First Iowa, and now North Dakota — North Dakota has rejected a bill that would have given “personhood” to every fertilized egg. The senate voted by a large majority, but not unanimity, to squash that very silly bill.
OK, Wisconsin and South Dakota — your turn. Do something to impress me tomorrow.
Maybe reason is finally on a roll?
I wonder, if this passed, what they were about to do next. Were they about to give all fertilized eggs the right to vote?
Sorry, tomorrow is the Sabbath. Logic is forbidden on the Holy Day.
I saw this yesterday. Maybe they finally thought through the consequences of such a bill. We can only hope.
10ch … funny. Maybe as a price for saving them, we could conscript fertilized eggs to go fight and die in the next war. That would make sense after fighting to keep them alive.
@#1 Lee Picton
“Maybe reason is finally on a roll?”
I predict that it will still take a long time.
Yeah, I’m rooting for Wisconsin! *crosses fingers* I don’t hear much about what happens in our government but I can hope…
Reminds me of the old story. How many legs do 5 legged dogs have?
Four, claiming dogs have 5 legs doesn’t make it true.
I can see where this is going. State legislatures in fundie states will declare the earth is flat, the center of the universe, and 6,000 years old. Obama is an illegal alien, the antichrist, and the democrats are all demons from hell. Palin is the president, John McCain isn’t really a zombie, and jesus is here someplace. The rapture is next week and all the atheists, catholics, and other religions are going to be sorry.
Once you decide reality is votable or consensual, there is no limit to what is true. Got to go, my starship is boarding and we are on our way to Kpax for a vacation.
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm reason sandwich
Good to see Minnesota bordering on sanity.
@#8 raven
“Once you decide reality is votable or consensual, there is no limit to what is true.”
Those who control the present control the past. Those who control the past control the future. Guess where that came from?
raven:
Seems like the answer would be 0, then. Since 5-legged dogs don’t exist, they automatically have no legs.
I think the quip you were aiming for goes along the lines of: “How many legs does a dog have, if you call the tail a leg?” “Four. Calling the tail a leg doesn’t make it one.”
I’m trying to imagine serving on a jury with one or more fertilized eggs. Or maybe Embryo School, where frozen embryos 6 or more years old are required to attend regular classes.
And since embryos can’t drive or take care of themselves, could all pregnant women get handicapped plates for parking? (Actually not all that bad an idea, come to think of it.) Would pregnant women automatically get to drive in the carpool lanes?
And hey, while we’re at it, Equal Rights for Sperm! I demand that males get in on the rights. After all, each of our sperm contains HALF the genome for a living human. For every two sperm, we should get the same rights as a fertilized egg.
But then again, there’s that pesky voting issue. Sperm has a well-known liberal bias.
We’ve always been at war with Eurasia
Noooo, we’ve always been allied with Eurasia. Eastasia is the enemy.
Well done, ND! Maybe this’ll be a good week afer all.
The MadPanda, FCD
@#12 Benjamin Geiger
“Seems like the answer would be 0, then. Since 5-legged dogs don’t exist, they automatically have no legs.”
I am not familiar with mathematical logic, but I think that formulae with non-existent variables are not valid sentences. Or, perhaps they would all return false, such as, “a five-sided square has x sides” – would return false for all x. Again, I am not familiar with mathematical logic, so if any logician knows better, feel free to correct me.
Hank Bones @3:
No, today is the holy day, no… wait, it was yesterday…. ummm next Thursday? Never mind, we can’t be impressed anyway.
We South Dakotans are already on it having defeated strigent antichoice ballot initiatives in each of the last two general elections.
If it had passed fertilized eggs could have “applied” for social security numbers, or voters rights, or counted as a second person in the carpool lane.
I can see why sane people voted against such rubbish. It would have opened up the legal system to more frivolity.
The limits of personhood are very difficult to ascertain. We cannot forget that the full process of conception-implantation was not completely elucidated till 19th Century (you can see in Hertwig, 1906 what was the state of the art of the question).
However, if personhood begins at fertilisation, then the first cause of mortality in North Dakota and elsewhere is “lack of implantation”, and bigger funds for “pre-implanted embryo rescues” should be implemented. Unless, of course, North Dakota pro-life legislators consider that each embryo must earn her own implantation with effort and without “welfare entitlement”. I do not know but there is a strong negative correlation between pro-life and pro-welfare, and so perhaps I’m missing the point of “pre-implantation mortality”.
I, Beethoven, “an organism with the genome of homo sapiens” and a respectable Tumor-American residing in this commenter’s lower back, find this deplorable. I join with all other cancer cells fighting for the civil rights guaranteed to every other group of cells. Those who disagree with the Tumorous lifestyle have no right to single others out for the blatant discrimination shown in this post. You are all just poopy-heads.
@NewEnglandBob #17
No, I know tomorrow is the holiest day of the week because I’m not allowed to buy beer at the store. If today were the sabbath, why come I’m able to buy booze, hmmm? Use your logics, man.
I want to know if this would have applied to cells with less than the full complement of chromosomes. If not, would people with Turner’s syndrome still be “people?” If so, would sperm also be included? And if this is the case, should I be tried for human rights violations for the massive, daily massacres I perpetrated on billions of “people” during my early adolescence?
Oh noes!
The corruption of America into oblivion is picking up pace and the Tribulations will start any second now! It’s all because of that evil atheist phenomena known as science, a pretty word for Satan worship in a while lab coat!
So, by your logic Hank, the Arabian peninsula is the Holy Land?
I’d say that any day you can buy beer, is holy.
