Comments by "Theodore Shulman" (@ColonelFredPuntridge) on "'I Know What I'm Trying To Get At': Blackburn Clashes With Pro-Choice Witness About Fetal Heartbeats" video.

  1. Suppose you transplanted a beating heart, with a supply of nutrients to keep it beating, into a corpse. Then the corpse would have an audible heartbeat, until the supply of nutrients ran out. During that time, would the corpse with the beating heart inside it be alive? What if you transplanted the beating-heart-plus-nutrients into a manikin? Would the manikin be alive, until the nutrient-supply ran out and the heart stopped beating?
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  2. There are plenty of people alive today who haven't been inside their mother's body against her will. I, for instance, was welcome inside my mother's body, from conception until birth.
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  3. Because the murderer caused the fetus to die against the will of the womb-owner.
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  4. Who cares when life begins? If the life is inside my body, being sheltered and sustained by my organs, then I will decide how long it gets to stay there. Its life may have begun, but so long as it is inside my body, I will decide when its life ends. And I'm not gonna worry about what you think about my decision.
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  5.  @notyourtypicalcomment2399  When a life is taken, and that life is inside your body at the time, then YOU get to decide whether or not taking that life was a crime. Inside your body there is no right to life for anyone except you, except if (when) you say there is one. Inside another person's body, the right to life is conditional on that person's will. Inside my body, you wouldn't have a right to life unless I said you had one, and if I did, I'd have a right to switch your right to life on or off like a bathroom light. "Now you have one!" "But now, you don't!" "And now, you do again!" "And now, it's gone!" Wheeeee! You see? Inside my body, I decide who has rights, and which rights they have, and when, and why, and how long. Because the inside of my body is the inside of my body. So I decide who gets to stay there. And other people's opinions don't matter. Including yours.
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  6.  @drsomeone1  It doesn't matter anyway. What a fetus is, doesn't matter. What matters is where it is, and there is no scientific or factual debate about where it is. It is inside the patient's body - there's no debate about that - and therefore subject to her jurisdiction and decisions, not to yours.
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  7.  @beno.9958  Inside my body, yes I do.
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  8.  @beno.9958  Why don't we force people to donate blood, tissues, and organs for transplant? Who gave you the right to condemn to death a patient who needs a transplant from your body, by refusing to donate? Write the answer here: _____________ Now copy your answer here: ______________ also gave me the right to get an abortion. Either you are entitled to decide which lives to sustain and shelter inside your body, or you're not.
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  9.  @beno.9958  I decide whom to sustain and shelter inside my body, and when, and how long. If you can't live without being sheltered and sustained inside my body, then you only get to live as long as I'm willing to allow access.
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  10.  @beno.9958  The problem with that bit of advice is that the patients who need abortions are already pregnant. What we need is a time-machine, so we can send someone - a gynecologist or a chaperone - back in time to prevent the conceptions. Get to work on this! Invent one!
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  11. ​ @francescapoteet5481  Don't focus so much on what the patient should or should not do. Focus more on what you should and should not do. You should not meddle inside the patient's body where your meddling is not welcome, and you should respect the boundaries on your authority. No matter how much you disapprove of what the patient is doing inside her body, inside her body is off-limits for you; you have no legitimate authority to intervene there. Mind your own business and know your place. Be grateful that if you get pregnant no one will try to force you to get an abortion if you don't want one. There are plenty of people in the world who cannot take the privilege of deciding whether or not to get an abortion for granted. The government which can force you to keep your pregnancy can also force you to abort your pregnancy.
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  12. What you have read is wrong. If the injection isn't successful, the doctors try another injection, again and again until one IS successful.
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  13.  @freechair4890  Then let it be removed from the womb where it is not welcome, and go develop its own organs somewhere else, if it can.
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  14.  @notyourtypicalcomment2399  The spouse is not located inside the husband's body. So the two situations are not analogous at all. RE: "Well, the mother can wait 9 months...." The 9 months are not the main problem. The main problem is what happens at the end of the 9 months. But even if it weren't, sure, the patient can wait 9 months, if she is willing to but if she's not, then you have no business trying to force them on her. Oh, and murder is entirely irrelevant to this discussion. No one here is talking about murder.
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  15.  @beno.9958  RE: "What problem occurs at the end of nine months?" Childbirth (doioioioi!). You shouldn't murder anyone, but you don't have to share the inside of your body with another person longer than you choose, either.
