Arizona bans funding of Planned Parenthood

[_EAllusion]

I'm not at all clear to me who decided that "personhood" was the central concept to be established regarding the moral appropriateness of convenience abortion, and upon what grounds. Nor is it at all clear why "personhood" is of key relevance to the moral and social practice and societal effects of unrestricted abortion on demand, and why other factors, of equal or greater weight, should not be considered.

It's not immoral to kill nonpersons if no person is harmed by it, therefore there's nothing wrong with killing fetuses if they are not persons. A person is a being deserving of moral respect. Since there are philosophically strong conceptions of personhood - the dominant ones actually - that do not cover all of the unborn, it is a central issue in the debate over abortion. It is thee primary issue, actually. Female property rights arguments are the main secondary issue, but it is secondary.

You don't support making it a crime to kill grass, do you? Why not? Because grass has no moral status in your view, right? Tarski and a huge % of pro-choicers - especially those with some background in ethics - think the same of blastocysts. Meanwhile, the central argument that animates pro-lifers is that fetuses do have moral status and therefore it is wrong to kill them. That's why it matters. You actually imply that it matters when you point out that fetuses are biologically human. The implication is that being biologically human is an important criteria for being a person. Maybe it didn't occur to you that not everyone agrees with this. It's not even a particularly defensible position, if you are curious.

[_Kevin Graham]

Will Droopy apologize for repeating a defamatory lie?

ROFL!



Sorry, but just the idea that Droopy could be expected to apologize for anything, is enough to bust a gut.

[_krose]

I'm not at all clear to me...

That's obvious, dude. You're not clear to anyone else either.

[_Droopy]

Of course not. It just seems likely among those who "protest too much."

In other words, its a standard leftist smear tactic, used primarily for public consumption when circumvention of critical argument is required.

And of course, there is plenty of research that says homophobes tend to be attracted to members of the same sex.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8772014

Is homophobia associated with homosexual arousal?
Adams HE, Wright LW Jr, Lohr BA.
Source

Department of Psychology, University of Georgia, Athens 30602-3013, USA.
Abstract

The authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively heterosexual men who admitted negative affect toward homosexual individuals. Participants consisted of a group of homophobic men (n = 35) and a group of nonhomophobic men (n = 29); they were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia (W. W. Hudson & W. A. Ricketts, 1980). The men were exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual, and lesbian videotapes, and changes in penile circumference were monitored. They also completed an Aggression Questionnaire (A. H. Buss & M. Perry, 1992). Both groups exhibited increases in penile circumference to the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. The groups did not differ in aggression. Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies

Now, I'm glad you posted this, Bluffalo, as its a wonderful point maker re my long held and argued position that much of psychology isn't science at all, in the normative sense of the term, but a body of disciplines and approaches that wrap themselves in its robes and utilize its structure and language.

The abstract opens with a volley of question begging (the concept of "homophobia" did not originate within psychology, but within the Gay rights lobby/movement and among the cultural Left that supports it, and the concept itself is questionable in that light) and a representative sample of - 35 "homophobes" who are analyzed based upon there scores on a "index of homophobia."

Now, to get an idea of just how "scientific" this "index of homophobia" is, let's take a look at it:

