When Does Abortion Become Wrong?

[thaiboxerken]

Exactly. It's a limited liability corporation.

I was thinking it was more like a parasite.

 

[TragicMonkey]

I was thinking it was more like a parasite.

Like the worm aliens on Stargate SG-1? That would be kinda cool, actually.

 

[thaiboxerken]

More like the alien in "Alien".

 

[billydkid]

What?

I think it's never wrong, it's not like a fetus is a productive member of society.

You are joking right? If that criteria were used as the litmus test to determine whether one deserves to live or not we would be in a lot of trouble.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Re: What?

You are joking right? If that criteria were used as the litmus test to determine whether one deserves to live or not we would be in a lot of trouble.

Why is that?

 

[TragicMonkey]

Re: Re: What?

Why is that?

It would be open season to hunt Joan Rivers, pretty much everyone in Hollywood, prison inmates, the clergy, and the entire legal profession.

Hmm. Am I arguing for, or against?

 

[thaiboxerken]

Exactly.

 

[billydkid]

Re: Re: What?

Why is that?

So you think we should set up a Ministry of Determining Who is and Who is Not a Contributing Member of Society and weed out those folks who aren't? Say those old folks soaking up tax dollars and such in old folks homes? Or those mentally defective folks who are such a drain? Or what about those members of society who are flat out not only don't contribute, but actually leach deliberately - say car thieves and tax lawyers. I think this contributing member of society is not a far cry at all from Hitler's basic approach - weeding out those who are leaches and don't contribute. Yes, lets dispose of all those folks that someone or other (you?) deems not to be contributing members of society. It's just being sensible.

 

[Mona]

Re: Re: Re: What?

So you think we should set up a Ministry of Determining Who is and Who is Not a Contributing Member of Society and weed out those folks who aren't? Say those old folks soaking up tax dollars and such in old folks homes? Or those mentally defective folks who are such a drain? Or what about those members of society who are flat out not only don't contribute, but actually leach deliberately - say car thieves and tax lawyers. I think this contributing member of society is not a far cry at all from Hitler's basic approach - weeding out those who are leaches and don't contribute. Yes, lets dispose of all those folks that someone or other (you?) deems not to be contributing members of society. It's just being sensible.

Yeah. They put an ultrasound stethoscope on my belly and I heard my son's heartbeat. But, he's no person.(That metaphysical construction.)

I was wrong. I decided not to kill him, so I'm in league with Pat Robertson. No skeptic am I.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Re: Re: Re: Re: What?

Yeah. They put an ultrasound stethoscope on my belly and I heard my son's heartbeat. But, he's no person.(That metaphysical construction.)

They're living examples of human genetic material in action, sure enough. So are permanently comatose people on life support: they have heartbeats too. I'm morally untroubled by killing either of those two examples of human life, fetuses or vegetables. Neither of them, to my mind, have the characteristics that make a life morally important.

I was wrong. I decided not to kill him, so I'm in league with Pat Robertson. No skeptic am I.

People keep fetuses all the time, and it doesn't make them non-skeptical.

If you kept the baby because you thought keeping the baby would make you happy than that was a perfectly rational decision.

If you decided that the little throbbing blob should be kept because it had a soul, or because it had some objectively identifiable property that made it morally wrong to kill it, well, I'd disagree with you. I might even, depending on your reasoning on the matter, say that you weren't being a skeptic on that issue.

That would be okay though. We aren't at our most rational when we're drunk, or horny, or depressed, or pregnant and doped to the gills with insidious love-the-baby hormones, or in fact at any time when our cognitive processes are impaired chemically.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Re: Re: Re: What?

Yes, lets dispose of all those folks that someone or other (you?) deems not to be contributing members of society. It's just being sensible.

Of course, we'd have to come up with an objective way of determining who is productive.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Re: Re: Re: Re: What?

Yeah. They put an ultrasound stethoscope on my belly and I heard my son's heartbeat. But, he's no person.(That metaphysical construction.)

