Hey abortion fanatics…
Posted on February 20, 2007
AP: Tiny Baby to Leave Florida Hospital
MIAMI (AP) — A premature baby that doctors say spent less time in the womb than any other surviving infant is to be released from a Florida hospital Tuesday.
Amillia Sonja Taylor was just 9 1/2 inches long and weighed less than 10 ounces when she was born Oct. 24. She was delivered 21 weeks and six days after conception. Full-term births come after 37 to 40 weeks.“We weren’t too optimistic,” Dr. William Smalling said Monday. “But she proved us all wrong.”
Neonatologists who cared for Amillia say she is the first baby known to survive after a gestation period of fewer than 23 weeks. A database run by the University of Iowa’s Department of Pediatrics lists seven babies born at 23 weeks between 1994 and 2003.
Amillia has experienced respiratory problems, a very mild brain hemorrhage and some digestive problems, but none of the health concerns are expected to pose long-term problems, her doctors said.
What a blessing. Of course, the ACLU would have been all for dismembering tiny Amillia who now has a chance to live a life as a beautiful, unique human being…or would the ACLU still call her a “fetus” or a “clump of cells?”
How is Amillia any different than a baby still in the womb at this point in pregnancy except that she is outside the womb? Was her life any less sacred the day before yesterday? Last month?
Seeing Amillia really puts the barbarity of slaughtering a child in the womb in perspective. May God bless her and her family.
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30 Responses to “Hey abortion fanatics…”
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You have to lie to save your baby, but if you want him put to death, just plunk down the money.
Kinda makes you proud to be an American, huh?
Isn’t it interesting that the mom had to lie so she could get the doctors to resuscitate the baby?
Inflammatory crap like that causes you to lose my respect much faster than you gain it.
She’s no different at all. She was born Oct 24, which means she was conceived exactly 38 weeks ago. That means she went through everything a typical baby goes through, except she spent a third of her time in an artificial womb.
This is a testament to our medical prowess, not the resiliency of life. It’s literally only a matter of time before we can replicate the entire process externally, but that does nothing to answer the question of when life begins.
Where did you see that?
Amillia’s survival does more damage to the pro-life argument than it supports it. As this case demonstrates, a fetus cannot survive until at least 21 weeks of gestation. Prior to that point it cannot be described as existing separately from the mother, and therefore the pregnant woman’s interests must be considered alongside the interests of the fetus. This creates the bizarre scenario where a woman’s rights as a person can be revoked in order to award them to a fetus that cannot exist independently of the pregnant woman.
Perhaps we can argue that personhood begins at 21 weeks, the very minimum gestation required. If so, than pro-lifers must accept that abortions performed at 16 weeks are acceptable, and I doubt they would do that.
I expect that Amillia will not become the posterchild of the pro-life movement. This case does not provide their arguments with a great deal of support.
No, it doesn’t demonstrate that at all. It only demonstrates that 21 weeks is the best we’ve accomplished yet. A year ago, you would have said that 23 weeks was the best possible.
This child needed four months of seriously intensive care to survive, so this does reinforce the fact that a fetus cannot survive on its own until well past 30 weeks.
It cannot exist independently of the woman, it just can’t exist completely independently. Perhaps the debate won’t be put to rest until you can walk into Walmart and buy an artificial womb. Then should would have a very simple and reasonable choice: natural or artificial.
Gavin–
A child cannot survive on her own (”independently”) for the first several years of life. So what’s your point?
I am not suggesting that she become the “poster child” for the life movement. I am suggesting that people take another moment to think about how barbaric abortion is, when most pro-aborts would support the killing of this baby simply for having still been inside the mother had she not been born so early. She puts a face on the truth, truth that abortion absolutists try so hard to hide.
Jeff–
Yes, NOW the baby is 38 months from conception…you know perfectly well that I meant the point at which the baby was born.
