And yet obstetrics is a branch of medicine, so clearly lots of people out there include things related to pregnancy in medicine, including those actually working in that field. Why we shouldn't accept medical practitioners' definition of medicine over yours is unknown to me.

How's this definition: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/medicine

"the art or science of restoring or preserving health or due physical condition, as by means of drugs, surgical operations or appliances, or manipulations: often divided into medicine proper, surgery, and obstetrics"

You like? Think it doesn't include abortions?

Well I'm not hearing you say clearly that it isn't medicine, so I can't tell if I'm supposed to defend it or not. I'm not going to guess at your position if you refuse to clearly state it for me, even when I ask.

The problem is that just because the Nazis used improper criteria (IOW, Jews, gays), this doesn't mean that other criteria aren't proper. As I said, just war and capital punishment are not the same as the Nazi gas chambers, and neither are abortions. Indeed, the equality arguments that underlie abortion rights are the polar opposite of the Nazis, who killed in the name of inequality.

I can't believe I read this whole thing. Anyway, here's my 2 cents.

1. I'm strongly pro-choice and Stu has represented my position essentially correctly. I think his use of the word "convenience" offends some people, because of the connotations of that word. But his word choice notwithstanding, I would not say that he has misrepresented my position.

I think when it comes down to it, for any rational pro-choice argument to make sense, the supporter of the position is basically saying, "Yes abortion is killing something/someone, but it's OK because of [insert reason here]."

From what I gather, lawdude's argument is essentially in this form, and his reasons have to do with gender equality. If that's the case, I don't really understand why Stu and lawdude are aruguing.

2. Ganstaman is correct that many people hold the view that abortion is OK because it's not really killing a human being. However, for the reasons Stu has elucidated, this position, though widely held, is difficult to logically justify. I think one of the main reasons people hold this view is that it makes the position more palatable. It's more comfortable to believe that abortion is OK if you don't see it as any sort of killing taking place. But I think it's a cop out.

I would have to say whatever stops more people from being born. The greatest moral obligation has to be to society as a whole. Every year we use more natural resources than can be replenished and we need to cut the be fruitfull and multiply **** out. Cities overcrowd people starve and we all have to eat crap that mildly resembles food because there's no way to grow enough naturally. Time to tax the **** out of people who have more kids.

And yet it was Stu that turned to appealing to emotion ("I can show you pictures!") to support his side, making me question which is really easier to justify logically. And plus, what are his real arguments? That DNA matters, even though he never said why? That I can't define the word 'organ?'

The debate even reached a point in post 105 where Stu asked about what organism the cells were benefiting. I asked why this mattered and never got a response. Without going through the thread, I feel like there were several such dead-ends where Stu just changed the topic instead of addressing the point (too late, I did just go through the thread).

Still, I'm not claiming you have to agree with me, but I don't see how this thread shows Stu's arguments to be the logcially superior ones unless you already agree with him.

Maybe, but I know that personally I hold this position because I actually believe it to be true. When I think about how I view what constitutes life, this is the conclusion I reach. I'm very against killing or even hurting criminals, so I wouldn't support killing innocent human beings unless I truly believed we were not killing human beings.

Though after posting that I realize it's not an entirely appropriate response (the first half) to what you were saying. Too late now. I guess my issue is with saying Stu elucidated reasons showing my position to be logically difficult. Maybe there are reasons, but I don't feel they've been adequately elucidated.

Lets see Nazis said jews have no equality rights...pro-choicers say the unborn have no equality rights. If both ideologies claim a whole swath of humanity has no equality rights is claiming they are polar opposites really accurate? I don't think so. Many pro-choicers share a lot of the same ideology with the Nazi's....more so than most pro-choicers are comfortable admitting too.

I crushed you in that debate because you were all over the place. You moved from a fetus not being a human being to being an organ...to being part of the reproductive system...to being a tissue. It became apparent that you are not really sure what a fetus is except that it is not a human being...which indicates to me(and probably others) that you formed your position on the nature of fetus not on facts but rather on a preconcieved ideology.

The strongest pro-choice arguments I have ever heard basically claim that not all human beings have equal value and because of that it is sometimes preferrable to kill some human beings for the benefit of others. I dismiss that argument because I think there is some minimum value to human life that precludes it from being killed simply out of convience. I'm not sure how to go about "proveing" that minimum value however.

