*had not has. D and S are side by side.

When you quoted me about the right to physical autonomy, you assumed that I was affirming the pro-choice position. Not so. No one has the right to do anything to the body of the fetus. They have physical autonomy.

This right is also why rape is illegal. It is one person forcing another person to do something with their body that they don't want to do.

However, any sex besides rape is consensual. When a pregnancy results from sex, you cannot try to claim that the pregnancy is something you have the right to terminate. When having sex, both parties should acknowledge the very real chance that a pregnancy will result, and be prepared to deal with consequences.

Let me put it another way: If a woman is pregnant, you cannot say she has the right to "choose" to eliminate the fetus. She already "chose" to accept the risk of having a pregnancy, unless she was raped.

Here's another way to see it. If you agree to have sex, you are agreeing to a chance that another person, a third party, may result from your actions. You may, in so doing, create a new person who has as many rights of physical autonomy as you do. If you do not want to have *your* physical autonomy invaded in this way, you have the option to decline to have sex.

Before you stigmatize what I said as being sexually unequal, let me remind you that I would have fathers accept the same risk, and I would support laws that force every biological father to financially support the pregnancy. Ideally he would be forced to actually help raise the child, but this is almost unenforceable.

"If you shaved cells off the fetus's butt, they would not be alive as they are part of the organism, but the fetus IS an organism."

First, your idea about what a life is I can accept. However since if the fetus is young enough scraping some cells off and attaching them to the womb lining will result in a second child (an identical twin) OK, maybe i should call it an embryo here, but in this case it does not fit with the common idea(and your idea) of what life is because IT IS DIFFERENT.

Because it is different (as an embryo, as with sperm or eggs before that) it deserves special consideration. That is you have to judge it like it's not a human and determine what it is.

Whether it feels pain or not (nerve endings have started to develop and started to fire) doesn't tell me whether it has a personality which cares about pain yet.

The scientific view is still unclear, so you can err on the side of caution, but does that give you the right to force other people to make the same error?

Where does a life become something worth protecting? Strategically we humans act to better our own interest.

"you[giga/toby?] STILL dodged:

Why should anyone be prevented from murdering someone? That is the essence of putting choice before life. If you believe life is not a right I don't see how you could try to argue that killing a person would be wrong."

I didn't dodge that question. I think i explained why we choose to live in a society where that freedom is curtailed. It's on the third page. We all freely give up that right to further a strategy which we believe in.

Now that strategy respects both freedom of choice and freedom to live, but that doesn't mean one should always be put above the other.

Second a fetus/embryo doesn't choose to live, neither does it choose to not live, it is incapable of these choices because it isn't 'human' yet.(as pointed out above, it needs special consideration)

Through Giapeep's arguments I have come to the position that a woman should have the right to choose, (and if she doesn't ever want to have an abortion she should choose abstinence, though i still think a healthy sex life is a good thing for human adults.) The main reason is to further my primary goal of living in a utopia. Lots of people have their own ideas about what is an ideal world, and mine allows everyone to freely express their ideas, and purse those dreams of happiness. (so one utopia with differing ideas)

To further this goal and to further enrich all human life, (so that all people are happy and support the society in which they exist, something which embryo's don't do, so I'm not counting them in my 'human' life bit just here on that basis) I believe giapeep's argument is a very good one.

Women should be allowed to decide(freely*) whether they can bring a life into this world safely, whether they can care for it (presumably with the father's input into what he can do to care for it, presumably with an idea of what the state will do, and as the octo-mum demonstrates what the state should do isn't just support every life that a crazy woman decides to create - i might say in this case if octo-mum thought the state would come in and take her 8 kids and find homes for them she wouldn't have bothered)

By giving this power to women we will help ensure that the next generation is happier and better able to deal with each other and build a better society for their children.

That is my ideal.

From a strategic point of view, it takes a lot of effort to care for a child. That is why many societies accepted abortion/infanticide as a practical measure. In Inuit communities babies which were born but could not be fed would be killed to prevent them from starving. This is again acceptable to minimize the pain the baby may feel.

So i am talking about a strategy not just for survival, but for improvement of society.

From a purely economic thinker's point of view(and economists often ignore the human in their systems, so this is going to sound inhumane again), I asked above :Where does a life become something worth protecting?

