IT IS IMMORAL TO KILL PEOPLE LIKE US, BORN HUMAN BEINGS — Rank Amateur

It is immoral to kill human beings except when it is moral. If we collectively dislike a group or individual enough, then it's OK, desirable, even mandatory to kill human beings. Usually a trained group of people are detailed with the task, and we support the troops with our taxes.

I may not like that arrangement, but it seems to be an exceedingly well established set up. Just about everybody approves of the properly presented war. Just about everybody agrees that killing to protect one's property is OK. Self-defense, sure -- fire away. Just like nobody doesn't like Sara Lee, nobody doesn't like certain kinds of killing. People who are opposed to abortion on the grounds that persons are being killed could at least be consistent and be committed Quakers. 99 times out of 100 they are not.

Hypocrisy? But then again, they never said it wasn't.

l, that it is in the same moral category as killing an innocent adult human being. The argument is based on a major assumption. Many of the most insightful and careful writers on the ethics of abortion—such as Joel Feinberg, Michael Tooley, Mary Ann Warren, H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., L.W. Sumner, John T. Noonan, Jr., and Philip Devine—believe that whether or not abortion is morally permissible stands or falls on whether or not a fetus is the sort of being whose life it is seriously wrong to end. The argument of this essay will assume, but not argue, that they are — tim wood

My God, for the now 5th time. The major assumption he is making is, that the nature of what a fetus is, is a determining factor in if abortion is or is not moral. It does NOT assume anything other than, if the fetus is such a thing as would make abortion moral, OK, or if the fetus is such a thing as would make abortion immoral OK.

All that assumption is saying, and why it is first in the argument is, before I make a case about what the nature of the fetus is, we need to assume that the nature of the fetus has something to do with the morality or immorality of abortion.

Your continued inability to understand this rather easy point of logic is pure ignorance, arrogance or obstinance take your pick.

I didn't even make it through the whole post, All this shows is you have not even made the slightest effort to understand the argument, you are arguing against.

You believe what you believe because you believe it. So much for philosophy.

hard to argue with that. I gave up being amazed at our ability as humans to justify killing the people we want dead a very long time ago.

Something is very wrong when 1 in 5 pregnancies in the us ends in abortion. Any one who finds that acceptable has lost their compass.

My God, for the now 5th time. The major assumption he is making is,... — Rank Amateur

I should have highlighted three sentences instead of just two: Again, from the beginning of Marquis's paper

1) The purpose of this essay is to undermine this general belief.

2) The argument is based on a major assumption.....

3) The argument of this essay will assume, but not argue, that they are.

This tells us - he, Marquis, is telling us explicitly - that the most his argument can be is valid in form. With these three sentences he cuts away the possibility of truth via the argument. But you keep claiming that the argument is substantive. It is not substantive. It cannot be substantive. It demonstrates nothing. It is an exercise in form. I credit Marquis with knowing that perfectly well. But you refuse to know it even though it is right there, in his three sentences right above.

No more Marquis.

As to FOV, I have repeatedly asked you to clarify the notion, especially with respect to certain assumptions that are built into it, but this you will not or cannot do. The entire enterprise of "your" argument is dead in the water. Not because I say so, but simply because it is.

That is the whole logic of the argument, and it has nothing to do with personhood, nothing — Rank Amateur

All this shows is you have not even made the slightest effort to understand the argument, you are arguing against. — Rank Amateur

That's shit. You use the euphemism "people like us" to refer to what has moral standing; I use "person". Then you reduce the worth of "People like us" to their future, as if their past, their relations with others, their desires, loves, regrets, passions, and every other facet that makes a person more than a foetus were as nothing. Then you pretend to derive an ought from the is of a foetus having a future.

The argument is artless.

A person is human tissue. But not all human tissue is a person.

I have no better way of saying this.

He is going to make an argument about the nature of the fetus

Before he starts he is asking the reader to assume that before he goes on, the nature of what a fetus is has something to do with the morality or immorality of killing it.

If the reader can not grant that whatever a fetus is, has no bearing on the morality or immorality of abortion he can stop reading.

That's it.

This is a simple concept, and now you are so committed to your completely baseless and inane position you will fight it to the bitter end, instead of a simple admission that you are misreading the assumption.