I notice you’re not calling on MN to do anything impressive. Probably a good idea. Tim Pawlenty does not inspire great expectations.
If this type of law passes in some state, I’d hope that the full consequences would be carried out.
The 30-50% of pregnancies which end in spontaneous abortion need some attention. At the very least, the parents should have to bear the cost of burial or cremation. We can’t be flushing babies down the toilet after all.
Perhaps we can even charge the mother for negligence. “What, having a child die while in your care once is perhaps a tragedy, but twice in a row calls for prosecution!”
well, that certainly makes me feel slightly better to be a (temporary) North Dakotan. Though it doesn’t make that ginormous “pro-life” billboard in front of my home go away. *sigh*
and re #20
you’re right, it’s completely ridiculous how unhelpful this state can be to the needs of actual, born people! They are having a daycare-crisis in town because there’s just a lot more children than daycare slots, and all the local government does about it is mumble something about hoping to bring more business into town to solve the problem, or else hope the churches will take more responsibility
yeah, THAT is going to help. I feel sorry for working parents in this town.
The thing I have already been wondering about calling a zygote a person is:
So, if your fertilized egg is a person, what do you get after the first cell division? What should the doctor say to the parents after delivering? Congratulation, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, its a healthy crowd?
Perhaps they just want more representatives in the House of Representatives, because their population count would increase dramatically as a result.
Wisconsin will have its first Citizens for Science meeting in a couple weeks. Not that we desperately need it more than, say, Minnesota.
Meanwhile, Minnesota will still be the home of the most extreme Crazy Town politician holding federal office.
Ha-ha/NelsonMuntz
… North Dakota voting not to accept a stupid bill is about as impressive as a parent not abusing a child.
Raise your standards a squeak, PZ. ;)
The religulous are the cwaziest people.
Christians, however got one thing right: Jesus returned.
Then he got into the wine again, and now he thinks he’s Mary Baker Eddy.
The rest of the story: The ‘Zygotes are people too’ went from committee to the house with a 7 to 5 do-not-pass recommendation. The house passed the bill. At switchover, the ND senate has, fortunately, rejected the bill. I suspect that Governor Hoven (R) would have signed the bill had it reached his desk- although he has shown a surprising amount of good sense over his two terms.
Being cynical, I suspect the reason ‘personhood for zygotes’ was rejected is that the state is preoccupied with clean-up from a severe western blizzard and ongoing eastern flooding. A unified populace is required to tackle real issue and help real people.
I’ll preface this by saying that I don’t believe that a zygote is a person.
However, the response here seems a little ridiculous. “Personhood” is not something you can lay scientific claim to, since the definition is too amorphous. What is it that makes a zygote / embryo / fetus human, if “human” is a legal term currently granted to an individual from birth (well, sort of in the last trimester too) to death? I don’t think that even this population of commenters would all set the same starting point, and they all would be influenced by some opinion of what constitutes humanity.
Yes, extending legal protection to a zygote would be a tremendously thorny problem, with many bad repercussions, but if that alone were reason not to do it, many groups would not have had rights given to them. In my lifetime, the extension of traditionally adult protections to children has had many effects, not all of them good.
I don’t think a zygote is a person, but I don’t presume to think that “person” is rationally defined just one way. If a great majority of Americans thought that the potential of a zygote was reason enough to treat it as a person, I can’t think of a scientific reason why they couldn’t grant it such legal status.
The arguments here – lack of viability or genetic defects – don’t figure into decisions of what to do with imperfect infants and strike me as a attempt to inflict absurdity that doesn’t really apply. I could just as easily remind everyone that there once were clear scientific reasons, based on the “fact” that Africans were not Homo sapiens, why slavery was appropriate, but it just seems like the point applies, an argument from emotionality.
We can be grateful that this proposal lacks the political clout to be passed, but I think we should grant others the right to define “human” themselves, and just hope that the zygote protectors don’t become a majority (or fund enough legislators, which would be enough).
So, if a fertilized egg were considered a person, would an unfertilized egg be half a person? And would I then be responsible for 1/2 a count of negligent homicide each month?
Cheers to North Dakota for quashing this nonsense!
@#35 Darby
“I could just as easily remind everyone that there once were clear scientific reasons, based on the “fact” that Africans were not Homo sapiens, why slavery was appropriate, but it just seems like the point applies, an argument from emotionality.”
The U.S. legal system never defined “person.” They only defined “citizen.” “Citizen” is just a legal term, whereas “person” clearly is not. To have a legal definition for it is therefore ridiculous, just as it is ridiculous to legally define the word “morality.”
Where did this strange fact come from? If you go all the way back to Linnaeus, you’ll discover that Europeans, Africans, Asians, and Native Americans were all classified as Homo sapiens, although he did call the different groups “varieties” and assigned relative rankings about intelligence and other stereotypical characters to them.
The logical consequences of this bill, had it been approved, would require that whenever a couple had sex, they’d be required to visit the courthouse and register the probable creation of a fertilized egg or zygote. Otherwise how would the state know the whereabouts of the zygotes in which it had an essential state interest? Can one just imagine all the couples trooping down to the courthouse, especially on Sunday mornings after a really good Saturday night, to in effect register the previous night’s activity?
And then imagine what would happen to the women whose zygotes failed to implant. Would the state charge each with murder? Or child abuse? Or criminal parenting?
