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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
 Posted - 12/11/2007 : 09:02:38 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Originally posted by chaloobi
In one single death there is the potential that a parent, a child, a sibling, a friend, a neighbor, an employee or employer, a teacher, an innovator, a highly skilled expert in any number of important fields, a taxpayer, in general a contributor to the community in many different ways, all could be lost. |
Shot your argument in the foot right there, where I've bolded.
Full-grown adults only have the potential to be valuable members of society. Full-grown adults who aren't such die all the time without causing a ripple in the fabric of our community.
Thus, because adults are "all potential," the crux of your argument, it is indeed rational to equate fertilized eggs ("all potential") with adults. They are analogous in regards to their possible impact on society.
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By potential what I meant was not everyone is in all the categories I listed (and there are many more catetories to list for that matter). What makes us human is all the elements of our lives, particularly our relationships, the things we do, the skills and memories we've accumulated, and the things we want to do going forward. Every living person has some combination of these, but a fetus has none at all.
EDIT:
At the heart of the issue, what is the major problem when a human being dies? The real problem is the loss to community, the loss to family, the unrealized plans and dreams. Strip that away and one man's death is hardly different from killing a steer for steaks. |
-Chaloobi
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| Edited by - chaloobi on 12/11/2007 09:22:34 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26021 Posts |
Posted - 12/11/2007 : 12:15:05 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by chaloobi
...but a fetus has none at all. |
A fetus has those things as imbued by its community. Especially "unrealized plans and dreams." The loss to society of any thing, be it a person, pet, library or corner hang-out is not what it's already given, but its potential to give more. A person's memories will already be lost if he never shares them. A person's relationships don't count for squat if she's a hermit. A person's skills are worthless if he fails to exercise them or pass them on. All these things are only potential for future good without even considering the possibility of death, because nobody is particularly obligated to do anything for society.
People who argue against abortion by citing the "potential" of a fetus are simply optimists about what sort of person that zygote might become. It's not because there's a qualitative or quantitative (or quantifiable) difference in the potential loss to society of an embryo or eighty-year-old. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 12/11/2007 : 13:23:06 [Permalink]
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What I'm trying to flesh out here is that the fetus is only potenital; it's an empty vessel that hasn't accumulated anything of value beyond the combined genomes of it's parents. Lose it and all that's been lost is a container, nothing more.
But a human being living in a community has real relationships with people around him, real responsibilities he is delivering on every day, real goals he is working toward, real ideas and innovations forming in his head. It's not just his memories and personality that make him human, it's these relationships and interdependancies. They are not potential, they exist right now and their existance defines his humanity at least as much as his genetic code.
A human organism without the context of a community and a culture is just an empty vessel. It cannot be valued on the level of an integral member of that community. You can't say this blob of cells that has no relationships to anybody, has no responsibilities, does not contribute anything to the community is the same thing as an actual member of that community. It's the difference between what could be and what is now. |
-Chaloobi
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pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
Posted - 12/11/2007 : 13:30:20 [Permalink]
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| One could argue that the combined genomes are exactly why we should not have human-assisted abortion, because genetic diversity is most important to the survival of the species. |
by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart. |
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 12/11/2007 : 13:44:14 [Permalink]
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| Considering the comparative rarity of abortion to live births, such an argument is silly. |
-Chaloobi
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| Edited by - chaloobi on 12/11/2007 13:44:37 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26021 Posts |
Posted - 12/11/2007 : 15:37:47 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by chaloobi
What I'm trying to flesh out here is that the fetus is only potenital; it's an empty vessel that hasn't accumulated anything of value beyond the combined genomes of it's parents. Lose it and all that's been lost is a container, nothing more. |
Not to those who place value on its potential.| But a human being living in a community has real relationships with people around him, real responsibilities he is delivering on every day, real goals he is working toward, real ideas and innovations forming in his head. It's not just his memories and personality that make him human, it's these relationships and interdependancies. They are not potential, they exist right now and their existance defines his humanity at least as much as his genetic code. |