We value things which are uncommon, or which take effort to replace. Thus 100 billion sperm can be spilled without concern for their life. They are treated as an abundant. It is a bad strategy to keep every living sperm alive and wait for enough eggs to exist to fertilise and make into humans. It is a bad strategy in some societies to allow a child to survive if there isn't enough food to go around, and it giapeep has convinced me it is a bad strategy to FORCE every pregnant woman to go through with her pregnancy.
(As i have pointed out, practically, it is stupid to try and stop women from aborting their fetus's because it may be more painful for the fetus, more dangerous to the mother's health, and will not stop it from happening)

You're ok with sperm and eggs dying because they do anyway. It the past when child mortality was much higher things were valued differently as well. Safe abortions were not available, but i bet if they had been they would have been encouraged. (this is a whatif taking history of our society into account)

Really, historically, religious folk justified killing animals but not humans by asserting that humans have a soul. Strategically this is a smart thing to do, you don't have to explain much further to an illiterate congregation, just we are definitely different to them, whether you're friendly with your dog, or he can do tricks and plays with you, it doesn't matter, he simply has no soul.

For those same reasons I understand why some religious folk have an issue with abortion (Thucydides, your issues are based purely on your values, which you have developed yourself, so i imagine are more mutable). I also don't expect that they will choose abortion.

I could argue that it is an outdated strategy, HOWEVER that doesn't mean it is not valid. I do not know better than them, and should not prescribe their behaviour. Also strategically speaking it is better to have multiple strategies so where one fails others will not. (not putting all your eggs in one basket) So again this falls down to individual choice, and not allowing society in general to dictate one way or the other whether a woman should have an abortion.

Because as i pointed out, it's NOT about society approving or disapproving, it's about society making the choice or not making the choice (and society could make the choice to abort some children, would you be interested in giving society that power?).

As i said, in my Utopian ideal, everyone agrees that our life should be protected from murders, we don't want to murder other people, or if we do we're happier to forgo doing so in order to have society protect us from those who would kill us.

We then consider those people who do murder us as a different group who wants to harm us. And they thus aren't like us, and shouldn't be entitled to the same rights. (i know you want to extend all rights to all people, whether they are merely mistaken for human or not, but as i have stated i believe in self-defence as a strategy, and by this logic I support not murdering AND defending yourself against attackers)

By this principle abortion is not the same as murder. We are killing one of our own, not out of malice because they are different and we don't understand them, but out of kindness because we do understand the world they will be brought into, and do consider them one of us, but don't want to subject them to suffering. AND the WE here is specifically the mother, for reasons Giapeep has explained ad nauseum.

"No one has the right to do anything to the body of the fetus. They have physical autonomy. "

by that logic, the mother may not feed it with her own blood. But it is not autonomous because of dependancy (again my favourite deciding factor because it is actually based on the reality).

The reason your admittedly very logical arguments aren't having much of an effect on me is this:

I have just finished studying the eugenics movement in depth and have observed the awful consequences of treating anyone as less than human. In those days there were very well thought out arguments and reasons why these people were less than human and also why they should be sterilized, euthanized, or killed outright as a benefit to society.

There were also those in a more compromising position who did not actually agree with eugenics but allowed it to occur since they assumed it was not up to them to decide such matters.

However, the eugenics movement was brought to a fairly abrupt end, thankfully, by a very clear galvanizing event: The Holocaust.

Why abortion worries me is that there is no possibility of such a galvanizing event. If it becomes totally mainstream to get an abortion, there is not going to be any kind of real worldwide conflict between the fetuses and their mothers. As such, the line we draw will probably just march on as it means less and less to us. There will be less and less decent people like you, orathaic and giapeep, who do not actually like abortions themselves but believe in personal choice, and more and more who are actually not concerned with the idea of abortion at all.

It could eventually lead to a world of renewed infanticide, with no one objecting. Maybe, just maybe, someday someone would stop it, and there would a galvanizing event, but the truth is I do not see that in the future.

So even if you are right, and a fetus is not a person in any way, there is still significant debate to that end. When faced with a choice, to end a life, or to not, I am more and more coming down on the side of "don't end the life."

