You've pinpointed exactly what's wrong with it. It's an argument that essentially assumes its own conclusion.

Abortion arguements and arguements of the like never acheive anything, people end up passing off what could possibly be true as solid evidence and also their opinions as facts. Is a fetus a being? No one knows for sure, but they sure think they do.

Sigh... not again with this weak argument of yours. You're overlooking the real issue that pro-lifers have with abortion. The real issue has nothing to do with the loss the life of an embryo but that THE ISSUE OF ABORTION IS MURDER. Natural embryo is sad but has nothing to do with the morality of abortion so please stop using that argument because it's irrelevant.

You didn't do a very good job of addressing his argument. I read your post about six times and I still don't know what exactly you're getting at. Maybe if you tried to address his actual argument instead of shrugging it off?

your ignoring some kind of important things here... aside from just being an a**, were not just talking about the "potential" of a fetus growing into a human being. a fetus being born and growing ect... is the INEVITABLE outcome of a successful pregnancy. <<please note 'successful'

lets go ahead and equate natural embryo loss with S.I.D.S. or death from "old age" both of these things happen and we as a society have seemingly no control over them. simply because we cannot prevent all cases of sids or keep our bodies from eventually giving out does that mean that we should kill every infant and old person because... well they might die anyways...

I'm not necessarily agreeing with Wuss's argument, but nice straw man. Wuss is hardly arguing that we should kill every infant and old person because they might die anyway.

No, but he is arguing that WILLFUL MURDER is equivalent to NATURAL DEATH.

Yeah, I think I covered it already, except that as usual, you choose to ignore it. Excuse me for quoting myself.

It's not a strawperson. JM is not saying that Wuss thinks we should kill infants just because they are going to die, but that Wuss's analysis justifies killing a person because other similar persons are going to die anyway. No one says that Wuss' argument necessitates killing---just that it justifies killing.

I think the answer you guys are missing to JM's argument is that we do, in fact, care very deeply about preventing the death of old people and infants. So, the question is again raised: then why aren't abortion haters doing anything to stop the death of embryos? We try to stop the death of persons, and since we're not trying to stop the natural death of embryos, then maybe that indicates that even pro-life people do not truly consider embryos to be persons.

However, I think the answer to this is simply that it's not a fair burden to place on pro-life advocates. Just because they think embryos are persons does not mean they should be asked to do the impossible. Look, there is no way to prevent a week old embryo from being flushed out of the mother's womb before anyone knows that it is there. If it's impossible to prevent, then there's no moral responsibility to try to prevent it. You don't get moral credit for trying to do the impossible.

So, okay, a lot of embryos die. And yes, pro-life people are not doing anything about it. But it's because they can't do anything about it.

If Wuss' argument is that the impossibility of saving some embryos lives justifies killing other embryos, then I really don't think it's a strawperson to say that we can't stop the death of some old people, so we should kill others. It's pretty clear to me that the life of an embryo that has been in the womb and healthy for over a month is distinct from the life of an embryo that was flushed out after a week. That's why we don't justify killing an old person because another old person is going to die anyway: we recognize that the death or life of those two distinct individuals do not depend on one another.

BINGO.

How much money has been spent researching a cure for natural embryo loss? Probably none. It might not be impossible, but we won't know because pro-lifers don't put their money where their mouth is.

But actually, there is a 100% guaranteed way to prevent natural embryo loss, and thus prevent the holocaust of pregnancy...

DON'T HAVE SEX. If person-status begins at conception and 60-80 percent of those persons will die tragically due to natural embryo loss, then pro-lifers shouldn't procreate because there is a 60-80 chance that the pregnancy will lead to tragic death. Procreation is Russian-roulette for the unborn (for pro-lifers, at least).


Imagine a scenario: you want to have sex with your wife. And every time you have sex with her, someone puts a revolver loaded with 4 bullets (66% chance) to the head of an innocent baby, spins the cylinder, and pulls the trigger. You are telling me that you'd choose to have sex anyway? What the hell, guys. That's pretty damn selfish.

If abortion is murder, then you must acknowledge procreation is reckless endangerment of a child.

True, such a risk is necessary to continue humanity, however I'm not the one who believes in the ethical problem of the above scenario--pro-lifers are the ones who believe that. I don't think that God was cruel enough to put people in such a dilemma.


You don't think person-status begins at conception. That puts you at odds with a large percentage of pro-lifers.

Except I NEVER argued that natural embryo loss justifies abortion (or that natural death justifies murder).

