I do not agree when people say that animals are totally inferior to humans (and i never said you said so). How can this be, when, I might be going against certain people's views here, man himself evolved from apes. When you look as an orangutang (sh*t can't remember how to spell it) or a chimp, you can tell that they understand so much of the world. They are the closest beings in the animal kingdom to us and i understand that completelly.
But not only monkeys. As Jenn pointed out with her example on horses, you look into centain animal's eyes and you just think "God, how could anyone ever have thought you were inferior to us."
Obviously, not all animals' brains are anywhere neer ours. After all, there's a huge difference between a chimp's or a dolphin's and a mouse's or a rabbit's. But when people say that animals are inferior to humans, it's like saying that the earth will blow up in 50 years. It's a generalisation that it=sn't taking in all the other possibilities of life.

(( can i just point out that fish have liquid brains. Random, i know, lol))

Alba xx

Liquid brains? That's... Really? Why didn't I know that?... never mind.

For sure, animals are incredibly intelligent beings and depending on both what it is and the individual, I have met animals that I would say were smarter than some humans which i have come into contact with... The only quandary I can think of in so emphasizing animals as you seem to, Alba, is that in a situation where you had to pick between an animal and a human... No, that was wrong of me. I'm sorry for even thinking such a thing.

Evolution... such a strange concept... Never mind me, just thinking out loud...

Forgive me if I have misread any of this situation, but I do not seek in any of this to force you to alter your opinions. The purpose of me posting here is to try to give you insight into the twisted labyrinth of my mind. I don't have with you the personal relationship that most of the members of the forum have with each other. Thus, I utilize this place of discussion to give you an understanding of me, if you should desire it... Likewise, I endeavor to learn about you through your replies. My intention therefore is not to argue with you or prove you wrong, but merely to summon forth your thoughts so as that I might try to... comprehend your standpoints. Such understanding will hopefully put us in a place of friendship, or at least bring whatever relationship may exist to a point that lacks animosity. The part that backfires is that, depending on how well I portray my ideals or how you would chose to receive them, I might put some rift formed by either misunderstanding or anger between us. All I'm trying to do is to get to know some new friends better, and let them in on what they can expect from me...

Lastly, I want to thank you, Alba, for making a topic on which we are free to voice our thoughts in an environment that suffers not from the hostility that it might be met with elsewhere. I, for one, will make a great enterprise of not interpreting the strength of your emotions to mean an attack on my person, and request that you would keep in mind that I say nothing in a heated manner or with injurious nature. If I ever have anger with you I will (well, knowing me, I'll probably keep it bottled up inside and let it eat me alive from within) tell you, but I would not be so insensitive as to do it in front of everyone else. As if I hadn't already made my point fifteen different ways, my quest is not your humiliation or mine, although my being made to look the fool would undoubtedly happen long before you started to even think in a clouded manner. If you have made it this far, thank you for reading my ramblings, and I hope you now understand that," what may look like a conflicting nature in my words is, in truth, no more than inquisitiveness and the need for clarification that my oh-so-dense mind cannot live without.

Can i just point out that you are the most articulate person i've ever had a discussion with, Whilaroo! I swear, you convey your feelings into words so well it would be hard to mistake your feelings. Finally someone who has as much passionate emotions about aspects of life as me. YOU RULE MAN!!! lol
Anyway, i know i'm changing subject, but I'd like to know your opinion on abortion.
Strange topic, yeah, but it's something that's happening more and more these days, and I'm not too sure what to think about it.
On one hand, I'm against it, knowing that it's taking away life and an actual human being. Women have no right, even if the child was unwanted and and accident and is "theirs" as most say, so they can do what they want with it, it's inhuman to take away a life without the person's concent (even if the life is only a fetus).
But on the other hand, abortion can be a good thing. For example, if you find out that your child suffers from a serious mental or phisical disability (even if this could only be detected quite late in the pregnancy), it's understandable that if the child would not be able to live properly, that abortion might be necessary to prevent suffering at birth. Also, there's the idea that the unborn child is not really a life, seeing as it has never taken a breath and opened it's eyes on the world outside the comfort of it's mother's womb. People could say that it wouldn't know what it would be missing... though that doesn't sound too good, does it.
What do you think about this?

Truly, Alba, it is an exhortation to me to know that I speak with such a measure of clarity. Being misunderstood is perhaps on of my greater fears, that I should be incapable of implicating my thoughts in cognitive manner... I too am glad to find someone with a passion for life and such firmly formed opinions. It is most intriguing to talk with someone who does not appear to abhor speaking about their convictions and the reasoning behind them. Know that I speak only my thoughts, this is not embellishment, your conversation is incredibly refreshing. You cause me to think, both you and CnP, and for that, I cannot thank you enough.

