|
capliberty
Stranger


Registered: 04/23/06
Posts: 1,949
Last seen: 14 years, 5 months
|
Re: Is Abortion murder? [Re: Icelander]
#5960473 - 08/13/06 08:44 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
n other words what business is it of yours? Are you so sure you are right about everything you believe? Whats really behind all of this wanting to control others
I got one for you, what business is it of mine, I guess its none of my business if its not my situation, [but] what if the female get knocked up and her boyfriend wants to keep the child thats growing in her womb, but her mom talks her into getting an abortion because she thinks its the responsible thing to do, so basically she decides to respect her moms wishes and get an abortion, so basically nullifies any decision by the father in keeping the child, he has no choice or power to keep his own child, even though he would want to keep he/she/it, the unborn child, to me its kinda not fair, looking from the fathers prospective to not have a choice on the matter
Edited by capliberty (08/13/06 08:45 PM)
|
Icelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery


Registered: 03/15/05
Posts: 95,368
Loc: underbelly
|
Re: Is Abortion murder? [Re: capliberty]
#5960532 - 08/13/06 08:58 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
That's nature. Men don't have babies so they don't get that choice. It's the womans choice and that's just the way it is in nature. Why fight that?
Millions of organisms of all types live and die each second and nobody worries too much. We start to worry when we get egotistical about what is mine. But nothing belongs to us except the experience we have living our own personal life. And I think thats an illusion too. All this other attachment is just so much cultural programming IMO.
-------------------- "Don't believe everything you think". -Anom. " All that lives was born to die"-Anom. With much wisdom comes much sorrow, The more knowledge, the more grief. Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC
|
Diploid
Cuban


Registered: 01/09/03
Posts: 19,274
Loc: Rabbit Hole
|
Re: Is Abortion murder? [Re: musicturkey]
#5960691 - 08/13/06 09:38 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
i see this "clump of cells" as human
But that is a belief based in emotion, not rationality or facts. That clump of cells isn't viable outside the mother. It has no brain. It has no spine, no nervous system, and it isn't sentient.
The emotional belief that somehow an egg and sperm aren't a human being but when they link up a web of electromagnetic forces that hold the two groups of genetic atoms together they somehow, magically, become something different is irrational.
Exactly when a human comes into existence is a fuzzy line somewhere after the brain has developed and the clump of cells begins to function independently of the mother to some extent.
-------------------- Republican Values: 1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you. 2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child. 3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer. 4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.
Edited by Diploid (08/13/06 09:44 PM)
|
Silversoul
Rhizome


Registered: 01/01/05
Posts: 23,576
Loc: The Barricades
|
Re: Is Abortion murder? [Re: Icelander]
#5960698 - 08/13/06 09:39 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Icelander said: Why do you care what someone else decides to do with their body? Do you really believe you have the right to decide this for others? Isn't that a tad arrogant and egotistical? They aren't harming you are they? Why isn't it enough to live your own life and let others do the same? In other words what business is it of yours? Are you so sure you are right about everything you believe? Whats really behind all of this wanting to control others?
Although I disagree with musicturkey's views, I can definitely understand where he's coming from. If I believed, as pro-lifers do, that a fetus or embryo was equivalent to a baby outside of the womb, then I too would be appalled at the practice of abortion, and would do everything in my power to stop it.
--------------------
|
Diploid
Cuban


Registered: 01/09/03
Posts: 19,274
Loc: Rabbit Hole
|
Re: Is Abortion murder? [Re: Icelander]
#5960718 - 08/13/06 09:42 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Why isn't it enough to live your own life and let others do the same? In other words what business is it of yours?
To be fair to the religious crowd, they see prohibition of abortion as the protection of a baby. If I saw someone hurting a baby, I too would step in and stop it if I could.
The problem is that they (pro-lifers) see an intricate assemblage of molecules as a human out of their religious dogma instead of look at the hard earned knowledge given us by medical science to step above dogma and come to opinions based on the facts, not the teachings of the church.
-------------------- Republican Values: 1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you. 2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child. 3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer. 4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.
|
Silversoul
Rhizome


