Posted on 07/23/2006 6:18:49 PM PDT by gridlock
Yeah, given the she's pretty much guaranteed to die on the table, but she's as close to dead as you can get. She can't think... she's not aware of her surroundings... and she won't feel any pain. Is scientific progress worth it?
Your first word says it all. "Imagine."
I've seen people argue *against* a strawman before. This is the first time I've ever seen anyone attempt to argue from a strawman.
Cheers!
You see the future clearly.
Remember Hillary!care? It would have been illegal for anybody to contract privately for medical care outside of the government program. Once the government steps in and takes over the medical industry, the private care option is going to go out the window.
I agree that once government gets control of the medical industry they will start rationing care based on age, quality-of-life, or other subjective criteria. For instance, in Great Britain it is almost impossible to get advanced care beyond a certain age unless you are designated as a "National Treasure". If you're a member of the hoi polloi, you're a goner, no matter how much money you have.
These days, the United States is the relief valve. People who need the care and are willing to pay for it come here from Canada, Great Britain, and all parts of the World. But if the United States goes the way of Canada, where will we go? Mexico?
Now I've worked hard all my life. I watch my weight, eat right and exercise. I've paid my taxes ever since I was a young pup, and I have diligently be socking away money in the bank. I fully intend to live into late codgertude, and be a nuisance to my Great-Grandchildren. I don't want some Hillary! wannabe telling me when I'm 72 that I can't have that gall bladder operation because that government money can be better spent on somebody young and productive, and no, I can't spend my own money either.
The government will always apply a utilitarian standard if they are granted power over who gets to live and who has to die. That is why we must make sure we do not even place one toe on that greased slope. This fight over ESCR is the edge, and we're standing here looking over it. I say we take a step back, toward reaffirming that government should never have that power.
How do you know? Don't you have some sense about how your parents might feel about such things?
All he knew was that his father put his young boys' survival above his own.
How do you know? You seriously want to claim that the author spent his entire childhood living with this man and "all he knew" about his father was this one little thing?
That's why I didn't think the article made a good argument against stem cell research.
Yet the author, who spent years living with his father, did. Why do you think the author wrote the article?
You're right, I don't know that the father wouldn't have preferred to drown if his survival meant that embryonic stem cells would be used for research rather than being discarded as medical waste.
There are other options. For example, the local fertility clinic also gives you the option of donating the child (excuse me -- "blastocyst") to another couple seeking to have children. Even then, the point you are skipping is that those opposed to embryonic stem cell research are also opposed to discarding embryos as "medical waste". So given the option, most people opposed to embryonic stem cell research wouldn't chose either experimentation or discarding them as medical waste. They'd choose "none of the above".
I think it would have been utterly selfish of him to make that sacrifice on behalf of his whole family, but that's just my opinion.
Would you support the importation of organs harvested from executed political prisoners in China, North Korea, and elsewhere to help improve the lives of Americans in need of organ transplants? Would you except the argument that the choice is between using the organs or letting them go to waste because, after all, those political prisoners are going to be executed, anyway? Or is the preferable option that they not be executed in the first place?
It's true that we can only speculate about the opinion of a man on embryonic stem cell research when he has never heard of it.
Anyway, what I got out of the article, and found interesting, was the author's observation that his father knew and feared the human desperation to survive, and to clutch at any hope, even if it endangered his own children. Personally I think the practice of embryonic stem cell research is not the only way we are exhibiting fear and desperation in the face of death that threatens to skew our perspective on health care.
You are, of course, getting the Reader's Digest version. But since you provided a detailed reply, I'll point out some of the implications of what I'm saying and what you are saying.
Do you really believe that all human life "should be protected regardless of it's [sic] capabilities"? Really? You know what Saddam is capable of. If his people give him the death penalty should we offer him asylum here in the US? Should Schwarzenegger have commuted Tookie Williams' sentence?
