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semm

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The fetus's brain becomes distinctly human, meaning that the brain has all the structures of the human brain and has distinctly human brain activity patterns (as opposed to any other animal), at 30 weeks.
Alright, what are the last two structures that are characteristic of human brains (and not animal brains) that come into existence, and when do they come into existence? What specific brain structures must exist for there to be rational thought (and do remember to provide evidence for your claim) -- remember you have to prove that the structures that enable reasoning come into existence at 30 weeks. What are the physical characteristics of "distinctly human brain activity" that distinguish the human brain from any other kind of brain, and when is that "distinctly human brain activity" detectable? We're looking for objective criteria by which one can determine whether a being has rights or not, so you need to put your money where your mouth is.
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What I meant to convey was that the fetus is basically just as developed as a 1 minute old baby.

There is no way whatsoever to determine whether a fetus or infant is rational, simply because they are not capable of it.

I am not proposing that an 8 month old fetus possesses the faculty of reason. Our rights come from our mind and its amazing abilities. Why are then rights endowed upon infants that do not posses rationality?

Mixon, I wasn't trying to equate abortion with infanticide. I'm sorry if it sounded like that.

No need to apologize. I do not seek to put words in your mouth or misrepresent you. I agree with you that a fetus just prior to birth and a neonate just after birth are basically the same developmentally. Again though the term "rights" needs to be defined. Several posters are arguing that a fetus/infant possesses a special right to life at the expense of the mother. From this they proceed to demand that the use of force is authorized against a mother to coerce her into caring for an unwanted child. Objectivism holds that no one may initiate the use of force against another. Whether we use a fetus, infant, or adult in the example does not matter. Whether we use a rational human being or an irrational human being does not matter. The prohibition against initiating force applies to irrational adults just as it applies to a fetus/infant/child. Age or the ability to reason do not matter.

In an unrelated note, has anyone else noticed that Objectivism isn't in the spell checker and that Collectivism is listed as one of the replacements?

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Alright, what are the last two structures that are characteristic of human brains (and not animal brains) that come into existence, and when do they come into existence? What specific brain structures must exist for there to be rational thought (and do remember to provide evidence for your claim) -- remember you have to prove that the structures that enable reasoning come into existence at 30 weeks. What are the physical characteristics of "distinctly human brain activity" that distinguish the human brain from any other kind of brain, and when is that "distinctly human brain activity" detectable? We're looking for objective criteria by which one can determine whether a being has rights or not, so you need to put your money where your mouth is.

There's only one that matters: the neocortex. It is extremely small in animal brains (and an advanced one only found in mammals), but in humans it is much larger, as is the rest of the cerebral cortex. That structure comes into existence around the 30th week (31st of pregnancy), my only reference is Carl Sagan's book "Billions and Billions" in the chapter on abortion. There doesn't appear to be much discussion of fetal brain development online. I've looked, and I couldn't find anything particularly detailed, except several references (including the wikipedia page on prenatal development) to the development of neurons which process sensation at about week 30 as well. Doesn't seem to be a popular topic. The full development of the brain isn't completed for 30 years, but the structures required for human thought exist at 30 weeks, even if they are undeveloped.

EEG tests (again, according to Sagan, I don't have another resource since this subject isn't anywhere near the top of my interest list) show patterns of brain waves which are different than animals and are human. They've done them in the womb, and that difference is seen at roughly 30 weeks.

The point here though, is not that 30 weeks is the exact time this occurs, but rather that there is a point during pregnancy when it does in fact occur, and that is the proper cut-off point for abortion, as then it becomes human as opposed to a mere animal.

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There's only one that matters: the neocortex.
So you're telling me that all mammals have rights. FYI here are some articles that incidentally mention the presence of the neocortex in other animals;

Dogs; "The postnatal development of neocortical neurons in the dog",
The Journal of Comparative Neurology
127,2: 199-206

Guinea pigs: "Interconnections of auditory areas in the guinea pig neocortex",
Experimental Brain Research

Wallaby: "Developmental profile of a fetuin-like glycoprotein in neocortex, cerebrospinal fluid and plasma of post-natal tammar wallaby",
Anatomy and Embryology
143,1: 106-119 183,3: 313-321.

