And Some of Those Aborted Could Have Become Precious MS-13...

...Didn't think of that, didja Nance?

You May NOT Question the Narrative; The Children Know Best

Teacher Placed on Paid Leave for Questioning Walkout for Gun Control

Sacramento, California, teacher Julianne Benzel was placed on paid leave for questioning whether students for life would be allowed to walk out of class the way students for gun control were.

Her questions were viewed as “anti-abortion” by some, which resulted in complaints and, finally, in Benzel being placed on paid leave.

Abortion is GOOD child-killing; Surely you know that and are smart enough not to question it! Oops:

Student Suspended for Refusing to Leave Class During Gun Control Walkout

Save The Lives of Children by the Millions...

Preventing Mass Murder With Mass Murder: Another Griffin Embarrasses Herself

Reporter Becky Griffin: Fewer Mass Shootings if More Babies Were Aborted

Especially effective for unwanted children: just kill them, and move on.

Planned Parenthood: Kill the Living, Breathing, Independent "Baby On The Table"

Planned Parenthood Condemns House Passage of Bill to Ensure Babies Born Alive During Abortion Receive Care

Here's part of the reason for passage of the bill in the House: A representative of Planned Parenthood made this statement in Florida:

During a subcommittee meeting regarding H.B. 1129 – the Infants Born Alive Act – Planned Parenthood lobbyist, Alisa Laport Snow, suggested that killing a baby who survived an abortion is acceptable as long as the physician and patient agreed to it.

The morality of abortion is zero. Watch the worming around in this video:

If You Thought Planned Parenthood Doesn't Need Taxpayer Funding to do Abortions...

...then consider this:

A Planned Parenthood clinic in Iowa that has performed abortions for nearly two decades has closed after the state diverted taxpayer funds to community health centers that do not perform abortions.

“After nearly two decades in the Quad Cities, on Friday, December 29, 2017, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland (PPHeartland) will officially close their Bettendorf location, a move directly resulting from defunding by extreme Iowa lawmakers,” the abortion giant announced in a press statement Wednesday.

Suzanna de Baca, PPHeartland President and CEO said, “Gov. Kim Reynolds and anti-woman lawmakers forced us to make some extremely difficult changes this year in order to continue providing care for as many patients as possible.”

PP is - along with being killers - a deplorable parasite on the taxpayer:

Judge Upholds Controversial Bill Requiring Taxpayers to Fund Abortions in Illinois

Frozen Embryos are Citizens of California

Louisiana judge rules Sofia Vergara’s frozen embryos are ‘citizens of California’

Loeb brought the lawsuit back in December and last week a judge threw out the case on the basis that it was filed outside the proper jurisdiction, given that the embryos were created in California. In court documents obtained by TMZ, the judge even kept up the theme Loeb started in the lawsuit, ruling that “Emma” and “Isabella” are “citizens of California.”

Hoo Boy! This will create an ABORTION firestorm in California, I'm betting. COOL!

The Push to Defenestrate Margaret Sanger, Inventor of Black Genocide via Abortion

A group of African American pastors have demanded that the Smithsonian remove a statue of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger.

The museum displays the Sanger bust in their “Struggle for Justice” exhibit, which is supposed to honor “champions of justice”.

The museum has so far refused to do so.

Smithsonian Director Kim Sajet stated, “There is no ‘moral test’ for people to be accepted into the National Portrait Gallery.”

Now, the black pastors, along with other pro-life advocates and Republican Senator Ted Cruz, have taken it one step further, rallying outside the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery to demand the removal of the statue.

They pointed out that from from being a champion of justice, Sanger supported eugenics to rid the nation of those she deemed “defective” and “feeble-minded”, by stopping the growth of their populations, particularly blacks and other minorities.

Star Parker said: “Margaret Sanger is a racist who wanted to end the black population through birth control and abortion. But The Smithsonian, funded by our tax dollars, celebrates this woman, even mentioning her advocacy of eugenics! They don’t even hide it! It is breath-taking in its idiocy.”

“That’s why Senator Ted Cruz, black pastors, and I will not only demand the removal of Sanger from this exhibit, but also demand an apology to all Americans!” she continued.

Margaret Sanger books reveal how she viewed minorities and the poor. In her book, “Pivot of Civilization”, she describes African-Americans and immigrants as “human weeds”, “reckless breeders”, and “spawning… human beings who never should have been born”.

In “Women and the New Race”, Sanger even wrote: “[We should] apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.”

Sadly, you won’t hear about this protest from the ‘fake news’ mainstream news media who know about Sanger’s racist views, but conveniently overlook them as well as this event, because it doesn’t fit in with their political agenda.

The pastor’s wrote, “Perhaps the Gallery is unaware that Ms. Sanger supported black eugenics, a racist attitude toward black and other minority babies, an elitist attitude toward those she regarded as ‘the feeble minded’; speaking at a rally of Ku Klux Klan women; and communications with Hitler sympathizers.”

They added, “Also the notorious ‘Negro Project’, which sought to limit, if not eliminate black births, was her brainchild. Despite these well-documented facts of history, her bust sits proudly in your gallery as a hero of justice. The obvious incongruity is staggering!”

