>> ^jwray:
Life doesn't start at conception, it's a continuous process that started 3 billion years ago. Only sentient life forms have the moral status of persons. A fertilized egg is not sentient.


Okay, finally a defined point at which life begins! I believe science puts sentience at about 6 months after conception. If you want to say life begins when the embryo can feel pain, I say, well, at least you put life somewhere. But you must realize that the consequence of that logic means that the babies who are born before this (up to a month) and live are not human until some time later. In that case, it would be okay for the mother to change her mind at any time during that month and flush the thing.

Science is exactly where it needs to be in terms of determining what is life and what is not. This argument that life begins at conception begs the question "why?" Theists believe conception is the moment "God" gives you a child... That's kind of gross to think that god is listening to you have sex.

When does this belief in start of life end? Some could argue life begins in the male gonads and the female gonads separately. Therefore, I could believe everytime I masturbate I kill millions of little blankfists. Civilization would most likely thank me for that.

>> ^Kagenin:
Only a monster would force a woman to carry the child of the man who raped them to term.


Why must pro-lifers and pro-choicers throw superlatives at each other all of the time? A monster! HA! Let's think about this. I appreciate that pro-choicers are making a sincere attempt at what they believe to be compassion by giving women the option to abort. Pro-lifers are making an equally sincere attempt at morality. Palin may be a pitiful excuse for a vice-presidential candidate, (no, let me rephrase that) a disastrous embarrassment to the Republican party, but she's not a monster, and neither am I.

>> ^chilaxe:
>> ^SDGundamX:

Could you enlighten the rest of us as to when life starts since you seem so sure it doesn't begin at conception?

>> ^volumptuous:
Saying that a 50-cell blastocyst that has 0 nerve cells (i.e. 0 feeling) possesses human qualities seems to clearly violate Occam's Razor.
If you have an alternative hypothesis, the modern intellectual community would like to hear it.

I thought SDGundamX's question was a very good one, but in essence your response was, "Let me answer your question with another question." You called for an "alternative hypothesis." Alternative to what, exactly? None of you pro-choicers (with the very dubious exception of Spoco) have offered an explanation of when life begins.

Then let me offer my opinion on the subject. Philosophically speaking, if you believe in human life as a concept in and of itself, there MUST be a SET point at which a fertilized egg ceases to be "life" and is suddenly given the sacred status of "human life." It is not philosophically sound to argue that human life begins at some point between 24 and 26 weeks of pregnancy. Human life is not defined by dependency on environment nor on physical or mental capabilities. (A human infant holds the sacred title of "human life," but it has less intellectual capacity and is less capable of independent survival than a border collie.) Infants and fetuses are just as dependent on their environment as zygotes. They are simply in a later stage of human development. A human being cannot be instantly endowed with all of the capabilities of an adult, and there must be a starting point. I'm really sorry that the ovum doesn't instantly take on a little miniature human form when it is fertilized. Then maybe people would think of it as a thing with all of the necessary equipment for becoming an adult human being?

Where is the logic of those who believe in 13-week abortions but not 22-week abortions? I see no difference but time. If you take a child out of the mother at 22 weeks, it cannot survive on it's own. It's gonna need a heck of a lot of help. Ah, but it is human life, is it not? It is no longer all wet and icky and attached to an umbilical cord and TAH DAH! it isn't dead! LIFE! Oh, goody. Now we know when human life begins.

Considering that the Morning After Pill does not actually "kill" an embryo, it's hard to make a case against it as post-coital contraceptive regardless of when you think life begins.

>> ^volumptuous:
Here we go again... "life begins at conception" bullshit.
Uggh, hurry the fuck UP Nov 5th!!!


Could you enlighten the rest of us as to when life starts since you seem so sure it doesn't begin at conception?

Here we go again... "life begins at conception" bullshit.

Uggh, hurry the fuck UP Nov 5th!!!

Causation cannot be linked directly to one source (as a general principle), but I don't think that's what this guy was trying to support.

I haven't read his work, so I can't judge directly, but I can imagine that his idea of religion in a society was that of fundamentalist morality guided by the hand of something superhuman, set apart from human intervention.

