Unborn Baby Not A Person?

[tinytherese]

This seems to be a popular argument among pro-choicers.

[KeenanParkerII]

I argue that it is irrelevant whether or not a baby is considered a person. The difference between an embryonic cell and a skin cell is that one has the overwhelming potential to develop into a full grown human being with all the experiences and rights that a human deserves.

ie. Why is killing wrong? Killing is wrong because it deprives one of life, which is all those experiences which we have accomplished, but more importantly it deprives us of our future experiences. Likewise, depriving an embryo of its potential to accomplish all those experiences is exactly equivalent. It is a deprivation of life, or the potential for future life, which is why we consider killing one another wrong in the first place, because of our potential to accomplish future life and all of its experiences.

[Nunsense]

Most of my family and friends are agnostics or atheists, so they don't believe that life begins at conception, but at birth. I don't even try to argue this on a scientific basis, because to me it isn't about science. It is about life.

When I worked for an anti-abortion shelter, we had to answer the hot line, and what I would try to focus on was the emotional side of things. I would tell the expectant mother that she would never forgive herself if she killed her baby, and that this guilt would be with her for the rest of her life. I was not afraid to play the emotion card, or the guilt card or whatever you call it, because it is the truth, whether the other person believes it at the time or not. Preventing the pre-born from being aborted was the main focus, any way we could.

And I just know that every woman who has an abortion feels guilty afterwards, no matter how tough she is, or how much she claims otherwise. I have known too many of them to doubt this fact for a moment. There is always that little question in their heads, what if I had let my baby live? What would s/he be? What would s/he look like?

I have even known women who have named their unborn babies and then had an abotion --- really bad move - that is a lifetime scar. But it got me thinking that I needed to get women to start thinking of names as soon as they found out they were pregnant - because it is just that much harder to kill someone with a name!

[Archaeology cat]

Ask them when personhood begins, and why. I recently got into a debate about this, and I pointed out that the other person's definition of personhood was purely arbitrary. The other person agreed that it is a human life from conception, but not a person because of a lack of consciousness/autonomy, if I remember the argument correctly. Also, there was a [url="http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/index.php?showtopic=100881"]thread on Transmundane Lane[/url] fairly recently that had some good arguments about this.

[BibleReader]

In general, people who argue that any [i]known[/i] situations is wrong when in fact they're right, are hiding from truth to accept their own actions. If they can rationalize that it is right or that it is good, then they can avoid the guilt or at least tell them selves that they are feeling it inappropriately. I say known situations, because every person on the planet has been equipped with the ability to see the difference between what is right and wrong.

I agree that we need to force them to feel that emotion, guilt, and responsibility. They are fighting a strong desire that they were told is alright because the law says it is. Whether or not they believe it, they can remain undecided and there will be plenty of people who are willing to hold their hand on the way into the abortion clinic. Its not so much about where life or humanity begins, but rather the twisted modern mind that says if I say its OK and can convince enough people it is, then it becomes fact. Logic says facts cannot change, and something that has been defined as murder for thousands of years, causes unbelievable emotional problems, and has no good to it (Save the selfish living), may have some truth to it, and truth doesn't change.

You will find that a person who has to define what a person is, will be restrictive in any sense of the word. They disassociate it from themselves and will not apply the situation if they in their current state were that baby. This same person will find themselves challenged with other questions like are brain dead people, mentally ill people, and other [i]degraded[/i] human conditions really people. They are really a modern version of Adolf Hitler, choosing who gets to live and die, like they have the power to define reality by giving it a label. Until they get off their high horse, and realize what their position is, powerless in the broadest sense, they will never give up any view that they personally define. Science is interpreted by the hearer, and they will give the same fact a new name and pretend it isn't real; this allows them to have a feeling of control over their own lives.

Anyways, they have no sense of moral or human society. What kind of person would hate a blessing so much as to cut it out from themselves. That their lives, which are so carefully calculated, would carry on as planned if they take that kind of control over it. This is the true result of the human condition, a man who believes he has power of time, space, and reality as a whole...

