Thread: Abortion is Mass Murder

Originally Posted by Mr Earl

My point is simply aborting should not just be a matter of conveniece for the woman.

Having or not having a baby is not a trivial question of 'convenience' like choosing paper or plastic bags at the checkout.

It is a life changing event. It is not something that should be forced on anyone to satisfy the irrational convictions of religious nutters who think something magic happens at conception.

A foetus has no knowledge of its own existence. It is not capable of fear about its demise or regret over all the plans it had for the future. These are human attributes which it does not have yet since it is not even close to being a fully formed human.

The interests of the fully formed humans in the situation (the pregnant woman and her sexual partner) are of higher importance since we democratically ascribe worthiness to the well-being and happiness of fully formed humans. If the pregnancy is an unwanted mistake the rights of these people mean that termination of the pregnancy should be allowed.

Originally Posted by Looper

The interests of the fully formed humans in the situation (the pregnant woman and her sexual partner) are of higher importance since we democratically ascribe worthiness to the well-being and happiness of fully formed humans.

Who's democracy?

At which point is a developing human being deemed to be fully formed, before or after their birth?

[QUOTE=ENT;3437710

Who's democracy?

At which point is a developing human being deemed to be fully formed, before or after their birth?[/QUOTE]

Depends on who you ask according to earl it,s as soon as the blokes finish saying "your going to love this didn't ya uhhh thanks"

Originally Posted by ENT

Who's democracy?

In this enlightened age we democratically agree what is right and wrong through discussion and rational enquiry. We don't delegate such power to mystics with holy books.

Originally Posted by ENT

At which point is a developing human being deemed to be fully formed, before or after their birth?

There is no absolute truth here. Conception is not a magical event and neither is birth. Choosing a point is a practical matter of balancing the interests of all parties concerned: The pregnant woman who does not want to have a child, her sexual patrner who does not want to be a father yet and the foetus which has the potential to become a human being.

What are the characteristics that make human life worthy of special consideration over lower order animals?

It is our more highly developed consciousness. This cognitive feature enables us to ponder our past; Make plans for our future; Experience emotions like human love and grief. These are the things that make human life special. They don't exist in humans until they are matured to some degree.

We could take this to its logical conclusion and say it is OK to smother unwanted babies at birth (as was commonly done in days gone by) but we are more civilised now and we don't like to get our hands bloody. So the infant gets an early reprieve once it squeezes past the arbitrrary milestone of X months in the womb.

Many pre-modern societies do not ascribe full human worth to babies until they are beyond a certain age. It is a common moral notion.

Abortion simply did not exist in days gone by so strangling at birth was the only option for unwanted offspring. Abortion lets us move the deadline back to inside the womb. This lets us accomodate the reality that not all pregnancies are welcome without the gore of strangulation so moving the moral deadline back to some arbitrary point during gestation, which still allows a window for termination, is the morally optimum rational choice to balance the inetersts of all parties.

Originally Posted by Looper

A foetus has no knowledge of its own existence.

This is something no one really knows for sure.

One thing is sure, the foetus is indeed a little human who has no voice and totaly dependent on the mother for protection.

Health reasons notwithstanding, aborting a healthy baby is against nature.

Seeing how humans also willfully engage in the destruction of the environment, for their comforts and conveniences, it is hardly surprising we murder our own babies because the mother is too selfish to consider anything other than her own comforts and convenience.

There is definately a schism, between nature and the modern western notion of dominating nature.

Aborting healthy babies is but one of the many symptoms of how wrong it has gone.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Yeah defend the fucking paedos you senile fool.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathol...ses_by_country

Must be horrifying news for all those whining little Peckerheads out there !

1.5% and 5% of the Catholic clergy has been involved in sexual abuse cases

1 in 5 girls are victims of child sexual abuse.

Uuupps.... sorry for posting ! Forgot that this is a Man's Forum.

Originally Posted by Mr Earl

There is definately a schism, between nature and the modern western notion of dominating nature.

Aborting healthy babies is but one of the many symptoms of how wrong it has gone.

Oh Earl, what are we going to do with you ?

You're neglecting the fact that primitive cultures who are far more in tune with nature than us have practised abortion and sometimes even infanticide for thousands of years.

Originally Posted by HermantheGerman

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Yeah defend the fucking paedos you senile fool.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathol...ses_by_country

Must be horrifying news for all those whining little Peckerheads out there !

1.5% and 5% of the Catholic clergy has been involved in sexual abuse cases

1 in 5 girls are victims of child sexual abuse.