Yes, I know my comments border on the absurd, but so does this bill. The truth is that beginning of life and end of life questions—other than murdering a stand alone living and breathing human being (even that is complex with most laws defining at least three kinds of murder plus justifiable homicide)—are hard to define. Every sperm, every egg and every fertilized egg contains a unique set of genes and each is as alive as an adult is. Yet nature squanders millions of each every day, flushing them out like a useless by-product of life. Who’s to define which fertilized egg gets state protection? Or whether sperm and eggs merit state protection? Where does one draw the line? The answer isn’t easy, any more than it’s easy to pull the plug on a “living” person whose EEG has flat lined. The state can set some far off boundaries but there will always be a large area of gray that might best be left to those closest to the issue. So, if you want to masturbate and kill sperm, go ahead. If you want to take Plan B (the morning after pill) then by all means do so. But, if you want to terminate a pregnancy at seven months, maybe the decision should involve more than the pregnant woman.
Just some thoughts on a topic that is far from the black and white of the religious right.
If you don’t grow some meat, you can’t have any personhood!
How can you have any personhood if you haven’t any meat!
Cue the “You all are “baby killers” crowd in 10 9 8 ….
Cue the “All you baby killing, cannabilistic, pseudo-intellectual atheists are going to hell” crowd in
10 9 8 7….
I’m surprised that one hasn’t shown up right now to point out that the entire state government of N. Dakota’s grandchildren will die in a plane crash into a zygote cemetary.
They do have funerals and cemetarys for zygotes, don’t they?
not nearly as close to absurd as i’d like. we’ve already had a movement to consider all women of childbearing age as “pre-pregnant”, and thus convince them to live alsays with the potential pregnancy in mind: stuff yourself with folic acid, no alcohol, no cigarettes (and presumably no active lifestyle, either). so it’s not that far off to demand an investigation into the eating/lifestyle habits of every mother who ever miscarried, if zygotes suddenly became people.
PZ – it came up in several of the articles on Darwin’s anti-slavery position. I don’t know how clear the historical context is (the articles very likely were all referencing the same source), or whether it was widely-held, but would it be a big surprise that the fuzzy concept of species could be used on human races of the 17 and 1800’s?
And – I’m just tweaking here – wouldn’t citing Linnaeus just be an argument from authority, when there might (heavy on the maybe) have been some actual disagreements among naturalists on the subject that never rose to a consensus?
Here’s one source where it’s mentioned:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/02/13/ST2009021302658.html
Of course beer is a sacrament. On the subject of which day is special, my local chinese takeaway has tuesday off. Apparrently Confucius was asked and couldn’t decide. He said “You choose day”.
As for ND’s decision: I’d rather this bad legislation didn’t come up and need to be stomped.
OT I’m thinking of getting an iPhone and am wondering about such apps on it as “Pocket God” and “Race Wars”. What d’you think?
Right now listening to Scanners by the Ram Krew.
What happens to personhood when it’s frozen at near absolute zero?
Now, this idea of personhood.
If a fertilized egg can be considered “a person” by virtue of its potential, then so can a first kiss or a glance across a crowded room. And so can the stirring deep in the pelvic girdle that young people feel when they are together, bless the days.
First, the word sucks. It is obviously a construct plucked from thin air to describe a degree of humanity that is fully developed except for a body, a brain, a synchronized system of senses and memory successfully interpreting the world and finding a place for a self-realized mind alongside and among so many others.
I submit the possibility that a zygote that has undergone lengthy change and matured into a recognizable homo sapiens is not a person until the moment that it declares itself to be so.
Potential humanity? For crying out loud, the birth of every child and the lives they subsequently lead are nothing more than concentrated potential!
What do these people want? Protection of potential lives at the expense of actual lives currently being lived?
What? They do? Oh.
I probably knew that.
Don’t hold your breath for SD. We keep on having that abortion ban pop up every year (but beat back everytime). However, we will catch up to everyone else in about 20 years or so. The only thing that our state legislature can agree on is that gay couples should not be afforded the same rights as heterosexual couple. Its a shame. Funny thing is that we do have some vocal advocates for reason and compassion but it is usually drowned out by the white noise of mid-western christianity.
Our local Rapid City newspaper had a full section on religion (actually it was where everyone should celebrate
easter). A whole bloody section.
I will celebrate this easter like every other easter. burning an pile of “Watchtower” pamphlets in praise to my lord and master…Chuthlu. Ai! Ai!
Dr. Myers, maybe Minnesota could do something equally impressive by kicking Michelle Bachmann to the curb? Release the squid-horde on that dumb bitch, already. We’ll work on Steve King down here in Iowa, I promise.
If you don’t grow some meat, you can’t have any personhood!
Hey, be nice to Bob Dole.
Seriously, though, this is refreshing to see.
Were I to follow this sort of faulty logic, I might have to stop eating eggs, since I’m a vegetarian, and any one of them could be a fertilized chicken.
@Raven #41
This must be part of the evil plot by the funeral industry to get economic stimulus money from the government as highlighted by Washington Post
Yes, BUT the ND house just rejected another bill that would have defined the rights of citizens not to be discriminated against. So, they think it is perfectly fine to fire someone from their job for being gay (or straight for that matter).
Iowa will start allowing gay marriages in less then 3 weeks…can we push something through quickly here in Minnesota so this won’t forever haunt us as the time IOWA did something right before us?
I’ll settle for MN finally getting Franken to the senate. The last I read, this is getting closer.
@Darby
While I do not mean to speak for PZ, his point was that taxonomically there has never been (back to 1758 the beginning of ‘modern’ taxonomy) any doubt that all people belonged to one species, Homo sapiens. It is not an argument from authority but rather a demarkation of published useful taxonomic evidence.
Oh, don’t forget Colorado. When we defeated (devastated it, really) the “personhood amendment” here in November, we were hoping that would be the last we’d hear of it. But religious fanatics have a zombie-like persistence (in addition to more obvious zombie qualities).
