Help fight the illegal immigration

[Nick012000]

http://www.grassfire.org/

Donate money. Contact your representatives repeatedly. Help stop illegal immigration.

[Lazerus]

Urge the Supreme Court to Uphold the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban!

I'm against illegal immigration, but I can't support any organization with that position. Sorry.

[Nick012000]

Why? It's infanticide. The only reason it's not full-fledged murder is because the poor baby isn't completely born by the time they kill it. In any case, though, feel free to simply not support that, while supporting the rest. We need to be united to stop the flood of immigrants.

[Lazerus]

Why? It's infanticide. The only reason it's not full-fledged murder is because the poor baby isn't completely born by the time they kill it. In any case, though, feel free to simply not support that, while supporting the rest. We need to be united to stop the flood of immigrants.

As long as it occurs before brain activity, abortion is no more murder then sterilizing a tumor. It's a little clump of cells with unique DNA, but that dosn't make them a person.

And yes, quite. I actually don't have a problem with the idea of large numbers of mexican immigrants per-se but......

1) We cannot tolerate constant and flagrant abuse of the law.
2) They don't integrate. (Learn to speak english, absorb the culture, etc). Effectivly making them foreign nationals.

[Madmoonie]

Perhaps but do you know what the Partial Birth Law allows? When the child is almost halfway out of the womb...they still allow for an abortion. No couple of strands of DNA, or single cell organism but a full fleged child and in the process of being born (half-way I believe but I will have to check) and this law says that up to that point it is still perfectly alright to murder the child. That is why I support the Ban.

[BrockthePaine]

As long as it occurs before brain activity, abortion is no more murder then sterilizing a tumor.

Then, by that statement, you believe that partial-birth abortion is murder? A baby/fetus/whatever has brain activity by the 23rd week, if not before: at the very least they can measure it by week 28. It's difficult to tell before that time, as the woman's biometrics tends to form a lot of background noise. Like trying to talk on a cell phone at a rock concert, I guess. :shrugs:

And now, back to our regularly-scheduled programming...

[RHJunior]

and again I submit the proposition: a compromise between pro and anti-abortion advocates.

No abortion after brainwaves are detectable.

Any of you pro-abortionists willing to go for it?

[MikeVanPelt]

I think they need to stop using the term "partial-birth abortion" and call it by a more explicitly descriptive term:

Full-term abortion.

It's a procedure designed for the third trimester.

My nephew was born at 26 weeks. He graduated from college a few years ago. No lingering effects from an extremely premature birth.

To say that so called "partial birth" full-term abortions are OK because the baby isn't human is to say that that living baby in the incubator 25 years ago wasn't human.

I like the "before any brain activity has begun" standard myself. (Check out when that happens... you may find it's earlier than you think.) And I don't see how you can make a case that there's an individual human being at a stage of development where an embryo can freely split into identical twins, or two embryos can freely combine into an individual chimera. Twins don't share a single soul, and a chimera doesn't have two souls. They're perfectly ordinary people, and you'd generally never know something was odd with their genetics, unless you do two DNA tests on one and get two different gene prints.

But full-term abortion is murder most foul.

[TMLutas]

and again I submit the proposition: a compromise between pro and anti-abortion advocates.

No abortion after brainwaves are detectable.

Any of you pro-abortionists willing to go for it?

The whole abortion debate for the advocates is about differing visions of who should be protected under the Constitutions. The pro-choicers either think that the pro-lifers are trying to protect nonpersons or they don't really believe in that whole "equal rights" thing and just want to be able to murder really inconvenient persons. Most of the latter claim to believe in the former. The pro-lifers have adopted a consistent, hard line on who is alive and say that all of them should be protected by the Constitution.

And then you have the mass in the middle that doesn't want to think too hard about this stuff and ping pongs back and forth away from the side that at the moment makes them feel too icky. Your offer will likely only be accepted by some of that middle group but only until one of the advocates comes up with a sob story that emotionally wrenches them out of that position.

[TMLutas]

I think they need to stop using the term "partial-birth abortion" and call it by a more explicitly descriptive term:

Full-term abortion.

It's a procedure designed for the third trimester.

My nephew was born at 26 weeks. He graduated from college a few years ago. No lingering effects from an extremely premature birth.

To say that so called "partial birth" full-term abortions are OK because the baby isn't human is to say that that living baby in the incubator 25 years ago wasn't human.

I like the "before any brain activity has begun" standard myself. (Check out when that happens... you may find it's earlier than you think.) And I don't see how you can make a case that there's an individual human being at a stage of development where an embryo can freely split into identical twins, or two embryos can freely combine into an individual chimera. Twins don't share a single soul, and a chimera doesn't have two souls. They're perfectly ordinary people, and you'd generally never know something was odd with their genetics, unless you do two DNA tests on one and get two different gene prints.

But full-term abortion is murder most foul.

One of the problems with brain activity is that it opens the door to euthanasia on the other side. You abort when there are no brain waves even though, inevitably, brain waves will start up in the future and you will get a human being. What's the moral difference between somebody getting killed when they've temporarily lost brain waves? This is why the Catholics talk about a life from conception to natural death. You fiddle on one end of the scale and it has implications on the other end.

Naturally, birth is a very bloody business. You have a lot of losses in spontaneous abortions (nothing to be done about that, there's no moral issue to it) so there's a danger of callousness creeping in. In the US, it's already creeped in, set up house, and is giving tours of the estate.

The other side of the problem, natural death, is just as messed up in the US. You have the inevitability of loss in this fight. So when do you fight it and why? I won't go into this end too much but it's not an easy question to get right. Again, there's a danger of callousness, this time of the "can we clear this bed yet" variety.

