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Post by vito on Nov 13, 2003 23:59:21 GMT -5
Thanks, Mo. Are there any others? I've seen the Jeremiah thing quoted before and it has always puzzled me.
First of all, who is the "you" God is talking about here? On the one hand "you" are someone who is "formed in the womb", but "you" are also someone whom God knows before anything is formed in the womb. Isn't it easier to understand this as meaning that the important part of "you" that God "knows" is your soul? Something incorporeal that is independent of conception or any other part of fetal development?
Secondly, what reason is there to think that "formed in the womb" refers to conception? Maybe someone who knows the Hebrew could speak more authoritatively about this, but in the English anyway it seems reasonable to assume that "formed you" refers to giving you the shape you now have: I.e. something human-like, not a zygote or a blastocyst.
Finally, who is God talking about here? Is he talking about Everyman? No, he's talking about Jeremiah, his chosen prophet. Doesn't this sentence lose all its meaning unless we understand it as saying that Jeremiah was unusual in that God "knew" him before he was "formed in the womb", and isn't the implication that the normal run of men aren't "known" by God until some time after they are "formed in the womb"?
In all it's always seemed to me to be a case of people really wanting there to be some Biblical sanction for what they want to believe or think and molding their interpretation of a verse accordingly. Like in the middle ages when the big muckity mucks in France didn't want a woman to rise to the throne of France, so church officials found for them the sentence in the Beatitudes saying "consider the lilies of the field, they toil not neither do they spin." The argument went that women are the ones who spin wool, and the lily (fleur de lys) was the symbol of France, therefore a woman ought not to rule France, q.e.d.! To us that interpretation may seem ludicrous and self-serving, but people back then bought it because they wanted to believe it.
I'm not saying this interpretation of Jeremiah is as bad, but I just don't see how this supports the idea that life begins at conception. Can someone tell me what (if anything) I'm missing?
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Post by MO on Nov 15, 2003 0:57:46 GMT -5
There are other passages about being knit in the womb and things of that nature. It doesn't say specifically not to violently suck a six year old through a tube. It does say, "Thou shall not murder." I would certainly never be willing to take the chance and murder someone with whom the creator has already ordained as human. But that's just me and we live in a pluralistic society.
Any intellectually honest cell biologist will tell you that it is a human life from conception. The problem with not granting human legal status at conception is that you have the problematic job of deciding at what arbitrary time it should be granted. If not at conception, then at what point do they become worthy of protection under the law?
I find it humorous that the pro abortion folks say killing these children should be "safe and rare." WHY should it be rare? If there is nothing morally repugnant about it, why not encourage it? Why NOT use it as birth control? It just proves that on some level they know. They know.
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Post by vito on Nov 16, 2003 22:08:34 GMT -5
By this I take it you agree that the passage in Jeremiah does not mean that a human being is "ensouled" at the point of conception as you and many others have claimed. Ditto the other references in the Bible to "knitting in the womb", etc. More proof that people just read the Bible in order to justify what they already thought!
It's undeniable that something unique happens at the moment of conception. An new combination of chromosomes is brought together. But that does not mean a unique human life has been created. The case of identical twins show that multiple unique individuals with separate identities and (from a religious standpoint) separate souls can arise from the same conception.
Moreover, any honest biologist will tell you the geneteic blueprint formed at conception does not determine who the developed individual will turn out to be. Environmental factors in the womb help determine how several genetic potentialities will end up being expressed. It seems to me that people who argue for conception as the defining point of an individual are taking an awfully reductive view of what constitutes humanity: we are far more than a chance combination of adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine.
For these reasons and others that are more personal and religious I don't believe that a fully ensouled human being exists at conception or at any point early on in pregnancy. Well over 90% of abortions are performed within the first trimester, when the embryo/fetus is an inch or so long and looks kind of like a tadpole. I have a really hard time calling that a human being, and since I think that a woman should be given quite a bit of leeway in determining who/what is going to be allowed to grow inside of her and (in a clinical sense) parasitically feeding off her, I have a hard time seeing how outlawing of abortion at that stage has any moral justification. I'm more sympathetic to laws that would restrict second and third trimester abortions, but anti-abortionists have demagogued this issue so much that most people don't realize that such abortions are an extremely small percentage of abortions that are performed.