I would feel comfortable working closely with a gay man.
____ 2.) I would enjoy attending social functions at which queer people were present.
____ 3.) I would feel uncomfortable if I learned that my neighbor was queer.
____ 4.) If a member of my sex made a sexual advance towards me, I would
feel angry.
____ 5.) I would feel comfortable knowing I was attractive to members of my gender.
____ 6.) I would feel uncomfortable being seen in a gay bar.
____ 7.) I would feel uncomfortable if a member of my sex made an advance
towards me.
____ 8.) I would be comfortable if I found myself attracted to a member of my sex.
____ 9.) I would feel disappointed if I learned that my child was queer.
____ 10.) I would feel nervous being in a group of queers.
____ 11.) I would feel comfortable knowing that my clergy person was queer.
____ 12.) I would be upset if I learned that my sibling was queer.
____ 13.) I would feel that I had failed as a parent if I learned that my child was gay.
____ 14.) If I saw two men holding hands in public, I would feel disgusted.
____ 15.) If a member of my gender made an advance towards me, I would be
offended.
____ 16.) I would feel comfortable if I learned that my daughter’s teacher was a
lesbian.
____ 17.) I would feel uncomfortable if I learned that my spouse or partner was
attracted to a member of his/her gender.
____ 18.) I would feel at ease talking with a queer at a party.
____ 19.) I would feel uncomfortable if I learned that my boss was queer.
____ 20.) It would not bother me to walk through a predominantly gay section of town
____ 21.) It would disturb me to find out that my doctor was queer.
____ 22.) I would feel comfortable if I learned that my best friend of my gender was
queer.
____ 23.) If a member of my gender made an advance towards me, I would feel
flattered.
____ 24.) I would feel uncomfortable knowing that my son’s teacher

One can choose Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral, Disagree, and Strongly Disagree.

As even a modestly educated organ grinder monkey can quite clearly see, far from being anything remotely resembling "social science," this is nothing more than a preconceived, ideologically loaded pseudoscientific instrument that assumes the existence of a mental disorder based upon the existence of an alleged psychopathology ( a phobia) and which then determines the existence of such psychopathology based upon personal attitudes and perceptions of homosexuals and homosexuality qua homosexuality with reference to the existence of the alleged psychological condition and grounded in the further question begging assumption that overall negative attitudes toward homosexuality, Gay culture, and homosexual tendencies among friends or family members, is evidence of mental disorder (psychological incorrectness, if not political).

Now, let's revise this instrument a bit, in a way that exposes its actual bias and agenda, and see if its still looks like something most people would want to defend:


Index of Aryanophobia

This questionnaire is deigned to measure the way you feel about working or association with Aryans and members of the master race. This is not a test, so there are no wrong answers. Answer each item as carefully and accurately as you can by placing a number beside each one as follows:


____ 1.) I would feel comfortable working closely with a white Aryan.
____ 2.) I would enjoy attending social functions at which members of the master race were present.
____ 3.) I would feel uncomfortable if I learned that my neighbor was Aryan.
____ 4.) If a member of the master race commanded me to do something, I would feel angry.
____ 5.) I would feel comfortable knowing I was thought of as inferior by members of the master race.
____ 6.) I would feel uncomfortable being seen in an Aryan bar.
____ 7.) I would feel uncomfortable if a member of the master race made an advance towards me.
____ 8.) I would be comfortable if I found myself attracted to a member of the master race.
____ 9.) I would feel disappointed if I learned that my child was in the Hitler Youth.
____ 10.) I would feel nervous being in a group of Aryans.
____ 11.) I would feel comfortable knowing that my clergy person was Aryan.
____ 12.) I would be upset if I learned that my sibling was not Aryan (blended family)
____ 13.) I would feel that I had failed as a parent if I learned that my child was a National Socialist.
____ 14.) If I saw two men holding Nazi flags in public, I would feel disgusted.
____ 15.) If a member of the master race made an advance towards me, I would be offended.
____ 16.) I would feel comfortable if I learned that my daughter’s teacher was an Aryan.
____ 17.) I would feel uncomfortable if I learned that my spouse or partner was attracted to a member of the master race.
____ 18.) I would feel at ease talking with a member of the gestapo at a party.
____ 19.) I would feel uncomfortable if I learned that my boss was Aryan.
____ 20.) It would not bother me to walk through a predominantly Aryan section of town
____ 21.) It would disturb me to find out that my doctor was Aryan.
____ 22.) I would feel comfortable if I learned that my best friend of my gender was Aryan.
____ 23.) If a member of my race made an advance towards me, I would feel flattered.
____ 24.) I would feel uncomfortable knowing that my son’s teacher was Aryan.
____ 25.) I would feel comfortable working closely with an Aryan.

