New York bill allows women to kill their babies

Go crawl back under your rock Charlatan.

Make me, hillbilly!

You will be far more compliant when I bring out the guns !

@makhai: I wasn't the one who linked in them in the first place though. Talk to that other guy about that. I was just presenting the other side and being non-bias. But I'm all for giving women legal control of their bodies. There's just a point where the "clump of cells" in a woman's body is in fact a innocent baby getting murdered and their legal rights are non-existent. Which shouldn't happen.

This is where the death penalty comes in. Even though I don't want to argue this side, I will. A person who has lived his life, committed inhumane crimes, and found guilty by the legal system, but still those who are diehard pro-choice don't see how that's completely f***ed and cannot send him to his death. This criminal could have violated a woman's body or even killed her and a baby inside her. In which case the latter would be considered a double homicide, even though the woman was carrying a "clump of cells", amiright? An innocent baby vs a disgusting criminal. (By the way, I don't support the death penalty, I'm just bringing you some perspective).

That was pretty funny 8.9/10

Also proof that a longer post isn't always better.

@blueecho: Agreed.

sorry but just because you don't agree with abortion, doesn't mean you have to spin it to make it sound evil

Mhm.

Also an important thing to keep in mind is that Pro-Choice is not Pro-Abortion.

I don't know why you would bring up the double-homicide law as some kind of point. You can find all kinds of laws that make no sense all over the world. A fetus is not a baby by its very definition. It's an unborn or unhatched vertebrate. So yeah, just a clump of cells whether it is taken from the mother by choice or not. In the end, it is still just a clump of cells. Hanging a double-homicide around someone's neck for killing a fetus doesn't really change much. Murdering one person or two have pretty similar consequences, if there is any difference at all.

As for me, I am all for the death penalty and I am also an ardent advocate of pro-choice. The only thing that gives me pause on the death penalty is where false convictions come into play. That's it. I'm also a massive gun enthusiast and a future surgeon. A different perspective doesn't really scare me as I hardly have one perspective that fits me into a liberal or conservative shoebox. Autonomy reigns supreme, as far as medical issues are concerned. The idea that a person must lose rights to control their own body because they are a woman disgusts me to no end.

They do the same in kill shelters.

This is horrible how could something like this get passed its just awful

See post #35 of this thread.

I hope to god that this isn't true.

@makhai: I brought up the law to see if you were one of the many hypocrites I've encountered. Thankfully you're not. At some point, this "clump of cells" must be considered a baby. All there is a vagina and a couple inches of flesh from the "clump of cells" to this world. To me, abortions so late in the pregnancy is very unethical and I consider it very questionable. The idea that a person must lose rights to control their own body because they are a woman also disgusts me. But at some point women are carrying another body/person inside. The legal rights of this person must be considered.

Good to know about your diverse beliefs, and I agree with the false convictions in the death penalty part.

@blueecho said:

I fall into both of these so I'll explain my reasoning.

Babies (in the womb or otherwise) are innocent. They are the product of their parents doing an act that is well known to produce a result (Sex=babies.) Why should a baby suffer because it's parents didn't have the decency to abstain from sex, or at least to put a child up for adoption if pregnancy resulted from protected sex? Personally only the health of the mother supersedes the right to life. (this can be a gray area in cases of rape. It's not a perfect world and I can't say I'd blame a mother mentally or emotionally unable to carry the child to term, but to kill a child is still a tragedy.)

In cases of the death penalty, if somebody who is old enough to know better commits a crime heinous enough that they will never be rehabilitated into society, why let them leech the system? Why not spend that money to help people who are in need and more deserving then people who kill, rape or perform other acts that remove them from society? I can tell you I believe most people would change their mind about paying for people incarcerated for capital crimes if that money came solely out of the pockets of those who wanted to abolish capital punishment. Keep in mind America is trillions of dollars in debt and sinking more all the time. Sooner or later that debt is going to cause a lifestyle change for every American.

There is also the concept of justice. A band named Stavesacre says it more succinctly then I can in this lyric from Zzyxx Scarecrow.

"We've lost our sense of justice, smearing lines of right and wrong; Despising any standards we blindly stumble on; Bleeding hearts scream compassion, what of those who cannot cry? A life is worth a life, justice merciful and blind."

Why should somebody who tortured or raped or murdered get a cozy place to sleep, hot food and entertainment while the person they victimized is dead or forever scarred? Not to mention those who loved the victim suffer as well. Frankly it's a shame that convicts get more rights then the victims.

So there you go. If that was too long, I'll sum it up. Abortion* allows women to murder innocent babies that are developing in the womb. In most cases the woman isn't raped or her life isn't in danger, she simply feels she doesn't have to live with consequences of her choices. Capital punishment is righteous punishment for people who know better yet who still decide they can live outside the laws society has put up to protect itself.

