A person with Down Syndrome on Abortion. "Let's pursue answers and not Final Solutions"

[Glitchvid]

[QUOTE=TestECull;52831388]I put an override in for cases where the parents knowing would cause her harm, but let's be realistic here. Legally speaking, until the child is 18, mommy and daddy have a right to know what little julie is up to.

And she would. I put a provision in specifically to act as a catch-all for scenarios where the parents would be abusive to her. And most level-headed parents would be ok with it, especially knowing the ramifications of making the kid take it to term.

You need parental consent for any other medical procedure on a child that isn't treating something life threatening, and legally speaking, someone who's 17 years, 11 months, 30 days old is still a child.[/QUOTE]

I'm sorry, a teenager shouldn't be forced to give birth.
The parents have as much a right to know as HIPPA and local law, but should have absolutely no legal choice on the matter of their kid being pregnant.

TBH I consider an abortion 'life saving' for underage women.

[Blazyd]

[QUOTE=glitchvid;52832194]I'm sorry, a teenager shouldn't be forced to give birth.
The parents have as much a right to know as HIPPA and local law, but should have absolutely no legal choice on the matter of their kid being pregnant.

TBH I consider an abortion 'life saving' for underage women.[/QUOTE]

"Life saving" literally means the mother will die if she doesn't get an abortion. In some cases, especially for young girls who aren't fully developed, giving birth can very well cause death and therefore an abortion is life saving.

But if you are fully capable of carrying a baby and giving birth without dying in the process, regardless of your age, then you don't need an abortion. We're talking about saving the mothers life in the literal sense, not in the sense that "her life would be changed for the worse if she had the kid" or something.

[Sableye]

can I just say, invoking the nazis and their eugenics as an argument for government control of abortions is a terrible way to argue your point, at least to try to convince people that are against you, its phenomenal for people who already want abortions banned because it conflates pro-abortionists with nazis. It just seems like people aren't arguing to convince anyone anymore, just reinforce beliefs with those that already believe in what they're listening to. The fetal personhood bills in congress for example are this groupthink/echo chamber effect, where the bill presumes fetuses feel pain, the sponsors and writers believe so, then bring in experts to testify that it infact does, then they press the bill forward regardless of whether it has broad support or even has convinced people on the other side.

[paramud]

[QUOTE=sgman91;52831802]Are insectile/viral/worm parasites humans? (It looks like we're back to the thing you said is irrelevant.)[/QUOTE]

(You're the one taking the argument back there, not me.)

[AxeI]

[QUOTE=Blazyd;52831691]For the sake of argument let's define consciousness as your awareness of your surroundings because through the numerous "definitions" of the word, that's the common element I see between them all. And define self-awareness as well, your awareness of yourself. So human development says a baby becomes "conscious" as early as 5 months (showing signs of things like working memory), and start becoming self-aware around 15 months.

You're saying in order to be considered human, you need to show signs of [I]either[/I] consciousness (awareness of surroundings) OR self-awareness. The problem I have with that argument is that a newborn baby is neither fully aware of its surroundings, has no real working memory yet, and is not self-aware. So it fits neither of your "human" criteria. But ask anyone in the world and they'll say a newborn baby is just as human as you or I.

Do you see what I'm getting at? When we're talking about terminating the life of a fetus/baby, there's no room for vagueness, apathy, or broad lines. You need to draw clear lines of what is acceptable and not acceptable and have them not contradict each other/have no loopholes because these are people's actual lives we're talking about. That's why loopholes in laws/policies are such a big deal because there is a lot at stake.[/QUOTE]
No, I don't see where you're getting at. You're imposing a definition of consciousness that I haven't agreed to nor is the common definition. Also I'm pretty sure babies start reacting to external stimuli when they're still in the womb so I'm not sure where you got the idea that only starts happening 5 months after birth.
Going "I don't know what you mean by *word* but I'm going to assume you mean this specific definition that is perfect for my argument" isn't an argument, especially when you don't bring up your own interpretation of what constitutes this "clear line" of yours.

