Forums → WEPR → Justify Abortion

-Women regret abortions.

-A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with her own body, even when in her mother's womb.
-Abortion is discrimation in the worst form, because it murders a child who came "at an inconvenient time."

@Hahiha

They do not.

I can point out to you tons of women who regret their abortions. Go to the March for Life, or Google it.

That "child" is not a person at the usual time of abortion and thus cannot be discriminated against.

That child has a beating heart, can feel pain, has cognitive capabilities, can move, etc. Look at an ultrasound, or Google an ultrasound.

By the way, for the reasons I explained above, the most efficient way to reduce abortion rates is to legalize abortions. I know you as an anti-abortion-ist(?) cannot support this without compromising yourself, but the numbers are there.

I can point out to you tons of women who regret their abortions. Go to the March for Life,

That child has a beating heart, can feel pain, has cognitive capabilities, can move, etc. Look at an ultrasound, or Google an ultrasound.

@Hahiha

By the way, for the reasons I explained above, the most efficient way to reduce abortion rates is to legalize abortions. I know you as an anti-abortion-ist(?) cannot support this without compromising yourself, but the numbers are there.

The end does not justify the means, at least for me.

I know what it looks like. Looks are deceiving. It is not yet a person by biological standards.

At that period, babies are fully conscious.

The end does not justify the means, at least for me.

At that period, babies are fully conscious.

[...] it being the murder of an unborn baby

A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with her own body, even when in her mother's womb.

Abortion is discrimation in the worst form, [...]

Women regret abortions.

That child has a beating heart, can feel pain, has cognitive capabilities, can move, etc.

The end does not justify the means, at least for me.

At that period, babies are fully conscious.

What you are pointing out is AFTER a certain stage of development. The unborn child is simply not alive for much of the time it is still developing. Abortion, if done at that stage or before that, is not taking a life. It is intervening on something that does not yet live. Like preventing a cell from multiplying.

Now whether it could grow to be alive, if you let it, is another story

Here we have a blastula; a hollow ball of cells that possesses no heart, no feeling, no cognitive ability, and no motor functions. This is all a human enbryo is at about four days.

Please define 'alive'. To me, it definitely is alive, just like any cell is alive. There is no 'dead' stage in development; it's a continuous line of reproductive cells passed on from generation to generation. I feel like it is too loose a term for this debate. I think we need to concentrate on the concept of personhood/consciousness.

Well, with the broader term of being alive, you are right, it is. Even a single cell is. Viruses are one of the few things that are " probably" alive but not easy to classify But it's not a person yet

@Hahiha

Muscle reflexes and semi-random neurological activity do not constitute sufficient signs of consciousness, neither full nor partial.

A human being can be classified too as a being that posesses "muscle reflexes and remi-random nerological activity," and thus, your consciousness could too be questioned.

@Fishpreferred

Where did you hear that nonsense? Do you even understand what murder is?

Murder is unjustly causing the death of a human being.

1 An unborn fetus has no desire to do anything.
2 "Whatever she wants with her own body" includes ending a pregnancy. You just justified abortion.

1. Your assumption that an unborn fetus has no desire to do anything has no basis. I could argue that it is present because it wants to be born.

2. I did not justify abortion for I do not consider a fetus to be part of a woman's body.

No, it isn't.

Abortion is discrimination against a human being.

The fact that some people regret some of those decisions does not make any of them inherently wrong.

I did not use that as proof of abortion's wrongness, but to discourage women to do that.

Here we have a blastula; a hollow ball of cells that possesses no heart, no feeling, no cognitive ability, and no motor functions. This is all a human enbryo is at about four days.

That child is a living being, because it has all the essential functions of a life-form. You forget that you too are made up of cells, and if your cells (which you do not consider alive) were systimatically killed, you would cease to be.

Then don't get one. Problem solved.

No, it does not end there. I consider every abortion to be a murder, and as such, every mother who aborts her child is liable in a court of law.

Not if they happen to be sleeping at the time. Ha, got you there. But, seriously, what babies? I thought you wanted to talk about abortion, not children.

A fetus is a baby.

@Doombreed

What you are pointing out is AFTER a certain stage of development.

No, even at conception, the fetus is a viable life-form.

@Hahiha

I think we need to concentrate on the concept of personhood/consciousness.

If you are sleeping and thus showing no apparent signs of consciousness, does that make it morally or legally permissible to kill you?

@Doombreed

But it's not a person yet

If we begin to define a person according to our own standards, then we get into dangerous territory. I could say "doombreed is not a person because people understand the wrongness of abortion," and thus justify killing you.

A human being can be classified too as a being that posesses "muscle reflexes and remi-random nerological activity," and thus, your consciousness could too be questioned.

A fetus is a baby.

No, even at conception, the fetus is a viable life-form.

If you are sleeping and thus showing no apparent signs of consciousness, does that make it morally or legally permissible to kill you?

@Hahiha

This is fallacious reasoning. As I said, those do not constitute sufficient signs of consciousness. They are part of being human, but they are not enough to constitute a person

As I said, once you start to have a private definition of what constitutes a person, everybody is in danger. Besides, what do you have that a unborn baby does not?

Fetus is prenatal, baby is post-natal.

BUT both are the same object. Does the removal of the umbilical cord somehow bestow personhood upon an inanimate object? You need to reconsider your reasoning.

It is not. It is entirely dependent on the mother.

Independence does not impart personhood anymore than having a name.

That is beside the point. My brain always remains active even during sleep; I never stop being a person, even if I was knocked out. Apparent signs of consciousness are not the issue here. The point is that the fetus has not yet developed into a person.

Babies have brains too, and what is a brain besides a mass of cells?

As I said, once you start to have a private definition of what constitutes a person, everybody is in danger. Besides, what do you have that a unborn baby does not?

Consciousness, Higher and general thought processing really, senses, motor functions. You know, all those things and more.

So yeah, why does something that lacks all of those things constitute a person?

Babies have brains too, and what is a brain besides a mass of cells?

There are stages of development, you do realize this right? If not, humans would be born as adults. A brain can be more than a mass of cells in the sense of development of its higher functions.

Ran out of time to edit my post

If we begin to define a person according to our own standards, then we get into dangerous territory. I could say "doombreed is not a person because people understand the wrongness of abortion," and thus justify killing you.

Except there is a legal, literal and metaphorical definition of a person and, at least before a certain stage of development, the fetus does not fit in any of those. You could justify it personally, it wouldn't make it any more legal. Because, as much as I might disagree, I do possess the characteristics of a person, namely, higher thought processes, conscience, morality, intelligence, etc. So do extremists, like ISIS, white supremacists, and the like. They are people. Their actions aren't really human, but they are people for all intents and purposes.

Consciousness, Higher and general thought processing really, senses, motor functions. You know, all those things and more.

I realise you're saying that you have these things that a fetus doesn't. That's all well and good. But I'm guessing that this ties into the personhood debate. If so, this is similar to the problem Michael Tooley ran into when he put together 'Abortion and Infancticide'. As you might've guess from the title, infants did not meet his personhood criteria and, as such, were not persons. He ended up getting ripped apart for this view--especially after he doubled down after some strong criticism.

That was back in the 1970s, but the landscape still has the same core issue:
There's no meaningful, non-question-begging account of personhood that in neither too broad or too narrow.

So I'd like to pressure on the idea that a fetus hasn't developed into a person. We don't need a bright, shining line--morality can admit of vagueness. But what's doing the work here? Higher brain function would exclude infants from counting as persons (severely mentally handicapped people might also fail this criterion). So it must be something else.