so, her ovary is directly guiding the processes inside the embryo? really?

9/14/2010 8:32:15 PM

So this is still a thread in which men argue about an issue they'll never have to really deal personally and physically with.

Productive.

9/14/2010 8:57:19 PM

That has nothing to do with anything.

9/14/2010 9:06:58 PM

Quote :

"so, her ovary is directly guiding the processes inside the embryo? really?"

Just as much as my liver guides the processes inside my white blood cells.

Quote :

"So this is still a thread in which men argue about an issue they'll never have to really deal personally and physically with."

Lots of my girlfriends have had abortions both with and against their will.

9/14/2010 9:12:45 PM

Quote :

"Arguments don't mean anything in a world of automation, because both parties can't even control what they are arguing for and against. Thats my point"

Automaton A has evidence E and inference procedure I for drawing conclusions C.
Automaton B draws conclusion not C.

A does not know B's evidence, or B's inference procedure (how B weighs the data). How are they to resolve their incompatible conclusions if not by arguing their various cases?

I'm trying to figure out just what is going on in your head.

Quote :

"Hmm...turn your statement on itself. You don't know much anything about me or my educational background and yet you tell me not to "opine" about things. Yet you are "opining" about what I know and don't know. I say well done."

Your posts are evidence for my view. When you display ignorance on a subject, what else am I supposed to conclude?

Quote :

"And you say science is a heuristic....ok agreed, but what then is a heuristic?"

Are you asking me what the definition of a heuristic is? This is not a philosophical question of any interest, as the semantic field of "heuristic" is fairly diffuse and uninteresting.

Quote :

"How can you use science to prove a heuristic?"

"Prove" in what sense? Beyond a shadow of a doubt (logically)? No. Can you prove the usefulness of certain theories? Certainly.

Quote :

"It's not gonna work because you wanna prove the scientific method using the scientific method."

So you're rejecting empiricism and predictive success as virtues for explanations of the world? How can scientific method by justified if NOT by empirical results?

Quote :

"Likewise, defining the growing child as part of the woman's body is equally intellectually dishonest and clearly serves a specific ideology."

You clearly do not understand the biology and are completely desperate to bend reality to your irrational sensibilities. If anything there's a massive gray area in what the child is (independently alive thing or not) for quite a while. The fact that you're unwilling to accept a gradient here is ridiculous.

Quote :

"Really? Really... Really? What part of her is guiding the process? Is it her brain? Ovaries? Stomach?"

What part of the developing human is guiding the process, pray tell? You realize that a lot of processes (especially in embryonic development) are not "guided" at all? Neural growth, for instance, is a competitive process in many instances that lacks general oversight, guided instead by a form of selective pressure? (That which works eats.)

Quote :

"So someone who has a developmental disability can be killed without any concern then, right?"

People with developmental disabilities have more of a mind than a human in the early stages of embryonic development almost without a doubt. I didn't have to tell this to you because you're not as stupid as you're acting. But then again this is ~da soap box~.

Quote :

"so, her ovary is directly guiding the processes inside the embryo? really?"

Nothing is directly guiding the processes don't be such a fucking dummy. Are you really talking about developmental biology with this much ignorance? Read something.

Quote :

"So this is still a thread in which men argue about an issue they'll never have to really deal personally and physically with. Productive."

So this is still a thread where shrill feminists get anti-intellectual.

Productive.

[Edited on September 14, 2010 at 9:55 PM. Reason : .]

9/14/2010 9:54:12 PM

What I don't get is the distinction of human life as somehow higher or better than other life on earth.
People eat animals that are raised in torturous conditions that can almost certainly feel pain, and rate their lives as less significant than those of zygotes that most likely can't feel much of anything.

I don't feel like humans are more precious than any other animals. Life is not something precious. It's just biology. The only difference is that humans have developed speech and higher order thought to waste time thinking about things.

9/14/2010 10:10:27 PM

Quote :

"Life is not something precious. It's just biology."

Tell that to Jimmy V...

