It has already been explained and you continue to pretend otherwise. There are ranges of the optional in formulating objective law. That is not "nebulous".

So what? The presence or non-presence of a heartbeat has nothing to do with either.

Not every "living entity" has rights. Bestowing entitlements to the unborn violates the rights of the living.

The death penalty inevitably bestows undeserved and irreversible execution on the accused innocent.

So yes, these two religious positions are consistent, consistently unjust and irrational.

The notion that abortion, including contraception, is "murder" is based on the false religious ideas that there is a mystic "soul" prior to birth, that it has "rights" amounting intrinsic duties, and these entitlements are mystically granted by a god, all of which leaves the nature and source of man's rights undefined and unexplained and contradicts them. It leaves us with no way to objectively determine what rights are or why, asserted instead by arbitrary decrees incorporating meaningless verbiage and subjectively claimed in the name of the supernatural. It is nonsense, not "logical". The supposed "logic" is at best rationalization from false and meaningless premises. It contradicts the right of the individual and undermines the possibility of a civilized society in contrast to theocracy.

The potential presence of "other choices" does not make abortion murder, justify its prohibition, or justify a claimed duty for women and their families who do not choose your "other choices" to sacrifice themselves to your demands.

Just read you comment and couldn't agree more. I've worked for and with the military for over 20 years and can see the culling of the brightest. Only the "yes men" are left on the top (now supplemented by the "yes women"). The overall degeneration is progressing fast...

The only way to ensure what you are advocating is to force the pregnant female if it is against her will. An infant, once born, can simply be adopted if the birth mother does not want to care for the baby. You are choosing that a fetus' rights are more important than the pregnant female 's rights. A
nd you have no problem forcing them against theirwill, telling yourself it is a simple inconvenience. Problems arise in pregnancies all the time. Ob gyn s pay some of the highest med mal rates of any medical specialty. For a reason. It's not our choice.

Responsibility is on both partners - male and female. I do not exempt "sperm donors" simply because they don't face 40 weeks of inconvenience. Both partners need to take responsibility for their actions and the potential repercussions.

And I would encourage you to investigate the abortive procedure. "Emergency" abortion was a misconception (no pun intended) I was under as well until I did more research.

"Although I think it is sad when pregnant women choose abortion, it is not my right to force them to carry to term. that is what you advocate. gun at her temple. comply with MY morality"

You are straying from the point. It starts with sex - not with pregnancy. Sex is a choice (I exclude rape/incest for obvious reasons) and choices have consequences - whether desired or otherwise. But again, the philosophical debate goes back to whether or not that newly created life has rights independent of the mother and father. Is it a moral decision? Absolutely: whether or not to recognize and respect those rights. It is not _my_ morality or _your_ morality at all - it either IS, or it ISN'T.

Part of the risk that should be taken into account, I agree.

I don't have a problem with that. Intent matters to me.

that is an onerous responsibility to place on the female. YOU have decided the values of her choice. She gets to identify and assess the risks. There is risk in abortion as well. There is no such thing as a 2-3 day preparation for most abortions.Although I think it is sad when pregnant women choose abortion, it is not my right to force them to carry to term. that is what you advocate. gun at her temple. comply with MY morality

Anti-abortion, pro death penalty is also inconsistent.

And if the contraception fails? Few kinds are 100%.

Doctors and scientists say that life begins not at conception, but at implantation, because so many zygotes never make it to that stage.

"So, you see, it cannot be settled in a thumbnail "dictionary" definition of human life."

I disagree. Life can begin at conception. Black and white. No moral ambiguity whatsoever. No rationalization. No jumping through hoops or mental gymnastics of justification. An easy refutation for rationalized murder by categorization. If it has the potential to become human, it should be considered as such with all the rights therein contained.

Much of the rest of your argument belies the notion of owning one's self. If my mother always has a claim over me by virtue of maternity, then many of my natural rights cease to exist.

The reason I bring up Asberger's and Down's Syndrome is because I have relatives and close friends who are afflicted with these conditions. I could add in autism or a whole host of other conditions. The end effect is that their minds do not function within the full realm of reason you or I enjoy. The dangers, however, in claiming that these do not deserve protection or rights similarly brings on a whole host of justifying reasons for initiating force against these individuals. It is the same reasoning by which our current Administration is seeking to limit the access to firearms by anyone with a "mental condition" - an intentionally subjective conclusion. Am I arguing that these so afflicted are capable of acting on all their rights? No, as some rights infer a certain level of reasoning capability. But I would rather take the stand that the rights are there until taken away than the alternative - that they are only granted upon clearing an arbitrary bar.

I used to believe that too. Then I listened to this (among other things):
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/...

The short version: a medical doctor who personally performed over 1200 abortions testified to Congress and laid out to them exactly what takes place during an abortion, including the 2-3 days of lead-up. One of the great myths he debunks is that abortions are carried out "for the health of the mother."

To consider: having sex carries the risk of pregnancy. Simple truth. To attempt to disassociate cause and effect is disingenuous. The whole reason women choose to get abortions (or are "persuaded" to by their boyfriends in most cases) is to avoid the consequences. If one does not wish to take the chance of being responsible for bringing life into this world, one should either forego sex or use contraception.