Maybe if we had had this argument a few months ago you may have actually literally convinced me. But now that I have been in this class at my university (the one where we studied eugenics) it seems more distant now than ever.

If that makes me seem inflexible and dogmatic, consider this:
In considering the value of life and human rights against the value of society as a whole, I have finally come to reject capital punishment and war. Things I have argued for fiercely in the past. It's a big step for me... I hardly see myself as pacifist, but that may be the road my development is taking. All that is a work in progress and maybe by the end of the year I can let you know where it has taken me.

If there really is a significant part of the population that values the right to freedom of choice over the right to life, then so be it, but I have never thought that society had a significant amount of people like that. Perhaps I was wrong.

After all just about no matter who you talk to, if they don't support abortion or assisted suicide, then they support war and capital punishment. I just don't know. I feel alone.

Thucydides: When you quoted me about the right to physical autonomy, you assumed that I was affirming the pro-choice position. Not so. No one has the right to do anything to the body of the fetus. They have physical autonomy.

gaipeep:

----No, the language affirms the pro-choice position (aborted sentence aside). The gestational environment resides woman's womb, the womb is inside the woman who is physically autonomous . Check it.

-----Fetus's don't have human physical autonomy. Their anatomy is fetal. With out the womb it dies. Why is this so hard for you to get? In the which comes first, the human or the womb, the womb always comes first.

-----Even our neonatal technology only adds a few weeks of early release, and it does so a great and often disabling costs to that life.


---- Newborns are born blind, they cannot reason their discomfort or grab a drink. It is as the body grows that functions get turned on. Thanking natural design. Newborns communicate instinctively (not by their own volition) in one way, through their breath; they make noises and it is then our job as their guardians to figure out what they need, cuz baby, they sure as hell don't know enough to tell us. At 24 weeks they cannot even do this; ouside the womb they cannot breath. And too often the response to a baby/child's communications of need are abuse and neglect. A new born is a life, but even at this point of it's growth it is not a fully formed human being.

----- Do you not think, that in nature's divine wisdom our pain and consciousness wiring come up after birth so that the fetus can survive the trauma of birth. I can't remember my birth, but I was probably stoned, and while some reports have come in, the reviews ain't good. (Life itself is on a continuum that is very long and detailed. Not all everyone's potential switches get turned on, some get destroyed and some stay off by birth defect destroyed the switch; some get damaged through trauma and not all of us attain the greatest potential of life.)

Without consciouusness and the abillity to feel pain, I'd say fetus' are a whole lot different than a human being.


This right is also why rape is illegal. It is one person forcing another person to do something with their body that they don't want to do.

----- giapeep

----- Kay, duh.

----- So your saying no one should do something with their body that they don't wan to do, except women. Is the womb a part of (most) women's bodies or not?

---- It's the woman's body, and the gestational enronment resides with in it. (repeat) Here's the thing, a woman (often enough) is more than her body, she has awareness of self and others, women are really good at the other awareness thing, cuz, ya know why? Because they have to evolved to be responsible for life's potential to recreate life (this is not a given) they should be able to choose to bring forth life or not. If. She. Can. If we trust in a woman's innate awareness, she will always make the choice that will favour both her life and the life or absence of life that is hers alone to choose. She cannot make this choice lightly, her body will not allow her to. Keep in mind, there are many many woman who have no choice but to come to a decision alone.

--- You would rather not allow women to choose than to have a child born through choice? Doesn't every child deserve to be wanted?



However, any sex besides rape is consensual.



--- No it's not. Sometimes it's drunk, some times its coherced, sometime it's fear, sometimes it's to get him to stop begging, sometimes it's lust, sometimes it's company and only sometimes it's consensual. Most of the time only if we are very very lucky.


When a pregnancy results from sex, you cannot try to claim that the pregnancy is something you have the right to terminate.



----Yes I can, my countries laws allow it, and even if it didn't, it's my body, it's my reposnsiblity to care my body for or not, my choice. And to have the freedome to make that choice, I need all options available to me.

When having sex, both parties should acknowledge the very real chance that a pregnancy will result, and be prepared to deal with consequences.

---- (Oh, that's right, you haven't had sex yet)

Agreed with this idea in general in so far as sex involves risk. But your saying woman's ony choice to the consequence of egg fertilization is her only optioin and that is untrue, dictatorila and really, really not your choice to decide.

