by nicolaou 58 Replies latest watchtower medical
Terry: Excellent and well put.....it's true: a vegetable seed is not the same as a developed and ripe vegetable any more than a joined egg and sperm at the moment of conception is the same as a fully developed human being. I'm amazed no one hadn't thought of explaining it like this before.
I'm going to give you a "G" on "Illustration Appropriate to Theme" and move you on to "Modulation" and Volume & Pausing.
Perfectly expressed Terry.
This is the logical flaw in the pro-life position, confusing "potential" with "actuality".....Classic example is the ludicrous argument that an "embryo" (which consists of a clump of stem cells) is somehow 'equivalent' to a fully formed, sentient and independent human being.....incredibly, this faulty logic led to the Bush doctrine banning most 'stem cell' research, potentially causing life-saving biological research into Parkinson's disease, Huntingtons, etc. from being performed by US research institutions.
Taking the "potential human life" argument to its logical conclusion, the pro-lifers should be staging "anti-masturbation" campaigns because every single sperm cell has the "potential" to develop into a fully formed human being once it is merged with an ovum......Perhaps that will be the next republican slogan....masturbation as a federal offense!! LOL
I wonder how many millions of babies are born on this planet, to helpless, manipulated women who are then abandoned by the "fathers"and left in abject poverty and hopelessness, raising a child in destitution, misery, poverty and hunger. How many of these children then grow up into criminals and other social deviants simply because they forced
into existence by careless adults who didnt want them in the first place?
This is an argument for abortion? How is a woman to know if the father of her children is going to abandon her? Should my mother have killed me after dear old dad left? I didn't grow up to be a criminal or social deviant--neither did my sister and brother!
Every sperm is sacred.
Every sperm is great.
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate.
Thanks alot RM, I can't get this out of my head.
Terry,
Excellent, excellent!
I was put in the position of making this decision at age 46. Until you are there, facing an unwanted pregnancy, you may not know what your TRUE feelings are on the abortion debate. I was sexually involved with an abusive therapist. I wasn't about to have his child. I took the plan B birth control pill as soon as I knew a problem existed and knew for a certain that if need be, I would go for an abortion.
I thankfully was spared this procedure. I was raised a Witness and I believe in CHOICE!
For all those who think it wrong....consider a God who asked parents to take their rebellious children outside of the camp and stone them! Consider a God who approves of shunning (considered DEAD). Consider a God who will "soon" wipeout six billion lives. Is this true respect for life? Not in my book!
The article is obviously designed to tug at the heartstrings, not to sate the intellect. As we all know, from conception it is determined whether a foetus has the potential to be male or female, what colour hair and eyes he/she can have and so on. The author then equates the blueprint for a person with the person itself. Rather than being viewed as something with the potential to become an affectionate, flower-picking blonde girl it is viewed as if that has already happened, and that what is being removed from the uterus is already a person with feelings and desires and an intellect. In the cold hard light of reality, the foetus is not a person. It doesn't want to play, stroke its mother's hair or gather flowers. It's not capable of thinking or of feeling. It may be some day, but not yet.
What really struck me is that after conception, the foetus has vastly less potential than the unfertilised ovum and the 300 million or so spermatazoa had. The zygote/blastocyst/foetus/embryo only has the potential to become one particular person or not, whereas the gametes can potentially become one of any of billions of different people or none at all. So if it's potential you want to measure, then perhaps every sperm is sacred - and every egg too. By using contraception, or masturbating, or abstaining, or even having sex, you are dooming untold millions of potential people to non-existence. That's a heavy burden to carry.
An infant is potentially many wonderful things (eventually) and at that same moment many monstrous things (eventually).
Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Sadaam, Ted Bundy were all cuddly infants once.
Had they been aborted can the world collectively say it would have been an awful loss?
Terry
Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Adolph Hitler, and Ariel Sharon. All of them conducted massacres of large numbers of innocent people - Stalin in the Gulags, Pol Pot after after year zero, Hitler in the death camps, Ariel Sharon his thousands in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila.
