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<h1 style="font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:14px; color:#046716">Evolution - the <em>Missing Link</em> to Abortion </h1>
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<p>Thirty-five years ago this week, America joined the ranks of nations engaging in the genocide of its own people. In 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court launched an all-out assault, this time not on a religious or ethnic group, but on victims with no voice, no defense, and no allies. It marks the day that, under the pretense of privacy, the womb became an unfair battlefield for the unborn.<br>
<br>
The beginning of America’s toleration for abortion can be traced back to the mid-1800s. It was in 1860 that German college professor Ernst Haeckel, just finishing Darwin’s <em>Origin of the Species</em>, left his physician practice for the study of embryology. So convinced by what he read, Haeckel became one of the most zealous advocates of Darwinism in the nineteenth century.<br>
<br>
Nine years later, with no real evidence for evolution, Haeckel devised sketched charts of human developmental stages. By 1875, Haeckel was convicted of fraud in a trial held by his own university. There he admitted to faking his drawings in an attempt to show similarities between the human embryo and that of animals. But today, many biology textbooks still include these charts, purposefully deceiving thousands of students, with no mention of their fraudulent history. <a href="http://creationscienceevangelism.cmail5.com/l/326796/xdrtdddt/www.drdino.com/readNews.php?id=43">Click to view a two-minute video on this great cover-up.</a><br>
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Despite Haeckel's conviction, his drawings paved the way for the murdering of the unborn. If a human life is nothing more than an animal, it’s no wonder the textbooks refer to the unborn as a mere “blob of tissue.” Haeckel’s sacred cow of evolution is the well-hidden and underlying missing link to abortion.<br>
<br>
America often mourns the horror of September 11, 2001 when nearly three thousand lives were tragically taken, yet keeps silent as more than four thousand lives are stolen each day through this evolution-influenced terrorism called abortion. We protest the casualties of war—yet turn our heads away from the 50 million innocent victims of Roe v. Wade. As Christians continue to stand on the sidelines, the Bible is unwavering; God ordained each of us in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5). Christians, it’s time to take a stand –it’s time for a change.<br>



For more ways evolution deceives society and its impact on our world, view <em><a href="http://creationscienceevangelism.cmail5.com/l/326796/xdrtdddt/shopping.drdino.com/view_item.php?cat=DVDs&id=443">Lies in the Textbooks</a></em> and <em><a href="http://creationscienceevangelism.cmail5.com/l/326796/xdrtdddt/shopping.drdino.com/view_item.php?cat=DVDs&id=444">The Dangers of Evolution</a></em> from our <em><a href="http://creationscienceevangelism.cmail5.com/l/326796/xdrtdddt/shopping.drdino.com/view_item.php?id=830">Creation Seminar Series</a></em>.</p>
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I hope the author of this article does not support the death penalty? Many of the same people who defend the rights of the unborn, also support putting people to death, and some of them also think it's OK to attack doctors and clinicians.

It's also oversimplifying things to say that people who are pro-abortion see fetuses as nothing more than animals. And it is pure, spurious wishful thinking on the creationists' part to try to pin this on Haeckel.

I've been through the process of bringing a child into the world. I initially had a miscarriage at about 6 weeks. It was upsetting. Would I ever choose to have an abortion myself? Probably not. I felt there was life inside me. But the line I draw is arbitrary and personal. At what point do I see it as an actual human being, versus a couple of cells? A couple of cells are no more of a human being than a bit of blood or a tissue sample. I used to think I considered it more of a "life" when the heart started beating, but again that is a personal arbitrary decision.

If a woman has been raped, if her life is in danger, or if she is completely unable to look after herself while pregnant (i.e. if she's taking hard drugs), then I think it is a violation of her human rights to deny her the choice of abortion. What's more, many women will choose to have an abortion for other reasons, and they will do it whether or not it is legal. However we may feel morally about their decision, surely it's best to provide them the safe conditions in which to do so. There can be limitations within law to prevent women from seeing it as nothing more than a contraceptive, give them time to consider, and support them in exploring other options.

There are no absolutes in life, and exceptions to every rule. The powers-that-be have dictated to women what to do with their bodies for millennia and they're not through yet.

A suggestion: evolution is the change in life over time. There has been no evidence presented anywhere here that it is responsible for abortion (a practice which existed long before the theory of evolution) or any other preceived evils of society.

Edit: What's happened here-? Odd format.

I think it's pretty ironic that the laws created to impose restrictions on a woman's body are created by men.

Actually the laws are allowing this barbaric action to take place daily if you hadn't noticed.... There are no restrictions, other than partial birth abortion. Unless you are proposing that this too should be lifted? Do you know what happens during partial birth abortion? The baby is turned in the womb and puledl out. Then they get a pair of sharp sizzor-like instruments, puncture the back of the head (near the neck) of of the baby, forcing the instrument inside and then open it up so that the brain gets pretty much mashed up.

The laws desperately NEED to be there and SHOULD be there to protect the unborn child from conception onwards, yet they are not. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

If a women wishes to abort her own body? That's her decision, but we are talking about another human being here who has every right to life as you and I do. Perhaps we would very quickly change the "pro-choice" mind if one was forced to return in time to the womb themselves..... considering the womb is now one of the most dangerous places to be! instead of the safest.

Pro-choice is a name that pro-abortionists use to give a give a positive sounding term to a barbaric action. Everybody voting for "pro-choice" has already been born. Hidden by a womb, doesn't make it any less a murder.

I think people should really go and watch or load a video (e.g youtube) and watch an abortion. I have seen one myself and I was close to vomiting. Thank goodness I had such a reaction, I would worry if I could watch something like that and remain indifferent.

I have a friend that had an abortion at 18. Recently she had a baby a couple of years ago. But had a scan of the child a few months into pregnancy. She was so taken-aback at what she saw on the scan, she admitted to me "It really put things into perspective". She was shocked at the detail of the child, fingers, toes the lot, that I dare say her previous abortion suddenly became a much harsher reality. Yet....at this stage of the pregnancy, abortions are taking place daily across the globe and is an even worse atrocity than the Jewish holocaust. The number far outweigh any previous mass murder killings.

Barbaric killings such as this were always known as murders (e.g. baby sacrifice). But these times are different. Abortions are now widely accepted as being simply a "procedure" to allow the women to get on with her life. Discard the unborn child like an insect, so they can get on with their lives. Society has become so de-sensitised, that it can no longer seem to distinguish the difference.

It's ironic that a man can be a double murderer (if he kills a woman and she's pregnant and the baby is killed), yet when it comes to abortion, suddenly it's not murder anymore.....put on a doctor's smock and a pair of plastic gloves and have the consent of the Mother, and the baby is no longer human, but disposable. By the way, they have scientifically proven that the baby feels pain. When they tried to get a law in to allow women to choose to have her unborn child anaethetised before aborting it, one of the family planning type organisations fought tooth and nail to have it prevented. Because allowing this would be making admissions they did not want anybody to know about (pain/life).

Unborn child murder, any child murder at all, is the most unspeakable action anybody could ever take. Child molestation ranks the same or a close second.

Rape and other incidences that can cause pregnancies under the worst circumstances are horrible, but most people around the world are NOT aborting their babies from rape. Using that one as a way of attempting to gain sympathy for abortion is completely misleading and honestly has little to do with what we are seeing in the abortion stakes.

I feel sorry for any woman in such a dilemma and what an awful decision to make. There is adoption and plenty of childless parents out there desperate for a child. They have the option for adoption. ..which is the greater crime? Rape or unborn child murder? Notice the rapist isn't "aborted"?

When it comes to unborn child murder? It isn't about choice, it's about protection. We're not talking about removing a cyst here! Nor are we talking about a woman's right to "vote". We are talking about a precious life in the womb. No woman should have any choice or RIGHT to murder her child, no matter what age, in or out of the womb. Anybody who thinks this is ok has already in effect either killed their own conscience or is spiritually and morally blinded.

How we treat the weakest and most vulnerable of human life reflects exactly where society is heading.

I hope Russ fixes this weird format, it's like reading teletext.

I understand what you are saying Bex and I think I can see your point of view. I would just like to ask you a few questions.

At what point do you call it a baby? The moment of conception? If so, how is it logical to claim that a small bundle of cells is the same thing as a small human being? In the light of the info that RAZD has given, also, about how common it is for pregnancy to go wrong and miscarriages to occur? Under law here, you cannot abort a fetus at more than 6 months, and if you are approaching that deadline it is next to impossible to do so. The law does recognise that a fetus is more or less a baby by that point. But a small bundle of reproducing cells? I think that is not so clear-cut.

It is also the mother who carries the baby to term for 9 months. Let's imagine she was raped. Let's say it was her own father. It's sick, but it's been known to happen. So you would force her to carry the baby to term would you? Nine months with that inside of her? Let's also say that she is a teenager and is trying to finish school. You would also force her to go to school in her condition, showing everyone there daily what has happened to her. Please tell me how this is humane or respectful of the young woman's rights in any way.

I don't think I'd object if abortion laws were tightened. I also would not object to the most humane methods being used and any other methods being outlawed. But a blanket ban on all abortions fails to take the rights of the mothers into consideration and elevates the rights of the unborn child over theirs.

I hope Russ' fixes it soon too.

Well Linda, RAZD can produce any "data" he wishes, it does not take away the diabolical reality. "out of sight, out of mind" as they say.

Journey of the unborn child:
http://www.guilfoy.org/journey.html

People are often surprised when they view the reality. They have been lied to for so long that it's a clump of cells or fetal tissue mass, and when they see ears, eyes, fingers, toes, colon, legs, tongue, arms, ribs, etc. of this little few-week old person, they are taken aback. There is absolutely no denying the humanity - the personhood of the child.

Here are some pictures of the aftermarth of 7 week and older aborted babies. (excuse the graphic nature of these pictures):
http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/pictures.html
http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/pictures_2.html
http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/pictures_3.html

88% of abortions are conducted at the end of 14 weeks. So when/if you look at those pictures, consider that carefully.

Either one believes that human life starts and becomes a person at conception (granting it civil rights), or that it starts after a baby is born.

I like this:

Human Life: This is any living entity that has DNA from the species homo sapiens. (1)
This includes: Zygote, embryo, fetus, newborn, toddler, child, teen, adult, and elder. People hold different values of life on these stages. You hold value on the stages after birth, while we hold value on the stages after conception.

Human Person: This is any human life that is considered to be a person. Our laws and constitution grant human person civil rights. One of these rights is the right to life. The disagreement is that an embryo/unborn child doesn’t become a person until after birth, and thus doesn’t contain those civil rights given to all of us. This is the core disagreement.

Murder: This is the pre-determined or simply the act of taking a human life. This act of murder is the act of trampling upon someone’s civil rights; which relates to the civil right of life. Our government finds us at value as human persons, and protects us from murder.

The arguments: Is an unborn baby/fetus alive? If it is alive is it a human life? If it’s a human life is it a human person? If it’s a human person then the act of removing it’s life is removing it’s civil rights and thus committing murder. If I can get through those phases and reach the end, than I can conclude that abortions (ending the life of the fetus entity which is human, alive, and a person) is immoral, illegal, and protected by our civil rights.

I. Life
a. Any form of living animal or vegetable.
b. life (lif) Pronunciation Key (*1)
n. pl. lives (livz)
The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism.

c. Our fetus/unborn child is obviously alive. It is not inanimate matter because over time it grows and displays motion. By this textbook definition, we know that it’s alive, but can it be considered human life?

II. Human Life
a. What makes it a human life? I believe it needs to follow certain characteristics to be a human life and thus a human person:

“…is biologically alive. It fulfills the four criteria needed to establish biological life:
metabolism,
growth,
reaction to stimuli, and
reproduction.” (4)

b. Metabolism: It contains the function of a metabolism (as it seeks nutrients from food supplied by a mother, and contains a self-governed method of processing these nutrients)

c. Growth: It has the ability of growth. Nothing new will be added from the moment of conception to the unborn child. Upon conception, the child contains all the chromosomes needed for it’s growth, personality, height, characteristics, etc. All that is needed to fulfill the plan of it’s DNA is time, and nutrient/food. Over time it grows it’s ligaments, nerves, bones, etc. A key here is that nothing will be added after conception: rather it just needs to grow.

d. Reproduction: It’s DNA already contains the functions it will need to design that needed to reproduce at puberty.

e. Response to stimuli: This is something overlooked. Many believe an unborn baby is not a alive because it has no pain stimuli, but that is untrue. It contains a pain circuit (connection of nerves from a sense, such as he olfactory nerve) to the brain at early stages in it’s first trimester. This, and the addition of other nerves in the head, feet, hands, gives it the pain-stimuli required to be alive.

f. Adaptation to the environment: A child is able to develop taste buds in the tongue during the first trimester, and studies have down (in the mid to upper portions of a pregnancy) that an unborn baby is able to learnt not to intake sour fluids injected in the mother, and well as desire sweeter fluids.

g. With this, I can show that the fetus is obviously alive. It is part of the Homo sapient species, and displays all those characteristics to grant it life. The only issue now is that the entity is not a human person, and even though it’s alive, it does not contain the civil rights that a human person does.

III. So when does human personhood begin?
a. As a pro-abortionist, you must be able to make the claim that the fetus has no personhood. To do this, you must show how non-persons can turn into persons.

b. As a pro-lifer, I must prove that personhood is developed before birth. Human personhood begins at conception. Here all DNA is set to fully guide the development of the unborn child. All 42 chromosomes are in place, and all that is needed is nutrients and time. This is the genetic view that human life starts at conception (5)

c. Now we must look at the stages of growth. Remembering that 88% of abortions are conducted at the end of 14 weeks, we look at the time period. And what are we looking for? We are trying to identify those things that make an unborn child the same as the rest of us. We are looking for those things that make the unborn child alive, and a human person.

d. For times sake, we’ll look at a handful that support our claim that this indeed is human life, and thus warrant sit being a human person and having civil rights.

5 Weeks:
the olfactory nerve, which is integral to the sense of smell, is present on the 35th day after conception.
-Pain receptors appear in the mouth

6 Weeks:
The foundation of the sense of smell is established on the 39th day when nerve fibers in the brain connect with the olfactory lobe
-Development of Neocortex (largest portion of the brain)
-This is extremely important because all the parts in in place to complete pain circuitry.
-This means a child has developed the ability to feel pain in late gestation.

8 Weeks:
-At eight weeks after conception, local stimuli can induce partial closing of the fingers, opening of the mouth, and squinting.
-Taste buds
-More taste buds unborn than a born child.

9 Weeks:
-Pain receptors appear in Face, palms, and soles of the feet.

10 Weeks:
Response to sounds. This shows it’s ability to react with it’s environment.

11 Weeks:
the child will open its mouth and suck a finger.
-pain pathways are running from sensory receptors in the skin to those in the brain.

An unborn child can quickly develop the organs and systems a born child does. It contains the ability to exert motion like a newborn. It contains senses. It can learn. These support those definitions called upon to be considered human life. With this only in the early stages of development, how can we not consider it human life? Like the rest of us, it merely requires time to grow and nutrients to keep it’s group. It contains the ability to produce it’s cell’s, and shows all those things that we ourselves use to define ourselves as being alive.

IV. Is this murder?
a. mur..der [mur-der] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
..noun
1.
Law. the killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law. In the U.S., special statutory definitions include murder committed with malice aforethought, characterized by deliberation or premeditation or occurring during the commission of another serious crime, as robbery or arson (first-degree murder), and murder by intent but without deliberation or premeditation (second-degree murder).

b. Do I consider this the murder of a human person who is alive? Yes. Do I consider this to be against our civil liberties? Yes.

Why is any of this important? It is of dire importance because we are discussing life here. About 4000 fetus’ (correct my math if you can) are eliminated every day through abortion (IN THE UNITED STATES ALONE). If this is true, and the fetus is considered alive, than we would be ending 4000 potential lives. If this fetus is human life, than not only are we eliminating the life of an entity, but we are eliminating our own species. If you grant these personhoods, as I explained, than we are committing a mass murder and merely ignoring it. It’s a rather grave issue. We grant human life as the most valuable gift in the world (granted through Gods, religions, and governments). To ignore the removal of this gift to individuals who cannot defend themselves is immoral. It places mankind in the position to defend the death, the mute, and those who cannot defend themselves. In a court of law, our government provides a lawyer at a human’s defense, if this human cannot defend itself. As humans, we must take on this position, and step forward to defend those whose voices cannot be heard.

This stretches beyond the issue of “I am a woman and it is my body”. In respects to that comment, we are very well discussing the right of a body; yet this body is that unborn child. Just as the woman holds rights to her form, so does a child hold those same civil rights; whether it is in the womb or not.

Since we can consider the unborn child alive, part of our homo sapient species, and a human person, than our government has granted it the same civil rights that those carrying the child have.

It is our duty to make sure the value of life, and of human being, is withheld. An unborn baby has the right to live, and do the rest of us.

AMEN!

All of us here had parents that said "yes" to life. Ok for us to sit and debate isn't it? We've already been born. To allow a baby to live, is not elevating its rights above the Mother. It is respecting a human being's right to live as we have been given.

The Nazi doctors experimented with BORN human beings (adults/children) in concentration camps in ways that make vivisection seem like playtime. Abortionists are just as bad and inhumane. The harvesting of selected "parts" from aborted human beings and sale of the same is monstrous beyond words.

I have already mentioned this in an earlier post. There are circumstances like this that are extreme and are very difficult to judge....problem is Linda, bringing this up, does not justify what is taking place everyday to unborn children. 4000 abortions everyday in the US alone, is not all the product of rape by a long shot.

1% of all abortions occur because of rape or incest; 6% of abortions occur because of potential health problems regarding either the mother or child, and 93% of all abortions occur for social reasons (i.e. the child is unwanted or inconvenient).

In a circumstance like this with a girl becoming pregnant from rape (by incest or otherwise) is a very difficult moral dilemma and asking a lot of any women to carry that baby full term. However, there are some women who DO carry the baby full term because they are aware of the precious life within them that is not guilty of any crime. The crime itself was disgusting, the result (a baby) is not.

The perpetrator is the guilty party and nobody talks about aborting them do they? The baby is innocent. I admire the girls/women who carry the baby fullterm, possibly giving it up for adoption, but I could not honestly judge the ones that didn't. You ask me if it's "humane" to expect them to carry a child? Is it humane to kill the child?

I do not believe that two wrongs make a right. Rape is a terrible crime, murder of an unborn child is a terrible crime. And yes it is a huge ask for any victim to carry such a child to full term. But if they KNEW about the unborn child more accurately than is being portrayed and what happens during an abortion to the baby, they make think twice.

Some women that have been shown the reality have changed their minds, it does happen. But this information is usually suppressed and they are simply fed what the pro-abortionists wish them to believe. That way it makes it a whole lot easier to go through with it and not have too much of a twinge of conscience.

Okaying abortion based on the extreme circumstances, still does not justify it on behalf of the unborn innocent. It is also another abuse of the Mother herself.

"Pro-abortionists apparently think that uninformed "choice" is the best kind. That makes their claim to be "pro-woman" ring hollow.

All of us ought to want women to know all the risks involved in having an abortion. They should know that there are two victims of what they are considering."

-Mental health and abortion
http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/breakpoint.html

-The abortion/breast cancer link
http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/breastcancer.html

You've obviously put a lot of thought into this and I like the way you've set your argument out. I think you're on firmer ground here than it's possible for anyone to be in arguing for creationism <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

What you say is logical if full rights are granted to a fetus from conception. I think the black and white stance you take here oversimplifies matters though; you claim that someone either believes a fetus is a human life from the moment of conception, or it is not human until it is born. I did explain that I think this is a grey area and that I tend to lean personally toward six weeks, when the heart starts beating, but that this is an arbitrary line to draw.

Presumably you believe in a soul. When does the soul enter the body, do you think? Do those stem cells in petri dishes have souls? They seem to have the potential to develop into many different kinds of things, not just one full human body.

If I had become pregnant through incest, I would want that thing OUT of me and lawmakers be damned. If some people want to keep the baby from such circumstances it's their choice. But should they be robbed of that choice? Maybe it is a rare occurrence, but it needs to be considered if people are pushing for a blanket ban. As far as the rights of the unborn are concerned, what happens when after that person is born they learn about the circumstances? What if they find out that they are the product of incest and they were given up for adoption because they were not wanted? What if they have their parents to thank for any genetic diseases that are the result of the incest? Don't you think that person might be facing a few little psychological challenges?

There are no absolute rights or wrongs here, I don't think. It is the mark of an ethical society that these kinds of issues are discussed. It would be interesting to hear what others have to say here. I know what fundamentalists would say, I don't think there are any surprises in store, but maybe some others will contribute too.

Hey Linda.

It only appears to be in this thread, and it matches the width of the picture in the first post. Must be some glitch that off-sets the frame.

Enjoy.

Thanks Bex for a detailed argument. You make some valid points.

Me too, it is hard to read in this format. Maybe inserting a wide picture will fix it ...
[color:"red"](edit: it did, but forced it wider to the right)[/color]

You may find we are closer to agreement than you think at first hand.

I would like to discuss the issue without any emotional bias or extraneous arguments.
I think using this is introducing an emotional argument and the appeal to emotion logical fallacy. If you use the law here to justify your application of the definition, then you must also realize that abortion is (currently) legal under the law, so it is specifically excluded from your usage.

