darth_ender

^Amen

Bingowings said:

Well He is kind of cool irregardless, I was talking to God the other day and like he turned around and said without a hint of irony. "I was going to smack you in the mouth but that foreskin on your foot so becoming" Crazy times he then smote me with a Urinary Tract Infection.

BTW a clump of cells can be a viable fetus, all viable fetuses were at some point a clump of two cells. But a fetus is not a baby and a baby is not a person.

 A brilliant justification for infanticide.  Nice.

 

I think it's fun to double, or even triple post on purpose

I don't think he's saying it's more acceptable.  I think he's saying it is unacceptable for similar reasons.

I don't think he's saying it's more acceptable.  I think he's saying it is unacceptable for similar reasons.

I don't think he's saying it's more acceptable.  I think he's saying it is unacceptable for similar reasons.

twister111 said:

darth_ender said:

First I'll admit that I don't fully understand your scenarios, as I find your phrasing confusing.  

Here:
Scenario #1: Happy couple, drunk driving. Hit stranger. Stranger comatose after accident. Diagnosis finds virus. Cure heart transplant and blood donation(constant 9 months) from woman involved with drunk driving.

Scenario #2: Happy couple, genetic tests. Stranger part of genetic tests. Stranger falls ill and comatose. Good news thanks to testing their blood at the same time they find the cure as described in scenario #1.

Your initial scenario: Happy couple, drunk driving. Hit stranger. Stranger comatose after accident. Solution throw money at the doctors and they can make it better. Stranger would've been just fine had accident not occurred.

Your violinist alteration: Happy couple, drunk driving. Violinist hit. Violinist comatose after accident. Somehow you(ender) become one of the individuals involved in the drunk driving. Your blood is needed* to keep the voilinist alive. You agree to the situation.

*(To keep things clear I'm assuming that " If I am not only the only person who has the proper blood type to keep that violinist alive, and I am the reason he is in his predicament, then I am indeed obliged to devote my resources to his survival." the emphasized portion was a typo/error and you meant to convey that your blood actually was the only blood that could save the violinist.)

Thanks for the summaries and for catching my poor phrasing.  I'd meant originally to say, If I am not only the only....but I am also the reason," but clearly forgot how I was originally writing my sentence by the time I got to that point.  I edited it, but as "If I am the only...and I am the reason," as it's probably less likely to get confused that way by future readers.  Thanks for pointing that out :)

darth_ender said:

But I also find your analogy over the top. Donating your heart and blood? Come on! Loaning your body for a finite time is far different than giving up organs indefinitely. My analogy is definitely closer to the real thing. And as consuming as pregnancy is (as I lie next to my pregnant wife, typing this, and not revealing the difficulties she has had lately), generally the difficulties are not nearly as bad as you convey in your analogy.

Well I was thinking of a way that the stranger would somehow need the woman specifically to survive as a fetus does. I also thought about how a fetus basically occupies an organ. So in a way simply donating blood isn't enough, nor is some temporary line through a person's kidney's sufficient. It'd have to be something more considering the uterus does expand and c-section is a possibility too. A lung may have been better up to this point but you'd have to include the possibility of her death too. So I went with the heart.

I see.  It seems still over the top.  Maybe to improve it, the organ loaned would not be so critical as the heart (which unlike the uterus [which is designed exclusively for pregnancy, btw, and therefore is fulfilling its design, while a heart transplant does not], is absolutely essential for human life to continue).  Perhaps a kidney would be best.  A person can live without it, but the potential for death from the surgery or future loss of the other kidney probably better matches the risk.  And in a finite period of time, the person would get the kidney back.

I know, it seems like splitting hairs, but while we're on the topic of refining analogies, let's get them right ;)

darth_ender said:

Money issues were not my intent either, though I can see how one might interpret it that way. My intent was to simply draw in the fact that it is draining on the couple, but the drain does not justify the euthanasia. See my post with the statistics to see my view on the inconvenience of pregnancy, that it is not always about money, but that it is nearly always about convenience of some sort.

Well my main beef with your scenario is that it seemed to undermine the physical drain of pregnancy. Now that you've admitted that wasn't your intent, it's alright .
Now we could go on debating "what makes a person" but I don't really want to do that. Just gets nowhere and it conveniently never allows for the possibility of considering the sperm a person(or potential person as you see a fetus) too or to be treated the same as pro-lifers want a combined sperm and egg.

 I can see the argument to be made for an embryo not being a child (though I don't agree), but I don't see the sperm comparison as valid.  Left to its own devices, a sperm will never develop, never survive independently, never make it past a single cell, is not even genetically human as it is lacking half its chromosomes.  Once fused with an ovum, suddenly it multiplies, has the potential to grow into a 100 year-old man or woman, as long as health or the influence of others don't hinder it.  It requires life-saving reliance on another human for a time, but it is still genetically a unique human, growing, ultimately with the likelihood of survival on its own.

