Howdy thar.

This is totally unrelated to the normal posts on this blog, but I've noticed that this diagram is nowhere to be found online.

Images are from the September 2010 Apple keynote.

So tell me, which babies should I kill?

From Grey's Anatomy, Season 2 Episode 10 "Much Too Much". I just love this scene.

(Cut to Izzie alone with Dorie in her hospital room. Izzie is looking at the heart readings for the quintuplets)

DORIE: How’s it look?

IZZIE: Not bad.

DORIE: Not bad?

IZZIE: Not bad is pretty good when you have 5 babies in your uterus.

(Dorie makes a slight sigh of pain. Izzie looks at her)

DORIE: Ah. It’s Kate. She kicks me so hard. It’s like a belly burn every time.

IZZIE (raises her eyebrows but looking at Dorie’s patient file): You’ve named them already?

DORIE: I know you think I’m crazy. Or maybe just a little bit stupid?

IZZIE: Mrs. Russell, I’m sorry if I’ve done something to offend you.

DORIE: The only thing that will offend me is if you pretend that you haven’t been judging me since the minute we met. (Izzie is silent) We’re gonna be spending a lot of time together so we may as well be honest, right?

IZZIE: If you had reduced the fetuses, even by two, the other three could’ve been carried longer, been more developed and born healthier.

DORIE: And you’re about the 16^th doctor that’s told me that.

(Izzie is quite. Dorie reaches out and grabs Izzie’s arm. She places Izzie’s hand on her stomach)

DORIE: This one up here. This is Charlotte. She’s the stubborn one. Lodged into my rib cage. Won’t budge.

(She moves Izzie hand to another part of her stomach)

DORIE: Now over here, Lucy. She’s a bad ass. If she gets kicked, she kicks back.

(She moves Izzie’s hand again. Izzie is smiling)

DORIE: Emily. She has the hiccups almost everyday.

(Again moves Izzie’s hand)

DORIE: And over here is Julie. She’s pretty mellow. Every once in a while she just turns over. (Again moves Izzie’s hand) Which brings us back to Kate.

IZZIE: Who gives you belly burn.

DORIE (grinning): Every time she kicks.

FYI

Let me make something perfectly clear. Abortion is NOT simply "terminating a pregnancy" or "expulsion" or "denying consent for the use of your body". It is not at all "refusing to save a life". It is the deliberate and purposeful killing of one human being by another. The unborn child is killed, and this is the intent of the procedure. This is the part that pro-lifers object to. From Wikipedia's article on feticide:

Use during legal abortion

In abortions after 20 weeks, an injection of digoxin or potassium chloride to stop the fetal heart can be used to achieve feticide.^[12][13] Less commonly, urea may be injected into the amniotic sac,^[14][15] or the umbilical cord may be cut, resulting in the fetus bleeding to death.^[15][16] Fetal death causes the tissues to soften, making removal of fetal parts in a dilation and evacuation procedure easier.^[15] In the United States, the Supreme Court has ruled that a legal ban on intact dilation and extraction procedures does not apply if feticide is completed before surgery starts.^[13] When used before labor induction, feticide prevents the possible complication of live birth.^[17] The possibility of unsuccessful feticide—resulting in birth of a live infant—is a malpractice concern.^[18]

The most common method of selective reduction—a procedure to reduce the number of fetuses in a multifetus pregnancy—is feticide via a chemical injection into the selected fetus or fetuses. The reduction procedure is usually performed during the first trimester of pregnancy.^[19] It often follows detection of a congenital defect in the selected fetus or fetuses, but can also reduce the risks of carrying more than three fetuses to term.^[20]

Anyone claiming differently is being disingenuous at best.

What can we learn from the polls?

Note: Images may be cut off due to excessive width. Click them to view them entirely.

You're probably very familiar with this graph by now. Many have been declaring this a success, and in early 2009 with a statistically significant (outside the margin of error) majority it appeared it was. The trend we're seeing in youth is very promising.

