gadgetlady

Terribly sorry you're bored. You don't have to answer. Anybody else want to tell a slave owner why his black slave is more than 3/5 of a person?

Ahhh, but that is precisely the point. They were WRONG. And to convince them otherwise, you would have to use a better argument or provide them with more information. So use modern scientific data. Convince me using some other form of information that blacks are human beings.

4 cells don't have feet. Or a heartbeat for that matter. You can keep saying "4 cells" if you want, but you're just deluding yourself and you're certainly not fooling anyone else.

What kind of differences? Because, of course, you know that blacks are closer to apes because of their skin color and hair texture. And their brains are smaller; it's a proven fact! And have you ever heard them talk? They clearly have underdeveloped language. And their skills are not up to the level of a white man. So they aren't really a full person. (Just so no one gets confused, I don't believe all of the crap I just wrote. I'm paraphrasing what a slave owner might have said)

Infants don't. So are they not human? Certainly, the Nobel Prize winning people and educators I've cited before think they don't. Are they wrong? Not according to your definition above. The infants don't have language skills and a highly developed imagination and they don't create practical things. So is it OK with you if Dr. Peter Singer kills his infant newborn child? Is it his choice to make and not yours to interfere? Sure sounds like it to me.

Yeah, that's what the slave owners said. Despite your refusal to answer, you do finally answer. The difference, and the only difference in your mind, between a black person and an unborn baby is that the unborn baby resides in the body of another person? So it is simply the journey through the birth canal that bestows life?

The time travel challenge is: Pretend you are climbing into a time travel machine. You go back to the time to America when slavery was legal. The slave owner you run into fully believes blacks are only 3/5 of a person. Convince him otherwise. You can't use the "everybody knows" argument because everybody in his time doesn't know. What evidence will you use to convince him? What scientific facts will you use to support your claim? You can use scientific facts from 2007, if you'd like, but not "in the future we all know", or "in the future it is outlawed for good reason". Give him the reasons. It's not a silly game. The actual issue, of course, is what criterion (other than "everyone knows") we use to define human beings. The answer will inform the question of when life begins. Which is why, of course, I don't think anyone on the pro-abortion side will answer.

Yup, that's what I thought you would say. In fact, I almost posted before you did that I'm quite positive you wouldn't take me up on the challenge. I know why, too. And it's not because you don't get the point or it's not your job. Anyone else want to take the time-travel challenge? I'm a bit confused here. What pro-lifers do you know who make the decision for other people? You keep bringing this up, but I don't get it. The pro-lifers I know lobby, protest, march, run pregnancy counseling centers, debate, run homes for unwed mothers, donate to the cause, try to influence politicians to pass laws, educate people, engage in civil disobedience, etc. Not a single one of them holds a gun to a woman's head and makes the decision for her. Not a single one of them "gets to set the rules for others to follow". They (we) have a belief and we act accordingly to change the law and society around us.

(emphasis added) The reason I use the arguments of slavery and Hitler is not because they were great evils, but because they were great evils which were based on the belief that certain human beings were not 100% human and therefore could be exterminated at the whim of those who were 100% human. There are many other great evils in history, but not all were based on the premise that people can be exterminated if they are deemed to be sub-human. These two were. And abortion is, too.

OK, let's try this a different way, Mark. Pretend you are climbing into a time travel machine. You go back to the time to America when slavery was legal. The slave owner you run into fully believes blacks are only 3/5 of a person. Convince him otherwise. You can't use the "everybody knows" argument because everybody in his time doesn't know. What evidence will you use to convince him? What scientific facts will you use to support your claim? You can use scientific facts from 2007, if you'd like, but not "in the future we all know", or "in the future it is outlawed for good reason". Give him the reasons. One, two, three, GO!

No problem. I'm happy to help. Any time you have questions about the Bible, feel free to ask

Actually, no. He only "granted amnesty" to one: the one who called on Him and accepted Him as Lord. He grants forgiveness to those who ask and who are repentant. John 8:9-11 (NIV): At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" "No one, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin." (this is also, in the NKJ translation, is more commonly quoted as "Go and sin no more"). Jesus calls for us not only to acknowledge our sin and repent of it, but to turn away from it. That's why the second thief on the cross wasn't forgiven; he was more interested in Jesus' power for his own glory than he was in seeking forgiveness for what he had done wrong.

Why don't we, then, just kill people who are abused or raped or mentally retarded? It would stop their suffering, after all. Because, of course, it is not our purvue to decide for other human beings whether their lives are worthy of living.

But it doesn't miss the mark at all. What you're forgetting is history. What you're forgetting is that Hitler and the people around him DID BELIEVE that Jews were less than human. And probably some people still believe that. Slave owners DID BELIEVE that slaves were 3/5 of a person. And probably some people still believe that. Certain modern professors and Nobel Prize winners DO BELIEVE that newborns are less than human. You can say it's been corrected and "nobody" believes that anymore, but that doesn't erase the fact that it once existed and was fully believed. And the reasons people gave were perfectly logical to them. Just because "the majority" doesn't agree NOW doesn't mean that when "the majority" agreed THEN that they were right. "The majority" is right NOW (about Jews and blacks), and "the majority" WAS WRONG then (about Jews and blacks). "The majority" IS WRONG now about abortion. We can look at history with 20/20 hindsight. We can't look as clearly at the history we are making now. If/when "the majority" (or the politicians or the judges) recognize the humanity of the unborn and we look back at when abortion used to be legal, perhaps we will see 20/20 then, too.

