Stop avoiding answering my question. Upon what basis is a human fetus not a human. And if it is human, on what basis is killing it not murder.

-.- that is slightly uncalled for.

I don't know my stance on the abortion issue , since I have never had to deal with it first hand, so I have just expressed my views on the arguments presented. and I can agree that during the first stages of development, the human fetus looks like that of all mammals, and coelemates which includes earthworms,fish, and any organism with a complete digestive tract. and though the DNa is distinctly human, it is only .001% different than a closely related species. and at such an early stage the cells are just that...cells, no differentiantion, no neurons, no brain, no tissue no organs, nothing apart from a few different nucleic acids sequences that as yet can qualify it as distinctly human.

However, once the specializtions occurs, the fetus is human, but i don't know if it can be considered murder since it is not sentient at the time, but perhaps it is. i don't know, nor do i think humanity will ever know.

Darkwing, Sinder, Alex and many others have replied to your question countless times. Would you please stop just repeating the same argument over and over again. We understand your point of view, you've expressed it often enough, we realy don't need to see it expressed yet again, ok? Now a couple of posts up, Sinder was kind enough to print the rules for discussions in this forum. Before you make another comment, can I suggest you read them again.

I really didn't see his statement as rude or inconsiderate, even if it was a bit repetitive.

----

Someone said something about having 364 days of unhappiness?(sinder, I think?) that is highly unlikely, to say the least.

A poor life (financially) isn't always a bad one.
A life with one parent isn't always a bad one.

What other scenarios are there when connected to a teenage parent? Yes, there is the occasional abusive father, but quite honestly, that doesn't happen all that much. In my family we have quite a bit of teen pregnancy, and often the babies go to the parent's mother until the parent can take care of it.

If you were given the choice to live or be aborted, you wouldn't even try to live and make the best of it? Crap happens to me all the time, I don't get depressed and wallow in self-pity. I just keep going and make the best of it. Maybe that's just me and I'm the only one that finds it easy to do.

I don't understand why parents can't be more supportive, in all honesty. Would it really be so hard to take care of your pregnant daughter and your new grandchild? I would be a little disaappointed in my daughter, I have to admit, but I wouldn't shun her and kick her out of the house. We would move on and welcome our new family member.

Even if abortion isn't made illegal (like I hope) I at least hope that it will be avoided at all costs. I don't understand why the mother's life is always put in front of the baby's. Is it because it can't defend itself? I still don't understand why not being ready is any kind of excuse, because adoption exists. I don't see why the baby having a bad life is an exuse, because who can really know if it will really have a bad life? Who can say whether or not it would rather live a bad life, than not live at all? The disagreement between Sinder and I on that subject says that you can't.

Alright you've answered my question Megil Te Zeke, I now know you're stance.

At a very early stage of development the human fetus does indeed look like a wierd alien sea creature (I've used this analagy before) same as all other vertabrates do at that stage of development. But if the human fetus does look like that at that stage of development so what? It makes no sense to value a human life entirely on the stage of development that it has presently reached, this would mean that an adult is legally more valuable than a child and a child than a toddler and a toddler than a baby. It simply makes no sense to judge the value of a human life on the basis of the stage of development it has presently reached.

From my understanding of fetal development, the sperm fertalises the egg forming a human cell, which divides and carries on dividing until it reaches a certain size, then it forms itself into the "wierd alien sea-creature" and from that it develops a brain, heart, limbs, other internal organs and a general human baby shape, which owing too our protective parenting instincts we feel protective towards. The point is that it is illogical to put greater value on the cute baby shaped blob of human cells, than a wierd alien sea-monster shaped blob of human cells, or a spherical blob of human cells, or the 17 year old blob of cells that's writing this post, beacause if this were the case then the above would also apply, there is only difference of time and stage of development and complexity of cell specialisation between the spherical blob of cells and the 17 year old blob of cells afterall.

I think there is a very large difference between stages of the foetus, or even the foetus itself,

or a child or adult. no one here ever said that a child was less then an adult.

That's his point though.

everyone implies that an adult is better than the unborn child when they say that the adult has a right to live and the child doesn't.

Right, I am not at all happy with the way this going. I'm going to deal with these one by one.

“I really didn't see his statement as rude or inconsiderate, even if it was a bit repetitive.”

Right. I did, hence the comment. I didn't warn him, I didn't argue with him, I simply said he didn't need to keep repeating the same argument over and over again, and that before he posted anything else I wanted him to read the rules. Simple no? I did not say he was rude or inconsiderate, though I feel that quite strongly, and you too for that matter. Here's why. You already expressed your opinions on the matter, yet you seem to be unwilling to let anyone else do the same without arguing. You've posted your opinions, we know them, we can read. You do not need to keep posting them over and over and over again. Secondly, and I'm really annoyed by this, Darkwing and Alex have both made very personal, private observations. Having had the guts to share those with us, you both have consistently failed to show any degree of respect for their opinions. Neither of you have the life experience to talk about this with the conviction that you are. You have every right to your opinion, but not to say that someone who has gone through this was wrong. You might believe they're wrong, but until you have been in that situation, you have no right to tell someone else that they were. Quite honestly I am astonished, not only by the arrogance you're showing, but by the judgemental attitudes. As Darkwing said, its very easy to take the moral high ground when you haven't been in that position. He has, so who are you to judge him?

