aei_haruko said:
I disagre. if we measure life as anything that can feel pain, then we ignore what it means to be alive.
Again: That wasn't my definition. I said "some people like to define".
If the ability to feel pain was the deciding factor for my opinion, then i would be a member of PETA or some other group by now advocating their cause against killing animals for any reason.
there are 7 definitions as to what a life is, and a fetus fills up 6 of them.
Except that i wasn't arguing that a fetus wasn't a life. I was arguing whether or not it can be considered murder/cruelty to kill one.
Plus I think it's much more cruel to kill something that never had the chance to live on its own, then something which might've lived a good life.
Except that this can ruin the life of the mother, and since she is ultimately the one who is going to be the most affected by this, it's her choice to make.
Also, by that logic, you could argue that it's cruel to a non-existent baby to interrupt its mother and father in their sex just before they conceive it. If i walked in on two people trying to make a baby and made them stop their act (as in, they would have conceived a child if i hadn't walked it), then by your argument, I've been cruel to the baby, because i "interrupted it's chance to live" (even though it happens before a fertilization, which you a few lines later defined as the point where life begins, i still interrupted it's chance).
I'm sorry, but to me, that idea is ridiculous. It's impossible to be cruel to a non-sentient being, and a fetus isn't sentient (reacting to stimuli isn't equivalent to being sentient). It's true that a fetus is eventually going to grow into something that is sentient, but until it does, you can't be cruel to it.
You can't both say that abortion is wrong because it's "taking a life" and it's wrong because you are robbing a child of the "chance to live", because like i just demonstrated with my interrupted sex example, it's possible to rob a child of it's chance to live before it (by your own definition) can even be considered a life. Either you consider abortion wrong because it's taking a life, or you consider it wrong because it's robbing the child of the chance to live.
in a prior post I stated that adoption should be a viable option. it's essentially giving up responsibility over a child that somebody never wanted, and hopefully it would go to a good home because of the mothers choice. I say that if a mother doesnt want to have her children, thats okay. In fact, I've donated money to organization made specifically for that purpose. Yes they were catholic ( I'm definatly not in agreement with the catholic church, but I'll admit, it does some good) . In the organization, there are many houses for women who are victims of rape, and abuse, it gives them a place to stay, and all of it is funded by charity. Women give birth to their children, and then they can either stay and raise their children, or they can leave their kids their and continiue with their lives, it's a wonderful place really. i've volenteered there at one time, and it definatly does lots of good. And i know that these types of places really can contribute to societal good as a whole.
The problem is that adoption isn't a viable option if an all-out prohibition against abortion is put in place. There is simply going to be too many babies, and not enough people to adopt or take care of them. In Denmark alone (where i live), we are 5 million citizen and there is around 15k provoked abortions in a yearly basis (in fact, a friend of mine, a very beautiful girl who i was out partying with last night had an abortion today. I was supposed to go with her to the hospital, but had to cancel because i got ill). Now scale that up to world-wide level and the problem is apparent.
Adoption works because it's an ALTERNATIVE to abortion, not because it replaces it.