I was wrong. I decided not to kill him, so I'm in league with Pat Robertson. No skeptic am I.

Well, that line of reasoning isn't one of critical thought. No, you weren't skeptical at that moment. You made a decision based on emotion, which isn't bad, just not skeptical.

 

[Mona]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What?

They're living examples of human genetic material in action, sure enough. So are permanently comatose people on life support: they have heartbeats too. I'm morally untroubled by killing either of those two examples of human life, fetuses or vegetables. Neither of them, to my mind, have the characteristics that make a life morally important.



People keep fetuses all the time, and it doesn't make them non-skeptical.

If you kept the baby because you thought keeping the baby would make you happy than that was a perfectly rational decision.

If you decided that the little throbbing blob should be kept because it had a soul, or because it had some objectively identifiable property that made it morally wrong to kill it, well, I'd disagree with you. I might even, depending on your reasoning on the matter, say that you weren't being a skeptic on that issue.

That would be okay though. We aren't at our most rational when we're drunk, or horny, or depressed, or pregnant and doped to the gills with insidious love-the-baby hormones, or in fact at any time when our cognitive processes are impaired chemically.

I didn't kill him because he was alive, and had to be human, since I had mated with a human male. Whether he had a soul I did not know or consider, and neither do I make decisions based on metaphysical notions of "personhood." What I did know was that he had a heartbeat.

I wasn't raped, and I knew that having sex carried a chance of pregnancy, despite precautions. So, I had invited him into existence and, as I see it now, I was contemplating making him pay with his life for my gamble.

Also, I disagree that as a female only I and other women are entitled to have an opinion on this subject. Males are equally able to discuss the various aspects of this very vexing ethical issue.

Finally, I am disgusted by notions that only "productive" members of society have a right to live. I'm involved in multiple aspects of a program for developmentally disabled adults, many of whom cannot work and require extensive assistance running their lives. I would not care to live in a culture that kills them and other "useless eaters."

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

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I didn't kill him because he was alive, and had to be human, since I had mated with a human male.

In that case I'm not sure your decision was rational.

If someone is completely, irreversibly comatose, do you oppose "pulling the plug" or do you think we should keep them alive as long as possible by life support?

Whether he had a soul I did not know or consider, and neither do I make decisions based on metaphysical notions of "personhood." What I did know was that he had a heartbeat.

I think you're doing an injustice to rationalist morality by calling personhood a metaphysical notion. As far as I'm concerned, and I think most modern bioethicists are on my side, personhood is based on perfectly concrete capabilities and qualities. Rocks aren't non-persons because of some kind of airy metaphysical notion of rockness, they're non-persons because they have none of the qualities persons do that make persons important.

This is a touch like the "atheism is a religion" canard. Morality doesn't have to be arbitrary or metaphysical, and I try to make sure my morality isn't. Whereas a morality that says an early-term fetus is a person and Alex the Parrot isn't is both arbitrary and almost certainly based covertly on some metaphysical premise that privileges humans.

("Persons", as philosophers use it, is meant to refer to regular humans, aliens with similar cognitive faculties, possibly parrots and chimps and dogs, and anything else that has the same qualities that make it morally important).

I wasn't raped, and I knew that having sex carried a chance of pregnancy, despite precautions. So, I had invited him into existence and, as I see it now, I was contemplating making him pay with his life for my gamble.

As I see it, fetuses have no particular claim on us that we provide them with the facilities they need to develop, and the whole point of medical technology is to insulate us from the consequences of risky behaviour. I know that eating out carries a risk of food poisoning despite precautions, and going to the shops for chocolate carries a risk of getting hit by a car despite precautions, but in neither case to I feel morally obliged to turn down medical help if the worst happens.

Eating out, buying chocolate and having sex are all optional. We could abstain from them if we wanted. Still, I'm glad I live in a society where I can have restaurant meals, chocolate and sex and the medical establishment will be there to help me if things go wrong.

