Living a non-contradictory life is harder than most people realize. The violent TV shows, movies, porn, computer games, etc. make living a life that affirms life challenging indeed.

You're "tired..." yet quote Rand basically correctly.
Do you, or do you not, care what Rand says? Why are you on this blog?

Don't you think it depends on the individual? Sure, some may be impacted...the weaker ones who have conflict with the abortion decision in the first place.
There is no "new info" to change the moral principle.
"Potentiality" does not equate to "actuality" when it comes to rights.

They are often not looking at the moral basis for laws. Moral principles are never based on extreme situations.

And this is precisely why the birth control pill is fundamentally anti-life as well. Sex is a celebration of life. To do anything anti-life while, before, or after participating in that celebration of life is inherently contradictory.

You simply cannot call yourself an Obj.ist if you contradict Obj.ist principles.
No, fetus does not have rights - period. The woman has rights to her body, thus the laws you reference.
Don't let emotions cloud your reasoning.

One simply should not make decision/draw conclusions about issues based on feelings.
I certainly did not deny emotions; but they are auto responses to one's values, not the drivers; not inputs to logic....

Morality is most often defined by the extremes. All one needs to do is look at the legislative and judicial history of the United States to see that, particularly those cases that go to the Supreme Court.

Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!

How about we just agree on mandatory ultrasounds prior to abortion? Or do you not believe that the woman should be fully informed before making such a life-altering decision?

First it is important to separate abortion from this issue of selling/using rejected tissues. One is dependent on the other, but a separate moral question.

I fundamentally see the issue as a beginning of life question, and the lines form up quite pretty well along religion and science. Arguing that at conception is the beginning of a human life is simply technically foolish, there isn't even a nerve cell yet. Arguing that after a child is 1 yr old is not is just as silly. Somewhere in the middle is the only sensible position. Presently this time is set at 28 weeks, and yes at that point a fetus looks like a tiny person and has all its organs.
One can argue about the timing of when it life begins, but it is clearly not when the embryo is 16 cells. In my mind the fetus is fully dependent on its mother to survive, and the burden is on its mother to nourish, protect and care for this fetus. Sometimes this burden is accepted to be carried partly accepted by the father and extended family in support of the mother during pregnancy and delivery, and in caring for the child after; however, the burden and responsibility is fundamentally with the mother. In addition, childbirth is quite its own burden. Therefore, very simply as the one responsible for all this nourishment, inconvenience, pain, cost etc, there can be no question among people believing in freedom of where the decision for the maintenance of the fetus lies. In capitalistic terms, the mother pays, therefore the mother decides. Now, this breaks down if the life of another is in question...sort of, but that is the beginning of life debate. Therefore, the mother should have freedom to decide what to do with her own resources, without restriction, until the fetus is a human life. This is clear and simple.

Another argument I see here is the psychological trauma/damage to the mother by making this decision. I have a big problem with this argument. First, again it is the mother making a decision she must live with. Does one of us really support the concept that society/government should protect a mother from making a bad decision? Really?
Separately, is this negative "trauma" a concern about other people's opinion or one's own? Clearly there are both. The internal ones are the only ones of substance. Other people's opinions are noise.
Lastly, this entire concept of physiological trauma is not based on logical thought in the mother. Clearly illogical thought happens, much of the time, but among us we would seek legislative action to control this? Really?

I may be the most vocal male supporter of abortion rights on our site, so as Kent said to the giant Jiffypop in Real Genius, "Lemme have it!".

This was not a conclusion based on feelings. It was a conclusion based on anecdotal evidence. My family has had a situation almost the same as Abaco's.

Do not kid yourself, they do. different effects based on the individual personalities, the reality of the game, movie or book, the duration and repetition of exposure....

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/...
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/20/3/2...
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/...

Bartholow. B. D., Bushman, B. J., & Sestir, M. A. (2006). Chronic violent video game exposure and desensitization to violence Behavioral and event-related brain potential data. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 532-539.
"Hundreds of studies have shown that exposure to media violence increases aggression. Media violence is believed to increase aggression, at least in part, by desensitizing viewers to the effects of real violence. Media violence initially produces fear, disgust, and other avoidance-related motivational states. Repeated exposure to media violence, however, reduces its psychological impact and eventually produces aggressive approach-related motivational states, theoretically leading to stable increases in aggression."

Aye, there's the rub. Rand's views do stem logically from metaphysics, and I have read her quite closely. However, metaphysics and biology have quite different definitions of when life begins. There is, as you say, an untenable contradiction of rights, and that is really the whole point of the debate. One thing that Ms. Rand was quite clever at doing was defining terms to suit her worldview. This is an issue that I, unlike Ms. Rand, am willing to accept a little ambiguity in my life (I don't see it as a contradiction in this case.) because a complete knowledge of the answer cannot be conclusively known.

