Politics: A new beginning

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
You remind me of my Dad, old man, running about during a decade of my youth gleefully quoting Bill Cosby many times each week: "I brought you into this world, I'll take you out!"

I'm guessing I'd like him.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
[non-sequiters about STDs to avoid the issue under discussion]

I don't advocate that there be negative consequences of sex, but I can do nothing about the biological reality that sex has consequences and one of them is that it can create another human life who had no say in the matter of being created.

[Bad_Rich_Chic]

Originally posted by Not Me
You have obviously never heard of ECMO. No lungs required.
Apparently you have never heard of a lung transplant or cardiac bypass surgery, either, which use the same extracorporeal oxygenation systems intra-operatively.

I've heard of it, but I admit I've yet to hear of a set of lungs being sucessfully transplanted from a donorcycle accident victim into a 1 1/4 pound fetus, or of anyone, fetus or not, being kept alive on lung bypass for 3-4 months. If anything had been invented that could keep fetuses alive before 24 weeks or so, I'd probably have heard of it (and we'll leave out the severe debility common in most of those that do survive from that early). My impression is that this stuff just doesn't work on something that hasn't developed the ability to abosorb its own oxygen yet. You've pretty much got to work through the placenta until then.

Now, build me a surrogate womb and we're in business. I'm sure that, eventually, it will happen, though I doubt I'll live to see it.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Not Me
I don't advocate that there be negative consequences of sex, but I can do nothing about the biological reality that sex has consequences and one of them is that it can create another human life who had no say in the matter of being created.

It's times like this that I look back at my archive of posts in which Plated chastized me for "wasting my time" posting on matters relating to religion, especially the ones where he tells me I'm giving religion too much dignity by continuing to study it and care about it.

Which is good, because the only other time I laugh at Plated's posts is when I'm responding to them.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
You know, maybe I've been scrolling too much, but I've yet to hear an articulation of why a fetus is deserving of protection.

Ask yourself why you yourself deserve protection from being killed and I think you should arrive at your answer. Unless, of course, you don't think a fetus is a human being. If you don't, then I ask you, why are you a human being deserving of protection but a fetus isn't? What makes you different?

If it is because you do not have to be connected to another person to be alive, what about conjoined twins that medically cannot be separated from each other and survive? Are they not human beings? Don't they need a PARTICULAR person to survive?

Does merely being outside of the womb make someone a human being? And if so, does that mean that the moment before the head comes out, the baby is not a human being and it is magically transformed into a human being somehow in the second at which it's head leaves the womb? If so, please explain further.

And if it is viability, the timing of which varies from person to person, doesn't that mean that there should be some sort of test to determine viability for the INDIVIDUAL ?

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
If anything had been invented that could keep fetuses alive before 24 weeks or so, I'd probably have heard of it (and we'll leave out the severe debility common in most of those that do survive from that early). My impression is that this stuff just doesn't work on something that hasn't developed the ability to abosorb its own oxygen yet. You've pretty much got to work through the placenta until then.

I don't know what you mean when you say "developed the ability to absorb its own oxygen yet." From conception on the cells need oxygen to survive and they absorb it. If you mean the lungs absorbing oxygen, well, you can keep a fetus alive on ECMO without it's having lungs that can absorb oxygen. Just like you can keep an adult alive without lungs that can absorb oxygen when you have removed their lungs during a transplant.

But the only reason we were even discussing this was because people were saying that the justification for abortion is that a fetus is not a human being and I was asking them to define what makes someone a human being. They were defining it in terms of viability. If you define whether a fetus is a human being by whether it can survive outside the womb, that defines what makes someone human by medical technological advances. I don't think the state of medical science is what makes someone a human or not.

Regarding what you will and will not live to see, currently, you can take tissue out of a human fetus or even an embryo and transplant it into a mouse and it will grow into a functional organ.
Xenografted human whole embryonic and fetal entoblastic organs develop and become functional adult-like micro-organs.

How long before you can take the whole fetus and tranplant it into another uterus? I don't know, but I am betting it will be in my lifetime.


But that isn't the issue to discuss. The issue to discuss is how do we define at what point the mother's rights outweigh the fetus' rights and what is the basis for this conclusion.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Not Me
But the only reason we were even discussing this was because people were saying that the justification for abortion is that a fetus is not a human being and I was asking them to define what makes someone a human being.