At a score of 100-125 one has "mostly negative feelings about Aryans/members of the master race, and is clearly an Aryanophobe (or Caucasiophobe).

We can do this any way we like. We could reverse the process, for instance. We could make up, upon ideological grounds, the mental disorder of heterophobia, and then ask questions about it in a search for those suffering from it and who would then be understood to be in need of therapeutic intervention. We could classify homosexuality as a psychopathology in which extreme, irrational fear of the opposite gender pushes one into same sex attraction. We could construct ideologically/politically loaded instruments that demonstrate psychopathology when people score within a certain range based upon their feelings about leftists, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans, Mormons, Catholics, or any identity group we desire, and then interpret negative perceptions (as we define "negative") as indicating the presence of personality disorder.

We can, in other words, medicalize ethics, philosophy, political ideology, and moral conviction. This has a long and sordid history on the Left, and its still continuing to this day (and I don't mean just this study, by any means).

This is classic Adorno (and Lenin, for that matter).

[_Buffalo]

Droopy, what would the meter read, attached to Droopy Jr., if you were exposed to gay porn?

There is a high probability that it would show arousal. That's just a scientific fact. Your absurd comparison of gays to white supremacists further supports it.

[_Droopy]

Its only a lie if I know it is.

And you knew it!

Put your crystal ball away, and let's get on with it.

The Church has never clarified if and when the unjustified killing of an unborn child is murder,

How brave of them.

Yawn...

You apparently don't understand my model of personhood since you argue with me below by stating that it is a matter of degrees ---which is exactly what I said!

You have not as yet articulated any model of personhood, with any degree of detail.

and again! I am the one that opposes the absolutes. Please try to convince your fellow conservatives who seem to think that a fertilized embryo is a person.

I have severe doubts that my initial critique of "personhood" is anything like yours, were you to articulate it hear in other than bare outline.

The difference between the embryo, a fetus, an infant, and and elderly person, are ones of degree, phase, development, and continuity, not one of kind.

not one of kind? So a pine seed just is a tree-period?

Are you having problems conceptualizing the idea that the entire developmental trajectory from embryo to fetus to infant to child to adult to corpse all involve a human organism?

he says without bothering to give define humanness.

Have you ever heard of DNA, Tarski? That's where we begin. All the specific information therein defines the core nature of the organism. "Humanness" in any more expansive sense is another nebulous conceptualization, like "personhood" that you are going to have to delineate in much greater detail, less throwing the terms around hoping one of them will somehow stick.

Gee, I wonder what is the humanness content of a human sperm cell (or any other cell).

Probably the fact that it is a human sperm cell and a human female egg that unite to form a human cell mass that becomes a human embryo. Round and round the ideological centrifuge we go, eh Tarski?

There is no fact of the matter in borderline cases. But, a one year old is definitely a person as is a newborn (we would stipulate as much in any case), while a newly fertilized ovum is not. Do you really think you can address personhood without reference to the issues I mentioned?

Part of the main problem I addressed in my last post is the:

1. Nebulousness of the concept of "personhood, " and

2. The question of whether on not "personhood" need be the defining demarcation line in reference to which moral questions regarding abortion can be legitimately asked at any time in the human developmental process.

you believe in unrestricted abortion, for any reason, upon any pretext, as a form of birth control.

That's twice!! WTF??
Now there is no conceivable excuse this time. Since I said "first trimester" I have in that very sentence implicated at least one possible restriction!

You allowed for no restrictions whatsoever in the first trimester. Here is what you said:

by the way, for a first trimester abortion, it is enough that the pregnant women in question does not want a child and cannot carry the fetus to term without causing major damage to her own life goals

Please show how this language is not a carte blanche for abortion in the first trimester for any subjective reason or pretext whatsoever.

Then I went on to give other indications that would question the morality abortion done to avoid minor inconveniences or as part of a premediated habit of delayed contraception. (I know of no one who would do this however. It is a fantasy of the right.)

