Question: Does life start at birth or conception?

The question of whether or not it is OK to induce birth at a time when the child has a chance of surviving said birth is
not exactly the same as the question of whether or not it is OK to terminate, kill, or abort in which case the fetus has 0% percent chance of survival.

But OK...so your answer is that an induced preterm birth is still murder if the child ends up dying.
Hmm...then perhaps using viability as a milestone was not such a great idea after-all....

I take it its safe to assume you have no problems with inducing birth when the child's chances of surviving the birth are near 100%, right?
So then are you not essentially saying that it is murder to force a child out of the womb if the child does not have a high chance of surviving it,
while also saying it is not murder to expel a fetus when its chance of survival outside are near zero.
And aren't these two positions inconsistent with one another?

Of course it has something to do with it.
You're saying its OK to have a legal abortion.
I'm saying something being legal is not enough to make it OK.

Also, as I've mentioned before, this is not necessarily to say that the law is wrong or that its justifications are wrong,
but if all your saying is that you agree with the law's justification, then you should use the law's justification as justification, but not the law's existence itself.
Again, that is committing the Appeal to Law Fallacy.

No, I'm not saying anything close to that. Of course you can have an opinion based off of a logical fallacy....but why on earth would you want to??

I asked for your opinion in an effort to find out what it was based off of, and it seems to have been based off the appeal to law fallacy.
Also, as I've mentioned before, this is not necessarily to say that the law is wrong or that its justifications are wrong,
but to use something's existence in law as justification in and of itself is illogical.

Lol, you stopped reading at the word "guilt" ? That means you didn't read my explanation for my position...no wonder it was confusing to you...

That's OK, I'll just explain it again (without using the word guilt)...I'll substitute guilt with choice and responsibility...yeah.., choice seems like a good word...

First, let me say from the get-go (in case you stop reading early again) that there is no physical difference between a fetus conceived through rape, and one conceived through consensual sex. Nor is there a difference between the abortion procedure performed, or the amount of pain a fetus can or cannot feel.....but....

I believe that a woman who becomes pregnant due to rape does not have the same responsibilities as a woman who becomes pregnant through consensual sex because a rape victim has no choices in the matter. Similarly if choice is removed from a woman in other ways, the woman should not then be held responsible for or be made to suffer for situations that arose from choices which were made on her behalf and without her consent by someone else.

Of course, in regards to latter term abortions, I feel the same way about the fetus, but if we ever reach such a place, then we simply have ourselves a lose-lose situation, in which no matter which path is taken afterwards, someone who bears not the responsibility of the circumstance will end up suffering...at which point I would see it reasonable to default to the paradigm of "survival" of the "fittest". The "fittest" usually being the mother.

Or to put it another way, I don't believe a rape victim should be held responsible for any choices she might make to alleviate herself of potential suffering brought on by the choices of someone or something that was out of her control, even if the rape victim's choices themselves end up causing suffering.

-Meta

 

OK, we both seem to agree with the justification I used for lower bound, you just disagree with the data point I used.
You claim brain waves and pain perception can't occur before at least 20-25 weeks from conception,
and you backed up your claim with a comprehensive and well sourced study. So I accept this.

This is good. We have now moved in the lower bound to 20-25 weeks, and while the upper bound of viability (28 weeks, legally speaking) provided by Fox is starting to seem a lot less rooted, if we do accept it, that would then leave us with only about 3-8 weeks worth of murk!

Though much of what you just wrote here doesn't actually address what I wrote, you did make many good points which are relevant to the discussion, but....

If a woman consented to the sex, chooses not to use contraceptives, get's pregnant, knows that she is pregnant early on,
has access to an abortion clinic early on, and is not hindered from getting but rather chooses not to get an abortion and waits 'till late term,....
has she then consented to the pregnancy?

Certainly, she has at least consented to the pregnancy reaching late term, has she not?