When does a thought take shape? Who bears witness to it? Only the bearer. When does a thought become action? My thoughts are my own, they form in my mind. That’s what it feels like being pregnant. something is forming in a private, personal space within me.
Birth is not a mystical moment that gives status and rights to an individual. but it is in that moment, for a lack of a better way to describe it-- I am no longer thinking, I am acting.
I create life. Could care less when the cosmos claim credit. Life doesn’t happen unless I say so. Know one thinks for me.

I don't have to, because I'm not subject to your whims. You are free to not get an abortion when you become pregnant.

the whole Aspergers/Downs is a specious argument. You refuse to address the risks to pregnant women and their moral choice to choose whether to assume those risks. I agree that we should try to persuade wherever we can-but you have no right to force a woman to carry a fetus to term

gods hairy balls! quit saying that! you take me out of context! I never said I would kill my adult daughter! she has her own volition. I never said I would "kill" anybody. I said, my own life first and foremost. just like the stewardesses tell you-put the oxygen mask on yourself first, then your child...
what does Asperger's have to do with any of this?? well I can think of an angle...but

"Asperger's Syndrome" is an example of Nazi pseudo-science. More on that here below. Blarman, I usually get paid to write at the level you demand here. If we were discussing why the government should not set prices by command, that would be pretty easy to write about off the top of my head. Here, you are demanding that I provide you with answers to the toughest questions - and in 25 words or less ... so that you can argue with me. I asked you for your definition of "human being." You provided none. I agree that is it is not an easy challenge.

Moreover, I am not an official spokesman for Objectivism. No one is. If you can find more cogent and insightful statements by David Kelley or Leonard Peikoff, I am willing to consider those as expert opinions.

Maybe your mother _always_ has the right to kill you. You turn out bad at 35 and she terminates you. Could be. (Here in the Gulch, khalling said that she would kill her adult daughter - an actress in AS3, in fact - to ensure her own happiness. So, you see, it cannot be settled in a thumbnail "dictionary" definition of human life.

Do not say "you brought it into the world by your actions." Benjamin Franklin's son, William Franklin, was the governor of New Jersey and a Tory loyal to the king. Should Benjamin Franklin not have attempted his demise, though he sought to hang his father? (What if your son joined the IRS? or fought for immigrant rights?) These are tough questions. You will not find them in the dictionary under "life, human (see abortion)".

Perhaps it does not matter what "human" life is. "I swear by my life never to live for the sake of another man or ask another man to live for mine." Even if the embryo is human, how is its claim to your life any more valid than the claim of a welfare moocher or bureaucrat looter?

You mentioned Asperger's Syndrome twice. The truth is that Hans Asperger's attempts to socialize "little professors" was approved of by both the German Nazi government and also the US occupation forces who interviewed him and - being Boy Scouts themselves - agreed that marching the little professors in to the wood, singing songs behind a flag was a good way to socialize them. That's why they called it "national socialism" and it did not die with Hitler.

Because you say so? How capricious and arbitrary.

How is it different?

We say things like, “I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” You're saying that doesn't apply to women? We have to live our lives for the sake of what might become a child?

Perhaps you don't really recognize the stakes about why this is so important. When evaluating ANY philosophy/religion/etc., there are the values, and then there is the application of the values to the appropriate population. If no standard of application exists, then the philosophy in turn is subjective and arbitrary - not objective. That is why it is absolutely critical to any philosophy that it be explicit in defining to whom it applies. We don't apply Objectivism to nematodes or flowers, but to human beings. Rand's writings make it pretty clear that Objectivism should apply to everyone (unless I just completely misread it somehow), but you are trying to tell me that no objective standard exists for evaluating personhood - ie who is part of "everyone"? If that is the case, then there is no universal philosophy that holds water - including Objectivism. I somehow doubt that was ever the intention of Ayn Rand.

Look at it another way. Objects are defined and categorized according to their characteristics. There is an object behind a curtain and I want to know what it is. So I ask you to design a test - a list of characteristics that will tell me if the object behind the curtain passes or fails the test. If it passes the test by adhering to the definition so constructed, we categorize it as A. If not, it is A! (read "not A"). What you are trying to tell me is that there is a third state - neither A nor A!: a statement which defies epistemiology and reason entirely.

This is precisely why I warned about the slippery slope condition of pro-abortion advocacy. Such advocates by their own volition must either take an arbitrary position when defining personhood status or they take no position at all, and seriously undermine any other possible logical arguments they might endeavor to make.

"I might say that the child is independently alive when it says the word "I"."

So you would support killing infants up to about two years of age, as well as anyone who is born mute or has cognitive issues such as Asberger's or Down's Syndrome? You realize that such an approach is used to justify genocide, right? You do realize that was Margaret Sanger's morality?

"it might be more fruitful for you to explain why an entity that cannot speak for itself is a human being"

Because you are judging it based on what it is at the moment and not on what it may become. The moment (pun intended) that you take time into account in attempting to define a human life, you will fail. If your definition of humanity depends on the moment, you then relegate any momentary dissonance as justification for termination. No room for error or imperfection. No room for improvement or discovery. No room for scientific inquiry or learning. No tolerance for life.