According to the Guttmacher Institute (fertility and sex education is their bailiwick)... At 2014 abortion rates, one in 20 women (5%) will have an abortion by age 20, about one in five (19%) by age 30 and about one in four (24%) by age 45.5. These figures represent a decline to a low, not an increase, over the last 40 years. 1980 was the high point in abortions.

Hypocrisy? But then again, they never said it wasn't. — Banno

I gave up being amazed at our ability as humans to justify killing the people we want dead a very long time ago. — Rank Amateur

Of course we are hypocritical and inconsistent, and that seems to be built into the human condition. We just can't avoid hypocrisy and be consistent with ourselves. We are not inherently consistent beings. We can try, but...

Something is very wrong when 1 in 5 pregnancies in the us ends in abortion. Any one who finds that acceptable has lost their compass. — Rank Amateur

Yes, something is wrong: We are doing a piss-poor job of sex education and pregnancy prevention education. Both of which are a critical piece of "life education" which we don't do very well at either. Still, even well-informed people engage in sex without pregnancy prevention in place, and women get pregnant who would really rather not have.

I don't think it's terrible that women abort pregnancies the Plan B or early abortions (before 21 weeks). It is terrible when the possibility of getting a safe abortion is precluded. Do you think that "Every child a wanted child." is a bad slogan? I think it's good. Couples who bring a wanted baby home are going to do a much better job of caring for this child. (I'm in favor of couples raising children, too. Two parents are better than 1, two breadwinners are better than 1, two role models (male/female) are better than the model of one person only, etc.

I don't think it's terrible that women abort pregnancies the Plan B or early abortions (before 21 weeks). It is terrible when the possibility of getting a safe abortion is precluded. Do you think that "Every child a wanted child." is a bad slogan? I think it's good. Couples who bring a wanted baby home are going to do a much better job of caring for this child. (I'm in favor of couples raising children, too. Two parents are better than 1, two breadwinners are better than 1, two role models (male/female) are better than the model of one person only, etc. — Bitter Crank

I think abortion, as a method of birth control, is a symptom of a rather complicated web of social issues and pressures. I don't believe anyone at the time of Roe vWade, would have imagined that since then, there have been over 60 million abortions done in the US. That is a hard number to grasp. If 60 million names were put on the Vietnam memorial wall, it would stretch for 50 miles.

I believe at the beginning of legal abortion the premise was they would be rare, a last resort, and a lesser evil than having those rare cases seek illegal abortions. That changed. Sex has changed, some for the better, some for the worse. Sex has become more transactional, comoditized, since the pill made the prospect of sex without responsibility a possibility.

What happened was, once abortion becomes available, it becomes the most attractive option for everyone around the pregnant woman. If she has an abortion, it’s like the pregnancy never existed. No one is inconvenienced. It doesn’t cause trouble for the father of the baby, or her boss, or the person in charge of her college scholarship. It won’t embarrass her mom and dad.

Abortion is like a funnel; it promises to solve all the problems at once. So there is significant pressure on a woman to choose abortion, rather than adoption or parenting.

But that’s an illusion. Abortion can’t really “turn back the clock.” It can’t push the rewind button on life and make it so she was never pregnant. It can make it easy for everyone around the woman to forget the pregnancy, but the woman herself may struggle. Life stretches on after abortion, and generally the only person who worries about her irreversible choice is the woman.

Abortion is pro men, pro power, pro all the people around the mother who perceive their life will be inconvenienced by a child. Who want a do over for that responsibility free sex society promised them.

What awful pressure we are putting on woman when we now have a tug of war between a woman and her baby. It may be the first time in history when mothers and children have been assumed to be at odds. We’re supposed to picture the child attacking her, trying to destroy her hopes and plans, and picture the woman grateful for the abortion, since it rescued her from the clutches of her own child. This is an aberration of reality.

This is a fiction, caused by a societal revolution in the last 50-60 years. Much of it good, some of it with a cost. And woman are paying a high price.

We had somehow bought the idea that abortion was necessary if women were going to rise in their professions and compete in the marketplace with men. But how had we come to agree that we will sacrifice our children, as the price of getting ahead? When does a man ever have to choose between his career and the life of his child?

Abortion indisputably ends a human life. But this loss is usually set against the woman’s need to have an abortion in order to freely direct her own life. It is a particular cruelty to present abortion as something women want, something they demand, they find liberating. Because nobody wants this. No woman wants to have an abortion. But once it’s available, it appears to be the logical, reasonable choice. All the complexities can be shoved down that funnel. Yes, abortion solves all the problems; but it solves them inside the woman’s body. And she is expected to keep that pain inside for a lifetime, and be grateful for the gift of abortion.