9/14/2010 10:20:17 PM

Quote :

"I don't feel like humans are more precious than any other animals. Life is not something precious. It's just biology. The only difference is that humans have developed speech and higher order thought to waste time thinking about things."

We are different because we can ask ourselves whether it's right to kill another person.

9/14/2010 10:22:57 PM

Quote :

"What I don't get is the distinction of human life as somehow higher or better than other life on earth."

There's a fairly convincing case that humans experience more sophisticated sorts of suffering than other animals.

Quote :

"People eat animals that are raised in torturous conditions that can almost certainly feel pain, and rate their lives as less significant than those of zygotes that most likely can't feel much of anything."

I agree there's a contradiction there.

Quote :

"I don't feel like humans are more precious than any other animals. Life is not something precious. It's just biology. The only difference is that humans have developed speech and higher order thought to waste time thinking about things."

Human suffering is very deep. I don't think other animals behave in a way that suggests they suffer anything like humans do. (It probably has to do with our capacity for long term planning)

9/14/2010 11:05:09 PM

You ever killed a hog? Looks to me like they suffer exactly like humans do.

9/14/2010 11:15:40 PM

Quote :

"That's only because you flip the coin slightly differently each time. If I made a coin flipping machine, it would land on the same side every time."

But why would flipping it “slightly differently” each time result in a 50/50 split? Wouldn’t you be likely to slip it a certain way more often than a certain other way?

And LOL at your coin flipping machine… if you built a machine that flips coins and nothing more, you’d still notice a 50/50 distribution. You could almost certainly build a machine though that flips the coin to land on a certain side each time.(this is fundamentally how monte carlo simulations work)

Not to mention that coin flipping example was just a single example. Literally every aspect of physics relies on probabilities, that demand the universe to be random. The universe can’t not be random, or physics wouldn’t work. Not accepting this is like believing the universe was created as-is 7000 years ago.

Statistical sampling wouldn’t work at all if random didn’t exist. The fact that statistical sampling works proves that random exists. THe current experiments with quantum computers wouldn’t work if random didn’t exist. The universe definitely is not 100% predictable. No one has seriously believed this for decades, at least.You can however determine a definite probability for events happening, but obviously your margin for error increases as you pile probability on probability.

Quote :

"Anything you consider random, is simply a system that we could predict, it is just to complex to easily predict. Quantum mechanics being the only exception, somehow the prevailing theory in this field is "we don't know how it works, it must be random!", which seems like anti-science. "

That’s not what quantum mechanics says actually. It just says things have a probability of being at certain places at certain times, and you can model them as discrete quanta (ie “teleportation”). It doesn’t speculate on how they are in those places at those times, just that they are. But the issue is that if the distribution of these states weren’t truly random, we couldn’t use sampling to determine the probability of quantum states to make predictable models. But we can, therefore random exists in the universe. I guess i’ll have to think on it more to explain it better, but it seems very fundamental and intuitive to me that this is the case…

We may be automatons, but that doesn’t mean free will doesn’t exist (it doesn’t mean it does exist either). The only significance of this realization is that free will can exist for universe-automatons. Whether it does or doesn’t is a different question.


[Edited on September 15, 2010 at 1:45 AM. Reason : ]

9/15/2010 1:44:07 AM

Quote :

"Nothing is directly guiding the processes don't be such a fucking dummy"

To say that the woman is "constructing" the baby, as you did, is to imply that there is some kind of guidance from the woman.

Quote :

"If anything there's a massive gray area in what the child is (independently alive thing or not) for quite a while."

I would agree. Which is why I say that it is equally dishonest to say it is simply a matter of the woman's choice over her own body. I'm glad we agree on this.

Quote :

"Literally every aspect of physics relies on probabilities, that demand the universe to be random."

You are out of your element here. If we had all the information necessary about the universe at a particular instance, we could predict perfectly how the coin would land each time. In fact, it precisely due to this non-randomness that the universe works, not the other way around as you assert. You say that people have known for 7000 years that the universe is random, but this is perfectly backwards. We are learning more and more every day how to predict what will happen given a set of circumstances. Things only appear "random" because we don't have enough information to explain why each particular thing does what it does.