Uuupps.... sorry for posting ! Forgot that this is a Man's Forum.

You forgot that most of the Pope's paedos like little boys.

Originally Posted by Latindancer

Originally Posted by Mr Earl

There is definately a schism, between nature and the modern western notion of dominating nature.

Aborting healthy babies is but one of the many symptoms of how wrong it has gone.

Oh Earl, what are we going to do with you ?

You're neglecting the fact that primitive cultures who are far more in tune with nature than us have practised abortion and sometimes even infanticide for thousands of years.

Sure infanticide has been around for ages.

Significantly though, the Greeks considered the practice barbaric, as should we, since it was Greek philosophy which shaped the foundations of western thought.

How we have strayed from our fundamentals!

Originally Posted by Mr Earl

There is definately a schism, between nature and the modern western notion of dominating nature.

Can't argue there just look to the climate change/global warming thread.

Originally Posted by chassamui

You are an advert for early onset dementia.

Or meth induced psychosis.

Originally Posted by Mr Earl

Originally Posted by Looper

A foetus has no knowledge of its own existence.

This is something no one really knows for sure.

It is pretty reasonable to surmise from behavioural observation and introspective recollection of our own childhoods that babies do not have much of a clue as to what is going on other than the basic animal urges of hunger, thirst, tiredness etc. Most people's earliest tangible human memory is only from about the age of 2 or 3.

It takes a couple of years to bootstrap the human cognitive system to the point where it starts to resemble a functioning human being.

The key distinguishing behavioural feature being language and communication of more complex ideas beyond basic instinctive urges like hunger and tiredness.

There is no magic point in time when a 'mature human being' can be said to have come into existence. By any objective behavioural measure it occurs sometime between 1 and 3 years of age.

Of course it is sad to some degree when an abortion is carried out because a potential life has not come to fruition. But it is also sad when someone who does not want children at that time for whatever reason has their life derailed in a major way by an unwanted baby.

There are many reason such as rape, mental disability, medical danger to the mother why abortions are sought on special grounds. Women (and men) may also simply not want children at that time and we hold the autonomy of individuals and their desire to have control over their lives to be worthy of consideration when deciding what is morally allowable.

The foetus is not yet a human being in any real behavioural sense. If the mature human stakeholders in the situation (pregnant woman and sexual partner) feel strongly enough about it then they should be given a window of opportunity to stop an unwanted pregnancy. Discounting their desire for autonomy over their lives to nothing in the face of a sacralised notion of some kind of human 'spirit' existing in a tiny bundle of cells is not a rational or balanced moral analysis of the situation.

Originally Posted by Mr Earl

One thing is sure, the foetus is indeed a little human who has no voice

And also no thoughts or higher order cognitive processes above those of basic animal survival and no grasp of what it means to be a human yet.

Originally Posted by Mr Earl

Health reasons notwithstanding, aborting a healthy baby is against nature.

It is sad but it is not 'against nature' since mothers in nature often have to make decisions to abandon young who they judge to be not viable based on current resources, existing maternal responsibilities, health of supporting relationships such as a husband to provide the bacon etc.

Originally Posted by Looper

There is no magic point in time .

Again something we really cannot be sure of. As science is at a loss to explain conciousness, it's beginnings or where it ends or continues.
Western science is very limited in this area.

Who is to say that the foetus has or hasn't consiousness.

Sure this drifts into the realm of the metaphysical, but it is something to consider.

I ain't no expert, but I can say they is much more out the than our limited dumbed down human senses are able to percieve.

And to contradict the OP some, who is to say this current rash of abortions isn't part of a natural cycle of the earth to rid itself of the white industrialist parasite infecting the planet.

Originally Posted by Mr Earl

Again something we really cannot be sure of. As science is at a loss to explain conciousness, it's beginnings or where it ends or continues. Western science is very limited in this area.

If you subscribe to a mystical notion of consciousness then anything follows from there and we are back in the dark ages. You can argue that black is white in any moral discussion because you think that consciousness is a mystical property of the universe which trumps the more pedestrian dimensions of reality.

If you instead subscribe to the rational notion that consciousness is simply the subjective feeling of what it is like to be a living organism with a developed higher order nervous system then you are forced to explain the reasons why the purported 'right to existence' of a bundle of non-sentient cells should trump the right to self-determination of a mature human being who only has one shot at life and would like things to proceed as much under her control as is possible and morally reasonable.