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  • Posted by $ EloiseH 9 years, 8 months ago
    without passing any judgment on the law, I will say that from both peer-reviewed scientific studies that I have read, and from personal experience with "crack babies," it is extremely difficult to deny that many (fortunately not all) of these babies suffer permanent neurological damage. I do not know of any conclusive evidence that meth causes similar harm. The question seems to me to be that if we have proof that the knowing action of the mother causes harm to her child, whose rights trump whose? I do not have an answer.
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    • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 8 months ago
      By a commonly accepted legal definition, an illegal act cannot be a "right." If a person is taking illegal drugs, that cannot be considered to be their "right." One can argue the morality of this, but the legality seems to be quite clear.
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    • Posted by $ blarman 9 years, 8 months ago
      I have two nephews (by adoption) whose mother was a drug addict all during both pregnancies. These two boys were taken on initially as foster children by my sister-in-law and her husband who have been unable to have children of their own. The boys both are on ADHD medication (my sister-in-law is a professional RN) as a result of their mother's actions. While I am not advocating prison for these mothers, I can tell you from first-hand experience that doing drugs while pregnant can have profound and life-altering effects on the children - like my two nephews. They have serious trouble concentrating, emotional stability akin to a child 4-5 years younger, and a serious lack of self-discipline - again akin to a much younger child.

      Please. Just don't do drugs. The long-term consequences on others - especially children - are avoidable and tragic.
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    • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 8 months ago
      The problem is that there are many substances that "might" cause harm to a developing baby. Aspirin, alcohol, cocaine, etc. Some are legal, some illegal. Some are known to cause harm at certain levels, others are OK at low levels. Some depend on the physiochemistry of the mother/baby. And some we just don't know (there is conjecture that certain foods affect fetal development in certain ways).

      How does one determine "harm?" If caffeine (which is one of those substances suspected of affecting development) is consumed, are we going to arrest the mother? I applaud the intent, but the execution is flawed.

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  • Posted by $ jlc 9 years, 8 months ago
    I really think that we should not toss all pre-birth developmental stages into a single basket and then try to rule on how to treat them. There are some known stages to development and those stages should be taken into consideration: For the first week, the germinal stage, what you have is a lump of cells floating around in the female reproductive tract. Then, after a week, the blastocyst implants and you have a real embryo. (Pretty much all of the pre-implantation stage takes place on a microscopic level.) This embryo is still just a mass of cells that are differentiating into different layers. The embryo continues developing and after about two months (8 weeks, 60 days) it has developed enough to be considered a fetus. (For most of the 'embyonic' period the size of the embryo is about that of a quarter, and the embryo does not look human.) At the end of the first trimester the fetus (now the correct term) starts to actually look human. At 24 weeks of gestation, the fetus is capable of surviving if born pre-term...in a modern hospital setting.

    I think that the germinal, embryonic, fetal and pre-term survivable stages should all be considered separately under the law (which, in many cases, they are).

    Miscarriage is the loss of a fetus (/embryo) during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. It is considered synonymous with 'spontaneous abortion'. About one in 5 pregnancies are known to end in miscarriages, but it is suspected that the figure may be much higher since a gestational or early embryonic miscarriage may not be noted as such.

    So, 'fetus' is an appropriate term for a pre-birth human, and if miscarriage is defined as spontaneous it cannot be manslaughter.

