Cecilie1200
Diamond Member
I am fully qualified to question YOUR biological competency for the following reasons:
1) Merriam-Webster IS an authority on the meanings of words, and that includes ALL words commonly used in the English language, including medical terms. It isn't as specific and detailed as a medical dictionary would be, but it is neither incorrect nor widely divergent from what would be found there.
Then you should have noted that MW defined a fetus as:
Fetus - an unborn or unhatched vertebrate especially after attaining the basic structural plan of its kind; specifically : a developing human from usually two months after conception to birth (from Merriam-Webster)
I DID note it, dunce. That's a quote from MY POST. What difference does the specific period of time denoted by the word "fetus" have to do with anything? Did I ever deny that "fetus" referred to a child pre-birth? Have I ever argued that "fetus" refers to a different developmental stage than it does? I don't think so.
What the hell are you talking about? I merely stated that a begins, developmentally at 8 weeks. I've never denied that a woman is carrying a "developing human" in her womb.
Yeah, you have. You're trying to tell us that a fetus is "not really a human being" until he is viable outside the womb. Don't even try to pretend otherwise now.
Have you not been reading my posts? And why do you turn into such a sneering weasel on here? Are you just an angry person?
I've been reading your posts, which is why I'm not letting you pretend your position is anything other than it is now. This is what YOU said:
"I don't really buy that a fetus is a human being. I certainly accept that it will become a human being under normal circumstances."
Again, this is exactly what my quote said. So what the hell are you splitting hairs over?
We've all seen what you said, and just because you want to backpedal away from it now doesn't mean I'M "splitting hairs".
I don't care what the law says. I realize people like you cling to "it's legal" like Christians clutching a piece of the True Cross because it's all you have to hide behind, but "Abortion should be legal because it's legal" is the kind of argument five-year-olds use.
I never said if an abortion should or should not be legal. I just noted that it is. Like I said, if you don't like the law, then change it. Until then, I am going to respect the law and not your mandates.
So now you're going to try to pretend you have no idea what this debate is about. Exactly what would you like to tell us YOU thought the abortion argument concerns? And if you DIDN'T think it was about whether abortion should be allowed, why is it that you keep running to, "Well, it's legal!" like it's home base in a game of tag?
And by the way, what possible purpose is EVER served by "noting that it's legal"? Are you imagining that there's someone on this board who doesn't already know that? Are you expecting someone to pop up and say, "Abortion is legal?! Ohmigod, I did not know that! That changes EVERYTHING!"?
I don't believe I or anyone else has had any "mandates" about what YOU should or shouldn't do in contradiction to the law. My debate is always, solely, about whether or not abortion should be legal, not whether or not it IS or trying to order you not to get your girlfriend one.
I also don't care how many times you plug your ears and chant, "Cecilie thinks all development stages are the same; Cecilie thinks all development stages are the same." I've said exactly the opposite, everyone has SEEN me say exactly the opposite, and your insistence on lying about it just makes you look too chickenshit to deal with my ACTUAL arguments instead of the one you desperately WISH I was making.
Seems to me the only thing you "know better" about is your complete inability to debate anyone but a strawman.
Okay. Then tell me again why viability is not important to this debate?
Viability outside the womb is not important to everyone in the abortion debate because not everyone's position is based on level of development. I for one base my position on things much less subjective and changeable, such as the simple fact that a fetus, and before that an embryo, is a living organism. How far he has developed toward adulthood changes nothing about that for me.
In addition, making a big deal out of an organism's viability in this or that environment is specious and illogical. A fetus is fully viable IN THE ENVIRONMENT FOR WHICH NATURE HAS DESIGNED HIM, ie. the womb. Nature does not intend for the fetus to live outside the womb, and therefore he is not fitted to do it. This argument is akin to saying that because I am not viable fifty feet below sea level (because nature has fitted me to live in a land environment rather than a water environment), I'm not really alive. ALL life forms are designed to live in a particular environment, and if you remove them from it and put them in a radically different environment, they die. Likewise, some lifeforms are designed to live in one environment at one stage of their lives, and another environment at a later stage of life.
In short, it is illogical to say that a fetus is not human simply because he is different from an ADULT human.