Registered: 01/01/05
Posts: 23,576
Loc: The Barricades
|
Re: Is Abortion murder? [Re: Diploid]
#5960741 - 08/13/06 09:46 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
I don't think you necessarily need religion to think that that clump of cells is a human. It has human DNA, afterall. The point at which someone becomes a human is a tricky question, and conception seems no more arbitrary an answer than anything else. Science hasn't really attempted to answer that question.
--------------------
|
Diploid
Cuban


Registered: 01/09/03
Posts: 19,274
Loc: Rabbit Hole
|
Re: Is Abortion murder? [Re: Silversoul]
#5960763 - 08/13/06 09:50 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
An egg and sperm each also have DNA, but few people think they're human. That's not a good criteria for deciding if a thing is human.
The distinguishing feature that makes us human exists in our brain. Until that develops, calling a brainless mass of cells a human is like calling an egg or sperm human.
-------------------- Republican Values: 1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you. 2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child. 3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer. 4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.
|
Silversoul
Rhizome


Registered: 01/01/05
Posts: 23,576
Loc: The Barricades
|
Re: Is Abortion murder? [Re: Diploid]
#5960785 - 08/13/06 09:54 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Diploid said: The distinguishing feature that makes us human exists in our brain.
Is that the official scientific answer, or just your arbitrary assumption? Does anything with a brain count as human? Surely you wouldn't consider a dog to be human. Does the brain have to be at a certain stage of advancement? Afterall, a newborn infant's brain isn't fully developed either. And self-awareness doesn't really develop until later in the child's formative years.
Your answer is as arbitrary as any. And for this reason, I believe that abortion is an issue on which equally reasonable people can disagree strongly(though there's plenty of unreasonable people yelling on both sides).
--------------------
|
Diploid
Cuban


Registered: 01/09/03
Posts: 19,274
Loc: Rabbit Hole
|
Re: Is Abortion murder? [Re: Silversoul]
#5960807 - 08/13/06 09:59 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Is that the official scientific answer, or just your arbitrary assumption?
It's my opinion. Everything in this thread is opinion.
Does anything with a brain count as human?
No, anything with a functional human brain counts as human. A headless body kept alive with a heart-lung machine isn't human any more than a headless week old embryo.
Afterall, a newborn infant's brain isn't fully developed either.
But it is viable independent of its mother. It is already learning, looking around, hearing, and forming neural connections. Besides, I'm not suggesting a near-term fetus is not human, but I do say a week old fetus with no hint of a brain is not a human. Where the line is crossed is very fuzzy.
-------------------- Republican Values: 1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you. 2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child. 3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer. 4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.
|
Silversoul
Rhizome


Registered: 01/01/05
Posts: 23,576
Loc: The Barricades
|
Re: Is Abortion murder? [Re: Diploid]
#5960813 - 08/13/06 10:02 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Diploid said: No, anything with a human brain counts as human.
Why would the same not be true of DNA?
Quote:
But it is viable independent of its mother. It is already learning, looking around, hearing, and forming neural connections. Besides, I'm not suggesting a near-term fetus is not human, but I do say a week old fetus with no hint of a brain is not a human. Where the line is crossed is very fuzzy.
While I agree, I still think the distinction is rather arbitrary. I see no reason why a brain should be the determining factor here.
--------------------
|
Diploid
Cuban


Registered: 01/09/03
Posts: 19,274
Loc: Rabbit Hole
|
Re: Is Abortion murder? [Re: Silversoul]
#5960822 - 08/13/06 10:05 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
While I agree, I still think the distinction is rather arbitrary. I see no reason why a brain should be the determining factor here.
Because a human missing a kidney is still a human. Same missing a liver, or a leg, or even a heart using an artificial one. But (metaphysics aside) no one exists without their brain.
-------------------- Republican Values: 1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you. 2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child. 3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer. 4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.
|
porcupine
Stranger

