I should think Trump's views on abortion were a good reason not to vote for him. What goes through an Evangelical's mind?

40 years from now, when society finally progresses beyond archaic views on abortion/gay marriage, the Evangelicals will look upon themselves with shame and regret.

Here's exit polling from Pew Research on the religious breakdown of voters.



Mormon support for Trump declined, but there you would expect some decline coming after Romney. Hispanic Catholic and white evangelical support for Trump increased and Jews both became more Democratic.

"Other faiths" moved +6 on Trump from Romney? I can sort of see the -12 from Obama to Clinton as just a general dissatisfaction, but I'm not really sure what the "other faiths" would see in Trump to drive it up.

The way the tide is turning on the abortion issue, with younger people more likely to be pro-life than their parents....it is the pro-abortion philosophy which is more likely to be viewed as archaic in 40 years. More and more people are finding it incredibly problematic to afford right to life only at birth.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinio...lumn/24900705/

There's a lot of nuance here. For example, the rise of the acceptance of contraception changes the perspective of abortion. If you use contraception, the need for abortion as a birth control method goes down. This is very different from the context in which abortion was viewed a generation ago.

There's also been an underlying nuance about the abortion debate that strong abortion defenders have had a very hard time accepting, which is that later term abortions are more morally problematic than earlier term abortions. Both the pro-life movement with "life begins at conception" and the pro-abortion movement that takes abortion to be morally acceptable up to the point of natural birth with "My body, my rights" were not viable positions to hold in the long run. There's simply too much absolutism there to be robust enough.

At this point in time, I with the advent of technology and scientific information that has allowed us to see more deeply into the situation and to expand the window of viability of a fetus, the underlying assumptions that are at play are vastly different than when the original decisions were made.

However, I do not expect the overturning of Roe v Wade as something that's really going to happen here. It certainly has a higher chance right now than it has had in a long time. In another 40 years, I'd expect earlier term abortions to still be legal, and for later term abortions to still be illegal (as they actually are in some 40+ states, I think). But I don't really see it being likely for it to be illegal to abort children with certain types of diseases or genetic abnormalities. (I personally think it's a morally slippery to go down the path of selection based on genetics, but that's a discussion for another time and place that will largely be driven by the changing landscape of genetic testing and genetic remedies that become available over time.)

It might well be a discussion for another time and place, but I'll note that my wife and I will be doing IVF (probably) with genetic screening of blastocysts in 2017. Are you worried here, too?

I don't have issues with IVF and don't subscribe to "life begins at conception." I think the fact that the failure to implant doesn't cause us much stress/concern should be an indication that this particular stage of development is not sufficient to create a significant moral problem.

I also think that genetic screening for certain types of high risk abnormalities is reasonable because of the beliefs I've described above. If these are detectable by that stage (as I believe many are), then there's not a significant moral harm of choosing not to go forward at that point.

So I'm not worried at this time, but there may come a point in time (as technology advances and changes) where the worry may begin to rise. If there's a place to worry about this, it's that we're often not having enough moral/ethical conversations about these decisions, and that it's treated too "coldly" as a purely medical issue.

It is inconvenient, however human life does in fact begin at conception. The discussion regarding whether it creates a moral problem to end that life should be had with full understanding that a life does in fact exist at that point.

Sure. If you want to play the definition game, one can define life in that way. But then I would reject the claim of the sanctity of human life in all stages. That is, in some stages of fetal development, human life (as defined as a strict biological definition) is not sacred.

Aside from the negation of this principle for very early fetal development, it also applies to those of advanced ages or under various forms of medical incapacity. There's a reason that a lot of very old people have DNR (do not resuscitate) orders. The types of injuries sustained during life preserving measures (such as CPR) create a quality of life that many people deem not worth living. (In other words, old people prefer to be dead than to live through the pain of to trying to recover from having all of their ribs cracked.)

So it's up to you how you want to define the terms. Most of the "life begins at conception" arguments come with the implicit assumption of the sanctity of human life at all stages. My point is merely to make the distinctions explicit.

The soul/spirit human being enters into the fetus at about 28-30 days. Prior to that the soul/spirit human being was involved in the creation of the body of the fetus which one would see after conception.

The only way to comprehend birth and even death is to gain a knowledge of the human being as a soul /spiritual being who has , in effect, four bodies;

Physical body which can be seen in the corpse before decomposition.

Formative force or etheric body which one can appreciate in the sleeping human being which appears plant like as it contains "life".

Astral body or that to which the human being thinks, feels and wills which is the range of the "soul".

Ego or "I" which is a body and not an abstraction but that in which the human being belongs to the highest of spiritual worlds .

To understand and comprehend "abortion" one must understand that we are not born of the physical conception but bring our characterological disposition from previous lives into the embryo. Science ,in its present state, offers nothing but a copmprehension of the corpse or in other words the mineral.

There is a being who has, most often, planned for somewhat 400 years to enter into the blood line of a particular family and this is the difficulty with abortion.

What you see when you look upon another is not the mineral/scientific man of modern science but the confluence of these four bodies, three of which are suprasensible.

