…Your are unwittingly claiming that all human embryos are dead with this line of reasoning…
[/quote]
That pretty much sums it up.
Smh, ride away. Too many Sioux and Cheyenne warriors down yonder.
Ride. Away. Now.
Don’t get scalped alive. It’s a horrible way to go.[/quote]
I’m not claiming they’re dead, though. I’m claiming that if we treat them as people, they cannot become dead, per the medical definition of what constitutes a person’s death (this being the irriversible cessation of heart/brain activity). Thus, they cannot be murdered.
If this is absurd – and it is – then our initial assumption was wrong.
Apparently abortion does not even qualify as murder, even for those from the pro life perspective. I’m not sure why that word keeps coming up in this thread.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
I only want to do this if we do it precisely.[/quote]
Honest question: why?
I’m aware of your position on abortion. Why do you want to play the semantic game that basically boils down to focusing on details to the point of trying to make the big picture irrelevant?
I don’t get why you’re trying to disprove what you know is true, by what eventually boils down to playing pretend half the conversation doesn’t exist.
[quote]Bismark wrote:
Not quite. I draw the line at 24 weeks - when brain waves begin. The fetus will still be out of sight for a while at the point. [/quote]
Pro-abort logic at it’s finest.
You are trying to use a portion of science you aren’t denying (measurement of brain waves and the machines that allow us to measure them) to deny science (biology 101) and while doing so forgetting that that very same science gives use this magical device called an ultrasound.
You wanna know how I know you aren’t a parent? Because you’d not have been silly enough to utter the later part of your post if you gave a fuck about your kids. I know people like Pitt would say their kids weren’t people and could be killed at anymoment because they look a little funny, but most people remember the first ultrasound… And it’s long before six months pregnant.
Oh, and if your chick isn’t showing at six months, she’s lying to you, or a fat fuckign slob.
[quote]Bismark wrote:
Would you be ok with the aforementioned being charged with murder, or not? After all, terminating a pregnancy is “murder”, and murder has no statute of limitations. [/quote]
tell you what… Pro-aborts admit their immorality and society stops slaughtering babies to the tune of about a million a year… we can keep the health of the mother “exceptions” which include rape or incest, and even the morning after pill, and I bet my life I can convince the whole of the pro-life community to not seek retro active punishment.
How’s that?
Jesus this is a shit argument man. Come on. You typically challenge me. But here… Come on man. You’ve got better shit than this in you.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
then our initial assumption was wrong. [/quote]
Or, you know, we adapt our definition of things, much like the democrats had to adapt their definition of person to include the very same black people they enslaved and lynched in order to win their votes…
[quote]sufiandy wrote:
Apparently abortion does not even qualify as murder, even for those from the pro life perspective. I’m not sure why that word keeps coming up in this thread.[/quote]
Sigh… Black people didn’t qualify as people until LBJ forced the rest of the democrats to agree with the republicans.
It’s like you fucking guys like walking into the tar pit and being fossilized with the rest of slavery.
Almost certainly my last post for this particular thread. Just got to know when to let the debate end. I don’t really have much to add, but to make some clarifications
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Why are we concerned about the CESSATION of brain activity?
smh_23 wrote:
Because that is the medical definition of death --[/quote]
No, that is a narrow tool to make a judgement for a narrow circumstance. Again, death, without any argument, happens to all organisms. That is also science. Might I remind you also that even in the realm of organisms with brains…Well, a cat’s brain may cease to function, too.
But none of this is relevant to what I was actually asking above. I asked WHY are we CONCERNED with cessation of brain activity. That is what I was asking. And the reason, is because cessation of brain activity means no FUTURE activity. Past activity is just that, already in the past. It is the potential being cut off, forever, which is the offense. Abortion is no different.
Excuse me? You are severely inflating indications of death with the medical scientific definition of living/death. Death is the cessation of life, period. Cessation of life is death. A bacteria is living, yet will not experience heart/brain death. There is no talking around this. That is flat out accepted science.