While I personally oppose the death penalty, that is irrelevant to this discussion. Killing a person for what they do is an entirely different argument than killing them for what they are. It is the difference between locking up a felon and enslaving a person because they are black. Unless you think it's impossible to oppose slavery without opposing the incarceration of criminals, then it should be easy enough to understand how one can oppose the killing of innocent individuals for medical research and have different feelings about the death penalty and the punishment of criminals.
I know that's not what you meant by "capabilities" but assuming you're for the death penalty you're acknowledging that not all life has equal value... that not all life is worth protecting.
A while ago, I found out that the best way to understand what someone is saying, when presented with a possibility that is silly and a possibility that makes sense, is to assume that they meant the interpretation that makes sense. Straw men are a lot of fun but if you want me spend some time carefully crafting a well qualified statement that you can't pick nits over instead of writing a rough casual summary of my position that you can pick apart down the spelling, I can oblige.
Or what if we find OBL but he's carrying a newborn everywhere he goes. If you attack, he promises to murder the little one. Do you charge in anyways? Most people here, I'd wager, would say absolutely. Sucks to be that baby... sucks to be the parent/sibling/third cousin twice removed of that baby... but that sacrifice would ultimately be worth the thousands of lives we'd potentially be saving by taking out the (insert your favorite expletive here).
Given a choice to kill OBL with a well aimed single shot or OBL and the baby with a spray of automatic fire because it's easier, which do you think most people would find preferable and why? I'm not even sure why we are discussing this point. Why not simply ask, "Do you ever think killing another human being can be justified?" Yes. Of course I do. But that's doesn't mean I think sacrificing human beings for medical research is a valid justification.
The decision becomes even easier if he's carrying around a test-tube with a 4-5 day old blastocyst that's about this big.
I think that depends on whose blastocyst (is that the talking-point word of the week?) he's carrying around and a whole lot of other factors that have less to do with reasoned morality and more to do with emotional response. It's also easier to kill a stranger than a friend, an innocent person with their back turned or a hood over their head than one looking you in the eye. What does that tell us? That the value of a person's life depends on how they are facing? Or does it tell us more about the mind of the person doing the killing?
Are we then caught in a "utilitarian haggle over the greater good"?
The "utilitarian haggle over the greater good" is not nearly as clean as you are painting it to be. Current research using MRI machines shows that moral decisions are made through a combination of cold utilitarian evaluation and emotional connection and empathy. If you remove either one, you get defective, unreasonable, unsustainable, and awful decisions.
Absolutely. Is it hard to digest? Yup. The realistic notion, though, that not all life is worth protecting at all costs is going to be present in the minds of those who approve of this type of research.
Replace the word "life" with "liberty" and "research" with "law enforcement". "The realistic notion, though, that not all liberty is worth protecting at all costs is going to be present in the minds of those who approve of this type of law enforcement. Can you see the slippery slope yet?
IMHO the key is to get people to re-evaluate the cost vs. the reward.
Imagine Grandma's dying. She's 105 and was starting to lose touch before the stroke last week. She's in a coma now and will be dead within 24 hours.
The key to understanding my point about capabilities being irrelevant is illustrated by the qualification in your example. We've got the same Grandma in the same situation, but this time two doctors approach you with two different plans for Grandma's future. The first doctor is the one from your example and wants to use Grandma for experimentation and then let her die a day later. The second doctor offers you a treatment that can restore the damage done by the stroke, end the coma, and give her another 5 to 10 years of life. Which treatment plan do you choose and why? Same Grandma. Same current capabilities. Same reward. If you want to look at it as the cost changing, that's fine, but it's the cost of destroying blastocysts (either to dispose of them or experiment on them) that opponents of stem-cell research don't like. It is like being told "We can kill Granny now or cut off her limbs for medical research, which do you prefer?" while knowing that there is an option that gives Granny many more productive years to her life.
With a lot of luck this could save... or at least significantly improve... many, many lives somewhere down the road. Somewhere... twenty years or more down the road... and maybe never.
Every healthy adult, if cut up into healthy organs like a car in a chop-shop, could improve the lives for dozens of other sick adults who need organ transplants. Should we run a lottery and grab random healthy adults and sacrifice them for the greater good? If not, why not?