Abortion is wrong, that is the least extreme way in which I can indicate my feelings on the matter, but you seemed to have already grasped the base concept upon which I have built my opinion: a human, even in the fetus state is a human being. The way I see it, then, is that the elimination of such a life would be to the murder of a newborn or any other person, and as the unborn child has not committed any sort of crime, it is not as if they can be charged with anything other than being unwanted. True though it may be that they will live a life that is less than pleasant, they should be, at least, given the chance to live it. The probability, or so I have been informed by several medically employed persons, of the child having some sort of a defect that causes the pregnancy to become dangerous is minuscule in even the worst cases. I have not personally been involved in a situation where I knew someone who chose to abort a baby, but from what information I have been able to garner, the experience actually seems to have a tendency to cause mental scars to the woman who aborted the child...

You mentioned above that the baby wouldn't be able to give consent, but even if they would that would only be euthanasia, another practice which I do not condone. Perhaps, if they were at a cognitive state and you look at it as one life sacrificing themselves for another, in the case that the pregnancy would definitely end in the death of the mother... But even then, I am an idealist and believe that the mother would be willing to give up their own life for the child. But then, my mother always was and forever shall be that kind of person, so...

I can honestly say that she is my greatest influence in this area, my mother that is. She was adopted after having been put up for adoption because her birth mother "didn't want her". She ended up with what some would call a messed up family, but she loved them all the same. Her life was hard at times, but she survived...no, thrived even in difficult situations. As far as I'm concerned, she ended up a better person than most, not that she's perfect, but she is a good person. If her birth mother had just opted out and had an abortion, I wouldn't exist... Some might say that, "Well, these circumstances just make you to close to the subject to be objective." I ask you though, do you understand what it means to know that you could have been quelled before you were born, or that your best friend might not have been because of whatever reason his/her mother gave for needing to abort them?! So my emotions on the subject are a mixture of fear, sadness, rage, pity, heck I probably span the whole emotional bridge on this issue.

Understand that I do not condemn women who chose abortions, I pity them, for I truly believe that you could only do something like that if you didn't understand the ramifications of your actions... Thus, it could be considered involuntary manslaughter, if you will, an accident, but if whence someone became conscious of exactly what it was they were doing and still went on to do it, what could I perceive but murder?

Summed up, abortion is one of the saddest things in the world, the ending of a life that knew not the joy of living...

Yes, but abortion has it's qualities. I'm not saying that it is good, but there are some things that it can be used for:
Imagine, teens, well, have sex, without any protection. The female gets a baby. Having teen parents is a really, really, really, bad thing. Abortion would've been the first thing that would come into my mind.

I do agree that abortion is a form of murder, and I also agree that being a teenager and having a child is totally wrong. For one, you can't stop your studies to look after the child because than you're stranded for work in the futur. To hire a nanny is even worse for the child because they end up thinking they have two mums and don't see their parents enough. Also, the mother might not be old enough to look after the baby properly.
For example, a few years ago, a young spanish girl of 11 ended up pregnant after having slept with her 14 year old cousin. Now I know that's SICK, SICK, SICK, but imagin the position she would have been in. At eleven, a girl's body isn't developped enough to even cope with the birth, let alone looking after the child afterwards. I would endanger her life!
Now there, I think that abortion is a valid solution, even if, yes, it is murder, but even so, i think that the girl had much more potential than the unborn baby. In my opinoin (even though i don't know what happened) she sould have lived and had an abortion, and not died, probably killing the baby at birth.
Although I have no proof that either of them died and they're probably having a great life... well, a 15 year olf girl with a 4 year old child is just awfull, but you never know what could have happened...

Teenage pregnancy is an incredible problem, but to end the baby just to cover for even these things... If the girl is able to give birth, which is only a minuscule percentage of the population, then at least you could put the child up for adoption and give them a chance. It's true that their life may end up as a horrible and twisted thing, but they also have the chance at just living. One of the things you said, Alba, hit me: "i think that the girl had much more potential than the unborn baby." How can something like that be decided? I don't mean to...I don't...I seem to run out of words... Every day we choose to value one life over another, I do it too, so this is a statement that I make to include all humans, but in this instance, when it is possible that both beings might survive... Albeit, life in the aftermath of giving up a child to either abortion or adoption is not easy for the girl, but when you opt for abortion you don't even consider the child worth the while, the time? At least if you let them be adopted, they live. Yes, their life could be emotionally tumultuous and end in a horribly disfigured manner, but why should we be the ones to decide that for them before they've even had the chance to find out what breathing is like?! I know that I sound like I'm caught in a spin-cycle, but I'm trying for all I'm worth to get this out without choking on my own emotion. Hmm, how about we try it this way... The girl made a mistake, a big mistake, and the guy...yick, made the same one, although I'm gonna hit him harder with it because he doesn't have to go through pregnancy and is most likely exempt of responsibility. So, someone has to pay for this 'mistake'... For the sake of simplification I'm gonna say that there are three people who could have to pay: the mom, the dad, the kid. The mom would have to pay by sacrificing a good deal of her young life to care for the kid, but in doing this she does get the joy of a child. The father could equally 'suffer' the sacrifice of raising or at least helping to raise the kid, again he would undergo the 'horror' of having a child. Both of these routes through life could either make or destroy the mum and da, or could make, and I shiver as I say it, a family. Now we get to the kid... At this point, the only sacrifice the child can make is its own life. It seems so simple, doesn't it, to just eliminate the fetus, what science calls the baby until it has its umbilical cut, and live your life... The father gets away from this one scot free, but the mother undergoes, generally, what most mothers do when they lose a child, loss, emptiness, inconsolable sadness. Of course, for some this can easily be gotten over, but others who realize what they have done... Like I said, I'm just a writer as far as this is concerned. I've never even been on the sidelines of an abortion to know what it is like, but I have seen what it is like to not have been aborted. Frankly, I fear for someone who can justify abortion because it makes expendable the life that might have otherwise had at least the simple right of living...

