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Please. Just don't do drugs. The long-term consequences on others - especially children - are avoidable and tragic.
How does one determine "harm?" If caffeine (which is one of those substances suspected of affecting development) is consumed, are we going to arrest the mother? I applaud the intent, but the execution is flawed.
I think that the germinal, embryonic, fetal and pre-term survivable stages should all be considered separately under the law (which, in many cases, they are).
Miscarriage is the loss of a fetus (/embryo) during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. It is considered synonymous with 'spontaneous abortion'. About one in 5 pregnancies are known to end in miscarriages, but it is suspected that the figure may be much higher since a gestational or early embryonic miscarriage may not be noted as such.
So, 'fetus' is an appropriate term for a pre-birth human, and if miscarriage is defined as spontaneous it cannot be manslaughter.
Jan
Jan
Incarcerating the moronic mom who takes drugs, amphetamines, or smokes and drinks while pregnant does what, exactly? Think that'll keep them from doing it? Yep, just like prohibition kept people from consuming alcohol. You can pass all the morality laws you can think of, but they will be as effective as trying to teach a caterpillar to stop becoming a moth.
A pregnant woman should have the same authority and responsibility for her unborn child as she has for a child that has successfully run the gauntlet and escaped from her womb.
And some of the females I've encountered the past couple of years... no, they're nothing more than incubators.
If we were all in this together as a choice then we could ask morons to stop having children along with the drug addicts.
My personal opinion is we shouldn't make someone do anything to save another life, but we could ask nicely. If there were a machine that could care for the fetus, I think it would be a crime to kill it when there was an option to save it.
Does an unborn human have _any_ rights?
What if by the ingestion of a compound, she could have altered the fetus into a congenital slave, a being without self-identtified rights?
I appreciate the ironic contradiction that apparently it is wrong to _harm_ an unborn person, but perfectly all right to kill one.
If abortion is murder why is miscarriage not manslaughter?
I also must nod to the bitter irony that the substance in question (methamphetamine) was not actually covered by the law. In Michigan (and other states), while representatives posture for the press, the actual bills are written by the Legislative Service Bureau. The LSB's job is to produce bills that can become enforceable laws. Apparently, the legislature of Tennessee does not have such a support function.
If abortion is not murder, why does a man who terminates a pregnancy in the commission of a crime (or car accident) charged with manslaughter? Why is a man accused of assault also accused of murder if the unborn baby dies in the assault?
My point of view is yes, that unborn child is a human and deserving of all human rights including a right to not be killed at the whim of the birth mother or to have it's mind cooked by her desire for crack. In this day when it is considered a violation to subject other people to second hand smoke in a restaurant (thank goodness) can't dumping narcotics into the helpless unborn child who can't even cry out in objection be seen as less a violation?
http://youtu.be/mBkoQFNxgkU
Absolutely, the moment of conception, when two cells combine to make a brand new life, that is a brand new human being.
Question... when your mom & dad conceived you, were you wholly YOU, just at a different stage of development? If not, please point out to me the EXACT moment when you became you.
Point being, there is no differentiating moment other than conception. It is a fully complete new life, wholly dependent on his mother (just like our 6 month old daughter is wholly dependent on us, and my wife to nurse her right now). All natural courses of events taking place, that new human being will grow into an adult some day.
Your question at the end is wholly irrelevant to this discussion, and is entirely outside the realm of science, we are unable to make a determination on what happens there. Nice try derailing it though while your side's losing, let's get back on track:
The question at hand, which you still have not answered, is this: WHEN does an unborn baby (or "fetus" as pro-abortions like to call them to dehumanize them) become a "human being"? Please, point out the exact moment in development when it happens. And explain to me what happened at a cellular level that it all of a sudden changed from "not human" to "human".
Most people make omelets from unfertilized eggs. I certainly do. But when the very health-minded organically disposed individuals pay a hefty premium for free-ranging chicken eggs, very often they get fertilized eggs, without ever knowing it. But yes, that's off track - just entertaining, nothing more. Not quite sure about the comment regarding the "losing side" - didn't know there was a war going on; at least not one having to do with omelets.
Regarding your question as to when exactly does life begin? - is it not possible that humans, at this stage of their development, do not know the answers to everything? Is that alone a justification to turn to the supernatural as a simple explanation of what a human mind cannot [yet] understand? Were thunder and lightning bolts thrown down by Zeus when he was upset? And since when did the word "fetus" became dehumanizing? And does the process of becoming a human being needs to occur as a step function within a millisecond? - could it not be a continuous process?