Also, I disagree that as a female only I and other women are entitled to have an opinion on this subject. Males are equally able to discuss the various aspects of this very vexing ethical issue.

On this we agree completely.

I'd go so far as to say, though, that there's a strong argument that men should not force their opinions on the matter on women. Historically speaking, laws against abortion have been passed by people who will never want an abortion and I'm not sure that's coincidental.

Finally, I am disgusted by notions that only "productive" members of society have a right to live. I'm involved in multiple aspects of a program for developmentally disabled adults, many of whom cannot work and require extensive assistance running their lives. I would not care to live in a culture that kills them and other "useless eaters."

That's TBKs particular bit of nazi ideology (yes, I Godwinned, but nazi Germany is the only first-world state in recent history to have systematically murdered its unproductive citizens), not mine.

If you're walking and talking I agree completely that it would be monstrously immoral to kill you, disability or no.

On the other hand, the disability lobby has always had a colossal blind spot when it comes to the distinction between killing existing people, and preventing future people from arising. I'm perfectly happy to say that if you're disabled and need extensive assistance that you have every right to life but it would be better if you had never been.

I'm in the same boat in my own opinion, having hereditary shortsightedness. I don't think anyone should kill me, but I think it would have been better had I not existed and someone else who hadn't inherited that vision disorder had come into existence instead. That person would have a slightly but significantly happier life than me all else being equal, since they could snorkel, play contact sports unimpaired and wouldn't have to pay for optometry and spectacles.

Edited for snorkle.

 

[Mona]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What?

In that case I'm not sure your decision was rational.

If someone is completely, irreversibly comatose, do you oppose "pulling the plug" or do you think we should keep them alive as long as possible by life support?


I think you're doing an injustice to rationalist morality by calling personhood a metaphysical notion. As far as I'm concerned, and I think most modern bioethicists are on my side, personhood is based on perfectly concrete capabilities and qualities. Rocks aren't non-persons because of some kind of airy metaphysical notion of rockness, they're non-persons because they have none of the qualities persons do that make persons important.

This is a touch like the "atheism is a religion" canard. Morality doesn't have to be arbitrary or metaphysical, and I try to make sure my morality isn't. Whereas a morality that says an early-term fetus is a person and Alex the Parrot isn't is both arbitrary and almost certainly based covertly on some metaphysical premise that privileges humans.

("Persons", as philosophers use it, is meant to refer to regular humans, aliens with similar cognitive faculties, possibly parrots and chimps and dogs, and anything else that has the same qualities that make it morally important).



As I see it, fetuses have no particular claim on us that we provide them with the facilities they need to develop, and the whole point of medical technology is to insulate us from the consequences of risky behaviour. I know that eating out carries a risk of food poisoning despite precautions, and going to the shops for chocolate carries a risk of getting hit by a car despite precautions, but in neither case to I feel morally obliged to turn down medical help if the worst happens.

Eating out, buying chocolate and having sex are all optional. We could abstain from them if we wanted. Still, I'm glad I live in a society where I can have restaurant meals, chocolate and sex and the medical establishment will be there to help me if things go wrong.



On this we agree completely.

I'd go so far as to say, though, that there's a strong argument that men should not force their opinions on the matter on women. Historically speaking, laws against abortion have been passed by people who will never want an abortion and I'm not sure that's coincidental.



That's TBKs particular bit of nazi ideology (yes, I Godwinned, but nazi Germany is the only first-world state in recent history to have systematically murdered its unproductive citizens), not mine.

If you're walking and talking I agree completely that it would be monstrously immoral to kill you, disability or no.

On the other hand, the disability lobby has always had a colossal blind spot when it comes to the distinction between killing existing people, and preventing future people from arising. I'm perfectly happy to say that if you're disabled and need extensive assistance that you have every right to life but it would be better if you had never been.

I'm in the same boat in my own opinion, having hereditary shortsightedness. I don't think anyone should kill me, but I think it would have been better had I not existed and someone else who hadn't inherited that vision disorder had come into existence instead. That person would have a slightly but significantly happier life than me all else being equal, since they could snorkle, play contact sports unimpaired and wouldn't have to pay for optometry and spectacles.

