McCain Wasn't in a Cone of SilenceFollow

I'd suggest that Knox actually get some learning about basic human embryology and what an ovum, a blastocyte, a zygote, an embryo, and a fetus actually go through in developmental stages, but as a card carrying Republican I'm sure he's allergic to real science. Republicans: Ignorance is power!

However, for those who like their science hardcore and sans any religious bias, here's a great website on embryology:

http://www.embryology.ch/indexen.html

If we're going to pick arbitrary points at which a soul enters a body, I'm gonna have to go with the closing of the neural tube around day 29 myself. This is the point at which the spinal cord closes off, forming at once the lining of the brain and the hymen in girls. It's also the point when things tend to go horribly horribly wrong, and if the brain lining doesn't close properly you end up with a brainless baby. Urgh. No brain, no soul I say!

Or if we want to go with a scientific definition, the soul enters the body when the embyro becomes a fetus. Which is around the 11th week. At that point the proto-human is a whopping 1.25 inches long and still resembles a tadpole, but since the basal plates for the major organs are all in place, you could make the argument soundly that it's actually a little human being and not a lump of somewhat organized human cells like it was before.

Or perhaps the soul enters the body when the fetus first moves, usually around 16 weeks. Since obviously if something can't move on its own it's not alive.

Orrrrrr -- we could go to the other extreme, and this is actually the argument that I've heard from my Fundamntalist in-laws amazingly enough -- the soul enters the body on the first breath, so a baby that is stillborn or aborted was never tainted with original sin on earth. Cuz if you're Catholic, you know, if your soul is on the Earth, and you weren't baptized before you die, you go to hell and all. It's kinda sh*tty to tell a family who just had a stillborn that their baby's soul isn't going to heaven since it wasn't baptized!

You can argue that the soul enters the single-celled organism at the moment of fertilization all you want, but one third of all such fertilized ovum are flushed from a woman's body because meiosis (DNA recombination) didn't go right, so by that train of logic God kills more babies than anyone. DNA is some pretty delicate stuff, and one little transcription error can result in an inviable zygote. The female body detects that things aren't going right, and gives up pretty quick. This is why we don't have babies that are born with their skin inside out or feet growing out of their head.

Edit: And because I know this argument is going to come up . . . what if my mother had aborted me? She point blank told me when I was a teenager that she considered it, since she was 39 and already had three girls and really couldn't afford another one. But they opted to wait until I was far enough along developmentally to make sure I wasn't going to have massive heart defects or Down syndrome and such, then determined since it seemed like I was all right to go ahead and incur the cost of a fourth kid. Oddly enough, I'm the only one of my sisters that didn't end up with a mental illness, and landed closer to the genius end of the spectrum than the disabled one.

I'm glad of course that my mother chose to have me, but I'm also glad she made sure I wasn't going to suffer in pain and misery all my life first. That's the kind of decision making I can appreciate.

Edited, Aug 19th 2008 7:12pm by catwho

I'm just going to comment for conversations sake. Cause I'm bored.



So... a girl's hymen is part of her brain? That's kinda hot, in a fetishy kind of way. Like ear sex.



How would this work? If it never had a soul, how would it's soul enter heaven? Unless there are a pool of souls that are given out, and return... kinda like reincarnation (Dangerously non-catholic views there).




I think we do though... those pictures of that Harlequin Fetus thing are pretty nasty. Stuff like that are where stories like Rosemary's baby come from.

To further the point, even after birth, children don't have full human rights; they are restricted rights. And in the case of Christian Scientists, they don't even have a right to life.

Well, iirc, Harlequin fetus is actually a problem with the connective tissue not being plastic enough. The protein coding for collagen went wrong. There's a kid who actually had a mild enough case of a related syndrome to survive birth; he has to slather on lotion seven times a day and he's bright pink, but he's alive. Needless to say there's no cure.

And yes, the hymen is actually part of the proto-brain. Unlike the top end of the neural tube, it's not supposed to close off completely. When it does, you have a perfectly healthy girl with a strangely delayed period that leads to a terrible infection that can kill her if it's not caught early enough. It's called an imperforate hymen. Once it's fixed (a doctor pierces the hymen with a scalpal to relieve the pressure on the uterus), though, she generally returns to being a perfectly healthy girl.

Something that serious, you'd think it'd be a check done at birth. It'd be less traumatizing for the child too. I'm sure many guys who were circumsized at birth would dread the idea of having it done during any period of time they could actually remember. I'm sure a woman feels the same way about knife usage in that area.

Well, not really.

I'm sure that mothers would be even more traumatized to have doctors sticking their fingers up their baby girl's vajayjay.

Women have to deal with all sort of uncomfortable stuff up there eventually. (I refer to my yearly gyno as "the yearly violation" for a reason.) Usually by this time the girl is in such severe pain from the infected blood clots she'd be happy enough to have her entire uterus removed.

The soul enters the body when you make the appropriate sacrifices to Apollo. All those who say otherwise are filthy heretics and their lies shouldn't be listened to.

