CompWiz wrote:...
This is exactly what I have been trying to say. Sure, if being pregnant would put the mother's life at stake, or doctors are absolutely sure that the baby will have terrible defects and not survive, or the mother was raped, an abortion could be allowed. However, having an abortion just so people won't find out what you've been doing is stupid. Killing so you'll have convienience is rediculous.
Could a woman be phsycologicaly scared if not shattered or destroyed if forced to have pregnancy. That to me seems more conciderable than the chance of death. To me, death is not so horrible seeming...there was a time when I would have welcomed it...but suffering without controll is truely an awful prospect to me.
If a woman is so scared of becoming pregnant, she could just, umm, not have sex? It's really not that complicated. If she wants to put herself at risk for STD's and children, then that's her choice. She may have to face the consequences of her actions. In the US everyone is educated in all of this, so everyone knows what could happen if they decide to have sex. They have control over whether they will have sex or not. (If they're raped, abortion would be allowable) So everyone has a choice about this. No one is being forced to have a baby. No one is being forced to become pregnant. It is their own decisions that put them in this situation, and their convienience definitely ranks lower than the life of a human they brought into existance.
And as to whether it's a human, in both biology class and health class, we have been taught about early
human development: from egg and sperm meeting to birth. A human's life cycle begins when the egg and sperm meet, not when they emerge from the mother. Some people have become brain dead, but most people would consider them human. Some people go into comas for years, acting nothing like a human or sentient creature. Then they wake up, and act just like one. Were they not human during the time while they were in the coma?
And are you saing that if we found sentient aliens, they'd be human too? You did say that sentient = human, right?
Scenario:
You have done some horrible crime, worthy of the death penalty. Someone finds out, then somehow goes into a coma. Is is ok to kill them so no one else will find out that you did the crime?(so you'll have convenience) They aren't consious, may never become consious, and are not acting in any manner that a sentient intelligent being would. They even have serious health problems(the coma), and most doctors say that they probably won't survive.
If you don't kill them, you will have to suffer for years, wondering if they will wake up and reveal who really did it. Would you put their life above your suffering, and perhaps your death? Would it be right to kill them to cover up that you did something wrong?
Would it be ok to kill a baby to cover up that you did something wrong?
A child is normaly concived via sexual intercourse or artificial incemination. I will not go into the other possibilities as they are incredibly minute, anyways...this said, both are choices. But to say so idealogicaly that one can just not havesex is like saying about obescity "Don't eat." You have just offered the most stupid possible answer. How? Because it is in our nature to fuck each other. You are telling people "Well, evolution (or god if you want to believe that) may have desinged you so you suffer when you don't have sex, but the solution is to be misserable." People know this, and yet they still do it regardless, because they are compelled just as you are compeller to eat when your body wants food. Perhaps you aren't sexualy active in any way...but that certainly isn't the majority.
(defining human) Brain dead persons have no right to live unless some one wants to sustain them and they wanted to be sustained, IMO. During a coma, you think...if you didn't think, your brain would 'die.' Thus, a comatose is not a brain dead. A fetus is not thinking, as such it is like a brain dead untill it begins thinking. It can not suffer. A mother can.
(sentient vs body) = does not mean the same, but it means equal as far as rights, so aliens have just the same rights as humans if intelligent and as such, you'd have no right to exploit them or murder them without being attacked first.
(comparison of killing coma patients to feti) Firstly, death penalty is under my point of view illogical. Please tell me why if a person commited a crime they should worry indefinately about dying for it and as such be made to do more horrible things. If some one was trying to make you die, what WOULDN'T you do? Me, I doubt I would just give myself to the axe man. Secondly, we can't determine if some one thinks in most comas, but in the case of brain damage, I don't know why they would be kept alive. Also, you said if a fetus threatens life it is ok to abort, this seems to counter what ever point your making and render it null to the at hand discussion.
), but this is seems pretty absurd to me 
perfect place for a spelling error