Why abortion is legal - why it is not wrong, murder or genocide.

After seeing a thread on how abortion is genocide/murder HERE. I decided to set out to show why abortion is not the black and white issue that a lot of people are treating it as, and why it is therefore legal to abort. I am not here to discuss why aborting late is a bad thing - I am simply proving there is no magical line where a human life begins - so to therefore we can not say abortion is murder or genocide or that it is flat out wrong - these arguments are all technically incorrect. You can say it is morally wrong - but that is your opinion and that is all it is. Our law's are designed to be based on factual evidence and the morals of society as a whole - not opinion. I am not trying to prove if abortion should be done earlier or later - just that there is no line on when life begins so we can therefore not know when abortion becomes wrong.

I am going to write this thread in such a way as to try to address both spiritual/religious people and non spiritual/religious people views.

Stages of pregnancy
First, lets all take a quick look at the stages in the begining of pregnancy - remembering we are not arguing when abortion should take place but if there is a point where life starts and it should not take place because in law taking a life is murder.

Before week 4:
Within four days of fertilization, the sex of the zygote can be determined through microscopic techniques. Soon after one week of fertilization, the zygote contains the beginning of all major body structures. Fetal circulation occurs by three weeks - complete with heart and major blood vessels coursing through its quarter-inch frame.
Week 4 - 1mm (fetus length) looks like a tiny tadpole
The embryonic disk has become thicker and oval in shape, coiled up because the outermost layer, the ectoderm, has developed faster than the endoderm. One end of it has swollen to form the brain, and the other corresponds to the coccyx. Between the two, the neural groove will form the central nervous system.
Week 5: 1.5 - 2.5 mm (fetus length) at five weeks, all basic body systems are developing, including the brain and nervous system enabling the fetus to feel pain.
week 6: 4 - 6 mm (fetus length)
week 8: 8 -11mm (fetus length)
week 10: 27 - 35 mm (fetus length)



A lot of people would argue that the life begins when the sperm fertalizes the embryo to form a zygote.
A zygote is synthesized from the union of two gametes.
Human sex cells (sperm and egg) have one complete set of chromosomes from the male or female parent. Sex cells, also called gametes, combine to produce somatic cells. Somatic cells therefore have twice as many chromosomes.
A human somatic cell contains 46 chromosomes: 2 complete haploid sets, which make up 23 homologous chromosome pairs.

So at this point we have a cell that has human DNA but is DNA life?

What are we? Mind, soul, body, DNA?


The DNA argument

Many of us are used to thinking of DNA as this unchanging programming that governs all our body’s responses for the rest of our lives. In essence, certain things about our DNA are unlikely to change, ever. But there are a number of outside things that could result in minor DNA change. Source
With this argument when we created a zygote with 48 chromosomes we say life was created.
But life can not be defined by our DNA because as shown above our DNA changes - does this mean when it changes we cease to exist?
Or is human life defined by having 46 chromosomes - if that is the case what about the people with fewer or greater chromosomes?
If life is defined as just having chromosomes then the sperm also has a life.

The soul argument:

Assuming we see the sould as a distinct entity separate from the body and considering we have no way of knowing if the soul really exists or if it does- when it actually enters the body.

If God exists then having an abortion may be a waste of the gift of life but it has only killed the body - not the soul- you are not really destoying a life here because God could give that soul a new body - if it is his will.
We have only taken away an oportunity that we also created.
IMO people of religion often demonstrate here that they do not believe in their own faith, if the life we have taken this "life" then what was it beforehand? Did god create the soul when the fertilization took place? or did it already exist? If god created it's soul upon fertilization did he destroy it when the body died - if so is that murder?
If the sould was not there before hand then we may have killed the body but we still have created the soul.