[Skinzo]

[quote name='tinytherese' date='22 January 2010 - 02:33 AM' timestamp='1264142034' post='2042129']
This seems to be a popular argument among pro-choicers.
[/quote]

One interesting thing to point out to pro-choicers are the recent cases in which crazed women attempted to steal another lady's baby by cutting the child from the womb. There are several such stories on the web. It's quite odd how the media always refers to the unborn child as a "baby", not a fetus, not protoplasm, etc.
Seems as if "it" really is a child after all! In each instance, the assailants are charged with murder. So how can that be if it's not really a person?

See: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25472068/

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-06-08-oregon-death_N.htm

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,579753,00.html?test=latestnews

S.

[Winchester]

[quote name='nunsense' date='22 January 2010 - 03:16 AM' timestamp='1264148189' post='2042156']
Most of my family and friends are agnostics or atheists, so they don't believe that life begins at conception, but at birth. I don't even try to argue this on a scientific basis, because to me it isn't about science. It is about life.
[/quote]
Only a theist could make the non-person argument, anyway as a materialist must believe human life begins at conception. There is no ensoulment for an atheist. A theist could argue that the soul enters the body at, for example, the quickening, but an atheist must accept that human life begins at conception.

Any atheist who argues otherwise is being stupid.

[elizabeth09]

I belive that baby in a mother is a person. Pro-Choser will differ with me. Even thought today marks the day where Row v Wade (1973) bacame legalized in the U.S.A

Edited January 22, 2010 by elizabeth09

[CatherineM]

I find it difficult to believe that any woman who has heard their child's heartbeat or felt them move inside could doubt that is a little person.

[elizabeth09]

I know. They must in this world where it must be this.

[Archaeology cat]

[quote name='CatherineM' date='22 January 2010 - 06:07 PM' timestamp='1264183653' post='2042281']
I find it difficult to believe that any woman who has heard their child's heartbeat or felt them move inside could doubt that is a little person.
[/quote]
My daughter has her own personality in utero - so did my son, and their personalities are different, I can already tell.

[HisChildForever]

It's more frustrating to talk to someone who knows abortion is murder but thinks it's "acceptable" in rape cases than someone who thinks it's not murder period.

[elizabeth09]

The mothers must think that killing is fine

[Sirklawd]

[quote name='tinytherese' date='22 January 2010 - 01:33 AM' timestamp='1264142034' post='2042129']
This seems to be a popular argument among pro-choicers.
[/quote]

honestly i would try to avoid this argument if possible. more than anything, it's a distraction. if someone is all like "but its not even a person". I would jump back to the real topic with "so what you're saying is that it's ok to murder a human?"

they can talk about the definition of person until their eyes turn blue, but the truth is that it's human, it's alive, and it's individual from the mother. All of the cells, whether numbering 1, 4, or a million, constitute a totally individual human being.

[Veridicus]

[quote name='Winchester' date='22 January 2010 - 11:57 AM' timestamp='1264183053' post='2042274']
Only a theist could make the non-person argument, anyway as a materialist must believe human life begins at conception. There is no ensoulment for an atheist. A theist could argue that the soul enters the body at, for example, the quickening, but an atheist must accept that human life begins at conception.

Any atheist who argues otherwise is being stupid.
[/quote]

+1

[Happy_Catholic]

"Person" is a legal term. It has no grounding in good science.

Six million people died during a particular phase of German history last century all because a certain man with a poorly cut moustache altered who the word "person" could be applied too.

The SCOUS at one point said Black people were only 1/5th of a "person", and thus slavery existed.

Words like "person" enable a group of "persons" to determine who are "persons" and who are "non-persons". There's only one reason people want to play with a word like "person" its so they can limit the rights of those who they deem "non-persons".

The reason the pro-aborts are so anti-personhood for the unborn is that Roe contains a comment that if personhood for the human uterine entity then abortion is no longer acceptable.

We get personhood for the unborn, they get to live.

Frankly, if you're human, you should be classed a person. From the moment of conception till natural death.

Zygote, embryo, foetus et cetera. These are simply stages of development. We all had to go through them, we wouldn't be here if we didn't. Remove "personhood" from the law for everyone, or apply to everyone. None of those "I'm better then them" BS.

