On the abortion topic

[Cataclysm]

I'm basically arguing over abortion with someone on youube, who believes that human life shouldn't be taken away. He says that sentience of the embryo shouldn't matter, since animals are also sentient and we kill them all the time.

Here's his latest quote:

My point is that it's impossible to pinpoint a precise time that "sentience" is obtained. Therefore relying on such a qualifier is extremely faulty. And why should sentience be a qualifier for being human, anyway? Dogs are sentient, yet are considered property and have few rights under the law. Sapience, what many people mistake as sentience, isn't even obtained by babies until around the 18 month point after birth. Perhaps infanticide is okay too (many people think so).

I would like to know what you think.

[VirtualStranger]

> Arguing on YouTube.

Well there's your problem.

[Sylvana]

Sapience, what many people mistake as sentience, isn't even obtained by babies until around the 18 month point after birth. Perhaps infanticide is okay too (many people think so).

That's my personal opinion, but I try and be more humane than that.
I prefer a different philosophy, sentience, sapience, feeling pain, all don't matter. All life is important. However, difficult times call for difficult decisions, that is why we kill animals and why sometimes we kill other humans, the unborn included.

[TigerHunter]

The fact that we cannot establish a single point at which sentience is achieved is irrelevant. There's no definitive point at which water stops being cold and starts being hot, but we can definitively say that water at 0 C is cold and water at 100 C is hot. And fetuses are definitely no sentient. For most of pregnancy,  the fetus is more on the level of a mouse than a human in terms of brain activity. While I do somewhat disapprove of killing mice just to get them out of your attic, I don't see any problem in killing a mouse that's leeching off a human being like a parasite.

Also, share this story with him:

My husband Alan and I found out that I was pregnant in late April of 2009. This was a complete accident. Due to the fact that we were both Tay-Sachs carriers, we were going to have a child via IVF. But what was done was done. I scheduled an appointment for a Chorionic Villus Sampling (CVS) for as early as possible (10 weeks). Words cannot describe how relieved we were when the doctor told us that our child was fine.

My pregnancy was an easy one. No complications, plenty of happiness. My husband, my in-laws, my daughter Sophia (from a previous relationship), and the rest of my friends and family were overjoyed. My parents had passed away years before that, but I know they would have been happy too.

I gave birth to my son Elijah on January 15th, 2010. Everything was perfect until Elijah was six months old. He wasn’t reaching the developmental milestones he should have been. My husband became concerned. His brother died at the age of four from Tay-Sachs. Alan remembered watching the disease progress. He said that this watching Elijah was like “deja vu”. I didn’t think much of it, but I figured it was better to err on the side of caution. I made an appointment with an opthamologist to look at Elijah’s eyes, which is a way of diagnosing Tay-Sachs.

My world came crashing down around me when the opthamologist told me that Elijah had “cherry-red spots” in the back of his eyes. That meant that the doctor was wrong. My son did have Tay-Sachs. Furious, I went back to the first doctor and told him what I had found out. I know he was pro-life, and I’m pretty sure he lied to me so I didn’t have an abortion. It’s also possible that he made a mistake. All I know is that he no longer can practice medicine and I recieved a lot of monetary compensation. However, it’s not worth it.

Alan had a lot of issues in his past. After the death of his brother, he started using drugs. He got into methamphetamines by the time he was 15. He got clean when he was 21. Upon hearing of Elijah’s illness, he began using again at the age of 30. I tried to get him help. I wanted to send him to rehab, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He purposely overdosed about a month after Elijah’s diagnosis. His suicide note read “Watching my baby brother die was too much. I can’t watch my son. I’m sorry.” My husband, the love of my life, is dead.

His in-laws are incredibly distraught. They had to bury both of their children, and now they’re going to have to help me bury their first and last biological grandchild. Their depression caused them to lose their jobs, which lead to them losing their house. They live in my house now, but I hardly see them. They only leave their room to eat.

My seven-year-old daughter is so confused. She knows what’s happening, but she wants to know why. I wish I could tell her, but I don’t even know myself. Every night, she holds Elijah in her arms and weeps. She begs him not to leave and tells him how much she loves him. She showers him with kisses and won’t let him go until I put her to bed. She was too depressed to be in school, so I have teachers coming to our house so she can be homeschooled. She’s in therapy three times per week. I’m doing everything I can for her, but it doesn’t seem like enough.

Elijah needs constant care, so I had to give up my job. At first I had a nurse taking care of him, but as his disease progressed, I kept having to leave work for emergency visits either at home or at the hospital. I have more than enough money to stay afloat, but what good is that when I’m home pretty much 24/7 watching my son slowly die.

This is the only time in my life that I’m glad my parents aren’t around. I don’t want them to see this. It’s too painful.

Elijah has is the worst of all. He’s blind, deaf, and paralyzed. He cannot eat, so he needs to be tube-fed. He has seizures every day and is severely brain damaged. He cannot laugh or smile. My baby boy has no quality of life. If I was made aware of his illness, I would have had an abortion. At only 12 weeks, he wouldn’t have felt a thing. Now pain is all he knows and feels. I expect him to pass away within the next few months.

