You are missing the point. You don’t have to carry it to term, but you also don’t have to kill it when it’s viable. Take it out and keep it alive, put it into an incubator and then place it for adoption or to the appropriate state institution. What exactly is the problem here?

“I’m assuming that Who meant to write “Silent Scream,” a film which manages to get virtually every relevant fact of fetal development AND the abortion process wrong. It’s also odd that Who doesn’t think there’s such a thing as a clearly medically necessary abortion or pro-lifers who oppose such things. As I said, these aren’t rational people. They’re not even particularly bright.

As for taking the law hostage, the pro-life movement and its various vigilantes have attempted all kinds of back-door measures to inflict their superstitions on other people. Phill Kline comes to mind.

Finally, having helped my wife through a protracted and painful series of complications after delivery, if I thought for one moment that someone had inflicted them on her from the relative safety of the law, thus abused, then yes: I would kill that person.

Now you know.”

Being a married man I sympathize with the protectiveness of one’s wife. Since,in moff’s follow-up, above, he indicates that he considers murder justifiable for inflicting suffering I can only assume then we know where he stands on issues usch as capital punishment (which I myself oppose FWIW).

The rest though is pretty thin gruel. Getting past moff’s obsession with immaculately typed text (although to be fair, he did get the referenced title right, even if he demagogued the content to an unrecognizable extent – Nathanson’s film, which I’ve seen – is an ultrasound of an abortion. If I remember correctly, the film was the product of Nathason’s own observations as a practicing abortionist – the complaints moff argues are strangely similar to those offered at the time by Planned Parenthood, a group with no small stake in the outcome), he manages to twist my phrase “if the scenario Moff draws is a life endangerment one (which is difficult to tell as such cases vary in severity) no pro-lifers I know of are directly opposed to the application of abortion” into “It’s also odd that Who doesn’t think there’s such a thing as a clearly medically necessary abortion or pro-lifers who oppose such things.” Perhaps this is a simple case of not recognizing that the difficulty I allude to is not one of medical cases but of his own example of hydrocephaly, to which the “medically necessary” outcome depends on the severity of the case. To be fair, a second reading of his phrase could call for the most extreme example of such cases, but an equally fair reading of my own phrase should allow that not only do most pro-lifers recognize the potential, few, if any (I am open to the possibility though unfamiliar with absolutists in this case) suggest prohibitions against abortions in cases where the mother’s life is endangered.

There is some debate about how certain such determinations are. I’m open to the strong possibility of “clearly medically necessary” examples but there are physicians who disagree. I don’t think pointing that fact out in any way diminishes the acceptance of a “life of the mother” exemption, especially when such detrminations are made rigorously and in the patient-doctor relationship. The fact stands that the exemption is the policy recommendation of the vast majority of pro-lifers.

Alternatives to partial-birth have served as the response to that particular thorny issue, and this is probably one of the things moff refers to when he references “back doors”, but the relative, comparative safety of such procedures is not an easy or simple fact to establish especially when weighed against the physical cruelty of the procedure to the fetus. The availability of more “humane” methods to the fetus indicate that such life exemptions are still protected, even with a general ban on partial-birth procedures.

Given moff’s clearly sincere anger and vehemence regarding suffering, perhaps it’s not too much to ask to suggest that the suffering of one’s own child, even though doomed, be considered in this context.

“The fetus is unique only in an attenuated and nonmoral sense: its DNA. What makes organisms unique in a moral sense is their traits and experiences. Fetuses have neither: no thoughts, no feelings, no sensations of any complexity. They simply don’t have the neurophysiology for them. And of course they’re not independent in any sense, as others have pointed out above.”

Certain types of severely handicapped people might fall into similar categories, yet legally they are regularly regarded as unique human beings with protection under the law. The distinctions you wish to make are, at the very least from the point of uniqueness, disingenuous. Contending that uniqueness is primarily a moral category is a clever (and familiar) way of muddying the discussion, but legal determinations of rights under the law (and in many philosophical systems) make little use of individualized feelings or experiences. The dangers of such subjectivities are historically plentiful. One group of people decides the others’ experiences, feelings, or moral uniqueness is inadequate to consider them human. The response is extermination.

In the end though, a human at the very beginning of their life is still a human, and even identical twin zygotes are unique in terms of experience at a primary (one might say existential) level. Their level of awareness may not be high (and it is dangerous to rest on such arguments given the relative inability of science to make comprehensive and consensus decalrations on the subject of self-awareness regarding early human life) but their uniqueness is unquestionable. Affixing the idea of “moral”ness to the concept only alters it in a subjective and inconclusive way.