[editline]29th October 2017[/editline]

[QUOTE=sgman91;52831771]Brain dead people do not lose their personhood because they have lost brain function. They lose it because they have lost brain function and there is no ability to bring it back. The lack of ability to recover is fundamental.[/QUOTE]
You keep arguing as if the future, the potential to become a human has any value, when what actually matters is the past. The value in reviving a brain dead person, if we could, lies in the fact that he had memories, a personality, loved ones who care for him... None of which a foetus has.
You keep arguing that potential life in the form of a foetus is fundamentally different to potential life in the form of an egg and a sperm about to fuse with each other, but I don't see why that would be? Much like conception, growth is a process that results from the fusion of various systems that were previously separate, namely the foetus and the numerous nutrients it needs to actually grow into a baby.

[EcksDee]

Hey sgman1

Should the Government be allowed to force you to donate your kidney to keep your son alive?

If not, why should a woman be forced to donate her body to keep a nonviable fetus alive?

[Big D Duchovny]

It's very hard define when something starts being a person - it is, because obviously there's a continuum. A fertilised egg isn't as far along as a blastocyst, which isn't as far along as an embryo, which isn't as far along as a fetus and etc.

[I]But[/I] just because drawing a line on a continuum is hard, doesn't mean that people don't do it. Barring a very few zealots, I'd argue everybody does. If we try to avoid it by taking the stance that a zygote is human, we end up with a few pretty ludicrous conclusions:
1. You have a moral imperative to stop abortions from happening. If you really, truly believe that fertilized eggs are humans, any kind of abortion, as well as some forms of contraception is literally murder. You would be an awful person if you didn't do your utmost to stop people from murdering humans.
2. Any kind of activity that would endanger the development of an early stage pregnancy should be forbidden in sexually active women. If you're having sex, and you're not using the sort of contraception that prevents ovulation, it is only logical that you'd make illegal any activity that could endanger the zygote or an embryo. Women who do not comply would frequently be making themselves guilty of involuntary manslaughter. You'd have to include all sexually active women, as pregnancies usually aren't discovered until later stages. If someone with a recognized pregnancy engaged in these activities, murder charges should be considered.

Now, let's consider the "potential life" argument. Here, conception is the important part, because obviously sperm and eggs alone have no value, right? I don't think that's entirely logically consistent - why aren't sperm and eggs alone potential life? If we compare them to a fertilized egg, there are many similarities:
1: They consist of a single cell
2: They have no capability of anything resembling thought, consciousness or human traits that aren't also shared with many other eukaryot cells.
3: There's no certainty that they will ever turn into born human even without provoked abortions being a thing.
The third one's logic needs a little explaining; yes, fertilized eggs are much more likely to result in a birth, but there's the question of implantation, which doesn't always happen. Then there are a million other things that can go wrong. But why start at fertilization? Why not start at the point when the sperm is swimming to the distal part of the fallopian tubes to meet the egg? What is the functional difference between this step and the fertilized egg getting implanted? Both events happen only with some uncertainty, and the fertilized egg possesses no more human traits than the sperm of the egg alone - because the importance of the fertilized egg is only inferred from "potential for life", the same potential (or well, less potential, but still potential) could be applied to the individual sperm of egg travelling up or down the fallopian tubes. By extent of this logic, if using a copper IUD is wrong (copper IUDs work partially by preventing implantation of the fertilized egg), using a condom should be, too - at least if there's an egg around waiting for the sperm. The "potential for life" argument is bad, because it never defines what constitutes a high enough probability/potential for life to be considered such - you'd have to pick a more or less arbitrary point, often landing on fertilization, probably more because of cultural inclinations than logic.

Really, most people would agree that embryonic/fetal development is a continuum towards reaching a stage of being a human. Even someone who's against abortion based would probably agree that aborting 4 weeks in is much less emotionally jarring than aborting something that's practically a few pushes from being a neonatal. At the same time, there's no real logic behind any cutoff - butre mentioned the heart starting pumping at 22 days as some kind of important step, but the human heart at that point is just a muscular tube, the embryo has just barely established the tube within a tube body plan, and overall it resembles nothing human neurally or physically.

