Please don’t confuse pro-abortion with pro-choice ._. there is a huge difference between the two, and it’s kind of insulting when you mesh them together like that.
Also, yes, you have a point. But since my argument isn’t based solely on those serious cases, your point is moot. You are also excluding the percentage of women who get abortions because dispite using contraception, pregnancy happened. They tried their best to have protective sex, but accidents happen because contraceptives aren’t full-proof. Do you think they shouldn’t count because they still don’t have a medical condition or weren’t raped?
I think that it is a “life” as soon as it reaches the embryonic stage, but then even bacteria and cancer have “life”. “Life” doesn’t concern me as much as “conciousness”. Abortions that happen after the fetal stage tend to irk me. Abortions beyond the second and third trimester upset me unless the mother developed a serious medical condition or some other life-changing factor has appeared.
Seriously people, discuss whether or not a fetus is living. That’s the assumption everything hinges on. Everything else is irrelevant.
First, yea, I totally misread the last post, sorry about that xD…
Anyway, down to buisness. I completely disagree that the fetus “right to life” trumps the womans “right to choose”. I find this logic completely irrational. The fetus has no conciousness, comprehensible thought or any idea at all of what is going on. It doesn’t think, it doesn’t feel, and is 100% dependent on the mother carrying it. It is literally attached to her, sharing her body, her food, nutrients, pretty much everything but her pain. Whereas the mother is a concious human being with thoughts, feelings (both physical and mental), a very good idea of what is going on, and get this: her right to life, which includes her right to terminate pregnancy in favor of maintaining the life she currently has. It’s her life, her choice. And until that fetus is no longer 100% dependent on her body and hers alone, that life is connected to her and thus belongs to her.
As for the second part, of course a fetus is alive. Anyone who claims otherwise is in serious denial or is just plain stupid. But like I said to Chameleon, even bacteria and cancer are alive. It sounds like the main argument seems to be concerning the idea of “potential” life, which I think is complete bull. Every living being has “potential” life. Hell, I have “potential” life tomorrow. And the next day, and the next day. Because what am I doing? Living. And what does each day have? Potential, because I could die at any given minute. Most likely at the hands of, guess what? Another human being.
I guess a better way to put it is when does a fetus become a human? Sure it’s living, but as you said, when does it gain the rights that we as humans have? You can argue that they’re completely dependent on their mother, but someone else can point out that so is an infant in many respects. A child’s independence and humanity over time is a spectrum, and as such it’s really hard to define what qualifies as human and what qualifies as organic mass. For everyone it’s going to be different, and it’s hard to say one’s clearly right over another. You clearly feel a fetus isn’t a human until fairly late in a pregnancy, and that’s fine, but others don’t, and every argument you make is going to be subjective. Sure, it’s based on facts, but your (and all arguments in this debate) draw conclusions of their own that are impossible to prove, and are really nothing more than opinion.
I think you misunderstand what I was saying about potential. I was simply trying to stay neutral in the abortion debate itself. I think you can agree that even though you don’t think a fetus is an independent human worthy of its own rights, it’s something entirely closer to a human than an egg sitting in the same woman’s ovaries. It represents an entirely different potential in that, as long as it’s nurtured, it will progress into a human child without any other assistance. It has everything it needs besides the sustenance we rely on ourselves, and that is significant. It doesn’t necessarily make it human, but it makes it markedly different than an egg. That, I feel, is much less debatable. Any woman who’s been pregnant can tell you about the maternal instinct inherent in every woman that comes out. Our unconscious pysche recognizes the importance of it.
I then put “a life” on the other end of the slash for people who believe a fetus is a human the moment it exists.
I think we’ll all agree that at the point it is now a human, the mother has no right to terminate its life (we can all agree that a newborn child is a human with rights, and no mother has the right to kill it). At the same time, before anything that is a human, we all agree the mother has the right to prevent things from progressing (we can all agree the woman has a right to use a condom to prevent sperm from reaching her eggs). Defining where the two meet is the real argument, and it’s difficult because there’s no objective way to approach it.