I think that is one of the fundamental questions of life that until science can answer, we are left with religious speculation. Show me the man or woman who can point a meter of their design at another object and have it declare with certainty and accuracy the presence of conscience and I will show you the most important inventor in the history of the world.

Got it.

What is murder?
If abortion is murder, then so is not giving to charity, or not donating blood, etc.

You're commenting on a post which is titled "what abortion has led to" while discussing infanticide, and you're still trying to suggest they aren't trying to dishonestly conflate the two?

Actually, that's not true at all. One of Margaret Sanger's prized possessions was a personal letter written to her by Adolf Hitler, who praised her and her methods. Hitler and Sanger both took the basic premise that the value of human life was subjective and depended on such characteristics as race, skin color, and even religion.

I am not prepared to say that a fetus is a human being from the point of conception, but I think that when it has brain waves, it is. And in any case, killing a live baby after it has survived an abortion is certainly murder.

We are not in the ME.

"Forcing someone to carry to term is the rights violation, not having an abortion."

The choice was whether or not to have sex in the first place. Pregnancy is a consequence - not an choice. If you choose to have sex, you choose to take the risk of getting pregnant - with all that pregnancy entails. You want to decrease that risk, use protection, know your cycle, etc., but it is a denial of reality to deny that the responsibility lies in the decision to have sex. No one "chooses" to get pregnant. I could point to any number of childless couples as evidence that it works both ways. Blaming someone else (in this case the unborn) for the consequences of your own actions is not only immature, but immoral. Each of us is responsible for our own decisions and no one else's.

Indeed, this whole story is the epitome of the slippery slope fallacy that abortionists must rely on. First, they say that the unborn have no rights, but can't specify when those rights begin or by what methods the acquisition of those rights is maintained. And so the bar for true "humanhood" shifts constantly according to the subjective whim. It enables some to justify abortion based on the desirability of the child, potential for health defects, race, gender, and more. And then, because the bar isn't based on a fixed moral standard, it then becomes okay to kill other people based on any "undesired" categorization such as hair-color... or religion.

"Roe v Wade needed to be worded and argued better,"

I agree, but here's my version:

"Recognizing as per the Declaration of Independence that Life is the primary Right from which all other Rights are derived and that Government's duty is to protect and preserve the inherent Rights of the individual, this court finds that it is the utmost duty of a moral government to protect Life and to punish those who would seek to abrogate that Right as pertaining to another human being. We hold that to attempt to deny the Right of Life to the unborn is to draw an arbitrary line in the sand based not on science, but on ideology. To those who would seek to deny the right to Life to the unborn, we ask them to identify humanity itself, for in doing so they must either acknowledge that Rights are inherent and therefore not subject to the whims of man, or they must argue that Rights are not inherent, but rather the products of some arbitrary judgment. We choose to recognize - with the Declaration of Independence - that rights are inherent."

You are so delusional that it makes no sense to post an argument.

What a distorted logic, if it is logic at all.

We have laws. Actually, had them since the Ten Commandments came into existence a few thousand years ago.

It says: "Thou shall not kill".

It is NOT the woman's choice to kill the newborn. It is NOT abortion any more.

While there are arguments back and forth when does life start and I don't want to get into that, there is no argument about a newborn child.

It is a human, capable of surviving outside the womb and if its life terminated, it is murder.

Plain and simple.

NO, it is murder.

I am not buying into anyone's game as the majority of Gulch members don't.

I assume people have their own opinion they have consciously developed and which is called "adulthood". You may not have heard of it.

As for "conservatives dishonestly trying to conflate infanticide with abortion" - no, they don't.

What Tran proposed and Northam spelled out with deadly accuracy only a former medical professional is able, is indeed infanticide. Check the details and don't buy into the propaganda of the left.

Of course he doesn't. It is not a job requirement for the governor of NY.

What is a requirement the ability to render a verdict that the US was not that great country. It is important to make the left happy.

Plus 1!

I deem her brain never developed and her life should be terminated!

It ceased being just her body being involved when she created a new body inside herself. If that body is not a human life, then what is it? I strongly disagree with this whole premise because it just does not make sense.

Interesting, but the argument is predicated on what is "potential" vs "actual". The statement of the article in the lexicon, which is presumably Rand's position, is an embryo or fetus is a potential and not an actual. That is, in fact, an opinion. An equally valid opinion would be a "potential" would be separate sperm and egg cells, but when they are joined at conception an "actual" is created. So, which OPINION is the correct one? Flip a coin?

The article uses the "pull on the heart strings" tactic by saying the "horror" of unwanted parenthood forced on the mother is nothing but slavery. It doesn't mention the adoption option to escape said "slavery".

Then the article tries to make you believe there really is no difference between the cells of a viable fetus and an infected appendix. My BS meter pegged on that one.

I have my own copy of the Lexicon as well as many of Rand's books. I definitely agree with her on many topics, but I have great reservations on this one. IMHO a civilization that can come up with reasons to murder its children by the millions is a civilization that doesn't deserve to survive.

Forcing someone to carry to term is the rights violation, not having an abortion.
Roe v Wade needed to be worded and argued better, by focusing on individual rights and the governments role to protect them.
It should've said something like, "since the function of government is to protect rights, only rights violations can be illegal. Since the unborn don't have rights, nor is being carried to term a right, abortion is not a rights violation, so should be perfectly legal."

Because we have a rights protecting constitution is why abortion should be perfectly legal.
Being carried to term is not a right, anymore than free healthcare is a right.
No one should be forced in either case.

Exactly.
Those advocating someone can be forced to carry to term, are in principle, no different to those advocating forcing someone to pay for your healthcare.

Nazi's opposed abortion and homosexuals, kinda like today's religious conservatives, so the comparison isn't 100% wrong.
What this guy is proposing is indeed infanticide, but that's not what those of us who are pro-choice are advocating.
Conservatives are dishonestly trying to conflate infanticide with abortion, in order to ban the latter, even in the first trimester.
They are basically religious versions of democrats.
Don't buy into their game.

"I disagree with your definition of right wing. There are some who are described as right wing who are "social conservatives" who want to enforce their views on others."
Yes, these people are collectivists and therefore left wing like all the rest of collectivists.

"Most of those on the so-called "right wing" want limited government, rather than support rights protecting government."
Then they are not right wing.
"Limited government," is politically illiterate boilerplate.
Objectivists support rights protecting government.
That is the properly consistent, individualistic and therefore right wing, political position.

"When Ayn Rand says that each individual must generate enough self-sustaining actions for his/her own life, that is a responsibility to oneself."
Yes. But that's not a political argument. She isn't saying the state's job is to enforce "responsibility" like the anti-abortionists are.

The right is actually whether or not to have sexual intercourse. Pregnancy is an effect, not the cause. We get to choose the cause, but once chosen results in the effect. That is reality. We simply don't have the power to break the universe and unpair cause and effect.

Gametes can not reproduce themselves - thus one critical factor for life is not fulfilled. To illustrate the absurdity of the argument, by such reasoning every time a woman had a period it would be murder. Or even sex itself, as semen typically contains tens of thousands of spermatozoa...

"current Roe v. Wade is currently a reasonable compromise..."

It is horrible legal precedent no matter how one slices it. Roe v Wade basically exempted the government from its primary duty to protect the life of the innocent. What is also wrong is that it tramples on States' rights; there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that gave jurisprudence in the case to the Federal Government. It was solely an ideological decision, because even the science they pointed to at the time was horribly flawed and they knew it.

Do no harm? Josef Mengele comes to mind. The product of another Socialist enterprise.