I have mixed feelings on the abortion issue. Medical science has blurred the lines of when a person becomes (and ceases being) a person. At least in my opinion, that is where disagreements over the abortion issue arise. I think both sides of the debate make valid points.
However, the law makes things even muddier. This guy here kicked a pregnant woman, causing her to miscarry. He is being charged with manslaughter, which means that the unborn child is considered to be a person. If it was the mother who decided to abort the pregnancy, then the unborn child is considered to be just a piece of tissue.
I think this is inconsistent, and the law shouldn’t have it both ways.
16 Comments
EN2 SS · November 3, 2021 at 9:26 pm
Can you give me a valid point about the murder of fifty million babies, since legalization of infanticide? And please don’t throw rape/incest out there, neither happen anywhere near fifty million.
Divemedic · November 4, 2021 at 9:06 am
Emotiinal appeals aside, The valid point is the central argument: at what point does a living cell become human? When does a human cease being human?
Medical science has been blurring that line for decades.
Big Ruckus D · November 4, 2021 at 10:25 am
The cells are human from the moment of conception. The single cell from which the process starts, once fertilized, contains the complete human genome from which a fully formed human will be made. What else would or could the cell be and still produce the eventual finished result?
It’s not as if a human pregnancy won’t predictably result in the creation and delivery of another human every single time. Losses from miscarraiges and still births do not result in a non-human either, but rather one that wasn’t able to survive given the state of dvelopment Has a human woman ever given birth to a dog, or an alligator, or anything ofher than another human? Only in sci-fi horror.
That it takes 9 months of gestation is simply a requirement stemming from the complexity of a human body being built up by cell division. Trying to set an arbitrary point at which it constitutes a human is just a rationalization for killing it in-utero. And over time, those advocating for abortion have argued repeatedly to move that line all the way to the point of natural delivery, so the notion of viability has been effectively mooted in that regard.
Further, the survivability outside the support system of the mother’s body has no bearing on whether the “clump of cells” is in fact human. That they are human is evident by their DNA. If they weren’t, science™ couldn’t use cells culled from aborted children in developing treatements for…humans.
Further, if the gestation process is interrupted due to a miscarriage – or abortion – the inability to survive is due to as yet incomplete formation of organs and systems, and in the case of abortion specifically, due to the body of the unborn being intentionally damaged with fatal injuries as part of the process.
Divemedic · November 4, 2021 at 11:22 am
But science blurs that. We now know that every cell in the body has a full set of human DNA (except red blood cells). So the possession of human DNA doesn’t a human make.
There are exceptions to that, of course. There are monosomies. Chimeras. Frozen embryos. Ectopic pregnancy, which is fairly common.
Each of those points raises enough doubt in my mind as to make me have no strong opinion in either direction.
EN2 SS · November 4, 2021 at 4:35 pm
I thought better of you, divemedic. Oh, well.
EN2 SS · November 5, 2021 at 6:21 pm
Sorry, I can’t let that slide. So it’s an emotional issue, that fifty million babies were murdered? How about the millions killed by Germany? Or the millions killed by Stalin in Russia? How about the unknown millions in China? Or Pol Pot’s millions? The millions murdered throughout Africa? The millions murdered through the centuries by Islam? All murdered by Evil. Being legalized by libtardian not so Supreme Court idiots does not make it right. But it’s just an emotional issue to object? Crap.
Science has shown that at conception there is a burst of light, from the joining. I can’t wait to hear the reason for that.
Divemedic · November 6, 2021 at 9:27 am
Yes, the logical argument is where does life begin. Talk like “babies being murdered” and comparing abortion to Hitler and Stalin is an appeal to emotion.
There is a burst of light when chemical reactions take place. It’s caused by electrons moving from one orbital to the other.
EN2 SS · November 6, 2021 at 1:45 pm
Comparing abortion to the named Evil ones is legitimate, all their murders were legal in their systems of government. Abortion is legal because a libtardian SCROTUS made up the ruling out of whole cloth. Saying objecting to murder is an emotional response, is absolutely crazy. So as long as a psychopath doesn’t get emotional about it, he can kill anyone he pleases? And we shouldn’t get emotional about his murders? Laughable.
Divemedic · November 7, 2021 at 9:27 am
Only if you accept the premise that a human becomes human at conception. I can see that argument. I can also see the other side, which maintains that a human becomes human at some later point.
A case can be made for both views.
Divemedic · November 4, 2021 at 9:06 am
Emotional appeals aside, the valid point is the central argument: at what point does a living cell become human? When does a human cease being human?
Medical science has been blurring that line for decades.
Big Ruckus D · November 4, 2021 at 2:27 pm
Those caveats may be debatable on purely scientific basis, but the argument against abortion goes far deeper than that. First, humans – nor any otber mammals – aren’t hatched fully formed. Thus, some length of time is required in the development of a human offspring that is self-sustaining in terms of vital bodily processes.