9/15/2010 7:22:01 AM

What it boils down to is that quantum effects are not observable in extra-atomic systems. They may be "random" at their core, but as moron points out, their randomness belies extreme stability and predictability of the atoms and greater systems that lie above them.

I don't see how this makes free will possible, since evidence suggests that your mind is simply a product of your physical human brain. If the cells within that brain are not impacted by random quantum effects in anyway except to make the atoms that comprise that cell stable and predictable, how does that "random" element even introduce the chance that anything above the sub-atomic level is random?

Because random exists at the sub-atomic level it must exist at the extra-atomic level? Or are we some how tapping into the random quantum effects even though we're pretty certain that our cellular model for life is accurate and very, very much extra-atomic?

[Edited on September 15, 2010 at 9:04 AM. Reason : grammar]

9/15/2010 9:02:27 AM

Quote :

"To say that the woman is "constructing" the baby, as you did, is to imply that there is some kind of guidance from the woman."

Do you do realize that the brain doesn't tell the heart to pump?

Quote :

"But why would flipping it “slightly differently” each time result in a 50/50 split? Wouldn’t you be likely to slip it a certain way more often than a certain other way? "

Because you've assumed the weight of the coin is fairly even. If you used a coin that was weighted more on one side or the other, you would see your results start to lean.

Quote :

"Literally every aspect of physics relies on probabilities"

Really? Name a few. I don't recall there being any probablities to calculate velocity or resistance.
Perfect noise is an idea, it doesn't exist in the real world.

Quote :

"Statistical sampling wouldn’t work at all if random didn’t exist."

It doesn't work with a perfect level of accuracy. If you don't use samples and use the entire population, you can get perfect accuracy, statistics is essentially just making smart guesses.

Quote :

"It just says things have a probability of being at certain places at certain times"

That's just a system we don't understand. There is some process behind it.

9/15/2010 10:19:06 AM

Quote :

"To say that the woman is "constructing" the baby, as you did, is to imply that there is some kind of guidance from the woman."

She is piping the embryo nutrients, which is growing "on its own" with no real central planning. It's a pretty remarkable process, but it's clearly no different in the early stages than the woman growing skin cells.

Quote :

"Statistical sampling wouldn’t work at all if random didn’t exist. The fact that statistical sampling works proves that random exists. THe current experiments with quantum computers wouldn’t work if random didn’t exist. The universe definitely is not 100% predictable. No one has seriously believed this for decades, at least.You can however determine a definite probability for events happening, but obviously your margin for error increases as you pile probability on probability."

Probability is not randomness; lack of human ability to predict is not particularly strong evidence for indeterminism. (Some problems are not computable but this does not suggest anything about indeterminism).

Quote :

"I would agree. Which is why I say that it is equally dishonest to say it is simply a matter of the woman's choice over her own body. I'm glad we agree on this."

The only relevant factor is if the growing child has a mind or not. Early on it's clear it does not.

Quote :

"Things only appear "random" because we don't have enough information to explain why each particular thing does what it does."

For quantum events this is up in the air. Not enough evidence.

9/15/2010 1:21:19 PM

One thing that gets glossed over time and again is whether or not the growing child HAS A MIND or not.

When its neural structure is extremely sparse (or even when it's dense and unordered/unconnected), it's clear it does not, because the system lacks the computational resources to produce a mind. This is something that gets ignored in these debates time and again. Quite frustrating.

Unless you believe the zygote is "ensouled" upon fertilization, you have no leg to stand on from the argument's perspective. And if you do, how are we supposed to codify your ancient intuitions into public policy?

9/15/2010 1:23:18 PM

if i can get enough people to believe in my ancient institution we'll all vote it into law.

9/15/2010 1:30:14 PM

^^Is having a mind enough of a criteria for independent rights as a person? If we consider abortion of a fetus (with a mind) as murder, should we also not consider eating unhealthily or smoking during pregnancy assault?

