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Originally Posted by Captain Trips
Some of us beleive that when we slide out of the holiest of holies, we're sprinkled with a sort a magic dust that makes us human. Others beleive that a human is formed when the male sperm and female egg combine their DNA to make a separate entity.
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Excuse me, but "when we become human" is NOT what's in dispute. What's in dispute is when the fetus becomes a PERSON.
"Human" is a purely biological term that can describe a lot of tissues that aren't people. My nail clippings are human. What I leave in the toilet is human. Sticking strictly with what is not only human but also alive, my blood is human, and every time I cut myself shaving, I "destroy human life." Is that murder? Or (since it's MY blood after all) is it suicide? Sticking even more strictly with what is not only human and alive, but has the potential to become a person, does a woman kill a person every month when she has her period, unless she becomes pregnant?
All of this is ridiculous, of course, but it's meant to point up the absurdity of an argument from genetics, or the tendency of anti-abortion folks to muddy the waters with irrelevant terms like "human" or "life," when those are not at all what's at issue. What's at issue is the definition, not of human, and not of life, but of
person.
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It's really an argument about how much each of us values life
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No, it's not, and as long as you continue making that mistake you are going to completely fail to communicate anything to anybody. Everyone here values "life" equally. It's a dispute about what constitutes being a human being, specifically whether an embryo at conception meets the criteria. You think it does. Why?
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If we call what we're killing a "non-person" it's then ok to kill it.
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Of course. And if we call it a person then it's not OK to kill it. But I have excellent reason to call it a non-person: it has no brain, it has no personality, it has no mind, it has no feelings, it doesn't give a damn whether it lives or dies, it will not suffer if it's killed. It has the potential to
develop all these things, and when it does, I'm prepared to call it a person, but not before.
You disagree. You think, for some reason that escapes my comprehension, that this blob of unconscious and totally insentient cells should be considered a person. Explain why. It's not going to do you a bit of good to tell me I'm making excuses, when you haven't presented any reason at all why I should even NEED an excuse.