    Jan
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    • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 8 months ago
      Thanks for the facts, Jan. I've always thought that the only rational way to look at the situation is to consider the stages of development and when the baby was a viable life on its own. Prior to that point, it is solely the choice of the mother, after that point, both the interests of the mother and child must be taken into account at an equal weight. That is not a religious view (my religion teaches differently) but a rational and pragmatic view.
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  • Posted by Danno 9 years, 8 months ago
    It is scientifically proven that a woman considering to become a mother should end all harmful ingestion practices 3-4 years before conceiving. This is to rollback the RNA changes that could be passed to offspring. Smoking METH with permanently harm the baby's developing brain.
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    • Posted by Danno 9 years, 8 months ago
      I forgot what medical research journal I read it in but my friend Dr. Darrell Tanelian (PhD, MD) confirmed it. He went Galt.
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      • Posted by Danno 9 years, 8 months ago
        I should mention the two researchers in the late 80's and early 90's who said that RNA was more important for disease and was inheritable were ridiculed by their pears. Now others take credit for epigenetics. BTW cancer starts with malfunction of mitochondria (its DNA passed down by the mother only).
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    • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 8 months ago
      Aren't all eggs that a woman will have, already created and held from the time of sexual maturity through menopause? If that's the case, isn't anything that the woman ingests prior to sexual maturity affecting those eggs, and afterwards only affecting the developing embryo after it implants in the uterus?
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 8 months ago
    If women are incubators when pregnant, they should require permission to work around chemicals, electricity, law enforcement, well they should need permission to do anything. Stay home and keep that baby safe. I'm making the slippery slope fallacy, but we need to decide where we draw the line. When a woman gets pregnant, just how much of her rights does she forfeit. We should decide. And the "we" should be mostly women who are of childbearing age.
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    • Posted by Hiraghm 9 years, 8 months ago
      Sadly, the child has no choice.
      A pregnant woman should have the same authority and responsibility for her unborn child as she has for a child that has successfully run the gauntlet and escaped from her womb.

      And some of the females I've encountered the past couple of years... no, they're nothing more than incubators.

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    • Posted by $ Mimi 9 years, 8 months ago
      We shouldn’t. It is an individual choice. As a society we can set boundaries but we shouldn’t make choices.
      If we were all in this together as a choice then we could ask morons to stop having children along with the drug addicts.
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      • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 8 months ago
        Don't we have to. Even if a fetus or embryo has no formal rights, its welfare could be considered. Until they make an incubator that can carry an embryo or fetus, the embryo/fetus's rights are in conflict with the mother's. If the doctors determine the mother should be on bed rest and she doesn't comply, it's in the child's interest to tie the mother down.

        My personal opinion is we shouldn't make someone do anything to save another life, but we could ask nicely. If there were a machine that could care for the fetus, I think it would be a crime to kill it when there was an option to save it.
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  • Posted by richrobinson 9 years, 8 months ago
    This is where government intrusion is easy. They can claim they are protecting babies and the unborn children. I guess if she had an abortion she would have been fine.
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    • Posted by $ allosaur 9 years, 8 months ago
      If the woman had an abortion before it became too late for a late term, whatever that may be where she is at, she would be AJ squared away as far as the law is concerned. Kinda rubbed me the wrong way to write that stark fact, since I personally consider abortion to be murder.
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 9 years, 8 months ago
    Well, it does raise a lot of questions, all of which should have been answered before the law was passed.

    Does an unborn human have _any_ rights?

    What if by the ingestion of a compound, she could have altered the fetus into a congenital slave, a being without self-identtified rights?

    I appreciate the ironic contradiction that apparently it is wrong to _harm_ an unborn person, but perfectly all right to kill one.

    If abortion is murder why is miscarriage not manslaughter?

    I also must nod to the bitter irony that the substance in question (methamphetamine) was not actually covered by the law. In Michigan (and other states), while representatives posture for the press, the actual bills are written by the Legislative Service Bureau. The LSB's job is to produce bills that can become enforceable laws. Apparently, the legislature of Tennessee does not have such a support function.
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    • Posted by Hiraghm 9 years, 8 months ago
      miscarriage would be manslaughter depending on the circumstances of the miscarriage, just as a post-birth death may be manslaughter depending on the circumstances of the death.