Taking your points seriatam (I've never been to slick with interspersing my own comments within your quotes, so I don't try to do it piecemeal).

I believe every man and woman has a right to dictate when they want life support to end. I do not support maintaining individuals in an irreversible coma in that state, and in prior eras they would die a natural death. Not all medical intervention is a blessing.

The situation with unborn human offspring, however, is different. We were all once there, and they are moving toward full awareness, and will usually get there if not killed. So, aborting them is more analogous to killing someone who is in a coma, but who will almost certainly come out of it shortly.

As to "personhood" this is a fiction, and a largely metaphysical one. Indeed, the entire notion of human rights is a metaphysical construct rooted in natural law, but happens to be one whose consequences I like.

And about whether it would be better to have never been: if you mean better to be aborted, this begs the question. Reasonable people argue that a fetus with a disability has, in fact, come into being. Is it moral to kill him or her at some time prior to live birth, but not after? Why not permit the killing of neonates up til, say, 2 mos.? We could catch a lot more disabilities that way.

Some bio-ethicists have argued that sometimes infanticide ought to be permitted. Given rationales such as you have set forth in defense of abortion, could you consistently disagree with them?

The disability rights lobby is right, in my view, to be alarmed by opinions such as yours.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What?

I believe every man and woman has a right to dictate when they want life support to end. I do not support maintaining individuals in an irreversible coma in that state, and in prior eras they would die a natural death. Not all medical intervention is a blessing.

The situation with unborn human offspring, however, is different. We were all once there, and they are moving toward full awareness, and will usually get there if not killed. So, aborting them is more analogous to killing someone who is in a coma, but who will almost certainly come out of it shortly.

I think there's a really important problem with that analogy you propose. That is that the temporarily comatose person had an ongoing life with hopes, goals and so forth which has been suspended. The fetus has no such previous life.

It's also worth saying that fetuses aren't people in the same way that acorns aren't oak trees. Even if most acorns will usually become oak trees given the right environment, that doesn't seem to mean that we should give an acorn in the right environment the same consideration as we would give an oak tree. I wouldn't cut down an oak tree just because it was on a spot I wanted to build a house on, but I'd be relaxed about paving over an acorn.

As to "personhood" this is a fiction, and a largely metaphysical one. Indeed, the entire notion of human rights is a metaphysical construct rooted in natural law, but happens to be one whose consequences I like.

Personhood is not metaphysical, any more than the distinction between animal, vegetable and mineral is metaphysical. The group of persons is a definable group of real, existing entities. If personhood is a fiction then redness, sourness and velocity are fictions.

Please don't try to drag rationalist morality down to the level of social conformity or religious conformity. I'm not making arbitrary or metaphysical distinctions, I'm making distinctions based on observable facts.

And about whether it would be better to have never been: if you mean better to be aborted, this begs the question. Reasonable people argue that a fetus with a disability has, in fact, come into being. Is it moral to kill him or her at some time prior to live birth, but not after? Why not permit the killing of neonates up til, say, 2 mos.? We could catch a lot more disabilities that way.

As far as I'm concerned killing a fetus before it has a functioning brain and consciousness is completely morally unproblematic, and you can kill it because it's disabled or because it's male or because it's got blue eyes. I just don't care. (Something like 98% of abortions in the real world are in this category).

If you scroll back you'll find the bit where I said that I don't think infanticide is a good thing, but that I can't see any consistent moral position in which it's tolerable to put down an unwanted dog but intolerable to put down an unwanted baby. In an ideal world where we had unlimited resources and unlimited altruism we'd keep everything alive whose life was not unbearably painful, of course.

Some bio-ethicists have argued that sometimes infanticide ought to be permitted. Given rationales such as you have set forth in defense of abortion, could you consistently disagree with them?

I don't think you can, if you put sufficiently heavy emphasis on that magic word "sometimes".