Here’s another question for the biologists amongst you, the definition “any organism with the genome of homo sapiens.” would that exclude persons with certain chromosomal illnesses, like Down’s syndrome and XYY syndrome from attaining “personhood”, since they strictly speaking don’t have the genome of homo sapiens? And would it then be okay to murder them?
Actually it would be (best case scenario) involuntary manslaughter, or second degree murder (depending on state). So about 4-25 years, or life if you live in a “3 strikes” state, and just happen to be that unlucky.
This is going to fill up your prisons faster than the war on drugs.
@#55 Jeanette
“But religious fanatics have a zombie-like persistence (in addition to more obvious zombie qualities).”
In fact, they favor the zombie afterlife over the current existing life.
Will they include a chimera clause? What happens when two person-blastocysts combine and grow into one viable fetus?
An egg is not a person? Heresy! Sacrilege! Come on, everyone sing along now: every sperm is sacred …
I’ve dug a little deeper – there were schools of thought dubbed monogenism and polygenism, with the disagreement as to whether humans of other races originated separately at Creation or were all descendants of Adam and Eve (remember that science and religion used to be much more integrated way back when). Ironically, the suggested groups appear to have been subspecies, but would probably have to be in separated into higher groupings if that difference was used under modern application of monophyletic / polyphyletic definitions.
It makes sense – both the discovery of humans in the Western Hemisphere and the need to rationalize slavery would have lent themselves to such a debate, and fractions of science have always been driven by such postmodernist motivations. I’m not trying to sound trollish, but I see some possible resemblance to that attitude in some of the early responses here – an attitude based more on some application of an inexplicably certain opinion than the science usually supported here.
For additional context, I have for many years conducted a lab discussion of ethical questions for introductory courses, and one question asked was, if it was up to the student, when would they set the beginning of legal human life (or citizen life, a semi-valid hair-split)? Students discuss the issue in a group; the written labs require an answer with a reason, and students often choose conception as the point they would enforce, but rarely do they give clearly religion-based reasons. I have stopped seeing this as purely a religiously-driven opinion, and can’t really see any other developmental point as being clearly a better choice. What makes a human human, and when does it happen?
Those fertilized eggs will kick your butts one day when they grow up to be humans. We may kill them, but they survive in heaven and thrive.
Imagine the 50 million plus babies in Heaven right now from abortion. That’s just from the US. Now multiply that number tenfold and imagine these growing up in heaven and being in God’s army when Christ comes again.
You people just created an unstoppable army of billions of saints. The more babaies you kill, the bigger the army that awaits at Heaven’s gate for orders to march.
Wisconsin impress you? Maybe we’ll make a good example out of the Neumanns ( http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/article/20090404/WDH0101/904040664/1981 ) but who knows, all of this happening in the middle of a judges election.
I hear the tin horns that begin the March of the Toy Soldiers from the Nutcracker Suite.
‘Zat what you meant, baby maker?
Will these babies be in embyo or zygote form or did they grow up in heaven and get angel combat training?because 50 million flying little human clumps of cells isn’t really threatening. It’s hysterical!
What proof do you have for the figure of 50 million plus babies in Heaven right now from abortion. That’s just from the US? And why would an “all powerfull” enity even need an army of any sort, especially aborted babies?
Darby,
Considering that fertilized zygotes can both split (twin) to create more than one ‘human being’ after conception, and also merge into chimeras of two totally different fertilized eggs to create one ‘human being’ where two were concieved, I can’t see why you see that as a better choice than sometime after brain activity starts. How can that developmental point be the best choice, when it’s not at all uncommon to get more or less actual living, breathing babies than you conceived?
A fully-developed ‘human being’ with no brain activity isn’t a human being, it’s a corpse that can be kept ‘alive’ only by constant artificial means. A blob of cells with no brain whatsoever is not a human being, even if they might someday become one. A single cell is even less so. See how simple that is?
Any other part or organ and we might be able to make do with artificial aids or a transplant, but once the brain ceases functioning, it’s time to donate the organs and plan a funeral.
Your inability to see other developmental points as a better choice is indicative only of your inability to see, not that you’ve picked the best possible point.
DUST: It’s like this:
AT CONCEPTION, a human has a sould. if you kill that human the sould has to go somewhere. Since child is not yet born, it has not reached the age of accountability and therefore automatically is not judged andgoes to Heaven. Any further questions? You see all of those babaies that people killed in the womb are still around. They will grow up in Heaven. So, you see your overpopulation theory didn’t work out after all. Population control is not effective after all.
Wow. Grow up in heaven? Do the souls get breast fed? Go to kindergarten?
You are a loon. Another Rapture ready godbot fuckwit.
babymaker-it’s like this–where did you get your number of “50 million aborted babies”?……that was the question.
So, where does that number come from?
50 million more babies for Christ’s army? Damn! Let’s get out there and kill some more babies! I’ll bet we can get that army up to 300,000,000 at least!
If the babies go straight to heaven, wouldn’t killing babies be considered to be one of the most loving things you could do for them? You’d be sending them STRAIGHT TO HEAVEN! Shouldn’t we be TRYING to get as many souls into heaven as possible? I thought that was what God wanted, wasn’t it?
I call “Poe” on Babymaker.
Get off the innertubes before I call your parents.
And what the hell’s a “sould?” Any relation to “soulja?”
Bless your heart.
Since the US is founded (presumably) on principles of individual liberty and individual rights, I would have to say that these things begin at birth, because that’s where individuality begins. Before that, a fetus is actually a part of the mother, not an individual.