Also, I don't believe a fetus itself should be expected or required to request/get explicit consent to exist within the womb.
That's absurd, (not only because the 1st part is impossible) as the fetus was placed there not by its own will but by the actions of others.
It'd be like saying that a prisoner existed within a prison without requesting/getting the captor's explicit consent and therefore didn't have any rights.
Now obviously prisoners do have rights. What exactly those rights are and their extent may be up to debate, but I'd like to think that they still have rights.

Also consider the case in which one person chains a second person to a bed in the house of a third person. (this is probably better than the prisoner analogy)
The second person has not gotten consent nor was it his choice to be there, but I would say he still has the right to his life.
I would say that for this case the third person certainly has a right to remove this person from the bed and expel him from the house,
but does the third person also have the right to inflict harm or even death on the second person?
What if harm and or death is required for person 3 to remove person 2 in a timely manner?
Would you say that it is OK for instance, for the 3rd person to saw the 2nd guy's arm off in order to remove him?
Note: this is not a legal question, but a moral one. I want to know your personal opinion on this.

And also, on a related note, as I've told Fox many times, current law should not be used when determining what the law should be.

-Meta

 

Nor is a human fetus an endangered species. Like I said, the two types of protection (against inhumane treatment vs against extinction)
are entirely different in nature and in the reason for them. SpaceCriket may have missed the mark with that self-awareness comment,
but to then turn around and equate the "rights of plants" with the rights of animals and humans misses it even more.

Heh, this conversation is starting to sound like a stand your ground debate.

Yes, the availability or lack of alternative resolutions is definitely part of it.

If the victim in this scenario starting beating the other guy to death, I'd say it depends on what the other guy's options are at that point as to how justified he might be in killing the victim to prevent his own death.
If there is truly no other reasonable way to prevent the victim from killing him, then I'd say he would be somewhat justified in the killing.
However, there would still be penalties due to this person in my eyes, if the original handcuffing was itself unwarranted or done with malicious intent.
But 1st degree murder would not be among them.

On the other hand, if all the guy has to do to prevent the victim from beating him was to do something such as agree to walk down the street to the nearest police station and have them undo the cuffs, or to call police firemen ect. and wait for them to come to them,
but instead refused and actively prevented the victim from doing so, then to me he is in no way justified in killing
when the victim then starts to beat the **** out of him. Note that this would likely be difficult for a jury to determine

For me, from pov of the guy doing the handcuffing, after they're handcuffed its all about how much choice he gives the victim.
The fewer options he gives the victim to maintain their life or restore personal autonomy,
the less justified he is in killing or injuring in order to maintain his own.

To take this to the extreme just to make my point absolutely clear,
if I pull out a gun on some random person and start shooting, if they then pull out their own gun and start shooting back at me,
I can't then kill them and then say I was justified in doing so because they were trying to kill me, as it was only as a direct consequence of my own actions that they were left with no other choice but to fight for their life by trying to kill me before I killed them.

So, to wrap this part up, yes, the availability or lack of alternative choices for resolution from the killer's pov is part of it,
but the amount of choice the killer afforded to the dead is just as important a consideration.

Right. If alternative resolutions exist other than lethal force, both parties ought to have a duty to pursue them.

Agreed.

It harms her, regardless of consent. See my previous post regarding the point of consent.

-Meta

 

1. First of all I only made the claim in response to Fox making the (unprovable) counterclaim, unprovoked.
I thought it'd be good to set the record straight while simultaneously making the point to FoxHastings
that it is not OK to make such assumptions about people. You think that's wrong?

2. I can and will prove my claim in exchange for you or FoxHastings taking up my offer.

-Meta

 

You, like Pasithea, seem to be under the false impression that someone here was attempting to use their status as a scientist
to make some point related to the topic of abortion. Can you quote anyone in here making such an argument?
Though you did say you just jumped into the conversation....so I suppose this can be forgiven...

Also, BTW, its nice to meet a fellow scientist in here.
From what a few of the other posters were saying, I was starting to get the impression that everyone around here thought scientists,
posting on a political forum, were some sort of magical all-powerful beings, existing only within the drops of pixie tears or in the dreams of unicorns.