Let me put it another way: If a woman is pregnant, you cannot say she has the right to "choose" to eliminate the fetus. She already "chose" to accept the risk of having a pregnancy, unless she was raped.

--- Some may have chosen the risk of pregnancy on purpose, to trap the man into marrying them and taking care of them. Some simply choose to have sex. And what do you know, accidents happen. Just what every kid wants to be, and accident. Yay!


Here's another way to see it. If you agree to have sex, you are agreeing to a chance that another person, a third party, may result from your actions. You may, in so doing, create a new person who has as many rights of physical autonomy as you do. If you do not want to have *your* physical autonomy invaded in this way, you have the option to decline to have sex.


--- Are you going to be a lawyer when you grow up, cuz this is not what I'd want to hear from a doctor. Only your being a lawyer would explain this statement. Omg! This isn't how you've been trying to court women is it?

---- I want to have sex without procreating. If an egg gets fertilized I had better decide if it's safe for it to come through my body into my world or not, cuz it cannot.

Before you stigmatize

-----?

what I said as being sexually unequal

---- and dictatorial, let's not forget that.

let me remind you that I would have fathers accept the same risk,

--- glad I'm not in your world and I bet most of the men here would agree with me.

and I would support laws that force

--- cuz that'll work. Force, fist, face. "Annnd in this corner the abusive Big Daddy, in the other weighing it a 50 lbs, our returning looser, Billy the kid! Touch gloves and make it a fair fight." Get the iron lung out, this looks like a reprise of Coma Boy's loss.

every biological father to financially support

--- cuz only people with money have sex...

the pregnancy. Ideally he would be forced to actually help raise the child, but this is almost unenforceable.

-- Almost, as in you almost got the last sentence right?


The End.

Thucydides,

I am sorry you feel so alone. You are not, certainly not in your feelings. I can understand how learning about the eugenics movement (which is by far from over, by the way. Only Hitler's war is over) can rock you. Our human history is not pretty and women and children have suffered the brunt of it.

You write,
" If it becomes totally mainstream to get an abortion, there is not going to be any kind of real worldwide conflict between the fetuses and their mothers."

Oh yee of little faith, you are not paying attention. Look at our population, we are full up bub. There will be fewer unwanted pregnancies, but there will always be women who will choose to give birth, and it's a much better choice when it is decided upon from all options. Freedom to choose make for a real choice (we hope).

There are enough women who can breed who will choose to have babies, always. Most of us are wired that way.

Something I should clarify, I would never give up a child I gave birth to for adoption. There have been many periods in my life that should I have become pregnant I would have looked at the state of my world and decided not to abort the fetus. Luckily I did not have any accidents so I never had to make this choice. But I did have to decide if I would have children or not -- I often chose to make love, I have never chosen to make a baby. And I am comfortable in myself with this choice.

I see you still using the standard monikers, choice vs life, each is then pitted against the other in an either - or, right fight. The thing is in this kind of choice, there is no social right or wrong. Each must have the freedom to decide, this is the essence of freedom of the self.

Your young, and I'm glad your thinking about your changing views on things like capital punishment and war. And yes, it's odd how we can contradict ourselves, but hey that's what human beings do. (I read once human becomings, I like this better) You are also a male, who, I'm sorry to say, has not yet realized what a woman's life choices are like. That's ok, but you must know you don't know enough to proscribe any rules on women.

I'm glad you value life, and almost regret taking you to task, had I realized that you are still young enough to be feeling the loss of innocence I would have changed my tone. But then, I would not have been respecting you as my peer, if I had.

We are raised to have romantic notions about pregnancy and birth, but it's not only romantic, or often. There are some harsh truths, that the fetus is not a human is probably a hard one to swallow, but there are more bitter pills than this.

The harshest truth for me is to know that so many children are born unwanted and uncared for. This is too often a fate worse than death and very hard to overcome.

You have been studying too much and spending too much time here.

Go outside, hang with some humans and live your life in the real world. I promise it's not all that bad.

