Question for the atheist converts
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Well, I was pro-choice long before I stopped believing there was a god. I was anti-abortion as a kid, but that was just a hand-me-down from my folks that I never gave much thought to until I got to my early 20's. Quite honestly, I don't remember there being a lightbulb moment or anything; I just gradually realized that there were circumstances when an abortion was the best idea, and who was I to say what women should do with their own body.
I think the real change came when I decided that making abortion illegal was a violation of a person's personal responsibility. The individual/couple should be making that decision; not the government.
I think the real change came when I decided that making abortion illegal was a violation of a person's personal responsibility. The individual/couple should be making that decision; not the government.
God belief is for people who don't want to live life on the universe's terms.
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I am very sure that recently fertilized eggs are not conscious or human beings.
I am very sure that a new born baby is both human and conscious.
Thus the right or wrong of abortion depends on when. So what is the cut-off? Maybe there is not definite fact of the matter. Better safe than sorry I suppose but lets not going around talking like 3 week old fetuses are human beings. (Don't give me the potential human being thing because every cell in my body is a potential human being).
I am very sure that a new born baby is both human and conscious.
Thus the right or wrong of abortion depends on when. So what is the cut-off? Maybe there is not definite fact of the matter. Better safe than sorry I suppose but lets not going around talking like 3 week old fetuses are human beings. (Don't give me the potential human being thing because every cell in my body is a potential human being).
when believers want to give their claims more weight, they dress these claims up in scientific terms. When believers want to belittle atheism or secular humanism, they call it a "religion". -Beastie
yesterday's Mormon doctrine is today's Mormon folklore.-Buffalo
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Yes, I changed my position on abortion when I left the church. To be more exact, I reverted to my pre-LDS conversion position with some slight modifications. When I was a teenager in the seventies, I was completely pro-choice and very impatient with the idea that other people would attempt to interfere with a woman’s rights to have an abortion. Then I converted to the LDS church and changed my position for one reason only – I was told that GOD had taken a position on the matter. Who was I to question God?
When I left the church this was one of the many things I had to grapple with on my own. No god to guide me, no leader to tell me what to think. In the meantime, I had born three children since being heady pro-choice teen, and knew very well that, at some point, the “fetus” growing inside me definitely became a “baby”, a living human being. So while I still support unrestricted access to abortion in the first trimester, as the pregnancy advances I think it is in society’s larger moral interest to monitor abortion access. Carl Sagan wrote a fabulous essay on this, I believe it was in his book Billions and Billions. It heavily influenced my thinking on when this cut-off should be. Like me, he had concluded that there was a WORLD of difference between an abortion in the first trimester and in the last trimester. But how do we come to some agreement in between? He suggested that since our society is already, by and large, morally comfortable with using brain waves to determine “life” – as in declaring someone “brain dead” – we should use a similar standard with the fetus.
Our old friend, 2think, has excerpts of this essay:
http://www.2think.org/abortion.shtml
Here’s the pertinent section:
When I left the church this was one of the many things I had to grapple with on my own. No god to guide me, no leader to tell me what to think. In the meantime, I had born three children since being heady pro-choice teen, and knew very well that, at some point, the “fetus” growing inside me definitely became a “baby”, a living human being. So while I still support unrestricted access to abortion in the first trimester, as the pregnancy advances I think it is in society’s larger moral interest to monitor abortion access. Carl Sagan wrote a fabulous essay on this, I believe it was in his book Billions and Billions. It heavily influenced my thinking on when this cut-off should be. Like me, he had concluded that there was a WORLD of difference between an abortion in the first trimester and in the last trimester. But how do we come to some agreement in between? He suggested that since our society is already, by and large, morally comfortable with using brain waves to determine “life” – as in declaring someone “brain dead” – we should use a similar standard with the fetus.
Our old friend, 2think, has excerpts of this essay:
http://www.2think.org/abortion.shtml
Here’s the pertinent section:
Thinking occurs, of course, in the brain--principally in the top layers of the convoluted "gray matter" called the cerebral cortex. The roughly 100 billion neurons in the brain constitute the material basis of thought. The neurons are connected to each other, and their linkups play a major role in what we experience as thinking. But large-scale linking up of neurons doesn't begin until the 24th to 27th week of pregnancy--the sixth month.
By placing harmless electrodes on a subject's head, scientists can measure the electrical activity produced by the network of neurons inside the skull. Different kinds of mental activity show different kinds of brain waves. But brain waves with regular patterns typical of adult human brains do not appear in the fetus until about the 30th week of pregnancy--near the beginning of the third trimester. Fetuses younger than this--however alive and active they may be--lack the necessary brain architecture. They cannot yet think.
