Oh really? Typically, if I think something is complete and utter hocum, I'm not going to say "there might be an argument." Why did you think there might be?

The fact is, boggie and I have schooled you seven ways to Sunday on this one, and the fact that you gave ground in a moment of actualization is very telling...



This is the same Get Out of Jail Free argument just about every pro-abortion person uses, and it makes me sick. Something to the effect of, "I never said I agreed with that practice, but I have no problems allowing a mother to have it performed on her."

Do you know why you make sure to say that you personally don't agree with partial-birth abortions? Because they're freaking horrifying, and you know it. Your stubborn insistence on this being about "choice" blinds you to taking a stand against a brutal reality.

At the end of the day, if people like you had their way, an unborn 8-month infant could be partially-birthed and aborted and you'd be okay with that. Because the baby wasn't technically "born," right, Twerker?

I'll give you a chance to rethink your inane argument.



This is something someone who's losing a science argument says.



You just can't leave that cognitive dissonance thing alone, can you? We get it, you went to school, you learned some psyche terms, and you want to use them in real life. Bravo. But you can't seem to move past this one concept that you're taking way beyond its actual meaning. Give it a rest.

You're so funny.

No, I'm still pro-choice. Honestly, I don't really even care that much. I'm not a woman, it's never going to be my problem.

I just don't think a bunch of men should be deciding what woman can and can't do with their own bodies. It's just not our place. It's that simple.

Do they?

Your declaring that one side of this discussion is right circumvents the point of such discussion.

Anyway, talk to dbl about whether the fetus, say, before the third trimester, has a right to live.

Might as well save me some time.

Ah... always the compassionate leftist. So what if science tells us that a fetus at the end of the 2nd trimester is a thinking, feeling, self-aware sentient human being. KILL the little fucker if that's what the mother wants! What the hell, we can't see the kids face or hear its silent screams of agony as the abortionist is vacuuming up the little guy's body.

I don't know Twerker, seems to be an extremely callous position you have taken here; particularly in light of the science.

And talk about cognitive dissonance, we have it here in spades!

We have a leftist, who supports abortion and a libertarian (and on most issues I take a libertarian position) who supports abortion.

And yet, when presented with solid science on the personhood of a fetus at the end of the 2nd trimester, it is the libertarian (me) who has adjusted his thinking on abortion (it is not a libertarian value to murder a human being), while the leftist (you Twerker) has his fingers firmly in his ears shouting "NA NA NA NA NA... can't hear you! It's a woman's CHOICE if she wants to murder a poor defenseless human being!"

More textbook cognitive dissonance on display by Mr. Cognitive Dissonance himself!

Nice work Twerker!

You are the gift that keeps on giving!

Do you know what we call this MDanel?

Why it's... wait for it......................




COGNITIVE DISSONANCE!!!

Spoken like a man of science... fiction! Danel already dealt with this one quite nicely. However I do have a question. If "there might be an argument" but you "think it's bullshit," then where exactly does the science fall down? What informs your thinking on the subject? Inquiring minds want to know.



Of course making a law saying you can't do something is moving the legal line! That's the whole point of this debate!!! Seriously, have you not been paying even the slightest bit of attention here?

With the science now proving that a fetus at the end of the 2nd trimester is, in fact, a thinking, feeling, self-aware sentient being, should the LEGAL line respecting abortion be moved? THAT is what this abortion debate is all about!!!

As for your comment "isn't the legal line all that matters," I would say NO! The "legal line" is FAR from all that matters. We are constantly challenging and adjusting laws with the advance of science. We used to let sewage flow freely through our streets and dumped in rivers and then it was discovered that this led to disease and deaths, so laws were adjusted or new laws created in light of those new discoveries. In other words, legal lines were moved to deal with new realities.

Why should the laws concerning what constitutes personhood be any exception?



Actually I barely touched on the grapic details; the real details get much uglier than what I presented.

And I would only side with the mother if her life or health was truly in danger, or the fetus in question had some horrible illness that condemned it to a painful death after birth and the mother felt that abortion was the more moral path to take - in that latter category, disease/defect, I would lean more toward the mother's personal inclination.



