sometimes as many as eight can leave
sometimes as many as eight can leave
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
Wrong.
Holy fucking shit you must be a high school student that is so wrong.
The physical difference is negligible. It's a personal and, ultimately, cultural definition. Anecdotally, I know of people that have had miscarriages and the father memorialized his child's passing with a tattoo. Taken to the extreme you get those creepy miscarriage internet memorials that we laugh at in flames. On the flip-side, we have abortions (coincidentally, complete with their own set of emotions and guilt.) There are Pacific island cultures in which a child is not considered a person until 4 or 5 years of age. They don't even receive a name before that point. In our culture, women have names determined before they are even physically capable of pregnancy, much less completed mate selection.
You can define when you think a collection of unique DNA starts being a person whenever you want, because it's ALL arbitrary. A new-born is no less of a parasite than a fetus. An adolescent is scarcely a larger contribution to society than a pre-teen. It's a complete farce to claim there is any logical reasoning behind making the determination at the 3rd trimester rather than 3 months after birth; your logic is based simply on how similar it looks to you.
solecistic would you like to join my campaign to remove and save all of women's eggs and sterilize them so that they can be complete whores and never pay any consequences but then when someone fucks up and wifes them they can procreate?
(it's a great idea until the procreation part)
but atmosfear, if you never procreate, how do you plan on getting into dad tavern?
We should make all of her subsequent pregnancies result in abortions.
The beginning of life as it's culturally defined is unscientific, arbitrary and useless. The point at which life begins is already defined objectively by biology - life begins when the first cell splits. Cultural opinions are irrelevant and little more than an excuse for relativist stupidity.
That said, I don't have a problem with abortion. It's not something I would choose for myself, but I don't think the government should be making the choice either.
AgreedGetting an abortion because the pregnancy was a mistake is one thing, because it shows something more like responsibility to make a decision about the consequences of carrying to term. But getting pregnant just to abort? I think abortion should be legal, but that doesn't mean I think getting an abortion is the same thing as getting a mole removed. It's not, or there wouldn't be such a debate.
Last edited by ephekt; 11-05-2009 at 04:14 PM.
He said "The beginning of life" not "beginning of personhood." The former is defined by conception (when growth starts). The latter is arbitrary and has no bearing on the former.
I honestly can't tell if you're being this obtuse or just creating a strawman.Two cells do not make life
Last edited by ephekt; 11-05-2009 at 08:13 PM.
He obviously meant the beginning of a human life from a legal or ethical standpoint, i.e. the beginning of personhood, rather than simply the literal "beginning of life" from a scientific standpoint. Seems like you're being a bit obtuse yourself. It couldn't have been that hard to see what he meant.
Which is precisely what I was referring to. "Human life" and "beginning of life (created through human sexual reproduction)" are two ways of expressing the same exact thing. Human life does not start as part of another species and then magically become a human at some arbitrarily assigned point. Nor do philosophy, ethics or law define what human life is.
Basing the ethical and legal definition of a human life on anything but biology is patently retarded.from a legal or ethical standpoint, i.e. the beginning of personhood, rather than simply the literal "beginning of life" from a scientific standpoint.
Obviously the question ought to be "When does a human gain human rights?" but that's not what he said. But to be fair, I skimmed the first page so I may have missed some context. He did seem to reinforce a relative view of human life in post 42 though.
To add something beyond the niggling... Gestation (around 8 weeks iirc) is when all the internal organs are in place and limbs and genitalia are nearly fully formed. This is also the point where a we start calling it a fetus rather than embryo. If there is a need for a bright line, it probably ought to be there.
Last edited by ephekt; 11-05-2009 at 08:53 PM.
Wow, thank you for dropping that scientific truth bomb on me, I totally thought we started out as a different species.
The reason I said "a human" life is because legally and ethically, "a human life" not does not necessarily begin at whatever point you are saying that biology tells us it begins at. I would have thought it was obvious that I wasn't trying to suggest that the embryo is actually a part of another species until a certain point. My point was that something which is biologically alive, and a part of the human species, still isn't necessarily legally or ethically a living human being. Which is what atmosfear was pointing out by saying that the "beginning of life" is a culturally-defined point.