It is extremely small in animal brains (and an advanced one only found in mammals), but in humans it is much larger, as is the rest of the cerebral cortex.
You're just making stuff up. Start paying attention to the claims that you've actually made. You claimed that there is some unique structure to the human brain, that you could identify it, and that you could show that this structure which is uniquely human exists at 30 weeks and not before. Well now we're back to scratch -- what is that quantal moment when the faculty of reason exists, as a scientifically provable fact. BTW, Sagan was an astronomer; I suggest you check primary sources, not gee-whiz popular science. Go to a decent biomedical research library if you intend to start making claims about brain structures. The brain exists in some form at 10 weeks; all animals have them. Elementary logic tells you that if you associate "presence of a physical structure that potentially gives rise to reasoning" with "has rights", then all animals have rights.

If you aren't willing to substantiate your claim about EEG patterns, then it is intellectually dishonest to make that argument.

Edited by DavidOdden
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If you aren't willing to substantiate your claim about EEG patterns, then it is intellectually dishonest to make that argument.

Well I was going to look up papers on the subject but my university's library website is apparently down.

In any case, as I said before, the argument is not when the brain or brain waves of a human become distinctly human as opposed to other animals, but that it does. If it didn't, then they wouldn't be any difference between humans and animals, because our brain would be the same. My point is that the point at which it differentiates is the proper dividing point between abortion being legal and illegal. Whether that happens at 30 weeks, 20 weeks, or 35 weeks doesn't really matter.

If you agree that that is the proper dividing point, then it just comes down to a matter of scientific evidence as to when that occurs exactly. I'll get back to you if my library website ever comes back up.

A link to a paper which seems like it would be along the lines of what I'm talking about.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal...954094/abstract

Judging from that abstract, the fetus becomes conscious around the time I was discussing. Perhaps that is a more proper differentiation point that "capable of rationality" from a brain structures standpoint, I'm not sure. Apparently however, either one is very late in the pregnancy, only a month or so prior to term.

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My point is that the point at which it differentiates is the proper dividing point between abortion being legal and illegal. Whether that happens at 30 weeks, 20 weeks, or 35 weeks doesn't really matter.
So then it wouldn't matter if we said it happened at birth.
If you agree that that is the proper dividing point,
You haven't even begun to justify the contention that this is the proper ethical distinction, in fact you haven't even identified what the distinction is in any ethically useful manner. You continue to equivocate over brains, consciousness, brain structures and reasoning. So there is nothing to even consider agreeing to. Please note that squid are conscious.
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So then it wouldn't matter if we said it happened at birth.

It matters where science actually says that point is, that is the proper demarcation point. If science somehow found it was at birth then okay, I'd go along with it.

You haven't even begun to justify the contention that this is the proper ethical distinction, in fact you haven't even identified what the distinction is in any ethically useful manner. You continue to equivocate over brains, consciousness, brain structures and reasoning. So there is nothing to even consider agreeing to. Please note that squid are conscious.

A fetus is not just a clump of cells if it is conscious. It is a separate entity, it is a human with consciousness, and as such has rights. Apparently, from the article I linked above, science has found consciousness arises at 30-35 weeks, which is almost term anyway. I think that is a valid demarcation point that is a proper ethical distinction. At the very least, you have to agree that the idea that "well its not even validly alive" is no longer a plausible argument if the fetus has even a rudimentary consciousness. Since it is a human consciousness, and human consciousness grants rights to adults, I should think that rights must be granted to a fetus once it has attained consciousness. And at the point where that actually occurs, there is very little additional effort required to actually give birth to an infant rather than abort the fetus. As a result, the argument that it infringes on the mother's rights seems silly.

