There is no valid argument that legitimately classifies the single cell at conception as a living human. and yes .. the anti-abort arguments are very disjointed and desperate, usually involving circular reasoning or some other logical fallacy.
Having a position, and being able to justify that position are two different things. Not all "human life" is a living human. Notice the distinction between the word human when used as a descriptive adjective (human life) and a noun (a living human)
You guys are cracking me up here. There is a fire in the hospital and you have the opportunity to save 2 newborn babies OR 4 people in a coma. Who do you choose? There is a fire in the hospital and you have the opportunity to save 2 trays of 30 embryos each, 1 baby OR a 90 year old man who will probably die anyway in a year. There is a fire in the hospital, the firemen put it out but the power is off and a generator can only handle the breathing machines of a middle-aged man OR neo-nato premie incubators.
I don't use these kinds of comparisons in my debating. They are like using slavery and the Nazis .. pretty pointless really as they don't "prove" anything.
To be fair I think what they were trying to do with the thought experiment was show that a fertilized egg is not comparable to a person. These kind of questions are interesting but I've always preferred making my point. Though I think generally that most people if they left a petri dish with a fertilized egg in it they would not feel bad afterwards though in your examples most people would still feel guilt. Now the fundamental flaw with these types of thought experiments I see is they only really address what people would feel and not the facts behind it, like for the fact a human zygote is in it's most basic description a cluster of cells with human DNA now I think we could easily say that simply being a strand of human DNA doesn't show something like personhood or even the ability to produce consciousness one of the most basic signs of how we usually distinguish personhood.
It doesn't explain anything. In a fire--one will save what means most to them out of necessity of choice. A zygote is not as meaningful as a 6 month old baby. A 6 month old baby may not mean as much to me as a three year old toddler. In a fire we make hard decisions. We aren't talking about what to kill when someone has to die anyway when we are talking about the abortion controversy. That has nothing to do with the question---do we protect vulnerable innocent human life or can we kill it at will.
That's sort of the point I was trying to make in the second paragraph except more to do with how it only deals what we would do on initial feelings rather than what's the right choice. That's why I went into some of the points of the abortion debate in the second paragraph. Kind of a loaded question, you use the word "innocent" to describe a zygote this implies human being characteristics as you wouldn't call a strand of human DNA "innocent" as it implies personal characteristics such as consciousness, this would have to be demonstrated which it hasn't. Whether or not a woman has the right to stop it from developing into a consciously active life or terminating the pregnancy before it becomes viable would be a better view of the abortion debate as the pro life side says no to this while the pro choice side says yes and as far as I can tell is medically speaking a correct phrase of question though people are free to scrutinize it if they wish because I could still get terminology wrong.
The practice of the state allowing abortions can be compared to Hitlers use of Eugenics on the Jews in a way. Although abortions aren't necessarily immoral Eugenics as Hitler did with his experiments. So maybe that is what is confusing, that abortions stops bad babies from being born since they were never wanted. Most criminals were bastardized children so this form of Eugenics is useful to a productive society. Now of course this is general assumption, as some children from two parent christian homes have become criminals, and some bastardized children from atheist homes have become productive members of society. Abortion is a delicate issue due to its sensitive nature.
The same comparrison could be used when it comes to using law to remove rights, removing the right of the woman over her body is akin to removing the rights of Jews in Nazi Germany, both were/are designed to make a born human less than another born human.
Eugenics is a bastardization of science that believes that we can get rid of "weak" traits and make the gene pool "strong" by favoring certain people in reproduction or by sterilization or even killing the so called "weak" I won't get into all the reasons why this is a flawed belief because it's not the discussion but I don't know how this is similar to letting women terminate a pregnancy at it's earliest stage which has nothing to do with an end goal other than women being in control of their bodies.
You won;t get into reasons because however unsavoury, eugenics is perfectly good science. If people are carriers of cerytain genes stopping them from breeding makes perfect sense,
Eugenics is often done by things like about promoting a certain percentile of the population while discouraging another percentile to promote a "strong gene pool" the problem behind eugenics is that it doesn't take into account of the unknowns so while when we try to govern the gene pool from a central authority rather than a natural or for a similar metaphor an invisible hand as it would seem then we could end up losing some important genes as survival would no longer be about environmental factors but artificial selection from an authority without full information on what the end result would do. in simple terms the main flaw in eugenics is that it seeks an end goal of a strong gene pool by picking a percentile of people as "strong" while not fully understanding what results of this could do. That is a very definition of a bastardization of science. EDIT: Just as an added I forgot to mention as shown many of the models of inheritance in eugenics are flawed.
So all of Eugenics is flawed because SOME of the models are flawed? Eugenics can have many intentions and you have just pciked one as a strawman. Stopping the mentally subnormal from breeding is rather obvious.
No the very model of eugenics is flawed for many of the reasons I mentioned, reducing genetic diversity by artificial central authorities is a flawed mechanism as you could bring down the hereditability of many important genes as we can not know yet what genes we would be losing, obviously losing is a relative term for my argument here but even lost genes or probably better to say recessive traits may come back that are not beneficial. I even spoke briefly on hereditability for eugenics being flawed I should have explained better, as shown hereditability is not fully understood and it's hard to map out percentages or even a "strong" percentile. To put these together to give your mentally subnormal comment a response it should be noted that like I previously said having a central authority dictate this would not work as well as a natural one (natural selection) as you wouldn't be able to stop many carriers of recessive genes that pass it on so you would only effectively stopping an extremely small percent of cases that would not effectively work as a eugenics model even if you could know what genes would be relevant for survival. I obviously don't need to get into the ethics of it as I believe we are in agreement there.
Most folks that try and compare Eugenics to Abortion do not really understand what the Eugenics movement was all about. Even if there were such a thing as a genetically inferior race. The Jews certainly would not qualify. Just look at the number of Chess Grandmasters that were Jewish including a ridiculously high proportion of world champions. Abortion in general in the modern age in first world nations has absolutely nothing to do with selection of the basis of genetic superiority or inferiority and zero to do with Hitler.
Humans have participated in Eugenics continuously throughout our existence...we each choose a mate based on visible and unseen traits, reproduce with that choice, and thus pass the genetic possibility of those traits unto the next generation. I would not breed with a defective partner based on this obvious degradation of my genetics.
Actually eugenics and your support of it relates well to the subject of abortion. Deciding who should breed, what characteristics are desirable and should be propagated and genetic lines should be stopped is a very dangerous way for society to go. Eugenics supports the idea that some human life is less valuable then others and disposable. With eugenics it is society deciding what family or racial lines should be disposed of. Which----is what Hitler was doing whether you like it or not.
I didn't say I supported it . that is entirely YOUR invention. - - - Updated - - - how can some human life NOT be more valuable than others? There is no intrinsic value of life, it is all relative to whoever is making the value judgement.
Some pro-lifers misunderstand the pro-choice position pretty radically. It has nothing at all to do with outcomes/consequences. It is purely a belief in the freedom of the mother to do what she likes with her body - to propose all these other "solutions" is abhorrent because it denies the mother that choice. It has nothing to do with feminism or leftism - I am by no possible stretch of the imagination on the left, and if you can somehow figure out how to get men pregnant I'll advocate for their liberty also.
And the prize for the greatest non sequator is...... I support Hitler because I beleive that the value of human life is relative? Incredible.
Obviously your understanding of the term is no better than your ability to spell it. No, you are of one mind with Hitler because you think that value is "relative to whoever is making the value judgement"; and that being the ideological sword you live by, you can look forward to dying by it as well. To people like you, nothing is more incredible than the truth.
