Funny
 

I'm not kidding. Viability is meaningless to me because it moves with science. A 7 month fetus "born" 50 years ago that was considered not viable, could be viable today after 4 months.

The Analysis From a Dissident Catholic Democrat
 

Or sign up for ROTC, but then don't show up.

Funny
 

Then what is relevant to you? How does science determine that a human embryo, which, if placed in the right conditions, will result in a live birth, is not human throughout its entire existence?

Dead Babies
 

Well then, I think you've settled the question for everyone. Now it's just a matter of balancing between 2 lives, rather than between a life and a non-life or maybe-life

Funny
 

Why is a date that moves with science meaningless?

(Boy, this is a familiar discussion - Oh, wait! I see, this is the same analysis that Atticus had a few posts ago - you are both succombing to the safety of easy answers and shying away from the hard questions).

Funny
 

See my response to Sidd. Why is a live birth and right conditions important?

Funny
 

To distinguish it from the cells in the hair I'm pulling out right now.

I still don't understand how it's a "scientific" question as to what a human fetus is. It has the DNA of a human. It will develop into a full-blown human. But it does not have certain characteristics, yet, that we would call human (e.g., sentience). Each of those things can be measured/confirmed by science. But what does that tell us that we don't know?

Funny
 

Because the implicit argument being made is that the "life" is has either not developed enough to be human or is not yet worth protecting simply because it cannot live on its own outside the womb.

As science improves, we see that the same "life" at the same stage of development can survive and is now worth protecting. It's at the same fucking stage of development but in one era its is permitted to be "killed."

Dead Babies
 

I never claimed to have a definition.

But to address the differences in your feelings about an early pregnancy miscarriage vs. a late pregnancy premature birth, I think the time and the tangible aspects of the pregnancy are the reason it seems different if you loose a baby early on than if you lose the baby later on in the pregnancy. If someone miscarries after only a few weeks of being pregnant, the pregnancy hasn't yet shown and the child is still rather intangible to you. You have this image of who the child is in your mind, but not much else. And when the miscarriage occurs early on, you didn't have much time to develop feelings for this child. I think that even seeing an ultrasound of the baby can have a tremendous psychological impact on parents simpley because it is something tangible that they can see. Same is true when the pregnancy starts to show.

However, I don't think that the point at which a parent develops strong feelings for an unborn child is relevant to what point a fetus' rights vest.

Dead Babies
 

Sure. I also make that balance when I decide to buy a steak for dinner. Or eat a peach.

Funny
 

Because ultimately Club's got to justify a party position that an embryo has protectable, overriding interests at the moment of fertilization, so he wants to take viability off the table by any means necessary?

Funny
 

I don't get your first point, but it's probably not important.

If I said that I thought science would tell us whether it's human, I misspoke. I've been pitching that at some point science will be able to tell us definitively when life begins, because many pro-choicers do not believe, as you correctly do, that life begins at conception.

All of that said, I still think it is a difficult issue, but it's one that I think should be done honestly in that I think the left should realize that we are balancing the rights of 2 lives, not 1.

Dead Babies
 

That's because you're pretending this decision will be made in law schools or on lawyer boards. In reality, the decision will be made under the same conditions that permit rational people to say it's immoral to shoot a healthy dog, but okay to slaughter a healthy cow. And the decision will be no more or less legitimate.

Funny
 

Aren't you just as uncomfortable as he is with unclear lines?

Funny
 

Fuck off. I haven't even been able to form my own position on the issue, why the fuck would I be trying to justify someone elses?