Abortion

Now I can finish what I started with my Round 1 post: 8. The last of Con's assumptions is about mutilation. Taken literally, the assumption means it is wrong to shave or cut any hair, to trim nails, to pierce ears (or any other body parts), to get a tattoo ... the assumption is obviously rejected in most human cultures. Some encourage the deliberate creation of scar-patterns, and consider the results beautiful. htt.../news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/07/0728_040728_tvtabooscars_2.html Then there is "surgery", another class of mutilation altogether. Everything from removing tonsils to getting tooth cavities filled to replacing knee joints involves modifying the human body. There is nothing significantly different, in either degree or kind, with respect to scraping a womb to remove an unwanted organism. Well, there is nothing significantly different as far as the woman's body is concerned (yes, abortion can scar the womb). And now that the faulty assumptions have been exposed, I can address the main content of Con's arguments. "... killing an innocent human being is always wrong." This may be true, but an unborn human is neither innocent nor a person-class being, and so the statement is not actually a valid argument for opposing abortion. Something I wrote in my first post may need some clarifying. Suppose you meet a truly alien organism, as, for example, did some human children in the fiction/movie "E.T., The ExtraTerrestrial". By what criteria would you determine whether or not that organism qualified as a person? Whatever the criteria, it would be prejudicial to fail to apply them to various human growth stages. It is a simple measurable fact that unborn humans lack all the characteristics which can distinguish an arbitrary person-class organism from a mere animal. Dolphins are much more likely to qualify as persons than unborn humans! ht..../news.discovery.com/animals/dolphins-name-themselves.html "If you look at that picture and still say that abortion is not the brutal, cruel, murder of innocent human babies, then you are either in denial or are just outright lying." The word "murder" only applies to killing person-class beings, which unborn humans measurably are not. Again, unborn humans aren't innocent. Finally, to call it a "baby" is pure propaganda, a mis-use of the English language. Therefore it is the abortion opponents who are in denial. "When a women says "I'm going to have a baby", that is a figure a speech ..." No, Con, you are quite wrong. See, I also wrote: "She never says, in reference to that pregnancy, 'I have a baby right now!'" --and you didn't challenge that statement. The phrase "I'm going to have a baby" is truly a future-tense statement-of-belief, not a "figure of speech". "The boat analogy is a bad one." You are wrong again, Con. I'm comparing construction projects, not long-term uses or cherishings. The main difference between the two projects is that one is internally constructed and one is externally constructed. Neither project deserves to equated with the result before it is ready. "Whether or not ... a mother suffers when her unborn child dies naturally ..., is irrelevant to this debate ..." You are wrong again, Con. The relevance is that the suffering is very largely caused by mis-using the words "child" and "baby". There is a big difference between believing you have a baby or child --but it miscarries-- and knowing you are hosting a complex biological construction project that might fail to be completed. It should be obvious that constantly reminding oneself that the project might fail can lessen the emotional impact should actual failure occur. On the other hand, if the project is successful, that is all the more reason to be happy about it! "Yes, the DEVELOPMENT of an unborn child is very complex, but again ... that is irrelevant." See above; you are wrong again, Con. "It is not logical to think that the unborn baby becomes a human being at birth." I never wrote any such thing. I did use words to the effect that no unborn human can qualify as a human being, when "being" means "person". The scientific evidence indicates that months of growth after birth are needed before a human baby acquires some of the generic traits that we could expect persons-of-any-species to possess. For example, one person-class ability is to recognize self in a mirror (this ability alone is not enough, and it is useless for blind organisms). Adult dolphins can recognize themselves --and so can a large octopus, but dogs and cats mostly can't. Human infants also can't, until they are perhaps 9 months old, or even older. htt.../tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/understanding-how-children-mature-ga6.htm It is the Law, not Science, that grants person status to humans after birth. Nevertheless, that status is something that really isn't relevant to any abortion debate, which involves humans before birth. Meanwhile, there is one extremely relevant status change that does occur at birth. As previously described, an unborn human survives by committing assault. This remains true until birth. After birth, it can only survive by receiving gifts, such as the gift of being carried to a teat. At that time, birth, it stops committing assault, and begins behaving innocently. "I did not misuse the word 'being'." Yes, you did, by in-effect claiming that merely calling an unborn human a "person" automatically qualifies it as a person. "Are you aware that "fetus" is Latin word which means 'little CHILD' or 'little PERSON'?" No. I have not been able to find any dictionary with that etymology for "fetus". htt.....ww.websters-online-dictionary.org/definitions/fetus That dictionary's etymology is "offspring, bringing forth, hatching of young" --and is echoed in the other dictionaries I've looked at. Besides, "fetus" encompasses an unborn rat, an unborn skunk, an unborn mammal of any sort --are you going to claim those are all persons, too? "... you could argue that any baby or young child even after birth, should be punished for doing bad things ..." That is false. I actually wrote: "In the criminal-justice system there are extremely many cases in which a human who has been assaulted in one way or another has declined to press charges. In essence, the assault is forgiven." What I've described elsewhere is why an unborn human animal could, not "should", deserve death. See the "dictionary.com" site for the earlier definition of "guilty" (as previously indicated). The definitions below are from htt.....ww.websters-online-dictionary.org/definitions/guilty 1. Responsible for or chargeable with a reprehensible act; "guilty of murder"; "the guilty person"; "secret guilty deeds".[Wordnet] 2. Showing a sense of guilt; "a guilty look".[Wordnet] There are several other definitions, but here also it is clear that actions can indeed be associated with guilt independently of consciousness. Wikipedia is generally reliable enough. You are welcome to find other references elsewhere, that will say the same things I --and Wikipedia-- did. "Now when a women agrees to have sex, she is inviting a baby in." This is often wildly false, especially when birth control is used. Even when not used it can still be false, partly because sex doesn't automatically cause pregnancy, the way a hydrogen automatically reacts with chlorine in sunlight. And it is false partly because zoologists have discovered that for humans the primary purpose of sex is "pair bonding", not reproduction. htt.....ww.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/ep01138154.pdf Religions that claim otherwise are denying facts, and are no more right about this than when they claimed the Earth was at the center of Creation. (to be continued)