gadgetlady

Infants don't. So are they not human? Certainly, the Nobel Prize winning people and educators I've cited before think they don't. Are they wrong? Not according to your definition above. The infants don't have language skills and a highly developed imagination and they don't create practical things. So is it OK with you if Dr. Peter Singer kills his infant newborn child? Is it his choice to make and not yours to interfere? Sure sounds like it to me.

Yeah, that's what the slave owners said. Despite your refusal to answer, you do finally answer. The difference, and the only difference in your mind, between a black person and an unborn baby is that the unborn baby resides in the body of another person? So it is simply the journey through the birth canal that bestows life?

The time travel challenge is: Pretend you are climbing into a time travel machine. You go back to the time to America when slavery was legal. The slave owner you run into fully believes blacks are only 3/5 of a person. Convince him otherwise. You can't use the "everybody knows" argument because everybody in his time doesn't know. What evidence will you use to convince him? What scientific facts will you use to support your claim? You can use scientific facts from 2007, if you'd like, but not "in the future we all know", or "in the future it is outlawed for good reason". Give him the reasons. It's not a silly game. The actual issue, of course, is what criterion (other than "everyone knows") we use to define human beings. The answer will inform the question of when life begins. Which is why, of course, I don't think anyone on the pro-abortion side will answer.

Yup, that's what I thought you would say. In fact, I almost posted before you did that I'm quite positive you wouldn't take me up on the challenge. I know why, too. And it's not because you don't get the point or it's not your job. Anyone else want to take the time-travel challenge? I'm a bit confused here. What pro-lifers do you know who make the decision for other people? You keep bringing this up, but I don't get it. The pro-lifers I know lobby, protest, march, run pregnancy counseling centers, debate, run homes for unwed mothers, donate to the cause, try to influence politicians to pass laws, educate people, engage in civil disobedience, etc. Not a single one of them holds a gun to a woman's head and makes the decision for her. Not a single one of them "gets to set the rules for others to follow". They (we) have a belief and we act accordingly to change the law and society around us.

(emphasis added) The reason I use the arguments of slavery and Hitler is not because they were great evils, but because they were great evils which were based on the belief that certain human beings were not 100% human and therefore could be exterminated at the whim of those who were 100% human. There are many other great evils in history, but not all were based on the premise that people can be exterminated if they are deemed to be sub-human. These two were. And abortion is, too.

OK, let's try this a different way, Mark. Pretend you are climbing into a time travel machine. You go back to the time to America when slavery was legal. The slave owner you run into fully believes blacks are only 3/5 of a person. Convince him otherwise. You can't use the "everybody knows" argument because everybody in his time doesn't know. What evidence will you use to convince him? What scientific facts will you use to support your claim? You can use scientific facts from 2007, if you'd like, but not "in the future we all know", or "in the future it is outlawed for good reason". Give him the reasons. One, two, three, GO!

No problem. I'm happy to help. Any time you have questions about the Bible, feel free to ask

Actually, no. He only "granted amnesty" to one: the one who called on Him and accepted Him as Lord. He grants forgiveness to those who ask and who are repentant. John 8:9-11 (NIV): At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" "No one, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin." (this is also, in the NKJ translation, is more commonly quoted as "Go and sin no more"). Jesus calls for us not only to acknowledge our sin and repent of it, but to turn away from it. That's why the second thief on the cross wasn't forgiven; he was more interested in Jesus' power for his own glory than he was in seeking forgiveness for what he had done wrong.

Why don't we, then, just kill people who are abused or raped or mentally retarded? It would stop their suffering, after all. Because, of course, it is not our purvue to decide for other human beings whether their lives are worthy of living.

But it doesn't miss the mark at all. What you're forgetting is history. What you're forgetting is that Hitler and the people around him DID BELIEVE that Jews were less than human. And probably some people still believe that. Slave owners DID BELIEVE that slaves were 3/5 of a person. And probably some people still believe that. Certain modern professors and Nobel Prize winners DO BELIEVE that newborns are less than human. You can say it's been corrected and "nobody" believes that anymore, but that doesn't erase the fact that it once existed and was fully believed. And the reasons people gave were perfectly logical to them. Just because "the majority" doesn't agree NOW doesn't mean that when "the majority" agreed THEN that they were right. "The majority" is right NOW (about Jews and blacks), and "the majority" WAS WRONG then (about Jews and blacks). "The majority" IS WRONG now about abortion. We can look at history with 20/20 hindsight. We can't look as clearly at the history we are making now. If/when "the majority" (or the politicians or the judges) recognize the humanity of the unborn and we look back at when abortion used to be legal, perhaps we will see 20/20 then, too.