I guess things probably got a little dicey for the legislators when they started considering “The Office of Tampons and Sanitary Pads” which would be necessary so that the great state of N Dakota could check every woman’s period every month for signs of the souls of new little soldiers in god’s army. What a fun job!
I’m “sould” too, Rjaye.
Poe.
*I hope*
They are here. Shorter babymaker: “All you baby killing, cannibilistic pseudointellectual atheists will burn in hell.”
So predictable. The fundie Death Cultists took all their lies, violence, hate, and murder, balled it up, and worship it and call it xianity.
So stupid. Why does an omnipotent supernatural god need an army of zygotes? Last time he was in a genocidal mood, all he did was drown everyone without a single zygote. Incidently, none of your god babble is in the bible. You are just making stuff up.
So boring. After they wish everyone a merry hell and threaten to kill everyone, they wander off, secure in the knowledge that several more people just decided a religion populated by crazy, evil loons can’t be real.
Damn straight. You would also be keeping them out of the claws of demented rapture monkeys like baby maker. Can you imagine growing up poor with a pschotic mother like that?
Not to mention spending boring hours in church with malevolent beings who spend all their time telling you how good they are and doing the opposite.
Probably not. Even I’m having a hard time believing people like the “xian” on the earlier thread who threatened to kill everyone and baby maker who apparently has never had a coherent thought in her life aren’t faking it. But they aren’t. This appears to be a genuine nutcase on her way to 10 or 20 kids. Too bad, with a mother like that, their life is screwed up before it even starts.
Not that the primary point of reproductive rights is population control, but it actually sounds like this is working out wonderfully. Earth gets to be a little less crowded and have fewer unwanted kids and unhappy parents, and all those zygotes get to grow up in an infinitely roomy Heaven, ending up with awesome careers in God’s theologically-unnecessary-but-I-bet-the-uniforms-are-spiffy armed forces. Everybody’s happy!
Would this law have made it illegal to save the life of a woman with a tubal (ectopic)pregnancy? Because those are usually fatal. As the fetus grows, the fallopian tube ruptures. Death by hemorrhaging can follow.
baby maker and proud of it said
(You people just created an unstoppable army of billions of saints. The more babaies you kill, the bigger the army that awaits at Heaven’s gate for orders to march.)
I so want to make this movie. It is a fact that the one thing Christians do well is make up the plots for great horror movies and this is one of them. Billions of bleeding little blobs of cells oozing out to destroy humanity. It would be a blockbuster. It should be in 3D.
“Can you imagine growing up poor with a psychotic mother like that?”
Interesting. I’d assumed that “baby maker and proud of it” was male, probably because sperm deposition into multiple females is so much more efficient at making babies than is sperm receipt + prolonged incubation, one baby at a time. (Although there is the Nadya Suleman approach. Not that that’s one to be proud of.)
Another possibility, somewhat less likely, is that baby maker is female and has mastered parthenogenesis, so she can make babies on her own. That does seem like an achievement one could be proud of.
Least likely possibility, I’d guess, is that baby maker is a deity & can make babies out of thin air (or, at least out of dust).
This mote of Dust has never made a baby! :)
Well, if babymaker ain’t a Poe, s/he’ll be really happy when s/he realizes that God, the grand abortionist, has already added billions to his zygotic army without help from anyone.
Delurking for a moment.
I was reading this thread and noticed someone else from Rapid City. Yes, the whole religion section in the paper is annoying, and it makes me wish I owned a bird. Or an unhousebroken puppy. At least put that dead tree to use.
About once a week I’m the one elected to do the lunch run. Have you seen those folks at the corner by Baken Park? They sure to have a lot of time to protest Planned Parenthood. Do any of these people have JOBS? I’m working on my 2nd retirement check, and barely have time to protest the rise in beer prices to the owner of tavern at Johnson’s Siding.
I hope SD doesn’t fall to this idiocy. As mentioned before, the abortion iniative has been defeated twice. (Amusing side note: After the first time, the people who put forth the bill to deny women rights to their own bodies said they accepted the defeat and wouldn’t be back. They lied. It will now probably back for a third time. Typical, and sadly not too suprising)
Hi Legs, Former Rapid Citian, current South Dakotan. South Dakota won’t impress tomorrow. Our legislature has packed it in for another year. Our fed Senator did manage to remove cap and trade from the budget, but I suspect PZ wouldn’t approve.
Yay, North Dakota!
@#12 Benjamin Geiger
“Seems like the answer would be 0, then. Since 5-legged dogs don’t exist, they automatically have no legs.”
Actually, 5 legged dogs may exist, or at the least it is possible that they could (remember mutations?).
Once there were some scientists who learned how to make humans and decided to tell God that He was no longer needed. So they contacted Him and told Him they he was no longer needed.
In fact the scientists were so confident that they arrogantly challenged God to a human making contest.
God accepted, but God said that there was only one rule:
“You have to make man EXACTLY the way that I made him”.
The scientists gladly agreed and as they all reached down and picked up a handful of dust, God replied “NO NO NO get your own dirt!”
Derender, you are so funny. Scientists have no need to contact imaginary deities. After all, they are imaginary. Science divorced god and religion a couple of centuries ago, due to their irrationality. And still no need for god or religion. But religion needs science, and looks silly if it disagrees with science. That is why you are funny.
As a recent immigrant to North Dakota I must say I agree with the vote against the Bill. In previous threads I have argued in favour of the right to life – and that right only – being extended to the fertilized egg but “personhood” is both too nebulous a concept and, as has been pointed out, granting it would entail too many unintended – not to say absurd – legal consequences to make this wise legislation.
