It is the taking of a human life at a stage of human development you and I were once at. A human life that can feel pain in many cases.
Or maybe start thinking about facts rather than feelings and beliefs when making policy decisions that could potentially sentence thousands of women to horrible suffering and even death from back-alley abortions, eh?
You moved so fast from posturing about facts to an emotional appeal I got whiplash. Fuzzy Bear's post was rational, you did nothing to attack his logic or dispute his facts and yet you accuse the pro-life side of only being concerned with feelings. Good grief.
Because believing that embryos are human beings who suffer like the rest of us and whose termination is murder is a belief. The fact that back-alley abortions can be very dangerous and that being forced to carry a child isn't a fun experience is not disputed by anyone. So yes, the pro-life side has no evidence to back up its belief that embryos are persons- it's merely a belief.
You have a right to believe that, but I'm not going to stand by when real humans suffer because of beliefs, whether they're women, LGBTQ folks or members of minority religions. Also, Fuzzy's post is ridiculous- "a stage of human development you and I were once at" is an emotional appeal if I ever saw one, you can claim it about the stage of a sperm just like you can claim it about an embryo.
The lack of self awareness here is kind of funny. Like you go from criticizing emotional appeals to making them in the same paragraph. Like I said in my last post, I'm getting whiplash
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Now that that's out of the way, there are a few major issues with your argument:
1) You get your facts wrong on a couple of points. First, you criticize us for believing embryos "suffer like the rest of us". Fetesus do feel pain (around 30 weeks I think) and neither I nor Fuzzy claimed that embryos did. You either mistakenly believe that fetuses can't feel pain or misrepresented mine and Fuzzy's position. Second, you can't claim a sperm is a stage of your development because it isn't you. My daughter is genetically unique and distinct from me going back to when she was an ovum, while my sperm is not.
2) You're playing fast and loose with the words "fact" and "belief". We are discussing "personhood". It is a "fact" that someone is or isn't a person according to a definition of personhood, but I dispute that there is a single definition of personhood that is a "fact" on the same level as "2+2=4".
Rather, I posit:
a) Being a member of homo sapiens sapiens should be sufficient to meet the definition of personhood, regardless of stage of development or dependence on others to stay alive
b) Pro choicers (with a few exceptions like Peter Singer who bite the bullet) are being inconsistent when denying fetuses personhood either because a fetus meets their definition of personhood or because their definition excludes classes of people that they treat as non-persons.
This leads to my last point
3) You keep talking about "real humans" and "facts" and "beliefs" about personhood without ever stating your definition or why it is factual. Would you mind doing so?
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