Why is it that pro-lifers seem always to descend into ranting incoherence?

You're ok with killing something that for all you know is a full human baby. — Gregory

Killing babies, never mind any fullness thereof, is murder. If you cannot use the language, you cannot make sense. Learn the language and how to use it.

Learn the facts. Fetuses might be babies and abortion might be murder

Since you cant, it's obvious that they might be human. Isn't it obvious that you don't kill something that might be human? Its called basic respect for (here comes that that word) life. forget about the killing animals thing. I brought that up as an example. You're ok with killing something that for all you know is a full human baby. — Gregory

I think it should be legal to kill humans, never mind "might be humans", under certain circumstances. Do you disagree?

If they are in terminal pain, yes. But not for lesser reasons like abortions are usually for

If they are in terminal pain, yes. But not for lesser reasons like abortions are usually for — Gregory

So you're in favor of murder?

I think we have it here. Some folks don't like abortion. And, those same folks being unable to formulate a coherent argument or even basic understanding, get lost in nonsense. Which is not at all to say that issues of abortion are nonsense, only that the arguments of the unwashed and many are nonsense.

Fetuses might be babies and abortion might be murder — Gregory

And if toads had wings. Yours is nonsense. Fetuses are fetuses. Babies are babies. Abortion is abortion. Murder is murder. Start with these. If you wish to connect them, you need more than wishful thinking and rant.

If they are in terminal pain, yes. But not for lesser reasons like abortions are usually for — Gregory

Ah, so it isn't about baby killing after all. It's about the reasons we have.

The abortion debate suffers from a lack of people who are willing to admit their solutions also suck. There is no solution that'll magically make the world a better place. Just ways to avoid the worst outcomes.

No, I think we can put to death a 30 year old if he wants to die and is in terminal pain. He is clearly human. You guys have no evidence that shows the fetus is not a human baby and are willing to take a chance in killing it. That's not right. It has it's own DNA at conception and has brain waves and a heart beat soon in the pregnancy. The fact is you guys just don' care if it might be a baby. You'd rather be sleazy in your thinking and try to get away with killing what could possibly have all the dignity you have

Suppose the Supreme Court said you can kill your born child before it can recognize itself and argued that self recognision is the test of personhood. There is such a thing a the Mirror Phase in a child if you didn't know. In New York you can kill a baby seconds before it's born and not afterwards. What's really the difference? What this boils down to people not giving an F about anything but sexual freedom. They don't care about motherhood, they don't care about pregnancy, and they really don't care about sexuality. They demean the whole subject in the name of "freedom"

It's too bad you the best you can do on a serious topic is wahh-waah-waahh but that's all you've got. But here's a challenge: don't you have an abortion, and see how it goes if anyone near you wants to have one.

And the Supreme Court doesn't make the law. I suggest that in your thinking you start with what you think you know, and then figure out if you actually know it. If you lead with what you don't know, e.g., "Suppose the Supreme Court said you can kill your born child," then why should anyone pay any attention to your nonsense.

You're a complete sophist dude, to put it kindly. Parental rights might be interpreted however the Supreme Court wants considering they consider the Constitution to evolve. You don't have a shred of evidence a fetus is not a full human because it's fucking obvious it could be. Your saying there is no possibility whatsoever that a fetus with brain waves and a heart could be a full human? Once you admit that this is possible, you can see that abortion is evil, unless you're a complete idiot

Fetuses are know to laugh, cry, smile, and show other emotions. Sometimes they even touch themselves in some first primitive experience of sexuality. The pro-choice people, through completely selfish emotions arguments, claim they know for sure this isn't a human being. They say in New York they know for sure there is no human being until the first breath is breathed, but again with no evidence. Common sense obviously tells us to take the safer route and consider them all humans

You guys have no evidence that shows the fetus is not a human baby and are willing to take a chance in killing it. — Gregory

And you have no evidence you're not a robot.

You'd rather be sleazy in your thinking and try to get away with killing what could possibly have all the dignity you have — Gregory

What interest do you think we have in killing someone?

They don't care about motherhood, they don't care about pregnancy, and they really don't care about sexuality. They demean the whole subject in the name of "freedom" — Gregory

You're the one demeaning pregnancy and motherhood by acting as if it were all sunshine and rainbows and noone ever needed to make difficult decisions.

You are the one claiming that motherhood starts at birth. I have a much more respectful and wholesome view of pregnancy. A pregnant women is a mother, and females know this too. I know life can be hard, but you just don't care if something that might be a full human is killed. You are willing to publically defend it. I know I'm not a robot because only I make my decisions. If we are going down that sceptical rabbit hole, i ask you to prove Jews and blacks are equal to whites and shouldn't be enslaved. What's your evidence and PROOF that slavery isn't good for them. I respect life and other people. You are willing to use doubt to take life (even up to birth?)