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It matters where science actually says that point is, that is the proper demarcation point. If science somehow found it was at birth then okay, I'd go along with it.

Yes, I'm sure, and if "science" found out it wasn't until one year old, you'd be OK with that too. So now we are starting to get a picture of what you consider to be right: forced surgery on the mother or infanticide!!!!

The following quote illustrates just how inconsistent you are in your application of rights:

But the same can be said for a 30 week old fetus, the only difference between a 30 week old fetus in the womb and one outside the womb is location, and since a 30 week fetus can be removed without much trouble and remain alive, and in order to abort one you have to do almost everything required to remove it anyway, there isn't any real difference between a 30 week fetus inside and outside the womb. That's why I say that at that point abortion should be banned except in cases where the mother's life is in jeopardy. [emphasis added]

You state that a 30 week old fetus has rights and yet you would allow it to be murdered for something about which it has no choice and is not responsible.

Not that David needs my help but he has just caught you making arbitrary claims. First you insisted that 30 weeks was the cut-off point and you made that central to your argument for forced surgery and now you are dropping that claim in favor of any arbitrary timeline to include infanticide. You just picked 30 weeks out of thin air and made up an "argument" around it.

It is a separate entity,

Separate? From what dictionary are you working? It is part of the mother's body, completely dependent upon her for sustenance.

it is a human

It is unlike any human being I've ever seen.

with consciousness

A human consciousness is rational. Rationality requires looking at the world. So long as it remains in the womb it will never be rational. Nor is it conscious since consciousness requires being conscious of something.

As a result, the argument that it infringes on the mother's rights seems silly.

Silly? To oppose forced surgery? Maybe in Nazi Germany.

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"It is a separate entity" -- Different entity, ok, it isn't just an organ or limb of the mother at least by this point I suppose thus making it different from her, however "separate" may be poor word choice here to use instead of "different" because the thing is still biologically hooked up to the mother getting sustenance from her and contained within her. " . . . it is a human with consciousness, and as such has rights." Go back and look over the past several pages at least and you'll see human consciousness is not the only requirement for rights, so don't get too far ahead of yourself here. The fetus isn't yet existing as an independent entity. Having rights anyway still doesn't mean having a right to something at the forced expense of others and it is still violating somebody else's rights even if it is a small violation. If I ran off with a penny from you without your consent I've still stolen from you regardless of how small it is or even if you weren't all that attached to the penny. If you cease to care about small violations of rights just because they are small, you've given up rights as a principle. So certainly you couldn't argue that if consciousness is reached before viability that the pregnant person had to keep the fetus in her until at least it could become viable, no matter how small the amount of time that could require. Now once the fetus has an active human consciousness and is viable, go back to arguing over if it can have rights or not at that point for being capable of individuality at least and then if that is good enough to be capable of rights you've still got to tackle what seems like a more technical legal issue to me of how much force one may be justified to use to stop this particular violation of rights given that at that point it can be stopped without killing the fetus, but that that way may be more troublesome for the pregnant person having her rights violated.

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Sorry for replying to this so late, I've been reading the thread but hadn't had the time to respond properly.

She chose to create the fetus, so she volunteered automatically. The creation of the fetus and allowing it to reach the point where it has a human brain and can survive outside the body (at 30 weeks this isn't a problem) is an acceptance of the responsibility for that life.

There is no such thing as automatic volunteering. This is something that Collectivists made up. You will encounter the same sort of argument when Collectivists prattle about their imaginary social contract. "You accepted this or that, because I say so."

Actually, you can. If you choose to perform surgery on someone, then you must complete it, you can't just change your mind in the middle and leave him bleeding on the operating table.

Actually, there is a contract between a patient and the surgeon, that's why he can't just quit in the middle of it.

And so how does parenthood begin? Who is the contract with? You automatically discount society as an option, or yourself. It can't be the infant, small child, or even a teenager because by legal standards they are not capable of entering into a contract. What is you basis for how a parent takes on the responsibilities I outlined in my previous post? If not by the simple decision to have a child, then by what possible standard could there be?

