BREAKING: MPs vote against reducing abortion limit. -- LiveWire Teen Forums

Quote: from mountain hare at 4:16 am on May 22, 2008

Quote: from allsmiles at 5:14 pm on May 21, 2008
Quote: from mountain hare at 4:28 am on May 21, 2008
Quote: from allsmiles at 3:24 pm on May 20, 2008
Quote: from King kong at 10:53 pm on May 20, 2008
Quote: from marshmellowman at 10:52 pm on May 20, 2008
Quote: from King kong at 10:49 pm on May 20, 2008
but the baby can live now live out side the womb from 24 weeks

Not really. Even at 24 weeks the chances of an aborted foetus living are pretty low.

I mean premature birth

It's still like... less than 10% survival rate, if memory serves. In any case, the baby is relying on machines to live and thus I would argue that they are not truly alive at that point. The right decision was made.

So a person on dialysis isn't alive?
I'm sure all the patients with end stage renal failure would be overjoyed to hear that they are actually dead.

They wouldn't be alive without the machinery. It's just a bridge to say that they are a part of the machine, and not fully human any more. A person on dialysis is a person who -should- be dead. Is that better?

You are aware that you just admitted that a dialysis patient is alive, right? Are you going to retain consistency and admit that a fetus is also alive?
And your observation that a person on dialysis is a person who 'should' be dead is worthless. Many people continue to live due to medical interventions, who would be dead otherwise. That includes diabetics, haemophiliacs, patients who suffer from severe lacerations, etc . What's your point?
I mean, no human being is fully autonomous. If we don't rely on medical interventions to survive, we still rely on food, water and oxygen intake. Quite simply, your distinction between 'shouldn't be alive' and 'alive' is completely arbitrary.

Poor lexical choices on my behalf (which I'd like to point out, I corrected in my last post!). That aside, it's a fucking opinion. I personally would rather be shut off than be kept alive by a machine, unless I go ahead with brain augmentation when it becomes a little more mainstream, in which case I'd no longer consider myself human or alive in the same sense (you know, there are different concepts of "alive," which is what I was getting at when I said that they wouldn't be alive). My definition of alive is no less arbitrary than any other. A dead body that has not decomposed would still function with a little electricity. So not even death is the definite terminus of life. As such, it is up to us AS INDIVIDUALS to define life. You don't like my definition? Fine. You don't like the fact that I do not consider those relying on machines to be truly alive, derrived from the fact that I don't believe that people with organ failures should be kept alive? Fine. That does not change the fact that it is up to ME to define what I consider life to be.

As for haemophiliacs and diabetics dying... well yes. That would remove haemophilia and at least genetic diabetes from the gene pool. I can see the benefits from breeding them out. Sorry if you've got to look at everything morally, but there would be a lot of benefits to the species.

Post edited at 3:10 pm on May 22, 2008 by allsmiles

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When they leave me, they're all smiles.
When they leave you, they're in tears.

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