Should pregnant women be subject to laws of endangerment as though they would if they had an infant strapped to their stomachs? I'm not trying to be snarky at all, this is my difficulty with abortion laws.

9/15/2010 1:37:22 PM

Quote :

"Is having a mind enough of a criteria for independent rights as a person? If we consider abortion of a fetus (with a mind) as murder, should we also not consider eating unhealthily or smoking during pregnancy assault? Should pregnant women be subject to laws of endangerment as though they would if they had an infant strapped to their stomachs? I'm not trying to be snarky at all, this is my difficulty with abortion laws."

What's the tension here? I don't see it.

Since it's not a human yet, you can discard it. But if you're going to grow it into a human, you need to take proper care of it or it will affect that human for his entire life. I don't see the difficulty here.

9/15/2010 3:56:06 PM

So what consequences should there be for not "taking proper care of it?"

9/15/2010 4:24:50 PM

Setting a point at which the fetus becomes a Real Person™ is kind of pointless. Its bound to differ in every case and even after birth the baby is not capable of being self sufficient. It still depends on parents for care and feeding. So why set the goalposts at some point in the womb if it still going to be a drain on the parent once it gets out?

I think a better question is: Does the strain on the mother and the eventual hardships for an unwanted child after birth outweigh the potential for another human coming into existance?

This removes the doubt in the question of assault on a mother where the fetus dies. It is in that case certainly murder of a potential life. A life that the mother was prepared and ready for.

In the case of abortion it is maybe still murder, but it is justified because the hardship on the mother and the hardship the child would endure if born would be worse than if the child was simply not born.

In any event widely available access to free and high quality birth control would help eliminate alot of the debate.

9/15/2010 4:41:06 PM

Quote :

"I think a better question is: Does the strain on the mother and the eventual hardships for an unwanted child after birth outweigh the potential for another human coming into existance?"

How is it even possible to answer this question? There's no way to know either the strain on the mother, the eventual hardships for an unwanted child, or the potential for another human being coming into existence.

I wouldn't be terribly comfortable with laws or restrictions based on "potential" or "eventual" anything.

9/15/2010 5:00:26 PM

Quote :

"So what consequences should there be for not "taking proper care of it?""

Who the fuck knows, I'm not on the hook for this. What consequences should there be for poisoning somebody slowly over the course of their whole lives? Probably has to do with how debilitating the birth-defects are and how clearly it's the mother's fault.

Quote :

"Setting a point at which the fetus becomes a Real Person™ is kind of pointless. Its bound to differ in every case and even after birth the baby is not capable of being self sufficient. It still depends on parents for care and feeding. So why set the goalposts at some point in the womb if it still going to be a drain on the parent once it gets out? I think a better question is: Does the strain on the mother and the eventual hardships for an unwanted child after birth outweigh the potential for another human coming into existance? This removes the doubt in the question of assault on a mother where the fetus dies. It is in that case certainly murder of a potential life. A life that the mother was prepared and ready for. In the case of abortion it is maybe still murder, but it is justified because the hardship on the mother and the hardship the child would endure if born would be worse than if the child was simply not born. In any event widely available access to free and high quality birth control would help eliminate alot of the debate."

It all has to do with harm. If the embryo is a clump of neuroblasts then you cannot "harm" it.

9/15/2010 5:06:28 PM

So if someone assaults a pregnant lady and it results in the termination of the fetus, nothing beyond the basic assault charges should be done? You sidestepped the issue of dependence too. A baby is no more independent than a fetus nor is its brain fully developed. Even if we could determine the biological point at which full human conscious is established, why is that a good place to set the standard?

If its while inside the womb does it have a right to life over the mother? If its outside the womb does that mean between that point and birth its still just a clump of cells thats ok to toss?

9/15/2010 6:23:13 PM

Quote :

"She is piping the embryo nutrients, which is growing "on its own" with no real central planning."

so then you admit that she is not "constructing" the child. Lowes may supply the lumber for a house, but we wouldn't suggest that Lowes built the house.