The truth is we actually engage in infanticide by neglect routinely in the first world. We just pretend it's not infanticide by chanting a magic formula like "treatment was discontinued as it was not in the best interests of the patient" or something, as if it's in the patient's best interests to die slowly of neglect rather than being put down humanely.

The disability rights lobby is right, in my view, to be alarmed by opinions such as yours.

I see their point, I just don't agree that it is important enough to take seriously.

As an analogy, I read a while ago about a primitive society somewhere in which the mentally ill were considered touched by the gods and thus kind of sacred. So unless they were a danger to the community they were allowed to do what they wanted and were taken care of by the community. (This society could even be fictional, it doesn't matter).

In that society, it would probably be bad for the mentally ill if skeptics came along and said "There are no gods and these people aren't blessed. They just have malfunctioning brains". After all, it might well turn out that once the public realised this was true they'd stop taking such good care of the mentally ill.

I wouldn't refrain from debunking belief in gods on that basis though. That debunking won't necessarily lead to worse treatment for the mentally ill, and belief in gods has all sorts of other negative consequences that society would be better off without.

In the same kind of way I think we should have a rational approach to morality, even if an irrational approach serves the (wholly worthy) purposes of some interest groups. Doing right by the disabled doesn't necessarily mean we have to be irrational, and being rational doesn't necessarily mean not doing right by the disabled.

 

[Mona]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What?

I think there's a really important problem with that analogy you propose. That is that the temporarily comatose person had an ongoing life with hopes, goals and so forth which has been suspended. The fetus has no such previous life.

It's also worth saying that fetuses aren't people in the same way that acorns aren't oak trees. Even if most acorns will usually become oak trees given the right environment, that doesn't seem to mean that we should give an acorn in the right environment the same consideration as we would give an oak tree. I wouldn't cut down an oak tree just because it was on a spot I wanted to build a house on, but I'd be relaxed about paving over an acorn.



Personhood is not metaphysical, any more than the distinction between animal, vegetable and mineral is metaphysical. The group of persons is a definable group of real, existing entities. If personhood is a fiction then redness, sourness and velocity are fictions.

Please don't try to drag rationalist morality down to the level of social conformity or religious conformity. I'm not making arbitrary or metaphysical distinctions, I'm making distinctions based on observable facts.



As far as I'm concerned killing a fetus before it has a functioning brain and consciousness is completely morally unproblematic, and you can kill it because it's disabled or because it's male or because it's got blue eyes. I just don't care. (Something like 98% of abortions in the real world are in this category).

If you scroll back you'll find the bit where I said that I don't think infanticide is a good thing, but that I can't see any consistent moral position in which it's tolerable to put down an unwanted dog but intolerable to put down an unwanted baby. In an ideal world where we had unlimited resources and unlimited altruism we'd keep everything alive whose life was not unbearably painful, of course.



I don't think you can, if you put sufficiently heavy emphasis on that magic word "sometimes".

The truth is we actually engage in infanticide by neglect routinely in the first world. We just pretend it's not infanticide by chanting a magic formula like "treatment was discontinued as it was not in the best interests of the patient" or something, as if it's in the patient's best interests to die slowly of neglect rather than being put down humanely.



I see their point, I just don't agree that it is important enough to take seriously.

As an analogy, I read a while ago about a primitive society somewhere in which the mentally ill were considered touched by the gods and thus kind of sacred. So unless they were a danger to the community they were allowed to do what they wanted and were taken care of by the community. (This society could even be fictional, it doesn't matter).

In that society, it would probably be bad for the mentally ill if skeptics came along and said "There are no gods and these people aren't blessed. They just have malfunctioning brains". After all, it might well turn out that once the public realised this was true they'd stop taking such good care of the mentally ill.

I wouldn't refrain from debunking belief in gods on that basis though. That debunking won't necessarily lead to worse treatment for the mentally ill, and belief in gods has all sorts of other negative consequences that society would be better off without.