This is also extraneous to the issue of whether what we are dealing with is a human life. If your argument were completely valid you would not need to include this in your argument: laws are made by human societies to represent relatively average social and (hopefully) secular values that respect the beliefs of all people in the society.

Or some point in between, and the gist of my argument is that some point between these two positions is much more accurate, credible and ethical.

The definition of life at conception fails for a couple of reasons. One of which is that nothing is added by conception, the living cells and the DNA existed before that, and you can trace those back to the origin of life (by whatever theory you care to embrace), so it is just an arbitrary point. Second, it just plain does not define a human life -- from my thread Legal Life, Legal Death and Stem Cell Research - resolving the ethical question:
This basic set of facts shows that well over half of conceptions are just not really human beings - a single cell that passes out of the uterus is no different than a skin cell that is shed, an ejected blastula is no different than tissue that is accidentally or intentionally cut off (like a toenail), and an empty pregnancy sac is not a being of any kind, whether the cells are alive or not.

I represented this graphically in my second response to Russ
The point being that if we are going to talk rationally about human life then we need a definition that does represent A, and that trying to use B to define A is a false representation of reality. There is something in A that is additional to what is in the B that is notA.

The question is not how human a fetus looks, but how human it is. The development of the whole individual does not occur in the first or last weeks, rather it is a continual process, one that is not complete (normally) until it is time for birth. The evidence from premature births is that a fetus less than 24 weeks is not likely to survive and those that do are usually severely impaired because they never fully develop.

From Premature babies' disability risk:
These premature babies, "preemies," are not born fully functioning (mature) babies, they needed machines to replace functions of the natural womb to finish their development, and would normally have died without them. In one sense they are not fully "born" until they can survive off the life support machines, but it is normal social convention to consider them born as they have been removed from the womb.

Only 38.7% of the preemies admitted to the neo-natal intensive care survived, and of those only 50% did not have significant complications\disabilities. This is a 19.4% "success" rate at this point of development. This is where they are doing everything possible to save lives. Where such procedures are not available the natural result is normally death of the fetus.

Note that this would in effect make the point of "uniform life" to be, not birth, so much as the earliest possible point at which {assisted premature} birth would be medically feasible without causing significant detrimental effect on the end result.

Can you tell me what %human this fetus is?

. . . . <img src="http://herballure.com/ForumExtras/Images/rwinffbczw.jpg">

And this compares to the question of human life when a terminally ill or injured person is being kept "alive" through medical intervention with life support, the question comes down to "when is it ethical to remove life support and let natural death occur."

Personhood

This standard is a little more difficult to establish on a broad cultural and social basis except by taking into considerations the beliefs of each individual family involved and the diversity of levels acceptable to individuals. From Biology, Consciousness, and the Definition of Death (click):

This last paragraph is the key: until the fetus has achieved the status of legally competent the "appropriate surrogate" - in this case the family - can decide to terminate life support, based on their perception of "personhood" discussed above. If the patient naturally expires due to failure of the {circulatory and respiratory functions} to maintain life on their own, then the legal issue is settled.

Certainly in cases where continuing a pregnancy endangers the life of the mother, the doctors could perform an early-term C-section, and once the {fetus\premature child} was removed the family could direct that "no heroic measures" be taken to see if the {fetus\premature child} survives or dies a natural death on its own - this choice is currently legal, as there are people of certain religious beliefs that they would chose to let nature take its course and have insisted on their right to their beliefs. This certainly fits with the end of the material quoted above:

[color:"purple"]"Because of this broad legal and moral right to refuse treatment, life- supports that are unwanted or are considered unhelpful - including life-supports for permanently unconscious patients - can be terminated without first declaring the patient dead."[/color]

I submit for your consideration, that any method that results in the removal of a fetus from a womb, but that does not harm or endanger the {patient} in any way except for the "removal of life-support" -- and that removal done only upon the request of the "appropriate surrogate" (here that would be the immediate family) -- and where the {patient} dies, the result is legal death due to natural causes.

Ethically we must treat the beginning of a distinct human life in the same manner that we treat the end of that life, and applying a pluralist definition that covers a spectrum would be the only way to meet the needs of all people involved in such decisions. Different families will make different choices, based on their own beliefs, beliefs that are protected in the constitution and in the existing laws of this country.

This definition applies to all life, and they are equivocating on reproduction ability (but it's a problem inherent in the definition of life, a different issue altogether).

A proper application of this definition would mean that you are not a fully human life until you reach puberty and are actually capable of reproduction. People that are sterile can still have the DNA for reproduction. This is rather silly, but it is just as arbitrary as using conception or the (traditional) birth as defining point in the spectrum of human life.

The real question is like asking at what precise wavelength does yellow become blue:

<img src="http://razd.evcforum.net/Pictures/CvE/aspectrum.jpg">

Different people will choose different wavelengths based on their (so far) constitutionally protected individual beliefs.

Enjoy.
[color:"green"]
Note: my time is limited, so I only choose threads of particular interest to me and I cannot guarantee a reply to all responses (particularly if they do not discuss the issue/s), and I expect other people to do the same. Thank you for your consideration.[/color]

Thank you too RAZD and Linda for your views.

You're correct RAZD, abortion is legal.....and is it possible for laws to ever be wrong? Should we ever question it? we must ask why is it legal given the definition of murder and definition of a human being?

Our beliefs of our origins and life most definitely colours the way people view themselves and humanity as a whole. Just as I could say to you that my creation/Christian beliefs call us to respect all human life, especially the weakest and most vulnerale amongst us. How much more vulnerable can you get than a baby still relying on the protection of the womb to grow? Remove that and of course the growing baby will die! Does it mean that it really wasn't fully human yet? No, just not fully grown.

Though the baby obviously requires 9 months to fully develop, it still has the full information ready (from both parents) from conception so that all can unfold during that time.

Certainly it is not subhuman. So no matter what stage its at, it still has the genetic code of a human being. Which makes it - human. The law is obviously not infallible. Certain laws that have been changed or put in place do not always ensure the right outcome. Some feel the justice system is almost back to front. But, we'll stick to the abortion issue <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

You state that a premature baby often dies because it has not yet reached the full stage of development.....this is true, but does this make it any less human? Even a born baby will not survive for long without Mother's milk because it is still vulnerable and certainly still growing/developing and requiring breastfeeding on an almost continual basis. The fact the new born baby cannot stand on its own, cannot wash itself, cannot control it's bladder or bowels yet, cannot form words, cannot even see at a distance as yet, is still evident that the baby is of course still developing/growing...yet it is fully human. Every stage of a baby's development is precious and should be respected as human life. We already know that Haakels pictures were a total misrepresentation. And I believe that it hasn't stopped there.

An egg on its own or sperm on its own does not produce a life. The miracle result from the two meeting in fertilisation is where a new life is created (an individual). As the genetics/information from both parents is passed on, which then set the immediate stage for this individual to grow. And this new life should be respected and allowed to reach it's full development without being deliberately torn from the womb.

You ask me what percentage is it human? It sure isn't half human! it already has all the information. I believe it is 100% fully human from the moment of conception.

Do I think we as born adults have the right to play god with the unborn child and remove it's life should it become an inconvenience? No. Am I convinced by the apparent powers that be that tell us it's not really human at this point? No.

And we know that there are premature babies who thanks to the intervention of good human beings have survived outside of the womb with proper equipment (doesn't always work out that way obviously). I know teenagers that can't survive on their own <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Sick or old people requiring intervention due to sickness/dying/vulnerability are no less human either and just as worthy of aid as a premature baby (within reason, unless the person is brain dead). if we have the means to help? Then we should do so. I am not in support so much of keeping someone on lifesupport if it leads to nowhere. If they are already brain dead! Then sure, letting death/nature take its course is sometimes the only way to eventually go.

But this is not the same as the deliberate removal of a life, or deliberate negligence if one has the means to intervene.

Do excuse me if my response here has not been quite up with yours in literacy/complexity! I tend to respond as clearly and simply as I can (within reason).

With that aside, emotions and beliefs clearly do come into it also. If we all have no real meaning to our beginning or end, then the unborn child's existance and right to live is therefore debatable according to what we decide. If WE decide that it can be aborted at certain stages, then we can make it "ok" for likeminded people of a similar belief system.

However, if one believes in a meaning to the beginning and end to life and that this is not all there is? The value of life and human beings becomes apparent.

Thank you Bex for your response.

I was pointing out that IF you are going to use one law to support a position that you then need to consider all laws (and perhaps, supreme court decisions?). Perhaps the law on murder should be changed - should we not question it?

Your definition of human life is invalid, as there are things covered in your definition as human life that clearly are not: an empty pregnancy sac is clearly not a human life, yet your definition includes it.

. . . . <img src="http://herballure.com/ForumExtras/Images/wyjbammegu.jpg">

Clearly A = B + (something else)

Something not included in your definition/s.

Or the buddhist belief that we should respect all life, but this is a red herring and it does not add to the definition of what is human life, where we draw the line. We know life is not sufficient, B has life. We know human DNA is not sufficient, B has human DNA.

Likewise an organ removed in an operation has living cells and human DNA, but nobody would confuse an organ with a human life.

What does A have that B does not have? What makes A = human life while B does not?

This too is obviously false when 70% of zygotes do NOT have the necessary information to become human beings, because they fail to do so even with the best medical care.

An appeal to emotion, and another false statement. The organs removed above have the genetic code of a human being, but they are NOT human beings, they are not "made into" human beings by having the genetic code. If not being fully human is "subhuman" then anything that is B is subhuman by this definition, because it clearly is not A (human). B does not become human by wishing it.

Does it make it more human? We do know that - whatever the reason for death - they (over 60% of the preemies admitted to the neo-natal intensive care) do not have everything they need to live as a human being. They don't have everything you need to have to get all the way from B to A.

Yet it was common before modern medicine for most babies to die in the first year, so common that many societies would not recognize a baby until the first birthday (another arbitrary definition point for human life).

However this will still not suddenly place embryos where there were none, nor repair damaged, incomplete or missing organs inside the (genetic) abnormally developing fetus.

Nor does a zygote. 70% of them fail.

Especially those where there is only a pregnancy sac? Especially those (55%) that are flushed down the toilet without you even knowing they were there?

I'd put it at about 96% -- I think that is the latest consensus for the difference between human and chimpanzee (look at the long fingers). Sorry, but I did this just to show that you cannot tell how human a fetus is from a picture.

I thought the fiaso over Terry Sciavo was a disgraceful exhibition of grand-standing politics in this regard, an embarrassment for America of people actually wanting to make decisions for a family that were the family's right to decide, legally and ethically and traditionally.

Over 60% of the preemies admitted to the neo-natal intensive care die even with the best medical care. Legally families have the right to refuse life saving medical treatment of children until they reach the age of majority. Traditionally families have had this right. Different people will make different choices, and ethically we need to respect the right of families to make those decisions.

Enjoy.
[color:"green"]
Note: my time is limited, so I only choose threads of particular interest to me and I cannot guarantee a reply to all responses (particularly if they do not discuss the issue/s), and I expect other people to do the same. Thank you for your consideration.[/color]

Just to chime in here.

I'm open to entertaining arguments suggesting that abortion should be illegal with the following caveats.

That the law allow for exceptions (i.e., rape victims, health problems, etc.)

And that the argument in no way, shape or form fall back upon the Christian faith, as basing any law on any one religion is bigotry. Defending one's stance with remarks like "Oh, the bible says..." (not that anyone has done that here thus far) isn't going to mean a whole lot to any non-Christian. All this results in is being offensive and disrespectful.

With that said, I'd be interested in hearing why abortion should not be permitted - and, as said above, WHO exactly is going to be imposing these laws. It's a little too convenient that there has never been a single woman throughout history to create such a law. Always it is men telling women what can be done with their bodies. It will be a cold day in Hell before a board of women decide what men can do with their bodies, regardless of what the law is or how important it may or may not be. Moreover, it wasn't all that long ago when white people were telling black people what they can and cannot do. Imagine if you said "Oh, but the bible says black people should sit in the back of the bus and not drink from out water fountains". Serious, keep religion out of it. It has no place in this argument.

So if women start telling women what they can do with their bodies (within reason), I'll not say another word.

You've gone from saying that just because the unborn baby looks human - that doesn't mean it's fully human, to now saying that an empty birth sac means that there isn't life there yet....you're contradicting yourself. So visuals alone isn't proof....yet now suddenly it is. If the fertilisation has been successful, there is a life from that moment on. The life is not immediately visible to the human eye - many things are not <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> Check a microscope sometime. This is why women take the morning after pill. It a nice name for a "threshhold" abortion.

First, if there really is a question about whether or not an abortion kills a living human being, then all abortions should immediately cease until we can be sure that an abortion does not take a human life. In other words, the burden of proof remains on those who want to terminate life to demonstrate that it is not in fact a human life they are destroying.

If there are ANY questions at all when human life begins and clearly there is - then we should err on the side of life, we ought to give the benefit of the doubt to life.



Incorrect. It doesn't "become" a human being during development in the womb. The information is there upon conception. The baby only requires enough time in the womb to grow and be ready to enter the outside world. No amount of you trying to subtract the humanity out of the child is valid.

I said:
You replied:

A zygote IS a life, regardless of "failure rate".

Any basic biology or zoology textbook will teach that at the moment of conception, that is when the egg is fertilized by the sperm bringing into existence the zygote, there is a unique, genetically distinct human being. Notice that this is not a religious question, but one answered by scientific and medical facts. Did you not know this?

Comparing organs to the beginnings of a human life defies belief. Those “bunch of cells” , even in a small number, make up a very complex organism that is already a human being. In other words, we don’t become human beings because we get bigger or become older. We are already human beings from the beginning, and at every stage of life.



Successful fertilisation produces human life immediately. Miscarriages can occur any stage of the pregnancy whether early or late. There are so many reasons for these happening. A failure of the pregnancy does not cancel out the humanity of the child, as much as you are trying to push this. Which actually lends even further validation to Russ' intial post.

Successful fertilisation must take place and from then on in, it is fingers crossed that nothing will go wrong in the pregnancy and all will allow the baby to grow fully and birth successfully.

My grandparents gave birth to two babies that died because the umbilical cord was wrapped around their neck and strangled them. Perhaps they too were not fully human because they were unable to remove it from their own necks <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />



Yes we most definitely do need to respect people that make these heart-wrenching decisions, letting nature take its course in the face of sometimes ludicrous odds maybe the only option! However, once again you are attempting to state that because so many preemies apparently fail at holding onto life with even with the most exhaustive medical intervention somehow makes them....less human. This is simply your opinion, but holds no ground.

The only thing I am gathering from your posts is very much a leaning towards the preference for termination, rather than protection. Every argument you produce is more anti-life than pro-life, which speaks volumes about the kind of philosophy you have clearly bought into and how damaging it potentially can be. Those with your beliefs are very lucky they were born before abortions became so widespread, commonplace and accepted. As a fellow human being, I can honestly say that I am disgusted that anybody would be pro-abortion in the face of even the remote risk of taking an innocent human life.



Appealing to the feminism ego, rather than considering the life of the unborn PWCCA is a bad reflection. We are not talking about the woman's body, we are talking about another life here (an individual). women have rights — over their own bodies but not over other persons’ bodies. The law must respect a “right to privacy” but killing other persons is not a private but a public deed. Persons have a “right to life” but non-persons (e.g., cells, tissues, organs,) do not.

Take a look at any anti-abortion marches and check out how many women you will see marching against it. You would be surprised at how many "men" are all for it, particularly those of loose morals. It suits them just fine for the obvious reasons. If they had half as much balls as they had to make the baby in the first place, they would stand up for the consequences of their actions and protect and nuture the life they have been part of making. Plenty of women have been pressured into abortions by boyfriends.

Appealing to someone who is actually alive and has been a part of this world for some years means more to me than someone who has not even been born yet and may still be microscopic in size.

If you want to argue against abortions of late pregnancies, that's a whole different ball park. Besides, you'd be preaching to the choir in that regard.

But you haven't said WHY appealing to the unborn is more important than the living. Because I place a lot more value on the former over the latter. I'd be curious to hear what you base your arguments on - unless they are all biblical in origin, in which case please don't share them with me. I'm not interested in bible thumping, as religion has absolutely nothing to do with this argument, regardless of which side one is on.

I thought the following was very interesting:

Soft pro-choicers give reasons for thinking there are. Their position can be fairly summarized, I think, in seven arguments. Each attacks a basic pro-life syllogism by accusing it in different ways of using an ambiguous middle term, “human being.” They say a fetus is a human life but not a human person:

First , there is the linguistic fact that we can and often do make a triple distinction among a human life, a human being and a human person. Each cell in our bodies has human life, and a single cell kept alive in a laboratory could be called “a human life” but certainly not “a human being” or “a human person.” “A human being” is a biologically whole individual of the species. Even a human being born with no brain is a human being, not an ape; but it is not a person because it has no brain and cannot do anything distinctively human: think, know, choose, love, feel, desire, commit, relate, aspire, know itself, know God, know its past, know its future, know its environment, or communicate — all of which have, in various combinations, been offered as the marks of a person. The pro-life position seems to confuse the sanctity of the person with the sanctity of life, which is two steps removed from it.

Thus pro-life seems to be based on a linguistic confusion. Not all human life is sacred. Not even all human beings, individual members of the human species, are sacred. But all human persons are sacred.

Second, pro-lifers seem to commit the intellectual sin of biologism, idolatry of biology, by defining persons in a merely biological, genetic, material way. Membership in a biological species is not morally relevant, not what makes persons sacred and murder wrong. Membership in the human species is no more morally relevant than membership in the subspecies, or race. If racism is wrong, so is speciesism.

Third , the very young product of conception, the zygote, has no ability to perform any of the distinctive activities that anyone associates with personhood (reasoning, choosing, loving, communicating, etc.) — not even feeling pain, for the zygote has no brain or nervous system. At first it is only a single cell. How could anyone call a single cell a person?

Fourth , it seems to be an obvious mistake for the pro-lifer to claim that personhood begins abruptly, at conception, for personhood develops gradually, as a matter of degree. Every one of the characteristics we use to identify personhood arises and grows gradually rather than suddenly. Pro-lifers seem to be victims of simplistic, black-or-white thinking, but reality is full of greys.

Fifth , pro-lifers seem to confuse potential persons with actual persons. The fetus is potentially a person, but it must grow into an actual person.

Sixth , personhood is not a clear concept. There is not universal agreement on it. Different philosophers, scientists, religionists, moralists, mothers, and observers define it differently. It is a matter of opinion where the dividing line between persons and non-persons should be located. But what is a matter of opinion should not be decided or enforced by law. Law should express social consensus, and there is no consensus in our society about personhood’s beginning or, consequently, about abortion. One opinion should not be forced on all. Pro-choice is not pro-abortion but, precisely, pro-choice.

Seventh , a fetus cannot be a person because it is part of another person, the mother. Persons are wholes, not parts. Persons are not parts of other persons, but the fetus is part of another person; therefore, the fetus is not a person.

The first argument — that some human beings are not persons — is to say that only achievers, only successful functioners, only sufficiently intelligent performers, qualify as persons and have a right to life. And who is to say what “sufficient” is? The line can be drawn at will-the will of the stronger. Nature, reason, and justice are then replaced by artifice, prejudice, and power. When it is in the self-interest of certain people to kill certain other people, whether fetuses, or the dying, or enemies of the state, or Jews, or Armenians, or Cambodians, or heretics, or prophets, the killers will simply define their victims as non-persons by pointing out that they do not meet certain criteria. Who determines the criteria? Those in power, of course. Whenever personhood is defined functionally, the dividing line between persons and non-persons will be based on a decision by those in power, a decision of will. Such a decision, given the fallenness of human nature, will inevitably be based on self-interest. Where there is an interest in killing persons, they will be defined as non-persons.

To the second argument, it must be said that “human being” is not a merely biological term because the reality it designates is not a merely biological reality, though it is a biological reality. To identify human beings and persons is not biologism; in fact, it is just the opposite: it is the implicit claim that persons, i.e., human beings, have a human biological body and a human spiritual soul; that human souls inhabit human bodies.

If robots could do all that persons can do behaviorally, they would still not be persons. Mere machines cannot be persons. They may function as persons, but they do not understand that they do not have freedom, or free will to choose what they do. They obey their programming without free choice. They are artifacts, and artifacts are not persons. Persons are natural, not artificial. They develop from within (like fetuses!); artifacts are made from without.

The connection between the two errors of (1) reducing persons to functions and (2) reducing “human being” to a merely biological category is obvious: the first is the root cause of the second. Once a person is defined in terms of functioning, then zygotes, fetuses and even normal newborns are no longer fully persons. What are they, then? Only members of a biological species, “human being.”

This justifies abortion, of course-and infanticide. The camel is a one-piece camel. I know of no argument justifying abortion that does not also justify infanticide.

To the third argument: the zygote has no brain, true, but it does have what will grow into a brain, just as an infant does not have speech but has what will grow into speech. Within the zygote is an already fully programmed individuality, from sex and aging to eye color and aversion to spinach. The personhood of the person is already there, like the tuliphood of the tulip bulb. One must actually be a human being, after all, to grow a human brain.