Yeah, given the she's pretty much guaranteed to die on the table, but she's as close to dead as you can get. She can't think... she's not aware of her surroundings... and she won't feel any pain. Is scientific progress worth it?
The problem with your analogy is that the blastocysts being destroyed are not "pretty much guaranteed to die" (unless someone fails to care for them or kills them on purpose -- bear in mind that infants are "pretty much guaranteed to die" if you expose them to the elements and don't care for them, too) and aren't "as close to dead as you can get".
As for the point about her being unable to think, unaware of her surroundings, and unable to feel pain, that is irrelevant. What is relevant, and the only thing that is relevant, is whether she will ever have those capabilities in the future.
Science fiction is full of hypothetical examples of people being put into suspended animation and even being reduced to data streams or foam polyhedrons. While the cases are hypothetical, they work within the fiction because the audience treats them as if they could really happen. In every case, the line between protect and destroy, life and death, and so on has very little to do with present capabilities, ability to think, awareness of surroundings, the ability to feel pain, or any other current present capability. The thing that matters, and the thing that matters in your hypothetical example, is what the individual's future capabilities will be. And to argue that the future capabilities of a blastocyst don't exist because it's going to be destroyed, anyway, is like arguing that just because China executes political prisoners, anyway, it's ethical to use them for medical research so long as they are sufficiently anesthetized at the time.
FYI, the Americans let many of the "doctors" of Japan's Unit 731 that did horrible medical experiments on human beings (mostly Chinese but possibly some American prisoners of war) -- including giving them diseases to see what would happen, heating and freezing them to death, vivisecting them, and so on -- escape war crime prosecution in exchange for their medical research notes for utilitiarian reasons. Do you think this was justified on cost vs. reward grounds? Would you feel the same way of one of the prisoners killed by those "doctors" was a friend, relative, or spouse? Do you think it would be good to let medical researcher know that they can escape prosecution for unethical research on unwilling subjects if they are willing to surrender their research and if not, why not?
Then you might find Thomas Sowell's book A Conflict of Visions interesting, since it talks about different perspectives on human nature and perfection between conservatives and liberals.
Personally I think the practice of embryonic stem cell research is not the only way we are exhibiting fear and desperation in the face of death that threatens to skew our perspective on health care.
I can agree with that statement.
So when you become useless and in a "vegatative state", as determined by the vultures circling about you, should'nt we be able to use you up, YOUR stem cells to see what they might do for me?
You clearly don't believe that outlawing the murder of embryos in the name of "protecting life" will lead us down a slippery slope to a place where no killings are ever justified. The thought seems irrational and silly to you, even though I'm sure you could imagine someone on a left-wing blog trying to make exactly that claim.
Likewise, those who support Embryonic Stem Cell research don't believe that allowing it will lead us down a slippery slope to a place where any killing of life deemed "less valuable" (such as that of an infant) is acceptable. This argument is every bit as irrational and silly as its counterpart above.
IMHO, you shouldn't try and convince people that since infanticide is wrong and we as a society should avoid it, ESC research should also be banned. Your ideological opponents see a bright-line between the murder of a bouncing baby and the destruction of a hundred cells... and they can't imagine any slippery slope bringing them to that extreme.
It would probably be more effective to stick to why the embryo's life -- even before it gains consciousness -- is valuable.
The benefits hinted at (not even promised) by scientists who want to do ESC research are not worth the ghoulish destruction of human life -- even if that life doesn't have a face, isn't conscious, or can't feel pain.
Whether a slippery slope is a sound argument or not depends on showing that the slope is, in fact, so slippery that one can't take a middle ground stand without sliding one way or the other. There is ample evidence that the abortion slope is indeed quite slippery, from the arguments of Peter Singer and Michael Tooley that infanticide is just like a late abortion and mothers in India who murder their newborn daughters and justify it by explaining that it's just like aborting a female fetus to mothers conceiving children specifically to provide spare parts to their born children in need of a transplant. It's all out there already.
