We've been through this before. Agree we should be careful. We should be careful about endorsing a case where one human adult is compelled to serve another , and we should be careful not to kill a real human. A single cell is clearly not a human. It might become one with a lot of nurturing, but it is not a human being.

Perish the thought! ;)

On of the things we accept as functioning adults is the responsibility for the natural and expected consequences of our actions. You don't get to skate from a vehicular manslaughter charge by laughing and saying, oops my bad. Do over?

Conception is the natural and expected consequence of sexual intercourse. It is a feature, not a glitch. If our mothers were honest with us, many of the adults posting here would have been told that their presence on this planet was an oopsie, and that if abortion had been readily available and socially acceptable, many of us would never have seen the light of day.

The percentage of abortions that end pregnancies that resulted from rape or incest, or that truly threaten the mother's life, is very, very small -- and even in those cases, I find it hard to condemn the child to death for the criminal conduct of his father.

So, yes, I am prepared to insist -- do not drink and drive; do not wave a loaded gun around; and do not wave any other kind of loaded projectile around, unless and until you are prepared to undertake the natural and foreseeable consequences of your actions.

I know you're being cynical and hyperbolic to make a point, but the problem is that every attempt at drawing that line introduces exceptions which invalidate it. For example, the serious definition you give invalidates anyone with an asthma inhaler or is on oxygen. Other similar examples run afoul of the same logical issues. Time lines keep getting pushed back as one recognizes brain wave patterns or the ability to feel pain, not to mention the ever-advancing medical science which increases the viability of premature babies.

The fact is that human beings aren't static - and neither is any other living organism on the planet. Everything exists on a spectrum of maturity. The logical fallacy lies with trying to say that something exists without appearing on that spectrum.

Alas, I fear you are correct.

Gorgeous!

TANSTAAFL
Nurse practitioner Marcelle Pick still questions the safety of Splenda, given that many of the studies are short-term and some studies show potentially harmful side effects, including problems with kidney and liver health, when excessive amounts are consumed.
According to Columbia University, sucralose, as well as other artificial sweeteners, can cause bloating, gas and diarrhea. When eaten in large quantities, Splenda may have a laxative effect. This includes Splenda that is added to foods during production, as well as Splenda that you add yourself.
Part of the reason for Splenda's laxative effect might be because it changes the bacteria content in your gut. Healthy gut flora leads to minimal gas production as a process of digestion. However, Splenda consumption may increase nitrogen gas and may increase the amount of water in your colon, which can cause diarrhea. An animal study published in 2008 in "Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health" found that, over the course of a 12-week period, sucralose reduced healthy bacteria content and increased the amount of bacteria found in stools. Researchers concluded that high or regular sucralose consumption leads to lower healthy gut bacteria levels and may affect the absorption of certain medications.
[/s] ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Trust me, as a lawyer? Is that something like "a lawyer, a doctor, and a priest walk into a bar"?
Well, I'm a lawyer, too, and I find that case law brings reason and humanity into situations where the mind of statute-drafting legislators [or their staff] are ill-equipped to wander. Statutes on anything more nuanced that a four-way intersection cannot foresee all of the variations of human conduct that would be approved or outlawed by a statute passed today, let alone envision the changes in possible conduct in the next year or the next decade. Even if every federal, state, and municipal legislative body had to review their laws every year to ascertain what their impact had been and whether the laws were functioning as planned, you would still need access to judicial review for the person whose conduct fell afoul of the law as written, but not as it was intended to be applied. See, for example, tax law, which is incredibly specific, usually written by experience practitioners, and still needs volumes of rev.regs. and rev.procs. to provide guidance.

Yes, because it is a parasite, purely dependent on her for life support.

If you want to legislate right to life for a fetus, it is absolutely ridiculous to start with conception. I don't, and never will care about a single cell, 2 cells, 4 cells or eight cells. This is technically ridiculous, supported ONLY by religion.

An argument for the "rights" of a fetus over a complete adult human woman, has to be based on some evidence of sentience and self-awareness in the fetus. That is the only thing we use to separate ourselves from livestock.

This is Galt's Gulch, not Galt's Church. We believe (within limits) that we should not be compelled to live for the sake of another. We believe we should not be compelled to support other adult "freeloaders". Yet, here we are arguing about compelling a woman to nine months and personal health risks to support another thing, not even a sentient human.

The minute one sets this aside for rape, the hypocrisy is unbearable. This is religion. It is forcing one's own ethics on another. I can't believe the number of sustained arguments that have been maintained on this subject in this forum.