The question of when life begins? You know when life BEGINS. That is not even up for debate — what is up for debate is when we as a society begin holding those lives that have indisputably begun as sacred.
Not all conceptions are wanted. Let’s get rid of sex, except for committed procreation, and then we will be OK. This baby was a miracle for her committed parents. I hope her life will be blessed by the love she will get. Having said that, she is an exception to the “procreation” debate.
I kinda thought so, but when in doubt, I go with a literal interpretation. My point is the anyways. At 21 weeks, the baby needed the same exact things a 21 week fetus needs: a sterile, well-regulated environment and food, water, and oxygen from an outside source.
Just because you happen to belong to a dominant religion which dogmatically believes a certain answer, doesn’t mean others aren’t so sure.
Please pick any definition which clearly supports your belief.
Sure it can. It certainly wouldn’t be likely to thrive, but it could survive. Upon birth, a healhty child can survive on its own for hours, if not days. A one year old could probably survive a week or so in a warm climate with natural food and water sources. It would probably succumb to disease or a predator in the first couple weeks, but maybe not.
Amillia, on the other hand, couldn’t breathe. She would not have survived 5 minutes. That’s a HUGE difference in scale.
Let’s take the second one listed.
1 a : the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body b : a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings c : an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction
I’m confused about that quote, Lobo. It refers to the Encyclopedia Britannica, so I’m assuming it’s not a quote from EB. Are those your words or are you citing someone else?
“Just because you happen to belong to a dominant religion which dogmatically believes a certain answer, doesn’t mean others aren’t so sure.”
No Jeff, such nonsensical debates are started by people trying to legitimate what, if discussed honestly, would be a completely indefensible position. The only way a pro-abort can get away with holding the absolutist position most movement-types hold is to deny the truth.
You didn’t say “when consciousness begins,” or “when the nervous system is operational,” or “when an unborn child can feel pain,” you said “when life begins.” (Not that these measures matter to me at all in this discussion). No honest person can be confused about, or would wish to muddle, the very simple concept of life BEGINNING unless one wishes to convolute. We don’t argue after the first quarter of a football game about whether the game has begun simply because the score is only 3-0, we know the game began with the ref’s whistle and opening kickoff even if there hadn’t been much excitement in the opening 15 minutes.
But this what you and others like you try to do because of, excuse me on this one, the “Inconvenient Truth” that what we are really arguing about is when it’s OK to snuff out innocent human life and when it’s not.
Jeff–
I need to call you out on something I forgot to hit before.
You took issue with my use of the word “fanatic,” yet you describe my beliefs as “dogmatic,” which in the context is obviously meant pejoratively. If you want to criticize me for something, don’t turn around and do the same thing.
“Sure it can. It certainly wouldn’t be likely to thrive, but it could survive. Upon birth, a healhty child can survive on its own for hours, if not days. A one year old could probably survive a week or so in a warm climate with natural food and water sources. It would probably succumb to disease or a predator in the first couple weeks, but maybe not.”
“Survive.” Jeff, stop being ridiculous. You really stretched here. What does an unborn child require to survive? Food, shelter, warmth. Without that, the unborn child will die. Same thing with a young child. The “one-year old in the wilderness” example you use is freaking laughable. Not that you need to be raising a child to know this, but I have a 17-month old daughter who I know needs her mom and dad to survive. A one-year old could not seek out food one her own let alone evade the predators you imagine…which proves MY point, not yours. “Surviving” for a day or a week is not surviving. Some babies “survive” abortions before being killed outside the womb or are simply left to die on a cold metal table.
Funny little nuance, but meaningful, that you refer even to a one-year old child as “it.”
Oh for crying out loud, even Sesame Street can figure out the definition of “alive.” There wouldn’t even be a question about when life begins except that some people want the right to end those lives.
http://usr-bin-mom.com/images/prolife/sesame_abortion.jpg
(Not a disgusting image, just a still from Sesame Street.)