You clearly don't believe that outlawing the murder of embryos in the name of "protecting life" will lead us down a slippery slope to a place where no killings are ever justified. The thought seems irrational and silly to you, even though I'm sure you could imagine someone on a left-wing blog trying to make exactly that claim.
The question is whether you have a clear distinction along the slope that you can hang on. The distinction between "guilty" and "innocent" and the idea of a "clear and present danger" is pretty fundamental to making moral distinctions. The fact that only the looniest moonbat would argue that killing is never justified while abortion has people split fairly evenly and infanticide and utilitarian euthanasia leave a long and infamous trail throughout human history suggests a much higher risk of abortion and fetal cell research leading to infanticide and other morally questionable practices than the risk of people deciding that killing is never justified.
Likewise, those who support Embryonic Stem Cell research don't believe that allowing it will lead us down a slippery slope to a place where any killing of life deemed "less valuable" (such as that of an infant) is acceptable. This argument is every bit as irrational and silly as its counterpart above.
The question is whether what those who support Embryonic Stem Cell believe is correct or not. Noam Chomsky didn't believe the Khmer Rouge was killing a third of Cambodia's population until he could not longer ignore the piles of bones, and all of those Democrats who voted to de-fund Lon Nol's government and who honestly believed that the socialist Khmer Rouge would be better for Cambodia than the right-wing military government of Lon Nol were wrong to the tune of about 2 million lives.
There is already evidence of sliding down the slope. And that, I think, was the point of the essay that started this thread. How do you draw the line that stops the slippery slope in the case of embryonic stem cell research when we not only can't draw a line that protects a 9-month old fetus ready to be born and infanticide is still practices in many places around the world (mostly to murder female babies)?
IMHO, you shouldn't try and convince people that since infanticide is wrong and we as a society should avoid it, ESC research should also be banned.
You are skipping a lot of steps in the argument. For example, I can demonstrate (with the help of pro-choice authors, in fact) that abortion and infanticide are essentially the same thing, differing only by whether the child is born or not. And as Peter Singer and Michael Tooley demonstrate in their writings on the ethics of abortion and infanticide, using the logic used to defend abortion, it's difficult to rationally argue that infanticide is wrong because no really significant change happens to the child in the moment that they are born (other than a lot of squeezing and a change of address).
Your ideological opponents see a bright-line between the murder of a bouncing baby and the destruction of a hundred cells... and they can't imagine any slippery slope bringing them to that extreme.
In a single sentence? Of course not. In a paragraph? No. In dozens of posts or hours of conversation, however, I've convinced people that they are wrong. That's why abortion never gets discussed on talk radio or TV talk shows and when it does, it never changes anyone's mind. The issue is too complex to reduce to a two-minute sound bite, which is why I don't consider a quite summary of my point an argument likely to change minds. Of course I don't think most people have really thought through their position on abortion, infanticide, and a lot of other issues.
With respect to the hundred cells, the baby is also just a bigger lump of cells and infanticide has a big place in human history and is still practiced. The cute face hasn't stopped people from murdering babies by the thousands in the past (and present, in places like India) so I wouldn't count on that stopping them in the future.
It would probably be more effective to stick to why the embryo's life -- even before it gains consciousness -- is valuable.
It's all part of the same argument -- there is no substantive difference between a fertilized egg and an newborn infant with respect to personhood. Any criteria that you pick for personhood that falls between fertilization and a year or two of age is arbitrary and unsupportable if someone wants to challenge it. That is the slippery slope that I point out. There is no sound way to hang on the slope between those two ends that can't be demolished.
The benefits hinted at (not even promised) by scientists who want to do ESC research are not worth the ghoulish destruction of human life -- even if that life doesn't have a face, isn't conscious, or can't feel pain.
Ultimately, call it a "ghoulish destruction of human life" is still appealing to the broader consequences of a narrow practice, which makes it very much like a slippery slope argument.
Really it comes down to just two points (though if you're really Jonesing for a point-by-point I'll put it together some time next week).