You are the one claiming that motherhood starts at birth. — Gregory

Not really.

I have a much more respectful and wholesome view of pregnancy. A pregnant women is a mother, and females know this too. — Gregory

Nothing says wholesome like referring to women as "females". Your respect for mothers apparently does not extend to their ability to judge what's best for them and their children.

I know life can be hard, but you just don't care if something that might be a full human is killed. You are willing to publically defend it. — Gregory

Like millions of other people are. So the question is, why do you think all these people want to kill babies?

I know I'm not a robot because only I make my decisions. If we are going down that sceptical rabbit hole, i ask you to prove Jews and blacks are equal to whites and shouldn't be enslaved. What's your evidence and PROOF that slavery isn't good for them. — Gregory

The proof is that I have met and talked to them, and they seem to be like me. Unlike fetuses, by the way, but I don't really care to discuss at what point in pregnancy one draws the line.

I respect life and other people. You are willing to use doubt to take life (even up to birth?) — Gregory

What do you mean by "using doubt"? I personally haven't killed anyone or was in any way responsible for a specific abortion. So I don't "use doubt" to kill people.

I don't think I can prevent abortions in any reasonable way that doesn't cause more harm than good. So I don't try. Your position is obviously that abortion is a terrible evil to be rooted out at all costs, but I wonder why you think this will result in a better world for anyone.

You don't have a shred of evidence a fetus is not a full human because it's fucking obvious it could be. — Gregory

Eh?

I could be rich. Am I?

I'll say it just once more, the life of the unborn is irrelevant. The mother's body is hers, and hers alone. And the law has an absolute duty to promote that ownership, even as it has such a duty to protect the life of the child once out of the womb. Person-hood works both ways. When are people going to get this through their thick skulls, a woman is a person to, and there are any number of situations in which a person could protect the life of others but cannot be made to do so by law. Browbeat people as you feel you must, as a moral imperative, but stop demanding your moral views be supported in law! Law that forces a woman to carry a pregnancy to term is not about the right of the unborn, it is using the law to fix women into the role of motherhood. In 1965 my high-school subjected my sophomore class to a sex talk by a doctor (Catholic, of course) during which he gave this marital advice "keep her fat, pregnant, and in the kitchen". That is the real issue under discussion here.

Others seem to be holding up our end pretty well otherwise.

Your position is obviously that abortion is a terrible evil to be rooted out at all costs, but I wonder why you think this will result in a better world for anyone. — Echarmion

First, the word female is a beautiful word. I don't see the problem there. Second, I actually supported Biden because the good of the whole community is more important than the loss of fewer lives. No one knows what trouble Trump could have gotten us into. It was said earlier that "maybe" I'm a robot and I responded that if we are just going to make crazy shit up than why not say slavery is ok. With regard to abortion, we clearly don't have to keep a thumb alive if it's cut off in an accident. However you have to use common sense when it comes to morality. Otherwise all kinds of evils become permissible. A fetus is not a cyst because a cyst never comes a full grown baby. Fetuses in the womb have been known to suck their thumbs, just like new borns. The women has no abortion rights and we don't balance the mother's "rights" with those of the fetus because the mother should just be a mother. They have no right to kill their offspring. Embryology has shown that fetuses have many characteristics of a human, and you cannot prove it's not a full human person. The Confederates argued that they needed to balance the needs of the blacks with the "needs" of the whites in the latters' desire for a segregated "traditional" culture. Abortion is the new slavery. It is the moral issue of the times, as slavery was then. Abortion, just like slavery, does not respect everyone and gives one group of people rights over others. If women don't want to get pregnant, then grow up and go become a nun or use birth control or whatever. Take responsibility for your actions. Of course I know that blacks are full human, but fetuses might be too. It's unbelievable that someone would be okay killing something that very well could be a baby. In one's mother's womb should be the safest place in the world. Many pro-choice people are for animal rights, but they show more respect for a gibbon than for a human fetus. In fact they treat fetuses with squeamishness and fear. It's totally lame and indefensible.

The women has no abortion rights and we don't balance the mother's "rights" with those of the fetus because the mother should just be a mother. They have no right to kill their offspring. — Gregory

Nonsense on confusion, layered. 1) In the USA women do have "abortion rights." 2) We do balance those "rights"; that is the substance of the argument n Roe v. Wade. 3) The mother "should just be a mother"? What fantasy world do you live in and why? And 4) no one is killing offspring. Period.

