[Professor S]

Originally Posted by Vampyr

Technically, if we aren't sure they're living, we aren't defaulting to "kill it." We're defaulting to...remove it.

You don't know, so you default to it not being human. I don't know, and I default to it being a life. You proived my point.

It's not that we're bloodthirsty (even though we are) it's mostly because we don't want to accidentally cause more pain that something is already experiencing, and we don't want to make something live that might be better off dead, because in death there is absolution. We -know- when something is dead, there is no gray line, and we know they aren't feeling pain.

I'm having hard time understanding your point in the context of this discussion. What do you mean by talking about "pain"? Who is experiencing the pain? Life is pain? What does pain have to do with pregnancy and the discussion of abortion? Please explain.

And I never said abortion was bloodthirsty, I actually think its a pretty emotionless and dehumanizing procedure... it has to be for people to stomach it. I've had two friends who have had abortions, and they haven't really ever been the same since.

In terms of abortion, you're absolutely right about it depending on when human life begins, but due to all the factors that I've already mentioned, like rape, I cannot define human life as beginning upon conception.

What does the act of rape have to do with whether or not a child is alive? Using your explanation, if there were two pregancies, one conceived legitimately of love and one of rape, only one of them is a child? Why does the act of conception dictate how alive a child is?

This would mean giving power to those who do not deserve it, it would mean putting an enormous burden onto women, something us men already have a bad track record with, and it would mean that every women who wishes she could have an abortion because she has been given an unwanted baby is a murderer at heart, and I just can't believe that. I can't label every one who has had an abortion as a murderer, because when you compare them to a real murderer...there is nothing similar.

That's debateable. If a child is born and a person immediately killed it, wouldn't it be murder? That child can't support itself, but its murder.

So in the end, aren't we determining human life on intent of the parents instead of the life of the child? And in the end, isn't that a very dangerous way to think as we begin to say that life is only as valuable as we choose to define it?