Acquiescing in the killing of any living creature, especially one that might later become a baby, is troublesome and painful. But we've rejected the extremes of "always" and "never," and this puts us--like it or not--on the slippery slope. If we are forced to choose a developmental criterion, then this is where we draw the line: when the beginning of characteristically human thinking becomes barely possible.
It is, in fact, a very conservative definition: Regular brain waves are rarely found in fetuses. More research would help… If we wanted to make the criterion still more stringent, to allow for occasional precocious fetal brain development, we might draw the line at six months. This, it so happens, is where the Supreme Court drew it in 1973--although for completely different reasons.
Its decision in the case of Roe v. Wade changed American law on abortion. It permits abortion at the request of the woman without restriction in the first trimester and, with some restrictions intended to protect her health, in the second trimester. It allows states to forbid abortion in the third trimester, except when there's a serious threat to the life or health of the woman. In the 1989 Webster decision, the Supreme Court declined explicitly to overturn Roe v. Wade but in effect invited the 50 state legislatures to decide for themselves.
What was the reasoning in Roe v. Wade? There was no legal weight given to what happens to the children once they are born, or to the family. Instead, a woman's right to reproductive freedom is protected, the court ruled, by constitutional guarantees of privacy. But that right is not unqualified. The woman's guarantee of privacy and the fetus's right to life must be weighed--and when the court did the weighing' priority was given to privacy in the first trimester and to life in the third. The transition was decided not from any of the considerations we have been dealing with so far…--not when "ensoulment" occurs, not when the fetus takes on sufficient human characteristics to be protected by laws against murder. Instead, the criterion adopted was whether the fetus could live outside the mother. This is called "viability" and depends in part on the ability to breathe. The lungs are simply not developed, and the fetus cannot breathe--no matter how advanced an artificial lung it might be placed in—until about the 24th week, near the start of the sixth month. This is why Roe v. Wade permits the states to prohibit abortions in the last trimester. It's a very pragmatic criterion.
If the fetus at a certain stage of gestation would be viable outside the womb, the argument goes, then the right of the fetus to life overrides the right of the woman to privacy. But just what does "viable" mean? Even a full-term newborn is not viable without a great deal of care and love. There was a time before incubators, only a few decades ago, when babies in their seventh month were unlikely to be viable. Would aborting in the seventh month have been permissible then? After the invention of incubators, did aborting pregnancies in the seventh month suddenly become immoral? What happens if, in the future, a new technology develops so that an artificial womb can sustain a fetus even before the sixth month by delivering oxygen and nutrients through the blood--as the mother does through the placenta and into the fetal blood system? We grant that this technology is unlikely to be developed soon or become available to many. But if it were available, does it then become immoral to abort earlier than the sixth month, when previously it was moral? A morality that depends on, and changes with, technology is a fragile morality; for some, it is also an unacceptable morality.
And why, exactly, should breathing (or kidney function, or the ability to resist disease) justify legal protection? If a fetus can be shown to think and feel but not be able to breathe, would it be all right to kill it? Do we value breathing more than thinking and feeling? Viability arguments cannot, it seems to us, coherently determine when abortions are permissible. Some other criterion is needed. Again, we offer for consideration the earliest onset of human thinking as that criterion.
Since, on average, fetal thinking occurs even later than fetal lung development, we find Roe v. Wade to be a good and prudent decision addressing a complex and difficult issue. With prohibitions on abortion in the last trimester--except in cases of grave medical necessity--it strikes a fair balance between the conflicting claims of freedom and life.
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Tarski wrote:(Don't give me the potential human being thing because every cell in my body is a potential human being).
Note that my take on the matter does not rely on them being potential human beings. We disallow cruel treatment of non-human animals. Now granted, those animals are generally conscious at the time we disallow such treatment while a human fetus isn't. I don't consider the wilful killing of other animals to be equivalent to homocide. Similarly I don't think abortion is equivalent to homocide (except perhaps late-term abortions where the baby could have survived if it were born and maybe to some degree before that when the unborn fetus can feel and respond to pain).
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Re: Question for the atheist converts
John Larsen wrote:antishock8 wrote:Scottie wrote:For those of you who used to be religious anti-abortionists, do you have a different opinion on abortion now?
Yeah, my position changed radically. I think there needs to be an aggressive program emplaced that enforces use of birth control, which is abortive in nature more or less, and more people need to get abortions instead of reproducing and passing their neglect onto society. My concept of life has also been altered since I don't believe in any deity any more. In other words fetuses aren't sacred cows to me. in my opinion, the cost to society is prohibitive when we're talking about outlawing abortion.
1) Require people who want to reproduce to prove that they can care for their children without the aid of medicaid, welfare, or any other type of state assistance.
2) Require a minimum aptitude for potential parents.
3) Mandatory sterilization for welfare recipients.
4) Free snippage for citizens by the state.