A report by Lifenews pointed out that Planned Parenthood, who continues Sanger’s work places 79% of their abortion facilities near minority neighborhood.

The Left doesn't care about anything but the Narrative. They have secured the "Right" to kill en masse, and they will protect that Right despite any facts or evidence. They cannot relinquish that "Right", and they will fight any attack on that "Right" with all their resources, legal and otherwise.

Watch for the Smithsonian to invoke "Free Speech" and the First Amendment.

Planned Parenthood and Fetal Killing, Again

Note that the "justice" system doesn't address the crimes committed by the abortionists; it attacks those who reveal the crimes. Thus the state is part of the criminal system.

‘I Might . . . Pull Off a Leg or Two’

Lisa Harris, the medical director of Planned Parenthood of Michigan: Given that we actually see the fetus the same way, and given that we might actually both agree that there’s violence in here. . . . Let’s just give them all the violence, it’s a person, it’s killing, let’s just give them all that.

Dr. Ann Schutt-Aine, the director of abortion services for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast (which has been referred to local law-enforcement for criminal charges related to fetal-tissue trafficking): If I’m doing a procedure, and I’m seeing that I’m in fear that it’s about to come to the umbilicus [navel], I might ask for a second set of forceps to hold the body at the cervix and pull off a leg or two, so it’s not PBA [partial-birth abortion].

Dr. Stacy De-Lin, the director of abortion services for Planned Parenthood of New York City: But we certainly do intact D&Es [dilation and extraction, otherwise known as partial-birth abortion, a method that is illegal under federal law].

Dr. Uta Landy, the founder of the Consortium of Abortion Providers (CAPS), Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA): An eyeball just fell down into my lap, and that is gross! [laughter from the crowd]

Talcott Camp, the deputy director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Health Freedom Project: I’m like — Oh my God! I get it! When the skull is broken, that’s really sharp! I get it! I understand why people are talking about getting that skull out, that calvarium.

Dr. Susan Robinson, an abortion provider at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte: The fetus is a tough little object, and taking it apart, I mean, taking it apart on Day One is very difficult. . . . You go in there, and you go, “Am I getting the uterus or the fetus? Oh, good, fetus. [Robinson makes a stabbing sound effect] What have I got? Nothing. Let’s try again.

Below are some comments from the footage that provide further evidence of Planned Parenthood’s involvement in illegally profiting from fetal-tissue trafficking, as well as altering abortion procedures to collect intact organs, which is also illegal under federal law.

Dr. Leslie Drummond, an abortion provider at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte (a PPFA affiliate that contracted with a biotech firm to be paid per fetal organ provided): I get a lot of oohs and ahhs from StemExpress [biotech firm]. You know, they’re wanting livers. . . . Last week I was in Sacramento, and she said, “I need four intact limbs.” And I said, you want what?

Dr. Deborah Nucatola, the senior director of medical services for PPFA: You know, sometimes she’ll tell me she wants brain, and we’ll, you know, leave the calvarium in till last, and then try to basically take it, or actually, you know, catch everything and keep it separate from the rest of the tissue so it doesn’t get lost.

StemExpress procurement manager: There’s a lot of clinics that we work with that, I mean, it helps them out significantly.

Deb VanDerhei, the national director of CAPS for PPFA: But the truth is that some might want to do it to increase their revenues. And we can’t stop them.

Dr. Stacy De-Lin, the director of abortion services for Planned Parenthood of NYC: But I think a financial incentive from you guys [CMP investigators posing as tissue buyers] is going to be like . . . the people who we have to get this approved from will be very happy about it.

Dr. Paul Blumenthal, the former medical director for PP of Maryland: I know Planned Parenthood sells a lot of stuff [fetal organs] to people.

Both the NAF and Planned Parenthood sought and obtained a preliminary injunction against the Center for Medical Progress to prevent the release of these undercover videos. That civil suit is currently on appeal. But California’s attorney general took matters into his own hands in late March, charging CMP investigators David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt with 14 felony counts of illegally recording “confidential communications.” The state refuses to name the 14 accusers in the criminal case, even though Daleiden and Merritt have themselves been charged publicly.

The gruesome footage from this latest video leaves no doubt as to why NAF and Planned Parenthood want to silence CMP’s investigators. “Every video recording for which the attorney general is charging David was obviously and unquestionably made in a public place where it could not possibly be considered ‘confidential,’” says Brent Ferreira, one of Daleiden’s defense attorneys.

The gruesome footage from this latest video leaves no doubt as to why NAF and Planned Parenthood want to silence CMP’s investigators. Those in the abortion industry know they’re taking human life. They just don’t care. Updated May 26, 10:40 a.m.: A California judge ordered the CMP’s defense attorneys to remove the video footage from YouTube and from their website. More information is available here.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447939/undercover-video-center-medical-progress-exposes-gruesome-abortion-practices

Planned Parenthood: The Superpower Which Slays

If there's anything we've learned from Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, The Avengers) over the years, it's this — every single one of us has a hero inside; and it's our responsibility to use our superpowers to slay.
Planned Parenthood.