Why are the first three considered murderers throughout the world, while Ariel Sharon is known to be a mass murderer in the muslim world and considered a hero in the Yahwist Judeo-Christian world?
Because of the context. These people were not genetically predisposed to murder. They murdered in a situation, and if they had been aborted, other people would also have acted badly in whatever other situation would then have existed.
Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Adolph Hitler, and Ariel Sharon. All of them conducted massacres of large numbers of innocent people - Stalin in the Gulags, Pol Pot after after year zero, Hitler in the death camps, Ariel Sharon his thousands in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila.Why are the first three considered murderers throughout the world, while Ariel Sharon is known to be a mass murderer in the muslim world and considered a hero in the Yahwist Judeo-Christian world?
Because of the context. These people were not genetically predisposed to murder. They murdered in a situation, and if they had been aborted, other people would also have acted badly in whatever other situation would then have existed.
Let us go through this slowly and see where the error might lie.
First off, let us flip the coin over on the other side to give us a fresh perspective.
Let us take the positive side of things.
1.Was Mozart genetically predisposed to music? How about Bach? Or, would you assert they only composed (with enormous genius!) in the situtaion they were in while other people would have composed their music in a different situation?
2. Were the men who made up the First Continental Congress (in America) easily replaceable as great thinkers, leaders and crafters of one of mankind's greatest social documents? Or, could any mix of men in any era have acted as well in context?
Do you see what I am getting at?
Genius, leadership, creativity and far-sighted wisdom is the possession of what we often call "gifted" people. Without those special minds we have, instead, mediocrity. The results of creative genius are benefits to mankind such as great music, art, literature and model governance.
This is the postive side of the coin of the argument.
Just as men of great ability who do great things are specifically great in their own time and place; so too are men of evil inclination just as specifically endowed.
Let us flip the coin over, shall we?
Snakes act like snakes and spiders like spiders becase they ARE such. Humanity is composed of a great many individual traits which are inherent for good or bad.
None of us knows the eventual personhood of an unborn human. However, if their parents are predisposed genetically toward certain diseases or deformities of a physical nature we can reliably predict a certain expectation in the child.
Why do you imagine that does not apply to behavior?
If a family such as the BACH family can produce generations of musical genius just as the offspring of a superb stallion possess the qualities of the progenitor--why exempt the human?
Yours is an artificial argument. It is framed in terms of your social views and not in terms of nature itself.
Moreover, you skirt the issue of potential vs. actual.
In effect you are asserting there are no predispositions! Preposterous.
Parents take medical tests to be informed of just such eventualities as would produce profound retardation and physical deformities.
Essentially, you are arguing that ALL LIFE is equal. Not only is it wrong; but, it is wrong-headed. There are infants born with only a brainstem who will have no conscious life at all! Their unfortunate parents are faced with the decision of keeping that human vegetable viable or not.
Humanity is as good or evil, beneficial or harmful as the individuals which compose society. Nothing exists (even life) in a sterile vacuum of non-context.
Abortion is our topic here.
When we destroy a fetus (for whatever reason) it is as reasonable as our reasons themselves. There is no extra layer of profundity.
Why? Because it is tissue and not person. To be a person you must exist over a period of time with full opportunity (physical, mental and emotional) to develop personality, identity and function.
...in this context, makes me feel sick. A featus is not a burger, and it`s not a "germ settling in to make you really sick". If that`s a persons view of a featus, they should immediately go and get sterilized.
Anything that begins by asking you to turn your brain off should be treated accordingly.
I am all for abortion. After all isn't the morning after pill a form of abortion and where would so many of us be without that little safety net?
I see a foetus as somewhere between a burger and a steak - hows that?
And yes I have tried since I was 16 to get sterlised but the doctors keep thinking I'll come over all maternal - I'm thinking they could just be right. If I don't get successful by the time I'm say 48 maybe I'll think about creating slaves to look after me in my old age as so many do!