He is not chastising various forms of Christianity or Islam or Shintoism, but rather the idea that our laws are based upon religious dogma rather than intelligent discourse.

In a society that prefers the laws of God, the laws will not be ratified by intelligent and rational theists, but by the lowest common denominators--the fundamentalists. The reason for this is simple. Rational, intelligent people, regardless of their religious affiliation, will only support a morality based on human ideas of the social contract. As in, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." is not a religious idea, but a human idea. Atheists don't want to be murdered or raped or have their items stolen, either. It's just a simple idea of humanity.

The line is drawn when fundamentalists start nitpicking and defining when life begins and when it ends. Then you have laws against abortion, even in cases of incest or rape, because it's "murder." And you have laws against assisted suicide, because only God can decide when your life ends. This is when God's law takes precedence over any human debate.

I think his study finds that there are more cases of crime in a society where fundamentalism has shifted the discourse from human laws to dogmatic Godly laws, where everything is black and white. And in a viable society, no law can be black and white, because that disallows debate over methodology and punishment options.

>> ^gorillaman:
>> ^Doc_M:
Again I say, I've never met an adopted person who regrets life and I've known several. And, if they did, they have the choice of ending their lives when they see fit. No one has ever been able to argue against this point to me. No one.
Wow, that's annoying because I remember slapping you down on that bullshit some time ago and I bet I'm not the only one. I've never met anyone who wishes their parents used contraception, therefore contraception should be illegal?
At the time abortion or contraception is used, the subject does not yet have any rights. They may develop them in time, but that potential is not the same as possession.


Gorilla, With contraception, no life was formed, with abortion, a child was formed and killed, a child that could have lived was denied its choices and its rights as a human. We simply disagree when life starts. No need to get smarmy about it.

For I'mstellar:
There is a definitive difference between pure liberty and American liberty. The USA offers limited liberty. It says, you can do what you want unless you violate someone else's rights. If you kill another person, you have violated their rights. If a conceived child is a person, abortion violates their rights and is not comparable to the child-baring conditional pain. The bottom line in all these abortion arguments is exactly what Gorilla is arguing, when does life begin. Bible believing Christians think conception. Many others think birth, Gorillaman and his cohorts think later than that. If we can't agree on it, we will never agree on when a person gains rights as a person. It becomes (has become) an academic discussion.

Life begins at ejaculation.

>> ^thinker247:
Sea that? God did it. Sea that? God did that, too. Sea that over there? God, again.
>> ^NetRunner:
What's the "sea theory"?


I think dear old Butch was refering to life beginning in the sea and evolving into land beasties. Your "sea theory" does fit with his actual interpretation though

>> ^Zonbie:
wow, what a douche. I have always wondered why some government officals like the idea of telling women what they can and cannot do with their own bodies...


Because it's not just her body. If you were arguing what women can and cannot do with their own lives, that's different. That's the inherent argument... when life begins. But there's no arguing that's a body inside her. A body with lungs and a heart and brainwaves. If you don't want to call it a life, that's your prerogative. But it's not her body.

In Denmark we have a relatively low threshold for abortion, 12 weeks after conception is the cut. This is before the fetus is very well developed and satisfies my desire for personal choice. When people say that life begins at conception, they need to remember that for the first few weeks "life" is still a round little ball of cells; it's not a tiny person.

It is not baby-murder.

Uhh, I blazed through the thread to make my off-the-cuff remark, that I missed this:

>> ^LittleRed:
>> ^BillOreilly:
If it was such a "tough" decision to have an abortion, the woman wouldn't have gotten pregnant in the first place to force her to make said decision. It seems that keeping their pants on is the real decision women have to make, eh?

Yes and no. Of course girls have to be responsible for their actions, just like the rest of us, and not see abortion as a trivial matter. You should not, however, punish those, who might actually want and/or need an abortion. If there are changes in personal life, a spousal death or whatever, then, within a reasonable limit, people should be able to abort their pregnancy. Guys do have a role to play too, however little..

