Some things to chew on, and get off my chest

[V3]

I'm pro-choice. However! If, somehow, someone could demonstrate a point of self-awareness or true consciousness in the child... THEN I would certainly denounce an abortion as murder.

Tagrineth,

Yourself, refer to this parasite as child, it isn't murder when you kill a child intentionally ?

Scientifically, you can show that the child in the mother womb is biologically distinct human individual from the moment of conception. I suppose you excepted this already since you ask for self awareness.

You can demonstrate self awareness by the fact that it is self aware of its existance. Its first step of of self awareness is taking charge of the host, releasing a chemical from its cells call human chorionic gonadotrophin that shuts down menstruation and begins the effects of pregnancy in the mother.

So there you go, I hope you would denounce abortion as murder.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

Joe has a potty mouth, Joe has a potty mouth. NANANANANA!

This thread is like a primary school playground.

Hey, lets all fuck this and that.

As I said before Joe, I've found that simple yes/no answers are not good when talking to you, because then you take that simple answer and twist it around to mean something completely different.

You know Natoma......"fuck you."

How could I twist around YES OR NO. What on Earth is your problem? I've told you several times that this is not the ONLY question I'm going to ask you. I need your CLEAR AND CONCISE answer to a few, core questions before I can get to my ultimate point. It's for oyur benefit, and everyone else'e benefit who cares to understand my position. You've tried to turn this into a "how do you define life" thread, which is completely NOT the point.

Of course you're not really interested in being concise and to the point, because you can't just type YES OR NO, let it play it out, and THEN respond however the hell you want.

So, I'll continue with Ilfirin, who at least has the courtesy of TRYING to see it through.

 

[Legion]

I'm a strong believer in the "mind your own damn business" school of thought where if something doesn't involve you, don't try and tell other people what to do.

What is your position on Abortion laws? (I don't think you've actually stated it. )

Well, going with what I just said, it'd have to affect me directly for me to have a position on it

hmmm sounds like a cope out.

 

[Vince]

I just have to say about abortion, that before the child is born, it's effectively a parasite in the mother.

Go read up on the effects of pregnancy on a woman.

I'm pro-choice. However! If, somehow, someone could demonstrate a point of self-awareness or true consciousness in the child... THEN I would certainly denounce an abortion as murder.

This is exactly why the Pro-Choice group's agenda is the biggest pseduo-science coups in contemporary time. I've pretty well versed on these topics and what you're stating (especially the latter) is unbelievably wrong and, frankly, ignorant.

I don't feel like typing it out again, but here's the case I made against PaulS:

Vince's previous post[/url]]And here's why: (I already covered this, but maybe it'll make more sense in this context) As far as "Human" goes, being human is reduced to having a specific aperiodic code which is genetically transmitted, location dependent, and has allowances for a given variance within these conditions. You can read the code yourself since the completion of the Human Genome Project. And this information is present at the time of conception, which we'll call tc. So, from tc to tc + n. where n describes the period alive untill formal death, you're basically "alive" and "Human."

You've further went, in the last response, and preached to high illogic with your call to comparing a "fetus" with "a final human being." Genetics already leads back to my argument as it's [basically] constant thought a life - but you're argument is based on physical looks, manifestations, and development. Which isn't a sustainable position as you're never the same physical manifestation of the underling information you just were a moment ago (as we covered) and never the same at any two points in life. So, of course there is a difference - but there's also a difference between the person whose typed the message I'm responding to and the person who will type a response to it. So, way to show nothing.

What you're doing is imposing an arbitrary semantic bound on the progression of "life" with the use of "human" that has no true biological basis in that it doesn't recognize what's been stated here very basically (not to mention the other countless objections). Instead, you're turning to one of the last truly obscured and extremely shadowy parts of biology left - consciousness - and trying to define some arbitrary bound using "when someone is conscious"

From a scientific standpoint, it's premature to say either case is right; but from what we know you're position is ludicris. Even utilizing the most basic metric for what defines consciousness I can think of, you can draft extreme positions which allow me to kill otherwise fully healthy people.

For example, it's most probable that when not during the period Kleitman called "peridoxical sleep," that whole REM thing, you're not conscious. If you look at the ERPs recorded during sleep, none show the known signs of consciousness while a person is undergoing SWS.

So, lets arbitrarily define entities undertaking SWS as "PaulS" and figure that just because they're not conscious - there's no hurt in killing them off then. As you previously stated:

PaulS, pg2[/url]]This goes back to my previous point - You can say a lot of things are "alive", but that doesn't mean that they're alive in the same way you and me are alive. That's why abortion isn't murder, because you're not killing a person.

