PROLIFE, I replied to the post to which I'm now again replying with these thoughts.
siliconinvestor.com
In brief, I believed that your "shouted" claim,
<<<FORTY DAYS------------HEART'S ENERGY OUTPUT AT 20% OF ADULTS>>>
Was a lie, and said so, though I left open the door for correction, because I am not a scientist. I said my suspicions were increased "based on an assessment of the typical argument-ethics I have noted among anti-abortion zealots."
Now here is your extremely interesting reply of today addressing the "lie" issue: (A response which was not linked to my post pointing out the lie.)
<<<This information has been around for years. I did not decide myself what it was, as you suggest.>>>
What does "decide for myself what it was" even mean, for goodness sake? That you didn't create the truth of it, or didn't create the lie it tells??
The question is, did you post the lie knowingly or in ignorance? It has an answer only you can give us.
Unfortunately, you just chose to reassociate yourself with the lie, perhaps in confusion, with the very words that should have triggered your worst fears:
<<<This information has been around for years.>>>
You have just told us that the "prolife" movement has been disseminating this "information" -- which is misinformation -- for years.
And by clear implication, you have also told us that in your mind, a lie told often enough really does become truth. These words:
<<<FORTY DAYS------------HEART'S ENERGY OUTPUT AT 20% OF ADULTS>>
present a lie, and you offer this: "This information has been around for years."
How vile. How disgusting. How unconscionable. How cruel. How utterly, utterly, creepy of you and your movement.
Last night I intuited (using only common sense and my observation of the ethics of many spokespersons of your movement) that you would rationalize the lie with some "clarification" along the lines of "I meant if you blew the fetus up by several hundred times its heart would output 1/5 of the energy of an adult heart!"
Today, having spent a few minutes with Jeeves, I have more information. It confirms that my intuition that you were posting, knowingly or unknowingly (I waited for an indication of which it was) a lie when you posted this: <<<FORTY DAYS------------HEART'S ENERGY OUTPUT AT 20% OF ADULTS>>>.
Here are a few facts that will tell you whether the above is or is not a lie that you and your movement have been disseminating "for years."
FACT: At six to seven weeks (40 days is 2 days less than the lower of those figures) the fetus and heartbeat are usually visible on transvaginal sonogram.
Do you understand what that says? It tells you that not always, but usually, by the time you reach 40 days-- plus 2 more that I'm giving you as a bonus-- a sonogram across the vagina can SEE the fetus. Maybe. And maybe you can even detect the neural twitch of the tissue that is to become a human heart. PROCHOICE, do you believe that these firing neurons, pumping no blood, in the only-sometimes-even-visible fetus (so tiny is it) are "ouputting energy" 20% of that "outputted" by a developed, pumping, adult, human heart?
PROLIFE, that is a lie. Please repudiate it.
FACT: By the end of the second month the fetus is about an inch long and still weighs less than an ounce.
Okay. The "end of the second month" means at sixty days. I couldn't find a forty day table, but will estimate 40 day length and weight by deducting 1/3 of the sixty day length and weight, giving us this rough estimate: The fetus at 40 days is 2/3 of an inch long and weighs less than 2/3 of an ounce.
PROLIFE, do you believe that this 2/3 inch long, less than 2/3 ounce cluster of cells which can't always be detected even by sonogram is "ouputting energy" 20% of that "outputted" by a developed, pumping, adult, human heart?
PROLIFE, repudiate the lie that you have been spreading for years. Tell me that you are going to take it on yourself to stop your movement from continuing to spread that lie.
Now I shall, for my amusement and your edification, update the rationalization I expected you would produce for us today. If you have been, yourself, duped by the lie, it would not be you, but its original inventor, who will have this rationalization in his or her back pocket. I assume you will track the source down and share your findings with us.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Lie-Rationalization Update Guess~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is what I am guessing they will have to say -- if you take them to task, which surely you will! -- as a cover for having spread that lie that you and you movement have been spreading "for years":
"Oh, we didn't mean that the fraction of the 2/3 ounce group of cells that are programmed to become the heart itself produces an <<<ENERGY OUTPUT AT 20% OF ADULTS>>>!! Nooooo! No way! That would be just too silly! Why, do you take us for fools? Nooooooo!.. What we meant was THIS:
That if you made the 2/3 inch long, 2/3 ounce fetus larger! by multiplying it! Yeah, that's it, by multiplying its weight by 4,200! (the number of times 2/3 of an ounce goes into an adult 200 pounds)...
Then, you see, if you had a 200 pound fetus, FORTY DAYS------------HEART'S ENERGY OUTPUT AT 20% OF ADULTS!!! See? That's the ticket! Proportionality!
Yeah, that's what we meant, a two hundred pound fetus... OR!!! Wait! You could do it this way!-- PROPORTIONALITY IS THE KEY, yeah, that's it, proportionality! -- You could reduce the height of a 200 pound adult to... let's see... well, all you have to do (PROPORTIONALITY!!!) is to shrink the six foot adult down to a height of... 2/3 of an inch or so? Yeah, that's it, that's what we meant, all we have been saying for years is that
<<<FORTY DAYS------------HEART'S ENERGY OUTPUT AT 20% (OF a 2/3 INCH TALL ADULTS.)>>>
Yeah, that's it. |
