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Flame » in reply to re: Adoption

The difference
Mary Anne — (archived)

I see no difference if I had been killed back then, or killed today.

The difference is, back then, the embryo or fetus that would become you had no functioning cerebrum. Today, you do.

I understand your position, and I understand its basis. I appreciate that you are against abortion because of it. Yet I don't agree.

When women are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term because the law compels them to do so, they become little more than incubators for almost a year of their lives, appliances carrying out the will of the state.

The state only has a defensible interest in the case of fetuses in an advanced stage of development, when the equipment for consciousness exists and could indeed be functioning: one citizen's rights against another's. This is why third-trimester abortions are so controversial for more people than first- or early second-trimester abortions are.

This argument concerns at what point a zygote crosses over from a potential human to an actual one. You say at conception. I say at consciousness. The Catholic Church says, as sperm and egg.

You also say that women should not have this choice to make. I say that women, having already reached the threshold of consciousness, take prescedence over organized cells that have not, every time. We will never see eye-to-eye on this.

Regards--
Mary Anne

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