Remember that even post-birth children still require the physical, emotional, and monetary resources of their caregivers for survival.  My children take a toll on my health and billfold.  But I don't think I'd get away with aborting them at this point it their lives.  As unique individuals of my creation, I am now responsible for their survival, regardless of the fact that I am less healthy than I would be if I didn't have them.

First I'll admit that I don't fully understand your scenarios, as I find your phrasing confusing.  But I also find your analogy over the top.  Donating your heart and blood?  Come on!  Loaning your body for a finite time is far different than giving up organs indefinitely.  My analogy is definitely closer to the real thing.  And as consuming as pregnancy is (as I lie next to my pregnant wife, typing this, and not revealing the difficulties she has had lately), generally the difficulties are not nearly as bad as you convey in your analogy.

Money issues were not my intent either, though I can see how one might interpret it that way.  My intent was to simply draw in the fact that it is draining on the couple, but the drain does not justify the euthanasia.  See my post with the statistics to see my view on the inconvenience of pregnancy, that it is not always about money, but that it is nearly always about convenience of some sort.

DuracellEnergizer said:

darth_ender said:

This world is overpopulated anyway
This world sucks and I don't want a child to be subject to the evils therein
...

Wow, those all sound like they boil down to convenience.

How do those "boil down to convenience"?

 Yeah, these probably weren't the best to include in my list.  But still, the first at least is about the inconvenience to the whole of humanity through a false argument (Japan, which has far fewer natural resources, is still quite capable of supporting its far denser population).  The second probably doesn't fit well at all, but it's a stupid argument in favor of abortion.  It's not bad for those who smother their children because the world is evil, but it doesn't fly if you really believe that humans are worth preserving, even in a crappy world.

It's true, my analogy wasn't perfect, but no analogy is.  Frankly, yours is awful and clearly suited to meet your own ends.  Mine showed how the irresponsibility of a couple led to a potential human being.  That is my point.  I could refine it with blood donations and such, but that is hardly the point of the analogy.  The point is that we are talking about someone who, according to definitions made by those justifying abortion (rather than the natural definition), are not people.  Just potential people.  The primary purpose of the analogy is to point out that killing a potential person is really killing a person.  The only further justification that can be offered is further refinement to the definition of a person: a person has a history, even if at present he has no self-awareness.  But in reality this is not true either.  If we were guaranteed that Terri Schiavo would make a full recovery, would not the termination of her life been immoral?  But nevertheless, she was not a person, according to the "pro-choice" crowd, at the time of her death.  She would one day become such, but was not at the time.  Does the inconvenience of her existence now justify killing off what she will be later before she gets to that point?  No.

A popular abortion analogy is that of the Famous Violinist.  If you want to call an analogy "horribly flawed," this one is far more deserving than mine.  But let's improve it by combining it with mine but using it in the way you interpreted mine.  The famous violinist is hooked up to the other individual because of the drunk driving scenario I put forth.  If I am the only person who has the proper blood type to keep that violinist alive, and I am the reason he is in his predicament, then I am indeed obliged to devote my resources to his survival.  It was my choice.  I was pro-choice to get into that situation by drinking and driving.  With that form of pro-choice, I am also pro-consequence.

Aside from the exceptions I've stated I agree with, that ultimately is the reason for the majority of abortions:

Financial difficulty
Too young
Too many things to do in life
We wanted to have kids later
I have all the kids I wanted
Diapers are icky
It will make me fat
I don't like the father anymore
I was drunk when I got pregnant and would have been more selective had I been sober
This world is overpopulated anyway
This world sucks and I don't want a child to be subject to the evils therein
I don't want to parent alone

Wow, those all sound like they boil down to convenience.  Let's look at the following survey results.

REASONS GIVEN FOR ABORTIONS: AGI SURVEY, 2004 [6]

Rape, incest, health of mother, and health of child altogether account for 7.5% of all abortions.  The rest are easily labeled as inconveniences, be they social, financial, career, etc. inconveniences.  Even excluding the "other" category since we don't know what they are, they still means that 86.5% of abortions are simply matters of convenience.

I don't think the "people get abortions because their babies are inconvenient" argument is without legs to stand on.

Not too bad for safe and legal, but I don't think the US is exactly keeping them rare.  1.2 million abortions in our country each year.  1.04 million for convenience reasons.  It's a stinking business I tell you.  A stinking business.

Bingowings said:

Darth Vader is a fictional person, he has a history, he likes things he dislikes things.

He was a fictional baby where he hadn't yet formed these tastes, thoughts, personality traits.

A character in a film can be within the context of his fictional world be a person but a baby can not.