9/15/2010 7:06:18 PM

Quote :

" It all has to do with harm. If the embryo is a clump of neuroblasts then you cannot "harm" it. "

im not saying you can harm a clump of cells, im saying the point of consciousness is not a valid stopping point. What im saying is even if it was possible to figure out when that is (its not) its not the only thing worth considering.

9/15/2010 7:25:15 PM

Quote :

"In the case of abortion it is maybe still murder, but it is justified because the hardship on the mother and the hardship the child would endure if born would be worse than if the child was simply not born."

Is that a road you want to go down?

If so, I demand MY right to decide who warrants murdering. You can bet that I'll go around bumping motherfuckers off like you read about.

9/15/2010 10:13:16 PM

Quote :

"What im saying is even if it was possible to figure out when that is (its not) its not the only thing worth considering."

As science improves we'll get better at setting bounds for this. Consciousness is a computational function/property of the brain. If you don't have the goods you can't cut the task.

Quote :

"so then you admit that she is not "constructing" the child. Lowes may supply the lumber for a house, but we wouldn't suggest that Lowes built the house."

You are extremely out of your shallows.

Quote :

"So if someone assaults a pregnant lady and it results in the termination of the fetus, nothing beyond the basic assault charges should be done? You sidestepped the issue of dependence too. A baby is no more independent than a fetus nor is its brain fully developed. Even if we could determine the biological point at which full human conscious is established, why is that a good place to set the standard? If its while inside the womb does it have a right to life over the mother? If its outside the womb does that mean between that point and birth its still just a clump of cells thats ok to toss?"

Dependence doesn't matter, mind does. Mind is the only thing that matters here.

Clearly there should be a separate legal category, as killing a woman's fetus is terminating months of emotional and physical preparation (assuming she wants it). It's squashing somebody's hopes/plans/etc and can lead to some serious emotional damage (if they want to bear the child to completion). I'm having a hard time imagining you can't figure this out yourself. Are you seriously this dense or are you just being mistar smarty pants on the internet?

[Edited on September 16, 2010 at 11:26 AM. Reason : .]

9/16/2010 11:15:57 AM

Quote :

"Clearly there should be a separate legal category, as killing a woman's fetus is terminating months of emotional and physical preparation (assuming she wants it). It's squashing somebody's hopes/plans/etc and can lead to some serious emotional damage (if they want to bear the child to completion). I'm having a hard time imagining you can't figure this out yourself. Are you seriously this dense or are you just being mistar smarty pants on the internet?"

The real question is what if she intentionally terminates it (which is what abortion is all about anyway). Assume she doesn't want it, assume it's squashing absolutely no plans. Then is all that matters is whether the fetus has a mind?

9/16/2010 11:38:10 AM

If it doesn't have a mind you cannot harm it. It seems like a pretty basic principle.

You can't harm a clump of neuroblasts. Depending on how organized neural activity is, it allows for (shockingly!) a wide array of cognitive functions. It could be the case that the developing child is developing sensitivity to pain, but it's still okay to terminate it because it doesn't have the ability to support HUMAN mind function.

This requires two angles: (1) the philosophical angle, asking ourselves what sorts of cognitive functionality is essential to human life; (2) the neurological angle, asking whether the developing child has the computational resources to support such functionality.

It does not require the third angle: (3) the theological/superstitious/anti-empirical attitude, where one asserts that minds are souls and that the zygote is "ensouled" when the daddy pumps one off in the mommy.

9/16/2010 11:42:35 AM

Quote :

"You are extremely out of your shallows."

I'm not the one who claimed that a woman is constructing a baby.

Quote :

"It could be the case that the developing child is developing sensitivity to pain, but it's still okay to terminate it because it doesn't have the ability to support HUMAN mind function."

So I can torture a dog because it doesn't have HUMAN mind function?

9/16/2010 4:12:04 PM

Quote :

"I'm not the one who claimed that a woman is constructing a baby."