[Aurrin]

I'd agree with you, TM, but this could only be an improvement in that department. Euthanasia is close to being as badly handled as abortion. As it is, there are many, many documented cases in which the patients have full brain waves, but the hospital just decides that they won't pay for it, so they pull the feeding tube and let them STARVE TO DEATH.

While I applaud your forethought in the matter (and really, I do, because far too few people actually look at widespread applicability of such things), that's a slippery slope that we've already slid all the way to the bottom and are mucking around in the mudpit.

And for once, RH, I think we're in agreement. I think that's a very agreeable solution. I would tend to advocate conception-based reasoning, but I think that's a workable compromise. (And of course, there are always exceptions for the weird medical cases where it just can't work.)

[Sun tzu]

and again I submit the proposition: a compromise between pro and anti-abortion advocates.

No abortion after brainwaves are detectable.

Any of you pro-abortionists willing to go for it?

Something in that vein, certainly. I dunno if just brainwaves are enough to qualify (after all, reptiles have a brain too. I'd need to look up more closely on the develomment of the brain), but it's definitely the kind of criteria I believe should be used.
I remember a pro-life document I once read said the ability for thought began in the second semester...Like I said, I'd have to study a bit more before taking a definite position, but I imagine "no abortion after that point" would be the fair decision. Before, it would fall under "bunch of cells with unique DNA"; after, it would be "a person", even if still limited.

[BrockthePaine]

I remember a pro-life document I once read said the ability for thought began in the second semester...

I believe you mean trimester, yes?

[Sun tzu]

I remember a pro-life document I once read said the ability for thought began in the second semester...

I believe you mean trimester, yes?

Right. My apologies.

[BrockthePaine]

No problem. I was attempting to make a college joke out of that, but it just wasn't coming...

[Luna_Northcat]

and again I submit the proposition: a compromise between pro and anti-abortion advocates.

No abortion after brainwaves are detectable.

Any of you pro-abortionists willing to go for it?

I would go for that, yes. Except for the cases where it comes down to an emergency decision in order to save the life of the mother.

However, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you probably buy into the statement that "brain waves have been detected as early as six weeks gestation."

Unfortunately, that isn't the case; that particular canard had its birth in a speech in 1964 by Dr. Hannibal Hamlin, "Life or Death by EEG", which was then printed in the Journal of the American Medical Association, October 12, 1964 (Vol 190, No 2, pages 112-114) -- and he was misquoting a piece of Japanese research, Okamoto and Kirikae's "Electroencephalographic Studies on Brain of Foetus of Children of Premature Birth and New-Born, Together With Note on Reactions of Foetus Brain Upon Drugs" (Folia Psychiat Neurol Jap 1951;5:135-146). Ironically, this research itself would have horrified you (it horrifies me!) -- they took still-living fetuses obtained by hysterotomy abortions and implanted electrodes in the brains to obtain electrical activity. However, three things -- they obtained "electrical activity", not brain waves; the youngest of the fetuses thus obtained and tested was three months, not 40 days; and their results have never been corroborated by anything since.

Better, and far more recent, research with more sensitive instruments actually indicates that although cells begin to develop electrical potential at about 12 weeks, this is the kind of electrical potential that all living cells have. There is no coherent and regular communication between neurons until nearing 20 weeks (although there are incoherent and irregular bursts of electrical activity from about week 16), and nothing which could be called a "brain wave" as one normally understands brain waves on an EEG until around weeks 21-22; and the brain waves do not settle into "normal" coherent patterns until 26-27 weeks. (See, for example, http://www.cirp.org/library/pain/anand/ .)

This is in keeping with the laws of physics and physiology: the physiological structures which give rise to "brain waves" in humans are not physically present and functional until 20-24 weeks. We know this from autopsy.

So I'm going to guess that you think you are arguing for a ban on abortion after about 6 weeks. If I'm wrong, I apologise for the misinterpretation. However, I do think you should be aware you are pretty much arguing for something close to the status quo -- a ban on abortions after brain waves are present would mean a ban on abortions after (to be on the safe side) around 20 weeks gestation.

[Luna_Northcat]

I think they need to stop using the term "partial-birth abortion" and call it by a more explicitly descriptive term:

Full-term abortion.

It's a procedure designed for the third trimester.

My nephew was born at 26 weeks. He graduated from college a few years ago. No lingering effects from an extremely premature birth.

<snip>.

Mike, I can't think of anywhere in the US that an abortion at 26 weeks would be legal. An abortion at 26 weeks IS murder, under any definition, because it is a potentially viable baby.

The most liberal cutoff date I know of in the US is 24 weeks. I could be wrong, so if you know different please tell me. In at least a few places the cutoff is 22 weeks, because 22 weeks is the absolute earliest that a fetus can possibly survive (and even then, only 1% of those born at 22 weeks DO survive, and most of those not well).

"Full term" is 37 weeks. There's no way abortion that late would ever be legal, and quite rightly. But I don't think you should muddy the waters.

[Nick012000]

Since this thread has been derailed by the abortion debate, I'm going to start a new one.

[The JAM]

No abortion after the heart starts beating?

[BrockthePaine]

Mike, I can't think of anywhere in the US that an abortion at 26 weeks would be legal. An abortion at 26 weeks IS murder, under any definition, because it is a potentially viable baby.

The most liberal cutoff date I know of in the US is 24 weeks. I could be wrong, so if you know different please tell me.

36 US states have a ban on abortions in the third trimester, and of those, only 16 allegedly will stand up in the high court. That leaves 14 with no restrictions, and some which are rather iffy, should they be legally challenged.