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I never said that laws dictate morals. I said that a "moral law" would be the morals which our laws set. In America it is morally acceptable, by law, to kill a murderer. In America it is morally acceptable, by law, to have an abortion.

Your morals may not coincide with those of the law, which is why you would try and change them. But the fact remains the same that legally abortion is morally fine.

Also there are no "basic morals" that you are born with, what-so-ever. If you're raised that it's perfectly acceptable to kill a human, then there're nothing telling you anything different. This is proven throughout history (Druidism is a perfect example.) where for whatever reason, it was acceptable to kill humans. For sacrifice, or witchcraft, or whatever the reason.

I think that sacrifice became an accepted practice among some religions, as an exception to the rule rather then it being accepted all around. I mean, you can make sacrifices, but it has to be for -this- reason, and it has to be -this- kind of person, you know? It's not that homicide was shrugged off as, "Well you can sacrifice them." It was, "You can sacrifice, because it pleases the gods or protects our country."

Diadema - yes, yes, yes, and thank you!
I agree. Killing an unborn child is wrong because it does have its rights in this world. Abortion and any other non pro-life way of thinking including murder is wrong.

Firstly there is no Declaration of Independance in my country.

There is no such thing as "natural law" there are natural instincts, but instincts are different than laws. Laws are written in stone, what you can and cannot do. Instincts are not. For instance it's instinctual to want to have children, that doesn't mean that every person who can have children does.

This is because humans thrive on more that instinct alone, which is one of the main things that seperates us from other animals.

Murder is a definition. Under that definition one of the criteria for murder is it must be unlawful, as in it is not justified or authorized by the law. Since this is the case it is NOT murder. Murder doesn't mean killing someone innocent, it means illegally killing a human.

Actually, it appears to me that all it is is arguing over the definitiion of lawfulness.
I'm Catholic. Quite a good one, I like to think. However, that doesn't change the lawfulness of something. It only changes the ethical-ness of it. Obviously, we all think it is unethical. That doesn't, however, make it unlawful. It's our goal to make it unlawful.

According to God's law, it is unlawful. However, arguing in abortion threads about God's law doesn't help. It just turns you into a "typical bible-thumping lifer." We need to argue and debate according to man's law in order to get man's law changed.
The whole reason for this is to keep all of ya'll from getting cut up by Pro-Choicers. It would be easier if you'd just give up, and use the word Homicide just to make everyone happy and keep abortion debates from turning into an argument about whether it's murder or not.

Alright, I agree completely with you. I'm Catholic too. BUT.

In a debate, we need to play by the rules. Personal feelings may drive us, but they may not be used. Otherwise, your point is invalid to people who don't agree with you. We all feel that abortion is murder in the sense of killing a person. We all feel that it should never be legal unless it's REALLY needed and not just birth control (which accounts for 95% of abortions....)...some even feel it shouldn't be legal then.

Murder is a legal term. If you call it murder in ED, every good point you make will become completely invalid to those who don't agree that abortion is murder. It will get down to nitpicking your vocabulary instead of your points.

In a debate where you are defending your point, you can't afford to have things to be nitpicked and draw the focus away from the point and onto your grammar. By natural law, yes, abortion is murder, I think we all agree on that. But we're not talking about natural law with these people, we're talking societal legality. In legal terms in our society, abortion is not murder. By natural law, it is. But by SOCIETY's law, and that's what we're working with, it is not murder.

We cannot bring natural law into societal law; it is the basis of all societal laws, but we cannot introduce it as a new law for society without convincing the lawmakers that it is within the frame of societal law. To do that, we must avoid words like murder because they will pick up on it and slash you up with that one little word.

Baby, however, you can use...



We need to stick to definitions and terms because if we don't, they will catch us on it and use it to call us ignorant bible huggers.


Toxic, btw, is Canadian and Wiccan. We all agree with you that abortion is naturally murder. But, some outside this guild do not see it as natural murder. We've got laws so people with different views are still governed by a rule to keep us in check and keep a rapist from getting away with rape because it is not wrong to him or her....law is there to enforce a law on society that individuals otherwise would not stick to. Rape is a natural and societal violation of law. Until abortion is a societal violation of law, natural does not matter to a large chunk of the population. The goal is to reform social laws to protect the unborn so that a natural law is enforced, even on those who don't believe the unborn are protected by natural law. We're playing on their field, trying to get things right. We have to play by their rules, though. It is their field. We stick to their rules. If we cannot win because we stick to their rules, we may need to re-examine whether or not abortion really is a natural wrong. Since we know it is, we know there must be a way to win using the rules they've given. Their rules are to leave our morals out of it; any argument based on subjective morals is nul. So when it comes down to terminology, we must strike out murder, in debates. In this guild, we all agree it's murder naturally. But in debates where people think differently and don't agree on that point, we need to strive for societal law which puts in black and white what is wrong and right in a given society, that can't be argued against without violating societal law.

lol yep. part of the reason we're here is to get carried away without ruffling too many feathers. there is a thread I think going back that is talking about how abortion is murder, though maybe I'm not thinking. feel free to pm me if you ever wanna vent, lord knows a handful of people in here can tell you I've pmed people enough.... sweatdrop Especially I.Am, I get to pm him and post in his journal. Sometimes I get so worked up though I just have to blow off steam to someone who won't hate me for it, lol.

Back...I forget when, I first saw this thread and I did a doubletake, I only saw the title, and then it took me a few minutes to be like...oh...right... because my emotions took over. Luckily, keyboards come with delete keys. The title got me so...I guess angry, lol, I didn't really think straight. I mean, here I was coming back to my guild of pro-lifers and I saw the title and thought, am I in the right guild? Did it switch hands or something? Did...toxic kinda...like...become possessed by the ghost of an orphan who'd been adopted and not aborted and was bitter.... or something?

I know we have plenty of stickies, but maybe there should be one with debate tips and this could be unstickied or something, with things like common traps prolifers are likely to fall into during debate (such as termenology), dos and donts (Do provide sources when asked; Don't bring in religion. I know a lot of people have religious reasons, but this is no help in a debate, and most religious reasons have solid, natural law behind them, so the best bet is to find out the underlying whys of the view. Instead of going with the soul argument, it's better to go with the life argument. Many will claim it is not a live human, but this is biologically proven, the links section in here has things), and other things we come up against. Common pro-choice examples such as acorn and tree, pregnant teen in school, drug addict, etc. Things that are infuriating emotionally and leave us vulnerable mentally because we're half focused on being outraged. Being prepared for such arguments and able to expound on them with people who share your beliefs might help. A lot of problems come from nitpicking. It's all they've got. So when we enter, we need to be prepared to be picked like a monkey that's never had a picking.