The fourth argument is right, of course, to say that development is gradual-after conception. Conception is the break, the clear dividing line, and the only one. I am the same being from conception on. Otherwise we would not speak of the growth and development and unfolding of that being, of me. I was once an infant. I was born. I was once in my mother’s womb. My functioning develops only gradually, but my me has a sudden beginning. Once again, the pro-choice objection confuses being a person with functioning as a person.

Furthermore, if personhood is only a developing, gradual thing, then we are never fully persons, because we continue to grow, at least intellectually and emotionally and spiritually. Albert Schweitzer said, at 70, “I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.” But if we are only partial persons, then murder is only partially wrong, and it is less wrong to kill younger, lesser persons than older ones. If it is more permissible to kill a fetus than to kill an infant because the fetus is less of a person, then it is for exactly the same reason more permissible to kill a seven-year-old, who has not yet developed his reproductive system or many of his educational and communications skills, than to kill a 27-year-old. The absurd conclusion follows from defining a person functionally.

No other line than conception can be drawn between pre-personhood and personhood. Birth and viability are the two most frequently suggested. But birth is only a change of place and relationship to the mother and to the surrounding world (air and food); how could these things create personhood? As for viability, it varies with accidental and external factors like available technology (incubators). What I am in the womb-a person or a non-person cannot be determined by what machines exist outside the womb! But viability is determined by such things. Therefore personhood cannot be determined by viability.

fifth if the fetus is only a potential person, it must be an actual something in order to be a potential person. What is it? An ape?

There are no “potential persons” any more than there are potential apes. All persons are actual, as all apes are actual. Actual apes are potential swimmers, and actual persons are potential philosophers. The being is actual, the functioning is potential. The objection confuses “a potential person” with “a potentially functioning person”-Functionalism again.

Sixth , is personhood an unclear concept? If it were a matter of degree, determined by degree of functioning, then it would indeed be unclear, and a matter of opinion, who is a person and who is not. Refuting objection four undercuts objection six.

Personhood is indeed unclear-for Functionalism. Such questions as the following are not clearly answerable: Which features count as proof of personhood? Why? How do we decide? Who decides? What gives them that right? And how much of each feature is necessary for personhood? And who decides that, and why? Also, all the performance-qualifications adduced for personhood are difficult to measure objectively and with certainty. To use the unclear, not universally accepted, hard-to-measure functionalist concept of personhood to decide the sharply controversial issue of who is a person and who may be killed is to try to clarify the obscure by the more obscure, obscuram per obscurius.

Seventh , if the fetus is only a part of the mother, a hilariously absurd consequence follows. The relation of part to whole is what logicians call a transitive relation: If A is part of B and B is part of C, then A must be part of C. If a wall is part of a room and the room is part of a building, then the wall must be part of that building. If a toe is part of a foot and a foot is part of a body, then the toe is part of the body. Now if the fetus is a part of the mother, then the parts of the fetus must be parts of the mother. But in that case, every pregnant woman has four eyes and four feet, and half of all pregnant women have penises! Clearly, the absurd conclusion came from the false premise that the fetus is only part of the mother.

I have refuted the pro-choice position (1) in general, by the basic pro-life syllogism, (2) foundationally, by identifying and refuting Functionalism as the root pro-choice error, and (3) specifically, by refuting each of the seven pro-choice arguments against fetal personhood. But just suppose all of my arguments are somehow inconclusive. Suppose I was wrong in my very first point, that abortion is a clear evil. Suppose abortion is a difficult, obscure, uncertain issue. Even if you take this “softest pro-choice” position, which we can call “abortion agnosticism,” you stand refuted by the following quadrilemma.

Either the fetus is a person, or not; and either we know what it is, or not. Thus there are four and only four possibilities:

that it is not a person and we know that, that it is a person and we know that, that it is a person but we do not know that, and that it is not a person and we do not know that.

Now what is abortion in each of these four cases?

In case (1), abortion is perfectly permissible. We do no wrong if we kill what is not a person and we know it is not a person-e.g., if we fry a fish. But no one has ever proved with certainty that a fetus is not a person. If there exists anywhere such a proof, please show it to me and I shall convert to pro-choice on the spot if I cannot refute it. If we do not have case (1) we have either (2) or (3) or (4). What is abortion in each of these cases? It is either murder, or manslaughter, or criminal negligence.

In case (2), where the fetus is a person and we know that, abortion is murder. For killing an innocent person knowing it is an innocent person is murder.

In case (3), abortion is manslaughter, for it is killing an innocent person not knowing and intending the full, deliberate extent of murder. It is like driving over a man-shaped overcoat in the street, which may be a drunk or may only be an old coat. It is like shooting at a sudden movement in a bush which may be your hunting companion or may be only a pheasant. It is like fumigating an apartment building with a highly toxic chemical not knowing whether everyone is safely evacuated. If the victim is a person, you have committed manslaughter. And if not?

Even in case (4), even if abortion kills what is not in fact a person, but the killer does not know for sure that it is not a person, we have criminal negligence, as in the above three cases if there happened to be no one in the coat, the bush, or the building, but the driver, the hunter, or the fumigator did not know that, and nevertheless drove, shot or fumigated. Such negligence is instinctively and universally condemned by all reasonable individuals and societies as personally immoral and socially criminal; and cases (2) and (3), murder and manslaughter, are of course condemned even more strongly. We do not argue politely over whether such behavior is right or wrong. We wholeheartedly condemn it, even when we do not know whether there is a person there, because the killer did not know that a person was not there. Why do we not do the same with abortion?

Someone who is "actually alive", is only "actually alive" because they were carried full term through pregnancy without accident or deliberate termination. Think about that.





Both are living and equal in their right to life. Whether the unborn dies during pregnancy by natural means does not remove the fact it was human and alive. A fully grown adult, or a growing unborn child are no less in dignity or in their right to life.



The woman wouldn't be alive to have an abortion if she had been aborted herself <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />. Whether microscopic in size or ready to be birthed, the baby is a human life. Please read my posts, I have already answered what you have mentioned here.

whether you don't wish to hear about any reasons for my value on human life being related to God or not related to God is not of interest. Nor am I about appealing to fragile sensitivites or ego. This is about human life, not about anger issues with Christianity.

People here are debating pretty well in retrospect that we all are of differing belief systems. It is about the value of human life. Do you value YOUR life? If so, why should an unborn child not have the the life that you and I were given?

I read my bible I don't thump it <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Religion has barely made mention into this argument until you continue to make those kinds of statements. You seem to be encouraging the argument to head in the very direction you're apparently trying to avoid.

Thanks again Bex. We still have some communication problems it seems.

You are conflating two different arguments. Lets focus on the first, the empty birth\pregnancy sac, where I said:

[color:"purple"] ... an empty pregnancy sac is clearly not a human life, yet your definition includes it. [/color]

From Patient information: Miscarriage:
This developed from a fertilized egg, a zygote that implanted in the uterus wall and started dividing. It built the birth\pregnancy sac and a rudimentary placenta but no embryo, and all you have are parts that are normally discarded after birth, living cells that form a structure but that are not a human life.

This living cell structure began with conception, but it is not a human being. Never will be.

There is no embryo or anything else there that can develop into a human being of any kind, no matter what heroic measures the medical people take. There is no organism to grow, no cell/s left to divide and develop into an organism.

The zygotes that only became placental sacs are not, could not become, human life.

. . . . <img src="http://herballure.com/ForumExtras/Images/wyjbammegu.jpg">

B does not equal A

A = B + {something else}

This conception does not equal human life, therefore conception alone is not a sufficient definition of human life.

Human Life = Conception + {something else}

This is equivocating between life and human life. The sperm and the egg are also life. The zygote is a life a living cell, but it is not necessarily a human life: you cannot say it is a human life when it can end up as a birth\pregnancy sac with a rudimentary placenta - a structure of living cells - but no embryo, no organism, no possible human being.

Obviously false. You are now confusing (equivocating) the end product with beginning stage:

Conception + {time in the womb} is not just conception anymore.

It also is not necessarily human life when clearly not all beginning stage zygotes make it to the first week (55% fail) or to the 20th week (70% fail) naturally and under the best medical care.

In the case discussed above the information "there upon conception" was only sufficient to build a birth\pregnancy sac with a rudimentary placenta - a structure of living cells, of life - but no embryo, no organism, no human being in some cases. Likewise keeping a dead fetus in the womb will not result in a human being no matter how long (3 years?) you keep it there. In these cases conception plus "time in the womb" is still not human life:

Human Life = Conception + {time in the womb} + {something else}

A full term fully developed and normal fetus ready to enter the outside world is one of the successful few (<30%) of the zygotes at the beginning, it is not the same as a zygote, and no amount of emotional appeals, false terminology, wishful thinking or equivocation will make it so.

<img src="http://herballure.com/ForumExtras/Images/lhsvdciwrb.jpg">

Every stage of development is a hurdle that the fetus must successfully pass to become a human life.

Enjoy.
[color:"green"]
Note: my time is limited, so I only choose threads of particular interest to me and I cannot guarantee a reply to all responses (particularly if they do not discuss the issue/s), and I expect other people to do the same. Thank you for your consideration.[/color]

RAZD, an "empty" pregnancy sac is not a human life in itself, let's get real here and not misrepresent in order to score points.

Let me show you how much of misrepresentation this next statement will prove to be:


Let's take a look at what reality shows us. According to your statement, no embryo develops before 8 weeks, therefore there is "nothing there"....

Here is a reality picture of an embryo at 7 weeks old:
http://www.priestsforlife.org/resources/abortionimages/fig20baby7.jpg

One also wonders why anybody would get an abortion before 8 weeks if there was "nothing there".
Now take a good look at the pictures of an abortion at 7 weeks old. http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/pictures.html
Which then throws doubts on your responding statement below:


Anybody with eyes can see this isn't "nothing", but rather very clearly a developing baby. Nice try. Life begins at conception. If there is nothing there, how can anything be "conceived"? The information unfolds during the development time in the womb. No new information is added.

Here is a link showing reality pictures of the first week till the last stage in pregnancy.
http://www.pregnancy.org/pregnancy/fetaldevelopment1.php#week1

The stage is already set once conception has taken place. Foundation is already there. All that is necessary is nutrition, protection and time to unfold. It does not take long before the invisible (to the naked eye) becomes visible!

The following references illustrate the fact that a new human embryo, the starting point for a human life, comes into existence with the formation of the one-celled zygote:

"Zygote. This cell results from the union of an oocyte and a sperm. A zygote is the beginning of a new human being."

[Moore, Keith L. and Persaud, T.V.N. The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology. 6th edition. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1998, p. 2, p. 18]

[Note: This text is used for medical students at the University of Nebraska Medical Center]

* * *

"Development of the embryo begins at Stage 1 when a sperm fertilizes an oocyte and together they form a zygote."
[
England, Marjorie A. Life Before Birth. 2nd ed. England: Mosby-Wolfe, 1996, p.31]

* * *

Human development begins after the union of male and female gametes or germ cells during a process known as fertilization (conception).
"Fertilization is a sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm (spermatozoon) with a secondary oocyte (ovum) and ends with the fusion of their pronuclei (the haploid nuclei of the sperm and ovum) and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being."

[Moore, Keith L. Essentials of Human Embryology. Toronto: B.C. Decker Inc, 1988, p.2]


Embryo: the developing organism from the time of fertilization until significant differentiation has occurred, when the organism becomes known as a fetus.

Cloning Human Beings. Report and Recommendations of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission. Rockville, MD: GPO, 1997, Appendix-2.

"Embryo: An organism in the earliest stage of development; in a man, from the time of conception to the end of the second month in the uterus."

Dox, Ida G. et al. The Harper Collins Illustrated Medical Dictionary. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993, p. 146

"The development of a human being begins with fertilization, a process by which two highly specialized cells, the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female, unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote."

[Langman, Jan. Medical Embryology. 3rd edition. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1975, p. 3]

"The chromosomes of the oocyte and sperm are...respectively enclosed within female and male pronuclei. These pronuclei fuse with each other to produce the single, diploid, 2N nucleus of the fertilized zygote. This moment of zygote formation may be taken as the beginning or zero time point of embryonic development."

[Larsen, William J. Human Embryology. 2nd edition. New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1997, p. 17]

"Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed.... The combination of 23 chromosomes present in each pronucleus results in 46 chromosomes in the zygote. Thus the diploid number is restored and the embryonic genome is formed. The embryo now exists as a genetic unity."

[O'Rahilly, Ronan and Müller, Fabiola. Human Embryology & Teratology. 2nd edition. New York: Wiley-Liss, 1996, pp. 8, 29. This textbook lists "pre-embryo" among "discarded and replaced terms" in modern embryology, describing it as "ill-defined and inaccurate" (p. 12}]

"Almost all higher animals start their lives from a single cell, the fertilized ovum (zygote)... The time of fertilization represents the starting point in the life history, or ontogeny, of the individual."

[Carlson, Bruce M. Patten's Foundations of Embryology. 6th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996, p. 3]

PROMINENT SCIENTISTS AND PHYSICIANS :

The late Dr. Jerome LeJeune, Professor of Genetics at the University of Descartes in Paris, and discoverer of the genetic cause of Down Syndrome said, "After fertilization has taken place and a new human being has come into being. It's no longer a matter of taste or opinion, and not a meta-physical condition, it is plain experimental evidence." 5
Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, Harvard University Medical School: It is incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive...It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception." 6
Professor Hymie Gordon, Mayo clinic: "By all criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception." 7
Ashley Montague, Geneticist and Professor at Harvard and Rutgers, who is unsympathetic to the pro-life cause, said clear, "The basic fact is simple" Life begins not at birth, but conception." 8
Dr. Landrum Shettles served twenty-seven years as attending obstetrician-gynecologist at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. He was a pioneer in sperm biology, fertility, and sterility and is internationally famous for discovering male-and female-producing sperm. His intrauterine photographs of pre-born children appear in over fifty medical textbooks. Dr. Shettles states, "I oppose abortion...because I accept what is biologically manifest--that human life commences at the time of conception--and...because I believe it is wrong to take innocent human life under any circumstances. My position is scientific, pragmatic and humanitarian." 9

1 Bradley M. Patten, Human Embryology, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1968) 43.

2 L. Fridhandler, Gametogenesis to Implantation, " Biology of Gestation, Vol. 1 ed. N.S. Assau (New York: Academic Press, 1968) 76.

3 Time Magazine and Rand McNally, Atlas of the Body (New York: Rand-McNally, 1980) 139, 144.

4 "Pregnancy," The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed. Macropedia, Vol. 14 (Chicago: Encyclo. Brit., 1974) 968.

5 Report, Subcommittee on Separation of Powers to Senate Judiciary Committee S-158, 97th Congress, 1st Session, 1981)

6 Ibid

7 Ibid

8 Ashley Montague, Life Before Birth (New York: Signet Books, 1977) vi.

9 L. Shettles and D. Rorvik, Rites of Life: The Scientific Evidence of Life Before Birth (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Pub. 1983) 113.

Quotes from Abortionists and Abortion Clinic Workers:

"It is when I am holding a plastic uterus in one hand, a suction tube in the other, moving them together in imitation of the scrubbing to come, that woman ask the most secret question. I am speaking in a matter-of-fact voice about 'the tissue' and 'the contents' when the woman suddenly catches my eye and says 'How big is the baby now?' These words suggest a quiet need for definition of the boundaries being drawn. It isn't so odd, after all, that she feels relief when I describe the growing buds bulbous shape, its miniature nature. Again, I gauge, and sometimes lie a little, weaseling around its infantile features until its clinging power slackens."

--abortion worker Sallie Tisdale "We Do Abortions Here" Oct 1987 Harpers Magazine p 68

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"In my facilities, I always gave option counseling. Of course you make the abortion the most appealing. I told them about adoption and about foster care and about [when there was welfare] assistance. The typical way it would go is, "Well, you know you can place your baby out for adoption." But then, in the second breath you would say, "That's an option available to you, but you also have to realize that there's going to be a baby of yours out here somewhere in the world you will never see again. At least with abortion you know what's happening. You can go on with your life...The longer I was in it, the less I cared, so I really didn't really care what my conscience said. My conscience was totally numb anyway. But what it did do was public relations-wise. You were able, when a reporter or TV crew came, to pull out a packet of information for the patients to read and they received it. So what can anybody say? Publicly it looked good -- in reality it was another tool that was used to force a woman into abortion. It's typical -- I would give them an option and then shoot it down. The only option you didn't shoot down, obviously, was abortion."
Former clinic owner Eric Harrah quoted by Dr. Jack Willke and Brad Mattes

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"Counselors are just to give the appearance of help. . . [They] think of themselves as company for the women." --abortion counselor

"I have never yet counseled anybody to have the baby. I'm also doing women's counseling on campus at Albany State, and there I am expected to present alternatives. Whereas at the abortion clinic you aren't really expected to."
--abortion counselor Rachel Weeping and Other Essays About Abortion. James Tunstead Burtchaell, editor. New York: Universal Press, 1982

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"Vital signs should be observed regularly, and a Doppler [for listening to the fetal heartbeat] inaudible to the patient should be used at intervals to determine the presence or absence of fetal heart tones.. This [informed consent] is a controversial area, but most professionals in the field feel that it is not advisable for patients to view the products of conception, to be told the sex of the fetus, or to be informed of a multiple pregnancy" --Abortionist Warren Hern in "Abortion Practice" J.B. Lippincott Company, 1984 pgs 145 and 304

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"Sonography in connection with induced abortion may have psychological hazards. Seeing a blown-up, moving image of the embryo she is carrying can be distressing to a woman who is about to undergo an abortion, Dr. Sally Faith Dorfman noted. She stressed that the screen should be turned away from the patient."

--"Obstetrics and Gynecology News" editorial February 15-28, 1986

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"I was trained by a professional marketing director in how to sell abortions over the telephone. He took every one of our receptionists, nurses, and anyone else who would deal with people over the phone through an extensive training period. The object was, when the girl called, to hook the sale so that she wouldn't get an abortion somewhere else, or adopt out her baby, or change her mind. We were doing it for the money."
--Nina Whitten, chief secretary at a Dallas abortion clinic under Dr. Curtis Boyd

"They [the women] are never allowed to look at the ultrasound because we knew that if they so much as heard the heart beat, they wouldn't want to have an abortion." -Dr. Randall 'Pro-Choice 1990: Skeletons in the Closet" by David Kuperlain and Mark Masters in Oct "New Dimensions" magazine
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"Every woman has these same two questions: First, "Is it a baby?" "No" the counselor assures her. "It is a product of conception (or a blood clot, or a piece of tissue). . .How many women would have an abortion, if they told them the truth?"
--Carol Everett, former owner of two clinics and director of four "A Walk Through an Abortion Clinic" by Carol Everett ALL About Issues magazine Aug-Sept 1991, p 117

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"If a woman we were counseling expressed doubts about having an abortion, we would say whatever was necessary to persuade her to abort immediately."
--Judy W., former office manager of the second largest abortion clinic in El Paso, Texas

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"We tried to avoid the women seeing them [the fetuses] They always wanted to know the sex, but we lied and said it was too early to tell. It's better for the women to think of the fetus as an 'it.'
--Abortion clinic worker Norma Eidelman quoted in Rachel Weeping p 34

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"The counselor at our clinic would cry with the girls at the drop of a hat. She would find theirweakness and work on it. The women were never given any alternatives. They were told how much trouble it is to have a baby."
--former abortion worker Debra Harry, quoted in the film "Meet the Abortion Providers" 1989

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"When discussing the sonogram, you are supposed to tell the client that it is a measurement as far as the pregnancy is concerned, but not a measure of the fetal head or anything like that."
--Rosemary Petruso, on her training to be an abortion counselor. Her story appeared in the St. Louis Review and was also quoted in "Women Exploited: The Other Victims of Abortion" Paula Ervin, editor. Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, 1985

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"Sometimes we lied. A girl might ask what her baby was like at a certain point in the pregnancy: Was it a baby yet? Even as early as 12 weeks a baby is totally formed, he has fingerprints, turns his head, fans his toes, feels pain. But we would say 'It's not a baby yet. It's just tissue, like a clot.'"
--Kathy Sparks told in "The Conversion of Kathy Sparks" by Gloria Williamson, Christian Herald Jan 1986 p 28

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"When I first started working there [at the clinic], I had to sit and listen to women answering the phone for at least a month before they would allow me to answer the phone. We had to know exactly what we were doing when we were talking to these women. We had to find out very quickly what their problem was, play on that and get them in the clinic for an abortion. We were very good salespeople."
-Joy Davis

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"In fact many women will come to me considering abortion, and I have been personally told that I am to turn the monitor away from her view so that seeing her baby jump around on the screen does not influence her choice."
--Shari Richards, quoted from the John Ankerburg Show on 3/7/90

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"When a girl called to make her appointment, we'd work her in as soon as possible. If she called on Tuesday, we'd have her in no later than Friday. We wanted to avoid a long waiting period where she'd have time to think about it. First she would fill out her forms, and then talk with a counselor. . . The counselors were trained in what areas to cover and which to avoid. They'd say, "I know this is a terrible situation you're in. What can we do to help make this better for you? Yeah, it doesn't sound like you're ready for a pregnancy right now." Their task was to keep the machinery moving - to get the woman into the procedure room as quickly as possible. "

---clinic worker, name withheld

"There was a public health center in a town not far from Denver and they sent a lot of girls to us. They told us they did all the counseling. We weren't allowed to counsel them or even ask them about birth control. We couldn't even tell them what could happen during the abortion. Nothing. If we tried to discuss alternatives, we would get in trouble with the doctor because then the health center would threaten to send their business elsewhere. All we did was find out how far along they were, tell them when they were going to be finished, get their money, do the abortion, and send them home."
--Registered nurse Sam Griggs

From "Abortion Clinics: An Inside Look" published by Last Days Ministries.
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"I have seen hundreds of patients in my office who have had abortions and were just lied to by the abortion counselor. Namely 'This is less painful than having a tooth removed. It is not a baby.' Afterwards, the woman sees Life magazine and breaks down and goes into a major depression." -- Psychologist Vincent Rue quoted in "Abortion Inc" David Kupelian and Jo Ann Gasper, New Dimensions, October 1991 p 16

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"The Pennsylavania Abortion Control Act went into effect on March 20, 1994. For the past six years, health centers that provide abortion services and the lawyers representing them have been fighting the provisions of the law. What does the law provide? Women seeking an abortion must be told by a physician at least 24 hours prior to the procedure the nature of the procedure and the probable gestational age of the fetus. Women must also be told that the Commonwealth's materials are available describing fetal development and listing for agencies that offer alternatives to abortion. . . What we must do now is make sure that our Representatives know how strongly we feel about the law. Call them, write to them! Let them know how burdensome these regulations are. Vote for pro-choice candidates...."
--Elizabeth Blackwell Health Center for Women newsletter April 1994

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More evidence of abortion clinic lies.

