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Originally posted by ali92 I was born at 6 months (17 Sep 1985 as opposed to 13 Dec) and certainly survived, even though I needed major surgery on my left eye to make sure I wasn't totally blind (I am blind out of my eight eye due to the pre-mature birth). Shouldn't the line be drawn even further prior to this?

can anyone think of a more powerful argument for protecting life

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Originally posted by Lira Even if children aren't given precisely the same rights, there are quite a few rights common to both groups (citizens and their children), such as the inalienable right to life (I'm quite sure there's something about this in American Law, you probably know about it a lot more than I ever will).

Right, but the point is that if we can draw one arbitary line and deny an arbitrary set of rights to those who have not yet reached it, we are certainly not obligated against drawing another abitrary line and denying whatever rights we please, including the right to life, to those who have not yet reached it. Of course, this is rather irrelevant, as I cannot accept the assignment of rights to a non-person and I cannot accept the personhood of a fetus (at least prior to the third trimester, at the earliest.)

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Also, how can a foetus not meet any meaningful criteria for personhood if it shares, structurally, cells (and later on, organs) that resemble those of a person — would this criteria be invalid if a foetus were a fully-fledged tiny person?

Well, at least for me, any meaningful criteria for personhood must be rooted in that which makes us people as opposed to mere assemblages of biological tissue. That seems to me to be our capacity for higher brain functions such as individual volition, memory, and the comprehension of stimuli rather than a mere response to them.

If, for example, we were to 'grow' a human body in a laboratory, omitting only the forebrain, such that it was capable of being biologically self-sustaining to the same degree as a fetus, but utterly incapable of higher brain function, I cannot see how such a thing could be regarded as a person. It simply does not have the capacity for the things that make us who we are: our conscious thoughts, will, and the ability to make sense of and interact with the outside world.

To reduce the quality of personhood such that it requires only basic functions like circulation, digestion, et cetera or the presence of certain organs, cells, or genetic material strikes me disrespectful of the dignity of human individuals.

"Rights" as anything but arbitrary community standards are, in my view, already a tenuous concept. But when we attempt to extend them to things like a fetus, or the 'husk' of a human being in my example above, they strike me as even less justifiable.

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I'm defending the fact that it is not part of a woman's body, pretty much the same way a parasit isn't part of me.

Well, I certainly wouldn't consider it a part of the woman's body, so we seem to have no disagreement on that count.

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It suggests life of some sort, and that's why I mentioned it. As a matter of fact, I still find these points valid: So, in case I worded my words poorly, I shall rephrase here what I attempted to say: I do not dismiss what these doctors are saying, but the definitions behind "a sense of self" and "what we usually refer to as 'consciousness'" worry me a bit. The point here, and behind all my arguments, is that, although I don't doubt what you're saying, I can't avoid being too cautious because life is involved. Can you ever be completely certain that there isn't anything mind-like in a creature that is supposed to become conscious at some point?

I do understand your desire for caution when it comes to ending what might be considered a human life and given the limitations of our neurological understanding of human consciousness. Fortunately, science will probably solve this problem at some point in the future. In the interim, however, I would opine that we ought to exercise similar caution when it comes to compelling a woman to carry a child to term. Even if the fetus has a right to life, it is not at all clear that a woman can justifiably be compelled to house it in her womb and provide it with the nutrients it needs to survive. Certainly, if the fetus is to be regarded as having rights then it must also be regarded as an individual, and we would not normally place such an imposition on one individual to support the life of another. Attempts to justify this imposition on the basis of the idea that the mother is somehow 'responsible' for the creation of the fetus and, thus, its survival seem to me to fail miserably, though I'd be happy to go into more detail regarding a particular claim of this nature if necessary.

Furthermore, given that we cannot be certain that the fetus even ought to be assigned such rights, and indeed, our (albeit limited) understanding of human consciousness suggests that it cannot meet the necessary criteria (or at least any criteria which seem reasonable to me) to be assigned rights, I would say that the idea of compelling the mother to carry the child to term amounts to the temporary stripping of one person's known rights pursuant to the preservation of the probably absent rights of another entity which is probably not a person.

