South Dakota passes Abortion BanFollow

I quoted the whole of your argument, because there was too much wrong to section it out.

To begin with, to consider "life" begins the second the sperm hits the egg is a rediculous misunderstanding of fetal development. To attempt to label the pre-cognitive stages of fetal development (60% of the pregnacy) as life, ignores all of our definitions of life. The fetal cells are no more or less alive then the basic skin cells you washed off your body this morning. Its not a matter of "opinion" on wether the skin cells have life, they merely function as a living organism on the simplest of chemical levels. You CANNOT intelligently argue that these fetal development cells are any more life than the sperm or egg that bonded to create it.

The ONLY plausible way you can give the merit of "life" to the fetal development is to give it a soul, which is placing religion into the debate and thereby reduces the argument to ignorant ranting.

And btw, the prolife people ARE arguing that the unfertilized eggs are life, dont you see all the morning after pill protests? Even though the egg isnt officially fertilized, the nuts are screaming about this new form of murder. Their ignorance of EVERY subject of biology and medicine astounds me.

And if you think that when someone says something i dont check their credibility first, then your sorely mistaken. The fact that these people beleive such retarded rhetoric says alot about their logical and intellectual skills. If a man is shouting in the street that we are being invaded by aliens everyday, you ignore him. If that same man comes up to you and says your pen is a secret transmission device for the alien race, you dont throw your pen away and run. Likewise, when a religious idiot who thinks the flying spaghetti monster created the earth 6000 years ago comes up to you and completely misrepresents all of biology, you laugh and walk away.

Finally, you say if the people of dakota agree with it, then its their decision, well thats ********* First off, the people didnt, a single representive did, with the SPECIFIC purpose of getting a few votes in the next election(i wouldnt be suprised if she ran for governor next). I know your thinking "the representives are the peoples voice", but i really think youll have a hard time saying that the representives dont "represent" just the few % that voted for them, but the entire state.

Again i say this is a democracy, lead by the people, but one of the governments main purposes is protection of minority fews (wether 49% or 1%). If we let ourselves be swayed by public opinion on a daily routine, then we become victim to polarized mob mentality and become no better then the countries today screaming to kill our neighbors over a peice of religous property.

We cant let some more religiously dominant states ***** womem out of their rights just because a few idiots wanted to get into office.

EP. The funny thing is that I agree with your conclusion, but not the methods by which you arrive at them.

First off, you're making the wrong semantic argument. It's not about whether the cells are "alive", but whether they are "human life, and therefore entitled to rights and protections under the law".

Embryo's most certainly are "life", in exactly the way any collection of cells are "life". You're basically employing a kind of reverse strawman here, because by changing the argument to the much more broad "life", you are not only literally wrong (they are live cells, of that there is no scientific doubt), but you also imply that there's no difference between the collection of cells that make up an embryo and those that make up any other part of someone's body (or any other living thing that is not collectively considered worthy of rights in our system of laws).

Presumably, that's why you insist on using the generic term of "life" rather then the more specific "human life", or "human person entitled to rights". It allows you to skirt the real issue by shuffling the argument into a totally irrelevant direction. No one is arguing that I'm commiting murder when I pee. No one. No one's even arguing that I'm committing murder when I kill an animal (although, interestingly enough we have more laws protecting animals then that of embryos). That's because murder is defined as the taking of a human life, not any random set of live cells, no matter how complex they may be.


The issue is not whether an embryo is alive. It most definately is. It's not even whether it can survive on its own. Many organisms can only survive in speicific environments. The fact that an embryo must remain inside a womans womb doesn't automatically mean anything (except what we collectively decide it means). What is known is that an embryo starts as a collection of cells that has no inherent "human" properties outside its dna structure, with no evidence sentience nor self awareness. Over the next 9 months or so, it changes from that state to one in which we legally recognize it as a human being, with full rights and protections as such. These facts are not in question. The question is at what point during that process those rights should be granted.

And that is most certainly a legitimate subject of debate. Unless you are trying to argue that a developing embryo/fetus has *no* human characteristics and is worthy of *no* rights as such until the instant it's born? That certainly seems to fly in the face of science as well. It's a gradual process, not something that magically happens in the last instant. Clearly then, our laws should take that into account. In fact Roe v. Wade *does* take that into account. However, the decision was made by fiat at a judicial level instead of as a result of legistlative process. While the method used was quicker, I think it's not the correct way that a democratic society should decide such things.


I also think you are making some broad assumptions about why people oppose abortion. Sure. You hear the religious argument the most, but that does not invalidate other, more rational arguments. And well, honestly, even if we do pass a law banning abortion because "the people" as a group decide that an embryo possesses a human soul from the first moment of conception, if that is a fair representation of what the people believe, then it's a valid legal decision.


I guess my biggest problem with this is the tendency for many pro-choice advocates to simply bypass and ignore the most valid arguments from the pro-life side and instead obsessing on only the most easily debunked ones. That's dangerous IMO, since it means that some day you'll be faced with a legal change and have no clue why it happened. And it'll be because you continued to assume that the only arguments against abortion were totally ridiculous and based on religious garbage, and completely missed the logical and scientific arguments that they will present for their case. While you're arguing about souls and women's rights, they'll be quietly presenting an argument about fetal development, and pointing to the unknowns in the process, and arguing that in the absense of absolute evidence that an embryo at a particular stage of development is *not* human, the state should err on the side of human rights instead of the other way around.