At least you recognize it as legal fiction. But that’s just it, you’re borrowing an indication of death for an individual that had been sick, traumatized, etc., and trying to support its use in this legal fiction. But an embryo is not a man dead on a slap. It is a living human individual that is already equipped with all the information required to experience all stages of life. Including functioning of the brain. But do tell, what doctor has pronounced a living embryo dead? You’re either proclaiming them dead, or you’re not. I want YOU to take a stand. Are they, or are they not? A doctor says that man cooling on a slab is dead. So, are embryos dead? Have they come into existence and instantaneously died? Which is it? Go ahead, say they’re not dead, nor can be pronounced dead. That is the only correct answer as the science will be with you. But only then.
Nope. The problem lies in this, you are telling me that I can’t call murder a murder because the law allows for it. I correctly point out that law COULD (and has) allow many a murder. And, yes, it would come back to this “person” deal. And it has, see African slave trade.
You then attempt to use medical INDICATIONS of death within organisms, at a stage in their life cycle where they’ll have the two organs you repeatedly brought up. You have failed to acknowledge that the same medical science does not use the indication to pronounce death of an embryo. Because it’s living. No only is it living, it has something a medically pronounced dead man doesn’t…The potential for the same brain activities you’ve been concerned with throughout.
Think that one through for a bit…Trust me, slow down, and think about what you just typed.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Good talk, but I honestly must go.[/quote]
Yes, me too. I’ll be working late into the night because of this, though I don’t regret it. (Also, I wrote my last post before I saw this – not trying to be a dick by hitting you with a long post just before the buzzer).
As always, the debate is appreciated.[/quote]
No doubt. And you’re absolutely welcome to the last post concerning this thread. I didn’t (at the time), nor will I, think anything of it. Someone always has to be the last at some point or the thread would never, ever, never, ever…end. Oh my…Please, I’m actually begging you to finish it off. Put this poor thread down! And frankly, I can’t imagine being able to phrase anything differently at this point, or of anything new I might add. I’ve “clarified” to the best of my own understanding. If you feel the need to restate something you’re welcome to it.
The only thing I would ask, is to forgive any passion I have for the topic as hostility towards you as an individual. This is a topic where I state things matter-of-factly (as I see them), and this can certainly come off in a way I honestly don’t intend. Good night SMH. Good night the rest of you!
See push, didn’t take us long to up on the same side of an issue again, heh.
No wait, I do have one last thing to say SMH. Though not perfect, I will gladly support your bill to outlaw abortions past the point where the most sophisticated instruments/methods (always to be updated) can detect fetal brain activity. =P
[quote]sufiandy wrote:
Apparently abortion does not even qualify as murder, even for those from the pro life perspective. I’m not sure why that word keeps coming up in this thread.[/quote]
Sigh… Black people didn’t qualify as people until LBJ forced the rest of the democrats to agree with the republicans.
It’s like you fucking guys like walking into the tar pit and being fossilized with the rest of slavery. [/quote]
Yeah, the Democratic Party is rife with anachronisms. Its hostility toward Islam, LGBT rights, global climate change, academia, and the seperation of church and state is nothing short of troglodytic.
[quote]sufiandy wrote:
Apparently abortion does not even qualify as murder, even for those from the pro life perspective. I’m not sure why that word keeps coming up in this thread.[/quote]
Sigh… Black people didn’t qualify as people until LBJ forced the rest of the democrats to agree with the republicans.
It’s like you fucking guys like walking into the tar pit and being fossilized with the rest of slavery. [/quote]
Yeah, the Democratic Party is rife with anachronisms. Its hostility toward Islam, LGBT rights, global climate change, academia, and the seperation of church and state is nothing short of troglodytic. [/quote]
lmao. I don’t know what’s funnier, your use of the “but so-and-so is wrong about X, so don’t get mad at me for doing Y” defense, or the fact that rather than accept the fact the democrat party, for a few hundred years now, has a significant problem with seeing people as people, where it be because they are black or younger than they like.