Orathaic? Do you need some gingerale for that ad-nauseum?

wait wait wait, women are rational intelligent human beings capable of making the choices that are best for them?
thats crazyness.
everyone knows that men should make all the decisions for them, you know, barefoot and in the kitchen and all that.
and men should especially make decisions for women, about womens bodies. I mean, we've had patriarchy for thousands of years! why change?

Sarcasm, ain't it just full of truthiness.

wow...i'm stunningly appalled and saddened by several of the opinions in this thread. however, the arguments have been made and people still spout the same tired things over and over again.

Example 1: "You are also a male, who, I'm sorry to say, has not yet realized what a woman's life choices are like. That's ok, but you must know you don't know enough to proscribe any rules on women."

I'm sorry, but the whole, "you're a man so you don't understand" argument is hogwash. If a female doctor tells me something I medically need to know about my masculine parts you better believe I'll listen... I'm not going to sit there and say, "you're a woman so you just don't understand".

Women do not have some kind of special sixth sense that let's them have more insight into the abortion issue.

Example 2: "everyone knows that men should make all the decisions for them, you know, barefoot and in the kitchen and all that. and men should especially make decisions for women, about womens bodies"

Sorry, but the baby is the BABY'S body, NOT the woman's body. Or I suppose scientific evidence like DNA only counts on those silly tv shows like CSI and doesn't mean a hill of beans in the real world, eh?

Ugh...

how would you feel if vasectomies were regulated by the state? and no one could get them?
or they were made mandatory

Thucy, I am sorry I didn't answer your question (a while back in the thread) about who gets to decide if the women is not fit to be a mother (in response to my assertion that women might decide that the father will be a bum). As I have stated I believe in a continuum of rights and obligations. Those rights are divided between the mother, the father and society. As each has a stake in the investment (for want of a better word) and each has a stake in the obligations. All things being equal the women has the largest stake in the obligations (that is responsibility, both the gestation period, and lets face it in the reality of raising the child, in most situations), and thus the largest claim to the rights. These variables, however, may depend upon the situation; thus there may be situations where the mother will be deemed to unfit. So it does work both ways.
To Jacob "Sorry, but the baby is the BABY'S body, NOT the woman's body." When you say baby I think you might be referring to the embryo or the foetus, which I do not consider to be a full human being with the rights of a full human being. Once again, in this situation I believe in a continuum of rights and obligations. All things considered when you say it is the baby's body (insert embryo or foetus), I believe that the proper consideration, somewhere along that continuum is indeed the mother's body. Thus the balance of rights and obligations lies with the mother.

Spyman, I most certainly intentionally choose the word baby as I think the "fetus" is clearly a human person. Any attempts to define it otherwise very quickly lead down the road to eugenics that thucy has previously outlined.

Sic, that's an entirely different subject as there is no doubt that vasectomies affect anatomy that is my own body. I would be opposed to such legislation just as I would be opposed to similar legislation regulating a woman's ability to have her tubes tied. Once again, you are failing to distinguish between the body of the woman and the body of the baby. I understand that you don't think there is a distinction to be made but I think that there is a clear distinction to be made. At the very least, I'm sure you can understand why I would adopt my position given my view of the baby (which, I might add, is a much more scientific view than the one which tries to claim the "fetus" is really just part of the woman's body...)

whether it's a baby, fetus, part of the womb, whatever, it doesnt matter. the point is it's the womans choice whether to have it or not. its her choice whether she wants to be a mother.

keep your laws off womans bodies.

I don't have a problem with eugenics. I do have a problem with Nazi's, who may have embraced the eugenics movement. But the problem with their concept of eugenics lay with their understanding of its goals and implementation. That is it was based on a flawed concept of Darwinism (survival of the fittest) and forced implementation.
The notion that human-kind might someday might affect its own future by tampering with its own DNA is not anathema to me. Indeed if one looks towards the Malthusian future that we most likely face, I think that eugenics may be something that will save us.
There are many aspects of humanity that we need to change if we have a chance of achieving long term sustainability and survival. Many of these flaws are genetically hard-wired, such as our proclivity for war. Such a concept may sound appalling to us today, but I believe our long term future will be radically different; just as an ancient person would find many concepts, that today consider morally righteous today, they would find morally repugnant and against nature. This shift in perception goes hand-in-hand with the passing of time and evolution.

@Sic - and she made that choice when she spread her legs and let the kids father bone her.