Killing a live person doesn't do anything to erase the social benefits that she has already provided. People become sad when someone dies because they won't get any more of the same such benefits. It's entirely about potential. And I'm also talking about the here-and-now, in that my argument applies just fine to "one second in the future" (people can choose to be antisocial on a whim, after all - again, we don't have to kill them to find that their social benefits are rescinded).| A human organism without the context of a community and a culture is just an empty vessel. It cannot be valued on the level of an integral member of that community. You can't say this blob of cells that has no relationships to anybody, has no responsibilities, does not contribute anything to the community is the same thing as an actual member of that community. |
If the community has decided to place value on the potential, then that is the context that must be considered. You don't get to tell them that their own context is something else. You are basically reversing the roles of "keep your rosary off my ovaries" by insisting that the people who do value potential in reality do not value it.| It's the difference between what could be and what is now. |
What is now is necessarily what was, and has value only in terms of how well it predicts what will be. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 12/12/2007 : 06:24:06 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Killing a live person doesn't do anything to erase the social benefits that she has already provided. People become sad when someone dies because they won't get any more of the same such benefits. It's entirely about potential. And I'm also talking about the here-and-now, in that my argument applies just fine to "one second in the future" (people can choose to be antisocial on a whim, after all - again, we don't have to kill them to find that their social benefits are rescinded). |
I'm not concerned about what social benefits they've already provided. I'm thinking about existing relationships, committments and interdependancies. Example - years ago my sister-in-law had a miscarriage. People felt sad for her and were concerned about her health for a while. Nobody paid much attention or noticed the loss of the dead fetus.
Some years later, the brother-in-law of a friend of my wife's shot himself in the head and died. He had a wife and two children in grade school -- their three lives were traumatized and made more difficult emotionally, socially, economically. His parents were similarly affected as they had to help support and care for the grand children and their mother. Same goes for his siblings and his inlaws. I presume he had an employer who very suddenly had to find and train a new employee. There were likely a myriad of other effects to friends, neighbors and the wider community.
Unless you are willing to ignore the most important aspects of human life, there is no way you can rationally say these two deaths are equivalent. There is good reason nobody paid any attention to the dead fetus - nobody had a relationship with it, it wasn't a true human being. |
-Chaloobi
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pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
Posted - 12/12/2007 : 06:31:42 [Permalink]
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| But people do attach value to the fetus, and are emotionally impacted by their abortion. Look at all the pro-lifers. People are paying attention. |
by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart. |
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 12/12/2007 : 07:54:54 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by pleco
But people do attach value to the fetus, and are emotionally impacted by their abortion. Look at all the pro-lifers. People are paying attention.
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It's the difference between reality and emotionally charged imagination. If I imagine every aborted fetus to be my little baby boy, to which I have HUGE emotional attachment, then I'll get weepy eyed and motivated to take a stand against abortion. But in REALITY, no aborted fetus is my baby boy or even a human being for that matter. In REALITY, as a newborn, my baby boy wasn't a human being either.
Our emotions motivate us to make decisions and take action and when we do that, we often make big mistakes. Anti-abortion based on imagining the fetus is a human being is one of those emotionally charged mistakes. People feel like it's true, but just because they feel like it, doesn't make it so. |
-Chaloobi
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| Edited by - chaloobi on 12/12/2007 07:57:13 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26021 Posts |
Posted - 12/12/2007 : 13:20:19 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by chaloobi
I'm thinking about existing relationships, committments and interdependancies. |
Yes, I know. And I've been trying to get the point across that whether those things will still continue to exist two seconds from now or eighty years from now is only a potential.| Example - years ago my sister-in-law had a miscarriage. People felt sad for her and were concerned about her health for a while. Nobody paid much attention or noticed the loss of the dead fetus. |
How did your sister-in-law feel about her loss? Did she not have time to start dreaming about what her child might be like when he/she gets older? I was really bummed out when the first attempt my wife and I made at having a child didn't work out.| Some years later, the brother-in-law of a friend of my wife's shot himself in the head and died. He had a wife and two children in grade school -- their three lives were traumatized and made more difficult emotionally, socially, economically. His parents were similarly affected as they had to help support and care for the grand children and their mother. Same goes for his siblings and his inlaws. I presume he had an employer who very suddenly had to find and train a new employee. There were likely a myriad of other effects to friends, neighbors and the wider community. |
Yes, yes. His potential continued support, income, love, productivity (etc.) didn't come to pass, and those who depended upon him suffered because of it. Mothers can be devestated (to the point of clinical depression) by a miscarriage. How is that different?
