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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (146597)	4/29/2002 2:57:16 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1579737

Ahhhh, but there's the rub! Anti-abortionists contend we must know that point right down to the millisecond. Excuse me... what are you talking about? . For both religious and scientific purposes, I would contend that there are two key points.......either the beginning of brain activity near the end of the first trimester, or the moment the fetus leaves the womb and takes its first breath of air. I would say that the brain activity start would be a second key point, but the leaving the womb is really irrelevevant. If its a human outside the womb the same thing is a human in the womb. I was six weeks early, there are babies that are more developed then I was that are still in the womb. As for the brain activity that is a better criteria but even before that you have a living member of our species. As for souls - I don't know if they exist and I'm not sure if the idea should be the main criteria we use in determing when abortions are no longer allowed. But if the soul did exist and if it did enter the body before the first breath why would the lack of knowledge of the soul ("since what can a soul learn for 6 months in a watery tomb where the most significant activity is the kicking of its foot") be an important criteria? And even if it was, if we assume the soul's knowledge is the same as the brain's knowledge then the soul doesn't have much knowledge when it takes its first breath, or for awhile after that. But I don't think that brining in issues about souls is really productive here unless we both are religious and 100% accept the existance of souls. Even if that was true we are still talking about what the law should be in a secular society. Tim Tim