"Too bad the author of Roe v. Wade, Harry Blackmun, said in his decision that 'We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins.'"
Because, you know, it's just a minor, insignificant detail.
If nothing else, Krouse's article is clarifying in that it shows how wacky the pro-aborts really are.
It's no wonder public opinion continues to turn against abortion.
We have to call this what this is: anti-fetus BIGOTRY.
You have to be a sheer idiot to believe this. So all those women who love their unborns love creatures on the level of TAPEWORMS? What're they, stupid or something???
Ridiculous. Sheer bigotry.
Even tapeworms deserve more respect than unborn children receive from the likes of Krouse.
That's pretty confused, but in one respect at least he's not at fault.
Anti-choicers have systematically confused "human life" with "moral person" in a quite deliberate effort to blur the distinction, for decades now. They can't object when someone else does the same thing unintentionally.
It's quite common to use the term "human life" to mean "person" (that's obviously the sense Blackmun intended), and most people understand this, even if its literal meaning is more basic than that. Anti-choice rhetoric is filled with references to embryos and fetuses as "human life", "living humans", or "human beings". This wouldn't be a problem if anti-choicers would simply say that they mean those terms as moral categories. But they then cite biological facts to "prove" that the fetus is a "human life", which only makes sense if you use the term in its strict, narrow sense. So anti-choicers deliberately use the phrase "human life" as a synonym for "moral person", while supporting that claim with evidence for its literal meaning as a biological term. That's logically invalid.
Either admit that "human life" is merely a biological category - about which you then have to make a moral argument on different grounds - or accept that there is in fact a question whether a human fetus is a "human being" in the metaphorical sense. The student's statements above (on this point at least) are not wrong - in the language anti-choicers themselves consistently use.
Kevin,
He's not talking about personhood - he's talking about whether something is alive or not in the biological sense. I'm also very skeptical of your ability to read Blackmun's mind if you think Krouse is talking about personhood. He uses the term "wad of cells" for goodness sakes. He makes nothing close to a "it's a living human being but not a person argument."
Your game of blaming prolife people for being honest about science and embryology isn't convincing in the least.
Pro-choice people and organizations are intentionally dishonest or exceptionally ignorant about when the life of a human being begins which is why so many pro-choicers say the kind of confused crap Krouse does. It's not because prolifers have shared scientific facts about embryology, it's because pro-choice information is typically not honest about fetal development and embryology.
Kevin: I avoid the term "human life" because it's too wishy-washy. Science tells us that fertilization is the beginning of a new human BEING, and so that's the term I use.
Well, as the author of this column, I would like the chance to argue one poor point made in this blog. I stated in my article that a fetus is not a living human! Nowhere did I say it was not alive. Cells are definitely living, therefore the wad of cells is alive. Much like a parasite, then, this wad of cells is living. My point, if this author had any ability to comprehend what he reads, was that a fetus is not a "living human". I also would like it to be known, I only support abortions during the first trimester, no later than this point. I realize my statements were harsh, but I was simply trying to make my point to those who are ignorant conservatives.
JJ, posting a link to a special interest website that is purely prolife propaganda is fucking retarded. You didn't use an organization like the AMA, you used one group believing in one very specific thing. Let me go along those lines and offer you some pro-Nazi support via websites authored by neo-Nazis. There's nothing objective in this blog, it's more, "I'm pissed off and the only thing I can hope to argue is the usage of choice words". Speaking of "Because, you know, it's just a minor, insignificant detail." how about the embryonic funeral question you've all swept under the rug? That's quite critical, on the contrary, if you don't hold funerals for week-old naturally failed to implant embryos, then you yourself display that you don't consider week old fetuses people in the sense of a soul, whatever that is. LET ME REPEAT, BECAUSE PRO-LIFERS IMMEDIATELY GO INTO "WHAT ABOUT 6 MONTH OLD, BLAH BLAH, I'M STUPID". A 6 WEEK old. Krouse isn't ignorant about fetal death, that's just simply a fact. Throughout a married couple's sexual relationship, there will be many lost embryos. If they truly considered these people, they wouldn't sit idly by without any attempt to discover if any fertilized eggs are discarded by the body. Show me your active steps in discovering this, and you will have tied up your hypocrisy.
Hi Shawn,
Your article says, "Life begins when the baby is passed through the birth canal and exits the womb." Am I missing something here?
If the unborn are alive but not "human life" then what kind of life are they? Are they cat life or dog life?
The problem with your column is that you really didn't know what you were talking about and didn't express your thoughts very well.
It wasn't just harsh. It was incredibly ignorant of human biology. It's unfathomable to me that you think you're making a point to "ignorant conservatives" when your column displays your absolute ignorance regarding fetal development. Do you seriously think a fetus at 12 weeks is a "wad of cells"? What changes from week 12 (first trimester) to week 13 (second trimester) which changes this wad of cells into something which isn't a wad of cells and you oppose killing.
DJJ,
What are you trying to argue? Are you trying to argue that prolifers (by "special interest website" I'm guessing you're referring to the Abort73) can't take quotes from embryology textbooks and post them online? Why don't you take the time to look those quotes up with you think you're being misled?
Why is whether we throw funerals for human embryos "quite critical"? If we did throw funeral for unborn children would that prove the unborn are human beings for you?
Can you understand the difference between an unborn child dying naturally by failing to implant and an abortion which intentionally takes the life of the unborn? Can you understand that if an embryo fails to implant the woman is typically not going to know the embryo failed to implant?
Like Krouse, you don't seem to have any evidence from science that the unborn aren't living human beings. Instead of providing factual evidence, you're relying on questioning the motives of prolifers which has nothing to do with whether the unborn are living human beings or not.
I want to know what species they think a 6-week old embryo is.
In the past, it's always those who've attempted to separate biology from personhood who've attempted to marginalize categories of human beings. It's a fact.
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