People who pretend abortion is black and white on either side hasn't considered the case properly in my opinion. I think viability is a more fair cutoff point, with anything earlier being preferable. This means up until around 20-22 weeks (which is low compared to many US states) - at this point, the fetus is most likely not [url=https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1440624/]capable of pain[/url] and especially the subjective experience of pain, either. Equating abortion of these fetuses with infanticide is ignoring the many cognitive difference there are between them. I think the non-experience that it is to be aborted is made up by the fact that the mother and father won't be having an unwanted child.

Then you can put up edge cases such as anencephaly - would it be wrong to abort a fetus that is most likely gonna die within a few hours of birth with no capability of conscious thought? How about Crohn's, ALS, Down's, Edwards or Patau? Personally I think it should be up to the parents to decide what they want to put their child through, and personally I don't think any specific embryo/early fetus has a right to be born; until the thing has a distinctively human experience, you shouldn't be held accountable for the personality some people like to project onto it.

[Glitchvid]

[QUOTE=Blazyd;52832303]
But if you are fully capable of carrying a baby and giving birth without dying in the process, regardless of your age, then you don't need an abortion. We're talking about saving the mothers life in the literal sense, not in the sense that "her life would be changed for the worse if she had the kid" or something.[/QUOTE]

That's my point though, becoming a parent is life changing, it requires extreme dedication and maturity. IMO most people aren't ready, and it'll make their lives fall apart, abortions are [I]life[/I] saving.

And the "need" vs want is a bad angle, we don't gate off meat because it's a "want" and not a need. Same with any number of the things that elevate people's lives. Abortions are more than just the basics of a woman having sexual autonomy, it's about being able to choose the type of future you want.

Pretty much everyone agrees accidents are unfortunate, and something that would be great if they didn't exist. Obviously we can't get rid of them, but we can reduce their impact, and give people a second chance. In cars we've added seatbelts and airbags, bikers wear helmets.
If someone doesn't want to get pregnant, they get pregnant on accident, we actually have the ability to prevent the accident from affecting their lives, if they get an abortion.

And those aren't the only angles either, there are plenty of happy couples that plan for a baby, the woman gets pregnant, but then something happens. Maybe the guy cheats, dies, gets fired from work, or arrested. And having that stable family just isn't going to happen. Women shouldn't be forced to carry that baby to term. If we can prevent struggling, we should.

[Ganerumo]

[QUOTE=Blazyd;52830843]This part is confusing. Are these the criteria that you would tell someone "you can kill the fetus/baby until it can do the following on its own: breathe, eat, shit, and pump blood"?

Does it have to meet all that criteria to be considered worthy of life? And what do you consider being able to eat "on your own"? And what do you consider being able to breathe on your own? Because you don't breathe on your own in the womb so technically you don't breathe by yourself until you're actually born, and even then some babies are born not breathing and need to be put on a respirator so really they're not even breathing on their own in that case either.[/QUOTE]

It's a very practical conclusion. If it cannot have basic life functions on its own and is directly dependent on being physically attached to a person, it's not an independent organism yet.

The way mammals give birth is odd because we literally generate a bunch of matter which eventually grows into a self-sustaining organism, so there has to be a line drawn somewhere between the point where it is just a part of the mother and the point where it is self-sustaining. Establishing this point when it is able to have basic life functions on its own is good, because it's practical and roughly the same across all babies.

Once it's capable of exiting the womb without a physiological need for a link to ensure most of its bodily functions, then it can be considered a separate functioning organism.

[Speedhax]

[QUOTE=butre;52829828]a. there's no capital letters in my name
1. it is difficult to make a decision on the fly otherwise this wouldn't be an argument. you don't have sufficient time to make such a decision. a decade isn't long enough
2. is a non argument

3. is completely missing the point. I already said which has more value and I already said what both Ben Shapiro and the entire Catholic doctrine thinks has more value. while I was at it i even threw my own opinion into the mix[/QUOTE]

I still don't see why you're so against abortion though. I mean there's the obvious "killing is wrong" answer but I mean that doesn't go deep enough for me. Are the reasons religious?