If no God or any form of afterlife exists - then nothing happens when we die, and this fetus (say it with me) is not self aware at before it has a brain (we can not pinpoint where self awareness starts) - so no harm has been done because this life is meaningless anyway and this 'thing' did not even no what life was to be able to miss it

The living argument:


Some would go as far as saying the sperm itself is the seed of life and should not be "spilled". Masturbation in their eye's is a crime. This actually make about as much sense than the fertilisation argument - because the sperm is just as alive as a zygote, it has no brain or heart but it is comprised of functioning cells, with the exception of the zygote having the combined DNA - which would take us back to the DNA argument. So for those who say abortion is wrong (refer to definition below) - this mean you are also guilty of murder if you masturbate if you are use the living argument.


The mind argument:

The mind argument is easy to dismiss because in order to have a mind we must have thought and feelings which requires a brain (unless you feel the sould can think then go to the soul argument). The brain of the fetus is in the begining stages of development in week 5. Brain development in fetus and its associated problems are still being researched. Hence, there are no specific answers to the how's and why's of fetal brain development.
Week 29 to Week 40: The third trimester stage is highlighted with fewer brain developments. The brain continues to grow and increase rapidly in size, all the while establishing connections between nerve cells. The brain along with the lung is the last organ to develop, and is completed close to the end of the third trimester. A newborn's brain is only about one-quarter the size of an adult's.

As you are unable to prove for a fact where a human being becomes human it can not be argued that it is wrong.
- Definition: Wrong: "•incorrect: not correct; not in conformity with fact or truth"

As you are unable to prove a life was taken, because we do not know what stage life begins during the begining of pregnancy - it is not murder
- Definition:Murder: Murder is the unlawful killing of another human being with "malice aforethought", and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide (such as manslaughter)


The genocide argument is not even close to accurate and not worth debating futher - we will leave it to a dictionary.

- Definition: Genocide: •systematic killing of a racial or cultural group


Edit to add:
I would also like people to consider these scenario's when deciding if abortion is morally wrong (i know these have been covered before elsewhere but these are what many people would consider a valid reason)

-Rape & Incest victims
(why should they be forced to have a child they do not want, may not be able to look after, a child they may resent. Not many people would want to have the child of someone who raped them.)

- Disabled/deformed children
(Why should someone bring a baby in to the world that may likely die of complications later, may be a vegetable, may not be able to afford the treatment the baby requires. While some people may be in positions to care for someone like this not everyone is)

Why should people bring kids in to the world they can not afford to look after - there are kid's already all over this world dying of starvation, why should they meet a slow painful demise. This world is already full of unwanted children, why introduce more?





These are not my points of view - this is critical thinking - things we all need to consider. At the end of the day my view is as much as we can think we understand someones circumstances. We are not them - we do not understand their whole life experiences, we do not understand everything that effects even people close to us - so who are we to tell them it is murder.

"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you."

Matthew 7:1-6:

Very solid argument and I applaud you for your sense of objective and reason. With that said there is little more that I can add to what you have stated.

Thankyou for this, I couldn't have said it better myself. I just wanted to add, to help with the self-awareness section of your post.

The first sense to emerge, touch happens as early as 7 ½ weeks, when your baby can first sense touch on the lips and nose, and quickly extends to the rest of body, as he goes from touching his lips or nose to touching the uterine wall, his face, and the rest of his body. Touch is a critical survival sense, as it not only enables a baby to suck, swallow, and cough at birth, but also to take in amniotic fluid while in the womb.

I agree that a fetus does not have a soul. A soul is the inner energy of the body that cannot be destroyed or created, I believe we recieve this around the ages 3-5 in which we do not have memories of the past day or before once we obtain the soul. Im soon going to make a very large thread on our existance and will hopefully enlighten people to wake up and see the true reality. But above all else well put together no one has the right to control our lives if we decide to do what is right for us then its not for others to decide because we can only express ourselves in our own way not others.

Please be patient with me while I fix the formatting - can anyone tell me what tag embeds the images? Thanks

The genocide argument is not even close to accurate and not worth debating futher - we will leave it to a dictionary. Definition: Genocide: •systematic killing of a racial or cultural group

you might want to rethink the above statement(s).

