victor809 wrote:Potts. You're wrong and your apology is accepted.
You're over-using the tag line of someone else.
victor809 wrote:It only has potential if it continues to suck nutrients from a host.
Incapacitated people basically do the same thing. Are you suggesting that we kill them off because they cannot feed themselves?[/quote]
victor809 wrote:It is not independent
The same can be said of mentally impaired or incapacitated people.
victor809 wrote:...it's rights end at the rights of the mother, since its existence requires the mother.
First, the rights issue is what is under dispute. Second, a child requires a mother to feed up until about 6 months of age (or thereabouts). So, by your definition, an infant can be snuffed out by its mother because it has "no rights."
victor809 wrote:You want to allow it to continue growing, then take it out, implant it in yourself and get to work.
Rights to not depend on technological advancements. They are "inalienable."
However, your approach would make several members of the German National Socialist party proud.
Any idiot can define some sort of human life as less than human, as a justification for its extermination. Hitler did it with non-Aryans, Islamists do it with Jews, and so on.
victor809 wrote:I'd be more inclined to be anti-abortion if the technology allowed them to be viable outside of their host, but that hasn't happened yet. Technology will always influence where we recognize complex ideas to lie, and unlike others (ahem, potts) I don't hold fast to an idea when better information and alternatives comes along. but at this time, you are talking about a parasite.
Oh, I see. So now children are parasites. Name for me one parasite that can and will become a human.
Baby formula: technology. Until then it was wet-nursing, and that has no guarantee of success. The extension of this is that if you cannot feed yourself for any reason, you can therefore be terminated by fiat.
Here's the deal, Victor: you are beholden to political view that clouds your rational view of conception and birth. Women's "rights" to an abortion is a purely political view. The country in which you live was founded upon the notion that the right to life is sacred and inalienable. We have court systems to determine when the right to life conflicts with another's right to life - that's what the courts are there to determine. But no one - including a mother of an unborn child - has a specific right to take the life of another person. Giving birth in itself is not a practice that sacrifices the life of the woman. Yes, it is a dangerous practice, but so is eating sushi or steak tartar, and it is something people have been doing - and is part of our function - since, well, forever.
You call a "fetus" stuff like "tissue mass" and "parasite." Again, none of these will ever become a human being. A fetus will.
The only difference between a fetus and a newborn is an umbilical cord and a few centimeters of birth canal.
Now I'm pretty sure you will not contemplate any of this - few who think like you ever do. However, your thinking is more in line with historical societies whose practices you would NEVER condone in public. However, hiding behind "wimmens rights" or "reproductive rights" is the cop-out you use to basically align yourselves with Nazis (and no I don't use that comparison lightly), and others who pushed that diabolical eugenics nonsense.
And like sterilizing people (which is just permanent birth control) off-ing the sick and disabled is also not far behind. In fact, this is what the assisted suicide types are pushing.
Oh, and high-minded medical ethicists from places like Oxford are now opening the door to legalized infanticide. They are claiming that you're not really a human being until some arbitrary age. You're not fully formed. Therefore, you can be put out of your misery. So really, your application of the term "parasite" as a means to justifying abortion, and straight-out infanticide is simply a matter of degree. If you are not productive in some form, you are a parasite, and need to be executed right away.
I know you don't like to acknowledge "slippery slopes," but abortion isn't just a potential slippery slope, we're sliding down it as we speak.
I don't have to invoke God, or use morality to make any of these cases - though it'd be REAL easy for me to do so. All I have to do is point out facts, and the foundations of out basic civil rights to back up what I say.
And frankly, if you don't like the fact that the right to life is inalienable, maybe you should try taking up residence in Communist China. They have the same basic viewpoint. Well...except for the fact that you don't have an inalienable right to life either.