And they'll likely succeed. As long as the pro-choice position is (falsly IMO) focussed entirely on the "bogeyman" of the Religious Right, no one's mounting an effective defense against the real arguments that may very well change many abortion laws in this country.

Well i agree with you on the most part, and think we were arguing over arbitrary points. You are correct in saying the debate is "human life", but i believe that phrase is often mis-interpreted.

Where does life begin? I can tell you:

It doesnt begin. Its a transition. A slow and methodical development from reproducing cells following the genetic pattern layed out.

Is it fair to place an origin point? No.

The mass is goes from cells to a full grown baby in 9 months. At 6 months and 2 days the cells dont "turn into life". At 9 months the cells dont become a baby. And at 1 second after conception the cell conglomerate doesnt "become alive" by human life standards.

The cold hard truth is that its just the potential for life, forged from materials of each parent. A complex bio-chemical system. Where then do we draw the line? The line of parental decision to procreate versus destruction of irreversable life?

Thats where the argument gets fuzzy, as each fetal development follows the same basic stages, each fetus is on a slightly different time line.

Personally, i beleive its too late to abort once the fetus can survive outside the womb(and a bit earlier than that due to the fetus neural development), but both of these cases are in the third trimester. I make that decision not on personal bias, or religious stupidity, but based on knowledge of fetal development and respect for the parents right to decide if they are ready for a child.

In true fairness, this is the only way to treat the issue. Analyze it logically, and decide a point where abortion is legal, and a point where it is not. Currently our laws satisfy this condition. Currently, if the fetal development is before a specified stage, it is up to the parents to decide, as it should be.

The biggest problem with this issue is people who know nothing but mis-informed facts about fetal development and are determined to fight a religious war for moral superioirty. These people know that all they have to do is mention abortion and they are gaurenteed the conservative vote. But the cruch is once they use this as a campaign issue, they are forced to attempt to fight the current system that protects a womans right to choose just to appease their constituants. So we are continuilly bombarded with this small minded illogical meanderings.

I get tired sometimes of having to fight everyday....(so to speak). Having to go to work and hear about schools trying to teach creationism in the classroom. Hearing every conservative i see speak about god, abortion, and gay sex, and completely ignoring education, economy, and health issues. For once i wanna wake up drink my morning coffer without seeing some religious nut starting another crusade on CNN.

I'm also not disagreeing with your position. I disagree with you (and others) on the validity of the opposing argument, and how that argument should be countered.



This is the crux of the problem though. If it's not fair to place an origin point, then isn't it even *less* fair to do that via judicial fiat at a national level?

This is the ultimate argument of the pro-life position. Ignore religion. Ignore god. Ignore all of that. I'm a conservative. I also happen to be pro-choice (not nearly as uncommon as you might think). However, I apply "conservative" ideas to the argument, not religious ones. A conservative believes that the more contentious a social issue, the more important that it be resolved at the lowest level of government rather then the highest. In the case of abortion, we got the opposite via Roe v. Wade.

If the issue were to come before the California legistlature, or (better yet) a ballot issue, I'd be firmly in the pro-choice camp (obviously based on the specifics of the law in question). And interestingly enough, California was one of the states that did exactly that *before* Roe v. Wade, and the legistlature of the time created abortion laws that allowed abortions (not sure on specifics atm though, but I believe they were similar to the rules outlined in Roe v. Wade).

That's the process I believe in. That's the process that *should* be used to decide issues like this. And yeah. That's going to mean that some people in other states may decide to have more restrictive abortion laws. But isn't that *their* choice? In the same way you may argue that the state has no right to interferre with the woman's rights with regard to her own body, clearly I, as a citizen of California, should not have the power to decide the laws in other states which don't affect me. They should get the same power of choice that those of us in California did on this issue.

And given that science *can't* really say when "human life" begins, should we allow the decision to be made by a group of 9 people, at a federal level, and blanketly applied to every citizen in every state in the nation? The fact that the decision happened to come down in a direction I agree with isn't the point. It was the wrong way to go about it. And it's still the wrong way. The pro-choice position should "win" as a result of logical reasoning and debate among the people. The resulting laws should represent the beliefs of the people on the issue.

"The people" may very well make a mistake on the issue. They may be wrong. They may enact laws that are bad. But it's their laws to pass and in this case, they as a body have to live under the laws they pass. But clearly, a single group of 9 people can *also* make a mistake, right? IMO, I'd rather that bad choice be made because the bulk of the people in my state made that choice, rather then because a handful of people, appointed with very little input by me directly (none actually), made a decision.


That's the conservative position on this issue. And that's how one can be both pro-choice *and* opposed to the Roe v. Wade decision. And honestly, while this may sound a bit wierd, if the citizens of South Dakota decide to pass a law that does not affect me, and that law tests a decision I think was a poor one, then that's fine by me...





