Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Kris Feenstra on April 9, 2012 at 7:38pm

You can't say that it's ALIVE, because that statement has no meaning, just like saying a particle has an exact position and velocity has no meaning. see also: "positivism"

Not really.  We can reliably observe that the foetus is alive. While biology has all sorts of ambiguous cases, this isn't really one of them.

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Permalink Reply by Unseen on April 9, 2012 at 7:51pm

You can say it's living. Does that imply that it's alive (if by "alive" you mean "a life")? You can say that your little toe is living. But to say "My little toe is alive" is a very odd thing to say because it's attached to and sustained by your body.

Just like a fetus attached to its host's body..

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Permalink Reply by Kris Feenstra on April 10, 2012 at 3:56am

"(if by "alive" you mean "a life")?"

Why would I possibly mean that?  I meant what I said to the word. 

Also, it's not at all strange to say that your toe is alive anymore than it would be strange to say it was dead if that happened to be the case.  Necrosis sucks 'n all, but it does happen.

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Permalink Reply by Unseen on April 10, 2012 at 9:31am

It's strange in that that is not the way we talk about parts of our body, generally speaking.

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Permalink Reply by Kris Feenstra on April 10, 2012 at 12:52pm

That's equivocal.

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Permalink Reply by Andrew on April 19, 2012 at 5:15pm

biologically it may be classified as living (or may not be, that's still up in the air), but philosophically is it worth something yet? Certainly ants are alive and not worth worrying about their killings, and corpses are dead yet worthy of respect, so "alive" does not mean "worth something" necessarily.

The abortion question is not about biological definitions, but about the question of worth. Clearly a sperm and an egg are not worth saving, yet a full-grown person is worth saving. So where does the switch happen? And before a fetus has formed any relationships (even with its own parents!), there is nothing worthwhile that is destroyed in abortion. 

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Permalink Reply by Unseen on April 19, 2012 at 7:01pm

Once again, it's all about offering up definitions to apply rather than facts that might settle anything.

Here's a definition: for something to be a person it must have formed a personality. Does a zygote or fetus have a personality yet? Is it zany, or depressed, or politically conservative? Does it have a favorite color?

Fetuses can't be persons because they don't have a personality yet.

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Permalink Reply by Shabaka Tecumseh on April 8, 2012 at 12:12pm

yes..because it's a stupid question.  this is a case where religion makes good people bad...what difference does it make, really?

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Permalink Reply by Becca on April 8, 2012 at 1:08pm

Life began billions of years ago and is a continuous process. The debates about life beginning at conception or birth or when the baby is viable outside the womb are in my opinion moot. If the process of conceiving and bearing children could happen without the need for a woman's body this debate would be so much different. That a baby needs another person's body is the reason why I am pro-choice, it is unfair to for a woman to be forced against her will to sacrifice her body for another person.

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Permalink Reply by Becca on April 8, 2012 at 1:32pm

All a man has to do is stick his penis in a woman and move it around long enough to ejaculate and his part is over. The woman has to carry it for 9 months and deal with the permanent effects on her body that's why it's her choice to make not the mans.

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Permalink Reply by John Kelly on April 9, 2012 at 3:27pm

However, the father should have rights to demand termination of the pregnancy due to the life-long consequences of carrying it to term. 

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Permalink Reply by Becca on April 12, 2012 at 11:55am

*Just want to note that this comment was a reply to another comment that now doesn't exist anymore.*

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