Part Two: What is abortion really like? Why all this fuss about abortion? Isn't it just the removal of a ball of cells?

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"But when I look in the basin, among the curdlike blood clots, I see and elfin thorax, attentuated, its pencilline ribs all in parallel rows with tiny knobs of spine rounding upwards. A translucent arm and hand swim beside."
--Sallie Tisdale "We Do Abortions Here"

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"I can remember...the resident doctor sitting down, putting the tube in, and removing the contents. I saw the bloody material coming down the plastic tube, and it went into a big jar. My job afterwards was to go and undo the jar, and to see what was inside.
I didn't have any views on abortion; I was in a training program, and this was a brand new experience. I was going to get to see a new procedure and learn. I opened the jar and took the little piece of stockingnette stocking and opened the little bag. The resident doctor said "Now put it on the blue towel and check it out. We want to see if we got it all.' I thought, "that'll be exciting-hands on experience looking at tissue.' I opened the sock up and put it on the towel, and there were parts of a person in there. I had taken anatomy, I was a medical student. I knew what I was looking at. There was a little scapula and an arm, I saw some ribs and a chest, and a little tiny head. I saw a piece of a a leg, and a tiny hand and an arm, and you know, it was like somebody put a hot poker into me. I had a conscience, and it hurt. Well, I checked it out and there were two arms and two legs and one head and so forth, and I turned and said "I guess you got it all.' That was a very hard experience to go through emotionally. --Former abortionist

"Saline abortions have to be done in the hospital because of the complications that can arise. Not that they can't arise during other times, but more so now. The saline, a salt solution, is injected into the woman's sac, and the baby starts dying a slow, violent death. The mother feels everything, and many times it is at this point when she realizes that she really has a live baby inside her, because the baby starts fighting violently, for his or her life. He's just fighting inside because he's burning."
--Debra Harry "One night a lady delivered and I was called to come and see her because she was 'uncontrollable.' I went into the room, and she was going to pieces; she was having a nervous breakdown, screaming and thrashing. The other patients were upset because this lady was screaming. I walked in, and here was this little saline abortion baby kicking. It had been born alive, and was kicking and moving for a little while before it finally died of those terrible burns, because the salt solution gets into the lungs and burns the lungs too. I'll tell you one thing about D& E . You never have to worry about a baby's being born alive. I won't describe D & E , other than to say that, as a doctor, you are sitting there tearing, and I mean tearing- you need a lot of strength to do it- arms and legs off of babies and putting them in a stack on top of the table." --Dr. David Brewer of Glen Ellyn Illinois

"I remember an experience as a resident on a hysterotomy. I remember seeing the baby move underneath the sack of membranes, as the cesarean incision was made, before the doctor broke the water. The thought came to me, "My God, that's a person" Then he broke the water. And when he broke the water, it was like I had a pain in my heart, just like when I saw that first suction abortion. And then he delivered the baby,. and I couldn't touch it.. I wasn't much of an assistant. I just stood there, and the reality of what was doing on finally began to seep into my calloused brain and heart. They took that little baby that was making little sounds and moving and kicking, and set it on that table in a cold, stainless steel bowl. Every time I would look over while we were repairing the incision in uterus and finishing the Caesarean, I would see that little person moving in that bowl. And it kicked and moved less and less, of course, as time went on. I can remember going over and looking at the baby when we were done with the surgery and the baby was still alive. You could see the chest was moving and the heart was beating, and the baby would try to take a little breath, and it really hurt inside, and it began to educate me as to what abortion really was." quoted in "Pro-Choice 1990: Skeletons in the Closet"

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"Following [the doctor's] directions, I took the collection bottle and poured its contents into a shallow pan. Then I used water to rinse off the blood and smaller particles which clouded the bottom of the pan. 'Now look closely,' the doctor said. 'It is important that we have got all the stuff out.' I looked in the pan to find that the stuff consisted of the remains of what had been, a few minutes before, a thirteen week old fetus. I could make out the remains of arms and legs and a trunk and a skull. I tried to piece them back together in my mind, to see if there were any missing parts. Most of the pieces were so battered and bloody they were not recognizably human. Then my eyes locked upon a perfect little hand, less than half a centimeter long. I stared at four tiny fingers and a tiny opposed thumb, complete with tiny translucent fingers. And I knew what I had done."
--former abortionist "Chi An" quoted in Stephen Mosher's "A Mother's Ordeal: One Woman's Fight Against China's One Child Policy" pgs 60-61

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"I got to where I couldn't stand to look at the little bodies anymore"
--Dr. Beverly McMillan, when asked why she stopped performing abortions.

"I have been there, and I have seen these totally formed babies as early as ten weeks... with the leg missing, or with their head off. I have seen the little rib cages..." --Debra Harry

"We all wish it were formless, but its not...and its painful. There is a lot of emotional pain." --abortion clinic worker Quoted in "The Ex Abortionists: They Have Confronted Reality" Washington Post April 1, 1988 p a 21

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"You have to become a bit schizophrenic. In one room, you encourage the patient that the slight irregularity in the fetal heart is not important, that she is going to have a fine, healthy baby. Then, in the next room you assure another woman, on whom you just did a saline abortion, that it is a good thing that the heartbeat is already irregular....she has nothing to worry about, she will NOT have a live baby...All of a sudden one noticed that at the time of the saline infusion there was a lot of activity in the uterus. That's not fluid currents. That's obviously the fetus being distressed by swallowing the concentrated salt solution and kicking violently and that's to all intents and purposes, the death trauma. ..somebody has to do it, and unfortunately we are the executioners in this instance..." --abortionist Dr.Szenes

"And then to see, to be with somebody while they're having the injection when they're twenty or twenty-four weeks, and you see the baby moving around, kicking around, as this needle goes into the stomach, you know." --Susan Lindstrom, M.S.W.

"I look inside the bucket in front of me. There is a small naked person in there, floating in a bloody liquid- plainly the tragic victim of a drowning accident. But hen perhaps this was no accident, because the body is purple with bruises and the face has the agonized tauntness of one forced to die too soon. I have seen this face before, on a Russian soldier lying on a frozen snow-covered hill, stiff with death, and cold." --Pro-choice doctor and author Magda Denes "Performing Abortions" by Magda Denes, M.D. "Commentary" Oct. 26 1976 p 35-37

Also quoted Magda Denes, "[the doctor] pulls out something, which he slaps on the instrument table. "there," he says, "A leg." . . . I turn to Mr. Smith. . . He points to the instrument table, where there is a perfectly formed, slightly bent leg, about three inches long. . . "There, I've got the head out now." ...There lies a head. It is the smallest human head I have ever seen, but it is unmistakably part of a person."

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"If I see a case...after twenty weeks, where it frankly is a child to me, I really agonize over itbecause the potential is so imminently there...On the other hand, I have another position, which I think is superior in the hierarchy of questions, and that is "who owns this child?" It's got to be the mother."
--Dr. James MacMahon, who performs D & X abortions, in Nat Hentoff "It's Just Too Late: Third Trimester abortions are an Outrage and an Insult to the Human Race" July 27, 1993 Pittsburg Post-Gazette

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Describing an abortion that apparently did not prevent the child from being born alive, Dr. Haskell said this, "It came out very quickly after I put the scissors up in the cervical canal and pierced the skull and spread the scissors apart...in the previous two, I had used the suction to collapse the skull." --Dayton Daily News Sun Dec 10 1989

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"The first time, I felt like a murderer, but I did it again and again and again, and now, 20 years later, I am facing what happened to me as a doctor and as a human being. Sure, I got hard. Sure, the money was important. And oh, it was an easy thing, once I had taken the step, to see the women as animals and the babies as just tissue." --abortionist quoted from a radio talk show by John Rice in "Abortion" Litt D. Murfreesboro, TN.

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"I have never known a woman who, after her baby was born, was not overjoyed that I had not killed it." --Abortionist Aleck Bourne "A Doctor Speaks" London Express, Jan 25

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"We know that its killing, but the state permits killing under certain circumstances" --Dr. Neville Sender, abortionist

"Even now I feel a little peculiar about it, because as a physician I was trained to conserve life, and here I am destroying it." --abortionist

"There was not one [doctor] who at some point in the questioning did not say "This is murder."' --Magda Denes on her two years of research done for her book In Necessity and Sorrow; Life and Death Inside an Abortion Clinic.

Also

"I do think abortion is murder- of a very special and necessary sort. And no physician ever involved with the procedure ever kids himself about that." "You know there is something in there alive that you are killing." --another abortionist interviewed by Denes

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"Clinic workers may say they support a woman's right to choose, but they will also say that they do not want to see tiny hands and tiny feet....there is a great difference between the intellectual support of a woman's right to choose and the actual participation in the carnage of abortion. Because seeing body parts bothers the workers." --Judith Fetrow, former clinic worker from San Francisco quoted in "Meet the Abortion Providers III" from a taped conference in Chicago 4/3/93

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..the emotional turmoil that the procedure inevitably wreaks on the physicians and staff...There is no possibility of denial of an act of destruction by the operator...the sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current." --Abortionist quoted in "Meeting of American Association of Planned Parenthood Physicians" OBGYN News P 196

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Quoted in Melody Green and Sharon Bennett "The Crime of Being Alive: Abortion, Euthanasia, Infanticide" p 3

"Remember, there is a human being at the other end of the table taking that kid apart. We've had a couple of guys drinking too much, taking drugs, even a suicide or two." --Dr. Julius Butler, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Minnesota Medical School

"Arms, legs, and chests come out of the forceps. It's not a sight for everybody" --Dr. William Benbow Thompson at the University of California at Irvine

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"Abortion Practice" by Warren Hern, M.D., Boulder Colorado Abortionist published in 1984 by the J.B. Lippenott Company. Hern performs abortions up until the 4th month of pregnancy.

"The procedure changes significantly at 21 weeks because fetal tissues become much more cohesive and difficult to dismember" p 154
"A long curved Mayo scissors may be necessary to decapitate and dismember the fetus." - 154

"The aggregate fetal tissue is weighted, then the following fetal parts are measured, foot length, knee to heel length, and biparietal diameter" p 164

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"Nobody wants to perform abortions after ten weeks, because by then you see the features of the baby, hands, feet. It's really barbaric." --abortionist quoted in M.D. Doctors Talk About Themselves by John Pekkanen p 93

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ABORTION QUOTES CONTINUED

"I was for abortion, I thought it was a woman's right to terminate pregnancy she did not want. Now I'm not so sure. I am a student nurse nearing the end of my OB-GYN rotation at a major metropolitan hospital and teaching center. It wasn't until I saw what abortion really involves that I changed my mind. After the first week in the abortion clinic several people in my clinical group were shaky about their previously positive feelings about abortion. This new attitude resulted from our actually seeing a Prostaglandin abortion, one similar in nature to the widely used saline abortion. . . this method is being used for terminations of pregnancies of sixteen weeks and over. I used to find rationales. the fetus isn't real. Abdomens aren't really very swollen. It isn't 'alive.' No more excuses...I am a member of the health profession and members of my class are now ambivalent about abortion. I now know a great deal more about what is involved in the issue. Women should perceive fully what abortion is; how destructive an act it is both for themselves and their unborn child. Whatever psychological coping mechanisms are employed during the process, the sight of a fetus in a hospital bedpan remains the final statement."
Quoted in "The Zero People: Essays on Life" by Jeff Lane Hensley, editor. Ann Arbor: Servant Books, 1983

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"I found much distress in the clinic, but it involved not only the women. I saw the pain of the babies who were born burned from the saline solution used for late-term abortions. I saw the bits of feet, bits of hands, the mangled heads and bodies of the little people. I saw pain and felt pain." --One time clinic worker Paula Sutcliffe in "Precious in My Sight" "Pro-Life Feminism: Different Voices" Gail Garnier-Sweet, editor

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>From "Rachel Weeping"

"The doctors would remove the fetus while performing hysterotomies and then lay it on the table., where it would squirm until it died. ..They all had perfect forms and shapes. I couldn't take it. No nurse could." --Joyce Craig, director of a Brooklyn clinic of Planned Parenthood. who assisted in abortion for two months, then quit. p 34

Edward Eichner, director of medicine at a Cleveland abortion facility said "No doctor, for ethical, moral or honest reasons wants to do nothing but abortions...women don't like to do abortions over and over for moral reasons. Sometimes our women doctors become pregnant themselves, which upsets the patients. At the same time, if a woman is carrying a baby, she doesn't like to abort someone else's. We have much more trouble keeping women doctors on the staff than men." --p 49

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"After an abortion, the doctor must inspect these remains to make sure that all the fetal parts and placenta have been removed. Any tissue left inside the uterus can start an infection. Dr. Bours squeezed the contents of the sock into a shallow dish and poked around with his finger. "You can see a teeny tiny hand' he said. --abortion clinic worker quoted in "Is the Fetus Human?" and in Dudley Clendinen, "The Abortion Conflict: What it Does to One Doctor" New York Times Magazine Aug 11 1985 p 26 ------------------------------------------------------------------

"From May to November 1988, I worked for an abortionist. He specializes in third trimester killings. I witnessed evidence of the brutal, cold blooded murder of over 600 viable, healthy babies at seven, eight and nine months gestation. A very, very few of these babies, less than 2%, were handicapped...I thought I was pro-choice and I was glad to be working in an abortion clinic. I thought I was helping provide a noble service to women in crisis....I was instructed to falsify the age of the babies in medical records. I was required to lie to the mothers over the phone, as they scheduled their appointments, and to tell them that they were not 'too far along' Then I had to note, in the records that Dr. Tiller's needle had successfully pierced the walls of the baby's heart, injecting the poison what brought death...one day, Dr. Tiller came up the stairs from the basement, where the mothers were in labor. He was carrying a large cardboard box, and ducked into the employees only area of the office so that he wouldn't have to walk through the waiting room. He passed behind my desk as I sat working on the computer, and he turned the corner to go around a short hall. He called out for me to come and help him. the box was so big and heavy in his arms that he couldn't get the key into the lock. So I unlocked the door for him, and , pushing the door open, I saw very clearly the gleaming metal of the crematorium- a full sized crematorium, just like the one's used in funeral homes. I went back to my computer. I could hear Dr. Tiller firing up the gas oven. A few minutes later I could smell burning human flesh. Mine was the agony of a participant, however reluctant, in the act of prenatal infanticide." --Luhra Tivis on her experience in the abortion business Quoted in Celebrate Life Sept/Oct 1994 "Where is the Real Violence?"

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> From the film "Meet the Abortion Providers"

"My heart got callous against the fact that I was a murderer, but that baby lying in a cold bowl educated me as to what abortion really was." --former abortionist Dr. David Brewer

"I want the general public to know what the doctors know- that this is a person, this is a baby. That this is not some kind of blob of tissue." --Dr. Anthony Levantino

"I have taken the lives of innocent babies, and I have ripped them from their mother's wombs with a powerful suction machine --McArthur Hill, M.D.

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"I am deeply troubled by my own increasing certainty that I have in fact presided over 60,000 deaths. There is no longer serious doubt in my mind that human life exists from the very onset of pregnancy"
--Dr. Bernard Nathanson, "Deeper Into Abortion" New England Journal of Medicine Nov 1974 p 1189

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"I dare say that any thinking, caring individual can't not realize that he is ending life, or potential life." --abortionist

"[Powell] said "Is this a fair way of expressing what you have just said, Doctor? You tell the mother "because your baby is defective, you have the right to kill it or not to kill it. If you choose to kill it, I will do the killing." "Of course," he [the abortionist] said. "There is no other way to say it and be honest."
both from The Zero People pg 9

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"I wanted to be the world's best abortionist, for the good of my patients. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right. So, after I met each patient, reviewed the medical information gathered by my nurse, examined the patient and performed the abortion, I would then carefully sift through the remains to be sure all the parts were accounted for. I had to find four extremities (two arms and two legs) a spine, a skull, and the placenta, or my patient would suffer later from an incomplete abortion...My attention was so focused on my perceived patient that I managed to deny that there were, in fact, two patients involved- the expectant mother and a very small child...I had to wonder, how can having a child be so wrong for some people that they will pay me to end its life?"
--former abortionist Dr. McMillan "How One Doctor Changed Her Mind About Abortion" Focus on the Family, Colorado Springs

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"Abortions are very draining, exhausting, heart-rending. There are a lot of tears. Some patients turn on you...I do them because I take the attitude that women who are going to terminate babies deserve the same kind of treatment as women who carry babies...I've done a couple thousand, and its been a significant financial boon...the only way I can do an abortion is to consider only the woman as my patient and block out the baby."
--abortionist quoted in M.D. Doctors Talk About Themselves

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> From the article "Abortion Providers Share Inner Conflicts" which appeared in the July 12 1993 issue of AAA News, a publication of the American Medical Association:

"I have angry feelings at myself for feeling good about grasping the calvaria, for feeling good about doing a technically good procedure that destroys a fetus, kills a baby."

"When I put my hands on somebody to feel how big they are and I get kicked, I am barely able to talk at that moment."

an abortionist stated that 'somebody had asked her what they could say to the staff to make them look less shocked when they look at a 20 week fetus.."It's hard to be in a profession where you have a hard time answering the questions that other people ask you about what you do."

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>From World magazine August 1995

"You would just look in the buckets and see arms and legs. I have horrible dreams about that now. It was something you would see in a scary movie." --Former clinic worker Kirsten Breedlove

"The babies were frozen in a freezer. Now I wished I had not looked." --Norma McCorvey

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"Even if you are pro-choice, no one likes to see a dead fetus."

-Vilma Valdez, Education Director Planned Parenthood of Greater Miami, The Miami Herald, Oct 24 1992
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"I went up to the lab one day and on the pathologiest's table I saw what I thought was little rubber doll until I realized it was a fetus. . .I got really shook up and upset and I couldn't believe it. It had all its fingers and toes, you know, hands and feet. . . I never thought it would look so -real. I didn't like it."

--Planned Parenthood employee quoted in Magda Denes book "In Necessity and Sorrow" New York:Basic Books 1979

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In an interview by Mark Crutcher, former abortion clinic director Joy Davis said "Each person who worked there had a different way of dealing with it. [One] would look at the ultrasound the entire time she was in the room, but she would never look down in the pan. She would never look at the tissue being removed. She never wanted to see that. She would never take her eyes off the screen. And I had one who would never look at the screen....she would never look at the tissue and never look at the screen, she just didn't want to see anything."
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Also from the 1993 Chicago conference

"Planned Parenthood is set up so clinic workers never have to see the babies. It's set up that way because having to look at the babies bothers the workers. ...Generally there is one clinic worker in charge of the babies...I was that clinic worker. I had to look at the babies. I had to store them, I had to send them to pathology. And I was the person who had to dispose of them.....in order to maintain my sanity, I established a personal mourning ritual. I said Shiva for the babies. I said prayers for the dead. I also named the babies as I put them in a waste container."
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"It [the fetus] is a form of life...This has to be killing...The question then becomes "is this kind of killing justifiable? In my own mind, it is justifiable, but only with the informed consent of the mother"
--abortionist quoted in "Democrat and Chronicle" 7/5/92

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>From the Dallas Observer 3/18/95 Former clinic administrator Charlotte Taft, "We were hiding from the women some of the pieces of truth about abortion that were threatening....It is a kind of killing." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >From "Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic" by Wendy Simonds. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1996

Quotes from clinic employees:

"You're going from dealing with people to dealing with what most people here at the Center consider a real hurdle, to do sterile room, because you have to deal with the actual abortion tissue. And for some people, that's really hard. They can be abstractly in favor of abortion rights, but they sure don't want to see what an eighteen-week abortion looks like."

"It's just- I mean it looks like a baby. It looks like a baby. And especially if you get one that comes out, that's not piecemeal. And you know, I saw this one, and it had its fingers in its mouth...it makes me really sad that that had to happen, you know, but it doesn't change my mind. It's just hard. And it makes me just sort of stop and feel sad about it, the whole necessity of it. And also....it's very warm when it comes into the sterile room because it's been in the mother's stomach. It feels like flesh, you know..."