Whether a slippery slope is a sound argument or not depends on showing that the slope is, in fact, so slippery that one can't take a middle ground stand without sliding one way or the other.
Agreed. Since you have not yet shown this so your argument is not sound. You claim that such an argument can be made. Pretend I'm from Missouri.
Specifically, I'd like you to either answer a few of the following, point me to websites that answer many of the following, or (ideally) point me to places where you've -- over dozens of posts, convinced a pro-choicer to either become pro-life or pro-infanticide.
And secondly in response to "a 'ghoulish destruction of human life' is ... very much like a slippery slope argument" no, it's not.
The slippery slope argument says don't A because Z is really bad... and if you A now eventually you'll (or we'll all) end up Z-ing (and... presumably will be unable to stop at B, C, D, etc). My argument says even if you don't believe A-ing will cause you to Z... A is still bad, so don't A... and if you don't believe A is bad, tell me what it is that makes you think A is okay and let me show you that A is worse than you think.
Everything else was either nit-picky or reiterating the above.
>Reminds me of what they did with the "Gelflings" in the movie "Dark Crystal".
Actually, it reminds me of the ending to CS Lewis's Screwtape Letters.
"Dark Crystal" is just a Disney entertainment presentation.
Thanks for directing me toward something substantial.
You're welcome. And it only reminds me of it 'in spirit' if you will.
I can, however, point to the US's inabbility to significantly restrict or ban partial birth abortions in the late third trimester, well past the point of viability, and even though majorities support severe restrictions or bans as government acceptance of infanticide caused by acceptance of abortion because infanticide is clearly what a lot of people, including pro-choice leftists like Richard Cohen, think it is.
I can also point to trends in euthanasia laws in the Netherlands and elsewhere as a growing utilitarian perspective that people should get to decide when other people's lives aren't worth living. And, again, I can point to the lack of outrage over Peter Singer, the bioethicist at Princeton, and his call for infanticide. Then there are the various men and women who murder their newborns, not only poor drug-addicted women but even fairly well-off middle-class kids, not to mention those who came out in support of Andrea Yates. There are also stark differences in the way that children, abortion, and infanticide are treated in popular media and genres such as science fiction.
I think the trend is there, even if we don't have legal infanticide. As with all speculation about the future, neither of us know how it will turn out. But if you are really curious about the subject, I'd suggest looking into the long history of infanticide and how and why it was practiced and compare and contrast with abortion. Most of the justifications for abortion and almost all of the real reasons why people support or have abortions (which are not the same as how they are justified) can be used to justify infanticide and already is being used to justify infanticide in the case of Peter Singer and others.
As for the "ghoulish destriction of human life", what makes it "ghoulish" and why is it bad?
Absolutely not. I just doubt that the descent is inevitable if we allow stem cell research. And more importantly, I doubt you will convince pro-life proponents of ESCR that it's inevitable.
(B) they assume that trends quickly go to their extreme so we can see the full effects of things that happened only 30-something years ago...
Again, no. "Still waiting" is an acceptable answer. But if you can't prove statistically that we'll start accepting infanticide you have to prove it by showing it's the only logical outcome.
As with all speculation about the future, neither of us know how it will turn out.
Bingo! The slope is not, in fact, so slippery that one can't take a middle ground stand without sliding one way or the other. The slope may be slippery enough that you're afraid of sliding to the extreme... and I appreciate that. But I think 1- you're not going to change any minds and 2- you downplay the significance of the unnecessary loss of an embryo's life... it's almost like you're saying it's just an embryo it's life doesn't matter... what matters is that one day a baby will lose its life because of this and that baby's life is important.
I don't believe that you actually think the embryo's life is unimportant. I believe that you just think those you'll be debating believe the embryo's life isn't important. But I believe that quietly accepting your opponent's assumption is a mistake.
ghoul n.
Take either the first definition literally ... a scientist who delights in the morbid or the third definition figuratively... killing the embryo to "feed" on the stem cells. And it's bad for the same reason cutting up Grandma' while she's still alive would be bad.