Geo also writes:

“This is either obtuse or disingenuous. Until quite recently (ie, a couple of centuries ago), both abortion and “adultery, fornication, etc” were severely sanctioned, legally and extra-legally, by religious traditionalists. That is precisely the state of affairs whose passing many if not most “pro-life forces” lament and whose reestablishment they ardently desire.”

I’d argue that it’s geo who’s being disingenuous here. Attempting to tie the current philosophy and activism of religious traditionalists to a few centuries ago is a bit silly. About as silly as assuming that pro-lifers (not all of whom are religious traditionalists, though I’m comfortable with the lable myself) harbor secret laments regarding legal prohibition and punishments regarding such issues, despite the complete absence of policy prescrptions or even rhetoric to reintroduce them. Geo wants to tell you what all (or most, to be fair) pro-lifers are really like, based on his own assumptions, regardless of whether real-life bears out those ideas.

Perhaps geo is conflating moral sanction with legal sanction. This too happens a great deal when people assume that because certain religions and moral perspectives find behaviors such as adultery, fornication, etc. objectionable (or to be more accurate, harmful to human society and individuals for various reasons) that they automatically seek legal prohibitions and punishments to go with them. Given human nature and history, I will concede that there are probably (certainly even) people of such a nature, but I’ve met very few of them and cannot recall any organized or even private pro-lifers who advocate such views.

In a fair and rigorous argument, it makes little since to play with such straw men (though I understand the temptation), since they exist to demonize the opposition rather than engage it.

“most Japanese are racist”

You know Brett, a model for a racist and sexist foreigner in japan, is the white man who tells the Japanese girls that he is soooo much less racist and sexist than the Japanese boys…

And your evidence for this dubious proposition is?

And I’d guess you’re full of shit.

I can easily imagine parents who would take their child marrying an Asian-American in stride, but would have an absolute shit-fit over their child marrying an African-American. By your lights, those people aren’t racist. Hell, by your lights, they’re probably just sensible.

It’s been fun, as always.

As for taking the law hostage, the pro-life movement and its various vigilantes have attempted all kinds of back-door measures to inflict their superstitions on other people. Phill Kline comes to mind.

Finally, having helped my wife through a protracted and painful series of complications after delivery, if I thought for one moment that someone had inflicted them on her from the relative safety of the law, thus abused, then yes: I would kill that person.

Now you know.
.

In my ideal world the clause of the Constitution prohibiting ex post facto laws would be much more seriously enforced than is presently the case, so, no “rounding up”.

“What’s the penalty for the woman who has a “medically unnecessary” abortion?” Nothing, if the fetus wasn’t viable to begin with.

If a fetus IS viable already, and the abortion isn’t medically necessary, then let’s be clear about this: The decision to abort isn’t a decision to end a pregancy. THAT could be done with a live birth. It’s a decision to KILL. And, yes, should be legally sanctioned, the same as if she did it five minutes after giving birth. There’s no good reason premeditated infanticide should be tolerated, and that’s all the elective abortion of a viable fetus is: Infanticide.

And as long as we’re here, just out of curiosity: In your perfect world, once the right laws and policies are in place, does the government go retroactive and start rounding up women who had abortions in the past, and charging them with pre-meditated murder? If not, why not? You can’t possibly argue for a statute of limitations in cases of cold-blooded killing.

Ah hell, why am I bothering? I just read your comment in 59 and was reminded how unfathomably dense and/or fundamentally dishonest you really are. Either you honestly believe that the fact that you’re married to an Asian woman somehow magically insulates you from any accusations of racism, in which case you’re an idiot, or you don’t believe it but you think you can use it as a convenient smokescreen, in which case you’re a creep. Either way, you’re not worth bothering with.

The fetus is unique only in an attenuated and nonmoral sense: its DNA. What makes organisms unique in a moral sense is their traits and experiences. Fetuses have neither: no thoughts, no feelings, no sensations of any complexity. They simply don’t have the neurophysiology for them. And of course they’re not independent in any sense, as others have pointed out above.

who (54): I also don’t recall proposed laws offering criminal penalties for adultery, fornication, etc. being offered by the pro-life forces.

This is either obtuse or disingenuous. Until quite recently (ie, a couple of centuries ago), both abortion and “adultery, fornication, etc” were severely sanctioned, legally and extra-legally, by religious traditionalists. That is precisely the state of affairs whose passing many if not most “pro-life forces” lament and whose reestablishment they ardently desire.

Anyway, I’ll have to confess to my wife tonight that I’m a racist; I’m sure she’ll get a laugh out of it, since we’re an inter-racial couple.

I just love the way so many ‘liberals’ assume that if you don’t completely agree with them, you must 100% conform to some nasty stereotype, incorporating all sorts of traits you evince no trace of. Hell, even if it requires throwing out most of the evidence they have about you.

There’s a technical term for this: Bigotry.