This is what abortion has led to
Posted by ycandrea 6 years, 2 months ago to Government
OK. I just vomited and I am still very shaken up when I heard that the governors of Virginia and New York want to kill babies after they are born in the name of abortion rights. I am really upset. I have always believed a baby is a human being with the right to live from the point of conception. Yes, a woman has a right to make choices about her body, but she does not have the right to kill another human being. She can give it up for adoption if she doesn’t want the baby. But now they can kill the child after it is born. Isn’t that murder? So, how do all of you who think it's OK to kill humans inside the womb think about killing them outside the womb feel? To me, there is no difference but some of you rationalize it. So did Ayn Rand. This is one issue I did not agree with her about and this is why. This is where your rights to abortion/murder have led. There should be a category for morality.
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"Where is you concern for drug addicts and their happiness levels?"
I am concerned about the government's responsibility to protect the Right to Pursue happiness, but I don't pretend that happiness can be found in self-delusion and the avoidance of reality. Nor do I pretend that I can divest consequence from choice on a personal whim.
His demand for "self regulation" to not have sex in anticipation of the state coming down on you with prohibitions is just as ugly -- like the culture of 'self regulatory' dhimmitude of the Muslims.
Anyone who has sex already "takes the risk of pregnancy", with or without contraceptives. Pregnancy does not imply a duty to bear a child. Blarman's appeal to his notion of "don't take the risk" means "don't have sex unless you are willing to take the risk of being forced by theocrats to bear a child". That is oppressive "regulation of sex" and worse.
His arbitrary pronouncement that unmentioned "studies" have somehow proven that women who don't want children are "happier" if they don't have an abortion takes us back to the Dark Ages when Augustine redefined "happiness" to mean sacrifice to duties imposed by the supernatural.
PS - glad you brought up happiness. How happy are women who have had abortions? Studies say most live under a pall of regret.
Abortion is a moral right, because women have a right to life, liberty, and a pursuit of happiness (including living a life free of children). So when does the fetus gain that right to life? That's simple, when it is ready to live.
Objective laws ought to be about protecting individual rights, and the mother is an individual, the fetus inside her is not. How do we know when the fetus becomes an individual? It's simple, the fetus becomes an individual when it makes its first individual "decision". That is, the fetus becomes an individual when it acts on its own for the first time, when it escapes the egg.
Mammals have eggs, just like every other animal, but the mammal egg is soft and is carried in the mother. But it is still an egg.
Life is a self-propagating system, life begets life. Life is "a distinctive characteristic of a living organism from dead organism or non-living thing, as specifically distinguished by the capacity to grow, metabolize, respond, adapt, and reproduce".
The purpose of an egg is to create life, and the thing inside the egg is ready to be alive when the development of the genetic code is done forming the non-living into the living, which begins with the process of hatching or water breaking.
One of the most important parts about being alive is metabolism, and one of the most important parts of metabolism and being a living being on a planet is the ability to breath the air. The process of an egg is to prepare the soon-to-be living for the world it evolved within. This brings us to human fetuses and the late stage of evolution in the human egg.
"Humans, like all mammals, need to put the finishing touches on lung development before being born. It’s this final stage that researchers have discovered holds the key to when labour begins. Fetal Lung Development: While in the uterus, babies are not breathing air. They receive oxygen via placental blood. While the lungs begin to develop early in pregnancy, the process continues all the way through the pregnancy gestation. Around 24 – 28 weeks of pregnancy, your baby’s lungs begin to produce a substance called surfactant. This substance is made of six types of fats and four proteins, and is critical for your baby to be able to breathe outside the uterus. Surfactant is a soapy-like substance. It coats the inside of the lungs and keeps the air sacs (alveoli) open. The alveoli is where gas exchange in the lungs occurs – oxygen is taken up by the blood and carbon dioxide is released and then exhaled. Without enough surfactant, the alveoli collapse and are almost impossible to open again in normal situations. If the alveoli collapse, they can also stick together and tear. The last stage of lung development begins around 36 weeks of pregnancy, and it continues until your child is about 8 years old. This is called the aveolar phase, when the lungs form millions of alveoli. During this last stage of pregnancy, surfactant production increases as well, preparing the lungs for life outside the uterus. What Causes Labor To Start? During late pregnancy, the uterus has an increased number of immune cells (macrophages). Macrophages help fight lung infection by effectively sweeping up any viruses or bacteria that might be present. A protein found in lung surfactant actives the macrophages, which begin to migrate to the uterus wall. Once there, a chemical reaction takes place, stimulating an inflammatory response in the uterus that begins the process of labour. The surfactant protein is called surfactant protein A (SP-A). Babies begin producing SP-A at around 32 weeks and levels increase for the remainder of the pregnancy, until the lungs are mature enough to breathe outside the uterus." (https://www.bellybelly.com.au/b…/what...)
Therefore a fetus in an egg is not-yet-ready to be alive, until it makes the individual, independent, evolved "choice" to join the world alive. Until that point, it is not-yet-living, not an individual, and not-yet-human. It will choose when it is alive when the process of creating it is finished. Until then, it is the mother's autonomy that matters. After that, it has taken for itself the inalienable right to life, which cannot be taken away for any reason.
The point as ewv states is that it demonstrates that the fetus is not an individual, and therefore cannot have any individual rights.
Here is a better argument: A fetus is inside an egg. The egg is used to form a bunch of stem cells into a life form. Until the stems cells have fully formed the genetic zygotes into the fully evolved form of the creature, that creature is not yet ready to exist in the world. Evolution "designed" life to be able to survive the world, and until the creature is fully evolved by the process of fetal development, it is not a life. When does a fetus become an individual? When it makes its first individual "decision" to leave the egg, (i.e., when the water breaks). How can we know this? Well the water breaks when the Surfactant protein A has reached a peak, which means the fetus's lungs are ready to breath air.
Having a right to abort an early term fetus is not equivalent to killing a newborn child.
Jan
It seems arbitrary to draw the lines at birth and 18.
An area where I think Rand is guilty of wishful thinking is that postulating a philosophy that it is immoral to initiate force against another human being does not automatically make other human beings observe that philosophy. The use of force has been and sadly will continue to be one of the forces that have driven historical development. Most nations of the world exist because someone with a bunch of weapons came and killed the people who didn't do what they said. It's only in football that you can throw a yellow flag for excessive force and they have to stop.
The other big difference is breathing on their own, but we don't declare someone dead because they are on a respirator with clear brain activity.
"a State deciding an embryo develops rights around 24 weeks is the legal decision"
And a completely arbitrary one - which is the entire point of the article. It is a slippery slope argument because it is a judgment call. And because it is a judgment call subject to human biases, it is not bound to moral principle and so that point of judgment can - and will - vary. This article exemplifies the dangers in attempting to justify morality in terms of legality - rather than the other way around.
I completely agree that the thought of Big Brother monitoring my health is a repugnant one, but at the same time, it is government's primary duty to protect life: anyone found intentionally destroying life represents a threat to the individual and by extension any moral government. Abortion requires intentional action - actions which should not be condoned by the State.
Thanks ewv.
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