She is in the same exact sense she's constructing skin cells, at this point. Cells do their own thing; what matters is that she's giving them what they need (or at least other cells in her body). No real difference here.

Quote :

"So I can torture a dog because it doesn't have HUMAN mind function?"

This is a separate question altogether from the one at hand. No you shouldn't torture a dog. But nobody's suggesting we "torture" a fetus either. Should the life of a dog be worth less than the life of a human? Certainly.

Is harming a dog the same degree of harm as harming a human? No.

Again the point is that this organism growing in the mother will develop a mind at some point. Up until that point (certain boundaries are clear), you are not harming anything worth worrying about. How else do you determine what harm is? You do realize that a mind requires hardware right?

[Edited on September 16, 2010 at 11:02 PM. Reason : .]

9/16/2010 11:01:22 PM

Quote :

"She is in the same exact sense she's constructing skin cells, at this point. "

Not at all true. Her own cells are doing the dividing. Her own cells are NOT guiding the child's development.

Quote :

"This is a separate question altogether from the one at hand."

Again, not at all. You are saying we can "harm the fetus" because it doesn't have a human mind. Logically, that should mean that we can harm anything that doesn't have a human mind.

9/16/2010 11:23:57 PM

Quote :

"Should the life of a dog be worth less than the life of a human? Certainly. Is harming a dog the same degree of harm as harming a human? No. "

why?

9/17/2010 12:51:15 AM

I think that topic might deserve a thread of its own. The more I learn about biology and genetics, the less inclined I am to argue human superiority from any scientific perspective. It's probably a philosophical debate.

9/17/2010 9:01:40 AM

Pro-Choice: Its not my right nor my place to tell some lady what can and cannot do to her body with regards to keeping or not keeping a kid.

However, if its my kid in there, then my opinion should be considered in the final decision.


Just because you got pregnant doesn't mean you deserve to be a parent. Witness the mother recently arrested for teaching her 2 year old how to smoke pot, and then videotaped it.

9/17/2010 9:09:40 AM

Quote :

"why?"

I explained this above. Just as human cognitive capacity is higher, our emotional capacity is higher as well. We can suffer more deeply and intensely than other animals. This seems to be a function of our ability to remember, plan, our self-image (as a persistent being), etc. At any rate it seems like capacity for suffering is well-correlated with the complexity of the neural machine in question (unsurprisingly). The computations have to be carried out on some medium. A cat or dog isn't going to hurt like a human is. You can deny that but I want to know on the basis of what.

Quote :

"Not at all true. Her own cells are doing the dividing. Her own cells are NOT guiding the child's development."

Nothing is guiding the child's development if you want to view it that way. I'm happy viewing it this way too, but the mother is certainly responsible for the growth of the child at that point.

Quote :

"Again, not at all. You are saying we can "harm the fetus" because it doesn't have a human mind. Logically, that should mean that we can harm anything that doesn't have a human mind."

I don't being harm in the sense of stepping on a toe. I mean harm in the sense of denying a human being its autonomy/rights. It may be a poor choice of terms so I'm willing to change the words I'm using, but I still mean the same thing. (No desire to get snagged on a waste-of-time semantic argument here.)

I guess my point is, even if the embryo is capable of feeling pain I still don't consider the abortion wrong as a virtue of that alone. In order for it to be considered murder in the conventional sense you need to be clear that what's being terminated is a human life, not a sub-human life.

Quote :

"I think that topic might deserve a thread of its own. The more I learn about biology and genetics, the less inclined I am to argue human superiority from any scientific perspective. It's probably a philosophical debate."

The only assumption that's required is that emotions require neural hardware, and that emotions are magnified as the number of neural connections increase and the interplays become more intricate.