All you have to remember is the pro-abortion argument is based on poor science, lies and general BS. Unfortunately for the unborn, until we can alter the law and get that "personhood" for them, they'll continue to be slaughtered 4,000 plus a day.

[Veridicus]

[quote name='HisChildForever' date='22 January 2010 - 12:36 PM' timestamp='1264185384' post='2042291']
It's more frustrating to talk to someone who knows abortion is murder but thinks it's "acceptable" in rape cases than someone who thinks it's not murder period.
[/quote]

This is true. Unforgivably illogical and inconsistent. We had an ethics presentation in my 1st year of medical school and a woman in my class who is a devout evangelical protestant (her husband is a youth minister). She presented abortion as her ethics topic and more or less said her opinion was that life started at conception but that in cases of rape and incest she could see why abortion was allowed. Needless to say I confronted her about the inconsistency of her argument. I'm not really sure if she cared about my opinion or its logic. Life is not dependent on circumstance or convenience or the crimes of someone else...we have an inalienable right to life bestowed by our Creator. No one 'gives' us this right but instead can only acknowledge the truth of it.

[Happy_Catholic]

[quote name='HisChildForever' date='22 January 2010 - 01:36 PM' timestamp='1264185384' post='2042291']
It's more frustrating to talk to someone who knows abortion is murder but thinks it's "acceptable" in rape cases than someone who thinks it's not murder period.
[/quote]

There's a book/study called Victims & Victors, it details the stories of women who were raped and continued their pregnancies and were better for it. It actually states the majority of women who are pregnant from rape continue their pregnancies.

What I don't like is the pro-aborts use this argument as a huge draw card for their reasoning. 1.2 million abortions a year, 98% for social reasons, that leaves 2% for foetal abnormality, maternal risk and rape. Yet, approximately <1 - 3 % of rapes end in pregnancy.

Their numbers don't support their claims that women who are raped want abortions for any pregnancy that has transpired.

As a side note, I find it absolutely abhorrent that the pro-abortion side claims to be about women's choice and then have themselves a good old harp along about how what woman could possibly want her rapists baby? Firstly, its the woman's baby too, and secondly, it places the woman in a horrid state, if she doesn't abort, people might question her claims that she was indeed raped, if she does abort, she moves from being a victim of a horrific crime to the perportrator of one.

[tinytherese]

I actually feel like I can really sympathize with women who have gotten pregnant because of rape and or incest, because as some of you know, my own dad has sexually harassed me. I avoided spending time at alone in the house with him last summer and even though it thankfully never happened, I do remember a time when I thought, "What if I did get raped by him and got pregnant?" It really hit me what could possibly happen. Believe me, I was terrified. Despite the horror and even some doubts if I could carry that pregnancy to term, I knew that I couldn't go through with it. I knew that if this did happen, my dad would need to be the one to be punished, not our baby who was completely innocent. Besides, I know that there are many infertile couples who are really torn that they can't have children in the usual way. I could find a decent couple to raise my baby.

I know that years ago, I talked with my best friend in high school about abortion and she pointed out that it would be really hard to go through the hardships of pregnancy and then the labor, only to give the baby away. Yet I know that it could be done, no matter how hard it would be. It would be possible. With God's grace this heroic sacrifice, not done out of obligation, but love could be done--even with joy. Besides, if my own mother didn't want to go through the discomforts of pregnancy and labor that I would never have been born. She did it out of love. I think that this song really summarizes it best. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCmLmZDpB4I&feature=PlayList&p=01E1A44C1C3D6A73&index=43

[havok579257]

I tell them they are stupid

Honestly, anyone who does not think life begins at conception is either lying to themselfs or un-educated.

Just ask them.., so this baby has a heart which beats and has lungs which breath and as of right now we can hear its heartbeat as early as 14 days. Yet your going to sit there and tell me that a baby who has a heart beat and is breathing is not a person? Last I checked, according to science, if your heart beats and you breath and your human, your alive and a person. So not only does thiesm say the baby is a person, but so does science. So your either ignorant and ignore facts or your lying to yourself. Pick one, cause those are the only two options.