Next. The topic was should it be made illegal. Now a few examples have been put in the poll. Several have been missed out. Poverty first of all. A woman, unemployed as an example, with lets say 3 children already finds out she's pregnant. There's no way she can afford to feed another mouth. What does she do? If she cant have an abortion, she has 2 options. One, raise the child herself, so all the other children suffer. Not ideal, you'd agree? Two, give the child up for adoption. The bond that a woman builds with her child is shattered, and she has to live with the notion that she abandoned it. Plus, there's no guarantee that the home the child goes to will love, care and protect it. What if the woman had been abused, and assaulted by the father? What if she has TB or HIV? If she has an abnormal fetus, which everyone concerned knows will lead to Downs Syndrome, or some other illness which means birth leads inexorably to tragedy. Oh, and guess what? In a lot of countries, there's no financial help for those women. What if she's an alcoholic or drug user? If the mother is herself a child, doesn't she have the right to a life herself, and at such an age, will she be capable of looking after the child. Its an huge responsibility.

The problem here is you're subjecting your own circumstances, lifestyle, financial etc, onto people who it may not fit. If this situation ever happens to you, then you have to make that decision, along with the mother. That decision is based on your circumstances in that case, not someone else's. I hope it doesn't happen, but if it does, I hope you aren't judged by people, whatever your decision, the way you're judging others.

I must admit, I hadn't noticed this passage before.

I sincerely hope you didn't mean this toward me, or darkwing specifically but more in general.

because if you did mean it towards me personally then please say so and we'll be starting an entirely different discussion in private where I might just explain a few things about myself, and then I'll ask you again if you still feel this way about me.

and in no means do I admit to doing this myself, I don't.



edit:
and Burntsierra:

Great post. I couldn't agree more.

I didn't mean it towards anyone personally, and forgive me if it sounded that way. it was for the sake of arguing that life is worth living for the baby, because the point of "what if it has a bad life?" was made.

To burntsierra -

I was not trying to be judgemental at all, and if it came across that way, I didn't mean it to. Yes, my opinion has been stated many times, but that is what happens in a debate, which is in fact, an argument. I never disrespected anyone's opinion, I merely told my view on the subject. And seeing as I'm causing so many problems, I will remove myself from all future debates in this forum on this subject.

I personally feel that abortion no matter what the circumtances are is wrong. If it were to danger the mother's life then i wouldn't condemn her if she did have an abortion, but I still feel that an inocent baby should have a chance to live.

And to the whole poor living conditions you can always put him/her up for adoption.

But all i have to say is this, if hate the idea of being a mother so much that you would kill to prevent it, DON'T HAVE SEX!

Why do I keep repeating the same arguments? Beacause you (the pro-choice crowd) consistantly fail to answer them, preffering to dodge the issue by discussing poverty, as though this is of relevance to a discussion about whether abortion is murder. When you do try to argue your case, I refute them with an argument of my own, as I am entitled to do I a debate. That you cannot respond to attacks on the coherancy of your arguments is your problem, not mine and it's no reason to accuse me of bieng dis-respectful just beacause you cannot logically protect your arguments against attack. And don't fall back on the "you don't have the life experiance to discuss abortion", it's just a clever cop-out from having to answer me with an argument. It is also not fair to criticise people on how "we have too much conviction", just beacause you cannot produce arguments that you can protect against even the most basic attacks is as I said your problem, when you cannot give arguments strong enough to sow doubt on our position, you can hardely be suprised.

The truth is that either abortion is murder, or it is not. If it is murder then all the other topics of debate, are hence irrelavent in either legalising it or banning it, it should be banned on principle. If it is not murder then this debate is more or less irrelavent, unless someone can come up with argument why abortion should be illiegal, for reasons other than it bieng murder. Our job is to give arguments why abortion is murder and rebuff your arguments, yours is to give argument of why it is not murder and rebuff our arguments. Arguing about the other topics, such as poverty, freedoms and so on, is only relevant if abortion is not murder, hence you can only argue from your veiwpoint, ie abortion is not murder, which explains why we consistantly keep coming back to the abortion is murder topic (our veiwpoint) and you keep trying to drag us into debates that are only relevant if your postion is correct. Try to prove the initial base of your argument (abortion is not murder) is correct through debate, before anything else, it would greatly improve the atmosphere in this forum.

Right, I've had enough of this. The argument is not as black and white as you're making it out to be. I've asked you to stop insulting others opinions. You did it again. I asked you to stop making the same posts, repeating the same thing over and over again. Guess what? You ignored me. Fine, this topic is now locked, please do not start a new one.