Registered: 01/09/05
Posts: 1,289
Loc: MI
Last seen: 11 years, 10 months
|
Re: Is Abortion murder? [Re: Icelander]
#5960908 - 08/13/06 10:34 PM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Icelander said: Why do you care what someone else decides to do with their body?
so if a pregnant mother uses copious amounts of cocaine and alcohol, you wouldn't care? if not, fine but i dont think its that difficult to understand why someone might.
Edited by porcupine (08/13/06 10:34 PM)
|
MushmanTheManic
Stranger

Registered: 04/21/05
Posts: 4,587
|
|
Apparently Mushmanthemanic uses a projector for a screen.
A projector for a screen? Preposterous!
I've righteously decided to take the higher path and ignore this violent personalism directed towards my monitor and its mighty resolution! 
Anyhoo... (...I never say that word in real life, honestly...)
So, what are the consequences of allowing abortions? It seems as if nearly everyone, with the exclusion of Diploid's first comment on this subject, has taken a moral or deontological approach. Whether you believe it is immoral to allow abortions or that is moral acceptable, this judgement cannot be verified in any empiric sense. It is probably based on a secular or, more likely, religious belief system that has the same problem. Morality is based in faith, it is assumed, and consequentially it's up for grabs.
|
Diploid
Cuban


Registered: 01/09/03
Posts: 19,274
Loc: Rabbit Hole
|
|
Anyhoo
I don't think that's a real word.
-------------------- Republican Values: 1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you. 2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child. 3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer. 4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.
Edited by Diploid (08/15/06 06:34 AM)
|
Amber_Glow
Sat Chit Anand

Registered: 09/02/02
Posts: 1,543
Last seen: 10 years, 10 months
|
Re: Is Abortion murder? [Re: Basilides]
#5962079 - 08/14/06 09:05 AM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
A clump of cells, a fetus, or whatever stage we are referring to, whether or not it has reached 'life' or official 'humanhood' isn't the most important question for me. Either way, this clump of cells still has a potential for life. It will be born and grow to be a human with a life and all of the wonderful things that come with that (yes, it is possible it could miscarry or some other malady could present itself, but you know what I mean). To abort is to stop this life from coming to be.
On the other hand, further down the line, each sperm and each egg has its own possible potentiality for life, but it is impossible to see each of these potential lives born.
Where to draw the line?
I am undecided on the moral right or wrongness of abortion.
*Aside: I am a vegan and I'm part of a few vegan online communities (if you don't know, a vegan does not eat meat or ANY animal products at all). You'd think someone with so much respect for life would be against abortion. I made a post in one of the communities and almost all of them were pro-choice and angry that I would suggest there seemed to be opposition between being prochoice and vegan. Go figure. (I think many 'vegans' are more concerned with being against mainstream cultural and being anti-right wing than they are with living their own personal morals)*
|
The_Red_Crayon
Exposer of Truth


Registered: 08/13/03
Posts: 13,673
Loc: Smokey Mtns. TN
Last seen: 6 years, 8 months
|
Re: Is Abortion murder? [Re: porcupine]
#5962138 - 08/14/06 09:37 AM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
first of all that's not the point he made, second of all, you can't generalize all pro lifers as being like george bush.
May not, but both are very alike. I find lots of pro-lifers are also for the war in Iraq, I guess if thousands of people are dieing out of sight out of mind... but heaven forbid a aborted fetus.
I really hate to say this to most people, but in the animal kingdom do you know what happens to animals that overpopulate. They run out of food, and are destroyed by disease, overpopulation destroys the balance of nature. Many scientists say that by 2100 the US will only have a sustainable population of 500 million people. That is only 200 million away.
Overpopulation hastens the spread of diseases, If people cant control the amount of new humans being birthed into this country, then believe me Earth will find a way to keep the Human population down.
|
RRRR
Rapture Ready