Again. I agree with you 100%. The only difference is that I believe that the decision about where that point is should be determined by the citizens of each state via a process of representative legistlature, rather then handed down via Supreme Court mandate.

How can we advocate a democratic process if we refuse to actually allow it to operate? If the decision about that point is so clear and "right", that there's no need to debate it, then why not let "the people" decide though their legistlative process? If the SCOTUS decision is right, then that should be born out in the laws passed in the absense of the decision. If the laws *don't* match what the SCOTUS ruled, then maybe that means it's not right? Or at least not right for everyone and every state affected. It's somewhat meaningless to talk of "choice", when we're not given one.





See. Here's the problem though. You see the religious nuts, and set out on a crusade of your own to fight them. The problem with this is that you are now fighting the issue on their terms. You've allowed them to turn it into a religious versus anti-religious argument. I've seen this in your posts on the subject so far. You've spent more time attacking religious arguments that no one has actually made, then addressing the actual issue. You assume that any pro-life movement or law *must* come from religion that you automatically pull out the anti-religion weapons and start employing them.


I'm simply cautioning you to wait for someone to actually argue a bogus religious point first. Because when you start off firing salvos at the religious folks right off the bat, you may end up totally missing the target you should be going after.

I agree that the religious nuts annoy me. But I honestly tend to hear more counter-religious arguments in most political discussions then actual religious ones. And that's just as annoying (and perhaps even moreso). I can respect someone who states his position because of his religious beliefs. I may totally disagree with him. But I can respect that. But I have to question the validity of an argument that is almost a pavlovian attack on religious beliefs when the mere topic is brought up, even if the religious arguments never are. I'm not aware of anything in that article that mentioned religion. I don't recall anyone making a religious based argument for an abortion ban in this thread. Yet you (and others) still pulled out the anti-religion arguments automatically.


I'm just saying that that's a pretty bad approach to arguing a point. If you want to argue against a ban on abortion, then argue about abortion itself. Don't argue against the people and arguements you think might be for the ban. And, specifically with regard to this issue, accept that it really is possible for people to be pro-life without being so based on religious belief. It's a broad ethical issue. Believe it or not, people can have ethics without religion. Why assume that all non-religious ethical arguments must match your own?

I really dont think allowing each state to decide this is a good idea. We have a higher court system specifically to deliberate of such complex decisions that effect each and every individual. Certain rights are to be held paramount, above state legislation, and the right to abortion is one of these. The supreme court was to prevent states from taking away these rights via majority rule on certain issues. Lets go back to your slavery issue, or even more recent segregation:

If it was left up to the states to decide, we would still have several states segregated(i live in alabam, some schools are still segregated..). But the issue was deemed something that was nationally relavent, something that was not to be arbitrarily thrown about in state legislature.

The cold hard fact is state legislature isnt held up to the standard and scrutiny that federal legislature is, and thus it is easier to abuse individual rights. You may be a conservative, and i respect that. I dont think all conservatives are religious nuts, and your right to point out i fall back on that alot nowadays. I too need to watch being "polarized" by issues.

I just want you to consider what it would mean for states to take on such issues. Do you really want the nation so divided that we have truly conservative and liberal states? Do i want to have to not take a job in texas because they have radically different laws that california?

I think this is wear the true conservative and true democratic views sway. I for one dont really see how you can miss the obvious danger of lowering the accoutibility of our laws and our rights a people.

Or are you going to argue that state laws are just as scrutinized and fair to the public as federal laws?

This is mainly the passage I was referring to. She may not have been claiming that she and other scientists should directly determine the law, but she does seem to be doing so at least indirectly. She says:
-only people with PhD degrees "IN HUMAN EMBRYOLOGY" can determine where human life begins
-human life begins at the moment of sexual or asexual reproduction
-the law should ban the termination of any form of human life

I think she made herself pretty clear. Maybe I misunderstood, but it seemed that most of what she said targetted abortion laws in general as well as the bill in question. Maybe the term "obscure" was a bit exaggerated, but I stand by my claim of a requirement of a degree in human embryology as being unnecessarily esoteric. Of course such a degree would be relevant, but the basic and vital points of the subject can be understood by almost any person of average intelligence. If the legality regarding abortions were based on when exactly an embryo/fetus attains a certain, specific level of cognitive ability, then I suppose we would have to leave it to the embryologists. But as far as I know, cognitive ability has nothing to do with Roe vs. Wade, the new bill in question, or even the ultra-pro-life ideal that this woman is advocating. She wants no abortions, at any point in development, period. That is not a scientific decision; it's a moral and philosophical one. Yet here she is, saying that the issue should be in her hands *because* of her academic merits.

What exactly needs to be studied here? As I mentioned above, none of the routes people are taking--on either side of the argument--really seem to have scientific bases. Ultimately, it isn't a scientific issue at all. We could know all there is to know about human development, but it still comes down to what point we think the plug can be pulled. If it were discovered (hypothetically, of course) that a 2nd trimester fetus had, in fact, a brain just as developed and complex as that of a 30 year old, I would still be pro-choice.

Edited, Mon Feb 13 21:15:04 2006 by CAustin