      If abortion is not murder, why does a man who terminates a pregnancy in the commission of a crime (or car accident) charged with manslaughter? Why is a man accused of assault also accused of murder if the unborn baby dies in the assault?
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      • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 8 months ago
        Because when the mother of the child decides that it is inconvenient, she can choose to have a medical technician murder her baby - the courts have said so.
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  • Posted by $ Mimi 9 years, 8 months ago
    This article acts like this is unheard of. The law may appear to be the ‘first’ of it’s kind by the wording but it is in fact not. There are thirty years worth of laws on the books in various states to jail the mothers and take their children away if they abused drugs while pregnant. Big scare for many wanna-bef moms in California thirty years ago during the cocaine spree.
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  • Posted by coaldigger 9 years, 8 months ago
    Sometimes there is no satisfactory answer to a dilemma based on our limited knowledge. When does a human-to-be obtain individual rights? When does the woman's individual rights lose precedent? Perhaps there will come a time when we can determine when the embryo, fetus has consciousness and we will define that is the transition point or perhaps there will be some other rational determination but for the time being, it is not unreasonable to me that the time be set arbitrarily as it is done in many states. I, personally, don't see any reason for society to want babies that even the mother doesn't but I also realize that that is not "moral" principle for a basis of law. I am mostly tired of the debate, think there more relevant issues for governance that need to be focused on and are being avoided by blathering about social issues, abortion, gay marriage, legalization of drugs, inequity, hate crime, gun laws and anything else to deflect from hard choices on the real issues that government needs to address.
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    • Posted by $ blarman 9 years, 8 months ago
      Government concerns all of society, and most especially the quality and perpetuation of society. I think the moral issues are of utmost importance to both society and its government.
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  • Posted by $ EloiseH 9 years, 8 months ago
    From both the reading and evaluation of peer review studies and personal observation, I will say it is well proved that some children (fortunately not all) exposed to opiates in the womb do indeed suffer permanent neurological and other sorts of damage. The question is whose rights trump whose and who decides? I do not have an answer, but I do know a great deal of taxpayer money is spent trying to help these children and often supporting them through their lives.
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    • Posted by $ stargeezer 9 years, 8 months ago
      For what it's worth, here's my view. The woman has the right to abort the child at any point up to the limits of Tennessee law. The government refuses to recognize that the unborn child is a human being fully invested with all the civil rights any of us enjoy. It is in all ways a different class of human being. One cannot speak of a seed as the adult plant or tree even though that is what it will become in time. The question is should a human be seen as anything different and if so, why.

      My point of view is yes, that unborn child is a human and deserving of all human rights including a right to not be killed at the whim of the birth mother or to have it's mind cooked by her desire for crack. In this day when it is considered a violation to subject other people to second hand smoke in a restaurant (thank goodness) can't dumping narcotics into the helpless unborn child who can't even cry out in objection be seen as less a violation?
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  • -2
    Posted by barwick11 9 years, 8 months ago
    Listen to these dickbags... "fetus".. It's called a HUMAN BEING morons
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    • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 8 months ago
      What makes it so? Just looking to understand your rationale. Certainly the moment after conception, when two cells each with one half of a pair of 23 chromosomes join to make a single cell with a full complement of 23 pairs, you cannot call that a human being?
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      • Posted by barwick11 9 years, 8 months ago
        "certainly" I certainly do!!!

        Absolutely, the moment of conception, when two cells combine to make a brand new life, that is a brand new human being.

        Question... when your mom & dad conceived you, were you wholly YOU, just at a different stage of development? If not, please point out to me the EXACT moment when you became you.

        Point being, there is no differentiating moment other than conception. It is a fully complete new life, wholly dependent on his mother (just like our 6 month old daughter is wholly dependent on us, and my wife to nurse her right now). All natural courses of events taking place, that new human being will grow into an adult some day.
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        • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 8 months ago
          So, when you make an omelet, do you make it from eggs or from chicken; or is that all the same to you? Seriously, the religious view that a cell is a human being is based on a belief that at the moment of conception God mysteriously attaches a soul to that cell (supposedly external or in any case created by God for each such cell at the moment of conception - forget about privacy here...). The non-religious view is that there is no mysteriously and externally created "soul" to be attached to a cell, but through development an eventual human being develops the qualities and characteristics that are called a "soul" by some and various names by others. Since this topic naturally drifts toward religion, here's a question for you - if an embryo (a human being in your terminology) dies of natural causes inside the womb, what does God do with that extra soul?
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          • Posted by barwick11 9 years, 8 months ago
            An omelet is made from unfertilized eggs you dork :)

            Your question at the end is wholly irrelevant to this discussion, and is entirely outside the realm of science, we are unable to make a determination on what happens there. Nice try derailing it though while your side's losing, let's get back on track:

