2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumA fetus is NOT a BABY or a CHILD. Got that? Eleven things you will NEVER hear:
Coming to our fetus shower?
What are you going to name the fetus?
"Hey there, fetus doll, let's go have a drink".
We're going shopping for a new fetus stroller.
Could you pick up some fetus powder while you're out?
Fetus elephants are the cutest!
He's just now losing his fetus teeth.
(singing) Fetus, Fetus, where did our love go? ooooOOOooo
(singing) OOoo Fetus I love your way.. wanna be you with night and day..
(singing) Fetus come back, any kind of fool could see
(singing) I want my Fetus Back, Fetus Back, Fetus Back Ribs..
msongs
(67,343 posts)vkkv
(3,384 posts)Less than 50% of zygotes make it to a live birth.
And there is no guarantee that an non-aborted fetus will EVER be a baby or child.
So, those who say that abortion is murder are lying.
There is no absolute guarantee that a fetus is going to make all the way to natural live birth so it cannot be even considered murder as many Anti-Choicers believe.
Anti-choicers' views are incredibly narrow and void of facts.
Joe Chi Minh
(15,229 posts)mean neither of us could die today. Of course, many Conservatives who affect compassion for the unborn, don't care once the baby leaves the womb, whether it dies of starvation or neglect, but that doesn't excuse abortion.
It happens, however, that sometimes the mother is the most innocent party concerned, and because of the enduring feeling of objective guilt, that is a tragedy for her. But as il Papa says, we're all sinners. Jesus didn't die an agonizing death on the cross for our little peccadilloes. Rather it is an indication of how boundless God's mercy towards us is, if we turn to him.
A Little Weird
(1,754 posts)So then is miscarriage manslaughter? I wonder how many women are heinous criminals in your mind.
Response to Joe Chi Minh (Reply #7)
Lars39 This message was self-deleted by its author.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)You also appear to fetishize suffering.
vkkv
(3,384 posts)NEITHER WERE YOU.
The Bible is a collection of stories by a collection of story-tellers. "Story-tellers" is also slang for 'LIARS' in some conversations and in stories by story-tellers.
How many versions of " God's word" are there? Hmmmm.. what, about FIFTY versions of "God's word" in English alone? How can that be? There should be only ONE VERSION, God's version, too bad he doesn't make an appearance once in a while and wipe away all these greedy and evil Republicans. But then, the Bible Belt has gotten hit a lot lately.. maybe there is a "God"... Nah.
re: Murder. It's not murder if it will not hold up in court -and calling abortion 'murder' would not hold up.
vkkv
(3,384 posts)"" the mother is the most innocent party concerned, and because of the enduring feeling of objective guilt """
The chances are likely that if the former mother is 'enduring' a feeling of life-long guilt, then she was also previously and is continuing to be 'enduring' a life-long struggle with low-grade psychotic symptoms, mild schizophrenia, paranoid delusions and /or another form of mental illness like a belief in an all powerful God that is protecting you and watching over you - which is not all that uncommon, Joe..
uppityperson
(115,677 posts)Observation is based on measurable facts, intended to be unbiased.
valerief
(53,235 posts)I suppose the religious zealots propose a law against miscarriages?
66 dmhlt
(1,941 posts)vkkv
(3,384 posts)shenmue
(38,506 posts)If a fetus is a person, why don't we baptize a pregnant woman's belly?
jonno99
(2,620 posts)F4lconF16
(3,747 posts)hughee99
(16,113 posts)People until a year or years after they're born. I don't think your question is as clever as you think it is.
Unknown Beatle
(2,672 posts)in barbeque sauce. Yummy for the tummy.
People don't like Peter Singer. On the other hand, while I think his philosophical attitudes are far from being just one tool short of being a kit, he's good at pointing out slippery slopes and the inconsistencies people have in deciding where the sliding downhill has to stop.
Nearly everybody is "absolutely rational" when their beliefs are supported by clear rationality; they turn into "trippy religious types" or the equivalent "trippy emotionality types" as soon as their beliefs are threatened by what's "absolutely rational." Then they're all about irrationality.
Personally, I'm fine with this. Nobody's every completely consistent; part of growth and change is balancing raitonality with emotion with beliefs, allowing them to interact and produce better, more stable, more consistent or at least superior (in some sense) systems. What I don't like is when it's denied that their irrationality is irrational; and I'm downright cranky when people claim their irrationality is "rational."
So abortion is okay because the "life" is still entirely dependent on the mother. It's blood nutrients and oxygen supply are funneled through the mother. However, there are many other people who don't eat or breathe on their own; they are considered fully human beings, not lumps of tissue maintained by others' efforts and therefore at the mercy of arbitrary termination by those people. At least not if they're still sentient and aware.
