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False.

The vast majority of the time, plan B prevents even that conception.

I know. The problem is that, if any fertilized egg is considered a person (even if it hasn't attached), then it could still outlaw the pill. While it usually works by keeping an egg from being released if it hasn't yet, it also irritates the lining of the uterus, so that an egg can't implant. It's not an abortion, because the egg never actually connected itself to the woman's body. But that won't matter if every embryo is a person.

But this law would have serious, awful ramifications.

For instance, it's unclear what the legal course of action would be if an embryo implants in the Fallopian tube. Instead of just removing it, the doctors would have to remove it and re-implant it. But now you are entering into a pregnancy already weakened by invasive surgery, which isn't good for the mother. But what happens if the embryo is destroyed in the process? Is the doctor liable? That seems absurd.

Also, think about invitro. It would be illegal. Invitro fertilizes 4-8 eggs, but that's just to give you a small chance for one to take. Under this sort of law, even if one takes, that could be considered murder--you created 8 embryos with the intention of only 1 surviving.

Stem cell ramifications are obvious.

But you also run into inheritance problems. If embryos are persons, then any existing embryos or fetuses have a claim to property.

And what happens if a woman does something risky to her pregnancy and loses it? Is it murder? If you get into a car accident with a pregnant woman, who is relatively fine, but loses her pregnancy in its 5th week, are you a murderer?

Etc.

The very idea of this law is absurd. Not to mention the fact that illegal abortions are always going to exist, and they just threaten women's health.

What you are failing to address is still the most significant part--the act itself only has significance because the "victim" is considered a person.

Whether or not they think there are contributing factors to why it's okay to end the personhood of a convict or person in vegetative state, they still have absolutely no reason for asserting that a fetus is a person.

You want a more nuanced position than that, but there isn't one. This is going down to the very base question of why we should consider some organism valuable in itself. Personhood is the only answer we have for that. If it doesn't have personhood, then it isn't valuable in itself.

You can dodge that question all you want, but it's still there. And it's still at the very center of this issue. Unless you can come up with some reason that a fetus should be considered a person, then you don't have an argument. I suppose you could also give a compelling reason why personhood shouldn't be our standard, but I can't imagine you possibly doing that.

Just because you don't like the result doesn't mean anything if you can't provide a good reason against it. I agree that birth is a stupid arbitrary event that doesn't have any bearing on the personhood of an infant. But I would also argue that personhood comes later than it, not earlier.

Wait, Sarah Palin had sex with a black dude?

You're still missing the point. I'm not saying you have to agree with this criteria. Clearly you *don't* agree. But that's not the point.

Can you agree that for someone who does believe that potential future life is a legitimate criteria to use that for that person, opposition to abortion while supporting the death penalty might be neither inconsistent nor hypocritical?

I'm asking you to stop looking at the issue only from your own point of view, but to stretch your brain a bit and look at it from someone else's. The question I was answering isn't "what is the right way to decide whether we're killing someone, or whether said killing is murder?". The question I answered was "how can someone who opposes abortion support the death penalty?".

I've answered that question. You don't have to like the answer, or even agree with it. But those two positions are logically consistent if we assume that the criteria I outlined is being used to make the decision. That's all I have to show here.

So long as we all agree to use the filter and lens you use it all makes sence? What makes you so certain that your criteria is the only valid one?

When did I say it was? It's subjective, right? For a person who does believe that, their conclusions are consistent with their beliefs. Did I stutter or something?

So fetuses are illegal aliens? We totally need to build a wall in front of every ******.

You reject the argument that different people may use different criteria when making a decision? Really? Cause that seems kinda moronic and incredibly self centered. Do you run around the frozen food section of your grocery store screaming at people that they're buying the wrong flavor of icecream?





I really think you don't understand the actual argument I'm making.

I'm totally going to hand out dental dams at the next Tea Party event I attend!

As long as you acknowledge that for someone who does view the issue that way, it's not hypocritical or inconsistent to derive different conclusions. That was the primary issue I took with an earlier statement in this thread (don't even remember who made it now). Can we get past that one?