I’m confused about that quote, Lobo. It refers to the Encyclopedia Britannica, so I’m assuming it’s not a quote from EB.
No, it’s not a quote from EB. The EB definition of life mirrors your second link definition and is part of the quote from Matthew Brazil in an article he published, titled, Should the Unborn be Considered Human?. Thus the quote.
I don’t have a link to it. It is something I saved to a folder, a long time ago.
I did a search and found the article at FreeRepublic
- It’s foolish to assume you know my motives for anything.
- Don’t lump me in with other people. You’re communicating directly with me. If I take an “absolutist position” or “deny the truth” feel free to demonstrate my error.
I give you that much respect and I expect the same in return.
Indeed, “when life begins” is only the first step in the equation…
Obviously, you colored that statement with your own viewpoint, but you are basically correct. The second part is “To what degree is any given life form, at any given stage of its life, morally significant?”
Yes, I broadened that on purpose. Sure, we could study just human life and that would certainly be valuable, but we are surrounding by many shapes and colors of life, so we should strive for a comprehensive understanding of its value.
Of course, we don’t have a fancy mathematical equation into which we can just plug variables, but you see the effect of this unknown equation in the way we grieve for various people and animals.
The breadth (number of friends/family/acquaintances) and depth (degree of sadness) of grief will differ significantly in all of the following situations:
- For a leading figure in society
- For an adult whose children are all adults
- For an adult whose children are still minors
- For a child
- For a pet
- For a wild animal of notable intelligence
- For a wild animal rudimentary intelligence
- For microscopic organisms
There several factors of moral significance that can be identified easily:
- Percentage of life expectancy completed
- The breadth and depth of the effect that individual has/had/would have on other individuals
- The intelligence of the species
- The intelligence of the individual
I’m sure there are many more; you may even take issue with some of the ones I listed; and we didn’t even get into what relative value each factor has, but my point is that moral significance, which is the core of the abortion debate, is not a simple matter and anyone who believes it is, hasn’t studied it sufficiently.
Incidentally, the previous sentence explains why I used the word “dogmatic.” I meant it literally (c’mon, you know by now how literal I am) in that your position emanates from your religious faith rather than a deeply analytical study of the subject.
You forgot oxygen, and it just happens to be the difference. There are very few life forms, and humans certainly aren’t one of them, that can survive for more than a few minutes without the ability to extract oxygen from the environment.
A significantly premature individual, of the vast majority of species, cannot do so and will perish in very short order. By comparison, the next few hurdles (food, water, protection for the elements, protection from preadators) are many orders of magnitude farther away.
You’re right that for humans, and most other complex animals, survival for days or even weeks is not significantly more of a “success” that survival for minutes, but the difference in magnitude becomes much more relevant as you look at simpler animals.
It’s no accident that complex animals have relatively low infant mortality rates. Complex animals require a lot of resources, so a species can’t survive if doomed offspring consume a lot of resources before meeting their fate. Thus, every complex species protects its offspring in one way or another until it can survive on its own. Simple animals, OTOH, can afford to saturate the environment with offspring, knowing that “chance” will separate the wheat from the chaff in short order and enough will remain long enough to continue the species.
Long story -> short: Each species has its own child-rearing tactics that varies with the species’ overall survival tactics, but there is one commonality: a preemie, of any species
(The following is just a side note, because even a newborn child who received zero nourishment would survive many orders of magnitude longer than one who couldn’t breath, which is consistent with the point I made above)
Don’t underestimate her. My 15 month-old knows exactly where to find, and how to get at, the bottle of ketchup. He certainly couldn’t crack a coconut or kill a rabbit, but in a reasonably lush environment, I’m sure he could find some berries and bugs.
You’re right that he couldn’t evade a predator (he’d probably approach it and pull its tail), but on average, a notable amount of time would probably elapse before he came in contact with a hungry/angry predator. That difference in magnitude would also be consistent with my previous point.