I've already explained when and how parenthood begins. The purpose of the state is to protect the rights of actual, individual (this is important) people. As long as the fetus is still inside of the mother, it is not an individual. To attribute any rights to it would directly contradict the rights of the mother. That is why the fetus cannot have rights until birth and why the state (and everyone else) has no business meddling in any way with the pregnancy or termination thereof.

Then by that definition before the baby has taken its first breath and as long as the umbilical cord is intact I can bash it with a rock and it is nothing more than destroying a tumor or growth. It is not "separate" from all other beings as yet. If you say "no no, the umbilical cord doesn't count", well then in utero doesn't count either since the infant gets all its nutrients through the umbilical cord. By the time the fetus has developed a brain of its own it can safely be removed from the mother without time in the ICU. At that point, the only thing that must be done is to induce a birth or remove it surgically. In fact, in order to do an abortion at that point you have to do a partial-birth abortion, which involves killing the fetus and then removing all of it intact. Why not simply remove it without killing it?

If the fetus is already out, with only the umbilical cord intact, a "post-natal abortion" is by definition no longer possible. Abortion means termination of a pregnancy. By the time the fetus is out, the pregancy is already completed. There is simply nothing to abort anymore, therefore we're moving into the realm of infanticide.

I have already refuted your other point. If it were indeed possible to preserve the life of the fetus without legally, emotionally, physically (both in terms of risk and surgical trauma) or financially imposing on anyone, you might have a case. I don't want to raise the squick factor unnecessarily, but I doubt that induced birth or a C-section are exactly the same as a late-term abortion in every way.

A separate human life does exist at that point. It has a human brain, has short-term memory, is fully capable of surviving outside the womb. The only difference between it and an infant at that point is location.

Location is an objective fact of reality and, as such, matters and can make a lot of difference.

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An infant isn't rational, Marc K. It has no language, its brain is underdeveloped, it can't understand any abstractions whatsoever. I will admit that I was wrong in my earlier position, the infant does not gain "rationality" at 30 weeks after conception. I apologize. But its sensory capabilities do arise at that time (see the link to that paper, and also the notes about the linking up of thalamic nerves which are responsible for sense sensation in the brain occurring at 30 weeks), and once it has actual senses then it becomes conscious, and since it is a human it is a human consciousness. Human consciousness grants you rights. And it can sense things in the womb, there is sound, some light, it can feel pain, etc. So it is aware of something, and so can be said to be genuinely conscious.

If a part of your body has consciousness then it is not merely a part of your body, it must be said that it is a different entity, not just a subset of yourself. So after 30 weeks or so, the question of abortion changes in nature, from "can i kill an unconscious growth" to "can i kill a consciousness?" and the latter requires at least more careful consideration. I will grant you that the fetus is still entirely dependent on the mother for nutrients, but if she gave birth to it, that would no longer be the case. So if the mother simply wants to no longer have it growing inside her, then she could give birth to it and her problem would be solved. If the woman will die if the baby is not aborted, then she has that right, since the fetus is not capable of decision-making it cannot be asked what it wants and so the woman's decision is final. I will grant you that the same logic would apply to simply wanting to abort the fetus as well, and I will concede that the woman would have to have the legal right to abort it. But I will not say that I could condone such an action if it was not absolutely necessary. It would betray a profound disrespect for human life and the potential each life has. Given that the baby is viable and the woman can give it up for adoption immediately upon birth, to not do so makes the woman profoundly inconsiderate and makes me question how much she respects human life.

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So if the mother simply wants to no longer have it growing inside her, then she could give birth to it and her problem would be solved.
Morally, it is very irresponsible to bring a human being into the world without planning for its support. In that type of situation, it is far more moral to have an abortion rather than create a human being. Edited by softwareNerd
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While it might be irresponsible to not plan for its support beyond "give to an orphanage for adoption", I think it is still better than simply preventing that life from existing at all. Out of respect for the potential of a human life, I would say that at such a late stage in the game one should (but can't be made to) give birth to the baby and give it up for adoption.

