I thought that was what we were discussing. You said we should treat an embryo as a person because it has the potential to become a person. I was addressing that idea.

No, all she could have done is prevented me from ever having it. I didn't have it yet, so she couldn't have taken it away from me.

You cannot steal what I don't have. I would not have been murdered, because I was not yet a person.

Well, I think I turned into a person when my cerebral cortex became functional, late in gestation. That's when I gained the ability to think and feel as a human being.

Oh, no, if you leave it alone it will die! You have to nurture it through nine months during which it feeds off its mother's body. And if something goes wrong in that process, it WILL die -- happens all the time.

What I'm trying to say here is that we have a continuum in the biological process, and there are many lines that could be drawn. I don't see the justification merely because a fertilized ovum has a full set of DNA and has begun the process of cell division, to regard this as a person while not regarding the same ovum before fertilization as a person. Neither one has a brain yet, nor any thoughts, nor any human feelings. Both, if many many difficult conditions are met, have the potential to develop all that. The unfertilized ovum requires one more step than the blastocyst: it requires fertilization by a sperm cell. Why does that one additional requirement mean we should treat it as a non-person but should treat the fertilized ovum as a person? This makes no sense to me at all.

Why not? I mean, I can see the difference. I just don't see why those differences MAKE any difference in terms of personhood.

Yes, that's exactly the point.

It's called a "reductio ad absurdum."

Yes, she could have "prevented you from ever having it." You were GOING to have it since you DID once exist as a small ball of cells. A small ball of cells that you have no problem with throwing away.

Had she aborted you, this life you now have WOULD have been taken away from you. You would have been murdered.

My point here was just how I arrived at the conclusion, if I did, the phrasing notwithstanding. If someone says that abortion is "murder" but it should be allowed in some circumstances, they're making an appeal to emotion in using the term "murder" which they know to be inaccurate, even from their own perspective (since, by definition, murder is not defensible, but sometimes they say abortion is, which means the two are not one and the same).

The exact same logic applies to your shotgun example. To call it "murder" just because of the fact that someone's head is blown off is an appeal to emotion. If a policeman defending his life blew a gangbanger's head off with a shotgun, no doubt the gangabanger' mother would call it "murder" - this is a specific and deliberate miscategorization designed to evoke an emotional response, just as it is with abortion. One could perhaps say that it ought to be considered murder, but to call it murder is simply dissembling, or more generously, engaging in wishful thinking and ignoring reality.


Yes, I agree with you completely, particularly if we're talking about some "rights" of a fetus. My issue, in general comes from people who talk about being champion's of the rights of a fetus and that it is a person with rights from the moment of conception. If this is truly how one feels, allowing abortions for rape incest victims is tantamount to executing people who's fathers and/or mothers commit crimes. So, either they're okay with this practice of paying for the crimes of the father, or the "fetus is a person with rights" bit is not really honest (I think a lot of times people offer this instead of saying "people should be punished with children for being sexually promiscuous" - I'm not accusing anyone in particular of that, but it certainly happens). But, motivations aside, the fundamental issue here is that the method of conception, rather than anything to do with the fetus itself, becomes the central issue. By talking about the fetus in terms of developmental stages, this issue is avoided altogether.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

That's all very cute, but the reality is that killing you today is a crime because the government grants citizens a right not to be killed and someone would be violating that right. Nobody making and enforcing statutes regarding killing is worried about how your inner chi could have gone on to affect the great, groovy life force. They're just enforcing the law.

__________________
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Couldn't "worrying about whether the baby would be born with a birth defect" apply to each and every pregnant woman? In the case of voluntary incest, are we not setting a precedent for culling out genetically inferior children via abortion?

__________________
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

That's all very cute.

Not worth a tinkers dime but cute.

I guess

Should I be flattered that you regularly co opt things that I say?

__________________
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

That's right, she could have prevented me from having a life. What were we arguing about again? Oh, yeah:

What I don't have yet cannot be taken away. And murder is not the prevention of a human being from existing, but the deliberate and unjust killing of a human being that already exists.

If preventing a human being from existing is murder, then contraception is murder, too. Or hey, what if my some other guy had come along and swept my mother off her feet, stealing her from my dad before I was conceived? Would that be murder, too? If not, why not? It prevents me from having a life, doesn't it? What if she had decided not to marry my father and joined a convent instead? (Pretty unlikely as she was an atheist, but . . .) Would that have made her a murderer?

By abstaining from placing an egg - fertilized in vitro - in a woman, you commit murder.
Right?

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At times I suppose.

I'll let you decide when flattery should visit upon you from what I say

Perhaps. If you flush it down the toilet.

Abstaining from allowing that life to go forward which has already begun is.

It is a human life with an entire future ahead of it. Who are we to decide we have the power or authority to not allow it to have it's life ?

It's an issue of how much we value life.

That's all.

So life begins the moment the 23 chromosomes combine, I take it. That is a single cell, completely dependent on nutrition and protection from the host.

I can't follow this "religious" idea of life. It's funny that this kind of "life" is of such importance, but that people who share your opinions are prone to accepting civilian casualties in a war (a lot of "pro-lifers" are Christian conservatives, not much to discuss). The multiplying machinery that has the potential to become a baby is so sacred, more sacred than most fully developed, conscious human beings, - unless the conception was a tragic event for the host, in which case it's OK to terminate this sacred life after all.

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This is my signature.
There are many like it, but this one is MINE.
My signature is my best friend. It is my life.

So, given that identical twins share all their genetic matter, does that make them one organism?

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When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
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No, it's a question of whether we place more value on quality of life vs. quantity of life.

THAT is all.

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(Voting for None Of The Above, so far...)

No, it doesn't work because it's a lame emotional appeal. It's about as effective as a fat Sally Struthers trying to make us feel guilty by surrounding herself with African children.


Actually, this is a discussion about whether abortion should remain legal and in what circumstances.

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears