I believe that life begins at conception, he says...(Another cartoon)

[WillParkinson]

[rfranklin]

1. In Buddhism life begins at conception and your age is figured from that time...

It was useful to me when living in Thailand and getting certain privileges before they would be granted by my birthday.

[yellerpup]

2. Can't read the cartoonist's signature, WP.

Love it, but I'd like to know whose it is. Tx.

[WillParkinson]

3. I do not know either...

The image is the same size even on the original.

[yellerpup]

4. Well, it's definitely worth sharing.

I'll rec it, too. Kick this!

[maggiesfarmer]

5. actually, I don't like it. it's disrespectful of valid reservations many have about abortion

I know, I know, ``it's just a cartoon damnit.''. yes, but it's a cartoon designed to make a point, one which I disagree with. if for no other reason, I think democrats need to spend more time winning support from Christian voters, not mocking them, as I believe Christian morality is more closely aligned with the Democratic positions than the Republican.

I'm pro-choice. firmly and adamantly. I would encourage my teenage daughter to consider it as a choice if (please NO) she were to become pregnant.

However, I respect arguments on the other side. Further, I believe that at conception a new living being, by all biological definitions of ``living'', exists. If I do a DNA test, I would discover find this is a human being (again, by biological standards). Being an atheist, I lean to the biological definitions over religious ones. I have a very hard time justifying abortion from a moral point of view if I only consider the fetus (which the cartoon does). Clearly I have to consider more than just the fetus.

I would like to have more solid, logic based moral justification for abortion but I have to admit I struggle here. Consider this thought experiment, which is what trips me up. The two primary justifications that I find myself using to rationalize my position to keep abortion ``safe and legal'' are this:
1. it's a mother's choice for her body. if she decides this baby isn't best for her and her life that's a call she's entitled to make
2. every child should be a wanted child (this ties in to Dubnar and Levitt's reported correlation between legal abortion and crime).

But consider #1. If I acknowledge that a living human being is being killed, but that's ``ok'', because it's the mother's choice, then why isn't it ok if the mother decides to kill her newborn? Like most, I scream in outrage when I hear of these cases. If I believe this newborn case is not ``ok'', I then find it difficult to justify the abortion case.

anyway, I'm sure you just meant to post a funny cartoon and not get into a philosophical discussion -- hope my brain dump doesn't offend. I found myself contemplating this the other day and your cartoon brought those mental machinations back up.

[riderinthestorm]

6. Simple for me, I don't respect any arguments on the other side because its not their choice

This is a privacy issue between a woman and her doctor. Nobody else gets to get involved in that decision.

So for me, no. I don't respect anything about their rhetoric because it shouldn't apply. This is a medical decision between a woman and her doctor period.

[GOTV]

7. I didn't much like it either

It suggests that the popularity of birthdays over conception days should say something about when life begins but it doesn't. Birthdays are more popular because a birth is more conspicuous than a conception. A woman may have sex thousands of time but she surely doesn't experience thousands of births. And for most of mankind's existence we didn't know there was a specific conception event or if sperm gradually turned into a baby under the influence of the uterus, though we always knew there were births.

We celebrate birthdays out of cultural inertia. It doesn't reveal more than that.

[bongbong]

8. Don't forget the tumors!

Tumors deserve to live, too! They're biological material like fetuses. Just because the host dies before they reach maturity doesn't mean Anti-Choice folks shouldn't have a massive "Save The Tumors!" campaign.

[Scootaloo]

9. For me, it comes down to this ethical thought experiment

Purely hypothetical, one hopes, but illustrative.

A pregnant woman has gone into labor and is on the gurney being wheeled into the delivery room. However, the presiding doctor discovers a complication in the pregnancy that had been, until this point, unnoticed. Due to the nature of the complication, there will have to be a choice between preserving the life of the mother, or preserving the life of the baby; if unaddressed, they will both almost certainly die.

Whose life is preeminent in this situation?

Almost every time I've presented this, the response is to save the mother. Though this conclusion causes (legitimate, I feel) gnashing of teeth and temple-rubbing over the ethical implications, the result always comes out the same; presented with an either-or choice between the two, the mother always has the greater value.

This is why the anti-choice movement works so hard to present the (utterly false) argument that abortion is "used as contraception." It's why their case study is always some "slutty" woman who is "irresponsible." It's an effort to devalue women, so that whatever's in their uterus is more easily placed above them on the hierarchy, regardless of its stage of development. If abortion is simply the cavalier tool used by loose and unthinking women to keep themselves ripe for the nightclub scene - and that IS the narrative used - then of course abortion has no positive value to society at all and should be done away with.

Unsurprisingly it's not too far removed from back when slavery was "justified" on hte grounds of how "out of control" freedmen would be.

[alphafemale]

11. Devil's Advocate question to that.

What if just before the woman goes under the anesthesia she mutters "Save my baby. I give my life for my baby"

And what if there are 4 kids under 12 in the waiting room and their father also recently died and they have no other close relatives?
They WOULD be split into group/foster homes.

I think the argument between the life of the mother or the baby is a bogus one anyway. Maybe a hundred years ago this happened with a prairie schooner Cesarean birth.

[Scootaloo]

12. Same thing that happens with a "Do not recussitate" order

The patient's request is granted. That's not much of a "devil's advocate" question. The person receiving the care has full autonomy on all medical decisions - at least those that they are aware of. Of course, making this stick would be nearly impossible; If the doctors saved her life instead, she COULD bring them to court for violating her care orders; but they could easily say "nope, never heard it, and made a judgement call on my patient's life."

As I said, it's a hypothetical, and the point is to show where the greater focus lies. It could be argued too that your question would never happen, either. I dunno if you've ever been under total anesthesia, but it's not like in the movies where you slowly drift off to sleep, allowing for dramatic last words. it's more like this.

Doctor: "We're starting anesthesia now. If you would count from ten backwards?"
Patient: "Okay. Ten, nine, woah, where did all these tubes come from?"

[alphafemale]

13. A muttered Save My Baby when a woman is possibly in low blood flow stress

Does not carry the legal standing of a witnessed DNR

[Warpy]

15. Back in the bad old days before anesthesia and sterile procedure

sacrificing the woman and saving the child was the prudent thing to do because the child could be saved by a septic c-section. The woman in question died immediately from shock.

Both would surely die without action.

That's the reasoning behind Rome's position on the whole business. The godly in the Vatican simply haven't kept up with modern medicine at all, especially reproductive medicine, something they find universally icky after a lifetime of (theoretical, at least) celibacy.

[Kablooie]

10. Well, I believe that life begins around 4 billion years ago.

[hwmnbn]

14. Oh snap!!