If you want to debate whether that's a valid viewpoint in the first place, I'm game. But let's first place some ground rules. You have to *not* apply assumptions which are not agreed upon. It's the other persons way of viewing the issue, right? That other person is therefore *right* with regard to how they apply that view. You can't invent your own rules that you think they must agree to, or you're just arguing in circles again.

Having said that, I'll respond to your earlier post. I'll start by restating the position in question:

This position believes that potential future life matters and that we should judge an action based on the degree to which that future life is negatively impacted. Note, that this has to do with probability and choice. Something that "might be" a future life has a low probability value. Same thing with a convicted criminal who "might" turn his life around. Also, there's a difference between choosing to act to prevent something and choosing to act to cause something. I just want to make sure you clearly understand what we're really talking about here.



No. Because there are a whole set of things which must happen for that specific egg or that specific set of sperm to result in a human life. Barring some kind of extreme medical intervention, that woman's period is going to destroy that egg. In terms of the guy jacking off, the fact that he did doesn't prevent him from impregnating someone at some future point. Also neither of those acts prevented something from happening. They didn't cause it to happen in the first place.




I'm not sure why you think this applies. The position isn't about demanding that someone must perform a set of actions resulting in the creation of a human life. It's about not taking action that destroys a likely future life (note that probability matters here). This part of your reasoning rests on the same false assumption you made in the earlier part. That's not correct though and the fact that one is absurd should lead you to conclude that the other is as well.



Meaningless statement. You're just restating your own position.



Correct. Which is why your whole "woman on a period"/"guy jacking off" examples are wrong. That's not at all how this is being evaluated.

In the case of abortion we do know that this given egg and sperm have formed a zygote, and have formed an embryo and will become a person if left alone. Get it? The very assumption behind the choice to abort is that if you don't, a living human being will be created. That's what you're choosing to do when you have an abortion. If the probability of that result wasn't extremely high, you wouldn't bother, would you?



Again though, this is the same false comparison. We're not talking about someone who "might be born", but someone who will be born if you don't act to prevent it.

What do you think an abortion is?



And that's the one rational thing you've said. This is why we allow abortions up to a certain point in a pregnancy. Now, there's clearly disagreement on where that point should be. But to deny that there is a balance in play between the right of the future child to exist and the rights of the woman with regard to her own body is to deny the whole issue itself. It just seems like pretending that there is zero value to anything that isn't already a person and then deciding that no one's a person until they are born is a convenient way to side step the more difficult questions of the issue itself.




With the exception of your last statement, nothing you've said is central to the issue. Most of it appears to be designed to avoid the central issue in fact. The central issue is that even the Roe v. Wade decision, which is broadly viewed by conservatives as being a huge overreach by the courts, still finds that a growing fetus has rights. If not, then there would be no restrictions on abortion up to the time of birth at all. That they did place greater restrictions the farther along the pregnancy goes shows that the idea that a future person has no rights at all is clearly incorrect. Or at least that the Supreme Court disagrees.


So yeah. I think the idea that we can judge issues of life and death based not just on the status of the thing/person/whatever right now, but based on the future we are potentially eliminating is well founded. And it's a pretty basic extrapolation of the same principle to arrive at support for a death penalty as well. The two are not incompatible at all. In both cases, you're looking at the future potential life which may be prevented, and judging the value of that life within the context of outside conditions. In the case of abortion, you're judging it against a womans right to control her own body. In the case of an execution, you're judging it against the harm the criminal has done and the likelihood that their future life will ever correct for it in any way.


I honestly don't see any logical hole in that way of looking at the issue. Obviously, it's a subjective thing. We're dealing with social theory here, right? But you can't dismiss it purely because you disagree, much less because of some imagined inherent contradiction. It is a perfectly valid way of looking at the issue and making those kinds of decisions.

Edited, Sep 16th 2011 6:57pm by gbaji