I do not agree with the stripping of one individual's rights, regardless of the duration, in order to maintain the rights of another to begin with, and much less so when the rights of the latter may in fact not exist.

It is clear to me that while some individuals may believe or opine that the life of the fetus should take precedence (whether based on some conception of rights or for other reasons), that position can hardly be seen as being rooted in any form of objective truth. Moreover, while there are compelling utilitarian reasons to prevent most instances of human killing even in the absence of a right to life or other moral imperative, the preservation of these unwanted fetuses seems to me to be more a utilitarian detriment than anything else (Lilith's post bears that out nicely.)

Put succinctly, it simply appears to me that the prohibition of abortion does not meet the threshold of justifiability at which point it becomes reasonable to impose the beliefs and opinions of some people upon others in the form of law.

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Originally posted by Arbiter To reduce the quality of personhood such that it requires only basic functions like circulation, digestion, et cetera or the presence of certain organs, cells, or genetic material strikes me disrespectful of the dignity of human individuals.

Exactly.

It is ironic that, as an atheist, I often find myself defending the charge that I am a "materialist" or a "reductionist" because I reject the existence of a soul or any other sort of dualism within humans, yet in the discussion of abortion the roles seem to be reversed. People who oppose abortion frequently point to physical similarities between the fetus (embryo, zygote, blatocyst etc.) and what we would uncontroversially agree to call a "person" - that it, as Lira put it, "shares, structurally, cells (and later on, organs) that resemble those of a person". In doing this, though, we aren't so much lifting the standing of fetuses to that of people as we are reducing the standing of people to that of inert, biochemical processes.

The fact that a blatocyst is "human" (at the cellular and genetic level, it unquestionably is) and a "being" (we can refer to it as a unique ontological category) does not make it a human being. If having human DNA and being a unique "thing" were the only prerequisites for personhood, then - as Sam Harris points out - we're committing a virtual holocaust every time we scratch our noses.

Appeals to states of "potential" personhood do little to clear the water either. There are countless trillions of "potential" human beings that never come into being due to our selective patterns of sexual reproduction. Really, given the finite number of human ova in the world, every time a woman menstruates a "potential" person fails to come into being - what is the moral distinction between aborting a "potential" person and refusing to give life to that "potential" person in the first place? Are we not, in both cases, simply preventing a process that would lead to the development of a human being from taking place? (All this reminds me a great quote I read recently from a pro-choice fundamentalist: "Have you noticed how the only people who oppose abortion are the people that have already been born"?)

There is no clear-cut answer when it comes to abortion and it is not an issue that should lend itself so easily to inflexible, moral proclamations. We should recognise that a blatocyst should not be entitled to the same rights as a fully-developed human-being and we should also recogise that a fetus on the cusp of making its way down the birth canal is entitled to more rights than a blatocyst. Although it's a bit like asking at what point a hill becomes a mountain, I think that the best place in the process to draw a line and decide that the nascent life within the mother is entitled to rights is the point at which it acheives biological independence: when it is no longer dependent on the biological processes of the mother for its survival. Roughly speaking, we can place this point at around the beginning of the 3rd trimester.

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Originally posted by Moongoose I may be understanding you wrong, my mind is not as sharp as i would like it to be at the moment due to the fact that i haven't slept for around 38 hours, but it looks to me that you are off the opinion that even if a woman gets raped, and gets pregnant because of thet, that abortion isn't justified?

If you believe that no moral distinction should be drawn between fetuses and human beings then, really, this is the only sensible conclusion that can be reached. Either a fetus has rights or it doesn't, so if someone wants to argue that a fetus has a moral worth indistinguishable from that of a person, then they must also accept the origin of that person's life is completely irrelevent in the determination of said worth. If a woman has a child and finds out on its fifth birthday that it was actually conceived via an act of rape, would she have any right to kill it?

Really, for all the moral ambiguity in the abortion debate, many of the moral consequences of holding a particular view flow quite naturally and inexorably from the premises. If you believe that fetuses are entitled to the rights of personhood then there are basically no cases in which an abortion could be considered moral (even in cases of conception by rape or incest). If you believe that fetuses are not entitled to the rights of personhood then there are basically no cases in which an abortion could be considered immoral, regardless of how flippant the woman's reasons may seem.

