What’s more, robertliguori dismissed those expert testimonies as “a bunch of people stating that human life began at conception. Whoopee.”
Well, golly gee whiz. I guess we can ignore anything that robertliguori says then. After all, he’s just some high school student stating (as opposed to articulating) a view on when humanity begins.
Since you asked, I will tell you the specific sense in which I classify myself as “pro-choice” rather than “pro-life.” I will not confine myself to “scientific fact” (which IMO is not ultimately dispositive with regard to questions of value), but rather will briefly state those views of mine that seem to me relevant to the conclusion I have reached: not worrying about categorizing them.
To deliberately cause, or to refrain from causing, the cessation of a developing organism may be a matter of justifiable concern to others by reason of social utility, or by reason of some intrinsic significance found in the act.
I will make no comment on the issue of social utility per se; but rather will confine myself to the question of intrinsic significance. And I will further confine myself to the question, “When, if ever, is it morally acceptable to bring about the cessation of the developing organism in the womb of the human mother?” (I will use the terminology “death (etc.) of the fetus” as a convenience, not implying unquestioning acceptance of any doctrine accompanying such terminology.)
I adopt a definition of “moral” such that a transcendental basis for moral-value is implied. Mortals do not create, legislate, or think-up moral-value: we discover it.
There is such a thing as moral intuition; roughly, “conscience.” The pervasiveness of an intuited moral response to a situation, provided that a clear and detailed understanding of the situation be equally widespread, is good evidence of the moral rightness of that response.
By the foregoing standard, to cause the death of a human person is an act of grave moral significance. It is to be avoided. The moral disvalue of the act is intrinsic and directly intuited, not derivative or dependent.
But the degree of moral disvalue is not infinite. “We” show by many and varied actions and choices that, important though the life of a human person may be, there are occasions and situations in which the cumulative value of alternative resultants justifies taking that life. This is known by the same intuition that urged us to value life in the first place. For example, “we” place the survival of our national government ahead of the value of the lives of morally innocent soldiers during wartime. “We” would be willing to see a gun-toting maniac, morally innocent due to his nonculpable mental state, shot down in order to prevent merely possible–not certain–harm to others. To say that the life of human persons has the greatest degree of value is not to assign it infinite value; nor is it to demean its value.
The moral value under discussion adheres specifically to the human person, and only to the human organism, human “being,” or human chromosome-bearer insofar as that entity is indeed a person.
When faced clearly with the distinction, nearly everyone denies that a fertilized egg, as such, is a “person” in the sense in which that word is applied to a child. Here the moral intuition is that a fertilized egg is a special human organism at the very beginning of a course of developing into actual human personhood.
The point at which the organism becomes a person is unknown and perhaps unknowable, but not unconstrained. Like the line of demarcation between a pile and a heap, it is a vague boundary: but that is not to say that every point along the way has an equal claim. I believe, and it seems most persons believe, that the exercize of a distinctly humanlike cognitive ability is significant. And for some, myself included, this amounts to the question of when a personal human soul becomes permanently associated with a certain organism. It is not intuitively credible that this happens prior to the point at which the grosser form of the nervous system and higher cortex take on the structure and form that typifies homo sapiens. Of course, this assumption may be wrong–it is a question of what we find believable.
In any event, it is reasonable to think that the person best situated to sense the attachment of the soul is the mother-to-be.
Once the fetus has become a human person, to bring about its death is morally wrong and indeed may be murder. Thus society is right to discourage very late term abortions.
But to discourage is not to police and prohibit. The moral wrong done to women in general involved in presuming to override (by a rigid timeframe) their internal perception of the personhood of their fetus, combined with the purely practical effects of such “police action” upon individual self-determination (which for better or worse is a right exercized by the already-born), makes state action, beyond an airing of moral sentiment, more wrong than the act to be prevented.
I am “pro-choice” in this sense and for these reasons.
—Of course that’s not the point you made earlier in this thread (or the previous thread). You said that whether an organism is human or not, is a social question. I provided cites of several leading embryologists or medical doctors who have testified otherwise.—
I’m not sure what you think this demonstrates, bringing it up over an over. Plenty of pro-choice people agree with the definition of “human” that is espoused here in regards to embryos and fetuses. But that is not the definition of “human” that people are debating over: whether the embryos and fetuses should be considered legally “human” in the same way that children and adults are.
…taps the microphone…ahem…is this thing on…? 
Once more. With feeling.
That is a personhood argument you are making.
To review for the bazillionith time:
Whether an organism is human (or canine or porcine or equine or…) is a biological concept.
Whether an organism has “developed enough” to grant certain rights (or to have those rights “trump” other rights) is a personhood argument. A personhood argument, while perhaps containing references to biology or other sciences, is a subjective argument (NOT really answered by science) rooted in philosophy or cultural beliefs. The argument that blacks were not full persons deserving of equal rights as whites, for example, was a cultural distinction.
Foist off, beagledave, I very rarely trust people on the weight of their words alone. If those biologists had demonstrated the reasoning behind their claims, I would be much happier.
Oh, yeah, is a tumor a human organism? It seems remarkably like a z-e-f in some cases.
