Altophish wrote:
Fine then...drag me into this stuipid debate kicking and screaming.
First of all...stem cells can harvested in a couple of different ways that dont involve death. The numbers are just much lower (of cells)
If you show me a procedure that does not harm embryos while still collecting stem cells, my objection might lessen.
Altophish wrote:
Second...How many of us have the stamp on our drivers for organ and tissue donating? Same thing. If your dead it is of no use to you. Abortions happen. Whatever your feelings on them is irrelavent. They are legal.
Well that is faulty logic to say the least, they were once illegal. Using that form of logic they would never have become legal. I hate to point this out, but abortion has been illegal for most of human history. Again, just because they 'happen' does not make them moral or ethical. And no, it is not the same thing as tissue donation. You had to make a concious choice to have that stamp put on your drivers license.
Altophish wrote:
Yes, I feel like starting a pregnancy only to end it for your own gains is immoral. However, I know at least a dozen couples (from work I have done) who have had children for no other reason than tissue donating. Things like bone marrow or extra kidneys. They had children, not from a desire to propogate, but from a desire to live.
Bringing up selfish interests in order to bolster your argument is not going to get you much traction. Just because people are doing it does not necessarily make it right. Personally, it almost sounds like a perverse form of paedophilia to have children for the sole purpose of having ready tissues.
Altophish wrote:
Remember, Christianity is somewhere at the top of list for leading causes of death through out the history of the world. Don't believe me?...try leafing through a history book.
Try looking up the figures for the deaths attributable to communism/socialism...approximately 80 million in the 20th century. What are the figures for abortions conducted worldwide every year?
Guttmacher Institue wrote:
Approximately 26 million legal and 20 million illegal abortions were performed worldwide in 1995, resulting in a worldwide abortion rate of 35 per 1,000 women aged 15–44. Among the subregions of the world, Eastern Europe had the highest abortion rate (90 per 1,000) and Western Europe the lowest rate (11 per 1,000). Among countries where abortion is legal without restriction as to reason, the highest abortion rate, 83 per 1,000, was reported for Vietnam and the lowest, seven per 1,000, for Belgium and the Netherlands...
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/25s3099.html
That is just one year. 46 million lives ended in ONE year alone....I don't think that your 'Christianity being the leading cause of death' holds up to this unless you perform a mental sleight of hand and discount the fact that these embryos are 'life'. Do a little math...
at that rate it adds up to more than a billion lives ended from abortion alone in the last 25 years. That is a staggering figure...if, and only if, you think about it.
Altophish wrote:
I'm not trying to be an ass but it seems to me that the wrong group of people is setting the bar for morality in this country. Remember "Blind faith is worse than no faith at all."
I am sorry, but have you ever read the Hippocratic oath? It's origins do not spring from Christianity.
The Hippocratic Oath wrote:
I swear by Apollo the physician, by Æsculapius, Hygeia, and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgement, the following Oath.
To consider dear to me as my parents him who taught me this art; to live in common with him and if necessary to share my goods with him; To look upon his children as my own brothers, to teach them this art if they so desire without fee or written promise; to impart to my sons and the sons of the master who taught me and the disciples who have enrolled themselves and have agreed to the rules of the profession, but to these alone the precepts and the instruction.
I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.
To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug nor give advice which may cause his death.
Nor will I give a woman a pessary to procure abortion.
But I will preserve the purity of my life and my art.
I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art.
In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing and all seduction and especially from the pleasures of love with women or with men, be they free or slaves.
All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought not to be spread abroad, I will keep secret and will never reveal.
If I keep this oath faithfully, may I enjoy my life and practice my art, respected by all men and in all times; but if I swerve from it or violate it, may the reverse be my lot."
It seems that we willing to sacrifice any ethical system that gets in the way in order to cater to our increasingly venal society.