First they fought to be able to enslave black people. Then they fought to “other” them with Jim Crow, then once they used Stockholm Syndrome to turn them into their voting stock, they figured out a way to get them to kill themselves in democrat run inner-city shit holes and through abortion.
But you know… the Republicans are wrong on a couple issues, so in your world none of that matters.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
then our initial assumption was wrong. [/quote]
Or, you know, we adapt our definition of things, much like the democrats had to adapt their definition of person to include the very same black people they enslaved and lynched in order to win their votes…
[/quote]
Legal facts can easily be called “fictions,” and their adaptation for a broad range of reasons is fine and expected.
Medical facts are different, narrower, and contingent. They supervene not on what we decide is best but rather on what we find is true. You’re suggesting that we change the medical science of death to suit an ideological political/religious/moral position. We’re not just talking about a diagnostic tool: There have been a great many peer-reviewed papers written about the medical definition of death (and, indeed, there have been billions of amateur observations: as I said, the people I’ve seen die died when their hearts and brains quieted permanently, not weeks later when their last and deepest cells ceased slightly humming). It’s been tested and studied and debated on the scientific merits, and it is indeed still debated, though not by anybody who seriously thinks it hinges on something other than permanent cessation of activity of the heart/brain.
Which is to say that accountants and writers, smart though they may be, don’t decide these things, just as pro-choice crusaders don’t decide what is and is not human tissue in order that they might better pretend an embryo to be inanimate and inhuman. If one of them were to encounter your insistence that the humanness of an embryo is medical fact, and he were to respond by suggesting that we must change this by “adapt[ing] our definition of things,” you’d kick him in the ass and send him on his way. This I know to be true to a moral certainty.
But, because it relates, I want to answer a different post of yours here: the “why” one. I’m interested in this not because it’s some time-waster or semantic trick, but because philosophy – i.e., morality – is always in the details, the isolated fundamental essences. My subject here is not the definition of a word but the weight of a concept. “Cessation” the word is small, uncontroversial (i.e., there is no semantic argument here), and unilluminating. “Cessation” the act may be much bigger. I care because this is how I decide what’s right and not. I don’t have a holy book: this is it. I am ambivalent about early abortion; I don’t want to be. And even those of us who are steadfast in their position can benefit from an argument like this. Weaknesses are identified and refortified, understandings are deepened a little. Maybe, sometimes.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Good talk, but I honestly must go.[/quote]
Yes, me too. I’ll be working late into the night because of this, though I don’t regret it. (Also, I wrote my last post before I saw this – not trying to be a dick by hitting you with a long post just before the buzzer).
As always, the debate is appreciated.[/quote]
No doubt. And you’re absolutely welcome to the last post concerning this thread. I didn’t (at the time), nor will I, think anything of it. Someone always has to be the last at some point or the thread would never, ever, never, ever…end. Oh my…Please, I’m actually begging you to finish it off. Put this poor thread down! And frankly, I can’t imagine being able to phrase anything differently at this point, or of anything new I might add. I’ve “clarified” to the best of my own understanding. If you feel the need to restate something you’re welcome to it.
The only thing I would ask, is to forgive any passion I have for the topic as hostility towards you as an individual. This is a topic where I state things matter-of-factly (as I see them), and this can certainly come off in a way I honestly don’t intend. Good night SMH. Good night the rest of you!
See push, didn’t take us long to up on the same side of an issue again, heh.
[/quote]
A great and much appreciated post. I know that this particular discussion is more grave and more urgent than gay marriage or the tax code. It’s for this reason that I try to scale down and blunt the edges of my rhetorical style. But your tone never appeared remotely hostile and there is nothing at all to forgive.
Don’t worry, I won’t respond point by point to your last post – this isn’t an “I want the last word” kind of thing, and since we’re both on our way out, there doesn’t seem to be any sense in trying to re-re-retake the trench in no-man’s-land we’ve been trading back and forth.