(And yes, I’m going to keep plugging this until you answer it)
And you still didn’t answer the eviction question.
Alrighty, here’s another question. Do z-e-fs have equvilant moral value as adults?
And since we are reviewing:
Legally, one is not obliged to provide aid/comfort, even to someone who will die without it. Even if I conceded that a z-e-f was worth more than a tumor, that would still not give said z-e-fs the right to trespass. And a z-e-f without a womb is more or less dead.
Mind you, if it would make you happier, we could simply extract and abandon z-e-fs (preferably near a stem-cell clinic), and let nature take its course.
I’m not sure if that argument is entirely watertight; you couldn’t abandon a newborn baby with impunity; IANAL, but I’m pretty sure you are legally obliged to provide aid/comfort to your dependant children.
(I know that the law doesn’t currently define a z/e/f as a dependant child, but if we were to consider it a person with moral rights equivalent to those of an adult (which is what this debate is about) then the law would)
Well done, Scott Dickerson, well done. However, I don’t think your post is complete yet.
The stated question was “When, if ever, is it morally acceptable to bring about the cessation of the developing organism in the womb of the human mother?” You only got as far as explaining why a pre-human person fetus (one without a soul) has diminished rights, a post-human fetus has full rights and a mother-to-be gets to decide where the point of demarcation is.
Does a pre-human fetus have any rights? If not, then the mother-to-be could stop her pregnancy without a second thought. However, if a pre-human fetus does have rights, then circumstances must be defined that override such rights.
If it were me, point (13) would state that a pre-human fetus has limited rights and point (14) would state certain circumstances can exist that outweigh the rights of a pre-human fetus and (15) would say that the woman is in the best situation to determine when circumstance exist.
The relevance of the section is to cover future technology. If the danger/invasiveness of first-trimester abortion was nearly identical to a futuristic procedure that transferred the embryo to an incubation device, who gets to decide which is used? In my opinion, the state gets to pick because circumstances do not exist that outweigh the use of one procedure over another.
—That is a personhood argument you are making.—
Well duh. That’s the only one worth making.
—Whether an organism is human (or canine or porcine or equine or…) is a biological concept.—
For one definition of human, yes. Another commonly used definition of human is equivalent to “personhood” (such as in “human rights”) Ding! That’s why the “human” term is an equivocative red herring for both sides.
In other words, that people assert that zef is human has little to no actual bearing on the arguement of why it’s wrong to kill zef. You can’t play morality by simply categorizing things broadly: you have to go straight to the heart of the matter. Why is it wrong to kill zef? (hint: “because it is human” is non-answer)
Well, Apos, at risk of 5-columning you, why is it wrong to kill you? Why is it not wrong to kill cancers?
Dammit. That would bt 5th-columning you.
—Well, Apos, at risk of 5-columning you, why is it wrong to kill you?—
No risk. In fact, I’m not even interested in presenting a particular moral viewpoint here (for instance, why it is wrong to kill me), though I could present several (and so could anyone else here, even if they were just quoting the major ethical philosophers).
What I am interested in is that moral viewpoints not simply be passed off as exercises in re-categorization. Any account of why it is wrong to kill me should deal not with my broad classification, but my actual characteristics. Only then can we figure out if the particular rationale we’ve picked can be legitimately extended to z-e-f.
For instance, an account of why it is wrong to kill human beings has developed throughout history using a particular understanding of “humans” that did not include at least z-e (since no one knew of their existence) It’s all well and good to define humans differently (and perhaps even more accurately, now that we know of z-e and what they are like), but that simply sidesteps the problem that the rationale that we previously developed for not killing humans may not work for the new definition of human. “Don’t kill humans” is a shorthand for actual moral reasoning, and since the question here is a controversial case, we can’t afford to waste time with the shorthand. We have to examine the rationale explicitly.
Er, Apos, I’m reading your posts with great interest, and I understand where you are quoting, but you might want to use the VB code for this function, as it will make your posts easier to understand. The code is:
left square bracket ([), the word “Quote” (no quotation marks), right square bracket (]), followed by the quoted text, then “/Quote” between brackets. You’ll end up with something like this in your post:
Otherwise, carry on.
Thanks for commenting on my submission, Pencil Pusher.
I should have more clearly tied the negative effect of preventative policing of abortion to the fact that it fosters the perception that a woman, once pregnant, may be compelled to surrender control over her body to the interests and judgment of the state. By this I refer not to the question of whether the fetus is, or is not, a part of the woman’s body, but rather to outside intervention into her control over the gestation/birth process. I presume the uterus, uterine walls, birth canal, etc., still belong to the woman even as it houses and feeds the fetus.
Now (still clarifying my own position, not proseletyzing for it), if there were a truly noninvasive means of transferring an unwanted fetus to a different womb, the moral picture would change. If we had the power to teleport unwanted fetuses elsewhere without financial cost or medical complication, a woman’s insistence on terminating her pregnancy through abortion could be viewed as nothing but a placing of individual self-assertion (“I should get what I want just because I want it”) above all other moral principles. I think few of us intuit that to be correct; nor is it good or right to expect society to promote it. I have denied that a person has an infinite right to life; now I will also deny that a possible person has absolutely no right of consideration or protection whatsoever.