You went on to give no specific or clear examples at all, save for an extreme hypothetical circumstance that I then showed no necessary reason for abortion at all.

You essentially support the traditional NOW, NARL, radical feminist/anti-natalist position of the cultural Left, at least for the first trimester.

Oops, there is that restriction again. Maybe there are more.

See your own words above.

by the way, anyone who uses the word "anti-natalist" deserves nothing but laughter.

Yes, I'm sure your right, Tarski.

Except that the malicious psychopath father (of the mere non-person unconscious tiny fetus) is intent on pursuing legal action, calculated lying, and unrelenty emotional manipulation of relatives and friends and other steps to ruin the mothers reputation and force himself into her life----forever (because he is a psychopath who thinks he owns her). The mother is not herself consitutionally able to out maneuver the creep and one can anticipate ends up a defeated suicide risk. The adoption was never really an option except on paper. You apprently have no idea how simple this is for some personalities and the kind of hell and hopelessness that follows.

These kinds of "what if you were the Pope and you were kidnapped by the Mafia and forced to have sex with a beautiful woman on film, and if you don't they will nuke Los Angeles" ethics class scenarios are fun, but the very fact that you need to use them to make your point is telling in and of itself.

Its like writing a movie screenplay. I can see a number of ways out of her predicament, and quite without abortion.

Fortunately, as it stands, you and your inexperienced judgemental old white celebate ass friends do not get to make such judgements from a safe distance as you would like.

The typical sanctimonious moral breast beating from the Anointed when they've been cornered by their own intellectual shoddiness.

Since my point isn't rationally opposable or even remotely sad if we assume the whole spirit child thing, I can only assume that your opposition to my example is based on political habit only.

So very typical of the Anointed, to reduce the principled convictions and philosophical principles of their opponents to mere "habits"

You have not even an inkling of an idea the slippery moral and social road you and the rest of the Left are traveling here, and neither your strange, inverted morality nor your slipshod sophistries in its defense can alter what we already know about where that road leads.

[_Droopy]

It's not immoral to kill nonpersons if no person is harmed by it, therefore there's nothing wrong with killing fetuses if they are not persons.

Therefore, there is nothing wrong with killing Jews, if no non-person (non-Jews, or at least Aryans) is harmed, from within the National Socialist perspective (Jews are "cattle," from within this perspective). Similarly, from within another modern perspective, Jews are "apes and pigs" and can be dealt with accordingly.

Other perceived sub-humans, such as blacks, can also be dealt with - predicated upon the particular cultural assumptions and ideology of the time - in whatever manner deemed appropriate for "non-persons" from within that cultural context.

Again, we have the concept "person" deployed as a moral demarcation line, but no guidance as to just what a "person" is from within what perceptual prism, nor any clear way to determine how these terms and concepts will be understood and used within other cultural contexts and other perceptual prisms once the fundamental premise - that there is a class of humans known as "non-persons" who can be exterminated at will for whatever subjective preferential reason - has been accepted as a fundamental moral axiom.

It is also not at all clear in a moral sense that embryos and fetuses can simply be killed at will, even if they are "non-persons" in some immediate sociocultural sense, as if killing embryos qua killing embryos on a mass societal scale can somehow be isolated from larger scale moral and cultural dynamics and effects that are inherent, not simply in the act itself, but in the psychological and moral qualities of a people that could produce such a cultural practice of mass convenience embryo/fetus killing.

A person is a being deserving of moral respect.

From within specific perceptual and moral frames of reference, this is correct.

Since there are philosophically strong conceptions of personhood - the dominant ones actually - that do not cover all of the unborn, it is a central issue in the debate over abortion. It is thee primary issue, actually.