Registered: 07/26/06
Posts: 170
Last seen: 16 years, 9 months
|
|
"Over population" isn't a question of human population, but rather resource management.
Believe it or not, but population rates are actually declining. They have been for the past years.
-------------------- Now when He was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, "The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, 'See here!' or 'See there!' For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you." Luke 17:20-21 (New King James Version)
|
The_Red_Crayon
Exposer of Truth


Registered: 08/13/03
Posts: 13,673
Loc: Smokey Mtns. TN
Last seen: 6 years, 8 months
|
Re: Is Abortion murder? [Re: RRRR]
#5962207 - 08/14/06 10:07 AM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
According to the UN its a serious problem
Quote:
The growing world population
The world is in the midst of an unprecedented expansion of human numbers. It took hundreds of thousands of years for our species to reach a population level of 10 million, only 10,000 years ago. This number grew to 100 million people about 2,000 years ago and to 2.5 billion by 1950. Within less than the span of a single lifetime, it has more than doubled to 5.5 billion in 1993.
This accelerated population growth resulted from rapidly lowered death rates (particularly infant and child mortality rates), combined with sustained high birth rates. Success in reducing death rates is attributable to several factors: increases in food production and distribution, improvements in public health (water and sanitation) and in medical technology (vaccines and antibiotics), along with gains in education and standards of living within many developing nations.
Over the last 30 years, many regions of the world have also dramatically reduced birth rates. Some have already achieved family sizes small enough, if maintained, to result eventually in a halt to population growth. These successes have led to a slowing of the world's rate of population increase. The shift from high to low death and birth rates has been called the "demographic transition."
The rate at which the demographic transition progresses worldwide will determine the ultimate level of the human population. The lag between downward shifts of death and birth rates may be many decades or even several generations, and during these periods population growth will continue inexorably. We face the prospect of a further doubling of the population within the next half century. Most of this growth will take place in developing countries.
Consider three hypothetical scenarios* for the levels of human population in the century ahead:
Fertility declines within sixty years from the current rate of 3.3 to a global replacement average of 2.1 children per woman. The current population momentum would lead to at least 11 billion people before leveling off at the end of the 21st century. Fertility reduces to an average of 1.7 children per woman early in the next century. Human population growth would peak at 7.8 billion persons in the middle of the 21st century and decline slowly thereafter. Fertility declines to no lower than 2.5 children per woman. Global population would grow to 19 billion by the year 2100, and to 28 billion by 2150. The actual outcome will have enormous implications for the human condition and for the natural environment on which all life depends.
Key determinants of population growth
High fertility rates have historically been strongly correlated with poverty, high childhood mortality rates, low status and educational levels of women, deficiencies in reproductive health services, and inadequate availability and acceptance of contraceptives. Falling fertility rates and the demographic transition are generally associated with improved standards of living, such as increased per capita incomes, increased life expectancy, lowered infant mortality, increased adult literacy, and higher rates of female education and employment.
Even with improved economic conditions, nations, regions, and societies will experience different demographic patterns due to varying cultural influences. The value placed upon large families (especially among underprivileged rural populations in less developed countries who benefit least from the process of development), the assurance of security for the elderly, the ability of women to control reproduction, and the status and rights of women within families and within societies are significant cultural factors affecting family size and the demand for family planning services.
Even with a demand for family planning services, the adequate availability of and access to family planning and other reproductive health services are essential in facilitating slowing of the population growth rate. Also, access to education and the ability of women to determine their own economic security influence their reproductive decisions.
Population growth, resource consumption, and the environment
Throughout history and especially during the twentieth century, environmental degradation has primarily been a product of our efforts to secure improved standards of food, clothing, shelter, comfort, and recreation for growing numbers of people. The magnitude of the threat to the ecosystem is linked to human population size and resource use per person. Resource use, waste production and environmental degradation are accelerated by population growth. They are further exacerbated by consumption habits, certain technological developments, and particular patterns of social organization and resource management.
As human numbers further increase, the potential for irreversible changes of far reaching magnitude also increases. Indicators of severe environmental stress include the growing loss of biodiversity, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing deforestation worldwide, stratospheric ozone depletion, acid rain, loss of topsoil, and shortages of water, food, and fuel-wood in many parts of the world.
While both developed and developing countries have contributed to global environmental problems, developed countries with 85 percent of the gross world product and 23 percent of its population account for the largest part of mineral and fossil-fuel consumption, resulting in significant environmental impacts. With current technologies, present levels of consumption by the developed world are likely to lead to serious negative consequences for all countries. This is especially apparent with the increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide and trace gases that have accompanied industrialization, which have the potential for changing global climate and raising sea level.