I’ve tried to warn ya, I really am this literal. It: “a person or animal whose sex is unknown”
The hypothetical child had not been assigned a gender and gender wasn’t relevant to the discussion, so I used the gender-neutral pronoun. I could have said “he or she”, but that’s tiresome. One shouldn’t have to use more words to communicate a more general thought.
Thanks for the link, Lobo; that was an interesting article.
He touched on a lot of the things I mentioned in comment 17, though some of his terminology muddied the waters. By talking about “personhood” instead of “moral significance”, he perceives it as boolean rather than the continuum that it is. That oversimplification leads to logical errors such as “these conditions would also seem to designate young infants, the mentally handicapped, and even very decrepit old people as ‘non-humans’.” They’re not “non-humans”; they just have a different level of moral significance relative to other humans.
The terminology difference also limits him to examining only humans, which leads him to make an incorrect analogy between pre-term dependence and pre-maturity dependence. One is present in all animals and the other is not.
He does make a great point about perception. Our perception of any particular being’s significance does not alter or define that life form’s actual significance. Understanding that doesn’t help us much because our perception is all we have at this point, but it’s still important to remember that our perception could easily be wrong. That’s exactly why I strongly feel the subject deserves more study that it’s getting.
I am one of the moderates that Mr. Brazil refers to, so I don’t have any problem with saying that a fetus capable of responding to stimuli is sufficiently significant to merit protecting, but he fell far short of conferring that same significance to an embryo or zygote.
Jeff–
You are too smart to give me so much to ding you on. Are you drinking tonight?
“It’s foolish to assume you know my motives for anything.”
I wrote nothing about motives, just what disingenuous rationalizations are required to come to a certain conclusion.
Related directly to this, again Jeff, you do exactly what you accuse me of doing (two straight posts).
My pro-life position pre-dates my acceptance of Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior (I was saved in 2001, I was pro-life for several years prior). Nat Hentoff is a pro-life atheist. What “dogmatism” are we talking about in the face of these facts?
“you colored that statement with your own viewpoint”
Jeff, come on. I don’t even think I need to comment on this statement. Who doesn’t?
“I meant it literally”
Jeff…you can be both literal and pejorative at the same time. You know this.
“You forgot oxygen”
No Jeff, babies in the womb receive oxygen carried through the mother’s blood. Biology class Jeffer?
“My 15 month-old knows exactly where to find, and how to get at, the bottle of ketchup.”
Already loading the kid up on french fries, huh Molby? : )
To the point — he would just as likely seek and find the Boudreaux’s Butt Paste and suck down the whole tube. Again, a one-year old, a 15-month old, a 17-month old — none can survive on their own. You know it…stop playing silly games Jeff.
“I’ve tried to warn ya, I really am this literal. It: “a person or animal whose sex is unknownâ€
Let me get literal AND Style Book-wild on you Jeff. You never refer to a human being as “it.” You pick a sex (as I have chosen “she”) based, logically, on the post we are talking about. Either that or you go the annoyingly cumbersome “he or she” as you have acknowlegded. You never call a human “it.”
On the meat of your post:
I don’t judge the value of life on how someone else may or may not, on a subjective basis, assign a menu of grief reactions. “All men are created equal…” All of your dead/open-end philosophical meanderings serve only to obfuscate a very simple concept when there is no need to as far as I can figure except as a justification for an indefensible position. I don’t believe in the subjective assignation of relative value to someone’s life, whereas you DEPEND on it. My starting point is that all human life deserves equal protection, where your starting point is reasoning backward from the standpoint that there are many reasons to not value life based on things like how famous someone is.
Glib,
I was about halfway through responding to your last post and I got tired of it. There are quite a lot of people here that I disagree with, but you’re one of the few that regularly feels the need to be condescending. I’m going to respond to your last paragraph and that will be the last time I try to communicate with you.