"It's going to be weird now because you're going to see the sono. You're going to see the heart beating- little hearts, you know- and then, all of a sudden, you're going to put his cardiac medicine in it to make it stop- to kill it. So you're going to see the exact moment when you kill the fetus. I won't kill it, the doctor will kill it...and, I mean, it might be more humane...[if] the fetuses do feel something, why not kill it, you know, fast, [rather] than rip its leg off?"

"I feel some sadness [about abortions] and I think part of the problem is that we don't talk about that...we don't talk about it as much as we think about it...somehow your pro-choice stance is compromised by saying the word "baby."...We don't allow ourselves to say or think that word...."

"At nine weeks...you start seeing fetal parts. And by the second trimester it's, you know, it's a baby, and by eighteen weeks it's definitely a baby. And by like, you know, twenty-two weeks, you go in and you watch someone do a sonogram, and you're like, "Oh my." There it is just moving, moving around. And it's really hard because I always thought of abortion in terms of just the woman, just her body."

"You're looking between the woman's legs; you're seeing, you know, what the doctor's doing. And it's what a lot of people would call kind of, I guess, gruesome- that's not really the word because- it's identifiable. I mean, when he...takes the forceps and pulls out a foot, you can see the foot, and my reaction- because I feel so strongly that women who want to have a twenty week abortion should be able to have that- but I mean when I look and was just like, you know, my first reaction was, you know, I was pretty horrified."

"So by it looking like a baby, you're associating it with yourself because...you used to be a baby, you used to be a fetus."

"...when you're, you know, putting a fetus's feet in over its head in a baggie, there's just this brief moment of "This could have been me," which I fundamentally believe is okay. She should have the right to choose..."

"...it looks like a baby, That's what it looks like to me. You've never seen anything else that looks like that. The only other thing you've ever seen is a baby...You can see a face and hands, and ears and eyes and, you know...feet and toes...It bothered me real bad the first time..."

"The destruction I can't deny....I wish we lived in a world where abortion didn't have to exist."

"You know, we still say "products of conception." Well, why don't we say it looks like- you know, a twenty-week fetus looks like a baby. Why can't we say that in public? Because that's what the antis say, you know."

"I think the tough part was seeing actual pieces of fetus being removed..And in the beginning, yes, I remember looking, standing behind this woman's shoulder [as she performed an early second- trimester-abortion] and thinking, "I can't do this...There's something emotionally upsetting about this..Features are discernible; you can count five fingers on a hand and five toes on a foot. You know, all the organ systems are formed. You know, you can see ears as structures, and the nose and eyes as structures...I have gotten to the point now that because I've been doing this work five months, four months, I look at it a little differently. I don't see the same things that I did. And, honestly, when I sit down to do one of these now, I am watching to be sure that I'm getting everything that I need to get. It's 'Do I have two lower extremities? Do I have two upper extremities? Is t here a spine? ...and the skull?...It does become a bit routine after a while. I don't fear it."

"I hate it when people put it together to look like a baby. I hate that...I don't want to look like it when its like that because it's like a broken doll, and that grosses me out." From the author: "Many health workers told me they 'never look at the face' when processing tissue."

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"Another thing that bothered me as I went about my work at the clinic was the fact that I had seen an ultrasound abortion. We did first trimester abortions. This was a late first trimester, probably second trimester. I handled the ultrasound while the doctor performed the procedure and I directed him while I was watching the screen. I saw the baby pull away. I saw the baby open his mouth. I had seen the Silent Scream a number of times, but it didnt effect me. To me it was just more pro-life propaganda. But I couldnt deny what I saw on the screen." --Joan Appleton, former clinic worker

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"So when I went back to doing abortions and saw the fetus on the ultrasound, I recalled the early days of my pregnancies, when I found out I was pregnant and saw the baby on the ultrasound, and it really felt like this is a baby, a very real and potential being. Now, I do feel that this is a potential person and it does not have a life of its own outside of the mother, but I also am really aware that when you're ready to embrace a pregnancy, you can embrace it from the very moment you conceive or are aware that you are pregnant. Faye Wattleton said recently, "I think we have deluded ourselves into believing that people don't know that abortion is killing. So any pretense that abortion is not killing is a signal of our ambivalence, a signal that we cannot say yes, it kills a fetus, but it is the women's body, and therefore ultimately her choice." I believe that very firmly. You look at the ultrasounds and there's a fetus with a heartbeat and then after the procedure, there's the fetus, usually in pieces, in a dish. It was alive one moment and it's not the next. I don't believe it's a painful experience for the fetus because its nervous system is not "wired" so that it can feel pain at that point. I don't believe, as some anti-abortion people would have you believe, that there's a "silent scream." But it's very clear to me that it's killing a potential life. And I found that hard at first. "
----anonymous, quoted by Camille Peri at http://www.salonmagazine.com/june97/mothers/abortion970623.html in Salon Magazine

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"I hated putting babies in strainers and rinsing them off and putting them in zip-lock bags."
--former abortion clinic owner Eric Harrah

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By Dr. Arnold Halpern, former director of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic

"There is no difference between a first trimester, a second trimester, a third trimester abortion or infanticide. It's all the same human being in different stages of development. I finally got to the point I couldn't look at those little bodies anymore."

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An abortion doctor describes his job:

"... As you get into the second trimester, if we remove the pregnancy using forceps, and if a heartbeat is the measure of being alive, that happens all the time."
Dr. Dennis Christensen, Madison Abortion Clinic, Wisconsin. From The New York Times; May 15, 1998; page A14.

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"I worked as an assistant nurse at Dr. Haskell's clinic for three days--September 28, 29, and 30, 1993. . . . On the third day, Dr. Haskell asked me to observe as he performed several of the procedures that are the subject of this hearing [D&X abortion, also called partial birth abortion]. Although I was in that clinic on assignment of the agency, Dr. Haskell was interested in hiring me full time, and I was being given orientation in the entire range of procedures provided at that facility. I was present for three of these partial-birth procedures. It is the first one that I will describe to you in detail. The mother was six months pregnant (26 1/2 weeks). A doctor told her that the baby had Down's Syndrome and she decided to have an abortion. She came in the first two days to have the laminaria inserted and changed, and she cried the whole time. On the third day she came in to receive the partial-birth procedure. Dr. Haskell brought the ultrasound in and hooked it up so that he could see the baby. On the ultrasound screen, I could see the heart beating. As Dr. Haskell watched the baby on the ultrasound screen, the baby's heartbeat was clearly visible on the ultrasound screen. Dr. Haskell went in with forceps and grabbed the baby's legs and pulled them down into the birth canal. Then he delivered the baby's body and the arms--everything but the head. The doctor kept the baby's head just inside the uterus. The baby's little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors through the back of his head, and the baby's arms jerked out in a flinch, a startle reaction, like a baby does when he thinks that he might fall. The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening and sucked the baby's brains out. Now the baby was completely limp. I was completely unprepared for what I was seeing. I almost threw up as I watched the doctor do these things. Brenda Pratt Shafer, RN

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My official title at the mill was "health worker." I did various duties-lab work, leading groups (deceiving women about their abortions), "advocating" (deceiving women during their abortions), and assisting the abortionist, which included helping during the abortion and checking to make sure all the parts of the baby were there in the collection jar afterwards. I will never forget, in the second-trimester abortions, holding those little feet up to a chart on the wall to make sure of the age of the baby. --- Dina Madsen

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My 23rd abortion changed my mind about doing abortions forever. This patient was a little overweight and ultimately proved to be a little farther along than anticipated. This was not an uncommon mistake before ultrasound was readily available to confirm the gestational age. Initially, the abortion proceeded normally. The water broke, but then nothing more would come out. When I withdrew the curette, I saw that it was plugged up with the leg of the baby which had been torn off. I then changed techniques and used ring forceps to dismember the 13 or 14 week size baby. Inside the remains of the rib cage I found a tiny, beating heart. I was finally able to remove the head and looked squarely into the face of a human being -- a human being that I had just killed. -Dr. Paul Jarrett

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From Norma McCorvey's book Won By Love:

At least 80 percent of the women would try to look down at the end of the table, wondering if they cold see anything which is why our doctor always went in with the scalpel first. Once the baby was already cut up, there was nothing but blood and torn up tissue for the woman to see. When a later abortion was performed, workers had to piece the baby back together, and every major part--head, torso, two legs, and two arms --had to be accounted for. One of our little jokes at the clinic was, "If you ever want to humble a doctor, hide a leg so he thinks he has to go back in." Please understand, these were not abnormal, uncaring women working with me at the clinic. We were just involved in a bloody, dehumanizing business, all of us for our own reasons. Whether we were justifying our past advocacy(as I was), justifying a previous abortion (as many were) or whatever, we were just trying to cope--and if we couldn’t laugh at what was going on, I think our minds would have snapped. It's not an easy trying to confuse a conscience that will not stay dead.

Thanks Bex, but this still does not refute the fact that in empty sac miscarriages there is no embryo, nothing to become a human being.
Great picture, and it sure shows what is missing in the case of an empty sac: if you have a miscarriage at 7-8 weeks with an empty pregnancy sac, then that well formed 7 week old embryo in your picture is precisely what is missing. Let's look a little earlier:

. . . . <img src="http://herballure.com/ForumExtras/Images/hmamacujji.jpg">

Before 3 weeks have passed an embryo has formed within a pregnancy sac. All pregnancy sacs this old and older should have at least this much development, and it should be easy to tell that this or more is physically missing in the case of empty sac miscarriages.

And the earliest embryo stage is less than this. From: Human Development Chart:
The beginning of the embryo stage is at 14 days.

The earliest point that the pregnancy sac begins to develop is not much earlier than the starting stage of the embryo -- from Stages of Development:
Sac formation starts at day 10 to 12, just a couple days before the embryo stage starts. Every empty pregnancy sac miscarriage from 14 days to the 8 weeks of the statistics above should have a detectable embryo in side, and they did not.

All empty pregnancy sacs from two week to eight weeks that have no embryo are not going to develop one. There is no there there.

An embryo failed to develop and the empty sac is ejected.

All the conceptions in these cases of empty pregnancy sac miscarriages between 2 and 8 weeks fail to become an organism of any kind, and certainly they are not human lives.

No amount of emotional appeal will change that simple fact.

Enjoy.
[color:"green"]
Note: my time is limited, so I only choose threads of particular interest to me and I cannot guarantee a reply to all responses (particularly if they do not discuss the issue/s), and I expect other people to do the same. Thank you for your consideration.[/color]

Thank you RAZD for your response.

Your ongoing "quips" of my "Emotional appeals" don't explain away the raw reality and photographs, including quotes from the highly qualified and experienced in this field, even including abortionists themselves. Again, nice try! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/gunshot.gif" alt="" />



Yes great picture, who drew it? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> Can we stick with live photos please? you don't want to claim anything with only cartoons or drawn up charts to show for it. It's not a good idea, especially after Haeckel's scandalous artistic embryo frauds.....perhaps he should have taken up art <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/xoxo.gif" alt="" />

However, even-so. Based on the animation and charts you provided. Nothing will change a very basic fact. No matter what stage of development that has taken place after conception, even with the pregnancy sac before the visible sign of the embryo. Life has already begun. Be it successful after that point or not. There is no denying the stage has already been set with all in place ready to unfold. You cannot take away what has been conceived. No matter how much you try and argue it out of existence. Abortion is the only way you'll do that. What do you think morning after pills are for? A more accurate name is "morning abortion pills". Check out the following and see the signatures at the bottom.

http://www.morningafterpill.org/mapstate.htm

A scientific textbook called “Basics of Biology” gives five characteristics of living things; these five criteria are found in all modern elementary scientific textbooks:

1. Living things are highly organized.

2. All living things have an ability to acquire materials and energy.

3. All living things have an ability to respond to their environment.

4. All living things have an ability to reproduce.

5. All living things have an ability to adapt.

According to this elementary definition of life, life begins at fertilization, when a sperm unites with an oocyte. From this moment, the being is highly organized, has the ability to acquire materials and energy, has the ability to respond to his or her environment, has the ability to adapt, and has the ability to reproduce (the cells divide, then divide again, etc., and barring pathology and pending reproductive maturity has the potential to reproduce other members of the species). Non-living things do not do these things. Even before the mother is aware that she is pregnant, a distinct, unique life has begun his or her existence inside her.

Furthermore, that life is unquestionably human. A human being is a member of the species homo sapiens. Human beings are products of conception, which is when a human male sperm unites with a human female oocyte (egg). When humans procreate, they don’t make non-humans like slugs, monkeys, cactuses, bacteria, or any such thing. Emperically-verifiable proof is as close as your nearest abortion clinic: send a sample of an aborted fetus to a laboratory and have them test the DNA to see if its human or not. Genetically, a new human being comes into existence from the earliest moment of conception.

"To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion ... it is plain experimental evidence." The "Father of Modern Genetics" Dr. Jerome Lejeune, Univ. of Descarte, Paris

The 23 chromosomes from the male sperm combine with the 23 chromosomes from the female. ovum and a new human life is created. Some 30 hours later the first cell division occurs. At the one cell stage it is easy but erroneous to make the comparison to any other single cell in the body. The first single cell is probably the most complex type of cell that is likely to be found anywhere as from it derives the complex anatomy of the human being. A single cell from the skin is not capable of doing this.

Therefore it is most definitely a human life and one that nobody has a right to remove based on the paper thin or "questionable at most" arguments of the opposition. Again, I will repeat, if there is ANY question at all? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crossfingers.gif" alt="" /> The benefit of doubt should always be given. The burden of proof however lies with the abortionists.

I will not be on the side that has innocent blood on their hands (literally). I am also unashamed to feel emotion in regards to such a serious matter. We're talking about life here...unless of course someone has the nazi mentality!

I've had a look at some of the quotes you posted above Bex -- though please bear in mind that quotes do not constitute evidence in and of themselves. This is a logical fallacy called the argument from authority. Furthermore, as horrific as many of these quotes are, I am also aware that this compilation was put together for the purposes of pro-life propaganda and therefore is highly likely to be presenting a skewed version of the actual truth. At the moment I'm looking around at other sites that give a different picture of what's going on, and other perspectives, in order to try to get a more balanced view of the whole.

My own feelings at the moment are that a fertilised egg is a potential human life. It is a little bundle of cells which will, under the right circumstances, become a human being. At that very early stage, I do not think it is logical to equate it with a more fully-developed fetus, or a baby, and it should not have the exact same rights. I imagine how I'd feel with it inside of me now and if I wanted an abortion for whatever reason, I think I'd be OK with that at the stage of a few weeks. More than that and I'd start to feel like I had a person inside of me and morally I would begin to feel it was wrong to harm it. I agree with RAZD's pictures of the spectrum. That's what this is, and what you have at the red end is not the same as the finished product at the blue end. The reason many people disagree about abortion is because it's difficult to know where to try to pin things in the middle.

All you’re saying here is that if everyone went out and had an abortion there’d be no people left. But considering that our withering world is racing towards a brick wall at break neck speed right now – due primarily to overpopulation – I don’t think that’s an issue here, whether abortion is morally just or not.


I wouldn’t want to be brought into this world by someone who wishes to abort me. Moreover, I don’t think anyone would willingly accept life if they were born into abject poverty coupled with disease. The only humane act in these instances is to not bring them into this world.

I don’t think there’s any harm in the deliberate aborting of a few weeks old fetus, as it is not an established being with emotions, regardless of which definition of ‘human’ you care to quibble over. That being said, I place far more value on a living hamster’s life than that of a 3 week old human fetus.


This begs the question, do you eat meat? I mean if we are to adopt this idea of being so inexorably fixated on the notion of life – all life – then I can’t help but wonder. If you are a vegetarian, do you consume animal products? If you don't consume any animal products (including honey and the purchasing of leather) do you sweep a broom upon the ground with every step you take to avoid killing insects on the ground? What makes those insects more important than you?

Anyway this isn't to say I am a vegetarian, I’m not. At times death is a necessary evil. I understand you live in a world where evil and righteousness seem very far apart but that is most definitely not the real world.


My two closest colleagues at work are staunch Christians, both of whom I have the utmost respect for and absolutely no qualms with their belief system – primarily because they do not have qualms with mine nor seek to dissuade me. And it isn’t that I “don’t wish to hear about your reasons which are religious based”, it’s that this line of thinking is a fallacy. If you start using your religion as the backbone (or any part for that matter) of your argument, then you’re only speaking to those people who already agree with you. To these types of people we must all ask why they enter a debate in the first place.


Perhaps because the mother in question is a rape victim, terminally ill (i.e., has HIV/AIDS), or lives in the squalor and decay of some 3rd world nation. You’re not doing the potential-infant any favors by bringing it into this world. I value life and I also value reality and the necessities (lesser of two evils, call it what you will) which life imposes upon us at times.


On the contrary, I’m trying to make absolutely certain that the conversation does not steer into that direction by pointing out the fallacy of religious/biblical-based arguments. I’m anticipating what always comes up in this age old debate. A summary glance at all the posts in this forum should prove to you why I would think someone is on the verge of posting bible quotes here in the first place. Just read pretty much any other thread here.

Linda, the "pro-life" propoganda as you refer to it, is simply protection of the unborn child. We are not "selling" anything accept life. Concelling services are provided for these women by pro-life to help them through their pregnancy and to carry the unborn baby full term. The truth is provided, scans are provided. If you are against "informed choice" and ongoing support via pregnancy so the unborn gets a chance to live? then something is very wrong.

This is what pro-life is about "informed choice" if the Mother, after she sees the scan of her child and understands what's involved in an abortion, still wishes to make her choice and abort the baby, then there isn't much anybody can do. Nobody takes her away in handcuffs as abortion is legal.

The quotes I gave backed up by the names of those involved and where they come from. Had they been a lie or a twisted version, the people involved could be sued. They would not get away with this in the face of the fact the information where they came from is given.

You can of course continue to live in denial of what is going on to the unborn even with the abortion pictures given. I'm sure you could also tell yourself that they were faked or perhaps "touched up" as well. Certainly it wouldn't matter what was put up, if someone wants to justify this atrocity, they will.

Even PWCCA still tries to justify it by saying that he wouldn't want to be born to someone who wanted to abort him in the first place.....yet then goes on to say he is pro-choice (pro abortion). So he's making an admission that anybody wanting to terminate in the first place is not the kind of person you would ever want as a parent. But then supports abortion at the sametime. Never once referring to adoption by the many childless people crying out for a child. Again, this mentality shows something is very wrong and the preference for death, rather than life and adoption is clear. Yes we know that every parent having an abortion (unless pressured) does not want the child or cannot cope with having a child. Which would tell us the child is better off right? I know toddlers who are unwanted, they're all over the world. Perhaps we ought to kill or anaethetise them? I know plenty of parents that have reached that point many times with their kids (and teens).

An unwanted child is not an excuse for taking the child's life. Much abortion goes on simply because the Mother has not been fully informed of the procedure, the baby and what goes on.

See, 93% of abortions are for social reasons, not rape or illness. It is the same kind of game playing they use when they give their negative actions a "positive" name. Using "Pro" behind everything. It is a form of brain washing and say it often enough, even in the face of taking human life, and people will often believe it.

Christians can pull out numerous quotes from the bible to explain why abortion is intrinsically evil and fellow Christians would nod in agreement. However, this falls pretty flat in debating this issue with those those of a very different belief. Which you have pointed out PWCCA. However, I would not hesitate to remind any pro-abortion "Christian". lest they die and be judged on how they treated the weakest and most vulnerable of human life.

The pro abortionist must try and lessen, or take away the humanity of the unborn in order to justify this action (at least in his/her mind). I think the following exposes the typical accusations pretty well, taken from
http://www.geocities.com/heartland/valley/6221/debate.html

"IS THE CHILD HUMAN?"

Scientifically there is no question that the unborn child is indeed a living human being. That the child is living is clear. If she were not alive, no abortion would be contemplated. Pro- abortionists like to say that the child is only a "potential" human. That the child IS something is obvious. Calling her a "potential" human doesn't say what she is, it only speaks to what she will be. I have never heard a pro-abortionist say what the child IS. The reason for that is obvious. They know the answer and that answer is that the child is human. No person or animal has ever been observed to change into some other kind of creature during their lifetime. If something is a cat, it has always been a cat, and will always be a cat. If someone is a human being then they have always been and will always be a human being.[/b]

Here is another comment made by some abortionists: ABORTION IS NECESSARY TO STOP OVER-POPULATION:

This argument sounds strong since we have heard for years that the world is becoming too crowded. There are two serious problems with this argument. First is that dealing with a problem by killing an innocent person is simply wrong. Secondly, the world is NOT overcrowded. If each person in the world were given 2500 square feet, the entire population of the world would cover less than 538,000 sq.miles. Texas alone covers 262,134 sq.miles. Yes, some countries are more crowded than others but the problem is typically a resource problem not a population problem. And in those countries where resources are especially scarce, populations tend to grow more rapidly as a protection against the scarcity of resources. Parents have as many children as they can so that they will be provided for in their old age.