No one wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg.

Essentially, we’ve agreed to surgically alter women so that they can get along in a man’s world. And then expect them to be grateful for it.

What abortion has become is just a new form of oppression of women.

60 million abortions since Roe is the butcher bill we are paying for our continued oppression of women. Society says we should have responsibility free access to their bodies, and when responsibility and all the fear and uncertainty that comes with it does happ, we do violence on the woman's body to make every one around the woman's life easier.

That is what abortion has morphed into. Money and power have just turned it into a well marketed, readily available, means of oppression of women.

Yes, something is wrong: We are doing a piss-poor job of sex education and pregnancy prevention education. Both of which are a critical piece of "life education" which we don't do very well at either. Still, even well-informed people engage in sex without pregnancy prevention in place, and women get pregnant who would really rather not have. — Bitter Crank

Agree

. Do you think that "Every child a wanted child." is a bad slogan? I think it's good. — Bitter Crank

I think every child is a child is better

But it does point to how badly we as a people need to distort biology and logic to justify abortion.

Examples:

Pro choice people will say there is no such thing as a potential person, but the pospect of how that potential person will affect their life is why they are having an abortion.

Unwanted children are bad, so we should kill them. We just need to do it at a point in their development where it is easier to justify.

Unborn humans are not persons, because ( fill in the arbitrary criteria), and since they are not persons we can kill them. Not the philosophic, but the "legal" concept of personhood has been human societies go to method of carving off a class of people, so we can do things to them we can't do to real persons like us.

A new and unique human life doesn't begin after the process of conception. And even if it does that doesn't matter.

But it's all about value judgements, or that's what it boils down to anyway, however you look at it, whether we talk about mine or theirs or in relation to this or that. There's no way around that. I could only try my best to get them to see things my way. And I'm sure I could do much better than how you've envisioned the exchange! — S

If you want to do better though, you have to change the form if your argument and hence the type of value judgement you make. Your judgement on X and your judgement on someone else's judgement on X are different. If you don't make this distinction, you make every moral argument about yourself. But you certainly are not so self centered as to assume you are the ultimate moral authority.

But liberalism has its limits, wouldn't you agree? I'm very socially liberal, but you ought to have some red lines. Don't shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. Don't have unprotected sex if you're not willing to accept the possible consequences or if you have an uncaring or blasé attitude about abortion. The former is immoral and against the law. The latter is immoral, but not against the law. That seems right to me. — S

Sure it has limits. But how are those limits established? Not by simply deciding what *I* would do and applying that to everyone else.

Pro choice people will say there is no such thing as a potential person, but the pospect of how that potential person will affect their life is why they are having an abortion. — Rank Amateur

I've never heard nor seen this. What is a "potential" person?

Unwanted children are bad, so we should kill them. We just need to do it at a point in their development where it is easier to justify. — Rank Amateur

We should kill children? This isn't rational discourse with concern for meaning to the end of learning or understanding. It's rant by someone who has abandoned reason and reasoned purpose. Per the OP, I dismiss it as nonsense and not the good kind.

Unborn humans are not persons, because ( fill in the arbitrary criteria), and since they are not persons we can kill them. Not the philosophic, but the "legal" concept of personhood has been human societies go to method of carving off a class of people, so we can do things to them we can't do to real persons like us. — Rank Amateur

More irrational ranting and nonsense.

A new and unique human life doesn't begin after the process of conception. And even if it does that doesn't matter. — Rank Amateur

You're confusing caterpillars with butterflies, and you're doing it deliberately. I accuse you of deliberate nonsense, with vicious intent. You either cannot or will not engage substantively on this topic. Until you do, your "arguments" are dismissed. I suspect as well, though I may be wrong, that you are profoundly ignorant on these matters and substitute ignorant slogan-talk for substance. And when challenged, you got nothing but your slogan-talk.

What happened was, once abortion becomes available, it becomes the most attractive option for everyone around the pregnant woman. If she has an abortion, it’s like the pregnancy never existed. No one is inconvenienced. It doesn’t cause trouble for the father of the baby, or her boss, or the person in charge of her college scholarship. It won’t embarrass her mom and dad. — Rank Amateur

This is a rather novel argument against abortion. I haven't seen a college scholarship administrator connected to abortion before. Very creative.

