Post: #101

(06-25-2013 12:02 AM)Wadsworth Wrote:  

(06-24-2013 11:52 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

(06-24-2013 11:47 PM)Wadsworth Wrote:  

(06-24-2013 11:18 PM)Samseau Wrote:  So let's go with the development line. What day does a fetus become untouchable? 6 months and 5 days? 6 months and 4 days? 5 months and 29 days? What's the line?

That is a good question, and I don't have an answer for it. Frankly, I think it's going to be arbitrary. Jezebel et al were complaining about the GOP talking about 20 weeks. I don't have a problem with 20 weeks. I'd be OK with less than 20 weeks.

There is no objective standard I can give you to support my argument in this regard. There is no obvious objective point during a pregnancy where we must start respecting the developing lifeform. People can base the cutoff around some objective level of development, but that standard is still going to be a subjective one.

So how can you claim that development makes a difference if you do not know when it does? That is a contradiction.

I understand your point, but I'm not convinced it's a contradiction. I merely examine the morality at both extremes.

I claim the nature of the development at each extreme is sufficiently different to merit an individual moral judgement in each case. If you follow those extremes to their limits (single cell and baby), you can clearly see the difference.

I don't see any difference, and the only things you've named that supposedly differ the 2-week zygote from the 1-year old baby are a bunch of attributes common to all mammals.

You are still in contradiction because you claim that developmental differences matter but you cannot name what these differences are.

It is like saying you believe that people who can communicate with aliens should be given special voting rights but when I ask what qualifies as an alien you cannot tell me what it is.

Post: #102

Interesting conversation. I like to think about things just to think about them, too. But thinking about things to clear things up in your own mind and trying to convince others of that is a whole other thing. If the abortion debate of where and when human life begins or when a zygote becomes a 'person' was so simple that two dudes on RVF could figure it out decisively, we wouldn't have the debate going on in the real world.

Personally, I believe that it's not a 'person' unless it can be removed and continue to live and develop. Yes, yes, a newborn baby also needs its mother to feed it and care for it, but it is surviving as an "separate entity". You might have a child born with a certain condition that needs immediate medical assistance and would die without it. That doesn't make it less of a person. Go ahead and hook it up to a ventilation machine if that will keep it alive. If a clinic can take out a two-week-old zygote and figure out how to support it so that it develops into a fully-formed human being (person), then by all means go ahead a do that. But can you say that about a zygote? No. In the future, technology may be advanced enough to keep the clump alive. Maybe at that point, I'll start thinking about it as "murder" because there is the option to give the clump of cells to doctors that can keep it alive vs vacuuming it out and forcing it to cease to exist. But currently, there is no existing technology that can do this. The way I look at abortion is not that it's ending a life. It's more of a, "get it out of my body (if I were a woman) and if you can keep it alive, fine, do so and then I'll raise it."

But at the end of the day, it comes down to the fact that we are forced to make an arbitrary and personal decision about it. What's the difference between a zygote, an embryo, a fetus and a baby? A baby is no different the moment after it is born than it was a moment before it came out of the vagina, but still, they are considered different things.

Why is it OK to bang an 18-year-old but not a 17-year-old? If it's ok to bang an 18-yr-old on her birthday, why not the day before? Do you think something magical happens to the girl where she wasn't ready for sex and all of a sudden at the strike of midnight, she is? No one could really make that argument. And some 18-yr-olds will actually be a day older than other 18-yr-olds because of leap years. Should a distinction be made for them? And if a day before is no worse than on the day, how about two days before? Three? Continue this one day (or one hour if you wish) at a time until you get down to 14 years old, or 12 or 10. What makes a girl ready for the responsibility of sex? Is it her period? Some get it earlier than others but the law doesn't care about that. Breast development? I never heard of a law that says it's ok for a girl as long as she has breasts. Is it her level of maturity? I've known 30-yr-olds with less maturity than many 17-year-olds. My point is that you simply cannot build an argument for why a girl needs to be 18 to the day before she can sleep around legally with a man of any age. It's arbitrary but based on reasons that are very logical just the same. An 18-yr-old is not a 10-yr-old but try to explain what that difference is in quantifiable and measurable metrics that account for ALL 10-yr-olds vs all 18-yr-olds. You can't do it. So the law says, "nearly all 18-yr-olds are mature and responsible enough that they can have sex with whomever they want but nearly no 10-yr-old is. For everyone in between, it would take too much work and be too difficult to figure it out at the individual level."

