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tecoyah · 09-15-2005, 02:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Its sort of amusing how the choice of words can couch a debate.

Tecoyah went with the most bland and non-descriptive way of describing an abortion. He used "the right to choose", as if you were talking about a hair style or car insurance. Now I do not think, (and Politicophile pointed out very clearly why) Roberts will overturn it. Nor do I personally think he wants to get involved with it at all and I responded in kind but with almost as harsh a language as Tecoyah's was bland. The only way I could go harsher would be to say 'murder their children'.

What I think is so facinating though, is that those who support abortion are unable to use the language in a descriptive manner. Abortion is plain and simple the right of a woman to kill her unborn child, period. Using terms like choice is just trying to soften and obfuscate what is really happening. I almost have to wonder if such language will backfire. While I find many uses of abortion disgusting and selfish, I do see a place for it, and there would be circumstances where I would even advocate it. Using non-descriptive language only makes the supporters sound unsure, and trying to hide something. It makes attacking them easier and since I do believe that if abortion ever came to a straight vote it would loose, the right to 'choose' may well be lost in some future, not because of Roberts, but because it is the will of the American people. If that time comes I do hope that sanity will prevail and there will be a good outline of instances where abortions should be allowed to take place. There is no place for that debate here, but a blanket prohibition would be bad as well.

If you wish to debate this Ustwo....so be it, obviously my intent for this thread has been ignored.....even after attempted direction from another Mod, Oh well.
Language can certainly "Couch" a debate....or it can inflame it, we seem oppsing ends of this spectrum as is Par for the course. I have a challenge for you, should you be inclined to accept it. Carl Sagan and his Wife created what I consider to be a wonderful paper on the "Right to Life", far more articulate and informative than I could ever hope to be, Please read the exerpt at the very least before tearing this apart. Should you decide to actually read the entire paper.....I would be perfectly happy to debate this issue with you.

Every one of us began from a dot. A fertilized egg is roughly the size of the period at the end of this sentence. The momentous meeting of sperm and egg generally occurs in one of the two fallopian tubes. One cell becomes two, two become four, and so on—an exponentiation of base-2 arithmetic. By the tenth day the fertilized egg has become a kind of hollow sphere wandering off to another realm: the womb. It destroys tissue in its path. It sucks blood from capillaries. It bathes itself in maternal blood, from which it extracts oxygen and nutrients. It establishes itself as a kind of parasite on the walls of the uterus.

# By the third week, around the time of the first missed menstrual period, the forming embryo is about 2 millimeters long and is developing various body parts. Only at this stage does it begin to be dependent on a rudimentary placenta. It looks a little like a segmented worm.

# By the end of the fourth week, it's about 5 millimeters (about 1/5 inch) long. It's recognizable now as a vertebrate, its tube-shaped heart is beginning to beat, something like the gill arches of a fish or an amphibian become conspicuous, and there is a pronounced tail. It looks rather like a newt or a tadpole. This is the end of the first month after conception.

# By the fifth week, the gross divisions of the brain can be distinguished. What will later develop into eyes are apparent, and little buds appear—on their way to becoming arms and legs.

# By the sixth week, the embryo is 13 millimeteres (about ½ inch) long. The eyes are still on the side of the head, as in most animals, and the reptilian face has connected slits where the mouth and nose eventually will be.

# By the end of the seventh week, the tail is almost gone, and sexual characteristics can be discerned (although both sexes look female). The face is mammalian but somewhat piglike.

# By the end of the eighth week, the face resembles that of a primate but is still not quite human. Most of the human body parts are present in their essentials. Some lower brain anatomy is well-developed. The fetus shows some reflex response to delicate stimulation.

# By the tenth week, the face has an unmistakably human cast. It is beginning to be possible to distinguish males from females. Nails and major bone structures are not apparent until the third month.

# By the fourth month, you can tell the face of one fetus from that of another. Quickening is most commonly felt in the fifth month. The bronchioles of the lungs do not begin developing until approximately the sixth month, the alveoli still later.

So, if only a person can be murdered, when does the fetus attain personhood? When its face becomes distinctly human, near the end of the first trimester? When the fetus becomes responsive to stimuli--again, at the end of the first trimester? When it becomes active enough to be felt as quickening, typically in the middle of the second trimester? When the lungs have reached a stage of development sufficient that the fetus might, just conceivably, be able to breathe on its own in the outside air?

The trouble with these particular developmental milestones is not just that they're arbitrary. More troubling is the fact that none of them involves uniquely human characteristics--apart from the superficial matter of facial appearance. All animals respond to stimuli and move of their own volition. Large numbers are able to breathe. But that doesn't stop us from slaughtering them by the billions. Reflexes and motion are not what make us human.

Other animals have advantages over us--in speed, strength, endurance, climbing or burrowing skills, camouflage, sight or smell or hearing, mastery of the air or water. Our one great advantage, the secret of our success, is thought--characteristically human thought. We are able to think things through, imagine events yet to occur, figure things out. That's how we invented agriculture and civilization. Thought is our blessing and our curse, and it makes us who we are.

Thinking occurs, of course, in the brain--principally in the top layers of the convoluted "gray matter" called the cerebral cortex. The roughly 100 billion neurons in the brain constitute the material basis of thought. The neurons are connected to each other, and their linkups play a major role in what we experience as thinking. But large-scale linking up of neurons doesn't begin until the 24th to 27th week of pregnancy--the sixth month.

By placing harmless electrodes on a subject's head, scientists can measure the electrical activity produced by the network of neurons inside the skull. Different kinds of mental activity show different kinds of brain waves. But brain waves with regular patterns typical of adult human brains do not appear in the fetus until about the 30th week of pregnancy--near the beginning of the third trimester. Fetuses younger than this--however alive and active they may be--lack the necessary brain architecture. They cannot yet think.

Acquiescing in the killing of any living creature, especially one that might later become a baby, is troublesome and painful. But we've rejected the extremes of "always" and "never," and this puts us--like it or not--on the slippery slope. If we are forced to choose a developmental criterion, then this is where we draw the line: when the beginning of characteristically human thinking becomes barely possible.

and the entire paper is here:
http://www.2think.org/abortion.shtml

My use of light wording reflects my belief that most abortion is not murder....as the material in the uterus is not a human bieng, the paper above explains my thinking quite clearly.