Most abortions are performed early on. According to the CDC, 66% of abortions are performed during the first 8 weeks, and 92% during the first trimester. There isn't any reason to suppose the boss, the loan officer, the Philosophy Department, Amazon.com, Bloomingdales, or anyone else would know about it.

Abortion is pro men, pro power, pro all the people around the mother who perceive their life will be inconvenienced by a child. Who want a do over for that responsibility free sex society promised them. — Rank Amateur

This is a fairly radical reinterpretation of the idea that abortion is a woman's choice.

"Inconvenience" you say. You bet an unplanned, unwanted child is an inconvenience--especially for the mother who will be performing most of the heavy lifting when it comes to child rearing--an inconvenience lasting a couple of decades.

We had somehow bought the idea that abortion was necessary if women were going to rise in their professions and compete in the marketplace with men. But how had we come to agree that we will sacrifice our children, as the price of getting ahead? When does a man ever have to choose between his career and the life of his child? — Rank Amateur

A man doesn't have to choose between his career and a child because, Rank Amateur--you may have noticed--men don't get pregnant. Men are not usually responsible for day-to-day childcare.

Women might have fewer abortions IF policy and practice in the United States really were pro-child, and pro-family. They are not. From pre-natal care to post-natal support to family leave to flexible work schedules to high-quality affordable day-care services, The US fails across the board.

The American working class (which is about 90% of the population) has experienced decades of economic decline. Affordable support services have become much harder to find, if they exist at all. For the mother and father to both work, most to all of one of their incomes will be devoted to day-care for the first 6 years. If the other spouse's income isn't enough for everything else (it often isn't) then the family falls into a downward spiral of rising costs and declining income, or a sacrifice of one of the spouses careers, or both, and other untoward consequences.

It is no wonder that couples choose to abort children they simply can not afford to have. For single working women, a child is a much more difficult proposition.

The idea that women should, as a regular practice, complete the pregnancy and give the newborn to an adoption agency, is a remarkably callous approach. So is your solution of requiring birth and then raising the child. Look: In the real world, raising more children than a couple has resources to support, is a very long, hard road with negative consequences entailed for everyone concerned--and that applies to couples that are very responsible, succeed in keeping their marriages together, are diligent and hard working, and don't self-destruct.

The rate of poverty, marriage failure, single parenthood, dysfunctional families, drug and alcohol abuse, and so on and so forth has been on an upward curve because of adverse economic trends for most people. Middle-aged working class white men in the rust belts and rural districts aren't committing suicide at remarkably high rates because they lack imagination and drive. The number of school children who do not know for sure who will feed them or provide them with a bed tonight is and has been on the rise because families are falling apart.

What was that line from Bill Clinton's campaign??? I think it was "It's the economy, stupid." When the economic foundation of the working class starts buckling, families and social networks start falling apart.

The connection to abortion? Abortion is the most affordable solution. Don't like abortion? Then work for a social democratic government that is capable of organizing economic resources for the benefit of the majority of the people--the 90%--rather than the 10% richest people.

Pro choice people will say there is no such thing as a potential person, but the pospect of how that potential person will affect their life is why they are having an abortion. — Rank Amateur

I flatly reject the argument that pro-choice people think a fetus is not a potential person. This is a very, very flimsy argument.

OF COURSE a fetus is a potential person -- what else, by any definition, could it be? Where there is disagreement is whether it is a person yet. It becomes a weaker argument that a fetus is not a person in the 8th or 9th month of pregnancy, but in the first 20 weeks, there is insufficient neural development for anything like a person to exist. Even at the beginning of the 9th month, some religious definitions hold that that fetus is not yet a person -- not until the infant has drawn breath.

What pro-choice people are doing is weighing the potential person against existing persons, and finding in favor of the latter. Pro-life people are doing the opposite -- finding in favor of potential persons over existing persons. Both positions have political implications.

