Emotionally defiant lack of knowledge does not define the meaning of thinking. That a "little body" fetus cannot not think conceptually about a future human life and is not a person is fact, no "rationalization". A fetus that cannot breath, eat or be aware of the world other than a few vague thumps and noises is not the imagined little kid running around inside in a playpen observing and learning about the world.

And we also see much more emotional hysteria by those who have no interest in Ayn Rand's ideas, including the cowardly militant trolls who routinely bulk 'downvote' what they don't understand, based on who wrote the post and a clash with their own anti-Ayn Rand dogma. Either they don't belong here or their militantly emotional flooding the forum means this forum isn't worth it anymore.

The repetitive outbursts of emotional accusations of "murder" in this thread are no joke. "Deeming her brain never developed" so she should be "terminated" is not funny.

As I responded previously, "Ayn Rand did not require your permission or authority to know that an embryo or fetus is before birth a potential human being. It only requires knowing what a person is. She wrote a lot on the nature of man and the source of morality and rights, more than 'enough knowledge to understand this'."

That represents far more than "opinion", in contrast to your assertions as admitted opinion with nothing to base it on and which does not even attempt to address what Ayn Rand explained. You can "recognize" or not recognize whatever you want to. Rational readers seeking explanation can judge accordingly.

"It is the anti-abortionists, who have no defense of the mystical notion of intrinsic 'rights' of the unborn who lack knowledge."

All life is self-sustaining to some degree. That has nothing to do with human rights. And no one has said that all self-sustaining activity includes rational thought. In the entire realm of the lower animals and the plant kingdom it does not. Ayn Rand's principle of the rights of the individual are not an argument for or from "convenience" and does not justify dumping babies. You are making assertions about her philosophy that are not true.

A baby in the birth canal being born IS the same as at the point of delivery. No contradiction.

That has nothing to do with abortion. The context that was dropped for that quote is that he said he was talking about exceptional cases where the infant is severely damaged or not viable at all. The question then arises as to what to do or not do to take extraordinary measures to keep it alive. This has nothing to do with abortion and occurs every day for patients of all ages.

Anti-abortion fanatics are hysterically trying to smear that as "killing babies" just because a mother doesn't want it. That is not what he said. The article is dishonest.

Your repetition of ridiculous assertions accusing people of murder, emphasized with an emotional outburst of profanity, is not an argument and doesn't belong here at all. This is a forum for Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason, not emotional outburst.

Every politics implies and presupposes an ethics. It matters to our rights when dogma is promoted as false ethics. False ethics have bad consequences. It does not matter, in logic, that you defiantly don't want people challenging your baseless emotional assertions. The quotes around your words are your words. Your public assertions here are always subject to challenge, even as you insist that you don't care what those who reject you think, if only so that others can read the response.

A baby must be born to be a baby. Emotional outbursts do not convert contradictions into facts by shouting them in capital letters. Running around shouting that people are "murderers" is not rational.

The laws that conservatives want deny the right, your description of Ayn Rand's argument wasn't correct, and it matters that the fundamental argument against abortion also denies contraception.

Religion was the source of the modern anti-abortion movement and to a large degree still plays a dominant role. It also was intended to control sex, and anti-abortion laws still do -- if you are punished for sex by religious-inspired laws you are controlled. https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

Sex is not like a loaded gun that cannot be stopped once the trigger is pulled. There are nine months in which to take other causal actions that terminate a pregnancy -- that is the refutation of the arbitrary claims that a person "has" to bear a child. She does not and has no duty to do so. Arbitrarily assigning duties is not "real world cause and effect" that "cannot be denied". The claimed "resultant responsibilities" do not come from the "real world", they come from demands to impose unwanted duties.

Yes, a constitution is not a self-enforcing piece of paper. It requires citizens to understand and agree with its purpose.

Two individual human beings' rights are not in conflict. There is no such thing as the rights of those who have not been born.

No one said a constitution is not required. It limits government to protecting the rights of the individual, not enforcing religious entitlements in the name of "offspring".

Insulting people as delusional as a substitute for an argument is not rational. Please review the guidelines for posting here.

Appealing to mysticism and the Ten Commandments is not logic and not an argument for government controlling women who don't want to bear children..

No one has argued for killing children. The article stirring up all this anti-abortion hysteria in the name of "children" already born is phony.

Ayn Rand did not require your permission or authority to know that an embryo or fetus is before birth a potential human being. It only requires knowing what a person is. She wrote a lot on the nature of man and the source of morality and rights, more than "enough knowledge to understand this". It is the anti-abortionists, who have no defense of the mystical notion of intrinsic "rights" of the unborn who lack knowledge.

No one denies the reality of a process towards human life that has begun, or that the entity is "human" in the sense of having human dna and the potential to become a human being. Confusing a person with anything with human dna before birth is the denial of reality.

It is no less "human" before brain waves in the sense of human dna; it is no more human in the sense of a person with rights when it has brain waves before being born.

There was not "democratic suggestion about killing babies after they are born". The article is a fraud intended to whip up hysteria.

"This discussion is about abortion to the point of delivery. A baby being born is not "mindless cells"."
That's a contradiction.
Either this conversation is about the first sentence or the second one. It can't be both. Make up your mind.

It illustrated the parasitical dependency.

That is not your choice to make for her.

Blarman's 'conclusion' "so you [Peter] are a member of the 'religious leftist conservative movement'" is a typically illogical, arbitrary assertion with no relation whatsoever to what Peter wrote.

The choice to "have sex in the first place" is not the only choice. Blarman arbitrarily decrees that the choices he doesn't like -- for abortion -- don't exist. There is no "responsibility" to bear a child as a consequence of sex. That is Blarman's arbitrary imposition.

People do "choose" pregnancy -- they do it by the means of sex, just as all moral choices employ causality as the means to an end. That includes the choice of an abortion to terminate a pregnancy, employed because it causes the termination.

A person's rights begin when he is born. Birth is a fact, not what Blarman calls "whim". To claim that it "then becomes okay to kill other people based on any 'undesired' categorization such as hair-color... or religion" is stupid.

The subjectivist fallacy of rights of the unborn is emphasized in Blarman's totalitarian theocratic "version" he wants to replace Roe v Wade: He explicitly invokes the false alternative of the "inherent" (intrinsicism) versus "whims" (subjectivism), which are two sides of the same coin. The means for the mystical invocation of intrinsicism is subjectivism claiming to establish the intrinsic in order for the mystic's consciousness to dominate everyone else's. He left out the objective.

I am mostly referring to the topic at hand, which is abortion to the point of delivery which has become legal in some states. A baby is a baby when it is being born whether you recognize the fact or not.