The issue that led to the Right becoming Pro-Life

[DesertBerean]

You keep saying the woman must have the final say. Why? The child comes from the joining of two sets of DNA. Not just hers.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

What is your working definition of a human person?

Joel Feinberg uses the term “common-sense person” to mean one who thinks, feels, communicates, has more-or-less human features, and so on. Yet many of the qualities that he defines as part of his common-sense person can be taken away, and yet that human being is still said to be a person. I do not consider a fertilised ovum to be a"human person" nor a 14 or 20 week embryo/foetus.

I, and other here hold that abortion destroys an actual human being. There are no good reasons for qualifying it as 'potential'.

The old chestnut. If you had to choose and could only choose one which would you save in a fire? A container holding 10 fertilised embryos or a day old baby?

The latter argument you make, that a woman's right to control her body supercedes the right of the fetus to life, is a more respectable and far less problematic line of argument. It is also the one I see advanced lately by those moral philosophers who seriously grapple with moral nature of abortion.

I realise that abortion is an incredibly complex moral/ethical issue. However, I have always been of the view that in this regard prevention is better than cure. That is why I advocate to good sex-ed in schools [along the lines of various European models], easily available and [ideally] free contraception to teens and young people, [condom machines in schools for example],a healthy attitude towards sexuality and the elimination of prudery surrounding the human body, and society working to remove various social issues that includes young women getting pregnant far too early in their lives.

They have a right to live as much as you do.

I have not disputed that. My remark was in response to my interlocutor who stated “Nor can it survive AFTER it is born without her supplying all its nutrients.”

Clearly newborns can survive without their mothers because the babies of women who die in childbirth survive and in previous centuries wealthy women handed their newborn babies over to wet nurses.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

You keep saying the woman must have the final say. Why? The child comes from the joining of two sets of DNA. Not just hers.

When the first man gets pregnant he can have the final say.

[JimL]

You keep saying the woman must have the final say. Why? The child comes from the joining of two sets of DNA. Not just hers.

I would argue on the one hand, leaving the issue of whether it is a human person or not aside, that the reason is because it's the womans body, so regardless of whose DNA it is, it is up to her if she wants to house a fetus within it.

[DesertBerean]

When the first man gets pregnant he can have the final say.

That's not an answer.

She has in her womb her DNA combined with somebody else's DNA. Perhaps we should study the question of what rights the source of the different DNA has over the fate of that DNA.

You see, in today's world, in the USA any way, the father has no say over it. If the mother wants him to pay for a child, chances are very good he ends up paying for the child whether he wants to or not. Unfortunately if she decides she doesn't want the child, and it happens HE wants the child, it doesn't matter. She gets to decide the fate of the child and he can't stop it, at least until it is born and he can take the matter to court. Wow. What hypocrisy.

Past politics doesn't matter...the morality and ethics of today does. In the past, fathers held the power over the fate of the child. That created many bad situations just as today's anti-father practices does.

[Bill the Cat]

No one is denying that an embryo or foetus is an organism with the potential to become a human being. The matter is whether the mother wants to carry that pregnancy to term. If she does not she has the right to terminate it via a medically safe and legal abortion or by an abortifacient.

And if a woman doesn't want to care for her 3 month old, should she have the right to "terminate it via a medically safe" method?

We are never going agree on this issue so we may as well stop here.

As long as you continue to spew illogical arguments that end up killing unique members of our species who have done nothing wrong except exist, I will continue to expose them.

You consider abortion to be wrong because it destroys a potential human being.

False. I consider it wrong because it destroys a human being. Not a potential one. An actual one.

I consider that a woman has absolute control over determining her own fertility and what happens to her body.

Again, what part of YOUR body gets removed in an abortion?

I might ask if you have ever seen a botched illegal abortion?

No. Nor does that matter. I've never seen someone overdose on heroine either. Both are avoidable by better choices.

Oh look an ad hominem.

Saying a book is biased isn't an ad hominem

Really?

Really.

What do you suppose happens to children whose mothers die in childbirth? What do you suppose the role of a “wet nurse” was in previous centuries?

Not relevant to my question. If a single mother living alone places her baby in a corner for 45 days and never tells anyone about it, what will happen to it? Can an infant survive on its own?

Your observation that my remark was an ad hominem was incorrect. My comment was a supposition. However, you have demonstrated your own weakness when it comes to making unwarranted personal remarks.

Riiiight… Again, if it walks like a duck...

The phrase was not coined by the Nazis.

https://www.thoughtco.com/nazis-and-women-1221068

Godwin's Law.

There was no ”church” prior to the fourth century.

Perhaps you missed the entire New Testament's description of the church?

There were physical buildings and religious communities but there was no overarching “Church” as in an organised authority.

False. The Church at Jerusalem was the authority until Peter moved to Rome.

That was merely Irenaeus expressing his views towards various other Christians, including the Gnostics, with whose theology he did not agree. He was a bishop but the title carried no authority outside his own community at that period. The term episkipos from which it derives simply meant an overseer. Irenaeas had no authority over Christians across the empire. No one did.