#67: DUST: It’s like this:
AT CONCEPTION, a human has a sould. if you kill that human the sould has to go somewhere. Since child is not yet born, it has not reached the age of accountability and therefore automatically is not judged andgoes to Heaven. Any further questions? You see all of those babaies that people killed in the womb are still around. They will grow up in Heaven.
—
Two words for this kind of reasoning: Andrea Yates.
If aborted souls go to heaven, then we should abort ALL of them, since if allowed to grow up, most of them will spend eternity in hell. Except for hard-core Calvinists (infant damnation, you know), Christians who believe in a literal Heaven and Hell should be the most rabid pro-abortion-ites on the planet. There is just no logical way around that.
That is exactly the case in some Latin American countries (Nicaragua & El Salvador ?) If a woman shows up at the hospital with an ectopic pregnancy, nothing can be done medically until it bursts; then surgery can be preformed to save the
baby machinewoman.…thus proving that we will always need God for the important task of, um, creating dirt ex nihilo. This might seem like a rather slim reed on which to found your theology, but it’s absolutely critical to the faith-based potting soil business.
If a woman is dying, then save her. But most of the time, the woman wants the abortion so that her life can be more convenient without a child instead of facing the consequnces of actions.
You see, in Physics we learn that an action has an opposite and equal reaction. The same goes for life. If you get laid, you get pregnant. If you smoke dope, you get high. If you stand in front of a moving train, you get plastered. It’s natural get over it.
I just hate to see people kill babies just so that they can find another bed partner and have a more convenient life. That’s ridiculous and cool it with the whole stupid “reproductive freedom” garbage. Don’t you mean UNreproductive freedom? Why can’t we just call abortion what it is – infanticide!
You abortionists have killed more babies than Hitler killed jews. At least the Jews had a fight chnace of escape from time to time.
Derender, another post by you devoid of logic and reason. But then, we expect that from ignorant unthinking godbots like you.
what’s a Gobdot?
Wow, I got bingo just off of post 95! Seriously, derender, try to find your own argument.
Like you. A person who believes unquestioningly in their imaginary god, and tries to foist their morally bankrupt religion upon us. See how you fit the bill? Otherwise, you would just fade away.
I will fade away once my body dies and my spirit fades into glory.
Thanks for the explanation.
That’s nice. I winder if I can make my own bumper sticker:
“Join the Gobdot Express”
These forum things are fun. I need my own radio show.
basic biology fail. basic logic fail, too
not all pregnancies come from getting laid. not all acts of getting laid result in pregnancies. your cause and effect fails.
please do. it’s always hilarious to see people advertise their stupidity and lack of basic reading & writing skills
GOB DOTs !
derender, are you dyslexic? It would explain the frustration.
Only one of his problems. There are many.
that sounds about right.
Well i do have a Wolrd Net Daily bumper sticker and a magnetic sticker that says “I am American and I say Merry Christmas”. They all complement my NRA window sticker.
I don;t know if I have enough space to put y Gob Dots sticker.
Striking down Prop 8 in California would be nice.
How old is the “life begins at conception”
arguement at what was the state of biology at the time?
rnb :
conception: when the egg is fertilized.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a person! It matters that it can’t live without the consent of another adult to use her body to survive. That survival is in the gift of said adult, as right now, there’s no law requiring people to let others use their bodies without consent, even to save a life. End of story. Until you want to write in a new “we can draft your body” amendment into your Constitution, that’s the law of the land. It’s important to obey the law, remember? Any time men want to volunteer to be kidney machines and breathing machines for others, I’m all for it. I’m not suggesting that we draft them. And I’d appreciate the same courtesy towards myself.
I like Derender’s physics fail:
In what possible way are these things opposite and equal?? How do you account for the fact that most acts of intercourse do not result in pregnancy? What’s the opposite and equal reaction for men who get laid?
conception: when the egg is fertilized.
Which part of fertilization? Fusion of the sperm and oocyte membranes? The cortical reaction? Fusion of the pronuclei (well, dissolution of the pronuclei so that the DNA can merge)? The second meiotic division? It’s not a single event, but a process.
“If a woman is dying, then save her. But most of the time, the woman wants the abortion so that her life can be more convenient without a child instead of facing the consequnces of actions.”
It’s true because he says it is. And, another guy told him this was true, and it must be, because we all know what stupid, flighty, hysterical sluts women are. Always thinking of themselves! How dare they think they have autonomy or the right to control their own bodies. The stupid bitches should just get over it and pump out bay after baby – as long as they’re WHITE women, of course – because Nazis were bad people!
(it makes sense if you hate women.)
“I just hate to see people kill babies just so that they can find another bed partner and have a more convenient life.”
Because bitches only deserve servitude and pain!
“That’s ridiculous and cool it with the whole stupid “reproductive freedom” garbage. Don’t you mean UNreproductive freedom?”
. . . what the hell is this loonie on about?
I dare to differ, getting laid is the prime cause of getting pregnant. Unless you’re doing it wrong.
Mu, do yourself a favor and look at context. “prime cause” is fine and dandy, but isn’t quite the “law of physics” cause-effect our moron postulated. hence the post.
I dare to differ, getting laid is the prime cause of getting pregnant.
Prime yes. Exclusive, no.
Unless you’re doing it wrong.
Depending on the context, that might count as doing it RIGHT. Virtually no one gets pregnant from anal or oral sex. And it’s so much more natural than all that latex and hormones, if that matters.
Despite my inability to resist making a cheap joke about sex, Jadehawk is right: saying that sex=babies in a Newtonian cause-effect way is pretty inane.
