Dear JP,

I never wrote about what people can say or can't say. I objected to Sellick writing that using medical terms is a euphemism cloaking reality.

You wrote: "In every day language no woman who is happily pregnant refers to what she is carrying as a "fetus", it is always a baby or a child. It is only when abortion is being considered that the term fetus starts being used. It is obviously less distressing to talk about the demise of a fetus than the killing of a baby or child."

The above is not true. I am the father of three children. My wife who was a nurse and happily pregnant referred to the contents of her womb as a fetus.

If you want to call a fetus a child you may do so, and I have no objection. However, I object to Sellick writing that calling a fetus what it is is a euphemism. I also think the Queensland law is poorly worded.

I never though I would catch davidf using magical language. He believes that something magical occurs when the foetus breaches and instantly becomes a child. Please explain to me how this happens. Is it like then old doctrine of transubstantiation when the host becomes the body of Christ in the Mass? Do we need the Aristotelian philosophy of forms and accidents to explain it?

Oh, I know, we do not at all. The magical change that occurs is only in our minds. And here I was thinking david was a nominalist but he turns out to be a realist, the real things are in the mind. So when a baby breaches it is our minds that produces the change from foetus to child. Human subjectivity wins again.

Why not admit it, the change is a convenient fiction to enable us to do away with unwanted children.

Dear Sells,

A change from one stage of human life to another is natural - not magical. We are a fertilisd egg at the beginning and a corpse at the end. We become a baby when we are born. Human birth is a wonderful process. We can even think of it as a magical process. We can correctly be labelled as undead humans since all of us will die. However, while we are alive we are not a corpse. While we are in our mother's womb we are not a baby. We become so when we are born. If you want to call a foetus a child you certainly may, but I find your insistence that it is a euphemism when other people call a foetus a foetus unreasonable.

A foetus does not have a skull just pieces of bone that will later fuse to form a skull. In referring to those separate pieces of bome as calvaria it is merely an accurate designation. Since it is not your field your ignorance of human anatomy is excusable.

I feel that you mean well and are probably not a bad person.

Unless you have absolute proof that a fetus is in fact also an unborn child then you must give the benefit of the doubt to the mother.

If you cannot prove that a fetus is a child then it is possible that it is not a child and by denying women the right to abortion you are sentencing them to an unwanted pregnancy, birth and motherhood. All these things deny her the freedom to choose her own life and destiny. This is a terrible sentence on anyone. You would want to be absolutely sure of your facts before placing such a heavy burden on any woman.

No one can ever know when life begins and if you cannot know then you should behave in such a way that shows that you cannot know. Do not behave in such a way that proclaims that you do know. There are many things in life that we cannot have answers to and we should have the humanity to say that we do not know.

This is where the arrogance of people like Sellick comes to the fore. Not for them is the humility to say we do not know and to accept their humanity as having limitations. Rather they put themselves above the human condition and deny that we should accept our lack of knowledge and behave accordingly. They want to place themselves above all others because they are so insecure in their worth as a human being. It is enough for everyone else to behave like a human being and to give freedoms where they are due but not for these people who consider themselves above humanity.

They are not human because they would deny the rights of women when they have no proof for their argument. They exalt themselves above the need for logic and reason which are cornerstones of human nature. Either they are part of the human family or they are not. They cannot have it both ways.

As I understand it Peter, late term abortions are almost only carried out on sound medical grounds alone?

So to get to the nub of the matter what are the medical credentials that allow you to critique other clinicians and their decisions?

The referenced terminology is there to protect the already hopelessly distressed patient!

For you and your ilk there is never a reason to abort? I mean it's not like we're living on an underpopulated planet, or have far too many mouths to feed!?

Typically of the fundamental fanatic there is no valid reason to abort a fetus, be it incest, rape of a child as young as 8 forced into marriage, rohipnol assisted date rape, or an entire promising career ruined by the same!

Very few doctors are unethical as you seem to infer; and must believe they have sound medical grounds in order to undertake such a procedure!

I challenge you to name just one unethical clinician harvesting human tissue unethically or without the informed legal consent of the pertinent patients?

And given things like incompatible tissue and tissue rejection, who the hell are you to sit there "completely clueless", yet sit there like a self appointed God on the day of judgement!

Discarded Fetal tissue is valuable just as donated blood and cord tissue is!

What sting are you implying? There is nothing to see here, other than the slanderous conspiratory theories of, I believe, an anti abortion nutter?

I hope the clinics one and all take out an AVO on you and all your ilk/patent control freaks!

It'd be a very different story if you were the one getting pregnant and finding your kidneys were being seriously compromised by the toxic/lethal side effects of incompatible tissue rejection!

And seriously, when only one life can be saved it is the mother we choose to support! Get a life of your own!
Rhrosty.

Phanto – what sort of proof do you want?

“Human life begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoo developmentn) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” “A zygote is the beginning of a new human being (i.e., an embryo).”
Keith L. Moore, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 7th edition. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2003. pp. 16, 2.

“Your baby starts out as a fertilized egg… For the first six weeks, the baby is called an embryo.”
Prenatal Care, US Department Of Health And Human Services, Maternal and Child Health Division, 1990

“Although it is customary to divide human development into prenatal and postnatal periods, it is important to realize that birth is merely a dramatic event during development resulting in a change in environment.”
The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology fifth edition, Moore and Persaud, 1993, Saunders Company, page 1

And when it comes to the possibility of taking human life, the presumption must always be in favour of not risking life. For example, the hunter who shoots a fellow hunter will not be excused because he says that he thought that the object he shot might have been a deer. The burden of proof is on the one who would kill not the other way around.