Within the contexts of themselves and for their own purposes, yes they do. Whether that definition is 'correct' with respect to biological science is a different question, but legal and ethical systems do generate their own definitions of human life which are what are what will be used (and thus are what matter) with regard to the questions those systems address.Originally Posted by ephekt
Maybe so; I don't necessarily disagree. Atmosfear's point--that in practice, such definitions are often made on a cultural basis--nevertheless is true.Originally Posted by ephekt
He wasn't asking a question, though. He was stating that legal and ethical definitions of personhood are culturally, not medically, set; again, I feel that this should have been obvious even though his language was a bit loose and he said "beginning of life".Originally Posted by ephekt
EDIT:
See, this is exactly where the cultural definitions come in. You think that the point of gestation is the obvious point to put a "bright line", but that's merely a personal and arbitrary judgment call on your part. Someone else might just as reasonably think that the obvious place to put the bright line is at birth, or at conception, or at implantation, or at whatever point the fetus can survive outside the womb (26 weeks at the absolute earliest, I think), or any other point really.To add something beyond the niggling... Gestation (around 8 weeks iirc) is when all the internal organs are in place and limbs and genitalia are nearly fully formed. This is also the point where a we start calling it a fetus rather than embryo. If there is a need for a bright line, it probably ought to be there.
Last edited by Syme; 11-05-2009 at 09:18 PM.
Indeed. And my point is that this is incoherent, as neither can define the term "living human being" without a biological grounding. Whatever society is doing when it creates this definition, it has nothing to do with what defines a human life. I guess I'm just annoyed at the intellectual dishonesty of the whole thing.My point was that something which is biologically alive, and a part of the human species, still isn't necessarily legally or ethically a living human being.
And I was being rhetorical with the species bit, you know?
Actually, I don't really care nor do I necessarily agree with that definition. That just seems like the most reasonable stage to declare it "human" rather than just a ball of cells, to use your definition.You think that the point of gestation is the obvious point to put a "bright line"
Last edited by ephekt; 11-05-2009 at 09:28 PM.
Okay, sorry. I should have picked up on that.Originally Posted by ephekt
Regardless, even if you don't care about or agree with that definition, your mere assessment of it as the most reasonable is subjective and arbitrary. It's just what "seems right" (or seems reasonable I guess) to you personally. I'm sure you realize that... my point is, there's no escaping this sort of arbitrariness when it comes to placing the "bright line". Hence the rightness of atmosfear's comment that the line's placement is culturally rather than medically or biologically determined.Originally Posted by ephekt
I don't necessarily agree that there needs to be a bright line, which is why I said "if there is a need..." Personally, I don't think the government should be involved in the issue. But anyway, the issue clearly isn't about when life begins; it's about when we grant the baby human rights. We already have precedence here so I don't see why abortion is a special issue (aside from some people's begging for special pleading). My whole point was that if we do rule on this legally, using social definitions is a horribly stupid thing to do, since as everyone seems to agree, they're all arbitrary.
It's all well and good to say that it's stupid to use social definitions since they are arbitrary and change with regularity, but what else do we have to go by to define where humanity begins?
So as coq says, what should we use? There's nothing else. You have talked about using scientific definitions, but as I said in my previous post, that doesn't in the slightest bit remove the need to make an arbitrary decision about where to place the line. Science can identify various points in embryonic/fetal development but it can't tell us which one marks the beginning of personhood because personhood is itself a socially constructed and defined concept, not a scientific one. THERE IS NO WAY to define a point at which it begins in any way that isn't arbitary and subjective. The definition is always going to be culturally determined. So no, using social definitions isn't a horribly stupid thing to do. It's the only thing we can do.Originally Posted by ephekt
I've always maintained that people should be forcibly put on contraceptives at the age of 12, and should have to apply to be taken off. Then again, I favor a police state so. . .
This is pretty nasty, of course there should be a limitation. Why doesn't this hoe just get the ring?
Anyways, I believe law should intervene, maybe some jail time or something. She is killing fetuses out of laziness, it's horrible. I mean, i'm for abortion rights, but this is taking it a few steps further.
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