I don't base my arguments on the Bible, but am enough of a Bible scholar to adequately disect the "silly" biblical arguments made by others who try to support abortion via the Bible.

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Rem tene, verba sequentur.

I'm duly impressed - you seem to be in command of all of the canned talking points from the Bible and you still don't use them. However, even accepting at face value what you've said (and not what it implies) your own citations don't support your argument, even as you ironically accuse me of the same.

You say that "the child comes forth" doesn't mean that the child has died, but it also doesn't mean that the child has lived. It's ambiguous. Whether or not it "comes forth" and lives in other portions of the Bible is immaterial, even if we assume no changes in colloquialisms or translation over the last, oh, 3000 years. And, in how many other cases would this translation even be relevant. The only person making leaps of inference here is you - my argument is unaltered even if this does apply to premature birth as well. If you hit a woman and she miscarries, then you pay a fine. If you hit a woman and she gives birth prematurely, you pay a fine. Both of these are the way it go, should no further "mischief" befall the woman, which leads to my next point.

I noticed that you avoid talking about the "mischief" and to whom it refers. That's probably wise, since that is also completely ambiguous and there is nothing to suggest that the "mischief" doesn't refer to the woman. Since being born prematurely is "mischief" by definition, a reference to the woman makes a lot more sense.

Generally, your argument is that the child's death is not specifically mentioned, so therefore it can't be considered. My argument is that it's irrelevant whether the child lives or dies since both child and wife are clearly considered property of the man (as an aside, we could probably both agree that this is one of the main problems with interpreting 3000 year old folk law from halfway around the world as relevant to modern American society). In no case does this make any kind of strong argument against abortion at all. You couldn't possibly argue that (particularly because it refers to involuntary actions of a third party). But it does cast woman and unborn child as property of the husband.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Familiarize yourself with the Torah. Children are "coming forth" all the time. In fact, you and I came forth. When a child is delivered dead, the Bible says that it was dead.

Sorry guy, but miscarry infers a dead child and if you kill a child, you have killed and there is an all together different punishment for killing.

Ambiguous to one who is unfamilar with the language I suppose. Of course, you have also claimed that Black's Legal Dictionary isn't up to snuff either. Seems that you discount anything that doesn't agree with the points you are so obviously unable to substantiate.

The mischief clearly speaks to a pre mature child being born but not dying. If the child is born and dies, then the man who caused the miscarriage is guilty of murder or if the woman dies, the man who caused it is guilty of murder or if both die, the man is guilty of two murders.

None of this, of course, amounts to a hill of beans because we don't refer to the Torah or the Bible for our laws. Today, if you hit a woman and kill the child, you will be charged for criminal homicide (murder or manslaughter), even if you didn't know that she was pregnant. If you kill a woman who is pregnant, and the child dies also, you will be charged for two counts of criminal homicide.

Oddly enough, in this country, you can't even be charged for criminal homicide of any sort, much less tried and convicted unless you have, in fact, killed a person. There is a rather large, and growing body of legal precedent for the personhood of the unborn aside from what Black's Law Dictionary says.

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Rem tene, verba sequentur.

What I said was that I was more given toward pity in terms of watching you try to make arguments. However, after reading what you posted below, I can honestly say that I pity you.


To paraphrase you: I have less than you, so you should give me some money

To quote Karl Marx: "From each according to ability to each according to need".

But, I don't pity you because your outlook is identical to that the father of Socialism. It's just an interesting backdrop for the sadness and irony of what's happening here. You espouse liberal and socialist policies, liberals enact policies that are in your best interests, and you hate them. As a matter of fact, you should be tripping over yourself to vote for Obama who has proposed scaling back "affirmative action" for minorities, and instead wants to replace it with "affirmative action" for poor people, regardless of race, creed, or color. He talked about how his daughters shouldn't get extra consideration in applying for college since they come from a wealthy background. He is your friend and would help you the most, and yet you sit there and whine about him and call him "Osama." But, that's not why I pity you either. Lots of people vote against their own best interests without realizing it.

