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Why does personhood matter? Why does thought matter? why does the ability to feel matter? I'll ask you to answer this in a clear factual manner with out resorting to philosophy

Sorry, I have to use a little philosophy. XD

Thought and the ability to feel matter when judging us as a species, however, it shouldn't matter when judging us as individuals. Newborns aren't quite at the level as our species can be, in those two attributes. I can think of many species of animals, that when adults are at least as intelligent as newborn humans. It doesn't mean that newborn humans should have the same rights as those animals.

There's always going to be philosophy in a discussion of rights. Without philosophy, why protect humans at all?

It was a great philosopher (Gottfried Leibniz), actually, who said we have two ways of knowing: By Reason and By Fact. Because my lazy a** doesn't do that much research, I usually resort to reasoning.

However, to answer your question, the idea that personhood matters is solely the premise that most Pro-choicers create... it isn't something I agree with however, I think it's a fair enough common level that we can both agree to start arguing from, don't you agree?

However back to philosophy: That's where the future of thought lies because Philosophy, now, is finding itself having an affair with Mathematics (many recent Phils. have come to understand Mathematics as being the sole truth in this world). Descartes asked himself: What do I know (without being told)? Mathematics is one of those things... logic much?

No choicer could argue with you if you can powerfully display a show of logic and logical followings. I think a sound understanding of philosophy is one of the best tools we as pro-lifers can utilize. What good have facts done us? Most statistics on the Pro-life side from the 80s and 90s were disproven because they were distorted... many other facts, as well, are too ambiguous. They can be used by either side... it just takes some good wording to change which side they support.

No, I believe that at viability, a pregnant woman should have the right to demand that labor be induced, or a C-Section, but not an abortion. Because other options exist, at that point, that allow her to deny use of her body to the unborn (soon to be born?) human, that allow it a chance to live separate from her. Before then, all methods to remove the unborn human result in its death, and it has no chance of survival outside of the uterus.

The argument about bodily rights is definitely one of best I've heard and I have a really hard time arguing against it, it still doesn't sit right with me. Perhaps it would be a better argument in the cases of rape where the woman did not chose to allow the sperm into her body, but I don't think that babies that result from rape should have less rights than any others. I expect that this argument has been developed more in recent years in response to the growing scientific proof that a fetus isn't just a lump of cells like abortion advocates used to claim. Scientifically it's fallacious to argue that the fetus is anything other than a human entity and it's vertainly alive. The only, very weak, string that abortion advocates cling to regarding personhood really irritates me. They claim that it may be human but it's not a person yet, perhaps that the soul does not enter until birth, in which case they're suggesting that we should make laws based on philosophy and religion-like assertions rathe rthan on scientific fact. This kind of reasoning is something that the pro-life movement gets beaten up for regularly (and I wish they'd stop it too)

However I do feel that if "bodily domain" were the legal reason that abortion should exist then the laws should be significantly different. Informed consent and parental involvement laws should be mandatory, as many women abort not really understanding that the fetus is, technically, a living human individual. Parents should be involved except in extreeme cases where parental abuse causes the pregnancy because minors don't have the right to fully control their own body yet. Viability as a division point is also philosophically very weird to me, because this is a point set by technology, not by actual level of personhood, so babies that today have no chance of survival, in 20 years may have a very good chance of living. Does this make them less of a person today because we don't have the technology to help them?

But, back to the main topic, there are some real casess of pregnancies that I think should be ended currently for medical reasons. Primarily the relatively rare tubal pregnancies which currently we don't have a way to save the baby. In this case not only are we helpless to save the child, but if nothing is done the tube will break causing infection and can easily kill the mother. Even though I respect the personhood of the child, regardless of the situation if there were two people in fatal danger, and we could save the life of one but only by letting the other die, we would save the person we had a chance of saving. There are relatvely few other medical justifications for abortion.

I have to contest something. "Human Being" is by no means a philosophical definition. It was and still is a literal one, that it seems only people in this debate seem to treat philosophically.