GPS with only 2 satellites can be done on the same theory. There's infinite points you can be where those two spheres intersect, but 99.9999% of those points are invalid, they're either in mid-air, outer space, or underground. If you're on the ground, and you know you're on the ground, there's only two points on the earth you can be. If you're not in Zimbabwe, then you're probably at the intersection of Johnson St and Center Blvd.
In the same way, scientists have exhausted all other options for when a human being becomes a human being. There is no mysterious point it becomes a human being left to choose from, besides conception. Check that, birth is the other option, but that has long been thrown out as an invalid option, given that if you walk up to a 9 month pregnant woman and stab her in the stomach, murdering her baby, you WILL be put in prison for murder (and rightfully so).
And your second question is you, once again, simply trolling and trying to change the subject, wholly irrelevant to the question at hand.
As to your point of "trolling," funny that you say that to a person rationalizing the basic concepts of life on a website dedicated to rationalizing the basic concepts of life. Perhaps you would have liked to discuss religion with Ayn Rand, or would you call her a "troll"?
I dunno, you'd have to ask Zeus. But I'd say it's an irresponsible way to handle his tools. They could get broken.
"Fetus" became dehumanizing when the left started using the term to dehumanize unborn babies.
If becoming human is a continuous process... at the other end couldn't someone argue that as we deteriorate we lose our humanity?
As to losing humanity with age - that's already being done in Britain and coming to America soon. Try getting an organ transplant or any major operation there (or soon here).
To what extreme would you carry this backward causation? Should a child be able to sue its parents for endowing it with inferior DNA, making it fail, say, a Mensa test? Nature is a crap shoot. We are all here by hundreds of stages of natural selection through hundreds of thousands of years.
Miscarriages are nature's way of eliminating the unfit. In our bodies, and even still in the womb, worn-out or inadequate cells constantly self-destruct and are replaced by new ones, reabsorbed and recycled, until the template wears out in old age. Should government have the power to rule over every cell in our bodies and hold us responsible for any damage we might cause through what we eat, do or omit doing? How do the minions of government know what the rules should be? Why should they be given power over everyone else? Is every citizen, or inhabitant, to be considered the government's property to do with as it deems fit? What kind of world would that be?
To repeat, a human being begins with its first breath. A human being owns itself. The selfish gene of the parents has a vested interest in seeing a child created and raised to successful adulthood capable of reproduction. Hence most parents do care about their offspring. The aged, infirm and demented, who were once robust and vital individuals, but now need care to make their end-of-life tolerable, have to depend on the grateful charity of family or hired help paid from savings. "Honor thy father and mother" was a pragmatic instruction to inculcate the notion of caring for them so you will be cared for when it's your turn to become dependent. It's payback for the years of care parents put into raising their children. Otherwise just set them out on the mountainside to fend for themselves, that the Spartans practiced.
As Ayn Rand said, "Life begins at birth."
What you're saying is, Mother A and Mother B both conceive on the same day.
Mother A gives birth at 39 weeks to a baby, goes out, and her baby is killed by a drunk driver on the way home from the hospital. That drunk driver is charged with murder.
Mother B is on her way to the hospital to give birth at the same time Mother A is driving home from the hospital. The drunk driver's friend, seeing the accident his other drunk buddy just got into, turns to look, and smashes into Mother B's car, killing her unborn baby in the process.
You're saying the first drunk driver should be charged with homicide, but the second drunk driver should not?
Do you realize how absurd that is?
What about human beings who cannot survive without the aid of another, even though they're already born? Are they not human? Do they no longer have rights?
The problem with Rand's view, and yours, is the word "potential". Referring to an unborn child as a potential human is like referring to a teenager as a potential old wo/man. Except you don't try to rob the teenager of his/her humanity. if nothing interferes, the teen will become an old wo/man. If nothing interferes, the unborn child will be born and join the rest of us on the other side of his mother's uterus.
But the idea that someone isn't human simply because s/he hasn't passed through the birth canal seems incredibly arbitrary to me. Almost as arbitrary as if I were to suggest that people who weren't born in America aren't human. Until they become American. Oh, they're *potential* humans, because they're *potential* Americans.
Of course, unlike an unborn baby... the non-Americans have a choice in the matter.
Hiraghm makes a good point about the uniqueness of a new fertilized egg with a distinct set of chromosomes being a new human. Unfortunately, as I describe elsewhere in this thread, that is unlikely to be ascribed to by the majority of people, and without most people in agreement, it cannot be considered rational.