Second, a human embryo leads inevtiably to a live human birth, barring some exogenous event that interferes with the process of gestation. Conversely, any old cell in the human body – at least as of now – cannot be used as the direct equivalent of an ovum and a zygote and thereby turned into a viable and healthy clone of the donor human. Yes, Dolly the sheep proved cloning can in fact be done, but she aged rapidly and died early due to the donor cell being from a mature sheep. Funny how that worked out.
Then there are the ethical and moral implications. Like it or not, abortion has proven to be an enabling act for a multitude of other troubling practices since justified in the name of science. It has also served to coarsen and destroy human morals and ethics that once existed. These were not universal, but at least defacto standards in that they were accepted western societal norms. Wrecking behavioral standards is neither enlightenment or progress.
Are we as a species better off now? Hell no. Science has peaked, at least for this cycle of civilztion, and has been on a downard slide towards being little more than a political/cult vehicle to justify all manner of depravity in the mistreatment of humans. The development of covid shots and their subsequent mandating are downstream of the moral hazard created by major waypoints such as abortion. We are just now coming to discover the horrendous side effects of covid shots on a wide scale, and more crimes against humanity are surely incoming, all rationalized based upon SCIENCE!
Bottom line, when life has been cheapened to the extent it now is, anybody and everybody is disposable. That may prove to be the single biggest reason to have not gone down this road, as the knock on effects will eventually kill multiples of those who were aborted. We may be witnessing the opening acts of just such an outcome right now.
One need not even be religious to understand the philosophical implications of this, either. If something ruins your life – even if indirectly by being just one step in a process – then it is to be considered a bad thing.
EN2 SS · November 5, 2021 at 9:02 pm
Emotions aside, right as rain, Big Ruckus.
Big Ruckus D · November 3, 2021 at 11:39 pm
And this, yet again, is representative of the intentional inconsistency (also known as double standards) that the left is legendary for. And yes, they can have it both ways as they apparently are incapable of experiencing cognitive dissonance.
That abortion was legalized in the US is a scourge that has not only killed 50 million children at some point prior to their birth, it has in turn cheapened all human life and has also given rise to a multitude of morally and ethically repugnant practices including the sale – for profit – of fetal tissues from tbose aborted, and – as is currently topical owing to covid shots – the use of fetal cells obtained through aborting children and removing tissue from them while still alive – to develop and test a multitude of pharmaceutical products.
It is but another shameful sign that Americans are not a generally moral, principled or serious people. Abortion is and has been – first and foremost – a form of birth control for the stupid, lazy and irresponsible. All arguments favoring it for other reasons (incest, rape) are a small enough percentage of occurences that they are just statisitcal outliers.
But it is worse than that even. If one honestly considers the fervor with which the left defends the “right” to an abortion and access to same, with no limits whatsoever, it becomes obvious that they truly desire the ability to kill unborn children. Whether for profit, or simply because they are just evil, matters not. And one needn’t even be religious to understand and recognize the existence of evil; it can exist as a purely human mindset without any spiritual or supernatural influence neccessary, so the atheists who’ll try to argue against that being a motive can STFU right now.
Humans commit evil against each other all the time. How else to explain the worst tendencies of sociopaths and psychopaths who take glee in doing the most depraved acts imaginable. Pedophiles, serial killers who torture their victims etc. And the ritualized killing of children is certainly an act with much precedent in human history.
Ancient religions made a practice of it, and looking at the abortion issue as it relates to contemporary politics and social ideologies, I’d say abortion is functionally no different than those ancients who pitched children into volcanoes or other such twists. The actual act has been “sanitized” as a clinical procedure, but still scratches the deep psychological itch that some people possess to commit infanticide.
Look at the (fucking crazy) leftist women who wear t-shirts proclaiming their pride in having personally had [multiple] abortions performed. There is a fundamental defect in the mind of anyone who thinks that way. They may be pawns though, as the real force behind maintaining access to it and encouraging its use lies with entrenched political operatives who have pushed the issue with ever increasing levels of derangement and cult like enthusiasm since it was first “legalized” at the stroke of a pen here by a group of black robed bastards. They truly want the killing to go on unabated. A slippery slope indeed.
James A McLaughlin · November 4, 2021 at 6:04 pm
Big Ruckus, I just had to say thank you for expressing your thoughts.
Don Curton · November 4, 2021 at 5:45 am
Inconsistency? If a woman wants an abortion, the father has no right to stop her. And if a woman decides to keep the baby, the father can’t force her to have an abortion. But, he is on the hook for 18 years of child support.
But back to your scenario, the difference between an unborn child and just a lump of fetal tissue rests solely on the mother’s choice there. Not a very good position for the law, but I still believe murder charges are appropriate for someone who kicks a pregnant woman and causes a miscarriage.
And yeah, the whole rape/incest/life of the mother issue probably accounts for no more than maybe 0.1% of the actual abortions performed. The rest are just convenience birth control.
kevinH · November 4, 2021 at 10:07 am
Very simply stated, it is one or the other, life or not, period.
Full stop.
Sentencing and charging enhancements are placating the victim and society.
As long as Mothers can choose abortion, all such enhancements are dishonest at best.
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