Afro_Cheese> Ah, good, at least I made my point clear
I’m not saying that the embryo is DEAD. A stone isn’t dead either. It’s not an organism, so trying to label it living or dead is pointless.
I’ve also never said that abortion is not termination of life. Quite a few pages ago I made a smaller essay on this point – that in a perfect world, with no poverty, no starvation, room for everyone, equality of genders and decent sex-ed, abortions would be very rare indeed. But let’s face it… A woman who takes leave to give birth and spend time wit ha child before returning to work looses out on pensions and promotions. A teen-age girl who becomes a mother too soon looses out on the chance to get a good education.
I think we can agree that the answer is NOT to not have sex. We’re just humans, and humans have drives. Contraception is not fool-proof, accidents DO happen. AND – bringing a new human being into the world is a great responsibility. It should be wanted, cared for and loved.
“And life starts at fertilization. I have yet to find any scientific website or book that argues against that point.”
So when the Pill works by flushing the fertilized egg that is also an abortion?
I also think that what Captain is trying to stress is ”A life.” Not living or being alive. But A LIFE. Think about it… the pregnant woman is someone’s daughter, someone’s friend, someone’s lover, maybe someone’s sister, or aunt. She has A LIFE. She’s autonomous, makes decision, lives.
You cannot say that about an embryo.
Falling4Daniel> Abortions and infanticide has been used since the stone-ages to avoid more mouths to feed if the tribe were in trouble. Back then the good of the many outweighed the good of the potential one…
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I don't think I want to know what you guys are talking about.And don't tell me because I don't think I want to know.JM
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__________________ "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
-Voltaire
"That includes ruining Halloween because someone swallowed a Bible."
"I just thought you were a guy."
"... Most guys do."
Well I do see your point, but just for the sake of correctness a stone is dead, seeing that one of the definitions for dead is inanimate or inert. Not only organisms can be classified dead. Many people assume that dead only means "has died" but it means anything that is not alive.
And abortion is more than just terminating a life. Terminating a life is just killing in general, abortion is specifically terminating a pregnancy. As far as I know, the woman becomes pregnant when the egg is implanted. But yes sometimes the pill does kill the embryo, but that still isn't enough reason to label it the same as abortion in my opinion. Also, like I said before, outlawing the pill could very likely increase the abortion rate, so even if someone is completely against abortion I could see why they wouldn't want the pill outlawed.
Preventing a pregnancy and terminating a pregnancy are different means to achieving the same end. If one is arguing the sanctity of a potential human life, neither choice is better or worse than the other.
Essentially any form of resisiting or ending life could be linked. I could say there is no difference between the death penalty and abortion because they are different means to achieve the same goal - a dead human being. Do I believe that? No. But I could argue that point.
And it's not potential life, it is life. We've already been over this.
Last edited by Afro Cheese on Dec 1st, 2004 at 01:43 AM
Actually an embryo is already a human, so one is basically killing a human and the other is supposedly preventing conception. But what Omega pointed out is that the hormones in oral contraceptives sometimes fail to suppress ovulation and the egg is fertilized anyway, but is unable to implant itself in the uterus, so it is essentially killing the embryo. But you are right most of the time it does prevent fertilization.
It's actually meant to make the lining of the uterus unreceptive to fertilized eggs. It's a backup function of the pill in case the woman ovulates anyway. Knowing that is a backup function, it wouldn't be an accident.
I know how "the pill" works. The thing is, it is still random--the woman doesn't have control whether or not her body ovulates. If her body does ovulate and the egg is fertilized, it is out of her control at that point. She can't magically alter her hormone levels to make the uterine tissue "work" with the ovum. She can (it's not even magically) choose not to have an abortion, however.
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Your argument would then commit the logic fallacy of false analogy as it would compare two things that are relevantly dissimilar.
It is living but it is not a life.
By taking a series of birth control pills, a woman is electing to repress her ovulation cycle and alter her uterine environment so that it is not conducive to implantation. There is nothing random about it.
It's a life.. you can't be living and not be a life. I'm not talking emotionally "this is my brother/sister/mother/father," I'm talking scientifically, a fetus is undoubtedly life. The reason there is a difference between the oral contraceptive and abortion, is mainly because abortion is terminating an already established life, while oral contraceptive is made to prevent conception. The fact of the matter is, the sperm is nothing more than part of the father's body and the egg is nothing more than part of the mother's body. So when sperm doesn't reach the egg, that isn't killing anything because there is nothing to kill. However when they do meet, that is fertilization and that is the beginning of life. Once the egg is fertilized it is an embryo and it is it's own organism. At that time they are no longer just preventing life, they are killing an already established embryo.
The only difference between a sperm and egg one second before fertilization and a sperm and egg one second after fertilization is proximity. Moreover, a woman is not even pregnant until 14 days after fertilization occurs.
No. There is another difference between a sperm or egg by itself and a sperm united with an egg - life. I don't know about that claim that a woman is not pregnant until 14 days after conception because I haven't read anything on that. But if that's true that would disprove the theory that the pill sometimes causes abortions. I have read that currently the words fertilization, conception, and fecundation are all defined as the union of the sperm and ovum, though some think they should have 3 different meanings.
Since people seem to continue to tell me that an embryo isn't life, a fetus isn't a baby, abortion isn't killing, I'd like to see some sources. Because from everything I've read so far I haven't found a single site supporting any of those statements, yet people continue to present them as scientific facts.
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Nov 29th, 2004 04:06 PM
