| | :One comment about the "one day before" analogy. For one, yes I'm against killing a baby one day before it would be born, but there *is* a fundamental difference between a baby that's within the womb and one that's without. You can't carry your "one day before" analogy back forever, so even there you have to draw a line somewhere. [[User:HelpJazz|Help]][[User talk:HelpJazz|Jazz]] 23:47, 26 September 2008 (EDT) | | :One comment about the "one day before" analogy. For one, yes I'm against killing a baby one day before it would be born, but there *is* a fundamental difference between a baby that's within the womb and one that's without. You can't carry your "one day before" analogy back forever, so even there you have to draw a line somewhere. [[User:HelpJazz|Help]][[User talk:HelpJazz|Jazz]] 23:47, 26 September 2008 (EDT) |
| | :: Using the point at which modern science can reliably sustain a baby outside the womb as the basis for making abortion illegal seems an odd sort of logic. If the basis for making abortion illegal is that it's wrong to kill innocent humans, then how can it be okay to kill babies of a certain age today, but not okay to kill babies of the same age in a few years' time when medical care has improved? As for it providing a "measurable cutoff point", there is no exact figure (the ability of science to keep a baby alive depends on many variables), and the most obvious "measurable cutoff point", and one that is not variable or subject to future change, is conception. And no, you can't carry the "one day before" analogy back forever. You can only carry it back to conception, the obvious place to "draw the line". [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 04:19, 27 September 2008 (EDT) | | :: Using the point at which modern science can reliably sustain a baby outside the womb as the basis for making abortion illegal seems an odd sort of logic. If the basis for making abortion illegal is that it's wrong to kill innocent humans, then how can it be okay to kill babies of a certain age today, but not okay to kill babies of the same age in a few years' time when medical care has improved? As for it providing a "measurable cutoff point", there is no exact figure (the ability of science to keep a baby alive depends on many variables), and the most obvious "measurable cutoff point", and one that is not variable or subject to future change, is conception. And no, you can't carry the "one day before" analogy back forever. You can only carry it back to conception, the obvious place to "draw the line". [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 04:19, 27 September 2008 (EDT) |
| | + | My own difficulty with the argument you're making at the moment is that the State draws distinctions between things all the time. ''This much'' is larceny, ''that much'' is theft. ''This much'' marijuana is trafficking and illegal, ''that much'' is personal use and ok. ''This'' is murder, ''that'' is vehicular manslaughter, and ''that other one'' is negligent homicide and barely a crime. So no, I don't think it's logically inevitable that since a fetus ''could'' be a baby, it ''must'' be treated like a baby, and therefore since the State prohibits murder it must prohibit abortion. The State doesn't treat all crimes equally, and in fact it can look at two events that, boiled down to their essences, are identical and still make a distinction between the two. [[User:Aziraphale|Aziraphale]] 14:00, 27 September 2008 (EDT) ''<-using up my italics quota for the month...'' |