I'm merely pointing out the screwed up priorities and contradictions of pro-lifers. They stick their heads in the sands so that they can act all self-righteous and outraged.

Nope. What I'm saying is that MURDER (abortion in the pro-life view) is equivalent to waving a loaded gun around and saying oops I didn't mean to kill you (procreation in the pro-life view). Or maybe MURDER (again, abortion) is equivalent to WATCHING SOMEONE DIE (natural embryo loss) and not doing ANYTHING TO HELP except wringing your hands and talking about how sad it is.

:saddowns:

I don't think Wuss's argument is about what we should do or be able to do. If I understand him right, he's calling into question the sincerity of abortion opponents by pointing out that they rail against abortion but don't do anything about natural embryo loss -- for example, try to find a cure for it.

Of course not, Darth_Alran said that. I'm not arguing against JM at all.

Nah, it's not an ethical dilemma at all. When you're deciding to have sex, you don't have an ethical obligation to a possible future person. I mean, if we wanted to get really ridiculous, we could say that if a couple chooses to not have sex, that they are in effect murdering the baby that would have been produced as part of that act. It's pretty clear that morality does not extend to the set of all possible persons.

When you have sex, you are therefore not recklessly endangering the life of a person.

When the embryo is actually there, and you choose to have an abortion, you are ending the life of a person (or in my view, a morally significant potential person).




True, but this is why I get the fun of being ideologically against abortion (although I am not categorically opposed to it...) while also being for assisted suicide of the terminally ill. It's like having cake and eating it.




It's not completely contradictory. But I suppose it depends on the pro-lifer. I could formulate a pro-life stance based on Kant's categorical imperative that is against abortion but also does not blame the parents for naturally dead embryos. That would be really lame though. I'm not that much of a loser, I have to prepare for my fantasy basketball drafts. Ok, so that makes me a loser too. But I'm at work, so I should probably get back to what I was doing.

I don't doubt that some pro-lifers are hypocrites. But there are plenty of consistent stances that you can take.

My bad!

ok here we are not even talking about pregnancies... but un-implanted embryos. that would have been a useful tidbit. so i suppose i probably should have read wuss' link before commenting

for me this creates an entirely different situation. i am opposed to abortion because as i stated before. the inevitable outcome of a successful pregnancy is a head bobbling crying pooping baby.

i honestly dont think most right to lifers even know about what wuss was referring to. and it seems like more of a GOTCHA argument, than a real attempt to open a dialog.

I still don't see any screwed up priorities.

And excuse me for making a moral distinction between not saving someone the mother didn't even know existed and purposefully ending someone's life.

And, if you think research isn't being done on embryo implantation, you're a fool. For every girl going and getting an abortion, there's another one who desperately wants to get pregnant and can't. The fertility industry as been studying the process of embryo implantation for a very long time, and they've come quite far. So far that now we have accidental septuplets. Unfortunately, there's still nothing at all we can do about an embryo that doesn't implant. It has that one shot; even if we stood under the mother with a petri dish, by time it flushed out it'd already be dead.

It's all asian stupid, that was the point.

I don't think that any government should have the right to tell a human what they can or can't do with their body or anything that resides within. This applies to what foods we eat, what drugs we take or whether or not we have abortions. I realize that this leaves open various issues that upset people (obesity, addiction, retardation, etc.) but these are simply a few of the unfortunate circumstances that result from freedom. I think that too many people are focusing on abortion. We should instead focus on a safe, economical way that doctors can perform a reversible procedure of some sort at birth that prevents a human from becoming pregnant. This decision would be left in the hands of the parents. Once the human has reached a time in their life when they're ready to have children, they can simply reverse the procedure. I don't know how feasible such a thing is. I'm no scientist.

For those of you that are religious, it's unfortunate that your god didn't provide humans with an alternative to our form of producing offspring. You would think that a being so great could have come up with something less problematic.

the only way such surgery would be feasible if it wasnt done until said children reached puberty. vasectomies are entirely reversible -- it even happens accidentally sometimes.

theres the solution, when a boy hits puberty, snip his balls, and then no girls get pregnant. ta daa!

You don't think the government has a right to tell us what to do with our bodies... but you want the government to temporarily sterilize us all?

Man alive, I don't know why but this made me laugh for minutes on end...too true too true.

They're working on a pill that makes the waggie tail on sperm not wag anymore. So you basically blow a load of dead tad poles.

The problem is they can't decide if this will also make your heart stop beating as a result.

I was gonna post the burnsauce emote but it's gone

Just in case you missed it the first time...