I think one reason that this issue rages on is that those who are in favor of abortion rights are afraid that the restriction of late-term abortions is just the camel's nose under the tent for the outlawing of all abortions, and the way the anti-abortion faction conducts itself does nothing to dispel those fears. If the right to first-trimester abortion could somehow be safeguarded, then I think most opposition to late-term restrictions would dissolve.
And one last comment, when you say the answer is that even safe abortions are more risky than not getting pregnant, and even people who do not think abortion is murder recognize that a potential human life is ended and that that's a regrettable thing.
For these reasons people who call the pro-choice side "pro-abortion" are engaging in really unfair and inflammatory rhetoric. I've known lots of people who are pro abortion rights, but I've yet to meet one who is "pro abortion". They may exist, but they're rare.
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Post by MO on Nov 17, 2003 2:56:50 GMT -5
It was never my intent to bring up one's religious beliefs on this thread. You did that. If the religious aspects of abortion are of question to you, that is legitimate and can be brought up into more detail on a separate thread. I will try to participate in such thread.
The same could be said for a two year old. The same could be said for a fifty-two year old!
Your post is typical double speak of people who believe in moral ambiguity. You did not answer any of the crucial questions that I posed. If human status should not be granted at conception, then where? You have dug yourself into a philosophical hole!
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Post by Brander on Nov 17, 2003 22:07:03 GMT -5
Personally I think Human status should be given at the point where the possibility of the embryo splitting (and creating more than one being), has just passed. Does anyone agree?
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Post by vito on Nov 17, 2003 23:22:54 GMT -5
The same could be said for a two year old. The same could be said for a fifty-two year old! But never would be except by someone trying to score points in an argument. Two year olds and fifty-years old are not lodged in their mother's bellies, they are not siphoning nutrients directly from their mothers' bodies through an umbilical cord, and everybody recognizes them as fully formed human beings. I don't believe in ambiguous morality, but I don't believe in simplistic morality either |
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Post by Torremalku on Jan 13, 2004 5:45:57 GMT -5
How can anybody assume that a child that is not wanted by it's mother even wants to live? There is no guarantee that it's life would be safe, happy or productive and nobody asked to be born anyway. Evidence for this can be found in the suicide rates among people today. If you pro lifers feel so strongly about this, why don't you go adopt some poor, unwanted down syndrome baby that almost got aborted?
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Post by MO on Jan 13, 2004 16:00:12 GMT -5
So, in other words, the value of one's life should be based on their worthiness in man's eyes? Should the murderer of a homeless prostitute go free because no one misses her?
The woman doesn't have to raise the baby. Just let it live! There are thousands of people who wait on lists for years to adopt.
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Post by ukbushgirl on Jan 29, 2004 15:38:31 GMT -5
Whilst this is a 'grey' area I feel most of the time there is one way abortion is right:
*The time when both parties (the mother and the child) would die if this 'action' was not taken.
The mother has already had a long life. She has enjoyed pleasures the child has not and the ultimate motherly love act is the act of martyrdom to save one's child's life (whether born or unborn).
The 'woman's right to choose' argument is invalid since when your choice directly infringes on anothers life and death it is no longer a choice you as a human can make.
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Post by Angmar on Jan 29, 2004 23:58:05 GMT -5
I think I would have to agree. It's all well and good to say that "this child will have a terrible life, it's not fair", but assume the unborn child can be the judge of how terrible life really is or will be. It's a gift, and most cherish it.
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Post by ukbushgirl on Jan 30, 2004 16:52:35 GMT -5
Many disabled people enjoy aspects of life. Also what kind of message does it send out to the born and often adult and fully capable of understanding disabled community. Clearly 'we don't want your sort', which is (or at least should be) wrong and immoral.
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Post by screamineagle on Jan 31, 2004 17:36:05 GMT -5
NO ONE has the right to choose whether someone lives or dies. Just because you are the mother doesn't mean that changes. Last I heard that was murder, unless it was a military action.
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Post by ukbushgirl on Feb 1, 2004 12:33:12 GMT -5
Life and death decisions are far too complicated for humans to take definate action about (apart from heroic acts such as saving a persons life). Thus God should have those rights, not us. If the baby is going to die let God destroy it- not the mother.
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Post by Ted on Feb 1, 2004 20:12:38 GMT -5
I think abortion should usually be illegal. You'd have to make exceptions in some special cases, though.
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Post by ukbushgirl on Feb 2, 2004 11:17:42 GMT -5
What circumstances? There should be one time when it is accepted and that is when both lives are in danger- one death is better than two.
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