In 2010, however, we've dropped to a tenuous and statistically insignificant plurality. However, from other polls we can learn what types of outreach we should focus our attention on.*

As you can see, 3% fewer people identify as "pro-life" than consider abortion to be "morally wrong". This is within the margin of error, but with the drop being from 50% to 47%, I think it's worth outreach to those "personally opposed" to abortion. SecularProLife.org is already doing some of this by its mere existence, as many religious people are unaware of the secular reasons to be pro-life, and are thus pro-choice due to their beliefs on the separation of church and state. There is also probably significant concern about back-alley abortions, and we definitely need to devote attention to the statistical and philosophical reasons why this is not a good reason to be pro-choice.

What I find more interesting is that 7% more people identify as "pro-choice" than consider abortion to be "morally acceptable". At most, 3% of this difference can be accounted for by the "personally opposed" crowd, meaning at least 4% of the 12% morally undecided/neutral crowd consider themselves "pro-choice". I think this means people don't understand that the benefit of the doubt should go to life.

The demographic differences are less interesting. There is only a 5% gender gap, for instance, on the morality of abortion (women being more against it), but very slightly (1%) less likely to identify as "pro-life". In addition, Republicans and Democrats have become more pro-life and pro-choice, respectively, but it's hard to know if this is an actual change in anyone's opinions or just a result of pro-life liberals feeling not welcome in the Democratic party.

What I find most interesting is the role education plays in the legality polls, with graduating from college (especially among women) being correlated to support for the "legal under all circumstances" view of legality. By emphasizing the scientific/biological and philosophical arguments against abortion, SecularProLife.org also helps address this issue.

In summary, if we take the current 47% pro-life plurality, and manage to get people to vote their consciences (+3%) and give the benefit of the doubt to life (+12%), we should get a sizable (62%) pro-life majority without actually having to change anyone's mind on the morality of abortion!

As demonstrated by this graph, those who view abortion as morally acceptable have been consistently in the minority. Even when those who view abortion as morally wrong were below 50% (2001, 2006, & 2008) or at 50% (2004 & 2010), everyone against abortion voting their consciences and everyone with no opinion giving the benefit of the doubt to life would bring a sufficient majority to protect the rights of the unborn.

The flag of the USSN

A 1-pixel border has been added to make it easier to make out on a white background.
The green bar represent's Esperanto, the de facto national language of the United Socialist States of Nulono, and the language from which the name is derived, and it also serves as a vinculum. The white represents 1, and the black 0, thus one over zero.
The rest is covered here.

Argumentum ad populum

There are many problems with your theory. Here are just the main ones.

First, it makes an uneducated guess about what makes women turn away

from abortions. Ask anyone working at a pregnancy resource center and

they'll tell you 9 out of 10 women will decide against abortion after

viewing their ultrasound. Women are not operating off of some sort of

moral yardstick of the mental capabilities of their offspring; they're

going off of subjective asthetic traits that trigger the natural

evolutionary instinct to protect, especially to protect our offspring.

Secondly, it misinterprets the statistics of when abortions are

performed. Late-term abortions are rare because women typcally

discover they're pregnant pretty early on. This is further

demonstrated by the statistic about women who were not able to abort

earlier. Of course, if they WERE able to abort earlier, I could see no

reason why they would opt to wait. Especially seeing as earlier-term

abortions are safer for her and less expensive.

Thirdly, it portrays a gross lack of understanding of the process of

sexual reproduction. The sperm cell and the egg cell will never

develop into anything. The sperm is part of the male and the egg is

part of the female. But when fertilization occurs, they fuse to form a

new single-celled organism called a zygote. This new organism belongs

to the same species as his or her parents, marked by the DNA that will

guide lifelong development; in human reproduction, for example,

fertlilization brings about a new human. The zygote is neither sperm

nor egg, but a new entity altogether, the first band on the

developmental continuum of life. The sperm and egg are "alive" in the

same sense that the cells in your eyeballs are alive, but they are part of

a larger organism (the man or woman, respectively. The zygote,

however, is an organism (in the case of human reproduction, a human)

of his or her own right.

Fourthly, you offer no justification for why these seemingly

arbitrary and vague psychological criteria should be used to deny any

human being his or her most basic human right: the right to live.

Fifthly, you call on people who already disagree with your basic

premise (which you make no attempt to argue for) to solve the problem

of late-term abortions by making early-term abortions more accessible.

To us, this is like saying we can stop the murder of ten-year-olds by

allowing, promoting, and "being okay with" the murder of nine-year-olds.