Because the debate seems to be revolving around exactly when a foetus becomes a person, and that argument is ultimately dependant on the point of view of the person doing the arguing, how about this......

Disregarding the idiotic and ignorant beliefs of the dimwits who base their lives around religeos dogma, it all comes down to science, and what the majority in any given society believe to be socially acceptable.

As far as the 'socially acceptable' part of the argument goes, that is something that should be decided by events such as the Roe and Wade decision, and should be revisited as and when society as a whole demands it (not when vocal opponents blow up enough clinics in the name of their 'caring' god).

The scientific part of the debate is what most people struggle with. This is for many reasons, including complete ignorance of the medical issues and often prejudice about the social circumstances of the individuals involved.

I would suggest that because science is not a static subject, with new discoveries and techniques being bought to the fore on an almost daily basis, then decisions about when a foetus becomes a person should be based on the best science availiable on the day.

To date, the earliest prem baby to survive and make it home was born at 21 weeks 6 days.

That should be used as a baseline.

I would say that 10 days less than that, taking into account current medical know how, would mean that survival as a viable 'person', would be ( virtually) impossible.

So my suggestion is, that the last possible date that a foetus should be allowed to be terminated would be 20 weeks and 3 days. This would change should a baby be born and survive at an earlier date than 21 weeks and 6 days.

Exceptions due to risk of maternal death would be taken into account on an individual basis.

The fact is, that their is a majority of people who believe that termination should be availiable to women who want it. Arguing against it using the 'human rights' card is ultimately pointless due to the ambiguity involved.

Using the religeous card is insulting and beneath contempt for anyone with more than 3 neurones to rub together.

A huge change in education and social awareness should be conducted alongside this method. No-one I know of whilst working in the field has ever enjoyed the procedure, and if some of the parents had a more informed view of what it entailed would no doubt be a little more careful with their sex lives. Theres always going to be exceptions, but to deny that there will always be people willing to perform abortions, legal or not, for money, is naive.

And as someone who has seen the end results of backstreet abortions using bits of wire and long-nosed pliars, I for one would dread the day that legal medical termination became a thing of the past.

The matter of what, "human rights"? Because technically, this question could have nothing to do with abortion at all. It could be a legal question about the status of children and young adults in society. A child has "Children's rights", a defined by the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child.. Children don't have the full range of human rights, clearly. Children don't have a right to work. Neither do babies. Nor fetuses. Maybe that's what Obama should've answered.

It's a stupid question that deserved a stupid answer. Once again, if the presenter can't be ***** to frame his questions in an accurate way, or worse, he frames them in a deliberately misleading way, that's his fault, not Obama's.



It's a not problem of *human rights*, though. "Human rights" don't include the right to be born. From what I've read on HR, and it's certainly a lot more than you, none of the fundamental human rights apply to fetuses. Fetuses don't have a right to education. Fetuses don't have free speech. Fetuses don't have a right to privacy. I'm not sure how much ridiculous this conversation needs to get before you admit that the question of "babies and human rights" has nothing to do with abortion.



He wasn't. He was being accommodating. He took pity on the interviewer for asking such a pseudo-intellectual question that turned out to be out of topic and completely retarded.

In the grand scheme of things, the only thing you can accuse of Obama of, is that he didn't spell out the finer details of his policy. But if that's what the guy wanted to know, that's what he should've asked. But even this is stretching it. Every single other person in the world understood what Obama meant when he said he was pro-choice, and pro-women's rights. It's just you that found it confusing.



That's true. But if you ask me the question: "When does a barrel oil become a threat to national security?", you can't expect me to give you the all finer details of my energy policy.

Same deal here.


Edited, Aug 20th 2008 9:31am by RedPhoenixxx

Let's be honest. You know what his position is, and you're choosing to be difficult for whatever reason.

I don't know, he is pretty shockingly fucing oblivious and ignorant. Not to mention unable to process reason. You may want to give him the benefit of the doubt of not being bright enough to figure this one out.

What surprises me abouthis thread is how much you guys seem to care if McCain got a heads-up on the questions. Considering that each of you Lefties despise the demographic that is the target audience (re: Sammy's & Smash's posts on the salt of the earth for example), what difference does it make to you? Unless you wish to cynically gain their vote, only to disregard and abuse them after your man is in office, why the fuss about the whole "cone of silence" thing anyways?

Totem

Yes, and I know your comment was largely tongue-in-cheek, but still there is a kernel of truth in the larger sense that the Left generally despises what they see as a monolithic moronic Christian Right wing conspiracy, a faith based on ignorance and myth.

Still, fair or not, these are people who your party has cast aside politically or any number of reasons. So why the big fuss about whether it was fair or not?

Having said this, there are any number of people on this board who place Chrsitians in a group of extremeists or label them as the Right wing conspirators, all of which exposes their lack of knowledge or understanding of Christians as a whole-- wherein lies the irony. For a party ostensibly based on tolerance and prides itself on free expression, Democrats effectively do to Christians what they abhor in others like racists, bigots, and sexists.

Plank, meet mote. Mote, plank.

Totem

Edited, Aug 20th 2008 11:19am by Totem