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More on abortion part 4

Ok. Here we go again.

"The above is true only if you start with the postulate that life begins at conception. I (and I suspect Mr. Occam) find it far more reasonable to begin with no conclusion, observe the facts, and recognize that they support the idea that the newly-conceived unicellular embryo is not a human being."

--To reference Occam's razor is clever, but inaccurate. Again, I assume you never got to my blog posting on this because of the connection speed, but I DON'T DISAGREE WITH YOU on this... well, not entirely. Its not an issue of when life begins precisely because 50% of embryos DON'T implant. You are discussing whether or not the embryo is human or not, I say that that is not the issue. Because if you begin with no conclusion, observe the facts, and recognize that humans result from pregnancy. No other way has been found yet. It doesn't matter whether we "define" a single cell as human or not, because the outcome is either going to be determined by nature, or by the actions of the mother. In almost every case (as I show on my blog) an abortion is done for convenience to the mother.

"Here you are granting yourself the gift of prophecy in order to justify your pre-formed conclusions. Certainly a woman who takes a morning-after pill has roughly an even chance of changing nothing. And a woman who terminates a pregnancy after 2-3 months may be simply avoiding a miscarriage."

-- You are right. An embryo may fail to implant. A fetus may miscarry. MAY. But if the woman chooses the actions of abortion, the outcome is CERTAIN. How is justifying it on possibilities any less than granting yourself the gift of prophecy? That doesn't change the fact that most abortions that are done would have otherwise resulted in a pregnancy. I didn't reference the morning after pill, but keeping the first issue in mind, the principle still applies. Again, simply because some pregnancies end naturally is no reason to cause others to end purposefully. Again, its not about when life begins.

"I find it telling that, in attempting to refute my assessment of how our society regards a miscarried and dead fetus of three, four or six months gestation, you can speak only of how we treat a distinctly different population, namely those babies who have already been born into the world (albeit prematurely) alive. Our efforts to saving living new-borns are at best only peripherally related to our treatment of, and our attitudes towards, deceased, miscarried embryos. We obviously don't consider them to be deceased people, you've done nothing to show otherwise."

-- Hmm. Where to begin with this one? Despite the fact that six month gestated babies can be viable, you say that our efforts at newborns are only distantly related. This is actually at the core of your assertion when you try to define a moment of conversion from not-human to human. We save those preemies that we are able. Simply because we lack the technology to save all of them or earlier fetuses does not mean that we don't consider the earlier ones people or not, it means we lack the technology. This is why I originally asked you if we had technology to allow fetuses to live at any point in the 2nd trimester if abortion would still be acceptable. What about at any point in the first trimester? Again, its not about when life begins, its about our society's reverence on life, and whether or not the child would live if the mother did not make a certain choice.

"Yet again, you give lip service to the idea that a miscarriage is the tragic death of a human being, but when it would inconvenience us to actually live our lives in consistency with that view of reality and mourn as we would mourn the death of a young child, and have a funeral, and have a burial, most of us (and I include most adherents to the anti-abortion position) don't. Mostly it's only when condemning a womans choice to terminate her pregnancy that this latter group bestirs themselves. THAT, you regard as a tragedy, because it's easy to do so and requires no effort."

--What? I really don't get what you were asserting, but here is what my response to what I think you said was. It is morally inconsistent of us to view abortion as a tragedy and not mourn all miscarriages as we would a young child's death. Is that right? I don't see a connection here, because the amount that we mourn is related to our emotional distance of the death. One will mourn their own child's death much more than hearing a story of another child's death in another state, even though that second death may be more "tragic." The level of mourning is not a measurement of the morality of an action. I for one, do consider miscarriage as a tragedy. Am I morally inconsistent?

"I don't see how you can take this stance, unless you are already convinced that life begins at conception, or the concept of enforcing tyranny over a woman's body has so little meaning to you that you are willing to simply postulate that humanity begins at the instant of conception for neatness' sake. And your final sentence encapsulates the illogic of this position. A 'potential' is a particularly meaningless kind of 'result'."
-- This was addressed fully in my blog post, I'm not going to repeat it all here. But I discussed whether or not it is an issue of tyranny over the woman's own body, as well as showing that it isn't about when life begins. A potential is a meaningless kind of result? Lets say you hear of a crime that will be committed. I don't know, say, you are hanging out at the ATM of a bank and you overhear two people planning on running inside and robbing the bank. Should you call the police? Or walk away? Our criminal justice system prosecutes those who walk away as aiders of crime, yet it was only your inaction that let a 'potential' crime happen, since you learned about it before the action occurred. Likewise, barring any actions by pro-'choice' women, millions of babies would be born. Potentials are indeed very meaningful kinds of results, especially when applied to the unborn. Why else do you think it is such an emotional issue?

"I'm perfectly free to ignore Ms. Crouse's article if I so choose. I was moved to respond to your comment, not her original article. In any case, see my response to "JFP" above, which does address Ms. Crouse's concerns."
--Actually, your response to JFP was not a refutation of Crouse's contention. You dance around the issue because addressing the contention she points out would require that you either state abortion is wrong or that sex selective abortion is acceptable. As usual, you ignore the meat of the issue to discuss nuances in how some people will misuse or mis apply certain aspects while ignoring the root principle. "JFP, does the UN explicitly endorse sex-selected abortion? The UN supports many freedoms and basic human rights that can be done to extreme, mis-applied, and/or abused. I don't see this as a contradiction in policy.If people determine the sex of their fetus and choose to abort female ones, and do so early in the pregnancy, them while I don't think it's murder i do think it's a bad, foolish, short-sighted idea. And I truly doubt that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, this is the choice of the pregnant mother herself."
I'll reduce it to a single question for you: If the unborn aren't humans, how can sex selective abortions be "violence against women?"

Indeed, we may go around and around on this one, I doubt I'll change your mind on anything. Such is the nature of the abortion debate. But since nearly every argument you give is based on an assertion about defining an embryo as a human or not, I'll wait to see how you respond to my blog article before posting here further, because that was indeed the whole point of my article. To discuss this point when you haven't read my article is kind of like driving in deep snow. Your tires can spin real fast, but you have no idea if you are getting anywhere...