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Resurrecting the topic of the week: abortion
Topic Started: Jun 3 2015, 12:21 AM (196 Views)
Larsland
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Hey y'all, Wednesday is a good a day as any for our topic of the week segment. Here we highlight a major current event or topical issue, and discuss our viewpoints on the subject.

Let's get some discussion going then. What do you all think of abortion? Should it be legal? Banned? Allowed only in certain circumstances?
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The Altarian Empire
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A fetus does have living cells, but the life is the same as that of the mother. Clipping fingernails analogy again.

A fetus is not a mere extension of the mother by virtue of having its own distinct DNA. Additionally, fingernails aren't composed of living cells to begin with.

You keep saying functionally equivalent when even you agree it doesn't perform the same functions. At best it is only capable of the same functions.

Alright, to make the language as precise as possible, an about to be born fetus and just born baby are capable of the same biological functions and possess no distinctive physical difference, i.e. the baby has not undergone any biological growth or cellular change upon being removed from the womb. They both possess the same physiological systems, with the sole significant difference being how their circulatory systems function, as a consequence of the medium they inhabit.

Manslaughter is killing a person with reduced culpability. During stillbirth, the fetus is killed by the mother giving birth unintentionally. Sounds the same to me.

Voluntary manslaughter requires intent. Involuntary manslaughter either requires killing while committing another crime, or killing as a result of extreme negligence or recklessness. Miscarriage does not meet any of those definitions.

Scientists have observed habits in fetuses, and not "memories" in the normal sense. Here's an explanatory article on your source debunking this idea that the memory systems in the brain are in any way well-formed at that age

That article is an argument over the definition of memory. In the purest scientific sense, memory is the ability to store and retrieve information. Habituation is a form of learning, and thus any behaviors resulting from habituation are a consequence of recalling learned information - memory.

Your source on "brain death" actually has several pages dedicated to critiquing the idea of brain birth, and includes other figures from reputable societies showing those figures to be wrong. It argues a better standard is to consider life as a continuum.

The article does critique brain birth, but brain birth has at most only been a part of my argument. As intermittent as they might be, the stem/cerebral brain activity does exist.

Consciousness does not arise in the fetus and only begins to arise in a birthed baby, being developed after birth. Basic awareness of stimuli such as pain does not even arise until about 30 weeks
The brain indeed only begins to basically regulate most bodily functions around 30 weeks. Lungs, the heart - these things are simply not fully developed as you claim, and only the heart is doing anything really useful.


The comparisons become more hard to defend the farther back you place the fetus's gestational age - but it doesn't really matter at this point, as you have already made clear gestational age is irrelevant to you, and that even a post-term fetus can be aborted for reasons unrelated to concern's for the mother's life by virtue of not having being removed from the womb. From that point onward, I have been arguing purely in terms of a fetus one second from being removed from the womb.
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Larsland
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A fetus is not a mere extension of the mother by virtue of having its own distinct DNA.
Red blood cells have different DNA from the rest of the body - does that mean that red blood cells are not part of the body? The human body is adapted in all sorts of ways to change both the expression and structure of its own DNA.
As an aside, do you honestly believe people with Chimerism are really 2 people?

Miscarriage does not meet any of those definitions.
I think I could argue that.

In the purest scientific sense, memory is the ability to store and retrieve information.
Sure. But memory as we usually use the term hasn't evolved in a fetus.

As intermittent as they might be, the stem/cerebral brain activity does exist.
Great, but you were trying to show unborn fetuses have higher order thinking skills. They plainly don't and this intermittent activity proves nothing.
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The Altarian Empire
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Red blood cells have different DNA from the rest of the body - does that mean that red blood cells are not part of the body? The human body is adapted in all sorts of ways to change both the expression and structure of its own DNA.

Red blood cells don't have DNA. In the spirit of question, would distinct chromosomes be more precise for you? It's sexual reproduction 101 that half of a zygote's genetic material is derived from the mother and half derived from the father. I see no rationality, outside pure contrarianism, in the argument that a fetus is a pure biological extension of the mother's body and not a separate organism.

As an aside, do you honestly believe people with Chimerism are really 2 people?

Even aberrant genetic material is still intrinsic to a specific organism and distinct from any other's.

Great, but you were trying to show unborn fetuses have higher order thinking skills. They plainly don't and this intermittent activity proves nothing.

Depends on what you're thinking of by "higher order" thinking skills. Higher brain function purely refers to neocortical brain activity - which includes the capacity for voluntary action, sensory perception (which we have already shown is present), and conscious thought., in contrast to the involuntary lower brain functions provided by the brain stem.
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