The differential between the abortion ratio for black women and that for white women has increased from 2.0 in 1989 (the first year for which black and other races were reported separately) to 3.0 in 2000 (51). In addition, the abortion rate for black women has been approximately 3 times as high as that for white women (range: 2.6--3.1) since 1991 (the first year for which rates by race were published) (52). These rates by race are substantially lower than rates previously published by NCHS and suggest that the reporting areas for the 2000 report might not be fully representative of the U.S. black female population of reproductive age. Census Bureau estimates and birth certificate data indicate that the large majority of Hispanic women report themselves as white (7). Therefore, data for some white women actually represent Hispanic women.

Black Abortion Differentials

Genocide perpetrated on blacks via elective abortions

reply to post by MMPI2


Im going to top off the factual post by saying... you know what I mean
Good point though so I will give you a star for putting up a challenge to the information. I would sit and debate this too, but that is more research, typing and for another thread - ok, ok. Since it is in this threads title I am going to argue that it is not the parent's commiting genocide - it would be a power higher up that is responsible for the genocide, and as we have established abortion itself is not wrong - maybe morally wrong to some - but not wrong the parents have in no way been responsible for carying out someone elses genocide mission. But I know you know this and wanted to trip me up - hence the star

I may not end up addressing everything in your OP, but here are a few thoughts:

The DNA Argument:

Yes, when a baby is first conceived, it has at that point become a life. In this case, a human life. Its DNA becomes the building blocks of that life and dictate everything physically about that new life that has been brought into existence. Abortion does, quite brutally, put an end to that new life and destroys his or her developing body. How does that differ from any other killing of human life, which also puts an end to a life and destroys that person's body? It's not a matter of, well, the child isn't born yet, so it's ok. There are laws in effect to protect children who have reached the point of viability. And before that, we're still talking about a human life, no matter what stage he or she is in when an abortion is being considered. Proponents of abortion, then, have typically had to resort to language that attempts to dehumanize the unborn baby as a human life. (e.g., dismissing him or her as just a 'clump of cells'...yet the person who joyfully discovers that they are pregnant are saying from the get-go 'I'm having a baby!")

The Soul Argument:

Here's the thing: we don't have any way of knowing what God would choose to do for those who have been aborted. Maybe that was their one and only chance at life, and instead of being born as (and to) someone else, they go to Heaven. All that they were meant to do, all the lessons that they and those whose lives they were meant to impact, everyone they were supposed to love and be loved by, the children they were meant to grow up and have one day and those generations to come....

...all gone.

As you are unable to prove a life was taken, because we do not know what stage life begins during the begining of pregnancy - it is not murder

Many prosecutors will not agree with you as they charge folks for murder of an infant in the mothers stomach when she is killed.

reply to post by byteshertz

But I know you know this and wanted to trip me up - hence the star

thanks for the star but - HUH?




ps -

we have established abortion itself is not wrong

we have?

Originally posted by Ariel
I may not end up addressing everything in your OP, but here are a few thoughts:

The DNA Argument:

Yes, when a baby is first conceived, it has at that point become a life. In this case, a human life. Its DNA becomes the building blocks of that life and dictate everything physically about that new life that has been brought into existence. Abortion does, quite brutally, put an end to that new life and destroys his or her developing body. How does that differ from any other killing of human life, which also puts an end to a life and destroys that person's body? It's not a matter of, well, the child isn't born yet, so it's ok. There are laws in effect to protect children who have reached the point of viability. And before that, we're still talking about a human life, no matter what stage he or she is in when an abortion is being considered. Proponents of abortion, then, have typically had to resort to language that attempts to dehumanize the unborn baby as a human life. (e.g., dismissing him or her as just a 'clump of cells'...yet the person who joyfully discovers that they are pregnant are saying from the get-go 'I'm having a baby!")

