Traduweise : I believe homicide is the act of a human killing another human. It isn't really a legal term. I believe it covers everything from murder, to self defense, to executions.

angelbear1297 :   Pregnancy is not the same as being on life support because a woman's body is not a machine whose purpose is to keep others alive. As far as morality goes, abortion is simply an act. It makes no sense to claim that abortion is morally right. It also makes no sense to claim that abortion is morally wrong. It is, however, a morally justifiable act. You are correct that laws should at the very least attempt to decide what is right or wrong, but since abortion is not wrong, and denying women control over their bodies would be very wrong, it makes perfect sense for abortion to be legal.


Vincent1875 : I'm fairly sure homicide is almost exclusively a legal term, but I'd have to look it up first.

Traduweise : I'm certain it is used a lot legally, but as I said the word homicide is a broad term that covers any instance of one human killing another. Yes there is criminal homicide like murder but there's also noncriminal things like war.

What is my opinion on abortion?, well I feel abortion is wrong and or murder although in some instances such as rape, or incest I could see where abortion is justifiable. But overall I feel as though it is just wrong and is legalized murder. After all (in the United states) we all have certain unalienable rights which one of those rights are the right to LIFE and one individual shouldn't take it upon them selves to end another life which is what abortion does. Technically the fetus is alive growing and developing and what abortion does is it ends the fetus from developing thus killing it. So i'd say that qualify's abortion as murder, it ended the life of another human being which violated the fetus's unalienable rights to LIFE but in some states the fetus doesn't have any rights what so ever  since it isn't a "person" or "human" yet. Overall I find abortion to be murder and it should be illegal because it does take the life of another (helpless) human being.

Traduweise : You obviously did not understand what I said about tumors or fetus DNA. You aren't killing people when you scratch your nose or remove tumors. They are parts of the the person they are removed from, and do cause the person or any other person to die. Yet, while a fetus is attached to the person, it is not part of the person. The fetus has DNA entirely separate from the person it is connected to, meaning killing it is murder. While the law may say that abortion is not murder, the law permits amoral people to write the law, meaning what the law says is not always right.

Traduweise : Actually in order to live the unborn child must have nutrients from the mother through the umbilical cord if I'm not mistaken. Once the cord is cut off the support from the mother is removed and by that time the child is able to support its own life. Before the child is born however, it is still alive but has no way of getting the nutrient it needs to live. Since abortion takes away the child's life source it therefore terminating the pregnancy and killing the child. Do you understand where I'm going with this? 

Now as for abortion being "morally justifiable" wouldn't an act have to be considered right or wrong so that you can justify it? Otherwise what are you justifying that its an act? I'm really just asking because to me for in my mind an action has to be right or wrong so that you can justify whether or not its right or wrong however I could be overlooking things.

Now I'm not quite finished yet, I would like to discuss one more issue. You say that denying women's right to have an abortion is wrong and leaves them with no control of their bodies correct? Well that is true but the women also had the choice to (and I'm going to be very blunt here so please forgive me) become pregnant in the first place even though the women knows very well that she cannot provide for a child. Now, I'm not saying you're wrong about that abortion its wrong not to let women have control of their own body you're absolutely right about that. But it looks like to me that the women had control over her body to get herself in that position in the first place.

star4z :   Not quite. A fetus most certainly is still attached to its mother, otherwise it would both starve and die of its own toxic metabolic waste. So what makes it human? It's not having human DNA. Nor is it in having unique DNA: a cancerous cell, for instance, does not have the same DNA as its host. You seem to be inventing arbitrary standards just for the purpose of supporting your argument.

Furthermore, even if the fetus were to be granted personhood, it still would not have the right to use another person's body without consent, a point I have already made. As such, the mother has every right to have it removed. That it cannot survive on its own is not her fault.


angelbear1297 :   If you had bothered reading my earlier posts, I have already addressed your point. I'm sick of reiterating, so I'll just copy and paste it.

And more importantly, abortion is essential in giving a woman control over her own body. Nobody should be forced to sacrifice his or her own self for someone else. But heck, go ahead. Call a fetus a human being and equate abortion with killing a person. That makes it even easier to justify. As a person, you have your rights, but you also have your responsibilities. As a person, I have to respect another person's individual rights and bodily sovereignty. I can't force someone else to, say, give up a kidney to save my life. It has to be given voluntarily, and that is the basis of individual rights. The most important argument for abortion is not rape, not incest, not teenage mothers unable to raise children, not even overpopulation. It's individual rights. We have bodily sovereignty. Anything less is a violation of our fundamental human rights.

If a mother doesn't want to have to go through the long and painful procedure of pregnancy on the other hand, she doesn't have to. She has the right to control her body that way, and as I said but you conveniently skipped, if a fetus is going to be considered a legal person, then it doesn't have the right to live at the unwilling expense of someone else. Your right to life cannot infringe on mine. That is a basic human right.

