Allosaur, I have hidden this post because you never know who you might be offending with a blanket statement of "skank".

Eudiamonia -

Are you telling me what I am feeling? Are you deciding for me that I will be existentially hurt by decisions I choose to make and so I should not be allowed to make them? Are you saying that I have to have counseling for something that women have been doing for thousands of years on their own (abort early term embryos) because you have decided it is damaging for me?

So...I can decide to join the military and go into combat and take the chance of getting killed...but I am not allowed to get the 'day after' shot to terminate a blastocyst?

Hear the outrage in my typety-typing. This is absurd. It hearkens back to Victorian doctors deciding that women did not actually have orgasms; we just thought that we did.

If you would like to ask women what they feel, that is different, but you have not only taken a stance that you will Inform us what we are feeling but that you will then make Rules that we have to follow in order to be magnanimously permitted to exercise free will.

Jan

Existence exists and every time you swat a fly you are removing something from existence. Denying the value of something is not the same thing as denying its existence. A(existence) = A(legit to be rendered non-existent) is not the same as denying that A = A.

Rape and incest have nothing to do with it: If it is legit to end the life of a blob of protoplasm due to rape then it is OK to do it because it is the free choice of the woman to do so. And it is. We can discuss 'when'...but that depends on our arriving on a basic agreement of 'what'.

Jan

My opinion is totally different. I abhor the idea of having a child - internal parasite, sapping your strength; total waste of my time and life after it is born. Sex is fun, and for me it forms a bond with the partner. That is all it needs to be or do. It may be an 'affirmation of life' for you, but is not the case for everyone.

Keep the little drippy-nosed suckers away from me: prevent conception, with abortion as a back up measure.

Jan, not a mom

"First, it is absurd to claim that a woman who aborts is doing 'deep and permanent psy. damage.'"

Why?

"You even contradict yourself by saying you don't know how many might be so damaged."

How?

Define when "human life" is achieved. That's the tough question faced by many who want to set a point during pregnancy when a medical procedure becomes homicide.

Then there's the legal side, which essentially makes the mother God, by giving her the right to declare whether or not the life growing within her is human or just fetal tissue. A physical assault on a pregnant female that results in the death of a gestating fetus can result in a charge of murder against the assailant, but that same court system will not charge that same mother with homicide if she willingly and with "malice aforethought" decides that fetus should be terminated. No wonder this subject is a moral dilemma!

We probably do not yet have the enough scientific knowledge to make the determination of when life begins. We know enough to say it does not begin when the sperm buries its head in the egg, because most do not result in a pregnancy and even three days after the big collision (dare I say “bang?”) the pair has only increased from two cells to about 150. For comparison, the eye of a fly has about 4,000 lenses, not to mention the number of cells. We’d probably all agree the “morning after” pill is fine, but it gets more difficult as time goes on after that. Probably vasectomies for all or installing a micro valve in the plumbing would solve most issues.

You are putting emotions before reason and values.
E.g. if you get angry when someone steals something from you, you are automatically responding to your value for the object stolen and your right to that object. How did the anger help you with any decision? Or present a better example.

so you can't accept error? People take precautions and believe they won't get pregnant. You can't oppose sex on the basis that a woman might get pregnant accidently and then want an abortion. If you get In an auto accident, does that mean that you shouldn't have driven the car?

You conclusion does not follow: you totally ignore the concept of rights. You incorrectly assume that a woman has sex knowing she will get pregnant, and thus loses her right to her body by having an abortion. Absurd.

You are obviously bound to your beliefs, and unwilling to consider the facts. Please do not reply, as I am done wasting my time trying to reason with you.

You have not said anything from science that contradicts Rand. When science contradicts, check your premises.

Thanks, H6163741.

Ms. Rand has laid forth the basis for a self-consistent philosophy for almost every phase of life, but this is one area that I will gladly correct her and others on.

Well said!

I will agree with you and Rand only when you are able to show me that abortion is not a process of denying that existence exists. It is a form of blanking out. Keep trying. You have a difficult burden to prove, and unlike Ms. Rand's atheism argument where her definition of atheism left her with no burden to prove the non-existence of a deity, in this case, there is still a burden of proof that must be met.

When it comes to objective definitions of life, the biological definition is more quantifiable than the philosophical. As for Rand's philosophy, it holds no contradictions if you accept her definitions. I reject her definition of what constitutes life and accept the biological definition. Ms. Rand's definition of life is appropriate for sentient life, and as a basis for determining rights.

Wikipedia's characteristics of life are fairly complete.

Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, electrolyte concentration or sweating to reduce temperature.

This is one of the harder items for fetuses to do.

Organization: Being structurally composed of one or more cells — the basic units of life.

This starts happening after the first few weeks of pregnancy. By the time a woman knows she is pregnant, one can detect the fetus's heart beating (18 days).

Metabolism: Transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.[49]

This starts to happen within the first few weeks of gestation.

Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of anabolism than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter.

This happens almost immediately after conception.

Adaptation: The ability to change over time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity, diet, and external factors.

This happens almost immediately within the womb.

Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of multicellular organisms. A response is often expressed by motion; for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun (phototropism), and chemotaxis.

Certainly fetuses respond to stimuli, even in the first few days of gestation.

Reproduction: The ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism, or sexually from two parent organisms.[54][55] or "with an error rate below the sustainability threshold."[55]

Of these, reproduction can be considered on the cellular level (in which case early-stage fetuses are capable of reproduction) or at the organismic level (in which case one should not have rights until puberty).

Of these, response to stimuli and adaptation are the two that come close to the definition of sentience, but they are an incomplete definition for sentience.

I disagree with your premise. Since we are human and have emotions we are unable to make decisions without them. Of course some of us are better than others about balancing the use of logic more heavily than emotions. I've read of studies about people who have been brain injured in the area of the brain that is responsible for emotions. Their decisions are very different than ours. It is logical to think that emotions can and sometimes should be used in decision-making. Growing up on Ayn Rand, I must say that this is a fairly new concept for me but empirically proven. This particular topic is one that cannot have emotion eliminated because of the humans we are.

I'm editing this comment because, after retreading your post, I actually agree with quite a bit of what you've sad. No, I don't think it is the government's job to protect women from bad decisions. However, I do think there is a point (see below) where the fetus become it's own person, and, as such, is entitled to individual rights.
BTW- PP has a policy of not allowing the mother to see the baby (fetus, child, blob of cells, whatever) when they perform an ultrasound to determine the fetus's position. I totally disagree with this. If we must let each women decide for herself, at least she should be fully informed.


I disagree with just about everything you've said, (I do agree that there should be some point after conception where 'life' should be defined. Logically I would use the presence of brain activity.)
HOWEVER, I do appreciate that you have spelled out you views reasonably and diplomatically. Wish I could say the same of others...

In "The Voice of Reason", Ms. Rand wrote, "For conscientious persons, an unwanted pregnancy is a disaster; to oppose its termination is to advocate sacrifice, not for the sake of anyone’s benefit, but for the sake of misery qua misery, for the sake of forbidding happiness and fulfillment to living human beings." I cannot disagree with this statement. The logical conclusion is to not mate in the first place if one does not want a pregnancy.

I am sure that all of us have read the following by Ms. Rand.
"Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think—not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment—on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict “It is.” Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say “It is,” you are refusing to say “I am.” By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person."

I do not need to start with the assumption that a fetus is a human being to come to the conclusion that abortion is immoral by Ms. Rand's own standards. Abortion, except in the cases of rape or incest, constitutes an attempt to escape from the consequences of one's own actions. It is a statement, and more importantly an action, that says "that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict 'It is.'"

Moreover, when it "wipes out the wiper", the wiper should and will have psychological scarring, because abortion is a form of blanking out.

Excellent point!

Sex is one act, abortion a totally separate one.
One a celebration of human life, the other the ending of a potential life for reasons only the mother should have to be satisfied with.

An egg cell is not a fetus. "The pill" prevents ovulation, thus potential exposure to sperm (of course, use of condoms, celibacy, coitus interuptus and sodomy also prevent exposure). All of which prevents conception. The pill does not prevent a fetus from being born -- it prevents a fetus from being created. Most "pro-lifers" start their argument at "conception." Data show that under natural circumstances about half of conceptions self terminate (miscarry) -- typically prior to the woman becoming aware she is pregnant.

It has nothing to do with feelings. It has to do with science. Go pick up a biology textbook. And a law book. You may be surprised to find that you could actually be wrong about something. An objectivist is open to learning. Apparently, you are not.

Still not evidence against the morality of abortion.

You have to better distinguish between Phil. and Biology. Rand was not "clever"; she formed an entire philosophy that holds no contradictions. Until biology or any other field discovers something that contradicts that philosophy, then the latter remains in tact. But the beliefs of biologists are not in themselves relevant here.

Your abortion argument is not logical. You still cannot create a conflict of rights.

I never disagreed with what you said in the last paragraph.