I think it’s humorous, BTW, that you got an italicized “Report comment as offensive” by ending your post with italics. Can I get a bold?

Report comment to moderator

I suggest that this is truly weak argumentation indeed.”

You argue that since twins are two unique people who share identical genetic material that somehow, the living embryo developing in her womb, genetically distinct from its mother, can not be differentiated in any meaningful way from the mothers’ own skin cells. How exactly does that logic work? I do not merely suggest that your argument is preposterously weak, and utterly irrelevant to the genetic differences between mother and child, I am astonished that you thing such sophistry supports your position and undermines mine.

Your confusion of skin cells with embryos was explicitly refuted by my argument, and your counterargument serves to confirm my position contra your insupportable category confusion. My opinion considers the evidence that you distort or ignore.

I also confronted your poor exegesis of Exodus 21:22 with specifics. That both added to the discussion and refuted your point. You were unwittingly citing a translation that undermined your own argument. You are clearly in no position to be so dismissive of someone else’s contribution.

“I suggest for the anti-abortion argument to be logically rather than emotionally based, the anti-abortion forces need to actually address two issues:

And as we have see at least in this discussion, the anti-abortion forces seem neither interested nor able to address these issues.”

I’m mystified why you stumble over what “humanness” is. The biological markers for human life and human tissue are obvious enough for forensic proof in a court of law. If we are unable to come to a consensus definition of “humanness” it is perhaps because we are so close to it and intuit it fully. Like “love” and “joy”, being a human is something of which we are so concretely aware we quail before the task of defining it in the abstract. Nevertheless, we can begin with a minimal definition that confines itself to the empirical and biological. Perhaps you have some abstraction in mind, some thisness or thatness that defines a vague subjective quality intrinsic to human beings that affords them dignity and moral worth. If that is the case, you should learn to use words with more precision and clarity. Words are the primary tools of thinking and discourse and if are sloppy with words, you are perforce sloppy with thinking, as witness your confusion over what the NIV says and how cloning and twinning relate to the genetic differences between a mother and the child in her womb.

To move beyond your emotional responses and subjective states such as independent viability to the hard clarity of logic we start with the irrefutable biological verity that from conception forward a unique, living human being exists in every sensible meaning of the words and with the full weight of modern science behind it.

To address your second point, no humans have absolute rights, even over their own bodies. We may not take certain substances lawfully, we cannot go unclad wherever we want, we cannot swing our fists wildly in a crowd. The burden is on the mother to demonstrate why her needs should be given preference over the living child in her womb.

Since the one thing we know with certainty is that abortion destroys a living human being, we must begin from that point and reason outward. Many embryos die, many fetuses miscarry, many children and all adults eventually die. That does not give any of us the right to kill them.

Report comment to moderator

Fetuses still use oxygen, just not directly breathed. One would have to say that an adult on a respirator isn’t fully human, by that rationale. In other words, Augustine was sometimes wrong. Clearly the fetus is formed by God, in His image. For a mother to say, “No, thank You, God,” and murder His gift is not only murder, but an insult to her Creator and that of her baby.

Report comment to moderator

The church fathers, including Augustine, condemned abortion, but not “unequivocally.” Augustine thought induced abortion was allowable prior to the “ensoulment” of the fetus, which he surmised to be at 40 days for males, 90 days for females.

Augustine must have been pondering Two Parents in Four Acts:

God made man gradually. So far as we know, He made all other creatures with an instantaneous command, “Let there be. . ” God spoke the word and presto, a species in one act. For man, however, He used a multi-stage process:

ACT I: God put his fingers into the mud and sculpted a form that looked like His reflection in a mirror.
ACT II: God performed artificial respiration, infusing the clay with something from His own body, breath, a divine gift not bestowed upon any other creature, so far as we’re told. The debut of soul and spirit enabled man to speak and to name.
ACT III: Obviously, divinity wasn’t enough, and Adam’s humanity was not yet achieved. Therefore, God removed the rib and propagated woman.
Act IV: God gave them law. Without it, Adam and Eve must have been either beasts of nature or usurpers of divine authority.

The Genesis concept is simple. The fetus is one stage in the manufacture of “the image of God.” The fetus is anatomically human, but in order to become fully human, the fetus has to breathe the breath of life, enter society, and be constructed by law.

Augustine and other Platonists were onto this non-materialist rationale for abortion.

Report comment to moderator

Search your hearts, why would any of you believe that ABORTION isn’t murder? – so you can take steps to abort your child, be it your spouse, or that of your sex partner?

The endless research to find ways to slaughter the unborn for selfish reasons will never end, using Scripture, twisting it to mean and manipulate a remote chance that someone’s decision to abort isn’t sin?

Meditate and prayerfully read the passages of Scripture below. As the LORD speaks to your heart.

Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. Jeremiah 1:5

God knows everyone before HE forms them in the belly, not just those who live to serve HIM, or those who don’t, but THOSE who are slaughtered in the womb, the LORD knows them too ——– HE knows each and every one of us, it’s no secret to GOD as to who we are.