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While it might be irresponsible to not plan for its support beyond "give to an orphanage for adoption", I think it is still better than simply preventing that life from existing at all. Out of respect for the potential of a human life, I would say that at such a late stage in the game one should (but can't be made to) give birth to the baby and give it up for adoption.

Taxation and restriction of freedom are not respectful of actual human life. Are you going to champion that cause also?

You cannot morally force dependence of another upon another.

If you would like to offer your intellect of ideas to persuade an individual to give up the child for adoption and so on, so be it. But one cannot claim a moral responsibility for it.

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If you would like to offer your intellect of ideas to persuade an individual to give up the child for adoption and so on, so be it.
While this is and should be legal, in most ordinary circumstances such advice/persuasion would be wrong: it would come from a faulty moral code. It is not as if there are people desperately looking for babies to adopt and facing a shortage of babies. So, this is not even a question of saying "create a baby as a favor to those who want one".

The idea of creating a human being that one cannot provide for is exactly the opposite of "respecting human life".

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I just want to point out that the "bringing a baby into this world when you cannot provide for it" argument is not very well thought out. My mom was 17 years old when she got pregnant. And I can tell you from experience that I am very very glad to be alive right now. I don't care how horrible the kids life is: A crappy life is unfathomably better than no life at all.

And one other thing, please let me know if my logic on this is terrible skewed. When a 4.0 student in high school dies through no fault of his own such as being hit by a drunk driver, we mourn the loss of life yes, but especially in a case such as this we mourn the tragedy that they never had a chance to be great. That their potential greatness was never actualized. Cannot this same concept be applied to the potentiality of the human mind in a fetus?

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You're glad you've lived, I've heard a couple times before, in abortion discussions elsewhere, from some people who had been either born into bad situations or given up by the biological parents and they have said after what they'd been through they thought at that point in their lives that it may have been better had they just been aborted and not gone through any of their life in the world at all. And besides, if you'd been aborted you'd never know what you were missing anyway to think to yourself about not liking what is going on (meaning, being aborted) or what you may never get to see or do. As for the high school kid scenario, in that case the people are sad because they already see so much good in the kid to know where he would likely be headed, unlike a typical fetus being tabla rasa and so you have little to no evidence what would become of this thing, great or awful. We don't go randomly morning any and all lost potential whatsoever for great things like "Gee! How terrible I didn't buy that lottery ticket! Now I'll never know if I could have been the one, if this could have been my day. What a crying shame."

Edited by bluecherry
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I just want to point out that the "bringing a baby into this world when you cannot provide for it" argument is not very well thought out.
Sure there is a sense in which a person who has been born, will generally prefer that they've been born rather than not. However, as BlueCherry said, if they had not the question would not arise. Anyhow, morally, that is besides the point to an Objectivist. A woman is not a baby-creating machine, creating the maximum number of people who can then be happy they were born. A woman should consider her life and how a baby fits into it, and make the decision that is best for her. There are many billions of sperm and ova in the world and we should not be living our lives by the potential interest of all those potential multi-billion babies.
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  • 5 months later...
Note: Please familiarize yourself with the Objectivist position on abortion before participating on this thread. A good starting point is the Abortion article on the Objectivism Wiki. - GC

I find the views of certain members of The ARI, such as Peikoff and Brook, on the topic of absortion to not be rational. I will brefly here present my pro-life, objectivist standpoint and invite anyone who cares to to try and find a contradiction in my arguement.

The views of Peikoff, and likely many other objectivists, is that people are only endowned withe rights of a human beings after they are born. Before conception, it takes an act of will to create a fetus. A fetus will develop into a rational human being unless another act of will is responcible for the termination of that fetus. The fact that the life exists within the body of another is irrelevant. In the near future we will be able to allow a fetus to develop entirely outside of a human body, this does not mean that person is not human because they where never actually born in the traditional sense. As a correlary it is also clear that very little is different about a fetus/human being in the moments before it is born and those immediately afterwards.