As I have noted, pro-life beliefs aren't "logical" either (twins, fetuses that have rights against you killing them, but which you have no obligation to provide for or save, etc.). This is an issue of values, not logic. And pro-lifers hate to talk about their values because the rest of the country flatly rejects conservative Christian views on sexuality.

But both sides have flaws in their logic on what is alive and what isn't. However, if you focus on sexial morality and equality, both sides' views are coherent.

Only an idiot would think that because a Jew in a camp is equal to you, it MUST follow that a zygote is equal to you.

By the way, I don't think you are an idiot. I think you are arguing something you don't really believe. For instance, you would arrest a woman who didn't feed her born children, but you would not arrest a woman who did not eat properly during a pregnancy. You do not, in fact, think fetuses are equal to born humans. You just like comparing those people who think your religious views on sex are bunk to the Nazpis.

Whether or not there is such a minimum value, gender equality and society's rejection of traditional Christian ppression of women is probably our single greatest accomplishment in the past century. THAT, and not mere concenience, is what outweighs whatever minimum value fetuses have.

We freed women by crushing conservative Christianity. It's not worth enslaving half the population again and reempowering the superstitious to save a few fetuses (and that's assuming an abortion ban would even work).

What debate were you reading that you felt you crushed? I was completely consistent in my view that a fetus is not a human being. You were the one trying to force me to call it an organ or a tissue, a classification I said was irrelevant and distracting.

On the other hand, you left a number of arguments/questions unaddressed. A number of times you changed topics instead of responding to my actual post. And you topped it all off with an emotional appeal to pictures! How confident could you have been in the logical fortitude of your position if you resorted to this?

You don't get to ignore all my last posts on various parts of this topic and then declare yourself the winner since your position is so obviously correct to you.

Unfortunately, he does.

Then you lose. After all, you keep insisting this is about whether

"Pro-choice rest on a belief that it is okay to kill some human beings for the convience of others....that some human beings are not worth societal protection."

is a fair characterisation. Since you now say it's obvious that ganstaman doesnt think a fetus is a human being then your intial quote is obviously not a fair characterisation of his position.

I await the new rules with interest.

I will add that I've asked myself before if a fetus was a human being because I found answering this relevant. I haven't asked the questions "is the fetus an organ" or "is it a tissue" because I haven't yet cared about the answer.

Interestingly, I've come across this in the context of an HIV positive pregnant female who didn't want to take her meds. I think she should be forced to abort or take medication. Even though I'm not viewing the fetus as something worthy of moral consideration, actions you take while pregnant can have a foreseeable difference in outcome once 'it' is morally worthy. Therefore, not taking HIV meds would qualify as negligence towards a future being, unless you kept said being from existing.

owned imo

(but stu will surely come back and crush you!)

I suspect so.

I conceded a long time ago that if the pro-choice position does not rest on that then it rest on a belief that a fetus is not a human being. I started to incorporate that premise into my arguments.

Why are you bringing this up now?

Yeah, and plenty explained why that was false too.
Because you keep changing "what this thread is about". When it suits you it's about the morality of abortion (or the methodology of the census, or what constitutes 'an organ', or the definition of medicine or ....) when someone pins you down on one of those topics it goes back to being "This thread is about whether I am mischaracterising the prochoice position".

It's amusing, it's not because I think anything good will come from watching you declare what people are thinking and why they hold particular views, even when they tell you you're wrong.

I asked you this:

In subsequent discussion I pointed out that the census is obviously not scientific because it does count some dead people and doesn't count some born people.

I'm still not sure what your fascination with the census is all about. Perhaps you can drop it and just answer my original question.

What is the youngest human being science is able to identify?

It is silly to even think an abortion ban "would even work". The question is to what extent an abortion ban will prevent abortions. By your standard our ban on some homocides doesn't work because homocides are still occurring.

Lets make homocide safe legal and rare....sounds silly right? Just like what you wrote above.

Yeah - and when I asked you for an example you provided.....a legal one.
I did answer your original question, it was my immediate post after you asked it. (How would you go on a similar metric? Answer all questions put to you or selectively choose those which are comfortable?)
EDIT: I've also already told you I'm not fascinated by the census. I realise it's kind of a lost cause telling you that I know more about what I'm thinking than you do, but we soldier on.

So you admit that a whole swath of humanity isn't equal to the rest of humanity. I'm merely suggesting that after adopting that premise continuing to claim pro-choice is a fight for equality appears facetious.

Where are these pictures you claim I resorted too? Perhaps you can quote the post so we can see if it is indeed an emotional appeal.