13 For thou didst form my inward parts: Thou didst cover me in my mother’s womb.

14 I will give thanks unto thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: Wonderful are thy works; And that my soul knoweth right well.

15 My frame was not hidden from thee, When I was made in secret, And curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

16 Thine eyes did see mine unformed substance; And in thy book they were all written, Even the days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was none of them. Psalms 139

Here again we read “unformed substance” – GOD sees everything, even what we can’t see, and that includes the famous sonogram.

Report comment to moderator

As for Scriptural reasons why abortion is wrong: I think all the ones people have already quoted, especially the one about “you knew me before I was born” (paraphrase), are pretty clear.

But there’s also the simple biological facts: sperm and egg join, become various “blobs of cells” – but very quickly, you have an embryo. Once there’s an embryo, there is a fetus, once there is a fetus, there will be a baby as soon as that fetus is born – because babies are being born earlier and earlier and surviving. If there is any chance that a baby can be born and survive, there is absolutely no reason AT ALL to abort him or her except the mother’s selfishness. Abortions before the baby looks to be anything besides a blob of tissue is slightly more debatable, but not much.

Every single person posting here was once a fetus, and before than an embryo, and before that a blob of tissue. If you had been aborted you would not exist now. You may say you wouldn’t care about it because you wouldn’t realize (never mind that unborn babies either can feel pain or may be able to feel pain and we don’t quite know, meaning that the fetus is in pain when it is killed). The point remains, however, that, especially once the embryo is a fetus..there’s no excuse.

Report comment to moderator

TJ,

I appreciate what you mention here in comment 96. Its something that no one else has mentioned really. TRS dips into that as well.

To further that point.

Musing, it seems from reading his posts, that he is asking for explicit Scripture reference and or a clear definition of humanness.

How does not knowing those answers excuse our ignorance and ALLOW abortion? There is no rational conclusion for that. Is it better to ere on the side of life when we are in ignorance or to ere on the side of death?

If your asking for explicit then the arguement needs to go both ways. Where is the explicit Scripture that allows for abortion? Further, I’m not aware of any that would even imply it.

Do we need a clear line of humanness between a skin cell and a fertilized egg? Or is it clearly scientific enough to say that at some point say conception we know a life is growing and will grow into a full size human being provided nothing interrupts its grown natural or unnatural?

Considering abortion is a direct act by another human to cause harm/death to a growing fetus, it should be easy to come to terms here. If it were dead and not growing already (miscarriage), we would have no need to abort. If it would remain a skin cell there would be no need, but a fertilized egg in a womb grows.

But the princple of abortion assumes that a living growing fetus is contained within a womb and must be terminated, leaves the lines very clear. Humanness as you put it is not needed to be “clearly” defined for us to prevent death by our hands, nor do we need it explicitly stated by religion that preserving the life of humans is common sense.

Abortion is not justified under ignorance. Nor will it be excusable.

Report comment to moderator

It’s as if they can only think of the baby as a grouping of cells, which it is for only a very short period of time. And yet, most of their arguments only ethically apply to that short period of time (if then).

Why can we not all condemn partial birth abortion? The medical community has repeatedly stated that there has NEVER been a case where a partial birth abortion was needed to save the life of the mother. It just isn’t a necessary procedure. But, we can’t even get you people to agree to stop something so obviously barbaric and heinous.

What about the 3rd trimester, where many “premies” actually are viable?

What about the 2nd trimester, where they look, act, and feel like miniature babies?

Could we start SOMEWHERE?

Heck, your “messiah” Obama won’t even give medical care to BORN children if they were aborted.

I’ll argue “personhood” with you forever up to the 8th or 12th week (although I strongly believe in the personhood of the child once conceived), but I don’t understand why you stand on the blastocyst and completely ignore the BABIES that are routinely killed and discarded.

Your position might hold more weight if you were actually working…heavens, even COMMENTING, in favor of stopping abortions at any point along the continuum.

Instead, we get arguments formulated for “cells” and silence on partial birth abortion.

Report comment to moderator

*****I can only think of a few instances: I can see people disagreeing about early (very early) abortions, where the baby isn’t really a baby yet. But, once we reach the 8th, or especially the 12th, week, I can no longer “agree to disagree.” At that point, a person who approves of abortion is the same as someone who approves of murder, IMO. I will not be able to blithely go about my business and just agree that their opinion is different than mine.

As the technology gets better and better, I think the excuses get harder and harder.

My MIL for instance, still thinks that a baby isn’t a baby until you feel “life” in the 5th month. When she was a young adult, they couldn’t even tell for sure that you were pregnant until you started feeling the movements.

So, I understand her point of view, but I think she’s dead wrong. I’ve seen my children at much, much younger stages using an ultrasound. They were trying to suck their thumbs. They were kicking, moving, drawing back from pressure on my abdomen, and so on.

Try telling me that isn’t a baby. That just goes against facts, reality, common sense…you name it.

As for babies before the 8th week (i.e. heart and circulatory system start to work) or before the 12th week (i.e. fully formed human, just very miniature), I believe that they are still persons and deserve personhood status. But, I can grudgingly accept that someone else might feel differently…barely.

Report comment to moderator