Abortions aren't performed when the unborn baby is only 4 cells. Abortions are performed after the baby has a beating heart -- because most women don't know they're pregnant until after that time. The majority of abortions are performed between 8 and 12 weeks. At 8 weeks, the baby has unique fingerprints, just like you and I. Clearly, not a "dividing embryo" with only 4 cells. As I suspected, you would answer with the "everybody knows" answer. You have stated earlier, I believe, that you are in favor of limiting or outlawing (I'm not sure which) late-term abortions. Why is that OK? Who are you to decide that a late-term abortion is unacceptable for a woman who thinks that her late-term baby (oops, sorry, "dividing embryo of 4 . . . or slightly more . . . cells") isn't a human life? For that matter, who are you to tell Nobel Prize winning men, professors at major universities, and that ilk (all modern figures, not from decades or centuries ago), that newborns aren't worthy of the right to live until they're 28 days old?

To those of you who think once you're in a coma you should be "let go": who knows, when entering a coma, when one will come out of it? It may be two days, it may be two months, it may be two years, or it may be 19 years. When does your family pull the plug? Minute #1? How do they know you won't awake at minute #2? The doctors told this woman her husband would never awake. If she had become discouraged and pulled the plug at 18 years and 364 days based on their telling her over and over that it was a lost cause, how sad that would be. I don't have any objection to any of you telling your families and loved ones to "give up on you", "let you go", "pull the plug", "let you slip away in peace", "euthanize you", or whatever you'd like to call it (it's all the same thing regardless of the words we use). For my family and my decisions, I know would never give up on my loved ones and I know they would never give up on me.

I'm sorry you misunderstood. I'm actually not sad at all. I love life. I just love it more when I can enjoy the things that I can't currently enjoy: biking and swimming with my kids, dancing with my husband, and the like.

You have time to accuse, and you have time to denigrate, but you don't have time to READ a very detailed answer to your question? Here you go. Have fun. http://www.lapbandtalk.com/486168-post167.html And while you're at it, read http://www.lapbandtalk.com/486176-post171.html That's really funny, because you asked me before, in another thread, I answered in detail, and then you thanked me for my honest answer. How quickly we forget. It's all in those posts above.

Agreed, but that does not make the desperate things right. And it doesn't mean the desperate things should be legal. After all, the woman who hanged her children and herself, despite being desperate (and dead) is a criminal.

That's a non sequitur. The extreme majority of babies aren't aborted due to potential mental retardation or disfigurement, and abortion doesn't stop or cure child abuse or rape. If it did, we'd have no child abuse or rape any more, would we?

Told ya' so. It's the "everybody agrees" answer -- and yet you still haven't addressed that "everybody agreed" (at least the ones who owned slaves) that slaves were 3/5 of a person, "everybody agreed" (at least in Hitler's SS) that Jews weren't full people, and "everybody agrees" (at least the renouned professors and Nobel Prize winners I quoted earlier) that an infant isn't a full life until somewhere around a month or so. Oh, no, sir. I answered it. Quite clearly. More than once. Go back and read it. Stop accusing me of not answering when I did. And, yet, again, YOU DID NOT ANSWER WHAT I ASKED. Typical.

Uh, yeah, no. It's a human rights issue. There are religious people on both sides of the fence, and even if most of them hover at one side of the fence, it still isn't a religious issue. As noted above, just because MLK Jr was a preacher doesn't make civil rights a religious issue.

If you can watch all the way through the video link I posted (here it is again: Abortion NO / The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform), see little hands and little feet, fully developed, being pulled out of a mother's womb, see little heads with little eyes and little mouths, see ribcages ripped apart, see little developed abdomens disemboweled, see fully formed babies burned to death through chemical abortion, and sleep well at night, YOU have no conscience.