But when we come to a case where two people's rights conflict with each other things get sticky. Sure people have the right to control their body to a degree. But they don't have the right to go around hitting others because that violates the rights of the other person. Your rights to control your body are limited by other people's rights to their own.

Then people say that the woman's rights come first because the child is violating her body and they go and cite rape laws. Well for one thing, I find it discussing to compare an act of sick violence to an innocent and unawares child merely trying to cling to life. Secondly there is a huge difference in INTENT. The reason a woman is allowed to use lethal violence against a man attacking her is because he is willfully attacking her and she is acting in self defense. Legally it does make somewhat of a parallel with the laws on trespassing. I don't, and should know the details of the laws better, except I expect it varies, but I know that it is legal to kill a burglar when your life is in danger, but people can also be sued when harm comes to trespassers on their property when the property owner themselves was not being attacked. It seems to me like intent to do harm should be taken into consideration when deciding if it's ok for a person to kill another simply because that second person is trespassing.


I think this too is a good topic for a different thread. There are many reasons that I believe the laws are essential. First off, in many cases of incest and abuse, at least one of the parents doesn't even know it's happening. By aborting the child and not telling the parents the clinics are actually helping the abuser hide the evidence and continue their crimes. If the parents themselves are the abuser then parental consent wouldn't be an issue since they'd probably be the ones bringing the daughter in for the abortion, again to hide the evidence of their crimes.

Most cases where teens get abortion however, have little to do with abuse by parents or relatives. Legally there is often still abuse since it’s considered child abuse for any adult to be having sex with a teenager. In these cases most tends don’t tell their parents simply because they’re ashamed. I was involved in some of the legal proceedings for a law on the topic in Vermont (which the freakin crazy democrats fought like mad to not even allow a vote) In that case one powerful testimony came from a mother whose daughter got an abortion without her knowledge. Since the girl was underaged they couldn’t access her medical records without parental permission. As a result they gave her the abortion, and various medications without finding out that she was very allergic to one of the medications. She went home, and the degree of followup they did to make sure she was ok was to call her cellphone and when they got no answer they did nothing. But the reason there was no answer was that the girl had passed out and was literally dying on the floor of her room. Luckily her mother came home, rushed her to the emergency room, and saved her life. The girl later got pregnant again and went to the clinic with her mother who tried to talk her out of the abortion, but preferred to be there with her daughter since she couldn’t change her mind. The clinic this time didn’t actually LOOK at the medical records and attempted to prescribe the same lethal drug a second time, but were stopped by the mother.
Teens aren’t very mature or responsible and this is why parents need to be involved in most cases. The law that was proposed in Vermont had a clause for exceptions. All a girl who felt that they really couldn’t involve her parents had to do was to contact a judge who would meet her at a place of her own convenience if needed. The intent was that the judges would be pretty lenient and allow exceptions for most cases brought to them. But that most girls who were simply were ashamed to tell their parents would generally be better off for having them involved.



I may actually move this to another thread, if you don't mind me quoting you.



You're right that I would not want to, nor argue to ban abortion in cases like your mother's. But it's a fine line since the degree of danger to the life of the mother varies. In Kansas I've heard the debate growing about a late-term abortion practitioner who used the "health reasons" clause to justify performing abortions on women for who health reasons may be things like losing her bikini-worthy tummy, or how the pregnancy would affect her social "health". Also, when the risks to the mother are just a chance I think she should still be well informed to decide if a 5% chance or 20% chance of serious harm or death to herself is worth a 100% chance of death to another. But, really, these abortions are such a small percentage of the current abortions performed that it's ridiculous how much many Pro-Choicers try to make them the entire reason to allow abortion for everyone. While some pro-lifers would try to ban medical abortions too, I think all pro-lifers would agree that a distinction could be made and that it would be better to allow only this fraction of abortions than to continue allowing them for any reason at all.