            The question at hand, which you still have not answered, is this: WHEN does an unborn baby (or "fetus" as pro-abortions like to call them to dehumanize them) become a "human being"? Please, point out the exact moment in development when it happens. And explain to me what happened at a cellular level that it all of a sudden changed from "not human" to "human".
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            • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 8 months ago
              Well, since you're addressing a bunch of separate items here, let me go one by one:
              Most people make omelets from unfertilized eggs. I certainly do. But when the very health-minded organically disposed individuals pay a hefty premium for free-ranging chicken eggs, very often they get fertilized eggs, without ever knowing it. But yes, that's off track - just entertaining, nothing more. Not quite sure about the comment regarding the "losing side" - didn't know there was a war going on; at least not one having to do with omelets.
              Regarding your question as to when exactly does life begin? - is it not possible that humans, at this stage of their development, do not know the answers to everything? Is that alone a justification to turn to the supernatural as a simple explanation of what a human mind cannot [yet] understand? Were thunder and lightning bolts thrown down by Zeus when he was upset? And since when did the word "fetus" became dehumanizing? And does the process of becoming a human being needs to occur as a step function within a millisecond? - could it not be a continuous process?
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              • Posted by barwick11 9 years, 8 months ago
                Dude, I don't HAVE to turn to the supernatural to explain it. It's VERY VERY simple to answer the question. Scientists knew it within less than a decade after the asinine Roe v Wade ruling. As technology advanced, they realized that there is no moment, other than conception, that can be used as a defining moment for when an unborn "fetus" is a human being.
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                • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 8 months ago
                  So, which part of the egg and the sperm, combined, defines the "human being" and where exactly is the "soul" located?
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                  • Posted by barwick11 9 years, 8 months ago
                    I'll answer you as soon as you answer me. Because the answer to your first question is plain as day. "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

                    GPS with only 2 satellites can be done on the same theory. There's infinite points you can be where those two spheres intersect, but 99.9999% of those points are invalid, they're either in mid-air, outer space, or underground. If you're on the ground, and you know you're on the ground, there's only two points on the earth you can be. If you're not in Zimbabwe, then you're probably at the intersection of Johnson St and Center Blvd.

                    In the same way, scientists have exhausted all other options for when a human being becomes a human being. There is no mysterious point it becomes a human being left to choose from, besides conception. Check that, birth is the other option, but that has long been thrown out as an invalid option, given that if you walk up to a 9 month pregnant woman and stab her in the stomach, murdering her baby, you WILL be put in prison for murder (and rightfully so).

                    And your second question is you, once again, simply trolling and trying to change the subject, wholly irrelevant to the question at hand.
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                    • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 8 months ago
                      Your GPS analogy is not quite applicable, since my point is that the definition of a human being (or the "start" of one) does not have to be a finite entity. Why are you summarily ruling out a possibility of a process that involves some time. The legal definitions always look for finite points, but that does not apply to many other fields.
                      As to your point of "trolling," funny that you say that to a person rationalizing the basic concepts of life on a website dedicated to rationalizing the basic concepts of life. Perhaps you would have liked to discuss religion with Ayn Rand, or would you call her a "troll"?
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              • Posted by Hiraghm 9 years, 8 months ago
                "Were thunder and lightning bolts thrown down by Zeus when he was upset?"

                I dunno, you'd have to ask Zeus. But I'd say it's an irresponsible way to handle his tools. They could get broken.

                "Fetus" became dehumanizing when the left started using the term to dehumanize unborn babies.
                If becoming human is a continuous process... at the other end couldn't someone argue that as we deteriorate we lose our humanity?
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                • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 8 months ago
                  Well, I was not using the word "fetus" in a dehumanizing way, but as a factual description.
                  As to losing humanity with age - that's already being done in Britain and coming to America soon. Try getting an organ transplant or any major operation there (or soon here).
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            • Posted by $ EloiseH 9 years, 8 months ago
              Actually there is a relatively simple answer to this. According to doctors, life ends when specific brain waves cease. This is generally considered a legal definition of death. The same kind brain waves, as I was told by a neonatologist, commence at about 23-24 weeks. (I do not recall the details of the type of brain waves.) A fetus with those brain waves has a chance to survive outside of the womb. Before those brain waves appear, survival is not possible. Is that perhaps the beginning of a human life? Certainly the functioning brain is what makes us human.
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              • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 8 months ago
                Yes, it does seem like a process as opposed to a finite point. We like to simplify concepts to the lowest denominator - a specific point of time, a specific event, etc. That does not seem to apply here. And this process may be slighly different for various fetuses, perhaps even dependent on outside conditions. The point being is that simply because science cannot define something with exactness at this point of human development is not a reason to default to a supernatural explanation. Otherwise, we haven't progressed far beyond the Ancient Greeks (in some things, I think, we even devolved...).
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            • Posted by $ puzzlelady 9 years, 8 months ago
              The exact moment? A human being begins when it draws its first breath outside the mother's body. A potential is not the same as an actual.