It's the same with abortion. You can say that the point of conception is where it becomes a person in your eyes but it's as arbitrary as having 24 hours in the day instead of 25 and your decision that ending a pregnancy at one month is 'murder' is as arbitrary as my definition of murder is (which is at the point where the entity can live separately from its mother).

There is no society in the world where killing a born child is legal so it seems that most humans are in agreement on this. But there are many countries where termination of a pregnancy is legal. The point here is not that it proves it's 'ok' but that there is a lot of disagreement on the morality (based on what constitutes murder) of an abortion. Maybe that just means no one is absolutely right when it comes to abortion.

Post: #103

If you are going to start defining a clump of cells as sentient/human-life/conscious/etc. then why can't we go back a step further and say that a murder occurs any time someone jerks off or has a period?

A grown man who is asleep has dreams and brain activity etc.

As I get older, I see a lot of what happens in the world and the decisions I make through the "lesser of two evils" perspective.

I used to think abortion was an un-questionable right. Now I think it should be allowed and questioned intensely. Women need to know ahead of time that pregnancy termination is a big deal. Not just for baby/society etc., but for them as well. Abortion can fuck with their bodies.

I often see game as the lesser of two evils as well.

As of now, I believe that there is a grey area where the clump of cells is ok to kill.

To all those meat-eater pro-lifers out there: you are eating animals that are even more sentient then early term babies. Why not eat babies? Is it because god said not to do it? If god told you to kill your best friend for no obvious reason, would you do it?

Post: #104

I think the comparison between a fertilized egg and simple sperm is a silly one. There is a clear difference between the two. They are fundamentally different things. Sperm does not have the potential of developing into a person, ever. It's the sperm AND the egg, together. I don't think it's illogical to make a clear distinction between sperm and a zygote. The distinction is obvious and can't be missed. What's puzzling to me is how the distinction is so clear to see for prolifers and yet they can't seem to see a distinction between a zygote and a person. Fertilization is quick. One minute it's not fertilized and the next it is. That's what makes it so clearly an 'event'. But the transformation from zygote to person is much slower and harder to distinguish. Because of this, some people think it's a fair argument to say that there is essentially no difference. Makes no sense to anyone but them though. This is why their morality is decided arbitrarily. It's the illusion that the transformation from sperm/egg to zygote is more significant than zygote to person. Both transformations are real. Your decision that it's 'murder' after one and not the other is arbitrary.

Food for thought. When you kill a caterpillar, do you go around saying you've killed a caterpillar or a butterfly? If someone stepped on a caterpillar and said they'd just "killed a butterfly", you'd think them an idiot.

More food for thought. Abortions have risks but they are less risky to the mother than giving birth. Giving birth will, absolutely, result in more deaths of the women.

Post: #105

I might be the exception here, but an OKCupid question asked about abortion and accidental pregnancies.

I stated that I was against them because I wouldn't let it happen. Call me neurotic but finding out I have an unplanned kid scares me more than cancer and the girl has the entire choice in the decision to keep it resulting in bitterment, child support or an unhappy marriage.

I can recall 3 times I didn't use a condom and didn't allow myself to get close to climax. If I was doing a girl on the regular I made sure she was on birth control and I still used a condom. Worst case last ditch effort is morning after pills which thankfully I've never had to use.

After more than 30 conquests I haven't had to deal with this moral decision thank god and never plan on it.

As an aside if I'm not sure if a girl is on birth control I usually use the pull out method while wearing a condom.

Getting a girl pregnant? Not even once!

Post: #106

(07-08-2013 10:29 AM)soup Wrote:  To all those meat-eater pro-lifers out there: you are eating animals that are even more sentient then early term babies. Why not eat babies? Is it because god said not to do it? If god told you to kill your best friend for no obvious reason, would you do it?

