No chance at a civil  discussion on this topic.

I pass.

I think that it is justifiable homicide. The fetus is a human life and having an abortion kills it but the right to life is not absolute.

If I was dying and the only thing that could save my life was for me to brush my scrotum gently across the face of our beloved president George W. Bush, then if he wants to come to my house and get tea bagged that’s great; it would be very generous of him. But he doesn’t have to do it just because that’s what I need to survive.

You don’t have a right to life if the thing you need to stay alive is something you have no right to have, like the use of another person’s body. A human has to grow parasitically inside the body of another human for 9 months. That is not a small sacrifice and no one should have to make it if they don’t want to.

I find it thouroughly incoherent to claim that abortion is not murder, when the fetus has its own genome and metabolism.

Call a spade a spade, will you?!? If the unborn fetus is merely a part of the woman's body, why does she need a man to make it?

The worst I can see you legitimately saying without being hipocritical is that the unborn fetus is a saprophyte because it has it's own independent genome, yet is fully dependent on the mother, but this implies life apart from the mother, so you are not willing to admit such.

On a similar note, if a human fetus was born in an artificial womb (like in Brave New World: there have been experiments with rats with this in mind) is it its own creature?

If it is, then the declaration of the unborn fetus in a person's body is arbitrary because there is no difference caused by the choice of the fetus between the natural womb, where it is not a person, and the synthetic womb, where it is.

Conversely, if it is not it's own being, then what other organism is it a part of?

Er...no.

 I was searching for a more precise synonym for parasite, but that didn't work. Apparently I just wound up with a word that meant fungus.

Point conceded.

I take the stance that sentience is not black or white. The killing of some animals is more 'wrong' than others (although exactly how you 'score' animals is of course open to debate). All things being equal a human life is worth more than a chimpanzee which is worth more than a cow. If a human life could be saved by replacing their failing heart with of a baboon I would personally kill that baboon. This coming from a vegetarian, non-leather wearer who captures and releases spiders outside rather then squishing them. With the spiders I have to weigh my annoyance with the spider with it's right to life. In the end killing and cleaning up take about the same amount of time so relocation is the best option. Had it been a goat or other 'higher' animal I'd have to say it's right to life is much greater than that of a spider so killing it for being annoying isn't such a valid option.

Same deal with abortion. At some point from conception to birth you cross what I'll call the right to life point where the mother switches from incubator to guardian. Before this point it's a matter of family planning, after a matter of needless killing, murder. In my mind the debate is over where this line should be.

    Personally I don't place this line until such time as the child would have a reasonable change of living outside the mother. Last time I checked thats about at the end of the second trimester. This is pretty close to Roe v. Wade so I'm pretty happy with it.

For a motherless child you're comparing the right of the child versus that of the people keeping the womb running, which in my mind would require a stronger case for terminating even an pretty early pregnancy. Plus I'd assume accidental pregnancies that don't require a mother would be quite rare.

Obviously an acorn is not an oak tree...

Personally, I set the bar a little lower; if the fetus can survive outside of the mother without lots of technology, then I feel it is independent enough where ending it would be wrong (under most circumstances).

Oh boy, 

Please tell me this is not another attempt to make us atheists out to be kitten barbaquers. This response is not aimed at any one poster, it is an OP/ED.

There is so much wrong with calling abortion murder. Most of it stems from the paranoia superstition of theism.

1. If it wasnt part of "God's plan" it wouldnt happen.

2. Misscarages and stillborns happen naturally. If you assign that to a magical bearded man in the sky, that super dad would be the biggest abortion provider of all time.

3. The firtalization of the egg is an arbitrary point theists pick. Sperm and eggs are all potential life, but we dont kill arrest people for noctrnal emmision or masterbation. We dont arrest women for expelling an egg during a period.

4. What does this say about efficiancy? If god were perfect, like(fictional characters can be because of the abiguity of the beliver) It would stand to reason that such a claimed being would have a much better ratio of production, say one sperm an one egg always producing a healthy and wanted kid. We dont see that in reality. The mistake theists make is viewing life as if it were a rabbit being pulled out of  a hat.

Pollen is basically tree sperm. From one tree during the spring, it produces hundreds of millions of pollen (sperm). But just like human male sperm, 99.999999999999999999999% do not produce life. Most biological reproduction attempts fail. This is hardly the work of perfection.

There are atheists here who would not have an abortion, but dont base that decision on superstion and recognize that their choice is one of personal responsibility.

The point is dispite the lies fundies sell about atheists, we dont throw parties when a women gets prenant and discovers that the kid will come out deformed or brain dead, or even if it is merely because she cant afford it. WE DONT FIND JOY IN ABORTION.

But, we also dont want goverment telling us what we can or cannot do with our own bodies. If you fear a goverment forcing abortion on you by gunpoint, then dont be a hypocrite and force atheists or pro choice people into back allies. It cuts both ways.