Endor:
You are as sharp as a bowling ball.
Reproductive freedom makes no sense. Eveyone here has reproductive freedom. You are free to reproduce, except in communist China where forced abortiosn happen.
So yes, it should be called UNreproductive freedom becuase abortion is not productive at all.
Now who’s the loonie?
Dianne:
Concpetion means the very beginning. The very first stage.The first thing to happen. Is it beginning to sink in yet?
derender, stop using words you don’t understand. freedom means being neither prevented from nor forced to do something. hence, reproductive freedom is the freedom to reproduce or not reproduce at will.
unreproductive doesn’t even make sense. the opposite of reproductive would be deproductive, and I’m not sure that word makes any sense either.
Baby is when it is outside of the womb. Is that concept beginning to sink into your mind? Sigh, village idiots are so boring.
so what’s the “first thing to happen” during fertilization? this website says sperm capacitation. so does that mean “every (capacitated) sperm is sacred…”?
Nerd of Redhead
have you ever heard anyone say to a pregnant woman: “Is your organized group of tissue a boy or a girl? ” No!. They ask if the baby is a boy or girl.
If it has a beating heart, it is alive. If you stop the beating heart, it is dead, therefore you killed it. besides conception is life. Period.
Using liberal terms like cells, tissue, zygote, etc. is just another politically correct ploy to justify infanticide. Call it what it is if you are going to do it. Do you also believe that partial birth abortion is okay? Sucking out the brains of a live infant (that can feel pain) is okay? That’s sick, twisted, perverted, and should be done to the people responsible for the idea in the first place.
Do any of you on here justify Tiller The Baby Killer’s actions? That old fart killed more infants than more people can imagine.
Typical village idiot sophistry. They are saying what it will become. It isn’t a baby until the fetus is outside of the womb. Check your biology and true definitions, not those by the religious right, which are always wrong.
Your so called Biology is biased. It is a baby when it is inside the womb. period. no use argueing, becuase it is a fact. Do you need to stick your head in and see for yourself? I don;t care what some nut in a biology text book decides to call a baby and when . I use my own judgment and common sense rather than scientific non-sense that some other biased writer has exploited in a textbook.
if that textbook called it a baby, would you then chnage your mind? A fetus is indeed a bilogical term, but it is a medical term as well. The common term is baby. i am no doctor, so no need in using medical terms. i am no biologist, so no need to check someone’s writing in a textbook to check my vocabulary on what a human should be called when it resides inside the mother. Or do you call her a mother? You probably call her/him/it the HOST. Forget the book, use common sense.
You think males give birth? Wow, we’re dealing with a real genius here.
Stupidist troll ever to post repeatedly on Pharyngula?
well as of late, a modified man did give birth – to twins. See how silly this whole thing of men wanting to be women and women wanting to be men is getting? If you have a penis and don’t want it, cut it off and give to the woman who does want it. Problem solved.
Same thing with so called transgendered people. People who cannot make up their mind if they are a man or woman. For crying out loud, look in you pants! If you’re not happy with what you see, go see a shrink.
Now they try to get into the opposite gender’s restroom because they claim to be confused about thier gender. I have an idea. Put in a third restroom and lable it with a question mark. that takes care of the problem. if you don’t know whether you have a pecker or not, go into the room with a question mark on it and stop going into the opposite sex’s restrooms. Besides, that’s a good way to get pepper sprayed for being a pervert.
Or stupidest?
You decide.
he’s got a point. reality does have a liberal bias, after all :-p
Only in the mind of a right wing village idiot who doesn’t understand biology. Which means you.
derender stilling holding on tight to that title of most idiotic new commenter
Nerd of redhead:
At least you didn’t deny the fact.
————
What’s a troll? is that a short little man that guards bridges and won;t let people pass without a password or paying money?
In that case, maybe I’m posting to ahost of vampires. Blood sucking is all there is.
That you are a village idiot, no, I confirmed that. It isn’t a baby until it is born. That is biology oh village idiot.
awesome. an internet troll that doesn’t know what a troll is.
nerd of redhead.
A baby is a baby when it is inside the womb and outside. Just becuase you like political correctness, doesn’t make it right. Biology must be wrong becuase a baby is a baby. Why deliver it at all if it is just cells and tissue? Why name it? Maybe call it blobby the blob or something like that since it isn’t human. It is a baby inside the womb. You just use that to justify the crime of abortion. Once we get past the justification for killing the baby, can we realize what it is.
derender, you call an embryo a “baby.” Most thoughtful people do not. OK? So shut up.
And my daughter’s name is Blobby the Blob. I am highly offended at your insinuation that she is somehow less than “human.”
lol. next up: Maths must be wrong, because pi = 3
Sven DiMilo
You only offend yourself when you refuse to acknowledge a baby as a human when it’s inside the womb. That should be insult enough for any kid.
Only with religious village idiots like yourself. Another lie for the idiot. Abortion stops a fetus from developing. If the woman dies, the fetus dies. It isn’t separate. Until it is, the fetus is biologically a parasite. Those are the facts, not the fiction that exists in the village idiots mind. And there is a reason you are the idiot. You know nothing of science and rationality.
Nerd of redhead:
“Abortion stops a fetus from developing”?
Of course it does. If it is DEAD, then it will not continue to develop. You took something that was alive and made it un-alive. A.k.a. – you killed it!
A fetus is not a parasite. it is a living human being period. Always has been and always will be. It is ALIVE! Don’t kill it it.
