Posted on 12/06/2006 10:56:00 AM PST by Ultra Sonic 007
I think this is an excellent paper. Your former teachers would (or, at least, should) be proud. Let us know what grade you receive, and any comments your professor makes. Personally, I think this is as well-written as many articles that have been published. Wouldn't it be great to see it in a periodical?
I wouldn't use 'conscious' as a noun, unless I was referring to the Freudian psychoanalytical concept, and even then it's typically expressed as 'the conscious.'
BTW, the question of whether an embryo/fetus/etc. is a living human has largely been conceded by the pro-abortion activists. Their arguments now go along the lines, 'yes, abortion does technically mean the death of a child, but it's justified because of"... economics/ethics/whatever.
Sad, isn't it?
Are their senses of morality dead?
I was actually homeschooled from midway through 7th grade all the way through high school, so you can thank my parents.
The idea that the "claim of right to kill" belongs to the female alone is an absurdity of this.
Kinda like "A pound of flesh but not one drop of blood". Take anything you want that contains ONLY the DNA of the mother. Everything else (for want of a perfect definition) has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I submit: the egg.
According to the PETA-type folks, if it potentially "has a face", it ain't for eatin'.
Yet, they'd get an abortion in a heartbeat. Oh, the logic of lefties.
As a former fetus, I oppose abortion!
Wonderful paper. I hope you get an A+!
Ah! I just noticed that the post ate the links to the online content.
Yes they are human.
The argument for moderation is a mistake. If by moderation you mean compromise allowing abortion under certain conditions. Yes there should be civility. But there can be no moderation in this debate anymore they we can be moderate if we debate killing sick or disabled people. The reason being that compromise will always be based on a personal belief about abortion. When one person says we should allow abortion in some instances he may mean in cases of rape or incest. Another amy mean the mother has a history of post partum depression. Another may mean when the family is poor. All of the arguments for abortion are therefore subjective arguments. It places the burden on the fetus to show why it should be allowed to live. Its life is subject to the beliefs, wants and needs of another human being. It goes without saying that a fetus can not defend itself or offer an argument for its continued existence.
But we can. The only way to frame the argument for life and the defense of the unborn is not by subjective experience or anticipated experience. But by objective standards based on religion, science, woman's worth, natural law and society's duty to protect the sick, weak, poor and helpless. These things are solid, they do not change based on a person's whim or fancy.
If the value of any person's life can rightly be subject to another we have no valid argument against slavery, embryonic stem cells, cloning, euthanasia, child labor, child abuse, rape, and murder. Let alone abortion.
Abortion clinics are the contemporary altars of Moloch. Just as worship of Moloch brought down God's judgement on Canaan we can not avoid our day of judgement for tolerating abortion. That is why we must not compromise in our defense of the unborn. We do not need to engage in extreme slash and burn tactics but we must hold fast to declaring that yes unborn children are human. They are persons and worthy of the laws protection.
I sincerely hope I didn't somehow come across as arguing for moderation. If so, then I screwed up somewhere.
The biggest argument of the pro-abortion folks is that it can't be considered a human being yet because it has not departed its mother's womb. A specious argument, considering the knowledge we have of pre-natal development, but one that has held since 1973.
The only line I can think to draw that isn't completely arbitrary is conception. I'm open to other ideas.
You'd be surprised how many pro-choice documents/books/material I read through that denied that. :/
Sorry, but no, to be a "human being" you must ONLY conform to the dictionary definition of the phrase which according to the American Heritage Dictionary is
A member of the genus Homo and especially of the species H. sapiens.
If you fall into the trap that the pro abortionists set when they start arguing the meaning of the obvious you get lost in the debate. When I debate them I start with the obvious, that the fetus is indeed a human being. You point to the dictionary and it's case closed. Then it's up to them to justify why it's OK to chop up a human being and throw it into the trash. I point out to them that they wouldn't do this to a pet, and so on, all of a sudden it's a lot more difficult for them to keep it rational.
However, if you start arguing whether the fetus is a human being you'll be 30 minutes into the conversation and you'll still have to prove to them a point which has been settled a long time ago when the phrase "human being" was coined.
In a media age where Katie Couric had a colonoscopy live on TV and channels are devoted to grotesque plastic surgery techniques, just about the only medical procedure that is banned from display is a live fetal ultrasound. If every child that undergoes 'sex education' in school would be exposed to a film of fetal ultrasonography, the debate would be over regarding the humanity of a fetus.
It is advocacy groups like Planned Parenthood and NARAL who have kept this one bit of education totally off limits.
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