Sticking with my original argument - if we have life at the point we have human DNA then do we stop having life when our DNA changes throughout our life (source in OP). If a humans life is defined by have 46 chromosomes then what about those few with a different number of chromosomes.

The Soul Argument:

Here's the thing: we don't have any way of knowing what God would choose to do for those who have been aborted. Maybe that was their one and only chance at life, and instead of being born as (and to) someone else, they go to Heaven. All that they were meant to do, all the lessons that they and those whose lives they were meant to impact, everyone they were supposed to love and be loved by, the children they were meant to grow up and have one day and those generations to come....

...all gone.

Before I use the argument of 'if god wanted it that way it would be that way' - I will say if it is their one and only chance at life - did we give them that chance and then take it away or did god give them the chance then we took it away? were they around in spirit before they were concieved? if so then they have just returned to what they were before, if not then we are the ones that got god to create them.

I applaud your post, thank you very much for taking such a step! If we only had the wisdom of our ancestors when it came to herbal medicine, then we would be able to attend to such a personal matter without the invasive procedures needed today. There were brews, mixes of herbs, and tonics once known to the shamans and wisewomen, only to be lost to antiquity because of political and religious dogmas. I know that these cures were poisons, but when administered by the medicine man or shoulderwoman, it would cleanse the womb and purge the excesses.

Abortion is killing at the end of the day, People can lie to themselves and come up with all sorts of excuses but you can never run away from the guilt. We always have to justify our actions, Just to make ourselves feel better. Yes it may not be murder in certain regions where it is lawful to abort, But it is our making, The fetus comes to be because of our actions and I think it's rather selfish when we take an innocent life.

As you are unable to prove a life was taken, because we do not know what stage life begins during the beginning of pregnancy - it is not murder

Life begins from day one.

we have established abortion itself is not wrong

Here you seem to be trying to justify your own actions. Please say "I" and not "WE", Some of the members here do not share the same views as you.

I agree with Ariels points.

Originally posted by Serizawa
Abortion is killing at the end of the day, People can lie to themselves and come up with all sorts of excuses but you can never run away from the guilt. We always have to justify our actions, Just to make ourselves feel better.

Yes it may not be murder in certain regions where it is lawful to abort, But it is our making, The fetus comes to be because of our actions and I think it's rather selfish when we take an innocent life.

No in order for abortion to be killing you must first prove where life begins, when does it start becoming killing? Maybe we would stop 'lying' to ourselves when you can construct a solid argument backed up with fact instead of just an opinion.

As you are unable to prove a life was taken, because we do not know what stage life begins during the beginning of pregnancy - it is not murder

Life begins from day one.

Again another nice OPINION but day one is a big day at what second did it become life and what caused it to become life?

we have established abortion itself is not wrong

Here you seem to be trying to justify your own actions. Please say "I" and not "WE", Some of the members here do not share the same views as you.

I agree with Ariels points.

We as in those who can follow a structured argument - established through fact's i presented that abortion is not wrong - by definition, because nobody can prove where life started and wrong means factually incorrect. You can say it is morally wrong - but that is your view. If you have some facts you would like to add so WE CAN ESTABLISH abortion is wrong then we may get somewhere.

reply to post by byteshertz


Abortion is a touchy subject for me.. but I still feel it takes up too much time. Its more of a moral issue and shouldnt be an issue as big as Iraq.

reply to post by volafox


I have to agree. That was one heck of stance that was taken. Kudos!!!

reply to post by byteshertz

We as in those who can follow a structured argument - established through fact's i presented that abortion is not wrong - by definition, because nobody can prove where life started and wrong means factually incorrect. You can say it is morally wrong - but that is your view. If you have some facts you would like to add so WE CAN ESTABLISH abortion is wrong then we may get somewhere.

Don't make me laugh, Your opinions are not facts.