Yep. They slay some 300,000 preborn humans every year. Slaying is easy. It actually takes no superpower at all. It merely takes a void where the conscience ought to be.

And that's an interesting subject. The Left rejects everything associated with received wisdom. The reason is obvious: they want full control, and allowing oneself to be subject to received wisdom means surrendering control to a higher level. So they reject all types of morality and material wisdom in favor of their own opinions, which they worship as the higher existence.

There becomes no possible violation of received wisdom which the AtheoLeft will not cheerfully violate, and do so with imperious self-righteousness. For them, morality means violating all of the received wisdom that comes their way, calling that received wisdom evil even though they reject the very concept of evil.

The AtheoLeftist inversions of moral principles are blatant and easily seen. In the case of Planned Parenthood, there is no "do not kill", or, "do no harm". Killing is what abortion is. And killing is specifically "harm".

The inversions of moral principles extend to politics with special violence; self-righteous, self-moral violence. When a member of the herd of the Othered (immoral deplorables) gets elected, that is a reassertion of received wisdom which is "immorally" in control. It then becomes the duty of the self-endowed, self-righteous, self-idolizing AtheoLeft to rid the world of this (these) immoral deplorables, and there is no moral constraint regarding the "how" for doing it.

The essence of the AtheoLeft is that they have no morality which is congruent with historical western society, that moral construction which is fundamentally Christian-based. That received morality is hated, as are the Christians who stick to it as much as possible. So hate becomes part of the set of values which the AtheoLeft has bestowed upon themselves. It's no longer a difference in social policies, no longer a difference in carefully reasoned deductions, no longer a value of tolerance. Now it is reductively distilled into pure hatred of the Other. Pure hatred: the top value of the AtheoLeft.

Perez: Harshing Mello

Dems unlearn their own electoral history in telling pro-lifers to drop dead

"Tom Perez's excommunication of pro-life candidates from his party implies that the winning strategy won't be used again. The tent is now closed, and smaller than it was before. The remaining Democratic voters who had fooled themselves up to now in order to help their ancestral party are being spat upon, a sign that party elders have learned neither from own recent electoral experience in 2006, nor from their soul-crushing loss in the 2016 election."

Mello Dramatic at the DNC

Nebraska isn't usually a pin on the map of political hotspots, but that all changed this week with Omaha's candidates for mayor. Thanks to Heath Mello's (D) pro-life views, a race that would have been a footnote in the national news has exploded into a front-page headline about the DNC's hard ideological line on abortion.

Is the party of slavery, the KKK, Racial Segregation, and abortion / Planned Parenthood finally marginalized to the point of no return? I'm not betting on it - Marxist class bigotry is still rampant, and the new KKK (antifa) is still not conquered.

Ezekiel at 11 Weeks, Walter at 19 Weeks

Ezekiel

And Walter at 19 Weeks

Out of the many comments expressing their condolences, some have stated that the photos—which continue to be shared to this day—helped change their mind about abortion.

“I am so shocked at my ignorance as to the development of a baby,” one commenter named Barbara wrote. “I will no longer look on as an observer. I will become an active informational type of person and share this as an example of life, the life of a baby—a real baby.”

“[M]y views on abortion have completely changed,” another named Jordan wrote. “How naive have I been?!”

Some women stated that seeing Walter’s photographs saved their own child’s life.

“Just came across Walter’s pictures. … I am pregnant and been in such a bad place this week. Did my first scan last week and he’s a boy, too. But this week I started praying for a miscarriage or decide to terminate since his father has shirked all responsibility,” one mother wrote. “I asked God to gimme a sign today that we will be fine, or I go ahead and seek a termination tomorrow. A few hours later, I see the link on Facebook. It put me to tears. But most importantly it has made me know without a doubt that I cannot do this to him.”

“[S]haring your story and showing his pictures it has helped me so much,” another named Crista wrote. “I just had a baby 7 months ago and I’m pregnant again. The father wants me to get an abortion and I thought about it, but now there is no way I can do it. God blessed me with this child for a reason, and I will take care of her and love her just like I do my other children.”

“I wish that this (miscarriage) hadn’t happened, but it did for a reason,” Fretz said. “Maybe that reason was to share with the world how perfect a baby which is legal to abort in many states really is.”

This is the reason that Planned Parenthood sells the dismembered parts: they are perfect, human parts, which were part of a whole, living human until s/he was killed.

Friendly Atheist Supports the Privilege of Murder

Friendly Atheist supports “Wrongful Birth” responsibility and punishment for physicians involved with the birth of a disabled child.

Texas Lawmakers Think Doctors Should Be Able to Lie to Women if the Truth Could Lead to an Abortion

Earlier this week, lawmakers in Texas advanced Senate Bill 25, a bill that would allow doctors to not tell pregnant patients if something is wrong wth their unborn child. Why? Because it’s possible that if you know that there are fetal abnormalities — ranging from severe disabilities to the possibility that the child could be stillborn, or born with its brain outside of its head, or something like that — then you might consider the perfectly legal procedure known as an abortion.