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE CONTROL OVER HER OWN BODY:

Probably the most frequently heard slogan of the pro- abortionists, this is also one of the weakest slogans. It is a classic example of the "Big Lie," the idea that if something is said often enough and loud enough, people will believe it. It is a very basic biological fact that the unborn child is a separate being from the mother. Yes, the child is completely dependent on the mother for his survival. Note, however, that dependence does not end at birth. Young children are completely dependent on others for their survival for years. The unborn child often has a blood type different from that of the mother. If the differing blood types were to mix, one or both of the mother and child could die. Half of all babies are male. During the pregnancy, is the mother temporarily part male? Without the protection provided by the amniotic sac the unborn child would be expelled from the mother's body as a foreign object. Clearly, the unborn child IS IN the mother's body but IS NOT PART of the mother's body.

EVERY CHILD SHOULD BE A WANTED CHILD (PWCCA's has used this one also and one that I use to believe in too, so I can relate):

The Planned Parenthood Federation loves the slogan "Every child a wanted child." There is nothing wrong with the concept. It would be a wonderful world if every child was born to parents who were thrilled to have that particular child. The simple fact is that this is not the case. The problem is that Planned Parenthood and others use this idea to justify abortion. In effect, what they are saying is "Every child a wanted child, and, if not wanted, killed." That no longer sounds very compassionate. The slogan misses the point completely. The "wantedness" of the child is not a feature of the child's make up. If the child is not wanted it shows a lack in the parent, not the child. One of the basic ideas of the civil rights movement is that one person's value should not depend on the arbitrary preferences of another person. Simply because the child is not wanted by her parents does not mean she is unworthy of life. Millions of couples are eagerly waiting to adopt babies. It is often argued that those people only want healthy, white babies. That is simply not true. Regardless of the race or condition of the child, there are people eagerly waiting to adopt.

The "wanted child" argument also ignores another fact. Just because the mother does not want her child during the eighth week of pregnancy does not mean she will not want him when he is born. Most mothers have probably felt, at some point during their pregnancies, that they did not really want to go through with it. Yet, when the child comes, those feelings are usually gone. However, not always. How many child murders have been caused by Mothers? Do we justify those and say "the child was better off, beceause clearly it wasn't wanted"? ...certainly dying is a release for any abused child, but you won't find people justifying it. Otherwise we may as well change the legal system and say that any child who is murdered by the parent was not wanted in the first place and is better off.

ABORTION SHOULD BE LEGAL UNTIL VIABILITY:

Another common argument, this is one that causes real problems because the word "viability" means different things to different people and means different things at different times. Not too many years ago, a child born a month or two early was at risk of death. Medical technology has progressed to the point that children born three months early are routinely saved. Children have been born at nineteen weeks and survived and grown to be healthy children. Clearly viability, whatever it means, is a function of when a child is conceived.

Typically viability is defined to be the point at which the child can survive outside the womb. Why should place of residence determine whether or not a child lives or dies? I suppose the idea is that until the child is outside the womb she is completely dependent on the mother. As noted above, she will continue to be completely dependent on others for years. In fact, if "ability to survive without the aid of others" is our definition of viability, then many teenagers are not yet viable.

A hazy standard that changes as medical technology changes is a poor standard for determination of a child's worthiness to live.

Typically viability is defined to be the point at which the child can survive outside the womb. Why should place of residence determine whether or not a child lives or dies? I suppose the idea is that until the child is outside the womb she is completely dependent on the mother. As noted above, she will continue to be completely dependent on others for years. In fact, if "ability to survive without the aid of others" is our definition of viability, then many teenagers are not yet viable.

A hazy standard that changes as medical technology changes is a poor standard for determination of a child's worthiness to live.

Typically viability is defined to be the point at which the child can survive outside the womb. Why should place of residence determine whether or not a child lives or dies? I suppose the idea is that until the child is outside the womb she is completely dependent on the mother. As noted above, she will continue to be completely dependent on others for years. In fact, if "ability to survive without the aid of others" is our definition of viability, then many teenagers are not yet viable.

A hazy standard that changes as medical technology changes is a poor standard for determination of a child's worthiness to live.

WOMEN SHOULD HAVE THE FREEDOM TO CHOOSE:

The government of the United States was founded on the premise that individuals should be able to live their lives in freedom. Therefore this argument carries a lot of weight if not examined carefully. In fact, the pro-abortionists like it so much that they refer to themselves as "pro-choice" so they can be perceived as standing on the side of liberty. The problem, as with most "bumper-sticker" slogans, is the shallowness of thought displayed. Yes, we have many freedoms, but those freedoms are constantly restricted. I have the right to swing my arms around. But if in the course of swinging my arms around I hit another person I may have left the area of freedom and entered the area of assault. I have the right to freedom of speech. Yet slander is not protected. Neither am I given the right to yell "Fire" in a crowded movie theater. The key is our rights may be restricted once their exercise infringes on the rights of others. As we saw above, the unborn child is a separate human being and therefore her right to life should not be infringed upon by any right of the mother's with the possible exception of the need to protect the life of the mother. This situation will be dealt with later.

IF ABORTION WAS MADE ILLEGAL, WOMEN WILL STILL DO IT: (what a cop out).

This argument is put forth to let the world know that pro-abortionists believe that abortion should be kept "safe and legal." First we will consider the aspect of safety. Abortion is not at all safe, whether legal or not. At least once each year we hear about a tragic case in which a woman dies as the result of a botched abortion. I would contend that we hear of only a small percentage of the actual number of such instances.

Medical research has found a link between abortion and breast cancer. Apparently, aborting a first pregnancy increases the risk of breast cancer. The reason is that during a first pregnancy, the breast changes into a milk-producing organ. Formerly undifferentiated cells proliferate and differentiate. Proliferation begins during the first trimester and differentiation does not finish until late in the pregnancy. The proliferating undifferentiated cells are susceptible to mutagenesis but after differentiation are less susceptible. If the pregnancy ends early, the process of differentiation stops. An interesting side note to this argument. Pro-abortionists insist that they want "safe" abortions but they constantly oppose legislation that would require abortionists to tell women of the potential dangers of the surgery so that an informed choice can be made.

If abortion is made illegal some women will still have abortions. That is certainly the case. But that in itself does not mean abortion should be legal. Auto theft is illegal. Yet people still steal cars. Since that law is ignored does that mean we should make auto theft legal? If it were legal it would certainly make it safer and less stressful for the thief. Of course that is nonsense. But then so is saying abortion should stay legal simply because some people would "do it anyway."

Crime does not decrease by legalising it, it increases tenfold. Legalising abortion may make it safer and sterile for the Mother, but it is still murder. It also opens the door to abortion and makes it an available option and so the flood gates open. If the Mother had to face the abortion herself, she may change her mind. But instead she can lie back and the abortionists are the ones who do the dirty work for her. It makes it much easier when someone else does it! We all know of people who pay others to finish someone else off and in a "professional" way so things don't "go wrong". Whether messy, risky, unsafe, or sterile and safer, it does not make murder "ok" nor can it justify legalising it. Taking the life inside of them is not the answer for anybody trying to get out of their pregnancy. It is understandable in desperate situations, but it is not justifiable on behalf of the unborn. Murder is murder. Desperate Mothers who kill even their children (already born) may be understood too in desperate situatioins, but it does not justify murder.

YOU CAN'T LEGALISE MORALITY:

Any time a new law is proposed someone screams that the law is imposing one person's morality on the rest of us. That is essentially true. But, the question is, is that unusual? Is that bad? I challenge you to find a law that does not legislate morality to one degree or another. Why is rape illegal? Because it is WRONG! Why is murder illegal? Because it is WRONG! Why is slavery illegal? Because it is WRONG! Many people say "I am personally opposed to abortion but I do not want to impose my morality on someone else." That sounds very noble but consider the following statement. "I am personally opposed to rape but I do not want to impose my morality on someone else." "I am personally opposed to slavery but I do not want to impose my morality on someone else." Anyone who would say that publicly would be justifiably branded a lunatic. There is no difference between that statement and the one regarding abortion. The key to all of these things being wrong is that they infringe on the safety and rights of another human being. The unborn child is a distinct, separate human being. Her rights deserve protection, too. If we believe abortion is wrong or immoral then we have a moral and ethical obligation to oppose it.

THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD PAY FOR ABORTIONS FOR POOR PEOPLE:

This argument comes very close to advocating socialism. Many pro-abortionists believe that the government should fund abortions for any women who want one but can not afford one. If the abortion is medically necessary to save the life of the mother the argument carries some weight (yet is still taking one life to save another) but otherwise it fails miserably. If the mother's physical health is not seriously endangered the abortion is not something she NEEDS but something she WANTS. It is socialistic to claim that the government should provide everyone with the things that they want but can not afford. I may want a lot of things that I can not afford. Other people may be able to afford them. That may not seem fair. But, as we have all heard many times, life is not fair.

ABORTION IS SAFER THAN CHILDBIRTH:

The quick answer to this statement is "It sure isn't safe for the baby." But even discounting that fact, this argument still fails. Pro-abortionists like to claim that abortion is safer than childbirth. They even have numbers to prove their point. As a college mathematics instructor, I am often skeptical of people who use statistics to prove their point. This is one case where skepticism is justified. In giving the rates of death for childbirth and abortion a cute little game is played. The number of serious injuries due to abortion is included in the number of deaths due to childbirth. That number is then divided by the number of children born. Abortion is included in deaths but not pregnancies. That is called dishonest reporting of facts.

ABORTION SHOULD BE ALLOWED IN CASE OF RAPE OR INCEST:

Again, a quick answer is "Why?" A woman who has been raped will not be 'unraped' after an abortion. Abortion will not take away the incestuous violation of a young girl. In fact, in the case of incest, abortion helps protect the abuser by helping to hide his crime.

Secondly, when rapists are jailed, we do not also jail their children. Killing a child who is a product of rape or incest punishes the child. It does not punish the rapist or abuser. No civilized society punishes a child with death because of the sins of their parents.

I can understand that a woman who is pregnant due to rape or incest may not want the child. However, killing the child just puts the woman in the position of responding to violence with another act of violence. There are millions of couples eager to adopt babies. There are couples willing to adopt any baby, not just healthy white babies. This allows the woman to not have to forever be reminded of her violation without having to live with the physical and psychological consequences of abortion.

ABORTION SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO PROTECT THE LIFE OF THE MOTHER:

This argument brings to mind the idea of a woman fighting for her very life in a situation where only having an abortion can help. If that is the case, then removing the child by caesarian section, and doing whatever can be done to save BOTH patients is a reasonable response. However, this is NOT what is meant in practice.

The problem is the word 'health.' In Doe v Bolton, the Supreme Court defined health to include physical, emotional, financial and social conditions. In other words, if the pregnancy is 'upsetting,' a health exception would allow an abortion. I find it appalling that people would advocate killing an innocent child because the mother is stressed.

Even if the mother is suffering from the pregnancy, I do not believe it appropriate to treat her sickness by killing her child. Medical science is sufficiently advanced that in the vast majority of cases the mother's illness can be handled without doing anything to the child.

ABORTIONS SHOULD BE ALLOWED IN CASES OF SEVERE 'FETAL DEFORMITIES'

Words are powerful weapons. When we want to provoke feelings of compassion we speak of 'handicapped children.' When we want to advocate killing we speak of 'fetal deformities.' Since when do we deal with a person's physical problems by killing them? If that is the case then why not advocate burning down all of the nation's nursing homes with the residents still inside?

A second consideration is that many forms of prenatal testing for handicaps are flawed and unreliable. Do we risk killing a baby for an ailment that she may not really have?

PRO-LIFERS ARE CONCERNED FOR UNBORN BABIES, NOT WOMEN AND CHILDREN:

This is patently absurd. If that were the case then pro-lifers would not be running crisis pregnancy centers http://prolife.org/cpcs-online/ all over the country. If that were the case then pro-lifers would not be more active in charities than the average person. If that were the case then pro-lifers would not be giving help to both child AND mother during and after pregnancy. If that were the case then pro-lifers would not be trying to adopt children.

ABORTION PREVENTS UNWANTED CHILDREN AND THEREFORE PREVENTS CHILD ABUSE:

First, I would suggest that abortion is the ultimate child abuse. To what greater abuse could a child be subjected than be ripped piece by piece from her mother's womb?

Secondly, if this argument were true then the rate of child abuse in the country would have gone DOWN since abortion was legalized in 1973. On the contrary, though, child abuse has gone UP since then. The nonchalant way in which the nation accepts abortion has led to a devaluation of human life that has led to more abuse, not less.

MOST PEOPLE FAVOUR LEGAL ABORTION:

Let us for the moment assume this is true. I still respond, "So what." Does majority support for something make it right? If it did we would still have slavery.

In any case, this argument is not true. Polls can be taken that show some support for legalized abortion. However, it is a known fact that poll results can be skewed by the way a question is answered. If people are asked "Should a women be allowed to make her own medical decisions without governmental interference?" then they typically answer yes. However, if they are asked "Should unborn children be protected from being ripped apart in the womb?" they will also answer yes. Neither question does a good job of determining public opinion. To determine public opinion, questions must be worded in an unbiased way. When people are asked "Do you oppose abortion on demand?" better than 2/3 say "YES." More than 78% would ban all but the "hard cases" (rape, incest, life of the mother).

Whilst you guys continue to debate whether the human life inside a womb is worthy of being called human or not, or figuring out any possible way to degrade or deny it (going back to conception in hopes that will be the answer), the abortions continue and every unborn child's life is under threat. You'd never wish to legalise murder in case your own person is under threat, but have no issues with the unborn. Again, I say the following: If there is ANY question mark involved in aborting a human life in the womb, the benefit of doubt should first go towards the unborn.

PWCCA,

You said:


However, what you appear to fail to realize is that YOU are the one bringing religious arguments to the discussion (not Bex), since all you have offered are your opinions, which are based on YOUR collective set of "beliefs" (i.e. your religion). Furthermore, you pre-suppose that Bible-based arguments are a fallacy and should be disallowed from the debate, yet everything you say in your post is based on Your Belief System (the YBS religion). This is just sheer hypocrisy.

You start your debate with:



No, that's not what Bex is saying...you're simply restating what she said, and incorrectly at that. But then you go on and seem to ignore your own remark by adding:



What is your proof of overpopulation? Is this just your own belief? or did Al Gore say it was so? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/kookoo.gif" alt="" />

You also said:



Again, this is your YBS religious argument. (I will add that I'm glad I'm not on the receiving end of this kind of humane-ness.) <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/nurseblinky.gif" alt="" />

Which begs the question... Do you know anyone who is in "abject poverty"? If so, did they actually tell you they would rather have been aborted than given the chance to live? Perhaps we should take a poll and find out how many people would rather have been aborted.

But since you already used the phrase "you don't think" to preface your moral statement, I will safely assume that your above comment is another of your own BELIEFS. Thus, your collective belief system (your "humane" religion), dictates that life in abject poverty is worse than death.

Oddly enough, according to many who have served in humanitarian relief efforts in third world countries, people in "abject poverty" actually value their lives and the lives of their children abundantly, and, in many cases, experience a more profound sense of joy than most of us living here with all our "luxuries" in America.

You also said:



This is yet again, another declaration of your YBS religion and moral values...which I'm sure the hamsters of the world appreciate greatly. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/swcreature.gif" alt="" />

Then you go on to ask:



Unfortunately, this is simply an attempt to divert the subject. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/yes.gif" alt="" /> But then you divert again...

Your next statement about Christianity is quite interesting:



I'm not surprised that you "respect" people who don't "try to dissuade you". However, could it be that those "respectable" people would rather just lie to you than bother having a real discussion with you? Then again, they may be simply too fearful to "offend the shadows" or just too selfish to care what you believe.

You continue your belief system's anti-religious hypocrisy by adding:


Well...we then must ask why YOU entered the debate in the first place. All of your comments are based on your YBS religious viewpoints, which, since they are religious, are, by your own proclamation, a fallacy.

Next you said:



The irony here is that making laws based on the 1% odds or worst-case possible scenarios leads to bad laws and to the ultimate stripping away of personal freedoms that you, as a pro-abortionist, so adamantly demand. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/followtherules.gif" alt="" />

Yet, in the next breath, you want to deny the freedom of life to an unborn child who is to be born of someone living in "squalor" in the name of, what, humane-ness? Because allowing the child to be born wouldn't be doing him/her any favors, according to your YBS religious faith.

So then, based on your YBS values...why should we stop at abortion? Why not go ahead and make people living in squalor sterile, so they can't reproduce in the first place. Would this not, according to your beliefs, be even more humane? There would be no child to abort and no nagging questions for the mother to concern herself with about whether or not she killed another human being.

Honestly, who is the one with the religious agenda here? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/questionmark.png" alt="" />

Perhaps someone would like to respond to the facts and science (supporting life) that Bex has provided with like substance. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/anyone.gif" alt="" />

Ah, Bex. I see cognitive dissonance has set in.

The point you keep dodging is that there should be visible sign of the embryo, particularly in the later stage miscarriages where there is still just an empty sac. The reason there is no visible embryo is that none developed, not because it is too early for one to be visible. An embryo of 3 weeks is large enough to see with the naked eye, and it is perched on a "stalk" within the sac.

Are you disputing that there is an identifiable embryo by 3 weeks of gestation? All you need to do is look on the web to prove that embryos exist at 3 weeks and earlier.

Week 2 -- Carnagie Stage 6: Primitive Streak (see picture):
Pretty clear where to look for an embryo if there was one, yes?

Week 3 -- Carnagie Stage 9: Appearance of Somites (see picture):
Certainly it is big enough by this time to tell whether there is one inside a pregnancy sac or not, even for those who are not medical experts, eh? Perhaps you would like to look at these and the two intermediate stages, (7) and (8), to see where you think an embryo would not be detectable.

Remember that the pregnancy sac begins to form at 10 to 12 days, shortly followed by the stalk formation and the embryo -- when all goes well. The miscarriages that occur between weeks 3 and 8 and that have empty pregnancy sacs are cases were all does not go well, where, in fact, an embryo has failed to grow ... and never will.

Previously you said:
Anyone can clearly see that this is not a developing baby when the embryo is missing in the pregnancy sac between weeks 3 and 8, that something necessary is missing that should be there for normal development.

What comes into play here is the fact that there are deleterious mutations, and there are mutations where both evolutionists and creationists can agree that information has been lost (while still disagreeing on whether or not it can be added). The point here is that the information in these cases is not sufficient to produce a human being -- information on how to complete that job has been lost. No amount of quotes or appeals to emotion etc will change that fact.

You can keep telling yourself that it is a human being, but you are mixing up the definitions in the process.

As has been shown previously, when humans procreate 70% of the time they do not make a human being: 55% of the time all they make is a single cell, and in the remaining 15% of conceptions that do not become human beings some of them only make empty pregnancy sacs, some have such abnormal (ie - non-human) development that they cannot survive even in the womb, even with the best medical care, some just stop developing and die.

This is the definition of life, not human life. Nobody is saying that the zygote is not alive. That is not the issue. The sperm was alive, the egg was alive, cells in an organ that is removed by surgery are alive, but they are not human beings. You are equivocating on the definitions of life and what distinguishes a human life from other life.

Previously you said:
Here you equivocated between conception and conception plus time in the womb. If a human being was automatically generated by any fertilized egg, then all the zygotes that passed out of the uterus (55%) would continue to develop into human beings, and time in the womb would not be necessary.

Even with time in the womb there are failures during development, cases where the information necessary to produce a human being has been lost. You cannot say that a zygote is alive, that it has human DNA and that it necessarily develops into a human being, because that flat out does not occur in 70% of the cases.

An empty pregnancy sac is not - and never will be - a human being. When all that develops is a pregnancy sac, a human being cannot be developed from the zygote.

We can liken this to a coin toss game. You are saying that all coin tosses are heads, from the moment the thumb flicks the coin, when obviously half of the tosses end up tails. Then you say that all coin tosses are heads, from the moment the thumb flicks the coin plus the time in the air, when obviously half of the tosses still end up tails.

You are mistaking the end point - those times when the coin toss has ended in heads - with earlier events, things that do not always produce heads (or eyes or hands ... ).

And to get the probabilities closer to reality you would have to toss the coin once, take all those that landed on heads and toss those a second time: those that landed on heads represent healthy babies that are delivered at the end of term, while all the tails from both tosses represent the cases where no human being is or will be produced.

Enjoy.
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You've mentioned it twice now Bex,

Here's an image you can compare with Haeckel's drawings btw. Did you know that Haeckel was not the only embryologist of his time, and he was largely criticized from the start? His theory is false, his drawings may be inaccurate, but the facts of embryological development remain. The consensus among biologists is that the drawings are still useful, however now we can use pictures instead to show the same thing.


Enjoy.
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Note: my time is limited, so I only choose threads of particular interest to me and I cannot guarantee a reply to all responses (particularly if they do not discuss the issue/s), and I expect other people to do the same. Thank you for your consideration.[/color]

Thank you Laura for addressing this! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/gunshot.gif" alt="" />

Comparing a rodent to an unborn human says it all <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> I'm surprised it didn't go further to a piece of dirt or excrement!

At any rate, my earlier post with the article I shared I think pretty much exposes all the typical excuses and justifications used by abortionists. The rodent comparison has been used before too. Which once again brings ongoing validation to Russ' post.

So we can indeed see it in action here.

Ah, RAZD. I see that your polysyllabic cliches' (i.e. verbal diarrhoea) has set in.