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  16.  @notyourtypicalcomment2399  A woman can also get an abortion in a moment of strength. And having respect for someone is very different from sustaining and sheltering him by allowing him access to the inside of your body. "I respect you, but I'm not going to give you access to the inside of my body longer than eight weeks; after that you'll have to do without" is a perfectly valid position to take.
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  17.  @notyourtypicalcomment2399  So long as the innocent child is inside a patient's body, the patient can do anything she likes to it.
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  18.  @notyourtypicalcomment2399  Because the event you are trying to interfere with is happening inside another person's body, and she has not invited you to interfere there. Here's an illustrative example (note: htis is not a metaphor or a simile or anything like that; just an illustrative example): suppose you were going to have your appendix taken out, and I thought (for some reason) that removing your appendix would be murder - a special, unusual kind of murder, but still, murder. (That sounds weird and delusional, but there are plenty of weird, delusional people in the world.) Like, suppose I thought that the individual cells of your appendix were human lives (they actually are, in a sense: they are alive and they are human) and that by removing them from your body your surgeon would be murdering them. And suppose I purchased some state legislators with big bribes/donations to their campaigns, and got them to pass bans against doing appendectomies. How would you respond? One possible way: you might try to convince me that I was wrong, that individual human cells of the appendix are not human beings. But the point is you shouldn't have to worry about what I would think, at all, because the appendectomy would be done inside your body. You should be able to say "even if removing my appendix really were a form of murder, even so, what I do or get done inside my body is none of your business, so go away!" You should be able to take for granted that inside your body the only opinion which should matter is your opinion, and that no one else be allowed to interfere with what you decide to do or get done inside your body, no matter what they think about it. And that is what we demand for the abortion patients: the right to make their own decisions about their own insides, without having to worry about what you or any other medically-illiterate loop-a-dupe has to say about the question.
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  19. Enduring full-term labor and delivery is harmful to health, not just to convenience.
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  20.  @JackHaveman52  In some cases, the patient's has some underlying condition which makes natural delivery, and c-section (which is a major surgery) too dangerous to the patient's life. Congestive heart failure, for instance. Then you need to remove the contents of the head in order to make it easier to remove, and reduce her risk of dying. This isn't very common, but neither are third-trimester abortions.
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  21. And the answer is: who cares? If it's inside my body, then I'm gonna get rid of it when I want to, no matter when human life starts. And I'm not gonna worry about what you think.
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  22.  @annmalleybooks  Far and away the most effective way to prevent people from getting abortions later in pregnancy is to make it easy for them to get abortions earlier in pregnancy. Since Dobbs was decided and Roe overturned, clinics in free states which happen to be near anti-abortion states are seeing big jumps in the number of second-trimester abortions, because patients in the neighboring anti-abortion states are finding it difficult to schedule their abortions for times still in the first trimester.
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  23.  @drsomeone1  Exactly. Doing an abortion on a patient who requests one is a form of righteous, justifiable homicide, not murder, because the person killed is inside the body of another person, and unwelcome there.
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  24.  @annmalleybooks  Because battered women, and abused children, are not located inside another person's body. So it's ok to intervene. If a woman were being battered inside my body (somehow) and you wanted to intervene, then you would need my permission, approval, and authorization.
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  25. Who cares if it's alive? If my organs are sustaining it and sheltering it, then I will decide how long it gets to stay alive. And when I decide, I'm not gonna worry about whether or not you approve.
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  26.  @3Betanzos  Life has lots of value in and of itself. But not enough to justify forcing a pregnant patient to shelter it and sustain it inside her body by use of her internal organs against her will. You are not allowed to do that even though your life has value.
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  27.  @charlesjohnson3625  Yes, of course I am pro-choice. And pro-life.
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  28. RE: "What’s the first thing the doctor does when he turns to you and says your grandma has passed away ?" He checks to see whether or not her insurance plan will pay for his services. That's the first thing he does.
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  29.  @notyourtypicalcomment2399  You're right that the fetus is not violating the woman's rights. Right-to-lifers are the ones who are violating the woman's rights. The fetus is an innocent beneficiary of the violation which the right-to-lifers' violations. Just as (here's a clarifying analogy) when Robin Hood broke the law by stealing from the rich and giving it to the poor, the poor were not guilty, but they benefited from Robin Hood's violations. The poor should not have been punished, but they shouldn't be allowed to keep the money either.
