And that makes it OK to demonize abortions and the people and places that perform them? That makes it OK to use loaded rhetoric about how they "cut up the fetuses for spare parts"?
Sorry, when and where did I "demonize" anything, or use that loaded rhetoric? Or are you simply debating with me as a "representative" of sorts of what some pro-lifers do? Not sure whether you were referring to actions I'd taken, or that others you think I agree with have taken...
And I'm sorry, but if the unborn aborted babies are dead, and their organs can still save other lives, I'm for it.
As I said:
I guess I agree that if abortions are already being done over the place, at least some "usefulness" (I hesitate to use the word "good" in this situation) is coming from them.
Well if the Bible says that it's not alive until first breath, and the bible is supposed to be the beginning of knowledge, then I would assume that would mean that the baby is not alive yet, no? I mean most of the arguments for life beginning at conception in your first link are not unambiguous statements of divine revelation, the concept is teased out based on the use of personal pronouns for people after the fact.
The Bible has passages that can be understood either way if you take them far enough out of context. The ones referring to God forming, knowing, and destining us in the womb are more specifically relevant to the "When does life begin?" question than are the ones about life being breathed into post-birth now-dead people.
Bear with me for a sec, but this is iron ore. If I were to build a self aware robot out of steel smelted from that ore and I was talking to the robot about it afterwords, I might refer to that ore with a 'you'. that does not mean that the ore is a robot, that doesn't mean that at the time I would have considered it as such, or even after the fact. it's just a quirk of language.
That iron ore, under the natural course of events, will never become a robot. However, all throughout nature, conception leads to miniature duplicates of the two creatures that conceived it.
That ore was made into a robot through - if I dare say it - intelligent design... blueprints, if you will. The ore was the raw material that needed external shaping and manipulating to become the final product - a robot.
That external shaping and manipulating - the blueprints - are part of our genetic code (regardless of whether you believe in evolution, creation, or even both). Our bodies are processing, manufacturing, self-repairing, and self-replicating factories all in one (ok, the self-replicating part needs two factories). We are what we eat is very true if you think about it. Where does the material that composes our bodies - at any stage of life from conception (or even the makeup of the sperm and egg before that) onwards - come from? Our food. Those raw materials are broken down by our bodies and converted into whatever the body needs it to be.
So technically, you could take pictures of your food and say that's "you" if you want. But without those blueprints, that food will never become people any more than that ore will become a robot. Once those blueprints are in-place and being followed, the situation changes. Robot components are constructed and awaiting final assembly. Egg and sperm have merged genetic code and are developing into the "final" form.
So just like those robot components on the conveyor belts in the factory are inevitably going to become a robot (barring intervention), so to are the combined egg and sperm going to become a person (barring intervention). The parallel can only be taken so far though - robots can be switched on and off, whereas that egg+sperm develops and grows from the moment of conception onwards (both before and after birth).
I guess what I'm saying is that while the comparison is useful to extent, it ultimately doesn't help. Iron ore is to robots what food is to people. A conceived fetus has no real robotic parallel - the closest thing would be robot components undergoing final assembly, but there are still differences.
But now there is a bigger issue here, If there are in fact two biblically derived lines of thought on the subject, and one of these lines says that life begins at first breath, then how can you condemn people with such certainty? it doesn't seem like such a cut and dry issue as most pro-life people want it to be, even if you are willing to entertain biblical authority.
Just like the woman in the video said, there are laws, and those laws are lent to interpretation in different ways. It depends on what your interpretation is.