Sixthly, the embryo does not go through "transformations" at all;

fertilization marks the beginning of the process of human development,

a process that continues until death.

Seventhly, I disagree that abortion is a state's issue, but I see where

Republicans are coming from: violence of all sorts is handled on a state-

by-state basis.

Eighthly, there is no such thing as a "fertilized egg". After fertilization,

the sperm and egg unite to form a zygote. "Fertilized egg" is about as

meaningful as "melted ice cube".

If you're a pregnant woman, I'm sorry, and it's sad, but your son or

daughter's body is not yours.

Also, more Americans are pro-life than are pro-choice:

Prenatal Rights

The issue of prenatal rights is one of the most divisive issues in the American political culture today. On one side are the doctor-killing antifeminist Christian fascists, and on the other are the radical baby-killing satanists.

Personally, I am an atheist. So many of you will be disappointed by the fact that you can't use that ad hominem to discredit me. I am also a liberal (a communist, in fact, but we'll get to that later), so don't go sayingi don't care for people after birth. Yes, I am a male. But I seriously doubt that you believe me to be so important as to make or break the abortion debate with my gender. It would be absurd to state that human embryos and fetuses are not deserving of rights simply because some random person on the Internet has a penis.

And that is the core issue: are the thousands of creatures being killed daily by abortion organisms that other human beings have an obligation to not harm.

"Wait!", you may say. "You said 'other human beings', already assuming that there is a human being killed in an abortion. But before birth, there is no human being, merely an embryo or fetus. Your argument is circular and, thus, fallacious." I would posit you with this question:

Exactly what kind of fetus is it?

It can safely be assumed that we are discussing *human* fetuses in this debate. Thus, the fetus is indeed a human being, a living member of the species Homo sapiens sapiens.

I can already see you typing your responses. You're going to say that the fetus is "human", but not *a* human. We speak of a human embryo/fetus just as we speak of a human hair or a human sperm.

The problem here is confusing parts with wholes. While a gamete or somatic cell is merely part of a larger organism. The "masturbation is genocide" argument fails for this reason, so it is surprising how popular it is (but, hey, you can't expect everyone on the Internet to have a high school education!).

I have *actually* had people insist that the fetus is literally "part" of the mother. These exact same people will often call the fetus a parasite, which is interesting because the term is defined as follows:

par⋅a⋅site   [par-uh-sahyt]
–noun
1.an organism that lives on or in an organism of another species, known as the host, from the body of which it obtains nutriment.

Clearly, the embryo or fetus does not fit the definition. But calling the human prenate ("prenate" being the term I will henceforth use to refer to any member of a viviparous species prior to birth) a parasite concedes that the he or she is a separate organism.

Many people are simply confused. They are, in the most literal definition of the word, ignorant. This is not an insult; what exactly constitutes an organism is not common knowledge. Many people believe that it has something to do with physical separation and/or biological independence. If examined further, both these criteria fall apart. The example of simbiotic relationships shines a light on why. In addition, ALL organisms require external sources of energy; to do otherwise would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

In reality, an organism is any self-integrating living system. The prenate is clearly alive, as he or she is composed of living cells that metabolize, divide, and react to stimuli. The prenate's genetic code directs his or her development, so the prenate is self-integrating. I have had people contradict this, saying that a zygote left on a table will die. But notice I said self-directed and not self-sustained (which would be impossible, as I explained above).

So, the prenate is an organism. So, what kind?

Produced from human parents and possessing a human genome, the human prenate can be nothing but a living member of the species Homo s. sapiens.

Sigh. If you already knew this, I apologize. I do not mean to sound condescending, but some people need a quick primer on Biology 101, a reminder of high or possibly middle school science.

One last thing. Homicide is defined as follows:

hom⋅i⋅cide   [hom-uh-sahyd, hoh-muh-]
–noun
1.the killing of one human being by another.
2.a person who kills another; murderer.

Abortion of a human prenate is clearly homicide, as I have yet to hear of human prenates being aborted by lizards or cows or oak trees.

For the importance of species, clicky.

Notice that this was merely intended to demonstrate that the rules of morality can be validly applied to human prenates. As opposed to my opponents, my argument was founded upon the biological origins of morality and not based on arbitrary psychological distinctions or subjective æsthetic properties. The human prenate has the same rights as a human being at any other age.

