The Abortion debate
- Thread starter Houseman
- Start date
I mean, we cannot force a corpse to donate blood, tissue, or organs to keep another life sustained, kinda fucked up how we can do that to living people
Was going to say something obvious about how it's up to whoever is pregnant to decide, but there's no discussion to be had because that shouldn't be up for debate and pretending otherwise only legitimises the usual suspects.
I would classify myself as anti-choice. It really is a good description of how we legislate around death in general. If someone has the option for nobody to die and chooses death, that's a crime. If somebody dies by nobody's choice, that's not a crime. Choice is, in fact, the problem.
The bacteria and viruses who live inside you have their own DNA. They are not part of your body.
Do you feel you have a right to take antibiotics, have a shower or brush your teeth, despite the fact doing so will end astronomical numbers of lives? Is it really your body?
Do we need a clear answer?
See, what bothers me about that question is that it's a metaphysical question disguised as a scientific question. Life as a biological concept is a set of metabolic processes which occur within cells. Those cells, however, don't care about the body they are part of. They don't have intelligence or purpose. Our lives as multicellular organisms aren't a single biological process but rather the cumulative action of trillions of cells. Those cells themselves are also constantly dying and being replaced. We continue to exist because we aren't actually those cells, we are a pattern created from the interaction between them.
A fertilized zygote is not more complex or made of different stuff than any of the skin cells you shed today. As that zygote divides and becomes a multicellular being, it slowly develops its own pattern. That emergence of a complex living thing from the simple behaviour of mindless cells is gradual and incremental, and there will never be a clear line where it "begins".
But that alone is not satisfying to us, because we're caught in this weird and immanent experience of actually being a pattern that can think. So it makes sense that when we say life we don't mean the life of an individual cell, we mean life as the stable continuity of existence that we experience. If you believe that that continuity begins at conception, then that's cool, but again, it's a metaphysical claim. We can't actually know.
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To be fair the premise is that the fetus is a person at time of fertilization and some of us are trying to point out the legal implications of that.
If they are alive, then they are certainly not persons, like insects are not persons. Brushing your teeth and killing an ant would be morally equivalent.
Exactly. It's not about something being alive, it's about it being a person. So what's a person?
Like I said on page 1, I think that personhood is irrelevant, or rather, that "personhood" begins at conception.
I think it's irrelevant because people might agree that a fetus is alive, but not yet a "person", and thus, doesn't deserve certain rights.
Yeah, we'll get right on that. Right after Trump goes to jail for choosing about 100, 000 people to die when there were other options. Cuomo can go for 20,000
Very much not fond of children, could do with less of the little bastards. So I say personhood begins at 18.
Generally, we consider a "person" to mean an independent being in terms of consciousness, rational thought, feelings and character ("personality").
At the point of conception, you've got something roughly equivalent to an amoeba.
Yes, because they are going to be dead before their circumstances change no matter what you do. When life isn't an option, death isn't a choice.