This reads a lot more like a question to prochoicers than prolifers. They are often the ones arguing that abortion is ok because the clump is not sentient.

I say it's not about sentience per se, it's that a clump of cells is NOT a person, period. Just because I can't say where, exactly, the demarcation is between a clump of cells and a fetus, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I know a clump of cells is a clump of cells. I know a fetus is a fetus. In the middle, the decision may be a lot harder to make, but I don't need to because we are not talking about abortion after the first trimester.

Post: #107

I don't care whether chicks have abortions or not, as long as my tax money doesn't go to fund it.

Post: #108

Here is a good movie, almost all of it was taken from court testimony:
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3722234/?ref=m_nv_sr_1

Post: #109

Do you care if people are beaten bloody or not as long as your tax money doesn't go toward it?
Do you care if people are murdered or not as long as your tax money doesn't go toward it?
Do you care if children are raped or not as long as your tax money doesn't go toward it?

Should people care if you are beaten bloody or not as long as their tax money doesn't go toward it?
Should people care if you are murdered or not as long as their tax money doesn't go toward it?
Should people care if you are raped or not as long as their tax money doesn't go toward it?

Libertarians are cowards or at best delusional. A civilization is not built on a zero-morality free market. A civilization is built on men coming to an accord on what is and it not acceptable, and then enforcing that accord by gunpoint where necessary.

If you cannot come to a moral conclusion on the matter of ending the life of an unborn child then you are not necessarily evil, but you are definitely weak, and you leave that space open for those with more conviction to bend you to their own will. No man is an island. You pick a side or you kiss the ring.

Post: #110

(02-01-2019 10:15 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  If you cannot come to a moral conclusion on the matter of ending the life of an unborn child then you are not necessarily evil, but you are definitely weak, and you leave that space open for those with more conviction to bend you to their own will. No man is an island. You pick a side or you kiss the ring.

I hear you on the moral part, but I don't see abortion as the murder of an "unborn child". That just sounds like emotional propaganda to me. An unborn fetus is not an unborn child. Fetuses aren't counted in the census and they have no legal rights - nor should they.

Post: #111

At what stage when a pregnant woman seeking to carry to full term is murdered should we consider there to be two victims rather than one?

Because the child/not-child being wanted or unwanted does not make it more/less a human/not-human, reconsider the question if the woman was your wife and she was carrying your unborn son.

Post: #112

(02-01-2019 10:27 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  At what stage when a pregnant woman seeking to carry to full term is murdered should we consider there to be two victims rather than one?

My position - and I realize this is really extreme - is you're not human until you are born. That is why we have birth certificates and not conception certificates. I'm not going to answer the emotional-laden question because I don't think it would be wise for me to do so.

Also, keep in mind that this is a player's forum. Bunch of guys traveling the world, most likely rawdogging and busting inside women. I doubt they'd be anti-abortion if push comes to shove. That being said, I understand where you are coming from and I respect you for settling down and raising a family.

Post: #113

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Unalienable rights are not provided by a government or a census. They are recognized to be derived simply by a man being "created".

Precisely when is a human being "created"? That is the million dollar question.

Quote:Around week 25 or 26, babies in the womb have been shown to respond to voices and noise. Recordings taken in the uterus reveal that noises from outside of the womb are muted by about half.

That’s because there’s no open air in the uterus. Your baby is surrounded by amniotic fluid and wrapped in the layers of your body. That means all noises from outside your body will be muffled.

The most significant sound your baby hears in the womb is your voice. In the third trimester, your baby can already recognize it. They will respond with an increased heart rate that suggests they are more alert when you’re speaking.

Whatever the answer, it sure as fuck isn't "as soon as they are born". This is nothing personal, TMD, but a society devolves into an ugly place when we consign ourselves to simply "remove emotion".

I'm not even going to go as far as to say dumb shit like "the morning-after-pill is murder" but if you think that murking a 8.99 month old human in the womb should be perfectly legal then you are well and truly down the rabbit hole my friend.