However, in many ways a newborn isn't sentient and really aware. In some cultures naming is done long after birth, by Western standards. I've read myths where the "soul" enters the child some time after birth. In other words, the newborn isn't really alive. It's fully dependent, and by strict rationality either euthanasia of the radically unfit and the newborn is fine, or late-term abortions start to look very fishy.
The real difference is that infants are judged cute and defenseless, therefore in need of defense; the radically unfit have those, more often than not, who love them and protect them. As for abortions, if the mother isn't going to protect her own unborn, everybody else is given a pass on the job. Esp. when it's in the "best interests" of a person who is defenseless and who have people who love and protect them. Sounds heartless and cold. We don't like to think of ourselves as that way--but as warm and feeling and rational--so we find ways to justify the arbitrary line between "alive and not alive."
Singer likes to point out that the line is arbitrary. He takes the logic into places that the purely rational fear to tread and the emotionally burdened are repulsed by.
If a fetus isn't a person, then barbecuing and eating one isn't cannibalism. We eat much of our own tissue and secretions--from snot and saliva to skin (us nailbiters often bite the skin and don't spit it out, and many sort of chew at their own lips). Sometimes it's our own secretions and tissues, sometimes others'. (Spit swapping, for instance--who kisses then spits? Then again, after oral sex some spit ... and some swallow.)
PDittie
(8,322 posts)Linda Ronstadt: OooooOOOOO fetus fetus
Janis Joplin: Cry, Fetus... Cry-ay-ay Fetus
Several artists: My fetus does the hanky-panky
Eartha Kitt: Santa Fetus
The Ronettes: Be my, be my fetus
Jackson Browne: She's got to be somebody's fetus
Johnny Winter: Fetus, please don't go. Fetus please don't go. Please don't go down to New Orleans, you know I love you so, fetus please don't go
Huey Lewis and the News: Doin' it all for my fetus
Leon Redbone: fetus, it's cold outside
Frank Sinatra; One for my fetus, and one more for the road
Tommy Edwards: My melancholy fetus
Vanilla Ice: Ice, Ice, Fetus
I'm going to start singing some of these anytime someone interchanges the word fetus with baby. It's the best demonstration of the hypocrisy of substituting one word for the other.
vkkv
(3,384 posts)cali
(114,904 posts)And I admit, I see the difference between a fetus of 2 months, for example, and one of 7 months. That doesn't mean I support any restritictions on abortion beyond those in Roe. I don't. But I do distinguish between a viable fetus and a non-viable one.
hedgehog
(36,286 posts)becomes a human being. Clearly, some people view the mother strictly as an incubator from Day1.(The same people who would cut back on WIC and Food Stamps once the child is born.) But there are other people who sincerely believe that the fertilized egg is fully human.
As someone who has gone through two early miscarriages, I can tell you that it is impossible to determine whether I was mourning a child or the idea of a child. Many here would tell me it was only a zygote or fetus, but that's not how it felt.
I am humble enough to say I don't know where to draw the line. I think that viability is a good measure, but then there are women who have third term abortions for what they consider excellent reasons. (No one is pregnant for 8 months and just decides out of the blue to get an abortion!) Pro-choice or anti-abortion, we could all use a little humility and allow those faced with the decision a little privacy.
Proud Liberal Dem
(24,391 posts)is the main reason why government intervention in the matter is so problematic. The only area that I think that the government has a legitimate concern is ensuring that the facilities that women obtain abortions in meet the minimum medical/clinical standards (not crazy and unnecessary TRAP law standards) to ensure the safety of the woman and that the people performing the procedure are adequately trained (which doesn't include "admitting privileges). Above and beyond that, legislators should STFO.
hedgehog
(36,286 posts)uppityperson
(115,677 posts)Proud Liberal Dem
(24,391 posts)then we should get rid of birthdays and celebrate "conception days" instead, right? Everybody should be able to take their current age and add 9 months onto it, right? Yay! We're all automatically 9 months older! Oh, and shouldn't pregnant women be able to claim their fetuses (sorry, "babies" on their taxes and applications for public assistance? I'm sure anti-choicers want to help pregnant women out as much as possible, right?
vkkv
(3,384 posts)Last edited Fri Jun 5, 2015, 12:39 PM - Edit history (1)
Watch for it, under a personhood rule of law, they just might be on it right now...
greymattermom
(5,751 posts)Now that question could make things interesting. Before the fetus is billable, is it a person?
Proud Liberal Dem
(24,391 posts)which, of course, Republicans wouldn't think about (nor care about). BTW just to be clear, I don't actually support any of that. Just being snarky (though I'm sure anti-choicers have thought about it before).
marshall
(6,665 posts)Chinese custom has long been to consider a person one year old at birth. Pregnant women do currently get federal benefits through the WIC program.