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Originally posted by NeoPhono Well, you could look at that two ways; 1) What happens when science and technology reaches the point where we could virtually raise a child from fertilization to "birth" completely external to the female? Then do all unborn, regardless of their stage of development, now gain the right to not be aborted? We're basically setting up a sliding definition of when abortion should or should not be legal based on current technology.

You could already say that now with the ability of technology to create clones of human beings from living cells. Every cell on the end of my nose, by your argument, could be afforded the same rights that I am, as - under the right technological conditions - it has the potential to be developed into a human being. This, really, is why the "potential" person argument is, in practice, worthless and self-defeating: unless you want to argue that my worth as a person is indistinguishable from the worth of a long chain of inert, self-replicating nucleotides, then actual personhood is the only legitimate barrier we can draw between those objects in the world that are deserving of the rights of personhood and those that aren't.

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2) It could also be said that children, even after birth, are still dependent on their mother for survival for an extended period of time. Since they are still dependent on their mother (or some form of external care) do we still have the right to kill those children? Do we have the right to kill those who are not able to take care of themselves?

That is why I draw the distinction at biological independence rather than functional independence. A fetus is solely dependent on its mother for survival. A baby is dependent only on anyone near-by who happens to have functional mamory glands or the financial means to buy a carton of milk.

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Therefore, I go to the point where a genetically unique being comes into existence.

Every time a cell divides "a genetically unique being comes into existence" - are you familiar with the erosion of telomeres (non-active genetic sequences at the ends of our chromosomes) during the process of mitosis? By your logic it would be immoral to kill off cancer cells because they have a unique genetic composition!

I can't help but, yet again, point out the irony of you (a Catholic if I am not mistaken?) pointing out to me (an atheist) that the moral value of human beings can be reduced to - or be best defined by - the nature of the matter by which we are composed. We may be made of nothing but matter, but that is not to say that we are nothing but matter!

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Once that happens, I begin to have issues with abortion when it is used simply as a means of avoiding the consequences of a willful action.

The reasons for abortion shouldn't enter into it. As I have already said:

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If you believe that fetuses are entitled to the rights of personhood then there are basically no cases in which an abortion could be considered moral (even in cases of conception by rape or incest). If you believe that fetuses are not entitled to the rights of personhood then there are basically no cases in which an abortion could be considered immoral, regardless of how flippant the woman's reasons may seem.

I would be interested to hear arguments to the contrary?

___________________
http://eschatonnow.blogspot.com/

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Originally posted by Renegade You could already say that now with the ability of technology to create clones of human beings from living cells. Every cell on the end of my nose, by your argument, could be afforded the same rights that I am, as - under the right technological conditions - it has the potential to be developed into a human being. This, really, is why the "potential" person argument is, in practice, worthless and self-defeating: unless you want to argue that my worth as a person is indistinguishable from the worth of a long chain of inert, self-replicating nucleotides, then actual personhood is the only legitimate barrier we can draw between those objects in the world that are deserving of the rights of personhood and those that aren't.

However, in the case of cloning, we aren't dealing with genetically distinct individuals, merely copies of existing ones. More importantly we're dealing with a completely artificial reproduction process that is even more voluntary than sexual reproduction. We also have to separate the reproductive process from normal cellular turnover. Under normal biological conditions a zygote will progress to viable human; no somatic cells will do that under normal conditions.

I would equate your worth, or at least your definition as a human to be indistinguishable from the nucleotides that encode for the species. I do not consider "personhood" and "human" to be equal as "personhood" tends to be more of a cognitive construct whereas "human" is simply a biological definition. I'm saying abortion kills humans, which is wrong, without thought to the presence of a "person."

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That is why I draw the distinction at biological independence rather than functional independence. A fetus is solely dependent on its mother for survival. A baby is dependent only on anyone near-by who happens to have functional mamory glands or the financial means to buy a carton of milk.

Unless we're dealing with infants with other special needs; metabolic errors, diabetes, allergies, etc., that require more advanced care, just as a premature infant does. The more advanced care can be drawn further back as technology advances, as I've already stated, until there is no difference between biological and functional independence. It is simply a matter of technology and care available.

