Wednesday, March 08, 2006
the great Abortion debate.
Just following a discussion with some list I subscribe to about the South Dakota (I think it's South Dakota) law change on abortion.
Up comes the old, it's not a child it's a fetus argument.
Ok, if you beleive it then to you it's a fetus. But here's what I think.
If two dogs mate the resulting product of the mating is a dog. Canine.
If two frogs mate the resulting product of the mating is eventually, after a few growing spurts, an amphebian.
If two humans mate?
You see, back in the begining of the abortion debate, before Roe V. Wade the pro side would come out with literature showing pictures of different species in stages of development and compare those developmental stages of the animal to a corresponding developmental picture of a "fetus". The literature compared them side by side pointing at that at one stage this "fetus" was exactly the same as a lizard, or monkey or some other animal. So it wasn't actually "human".
I was a newspaper reporter for a Catholic newspaper at the time and I covered more abortion rallies, lectures, etc. than you want to imagine. I kept hearing those same arguments over and over. So one day I asked one of the "pro abortion" people what if we removed the "lizard stage" embryo from a mother's womb and had the ability to grow it outside the womb to term would it then become a lizard? She looked at me like I was nuts. But I was trying to tell her that if two humans mate the resulting creature formed by that mating would be HUMAN.
It is not human when it hits air and breathes for the first time on its own. It is HUMAN from the moment two human donated cells, the egg and sperm, come together to create another life. A HUMAN life. That fetus will never be a cat, frog, sheep, goat, or lizard. That fetus can be nothing else than a human being, in some stage of development.
In those days the term viable was used a lot. A viable life was always something that could survive outside the womb. Well since those days in the 1970 viablility has changed. Infants born so premature that they had little or no chance of survival in the 1970's are born and survive every day. Modern medicine makes it possible for infants weighing as little as a pound at birth and pull through. Sure some of them have health problems, but so do some not very low birth weight babies.
So what is viable? I guess if you actually want a child who is gestationally and i developmentally only 5 months along it's a viable child, but if you don't it's just a fetus, easily disposed of.
So explain this right to "a woman has a right to do what she wants to her own body "and then tell me when the human inside the mother has the right to his/her own body? I can't justify one person's right to have a "beter life." at the expense of another persons right to live at all.
Up comes the old, it's not a child it's a fetus argument.
Ok, if you beleive it then to you it's a fetus. But here's what I think.
If two dogs mate the resulting product of the mating is a dog. Canine.
If two frogs mate the resulting product of the mating is eventually, after a few growing spurts, an amphebian.
If two humans mate?
You see, back in the begining of the abortion debate, before Roe V. Wade the pro side would come out with literature showing pictures of different species in stages of development and compare those developmental stages of the animal to a corresponding developmental picture of a "fetus". The literature compared them side by side pointing at that at one stage this "fetus" was exactly the same as a lizard, or monkey or some other animal. So it wasn't actually "human".
I was a newspaper reporter for a Catholic newspaper at the time and I covered more abortion rallies, lectures, etc. than you want to imagine. I kept hearing those same arguments over and over. So one day I asked one of the "pro abortion" people what if we removed the "lizard stage" embryo from a mother's womb and had the ability to grow it outside the womb to term would it then become a lizard? She looked at me like I was nuts. But I was trying to tell her that if two humans mate the resulting creature formed by that mating would be HUMAN.
It is not human when it hits air and breathes for the first time on its own. It is HUMAN from the moment two human donated cells, the egg and sperm, come together to create another life. A HUMAN life. That fetus will never be a cat, frog, sheep, goat, or lizard. That fetus can be nothing else than a human being, in some stage of development.
In those days the term viable was used a lot. A viable life was always something that could survive outside the womb. Well since those days in the 1970 viablility has changed. Infants born so premature that they had little or no chance of survival in the 1970's are born and survive every day. Modern medicine makes it possible for infants weighing as little as a pound at birth and pull through. Sure some of them have health problems, but so do some not very low birth weight babies.
So what is viable? I guess if you actually want a child who is gestationally and i developmentally only 5 months along it's a viable child, but if you don't it's just a fetus, easily disposed of.
So explain this right to "a woman has a right to do what she wants to her own body "and then tell me when the human inside the mother has the right to his/her own body? I can't justify one person's right to have a "beter life." at the expense of another persons right to live at all.