Clearly you're just a piece of viciousness parasitically attached to an issue you do not even care enough about to learn about.

Fetuses have rights pending perfection in live birth, and even some that come into effect before live birth. Mothers are always already born, their rights already perfected. And rights sometimes compete and conflict, the usual practice being that one set prevails over the other. That's how it is. If you want to change it, find and make the argument that changes it. If you cannot, consider that there may not be one.

Because in all reasonableness a fetus might be a human being, the mother has no abortion rights. This is as good an argument as you will find in philosophy. You don't bury someone who might still be alive and although this Old West example certainly is a different situation from abortion, the core principle applies to abortion. You don't kill a being that in all reasonableness might be a human being.

a fetus might be a human being, the mother has no abortion rights. — Gregory

This is a claim, not an argument, nor any connection with one. "Might be" - whatever that means - does not equal "is."

Try this for starters. You aver the fetus has rights. What rights would those be, based on what? Keep it brief, simple, and clear and I will try to respond.

You're now just trying not to see the truth. What rights does a fetus have? The right not to be killed for starters. It's based on their biology. It's probably pointless trying to reason with you. You desire to damn yourself, whatever that means

The right not to be killed for starters. — Gregory

Be careful here. What is it, exactly, that is being killed?

Possibly a baby. If your not comfortable caring out an abortion yourself, you probably shouldn't be defending it on the internet

No, not a baby. And there is no such thing as "possibly a baby," so you cannot kill one. I asked you to be careful and answer as exactly as you could. And you're unable. Does it occur to you that if you cannot martial your own thinking that you might just be wrong?

the "sin" of killing is based upon the perspective of the individual doing the killing. The bible informs us that all human life is sacred, meaning, essentially, that everything non-human does not matter. However, unless an individual is of that specific religion, that tenet is not applicable. Therefore, either all life is sacred, or no life is sacred. Those that consider nature to be murderous, as animals prey upon each other in order to survive, would fall in the former category. The latter category is rarely strictly adhered to as society's laws prohibit the killing of humans, unless done by the state, and under specific circumstances. The working definition of life is important to the first category of believers as this definition allows them to move forward with something they already want to do and are simply seeking permission to do so (as something not alive cannot be killed, therefore the tenet does not apply). Supporters of the second stance would only consider the definition of life as important with respect to punitive action if proceeding with their intention.
Most people abide within a self created grey area between the two and hence have difficulty in determining a course of action when what they want to do conflicts with societal values.

Why not? The state kills people. The general populace are not allowed to kill each other as that specific privilege belongs solely to the state. However, if one party may engage in a task, any party may engage in the same task, outside of the laws written by the state.

This conversation is disturbing. I'd rather not carry on

This is not a fight over babies. It is a fight over terms. Thirty years ago I struggled with this problem, the origin of shared terms and rational forms. My imagined abilities in philosophy were suffering. I felt that I could not escape received terms. So I wrote for my own discovery a paper that initially was encumbered by the sophomoric notions I was trained in, but developed the beginnings of a recognition of the resolution of the matter. We really do have distinct minds wherein we are each responsible, not for the terms and forms we apply in our reasoning, but for the character of responsibility we bring to them. Those terms and forms are then subjected to limited scrutiny by others. And depending on the honesty care and competence of that presentation and the response it receives, there is an impact between that act of presentation and that response assessing it that brings the participants into a greater recognition of the discipline and human character each brings to the reasoning. The result is a system of terms and appreciation of or expertise in shared forms that intimates between us a fuller language than received terms either brings to it. And that intimation is less limiting of that shared understanding than the conventional wisdom of the world, including academic authorities. But if that intimation goes unrecognized or even proscribed there can be no fully shared understanding, and convention rules while responsible reason is suppressed. That intimation is a drama by which we each dispossess ourselves of received terms in favor of sharing the drama of being changed in them in the character of a responsive interlocutor. But all that is required to ruin that intimacy, and growing skill at reasoning, is to forgo that dispossession. Taking the terms of reason as in our possession, or even as in the possession of convention of which they are received, secures polemic victory for the proponent of that possession while foreclosing against any possible understanding or growth in our powers of reasoning. The tyrannical mind can rule the world simply by refusing to share in the fuller origin of terms.

We really do have distinct minds wherein we are each responsible, not for the terms and forms we apply in our reasoning, but for the character of responsibility we bring to them. — Gary M Washburn

Amen.

So far as it goes. But there is no shortage of tyrannical minds in the world. And they constitute no small problem. Do you have a prescription for that/for them?