It hasn't got the language skills to turn environmental data into thoughts let alone the ability to turn those thoughts into deliberations on future actions.

It can't even survive without assistance.

It is a human biologically, it has value but it's not a person.

 To me this is the exact same argument you've already made without addressing the article that warranted the thread bump, without addressing the analogy I made, without addressing the convenience of defining personhood to suit a pro-choice stance, and ignoring several other arguments I've made.

More food for thought?  Why, if a fetus or newborn is not yet a person, is it illegal to kill past a certain point of viability?  What does it matter, especially if done in a pain-free manner?

Why is killing a pregnant woman considered a double homicide, even if the child is at a pre-viable stage?  This may only apply to US laws, but still, how could such be valid?

Honestly, if we're talking the life of a person or pre-person or potential person or partial person, I feel that pro-choicers need to be the ones answering most of the moral questions.  If I don't have DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) paperwork on a patient and that patient goes into cardiac arrest, we assume he/she is a full code and begin CPR regardless of how futile or terminally ill the patient was.  We err on the side of life.  But it seems that pro-choice folks seem to feel that we err on the side of consequence-free sex rather than life.  I'm sorry, but I demand answers to the questions I bring up, otherwise I simply see the needless killing of underdeveloped people.

The Man, The Boy, and His Donkey

I personally like the second version too, but you know what?  If it's slower, I'll still be incredibly happy and impressed with the outcome.  I care very little which is the final version.

I am appreciative of those that point out little errors here and there, but there comes a point where there are just so many nitpicks and complaints and diverse opinions over minutiae that I tire of it.  Adywan, do it the way you like it, and don't worry about majority vote or slight imperfections.  Long after you've released your version, the Ronsters of the world will still find editing errors and inconsistencies that no one had ever noticed or cared about before, and surely someone will then think that it's essential to have it fixed and they will never survive another viewing of the film without being driven up the wall for that little problem.  It will never be perfect.  Just accept what is good enough and what you love, and I know we will all love it as well.  Thanks for all you do.

PS No offense to Ronster, whom I like very much.  I'm just teasing.

The Holocaust as well.

The only reason your argument has any merit is because you and all pro-choice folks choose to define "person" as you see fit.  Let's look at my hypothetical situation that you never addressed before in a previous comment.

Let me give an analogy that I've thought long on.  The argument that an unborn child is not yet a person, as advocated by Mary Anne Warren, is severely flawed in my mind.  She suggests the following criteria define a person:

• consciousness (of objects and events external and/or internal to the being), and in particular the capacity to feel pain
• reasoning (the developed capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems)
• self-motivated activity (activity which is relatively independent of either genetic or direct external control)
• the capacity to communicate, by whatever means, messages of an indefinite variety of types, that is, not just with an indefinite number of possible contents, but on indefinitely many possible topics
• the presence of self-concepts, and self-awareness, either individual or racial, or both

Now let's hypothesize on an analogous train of thought.  Think of a man.  This man, due to the actions of a young male and female having fun with alcohol and a car, is injured and ends up comatose in a hospital bed.  In our little scenario, we have the technology to make a 97% guarantee that this man will not only come out of his coma (in about nine months), but will in fact ultimately make a full recovery, though there is a good chance his memory will be impaired.  But at the present we cannot detect any: a) consciousness; b) evidence of reasoning or significant brain activity; c) self-motivated activity; d) effort to communicate; d) enduring self-concepts.  This man is, according to Ms. Warren, not a person.  He is genetically human, but not a person.  The young couple involved did not have insurance, but because they are at fault in this accident, are required to pay for this man's medical bills and treatment.  However, simply euthanizing him is a cheaper option, and they won't be responsible for the physical therapy that would follow.  You see, when they chose to drink and drive, as fun as it was, they simply weren't ready for the consequences/commitment that might follow such actions.  Thank goodness this man was, at least for a time, a very large but ultimately nothing more than, a bunch of cells.

I suspect you would find horror at this situation.  But fortunately, with only a little more fiddling with the definition of person, you could argue that the man in question also has a history, and thus retains his personhood, whereas a fetus (an unborn, and in early stages unformed, baby) has no history.  But now it really seems like we are creating definitions to suit our own ends rather than simply relying on reality.  Let's look at an analogy of such behavior.

Many conservative Christians define the word "cult" to meet their own ends and thus exclude other religions, such as Mormons.  They come up with specific criteria so they make sure they can fit in while other groups do not.  Such does not meet technical definitions of a cult, but since it carries such perjorative weight, they utilize the word according to their own definitions.  I'm in the "in" club, but you're not.  I have the right to be treated with a full amount of respect, and you do not.

It's an identical method of exclusion for convenience.