In the same kind of way I think we should have a rational approach to morality, even if an irrational approach serves the (wholly worthy) purposes of some interest groups. Doing right by the disabled doesn't necessarily mean we have to be irrational, and being rational doesn't necessarily mean not doing right by the disabled.

Personhood is a metaphysical construct; it is a value philosophy and the law ascribe to some entitites, and not others. In law, even corporations can be "persons." At one time, slaves were not. I do not base my ethical decisions on such arbitrary notions whose genesis is in (religious) natural law; being a discrete human entity is enough for me to decide not to kill said entity, unless s/he poses an unreasonable threat to me or others.

As for a person in a coma having a social history, so? The unborn usually will, too, if you do not kill them. My point was that the fetus is in a normal stage of development common to us all, unlike the person in an irreversible coma. The person in the coma is done, kaput, no there there, and never will be again. The fetus is exactly where s/he is normally supposed to be, and can be expected to socialize with us a few months after birth. But even hermits have a right to live; I reject socialization as a means of determining who has a right to live.

As to the acorn/tree issue. Chopping down a tree OR squashing an acorn are generally no big deal. Killing a human being is. The entity in a pregnant human woman's womb is animate, and is treated as a patient by fetologists; surgery can be performed in the womb, on the unborn, and is. The unborn are not like acorns; they are like small trees.

You hold views on the disposability of people that I find troubling. While I do not adhere to Xian notions of the "sacredness" of life, I generally prefer the consequences that flow from such beliefs over the consequences of your beliefs. (I'm a pragmatist.)

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What?

Personhood is a metaphysical construct; it is a value philosophy and the law ascribe to some entitites, and not others. In law, even corporations can be "persons." At one time, slaves were not. I do not base my ethical decisions on such arbitrary notions whose genesis is in (religious) natural law; being a discrete human entity is enough for me to decide not to kill said entity, unless s/he poses an unreasonable threat to me or others.

We already know that's not quite true though, don't we? You agreed that it would be okay to switch off a permanently comatose person's life support, and the reason you gave was exactly the right one. A permanently comatose person does not have the special mental life we're looking for. So you've already agreed that it's okay to kill some discrete human entities that pose no threat to us, and for the same reason I'd give.

By the way, in the philosophical literature a "person" is an entity with the kind of special mental life that makes humans morally important. Slaves absolutely qualify as persons, and corporations absolutely do not. Where we draw the line with highly intelligent animals and seriously mentally disabled humans is up for grabs. Intelligent aliens would qualify, as would true artificial intelligence. That's the sense in which I'm using "person".

The idea of this definition is to capture everything that has that special mental life, and exclude everything that doesn't.

Now why is this way of designating the special, morally important entities better than yours? Because being a discrete human entity doesn't necessarily make an entity anything we should care about. The examples of the permanently comatose and of ancephalic babies demonstrate that for most people. Whereas anything with an adult-human-like metal life is something we should care about, and I think I can show that.

I strongly suspect that if I prodded you a bit with hypothetical scenarios about genetically engineered chimps that were as smart as humans, and genetically engineered humans with no heads (cloned as organ donors), you'd end up admitting that what is really important to you is what the entity is like, not whether the entity is a discrete human entity per se.

As for a person in a coma having a social history, so? The unborn usually will, too, if you do not kill them.

Sure, but no one will suffer and no one will miss them if the fetus never develops into an adult. I don't find that "loss of potential" any more morally troubling than the "loss of potential" that occurs any time an egg fails to implant properly, or for that matter when a sperm dies without fertilising an egg.

My point was that the fetus is in a normal stage of development common to us all, unlike the person in an irreversible coma. The person in the coma is done, kaput, no there there, and never will be again. The fetus is exactly where s/he is normally supposed to be, and can be expected to socialize with us a few months after birth. But even hermits have a right to live; I reject socialization as a means of determining who has a right to live.

No one (except possibly TBK, who we should all ignore) is advocating killing hermits.