The precedent for this current hoorah is a court case in which parents claimed that they would have killed the disabled progeny in utero, had they known about the disability. The apparent claim is that the doctor did not properly inform them of the in utero defect, thus denying them their right to kill it. Hence the term “wrongful birth” which means denial of opportunity to kill the unborn before birth in order specifically to deny the disabled human the opportunity for life. “Wrongful birth” is a pseudonym for anti-disability bias. The existing, living child was wanted to be dead.

The current Texas bill prevents the punishment of the physician for a condition which the physician did not cause, and purports to support human life as priority. This is a response to the punishment of the physician over denial of the right of the choice to kill (for the purpose of not wanting to care for a disabled person).

Here’s the analysis of the bill, by the Texas Senate Research Center:

AUTHOR'S / SPONSOR'S STATEMENT OF INTENT

The wrongful birth cause of action was first recognized in the Texas Supreme Court in 1975 in Jacobs v Theimer. The parents of the disabled child argued they would have terminated the pregnancy if they had known about the disabilities beforehand. The Texas Supreme Court awarded the parents the recovery of expenses reasonably necessary for the care and treatment of their child's physical impairment for its entire life. This ruling was based on the existence of a life.

C.S.S.B. 25 prohibits the wrongful birth cause of action. This legislation is consistent with Texas values that all lives are valuable and that child birth is prioritized. C.S.S.B. 25 will end the negative precedent that disabled persons should not have been born and also hold doctors accountable for their action, not holding them liable for disabilities they did nothing to cause.

C.S.S.B. 25 amends current law relating to eliminating the wrongful birth cause of action.

Note that “would have terminated the pregnancy” specifically means the intent to kill the disabled before the disabled could be protected under law (after birth). The existence of a living, disabled, post-natal child was a punishable offense deemed to be caused by the physician, who ultimately was forced to support the disabled child for that child's entire life.

So what the “Friendly Atheist” is complaining about is the appearance of loss of opportunity to kill progeny, in utero, for the convenience and financial benefit of the parents. This is anti-disabled, pro-killing of humans which obviously resulted in a living human, a human which was resented for having disabilities causing inconvenience for the parents. So the resentment of the “wrongful birth”, inconvenience to parents, and distaste for disabled humans was cause to punish the physician.

Child to parent:
“Why don’t you work like other people have to do?”

Parent to child:
“We won a lawsuit punishing the physician for allowing you to live, instead of allowing us to kill you like we should have done.”

But what about prior conventions and legal commitments for Doctors? Is the doctor ethically and legally responsible for total disclosure?

What is a Doctor's Duty to Disclose?
A doctor is required to disclose all relevant information regarding your medical treatment in order to allow you to make a decision about your own treatment. If a doctor fails to disclose pertinent information, he may be liable for medical malpractice.
What Information Does a Doctor Have to Disclose?
The doctor's duty to disclose includes:
• What the treatment involves
• The possible risks of receiving the treatment as well as the possible risks of not receiving it
• The success rate of the operation
• Alternative treatments

This leads to an obvious observation: a pregnant woman is considered to be two people if she is murdered and the fetus also dies. Under what circumstances does this two-people-in-one concept not hold? Obviously abortion is claimed to be the removal of part of the woman (not a separate human existence), which she wants rid of. So the woman has rights, and could have a lawyer. The unborn progeny cannot in all likelihood be represented in court as a separate human, at least ever since Roe v Wade.

The result is that one of the two-in-one people has the privilege of legal representation for recourse due to perceived harm, but the other of the two people has zero defense or recourse for harm, including murder. The murder, in utero, is now a right of the individual who is imbued with privilege, which is to be forced upon the individual without privilege.

The privilege of condoned murder is an awesome privilege, and one that is cherished as precious by the AtheoLeft. It is part of the tribalist Class War system, in which the fetus has been claimed by some to be an oppressor of the woman in the same sense that a malignant tumor would be oppressive to her. By using tribalist, classist segregation of humans into Victim Classes, disposable Oppressor Classes, and the self-righteous messiah class, the AtheoLeft is able to form its own elite "morality" into classes deserving salvation as well as classes deserving annihilation. Annihilation is perfectly Darwinian, and scientifically acceptable.

So there is no justice available to a fetus, much less a disabled fetus.

Steinem Stupidity

If banning Steinem could save just one preborn human...

Oh. Too late.

Reality of Abortion: Forget the "Choice"; This is REAL

Abortion

Stopping is a Good Start

Zika: A Science Being Done Right, Except For Interference From Rogue Abortionists

"Brazil opens probe as cases of Zika babies defy predicted patterns "

"Brazil’s Ministry of Health has launched an investigation into the cluster of babies born with brain defects linked to the Zika virus, after an expected “explosion” of cases across the country did not occur.

The bulk of the cases of congenital Zika syndrome – fetal brain defects that sometimes cause microcephaly, or abnormally small skulls – remain clustered in the northeast region of the country where the phenomenon was first identified last October, the ministry says.

And that has epidemiologists and infectious disease experts asking what is going on: Is it Zika and another virus working together that damages the fetal brains? Is it Zika and an environmental factor? Or something about the women themselves whose fetuses are affected?