5) Anyone who advocates outlawing abortion must have adopted, minimum, a child from neglectful parents.
6) Violation of my rules results in stripping you of your citizenship, and you'll be sent to live in Saudi Arabia.
Who would you have enforce these draconian rules?
The IRS.
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beastie wrote:He suggested that since our society is already, by and large, morally comfortable with using brain waves to determine “life” – as in declaring someone “brain dead” – we should use a similar standard with the fetus.
I'm not so sure about even that any more. See this article about a man who was pronounced brain dead, was about to be removed from life support, and yet lived to tell the tale.
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I'm not so sure about even that any more. See this article about a man who was pronounced brain dead, was about to be removed from life support, and yet lived to tell the tale.
My first suspicion would be doctor error. But aside from that, this is a different scenario altogether than detecting when brain waves BEGIN in fetal development.
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.
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beastie wrote:My first suspicion would be doctor error. But aside from that, this is a different scenario altogether than detecting when brain waves BEGIN in fetal development.
True, and I recognized that even before posting. However, it does cause me to wonder whether brainwaves are a sufficient criteria. My own criteria are not so clear to me. For example, I'm fine with IVF which will result in fertilized eggs which will be destroyed.
I actually hope more studies are done to figure out how this occurred. If the doctor made a mistake, then I guess he made a mistake. It would seem most likely as I don't yet know how it'd be possible for the patient to hear anything without any measured response, but it raises enough doubt for me to wonder. If the case is a unique one demonstrating that we can live during supposed brain death, then perhaps we need to reconsider what it means to be be declared braindead. Don't some NDE experiences happen while people are declared braindead? While it doesn't mean the experiences happen at that time or prove that spirits occupy bodies, it does raise some interesting questions for me. When does a fetus actually feel pain and when is it just a reflex? Do insects with their tiny brains feel pain? Since we're allowed to kill insects is that even a good measuring stick? For me, there are no easy answers--there aren't even any good answers including the ultra-conservative move of banning abortion for all cases (or even the church's accepting it at times for the mother's health or rape).
That's General Leo. He could be my friend if he weren't my enemy.
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Folks,
It seems to me that brain waves are far from sufficient to indicate the onset of fetal humanity.
1. Mice and maybe even insects have brain waves.
2. It seems clear to me that what matters is the structure and meaning of those brain waves. Are they random? Do they indicate the existence of plans, hopes, fears, an inchoate mental language?
It has been argued by philosophers from Heidegger to Dennett that to be human is to have "being-in-the-world". It is often thought that to be human one must have intersubjectivity and maybe even language. Many theories of consciousness and subjectivity assert that subjectivity is derivative on intersubjectivity. There is no self in the absence of the other (we before me, even at the ontological level)).
Dennett even argues that pain as we know it is impossible without a "world". The terribleness of pain is not intrinsic but derives from how it is situated in a human world. Pain disrupts immediate plans, creates panic, fear and struggle--all of these need understanding of and embeddness in worldly concerns.
According to this view a fetus can no more feel truley horrible pain than a bat can keep secrets or a snail feel loneliness.
Like I said, I would want to err on the side of caution.
It seems to me that brain waves are far from sufficient to indicate the onset of fetal humanity.
1. Mice and maybe even insects have brain waves.
2. It seems clear to me that what matters is the structure and meaning of those brain waves. Are they random? Do they indicate the existence of plans, hopes, fears, an inchoate mental language?
It has been argued by philosophers from Heidegger to Dennett that to be human is to have "being-in-the-world". It is often thought that to be human one must have intersubjectivity and maybe even language. Many theories of consciousness and subjectivity assert that subjectivity is derivative on intersubjectivity. There is no self in the absence of the other (we before me, even at the ontological level)).
Dennett even argues that pain as we know it is impossible without a "world". The terribleness of pain is not intrinsic but derives from how it is situated in a human world. Pain disrupts immediate plans, creates panic, fear and struggle--all of these need understanding of and embeddness in worldly concerns.
According to this view a fetus can no more feel truley horrible pain than a bat can keep secrets or a snail feel loneliness.
Like I said, I would want to err on the side of caution.
when believers want to give their claims more weight, they dress these claims up in scientific terms. When believers want to belittle atheism or secular humanism, they call it a "religion". -Beastie
yesterday's Mormon doctrine is today's Mormon folklore.-Buffalo
yesterday's Mormon doctrine is today's Mormon folklore.-Buffalo
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It seems clear to me that what matters is the structure and meaning of those brain waves.
That is what Sagan was referring to, I just used "brain waves" as a shortcut. He is talking about brain waves that have the particular "signature" that indicates human thought.
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.
Penn & Teller
http://www.mormonmesoamerica.com
Penn & Teller
http://www.mormonmesoamerica.com