Women might have fewer abortions IF policy and practice in the United States really were pro-child, and pro-family. They are not. From pre-natal care to post-natal support to family leave to flexible work schedules to high-quality affordable day-care services, The US fails across the board. — Bitter Crank

Completely agree

The American working class (which is about 90% of the population) has experienced decades of economic decline. Affordable support services have become much harder to find, if they exist at all. For the mother and father to both work, most to all of one of their incomes will be devoted to day-care for the first 6 years. If the other spouse's income isn't enough for everything else (it often isn't) then the family falls into a downward spiral of rising costs and declining income, or a sacrifice of one of the spouses careers, or both, and other untoward consequences. — Bitter Crank

Completely agree

It is no wonder that couples choose to abort children they simply can not afford to have. For single working women, a child is a much more difficult proposition. — Bitter Crank

And, that is a shame

The rate of poverty, marriage failure, single parenthood, dysfunctional families, drug and alcohol abuse, and so on and so forth has been on an upward curve because of adverse economic trends for most people. Middle-aged working class white men in the rust belts and rural districts aren't committing suicide at remarkably high rates because they lack imagination and drive. The number of school children who do not know for sure who will feed them or provide them with a bed tonight is and has been on the rise because families are falling apart. — Bitter Crank

Completely agree

The connection to abortion? Abortion is the most affordable solution. Don't like abortion? Then work for a social democratic government that is capable of organizing economic resources for the benefit of the majority of the people--the 90%--rather than the 10% richest people. — Bitter Crank

Completely agree, and this is very much what I was trying to say. And the person who is bearing the real emotional burden is the woman. The incredibly high rate of abortion is a symptom of some core problems of society. All these pressures you correctly point out, are not making abortion a choice, they are taking the choice away.

I agree with what @Bitter Crank said in his last two posts. I couldn’t have said it better.

Seconded, very nicely put Bitter Crank.

Where there is disagreement is whether it is a person yet. — Bitter Crank

If it is a potential person, then it is not a person, yes?

If it is a potential person, then it is not a person, yes? — tim wood

Yes. A freshly fertilized egg is a potential person, and nowhere close to being an actual person. Personhood is best reserved for newborns who have developed muscles and lungs sufficient to breathe on their own. By that time they have normally developed neural complexity as well.

Yes. A freshly fertilized egg is a potential person, and nowhere close to being an actual person. Personhood is best reserved for newborns who have developed muscles and lungs sufficient to breathe on their own. By that time they have normally developed neural complexity as well. — Bitter Crank

Yes by the fact of the matter, as you point out, but also by the semantics. "Potential person" as neologism is counterfeit coinage. In this sense it travels with the FOV of earlier posts in this thread, verbiage to create an illusion of meaning where semantically no meaning can be. In the meaning-challenged world we live in, where ideas and words are used as weapons, I hold this usage to be vicious, a kind of warfare, and something to be confronted as much as possible, and as hard as necessary.

"Potential person" as neologism is counterfeit coinage. — tim wood

It does not seem counterfeit to me, but what would you prefer: person or tissue?

2 things, firstly, when one talks of personhood, one needs to declare if it is being used in a philosophical or legal way, because the stakes are different.

Secondly, the issue with the concept of personhood, is it is arbitrary, variable, and used with a prejudice toward the desired answer.

It always comes down to:

A fetus is not a person because it does not have trait X, Then someone will give an example of what we consider a person that does not have trait X, than trait X is modified so it only applies to the fetus.

Which turns the logic of the argument into, the fetus is not a person because it is not a person

In your case, a fetus is not a person until it has developed lungs to breathe air.
I come back, but there are many persons, who either through illness, or accident have lungs that do not work, and need outside assistance to breathe. They are still persons

And you would come back, modifying your point so it only applies to fetuses.

And once again the personhood argument ends in the same place it always does, a fetus is not a person because you say a fetus is not a person.

Hmmm. Yes, well... Lots of determinations are kind of arbitrary, true. You have a problem with personhood, philosophical or legal. It's a distinction that I haven't thought much about, but now that you mention it... yes, there are differences. I don't really want to think about that now. (Central Processor resources are allocated for a couple of years.)

I could substitute "fetal viability" for "potential person". The result is pretty much the same: in place of 'potential person' I could say that the "fetus" is not viable at 24 weeks. I think we can all agree on what a fetus is, as well as earlier stages of development such as the blastocyst.

Are terms like "fetal viability" or "blastocyst" better for you?

So, per my response to RA above, do you find "fetus" more acceptable than "potential person"?