But they are not settled, and the philosophical questions posed are wide open.

support making it a crime to kill grass, do you? Why not? Because grass has no moral status in your view, right? Tarski and a huge % of pro-choicers - especially those with some background in ethics - think the same of blastocysts. Meanwhile, the central argument that animates pro-lifers is that fetuses do have moral status and therefore it is wrong to kill them. That's why it matters. You actually imply that it matters when you point out that fetuses are biologically human. The implication is that being biologically human is an important criteria for being a person. Maybe it didn't occur to you that not everyone agrees with this. It's not even a particularly defensible position, if you are curious.

Fascinating how the far Left, hard, secularistic utilitarian/pragmatist libertarianism, environmentalism, and other allied secular humanist philosophies (such as animal rights ideology (a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy)) form, in the end, a closed circle. All the same, at the root.

The moral problem of convenience abortion on demand, including in the first trimester, does not reside in "personhood," (whatever that is), but in humanness itself. That is the crux of the matter. A human embryo, barring accident or lethal disease, if left to itself and allowed to follow a normal, developmental path, will, inevitably and inexorably, become a human person.

Whether or not an embryo or fetus could be considered a "person" or not, is only peripherally relevant (and only comes into play under conditions in which the life of the mother, rape or incest (or, per the church, severe defects) tilt the moral question in the favor of abortion. When there is no such moral balancing in play, when the pregnancy was willfully entered into (by having sex), and when, left to itself, the embryo will develop into a human person, the moral question becomes, not whether the human being growing within the mother is a human person, but whether the developmental path from human being to human person can be terminated, and for what reasons.

[_Tarski]

Probably the fact that it is a human sperm cell and a human female egg that unite to form a human cell mass that becomes a human embryo.

"human cell mass" ??

This is how I will think of you; a human cell mass.

Here is another use of the word human in the same (irrelevant) sense:

Human DNA mass. (Single chromosome maybe?)
It's human!!

[_EAllusion]

Therefore, there is nothing wrong with killing Jews, if no non-person (non-Jews, or at least Aryans) is harmed, from within the National Socialist perspective (Jews are "cattle," from within this perspective). Similarly, from within another modern perspective, Jews are "apes and pigs" and can be dealt with accordingly.

Jews are persons. I guess you now understand why personhood matters to the debate. Probably not, but you should.

Again, we have the concept "person" deployed as a moral demarcation line, but no guidance as to just what a "person" is

That's what the debate is about. You have your own definition of personhood too. You might not recognize it that way because you seem unfamiliar with the terminology as it is used in ethics and law, but you have it nonetheless. After all, you seem to think Jews are people but grass is not. You just sort of take it for granted, it would seem, that being a unique biological human is what defines personhood. Later you hint at the potential argument, which is distinct from that. This, however, is a view that requires defense, not assumption. I don't think that is the quality that matters for personhood. I don't think "vegetables" are persons, for instance. Humans aren't worth respect because they happen to have a human genome. While I find the question of personhood to be one of the more difficult issues in ethics, this stance is baseless to me. It's other qualities that humans just so happen to possess that matter in my view. The specifics are technical, but it's more related to the capacity for sentient consciousness. Tarksi is obviously along those lines as well, and that's the dominant viewpoint. What's important for this discussion, though, is not who's right but simply understanding why people disagree and what they are disagreeing about.

From within specific perceptual and moral frames of reference, this is correct.

It's a definition, droopy.

[_EAllusion]

It's worth noting that Droopy is making a second argument partially hidden behind a wall of bad writing that is its own thing. He's arguing that the availability of abortion breeds a callousness towards human life that in turn predisposes people towards harming other, non-fetal, people. Therefore, it is in society's best interest to not allow this. This isn't a particulary common anti-abortion argument. It reminds me of animal rights activists' arguments that are along the same line. We should outlaw various harms to animals, not simply because animals themselves are deserving of rights, but because their mistreatment predisposes people to treat other people badly.

This argument can be addressed on its own terms. But this thread isn't an abortion debate. This line of discussion is a consequence of Brackite seemingly being oblivious to the idea that someone wouldn't consider a fetus - an embryo even - a person.