              To what extreme would you carry this backward causation? Should a child be able to sue its parents for endowing it with inferior DNA, making it fail, say, a Mensa test? Nature is a crap shoot. We are all here by hundreds of stages of natural selection through hundreds of thousands of years.

              Miscarriages are nature's way of eliminating the unfit. In our bodies, and even still in the womb, worn-out or inadequate cells constantly self-destruct and are replaced by new ones, reabsorbed and recycled, until the template wears out in old age. Should government have the power to rule over every cell in our bodies and hold us responsible for any damage we might cause through what we eat, do or omit doing? How do the minions of government know what the rules should be? Why should they be given power over everyone else? Is every citizen, or inhabitant, to be considered the government's property to do with as it deems fit? What kind of world would that be?

              To repeat, a human being begins with its first breath. A human being owns itself. The selfish gene of the parents has a vested interest in seeing a child created and raised to successful adulthood capable of reproduction. Hence most parents do care about their offspring. The aged, infirm and demented, who were once robust and vital individuals, but now need care to make their end-of-life tolerable, have to depend on the grateful charity of family or hired help paid from savings. "Honor thy father and mother" was a pragmatic instruction to inculcate the notion of caring for them so you will be cared for when it's your turn to become dependent. It's payback for the years of care parents put into raising their children. Otherwise just set them out on the mountainside to fend for themselves, that the Spartans practiced.

              As Ayn Rand said, "Life begins at birth."
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              • Posted by barwick11 9 years, 8 months ago
                That's funny, because it's a criminal act to cause the death of an unborn baby.

                What you're saying is, Mother A and Mother B both conceive on the same day.

                Mother A gives birth at 39 weeks to a baby, goes out, and her baby is killed by a drunk driver on the way home from the hospital. That drunk driver is charged with murder.

                Mother B is on her way to the hospital to give birth at the same time Mother A is driving home from the hospital. The drunk driver's friend, seeing the accident his other drunk buddy just got into, turns to look, and smashes into Mother B's car, killing her unborn baby in the process.

                You're saying the first drunk driver should be charged with homicide, but the second drunk driver should not?

                Do you realize how absurd that is?
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              • Posted by Hiraghm 9 years, 8 months ago
                Remind me not to let you drive if we ever travel together through regions subject to landslides.

                What about human beings who cannot survive without the aid of another, even though they're already born? Are they not human? Do they no longer have rights?

                The problem with Rand's view, and yours, is the word "potential". Referring to an unborn child as a potential human is like referring to a teenager as a potential old wo/man. Except you don't try to rob the teenager of his/her humanity. if nothing interferes, the teen will become an old wo/man. If nothing interferes, the unborn child will be born and join the rest of us on the other side of his mother's uterus.

                But the idea that someone isn't human simply because s/he hasn't passed through the birth canal seems incredibly arbitrary to me. Almost as arbitrary as if I were to suggest that people who weren't born in America aren't human. Until they become American. Oh, they're *potential* humans, because they're *potential* Americans.
                Of course, unlike an unborn baby... the non-Americans have a choice in the matter.
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                • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 8 months ago
                  Everyone seems to default to the legal definition based on a finite point of time. Treat the process of becoming a human being as a "process." It doesn't happen at any particular point of time.
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          • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 8 months ago
            Stupid question, and irrelevant to the discussion.