If you're a PaulS, your ERP's as seen on a few EEGs look absolutly nothing like the fast, irregular, and low-voltage stuff seen in a normal, conscious, person. It doesn't even matter if you truely are locally conscious during SWS as the ERP looks nothing like it!! "Human Life" now looks like: atc + n, where c is conscious beginning and n is the period of consciosuness - roughy 18 hours, and a is the number of cycle untill formal death. So, looks like I can kill your ass off roughly a(d-n) with d being the total elapsed hours from one consciosness cycle to the next. I might have had an error, the point gets across and I'm late for dinner out, just reply with the correct thing if you're so inclinded.

Shit, I'm not killing a person... I'm killing a PaulS - he won't feel it, he won't remember it, he won't know what he missed.

So Tag, what about it? Can I kill you when you're not showing signs of "self-awareness"? Believe me, I see the massively differential outputs all the time in EEG/EMG/EOGs, I don't think there'd be much problem in proving what's been stated here.


And moving away from "self-awareness to overall neural activity, the fetus is most definitly active. The concept of so-called "classical conditioning" of the fetus as an area of study goes back to the early 1900s. Spelt's had a famous study which showed fetal conditioning in 32week old fetuses in responce to vibro-acustic stimuli. Habituation, almost intrinsically due to the brain's connectionist origions, is much more open to usage in testing and again it's shown results IIRC that approach 20weeks. Earlier in time is difficult for many reasons which I can go into, but it's really beside the point isn't it... when you conclude that life's in there anyways? It goes without saying really, I have no idea where you heard otherwise.

PS. Also it can be argued that if you merely change the perspective, all life - humans included - are nothing more that parasitic entities who ravage the enviroment for the biocompounds and energy needs they have during their entire lives.

 

[Legion]

for some reason i can not see vince's or my last post...

 

[V3]

Yeah, just do it manually, change the last number in the link, I think its around 20 post per page so just add 20 for the next page.

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10490&start=220

 

[Lezmaka]

A question for everybody. Didn't have the time to read 11 pages, so don't know if this had been asked, or if the thread has derailed.

If marriage is a right, then why is a license needed?

Since I grew up in the 80's, I never experienced the civil rights movement, but were people fighting for basic rights, or basic rights as well as rights requiring licenses?

If a license is required for something, that usually means there's a reason for it. I doubt a convicted serial killer would be granted a gun license. States can decline to give someone a drivers license for various reasons, blind people, etc.

As far as I know, licenses are required in order for a marriage to be recognized by the city/county/state/etc. I may not understand their reasons, but plenty of people obviously feel that marriage licenses should only be given out to a male+female couple and that other combinations are somehow harmful to society. I would think almost all people would agree blind person getting a drivers license would be harmful to society (injuries/deaths, property damage, etc) so the legislators do not allow blind people to get a drivers license. Many people are against gay marriage because they believe it is harmful to society, so perhaps they think legislators can decline marriage licenses to certain people. Many people would agree that allowing 3+ people to marry would harm society and aren't there laws in most states preventing 3 or more people from marrying?

Personally, I don't really care if gay marriage occurs or not, as long as it doesn't break the law. If it does, then get the law changed/repealed, or get it declared unconstitutional.

 

[Natoma]

Those people were also already defined as human beings.

and could have their humanity stripped of them in the fashion unborn children have. Historically the same has been done with people suffering from insanity and other mental disabilities.

Mental disabilities, not physical.

It isn't my argument alone. This is something that has been argued by late-term abortion foes as well, given the situation in light of Roe vs Wade.

As i insinuated they hadn't the scientific expertise or the know how to properly make the decision they did. We know such today to be true.

Sound familiar to anything I've been saying? The judges who ruled in Roe vs Wade may personally have had something against Abortion and disagreed with it vehemently. But given the current circumstances, the rights of the woman do supercede the rights of the unborn. Note the use of the word "compelling point" wrt stages in a woman's pregnancy.

Point? I would argue this is the same arbitrary stance you have been holding to, yes. Based on the limited understanding of the time of Roe v Wade they were able to get away with what they did however irrational and unfounded their position was. Today we have realized much that was once believed not 20 years ago is false. We have come to realize neurological development occurs and much earlier periods of development then we first expected so on and so forth. had they been provided the information we have now concerning human development i doubt they would have made the same conclusion.

The phrase "compelling point" is near meaningless. As science has progressed it has been more and more difficult to defend once held axioms concerning abortions.

