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Originally Posted by Blade
How about the woman in a coma in florida they unplugged? It was the same language - she's "not really a human being". The technique of making someone killable by "defining" them out of the human family was invented by the nazis.
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You invoked the Nazis; you lose. If you can't see the difference between giving people control over their own lives and genocide, I can't help you.
The woman in Florida was not just brain-dead; her brain had liquified. Further, she had made it clear beforehand that she didn't want to be kept alive on machines. You can argue that we shouldn't have taken her husband's word for that; but it never made sense that the government is more qualified to know what she would have wanted than her immediate family.
Nobody was "defining her out of the human family." That's just crap polemic designed to shut down debate over how best to handle such tragic cases.
Barring evidence that a) the comatose person wanted to be kept alive or b) the family did not have the victim's best interests in mind, decisions on "pulling the plug" should be up to the family and nobody else (unless they can't pay the bills).
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How about the difference between a 70-year-old and a 8.5 month fetus? An 8 month fetus? A 7 month fetus? Ooooooooooo, I can just FEEL it - now you're going to give me a magic cutoff point.
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Life is all about drawing lines. You want to draw it at conception; I don't.
I draw it at "viability without heroic measures." After that point -- near the end of the second trimester -- abortion should be heavily restricted. My basic slogan is "first trimester unrestricted; second trimester some restrictions; third trimester, almost never."
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Why - because those people if born would live unworthy lives (to use the nazi phrase)?
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Unworthy? That's up to God, if you believe in him. But I think considering a fetus' potential quality of life -- and the quality of life of their caregivers, given the emotional, physical and financial burden of care -- is both fair and humane.
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Then are the people alive with those maladies living unworthy lives?
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That's not for me to judge.
At that point they're people, with full legal rights.
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Oh, THERE'S the magic cutoff point. Do you want to be the first of maybe 100 pro-abortionists I've asked to justify that, to actually do it?
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I suppose it depends what you mean by "justify." If you proceed from the assumption that once conception occurs the embryo is a human entitled to full legal rights, I'm pretty sure I can't say anything to "justify" my stance to you. If, on the other hand, you recognize that a fertilized egg does not enjoy any particular legal rights but an 8-month-old fetus does, then I can justify my position as the best place to draw the line between the two.
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How about what's truly liberal? Aren't liberals the people who care about the weak, the helpless, the people who are deprived of rights? Shouldn't YOU be lecturing ME about the rights of fetuses??
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All of which just demonstrates the useless of "liberal" and "conservative" in cases like this.
Parsed with a bit of hyperbole, liberals are concerned about the rights of the woman to the exclusion of the rights of the fetus, while conservatives are concerned about the rights of the fetus to the exclusion of the rights of the woman.
Reality, of course, is far more complicated -- unless you really believe that there are millions of women who for whatever reason harbor homicidal hatred for their babies or blithe unconcern about what abortion entails. There are many reasons to have abortions, but they are rarely simple. Even the simplest -- first trimester abortions because birth-control or willpower failed -- usually aren't easy decisions.
Me, I recognize this for what it is: A classic collision of legitimate-but-competing interests. At the beginning of pregnancy, the woman has almost absolute rights. By the end, the fetus has almost absolute rights. IMO, the debate should be about where and how the tipping point occurs. For me, it's "viability without heroic measures."