Some will argue that abortion is justified even if the rules of morality can be validly applied to human prenates.

I will address you elsewhere.
But if you sincerely think that, you should not object to the personhood movement, as it wouldn't change anything. :P

My Morality

The biological origin of ethics is generally agreed-upon by the scientific community. Ethics are clearly not a human invention, as pretty much any species has a code of conduct that acts as a biological leash upon intraspecies conduct. The reason is clear: species that coöperate and refrain from senseless violence survive better than those that don't. Thus, morality came about through evolution. Young children and even nonhuman organisms have an innate sense of fairness. This is why our responses are different in a visceral level when a man is killed by a bear or an earthquake than if he's killed by a man or a woman.

So, morality prevents aggression (defined as the initiation of force or fraud). These are called "negative rights" or rights of non-interference. Humans also tend to organize into societies for the purpose of the protection. This is where "positive rights", or rights of obligation come from. Societies or governments are instituted to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

Basically, organisms have an obligation to refrain from intraspecies aggression, and tend to form societies to both protect against aggression and ensure the well-being of the individual, the society, and the species. How and on which level this takes place is largely irrelevant as long as at least the basic needs of the population are met and negative rights are sufficiently protected.

Positive rights belong to members of a society. If you don't want these obligation, you are free to leave society. But seeing as negative rights are useless if not enforced, most people prefer to live in a society where members protect each other.

Let me now put my system of ethics in summary.

(1) Organisms have a moral obligation to refrain from intraspecies aggression.
(2a) Societies have an obligation to enforce point (1).
(2b) Societies have an obligation to promote the general well-being of the population.

Atheist Challenge

1. Clicky. ☺

2. Evolution is a fact and has been directly observed. The scientific theory of evolution refers to evolution by means of natural selection and descent with modification.

3. Of my life? Arguing with strangers on the Internet.

4. I don't keep a mental catalog of that sort of thing.

5. No, and why exactly would I be in such a situation?

6. Because I have yet to be presented sufficient reason to be a theist.

7. I wouldn't need to say anything, since any god worth his salt can read minds.

8. Today, Islam. In the past, Christianity. In the further past, whatever the Aztecs believed.

9. Well, 3 peaceful religions are Buddhism, Jainism, and the third one escapes me. I still have issues with them, though.

10. Empirical, objective, repeatable evidence.

11. That's hard to answer. What would the rest of that world be like?

12. What kind of vague question is this? I think it should stay separate from religion, I guess. I think it should protect the citizens. My political views are I'm a communist.

13. Why exactly would I need to do that? You aren't inherently evil; I could just set them on a different path. Though I'd need to be sure that wouldn't fsck up the timestream and make things worse.

14. Because it could save and improve lives. But I think killing embryos to save older people sorta defeats the purpose.

15. Evil? Bit of a strong word, but I would have to say yes. We should give all human beings legal rights of personhood, as well as make society and education such that abortion is arcane and unthinkable.

16. None. Even if you can look past the gross human rights violation and lowering of ourselves to the level of our enemies, torture doesn't even get accurate information.

17. Sure, why not?

18. No. Ignoring the moral issue, it makes no sense. An eye for an eye makes everyone blind. The moral issue is addressed elsewhere; I'm lazy so clicky.

19. No supernatural forces, though aliens are not any more supernatural than we are; to them, we're the aliens. I'm pretty agnostic and apathetic towards the existence extraterrestrial life, though the statistics seem to be probabilitistically in their favor.

20. I wouldn't sacrifice myself for a loved one anyway because I'm a selfish sonofabi-

21. What do I look like, some sort of deathologist?

22. What kind of stupid question is that? I'm typing this, aren't I? We can't yet bring people back from the dead, and you can't be dead if you were never alive.

Okay, those were some rambling questions.

YouTube

"The belief that pregnancy following rape will emotionally and psychologically devastate the victim reflects the common misconception that women are helpless creatures who must be protected from the harsh realities of the world. [This study illustrates] that pregnancy need not impede the victim's resolution of the trauma; rather, with loving support, non judgmental attitudes, and emphatic communication, healthy emotional and psychological responses are possible despite the added burden of pregnancy." (Cited in T. Hilgers,etal, New Perspectives on Human Abortion, University Pub., 1981, p.194)