The interesting thing here is that you aspire to be a "conservative", presumably because you associate conservatives with guns or blowing up brown people or toughness or something. But, any conservative worth his salt will tell you that he doesn't approve of entitlement programs. That is, he doesn't think I should have to "give [you] money fucker" simply because I have it and you don't. He doesn't think I should have to give it to minorities or to whites. You, on the other hand, don't think it's bad for me to be relieved of my money simply because I have more of it - it just pisses you off that you're not the one sucking at the government teat because you've been elbowed out of the way by one of the other, stronger kittens.

Your whole outlook reeks of self-righteous entitlement. You can't get good work because Mexicans will work harder than you for less money, and that's not fair. You can't go to college because all of the government freebies are going to black people instead of you, and it's not fair. Where's your handout? When is someone going to realize that you need to get something for doing nothing as much as anyone else? Where's your winning lottery ticket or multi-million dollar lawsuit over hot coffee? Where's your disability check? Where's your welfare? But, the fact that the government isn't giving you something for simply existing is not why I pity you.

I'm also white and I also couldn't afford college on my own. So, I worked my ass off and earned scholarship for school to get my undergraduate. Now, I'm getting a graduate degree by working 50 hours a week, including travel, and paying for night school while I do it. So, you're not going to find any sympathy from me that big mama gubbermint is to blame because you aren't getting free college. If I hadn't gotten the scholarships that I wanted, I was going to join the ROTC, which means military service in exchange for a college education. I'm sure you can find plenty of people on this board who had their college paid for in exchange for military service. I doubt you'll get any sympathy for your lack of freebies from them. If I didn't get into the ROTC for some reason, I would have taken out loans and paid them off after graduation. I'm sure you could find plenty of people here who did that who also wouldn't pity you as a poor oppressed white man.

But doing all of that is hard and requires dedication. Whining about blacks, Mexicans and liberals is easy and requires nothing. And that is why I pity you. You believe that the world owes you something simply because you exist. At least wealthy liberals that espouse socialism do so out of some misguided social conscience - you support it simply because you don't want to work too hard, but you still want money, and those who have worked hard should give it to you. I pity this outlook because it leads to a life of scapegoating, bitterness and lack of fulfillment. And, even if you do smell the coffee one day and realize that the only person to blame is yourself because you've waited around with your hand out all your life, you'll likely be too old to do anything about it, and that is sad. There is nothing, in my mind, more pitiable than someone who doesn't realize that the world isn't fair and that you have to make your own luck through hard work, dedication, and perseverance. I don't sympathize or empathize with you. But, I do pity you.

I realize that this is all far afield, so I'll consider my point of view expressed, and that I've said my piece. If you want to respond and have me respond again, start a new thread or something. You can call it "Why I deserve the handouts that other people are getting" or something.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

So, what do dead children do, get sucked into the netherworld without ever leaving the woman?

I see no indication that this is relevant to what I wrote - it appears to be a strawman.


More stramwan arguments.

Sweet... finally some substance

Er, well, maybe not. You're just repeating your previous post without addressing anything I said in response (except with vague ad hominems about me needing to read more). I'd honestly be interested (not rhetorically, but seriously) in any linguistic or contextual support you might add to suggest that the "mischief" necessarily refers to the woman or that a child, in the Bible, cannot emerge dead form the womb and be referred to as "going forth". If you are correct in your assessment that I need to "read more" and this isn't just obfuscation on your part, you should be able to present things that I haven't read and convince me.

Well, I won't speak to the "personhood" of fetuses, but I do agree with you on the Bible's take not amounting to a hill of beans. That was a point I made earlier - our knowledge of anatomy is more specific, and, in many cases, our prescription for handling justice as it relates to fetuses is already more stringent than the Bible.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Take away self-consciousness and higher intelligence and what significant differences remain to distinguish us from animals?

That's easy: none. So the definition of human being that you claim is adequate to resolving the abortion debate is one which entirely neglects the primary characteristics that set human beings apart from lower forms of life, and IMO that is absurd.

As for those lacking self-consciousness/higher intelligence and the implications that adopting the definition I am suggesting would present, that could very easily be addressed with a constitutional amendment, and there is no state that would fail to quickly ratify such an amendment.




