after a thorough cleaning it won't need it

I am still pissed off something fierce that with all the issues plaguing California, the most money spent by a long shot was the Prop 8 campaign. Making sure same-sex couples can't marry was TOP PRIORITY in the 2008 election.

California is the most epic fail state of the union. I don't want to be a state anymore. Can we be a federal territory like Guam, or Puerto Rico?

It's crucial that them queers can't marry and therefore be happy.

You have to admit, allowing same sex marriage would be pretty gay.

Haha, oh Kroko you still make me laugh my darling

Shut the **** up, kroko. You homo.

You're not going to find many people on either side of the debate that will tell you that "killing innocent children" is a good thing. There are several questions that one must ask themselves when considering this issue. When does human life begin? I put emphasis on the word human because that's really what's important here. I don't think that we're as concerned about other forms of life within our bodies or we'd all be committing mass-murder every time we used a condom or masturbated. There are people that believe that life begins at conception & there are people that believe that it begins later. Who is qualified to make such a determination? Should it be a philosophical or religious decision or should it be a scientific one? If it's determined by both sides that life begins at conception, does the "right" of an unborn child override the "right" of the host? How do we define human? Is it when something has developed physical human characteristics? Do we compare these characteristics to those of other species' as well? Should we take pain & suffering in to consideration? Does this organism feel pain or suffer & at which stage does this occur? Does the pain & suffering of an unborn child override the pain & suffering of the host? This is just the tip of the iceberg. These are the types of things that must be considered when answering my initial question & this is what I'd like to know. I'm curious to see how various people answer these types of questions & how they choose to justify those answers.


Do you define "discrimination" only by what's considered by law? Why or why not? Do you consider "sexism" to be a valid form of discrimination? Why or why not? I can only assume that you don't consider sexism to be a valid form of discrimination. I'm not personally interested in whether or not the law recognizes specific forms of discrimination. After all, we attempted to commit genocide on Native Americans & we justified slavery for quite some time.


Indeed. Maybe you should ask them because they're currently doing just that (they fail to recognize non-heterosexual marriages). Why does the government have to decide that everyone can marry as long as they're heterosexual? The federal government isn't permitted to recognize the marriage of non-heterosexual humans because of the Defense of Marriage Act. Why would the federal government not recognize the marriage of a couple that their own state recognizes?

This question demonstrates your position so well. You think the fetus has no rights, and that is evident in your phrasing. If we look at the beginning of that sentence,
we see that what you are actually asking is 'does the right of ONE PERSON override the right of ANOTHER PERSON', and the answer is a resounding NO. But, here's where you get it wrong. The right of the mother also does not override the right of the child. If you actually cared about human rights, AND you believed life started at conception, you could not put either above the other. While it's unfortunate when a woman's pregnancy causes her to suffer, nine months of inconvenience is a much smaller price than death; I will go with the position that does not involve killing an innocent person.

I'de do a girl in the butt in a heartbeat..oh wait..we've switched topics

Lets go through all the other questions too, then.



I believe it is conception, but I have no means to prove it. It depends greatly on what you define as human life. Some people believe it's when the brain begins to function, and I understand their argument. I can't know, so I err on the side of caution.

A deity. By which, I mean no one.

I don't like how you've put philosophy and religion together; but it should clearly be both. The issue is a moral one; morality must be the center of the argument. If science can determine the answer, it will make everything much simpler; but I don't believe it can. Science doesn't have ways to deal with questions such as when a bundle of cells goes from being a mass of cells to a baby.

This is the simplest question you asked. If it has human DNA, it's human in the biological sense. If it's a thinking, sentient being, it's human in the philosophical sense. We only have to worry about the first sense.

Of course. Also, there's no reason to make a distinction in this case. Barring sexual fetishes, pain IS suffering.

It would be fairly easy to determine when the neural pathways that sense pain form. And a day-old infant can be distressed; it's foolish to assume that the ability to feel distress appears at the moment of birth.

This is the same question as the one I answered in the previous post.

But there's no hard set rule that defines when a clump of cells first gets to be called a person.

[instaposted with JM's response]

Dumbass, read the post : The entire argument is postulated on the assumption that we had already determined that life began at conception.

No ****, but it's still an assumption. People are trying to pass laws on an assumption that is largely based on religious views.