"Potential person" as neologism is counterfeit coinage.
— tim wood
It does not seem counterfeit to me, but what would you prefer: person or tissue? — Bitter Crank

Let's discuss this and not argue it. While the idea is meaningful, just as the idea of a future value is meaningful, it is a not-yet. In the now, it isn't. If, for example, you wish to talk about the future value of something in terms of its value now, then that's a present value, not a future value. That is, the future value in itself has no present value, except as it is assigned a present value, not on the basis of a future value (which in this view is actually meaningless), but on a present assessment.

You might argue that at some point there must be a consideration of something future, after all, it's called a future value, and that concept is universal in many arenas. But on a close look, the "future" part of the idea is a convenient fiction. Everything about it arises out of that which is, which is to say, the now, that which is, now. Nothing future ever is, now.

Does not the future concern us by projecting itself into our now? Only by an illegitimate - however useful - reification of the idea.

Analogously with "potential person." Whether the "is" is implicit or explicit, the phrase implies that something is, that in fact is not-yet. Does that preclude us from thinking usefully about the idea of a person, though he or she be not-yet, non-existing? Certainly not! But neither is it a license to grant existence to something that isn't - as pro-lifers try to do. They, I argue, are not about the efficacy of the thinking about, but rather represent that the thought about is a present fact. Which is just plain a deliberate misstatement - that I call a vicious lie and part of a war they wage on reason, that I feel our present age requires us to actively combat.

not really all that important to my philosophy on the issue. Like most of where the discussion is today, personhood is not an issue. Although often discussed in forums like this, or in legal discussions. It is not really a part of near any academic discussions on the topic, because it is not a very defendable concept. Even if not believed to be true, it is usually granted.

My view is pure biology, at some point after the process of conception is complete, there is now a new and unique human, at exactly the correct state of human development commensurate with its age.

Where I do think there is a valuable discussion is a discussion on the competing rights of the fetus and the mother. Dr. Judith Thompson's pro choice argument is to me the best one. And while I believe I have a reasonable objection to it, it is not absolute.

As for personhood, as a philosophical concept it can have merit depending on the issue that is being discussed. As a legal concept, it has a long history of being used by those in power, to cleave off a group of people, so those in power can do things to them, they could not do to them if they were persons.

Just in case anybody reads only this post without referencing the posts to which I am replying, I haven't changed my views about abortion. I am still in favor of women having ready access to safe abortion procedures.

Tim: Your explanation has convinced me. I will strike "potential person" from my thinking on abortion. Fetus it is. (I would offer to strike "potential person" from my future thinking on abortion, but I haven't had those future thoughts yet, so they don't exist, and can not be edited.)

RA: You have also presented your idea clearly, and biology provides the best terminology.

I do not accept the idea that a blastocyst (a fertilized egg that has begun dividing (2, 4, 8, 16, 32...) is

a new and unique human, at exactly the correct state of human development commensurate with its age — Rank Amateur

The blastocyst is living human tissue--what else would it be--and so is a 5 month fetus. The problem is in the particle "a" or "the" which makes "human" a noun rather than an adjective. "A human" or "the human" is problematic at that stage of development.

If your view is pure biology, you would want to use human in the adjectival sense rather than the nounal sense.

Tim: Your explanation has convinced me. I will strike "potential person" from my thinking on abortion. Fetus it is. (I would offer to strike "potential person" from my future thinking on abortion, but I haven't had those future thoughts yet, so they don't exist, and can not be edited.) — Bitter Crank

So gentlemen, a logic question. If the fetus is not a potential person, and does not have a future, how than can it be a future burden on the mother, how can it have an effect on her future life she would want to avoid, how can it be a future burden on society?

It would seem you want your future cake, and eat it too.

If the fetus is not a potential person, and does not have a future, — Rank Amateur

It would be nice if you read with any comprehension; and it would be nice if you were intellectually honest. See, this is what I wrote above:

Does that preclude us from thinking usefully about the idea of a person, though he or she be not-yet, non-existing? Certainly not! But neither is it a license to grant existence to something that isn't - as pro-lifers try to do. They, I argue, are not about the efficacy of the thinking about, but rather represent that the thought about is a present fact. — tim wood

The question throughout has been distinguishing between what is, and what you can think about. You can think about anything you like, but that does not mean that what you think about actually exists other than as the idea you're thinking about.

In charity, I assume you do not think for yourself, but rather parrot things you've heard and read. I assume that because I see little evidence here that you can think for yourself. Why don't you go back to your drawing board and draw up some thoughts of your own that you can present, perhaps even with some of your thinking. You get points for that.