A human being is what a human being is. The law recognizes members of the species homo sapiens as human beings. Like it or not, that is the way it is.

As to "your" personal definition, it is proven invalid in that it excludes members of the group you are trying to define.

Maybe you are discussing morality, but I am not. Moral arguments may not be won by either side which may be why you want to attempt to go that route. I prefer arguing the real. where points can be proven and one isn't free to attempt to redefine a whole species in order to make an invalid point.

Which is why I never attempt to make a moral argument.

__________________
Rem tene, verba sequentur.

Of course we are. AJG is attempting to prove that unborns are something other than human beings. He is attempting to redefine the species in order to satisfy his argument. Human beings are what they are and if one needs to know what is, and isn't a human being, one turns to science.

When a new creature is found in the rain forest, do those who found it bring it to theologians, or philosophers to get a moal decision on what it is? Of course not, because if one wants to know what a creature is, one turns to science which is the only credible authority.

I know you would like a moral discussion, but it isn't necessary. Unborns at any stage of development are living human beings. Do feel free to provide some credible material that says otherwise.

The founders of this country said that we come into being with certain rights. Not that we matured into certain rights, or that we were born with certain rights, but that we literaly come into being with certain rights. Any attempt to determine when one gets rights is arbitrary and without any rational grounds.

That is your feeling. It isn't proveable and has no basis in fact. The law, however, recognizes members of the species homo sapiens as human beings and science tells us that unborns at any stage of development are indeed living human beings. Further, the legal term for a human being is "person". If you refer to Black's Legal Dictionary, the legal dictionary used by courts in this country including the supreme court, you will find the legal term "person" defined as "a human being".

Your feelings and intelligence are not what make you a human being. You are confusing kind with degree. If, as you believe, being a human being were something that we grow or mature into, then you would have to admit that anyone who is more intelligent than you, or had deeper feelings than you is more human than you. Is that your contention? That there are those out there who are more human than you?

A human being is what you are, not a product of the degree to which you have manifested your potential. There are any number of things that you can do to make yourself a better or worse person or human being, but there isn't anything under the sun you can do to make yourself more or less of a person or human being.

Especially when they prove your argument wrong huh?

Do feel free to provide some credible science that states that you don't become a human being until you have developed a certain level of intelligence or feeling. And your "core values" are irrelavent when operating from a context of what is. If you deny that unborns are living human beings in the face of hard science that says that they are, then you are operating from nothing more than a position of faith and as much as you may wish it so, faith doesn't win out against hard empirical evidence.

I don't have to bring you anywere. I can choose to recognise you as the flat earther that you are, and leave you wandering in the desert of your own ignorance. In fact, I encourage you to remain there because on the morning you wake up to learn that roe has been overturned, the shock and outrage that you express will be that much sweeter to people like me.

__________________
Rem tene, verba sequentur.

Well, the courts won't overturn Roe because there is no valid argument against abortion as far as I'm concerned. The fact remains that you choose to ignore certain things directed at you specifically PaleRider. You choose to make assumptions that my whole argument is invalid, but you fail to argue based on specific points I've made. You've never argued against those even when I directed your attention to them specifically (as I did in my last couple posts). You fail to provide proof to back your so called sources up. Simply taking a quote from a book that states that a unicelular organism is a human being doesn't make it true. Even text books must provide evidence for its statements to be true. Because you refuse to a) discuss certain points in the argument against anti-choicers and b) provide sources that provide evidence for your theory you can't be taken seriously. You claim that anyone who does not believe in what you believe in is ignorant. You are the height of arrogance.

__________________
Remember the Turkey Genocide.

Sorry, but it is a legal question. Maybe you aren't aware of how things work in a court of law. Suppose your legal team is arguing a point and my legal team has a problem with the way your legal team is using a particular word. We wrangle a bit but it becomes evident that we have a fundamental disagreement over what the word means. Lets say that this word is person.

When it becomes evident that we are not going to be able to agree on the use of the word, the judge will be obligated to call our respective legal teams to the bench or his chambers. There, he will open a copy of Black's Legal Dictionary and look up the word person. He will then read the definiton to the legal teams. In the case of the word person, he will read "a human being"

From there, he will point out that human being is not a legal term and is therefore not found in his legal dictionary. He will then refer to a Websters, or Oxford, or Cambridge dictionary where he will read the definition of human being. Oxford, for example defines human being as a man, woman, or child of the species Homo sapiens (keep in mind that federal law already recognizes unborns as a child or children which is a member of the species homo sapiens). Websters defines human being as simply human.

At that point, the judge will ask if your council has any evidence that unborns are something other than human beings. What evidence do you suppose your legal team will present to counter the veritable mountain of evidence that my team can provide that states explicitly that unborns are living human beings?

You are an individual human being. I am an individual human being. Any individual is an individual human being as opposed to being a group of human beings.

A zygote at conception is a living human being. At that point, it is a "potential" doctor, or a "potential" teacher, or a "potential" serial killer, but "potential" human being is not an accurate description. The offspring of two human beings can be nothing else but a human being.

Actually the "human life" argument is a smoke screne developed by the pro choice side of the argument do divert the conversation away from the hard evidence that the unborn at any stage of development is an individual human being.

And what you need to show is a constitutional justification for denying rights, without judicial review to a human being.

It can learn to talk and walk just as much as an infant can. The only difference between a zygote and an infant is several months of growth and maturity. You did not come from a zygote. You personally were a zygote. You are the same creature today as you were on the day you were concieved and the only difference is a degree of age, growth, and maturity. You never underwent any sort of metamorphosis in which your essential nature changed and you became something that you weren't before.