Jacob,
A woman often has no choice but to listen to her male doctor who has studied for years to understand the human physiological systems and has some professional experience in dealing (which some still do not do very well due to their human biases) with the women's medical concerns, as women are still not equal in numbers in this (or any) profession . That being said, not all men are doctors.

I was referring to the average male, and let's keep in mind only 31% of men have completed some level of higher education.

And even with higher eductaion, until you are reminded monthly that you have the privilege and responsibility to give birth to life, your understanding of it is incomplete enough to keep your mouth shut about what women can choose to do with both her body and the life it can bring forth.

Perhaps you would like to proscribe to someone on dialysis how best to clean their blood too?

And Jacob,
I did mean to include his youth as a factor. Surely you agree that someone just starting their adult life might not have all the information, let alone a clear understanding.

I do, and I am not holding that against him by any means. It's is the nature of most human beings at this stage of their personal human evolution.

Finally, I agree the baby's body is not the woman's body -- babies have been born.

Fetus are indeed part of the woman's body, see those womb and umbilicus thingies -- well imagine then -- they are what keep that fetus alive. DNA is irrelevant at this point in the process. All the DNA in the world will not keep a 24 week fetus alive.

Sorry if I offended your male ignorance -- it seems you are choosing to ignore some basic facts.

Women do indeed have some "sixth sense", and an evolved responsibility, the abitilty to decide base on surrounding conditions (much like other mamals) if it is safe for her to give birth and will seek conditions to give a better chance of success to her offspring. It is in her nature to account for more that just her own. Ya ignorant idjeet.

lol...

I knew it was probably a mistake to post in this thread. The other thread at least had some semblance of respect in it.

This one just has dogmatic tripe. "sixth sense" indeed...

And I love how since you can't answer my argument about the baby having separate DNA rationally you resort to calling me a "male" as if that were an insult, and also an "ignorant idjeet". Personally, I don't think I'm the one coming off that way in this thread...

To be clear, women are on average predisposed to being empathic, Men on averaeg have better spatial awareness.

If a woman is in the cave minding the kids, (cause she is pregnant withher next sprog) while the man is hunting and gathering food, He needs to be able to find his way home, and she needs to be able to understand and help her children with whatever they need (if she wants her genes to by passed on, and there are more humans alive now descended from good parents then than there are from the bad parents).

So if you want to call it a sixth sense, i'd just like to point out that touch is pain, heat, pressure, and roughness. at least 4 different sensory expierences rolled into one sensory organ (the skin) Smell-taste may be one sense, but it's a crazy chemical dector thingy whereby you can detect chemical in the air by sensors in your nose, and solids or liquids by using your tongue.

There is also a lot of processing going on in the brain to intepret this data, and women are better at 'sensing' (or processing the information) what other people are feeling. (While men have a better sense of direction) Again on average, and you can develope both senses whether you're male or female, and some depend not on DNA, but on the enviroment in which the brain develops. (though DNA is used to produce protiens, and protiens then become part of the chemical enviroment, but if a developing feus has alcohol in their system it reacts chemically and damages this brain development - see fetal alcohol syndrom?)

And Thucy I appreciate your position. And i can image a world in which my goals were not attained, and life was cheapened. I think that better education will help all people make better decisions. That may in fact be more important than making abortion legal, (in Ireland) as educated women tend to have less children (and less means more resoures and adult per child to care and effectively raise them, and better education could mean better child-care)

Jacob,
Idjeet was my frustration at your attempt to distract from the point of this discourse. For that I apologize. You are, however, showing much ignorance.

You are ignoring the facts, despite your ability to use terms such as DNA in a seemingly coherent sentence. And you may attempt to hide your disrespect toward what can only be a woman's choice, behind your obvious ignorance, but since your ignorance isn't that big, all it does is serve to enlarge your obvious lack of respect for the facts of a woman life and the life results from her body for which she will suffer for and be ultimately responsible for.

Explain to me how a brick is a house? DNA is the building block of life. It is not life.

How can you continue to ignore the simple fact that a fetus is unable to sustain it's own life outside the womb and for this reason cannot be called life. Anything under 24 weeks is dead outside the womb.