I chuckle at this you know. Legion, what have I been saying all this time, that you and Joe said was completely irrelevant? That as technology improves, the "right to abortion" will no doubt be pushed further and further back into the pregnancy term until it probably disappears. But at each stage that doesn't have the definition of life, the woman's right supercedes the right of the "entity" as you call the unborn.

Thanks for seeing the light.

 

[John Reynolds]

Personally, I don't really care if gay marriage occurs or not, as long as it doesn't break the law. If it does, then get the law changed/repealed, or get it declared unconstitutional.

Not that easy when the Bush administration has purposefully thrown this into the spotlight as an election year red herring. The religious right will fight this tooth 'n nail, citing Sodom and Gomorrah, the fall of Western society, the corruption of our values, etc. The Constitution? The separation of church and state? Mere trifles to the neo-con agenda.

Personally I think if, as a society, we want to protect marriage and validate its sanctity before God as righteous heterosexuals, we should outlaw divorce before telling others citizens it's a right they do not deserve to have because of what they choose to do as consenting adults in the privacy of their own bedrooms.

 

[Natoma]

Look I know this is a semantical argument, but I'm trying to show why the line of debate is flawed. Where do you begin is my question. How far back do you go. Whether you or Joe think that's irrelevant, that is precisely the question that is being raised.

Unfortunately you aren't achieving anytihng but making your reasoning look extreme and ridiculous. A sperm alone is not a potential life. There is't any equating the two. Your analogy is flawed.

It's not a flawed analogy at all when you look at it from the angle that you're the one who brought up "potential for life." Sperm do have a potential for life, when paired with an ova. As I said before, it's obviously a ridiculous example, but it goes completely with your requirement.

How far back do you begin? How late do you stop? What are the terms in which we can degard the value of human life to a subjective level which we then can base on biological/psychological/spiritual development to completely and arbitrarily define what it means to be "human"?

That was the question I asked pages ago. Thanks for restating it.

Many people see absolutely no issue with taking a morning after pill. But they certainly have an issue with a 9th month abortion. What about killing a baby 5 minutes after it's born? The point is that the line that is blurred between "humanity" and "entity" has no clear delimiter.

I see this as nonsensical. I see arbitrary definitions of what it is to be human can certainly be applied accross the board, and when it suits us, we can write off the value of human life. What seperates us from the mentally disabled or handicapped? Is there a point inwhich we can view autistic, infermed, or insane patients and inhuman? If so why do we bitch so much about elderly and infermed rights to kill themselves?

Again, what you're saying has nothing to do with defining human before birth. We already know what a human being is definitively after birth. The discussion at least when it comes to abortion rights is conclusively before birth, which means that all of these other examples aren't necessarily applicable to the discussion.

In the case of abortion rights, until we can get that clear delimiter, then the right is given to the human being rather than the entity/human being.

That is all I'm saying.

THis is a deliberately vague argument. You will never have a clear delimeter. The very nature of this being that we will never have a clear definition of what it is to be human.

No, we have a definitive delimiter right now. It's called birth. As technology progresses, that delimiter will more than likely continue to be pushed back until conception. But the point is, we aren't there yet. Hell you even said as much in the post I replied to just above wrt the Roe v Wade decision.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Can I interject another happy congrats to Natoma and request a picture of the couple? (Or has there been one and I missed it, all this abortion arguing has sort of took the wind out of me sails for the more joyous aspects of this thread. )

 

[Natoma]

Scientifically, you can show that the child in the mother womb is biologically distinct human individual from the moment of conception. I suppose you excepted this already since you ask for self awareness.

If one can show this V3, then abortion rights need to be tossed out the window. The moment someone can show that an unborn is in fact "human" is the moment where the rights of that being supercede the right of choice. Pretty much a summation of what i've been saying the past few pages. hehe.

You can demonstrate self awareness by the fact that it is self aware of its existance. Its first step of of self awareness is taking charge of the host, releasing a chemical from its cells call human chorionic gonadotrophin that shuts down menstruation and begins the effects of pregnancy in the mother.

If that isn't circular reasoning.

Seriously though V3, tumors are known to release chemicals and hormones that promote blood vessel growth. Is it therefore self-aware?

 

[Natoma]

Can I interject another happy congrats to Natoma and request a picture of the couple? (Or has there been one and I missed it, all this abortion arguing has sort of took the wind out of me sails for the more joyous aspects of this thread. )

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=234522#234522

Happy?

 

[Natoma]

If marriage is a right, then why is a license needed?

