A baby born without a brain is "genetically human", too. So what? Terri Schaivo was, too. My skin contains my full genetic profile. Every gene can be sequenced, so my skin is genetically human. That does not make it human. A zygote, IMO, is a human zygote. It's not a human being. Anymore than 12 raw ingredients in a crock pot is "beef stew". It's not. Try it. Then try actual beef stew. They aren't the same, even if the crock pot has all the same ingredients.

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

So, his statement was inaccurate. Thats all I said. The criteria he was using was flat wrong.

At what point does it magically turn into a human being then?

If you cant define that point, abortion should remain completely illegal, to remove any possibility of killing a human being.

We are not talking about cooking ingedients though. We are talking about human beings.

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When it lives in a western-style democracy, one presumes?

Yet certain national governments may bomb civilian populations without compunction, repeatedly ignoring the prospect of 'killing' many human beings, and they do it again and again and again....and its just fine!

We can, at the very least, be assured of the humanity of those who have already been born, cant we? Or have they a lesser order of 'right' than the unborn in this regard? Is this a shared collective guilt of the born, acquired, presumably, by virtue of the stain of some sort of original sin attendant to the process of having tumbled-out squeeling on the earth? Strange....

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"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. I dont advocate abortion in non-democracies either.

Unlike abortion, those deaths are not deliberate. I have come to the conclusion that trying to explain this to liberals is pointless.

Yes. I oppose the deliberate killing of post-born human beings as well, unless they are a threat. Therefore my argument is consistent.

If you can prove the pre-born are threats, I will be happy to side with the "pro-choice" crowd.

Dont know. Dont care. My argument would remain just as valid in any case.

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A wise conclusion. And I get the distinction you are making (consistently).

If a pregnant woman went to have, say, an ingrown toe-nail removed, and the unborn foetus was accidentally aborted during the procedure, because it was not the stated, intended outcome of the procedure, it wouldnt be considered 'murder' in your ethical system. Got it.

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"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

No, it wouldnt. And not just under my ethical system, but under our legal system as well. It must be deliberate in order to be defined as murder. It is impossible to accidentally murder someone. An accidental murder is called manslaughter.

It would still be a crime, because it was reckless and/or negligent, but it would not be murder.

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Don't ask me. I've leave that up to medical experts. But I know a 12 week old fetus is not a human being. It's merely a potential human being, which is not at all the same thing.

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

Which medical experts? You are aware that they dont all agree, right?

Maybe. But if you cant determine exactly when it becomes a human being, I prefer to err on the side of caution. Why take chances?

The worst that can happen for the woman in the vast majority of cases is temporary pain and inconvenience. The worst that can happen for the child is death. Death > temporary pain and inconveninece.

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Sure. Let them reach a common sense consensus. It's not 12 weeks, but it is 24 weeks. It's somewhere in the middle. Ban abortion after that point (and I don't care what that point is, so I won't have any objections).

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

If you dont care, why dont we just ban abortions completely then? It's all the same to you, right?

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