Yes, but then legislators would have to actually know something about what they are doing. :D

"But no one makes this argument from a secular position." I guess that makes me "no one". A human's life cycle begins with a single living cell. There is no need to assign a soul or any other religious component to understand that simple truth. Leave out the mysticism and you still have a living human in it's earliest stage of life. As can be observed, many can find reason to kill it, but many have found reason to kill humans in later stages of life as well. If we wish to be called "civilized" and hold individual human life as valuable we need to be VERY careful here.

What you're talking about is getting the Judicial Branch and the Legislative Branch to agree on politics. Lol. ;) And it isn't restricted to one side or the other. If you've read the Roe decision or the ACA decision, the mental and moral pretzel twists one has to accept in reading either of those is enough to make my head explode...

What I'd like to see is a prefatory clause in every proposed piece of Federal legislation which specifically cites its Constitutional basis. That would require those drafting laws to do an initial legal review of any pending legislation as well as give objectors (and the judges themselves) a very clear vector for Judicial Review.

We do not legislate good judgment, nor good taste. However, we do legislate moral conduct, and intervene to prevent or to punish conduct that harms another -- murder, manslaughter, assault, burglary.
The fetus has its own unique individuality, complete with unique DNA and fingerprints. If you don't affirmatively interfere in its growth and development, it will complete its trajectory from fertilization to birth at which point, presumably, you will accept it as a human to whom you would be willing to grant the protections of right to life.
Medicine has progressed to the point that we can provide life-saving surgery to a fetus well before the point where extra-uterine survival would be possible. Can law and philosophy really make the right to life of a fetus entirely subjective, such that the whim of the mother is enough to deny life to a child whose life can be saved by available medical intervention? Or allow her, well past the point of extrauterine viability, to choose a later-term abortion rather than a live birth for no reason other than her whim?

Yes stats from Gutmacher institute show
.001% of abortions due to incest and .085% from Rape.

Did you have a funeral? Did your friends and relatives all come to the wake?

I understand what you are saying. Of course some women feel bad. Some don't even notice. No one views it like the death of a 3 year old, for very good reasons.

Testosterone injections biweekly will induce temporary sterility in men. But the FDA Fool and Dunce Administration will not allow its use for that purpose, and the DEA Denying Equal Access restricts it and not estrogens as a controlled substance. Sexism! And vasectomies are not guaranteed reversible. Get your facts straight.

Really? You have a basis for that assertion? Because I truly mourned the miscarriage of my child, and so did my husband.

how about not having sex if you want NOT to have a baby with that person

I like the definition of a human as someone who can pay for dinner. Until then, they are parasites.

However, I'd settle for a thing with human DNA that breathes on its own, unaided.

Point well taken, thanks

Nothing about that sounds good.

Trust me, as a lawyer, I HATE the concept of case law. I wish everything was codified in a statute. Then the Court should just say "this statute is unconstitutional" or "this statute is constitutional" and stop.

From Guttmacher institute.
Percentage abortion reasons
.001%. Incest
.065% life endangered giving birth
.085% from rape
.288% health threatened
.294% mental health concerns
.666% fetal abnormalities
6.268% social economic
92.33% no reason/elective

Yes, but the problem with the Courts has been refusing to enforce the "limited" part of "limited government," instead choosing to grant power rather than force a Constitutional Amendment specifically designating power to the Federal Government as is proper. They have effectively nullified the Ninth and Tenth Amendments with their chicanery.

""This" is a First Amendment issue because the only basis for Government action in abortions is the life of the Zygote or fetus, and this is fully based on religion."

Then you admit then that the discussion is actually about a right to life - not a right to free speech or association or petition for redress. If you want to argue that the definition of life has been made by religiously-oriented individuals rather than by you, why don't you define life, then - especially human life. Where does one draw the line?

"My point is that the continuous manipulation of the limits of government intrusion..."

Government's first and foremost responsibility is to protect Life. You can't have any other right without Life. No liberty. No pursuit of Happiness. No property. No association. No self-protection. Nothing else matters unless Life is secure.

You argue it is a matter of "intrusion." The moral problem with this approach is that if one refuses to define the unborn as human it becomes a slippery slope fallacy on what else then fails to qualify as human. Hitler used this same perverted logic to qualify Jews as inhuman. Margaret Sanger promoted abortion precisely because she wanted to get rid of Blacks, believing them to be sub-human. Slavery as was present in the United States and other regions of the World circa 1700-1800 was facilitated because of the simple refusal to see other human beings on equal terms.

The Declaration of Independence was novel for many reasons, but one of the cardinal ones was in a recognition that humans were granted rights not because of condition, skin color, race, creed, religion - or political persuasion - but simply for being human. Throw away that primary rationale and it becomes all too easy for government to become the arm of tyranny.