In both rich and poor countries, local environmental problems arise from direct pollution from energy use and other industrial activities, inappropriate agricultural practices, population concentration, inadequate environmental management, and inattention to environmental goals. When current economic production has been the overriding priority and inadequate attention has been given to environmental protection, local environmental damage has led to serious negative impacts on health and major impediments to future economic growth. Restoring the environment, even where still possible, is far more expensive and time consuming than managing it wisely in the first place; even rich countries have difficulty in affording extensive environmental remediation efforts.
The relationships between human population, economic development, and the natural environment are complex. Examination of local and regional case studies reveals the influence and interaction of many variables. For example, environmental and economic impacts vary with population composition and distribution, and with rural-urban and international migrations. Furthermore, poverty and lack of economic opportunities stimulate faster population growth and increase incentives for environmental degradation by encouraging exploitation of marginal resources.
Both developed and developing countries face a great dilemma in reorienting their productive activities in the direction of a more harmonious interaction with nature. This challenge is accentuated by the uneven stages of development. If all people of the world consumed fossil fuels and other natural resources at the rate now characteristic of developed countries (and with current technologies), this would greatly intensify our already unsustainable demands on the biosphere. Yet development is a legitimate expectation of less developed and transitional countries.
The earth is finite
The growth of population over the last half century was for a time matched by similar world-wide increases in utilizable resources. However, in the last decade food production from both land and sea has declined relative to population growth. The area of agricultural land has shrunk, both through soil erosion and reduced possibilities of irrigation. The availability of water is already a constraint in some countries. These are warnings that the earth is finite, and that natural systems are being pushed ever closer to their limits.
Quality of life and the environment
Our common goal is improving the quality of life for all people, those living today and succeeding generations, ensuring their social, economic, and personal well-being with guarantees of fundamental human rights; and allowing them to live harmoniously with a protected environment. We believe that this goal can be achieved, provided we are willing to undertake the requisite social change. Given time, political will, and intelligent use of science and technology, human ingenuity can remove many constraints on improving human welfare worldwide, finding substitutes for wasteful practices, and protecting the natural environment.
But time is short and appropriate policy decisions are urgently needed. The ability of humanity to reap the benefits of its ingenuity depends on its skill in governance and management, and on strategies for dealing with problems such as widespread poverty, increased numbers of aged persons, inadequate health care and limited educational opportunities for large groups of people, limited capital for investment, environmental degradation in every region of the world, and unmet needs for family planning services in both developing and developed countries. In our judgement, humanity's ability to deal successfully with its social, economic, and environmental problems will require the achievement of zero population growth within the lifetime of our children.
Human reproductive health
The timing and spacing of pregnancies are important for the health of the mother, her children, and her family. Most maternal deaths are due to unsafe practices in terminating pregnancies, a lack of readily available services for high-risk pregnancies, and women having too many children or having them too early and too late in life.
Millions of people still do not have adequate access to family planning services and suitable contraceptives. Only about one-half of married women of reproductive age are currently practicing contraception. Yet as the director-general of UNICEF put it, ''Family planning could bring more benefits to more people at less cost than any other single technology now available to the human race." Existing contraceptive methods could go far toward alleviating the unmet need if they were available and used in sufficient numbers, through a variety of channels and distribution, sensitively adapted to local needs.
But most contraceptives are for use by women, who consequently bear the risks to health. The development of contraceptives for male use continues to lag. Better contraceptives are needed for both men and women, but developing new contraceptive approaches is slow and financially unattractive to industry. Further work is needed on an ideal spectrum of contraceptive methods that are safe, efficacious, easy to use and deliver, reasonably priced, user-controlled and responsive, appropriate for special populations and age cohorts, reversible, and at least some of which protect against sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS.
Reducing fertility rates, however, cannot be achieved merely by providing more contraceptives. The demand for these services has to be addressed. Even when family planning and other reproductive health services are widely available, the social and economic status of women affects individual decisions to use them. The ability of women to make decisions about family size is greatly affected by gender roles within society and in sexual relationships. Ensuring equal opportunity for women in all aspects of society is crucial.
Thus all reproductive health services must be implemented as a part of broader strategies to raise the quality of human life. They must include the following:
Efforts to reduce and eliminate gender-based inequalities. Women and men should have equal opportunities and responsibilities in sexual, social, and economic life. Provision of convenient family planning and other reproductive health services with a wide variety of safe contraceptive options. irrespective of an individual's ability to pay. Encouragement of voluntary approaches to family planning and elimination of unsafe and coercive practices. Development policies that address basic needs such as clean water, sanitation, broad primary health care measures and education; and that foster empowerment of the poor and women. "The adoption of a smaller family norm, with consequent decline in total fertility, should not be viewed only in demographic terms. It means that people, and particularly women, are empowered and are taking control of their fertility and the planning of their lives; it means that children are born by choice, not by chance, and that births are better planned; and it means that families are able to invest relatively more in a smaller number of beloved children, trying to prepare them for a better future."*
Sustainability of the natural world as everyone's responsibility
In addressing environmental problems, all countries face hard choices. This is particularly so when it is perceived that there are short-term tradeoffs between economic growth and environmental protection, and where there are limited financial resources. But the downside risks to the earth—our environmental life support system—over the next generation and beyond are too great to ignore. Current trends in environmental degradation from human activities combined with the unavoidable increase in global population will take us into unknown territory.
Other factors, such as inappropriate governmental policies, also contribute in nearly every case. Many environmental problems in both rich and poor countries appear to be the result of policies that are misguided even when viewed on short-term economic grounds. If a longer-term view is taken, environmental goals assume an even higher priority.
The prosperity and technology of the industrialized countries give them greater opportunities and greater responsibility for addressing environmental problems worldwide. Their resources make it easier to forestall and to ameliorate local environmental problems. Developed countries need to become more efficient in both resource use and environmental protection, and to encourage an ethic that eschews wasteful consumption. If prices, taxes, and regulatory policies include environmental costs, consumption habits will be influenced. The industrialized countries need to assist developing countries and communities with funding and expertise in combating both global and local environmental problems. Mobilizing "technology for environment" should be an integral part of this new ethic of sustainable development.
For all governments it is essential to incorporate environmental goals at the outset in legislation, economic planning, and priority setting; and to provide appropriate incentives for public and private institutions, communities, and individuals to operate in environmentally benign ways. Tradeoffs between environmental and economic goals can be reduced through wise policies. For dealing with global environmental problems, all countries of the world need to work collectively through treaties and conventions, as has occurred with such issues as global climate change and biodiversity, and to develop innovative financing mechanisms that facilitate environmental protection.
What science and technology can contribute toward enhancing the human prospect
As scientists cognizant of the history of scientific progress and aware of the potential of science for contributing to human welfare, it is our collective judgement that continuing population growth poses a great risk to humanity. Furthermore, it is not prudent to rely on science and technology alone to solve problems created by rapid population growth, wasteful resource consumption, and poverty.
The natural and social sciences are nevertheless crucial for developing new understanding so that governments and other institutions can act more effectively, and for developing new options for limiting population growth, protecting the natural environment, and improving the quality of human life.
Scientists, engineers, and health professionals should study and provide advice on:
Cultural, social, economic, religious, educational, and political factors that affect reproductive behavior, family size, and successful family planning. Conditions for human development, including the impediments that result from economic inefficiencies: social inequalities; and ethnic, class, or gender biases. Global and local environmental change (affecting climate, biodiversity, soils, water, air), its causes (including the roles of poverty, population growth, economic growth, technology, national and international politics), and policies to mitigate its effects. Strategies and tools for improving all aspects of education and human resource development, with special attention to women. Improved family planning programs, contraceptive options for both sexes, and other reproductive health services, with special attention to needs of women; and improved general primary health care, especially maternal and child health care. Transitions to economies that provide increased human welfare with less consumption of energy and materials. Improved mechanisms for building indigenous capacity in the natural sciences, engineering, medicine, social sciences, and management in developing countries, including an increased capability of conducting integrated interdisciplinary assessments of societal issues. Technologies and strategies for sustainable development (agriculture, energy, resource use, pollution control, materials recycling, environmental management and protection). Networks, treaties, and conventions that protect the global commons. Strengthened world-wide exchanges of scientists in education, training, and research. Action is needed now
Humanity is approaching a crisis point with respect to the interlocking issues of population, environment, and development. Scientists today have the opportunity and responsibility to mount a concerted effort to confront our human predicament. But science and technology can only provide tools and blueprints for action and social change. It is the governments and international decision-makers, including those meeting in Cairo next September at the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development, who hold the key to our future. We urge them to take incisive action now and to adopt an integrated policy on population and sustainable development on a global scale. With each year's delay the problems become more acute. Let 1994 be remembered as the year when the people of the world decided to act together for the benefit of future generations.
|
Diploid
Cuban


