TheMightyEthan

But that's only an accurate description once we have a definition of when "life" begins (I know we will never get an agreement on that). There's a difference between killing someone who exists and preventing them from ever existing in the first place. If an early term fetus isn't a "person" yet then an abortion is no different from a condom, either way you're preventing that person from ever existing in the first place.

Dean, all that science is only relevant if the philosophical basis for saying it's wrong to kill someone is consciousness. Either way it ultimately boils down to philosophy and neither philosophy is any more objectively correct than the other. Science can tell us that the earliest it could be conscious is 5 months, or that the moment it's a completed genome is conception, it's only philosophy that gives either of those facts any relevance.

YES! The release may be a bit late, but at least it looks like they're actually putting some effort into the port instead of leaving this kind of stuff out like lots of console ports do. Also glad to see they're not asking for a full $50-60. I'll probably still wait for it to hit at least $15 though, due to the mixed reactions I've heard.

Yante posted while I was writing, all of this is @TFG: First: I accidentally downvoted TFG's comment. Didn't mean to. Sorry. On topic: But that's assuming consciousness is the determining factor. When discussing whether something is a being with rights all questions are philosophical, there are no "right" or "wrong" answers in any absolute sense. I happen to base my philosophical stance on the belief that it's wrong to kill conscious beings, whereas other people might base it on the belief that it's wrong to kill a human, defining human as an entity with completed genetic code (i.e. a fertilized egg... also I made up that definition so if there are holes don't ascribe them to the viewpoint, which isn't mine). Neither one of those bases is any more "right" or "wrong" than the other in any kind of objective sense, it's just two groups of people trying to argue for their viewpoint.

Are you being difficult or is this a serious question? A fetus is special because the belief is that it's a person/human from the moment of conception. Those other things are not. Humans have rights that tumors and parasites do not, therefore when making any decisions about a fetus you have to take into account its rights, which you do not have to do with a tumor/parasite. These aren't my views, so someone who actually holds them feel free to correct me if I'm mischaracterizing them. I don't mean to.

@Dean: The issue, from their perspective, is that it's not just her body because you're killing the fetus, which is its own entity with its own body, and while generally you have a "right to bodily integrity" as it's called in American law the woman's right to control her body does not trump the fetus' right to not be killed. Few people would disagree that if it were only the mother's body in question she could do what she wanted. I don't agree with the stance that it's a person from the moment of conception, but if you do then the approach makes sense. If you look at it from that starting point then yes you have the same right/duty to prevent abortions that you do to prevent murders.

The reason I chose consciousness is because that's what defines whether or not our society considers it wrong to kill/hurt something (and I happen to agree with that approach). That's why you don't get charged with a crime for burning your fields but it would be a crime to set a dog on fire.

If I were being pedantic I'd change that to "a child" since "this child" carries the connotations that there is already a child, but otherwise I'd agree that that's the choice they're making. Then the philosophical question is whether or not they have the right to answer "no" and get an abortion. Many people on both sides of the issue (myself included) say that the answer to that question turns on whether the child/fetus/whatever in question has a right to live, and that question turns on whether it's a person yet or not, or at least whether it's "alive" yet or not. That's how we wind up with discussing when life starts, because that's what controls whether you're destroying a person or with rights or whether you're destroying a non-living thing with no rights. If it's a person with rights then it's well established that society can step in and prevent you from making that choice (see: murder), but if it's a non-living thing with no rights then at least in free societies the basic agreement is that it's none of society's business what you do (see: getting a mole removed, or any of the myriad forms of elective body modification).

@Dean: I've read that the most effective way to prevent abortions is to provide cheap/free access to contraception, especially for teens (based on actual studies, but no I'm not going to track it down right now). Sadly many of the same groups who are opposed to abortion are also opposed to giving people contraceptives, especially teens.

But by saying an abortion is "ending life" you're presupposing that "life" has already begun. You can't end something that hasn't started yet, and the answer to whether or not you're ending a life requires that you first answer what constitutes a life, so the answer is not as simple as you make it out to be.

