nuclearpenguin on March 5, 2012 at 9:12 AM

Exactly. Good example would be the pioneer days when people left the old world or went West never to see the loved ones they left behind again. Does anyone grieve for them? Missed? Yes, but not grieved for as if dead.

Until they hear otherwise, they tend to think the departed are doing well.

As for the cultural aspect, King David grieved deeply when his son died for 7 days, after which he went about his business, confident that the child was safe with God. Yet, the same David also wrote how God knew him when he was but a speck and also marvelled at how beautiful and wonderfully man was made.

Given what we know of that David, it’d be safe to postulate that he wouldn’t take kindly to this Dafydd’s post.

Rational conformity might be the most dangerous of all the left-wing ideals. I saw the movie Equilibrium a few weeks ago. It was from 2003, I think, with Christian Bale. Was an Orwell type film, worth a watch.

For instance, if (1) above were true, then pro-lifers would treat every early-term miscarriage as a death, and they would hold a funeral for the fertilized egg and mourn for months.

This is a really tired argument. How many people hold big funerals and mourn for months when a newborn is killed? Wasn’t it odd that Santorum even took his dead child home in the first place? That wasn’t a fetus.

We mourn something we’ve lost, not something we’ve yet to have. Yes, of course it makes a difference that the baby is inside the womb and not out in the world where we might meet. It would also make a difference if the baby were kept in a hospital and died there before the family ever had a chance to bring the child home.

These are all arbitrary reasons for deciding when life begins.

So long as abortion is legal until right before birth, I see no moral difference between pre and post birth “terminations”.

We’ve already decided when life deserves protected status, and that’s whenever the mother feels like it or after birth. We’ve already defined personhood as, “a being wanted by its mother/born”.

It’s a bit stupid that the women’s interest becomes so suddenly powerless after birth. I’ve never supported life in prison or any harsh penalties for a mother who would kill her own child. That’s simply completely inconsistent with our worldview on people.

For instance, if (1) above were true, then pro-lifers would treat every early-term miscarriage as a death, and they would hold a funeral for the fertilized egg and mourn for months

There are many miscarriages & failed implantations where even the woman doesn’t know. Then there are times when only the husband & wife know (yeah, being a bit old fashioned here) and haven’t told anyone yet. They do mourn, sometimes for months. And if you do know a woman has suffered a miscarriage, the proper thing to do is offer sympathy. Then there are the stillborn, generally there is a funeral.

By using your own measure, we should grieve the same for and attend the funeral for everyone who dies regardless of their relationship to us, otherwise we don’t really believe that they were a person.

Your entire argument falls apart when I simply point out that grief (and the cultural participation in establishments to aid in dealing with it – funerals) are directly proportional to how much we knew the deceased, not their value as a person.

When I skip the funeral of a man I did not know, I am not revealing that I did not feel he wasn’t a person. I simply did not know him.

When a couple (or a mother) chooses not to have a funeral for a miscarriage (and there are funerals for miscarriages), it simply states that there was not a chance to know that person, not that the deceased was inhuman.

Your attempt at a forced logical point reveals a shallowness of thinking that should urge you to confine yourself to simpler topics, lest you embarrass yourself further.

Late-term abortions were once banned, then allowed, based on “the health” of the mother.

Which devolved into “whatever might make her blue at times”.

That’s exactly where this is going. Babies are mere chattel until when, exactly? Tell us oh enlightened “ethicists”.

Yes, and we can easily test and track so much to determine facts, but where’s the data sheet on unalienable? And the outcomes of science seem more and more discretionary.
Perhaps the point missed is that in the end the tyrant will determine the outcome. What’s true, right, wrong, lawful. And as long as we can debate the obvious/self evident, tyranny can grip this nation tighter seemingly unnoticed and unopposed.
I miss Breitbart.

joe_doufu on March 5, 2012 at 12:10 AM

Seems like somebody missed the entire point of the article.

RachDubya on March 5, 2012 at 1:37 AM

I don’t think so. The fetus as a human being is scientific fact, with the beginning well known among everyone who honestly follows science. “Personhood” is an abstract concept, whose definition AND beginning are fluid, changing person to person with no basis in science.

The real choice is whether to base our laws on known science with testable conclusions, or upon an abstract fluid concept defined by “ethicists”.

Laws should be based on a testable fact, black and white… not gray and fluid, subject to the whim of emotion. When laws are not founded in testable fact, they are subject to the whim of every judge wishing to bend our laws to the outcome they desire. This is the basis of tyranny.

P.S. Don’t assume that leftists automatically listen to science and agree that human life starts at conception. I have a liberal friend from high school, who is a medical researcher on children’s diseases, that refuses to acknowledge that DNA proves that the fetus is human at conception.

Seems like somebody missed the entire point of the article. Of course everyone knows when human life begins and that abortion is murder. The article’s main point was that even the leftist “ethicists” know this, and they aren’t ashamed to admit that they’re fine with other forms of murder.

Just because it’s not shocking doesn’t mean it isn’t commentworthy. It was similarly unsurprising when Oblahblah’s choices for head healthcare roles turned out to have pro-death panel publications.

DAH was using their logic against them. That apparently went over your head because the use of logic doesn’t seem to be a trend in your response.

“I demonstrate the philosophical vacuity of that claim by noting that it goes to prove both that killing a newborn is murder, and also that killing a newborn is not murder.”

No, you don’t, and it doesn’t.
The premise you’re challenging is that an unborn baby has the same moral value as a born baby. By itself it doesn’t “prove” anything. The debate is about the minor premise that completes the syllogism.

Pro-lifers believe that human life is sacred, and killing a baby is murder.
Pro-abortion “ethicists” believe that their lives are sacred, everyone else is disposable, therefore killing a baby is not murder.

The pretense that there is a “debate” about when life begins is absurd and you should know that everybody (at least on a conservative site like this) is on to the shell game. Human life begins when human life begins. We all learned the science in grade school, and it has nothing to do with religious mumbo jumbo. You only pretend that there’s some doubt about it because you’re too cowardly to state your real belief that killing people other than Dafydd ab Hugh should not be deemed a sin.

The real debate is, given that the baby is a living human being (which is true), should society side with the baby or with the adult who wants the baby dead?