Can we just keep throwing them till they stick, yes? Trebuchet, perhaps? I’m in.
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Uh, hate to burst your bubble. But if it comes down to putting people up against the wall. . . . . One side is a LOT more heavily armed than the other. And that side generally agrees with Hobby Lobby. You may have noticed event in Nevada last weekend . . .
I think there’s a cultural divide here. You might want to read about The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to understand what’s being said.
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But not for malfeasance? Only for illiquidity? Seems dumb.
One side -is- more heavily armed. But that’s not the side that history will remember fondly.
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It’s worrying that among all the various articulate views here, no one seems conscious of the false dichotomy that either science or religion has the answer, as though they were opposite sides of the same coin. That idea is a recent and totally spurious creation of the religious anti-science movement, and if you don’t consciously reject it you end up in the sort of unwinnable argument we see here.
There’s no scientific way to define what a person is, or what pregnancy means. Yes, you can pick a definition for those words and then scientifically test whether something meets your definition-- but the initial definition comes from your moral and political agenda, not from science. The anti-science lobby have been hideously successful in sowing this confusion, and it’s caused this debate (and others) to slide rapidly backwards in recent years.
Their argument is “our moral authority comes from the bible, and your moral authority comes from science”. The problem is, people argue about the first part (which is futile) and forget to dispute the second part, which is absolutely wrong. I don’t believe in any kind of religion, and I do believe strongly in the value of science, but when I say it’s wrong to force women to carry unwanted babies, or to beat on gay people or muslims, it’s not science that tells me that; it’s my ability to tell right from wrong, even without believing in a magical sky wizard.
(and yes, I use the golden rule to figure out what’s right, and yes, that would be the same golden rule advocated by Jesus among others).
Meanwhile, back at the point–
It’s irrelevant to ask science whether a particular gamete or zygote or embryo could become a person. Let’s just stipulate that it could. And then let’s move on to whether that single cell has human rights today that override the human rights of the fully-realised person it’s growing inside. You don’t need a PhD or a pulpit to figure this one out, so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
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Non-profit and specifically incorporated as religious institutions. Hobby Lobby is incorporated to make a profit for its shareholders.
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I think even among most pro-lifers, the rights of a fetus don’t equal the rights of the woman carrying it (although I’m sure there are many examples to the contrary). The woman’s right to life is greater than that of the fetus, but the woman’s right to choice is not considered to be as great as the fetus’ right to life. It makes it easier if the fetus has no rights, but as you pointed out, that isn’t necessarily right or ideologically neutral. Pro-life arguments will appeal to those who believe that everyone has a soul from conception, pro-choice arguments fit better with those who see individual autonomy as one of the more important values. The fetus’ status as a human with rights or not is also not a woman’s rights issue: if it is basically on the level of a tumor then there’s no need to worry about its rights. If it is a human based on its potential or some reason other than physical development, the question of rights becomes much more complicated.
If a zygote or blastocyst or embryo is a human being, then breastfeeding may be murder.
Nipple stimulation in lactating women prompts production of the hormone prolactin, which in humans acts both to inhibit fertilization and, if fertilization does occur, embryo implantation in the uterine wall. It’s the source of the old wives’ tale that breastfeeding women can’t get pregnant — not entirely true, since it’s hardly a foolproof method of birth control, but it’s not wholly false either.
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You forget, that it is the winners who write history. . .
I don’t think Western Europe will look fondly on America’s religious far right.
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Somehow, I think America will get over that. It’s not like Europe’s opinion matters over here. . .
Much like how the opinions of the Middle East and China didn’t matter to Western Europe during the Dark Ages.
I hope America manages to overcome it’s reactionaries before it self-destructs.
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What about Russia’s?
No, I don’t think Russia cares about Europe’s opinion either. . .
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We can only hope that means Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. is now burning in the fiery pits of hell.
It’s interesting how pregnancy in US is so fetus-centered. Religious people seems to think that the mere act of fertilization of an egg entitles it to support by a woman’s body.
Not only that, but if a pregnant woman dies her body in vegetative state must be used as incubator for a fetus (see Marlise Munoz story).
Those “pro-lifers” are drastically anti-women.
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They also tend to not worry too much about the fetus once it becomes a child.
edit: which, basically, reinforces your point about their focus being on controlling women rather than any real interest in the fetus/child.
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That would be a big step up, actually—most of the pro-lifers think that a fertilized egg is a human being even before implantation. Of course if we accept that definition then the majority of pregnancies end in miscarriages before the mothers could ever know they were “pregnant.”
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Yes, he was ranting a bit, wasn’t he? Knocking down arguments.
On the other hand, when you’ve got people saying that “fertilized eggs are human beings” or “fertilized eggs are members of the human species” or some such, you’ve mostly left the realm of science and entered the realm of semantics and definitions.
Also, it seems to me that asserting that a “fertilized egg is a human being” is simply absurd. It appears Mr. Myers feels the same way.