Registered: 01/09/03
Posts: 19,274
Loc: Rabbit Hole
|
Re: Is Abortion murder? [Re: RRRR]
#5962227 - 08/14/06 10:14 AM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Believe it or not, but population rates are actually declining.
Actually, it's the rate of increase in the rate of growth that's declining. The rate of growth is still staggeringly high.
My guess is that the only reason the rate of increase in the rate of growth is dropping is because there are already so many people in the undeveloped world, and so many are born every day that they're starving to death faster than they're being born.
With that in mind, ask yourself which is better: aborting a clump of cells, or bringing it into the world to likely starve?
By the way (and it keeps coming to this, doesn't it) much of the blame for the misery of malnutrition in the world belongs squarely at the door of the Church whose moronic popes insist that using a condom or a pill to prevent conception is a sin against God.
And, astonishingly, John Paul, in a mass he gave in Brazil a few years ago, asked the throngs gathered to have more children because there is a shortage of new young people joining the church! I'm not making this up.
These are the same people who have convinced (brainwashed?) huge masses in the developed world that abortion is a sin, and for the same reasons.
-------------------- Republican Values: 1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you. 2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child. 3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer. 4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.
Edited by Diploid (08/14/06 10:28 AM)
|
Silversoul
Rhizome


Registered: 01/01/05
Posts: 23,576
Loc: The Barricades
|
Re: Is Abortion murder? [Re: Diploid]
#5962270 - 08/14/06 10:32 AM (17 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Diploid said: While I agree, I still think the distinction is rather arbitrary. I see no reason why a brain should be the determining factor here.
Because a human missing a kidney is still a human. Same missing a liver, or a leg, or even a heart using an artificial one. But (metaphysics aside) no one exists without their brain.
A human without a brain still exists. They simply don't live. And if the scientific reductionist view is right, then there's no reason why an artificial brain shouldn't be possible. In fact, if we're talking about the brain of a fetus or even a newborn infant, then it shouldn't be that hard at all to duplicate.
--------------------
|
|