Look, from a heartless employer's point-of-view, suicide and winning the lottery are equivalent. Either way, the potential productivity of the employee is eliminated, and a replacement needs to be found and trained.| Unless you are willing to ignore the most important aspects of human life, there is no way you can rationally say these two deaths are equivalent. There is good reason nobody paid any attention to the dead fetus - nobody had a relationship with it, it wasn't a true human being. |
Actually, from where I sit, your sister-in-law's miscarried fetus and your wife's friend's brother-in-law are precisely equivalent because I didn't have any sort of commitment to either one's potential. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2007 : 06:23:18 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Yes, I know. And I've been trying to get the point across that whether those things will still continue to exist two seconds from now or eighty years from now is only a potential. |
So are you arguing there is no difference (practical, social, economic, emotional, whatever) between killing an unborn fetus and killing an adult human being? | How did your sister-in-law feel about her loss? |
I was pretty young at the time, so I can't say for sure. But was it the same as losing one of her other children or her husband? Not even in the same ball park. And was the rest of the family and immediate community affected in any way like they would have been had her husband shot himself? Of course not. | Did she not have time to start dreaming about what her child might be like when he/she gets older? |
I have no idea. I do know the unborn fetus wasn't dreaming about and making plans for its own future. And I seriously doubt she'd done the same kind of dreaming with the fetus as she did with the two other children she already had. | I was really bummed out when the first attempt my wife and I made at having a child didn't work out. |
Were you as bummed as you would be had you lost your wife or an existing child? | Yes, yes. His potential continued support, income, love, productivity (etc.) didn't come to pass, and those who depended upon him suffered because of it. Mothers can be devestated (to the point of clinical depression) by a miscarriage. How is that different? |
Dad/husband/son/brother blows his brains out vs. expectant mother has miscarriage. You are seriously arguing there's no difference in the fallout from each of these?
| Look, from a heartless employer's point-of-view, suicide and winning the lottery are equivalent. Either way, the potential productivity of the employee is eliminated, and a replacement needs to be found and trained. |
Ok. You acknowledge at least this is a problem for the employer.... Not sure what the point is in comparing it to winning the lottery. It doesn't take away from the observation that a dead adult human being is not equal to a dead fetus. Actually, from where I sit, your sister-in-law's miscarried fetus and your wife's friend's brother-in-law are precisely equivalent because I didn't have any sort of commitment to either one's potential.
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Barring empathy I agree you may not care one way or another about either. But it's not about whether you care, it's about whether the two deaths are the same in terms of the effect on the immediate community. Is a dead fetus equivalent to dead adult? |
-Chaloobi
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26021 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2007 : 07:44:13 [Permalink]
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My point has been this:Originally posted by chaloobi
But because it is all potential, without awarenes, without social interconnection, without hopes, aspirations, dreams and memories, it is nothing like a fully realized human being. |
It is, indeed, something like an adult. The odds that the fetus will reach any particular potential is simply much lower. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2007 : 08:14:07 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
My point has been this:Originally posted by chaloobi
But because it is all potential, without awarenes, without social interconnection, without hopes, aspirations, dreams and memories, it is nothing like a fully realized human being. |
It is, indeed, something like an adult. The odds that the fetus will reach any particular potential is simply much lower.
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Hmmmm.....
A fetus is like an adult biologically of course. It's like an adult in that they both have future potential. But that's about it.
I argue to be a 'person', a human being must have established relationships, a place in the immediate community, some sense of it's own self and a concept of its future. This doesn't really begin until birth and for a 1st trimester fetus it's non-existant. Later on it may develop some simple awareness of itself and surroundings, but it's got to be minimal.
Based on this I argue a fetus is not a person, is not human and the anti-abortion argument that killing a fetus is killing a human being is false. |
-Chaloobi
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2007 : 08:43:46 [Permalink]
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| This is an interesting discussion, but if you all want to continue (and perhaps get more input from others who, having no interest in Ron Paul, haven't followed this thread), maybe it would be a good idea to start a new thread with a more fitting subject heading? |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 12/13/2007 : 10:51:36 [Permalink]
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For those interested in continuing the abortion discussion, go here.
Those interested in the merits (or lack thereof) of Ron Paul may continue to do so here. |
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Ron Paul - Not your hero