I apologize if I've come across as impatient. I'm not! I'm quite enjoying myself. :)
Or would you conclude that logically, my story is no more convincing than yours? (See here, here, here, and Spotlight fallacy here.)
There are already parents who have conceived children to act as spare parts for their born children. It would be no stretch for similar parents to conceive spare children to act as stem-cell donors for their born children or themselves, especially if their are compatibility issues. I'm not anticipating anything that's all that different from something that people are already doing, and pro-life proponents of ESCR aren't thinking the issue all the way through if they don't see it. I think they don't anticipate a future supply of stem-cells will be needed. The key here is to point out that stem-cells, like organ donation, might work best from a relative and the best way for people to get such stem-cells is to create and destroy.
Again, no. "Still waiting" is an acceptable answer. But if you can't prove statistically that we'll start accepting infanticide you have to prove it by showing it's the only logical outcome.
I don't have to prove anything statistically, nor do I have to show that it's the only logical outcome. Two thinks that you are missing here. First, most persuasive discussions between people either on the Internet or in person don't follow formal rules of logic and proof. All I need to do is make a case that the person I'm talking to finds persuasive. I don't need to create a mathematically airtight proof to do that in most cases. In fact, I doubt you could prove either position on abortion to that standard of proof. Second, I don't have to show it's the only logical outcome. I simply need to show that it's a likely enough outcome to cross a person's threshold of unacceptable risk. Killing a person isn't the "only logical outcome" of shooting a gun into a crowd, but it's still a bad idea to try it because (A) the outcome is likely enough to be a real concern and (B) the outcome, if it does happen, is really bad.
Bingo! The slope is not, in fact, so slippery that one can't take a middle ground stand without sliding one way or the other.
There are two ways to stand on a slippery slope. The first way is to find a firm place along the slope to stand that's not slippery. The second way is the bounce between two firm places that average out about where you'd like to stand. The problem with these debates is that there is no firm place to stand in the middle and the only two stable places are at the end, too far apart to allow for a gentle sway between the two.
The slope may be slippery enough that you're afraid of sliding to the extreme... and I appreciate that. But I think 1- you're not going to change any minds and
Despite how logically questionable slippery slope arguments are, in the real world, they change minds all the time. You do read Free Republic, don't you?
2- you downplay the significance of the unnecessary loss of an embryo's life...
The problem with that argument is that it's not "unnecessary". In fact, the problem with fetal stem-cell research is that the destruction of the embryo is necessary to perform such research and if that research produces fruit, it makes such destruction beneficial. My point is that the justification of the destruction of the embryo, for abortion or fetal stem-cell research, can be used to justify infanticide and other practices. The way such arguments persuade is to ask the person to explain how their argument in favor of the destruction of embryos wouldn't apply to infanticide or a host of other practices. In many cases, the person can't and will understand the problem with their position. In a few cases, the person will accept the implications and nothing more can be done with them (except to get them to state their views to shock others).
it's almost like you're saying it's just an embryo it's life doesn't matter... what matters is that one day a baby will lose its life because of this and that baby's life is important.
That's not what I'm saying at all. What I am saying is that killing an embryo is the same thing as killing an infant, and whatever justification you use to kill an embryo can be applied to an infant. The argument is persuasive not because it anticipates some future time when babies are killed after birth as legally as they are killed now before birth. The argument is persuasive because it forces people to face the fact that their argument in favor of abortion is an argument in favor of infanticide. That forces the to accept a package deal. Either they accept both or reject both. Most will reject both. A few will accept both. Those that accept both, in public Internet debates, prove to be useful idiots because, like Peter Singer and Michael Tooley, they'll happily tell yout hat they support infanticide as well as abortion, and that will shock most normal people without a heart of stone.
I don't believe that you actually think the embryo's life is unimportant. I believe that you just think those you'll be debating believe the embryo's life isn't important. But I believe that quietly accepting your opponent's assumption is a mistake.