I guess I support gay sex marriage more than same sex marriage :/

To "leave the federal government out of it" is to allow the states to discriminate at will.

This! Haha..

Now I'm ashamed of myself.

Not to mention the fact that the federal government is already involved, firmly on the anti-gay marriage side.

:saddowns:

dude

i :XD:'d

I'm trying to figure out how someone can think that a fetus has rights & if anyone that's non-religious also feels that human life begins at conception.


Why not? It seems rather dangerous to me (like a foot-in-the-door technique) to allow the government to decide what can & can't be done with ones body. The same type of argument could be made in support of assisted suicide. Many Christians in Canada were very upset in 2006 when a 14 year-old girl received a court-mandated blood transfusion.


I don't understand why we as a society should take pain in to consideration when dealing with a human fetus when we're so willing to overlook pain when it comes to other species of animals (e.g. the meat that we eat). We know, through science, that the pain that many animals feel is very similar, if not identical to the pain in which other animals feel. I suspect that our society is able to overlook this hypocrisy by believing that we're something more than an animal.

I think that your other answers all make sense when taking your religion in to consideration. Thanks for answering. I'm curious to hear from others as well, on both sides of the issue.

When taking my religion into consideration? And what religion is that?

But the woman ISN'T deciding what to do with her body. She's deciding what to do with the CHILD'S body.

Why wouldn't it have rights? How can you think that it doesn't?

That's simple. Animals aren't human. Excuse me for caring more about my own species.

Pigs are smarter than fetuses.

But why not judge by potential intelligence rather than current? It's all so subjective.

So when does a human being have rights? When it's premature? That's a fuzzy line, it's debatable what the limit is there. How about when the baby's born? What's the difference there? The baby still can't live on its own, just like the fetus. When the kid starts to speak? When they start going to school?

Seriously, I don't think the matter is so much if a fetus has rights, but rather that someone wants to say "THIS one has rights because it lived a day longer than THIS one!".

Welcome to drawing arbitrary but necessary lines in the sand: how the law has to work.

You stated that you believed in a deity. I assume that you belong to a particular religion unless you're a Deist. If I'm forced to take a guess, I would assume it's one of the mono-theistic religions. It doesn't really matter which religion if my suspicion is correct because the arguments in each are essentially the same. I suppose that a better way for me to phrase my statement would be that "I think that your other answers all make sense when considering the fact that you're religious". I don't really see why you're getting so defensive. I'm not really interested in the religious aspect of the debate (I myself was a fundamentalist Christian for the first 18-20 years of my life & am quite familiar with that side of things). I'm more interested in how people justify their positions without using their religious document(s).


I'm certain that pregnancy has an effect on a woman's body (short-term & long-term). Therefore a woman could choose to terminate a pregnancy based on something as simple as not wanting to go through with the process. This could be for anything from inconvenience to fear of short-term & long-term effects to fear of maternal mortality (the maternal mortality rate in this country is far higher than that of maternal abortion mortality).

I'm also curious to read what you think of condoms, contraception (including emergency contraception or "the morning after pill") & cases of rape (an obvious minority of cases but generally brings out the hypocrisy of the matter).


It wouldn't have rights because if we gave it rights, we'd be introducing the possibility of violating the hosts rights. I think that I would rather side with a living, breathing, human being than a fetus that may or may not yet be human & may not survive. It's an unfortunate situation that your god (if you're religious) or evolution (if you're religious or not) has put us in.

Why don't sperm have rights? Because you have to draw a line somewhere. I believe that the logical place to draw a line is where the government doesn't tell a woman what she can or can't do with her body.


Yet isn't pain, pain? If we're going to take the pain of our species in to consideration (I don't think that we should for the very reason that I'm pointing out) then shouldn't we also take the pain of other species in to consideration as well?


Yet we know that they're still able to feel pain much as our species feels pain. Let's also not overlook the fact that other primates are almost if not as intelligent as children of the same age. Surely you don't think that we should start eating children?

That's exactly the problem, and the most fair solution is conception. After all, something that literally /doesn't exist/ cannot have rights, thus removing all the moral implications from the situation.

...but then you have to worry about the ethical & moral implications of whether or not we can tell a woman what she can & can't do with her body, thus not removing the ethical & moral implications.

I would also like to add that I would try my best to prevent my wife from ever getting an abortion (not that she's the type of person that would do so in the first place). I don't like the idea of it being a casual decision, even if that eventually turns out to be the case, but at the same time I don't like the alternative even more.