As I have pointed out in other posts, atheism provides a haven for those who would seek to escape responsibility for their actions. No consequence for immoral behavior, they can become their own 'god' and moral is whatever gives them pleasure.
You raise an interesting point of morality - that an atheist supposedly escapes responsibility by rationalizing whatever he wants. I would make a counter argument that a religious person, in doing good, is not really being moral. He is not being immoral, just not actively moral. Morality, by definition, is making a choice between good and bad. If one does good, but he does it because it is his only option, then there's no choice; therefore, it is not an actively moral action. When a person in jail does proper things according to the instructions of the warden, those are not moral actions. Likewise, when a religious person does good things because to do otherwise will be punished by eternity in hell, that is no different than following the instructions of a warden.
Rationally if the fertilized egg will develop into a human being, it's a human being with 4 cells (that being the smallest 2nd division). At 2 weeks of age there are discernable appendages. Although you can't say what they are. So if we are going to be safe we might say that by 4 weeks you can call it a child.
Now I know that there will then be those who extrapolate that out to paraplegics and the mentally infirm and say that they then aren't people. That is an absurdity. Those people were capable of independent life, but by circumstance no longer are able.
Then the same can be said for those of us who are more advanced in years. Many times we find ourselves in nursing homes without the ability to care for ones basic needs in life. Sometimes for the rest of our lives?
I'm really NOT trying to be argumentative (I'll save that for the trolls, not my friends), I'm just seeking consistency. You say "they were once capable of independent life, but by circumstance they are no longer able," Either the "test" is independent survival or it's not, that's pretty much cut and dried.
Granted that we are talking about a bit of protoplasm that has zero ability to function outside the mothers body and that is the defining difference for me. After birth there is no question of the responsibility of the parent. There are ways to support a premature birth of the child at increasingly lower birth weights and earlier in the development of the child.
I am not able to state at what point in the birth cycle that a child may survive with full function. It seems that like many other things medical science is pushing back the "age" all the time, leaving me to say that I don't know for certain. That's the problem. Does a mother owe anything to her unborn child? I think so. Either the birth is intentional and as a planned act, she must assume the responsibility for the care of the child. Or it's a unplanned birth and there is what takes place before the pregnancy is certain, which can be forgiven. But in either case the couple engaged in a act that can result in a pregnancy - as adults we must "own" the results of our actions.
If our actions result in a pregnancy then the mother must be willing to accept the responsibility for her pregnancy and care for her unborn child. This taking responsibility is a objectivist principal too.
As a person of faith, I have one perspective. As a rational person who understands that others may not share that perspective, I've tried to rationally reason a perspective that can be supported by all. I don't find that in a position that says a human being exists at the moment of conception (based on whatever rationale), nor do I find it in a position that says that a human being doesn't exist until after it has passed through the birth canal (or caesarian section).
The problem with this (and similar topics) is that most people insist on imposing their views on others instead of understanding that others may have a reasonable and rational opposing view. It is not my call to prevent every other person from committing what I consider a sin. And using the force of gov't to enforce such is a much greater sin.
I find the reason for my stand on two grounds, the first religious and the second philosophical. I won't go into the religious reasons except to say that my faith call all life precious and that should be enough, but there is much more.
On the philosophical grounds for life at conception, some may find the analogy strained, but it works for me. In all the documents that proclaimed, described, built and installed the birth of our nation the founding fathers all agreed that the most important right a citizen could have was their right to live their life. It is evaluated in freedom of speech, from the tyranny of taxation, life stolen and life enslaved, but most importantly it was the promise of a life free for unexpected death Thomas Jefferson wrote of so eloquently in the decoration of independence.
I believe as I think he did that no person has the right to kill another person as a matter of convenience. That this may include the mother herself goes without question. If she may have that right (a notion I most strongly question) there may come a day when she may be found to have a "right" to terminate the child AFTER birth, a post partum abortion.
If that ever comes to be we will need to apologize to Hitler. AND I have a list of people who need aborted........
The real answer is reinvigorating moral principles. For all his failings, Clinton got it right that (in a free society - my words not his) "abortion should be safe, legal, and rare." Unfortunately, what they then institute is safe, legal, at the whim of the mother, and at the expense of her neighbors.
It's a slippery slope. Today we can kill unborn humans because they're funny looking and inconvenient, and tomorrow I can kill illegal aliens because they're funny looking and inconvenient.
And nobody wants that, right?
There is no scientific or medical definition that can be accepted by all. A single cell is not a human being, just as the entity in the mothers womb 5 mins prior to birth is most assuredly a human being. Somewhere between those two points a human being comes into being.