Post: #114

If it came down to it, I’d go through with it as long as it was early enough. I take precautions to make sure my girl doesn’t get preggeroni but I’m not fit or ready to take of a child at this stage of my life. I do have mixed feelings about it, and I can understand why OP had negative feelings about the whole thing, but taking into account the bigger picture I’d want to have it done. Although I’ve never been there and can’t really comment on that situation, I’m just speculating.

The fact of the matter is that the world is overpopulated and just like in “Idiocracy,” smart producers are slowly but surely being outbred by dumb consumers. I think in the bigger picture of population and resource management that abortion isn’t a bad thing

Post: #115

I’m sympathetic to abortion but only to be used “swiftly and sparingly.” Late term is cruel and the new law in New York is just insane. It just goes to show how leftists are hell bent on redefining everything to their advantage. That’s another topic altogether.

Accidents happen but people should learn from their accidents. We are also an advanced society with various forms of accessible birth control. It shouldn’t be hard to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

I’ve been there and done that. I’ve had a vasectomy. It puts control back in my hands and I don’t need to worry about some dumb broad forgetting her pill, condoms breaking, and other mishaps. I’m also older so the desire to have more offspring is gone plain and simple.

Post: #116

If you don't have kids then you can't possibly imagine what it's like to hold a baby or see it become mobile and curious starting around 9-12 months or even to hear it's infectious laugh. If you can appreciate such things without even having kids then congratulations, you have empathy for life.

Life is truly a blessing and a miracle. Getting in the middle of the life-making process puts you square in my sights as someone to take out. Plain and simple.

Getting rid of life you don't want is straight up motherfucking murder. No ifs, ands or buts about it.
No dumb bitch, soiboy or stupid politician should have any control of any sort in regards to what to do with said "life".

I will never change my position on this.

Post: #117

(02-01-2019 10:15 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  Do you care if people are beaten bloody or not as long as your tax money doesn't go toward it?
Do you care if people are murdered or not as long as your tax money doesn't go toward it?
Do you care if children are raped or not as long as your tax money doesn't go toward it?

Should people care if you are beaten bloody or not as long as their tax money doesn't go toward it?
Should people care if you are murdered or not as long as their tax money doesn't go toward it?
Should people care if you are raped or not as long as their tax money doesn't go toward it?

Libertarians are cowards or at best delusional. A civilization is not built on a zero-morality free market. A civilization is built on men coming to an accord on what is and it not acceptable, and then enforcing that accord by gunpoint where necessary.

If you cannot come to a moral conclusion on the matter of ending the life of an unborn child then you are not necessarily evil, but you are definitely weak, and you leave that space open for those with more conviction to bend you to their own will. No man is an island. You pick a side or you kiss the ring.

Nah, I don't agree. Even "aborting" actual born babies has been done all throughout history. If a woman fell pregnant outside of marriage (or without a male guardian/suitor) or if the kid turned out deformed in any way, the baby would be left in the forest for the animals to eat or thrown in the river.

Babies are arguably not "people", since they are not self aware. It's like killing a cat, pig or a cow.

And just because one doesn't care about abortion (since it doesn't affect me personally), doesn't mean I am a liberal. You know, you are allowed to have your own opinions sometimes and not have to follow the official party dogma 100% of the time. Doing so without questioning or thinking just makes you an NPC.

In general I am against abortion but if a woman wants to cough up $30,000 on her own to have the procedure then who am I to tell her she can't? The problem with abortions is the effect it has on society in general (less responsible), not the moral issue of killing an unborn baby (in my opinion). But if women were forced to pay for their own abortions then a lot of these issues would disappear. If a chick really wants her baby dead, she'll kill it someway or the other.

Post: #118

(02-01-2019 10:35 AM)TigerMandingo Wrote:  

(02-01-2019 10:27 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  At what stage when a pregnant woman seeking to carry to full term is murdered should we consider there to be two victims rather than one?

My position - and I realize this is really extreme - is you're not human until you are born. That is why we have birth certificates and not conception certificates. I'm not going to answer the emotional-laden question because I don't think it would be wise for me to do so.

Also, keep in mind that this is a player's forum. Bunch of guys traveling the world, most likely rawdogging and busting inside women. I doubt they'd be anti-abortion if push comes to shove. That being said, I understand where you are coming from and I respect you for settling down and raising a family.

