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| Lucius Black wrote: | | Quote: | | Actually, I'm not talking about the American Constitution, which I don't give a crap about. I'm talking about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Regardless, the Constitution is the law of your country and you can't simply dismiss it as an argumentative tool because "quite frankly, [you] don't believe a lot of what's in there." |
I'm not dismissing it as an argumentative tool. My views don't fall entirely within the confines of it. I won't use it as an excuse or a tool. I'm stating what I believe, not what a group of men 250-odd years ago believed. |
There's a thing called an amendment. Amendments to the United States Constitution were not made 250-odd years ago. In fact, the last one was ratified in 1992.
And don't say that you're not dismissing it as an argumentative tool, you've already stated that you don't care what the Constitution says and therefore won't consider what it says if used in an argument. That is dismissing it.
| Lucius Black wrote: | | Quote: | | Also, common sense was why people believed that the Earth was flat, that mountains became hotter as you climbed higher and the seas became hotter as you sailed south. "Common sense" is a far less valid argumentative tool and piece of evidence than the law. |
I'm stating my beliefs. If you don't care for them, don't respond to them. |
Funny that you don't follow that principle yourself.
Of course, I will continue to respond to them, because this is a debating thread in a debating forum and thus any post you make in it is open to criticism, disagreement, response and, you may have guessed it, debate. If you don't want your beliefs disagreed with, don't post them in a debating thread.
| Lucius Black wrote: | | Quote: | | She may have chosen to have sex, but she did not choose pregnancy. If she chose pregnancy, she wouldn't be looking for a freaking abortion. |
When you choose sex, you choose possible pregnancy. Condom or no condom. I don't find the stupidity of some people to be a valid reason for an abortion. |
So, you're suggesting complete abstinence from sex for those who do not want to have a child? I'm afraid that infringes on the right of anyone over the age of consent of their country to engage in sexual intercourse with another person.
Lucius, with all due respect, even the most hardened pro-lifers won't argue that people who conceive a child out of protected sex are stupid and should have to keep the baby.
But let me be clear, you are saying that a person who conceives a child in protected or unprotected sex without planning to is stupid?
| Lucius Black wrote: | | Quote: | | A born baby does not depend on its mother for life, if it did then there wouldn't be single fathers and there would be no place for nurseries or nannies (irrespective of gender). |
You obviously didn't understand what I was saying. A newborn baby depends on someone for life. Whether that person be a father or a doctor or a nanny, they depend on somebody. So does an unborn fetus and people actually cite "it can't live on it's own" as an argument. |
Actually, I understand exactly what you were saying which is why I was making clear that when you were saying a newborn baby depends on its mother for life that was incorrect, otherwise there would be no fathers raising babies, no nurseries or nannies raising babies.
However, the distinction lies in the fact that a foetus relies directly on its mother for life and will die in a matter of minutes without the connection to her, whereas a baby indirectly relies on another human for life and could survive for days without being tended to. Therefore, a foetus is a parasite and a baby a dependent.
| Lucius Black wrote: | | Quote: | | It all comes down to the simple fact that a woman is a protected citizen of a government and is protected in her right to not have her body interfered with without her permission, and that includes being forced to carry a foetus. A foetus is not a protected citizen of any government and is not so protected and holds no such right. |
Great. That doesn't matter to me. I'm debating the morality of abortion. The government allowed slavery and discrimination for hundreds or years. That doesn't automatically make it right. |
I too am debating the morality of abortion. And correction, your government allowed slavery and discrimination for hundreds of years.
And you can't dismiss an argument based on past wrongs. That's like saying that the work of a person who has spent seventy years campaigning for greater sexual equality is invalid because they once robbed a shop.
A sentient human has certain rights and it is immoral for those rights to be taken away. A foetus has no such rights and therefore has no rights for it to be immoral to take away.
| Lucius Black wrote: | | Quote: | To be counted as living things, organisms must have the following characteristics; movement, respiration, sensitivity, growth, homeostasis, reproduction, excretion and nutrition, that is to say that an organism must;
1) Be able to move.
2) Be able to burn food to provide energy.
3) Be able to sense its environment.
4) Be able to grow.
5) Be able to regulate and control its internal environment.
6) Be able to reproduce.
7) Be able to excrete waste.
8) Be able to absorb food for respiration.
A foetus does not qualify as it is missing numbers 2, 3, 5, 6 and 8. |
1. Can be done.
2. This is the responsibility of the mother.
3. So Helen Keller doesn't qualify as human? Tell me, are you familiar with the book "Johnny Get Your Gun?"
4. Grows within the mother.
5. Exactly how do you do that?
6. Believe it or not, there are women incapable of having children.
7. Errr, yeah.
8. Umbilical cord, anyone?
Exactly who is making up the criteria for what is considered alive? |
They are the international scientific standard characteristics of life as taught in any general science or biology class with a competent teacher and education system and universally accepted by all biologists as the official scientific characteristics of life. And they are not "making [them] up", they were agreed upon after years of scientific observations, studies and debates.
I don't see why you bothered saying that a foetus has 1, 4 and 7, as I didn't dispute those. As for the others;
2. That doesn't dispute that a foetus is incapable of respiration.
3. Helen Keller was deafblind, she was still in possesion of her senses of touch, taste, smell, thermoception and nocicpetion and therefore could sense most of the details of her environment. Also, the book in question is called "Johnny Got His Gun". And yes, I have not only heard of it, I have seen the film and as I remember, Joe, the main character, repeatedly tells the assembled members of the Armed Forces to kill him in Morse Code. All this shows is that it's a violation against nature when we force a person without most of the characterstics of life to live. We're artificially giving them characteristics of life.
5. In layman's terms, it is the brain allocating each cell in the body the resources that it needs to keep one alive. Foetuses are incapable of this.
6. I will address this after 8.
8. An umbilical cord only transports oxygen and nutrients which have been processed by the mother. The foetus in itself is not capable of absorbing food. A simpler way to put it is that the foetus is not capable of eating.
To explain 6 properly, I must indicate that the characteristics of life are not designed for individual assessment, they are designed for special assessment. If one was to analyse several rocks, you would find that a rock does not meet any of these requirements, unless it is moved by something else. If one was to analyse several humans, you would find that in general, humans meet all the characteristics of life, except for abnormalities. If one was to analyse all the humans in the world and find that (the following figure is purely random) 10% of all humans do not meet all requirements but still meet the majority, then you could safely say that humans are living things.
However, do not turn around and say that if all humans are living things then their embryos and feotuses are. The whole point of the excercise of the characteristics of life was that foetuses do not yet qualify as living things. They may or may not eventually, should they not be aborted and should they develop normally and not die in the womb before their first brainwave, but up until the point, they are not alive and they are not human.
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If you see dreadlocks and a staff coming towards you very rapidly, you're in trouble.
Last edited by High Mage Serratus on Mon Jul 20, 2009 8:18 am; edited 2 times in total
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Be able to absorb food for respiration.