Not at all. I believe my opponents normally don't understand the issue or the moral factors involved. Most people have a position on abortion that's laughably vague and silly because they don't think about it and don't want to think about it. That's why few people want to sit through the meat grinder of a full-blown abortion debate. They aren't up to it. What I do is make them understand what they really believe, and the implications of it.
Most people try to stand on the slippery slope by embracing some magic moment when they think the unborn become a "person" (I am using "person" and "personhood" as shorthand for a being with the legal rights of a person to life). None of these criteria stand up to scrutiny. Heartbeat? Monkeys have heartbeats. Birth? What changes during birth? Heck, I've had pro-abortion people wax poetic about myelination as if it were the magic key to personhood and have even debated the moral implications of cancers, chimeras, and cojoined twins. And then others will try composite criteria, but all they do is show the weaknesses of the constituent criteria.
In the end, it boils down to a simple choice. You can either determine personhood by what an individual has now or by what an individual will have in the future (bearing in mind that there is a difference between real probability and statistical possibility). If you pick what an individual has now, you get all sorts of wrong results, from Michael Tooley's argument in favor of infanticide to a bunch of science fiction examples that would allow the destruction of people in suspended animation. At that point, it's not so much an argument that society is going to sail down the slippery slope as it is forcing the individual I'm debating with to pick which way they want to slide. They can try to stand on the slippery slope but I'm not going to let them. I'm going to give them a shove.
ghoul n.
1. One who delights in the revolting, morbid, or loathsome.
2. A grave robber.
3. An evil spirit or demon in Muslim folklore believed to plunder
graves and feed on corpses.
Take either the first definition literally ... a scientist who delights in the morbid or the third definition figuratively... killing the embryo to "feed" on the stem cells. And it's bad for the same reason cutting up Grandma' while she's still alive would be bad.
It's not an equivalent issue in the case of stem-cell research because you can always ask Grandma. And, at the point where Grandma is so brain dead that she can't be asked and has no chance of recovery, well, we do allow her to be cut up for her organs. Take a close look at how organ donation works. If you don't take them out of the brain dead person while they are still alive, they aren't as useful. Japan, which requires the heart to stop to declare a person dead (or at least they did, there was a move to change that) had an acute shortage of organs for transplants because they couldn't take them from brain dead people.
The problem with all analogies is that the unborn have fairly unique circumstances. The best you can hope for is a close hit. The analogy I use is using organs from executed political prisoners. You don't know who they are (so empathy is reduced) and a lot of people would (and already do) pay for such organs to help themselves. But there is the knowledge that someone is dying for that advance. Is it moral to benefit from the death of a person you don't know, who was going to be killed anyway, if their death is not just? That's about as close as I can get. But even that brings us back to the question of the personhood of the unborn and abortion. And to be perfectly honest, there are plenty of pro-life people who do think and act as if the embryo really isn't the moral equivalent of a baby, and I think that has to do with a bunch of irrational things dealing with looks and empathy because moral problems and even MRI scans show that empathy is an important element of human morality (see article here -- I can provide peer reviewed articles on the subject upon request if you want to be anal-retentive about things).
The game that the pro-choice site plays is that they have a two-faceted argument and they toggle between the facets as they fail in a fancy dance that I call the ferris wheel because it goes round and round. It goes something like this:
"It's not a baby"
"Sure it is. Here's why..."
"Well it's a woman's body and she has a right to abort it."
"No she doesn't. Here's why..."
"But that argument's not valid because it's not a baby!"
They never quite admit when their argument fails and say, "OK, so you've proved it's a baby." They just change the subject and change back. Play that game and you'll lose every time. Don't let them change the subject.
I apologize if I've come across as impatient. I'm not! I'm quite enjoying myself. :)
You are coming off a bit as wanting to argue just to argue. As someone who has been there and done that (including citing logical fallacy web sites), I can tell you that gets old real fast and only gets you so far. An important thing to remember is that convincing the other person that you are right and they are wrong isn't the most important part of an Internet debate. Convincing the lurkers that you are sane and your opponent is crazy is the objective. Don't sound like a loon by playing games.
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