Until a baby develops through all the womb stages long enough for the basic fuel system lungs and breath to function outside, which not all do by the way, it is not life, it is a life in potential. Is this just too profound for you to understand?

Why is it the "pro- Life" argument always has to bring in killing, murder, eugenics (which is considerably off topic) to make a point that is not even accurate? These only detract from understanding and support further ignorance.

The most ignorant thing I've read so far is your post, Jacob, "I think the "fetus" is clearly a human person.Any attempts to define it otherwise very quickly lead down the road to eugenics that thucy has previously outline"

This proves your ignorance because what you think based on what you wish to be, not what is.

So now the right to choose abortion will cause a rise in the eugenics movement.
That's like saying giving everyone the vote will lead to anarchy

I must say, this is the most irrelevant point made on this thread so far.

"No it's not. Sometimes it's drunk, some times its coherced, sometime it's fear, sometimes it's to get him to stop begging, sometimes it's lust, sometimes it's company and only sometimes it's consensual. Most of the time only if we are very very lucky."

Drop your double standard. It's the same way for men too. To dare to assume otherwise is a stereotype I resent.

"(Oh, that's right, you haven't had sex yet)"

I'm sorry... when did I tell you that? Oh right I didn't because it's not true. Stop assuming things.

"Just what every kid wants to be, and accident. Yay!"

I happen to be an accident myself, that particular accident is something I am personally very grateful for.

Stop jumping to conclusions.
If you're just going to assume things about me and insult me then I have nothing to say to you.

From your original post it seemed to me you were a decent person. I realize I was wrong about that.

I have nothing to say to you anymore.

grrrr...typed out a long response to gia and then lost it when i tried to post it...

"You are ignoring the facts, despite your ability to use terms such as DNA in a seemingly coherent sentence. And you may attempt to hide your disrespect toward what can only be a woman's choice, behind your obvious ignorance, but since your ignorance isn't that big, all it does is serve to enlarge your obvious lack of respect for the facts of a woman life and the life results from her body for which she will suffer for and be ultimately responsible for."

Don't attack me, attack my arguments. When you persist in attacking me it just makes you less credible.

"How can you continue to ignore the simple fact that a fetus is unable to sustain it's own life outside the womb and for this reason cannot be called life. Anything under 24 weeks is dead outside the womb."

First of all, notice how you keep referring to the baby as being "inside" or "outside" of the womb? What happened to the baby really just being a part of the woman's body?

No one is ignoring the fact that with our current technology the baby cannot survive outside the womb before the fourth or fifth month. However, let's examine your premise that for this reason it cannot be called life. If independency is the qualification for personhood then you have a serious problem in that you are forced to accept infanticide. Peter Singer at least recognizes this even though he is crazy enough to actually embrace infanticide... I'm assuming that you don't, but perhaps you do. I did read how you want pro-lifers to be consistent in their views. Is it too much to ask you to do the same?

"Until a baby develops through all the womb stages long enough for the basic fuel system lungs and breath to function outside, which not all do by the way, it is not life, it is a life in potential. Is this just too profound for you to understand? "

So I guess when my lungs begin to degenerate and I am forced to rely on assistance to breathe then I will cease to be human? Your argument here is just scary...

"Why is it the "pro- Life" argument always has to bring in killing, murder, eugenics (which is considerably off topic) to make a point that is not even accurate? These only detract from understanding and support further ignorance."

Why is it that the "pro-choice" argument always uses words like "fetus" and "potential life"? Well, it is because there is no language neutral option we can use to frame the argument. I am not willing to participate in a debate using your loaded terms, and you are not willing to debate using mine. Our terms reflect our judgments and our positions. I could not call abortion anything less than murder.

"I must say, this is the most irrelevant point made on this thread so far."

If you think my post is irrelevant then why don't you try proving it instead of merely attacking me. I guess you resorted to attacking me because you have no answer to my arguments. If you did I assume you would have posted it...

Thyc,

First, my comment about the kinds of sex we all engage in, and the many reasons we do so (not complete by any means) was not gender specific, that was your assumption.

Sorry for the sight about about your sex life. Bad form. It was late, and I tell ya it frustrates me to no end the presumption that men seem to have believing they have any right to decide what women can do with their bodies and the lives they are ultimately responsible.