You’re misunderstanding me. I am not assigning values. I already admitted that I’m not educated enough on the subject to describe all of the various factors, let alone apply them.
I’m merely recognizing that we do subconsciously assign values. In an nuclear nightmare scenario, a finite number of people, animals, and crops will be protected within deep bunkers. Do you think they were chosen randomly? Do you think someone with a genetic disorder would be chosen? Do you think a 70 year old is as deserving of lung transplant as a 20 year old?
I agree, because I believe all human life is morally significant. All humans are above the moral significance threshold, and all houseflies are beneath it. That’s easy to agree on, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is actually equal. The intrinsic value of any given human life at any given point in time is likely to extremely close to the value of any other human life at the same point in time, so in day-to-day life, it’s a complete non-issue, but when you examine extreme circumstances, it’s easy to see that there are minute differences.
Lobo, I’ll keep an eye on the thread in case you want to continue our discussion.
The terminology difference also limits him to examining only humans,
I’d have guessed that just by reading the title.
which leads him to make an incorrect analogy between pre-term dependence and pre-maturity dependence. One is present in all animals and the other is not.
His analogy between pre-term and pre-maturity dependence is correct given the fact that his thesis is on humanity, stages of human life, morality, etc, and is dealing with human babies, which has absolutely nothing to do with animals or “other lifeforms” aside from the mention of a Condors’ egg to highlight moral bankruptcy.
In any case, I’ve invited Mr. Brazil to the forum to defend his work. I’ll let you know if he accepts or he may just show up and engage
If only people would choose to use an effective contraceptive,
They wouldn’t have to make another choice……..
http://www.sexual-health-resource.org/hormonal_birth_control.htm
At the point of conception is when life began for you. This was the start of your existence. Your own personal big bang. Three weeks after conception heart started to beat. First brain waves recorded at six weeks after conception. Seen sucking thumb at seven weeks after conception.
Greetings.
Thank you Lobo for directing me here. I’m delighted you used the work of an 18-year old college freshman. Guess I did better than I thought I did!
In any case, let’s take a look at some things.
[quote]That oversimplification leads to logical errors such as “these conditions would also seem to designate young infants, the mentally handicapped, and even very decrepit old people as ‘non-humans’.†They’re not “non-humansâ€; they just have a different level of moral significance relative to other humans. [/quote]
That very phrase was an example of me following pro-choice reasoning to its logical conclusion. Of course they’re not non-humans. Following the reasoning of some pro-choice advocates, however, that’s what we would end up with.
[quote]The hypothetical child had not been assigned a gender and gender wasn’t relevant to the discussion, so I used the gender-neutral pronoun. I could have said “he or sheâ€, but that’s tiresome. One shouldn’t have to use more words to communicate a more general thought. [/quote]
The problem with this is that gender has already been determined. Just because we cannot see the chromosomes yet does not mean that the gender hasn’t been determined. XX, XY, and all that. True, we do not know the sex until the child has developed enough. But that doesn’t mean that the sex has yet to be determined.
Obviously, Mr. Brazil is free to confine his analysis within any boundaries he chooses. The problem is that his conclusion, in large part, rests on his alleged lampooning of “pro-choice reasoning.” He then subjected that reasoning to the same limited confines he chose for his reasoning, which rendered laughable the otherwise plausible “pro-choice reasoning.” It’s essentially a strawman error, though I’m sure it was unintentional.
No, we were literally talking about a hypothetical child. Glib conjured him or her in comment #7. He or she exists nowhere outside this thread.
[q]The problem is that his conclusion, in large part, rests on his alleged lampooning of “pro-choice reasoning.†He then subjected that reasoning to the same limited confines he chose for his reasoning, which rendered laughable the otherwise plausible “pro-choice reasoning.†It’s essentially a strawman error, though I’m sure it was unintentional. [/q]
Mind elaborating?