The crux of the debate comes in littlered's response below:

I agree. I am not speaking for anyone but myself when I say I am pro-life. I believe life starts at conception. Once the cells start dividing, life is being formed. I have a friend who got pregnant while using the NuvaRing and condoms. There is no guarantee that birth control will work.

"Life begins at conception". I think this is wrong and it is what plagues the abortion issue. Sam Harris sums it up better than I can here.

As for women that don't get abortions casually, I have another friend who was 19, no longer in school, and therefore unable to be covered by her mother's insurance. She was all out of b/c pills and refused to use condoms. She lived with her boyfriend and was a self-proclaimed sex addict. She made it clear to everyone that she was not doing anything to prevent a pregnancy, but that she would most certainly terminate it if she were to get pregnant. So to all of you who disagree with Bill O, it's definitely not as uncommon as you'd like to think.

Uhm, don't hate me for being blunt (and a dick, and all), but she's a whore... She is being willfully irresponsible, which is A Bad Thing (tm). This is not what pro-choice is about. People like her are destroying it for the rest of us, by playing into the hands of the anti-choice/pro-life bunch.


I do find it interesting that someone that professes to be a high-esteemed and very involved member of a Christian church is pro-choice in situations other than rape or health issues.

This is a tough spot to go to, because if you actually have to FOLLOW the bible, just because you are a "very involved member of a Christian church" there are many, many other bad things you have to agree with, such as slavery, stoning and rape. I wonder why esteemed members of the church don't go so much for that these days either.

I can also guarantee you that no one I know would go to a pastor for counseling before an abortion. How exactly would that go? "Hi Pastor. So I've been thinking about getting an abortion. What do you think?"

Heh, this would be an interesting counseling session. I'm not sure your guarantee holds up to reality, though, because if you are very religious a pastor is indeed someone to go for guidence, like a third parent, and young people do fuck up, even if they are religious. On this last issue, I only have observational data though*, in that no one near me has ever been in the situation or looked up to a pastor in any way.

*(fancy way of saying that I'm talking out of my ass )

I'd call what Obama's answers thoughtful too. Look at the answers each gave to "what should we do about evil?"

Obama gave a pretty lengthy answer, talking about the need to confront it, while being wary of the dangers of committing evil in the pursuit of stopping it.

McCain just said "defeat it", which frankly scares me, and should invalidate him from even potentially winding up with nuclear launch codes.

As for the abortion comments, Obama made it clear that he was pro-Choice, just not in the clip you decided to post. He also made the point that perhaps banning abortions isn't the best way to prevent them, and said that part of the new Democratic party platform will include efforts to reduce the number of abortions through assistance and education -- that's the part you'd call Marxism (and I would call Christian), by the way.

The only way you could interpret his answer as a dodge is if you think he should state his position in the most offensive way possible (like "I'm pro-abortion" or "life doesn't begin at conception, moron"), and shouldn't try to find common ground with people who he knows don't agree with him on the fundamental question of when life begins.

I agree though, McCain did better than his average in this (and Obama worse than his average). I think the Republican platform is designed to make evangelicals happy, and that helped McCain here. Democrats try to be more secular, and so had more explainin' to do. The crowd definitely cheered more for McCain, but I felt the applause came from the answers I liked least; one-word or one-phrase answers to questions that I felt deserved more thought.

When I was watching the Obama half of the forum, I was actually predicting that McCain would be giving one-word, and one-phrase answers to many of the questions (and was going to get applause for the simplicity, too). It's one of the big divides I see between the two -- Obama sees nuance and shades of gray in most situations, while McCain sees black and white. I'm big on shades of gray, myself, and I worry about getting another President who tries to simplify things the way Bush and McCain do.

Setting aside the misleading title, tags, and description, you could have posted a video with the full answer he gave some 20 seconds after this clip ends.

As for "not having an opinion" he gave one: which was that we don't know when life begins, only God does.

You can disagree with that (and he does discuss that in his full answer), but you can't call that part of his answer a dodge, just humility.

He goes on to talk about reducing abortions through providing greater education and assistance to the people who're likely to wind up with an unwanted pregnancy...but I'm sure that's just Christian Marxist craziness to you. Probably something he got from his "crazy" pastor about helping the least of us.