The Pseudo-Logic of Heartbeat Bills

[Lummy]

It is murder and you support it. You can come up with argument but the fact is that you support legalized murder.It is a biological fact. The baby doesn't have the same DNA as the mother, Everything else about her does, including cancer.

Morals are not changed to fit convenience. Your post is cartoon =like.

Until the baby can survive outside the mother, it isn't a developed to the point I would call it human. After that, I agree with you --that it is murder.

The bizarre aspect of this is that for it to get this far, the woman -- or girl, probably -- went through sex education at school, maybe through some other venue, had counseling on birth control, probably had access to free birth control and day-after remedies, and still got pregnant. So you could make a case that she must have wanted to have an abortion over all else as a matter of choice.

And that would be premeditated murder at some point.

[Lummy]

I have never advocated for either side, by the way. People have asked for my opinion and I've given it. That is not advocacy. It is a peculiar tradition of a lot of Christians to tell everyone else what is and what is not moral, how they should and should not behave, in all manner of making everyone else in their own image, and I have a problem with that.

[Cletus]

Until the baby can survive outside the mother, it isn't a developed to the point I would call it human.

What would you call it?

[Cletus]

My religion goes by when the first breath occurs, which makes a lot of sense medically/biologically. Respiratory depression, arrest or prolonged apnea ultimately stops life or can lead to brain death. The heart, while neat, requires respiration. The body requires oxygen and CO₂. It's really more essential than the actual organs. Nothing on earth would really be living without the process or a similar process. This seems like a much cleaner way of determining life, and I think the Jewish people were onto something when they/we came up with that gem.

If the fetus is fed oxygen through the umbilical cord, how is that different from being on a respirator?

[IMPress Polly]

My religion goes by when the first breath occurs, which makes a lot of sense medically/biologically. Respiratory depression, arrest or prolonged apnea ultimately stops life or can lead to brain death. The heart, while neat, requires respiration. The body requires oxygen and CO₂. It's really more essential than the actual organs. Nothing on earth would really be living without the process or a similar process. This seems like a much cleaner way of determining life, and I think the Jewish people were onto something when they/we came up with that gem.

It is an interesting perspective, at any rate. Might be interesting to hear arguments about what the law or legal "rights" should be if a child is considered part of the mother until the first breath. If a mother is basically acting as nature's life support, which she is, does that impact her options or rights?

That's certainly an interesting argument! However, it is not a medical one. In a strictly medical sense, of course an embryo or a fetus is technically alive. That's not disputed by medical science today. The question most of us are debating here accordingly is instead whether that type of existence constitutes personhood. (And yes, there IS a difference: medical science refers to embryos and fetuses as embryos and fetuses, not "unborn babies", for example. "Unborn baby" is not a medical term.) I argue that it doesn't because every experience of value to us is consequential of birth. I mean, for example, if one had to choose between death and living the rest of their life in say a vegetative state, unable to have such basic human experiences as the ability to perceive the world around them or form relationships anymore, which would they choose? It probably wouldn't be seen to make a difference, frankly. One might just as well be dead for all practical purposes. No one actually wants to live like that. You see what I'm saying? Every experience of value to human beings is made possible by birth.

The essential functional difference between a grown individual in a coma and an embryo or a fetus is that the latter's form of life support is itself a living being, indisputably a person, with a will and needs of their own; a difference which I feel tips the scales of morality in favor of choice.

[DGUtley]

Life begins at conception.

[IMPress Polly]

Are any of our conservative members going to actually engage with the points that I have made about the distinction between life and personhood or just endlessly recycle the same statements about the point at which life semantically begins?

[Chris]

That's certainly an interesting argument! However, it is not a medical one. In a strictly medical sense, of course an embryo or a fetus is technically alive. That's not disputed by medical science today. The question most of us are debating here accordingly is instead whether that type of existence constitutes personhood. (And yes, there IS a difference: medical science refers to embryos and fetuses as embryos and fetuses, not "unborn babies", for example. "Unborn baby" is not a medical term.) I argue that it doesn't because every experience of value to us is consequential of birth. I mean, for example, if one had to choose between death and living the rest of their life in say a vegetative state, unable to have such basic human experiences as the ability to perceive the world around them or form relationships anymore, which would they choose? It probably wouldn't be seen to make a difference, frankly. One might just as well be dead for all practical purposes. No one actually wants to live like that. You see what I'm saying? Every experience of value to human beings is made possible by birth.

The essential functional difference between a grown individual in a coma and an embryo or a fetus is that the latter's form of life support is itself a living being, indisputably a person, with a will and needs of their own; a difference which I feel tips the scales of morality in favor of choice.

The personhood argument was first argued during the Progressive Era in an effort to use eugenics to eliminate undesirables from society. The Nazis later borrowed those ideas as justification for the Holocaust. You can read about that in, for example, The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics.

The personhood argument then returned in the 70s in defense of abortion. It is only recently, and regrettably, that a few on the right have picked it up to beat the left at their own game.

[Chris]

Are any of our conservative members going to actually engage with the points that I have made about the distinction between life and personhood or just endlessly recycle the same statements about the point at which life semantically begins?

It's been addressed, Polly. Life and when it begins is an objective, scientific, empirical question--there is no semantics involved. Personhood is a subjective, unscientific, emotional question--it is all semantics in assigning value to human life.

[Cletus]

Are any of our conservative members going to actually engage with the points that I have made about the distinction between life and personhood or just endlessly recycle the same statements about the point at which life semantically begins?

Your "points" are absurd, so probably not. In 1973, when Roe was decided, Justice Blackmun made it clear in his opinion, that "“If this suggestion of personhood is established, [Roe’s] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment.”

If you want to keep killing kids, you may want to leave the "personhood" issue out of the discussion.