"Development of the embryo begins at Stage 1 when a sperm fertilizes an oocyte and together they form a zygote."
[England, Marjorie A. Life Before Birth. 2nd ed. England: Mosby-Wolfe, 1996, p.31]

"Human development begins after the union of male and female gametes or germ cells during a process known as fertilization (conception).
"Fertilization is a sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm (spermatozoon) with a secondary oocyte (ovum) and ends with the fusion of their pronuclei (the haploid nuclei of the sperm and ovum) and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being."
[Moore, Keith L. Essentials of Human Embryology. Toronto: B.C. Decker Inc, 1988, p.2]

"The chromosomes of the oocyte and sperm are...respectively enclosed within female and male pronuclei. These pronuclei fuse with each other to produce the single, diploid, 2N nucleus of the fertilized zygote. This moment of zygote formation may be taken as the beginning or zero time point of embryonic development."
[Larsen, William J. Human Embryology. 2nd edition. New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1997, p. 17]

Source

We as in those who can follow a structured argument - established through fact's i presented that abortion is not wrong - by definition, because nobody can prove where life started and wrong means factually incorrect.

Do you feel stupid now?..........

Originally posted by Ariel

The Soul Argument:

Here's the thing: we don't have any way of knowing what God would choose to do for those who have been aborted. Maybe that was their one and only chance at life, and instead of being born as (and to) someone else, they go to Heaven. All that they were meant to do, all the lessons that they and those whose lives they were meant to impact, everyone they were supposed to love and be loved by, the children they were meant to grow up and have one day and those generations to come....

...all gone.

Here's the REAL thing:

YOUR interpretations on a god do not define that god for everyone. If one doesnt believe in god, this argument becomes null and void.

God is a perception, and individual perceptions have no place governing a nation.

Originally posted by Serizawa

Don't make me laugh, Your opinions are not facts.

"Development of the embryo begins at Stage 1 when a sperm fertilizes an oocyte and together they form a zygote."
[England, Marjorie A. Life Before Birth. 2nd ed. England: Mosby-Wolfe, 1996, p.31]

"Human development begins after the union of male and female gametes or germ cells during a process known as fertilization (conception).
"Fertilization is a sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm (spermatozoon) with a secondary oocyte (ovum) and ends with the fusion of their pronuclei (the haploid nuclei of the sperm and ovum) and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being."
[Moore, Keith L. Essentials of Human Embryology. Toronto: B.C. Decker Inc, 1988, p.2]

"The chromosomes of the oocyte and sperm are...respectively enclosed within female and male pronuclei. These pronuclei fuse with each other to produce the single, diploid, 2N nucleus of the fertilized zygote. This moment of zygote formation may be taken as the beginning or zero time point of embryonic development."
[Larsen, William J. Human Embryology. 2nd edition. New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1997, p. 17]

Source

by definition, because nobody can prove where life started and wrong means factually incorrect.

Do you feel stupid now?

Ummm, yeah, not one of those sources proves the beginning of life. In fact, they specifically use terms like 'develop' 'primordium' and 'fertilized', none of which denote life.

Originally posted by MMPI2

The genocide argument is not even close to accurate and not worth debating futher - we will leave it to a dictionary. Definition: Genocide: •systematic killing of a racial or cultural group

you might want to rethink the above statement(s).

The differential between the abortion ratio for black women and that for white women has increased from 2.0 in 1989 (the first year for which black and other races were reported separately) to 3.0 in 2000 (51). In addition, the abortion rate for black women has been approximately 3 times as high as that for white women (range: 2.6--3.1) since 1991 (the first year for which rates by race were published) (52). These rates by race are substantially lower than rates previously published by NCHS and suggest that the reporting areas for the 2000 report might not be fully representative of the U.S. black female population of reproductive age. Census Bureau estimates and birth certificate data indicate that the large majority of Hispanic women report themselves as white (7). Therefore, data for some white women actually represent Hispanic women.

Black Abortion Differentials

Genocide perpetrated on blacks via elective abortions

edit on 24-2-2011 by MMPI2 because:

I have a challenge for you: check out the data on poverty levels among african americans in the same time frame.