re: #667 kirkspencer

I’m not trying to “make a point about the biological reality of a fetus.” I’m trying to make a point that it’s not a person yet. That may sound solipsist and to some extent it is. It is, however, key.

I use a definition of person that’s highly biological. You don’t?

Jarring works in situations where the argument has become a mindless mantra. It forces conversation. It is not my preference, but in my experience it has frequently been the only thing that gets the conversation out of the echoing of Operation Rescue Talking Points.

See, to me the parasitism thing is a talking point, and you’re describing it as such.

Using it, I can progress to the fact that the fetus cannot survive without the mother but the mother can survive without the fetus; that to ensure the fetus progresses to become a baby we have to remove rights from (enslave is the other ‘shock’ word I use - and it is worth noting that different audiences respond to different shock words) the woman.

Yes, that’s Windsagio’s argument. He uses the analogy of someone being hooked up to you that you have to do dialysis for. It is logically sound, but it’s emotionally difficult to comprehend, because we don’t think of pregnancies as someone being hooked up to us for dialysis.

It is an emotional argument. My experience is that if you use intellect and the other is using emotion, you fail. If you both use emotion, provided you can prevent pushing it to total rage, you can persuade. I might be wrong, but that is my experience.

So is that true for them, too? They could persuade you through emotion? If not, what’s the difference between you and them?