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Every time a cell divides "a genetically unique being comes into existence" - are you familiar with the erosion of telomeres (non-active genetic sequences at the ends of our chromosomes) during the process of mitosis? By your logic it would be immoral to kill off cancer cells because they have a unique genetic composition!

I am familiar with telomere loss, but I fail to see how the loss of length in telomeres creates a genetically unique being since telomeres are non-encoding and telomere degradation is a normal biological process that probably controls cell line termination. Also, much like I do not have an issue with abortion when the mother's life is at risk, I also have no issue with trying to "kill" cancer. Also, I would not classify cancer as being a conscious decision of the patient, unlike having sex. We could argue that point with smokers for example, but that is a different topic.

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I can't help but, yet again, point out the irony of you (a Catholic if I am not mistaken?) pointing out to me (an atheist) that the moral value of human beings can be reduced to - or be best defined by - the nature of the matter by which we are composed. We may be made of nothing but matter, but that is not to say that we are nothing but matter!

Generally speaking, I think killing things is wrong, especially human beings. I think we'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who disagrees with that. Genetic and biologically speaking, the most basic way to define "human" is through DNA composition. Once we have a fertilized egg we have, genetically speaking, a human and a living "thing," no matter if you want to call it a person or not. I believe that killing this genetically distinct human to be wrong, especially when it came into existence as a direct result of the decision of consenting individuals. The only morality I'm trying to "push" is that I think the destruction of life is wrong and that abortion destroys life.

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The reasons for abortion shouldn't enter into it. As I have already said: If you believe that fetuses are entitled to the rights of personhood then there are basically no cases in which an abortion could be considered moral (even in cases of conception by rape or incest). If you believe that fetuses are not entitled to the rights of personhood then there are basically no cases in which an abortion could be considered immoral, regardless of how flippant the woman's reasons may seem.

I've already commented on the "person" vs. "human" separation earlier. When it comes to the reasons for abortion, I do believe there are differences. Those can be stated with the old libertarian idea that you have any right as long as that right doesn't interfere with another's. That is an oversimplification, but I'm pretty sure you get the idea. In the case of harm to the mother, the correlation is obvious; the "right" of the fetus to survive removes the right of the mother to live. When it comes to the case of a forced pregnancy, the line is a bit more blurred, but since the mother did not make a choice to become pregnant (a right), the right of an individual to not carry a child to term against their will (again, without choosing to have sex) is taken away by the fetus. This does upset me, as I do believe we're still killing a human and that is why I'd do everything I could to talk the woman into carrying the child to term, but I also respect the rights of the mother. Again though, these rights are revoked once a conscious decision to have sex is made.

and yet these are the same people that are pro death penalty for criminals.... i see the hypocracy in that. I don't understand why this is even an issue, its a women's decision to go through what she feels is necessary, and giving young babies for adoption when the baby already has a mother is completely crazy ! you either take care of it(family and grandparents) or you don't bring it to life when its still in its early stages... simple as that

___________________
"real social change for the oppressed people's can only be brought through a revolution by the people."

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Originally posted by SiLveR_NrGy_985 and yet these are the same people that are pro death penalty for criminals.... i see the hypocracy in that. I don't understand why this is even an issue, its a women's decision to go through what she feels is necessary, and giving young babies for adoption when the baby already has a mother is completely crazy ! you either take care of it(family and grandparents) or you don't bring it to life when its still in its early stages... simple as that

I see no hypocrisy.

A man and a woman make a choice to have sex and therefore give up their right to be pregnancy free.

A person makes a choice to kill another and therefore gives up their right to life/freedom.

It all boils down to free choice, the consequences of that choice and whether your "rights" interfere with those of another. A couple decides to have sex, gets pregnant, and forfeits their right to be pregnancy free. A person decides to kill someone, taking away the victim's right to life, thus forfeiting their own.

I have no idea what the last part of your statement is trying to convey.