The research in Brazil won’t have conclusions for months, but will have implications across the Americas, where the Brazilian experience and the rapid spread of Zika has caused governments to take protective measures and even warn women to delay getting pregnant.

“We can see there is a kind of cluster in [part of] the northeast region with high prevalence and high severity, of miscarriage and congenital malformation that is really severe,” said Fatima Marinho, co-ordinator of epidemiological analysis and information at the ministry.

“But we didn’t find this in other states – even the [adjacent] states didn’t see the same situation as in the epicentre.… We were preparing for an explosion and it didn’t come.

“So we started to think that in this central area maybe more than Zika is causing this intensity and severity.”

A central theory the ministry is now exploring is whether co-infection with other viruses, such as dengue or chikungunya, is the factor. For example, does a mother’s previous (or simultaneous) infection with dengue, which is also ubiquitous in Brazil, mean that the Zika virus affects a fetus differently? Or is it other viruses?"

[...]

After Brazil, the next country that was expected to see the wave of congenital Zika was Colombia, which has the second-largest number of reported Zika cases. But of more than 12,000 pregnant Colombian women with Zika, only 21 have had fetuses or babies with the brain defects.

Dr. Marinho, with the ministry, said this reinforces her suspicions about the role of co-infection or other factors in Brazil. Dr. Marques said Colombia is only seeing the babies of women who were infected late in their pregnancies so far (because the virus season is about six months behind, further to the north) and the evidence is that the likelihood of damage by Zika is higher earlier in gestation – so those babies may yet come.

But rogue abortion providers are interfering:

But Dr. Rodrigues had another explanation. “Now we know that in places where Zika comes the rate of abortion shoots up,” she said. “The feminist groups that will send pills by post to women … as a way of making up for the unfairness of the restrictive abortion laws, report an enormous increase in requests from Brazil and Latin America. I wouldn’t be surprised if when we look at cohorts in other counties, pregnancies disappear, and we can’t say if it was spontaneous or medical abortion.”

Researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine on July 28 that in Latin American countries where the new strain of Zika is spreading and abortion is illegal, there has been a huge spike in the number of requests to Women on Web, a Dutch-based organization which proves women with online consultations and then mails the drugs to induce a medical abortion. The increase over the rate of requests last year ranges from 38 per cent to 108 per cent in Brazil. (Brazilian authorities are now intercepting all deliveries to Brazilian women, the group said.)

Panic abortions have likely killed numerous normal humans. The impact on the actual science will remain unknowable.

The Great Personhood Hoax

One of the best known personhood wars was the issue of the status of slaves during the formation of the USA. Slaveowners wanted their slaves to get full “personhood” so that they could vote their entire plantation. The non-slaveowners conceded but only to the tune of 3/5 of a person per slave. That kept the effect of full plantation voting down some, but conceded a lot.

That definition of personhood, a legal definition, was not based on any characteristic of the slaves. It wasn’t their body functions or their minds or any physical or mental attribute at all. It was purely a political construct which was useful for application to a certain class of humans.

I’ve always wondered if that ratio was ever amortized by the percent black vs percent white in a given individual. Probably not. But the point is that the term “person” and “personhood” is not a reference to any tangible attribute of any human being. In the case above, it was an arbitrary political designation which chose slave status as the attribute. The reason for the designation of “non-personhood” to a class of individuals might vary in detail, but the original cause, the “why”, is always to deny that class of something that the more powerful class doesn’t want that class to have. It’s a class war construct.

There is no “personhood gene”; there is no “personhood” organ, no “personhood” height or weight or melanin. There is no “personhood meter” and no “personhood metric”. There is no operation called a “personhoodectomy” where personhood is removed. There is no “personhood replacement prosthesis”. There is no stem cell which provides “personhood”. The mother doesn’t pump “personhood” through the umbilical. No one falls and breaks their “personhood”. No one says, “your personhood is annoying, please tone it down, OK?”

Personhood doesn’t exist as a human attribute. Period.

Personhood is an externally applied exemption from the assault planned on those who are arbitrarily designated to be non-persons. Because it is not an actual part of a human, it can be applied and/or removed without touching or seeing the human or the entire human class being discussed. Personhood has no more actual meaning than the title of a designated class.

Personhood is always assumed to be attached somehow to the ethicist who is removing personhood from other unfortunate classes. No ethicist is a non-person under his own scheme of personhood, although when white men have their personhood revoked, some ethicists will be affected. Everyone else might be at risk, though, depending on the Social Justice theory of the day. One should check the list of personhood designations daily.

Particularly at risk is the human in the womb. Various calculations have determined many different points in the life of the human in the womb where “personhood” comes out of nowhere and lands on the fortunate pre-born. Commonly the “personhood” meme is created by law, and dispersed into the ether, where it ultimately finds pre-born humans to attach to. Of course, there is the other category as well, the non-persons, which get a similar meme through the ether but theirs decreases their chance of survival considerably.