Birth certificate does not proove that a human is born. It is a birth of a person; legal entity, corporation. From that moment onwards it belongs to a State; it can be taxed, governed etc. If parents would not register a baby, would it mean it is not born? Therefore is not a human?

Interestingly, aborting a child is not considered as an act of killing providing that there is mother's consent. Although, if a pregnant woman, for example, dies in a car accident, the one that caused it might be guilty of homicide.

State homicide laws that recognize unborn victims

Post: #119

I don't know if a clump of cells has feelings or not, or what the "scientific" definition of personhood is. Ten years ago I was talking to a liberal friend of mine. He was criticizing a pro-life poster for showing pictures of babies aborted in the third trimester, and said that legal abortion wasn't killing those kinds of human-looking fetuses, so it was okay.

And now we have legalized abortion up until the moment of birth. But I don't see many liberals saying that's gone too far.

So here's my opinion: abortion is evil. Maybe in some cases it's a necessary evil, but then again so is trading your kids with your neighbors during a famine so you can eat them with a little less guilt and maybe survive to have more kids. Nobody would legalize that, but it happens anyway when people are desperate.

Why is abortion evil? Because it is anti-human, and giving abortion the support of the law encourages anti-humanism. We have a society in which the intellectual elite fights tooth and nail for your right to kill your own children, thinks building a border wall is evil, wants to turn sex from a reproductive act into entertainment, and make this and other forms of entertainment into your sole purpose in life, before you die out. Family, nation, race, then species. There are already people (being reported on sympathetically by NYT) who advocate human extinction.

In a different post I talked about the Bolshevik core of the Left—the calculating crazies hidden among the mass of (mostly) well-intentioned liberals. The first Bolshevik revolution was in Russia and the second one was in China. The third one is in America and it is probably the most pernicious of the three. Unlike Russia and China, they didn't have to mobilize armed forces against the people to impose revolution on them. The American Bolsheviks are getting Americans to destroy themselves happily.

Post: #120

To determine if the fetus is alive, we can look at how we determine death.
- End of Brain Activity
- Stopping of Heartbeat

A baby gets a heartbeat and brainwaves I believe at 5-6 weeks. This to me should be a baseline of the law based on applicable medical science. If the baby has brain activity or a heartbeat that stops, then someone has died. We would declare this a death if it were an 80 year old guy in a hospital.

Life from conception to me is a more spiritual or ethical decision. A unique being has been created, all the unique DNA / Chromosones from the mother and father is in place at the point of conception. Without interference, it will grow into a living, breathing, human being.

The Hippocratic oath falls short here "first do no harm", I think it went.

Post: #121

This has probably been said before...but the abortion debate is a moral dilemma.

I respect those guys who are taking the moral high ground by saying life-is-life...hmm, that sounds like love-is-love and that might lead us down a very deep rabbit hole.

Anyway, back to the moral dilemma. I'm interested in what you think about the classic moral questions about the following:

- your wife was raped and is now pregnant
- your brother fucked your sister and now she is pregnant
- your wife is pregnant and your doctor tells you the child is grossly deformed

What do you do?

Post: #122

Personally I'm sick to death of the "what about women carrying the deformed antichrist child of their rapist/uncle" argument.

Nobody says "lets legalize at-will murder in case you have to perform a mercy killing after your plane crashes in the Andes".

If you said to the Left "okay, you get exemptions for serious defects and rape/inbreeding but that's all" then they would still pitch a fit. The evil suffered to accommodate the rare exceptions is far greater than the evil created by said rare exceptions.

Post: #123

It’s murder.

Post: #124

(02-01-2019 09:47 PM)SeaFM Wrote:  It’s murder.

Unfortunately, whether you like it or not, it's reality.

Go take that moral high ground preaching to almost any place outside of the first-world and see what sort of response you get.

Post: #125

(02-01-2019 09:43 PM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  Personally I'm sick to death of the "what about women carrying the deformed antichrist child of their rapist/uncle" argument.

I respect your opinion, but where is your solution?

Like I said to SeaFM...it's reality, like it or not.