9/17/2010 11:50:35 AM

Quote :

"Clearly there should be a separate legal category, as killing a woman's fetus is terminating months of emotional and physical preparation (assuming she wants it). It's squashing somebody's hopes/plans/etc and can lead to some serious emotional damage (if they want to bear the child to completion). I'm having a hard time imagining you can't figure this out yourself. Are you seriously this dense or are you just being mistar smarty pants on the internet? "

That was my point. The harm to the mother is more important than the status of the fetus in all cases. While the child is still in the womb its status as cells or human is irrelevent. The mother's status takes precedence. If the mother doesn't want the child, then she should be able to abort it regardless of the child's status. If the mother wants the child, it should be protected from harm by law.

9/17/2010 12:28:21 PM

Quote :

"That was my point. The harm to the mother is more important than the status of the fetus in all cases. While the child is still in the womb its status as cells or human is irrelevent. The mother's status takes precedence. If the mother doesn't want the child, then she should be able to abort it regardless of the child's status. If the mother wants the child, it should be protected from harm by law."

This is a sensible position and meshes with what I was saying earlier. When there's no harm to the mother, late term, however, I think the situation changes (due to the increase in sophistication in the fetus' brain).

9/17/2010 12:32:43 PM

yea i was trying to figure out the best way to word it and ^^ came out the best I think.

If the physical and mental harm of a late term abortion on the mother is the same as just finishing it out, i guess i might be ok with banning it in those cases. But i'm just not really a fan of forcing someone to carry through with something they really dont want to do. If the stress of the abortion is less than birth it should remain an option.

I would guess (but i dont know) that most late term abortions would be due to health risks rather than choice as most people would abort earlier. However its still going to come up on occasion and I think the best option is always to give people more choice rather than less.

9/17/2010 12:40:42 PM

Quote :

"However its still going to come up on occasion and I think the best option is always to give people more choice rather than less."

Even if the fetus has what we'd consider a human mind at the end of the pregnancy, if it's the mother's life or the fetus' then you must side with the mother, I agree. The fetus is worth less than the mother; it has had no experience, no memories, no plans, no hopes, and at that moment in time, no capacity for most of those things.

9/17/2010 12:44:04 PM

Quote :

"I guess my point is, even if the embryo is capable of feeling pain I still don't consider the abortion wrong as a virtue of that alone. In order for it to be considered murder in the conventional sense you need to be clear that what's being terminated is a human life, not a sub-human life."

I'm trying to remember who in the 30s and 40s also classified some life as "sub-human"...

9/17/2010 9:32:25 PM

Hmm, is it Ben-Gurion?

9/18/2010 9:27:17 AM

http://www.americanindependent.com/158282/wake-commissioners-will-vote-to-strike-abortion-coverage-from-county-health-plan

Quote :

"The new Republican majority on the Wake County Board of Commissioners will vote at its first meeting since the election to bar the county employees health plan from paying for abortions, board chairman Tony Gurley said Wednesday. The vote set for Dec. 6 marks a return to the abortion debate that erupted last February after county manager David Cooke unilaterally removed abortion coverage from the health plan. The board’s Democratic majority restored it in March over Republican objections. With Democrat Lindy Brown’s defeat by Republican Phil Matthews in the Nov. 2 election, Republicans have a 4-3 majority."

11/25/2010 4:43:46 PM

But I thought the elections were ALL about the economy....

11/25/2010 11:46:37 PM

^ they are... abortion is big business!

11/25/2010 11:56:02 PM

The new NC GOP speaker of the house in the last session alone sponsored several bills related to this topic. Here are just a few on the general assembly's website:

Ultrasound Before An Abortion Act:

Quote :

"The licensed physician performing the abortion shall inform the woman of the probable gestational age of the embryo or fetus, verified by an obstetric ultrasound, at the time the abortion is to be performed. The licensed physician performing the abortion shall: a. Perform an obstetric ultrasound on the woman; and b. After viewing the images to verify the gestational age, reproduce and review the images with the woman before the woman gives informed consent to have an abortion procedure performed."

Abortion-Woman's Right to Know:

Quote :

"AN ACT to require a twenty-four hour waiting period and the informed consent of a pregnant woman before an abortion may be performed."

11/26/2010 7:08:05 AM