This is complete and utter ignorance. The Bishops were appointed by the Apostles and their students. They were the authorities of their region, reporting to the Bishop of Rome.

Pope Clement I
“Through countryside and city [the apostles] preached, and they appointed their earliest converts, testing them by the Spirit, to be the bishops and deacons of future believers. Nor was this a novelty, for bishops and deacons had been written about a long time earlier. . . . Our apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife for the office of bishop. For this reason, therefore, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those who have already been mentioned and afterwards added the further provision that, if they should die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry” (Letter to the Corinthians 42:4–5, 44:1–3 [A.D. 80]).

Purely in order to inform you on the issues surrounding a homoousion deity.

I'm not talking about the Trinity. I'm talking about the anti-abortion stance.

Briggmann writes in reference to Irenaeus' comments in Prf 10 [Proof of the Apostolic Reading]

“The ascription of equal divinity to the Three prevents a subordinationist reading, insofar as subordinationism refers to gradations of divinity in the Godhead. Yet, the ascription of equal divinity does not at this time in Christian history rule out a hierarchical understanding of the Trinitarian relations by which second-century theologians often differentiated the Three.” [See Briggman, Anthony, Irenaeus Of Lyons and the Theology of the Holy Spirit pp. 201-203].

In other words the views held by Irenaeus’ with regard to a Trinity were most likely far removed from the homoousion concept that would be presented well over one hundred years later at Nicaea in 325 CE.

You also need to remember that even after the death of Constantine and despite the decision taken at Nicaea, the issue of the relationship between the Son and the Father remained unresolved. In 341 CE, Eusebius of Nicomedia, a supporter of Arian, presided over the Dedication Council at Antioch, oversaw Athanasius and his fellow like-minded bishops being deposed, and ensured the ascendancy of official Arianism in the East for the next thirty years.

By the last quarter of the fourth century the situation had become completely farcical with imperial Christianity effectively split and the two Augusti supporting different beliefs. Valentinian II [reigned in the West from 375 until 392 CE] was a Homoean and Theodosius I [reigned from 379 until 392 CE as Augustus of the East] and as sole emperor until 395 CE was a supporter of the Nicene Creed.

Your “orthodoxy” could only be enforced by Imperial edict with the threat of severe punishment [including death] for those who dissented. And that is what happened in 381 CE.

That is why all those Gnostic texts were hidden at Nag Hammadi. From 381 they were deemed heretical.

I find that so many Christians simply fail to understand the development of their religion over its first three hundred years or so.

Again, this has nothing to do with the anti-abortion stance of the early Church.

You seem [if I understand that comment correctly] to be suggesting that lay Christians were at odds with their various pastors, priests, and vicars on this issue. On what evidence?

The anti-abortion stance of the early Fathers was the orthodox position. That some who called themselves Christians were disagreeing is immaterial. The leadership set doctrine.

I must admit your earnest desire to stress your credentials does rather put me in mind of Gertrude’s line in Hamlet, you “protest too much, methinks”.

Ask yourself why you quote the books you have cited. Are you stressing their credentials?

[Bill the Cat]

[QUOTE=Hypatia_Alexandria;750891]

The old chestnut. If you had to choose and could only choose one which would you save in a fire? A container holding 10 fertilised embryos or a day old baby?

What if that day old baby is Adolph Hitler?

[Bill the Cat]

I would argue on the one hand, leaving the issue of whether it is a human person or not aside, that the reason is because it's the womans body, so regardless of whose DNA it is, it is up to her if she wants to house a fetus within it.

SO, again, if the woman is single, lives on the side of a mountain with her 3 month old, should she be allowed to put the baby out in the cold to die if she no longer wants to house it within her house?

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

That's a location. Being inside a garage doesn't make you part of the garage.

You will be telling me next that "You don’t plow under the corn because the seed was planted with a neighbor’s shovel."

Or that the pregnant woman is merely a convenient growing medium for a completely independent embryo.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

[QUOTE=Bill the Cat;750916]

What if that day old baby is Adolph Hitler?

Why? What had the day old Adolph Hitler done?

[Bill the Cat]

Why? What had the day old Adolph Hitler done?

Ok, if you were in a burning room with your mother and 15 terminal cancer patients and could only save one or the other, which would you save?

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Ok, if you were in a burning room with your mother and 15 terminal cancer patients and could only save one or the other, which would you save?

Ah standard deflection tactics.

[Cow Poke]

Ok, if you were in a burning room with your mother and 15 terminal cancer patients and could only save one or the other, which would you save?

B! I choose B!!!!

[Bill the Cat]

Ah standard deflection tactics.

Nope. Just countering to show the absurdity of that canard. Valuing 2 choices at different gradients in no way means the lesser valued item is in and of itself worthless. Now answer if you can. Your mom or the cancer patients...

[Cow Poke]

Nope. Just countering to show the absurdity of that canard. Valuing 2 choices at different gradients in no way means the lesser valued item is in and of itself worthless. Now answer if you can. Your mom or the cancer patients...

Did they make you play "life boat" in High School? The "situational ethics" game?