We have already had a pretty good conversation, I think... but it appears that my fundamental message has not gotten through. When one person doesn't understand, that person is an idiot. When no one understands... I'm the idiot... So... I took another think... ---------------- Pro-lifers are not interested in "personhood". That's a lawyer's invention. Not worthy of moral outrage. S A V E T H E B A B I E S ! ! ! Now... that is worthy of outrage! Stop the baby-killers! Who could ever defend killing babies? The pro-lifers know what is important, and that's why they get so many people torqued up, despite arguments that simply do not hold water. The pro-lifers do not debate intellectually. They debate emotionally: How could you be so morally bankrupt as to defend the baby-killers? Shame on you! SHAME ON YOU ! ! ! It's smoke and mirrors, of course... but that doesn't matter. The pro-lifers do not care about "logic" or "reason". They probably laugh when someone tries to appeal to such futility. The pro-lifers are all about emotion. When any normal human being looks at a baby, their brain turns to mush: "Aw-w-w-w-w... s-o-o-o cute!!" Any normal person is ready to step up to defend that precious little bundle. We have gene-deep reflexes that are far, far more powerful than any lawyer's invention. Protect! Nurture! This is not intellectual. It is physical. It comes straight from inside us, from our hormones. Our brains submit to our hormones, in this as in everything. The pro-lifers -- at least, the cynical demagogues who are the "shepherds" of that "flock" -- understand all this. "Life begins at conception!" is irrelevant and it is nonsense.But the alt-right demagogues don't care about relevance or reason: the slogan justifies the notion that a fertilized egg is a "baby", and if the demagogues can get people to believe such idiocy, then their "protect-and-nurture" instinct kicks in. Moral outrage is justified! When pro-choicers present their finely-reasoned arguments about the choice of this or that point of gestation as the true moment of personhood, they are Don Quixote tilting at windmills: making much noise about... nothing. So... How do we pro-choice people respond? IMNAAHO, the first thing we must do is underscore the emotional basis of the pro-life arguments. "Are we prisoners of our hormones? If your preacher tells you, tomorrow, that puppies are babies, too, will you join a screaming mob with your 'Save the babies' sign?" ... ... "Are you really telling me that this miscarried afterbirth, where you cannot even see the embryo, is a baby? That's silly. Babies have rosy cheeks and go 'gurgle-gurgle'!" ... ... "Of course we must save the babies! There are so many little orphans whose lives will be terrible without our help..." Any attempt to undercut the protect-and-nurture reflex is doomed to failure. Our instincts are far more powerful than our intellects. But the demagogues' obviously silly application of the word "baby" to a zygote gives us an opening to argue that, "YES!! We must save the babies! ... But that isn't a baby. Do not let your good instincts be hijacked by dishonest demagogues." T H I S I S N O T A B A B Y !
Mr. Donald Trump on abortion. Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/d/donald_trump_5.html
Quoting Trump is futile. He says whatever might excite his base. There is only coincidental correspondence between what he says and... anything...
while I understand your argument, it is a futile one, all asserting "YES!! We must save the babies! ... But that isn't a baby." does is bog any debate down in semantics.
There are two pictures in the OP. One shows a baby. The other does not. This is not semantics. This is vocabulary.
Guarantee you, you use that argument against pro-life people and they will ignore the pictures and concentrate on the word 'baby'
You're probably right. This is more destined for fence-sitters than for true-believers. The whole pro-life argument is emotional, based on persuading people that zygotes are babies. I thought perhaps imagery could persuade otherwise.
The issue as I see it is there is very little common ground between pro-life and pro-choice, one focusses on the fetus, the other on the woman .. I have tried to step away from that by looking at how abortion would be effected IF the unborn were deemed/declared persons from conception . .from the research I have done it would IMO remove any and all restrictions on abortion and force the state to pay for them. The unborn as persons would fall under the same protections and restrictions that born people have, they would be subject to the legal process and legal precedences already set of which one stands out .. that no person may physically impose upon another person without their consent regardless of the circumstances that led them to be in the position they find themselves (unless they are defending themselves against illegal injuries ie self-defence) Legally it is not the man or woman that causes pregnancy, it is the fertilized ovum successfully implanting into the uterine wall Biologically and legally it is the fetus that instigates and maintains pregnancy. Legally the fetus, as a separate person, must gain separate consent from the female to physically impose upon her, her consent to engage in sexual intercourse cannot be used as proxy consent for another person (fetus) for another action (pregnancy), if that consent is not given then the fetus is illegally injuring the female even though it has no conscious intent to do so .. having no conscious intent does not change the right of the female to defend herself up to, and including, deadly force if required. The state under the equal protection clause has a duty of care to defend and protect all persons from non-consented injuries, including the use of deadly force if necessary therefore the state would be liable for costs incurred for an abortion, just as they are liable for costs incurred by having a police force .. failure to meet their duty of care would violate the equal protection clause simple because the state already provides protection to the people against non-consented injuries, by excluding pregnant people they would be favouring one group (non-pregnant people) over another group (pregnant people). Morally - people already accept that it is morally ok to defend yourself against any and all non-consented injuries even if the 'attacker' has no mental capability to understand what they are doing is wrong.