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Originally posted by NeoPhono I see no hypocrisy. A man and a woman make a choice to have sex and therefore give up their right to be pregnancy free. A person makes a choice to kill another and therefore gives up their right to life/freedom. It all boils down to free choice, the consequences of that choice and whether your "rights" interfere with those of another. A couple decides to have sex, gets pregnant, and forfeits their right to be pregnancy free. A person decides to kill someone, taking away the victim's right to life, thus forfeiting their own. I have no idea what the last part of your statement is trying to convey.

that is the most outrageous thing i have ever heard! so basically its not ok to kill a non living cell but it is ok to kill a living person put on deathrow because he gave up his rights to freedom? (what do you think jails are for??! lol) if you don't think thats complete hypocracy i don't know what planet your living on,yet this is a typical philosophy of the average american, were living in the 21st century not in the age of creationism....

___________________
"real social change for the oppressed people's can only be brought through a revolution by the people."

Last edited by SiLveR_NrGy_985 on Feb-05-2008 at 04:57

Arguing about when a fetus is officially a "person" seems a bit ludicrous when you consider that once conception takes place, odds are that the fertilized egg will one day grow in to a fully realized human baby. So no matter where in the chain one interrupts that destiny, the end result is that the human baby will be "no more", thanks to the abortion.

So is abortion murder? By definition, I think it has to be. But I am also for abortion, for many of the reasons already stated in this thread. And telling people to regulate themselves has OBVIOUSLY been a historic failure of mankind. Should we really expect any different? At the end of the day, we're still just another animal on this planet with a drive to procreate. Millions of years of evolution can't always be overcome by deductive and impassive reasoning (and let's not forget that the Catholic Church has historically looked down on, and even discouraged, contraceptives...this on top of it's pro-life stance!).

To try and make people own up to every pregnancy that comes about in this over-crowded (and growing) world that we now live in (a world that is one day going to run out of resources to support these masses too), would be to bring about an accelerated and cataclysmic vicious cycle of population explosion, the likes of which would lead to exponential levels of human suffering well within our own lifetime.

No, let's get past the supposed moral high ground and accept that sometimes, in order to survive as a species, in order to do what's necessary for that survival, we have to do some ugly and distasteful things.

Let's call it what is is; A necessary form of killing...at a stage in life where the killing at least has a minimal impact on that person's unrealized and unconscious life (as a fetus, I mean). Given the alternatives to unneeded and unwanted children, I'm willing to accept this bitter, albeit necessary, solution.

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The thing about money? It makes you do things that you don't want to do

Last edited by donnybrasco on Feb-05-2008 at 18:28

I guess it is hard to say if abortion is murder or not. Terminating a life form is murder. However we humans invented the term murder only for unnecessary termination.

We have been terminating life forms from the beginning of time. Purpouses are, survival, consumption, religion and such.

The question would be. Is abortion an unnecessary termination of life a form?

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Originally posted by Octanesyco Greetings. My name is Casey. You can call me Moose. -Moose

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Originally posted by SiLveR_NrGy_985 that is the most outrageous thing i have ever heard! so basically its not ok to kill a non living cell but it is ok to kill a living person put on deathrow because he gave up his rights to freedom? (what do you think jails are for??! lol) if you don't think thats complete hypocracy i don't know what planet your living on,yet this is a typical philosophy of the average american, were living in the 21st century not in the age of creationism....

I guess that's the difference between you and me then. If a person knowingly makes the decision to kill someone (remove someone's right to life) he also make the decision to give up his own. If you don't want to be executed, it's quite simple; don't kill anyone. I'm not a huge fan of the death penalty and I think it should only be used in the most horrific and undeniable cases, but I have no problem with the reasoning behind it. Every other crime in our system has a grading penalty scale based on the severity of the crime, and since murder is probably at the top of the severity list, so is the punishment.

I also think you need to look up what "living" means, since you somehow equate a cell with non-living. Again though, no one is forcing people to become pregnant or forcing people to kill (or if they are, as in self defense, it's another issue). If you don't want to live with the possible consequences of sex or the consequences of killing someone, then take a good hard look at both first.

But you see the consequences of sex are possible pregnancy. And one of the possible consequences of that is having an abortion. Simple right?

___________________
I've never been able to eat a whole baby.
Kill the women. Eat the children.
It's just one of those days where you want to bend over everyone you know and kiss their ass goodbye with a big sideways boot.

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