Alright, I wrote this last night but the forum quit working so I didn't get to post it: I can't speak for everyone but I'm certainly not talking about abortions being performed anything later than 3 months, or at least not what you could call "elective" abortions. A couple years ago I actually did a bunch of research on this because I was discussing the issue with a pro-life friend in law school. I'm not going to repeat all my research now, so forgive me if I get some facts wrong: For me the philosophical basis of saying you shouldn't kill something is if it's a conscious being, "consciousness" being defined as "being aware of its own existence". (To expand on that I'd say you shouldn't cause pain to something capable of experiencing pain, but that's a separate topic.) Because I view not killing conscious beings as a very important goal, I say we should err on the side of caution to avoid doing so. The part of the brain believed to be responsible for consciousness as I've defined (ie more than just "not being asleep") is (IIRC, I'm not 100% sure, this was a while ago and I am not a brain expert) the cerebral cortex. So a being, or at least a mammal, cannot be conscious without electrical activity in that part of the brain. The earliest (again, IIRC) point at which electrical activity has been recorded in the cerebral cortex is at about 20 weeks, or just under 5 months, and at that point it's sporadic rather than continuous. That would be the cutoff age for abortion assuming two things: 1) we can detect the activity as soon as it's there, and 2) consciousness begins with the first electrical activity in that part of the brain. I don't think either of those are good assumptions. However, given everything we know saying that the earliest a fetus could conceivably attain consciousness is 5 months, and that I want to err on the side of caution, I decided that 3 months is a good cutoff. Again, I may have gotten some of the facts mixed up in my memory, but I do remember that I decided that 3 months was after building in a significant factor of safety. That's my 0.02.

And right now people are being oppressed and murdered by their own governments. Compared to that, nothing in any kind of news organization matters one bit, so no one should ever criticize anything other than the worst thing happening at that specific moment.

Worse things happening does not mean this isn't bad.

No judgement passed? Really? Previews are always hype building. Yeah, they don't give it a score like in a review, but it's still a conflict. Anyone associated with a piece of news, whatever the kind, should not try to cover it as a journalist. The fact that this is even considered okay by anyone in the industry kind of shows one of the problems with games journalism.

Yeah, admittedly I don't have children, but I would be absolutely shocked if that changed my viewpoint one little bit. I love kids, but that doesn't have much to do with opposing/supporting abortion.

She's already done at least one preview, that's a COI right there.

DAT ASS! But yeah, I also think Miranda's face in the game is weird looking, though it's not off-putting like Chobot's is. IRL I think Miranda's voice actress looks great, and while I wouldn't say she's amazing Chobot certainly isn't ugly, nor is she off-putting like the game character is. I think trying to make faces look like real people just isn't there yet, at least as far as making them attractive goes.

For me it's not that she's unattractive per se, but that the way they digitally rendered her (at least in that picture) is off-putting. Her actual face is not off-putting in the same way. But ultimately I don't care about them having her in the game, either positively or negatively.

OMG that's beautiful. My internet connection weeps in anticipation.

But yeah, you're right, I retract my knee-jerk reaction.

I agree that ideally people should give more individually, I just don't think it's realistic to expect individuals to voluntarily give on the same kind of scale that government can. But yeah, economic policy is an area where I can agree to disagree with people because I don't find opposing viewpoints morally lacking, I just disagree about the best way to accomplish the same goal. Okay, new post while I was writing: The grants didn't have anything to do with abortion, the grants were just to fund breast exams. Regardless of your stance on abortion, I think it's shitty to cut funding to exams that help women detect and treat cancer just because the organization also performs abortions.

Easy: Liara. I picked Liara in my main ME1 playthrough cause she was the best of limited options, but man they made her so much more awesome in ME2. Now I have no qualms about her. Also, Ashley becomes less racist throughout ME1, at least if you romance her.

That's where I think it's wrong to call it "your fair share". If you're stuck paying 40% and someone else only has to pay 10% it's not fair anymore. I'm going to both agree and disagree with this. If (super)* rich people were paying the same percentage as everyone else, then I would agree you can't say they're not doing their fair share, but I do think that when they're paying less than other people you can say that. But I also don't think it's necessarily unfair to take a higher percentage from people who make more money. I wouldn't say fairness requires it, but I would say fairness allows it (within reason, and yes, I am the arbiter of what is "within reason" ). *I say "super" because I'm aware that the stuff that ends up with people like Romney only paying 14% only applies to people with tons and tons of money, and not everyone who could conceivably be classified as rich.

I've heard "beat the tar out of you" but never "whale the tar".

I'm pretty sure every romance option is returning, and positive the 3 romance options from the first game are.