Thread: Is this "clump of cells" deserving of life?

Originally Posted by Anders Hoveland

You describe the baby as if it were a parasite.

The foetus develops into a baby long before the birth.


What if the baby could survive outside of the mother, but the mother just does not want to give birth to it? Why does the baby need to take an actual breath before it can establish its right to life? Shouldn't the fact that it has the ability to breathe outside the womb be enough?
What if the life of the baby can be sustained by medical technology outside the womb? Many 25 week old babies could survive if they were separated from the mother, yet they are still aborted.

Is it morally right to remove the life support from an elderly patient just because he could not survive without it? Do you see the silliness of your argument?

http://www.slate.com/id/2120872/
"a member of President Bush's Council on Bioethics, describes in his book The Ethical Brain, current neurology suggests that a fetus doesn't possess enough neural structure to harbor consciousness until about 26 weeks, when it first seems to react to pain. Before that, the fetal neural structure is about as sophisticated as that of a sea slug and its EEG as flat and unorganized as that of someone brain-dead."

Originally Posted by MegadethFan

What is "babyhood"?


All of them? You need to provide links for that assertion.

Actually, since abortions at that point at illegal almost everywhere except for medical necessity, yes, all of them. The fact is that women do not choose late-term abortion without medical necessity regardless of law.

http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2...you-can-help-0

Originally Posted by OKgrannie

Actually, since abortions at that point at illegal almost everywhere except for medical necessity, yes, all of them.

Not in Australia, well, not in the state I live. Abortion is given right up until birth.

Originally Posted by OKgrannie

The fact is that women do not choose late-term abortion without medical necessity regardless of law.
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2...you-can-help-0

From the information you have given I dont doubt that this is the case.

Originally Posted by Anders Hoveland

These three babies were prematurely delivered at 22 weeks, 22 weeks, and 21 weeks, respectively. Are they really babies, or just lifeless clumps of flesh?


http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/...iny-baby_x.htm
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/ar...ing-weeks.html

Dear, abortions AFTER 21 20 weeks are NOT early term abortions, and do NOT fall under the same requirements.
An, if I see correctly, these VERY premature babies were already hooked up to all kind of "heroic measures" to try to save them. . . .although the likelyhood that they will develop as healthy children is almost nul!

It is more likely that they will have SERIOUS deficits whole their short lives (cerebral palsy, retardation, paralysis, heartt, kidney and lung malfunctions) and will be raised in a group home at the expenses of the tax payers.

Not knowing why these babies' birth was so premature doesn't tell us what could have been done to prevent such drama. But IF these babies' premature birth was the result of one of the VERY FEW late term abortions, they would NOT have been hooked up to all the heroic medical technology to keep them alive in spite of their extremely poor chance of survival to live a full life.

So, since these babys were given all the possible care we have today to keep em alive, no matter what, It appears that they were NOT the result of a late term abortion, but a natural late term miscariage, and at their mother cared enough to try to save them, in spite of the major problems they will surely have.

Now, are the people who tey so hard to "save" these little potential lives willing to pay tthe cost of providing for their haealth care and all their needs for the rest of their natural life?

Ask yourself why the same people who want to save fetus are often the same who complain about having to pay for health care for e poor, to pay for food stamps to feed those kids, to pay for their schooling and all the special help they will need in school due to their disabilities and to pay for keeping them alive and safe in group homes IF they reachadulthood.

There is a very good chance that these late stage miscarriage may have been due to a lack of pre-natal health care for the mother, or lack of health care for the mother even before she became pregnant. . .and there is an even greater chance that that lack of healthcare for the mother was due to the fact that we do not have universal healhcare, and that the same section of the population that call themselves "pro life" refuse to consider that receiving basic healthcare should be an universal right for anyone born. . .not just for unborn children or fetus!

Originally Posted by politicalcenter

But they have deposited them in trash cans after giving birth.

Ridiculous hyperbolic BS.

There have been a couple of cases of late term abortions where the result of the abortion was not treated withh all the respect it deserved. . .but those were extreme cases and NOT the norm. they were also not one week before the normal date of birth, or the child would have survived, IF it was not aborted because of extreme medical conditions preventing it's further development.

These exceptional cases of late term abortion that resulted in the bad treatment of the child that suevived those abortions for a short time are unnacceptable, and should NOT, in fairness, be compared to regular abortions, even regular late term abortions, but with enfanticide.

And it is obvious that infants being murder by their parents or others before the age of one or two deseve to be treated as murder cases. . . And they are.

But you are just USING child murder as a false equivalency to abortion. Not very ethical or smart!

Originally Posted by Makedde

Once born, they are people, and are thus deserving of life.

Right, but the very nanosecond before their body completely exists the womb, they're just a "blob of cells" huh?

So it's not about the morality, just the "legality" - gotcha.

Originally Posted by Cady

Those were women in desperate situations who didn't have the option of abortion, or weren't aware of it.