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  30.  @francescapoteet5481  RE: "That child is separate from the mom although inside her body." Then let it be removed from her body (if that is what she wants) and be separate in a separate place (for as long as it can, which is usually somewhere between ten seconds and five minutes). Own the separateness! Celebrate the separateness. Maximize the separateness! Let there be separateness in great abundance, since it is so important to you. RE: "... it is a living human being on its own and has rights as well." Yes, but like your rights and mine, its rights stop at the barrier defined by the patient's skin. Inside your body, there are no rights for anyone, unless you say there are. Inside my body, I decide who has rights, and what rights they have, and when, and why, and how long. Inside my body, I can switch everyone else's rights on and off like an electric light. Inside my body, if I decree that you have rights during odd-numbered times of day and no rights during even-numbered times of day, my decree makes it so.
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  31.  @notyourtypicalcomment2399  No sir. Laws against abortion don't only require us not to kill anyone. They require that one person be forced, by the government, to grant access to the inside of her body when she does not want to. Enduring a whole pregnancy, and childbirth, is not a passive, nothing kind of thing. It's an affirmative undertaking and a bloody great imposition. Like submitting to a major surgery for someone else's benefit, not yours, and not resisting,
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  32.  @beno.9958  How the woman became pregnant does not reduce or invalidate her right to choose how long to remain pregnant. Her responsibility is to choose wisely, and it is a responsibility to herself. You complain that it's not fair to the fetus. Well, the fetus which gets conceived and aborted gets to live a short life between the time when it is conceived until the time when it is aborted. If she had been more careful to avoid conceiving it, then it wouldn't even get that short time! And that would be worse. A short life is better for the one who lives it than no life at all. So I find it very difficult to feel sorry for the fetus. Sure, it would be better to get more life than it gets, but the short life it gets is better for it than no life at all. Nobody gets to live as long as he wants to live. Especially, nobody whose living requires the use of the insides of another person's body gets to live as long as he wants. He only gets to live as long as he can get the other person to authorize the use of the inside of her body to keep him alive. Too bad for him!
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  33.  @helenn6061  "Natural" doesn't matter. As far as morals, ethics, and philosophy go there is no "natural" and "unnatural". Any moral or ethical predicate or imperative which applies to natural things or in natural situations, applies equally well to artificial things and in unnatural situations. To argue otherwise is to commit the "Naturalistic fallacy" or the "Appeal-to-nature fallacy". Undergraduate philosophy majors learn this, usually in Freshman year.
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  34. It is a scarce procedure. Less than one million per year in a country of more than 300,000,000? That's less than one per 300 people, which is pretty scarce. I mean, if you had a lot of jugs full of 300 red cherries each, and in each jug only one of those cherries were yellow rather than red, you'd say that the yellow cherries were pretty scarce, wouldn't you?
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  35.  @ajolleyduck2933  If the three year old is located inside the parent's body (somehow) then yes, the parent may kill the three year old, and doing so is justifiable homicide, not murder. If (as happens more often) the three year old is not located inside the parent's body, but is outside the parent's body, then no, the parent may not kill the three year old; doing so would be murder, and not allowed. I hope this makes things clear for you. I am trying to write as simply and directly as I can.
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  36.  @vickiroman189  All together now, kids: gimme an H! Gimme a Y! Gimme a P! Gimme an O! Gimme a T! Gimme an H! Gimme an E! Gimme a T! Gimme an I! Gimme a C! Gimme an A! Gimme an L! Whaddowegot now? That's right, kids! HYPOTHETICAL!!!!
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  37.  @wayando  When did human life ever have great value??? When have human beings ever lived in peace, except for a few minority groups in places like Pennsylvania?
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  38.  @charlesjohnson3625  No, the debate is about whether or not being a human life entitles it to be sheltered and sustained inside another person's living body, against her will and in spite of her active efforts to get rid of it. (The answer is NO!)
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  39. Who paid for your work? The taxpayers?
