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Marsupials have tailored the basic mammalian trait of breast-feeding to suit a specific set of survival skills. Nourishing offspring outside the womb permits more flexibility for mothers facing a fickle environment, says Renfree. If drought decimates the food supply, a red kangaroo can simply halt milk production and let her baby die—another will soon be on the way. Fertile female kangaroos keep one or two embryos queued up in suspended animation, and once a baby dies, another embryo begins development and will be born four weeks later. By contrast, a pregnant moose, say, must nourish the fetus for eight months until birth, regardless of how conditions change. Under harsh conditions, extra energy demands can endanger the mother.

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Also, I just went through this entire discussion looking for where I accused you of being rude, but it isn't in this discussion. So, what, are you harboring some resentment from a previous discussion?

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I was just pointing out that you are rude, and hypocritical to boot. It IS fucking rude to tell somebody they are ignorant, even if true. The un-rude thing to do would be to simply point out their error and indicate that they are mistaken.

That you have the audacity to accuse anyone here of being rude is fairly amazing.

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I direct you to this website that lists logical fallacies: http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/index.htm

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The anti-abortionists use the "where do you draw the line" argument only for obfuscation. In fact, they and the laws they sponsor actually "draw the line" at "protecting" an unimplanted single-cell fertilized ovum. That definition is what freedom of choice people are actually fighting against in the US.

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Originally posted by marfknox

Human life does start at conception, Halfmooner. By denying this plain biological fact...

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Originally posted by marfknox

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Ricky wrote: Are you stating that you think abortions should be legal until the moment of birth?

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No. ... I was saying that I think we need to come up with an "arbitrary" line, and I think the arbitrary line come up with by the Roe v. Wade ruling is quite a reasonable and humane solution.

The reason I say we need an arbitrary line is because the two non-arbitrary lines: conception and birth, are both unacceptable.

- To draw the line at conception is unacceptable because the child is so undeveloped at first that it is silly to regard it having equal rights to persons. That would mean complete banning of fertility clinics, the birth control pill and other abortifacients, the morning after pill, and all embryonic stem cell research. In fact, if we draw the line at conception, a woman could be prosecuted for manslaughter if she miscarried due to reckless behavior.

- To draw the line at birth is problematic because right before birth we have a human being that is independently viable - he or she just haven't exited the womb yet. At that point they've also developed full senses and even recognize the sound of their mother's voice. Although the fetus at the late stages is still a parasite on the mother, it is so fully developed, to abort it without good medical cause is alarming to a common sense of morals and ethics. In short, allowing abortions in the third trimester, without good medical cause, does indeed lower our society standards on the value of human life.

Because neither non-arbitary line is acceptable, we must turn to the gray area. Roe v. Wade was a brilliant decisions, and it is a damn shame that so many people in America who appose the ruling don't even know the specifics of what it said.

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I find it rather amusing that you bring this up in this thread, despite the fact that I never called you rude in this thread.

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Great guide to fallacious arguments there. Note that site's explanation of the "Slippery Slope" fallacy (significantly listed under the heading, "Fallacies of Distraction"), the exact fallacy verso used here with a surprising degree of success.

I had written earlier:

quote:The anti-abortionists use the "where do you draw the line" argument only for obfuscation. In fact, they and the laws they sponsor actually "draw the line" at "protecting" an unimplanted single-cell fertilized ovum. That definition is what freedom of choice people are actually fighting against in the US.

I hadn't known that verso's "slippery slope" had an identical formal name as a fallacy, when I wrote the above.

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The reason people are making the "spontaneous abortion" argument is that life starting at conception is not a plain biological fact. The first conception of my wife and I did not result in anything which could be considered remotely human. That blob of undifferentiated cells would never have developed a heartbeat or brain waves, as it was incapable of generating either a heart or a brain, yet verso would have us convicted of murder for having it aborted, because it was conceived. verso's argument that conception is a non-arbitrary dividing line between life and non-life is shown to be false because there can be - and frequently is - conception without any potential for life (my wife's OB/GYN put the figure at 65%). The conception "line" is just as arbitrary as any other.

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Even though I had that fallacies directory linked as a favorite, I haven't actually gone through and studied it, so I didn't know either that "slippery slope" arguments are logically fallacies. I've actually read philosphical academic articles using slipperly slope arguments in debating the ethics of abortion, which is why I considered it a legitimate argument. Silly me - I trusted the Humanities. ;-)

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Who cares what thread it is in?

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If you don't like other people being rude, and you complain to them about it, you forfeit your right to be rude to anyone.

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You can't even admit that you were rude to Half. So I doubt you will be issuing an apology or recognizing your hypocrisy.

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I'd guess a "slippery slope" could work either way, either as an honest analogy, or as a fallacious argument. I've often used the term myself, and not with the intention of deliberate distraction. In verso's case, I think if was a deliberate, or perhaps "instinctive," fallacy intended to distract. I'm slowly learning a lot here about logical argument, or at least I hope I am. Most of my life, it seems, I've been using too many fallacies, as I suspect most other people do.

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Originally posted by marfknox

It doesn't matter if it is fragile, undeveloped human life, it is still human life. Newborn babies haven't developed the cognitive abilities of adults, but we don't deny that they are human lives. At conception, it is alive, right? So if not human life, then what sort of life is it? I'm talking about the biological fact, not any cultural qualifiers like personhood. Biologically, once there is all the genetic material together and the thing is consuming, producing waste, and growing, it is alive and of whatever species its genetic code dictates.

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The problem is that in the political debate, it sounds just awful to say the debate is over whether all human life should be valued and protected equally because in the political context, "human" means more than biology. It means concepts of personhood that I would argue the embryo doesn't have yet. But to get biological, it is human life.

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