You don't have the right to live at someone else expense if you're a person or a fetus. So yes, abortion is morally justifiable, but it is only an act. An act is not right or wrong by itself. Firing a gun, for example, is not morally right or wrong. Firing a gun at a random bystander is most likely morally wrong. A murder (a real murder, that is) can be divided into 3 categories: first, second, and third degree. First degree is punished more severely because it requires premediation. Second degree is a 'heat of the moment' crime, and thus less severely dealt with. Third degree is accidental caused by reckless behaviour. It is the least severely punished. A truly accidental death is not punished at all. And while a law does not necessarily mean right or wrong, it's a fair standard in this case. An act cannot be considered right or wrong until it is placed in the proper context.

Now, as to your last point. Consent to sex is not consent pregnancy; that's like saying consent to drive a car is consent to wind up in a car crash. Some women use contraception and it fails, for whatever reason. Some women are raped. Some women just screw up. It doesn't really matter, because even screwing up does not mean you lose your individual rights. That would be like denying someone who got into a car crash medical care because "you consented to drive too fast". You claim to respect morality, so it should be easy to see that punishing people for that is not morally right.

Traduweise : Your implication that fetuses are like cancerous cells is sickening. By your standard, all humans should be dead because as fetuses no infant can survive. If your mother didn't want you, you would be dead, and by your reasoning, it would be your own fault, because you can't survive on your own. You couldn't be arguing for abortion if someone hadn't chosen not to have an abortion.

star4z : An baby can't survive on its own, but can in a hospital or foster home, i.e. without physically attaching itself to someone else. I've already made a great many arguments on this subject, and don't feel like repeating them. Come back when you have your own and are finished with the hysterical hand-waving.

Traduweise : Hmmm. I think Second and Third Degree murder are the same thing with the exception of the circumstances surrounding them. Third degree is a Second degree murder when the murderer is put in a situation where any normal person would be emotionally unbalanced. Walking in on your wife cheating on you and killing them for example. An accidental death caused by reckless behavior isn't murder. It's manslaughter. Then again perhaps you live somewhere that the degrees are different.

Vincent1875 : You're probably correct. Here in Canada, third degree murder does not technically exist, but some people (unofficially) refer to manslaughter as third degree murder. It's a bad habit, I guess.

Traduweise :

If I understand, your stance is that a mother has the right to do whatever it wants to
it's "fetus" correct? Because it is a parasite, if she so chooses to view it in that manner?

What if you are killing a human after all, and you have accidentally justified a type of murder?

Did anyone ever who got an abortion claimed it was a puppy instead of an human? Or a tadpole?

Sword legion : You can call it what a you like: fetus, human being, parasite. That's not really important.

Being a Man I really don't think my opinion matters but I'm pro choice.

For people saying that adoption is the no-brainer alternative to abortion. They should take into account that 30,000 kids go un-adopted each year, and of course the percentage is rising, as the human population exponentially rises. Hundreds of thousands of children in foster care, and these people statistically have very difficult lives.

I think The parents have the right to choose to have a child up to the point until that child has developed the characteristics that we consider to be human, the main one being cognition. A fertilized egg is about 100 microns wide, the size of this period(.).
At 20 weeks, a fetus does not feel pain, it has not formed a neural network, much less does it have the ability to know that it exists, there's no need to personify something that doesn't have the traits of an actual person.

I think it's immoral to force a child to be born into a family that A) doesn't want it to exist or B) a family that can't properly care for the child.

The first step in understanding the issue of abortion is to actually know what you're killing when you terminate a pregnancy. Saying that it's "killing a child" is actually failing to describe what it is.

I'm willing to be swayed one way or another, but as far I see it, it's not immoral to terminate a pregnancy.

yeah, and sorry about the long, drawn out post, I'm a bit opinionated....

sloanstar1000 : So your saying that the parents should be allowed to kill their baby because they were too dumb to use contraceptives? And it is immoral for the baby to be born, but it isn't immoral to kill it? You aren't making any sense.

tgags123 : Again, I already addressed this, You're calling it a "baby", calling it a "baby" or a "child" doesn't give an explanation of what we're talking about. A baby could be anything from a fetus to a 5 year old. I'm talking about a fetus that is 20 weeks or younger, specifically. You might as well call a fertilized ovum a "baby".

 I would hope that you would explain to me in detail why using contraceptives is morally just, while terminating a 20 week old fetus isn't? And at what point after conception does it gain the right to it's own life? I would argue that a right to life doesn't start until the CNS(central nervous system) is at least functional. A 20 week old fetus is just as aware of it's environment as a sperm cell is, or an eggplant for that matter, but you never see a picket sign that says "eating eggplant is murder!" outside of a farmer's market... why is that? An eggplant is alive isn't it?

Cognition is what makes us human, Cognition is when your life starts, not at conception, and that's my argument.

It's an emotional issue, and I would prefer to keep the discussion civil if at all possible.

sloanstar1000 : I am calling it a baby because it is a baby. It is alive at the time of conception. As soon as the sperm reaches the egg, it is a human being. Sperm is not a human, it is a part of a human. Killing a sperm via contraceptives is the equivalent of getting a haircut. The difference is that a sperm is a cell that is part of a human, not a complitely different human like a fetus.

Cognition does not make us human. If a person is completely incapable of thinking, that does not mean that they are not a person.