RAZD, you admit that an embryo exists in the first few weeks......and have said that many of them fail to form, so the miscarriages that occur showing an empty pregnancy sac and nothing more cancels out the belief that human life begins at conception. But rather only begins with an embryo. This is not so. Life begins immediately after the egg is fertilised. What happens from there on maybe another story, whether successful further development or failure.

I can well understand a failure at any stage of the process, whether at the beginning before the life has had a chance to establish itself, or even at the very end of the pregnancy. If it fails to develop further after conception, then of course you will NOT see an embryo, but obviously you will only SEE the discharge result of the pregnancy sac. At the moment of conception, the fertilised egg is the size of a dot in a line of print. But that "dot" contains the full DNA. Of course it's invisible, but invisible does not mean non existence. To repeat, this dot contains the full DNA as is seen in every cell in our full grown bodies. BUT, it also has all the living micro-forces necessary for a full autonomous human being. Currently, attached to the Mother. That is why doctors admit that the morning after pill is a "threshold" abortion mechanism and condemned by many.

Also I never disputed the existance of an embryo at 3 weeks, i have shown you already that they exist by the pictures and have constantly repeated this. This is from successful conception and successful further development, to which abortion removes.

I simply do not agree with what you are saying in regards to conception not being the start of life. Your opinion or those you believe in, are in contrast to the many I've quoted on here (doctors). Life, according to the many I've quoted, starts at conception. Are they all wrong?

Perhaps, according to you, they are! Let's pretend that life does not really exist until you believe it does (only when you can see it's taken form inside the pregnancy sac). Which is a successful (so far) pregnancy.

Even with this belief, how does this justify abortion? Abortions remove life, they do not remove "nothing". We are talking about a developing human being with the full genetic code, it is neither half human or half animal. So it should never be gambled with.

Whatever stage of development that life is in, as I have repeated many times and is backed up by doctors, everything is already there AT CONCEPTION. No new information necessary. There is no evolution in regards to gaining new information in the womb as time goes on. The information is there from the very beginning. All that is required is that nothing major goes amiss and the unborn life continues to receive what is required to make it to the end of the pregnancy. Some even die during the birth process for various reasons. Just as an embryo failed to develop, a baby can die during birth.

And here is what takes place during different stages of abortion.

In first-trimester surgical abortions, the tiny embryo or fetus is literally dismembered by the abortionist and "vacuumed" out of his or her mother's uterus. This is called Suction Aspiration Abortion.

In Dilation and Curettage Abortion, the abortionist uses a sharp instrument to dismember the unborn child and scrape its remains out of the mother's uterus.

The comprehensive Web site Abort73.com best describes the Dilation and Evacuation Abortion, usually performed in the second trimester. During this procedure, the abortionist uses forceps "to dismember the fetus by seizing a leg or arm and twisting it until it tears off and can be pulled out of the uterus. This will continue until only the head remains. Finally the skull is crushed and also pulled out. The body parts must then be reassembled to ensure that the entire baby has been removed."

It doesn't stop there. Currently, the U.S. Supreme Court is considering lifting the federal ban on Dilation and Extraction Abortions, also known as Partial-Birth Abortions.

ARE THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE ABORTED BABIES REAL?

Taken from this link http://abort73.com/HTML/I-A-4d-authenticity.html

It is a common tactic of abortion supporters to claim that abortion photos are a fake. This is the same tactic that Holocaust deniers use. Photographic evidence is hard to argue with so those who think abortion is a good thing, will try and discredit the evidence.

The Center for Bio-ethical Reform (CBR), the organization which secured these abortion images, addresses such claims on their website, and includes the following quote from Anthony P. Levatino, M.D., J.D., who is both a physician and attorney:

I, the undersigned, having performed induced abortions earlier in my career, have examined the photos depicting the aborted human embryos and fetuses used by The Center For Bio-Ethical Reform in their public education projects (www.abortionNO.org). It is my professional opinion that the photos depict aborted human embryos and fetuses and that the depicted aborted human embryos and fetuses are accurately captioned as to age, in weeks since fertilization.

There are many other former abortionists (and some current abortionists) who will corroborate Dr. Levatino's statement. Tammy Sobieski, who works at a Florida abortion clinic, said on television, in response to the abortion pictures on CBR's trucks, "What's disheartening for me is the lack of trust they have in women, that they think women don't know that that's the reality of abortion." Almost no one in the abortion industry is as honest as Ms. Sobieski, and this a statement she likely wants back. From her own mouth, referring to the same abortion images seen on this website she says, "that's the reality of abortion."

As to the age of the embryos and fetuses pictured, that is verifiable through any of the prenatal teaching texts listed in the "Medical Testimony" section, or through prenatal websites such as.

http://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/wwwhuman/Stages/Stages.htm

http://www.visembryo.com/baby/index.html

Finally, there is the common sense question of motivation. Why would anyone make these photos up? If these pictures were all a big hoax, if abortion wasn't really destroying tiny little people, why would so many people sacrifice huge amounts of time and money to oppose abortion? It just doesn't make sense. Abortion advocates have a significant financial stake in abortion's continued availablity. It's easy to see why they argue the pictures are fake. The pro-life community, however, doesn't make money in opposing abortion. We lose money. Why would we do that in defense of a hoax? The pro-life community exists because these pictures are real, because abortion does kill people, and that's a hard reality to argue with.

RAZD, by you wishing to sit here and debate incessantly about conception with both our views contrasting on this alone. In the last 30 minutes or so, 90 un-born human beings have been sucked or dismembered into oblivion in the USA alone.

This is no mere emotional argument, this is plain raw fact. No amount of intellectal verbosity or polite patronisations used as a smoke screen is going to alter that harsh diabolical reality.

However, things are happening and a growing realisation is apprently beginning to slowly change the tide as more people are able to view the reality, rather than be 'told" what to believe.

Just a note here. Anybody reading this who has had an abortion or has been supportive of it and regrets this at all after viewing the other side? Then your regret and change of heart makes doing this worth everything. Regret is great, ongoing guilt is not. God is merciful indeed!

If this offends anybody here? I make no apologies.

Nope. I'm just pointing out the fallacy in using them as part of an argument before anyone does - as so often happens in these debates.



Not so. My religion is wholly separate from my view on what a woman's rights are. I won't even bother using my religion as ammunition in this argument, despite that it does indeed frown upon the act of abortion. I can think whatever I want about a woman who chooses to abort a child (and 9 times out of 10 it's not very high). That being said, my religion has nothing to do with the freedoms I think the law should permit. I think the fact that marijuana is illegal while alcohol (a far more damaging drug) is, is absurd. And I'll argue against that fact. But I'll never use my religion as part of that debate.



I don't pre-suppose anything, it's a proven fact. If you use your religion as the basis for an argument, you're only speaking to those people who already agree with you - in which case there's no sense in debating. Nowhere have I mentioned my religious beliefs as a means of defending why abortion should or should not be illegal.



I am confident you don't know the first thing about my religion. Furthermore, my religious beliefs have not once entered into this argument. I keep them separate in debates like this, since this is not a religious debate. All I've been trying to do is ask that others kindly do the same.

It doesn't matter what someone's beliefs, religious or otherwise, are when it comes to a debate. All that matters is what factual information one can provide to prove something either right or wrong. We can all believe what we damn well choose, but when entering an argument those beliefs are as irrelevant as what your favorite color is or what kind of sports you most enjoy.

The information RAZD has responded with to her posts seems to do this quite well.

Thanks Bex, but I think you are still missing the essential point.

What I have demonstrated is that a significant number of conceptions do not result in an embryo -- something like 60% of the time.

Certainly there is no human life in those instances, there is not even any kind of organism. Logically these conceptions cannot be equated with human life - something is missing.

Not what I said Bex. Even with an embryo we are not assured of a human life, as many are missing essential components to become functioning beings -- these embryos die due to malformation or missing formation of elements critical for continued existence -- and they die.

Clearly this too is false when we have multitudinous evidence of embryos that are missing essential components to become functioning beings -- embryos that die due to malformation or missing formation of elements critical for continued existence -- and they die because their DNA did not have the proper information for the formation of a human being.

You are confusing the end result with the beginning. This is like buying a lottery ticket and then assuming you have won, because every win begins with the purchase of a lottery ticket. This is the post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy. Clearly in well over 60% of the cases the result of conception is not even a beginning of a human life. Just because A contains B does not mean that B results in A.

. . . . <img src="http://herballure.com/ForumExtras/Images/wyjbammegu.jpg">

B does not equal A, conception does not equal human life.

Please stop equivocating "life" with "human life" as they are not the same thing. Bacteria is "life" but it is not (last time I checked) human life. The issue is not when life begins -- that occurred 3.5 billion or more years ago -- the issue is when is that life "human" and not something else ( like an empty pregnancy sac or an embyo missing critical components).

What begins at conception? The egg and the sperm were both necessarily alive before, the DNA in the egg and the sperm is not changed, nothing is added, nothing is created. In 55% of the cases the zygote passes completely out of the uterus and never proceeds further than the combination of sperm and egg: what has "begun" in those cases? How is this not different from having sex where no conception occurs?

But you have disputed the cases where there is no embryo, and where successful further development does not occur.

There's that equivocation between life and human life again. This basic disagreement on your part is Cognitive Dissonance:There is more on Wikipedia if you are interested. You have made a strong commitment to the concept of life at conception, and you have told it to other people as if it is the truth, and thus dealing with evidence that shows it is a false concept sets up a sever case of Cognititive Dissonance. One way to resolve cognitive dissonance internally is to reject the contraditctory evidence.

The fact that the development of life into human life is a continous process (it even continues after birth) means that different people will come to different conclusions about the relative importance of different stages of development.

They have a right to honest information about the whole process, and they have a personal, legal, ethical, and moral right to make the decisions that affect their lives and the lives of those in their family.

This is just another appeal to emotion, a logical fallacy, and not to facts or reason based on facts. The (intentionally misleading) language used is intended to sway opinion through emotion, and not through facts, and it misrepresents the truth.

If the facts were on your side you would not need to make such appeals. The decisions should be made based on rational evaluation of all the facts by the families involved, and not by groups of busy-body outsiders with false information.

Enjoy.
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So, according to this logic most abortions are unnecessary? Just a waste of time and money for women who want to terminate pregnancies that are not actually pregnancies?

That's good, RAZD can be the poster person for a campaign that goes something like... Pregnant? Don't worry about it! It's probably not really a baby anyway!

Thanks SoSick for your helpful perceptions

No. Certainly those that are performed to save the life or prevent injury to the woman are necessary.

By this logic conception is not human life, it doesn't meet the standard of human life used to terminate terminal patients.

Conception doesn't add anything to the process of continuous cell life (as it has for 3.5 billion years), nothing magical happens, and it provides no absolute guarantees of becoming a human being.

It forms an honest basis for families to make decisions based on their personal, ethical, legal and moral beliefs. Different people will make different decisions, just as they do for the termination of life.

It is the right of the family to make these decisions.

Pretending otherwise is false.

Enjoy.
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Note: my time is limited, so I only choose threads of particular interest to me and I cannot guarantee a reply to all responses (particularly if they do not discuss the issue/s), and I expect other people to do the same. Thank you for your consideration.[/color]

Well, I think at the point that you start discussing preventing death or injury to the mother you have moved far beyond trying to guess the status of true conception, fetus or not, so why would you use that as as retort in this case?

Since abortions are generally only performed when there is obviously a viable pregnacy or fetus I have difficulty with most of your arguments, as usual.

Also since abortion, sucking the fetus out from the woman's womb one way or another, can also cause health problems, even death for the mother, wouldn't it be simpler for men like you who would suggest that's it's fine for a woman abort a fetus to simply make a small incision in their own body, say in their scrotum, and suck out their testicles instead? Then we wouldn't have to bother with the discussion of life and death issues at all.

Yer a real hoot, SoSick.

You were the one that asked if all abortions were unnecessary due the the possibility that the zygote/embryo/fetus may not be viable anyway. The answer is that some are necessary, and that without one in some cases both woman and zygote/embryo/fetus will perish. The choice then is whether to save the life of the known living breathing human being or to hold out for a possible maybe might become one. The ethical answer is that the family concerned decides -- not you -- and they should have the right to base that decision on honest information and not emotional clap-trap.

This is hysterical coming from you, when I think the woman should have the right to decide, a right that you want to take away.

You would choose the "rights" of an empty pregnancy sac over the life of a woman. That's rational. That's respectful of other people.

Is this another example of "christian morality" that you keep coming up with?

Enjoy.
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Note: my time is limited, so I only choose threads of particular interest to me and I cannot guarantee a reply to all responses (particularly if they do not discuss the issue/s), and I expect other people to do the same. Thank you for your consideration.[/color]

it was a rhetorical question RAZD. didn't really require an answer since you've already given your answer.

Just thought it would be interesting to throw the ball back into your court to see if you liked how it felt. but apparently you aren't making the connection. If you were given the message that castration were an acceptable behavior, an appropriate form of birth conrol since age 7, chances are excellent you would accept it and perhaps even engage in it. and the fact is, no one has ever died of castration done properly.. whereas women do die from abortions even when performed 'properly'. Therefore, castration is a safer form of birth control. you should easily understand that logic since you use it daily yourself.

Is there any particular reason you seem to feel that my opinion should always represent christian morality as you seem to perceive it? maybe your perceptions are a bit askew, ever considered that? I've never met a non-christian who comprehended christianity morality past the idea that all christians should love everyone and give everyone else their time and stuff for free... which isn' true anyway except to non-christians who believe that for some odd reason... but are you saying you are the first non-christian who can perfectly define christianity? i didn't see you link to a wikipedia definition...Do you want to tell me about the life of Jesus too? And how i should imitate it?

I thought this discussion was about abortion not empty pregnancy sacs anway. who cares about empty pregnancy 'sacs'. they don't do anything, they don't grow, they don't show up on ultrasound as babies, they don't get a mulit-week age date by an ob-gyn. i suppose you think an ob-gyn would miss that prior to doing abortion, that is the jist of your argument... it's useless really... your entire argument is irrelevant. it's an empty argument. Ob-gyns don't perform abortions on every woman that's comes running in claiming to be pregnant you know.

I don't know whether to just say duh or duh.

Thanks for being so rhetorical SoSick,

Vasectomy is a viable form of birth control, and it can have many side benefits as well as some sever complications. Any surgical procedure can have complications.

It - birth control - is also completely irrelevant to the question of the definition of human life. Are you equating abortion with birth control? Some people have to have them or suffer drastic consequences -- whether they want ot or not -- and it would be cruel to accuse them of just engaging in birth control when they are in the middle of making a difficult decision.

Some people must, for if you define human life by conception then you would have to be a vitally concerned about them as any other product of conception.

However, I'm glad to see that you agree that they are not human life (and that therefore human life is not defined by conception).

Don't let me stop you.

Enjoy.
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Yeah, vasectomy... well easier and safer to simply remove the testicle RAZD, as I said. I guess a vasectomy could be compared to a root canal. Leave the half dead thing there and it's sure to cause complications.

However. at the point a fetus, no matter the age, has attached itself to a woman's body to feed and grow, it is a part of the woman's body, until the baby is born. Many women have been known to hemorhage, even die from hemorhaging after abortions, or contract nasty infections, and likewise die. It's not a safe procedure under any condition. The fetus is literally ripped from the woman's body, in most cases of early stage abortion.

I hate to bicker but the term conception does not include non-conception, as you are arguing. An empty egg sac is not conception. It's a false pregnancy, no conception took place. duh.

And, abortiion is used as birth control RAZD, duh again. It's the rare case where it's used for reasons of detriment to the mother's health. If you want to argue that is not so explain the use of abortion by thousands of teenagers and single women, and in places like China. Really big duh RAZD. In 48 years on this earth I have only heard stories of women who had to have an abortion. I have never met a single one. I know many who have used it as means of birth control. So who are these women who have needed abortions? What are they, like 0.1 percent of all abortions?

Well at least you appear to have dropped your Christian morality bit... which is good... rather than force an example by me coming to your home to destroy your idols. I'm more adept at wiping filth from my feet and moving along to better soil. Because this is what the Lord had to say concerning people like you:

Luke 10:10 But into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you not, go your ways out into the streets of the same, and say, 11 Even the very dust of your city, which cleaveth on us, we do wipe off against you: notwithstanding be ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. 12 But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city. 13 Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which have been done in you, they had a great while ago repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. 14 But it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment, than for you. 15 And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted to heaven, shalt be thrust down to hell. 16 He that heareth you heareth me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me; and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me.

It hardly requires my sympathy or love toward you does it? Just so you know... your expectations of how Christians should treat you are a fantasy too. I wipe the dust of your city against you. I offer mud for your eye and dung for your plate which you will remember with longing while you rot in hell a few short years down the road. Why you seek God's love and charity from me when you don't believe they exist, RAZD, is probably the million dollar question you need to ask yourself.

Enjoy.

Wow, I guess the kind-hearted Christians I've known, who were filled with love for humanity no matter what race or creed, were deluded in the faith they followed. I'm frankly disgusted and depressed by this attitude towards other people. Thanks for making this clear, I'll no longer have an expectation that Christians ought to show general signs of virtue such as tolerance and love. I was under the impression that these were some of the shining lights of any religion. I can't imagine that people are going to get along with each other very well if they believe it is somehow right to call each other filth and tell them to rot in hell. What a beacon of love and hope you are for the Christians of the world SoSick.

This is no different from other religious extremists in the world who want to blow up/kill "infidels" in the name of their religion. Zero respect for the humanity of anyone who is "other." This is truly frightening and disturbing.

Good you shouldn't expect it. Why any Christian should feel the need to bend themsleves over backwards to meet your expectations is beyond me.

Especially when you spend your time teaching lies about God and morals/ideas quite contrary to biblical beliefs. People like you always expect Christians to stupidly give you what you want while you snicker at their 'ignorance' behind their backs.

Jesus himself said people like you are better off with a rock tied to their necks and thrown into the sea.

I happen to agree.

I don't expect the world to love me Linda. If it loves the Christians you claim to have known they probably are deluded.

well, at least you learned something today. Not every christian is sitting around waiting for you to patronize them. People don't get along very well because of God haters and teachers of lies, like yourself, who want to tell everyone how to think and what to believe, even about God himself, without any consideration whatsoever of the impositions they make upon others, in my opinion.

You will remember all that someday while you rot in hell too. I am not telling either you or RAZD to go rot in hell Linda, it's a choice you've made yourselves. Why is it such a problem for me to point it out to you? You should expect that response. The whole world is suffering with your choices in the meantime btw. That includes me and it makes me rather unhappy. It's hard to force a smile... knowing people like you would teach children that God is a lie and then expect them to love and honor you in his stead.

I know you'd like to hear how wonderful life will be in heaven when you die linda, how wonderful you are today, a pat on the back continue as you are... but ... sorry, it's not forthcoming. you need to find one of your evolution promoting same sex marriage preachers for that.

enjoy. have a party.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, so they say.

Enjoy the walk, Linda.

Wow. I'm pretty staggered.

Maybe we should stop differentiating between those who believe in a personified god, and those who are anti-religion, e.g. Richard Dawkins. The world is not split into black and white like this, nor is the Truth IMHO.

I have been working on regaining my own spirituality. I have been meditating, even concentrating on other beings/vibrations/whatever you want to call them as per the instructions of a reiki master. I ask my guardians to stand by me and help me clear my aura. I call on something the reiki master calls the gold/violet/white fire of the archangel Zadkiel. I don't know what's going on there and I don't think it really matters, but I can feel it working and it's powerful and wholesome. I am attuned to reiki myself and I can call on the love and life of the universe to flow through me. I'm aware of different vibrations, spheres of consciousness, and possibly even different dimensions. Maybe science will discover these one day, but for the time being they seem real enough to me. My mistake for a long time was writing them off as imagination.

Does it make them any less real if I don't call them God and angels? No. My route to getting at the Truth is different from yours but I hardly think it deserves the aspersions you are casting on it. Not everyone who disagrees with you is a Dawkins-style atheist, and it has to be said that people generally do not perpetuate hate, intolerance and bloodshed in the name of atheism. There's nothing wrong with people dropping the swords/guns and trying to understand and learn from each other.

I know you just want a pat on the back now and then Linda.

but I haven't got one for you when you expect me to change myself to suit your ideologies, in the name of your perception of christianity, especially.

Like I mentioned the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Lucifer was an archangel too, just in case you didn't know. He's the archangel of hell now. he has helpers. maybe if you learn anything at all from your adventures in spiritism it'll be that even in death, if your soul survives somehow, you will kneel to someone, something.

You shouldn't be worshipping angels.

And I'd beg to differ, but atheism has inspired much hatred of Christians, Jews, all religions. It's intolerance of Christianity is seen in court battles daily concerning any mention of God anywhere. It's noted anytime a church is burned or it's people gunned down. It's hatred and bloodshed is written on the graves of hundreds of thousands of Chinese and Russian peasants, it separated the families of east Europe from the west by a wall for many years, and continues to attempt to teach our children lie upon lie and lead them to hell on a daily basis. It even enables doctors to use your child for a medical experiment because you and she are nothing but another couple of expendable animals to it.

So.. you've rejected a 'personified' God in place of a personified angel. What a step. .. the love and life of the universe... that's a good one. Did it evolve on it's own? Spheres of consciousness... wow sounds very um... transcendental. have you flown around in your spirit body yet? Let me know how you feel when you get back if you do, if you can still type coherently.