Voting is considered a right as well, yet you are required to be registered, which is basically what a marriage license is, i.e. governmental registration. It can be argued that the right of marriage even supercedes the right to Vote. Why? Because you can't vote if you're a convicted criminal, but you can certainly marry, as some convicts have been known to do, even while still in jail.

Is that a satisfactory answer?

 

[digitalwanderer]

Can I interject another happy congrats to Natoma and request a picture of the couple? (Or has there been one and I missed it, all this abortion arguing has sort of took the wind out of me sails for the more joyous aspects of this thread. )

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=234522#234522

Happy?

Yeah, you two make a cute couple.

 

[Vince]

Scientifically, you can show that the child in the mother womb is biologically distinct human individual from the moment of conception. I suppose you excepted this already since you ask for self awareness.

If one can show this V3, then abortion rights need to be tossed out the window. The moment someone can show that an unborn is in fact "human" is the moment where the rights of that being supercede the right of choice. Pretty much a summation of what i've been saying the past few pages. hehe.

Anyone whose taken a Highschool genetics class can show this [that the cihild is a biologically distinct human individual] to be true. A Fetus, basically an advanced Zygote, is diploid - that whole 2N thing - is the direct result of the fusion of two gametes - that whole N thing.

See, that's why there are different words describing the normal cellular processes in a mother's body - we'll call them mitosic - and what goes on in the "sex cells" which oddly require a male - we'll call them meiotic.


If the fetus isn't "human" what is it? It surely containes the exact same information in it's DNA as a fully grown adult does, the only difference is size and temporal age - which is irrelevent when you consider your body is never the same as it was a moment ago in biocomposition.

And before you respond, I commeted on this before as well:

Vince previously[/url]]Well, in your genes, as encoded information but of course! But the fetus distinctly contains genetic information classified as belonging to Homo Sapiens... So, obviously, this can't support your case. Hmm, where else is this "Human-ness" which isn't genetic but an intangible quality of being Human that's not intrinsic to the species....

Let me guess, it's in the same place as Plato's "essences" and Aristotle's "substances" - better known as the waste-bin of legacy concepts which contemporary science has since filled with such disproved theories. Let me fill you in, around the 16th century, there began to be a movement away from this view of the world toward the mentality which has evolved into what I'm saying. People like Rene Descartes, Kant, Hume and eventually Russell opened the door to logical statements based on observable facts which lead to people like the infamous Ramon y Cajal to begin talking about what evolutionary neural developments actually existed which separated us.

You see there IS no difference, we're just arguing based on a different level of understanding. You're content to live in blind ignorance and state that something is "red" because it has some intangible and arbitrary quality known as "redness" whereas I'll look at it and say it's red because thats how we as humans perceive electromagnetism of ~650nm wavelength.

 

[Natoma]

The problem Vince is that you get people who say we aren't just the sum of our genes and hormones. What do many anti-abortionists say? The fertilized egg has the potential to become a human life. They don't say, you're killing a human being. It's all about the potential to grow into a human life. So even from "their side," there seems to be some, how shall I say, debate, as to whether a clump of dividing cells is "human." From a biologically reductionist point of view, the moment of conception is the moment we become an individual. Of course, you won't find too many biological reductionists on the anti-abortion side. Mostly religious nutters.

Sarcasm aside, I've said and will continue to say that I don't like the idea of terminating a pregnancy unless it's in the case of forced sex or the mother's life is in danger. But until we have a rock solid definition of what a human being is, I can't personally see legislating against the right of a woman to choose whether to bring a pregnancy to term. Frankly it's going to take technology to answer that question imo, and at that point, I believe the right to an abortion will fall away. We just aren't there yet.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Not that easy when the Bush administration has purposefully thrown this into the spotlight as an election year red herring.

Um...hello?

Bush did not throw this into the spotlight. The activists did. They are the ones that filed the law-suit in MA, and they're the ones that caused the issue in SF. That's what caused Bush to respond.

 

[Natoma]

God forbid fighting for our rights be allowed. Nope, can't have that. You'd think this country would have learned this lesson from the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Guess not.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

The problem Vince is that you get people who say we aren't just the sum of our genes and hormones. What do many anti-abortionists say? The fertilized egg has the potential to become a human life. They don't say, you're killing a human being.

??

SOME might argue that, but most of what I hear them say, is that you ARE killing a human being.

It's all about the potential to grow into a human life.

Since when? The "potential" to result in a "birth" is not the same as "life."

But until we have a rock solid definition of what a human being is, I can't personally see legislating against the right of a woman to choose whether to bring a pregnancy to term.

Until we have a rock solid definition of what a human being ISN'T, I can't see personally legislating to default exclusive rights to the mother.