So, pro-lifers, tell me, what good came out of Elijah being born? A few months of happiness? Guess what, it wasn’t worth it, especially not for Elijah. How can you justify me being forced to put him through this? The love of my life is dead, my in-laws will never see their family carried on, my daughter is being robbed of a happy childhood, my mental health is deteriorating every passing minute, and my son is in agony. All of this could have been prevented by an abortion, but my “doctor” manipulated me so I wouldn’t have one.

Don’t tell me that Elijah’s birth is a blessing or that this experience will make me stronger. Don’t tell me that fetuses can feel pain. Not at 12 weeks they can’t, and every credible medical professional agrees. And please, for the love of God, do NOT tell me how much you “care”. Usually, you only care about the fetus. Not the mother, not the family, just the fetus. But in my case, you don’t care about any of us, especially my son. You just want me to live MY life based on YOUR “moral” standards.

Many people would say “I hope you get pregnant with a terminally ill child!”, but I’m not going to say that. I hope you never fall pregnant with a child like mine, because you’d opt to put them through years of pain and misery, and only pain and misery.

[czechmate]

Since abortion is not even mentioned in the Bi(b)le, I wonder where the RCC and GOP get their argument from.
When they say "the Bible says......" they hope that no-one bothers to check it out.

[Eats Babies]

> Arguing on YouTube.

Well there's your problem.

This.

[Mechtaur]

Since abortion is not even mentioned in the Bi(b)le, I wonder where the RCC and GOP get their argument from.
When they say "the Bible says......" they hope that no-one bothers to check it out.

Considering at one point, God orders the Israelites to rip babies from their mother's womb, I'd hazard a guess to say that it might not be the pro-life side that God is on.

[Yla]

Also, share this story with him:

Good Grief!

Can you give a source for this? Not doubting it, but for a hypothetical pro-lifer "some dude said on some forum" won't be convincing.

[TigerHunter]

Also, share this story with him:

Good Grief!

Can you give a source for this? Not doubting it, but for a hypothetical pro-lifer "some dude said on some forum" won't be convincing.

I don't know if he'll accept "some dude said on tumblr" either, but here: http://prochoicetruth.tumblr.com/post/32312585554

Also, I don't think it matters whether or not it really happened. The very fact that it could happen is enough reason to keep abortion legal.

[m52nickerson]

I'm basically arguing over abortion with someone on youube, who believes that human life shouldn't be taken away. He says that sentience of the embryo shouldn't matter, since animals are also sentient and we kill them all the time.

Here's his latest quote:

My point is that it's impossible to pinpoint a precise time that "sentience" is obtained. Therefore relying on such a qualifier is extremely faulty. And why should sentience be a qualifier for being human, anyway? Dogs are sentient, yet are considered property and have few rights under the law. Sapience, what many people mistake as sentience, isn't even obtained by babies until around the 18 month point after birth. Perhaps infanticide is okay too (many people think so).

I would like to know what you think.

In this regard he is correct.  Arguing about being sentient in regards to abortion is not a good argument.   

[Rabbit of Caerbannog]

> Arguing on YouTube.

Well there's your problem.

Yup, you beat me to it.

[Stormwarden]

Abortion was mentioned, and God didn't seem to object. Numbers 31 is one example, in which pregnant women had their stomachs cut open and their newborns' heads dashed upon the rocks. That said, no one should have to go through what the woman in TigerHunter's post did.

I tend to consider pro-lifers as individuals, but the "pro-life" groups I don't negotiate with for all the same reasons I don't negotiate with terrorists.

[TigerHunter]

Ooh! Ooh! If we're talking about what the bibble says, be sure to bring up Numbers 5:12-28:

12 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him 13 so that another man has sexual relations with her, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act), 14 and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure— 15 then he is to take his wife to the priest. He must also take an offering of a tenth of an ephah[a] of barley flour on her behalf. He must not pour olive oil on it or put incense on it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a reminder-offering to draw attention to wrongdoing.

16 “‘The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the Lord. 17 Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water. 18 After the priest has had the woman stand before the Lord, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder-offering, the grain offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse. 19 Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has had sexual relations with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. 20 But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband”— 21 here the priest is to put the woman under this curse—“may the Lord cause you to become a curse among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. 22 May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.”

“‘Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it.”

23 “‘The priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water. 24 He shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering will enter her. 25 The priest is to take from her hands the grain offering for jealousy, wave it before the Lord and bring it to the altar. 26 The priest is then to take a handful of the grain offering as a memorial[c] offering and burn it on the altar; after that, he is to have the woman drink the water. 27 If she has made herself impure and been unfaithful to her husband, this will be the result: When she is made to drink the water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering, it will enter her, her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry, and she will become a curse. 28 If, however, the woman has not made herself impure, but is clean, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children.

There you have it, folks: God not only supports abortion, he'll do it for you!

(Make sure you link to the New International Version, the other versions don't specifically state that she'll miscarry.)

[kefkaownsall]

Fundie dont you know the KJB is the version spoken in the words of god.

[MrsYoungie]

Fundie dont you know the KJB is the version spoken in the words of god.

I believe that even the KJV separates people into "the quick and the dead".  The "quick" refering to quickening when in pregnancy the mother feels the baby move.  This is generally around 4 months along.  God doesn't seem too interested in saving the zygotes.