100% agreed on all points. I will add: arguing against a pro-choice stance means you inadvertently endorse infanticide, since the passing of Roe v Wade has seen the US drop drastically in the per capita infanticide rates to near negligible levels. Ignoring that makes a "pro-life" stance hypocritical.
But the other one is a placenta, not a zygote, or even the placenta of a zygote. Reason should prevail. Personhood is actually not the status quo legal approach. Viability, which is morally arbitrary and technology dependent, is the status quo legal approach. Rather, personhood is the inevitable rational conclusion when we ask what kind of life we value. It's not the dna per se, it's the person. If nobody has ever been home in the brain, then there has never been a person. We run against a brick wall because peoples' beliefs on this topic are entrenched, and even in the event that we give them something to think about, they won't admit it. I remember arguing with Agnapostate (banned member) about animal rights years ago and I never gave in. But months later I realized he was right.
Actually, it's a miscarriage... and the ZEF in unidentifiable in the placenta. I agree that this conversation should be rational... but it is not. If it were rational, it would be over. So sticking to purely rational arguments is like arguing in German to a Frenchman. The only justification for "a fertilized egg is a baby" is that something magic happens at fertilization, as well as something scientific. The only way to equate "fertilized egg" and "baby" is by decreeing that the egg acquires a soul at that moment. It is pointless to respond "superstition". The only approach that has any chance of reaching a believer is through that belief. The moment of acquisition of a soul is not specified directly anywhere in the Bible. Neither Old Testament nor New Testament. This is not surprising, because the modern idea of a soul as something independent of the body did not exist. The word translated into English as "soul" meant something like personality/character/identity, absolutely attached to the body, and ceasing to exist at death. That's the Bible. So... A Christian cannot cite the Bible without committing the grave sin of taking the name of the Lord in vain. If the source of "soul acquired at fertilization" doesn't come from the Bible... then where? If the believer is honest, they must recognize that they were told this "truth" by their preacher(s). Then the believer must choose between blind obedience to the preacher(s)... and the silence of the Bible. This is the dilemma of all believers: how far to trust and follow their leaders... without verification. Of course... in the fact-free world of the Tea Party and Donald Trump, "verification" is missing from lots of vocabularies.
Very interesting approach: "By what right does this 'new person' impose a parasitic relationship on its mother?" You are right to insist that personhood carries responsibilities as well as rights.
I wish I could take full credit for it, but I cannot, the majority of the rationale comes from Eileen McDonagh, Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University and her book "Breaking the Abortion Deadlock : From Choice to Consent" and personal email correspondences I have had with her relating to the subject.
A stolen idea isn't quite as cool as an original idea... but the important thing is to keep it alive and spreading. I, for one, will steal it and spread it.
I don't call it stolen ideas, I call it learning....and I have learned a lot from Fugazi (and used it )
The pro-lifers that only care that the child is born and does not do anything to ensure the quality of life of that child to become a person that is able to support its survival is a person who is totally irrational and cannot be trusted to think of the whole picture in their fight against abortion.
There would indeed seem to be an incoherence. These people make so much noise about saving unborn babies... and then do not lift a finger once the baby is born. An innocent observer might imagine that their behavior demonstrates more a desire to control the woman than to show love for the baby. But that cannot be! These people speak in the name of God!
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/aug/21/richard-dawkins-apologises-downs-syndrome-tweet Amazing how Twitter comments can be misinterpreted.
Well, perhaps the goal should be to make people more rational then. It's no more or less lofty than changing their abortion position. Showing a ball of cells (morula stage) and stating it's not a baby has been tried as well. A placenta, whether from a miscarriage or not, isn't a baby either, but the fact will remain that the embryo/fetus resembles a baby way before it thinks like one. The fact that it resembles a baby will prevent you from winning on emotional grounds. People who make policy decisions, which unfortunately in America includes everybody, need to be educated, ideally in middle school biology class, to understand that an embryo is not like a baby simply because it resembles one. That's simply the bottom line. And while it may seem futile to convince enough people to make abortion rights safe now, it should become less-so over time. I do fear what Trump SCOTUS picks would do in the medium-term, though. So the most important thing now is to keep him away from the white house.
I agree pretty much all along the line. I realize that an 8-month fetus looks like a baby, and that that is the pro-lifers' weapon. On the other hand, a one month human embryo is indistinguishable (for ordinary people) from any other mammal embryo. That is the image that pro-choicersmust insist on. IfJoe Sixpack accepts the fact that a one month embryo is not a baby... and therefore not a person... we move the conversation to the rational domain, "what constitutes personhood? ". As you say, "the goal should be to make people more rational".
I don't need to respond to pro-lifers...they're entitled to their opinion....but their opinion is relevant to no one but themselves and their own bodies. My health choices are private and personal...and so are everyone else's. I'm pro-mind-your-own-business. Whatever side of the fence you're on, people should learn to keep it to themselves. No one else cares about your opinion on their personal, private choices.
That is not true in most of America today... and is becoming less and less true as conservatives roll back women's rights. Pro-lifers are not satisfied with applying their morality to themselves. They are determined to apply it to all women.