But we do have the existing precedent, and in light of the inadequacies surrounding how "human being" and "person" are defined, I would say that it is entirely appropriate.

BTW, re the claim that the US Constitution does not grant a right to privacy, I would say that the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure implies just such a right.




But if the parents of a healthy child were to allow it to die, that would be murder or negligent homicide, correct?

So the courts do take into consideration such things as brain function, and merely being a human being isn't necessarily the overriding fact upon which a dertermination is made, correct?




To the contrary, we would have to modify Black's definition of "person" so that it would apply to nonhuman beings.




Again, any definition of human being that neglects to mention the primary characteristics that set us apart from lower forms of life strikes me as absurdly inadequate.




A zygote is nevertheless subhuman if we take into account those characteristics that set us apart from lower forms of life.




If you take away self-consciousness and higher intelligence, what is there that sets us apart from lower forms of life?




It rests on the premise that any definition of human being that neglects to mention the characteristics that set us apart from lower forms of life is deficient with respect to making legal determinations.

BTW, I wouldn't go tooting your horn until the existing precedent is overturned.




Redefine the species?

Are you really going to assert that self-consciousness and higher intelligence aren't the hallmarks of the human species?




Again, it strikes me as very, very odd that any court would use a definition of human being that failed to note the primary characteristics that set us apart from lower forms of life.




And given the fact that blacks and women didn't receive full constitutional recognition until the constitution was amended, it's an absurd question to ask.

If blacks and women required passage of constitutional amendments before they were granted constitutional recognition, how is it that unborn humans don't?

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Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?

--Hunter S. Thompson

No. Your brain makes you who you are. That's why if you lose a brain you can't replace it. You can't simply get a brain transplant just like you would with a heart or another organ. If brain transplants were possible do you think you would actually be you once the transplant was complete? No, I doubt it. That particular brain belonged to another person completely and so YOU will be a different person completely. The brain is what makes you who you are. That's why under my definition the brain is what makes a human human. You can argue as much as you like that your definition of a human is better, but that's your opinion. It's not fact.

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Remember the Turkey Genocide.

We are animals.

The primary characteristic of normal human beings is 46 chromosomes (+_ 1 for certain genetic abnormalities). Not speech, not self awareness, not any physical characteristic. All physical and mental characteristics arise from the primary characteristic.

It has already been addressed. They are human beings.

There are no inadequacies in the definition of human being and person. The fact that the accepted definitions crush your argument reflects on the quality of your argument, not a problem with the definitions.

Do you believe the right to unreasonable search and siezure grants you the right to kill another individual so long as you do it in private?

Did I not make it clear that there is a difference between killing a healthy individual and letting one who is so sick or injured that no hope of recovery exists die? That doesn't seem such a difficult concept to me. Which part are you having problems with. Clearly, if parents neglect a healthy child to the point that it dies, they have killed it and such a situation has nothing to do with letting a sick or injured individual die.

Actually, what the courts take into consideration is the chance of recovery if the individual is sick or injured. The brain function, or lack thereof, is no more than a symptom. If a reasonable hope of recovery exists, then the present level of brain function even if it is minimal is not a valid reason to pull the plug.

Why? Is there some law that would prevent you from doing business with non persons? If there is, I am not aware of it. If the ailens come, we will probably call them whatever they want us to call them.

Again, the primary characteristic of human beings is 46 chromosomes. All other characteristics arise from, that is, they are secondary to the primary characteristic. Limiting yourself to only what you can look at puts you in a very small box.

A zygote has 46 chromosomes. Therefore, it has the primary characteristics of a human being. All secondary characteristics will come with maturity. Suggesting that it is fine to kill a human being before it matures to a certain level is barbaric. Why not say we can kill all children before they get their 6 year molars, or before the growth plates in their bones harden? The logic is the same.

Why do we need to be set apart? It is self evident that we are what we are.

The fact that we have 46 chromosomes set us apart from all other life forms on the planet.

Are you not arguing that unborns are some sub species who at some point will undergo a radical change in their essential nature and become human beings?

46 chromosomes are the hallmark of the human species. All other characteristics are a result of having 46 chromosomes.