Here is the skinny. If you say your god is real, then let this "all powerfull" being speek for itself and do his own dirty work on us if we are wrong. Bottem line, for or against, I dont care, but dont act like you own anyone or have the right to tell people they must submit to your diety because you were told by it you could dictate to us. Theocracies are not fun for those outside the majority, that is why we have a goverment which laws are based on consensus and protection of dissent.

Abortion will aways exist. No one in their right mind throws a party over one. So stop this lying about what the intent of pro choice or atheists are. We value human life too. But we dont presume to be the judge of our neighbor. 

If part of god's plan is to have a world with human free will then abortion is part of that plan.

Since you invoked the mystical dude in the sky, Let's go all the way with it. Since this he has the mythical quality of omniscience, he has the wisdom to know the effect on ones life in the case of a miscarraige. Humans don't have that prescience.

Actually, this is the only point descreet enough in the reproduction cycle to not be arbitrary. A single sperm penetrating the wall of an egg is a very specific point in time. Far less arbitrary than the first second and third trimester rules of current abortion practice. What the point of fertilization MEANS is the real question.

What gives us tthe right to tell this mythical god what the acceptable level of efficiency is? We are less than ants to this god. If god decides the most effecient thing to do is to annihilate us, we can object all we want but we are still ants on the receiving end of a giant can of Raid.

If that pollen were wasted, I suppose you might have a point. But the 99.999999999999999999999% of the pollen that is not part of fertilization sustains the ecosystm in many ways. Just go ask a colony of bees what they do with it. Actually, the natural world is astonishingly efficient. Nothing goes to waste. Sounds pretty perfect to me.

So what I think your saying is this, as long as the decision to abort is arrvied at through rational thinking, then you have the right to abort.

Crashing evidence to support would be cloning a sheep from a hair-root-cell of another sheep... Umm... wait...

I have yet to see a major god that actually gives a s**t about women... (no offense intended, hope at least the atheist women/girls around here understood my point).

It's easy for you to say that as a man, isn't it? I can guess you're one, as I don't think any woman in her right minds would ever claim something like that so vehemently.

Case: Your wife has just been raped. Extremely violently. Though she survived and the baby seems to live well, later you both find out that the "baby" is actually 2 babies, one growing somewhere it shouldn't. Your wife is in danger of dying if that baby, which is, by all means, going to be miscarried due to internal bleeding, not taken out. Also, he's too young to live if that happens. Choice: no abortion, baby and wife dies, potentially other baby dies as well, or abortion, the "normal" baby might survive with low chances, wife also survives unharmed. What's it going to be, buster?

Really? Is it so irrelevant?

Case: Young girl, around the middle of high school. Parents poor, lower-class society. Raped. Abortion illegal. Has to carry baby. What's she going to do to feed and raise the baby? How's she going to manage with: money, housing, parental figure, clothes, food, education, etc. Can you answer me that, dude ?

One-way thought: so the mother should reap all the consequences of, let's say, her rapist? Check case above.

So do all living organisms, single-celled included...

I thought Jesus's mother didn't need a man... care to rephrase that?

Your appendix is part of your body, but you still need someone to help you if you want to take it out... or put it back in.

Mitochondriae have independent genome, but are dependent of host cells. Analogy doesn't hold. Definitions are quite strict, you know?

Send out the clones... By the way, if you watch "The Island" perhaps you'll stop asking this question.

So you suggest we go for an absolute (strictly NO abortion) when you also admit you know shit about its future effects... If you were born a few centuries ago, you might have been born as Thomas Aquinas.

Also, God's omniscience doesn't save him from the fact that he IS the greatest abortion provider of all times. Actually, it puts him in an even deeper hole than he is now.

OK, so you're saying that you can predict in each case precisely which spermatozoid will fertilize an egg, in order to prove that the factors involved in the process are so numerous that it's mostly arbitrary? Good luck with that !

You little insect! How dare you speak like that? (hey, don't fire me, you've called yourself like that!)

Theoretically, nothing in general goes to waste, not even the foetuses...

That's how Ol' Democracy goes, ya'know... But I doubt I should teach you that

It's funny how nobody thinks of these questions, amongst many many more:

- How's a rape-baby going to live, knowing the truth?

- How's the mother/parents going to cope with the stress: physical, mental, financial, etc. ?

- How's the child going to feel when the others around him will almost inevitably find out that he is the son/daughter of a rapist?

- How is the mother going to love the child? And mother may, but how's daddy going to?

- Previous question, but in the case of the family already having other children?

The reality is far more complex than most simple minds can think of, dear majority of theists. Given your attitude, and your complete failure to notice the real problems that await the life of an unaborted baby and his/her parents, you will allow me, I hope, to call you simple-minded, won't you?

