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Hi Mike,
Thank you for challenging me. I brought this to the top.
It is said that the truth will make you free. I found some more data. I am not trying to restrict your perspective, I think the following may show a broader view that you might not have come across!
Hope you are O.K. about my revealing this data:
website:
http://webpages.charter.net/jspeyrer/babies.htm
A quote:
"Oddly enough, audible crying begins long before birth at 40 weeks, the earliest recorded cries from aborted fetuses dating from 21, 22, and 23 weeks (Humphrey, 1978). This means that a baby is capable of crying about half the time it is in the womb. Cries have been heard coming from inside the womb. This condition, vagitus uterinus (literally, "squalling in the womb"), is rare but well-authenticated. Stories about such squalling have been passed down from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome."
website:
http://www.peopleforlife.org/pictures.html
amazing pictures there!
website:
http://www.priestsforlife.org/diary.html
Amazing pictures here!
Quote from website:
"We encourage pro-life groups and individuals to use these images, keeping in mind the words that pollster Harrison Hickman spoke to the 1989 conference of the National Abortion Rights Action League, "Nothing has been as damaging to our cause as the advances in technology which have allowed pictures of the developing fetus, because people now talk about that fetus in much different terms than they did fifteen years ago. They talk about it as a human being, which is not something that I have an easy answer how to cure."
"
also website:
http://www.priestsforlife.org/ultrasound.html
Quoting your post:
"and don't assume I would not discuss the topic
with an opposing view. But you didn't answer the hard questions."
I reckon you didn't answer many good arguments I put up! Please, give the web reference to these hard questions!
Good to be challenged; you're pretty good at exposing the issues that might be overlooked! Don't give up!
I thought I answered a lot of them.
Quote:
"Longer-term questions :
Do you believe that the only way to be loyal to humankind is to hold that only humans have rights and no other creature has any where near the same level of legal protection."
I didn't address the issue of other creatures.
I think it is a good idea to not be cruel to other creatures; and a good idea to recall all one's past and discover what is the real blueprint written within us for "being human".
M: "You seem to value the legal rights of a four-cell human being over the legal rights of an adult humpback whale or dolphin or elephant whose brains contain a lifetime of memories and are hundreds of times larger than the human fetus..."
Yes. Good issue to bring up.
M: "Can we say your valuation of those rights is because of scientific merit, or is it due to your religious beliefs?"
It is due to:
what I recall
what I've read or heard
science
logic
note: information is not complete from current perspective
M: "If we have evidence that another life form on Earth is highly intelligent and friendly to us, should we work as hard to save it from being killed as you work to make sure no human embryo or fetus is killed"
I do not think you can make those comparisons. Two wrongs do not make a right.
M: "I do not create a slippery slope
with my valuations. Where we draw the line
has a fence and a locked gate."
I do not think that is reflected in society.
M: "If you draw the line without strong regard to scientific merit, it seems less defensible on
spiritual grounds too...and I am in accord with you on certain absolutes of the law regarding
refraining from harming...but we live in a natural setting with hard realities pressing us."
One of those realities is: the shocking scandal of the apparant failure of humans to recall their own personal history, to know what "mankind is" from within. With such a gap in information; conclusions drawn may be erroneous.
The websites I gave indicate some scientific merit is present; as I explained also re: the circumcision documentary.
M: "I think abortion is a poor way to regulate our birth rate for many reasons, including the surgical risk to the mother and the potential for sadness. But that does not move me to forbid all
women who might do so. For the reasons above and in respect of your arguments, the action does not constitute a killing."
"Killing" is a matter of physics. It is always a "killing", whether you squash a bug or kill a human. The question at issue is WHO is being killed? Or how can you claim a line that turns "what" into "who"? There seems to be no evidence given by you so far that withstands scrutiny.
M: " And there is one more reason why spiritually, there seems less than adequate evidence that "soul" is harmed. The fetus has not made an ethical decision as far as we know, ever."
Arguing from ignorance is a well-known fallacy. You do not appear to have sufficient information to make such a claim.
M: "We have reason to believe it could not."
What reason? I disagree.
M: "We are strongly extending a line to extend to several months before birth when we say a human in the womb does have legal rights to protection."
Some people argued that the line of "human" should not be extended to cover dark-skinned races, didn't they?
M: "But we have not agreed to extend that to conception." Who is "we"? I understand in "Roe versus Wade"; the person at the center of that now opposes abortion.
M: "To have acquired the rights of an American child several months before birth is better than the rights of a vast number of full-grown adults in many centuries under the rule of many governments, including Christendom."
That is true it appears. But your argument appears to imply use of a non-sequitur.
10-year old children in the U.S. may well have more rights than adults accused of witchcraft or of heresy by the medieval Church. This does not lead anywhere. It does not follow that 10-year olds should lose their rights.
Thank you for your challenges!
Regards,
Alan
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