I understand.  Believe me, I've read a great deal of anti-Mormon literature.  Biased stories do require leaving out facts, which is legitimate.  But usually the big problem with biased stories is the conclusions they draw, not leaving the uneducated reader to formulate his/her own conclusions.  This story provided enough facts to allow someone to draw their own conclusions or at least do further research.

I understand his concern, but the factual portions are what are most relevant, and are rather difficult to dispute.  Obviously they are arguing a point, but the story could easily be backed up with a little more googling.

Thanks for sharing.  I will look into it :)

Bingowings said:

Of course a fetus is less than a person it's only formative stimulus has been a swooshing noise and the vague feeling of being warm and wet.

If the parents have invested hopes and aspirations into the progress of the pregnancy it's an important wiggly bundle of kicking flesh to them. If you believe, without any evidence it has a magic ghost put inside by an invisible benefactor it's probably sacred, but a person?

People only become people when they can demonstrate a definable persona.

The person thing starts sort of around the toddler stage when the child stops acting like a screaming muscle and starts acting more like a puppy.

Try asking a baby if it likes yo-yos. If you get an answer more meaningful than spit bubbles, screams, involuntary giggles or flatulence you may be on to something.

 You swim in very murky moral waters with an attitude like this.  If the primary value to a human being is contingent on the invested hopes and aspirations others have placed in that person, such arguments could be used to argue in favor of slavery, of murder, of genocide.  Human value is either innate or it is not.  I choose innateness.

To complicate your argument, you say that a person starts sort of around the toddler stage.  While I find this to be a bunch of bunk, since children are learning language skills before they are even born, it is true that self-awareness forms later.  This could be useful reading.

http://psychology.emory.edu/cognition/rochat/Five%20levels%20.pdf

So according to your argument, a child could still be "aborted" post delivery, up to toddler stage.  Someone who reads the article could justify abortion up to 5 years old.

Many of my patients have no hopes inested in them, no aspirations.  I was taking care of a time consuming hospice patient yesterday.  His can be very confused at times, and he receives large doses of pain medication.  He will die on his own soon.  But he has also expressed a desire to live.  Should the state decide that we should remove all life-saving measures because it is a waste of resources?  Should his family look at him as a 100 kg of kicking flesh because he has no future?

When "full-fledged" persons presume to define the personhood of others, historically we have found ourselves amidst the most horrendous atrocities.

TV's Frink said:

I'd like to see a more balanced source of the story than Lifenews.

 I fail to see how the statement of particular facts makes something untrustworthy.  Merely having an agenda doesn't make a story untrue.  One could easily strip away the biased phrasing and the quotes and British laws would remain true.  But since only Left-leaning news sources are considered reliable, here's something from ABC.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/HealthCare/premature-early-live-baby/story?id=8930142

The facts remain the same.  The baby may have likely died, but it was not the facility's right to take the mother out of the decision-making process.

Ah yes, good times.  And so recent.  Thought I would bump this thread with an article I stumbled across tonight, though five years old.

http://www.lifenews.com/2009/09/09/int-1317/

Thank goodness for the dehumanization of the pro-choice argument and the absolute control over medical decisions provided by state-run healthcare!  What would we do without them?

In an effort to not show an extreme view completely unwilling to hear an opposing view on the two separate topics I feel are shown to be faulty with this article, I will point out that I feel that some government involvement in health care can be beneficial, but I've yet to see something that does it right.  And I understand the difficulty justifying treating a child with a 75% chance of not making it.  But this was inhumane and shows what happens when we believe an unborn or supposedly "non-viable" human to be something less than a person.  This is the kind of thing that truly breaks my heart.

As I said before, even a cheesy effect or no effect at all is better than not including it, in my mind.  If it's going to be extended, it has to be as complete as can be! :)  I'm sure someone here or at fanedit.org might be able to help, if needed.

TV's Frink said:

What, hornet?

 http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/If-you-need-to-B-tch-about-something-this-is-the-place/post/705721/#TopicPost705721

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/If-you-need-to-B-tch-about-something-this-is-the-place/post/706100/#TopicPost706100

Seriously, after the conversation that took place here, it can hardly be coincidence that two individuals used that same slur in this thread.  Clearly they are homoinsectophobes!

Hey Ric, so much has been going on and I'm just busy and overwhelmed.  A little hiccup in the pregnancy has my wife on bed rest for the time being, which means I'm nearly always filling in as Mom when I'm not just fulfilling my role as Dad.  I feel like I don't have time to look at the boards lately and analyze the games sufficiently to feel like I'm playing a good game.  I want to put off playing for a while.  Hope you understand :)

I hate reading these filthy homosexual slurs!  Twice on a single page!  It's intolerable.  Obviously some people here have been reading OSC!

Cool.  I look forward to seeing it.  Did you include the yelling old lady?