Would you feel the same way if I went out and aborted cow or horse babies? Dogs? Cats? What’s the difference? A fetus is a fetus is it not? PETA would say differently since thye put more value on animals than humans. Do you feel the same way? You would abort a human, but never a dog?
Wrong biologically deficient on. Repeating your lies does not make them true. Just makes you look stupid. The is, like the village idiot.
A newborn is not considered a person until one month after birth by your bible. Don’t you ever read it? And it also does not disapprove of abortion. You religious imbeciles are so funny.
I’m glad you are against war and the death penalty then.
The death penalty I don;t know. For some, it is reasonable. You have to understand that babies cannot make decisions for themselves and adults can. Remember than most people in the U.S. who have been a victim of the death penalty had to face the consequences of his brutal crime. What crime has an unborn child committed? War is not good, but can be justified if there is a legitimate threat against national security.
If someone picked up a knife and started slicing at your and stabbing at you, would you stand there and let it happen, or would you defend yourself? Think of war like this. Right now we are under siege by a rogue group of misfits called Islamic terrorist who would cut my head off just as quickly as they would cut yours off even though we have entirely different points of view politically. To them we are Americans, therefore we are infidels and must die. Now tell me how to negotiate with nuts like that? We cannot, so therefore we must act in offense, not defense to prevent them performing another attack. The goal is extermination of the Taliban and Al Quaeda. Saddam Hussein may have not had much to do with 9/11 but was a self righteous nut himself. His spent millions payting families of suicide bombers inside israel and did harber Al Quaeda terrorists from time to time. He was pure evil
This guy would put children into wood chippers feet first and make the parents watch. Are you telling me he did not derserve hanging? If you ask me, we should have put him into one of his own woodchippers after a good long beating. Better yet, we could have stripped him naked and put in the crowds and let them handle him. He got off too easy.
The comes Iran sending in their Spec ops and arming foreign fighters inside Iraq and causing us to prolong the war. If it was not for Iran and Al Quaeda in Iraq, we would have been out in 4 months. I am against war at most times, but people like Hussein and Bin Laden need a good old fashioned rear end kicking.
Protecting unborn babies is one thing, protecting pshchopathic nutjob Islamic terrorists is another.
You have to understand that an embryo or a foetus is not a baby. If I call my nose an ear, how many ears do I have? 2, just because I call my nose an ear it doesn’t make it so.
The point is, that you argued that we shouldn’t be able to take the life of a foetus on the grounds that it’s a human. Yet you are happy to kill those who are alive and breathing for breaking the laws of a society. That’s hypocrisy, innocence has nothing to do with it. If you want to argue that you shouldn’t kill a foetus because it’s innocent life, then that’s another matter. But don’t pretend that it’s wrong to kill regardless when you don’t subscribe to that view yourself.
The religious
rightwrong, a case study in cognitive dissonance. Dereneder is a classic example.If you were going to commit a crime would you do it under system where the victim is punished and the criminal gets off light or – would you do it under a system where you get hanged the first and only time you commit the crime? My point!
That second one seems a little deterrant does it not? People should be scared to commit crimes. Under our system, it’s apriviledge – free housing, meals, exercise, friends, all the luxuries of home. If you don;t believe in the death penalty, at least make the crminals work, not live in a free world. make them bust stones all day every day for about 40 years.
Yet it’s the states in the US that have the death penalty that also have the highest murder rates. Seems like that deterrant is not working.
And that still doesn’t change the fact that you are hypocritical for arguing that one should live on the grounds of being human while the other should die despite them being human.
“And that still doesn’t change the fact that you are hypocritical for arguing that one should live on the grounds of being human while the other should die despite them being human.”
Of course not. derender and his ilk are not pro-life, but pro-misogyny. It’s not “babies” he wants to save; it’s women he wants to punish. The forced-birthers don’t give a damn about the kid once it’s born – especially not if it’s one of them.
Sven, that was hilarious!
You people never get anything. You’re hopeless cases. nevermind on the whole thing. Neither of us are getting anywhere. I used to be a liberal as some of you ar, butI done research for myself and found out that liberalism really is a mental disorder like Micheal Savage calls it.
I do not think it was research that did it. You had a horrific head trauma that did damage to your brain.
Getting it is a two-way street, since you are not absolutely right. In fact, you are closer to absolutely wrong. Learn something while you are here. Your politics and religion suck big time.
Derender, you need to stop posting. You add nothing to the discussion, and you preach instead of discussing. If you want to stick around, lose the attitude and realize you can learn things from us. If you don’t want to learn, either go away on your own or wait to get banned. Your choice. Choose wisely cricket.
Hey, let’s keep going. Maybe we can make the big mighty killer of bugs cry.
Really? Michael Savage? LOL
You blackswilling, hedge-born codswollop! And to think I actually took you seriously for a moment over there on the Vermont thread.
I have some mental-health advice for you. Shut off your computer. Don’t turn it on again. Ever. Go into your bathroom. Look at yourself in the mirror. Unleash as many blood-curdling screams at yourself as you can. Repeat until the demons get tired of the noise and move out of your head, and back into Ann Coulter’s where they belong.
Trust me. I only have your best interest in mind. If you see conspiracies every where you look, you’re looking in the wrong places.
Or, if you’re feeling really adventurous, you could read some unbiased literature on sexuality and on same-sex parenting – and when I say unbiased, I don’t mean “only things written by this one dude who just happens to work for NARTH” – and try to learn something about real people and the lives they actually lead, not the hateful caricatures that apparently fill your head. Learn something about acceptance, compassion, and about the possibility of taking part in the building of a society based on trust and respect, not on fear, hate, and slander.
How about it? Are you up to it?