-Meta

 

Personally, I think we might cut out a lot of the confusion surrounding this topic
if we were to simply differentiate more often between life (def 1&2 mostly) and "life" (def 2 mostly). (though perhaps not all...I'm looking at you hudson1955)

Perhaps we could use a different term to describe the latter? You know....something for the layman...
What are your thoughts on, oh say, something like mental life?

I thought about some alternatives; simply using "consciousness" for one, but for whatever reason people don't seem to want to use that,....
and "conscious life" just didn't seem to be as simple and easy to remember as "mental life".....

-Meta

 

*shakes head in disappointment*

I will try to make this short for you then
1. You believe an induced preterm birth is murder if the child ends up dying, right?
2. I take it its safe to assume you have no problems with inducing birth when the child's chances of surviving the birth are near 100%, right?
3. You also have stated that inducing birth (or aborting) before viability (when the fetus's chances of surviving the expulsion are very low) is acceptable.

From my pov, these three positions are inconsistent with one another.
Your basically saying its OK to expel the fetus if it isn't yet at a stage in which it'd be likely to survive outside the womb,
while also saying its not OK to expel the fetus if it isn't likely to survive outside the womb, which doesn't make sense.

Do you not see how 1 and 3 are in direct conflict with one another?

-Meta

 

Yes, and this is where handcuffing people and chaining people to beds comes into play.

If one person chains a second person to a bed in the house of a third person,
the second person has not gotten consent to be in that house, in that bed, but I would say he still has the right to his life.
I would say that for this case the third person certainly has a right to remove this person from the bed and expel him from the house,
but does the third person also have the right to inflict harm or even death on the second person?
What if harm and or death is required for person 3 to remove person 2 in a timely manner?
Would you say that it is OK for instance, for the 3rd person to saw the 2nd guy's arm off in order to remove him?

I think I know your answer,..based on the response you already gave, but I thought it couldn't hurt to re-post the question anyway...

I don't know. Perhaps there are more pressing legislative issues for the country. But it certainly doesn't hurt to discuss it, does it?

That sounds pretty reasonable to me. Though there's also still then going to be potential issues with who actually takes care of the child after its born.....

-Meta

 

If we're going to go all grammar spelling ect. Nazi, then I should point out that the word womb was spelled correctly in every one of my responses to you.
Plus, what exactly are you suggesting here? That scientists are required to be perfect spellers at all times?
And just how would you, an admitted non-scientist, know this?

Also, you can't expect to make sense of a paragraph if you only ever read the first few words of the first sentence.....

 

1. I'm not talking about the link. When I asked you specifically if you thought it was OK for the mother to induce a post-viability preterm birth,
even if doing so would mean the child had a lower chance of survival, you responded by referencing murder again. Is that not still the case?

2. I didn't just assume (the way you did). I asked you if that was how you felt. That's why there was a "?" at the end.
So.....are you suggesting that you in fact do have a problem with inducing birth when the child's chances of surviving the birth are near 100%?????

3. I could have sworn you said something about it being OK to abort a fetus before viability....so...what is your position then?
Are you now saying its not OK to abort or expel a fetus before it reaches viability? Actually, after rereading, I think your point 3 may have been misplaced.

-Meta

 

As you already pointed out, since I did not use Nazis to try to make a point related to the topic of discussion, I cannot have lost anything.
But don't forget. There is a point being made here and here.

-Meta

 

You mean "concise". And post 293 "you've" should have been "you".

Heh,...Giftedone, I'm sorry to throw you under the bus like this, since you seem like a pretty nice guy and all, and definitely make a lot of good points,
but the call to set the record straight beckons ever.....(Just kidding,...I love to throw everyone under the bus no matter who they are. Is why I make such a convincing devil's advocate)

Post 284, 5th paragraph, last sentence.
Also try to make sense out of the 7th paragraph without mentally swapping/adding/removing words.

I think you could write it that way (if you wanted to be boring) and it would still mean basically the same thing,
but I actually prefer the way Giftedone had it. It conveys an extra message beyond the obvious interpretation.

-Meta