Not that this means abortions should be disallowed, but I think the issue is far more complicated than either side admits.
Proud Liberal Dem
(24,391 posts)I agree that it's a complicated issue though this is one thing that I believe that Government doesn't need to step in and make more complicated IMHO by mandating waiting periods, unnecessary medical procedures, and forcing doctors to lie to women. As I said before, government should largely stay out of the mix other than ensuring that the facilities are clean and safe and the doctors are qualified to perform the procedure. Other than that, it should solely be a matter of a woman's choice IMHO.
3catwoman3
(23,939 posts)...nurse corps. I was the nurse practitioner in the pediatric clinic at Yokota. Many of our military families adopted babies from China, who would then get their care in our clinic. I saw lots of babies whose stated ages on their adoption papers did not at all match how they looked.
There are so many physical and developmental milestones that is it pretty easy to tell if a child is 6-12 months younger than they are alleged to be. Trying to convince the adoptive parents that their children were not as old as they's been told was not easy.
iandhr
(6,852 posts)"If you think a fetus is more important than a woman trying getting a fetus to wash the shit stains out of your underwear for no pay and no pension."
vkkv
(3,384 posts)karynnj
(59,495 posts)Maybe you should add to your list - "we're having a fetus" or go back generations and consider the often used (not) phrase "She's with fetus".
There is a logical connection between a fetus and a baby or child, which is so well understood that I won't even mention it. If you think that discuss like this supports keeping abortion legal and safe, you may need to rethink things.
Abortion is a very difficult issue as there are sincere people on both sides. However, there some - on both sides - see this as a completely one sided issue of either the woman's right to decide anything involving her body or one of preventing the destruction of evolving life. We have seen many cases where the Republicans have paid a price for taking very extreme positions on their side when they take positions that argue against even many forms of birth control, the morning after pill or making bizarre statements that rape can not result in pregnancy or that if it does, any child that results (9 months later) is a gift from God.
It does not take a huge amount of looking at polling to see that one can err on the other side as well and that starts with mentally denying that there an abortion potentially destroys what otherwise would have been a child. You may think your post hilarious, but I would assume that many women who have suffered miscarriages would find this very insensitive. Even if they were - say 4 months along, to them they lost a child - often one that they already had hopes and expectations for. ( I doubt you would have the guts to make that statement to someone who lost a full term baby unexpectedly at 39 weeks - like a dear relative of mine. )
Though many here were annoyed that HRC added "rare" to safe and legal - using the long used Democratic position, however, I think she meant exactly what she said. In addition, this happens to be pretty close to where the center is in US opinion. (There is polling on pollingreport.com on abortion where people are asked about various alternatives.)
vkkv
(3,384 posts)A CHICKEN.
A potential building is not a building.
A potential job is not a job.
A potential POTUS is not a POTUS
A potential baby is not a baby.
No matter what emotional feelings there are.
So stop calling them 'babies', the Anti-Choicers are simply skewing reality to hook people in as an advantage.
You are confusing the entire issue of an abortion. A future mother who wants to have a "baby" is making a huge commitment to it, she's emotionally invested, she wants to consider the fetus as a "baby" even though that is not accurate. Not-so with a pregnant teen or rape victim who is seeking an abortion, these women should not have be faced with the possible guilt of aborting a 'baby', because it is not a "baby".
My point, and the truth remains, a fetus is not a baby.
karynnj
(59,495 posts)The fact is that a woman considering abortion is making the choice, which is hers to make through the first two trimesters to not continue her pregnancy. You are merely playing with semantics. This is a decision to eliminate potential life. No one is saying that the fetus is a fully developed baby, but it is absolutely true that it is on the path to become one.
I saw your other post that spoke of the likelihood of miscarriage. However, to be fair, one should use the conditional probability of a miscarriage given the weeks of gestation. Roe vs Wade intentionally gives 100% choice to the woman in the early weeks and months of the pregnancy - until the point when the baby becomes viable. Mercifully, miscarriages are not that common the further along you are.
As to a woman feeling guilt because people refer to "aborting a baby", do you really think that they would not have the exact same guilt if people used the word fetus? I give women far more credit for intelligence than that. Do you honestly think that their concern was generated by the word alone and they were too stupid to know that at that point it was "just" a fetus?
Here, rather than arguing about the word, it is clear that the woman needs a huge amount of support and understanding from others that she made the decision thoughtfully and that it was hers to make.
diamondhead
(54 posts)Are you FOR or AGAINST abortion? I can't tell if your subject line is sarcastic.