*Note again, I'm not talking about cases of rape, or health issues that may arise with going through a pregnancy.

Well there is a good chance the death row inmate is also a murderer, so sure.

At least we have some common ground. As someone being educated for a career in the medical field, I had the pleasure of covering human development. During this course, we briefly went over the concept of when self-awareness emerges. I found the topic interesting, so I dug a little deeper in my off time. In the science community, it is mostly accepted that consciousness is a product of evolution, genetics, and our environment (the world around us or in other words, our experiences). A fetus has the first two criteria but it lacks the final and arguably the most critical. A fetus spends 95% of it's development in REM sleep and the other 5% in transition periods out of and back into REM sleep. Does a fetus dream? We don't currently know for sure but we do know that dreams come from our experiences and a fetus has none. In fact, it doesn't even have a fully developed brain after birth either. This is why chimpanzee babies are smarter than human babies, because our brains develop slower so they can develop to a much greater degree.

A recent study (2009 or 2010, I believe) showed that a baby starts to have the beginnings of consciousness at around 5 months but it is extremely basic. It takes them 4 times as long as an average adult to recognize that something is interacting with it. About 1.3 seconds. As far as I can remember, no other study comes to mind that can pinpoint exactly where a measurable consciousness begins but based on all the criteria for what consciousness is, I think it can be said without a reasonable doubt that a fetus is not a person. The lines between person and thing blur a short period after birth, based on the evidence collected so far.

@makhai: Hmm very interesting. But, whether a fetus does dream or not is not a very good argument. We don't know for a fact that they don't and I don't think we'll find out anytime soon. Making the assumption that they don't would be wrong and unethical. We can't just jump the gun in order to appeal to women who are pro-choice or to appear socially progressive. These are lives we are talking about and their futures. An individual's future is much more important. I don't think it matters how basic it's showings of consciousness are. What matters is that it did. I think it's expected or should be that a baby takes that long to recognize something. It certainly is understandable, I mean they're babies.

I respect your opinions and positions, but I cannot be convinced unless concrete facts are presented. To clarify I'm neither pro-life or pro-choice. I believe an abortion is more than justifiable in cases like rape, risk to maternal health or fetal health. Third trimester abortions are too late. I have trouble referring to baby as a "clump of cells". That sounds terrible. It sounds like we're an alien race and we're going to perform an experiment on a pregnant human being.

I disagree. Since a fetus spends almost every moment of it's development in deep sleep, it's waking mind cannot be measured to determine consciousness and therefore, whether or not it is a person. A dream is thought and what is a person if not a collection of thought? I am sure you are not one to say that a person is simply a collection of cells. So what else do you think makes up a person? If your criteria for a person is what is generally accepted, then we can test and measure where we should draw the line on whether or not a fetus is a person. From what the evidence supports, a fetus is not a person.

We can make assumptions about a fetus based on what we know about newborns. A newborn has only a glimmer of consciousness, a glimmer that is factually less than that of a much less developed animal. If a dog is not a person, then neither is a newborn human and therefore, neither is a fetus.

I also disagree that a person's future is more important than the right to control your own body. Because in order to grant rights to something that is not even a person, you are stripping rights from something that is actually a person.

I don't know what you mean by concrete facts. I presented facts.

I believe you are making a mistake in allowing yourself to be guided by your feelings rather than the facts though. No one should be stripped of their right to their own body. If you don't like the idea of abortions, then I would strongly encourage you to enter a field of science that will allow women to divorce themselves from their pregnancies without aborting the fetus. That way, no rights are stripped and you get to keep the fetuses. Everyone wins.

@makhai: What do you think of this?

https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-03-13/indiana-jury-says-purvi-patel-should-go-prison-what-she-says-was-miscarriage

Lets take the most biased one-sided interview we can find on this topic and put the most aggressive title we can think of above that and lets call it news... Late term abortions refused by the same people who are against early prognoses.

It's Indiana. I'm surprised they didn't lynch her. They are after all, trying to compete with Florida for craziest state at the moment. Considering that nearly every conservative state considers conception to start 2 weeks before copulation, this is not a shocker. This is what happens when religions are allowed to guide our laws. Stuff like this is only going to increase cases of hangar babies because now, women will be afraid to trust doctors too. Only now when a woman is sitting in a pool of her own blood, she won't go see a doctor in Indiana like Patel did. They will probably bleed out in their bathtub.

Slightly off-topic but this is also why Indiana is going to be hemorrhaging (get it? lulz) revenue as corporations are ceasing plans for growth in the state, other businesses are planning on withdrawing from the state, and their tourism is going to nose-dive. 'Boycott Indiana' actually has some traction. Not for this case specifically but for the exact same mindset that the state has towards its people.