In a sane society, there would be an effort to find the cause of the deaths of that category, and to apply constraints to stop it. That worked for polio and other hazards. But this is not your standard hazard, because it is a desirable hazard – a eugenic hazard which is legally approved and promoted, and supported secondarily with every taxpayer’s dollars.

So it is clear; personhood doesn’t exist, but not having it can get you killed. A society which designates a class of humans as killable purely on a non-existing attribute is not a well society.

Discussion Zone for Abortion

This post will serve as the launch point for the discussion of abortion. The discussion zone will be near the top of the Left Hand Column, along with the discussion zones for Atheism and Evolution.

Hugo has provided a good place to start the discussion.
Here's the discussion with Hugo, so far.

Hugo says,
“As I mentioned above, it's not about whether we should decide 'who' can be killed or not; it's about where in the human development stage do the cells go from 'it' to 'who', from just cells with the potential to be a human to an actual human (with "personhood" and "human-ness") that has the right to life.”

You can dance around the issue all you want, but I’m standing firm on actual logic: you cannot have come to exist without having come through the entire process of human development. When you were a “developing” human, you were a human. No matter what adjectives you add to the word “human” you cannot deny the human her humanity… unless you are the moral authority and arbiter of her fate as you choose to define it. However you define it, you are choosing a point at which the human may be killed. No wonder you want to deny her her obvious human natural access to a full life (you escaped the denial of humanity; you are privileged with life due to not having been killed).

”Logically speaking, statements are either true, or not-true. Statements about morality talk about moral actions or immoral actions. There is no in-between. “

Good so far. But I sense a diversion coming up.

”However, it's not always easy to spot which is which, and humans disagree all the time on which is which. In other words, some situations are definitely back-or-white, but many are somewhere in between. Abortion is at times clearly moral, but not always, so it's not a black-or-white topic. But the self-labeled pro-life crowd would like to put it that way.”

True or false: Shredding an embryonic human is killing.

”Here's a way to illustrate the dilemma:

1) Spermatozoids/eggs contain genetic material; a random set of chromosomes from a male/female. On their own, they cannot even potentially become an independent human being. Nobody argues that these should be kept alive for future use; abortion does not come up. And it's obviously not possible to do so anyway, especially not with the billions of spermatozoid that a single male produces over his lifetime. There is no 'who' being killed when an egg/spermatozoid is taken on its own.

Red Herring. No one argues that spermatazoa by themselves are human life; neither are unfertilized eggs. So 1) has no bearing on the argument being made, and it is diversionary.

”2) When a woman is pregnant with a baby, it happens quite often that the baby will be born before the ~40 week mark, the normal average gestation period. At that time, and for many weeks before, the baby is fully formed and able to live outside the womb. Abortion does not apply here either, just like #1, but for a different reason: the process is called a c-section and the baby lives. It would require the explicit killing of the baby to make sure it does not survive.”

And that is what Tiller and his ilk have done: inject the human embryo with poison through the uterine wall, killing the baby and making its removal by shredding into an abortion, necessitated by the murder of the intrauterine human.

Of course, as you mentioned on another thread, there are some people who apparently want this to happen, but that's not about abortion anymore at this point. There is no abortion once the fetus is fully viable, the baby is a 'who' that clearly has the right to live.

Of course there is and you don’t know any different because abortions are strictly secret (privacy, doncha know)..

...but in between, that's where it gets a bit more complicated.

Only if you self-anoint with moral authority to make it more complicated, and you eschew all rational arguments regarding human development happening to humans.

”3) The first one I will list is the easiest, in my opinion: at the time of conception. Because we understand human development very well, (and any sexual reproduction actually, since it's all the same), we know that the result is a combination of the female egg, which has half the number of chromosomes of a full human, with the male spermatozoid, which also has half the number of chromosomes. Together, they form a random combination, which is almost certainly unique because of the statistical improbability of combining the exact same genes twice, and the small mutations that can happen during cell division. This process can be triggered naturally, or artificially in a laboratory, or even just theoretically: take a spermatozoid from any male, take an egg from any woman, and combine their genetic code to get an idea of a new potential human being.

The latter case is purely imaginary, and is included as another Red Herring. No imaginary process produces, of itself, anything real in the material sense. No one is aborting anyone’s imagination.

” In the latter case, that human would never exist since it's just a thought experiment, while in the first 2 it could lead to a human, if the initial cell is nurtured in a womb and grow successfully to become a viable fetus, an actual human being. But, at the time of conception, there is no 'who' yet; there is nobody to talk about.”

Ah the human identity is merely denied, thus enabling its death by human destruction of its gestation.

” It's just 1 of a quasi-infinite number of valid sequence of human DNA.

As are you. And I emphasize the “just”.

”Moreover, the notion of 'time of conception' can also extend to hours, and maybe a couple of days, after conception, where the initial cell has had time to reproduce itself thousands of times already, but without forming anything resembling a human yet.”

It exactly resembles a human at that stage of development, just as you did at that stage of development. You have inserted your prejudice, and it is rejected.

”4) The next one, first trimester of development, is also easy but emotional manipulation kicks-in in full force from the so-called "pro-life" side.”