Translation: The only reasons we were even discussing this are that (a) I keep insisting that other people were saying that the justification for abortion is that a fetus is not a human being, even though no one here is saying that, and (b) I like the sound of my own voice, so I like to post long rants and read them aloud to myself.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
If anything had been invented that could keep fetuses alive before 24 weeks or so, I'd probably have heard of it (and we'll leave out the severe debility common in most of those that do survive from that early).

Regardless of whether you have heard of it or not, there are infants as young as 22 weeks that have survived. In terms of birth weight, infants below 500 grms (about 1 pound) have survived.

What is your point about premies having severe disabilities? Is it somehow a justification for abortion or were you just throwing that out there for no reason. Many full term infants have severe disabilities, too. Whether to withhold medical treatment isn't dependant on the gestational age. It is dependant on the prognosis for survival and morbidity. Some adults should be allowed to die, too.

New developments occur everyday and the limits of viability are being pushed lower with each advance. Since the development of ECMO and the use antenatal steroids to mature lung function and the use of nitric oxide to prevent oxygen toxicity, the morbidity is far less than you seem to be implying. For ECMO, the incidence of neurodevelopmental disorders is 15-20%, which is far lower than you seem to be implying.

Regardless, whether an "entity" (not my words) is a human being or not does not depend on external factors like technology. Whether an entity is a human being or not is intrinsic to the entity itself.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Not Me
Regardless, whether an "entity" (not my words) is a human being or not does not depend on external factors like technology. That is intrinsic to the entity itself.

Cannot reasonable people can differ about whether cyborgs are human?



Look, she's as sexy as Dan Rather, eh?

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Translation: The only reasons we were even discussing this are that (a) I keep insisting that other people were saying that the justification for abortion is that a fetus is not a human being, even though no one here is saying that, and (b) I like the sound of my own voice, so I like to post long rants and read them aloud to myself.

Mmmm Burger was saying that a fetus isn't a human. You can read all about it here:

http://www.lawtalkers.com/forums/sho...4659#post64659

Where he said this:

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
I look at a fetus, and I say, no, not "human" but "fetus" or "blob" or "sac" or "cell mass" or something. (emphasis added)

And this:

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
Because if your point is "we must protect it like a human" then it seems to me that you bear the burden of extending those protections to something that clearly is not yet human, particularly in those early days--where your slope is most slippery. (emphasis added)

I kept trying to bring the debate back to what is the reasoning behind viability being the point at which the fetus' rights outweigh the mother's.

However, you were right on one point. I do like to read my posts aloud to myself. It makes me feel important.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Not Me
However, you were right on one point. I do like to read my posts aloud to myself. It makes me feel important.

At least I was batting .500.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Cannot reasonable people can differ about whether cyborgs are human?

But if their conclusion regarding whether cyborgs are human is based on the reasoning because "I know one when I see one," are they reasonable people to begin with? I ask you.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Hypothesize a muddy hillslide in the rain, a slippery slope if you will. A newly conceived fetus -- smaller than one of your marshmallows! -- is at the top of the hillside, and it slips, and rolls, slowly, until it reaches the bottom, where it is a newborn little baby.

If that fetus were dependent on me, I'm comfortable that I would have many fewer qualms about aborting that fetus at the top of the hillside -- not no qualms, but fewer -- than I would about smothering the baby at the bottom, but what with the mud and rain and all, I have a very hard time deciding where on that hillside my mind would change.

and yet you speak with certainty of global warming.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
IMHO, maybe so. The balancing of interests involved certainly changes a lot. But one could also see permitting "abortions" in the first few days, on the theory that a just-conceived embryo really isn't sufficiently like a person to warrant protection.

similar to the rationale you long time posters use to smother newbies like me or NWN or Not Me; we're really not fully formed, so kill us; its ok. Cheers!

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
And at what point do we decide not to impose "our" judgment and to let others decide.

That would be up until the point at which the fetus' rights outweigh the mother's. You cannot really define the point at which this occurs, but you will know it when you see it. See how much better that is than anyone imposing their judgment on others?

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
I generally believe that there should be more restrictive provisions, and that the balance has been struck too late. And then the debate starts, and I find the choice of more restrictive but not aboslute is not going to be permitted.

That is exactly how our abortion laws are evolving. What is happening on the abortion front is that more and more people are being persuaded that unrestricted abortion is not a good thing. The pro-lifers will never achieve their goal of a complete prohibition on abortion in all 50 states. Probably only in 1 state at the most. But it will be more regulated.