Yes, and this is why abortion should remain legal and safe for all.

If abortion were made illegal, more of those infanticide cases would happen.

Abortion has ALWAYS existed. We are lucky that, today, women do not have to risk their life to obtain one. And yet, all that could change and we would get back to back alley, unsafe abortions for women (at least poor women, because women with financial means could just travel to another, civilised country where they could still get a safe, legal abortion).

Originally Posted by Sadanie

Yes, and this is why abortion should remain legal and safe for all.

If abortion were made illegal, more of those infanticide cases would happen.

I'm fine with that - there's no difference between the two, except in the latter case the baby at least had a chance at life, and the women can be arrested for their crime.

Abortion has ALWAYS existed.

So has pedophilia.

We are lucky that, today, women do not have to risk their life to obtain one. And yet, all that could change and we would get back to back alley, unsafe abortions for women (at least poor women, because women with financial means could just travel to another, civilised country where they could still get a safe, legal abortion).

I prefer it that way - I think if someone wants to take an innocent life they deserve to risk their own, as well as their freedom if they get brought to trial for it - maybe these women shoud've invested the $5 that they spent on drugs the night before on birth control pills. Any woman who'd kill her kid because she's too lazy to put it up for adoption is scum.

Originally Posted by Sadanie

Yes, and this is why abortion should remain legal and safe for all.

If abortion were made illegal, more of those infanticide cases would happen.

I'm fine with that - there's no difference between the two, except in the latter case the baby at least had a chance at life, and the women can be arrested for their crime.

Abortion has ALWAYS existed.

So has pedophilia.

We are lucky that, today, women do not have to risk their life to obtain one. And yet, all that could change and we would get back to back alley, unsafe abortions for women (at least poor women, because women with financial means could just travel to another, civilised country where they could still get a safe, legal abortion).

I prefer it that way - I think if someone wants to take an innocent life they deserve to risk their own, as well as their freedom if they get brought to trial for it - maybe these women shoud've invested the $5 that they spent on drugs the night before on birth control pills. Any woman who'd kill her kid because she's too lazy to put it up for adoption is scum.

Originally Posted by Anders Hoveland

These three babies were prematurely delivered at 22 weeks, 22 weeks, and 21 weeks, respectively. Are they really babies, or just lifeless clumps of flesh?http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/...iny-baby_x.htm
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/ar...ing-weeks.html

You can see where the 21 week old baby has immature skin still - it would have been a nightmare looking after these little ones since any firm touch can cause skin tears. They have absolutely no subcutaneous fat either - that means they must have had exceptional nursing care to survive.

Now the next question is - what price life?

To have a baby as young as this survive costs money - a LOT of money.

Nearly 13% of all babies in the U.S. are preemies, a 20% increase since 1990. A 2006 report by the National Academy of Sciences found that the 550,000 preemies born each year in the U.S. run up about $26 billion in annual costs, mostly related to care in NICUs. That represents about half of all the money hospitals spend on newborns. But the number, large as it is, may understate the bill. Norman J. Waitzman, a professor of economics at the University of Utah who worked on the National Academy report, says the study considered just the first five years of the preemies' lives. Factor in the cost of treating all of the possible lifelong disabilities and the years of lost productivity for the caregivers, and the real tab may top $50 billion, Waitzman says.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...9046084131.htm

On April 1, 2007, a tiny baby girl, weighing less 600 gms, (a pound and a feather) born crack addicted and arriving to a young teenage mother was taken by Child Protective Services the minute she was born. Too premature to subsist on her own, she was rushed from delivery to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in a hospital in San Antonio, TX. Though they had the authority to justify doing nothing, physicians opted to place tubes, wires and machines on every speck of that child's body on the guise of fighting for her life. So, six weeks later, still a ward of the state, she has doubled her birth weight. That's a remarkable feat, percentage-wise. The little girl has proven herself to be a fighter, though she is far from out of the woods, her job now is just to incubate. That's the warm, fuzzy human side of the story.

From the perspective of the practical side of use of government funds, the pharmacy bill alone for this "miracle" exceeded $850,000 during this past six weeks. That doesn't begin to take into account the cost for the hospital, doctors, including the micro preemie specialists on duty round the clock. A medical bill to date of $1.6 million is an estimate of the charges. That's $1.6 million per pound. In a climate where only 10% of all children categorized as being under the poverty line are insured through Medicaid in Texas, with the public demanding more and more tax cuts, and an obliging governor ever ready to comply, one has to wonder what is so distinctive about this child to warrant such attention.

Even with the use of every device known to modern medicine employed in her behalf, the odds of her escaping devastating physical and mental handicaps, the cost for which will inure to the taxpayers in the state of Texas in perpetuity, is far more likely than not. Understand that the costs will not abate even if this child passes in adulthood, because the precedent as been set. A week ago, an even smaller girl made the controlled panic trip from delivery to NICU, and her bills promise to be even larger.

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So, what price life??