False. Declaring the argument against your desire to kill to be emotional is merely word-play. Every human has to go through all the stages of development, right up to time of death. That individual is human the entire time. Your desire to redefine that obvious conclusion is rejected.

” Here, we are talking about a something that is not, at all, a person yet…”

This is a FALSE declaration. You have anointed yourself to be the arbiter of who can be considered a person and who cannot. The use of the word “person” changes the argument illegally away from the issue of the humanness of the developing human. And you use this redefinition which you make up to “justify” your theory of who can be killed at whatever stage which you choose to justify by changing definitions.

This is entirely Machiavellian.

”…but the embryo can start to reassemble one because of the formation of organs, and even a beating hearth at the threshold between embryo and fetus.”

All of this is trivial and so is the following discussion of Highschool biology.


”During the first trimester of a pregnancy, quite a lot happens basically and, the later it is, the more human-like the embryo is. However, there is absolutely no way that this embryo would survive outside of the mother's womb, there is no working nervous system and thus no 'who' to talk about.”

And another redefinition is put in place: no human is a “who” until you say so, because you have the moral authority to allow or deny a human her “whoness”, based on your opinion.

This is definitely still just some pack of cells, a lot of them, but not a human person.

This definition forgot to include the inability to talk about her “whoness”. You have made your decision using the same decision path and format that the eugenicists leading up to both Lenin and Hitler used: that category is not human; it has no person-hood; it has no whoness; it is without value, and it is a drain on its host and so: kill it.

”Moreover, that's when the vast majority of natural miscarriage occur and abortions performed during the first trimester are thus not much different from natural ones.”

Complete irrational misconception: “a natural cause of huan death is similar to killing a healthy human at the same stage”. I’m not even sure what it takes to make such a statement.

”Numbers vary and are hard to estimate, as many women don't even know they were pregnant, but it is said that only 30% to 50% of conceptions progress past the first trimester.”

Oh. Then it is statistically OK to kill your progeny. That’s a new argument and it doesn’t work, because it is statistically true that many black youth in ghettoes do not survive their teen years, so you might as well just go ahead and kill the inconvenient black teen youths. That would be racist though, whereas killing black humans at certain pre-born stages is just PEACHY.

”5) Now, the tough one... what should we do if a woman wants an abortion past the 3-month mark? If it's close enough, say during the 4th, it still pretty much the same situation as in #4, but the now fetus is getting very close to be what we should rightfully call a human, a person, who can live on their own.”

Nah. You can modify your definition of humanness yet again to include this category. A great many Pro-kill activists have already done so. Why is your opinion better than theirs?

”The most premature babies to have ever been born were only in their 20s, as in less than 30 weeks of development and thus only 5-to-6 months old. On the other hand, some abortions, without medical reasons, are performed up to the 20th week, and even a bit more, overlapping with the youngest babies to have survive. At this point, it's a very grey area.”

You are self-authorized to bite the bullet and make the decision whether to kill her or not. As your entire argument proceeds, that is what you are doing – justifying your opinion of when she can be shredded and relieved of her life.

”Personally, I am not comfortable either way and would let doctors and other medical/ethics professional weight in.”

So your moral authority fails you at this point? Someone else’s moral authority is allowed to supersede your own, so that you don’t have to face this failure point in your own moral theory?

”Doing everything possible to save a 20-something fetus has a very low chance of success and can actually lead to a life of misery of the person who survives.”

So you can decide that preventing a possible uncomfortable future life is a good reason to kill that person pre-emptively?

”But it's possible, and thus falls under the person category. I would tend to stay cautious and give a right to life to fetus as soon as they hit the 20-week, 5-month, mark, perhaps even a bit before and we can be accurate enough. We are now talking about someone, a who, in my opinion. Trying to get rid of that fetus is killing and should not be acceptable. But...

Yes. But… You might change your mind and allow the killing to proceed, anyway.

The remaining quandaries are not worth my discussion time; Here’s why: everything you say is predicated on your own personal moral authority to decide to kill. You base that on your own definitions of which humans you personally consider to have value: the values of “personhood”, “whoness”, and the value of being a healthy human.

I reject your moral authority to make those determinations for another human.

”To conclude, I will quote a few lines of your last 10 comments Stan. This might help clarify my position and the arguments I am presenting in favor of safe and legal abortions, with the 6 situations listed above as framework.
Stan said...
"You referred to the embryo or zygote or whatever name might be given to the fertilized cell attached to the uterus as “meaningless”. Now we can establish that you understand that this cell is human, with its own life and identity, is growing through a necessary phase of human development. That, according to you, is meaningless in the decision to kill that human."

The embryo or zygote is "not" a person; it has no right to life and no identity. ”

And there is the entire issue. Who gave you the authority over other humans at whatever stage of their development – to kill that human if it is deemed inconvenient? Who gave you the right to make these definitions which you declare with such certainty of your moral authority to do so? If no one gave you this magnificent power, then how did you get it? Here’s how: you gave it to yourself, as a part of your atheist elitist worldview.

That’s exactly how Atheism works.