The archangel zadkiel...

http://www.templeofthepresence.org/zadkiel.htm

well again, like I said the road to hell is paved... very well paved...

I don't worship anyone. I don't hate religions. And I am not a "spiritualist."

Here is what I see right now. You are telling me that despite the fact that I care about people and want to help them, and believe that we should all strive to love and understand each other, I am going to burn in hell for eternity. Conversely, only a chosen few people, who believe the Bible word for word, and who are free to hate, ostracise and kill those who are not members of the blessed elite, are going to go to heaven to enjoy eternal life.

I think I can safely say that it's only a few people calling themselves Christians, or extremist members of other religions or cults, who live life by this ideology. Thank goodness it's only a few, but some have been responsible for some heinous atrocities over time. I fail to understand how hatred and intolerance can be considered holy by anyone. You have a nerve preaching to me or anyone else about righteousness and morality.

You are indeed a spiritualist.

I didn't say you were going to burn in hell. I said rot. Whether you will burn there or not i really don't know. I said rot because without God to give you eternal life... your soul will have an eternal something else... rot basically. And hell i guess can be where ever the stench of the rot is.

My gosh Linda, I cannot believe you would actually think God would want you for a neighbor when you say such nasty things about him.

My words aren't hateful. They are truthful. You are the one who keeps mentioning the word hate. You really do hate truthful people don;t you? It's not my christianity... it's the truthfulness isn't it? i'm not a warm fuzzy enough christian for ya huh? oh well.

You hate what christains believe linda, you hate their God, you hate their rules, you hate their morality... just admit it and then get over it. you can care about people all you want, spend your life feeding the poor. It will not get you to heaven, or wherever the stench is not if God does not want you for a neighbor.

Besides if you want my opinion, you have a strange way of caring about others anyway... Personally, i'll tell ya, after a couple weeks of enemas for colon cleansing I have truly absolutely no idea how homosexuals do it and live.

Scrub me off your care list please. I don't want your illnesses and malarky.

I do not have to be friends with you Linda. i do not have to stroke your ego and lie to you to make you feel good. call it hateful if you'd like, makes no difference to me. You like to use that word, i know that.

Turn the tables a bit if you feel that way and just go around agreeing with everything Christians say to you. Take your own advice. Avoid the arguments if you are so tolerant. You guys always start this because you think a christian, myself or another, is not being perfectly polite to you. And your endless accusations...well hey Linda eat my sneakers... every single mass murderer I've read about in the news lately had a chip on the shoulder about something just like you've got about christians.

well then... you have nerve suggesting I would bother preaching to you about righteousness and morality. God forbid. What a waste of time that would be. You are too righteous to need any preaching. gosh why would someone who never sins need a preacher?

heh you are so funny. are you sweating? is your heart pounding? Maybe you should go soak up the love and life of the universe instead of playing with me. watch out for the bird droppings.

I think you can safely say anything you'd like. It would appear that way anyway.

Just out of curiousity... you don't find things like chemtrails hateful? vaccines? amalgams? Why not? It's your tax dollars at work after all... your govt caring about you... is that what you mean by caring? Or maybe they are free to hate, ostracise and kill those who are not members of the blessed elite, and are going to go to heaven to enjoy eternal life? And tell me, do you think I should love them for caring? Do you think God loves them for caring too?

I have to go put dinner in the oven. If you want to fight about something else i might be back later. We could fight about whether teaching kids that God doesn't exist is hateful if you'd like. Considering the fact that it'll help them spend eternity rotting in hell it might be worth a discussion, I mean caring argument.

Attributing the name Lucifer to Christianity is an age old misconception. The name itself derives from Latin, meaning 'light bearer' and it was another name used for the planet Venus in ancient times before the Common Era. In other words, the name was conjured not by the Christian mythology but a much earlier faith.

Ironically enough, there was a Bishop Lucifer in the 4th century AD.

It was only modern Christianity, not the Christian origins, which demonized the name, thus giving the name Lucifer its current associations.

Actually, the name Lucifer is only used once in the bible to refer to a fallen angel. It's used by Isaiah long before christianity ever existed, about 700-725 years before the birth of Jesus and the beginnings of christianity.

Isaiah 14:12
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!

Otherwise the name Satan is used to refer to the leader of the fallen angels, in both the OT and the NT.

I only used the name for the context it lent to Linda's colorful angel of light, exactly as you describe. Isaiah would have used it exactly for the reasons you describe also, in that it refers to an angel/spirit/power worshipped by other religions during his time. Other angelic powers, considered demons and idols by the Hebrews, are also mentioned in the bible such as Aster and Belial, all various names for the fallen angelic host, among various different cultures. Christians have changed those names very little, they have changed or varied among different non-christian cultures though, mostly simply because of phonetics and differences in accents and spelling. The name Jesus would not have been recognized at all by the earliest Christians, it's the Greek form of Yeshua.

Thanks again SoSIck for making your position so clear.

This is how cognitive dissonance deals with facts that contradict belief: pretend it doesn't exist or that it's something else. Let's look at the information again:

Patient information: Miscarriage[/b]
Color and bold for emphasis.

Conception occurs when a sperm unites with an ovum, the result is a zygote. The empty pregnancy sac does not invent itself, nor is it produce by the woman, but develops from a zygote that divides into multiple cells becoming a blastocyst. In the cases cited above those multple cells just happen to form an empty pregnancy sac instead of one with an embryo.

A false pregnancy on the other hand, is a psychological condition and does not involve the production of an empty pregnancy sac.

Denial of reality doesn't change it to what you want it to be.

The same happens with birth sometimes, so maybe we should stop having any births eh? You like absolute black and white solutions, don't you?

I see this as an argument to improve the methods used instead of trying to drive them back into the back alleys with opportunist quacks instead of trained medical staff.

So? That does not answer the question of when an abortion is required to save the womans's life. The question was:

Do you or do you not agree that some cases are necessary?

Nor does the rareness affect the question. Certainly that was not an issue in the supreme court decision on the Ayotte case

This is the (now reactionary) supreme court saying that abortion for medical emergencies cannot be denied.

Different people will make different choices based on their personal beliefs, and the fact remains that human life cannot be easily defined in a way to satisfy everyone. What this means ethically, legally and morally is that different people that are affected should be able to decide on issues that affect their lives and the lives of their families based on their personal beliefs. Allowing choice by the families involved - based on honest fact based information - is the only way to meet the needs of all people in our pluralistic society.

Enjoy.
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Note: my time is limited, so I only choose threads of particular interest to me and I cannot guarantee a reply to all responses (particularly if they do not discuss the issue/s), and I expect other people to do the same. Thank you for your consideration.[/color]

Actually, the term false pregnancy is commonly applied to empty sac pregnancies. look it up. Empty sac pregnancies are also called hysterical pregnancies in cases. even animals experience it.

likewise, sometimes the 'sac' will appear empty at several weeks and then a successful pregnancy ends up happening anyway. so using your argument remains problematic all around.

Sometimes people do have to make difficult choices RAZD. i am not about to condemn them for those choices, only their own hearts can guide them. I agree very much with the NH ruling. attempting to set rules in stone concerning sensitive situations is not in anyone's best interest.

however, relying on the expertise of a so-called medical professional is not always in everyone's best interest either. and doctors, and the law in places, have also been known to demand abortions when the mother was opposed to it, even at risk of her own life.

The expectation that doctors will always present you with the very best honest fact based information is sure to let you down time and time again. More deaths are caused by medical professionals than any other cause, including cancer, on a yearly basis. and that statistic does not include abortions.

and i'd disagree... that in the context of this discussion, rareness does affect the question. and the term conception is commonly accepted, not as a false or empty sac pregnancy, but as true conception and the beginning of life. bothering with pages and pages of trying to define conception to include all errors simply to make a point that abortion should be acceptable is simply deceitful. Conception requires a healthy working fully intact sperm and egg, not something inbetween that slides by because no other term exists to define it except mutant rejected or parasite. You know for a fact that neither Russ nor Bex were ever referring to false pregancies in their opinions concerning abortion.

Sheesh SoSick. Go have a rest and a laugh. Telling others how evil they are must get exhausting. I'll tell you this though, as I said before. Any religion that has love and charity at its heart is OK in my book. Anyone else who thinks that their religion frees them to unleash all manner of negativity on their fellow humans, and that this will be their ticket into heaven, is deluding themselves. You ought to take a break from your ranting and try to see where others are coming from before you spit more hostility in th name of God at them.

One more thought. The Bible contains quite a lot of wisdom in places. For example, Jesus said, "Love thy neighbour as thyself," and "judge not lest ye be judged." I don't remember a caveat to this which said, "unless your neighbour is not a fundamentalist Christian, in which case tell the b*stard he's filth and will rot in hell."

Gosh SoSick, are you making up stuff again?

Let's see if we can validate that statement:

Google search results

Nope. Making up stuff doesn't make it true.

So we should prevent information from being given out because individuals may have it wrong? Is it better to wallow in ignorance?

Well, you have been wrong before, and you like to base your conclusion on made up stuff. Rareness that contradicts your opinion makes it completely invalid no matter how rare it is.

Enjoy.
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Note: my time is limited, so I only choose threads of particular interest to me and I cannot guarantee a reply to all responses (particularly if they do not discuss the issue/s), and I expect other people to do the same. Thank you for your consideration.[/color]

Quite an attitude you carry around RAZD.

You might want to include the term 'false pregnancy' when searching for information about false pregnancies. Try false preganacy empty sac or something like that.

Considering the amount of ignorance that the medical profession wallows in, I'll take your comments with a whole handful of grains of salt.

and leave you to wallow in the remainder of your ignorance about that too because it's obvious you're going to push the status quo and regurgitate standard AMA or Planned Parenthood leaflet propoganda whenever you are able. If you were at this board for reasons other than simply aiding Linda in her various retreats from truth (and consequences) you would know exactly what I am talking about, like the other board members here do also. So good luck with your argument RAZD. ..Unfortunately a board full of people who have been made ill by numerous incompetent and dishonest doctors and dentists is the hardly the place to find the type of support you need in this area.

That is exactly what Jesus did daily more or less Linda, he told the pharisees and saducees, and others, that they were filth and will rot in hell. That is exactly why they wanted to kill him.

Maybe you should take off your rose colored glasses and then open the bible and read it.

You shouldn't rely on my opinion of these things if you don't trust it anyway. there are plenty of other places you can go to get the same information, a church, a pastor, even a priest.

Love isn't defined by tolerance of all things Linda. When it comes to your opinions, of God even, it would appear you expect and demand tolerance, love, and understanding but make no attempt to give any of it if it means your own beliefs are compromised. To love you as myself... I first have to consider so many things you know... and lifestyle choices and religious beliefs take a pretty high spot on the list. I would never permit many of the things into my life that you suggest, for so many various reasons, faith only being one of them. Because loving myself is equally important as loving my neighbor, I don't lie to either. I am loving you as myself in a certain context from thisdistant... and if you would like to follow my example, I suggest you seek God and stop lying to yourself if you ever expect to make real progress. I suggest you admit that you are filth like I am filth. that without Christ Jesus you will rot in hell just like I would have without him. And mainly Linda, that you repent and acknowledge your ignorance, because you are an incredibly ignorant sinner just like me. That is how I begin to love myself Linda. A fancy dinner comes much later.

As it is right now, I wouldn't even shake your hand because you are so filthy, both spiritually and physically. Till the day you seek to be clean, both spiritually and thus fully physically, to be whole, as Jesus would say.. till the day you sincerely seek it, not on your own terms but on God's term as the filthy rag you are, I wouldn't even allow my child within 50 yards of your filthy house.

Enjoy. have a party.

I grew up with a religion that told me exactly that: I am a sinning piece of dirt in constant need of God's forgiveness. This is why Catholics go to confession.

Quite a while ago I realised that thinking this way was damaging to my health. Being a human being is a special and empowering thing. And while it's important to acknowledge and learn from mistakes, I don't believe it is necessary to tell yourself what a piece of filth you are. I got constant criticism from my own parents who seemed to think I could never do anything right and I certainly didn't need it reinforced by the church. This is what I meant a while back when I said I was a humanist, in the more traditional sense of the word. I believe that humans are neither innately good or bad, but amazing beings capable of great things.

BTW when I think of Jesus' message to love your neighbour, I think of the kind of love called agape. It doesn't mean you condone everything everybody does, it doesn't mean you have to agree with them. What it means to me is that you learn how to respect people despite these things because that is what they are, fellow human beings.

Maybe you're right in saying that I am intolerant in some ways. I am intolerant of people who think it's OK to spread hatred and bigotry, in the name of religion or anything else. That kind of agape is admittedly hard to dig out of my spirit but maybe I should try a little harder.

Thank you SoSick for providing this important information.

Okay, however if you have actual information that your claim is true it would be a lot easier if you just presented it, rather than make a claim and expect people to prove a negative.

Only two hits on that last one and both of those involved the fact that a false pregnancy is not the same thing as an empty sac.

So it looks like you are still striking out there. Of course both of those are forums like this, rather than sources of real information, so it is possible (but unlikely given the derth of "finds" by google) that you could be correct.

This also does not answer the fact that the empty sac develops from a fertilized egg, a zygote, conception, rather it is just more attempt on your part to avoid the issue of confronting the truth. Your claim was that they were not the result of conception, and that is false.

The question is whether you think we can learn from mistakes, from concepts that have been invalidated by other information, or whether it is better to just avoid the whole learning thing and wallow in ignorance.

Given that one of the precepts of this board is to educate people about the benefits of alternative medicine I would go with expanding our knowledge base, and that if the claims could be verified to actually change the minds of Doctors and Dentists regarding some treatements. That is the way we increase knowledge eh?

Certainly knowledge is not increased by making unsubstantiated claims that are at odds with the facts and then pretending that you have some truth to your assertions.

Such as the truth about empty pregnancy sacs being produced by a zygote, by conception, but no embryo is produced and thus no human life is produce by such instances of conception -- that kind of truth?

Skepticism is healthy, and I expect people to be skeptical -- of all claims not just the ones you don't like.

And there is a big difference between honest skepticism and blanket denial of contradictory information. Failing to confront the truth is just being lazy and accepting cognitive dissonance over a pursuit for truth and new knowledge.

Enjoy.
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Note: my time is limited, so I only choose threads of particular interest to me and I cannot guarantee a reply to all responses (particularly if they do not discuss the issue/s), and I expect other people to do the same. Thank you for your consideration.[/color]

Because you have not yet comprehended that God is holy. And his agape love is a holy thing that unless you have truly experienced it, you have only perhaps an inkling of an idea of.

I personally would not compare myself to God in using that term that I would be somehow fully capable of it. Jesus himself stated that even he is not good, only his father is good. The temperment of most human beings, the daily stresses of mortal life, make it impossible for them to achieve agape love.




What it means to you... is truly meaningless Linda. God is not a respecter of persons, despite all of their 'tremendous' achievements. Our thoughts are not God's thoughts... and our tremendous achievements... well... if God were a man to compete with that might hold a drop of water. All of our tremendous achievements are nothing but dust in his eyes. A lot of really fithy dust too. It's hard for me to imagine that the creator of the universe would be impressed by a Ferrari, a man made island in a sea, dna research or cloning or whatever.

Far as i know he is more partial to our love for him and faith in him, than any of our worldy achievements.

Maybe not 100% of the time, but part of the time it is not impossible. Perfection may be impossible to achieve as well, in the Platonic sense, but it shouldn't mean that people should cease to strive for something better.


Tell me this: What matters more? That your worldly achievements include inventions that have helped people or even saved lives, that you'd led them to stand up for their rights, that you've touched individual lives by doing charity work or caring for friends and family in difficult times? Or that you've been kneeling in church and mouthing platitudes to a God who is apparently so narcissistic that all he cares about is how much he is worshipped? I think what we do here on earth, especially with/for other people, is worth a great deal. What else is the point in being here?

Honestly, at this point the fact that anyone is entertaining SoSick's trolls for attention with a reply surprises me. No offense to any of you.

Her outrageously insulting remarks, such as routinely calling other posters, and I quote, "filth", are so over the top I sometimes question whether she is actually for real or just joking. I sometimes have this that idea she's doing it for gags just to see how people react and deep down inside doesn't really mean a word of it. The frightening thing is more than likely she actually does mean it. And that is a frightening thought indeed.

I enjoy reading this discussion board and its many forums. I'm here on a regular basis. I've had a fair few heated debates bordering on arguments (and even outright anger) with board moderators Russ and Laura, but despite that I like them both. My wife and I purchase Algin and other supplements from them regularly, I've exchanged a private message or two with Russ over the years and even had a lengthy enjoyable telephone conversation with Laura some time back on the topic of mercury. I'm pleased that this forum exists as it serves a purpose to the general public in many ways. So, however few my posts may be I am and will continue to be an active member of this forum.

That being said, I will no longer tolerate nor cater to these brazenly insulting posts. From this point onward I will not read a single post by SoSick nor waste the actual physical energy it takes to reply. If by some unlikely turn of events I am told by a third party that SoSick has learned to stop treating other posters like rubbish I may return to these discussions - but seeing that as a highly unlikely scenario (as unlikely as flames being disallowed here, which they happen to be on every other discussion board), I won't hold my breath.

This isn't a farewell per se, just an announcement that I shall be absenting myself from these discussions and engage in only those posts which are polite and professional. I simply no longer have the time or the inclination to interact with people whose responses are filled with nothing but venom and hatred.

This is not an invitation for discussion - no reply to the above (by offending posters) will be read. Write a reply if you wish, but I forewarn you that in doing so you will be effectively writing to yourself.

Over and out. So long and thanks for all the fish. See you in another life. Blessed be. And all that jazz.

I'd say the kneeling. I fall into the category of people that believe that we are nothing without God, and that God blesses us with our abilities and even helps us achieve.

The world is a pretty messed place because people do so many things without God leading them and then all those mitsakes end up hurting people or causing other major problems. so... I guess if you want to spend your time spinning your own wheels in circles, doing things, some good some not so good, and then backtracking to fix things, you can live that way. but there is a better way, a much easier way, with God, with Jesus.

I'd also say it's a very narcissistic position to feel yourself too high and mighty to bow and worship at the feet of your creator.

I think some people here would benefit from reading Hitchhiker's Guide Pwcca, don't you? The Great Green Arkleseizure and the Coming of the Great White Handkerchief seem pertinent to a discussion of creation and evolution.

Thans for reminding me to get my head screwed back on straight and stop putting up with being spoken to as I have been, or for that matter letting myself get sucked into bickering. I think I'll go worship Slartibartfast for a while.

No one ever appreciated the constant complaining and nit picking anyway. Much less the attitude that every problem in the world is caused by someone other than a pagan, a deist or a spiritist with their head unscrewed. You should have mentioned that sooner. It would explain the loose nuts all around you.

Enjoy your book.

<img src="http://herballure.com/ForumExtras/Images/qevaapsdba.jpg">

This applies to the church, to Christians, today just as it did in Jeremiah's time. Neither God nor Jesus ever told us to love, accept, tolerate or teach the things, people or ways that defile us, and our land, in his eyes. Jesus was sent not just to teach us, among other things, to love one another, but to execute judgment and justice in the earth. A lot of so-called Christians miss that because they are taught the nicities of Christianity as children, but as adults no longer search the word of God for answers or truth. The OT is a prerequisite to the NT, not vice versa.

[color:"blue"]Jeremiah 23:14 I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness: they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah. 15 Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts concerning the prophets; Behold, I will feed them with wormwood, and make them drink the water of gall: for from the prophets of Jerusalem is profaneness gone forth into all the land. 16 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you: they make you vain: they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD. 17 They say still unto them that despise me, The LORD hath said, Ye shall have peace; and they say unto every one that walketh after the imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you. 18 For who hath stood in the counsel of the LORD, and hath perceived and heard his word? who hath marked his word, and heard it? 19 Behold, a whirlwind of the LORD is gone forth in fury, even a grievous whirlwind: it shall fall grievously upon the head of the wicked. 20 The anger of the LORD shall not return, until he have executed, and till he have performed the thoughts of his heart: in the latter days ye shall consider it perfectly. 21 I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran: I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. 22 But if they had stood in my counsel, and had caused my people to hear my words, then they should have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their doings. 23 Am I a God at hand, saith the LORD, and not a God afar off? 24 Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the LORD. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the LORD. 25 I have heard what the prophets said, that prophesy lies in my name, saying, I have dreamed, I have dreamed. 26 How long shall this be in the heart of the prophets that prophesy lies? yea, they are prophets of the deceit of their own heart; 27 Which think to cause my people to forget my name by their dreams which they tell every man to his neighbour, as their fathers have forgotten my name for Baal. [/color]

It is better for me to suffer the inequity of being called a christian bigot or whatever, and even fail to shine the light of God's love on a few very hard to reach souls who run from the truth and curse God, than it is to help perpetuate those things, in even the smallest way, which have angered Him forever.

Amen! Too true. And because of these luke warm Christians who failed to stand up, but preferred instead to preach "marshmellow feel good Christianity" or "Compromise Christianity" tickling their own ears and the ears of their listeners, we now see the results around us increasing all the time. Sin accepted as the norm. Sin called "alternative lifestyles". Christ said "woe to those who call good evil and evil good".

Evil triumphs when good people do nothing.