I can see how it is difficult to accept the sanctity of human life at the earliest stages, however at what point in time does sanctity exist then? What point is it where a minute earlier, there is no sanctity of human life?

I would argue it is more reasonable to argue that all unique human organisms no matter how old or young or mentally incapable should be granted basic rights and be treated equally with one another. At conception, we are dealing with a unique human organism or "life".

Do you realize that under this framework, women will literally flush human lives down the toilet due to natural failures of implantation? It's hard to say that there's any dignity there (well, not any more dignity than a dead goldfish, though normally the dead goldfish has a clean toilet and isn't thrown out with other human waste product), or that any sorts of rights were granted. So I find this to be a strange argument.

The inability to answer a tough question does not imply that the answer to is to draw a thick line somewhere and declare that to be an answer. I consider this challenge to be similar to the challenge of answering the question, "What does love require of me in this situation?" The fact that you might be in a tough situation where the "best" answer appears ambiguous does not mean that you should just declare some answer as the most loving answer because dealing with the ambiguity is hard.

[QUOTE=Aaron W.;51178251]Do you realize that under this framework, women will literally flush human lives down the toilet due to natural failures of implantation? It's hard to say that there's any dignity there (well, not any more dignity than a dead goldfish, though normally the dead goldfish has a clean toilet and isn't thrown out with other human waste product), or that any sorts of rights were granted. So I find this to be a strange argument.

QUOTE]

Your example represents a natural death. I don't see how that is incompatible with the existence of human dignity at that point.

The law should be negated here for the woman and man, if educated properly, can decide as to what to do and if so to go ahead with an abortion or not. It has to be taken out of the governmental hands and this means that an individual decides but she/he would attempt to understand and to understand is not to see the fetus as a bunch of minerals.

This is why only an attempt to comprehend reincarnation/karma can answer these questions for science surely can offer nothing about birth and also death; it is helpless in this regard.

Also the idea of flushing fetuses down the toilets is exactly what happens when one has an abortion . I believe that inflammatory statement was used, once upon a time, to bring the legalization of abortion to effect.

The difficulty is: should a would be mother be punished with jail, etc. if she has an abortion. This is onerous , the ship has sailed and only a proper education can opffer amelioration to the question of abortion otherwise we would be spinning meaningless abstractions on both side of the fence to no one's ennoblement.

Natural death is a pretty vague concept, and it's almost certainly being applied in an uneven manner. Failure to implant doesn't instantaneously kill the cells. They probably live a while longer and are likely to be technically "alive" when they pass through the exit. That means that they probably drown in the toilet. There's just not much dignity there, even if it is natural.

And so the same natural death would occur for IVF cells that don't implant. Or if IVF cells are dumped down the toilet directly. Death happens pretty naturally.

Actually its about 14 days. The point at which an embryo can no longer turn into twins.

This argument also applies to your statement that life begins at conception. At what point does life begin? The moment the sperm penetrates the egg? Or once fertilization has occured? Or on the first split? You cant point to a point in time where a minute earlier theres no life, and then there suddenly is. The only way you can do that, is by definining life as some arbitrary point.

I disagree.

Conception is not an arbitrary point. The point when two body parts (sperm and egg) recombine and form a new living, whole, human organism who is growing and developing into adulthood.

Prior to this point, there is no life.

Do you believe that the process of combining* is a single step that happens instantaneously? What is your understanding of what happens from the first moment the sperm touches the egg's exterior? Are they combined yet?

* I use "combining" even though you used "recombine" because I'm not sure what the re- is referring to, and so I believe it to be a typo.

Sorry, yes combine. Conception occurs at fertilization.

Fertilization occurs when union of egg and sperm occur.

Fertilization in humans occurs when a sperm cell successfully penetrates the cell wall of an egg and enters the egg itself. I believe at this point, other sperm are prevented from also fertilizing the egg.

A new person begins at conception, when the sperm and egg meet and fuse.
That new life has its own DNA, and is its own unique person. I believe this is basic science.

To answer your question, when the sperm touches the egg's exterior they are not yet combined.

Is the fusing process instantaneous? If not, then there's a separate beginning and end to the process. In which case, is it the beginning or the end or something in the middle that is the transition into actual personhood?

Good question....

At 5:05 of this video is the completion of the fertilization process where 2 sets of chromosones join together and "a unique genetic code arises instantly determining gender and hundreds of other characteristics"

This is the instant where that new life begins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFrVmDgh4v4

why this point, exactly?

because its a unique genetic code? a unique genetic code does not equal life.

So... you're going to hinge your understanding of a complex genetic process on the word "instantly" that you found in the narration of a YouTube video?

You're talking about it as if there's some magic moment where you instantly go from some random assortment of proteins to all of sudden having human DNA, and that humanness is granted in that very instant. I don't believe that in the careful analysis that a binary classification at this level actually works.

When those 2 sets of chromosones join together and form this unique living genetic code, that moment represents the very beginning of a unique human life. I think this is clear and supported by science. Do you disagree?