I don't see why the fact that we were all fetuses at one time is either here or there. If I'd been aborted, no one would miss me now. For that matter if a different one of my father's millions of sperm had fertilised the egg I arose from, there would have been a completely different person in the world and no one would miss this me.

As to the acorn/tree issue. Chopping down a tree OR squashing an acorn are generally no big deal. Killing a human being is. The entity in a pregnant human woman's womb is animate, and is treated as a patient by fetologists; surgery can be performed in the womb, on the unborn, and is. The unborn are not like acorns; they are like small trees.

Certainly they are in the sense that they look like miniature, deformed human beings. To me, though, what's morally important isn't what they look like at all. It's what is or isn't going on between their ears.

There really is no comparison between what's going on between a fetus' ears and what's going on between your ears. That to me is what makes humans morally important in the first place, and that's why you are morally valuable in your own right and a fetus, or a permanently comatose person, is (in your words) disposable.

You hold views on the disposability of people that I find troubling. While I do not adhere to Xian notions of the "sacredness" of life, I generally prefer the consequences that flow from such beliefs over the consequences of your beliefs. (I'm a pragmatist.)

I'm sorry, what do you see as being the consequences of my beliefs?

 

[merphie]

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Kevin_Lowe, That's a pretty cold definition.

Who determines who has the "special mental life"? Do animals exhibit some sort of personallity? Does that not qualify? Do they not feel pain as we do?

I could not image making the choice to end the life (Breathing etc) of my wife even if she didn't response or was declared Brain dead. They may never talk but it would be so hard when you have a breathing warm person to hug. Dirt doesn't carry these qualities.

Any baby or fetus that is capable of becoming a human would be just a valuable just from their potential. I suspect that being pregnant would carry a special meaning to women. I have known women who had an abortion and lived to regret it for the rest of their lives.

A description of genetic chimps or headless humans is far beyond our current technology. I don't see how it pertains to the subject because you are talking about hypothetical senarios.

I don't see the abortion as a simple matter of no one missing you. How would you feel about a woman who uses abortions as a method of birth control? Lets say every month this woman has an abortion because she got pregnant again from a new guy?

If the deciding factor is how their brain works, then would it be ok to kill mentally retarded people? Who would decide what qualifies as mentally acceptible and who does not?

The question still comes down to where the line is drawn.

 

[CFLarsen]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What?

I could not image making the choice to end the life (Breathing etc) of my wife even if she didn't response or was declared Brain dead. They may never talk but it would be so hard when you have a breathing warm person to hug. Dirt doesn't carry these qualities.

But is it a person? With no brain functions whatsoever, she would never come back. Ever.

So, who are you keeping her "alive" for, yourself or her?

If you equate "life" with "personality", then you have to end her no-life. She has no personality whatsoever.

Any baby or fetus that is capable of becoming a human would be just a valuable just from their potential.

But your wife could never come back. Ever. She has no "potential" whatsoever.

I suspect that being pregnant would carry a special meaning to women. I have known women who had an abortion and lived to regret it for the rest of their lives.

So have I. But when asked if they thought it was the right decision, they have all without exception said "Yes".

A description of genetic chimps or headless humans is far beyond our current technology. I don't see how it pertains to the subject because you are talking about hypothetical senarios.

Given the progress of genetics, it is not a very hypothetical scenario anymore. We will very soon be able to grow body parts, and create animals that far surpass what we can imagine today. Why back down from facing the issue? Surely, it is better to be prepared than to be taken by surprise?

I don't see the abortion as a simple matter of no one missing you. How would you feel about a woman who uses abortions as a method of birth control? Lets say every month this woman has an abortion because she got pregnant again from a new guy?

I'd like to see a study that shows that women use abortion as a method of birth control. Contrary to what some claim, women do not use abortion as contraception.

If the deciding factor is how their brain works, then would it be ok to kill mentally retarded people? Who would decide what qualifies as mentally acceptible and who does not?

The question still comes down to where the line is drawn.

Yep. Is a brain dead person still a person?