            Hiraghm makes a good point about the uniqueness of a new fertilized egg with a distinct set of chromosomes being a new human. Unfortunately, as I describe elsewhere in this thread, that is unlikely to be ascribed to by the majority of people, and without most people in agreement, it cannot be considered rational.
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            • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 8 months ago
              If you put aside the concept of supernatural, e.g., a "soul" added externally by God, there is nothing in a fertilized egg that could be seen as a human being until it develops to some degree. There is potential, to be sure, but not a cognitive, sensing live organism that is in any way different from an ameba.
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          • Posted by Hiraghm 9 years, 8 months ago
            I NEVER make omelets from fertilized eggs. gross.
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            • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 8 months ago
              If you get eggs from people that are so proud of the "free roaming" chicken that they raise, that is very often what you get. When chicken and roosters roam together, that what happens. You're supposed to ignore (or swallow) the beak that starts solidifying first.
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        • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 8 months ago
          My faith teaches me that what you say is the truth. My rationality says that others may have a different view. It is reasonable to believe that a non-believer could look at a single cell as nothing more than a cell, and even a group of several cells as nothing more than just a few cells. Only when there are enough cells that distinct organs and limbs exist and those cells can live on their own does the entity really become an independent being.
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          • Posted by barwick11 9 years, 8 months ago
            Rationality also has no moral basis beyond one's individual insight, and allowed a goose stepping moustache-laden douchebag to murder millions of people because "in his view..."
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            • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 8 months ago
              Not being a fan of either moustache-laden douchebag, I think that it would be fair to add that people have been murdering people in the name of [great society, god, nationalism (pick your evil here)] for as long as people existed and are likely to continue to do so in the future. Your great reference, the Bible, is a description of non-stop genocides, either by God or by his direction. The fact that Stalin was an atheist, and who knows what Hitler believed in, does not in itself makes atheism murderous. How many millions have been butchered in the name of Islam? Bottom line - when a person needs a "justification" to kill, it is easily found in many venues.
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              • Posted by barwick11 9 years, 8 months ago
                I've never said atheism in itself is murderous. I simply said the truth, that it has no moral basis beyond what "I say", or what "you say", or "I believe", etc...
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              • -1
                Posted by Hiraghm 9 years, 8 months ago
                Please describe the genocide described in the New Testament...

                As I have pointed out in other posts, atheism provides a haven for those who would seek to escape responsibility for their actions. No consequence for immoral behavior, they can become their own 'god' and moral is whatever gives them pleasure.
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                • Posted by strugatsky 9 years, 8 months ago
                  As far as I know, the Old Testament is still part of the Bible and it is filled with little genocides and murderous sprees by God's chosen and eventually, God tops all the little murderers by killing everyone except for Noah. Nice work of Love! But wait - there's more. Now we get to the New Testament - full of love..., or is it? What happens to all those souls that are guilty of nothing more than not accepting the mandatory direction given from above? Tell me, would a loving parent torture and kill his children because they reject his love and teachings? All I can say is, God, save me from this kind of love.
                  You raise an interesting point of morality - that an atheist supposedly escapes responsibility by rationalizing whatever he wants. I would make a counter argument that a religious person, in doing good, is not really being moral. He is not being immoral, just not actively moral. Morality, by definition, is making a choice between good and bad. If one does good, but he does it because it is his only option, then there's no choice; therefore, it is not an actively moral action. When a person in jail does proper things according to the instructions of the warden, those are not moral actions. Likewise, when a religious person does good things because to do otherwise will be punished by eternity in hell, that is no different than following the instructions of a warden.
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            • Posted by $ stargeezer 9 years, 8 months ago
              FWIW I think we should separate Morality from reason in this one. Even though I think both can be successfully argue this both ways.

              Rationally if the fertilized egg will develop into a human being, it's a human being with 4 cells (that being the smallest 2nd division). At 2 weeks of age there are discernable appendages. Although you can't say what they are. So if we are going to be safe we might say that by 4 weeks you can call it a child.

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              • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 8 months ago
                My problem, from a rational point of view, is that the entity that you describe cannot live independently on its own. Rationally, to "own oneself" and therefore be entitled to all the rights that pertain to personhood, one must be able to live independently from others. That entity clearly cannot.

                Now I know that there will then be those who extrapolate that out to paraplegics and the mentally infirm and say that they then aren't people. That is an absurdity. Those people were capable of independent life, but by circumstance no longer are able.
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                • Posted by $ stargeezer 9 years, 8 months ago
                  I understand what you are saying robbie, but the same can be said for small children's survival without someone to even feed them for several years of their lives.

                  Then the same can be said for those of us who are more advanced in years. Many times we find ourselves in nursing homes without the ability to care for ones basic needs in life. Sometimes for the rest of our lives?