See, now you, I like.

Wow, I didn't even notice that part. Thanks for addressing that Jane.

I'm sorry to have to do this, but men cannot POSSIBLY understand what it's like to have a uterus and the consequences that come from having one.

I don't pretend that I understand what it's like to have a penis and therefore I don't tell you what to do with it.

Give me and my uterus the same courteousy. 

Exactly!  It is this sort of attitude towards women that I find unacceptable.  I find this attitude is common in religion as well (i.e. - a woman must cover up because it'll be her fault if a man becomes aroused).  Ok, sorry that was off-topic!

Off topic.

 It seems around here that sometimes the bible is used to bolster an argument and sometimes using the bible to bloster an argument is lambasted. What gives?

Apology accepted, thank you. 

I don't think any reason is really a good reason to terminate a pregnancy.  I'm sure it is a terrible, painful choice to make.  But that choice still has to be made available.  I don't think a few weeks old fetus' life should trump that of its carrier. 

When you start a response with a disparaging remark I have to expend energy to not become defensive. It automatically makes me want to dismiss yor argument and I have to force myself to continue.

 If I knew the answer already I wouldn't have asked the question. Part of "doing my maths and logic" requires asking questions. How is this a problem?

This helps some. I will keep it in mind. 

I will go past you twisting the definition of "parasite" and "foetus" to fit your own argumentative needs, I will also go past the fact that this was disgusting of you, and I will ask: what was the purpose in trying to prove what you consider to have proven? What use would this be to anyone?

Another parley to add to the issue is the case of Terri Schiavo.  She was essentially brain dead and could not function without life support.  Technically she was still alive.  The machines work as a host just as a woman does to a zygote.  There are numerous cases of a fetus essentially being being dead in the womb but the fetus still grows since the woman is providing life support to the body while the brain has died.  Would it be unethical to abort the fetus when it has no chance of living outside the host?

Of course there are plenty of time, especially in third trimester abortions (which the antis want to make completely illegal for no reason in particular) when a stillborn fetus has to be removed.  Since the antis classify all abortion as murder then why is it murder to remove something that is already dead?

Actually I agree and think most of us on here would too (at least as far as how the law should be.)

So you would say that getting rid of tiny blobs of cells with no brain, no nervous system, no senses, not even visible to the naked eye is murder. By that logic I'm murdering when I pick at a spot, or have a haircut! Why draw the line at conception? Why not an ovum or a sperm? Of course then you would be committing murder every time you had didn't come in a vagina, or if you're a woman, every time you have your period. And even then most of the sperms wouldn't actually fertilise the ovum, they'd die, only one sperm actually gets to fertilise the egg and yet everytime a man comes he releases millions of the tadpoles. Also, the majority of embryos die naturally barely after conception almost entirely unnoticed.

Embryos are just little blobs of cells, you aren't doing them any harm by getting rid of them. They can't feel pain, nor can they conceptualise their own existence, never mind big concepts of life or death. They don't have brains, or even internal organs, bones, eyeballs anything. And then you have the foetus, admittedly more developed than the embryo. But it will have less intelligence than a street pigeon, will be barely sentient, and cannot think I am a human being, I deserve life, in fact it won't even know what life is, how then can we be doing it a disservice by aborting it? It will be no different from a cat foetus, a dog foetus, a cow foetus.   

I am not saying go round aborting babies at will. But it is the woman's choice. It is especially important under certain circumstances that the right is there. What if the woman was raped? Would she really want to have the child (appeal to emotion I know, but here it is important, emotions are key parts of people's interests when it comes to this subject)? What if she had no income to support a child? What about if the continuation of the pregnancy would put both the woman's life and the foetus' life in jeopardy?

I wrote an essay on abortion in December. I've enhanced many of my ideas since then, they've progressed (my philosophy is always progressing, I discover something new almost daily these days) but it's a good essay nontheless (not quite as good as my animal rights essay). I'll post it on the Philosophy/ psychology forum.

Abortion is a form of population control that allows us to keep the population of the world down so that we can rape and pillage our planet a bit more without worry about having to share it's resources with another raper and pillager.

 oh... and to the Christians.

You can't say abortion is murder and then allow your nation to bomb and kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Iraq.  Thats just stupid, man.  Supporting this war is the same as supporting the murder of innocents.  WAKE UP!!!! 

The reason Amarica is in Iraq is because if we wern't the Muslims would attack us.

I doubt the Muslims (please note: this would be a very bad generalization, not all muslims did, but I'll use this in order to link to the post I'm replying to) attacked the USA for no reason at all. Wasn't it... something the USA did? Because it doesn't look to me as if the USA was very legitimate in its actions lately... Lately meaning from the 1950s onwards.

So why not October 10 then?