Thank you Lobo for directing me here. I’m delighted you used the work of an 18-year old college freshman. Guess I did better than I thought I did!
Welcome! Yes, you did very well, and apparently your Professor agreed in that he rewarded your work with an A.
Sure. I’ll start by saying that I don’t dispute the first half of your argument. Given the scientific definition of “life” or “alive” and the NINDS study (I think you cited this, though the dates don’t match), it is easy to conclude that a fetus is “alive” by the 28 week mark.
I take issue with second half, where you extend that conclusion to cover the first 27 weeks as well. For that, your logic appears to be:
- If it’s alive at 28 weeks, it’s a “person” at that point in time.
- You assert three requirements for “personhood”
- You give several examples of humans generally regarded as “persons” that don’t meet those requirements
- Therefore, you conclude that the whole line of reasoning is invalid.
- You then fall back on the assumption of “personhood” is static.
If I have made an error in summarizing your position, please correct me.
As Glib pointed out several times, pro-lifers tend to claim that all human life is of equal value. From that perspective, the question is boolean: “Is she/he/it ‘human’?”
However, pro-choice proponents acknowledge, consciously or not, that the question is bigger than just human life. Therefore, we ask, “What is the intrinsic value of this individual?” That’s definitely not a very PC thing to ask, but that doesn’t mean it’s invalid. As you correctly pointed out, our perception is fallible, so we should tread very cautiously when attempting to determine that value, but we need to try nonetheless.
Once you’ve accepted that individuals, of any species, can have various values, it’s no real leap to suggest that that value can vary over time due to changing circumstances. Thus, from conception to burial, it is also possible that an individual may cross the “personhood” threshold, in either direction, at various times.
Now, I’m not trying to convince you that this perspective is accurate. I’m well aware how futile it is to try to “convert” someone. I’m just trying to point out that your perspective prevented you from fully comprehending and analyzing the “pro-choice reasoning.” That was a central to your conclusion that a zygote is a “person” because it becomes a fetus which is clearly a person, so your conclusion is rendered unsubstantiated.
“but you’re one of the few that regularly feels the need to be condescending.”
Jeff–
I have simply answered your arguments directly. What you see as “condescending” are probably sarcastic jabs that *I like to pepper my comments with when I interact with you because, truth be told, it’s fun to needle you.
Talk about “condescending.” Jeff, it’s funny how nearly every time you accuse me of something, I can find you doing the exact same thing on the very thread we’re discussing:
“However, pro-choice proponents acknowledge, consciously or not, that the question is bigger than just human life.”
No Jeff, it is not “bigger than just human life.” On this planet there is nothing either philosophically or physically “bigger” than human life — that is the very foundation of all our laws. Talk about pomposity — You are contending here that pro-abortionists are engaged in some higher level of intellectuality regarding this issue than people who respect the sanctity of human life. It’s no sign of superiority to make something that really is simple into some faux-agonizing set of questions about the “intrinsic value of the individual,” which of course puts in your own subjective hands the decision about who deserves to live and who doesn’t. That is where we differ Jeff — you seem to think that there should be some sort of legal “who lives, who dies” council, presumably staffed by “enlightened” members of NARAL and the Hemlock Society, who would decide the “intrinsic value” of each human life. That’s frightening.
If you admit you are not sure about the “personhood” (another invented obfuscation of Singerites) of a human at a certain stage of life, why do you err on the side of killing and instead say, “OK, I’m not sure, so we should allow the killing of that “might-be person” until we are sure of his personhood, even though, of course, this is a nebulous classification, nonetheless…forceps” If you’re not sure whether or not someone is standing behind a curtain, your default position is not to fire your rifle into the curtain, right? You err on the side of NOT killing that “potential person,” no? You look both ways when crossing the street, right?
Oh yeah, I knew there was another thing; You invent ridiculous strawmen…
As far as viability goes, I know several young adults who can’t survive more than a few hours without support from their parents. Can they be aborted too?