No I didn't. I'm not religious. At all. And I do not believe in a deity.


Contraception is just fine. I frown at the morning-after pill. Abortion in cases of rape should be illegal.



I think I already made this argument. Excuse me for quoting myself.





No, we should not. We are human, they are not. If they don't like, they can evolve language and beg us to stop. In short : **** them. Humans come first.

The confusion exists only in your mind. The problem, the source of this entire debate, is that you do not think the unborn is a person. Illegalizing abortion is not telling a woman what she cannot do with her body; it is telling her what she cannot do with her child's body. No form of murder should be legal. There is nothing that can make it right to kill the child; no amount of suffering by the mother can outweigh the child's death. It is unfortunate when the woman suffers, but there is no moral quandary : The choice is between two bad options, and it is clear which is worse.

This brings me to the second problem with your way of thinking. You worry about the woman suffering; why? What is special about the woman, that makes her more valuable than the child?

I see. I think I misunderstood the above statement. My apologies for the confusion. That really makes this much more interesting. If you're not religious then you must know that life can't possibly begin at conception (unless I'm to assume that you don't mean in a strict sense).


I think that's only one of many issues. I'm actually less concerned with a fetus that may or may not survive than I am with the rights of the mother who bares it.


If a woman's only reason for getting an abortion is physical it is. There are privacy issues that must be taken in to consideration as well.


I'm assuming that we're only referring to the murder of our own species & that you're not referring to the strict definition of the word ("unlawful killing").


While I'm concerned with the suffering of people after they're born, my reasons have little to do with suffering. They have more to do with women's rights. I suppose that an already born human is more "valuable" than a human fetus because there's no guarantee that the fetus will survive.

This whole thing reminds me of Ripley's predicament in Alien 3.

We already do that in other cases. You aren't allowed to commit suicide for instance, in any manner. It's not without precedent and thus not as much of a reach as potentially killing a person off.

It's not like I don't understand the predicament, I think it's just a reality that has to be accepted. It's terribly not fair to the mother if she was forced into it, but it's even less so for the potential child.

Another analogy is how we put the responsibility of children on the parent. If a parent doesn't take care of a child, that's against the law. Even if the parent didn't want the child, as long as the child is custody of that parent, they're responsible.

I think that the only case where the mother should be allowed a choice is when it provides a serious health risk to the mother (above and beyond the usual pregnancy/birth). If any pre-existing condition or development with the child endangers the mother, then the mother can choose her life or the child's.





There's no guarantee a baby will survive either. As if I need to explain that, but case in point: SIDS.


Of course, I also believe that women should be the only ones allowed to vote on the acceptance of such a law, since they'd be the only ones truly affected. :/

CM, are you saying the bank account of a man married to a stay at home mom is not affected by a child?

What a silly argument. It is amazing that they were able to find contradictions to a universal statement! I am flabbergasted by the mere possibility! Would you prefer 'life begins at the formation of an embryo'? It seems to cover all those possibilities - twins; no, of course they don't have the same life. They just share the very beggining of their lives! Chimeras; no, life wasn't destroyed. It was just combined. Cloning; look, there's an embryo. Or, how about this : Lets follow that same tactic in the other direction, and look at what all the definitions of Conception have in common - Creation. So what is being created? (Hint : Life.)

The rest of that article has nothing to do with any argument I've made, so I'll ignore it, except for the bit about zygotes that don't implant, because I find that argument particularly stupid and annoying. To that all I have to say is this : If a bunch of people were hitting you, would it be alright for me to stab you?

What? Were you agreeing with me?

I'm referring to one human killing another in any way for any reason. And remember that justified does not equal right; or do I have to explain how justification does not make an act any less wrong?

I try to avoid valuing one person over another. It is not my place to choose which people are deserving of life and which are not.

To be fair, JM, you do have a remarkably sweet *** :/

I'm not sure what to make of that.

How best to explain it... hmm. JM's *** is very sweet. It is well-muscled, but still contains, to put it colloquially, enough cushion for the pushin', it is well proportioned, smooth as a baby's, it inspires a lust in those who are apt to feel lusty about sweet things, it could cause one's hand to quiver in anticipation of even the slightest grazing touch.

All I'm saying is that it's fairly clear why the gays are after it