Ok, I'm going to point one little thing out in this abortion discussion. Rape. A teenage girl is raped, as is unfortunately quite commun in some countries, even if we don't hear about it any more. If the girl gets away with her life, then she also looks forward to the possibility of being pregnant. The girl may not feel ready to be able to care for the baby, and yet it was not of her own fault that she ended up with-child.
I think that, in these cases, then it is acceptable to abort. Going through with the pregnancy and then giving the child up for adoption can often cause more psycological problems than the abortion. Postnatal depression, or just depression in short, as well as the post-traumatic stress of the rape itself.

But could you imagine being a victim of something as brutal as rape and then terminating the pregnancy? Now, it may start off all right, but just think about what would happen if, at some point in life, she would decide that she was responsible for the death of that child. Yes, I can see how the child could be a symbol of pain for the person or just another thing that they wouldn't be able to take care of, but I myself can find no basis to condone the ending of such a life. I know that, were I capable of being put in this situation, I couldn't abort a child under any circumstances, but I'm not a female so I can't. Think about it, would you ever be able to justify to yourself having an abortion or encouraging someone else to undergo the procedure? Rape messes you up bad, again I have not had the pain of being anywhere near such a case, but I am an empathetic person at least. I understand humiliation and pain. Even not being able to magnify them to that incredible extent, nor possessing a desire to do so, I believe that I can barely begin to see what I would do to console someone in that situation... It's hard... To me it just doesn't matter the reason: health of the mother, health of the child, rape, not wanting a child, not being able to deal with a child, etc...I cannot bring myself to believe that abortion is ever necessary or even a good alternative...

Then there are all the psycological problems that accompany it. Say that yes, you do go through with the pregnancy, and then give the child for adoption, you're putting your mental health at risk. For one, a mother has a bond with a child that is so strong that it can cause severe mental problems, such as thinking that you're not good enough to look after the child, or severe depression. By terminating the pregnancy before the advanced stage, then the link isn't forged, thus saving the mother from these illnesses.

So... one person's mental health is worth another person's life?

The mind can heal, in fact, any aspect of the human is capable of healing. True, the person may live with scars for the rest of their life, but the point is that they have the capability to repair themselves as well as the choice to allow their 'psyche' to knit itself back together. Death, however, is not something that simply reverses itself. For me, the concept of death is not a wholly bad thing, but for you who believe that this world is the end-all be-all, I cannot understand how you might treat death with even a tiny bit of a casual attitude... Excuse me if I sound rash, but I feel a bit disturbed at the moment...

What I said above is rather abrasive, but it is still how I feel, whether it is offending or not. To demean the life of an unborn child is to demean the most innocent form of life. With that mentality, it becomes even easier to deem anyone unnecessary to life's function. If someone else's existence threatens your life or has the potential to in some way, say that of your mental health, are they not expendable as nothing more than a danger to your person? I find that letting such a feeling guide anything but a villain or antihero character in my writing is a rather frightening. When the death of innocence becomes an acceptable outcome, morality takes a back seat as it sits and watches the world fall apart... The ability to condone such removal of presence can lead to far darker things...

Sacrifice...we talked about it before... Tell me, should not a mother be willing to sacrifice herself for her child? If not, can she be trusted with motherhood? Is not the mark of true love the sacrifice of one's self? CnP, Shadow, when asked about what the extent of your belief in love would be, you answered, unless I'm gravely mistaken, that for one you loved you would find it in yourself to give up even your own lives for that one for whom you cared that strongly... Tell me, were you ever to be in such a situation as that you should have children, this is addressed to all, would you not wish to have that sacrificial love for your offspring? I do not question your integrity, but merely wish to understand if you truly have the opinions you stated above...

Wow, but I do appear like the black cloud, don't I?