I say then that assigning a fetus the human right to life only 'after it is born' is being arbitary, and hense, not rational.

As there is no objective measure for consiousness aside from human/non-human I say that stating any cutoff between when a fetus is endowned with the rights of a human other than conception is unreasonable.

Regarding the last statement....While there is no objective measurement for consciousness yet, it is abundantly clear that sentience and volitional thought are generated/caused by the Brain. An embryo does not have a brain and there is a period of time from conception and when the first neural impulse is fired by the rudimentary neurons of a fetus. When a person suffers brain death from an illness or injury, such that their brains cells die and there ceases to be any electrical activity(particularly in the cerebrum and outer cortexes)it can be safely assumed that they are not conscious because the organ generating consciousness has been destroyed. I am not the least bit convinced that every cell in the body is involved with consciousness, and certainly not with volitional thought. So I dont think that its reasonable to regard a blastula comprised of human cells as having the same rights as a fully formed human. Ayn Rand AFAIK, was not an embryologist or even a neurologist and had no advanced knowledge of the biological sciences. Much of what we know about the brain today was discovered in the last 30 years.

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  • 2 months later...
So do embryos and yet embryos have no rights.

Indeed, a healthy embryo in a healthy mother has more chances to develop rational faculties that many adults with severe irreversible brain damage.

Being born to a 17 year old mother I believe that her chances to develop rational faculties were greatly reduced by having me. I am thankful and owe her a great debt because I wasn't aborted. She sacrificed a great deal for me, and it isn't right. It isn't right that my birth was a bond of debt and sacrifice. Had she been free of altruism she wouldn't have begrudgingly raised me with the inner conflict of not really wanting me. It was extremely damaging to my self worth. How are rational beings supposed to be born and reared into such a conflict of interest?

Edited by Tenderlysharp
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I just want to point out that the "bringing a baby into this world when you cannot provide for it" argument is not very well thought out. My mom was 17 years old when she got pregnant. And I can tell you from experience that I am very very glad to be alive right now. I don't care how horrible the kids life is: A crappy life is unfathomably better than no life at all.

So you would argue that a negative is better than nothing? Or are you arguing that a "crappy life" is not a negative?

And even so, your mother chose to have you. That's the key word: chose. If your parents were forced to raise you, would that make you feel better?

Edited by Black Wolf
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I don't care how horrible the kids life is: A crappy life is unfathomably better than no life at all

The key factor here is that it was a CHOICE. Those that are against abortion want that choice taken AWAY. They want to FORCE the situation.

You say a crappy life is unfathomably better than no life at all. I say absolute individual rights without exception, because if there are exceptions that opens a spillway to the abuse of other individual rights and on down the socialist road we begin to descend....is unfathomably better than, and I hate to say this, but I believe it to be true....you or me coercively being brought into existence as opposed to the alternative.

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I am thankful and owe her a great debt because I wasn't aborted.

That's an inexact way to phrase it. You wouldn't have been aborted any more than you would've been aborted by your grandmother never having children. A fetus would've been aborted, and some sperm would've been prevented from fertilizing one of your grandmother's eggs.

You didn't exist at the time (therefor you couldn't have accumulated any debt).

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That's an inexact way to phrase it. You wouldn't have been aborted any more than you would've been aborted by your grandmother never having children. A fetus would've been aborted, and some sperm would've been prevented from fertilizing one of your grandmother's eggs.

You didn't exist at the time (therefor you couldn't have accumulated any debt).

That's the point so many seem to miss, Jake.

YOU wouldn't have been aborted any more than YOU would have been denied life by the simple use of birth control on your mother's parts.

You were non existent, just a potentiality.

By anything preventing your birth you would have lost nothing.

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