I break this argument down as follows. If one chooses to mate with someone else, with or without "protection", one has to realize that there is a possible consequence of getting pregnant, however unlikely. If one does not want to live with consequence, one should not mate in the first place. If however, one does mate, to have an abortion as after-the-act birth control is inherently anti-life, a subject Ms. Rand wrote about in AS.

I will not force my views on this subject on others, however.

I agree with ProfChuck on the idea that "government should play no role in the abortion debate".

I will agree with you that sentient life does not begin at conception, but most life forms, particularly non-animals, are not sentient. Just because one has the ability to terminate a life like one might squash an insect does not mean that the insect was not alive. I am not going to argue that the unborn life form has rights, but that does not make it not alive.

Well said!

Correct. Sanger was not only a eugenicist, but a racist.

"We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."

- Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922. Page 12.

I am really tired of the pro-abortion side telling me what Rand would say. You don't know, and neither do I. However, as she did espouse the rights of the individual, I would guess that she would oppose abortion, at least after a certain point has been reached. (Maybe brain activity?). BTW- per the original post, Rand only specifically favored abortion up to three months. That's a long way from abortion on demand at any time.

There are a whole host of psychologists who differ from you here. Your statement is like saying that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder isn't a psychological disorder either.

2. Objectivism deals with reality and accepts the tenet that we have only our perception with which to evaluate reality. Since our perceptions are subject to change with more information, NO subject is "settled". There is always room for the adjustment of theory to account for new information.

3. This is your opinion, but obviously many differ from you. What you are saying is that until the blueprint is complete, that it doesn't matter that it is a blueprint at all regardless if the process is underway. What you are in fact doing is denying the potentiality of value in an unfinished product.

you love skanks?

Please don't deign to tell us what an Objectivist HAS to accept unless you are Ayn Rand. Maybe not even then...
What about the rights of the fetus?
Are they granted upon exit from the birth canal? No. In our law, fetuses have property rights. It is considered child endangerment to take drugs while pregnant, and, if a pregnant woman is killed, also killing the fetus, it is usually charged as double murder.
If you still don't think a fetus is a person, I ask you to pick up a high school biology textbook or What to Expect When You're Expecting.

Ok if A=A then lt's look at this from a current secular perspective only.

First legally and according to statute "What is Life and When does it begin?"

Second is human life more valuable than animal life?

16 U.S. Code § 668 - Bald and golden eagles
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/te...

Owning, moving, possessing, damaging "eggs" from a bird is punishable by "$10,000 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both: "

42 CFR 71.52 - Turtles, tortoises, and terrapins.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/...


Now if the Federal Government is defining an egg, which is NOT a live bird and is not fully formed as requiring protection, I would think that by any reasonable definition, that a human embryo which is the point at which two eggs begin to grow and subdivide and metabolize, would and should be entitled to protection under the law as well.

How can one define a bird "egg" as alive, and not a Human fetus? Or at the least how can one dictate that an "egg" should have legal protection and a human fetus not?

Nothing above even remotely hints at religion only the legal standpoint of where life is considered to deserve protection.

I disagree. Feelings are responses to stimuli. And they originate from somewhere. If you feel disgust when you look at maggots eating a moldy piece of meat and lose your lunch, that feeling came from something innate - you didn't just decide to be disgusted at something that to a fly is normal. While that doesn't mean we should allow our feelings to rule our actions (I am NOT suggesting anything of the kind), we must recognize those feelings and what they tell us as being a source of information.

Consider the following emotions:
disgust
hate/abhorrence
love
guilt
shame
confidence
outrage

The list could go on. Are the emotions themselves meaningful? Only insofar as we allow them to influence our decision-making. But that gut-reaction to something shouldn't be merely ignored. When we see someone pull a gun and threaten a store manager for money, the emotional reactions come from a completely different portion of the brain than that used for reasoning, so we can not conclude that such reactions are the result of logic. Rather, they are primal and act as inputs to the logical portion of the brain.

But the larger question is why almost universally normal people evaluate and react to the same stimuli emotionally. I would submit that in actuality, these emotions are indicative of the innate morality of the action being observed and allow us as humans to act instinctively without having to take the time necessary for cognitive evaluation.

Those stats say nothing about motivation behind govt. support of abortion.

When I was 17, one of my cousins gave birth to a girl who was less than 1.5 pounds during the 26th week of her pregnancy. While she was in the neonatal ICU for 2+ months after that, she has done quite well with some complications showing up just in the last year (She is now 31.) that the doctors warned us might happen. At the time, she was the youngest to ever be born in Florida. Since then, the envelope has been pushed back to 21 weeks.

I define life by the simple biological measures that lead to your saying that "the zygote has life at conception". Sentience is a much trickier problem, as you correctly say.

Human life as opposed to potential life. "Form" does not count. Read Rand.