                  I'm really NOT trying to be argumentative (I'll save that for the trolls, not my friends), I'm just seeking consistency. You say "they were once capable of independent life, but by circumstance they are no longer able," Either the "test" is independent survival or it's not, that's pretty much cut and dried.

                  Granted that we are talking about a bit of protoplasm that has zero ability to function outside the mothers body and that is the defining difference for me. After birth there is no question of the responsibility of the parent. There are ways to support a premature birth of the child at increasingly lower birth weights and earlier in the development of the child.

                  I am not able to state at what point in the birth cycle that a child may survive with full function. It seems that like many other things medical science is pushing back the "age" all the time, leaving me to say that I don't know for certain. That's the problem. Does a mother owe anything to her unborn child? I think so. Either the birth is intentional and as a planned act, she must assume the responsibility for the care of the child. Or it's a unplanned birth and there is what takes place before the pregnancy is certain, which can be forgiven. But in either case the couple engaged in a act that can result in a pregnancy - as adults we must "own" the results of our actions.

                  If our actions result in a pregnancy then the mother must be willing to accept the responsibility for her pregnancy and care for her unborn child. This taking responsibility is a objectivist principal too.
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                  • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 8 months ago
                    Nor am I looking to be abrasive (I do seek argument, that is how we all learn - by presenting facts, and analyzing them rationally).

                    As a person of faith, I have one perspective. As a rational person who understands that others may not share that perspective, I've tried to rationally reason a perspective that can be supported by all. I don't find that in a position that says a human being exists at the moment of conception (based on whatever rationale), nor do I find it in a position that says that a human being doesn't exist until after it has passed through the birth canal (or caesarian section).

                    The problem with this (and similar topics) is that most people insist on imposing their views on others instead of understanding that others may have a reasonable and rational opposing view. It is not my call to prevent every other person from committing what I consider a sin. And using the force of gov't to enforce such is a much greater sin.
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                    • Posted by Rozar 9 years, 8 months ago
                      Great points Robbie.
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                      • Posted by $ stargeezer 9 years, 8 months ago
                        I totally agree. The problem is that other people will not share either of our opinions so in a democratic republic we try for a compromise. I hope others can understand that I find abortions of any kind abhorrent since I believe that life begins at conception. That should place me firmly on one side of the discussion.

                        I find the reason for my stand on two grounds, the first religious and the second philosophical. I won't go into the religious reasons except to say that my faith call all life precious and that should be enough, but there is much more.

                        On the philosophical grounds for life at conception, some may find the analogy strained, but it works for me. In all the documents that proclaimed, described, built and installed the birth of our nation the founding fathers all agreed that the most important right a citizen could have was their right to live their life. It is evaluated in freedom of speech, from the tyranny of taxation, life stolen and life enslaved, but most importantly it was the promise of a life free for unexpected death Thomas Jefferson wrote of so eloquently in the decoration of independence.

                        I believe as I think he did that no person has the right to kill another person as a matter of convenience. That this may include the mother herself goes without question. If she may have that right (a notion I most strongly question) there may come a day when she may be found to have a "right" to terminate the child AFTER birth, a post partum abortion.

                        If that ever comes to be we will need to apologize to Hitler. AND I have a list of people who need aborted........
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                        • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 8 months ago
                          I'm right there with you Star. I too have a long list of post-birth abortions that would do this society good. But then, we're just blowing off steam, as we both know that our morality would prohibit that.

                          The real answer is reinvigorating moral principles. For all his failings, Clinton got it right that (in a free society - my words not his) "abortion should be safe, legal, and rare." Unfortunately, what they then institute is safe, legal, at the whim of the mother, and at the expense of her neighbors.
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      • Posted by Hiraghm 9 years, 8 months ago
        What makes it so? A unique, human genetic pattern.

        It's a slippery slope. Today we can kill unborn humans because they're funny looking and inconvenient, and tomorrow I can kill illegal aliens because they're funny looking and inconvenient.

        And nobody wants that, right?
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        • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 8 months ago
          While I think that your definition has some merit and can be backed rationally, it is unlikely to be widely accepted. If it is not to be widely accepted, then is it a rational view?

          There is no scientific or medical definition that can be accepted by all. A single cell is not a human being, just as the entity in the mothers womb 5 mins prior to birth is most assuredly a human being. Somewhere between those two points a human being comes into being.
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