Abortions aren't performed when the unborn baby is only 4 cells. Abortions are performed after the baby has a beating heart -- because most women don't know they're pregnant until after that time. The majority of abortions are performed between 8 and 12 weeks. At 8 weeks, the baby has unique fingerprints, just like you and I. Clearly, not a "dividing embryo" with only 4 cells. As I suspected, you would answer with the "everybody knows" answer. You have stated earlier, I believe, that you are in favor of limiting or outlawing (I'm not sure which) late-term abortions. Why is that OK? Who are you to decide that a late-term abortion is unacceptable for a woman who thinks that her late-term baby (oops, sorry, "dividing embryo of 4 . . . or slightly more . . . cells") isn't a human life? For that matter, who are you to tell Nobel Prize winning men, professors at major universities, and that ilk (all modern figures, not from decades or centuries ago), that newborns aren't worthy of the right to live until they're 28 days old?

meat was rationed and huge petrol lines were everywhere," Grzebski told TVN24, describing his recollections of the communist system's economic collapse. "Now I see people on the streets with cell phones and there are so many goods in the shops it makes my head spin." Grzebski awoke to find his four children had all married and produced 11 grandchildren during his years in hospital. He said he vaguely recalled the family gatherings he was taken to while in a coma and his wife and children trying to communicate with him. So was he alive and did his life have value for the 19 years he was in a coma? What an amazing wife and family this man has. What an example they set, and would that we could all love those around us as profoundly.

To those of you who think once you're in a coma you should be "let go": who knows, when entering a coma, when one will come out of it? It may be two days, it may be two months, it may be two years, or it may be 19 years. When does your family pull the plug? Minute #1? How do they know you won't awake at minute #2? The doctors told this woman her husband would never awake. If she had become discouraged and pulled the plug at 18 years and 364 days based on their telling her over and over that it was a lost cause, how sad that would be. I don't have any objection to any of you telling your families and loved ones to "give up on you", "let you go", "pull the plug", "let you slip away in peace", "euthanize you", or whatever you'd like to call it (it's all the same thing regardless of the words we use). For my family and my decisions, I know would never give up on my loved ones and I know they would never give up on me.

I'm sorry you misunderstood. I'm actually not sad at all. I love life. I just love it more when I can enjoy the things that I can't currently enjoy: biking and swimming with my kids, dancing with my husband, and the like.

You have time to accuse, and you have time to denigrate, but you don't have time to READ a very detailed answer to your question? Here you go. Have fun. http://www.lapbandtalk.com/486168-post167.html And while you're at it, read http://www.lapbandtalk.com/486176-post171.html That's really funny, because you asked me before, in another thread, I answered in detail, and then you thanked me for my honest answer. How quickly we forget. It's all in those posts above.

Agreed, but that does not make the desperate things right. And it doesn't mean the desperate things should be legal. After all, the woman who hanged her children and herself, despite being desperate (and dead) is a criminal.

That's a non sequitur. The extreme majority of babies aren't aborted due to potential mental retardation or disfigurement, and abortion doesn't stop or cure child abuse or rape. If it did, we'd have no child abuse or rape any more, would we?

Told ya' so. It's the "everybody agrees" answer -- and yet you still haven't addressed that "everybody agreed" (at least the ones who owned slaves) that slaves were 3/5 of a person, "everybody agreed" (at least in Hitler's SS) that Jews weren't full people, and "everybody agrees" (at least the renouned professors and Nobel Prize winners I quoted earlier) that an infant isn't a full life until somewhere around a month or so. Oh, no, sir. I answered it. Quite clearly. More than once. Go back and read it. Stop accusing me of not answering when I did. And, yet, again, YOU DID NOT ANSWER WHAT I ASKED. Typical.

Uh, yeah, no. It's a human rights issue. There are religious people on both sides of the fence, and even if most of them hover at one side of the fence, it still isn't a religious issue. As noted above, just because MLK Jr was a preacher doesn't make civil rights a religious issue.

If you can watch all the way through the video link I posted (here it is again: Abortion NO / The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform), see little hands and little feet, fully developed, being pulled out of a mother's womb, see little heads with little eyes and little mouths, see ribcages ripped apart, see little developed abdomens disemboweled, see fully formed babies burned to death through chemical abortion, and sleep well at night, YOU have no conscience.

Daffodil, were you around when Jane Roe was "discovered" by the pro-abortion movement? No one really knew who Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade, was until Norma McCorvey surfaced. The pro-abortion movement latched onto her, parading her before large groups of people, so proud to have found their "hero". Then they put a microphone under her nose and asked her to speak. The first thing she said? "I just want to know where my baby is." It was amazing! They dropped her like a hot potato; you should have seen the looks on their faces. She wanted to meet the child she didn't abort (yes, Norma McCorvey didn't even have STANDING before the court when Roe was heard because she was no longer pregnant -- what a flawed legal decision that was!). As it turns out, as she began to reveal her story, she didn't even want an abortion. She was seized upon by a pro-abortion attorney and dragged through the system like some lost puppy, set up, and then dumped by the movement because, you see, she really was pro-life. Incidentally, in the companion case to Roe, Doe v. Bolton, the decision that guaranteed abortion through all 9 months of pregnancy, Doe is also pro-life.