Daffodil, were you around when Jane Roe was "discovered" by the pro-abortion movement? No one really knew who Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade, was until Norma McCorvey surfaced. The pro-abortion movement latched onto her, parading her before large groups of people, so proud to have found their "hero". Then they put a microphone under her nose and asked her to speak. The first thing she said? "I just want to know where my baby is." It was amazing! They dropped her like a hot potato; you should have seen the looks on their faces. She wanted to meet the child she didn't abort (yes, Norma McCorvey didn't even have STANDING before the court when Roe was heard because she was no longer pregnant -- what a flawed legal decision that was!). As it turns out, as she began to reveal her story, she didn't even want an abortion. She was seized upon by a pro-abortion attorney and dragged through the system like some lost puppy, set up, and then dumped by the movement because, you see, she really was pro-life. Incidentally, in the companion case to Roe, Doe v. Bolton, the decision that guaranteed abortion through all 9 months of pregnancy, Doe is also pro-life.

Abortion is not a religious issue. Yes, there are a lot of religious people that take a stand on the issue, but just because Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Baptist minister didn't make civil rights a religious issue. Just because in the 1920's religious people took a stand against eugenics laws that were on the books in 30 states (laws that, btw, Hitler studied and borrowed from when he came up with his "bright" ideas) doesn't make forced sterilization a religious issue. If you want hate, bigotry, social injustice, name-calling and hatefulness to stop, then why don't you start with the least among us? I have no problem with religious freedom. What I have a problem with is people killing other people for their own convenience.

I do want to add one thing. While I fully believe abortion takes the life of a human being and is therefore murder, I also believe that many women are deluded at their time of intense emotion and crisis by the pro-abortion movement. I know there are women who specifically ask whether if what they're carrying is a baby, and they're told it is not -- that it's a clump of cells, a blob of tissue, a product of conception -- and they're never informed about the reality of what's going on in the womb. Since an unplanned pregnancy is very often a very scary thing for a lot of women, being given what is presented as an "easy out", like having a tooth pulled, is something the grasp at very quicky. Human beings often make very bad decisions at times of crisis in their lives. That is why I don't condemn these women, the other victims of abortion; they need to heal and they need to be loved.

You know what's incredible? In the US it's illegal to destroy the egg of a bald eagle. Pretty much everyone understands this -- even those in favor of abortion. Destroying the developing little bald eagle means taking the life of something we as a country, for whatever reason, value. How screwed up are our values when we can't destroy a developing bald eagle but we can destroy a developing human being?

I never expected to convince you. I do believe, however, that people with open minds willing to explore the evidence and who don't have an emotional attachment to abortion can change their minds.

The pro-abortion response to this will be, "but it's OBVIOUS that THOSE things are wrong!" -- which is, of course, missing the point entirely, because it's not always obvious to those who commit the crimes. Just as it wasn't obvious to Hitler and the SS troops and it wasn't obvious to the slave owners and it isn't obvious to the "distinguished" men below who support infanticide: “There is little evidence that termination of an infant’s life in the first few months following extraction from the womb could be looked upon as murder... It would seem to be more ‘inhumane’ to kill an adult chimpanzee than a newborn baby, since the chimpanzee has greater mental awareness. Murder cannot logically apply to a life form with less mental awareness than a primate.” Winston L. Duke Article: The New Biology Reason magazine, August 1972 “No newborn infant should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment and if it fails these tests, it forfeits the right to life.” Dr. Francis Crick Nobel Prize winner Pacific News Service, January, 1978 “In our book, Should the Baby Live, my colleague Helga Kuhse and I suggested that a period of 28 days after birth might be allowed before an infant is accepted as having the same right to life as others.” Peter Singer Professor of Bio-Ethics Princeton University “It is reasonable to describe infanticide as post-natal abortion... Infanticide is actually a very humane thing when you are dealing with misbegotten infants. We might have to encourage it under certain conditionalities of excess population especially when you’re dealing with defective children.” Joseph Fletcher Professor of Ethics Harvard Divinity School Infanticide and the Value of Life, Prometheus Books, 1978 “Infanticide has a logical continuity with abortion and even with contraception.” Edward Pohlman, Researcher Planned Parenthood Psychology of Birth Planning Shankman Publishing Cambridge MA, 1967 “If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice that only a few are given under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so chose and save a lot of misery and suffering.” Dr. James D. Watson Nobel Prize winner Time magazine, May 28, 1973 Moral relativism is, indeed, scary.