Quite apart from the absurdity of this claim, I find it funny that it is YOU denying the science on human fetal development.



I was making what I thought was a painfully obvious analogy; apparently you saw it as too subtle to fathom. So let me spell it out for you.

ALL of us - those of us in developed nations - have become dependent on mepodern technology to survive. If this nation were to experience, say a massive EMP blast that took out everything that used a microchip, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people would die due to the absence of modern technology.

Does an infant born at 24 weeks after conception rely on modern medical technology to survive? In most cases yes... but at 24 weeks, their bodies have developed everything needed to survive outside the womb, with minimal medical intervention in most cases.

But to imply, as you clearly are, that if they rely on modern technology for survival then they must not be viable or deserve the label of "person" is to completely ignore how all of us have become dependent on modern technology to survive; hence my analogy of plunking you down in a remote forest with no modern technology.

It wasn't a "low blow," as you say, it was an analogy even a child would have understood.

Things are rarely as clear cut as you believe dbl, but, for the purposes of this discussion, yes.



Mm. If I talked with a pregnant woman at 3 times during her pregnancy: Once at the end of the first month, at the end of the fourth, and then again at the end of the eight, during which of those conversations am I having a conversation with a woman who's put on a little weight, or who is carrying a human being inside her.

Classify those three encounters, if you would.



As I said before, I don't think this is actually how you think. But I don't know you, so I might be wrong. But the mindset I can sense behind this post differs from that which I've sensed behind most of all other writing of yours.

Anyways...



You sure? I was under the impression that a human life was actually a martian life.



That's not what I was referring to.

As two stances become ever more closer or similar, it becomes more complicated or lengthy to debate them.



Mm. Actually, even objections to just the science itself could easily be non-ideological. If there couldn't be a scientific objection to a scientific idea then we would know no more than we ever did.



...

Mm.

As soon as she was aware she was pregnant she would likely say she has a precious life growing inside her. The maternal instinct in nearly every woman on the planet is undeniable even when in thier childhood.The overwhelming majority of women would say the same thing unless they harbour little or no maternal feelings for the new life developing inside them.






What in the world are you talking about?




It shouldn't be complicated at all.Pro-choice advocates and lawyers have complicated this whole debate.You are willing to say that life began billions of years ago in some promordial ocean with a little chemical reaction and little bit of lightning..and the first molecules started to self-duplicate and there you have life. But you are hesitant to conclude that an embryo's beating heart at 4 weeks is not life let alone a potential human being.

As DBL rightly stated that religious beliefs notwithstanding...science has proven that a human life begins long before full term birth. That should settle the whole argument..

And?





Sarcasm.



Whatever you refer to with "it," what I said was that as two positions become more and more similar, it becomes more and more complex and lengthy to debate them.

The debate between the allowance of abortion, and the disallowance of abortion, which would seem to be your position, would tend to be simpler and shorter than the debate between the disallowance of abortion, and the allowance of abortion until the third trimester.

Lastly..



Am I? I think you'll find I've said nothing to the contrary.



What should be so is not always so, and what should be right is not always right. For you, religion should be right, but this does not magically make proof appear out of nowhere.

Dbl doesn't believe that human life shouldn't be aborted. At least he hasn't said anything to the contrary.

What he actually said was that the fetus was viable after the second trimester. Viability referring to the probabilty of a fetus surviving when a premature delivery is attempted during the 26-27th weeks of pregnancy, which encompasses the boundary between the second and third trimester, being, on average, a high 90%. Probabilty of survival only increases thereafter.

In addition, since edits can be hard to keep track of, the fetus is human life, yes. But, if it is indeed your position that any action which results in the ending of human life should be a crime punished similarly to murder, then all those who terminate a recently fertilized egg, at minimum, will indeed be thrown in jail for the rest of their lives, but also those who cause any kind of physical injury to someone, a scratch, a bruise, anything, because of the human life such action destroys.

But feel free to revise your definitions and/or statements.