Because if you're for abortion and your subject line is NOT sarcastic, then your post is making an argument AGAINST abortion.
uppityperson
(115,677 posts)diamondhead
(54 posts)For abortion. You know, as in, you think abortion should be legal and that there's nothing wrong with it.
uppityperson
(115,677 posts)being "for abortion". What do you mean? How do you feel about abortions?
Do you agree or disagree with the subject line : A fetus is NOT a BABY or a CHILD?
diamondhead
(54 posts)Silly word games are not going to change reality. Pro choice is just another way of saying for abortion. Pro life is another way of saying against abortion.
A fetus is not a baby in the same way a zygote is not a fetus. The real question is at what point in development does a zygote become a fetus, and at what point does a fetus become a baby. There is currently no scientific consensus on this, and in truth there's probably no scientific way to determine an exact point anyway.
It's safe to say, however, that a baby doesn't exist at conception. Nor is it out of the question to say that a fetus is long past being a fetus way before actual birth. Perhaps it's a baby when the brain is formed to the point that it becomes concious. How one would go about determining such a thing is currently beyond scientific ability.
All I know is that the thread is making a case against abortion if the subject line is not sarcastic.
uppityperson
(115,677 posts)How do you feel about abortions?
Do you agree or disagree with the subject line : A fetus is NOT a BABY or a CHILD?
diamondhead
(54 posts)And then the body of the post goes on to give examples of situations where people refer to whatever is inside the uterus as a BABY, even though s/he is trying to be clever about it by replacing the word baby with fetus. What the post is saying is that the fetus IS a baby, which makes me think the subject line is sarcastic.
And I already answered your question. A fetus is not a baby until it is a baby. Before birth.
uppityperson
(115,677 posts)And the post goes on to give examples that never happen. It doesn't say people do that but they NEVER do that. It is not "examples of situations where people refer to whatever is inside the uterus as a BABY" but examples of things that NEVER happen.
ETA, rereading, I am understanding more what you mean. Since people NEVER say that, then what they are pregnant with is not a fetus but a baby? Hm.
vkkv
(3,384 posts)It is logical that the same brain that cannot differentiate from 'fetus' and 'baby' can also not differentiate between "pro-abortion' and 'pro-choice'.
diamondhead
(54 posts)Are you aware that your thread is making the case AGAINST abortion?
People call them BABY showers, even though the baby hasn't been born yet, because they acknowledge that there is a BABY in the womb. The same thing goes for almost every other example you made.
Pretty ironic that by trying to make the case for abortion, you actually did the exact opposite.
vkkv
(3,384 posts)Diamondhead, you are stuck, you just can't get over your wrong use of the word 'baby'.
I am not talking in abstractions here:
A fetus is not a baby.
We should never hear in a court of law, or in Congressional hearings, a fetus being referred to as a baby. That is the emotional hook that Anti-Choicers use to gain an emotional sympathy of bias for their cause.
Babies are not being aborted, fetuses are.
A human fetus is not a human baby or infant or teen or adult.
Stop referring to abortions as the killing "babies", because they AREN'T live birth babies.
Another thing you will never hear:
We're having scrambled chickens and toast for breakfast.
diamondhead
(54 posts)Your opinion that an unborn baby ought to be called a fetus is fine, but you did a lousy job making a case for that opinion by posting this thread, which inadvertently (on your part) made the opposite case.
Now you have further erred with the "scrambled chickens and toast for breakfast" example. Eggs are 1) Not fertilized, and 2) even if fertilized, usually not past the point of development that any reasonable person would consider them baby chickens.
Again, you're just doing a really bad job of making your argument.
If you can find a reasonable argument to assign the word "fetus" to whatever is in a woman's womb at, say, 1 week before her due date, I'd like to hear it. So far, you've made the opposite argument.
uppityperson
(115,677 posts)1. At what point "before birth" does a fetus become a baby?
2. At what point in a pregnancy should abortions be allowed and disallowed?
vkkv
(3,384 posts)If an unborn can survive on it's own without being connected to it's mother than that's too late to be aborted and few are except as a health danger to the mother.
And such development indicates that that is not a fetus now is it? Fetuses are aborted, not babies who can survive without being connected it's mother -except as a health danger to the mother.
And yes, people have been known to eat fertilized eggs, regularly. Look it up.
vkkv
(3,384 posts)All SIX are on this ONE thread..
A troll "sent from God" , no doubt.
hedgehog
(36,286 posts)give this much serious thought. Abortion may be the best choice in a given situation, but it is still a serious choice. Playing word games substituting "fetus" for "baby" is disrespectful of the women facing this decision, IMHO.
vkkv
(3,384 posts)are of the UTMOST importance, a zygote or fetus should NOT be referred to as a "baby" and that's what anti-choicers are doing to twist the truth.
quadrature
(2,049 posts)it graduates from medical school.