Here are more declarations from on high:

”Only a fetus can be labeled as person, and only a fetus can be 'killed', once it is deemed to be an actual person. Something meaningless cannot be 'killed', or 'murdered', by definition, as it is not a person. The only acceptable cases where abortion 'is' about killing were explained under #6, and are limited to rare medical situations.”

So you have outlined a moral code for who can be killed, complete with paragraph numbers.

”In other words, all humans went through the phases of human development, but not everything that goes through 'some' of the phases of human development is a human. What was discussed under #1-3-4 are examples of things that go through some of the human development process, without being humans.”

More definitional clarifications under your personal authority to decide which human dies.

”" find the time in the gestation where the “person” organ is installed, and declare that to be the cut-off for killing the developing human, thereby depriving her of her life. Obviously, the ability to detect the material “Personhood Organ” is something that only the “Right To Kill” advocates have. That’s an astonishing ability. And in fact it Does Not Exist. There is no more onerous ploy than to claim the ability to deny personhood to another human."

Nobody is stating that it's simple, and there is no such thing as a 'person organ'. This is a use of ridicule in order to avoid a tough debate.”

Not ridicule at all. You are installing personhood and whoness and killability with your personal opinion of which humans are killable. You are a dedicated Materialist. So if personhood is acquired, it must get installed at some point, under your own philosophy of Materialism. If that is not the case, then its just your opinion regarding which humans you have decided are killable.

”As I keep mentioning, the pro-life side has nothing but emotions on their side.”

And that is absurd. When I assert that when an egg is fertilized it becomes a unique individual being launched into the normal path of human development, that is biological fact. Your case, on the other hand, is purely opinion. There is no reasoning which allows you to be the arbiter of life and death over another biological human. All of your vaunted “reasoning” is just opinion which is supported only by your emotionally derived definitions which you have modified to support your case in advance to actually making it.

They point out to how embryos 'look' like babies, or how the embryo 'could' have been a human.

Did no such thing. Straw Man/Red herring.

”But the question is whether the embryo 'is' a human at the time of abortion.

False. The issue is why you think you have the moral authority to deny life to another human.

”The longer the gestation period the tougher the question becomes. But, the fact that we have the 2 extremes, as explained under #1 and #2, means that there is necessarily a cut-off. Using facts and reason, we can try to figure out the ethical way to find that cut-off and avoid killing humans.”

You have not used facts; you have created false definitions which you assert as fact. You have not used reason; you have rationalized your own personal authority to decide life and death over other humans.

"Apparently then, infanticide a la’ Peter Singer (the moral-free ethics prof) is OK with you, too?"

No, not at all. The quote, which you misunderstood, was meant to illustrate that if someone attempts to label 'human' something which is not human at all then, yes, it makes it look like killing.“

Another false statement, and equivocation: no one has made labels except for you with your phony redefinitions. The consistent use of the obvious "humanity" involved in the propagation of humans is not a label. It is an inconvenient fact which you refuse to acknowledge, in the defense of your own assumption of personal moral authority.

”If I label mosquitoes as humans, and then ask you: have you ever kill a mosquito?”

Red Herring/False Analogy/Straw Man. You are the one creating labels, not me.


”Does it mean that you did in fact kill a human if you answer yes? This is exactly the same thing here. The pro-life side defines embryos, or even just a single cell, as 'human'; they then equate the destruction of these cells with killing a human.”

Only your bogus labeling says otherwise. You cannot defeat the biological necessity of the humanness of the fertilized egg, etc.

"The human inside the woman is a unique individual, living through the development stage: it is not “the same as a fully formed human” and it is fully human"

Why?”


It is biological necessity. It is normal human at a normal stage of human development. You deny this with your bogus redefinitions which are not True in any material fashion, but are merely your opinion.

”This is what makes no sense with your position. And all of this really is just about that 1 question: why do you think that anything, literally anything, that is part of the human development process after conception is literally a human, a person, that can be killed? We are talking about 1 cell at first, then a few, and then maybe something that starts to look like a person, as described under #4, but it is not a human that can survive before several more weeks.

All humans up through teen years cannot survive without help from other humans. Nor can the elderly, the indigent, the disabled, the mentally ill, and other demographics. Your rationalization would of logical necessity include all of them as “killable”.

”**Final thought / side note**
I purposely avoided anything not directly related to abortion, including the notion of objectivity. But, I must repeat that this is not what I think is my opinion, or a subjective view of morality that varies with the whim of the people. This is about figuring out what is 'the' moral choice in any given situation regarding pregnancy.”

It’s not that hard: either humans have value which is not to be denied by other humans, or they do not and may be killed as they are determined to be inconvenient.

”Objectively, there are always moral choices and immoral choices, regardless of our opinion, but we don't always agree on what these objective moral truths are.”

Obviously it goes beyond that: why do you think you have moral authority over the lives of other living humans?

”The notion of whether such objectivity even exist, under Theism or Atheism, is irrelevant to the question here, and I thus hope to come back to it on the other thread, eventually.”

I’ll prime that pump: Atheists think they have the boundless freedom to decide their own moral principles as well as moral principles for application to other people. Theists do not think that.