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  40.  @Chiclette-ld1xx  A technical point: there is no "moment of conception". Conception is a process. It takes about 24 hours. The sperm-head fuses with the egg, and then the paternal chromosomes slowly make their way through the ooplasm to the nucleus of the egg, and then take up their positions beside the maternal chromosomes and begin directing mRNA synthesis (and, ultimately, protein synthesis), and THEN the process of conception is complete and you have a true diploid cell.
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  41.  @ajota2288  That's true, you shouldn't just create it and erase it, but you don't have to sustain and shelter it inside your body longer than you want to, either.
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  42.  @ajota2288  Exactly. But you could phrase it better: If you don't want it, don't grow it. Get rid of it early on so that it doesn't grow.
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  43.  @hauteemonroe6715  Yes, but they're no good for a patient who is ALREADY pregnant. It's too late to prevent her pregnancy.
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  44. No, abortion is not murder. When it is done at the request of the womb-owner, it is a form of righteous, justifiable homicide.
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  45.  @alittlewheiser521  Of course it doesn't! I'm not specially entitled, except inside my body. And you are specially entitled inside your body. That's why we don't let the government force you to get an abortion (any more).
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  46.  @RootzRockBand  Excuse me. I'm not trying to steer anything. I'm only pointing out that something can display an audible heartbeat and still not be alive. Therefore, an audible heartbeat, by itself, is not enough to qualify as evidence of human life. Any claim you make that this is "steering" the conversation in any direction is something from you, not from me. Personally, I don't care if an unborn baby is alive, or when life begins, or any of that distractive govno. Even if it is alive, if it's inside my body, being sheltered and sustained by my internal organs, then I get to decide how long to let it stay there, no matter what it is and no matter what will happen to it when it leaves. I would be entitled to get rid of it even if it were a fully-aware person, standing up inside me, playing a violin, and solving previously-unsolved math problems. If all the human beings in the whole world were (somehow) located inside my body, then I would have a right to get rid of them, or, to spare the ones I like, and get rid of the ones I don't like. If God were located inside my body than I would have a right to kill God.
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  47.  @drsomeone1  You can survive several minutes - without a heartbeat. Brain damage usually begins after five minutes.
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  48.  @drsomeone1  RE: "but if the baby is aborted at 35 weeks because the woman simply doesn't want him..." Then you are living in some alternative universe, not this one.
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  49.  @annmalleybooks  Mengele is irrelevant
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  50.  @ajolleyduck2933  There is no such thing as the "natural order of life".
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  51.  @maggie648  I was welcome inside my mother's body. My mother chose to have me, willingly. If I had been unwelcome, I would rather be aborted than have the government force her to carry me against her will. If you were any kind of a human being at all, you would feel the same way about your mother.
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  52.  @3namechangezalowdevry90day7  Delivering the baby before it is viable ex utero is called "doing an abortion".
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  53.  @3namechangezalowdevry90day7  Sure, if the patient is willing to shelter and sustain it inside her body that long, and, if she is willing to endure the delivery when the fetus is that large. I thought we were talking about situations where she's not willing.
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  54.  @3namechangezalowdevry90day7  RE: "You're still trying to claim "castle doctrine"?" No sir. Body doctrine. Medical autonomy. RE: "Castle doctrine applies to a threatening intruder, not an innocent family member...: Of course! But body doctrine is not subject to any such limitation. It applies to everyone. Absolutely everyone, with no exceptions. It applies to God Himself. RE: "... you invited in..." Only for a short stay, to be ended when I say, regardless of all other considerations. RE: "... and who can't leave for medical reasons. ..." See above.
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  55.  @Alice-iu7gx  No, I'm not comparing anything to anything and I'm not making a "'gotcha' argument". I'm pointing out the true fact that hearing a heartbeat does not necessarily indicate life. It could indicate a fake heartbeat.
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  56.  @Alice-iu7gx  A baby's heartbeat can be faked too. There are fetuses which have heartbeats but no brains and no minds. And there are fetuses which have heartbeats but also have defects which render them unable to survive more than an hour after being born. That's what Governor/Dr. Northam (who used to be a pediatric neurologist before he went into politics) was talking about.
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  57. Doesn't matter what it is. What matters is where it is. My ownership of my body includes a right to kill anything located inside it. Anything. If ALL the human beings in the whole world were (somehow) located inside my body, then I would be entitled to kill any of them or all of them. If God were located inside my body, then I would have a right to kill God.
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  58. That's less than 2% of abortions. Maybe less than 1%.
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