Sorry guy. It isn't me who is attempting to "manipulate" definitions. I accept them for what they are and if I find that in order to make my argument work, I must attempt to unilatarially redefine a thing, I re-examine my argument or my position as one, or both, are clearly flawed.

Sorry, but you couldn't be more wrong. The roe court made its decision based on an assumption that unborns were not living human beings. Perhaps in 1972, an argument of sorts could be made that unborns were not, in reality, living human beings. No such argument can be made with any crediblity today as your argument proves.

__________________
Rem tene, verba sequentur.

I encourage you to continue with that belief. You have shown yourself incapale of accepting truth when it is given to you.

Are you aware that the court has already banned late term abortions. 4 years ago, most pro choicers would have said that it would never happen. Were you aware that not so very long ago, roe was almost overturned and was saved by one 11th hour vote? Are you aware that the one who cast that 11th hour vote has since retired and been replaced by a more conservative judge?

Clearly, you aren't aware of a lot of things which is good because it will make the shock of roe being struck down that much more disturbing to you.

__________________
Rem tene, verba sequentur.

They are irrelavent as they are not what make you a human being. If you were born with anencephaly and had no brain and would never develop any of the attributes you name, you would still be considered by both science, and the law to be a human being. Obvously, from that fact, it stands to reason that none of the things you list are prerequisite to being a human being either in the eyes of science or the law.

__________________
Rem tene, verba sequentur.

You prove over and over again that your claims are baseless. You refuse to provide evidence and argue against points directed at you. Clearly you aren't aware that judges judge based on the evidence provided. They are more mature than you are by far. They won't stick their head in the sand and refuse to hear the case against your own. For that reason, I highly doubt abortion will become legal based on your argument.

__________________
Remember the Turkey Genocide.

I have provided more than enough evidence and torn down every argument you have offered. Your tantrum doesn't change the fact.

Let me see if I can break this down into legal terms that you might be able to understand. You claim that there is no legal basis for overturning roe. Here is the legal basis.

The 14th amendment is very important to roe and the justices who decided the case knew it. In his majority decision, Justice Blackmun acknowledged that fact. He said:

"The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a "person" within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment. The appellant conceded as much on reargument. On the other hand, the appellee conceded on reargument that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. "

In the years since roe was decided, the "suggestion of personhood" has been answered. In fact, it has been answered in spades. There are people sitting in jail, right now, having been charged individually, and specifically for criminal homicide (murder and manslaughter) in the death of unborns. Under our legal system, you can't even be charged for any sort of criminal homicide, much less tried, convicted, and sentenced, unless you have, in fact, killed a person. I can't say whether the courts made a tactical error, or achieved a tactical victory in establishing the personhood of the unborn, but either way, it has been established.

Note that Justice Blackmun stated that if the question of personhood is established, that roe collapses because there exists no right for one individual, to kill another for any reason other than self defense. A woman most certainly has the right to terminate a potential human being, but no right exists to kill a living human being, without judicial review and without legal consequence for any or no reason. At the time roe was decided, no case law could be presented that holds the unborn as a person within the meaning of the 14th amendment. A fairly large body of case law can be presented today. That coupled with the overwhelming body of science, and federal law that acknowledges that a child at any stage of development is a human being constitutes the death knell for the court's invalid assumption that "at best" an unborn represents the potentiality of human life.

__________________
Rem tene, verba sequentur.

What makes a human being then, hmm? Is it what every cell in the body has? Is it the fact that a single cell can develop into a human being? You are arguing based on a point in time where a cell magically becomes a human being even they share no characteristics, but the the DNA of a human being.

__________________
Remember the Turkey Genocide.

To date you haven't proven a clump of cells is a human being. You haven't even given reason to believe you have even made an attempt to do so. You simply make a statement and declare it as fact.

__________________
Remember the Turkey Genocide.

Nice tautological statement. However, it claims nothing. A word means what we say it means, and reality remains what it is, regardless of what words we apply to it.

Actually, all this rigmarole and going round and round about definitions is spinning our wheels. I've offered the definition of "human being" for purposes of human rights that I prefer, but I don't have to stick with it; there's another option. Reality being what it is regardless of what words we use for it, either one of two conclusions is acceptable as a description of that reality:

1) We define "human being" (for purposes of the present discussion) as an organism with human intelligence and feelings, and state that all human beings have human rights. We conclude that an embryo at conception is not a human being and does not have human rights.

OR:

2) We define "human being" (for purposes of the present discussion) as an organism with a full and unique set of human chromosomes, whether or not it has human intelligence and feelings, and state that NOT all human beings have human rights -- only those with human intelligence and feelings. We conclude that an embryo at conception is a human being -- but as it does not have human intelligence and feelings, it does not have human rights.

You may choose whichever of those you prefer.

There is no such thing as "proving" a definition invalid. However, if you prefer not to use the definition I've offered, we can go with #2, above. Fine with me.

Bullshit.

Sorry to be rude, but that's the only thing I can call that statement. Bullshit.

You're arguing, at bottom, that abortion ought to be outlawed. This is a moral statement.

Pale Rider, let's cut to the chase here. You are claiming that your position is one backed up by science. You are claiming that a position that an embryo at conception has full human rights is the only one in accord with biology.

Before you can show this, though, I think you need to show, based on biology, that there is any such thing as a "right." Please do that, and then we may parse out whether these "rights" apply to an embryo at conception.

True, you can instead choose to lose the argument, and demonstrate to everyone reading this thread that you have no ability to reason without using personal insults, as you did again in the portion of the paragraph following this, and which I have snipped as unworthy of being quoted or answered.

If that's fine with you, I guess we're done.