i apologize divemaster! outside force other than my own had control over this thread and many others to my recollection. please forgive me and my cohorts, for they no not what they do. again i apologize.
please let me make MY view on abortion clear. abortion is and always will be a woman’s choice. you…i’m sorry…i (damn kids =D) mentioned ru-486. ru-486 is an FDA approved drug that has taken it’s toll on these threads. people are complaining and i agree that if we were to be “popping them in like candy” (ru-486) we as a society will probably digress ourselves into unprotected sex wherever and whenever an opportunity arises. i personally approve of ru-486 but i fear the consequences of this pill. consequences such as a risk of higher teenage pregnancies due to relying on this pill. not relying on contraceptives to reduce STD’s or AIDS.
does anyone know or has anyone heard of any cases of addiction to this pill? just curious.
I received your very kind e-mail, Asianmagik. I will reply to you via that medium later this evening.
If no one has yet welcomed you to the boards, let me be the first. “Welcome!”
Not to be difficult, but the bit about bodies without functioning brains (the concious parts thereof) appears likely to be complicated greatly by modern medical science. First off, the life of an individual cell in a body (organism) is very different from the life of the organism as a whole. If the organism is dead, but many or even most of the cells are still alive, is the life of the cells still sacred? If so, is an organ transplant a way of keeping a soul from heaven? If body/head transplants became possible, which seems unlikely in the near future but certainly possible in the far future, where would the soul go? If a person’s body was damaged, and a new body (neck down) was vat-grown as a replacement, and the transplant was completed, would the person have a soul, or only part of one? Trying to define a soul seperately from conciousness doesn’t seem to work well at all when control of all the parts is centered in the seat of conciousness.
As far as the punishment in the OP is concerned, why is it all being focused on the mother? Given that she has to make a life or death decision and live with the consequences, shouldn’t the father face similar consequences? In order to make it fair, the father, once positively ID’d should, regardless of the mother’s actions, have a choice to make also. If he chooses the legal route, he has to have morning sickness induced during the appropriate period, followed by appropriate weight gain and other physical modifications. If any smoking is done or alcohol is consumed, he is to be considered a negligent monster by other psuedo-parents, and fined an extra sum each month for the rest of his life, and not the 18 years the good psuedo-parents get. After nine months, he is put through 4 to 40 (determined randomly) hours of genital torture. After that, he has to carry an alarm bag which goes off every two hours or so for the first few months, and if not responded to in a timely manner, he is charged with criminal negligence. He can pass the management of the bag onto other people if they accept if voluntarily, but if he leaves the bag unattended he will be charged with psuedo-child abandonment. Due to the difficult nature of dealing with the bag, with it he cannot attend any function where bringing an infant would be inappropriate. The “bag” is then matured to mock the behaviour of a child over the next 18 years. You get the picture.
The alternative choice is to accept the penalty for abortion, the same penalty that the woman would experience acompanied with the equivalent cost of the abortion and similarly applied discomfort.
This would (a) make both partners really care about birth control, and (b) make guys think twice about outlawing abortion.
If that were my child that is exactly what I would do.There would be no ‘life support’ as such, aside from simple nourishment. Starving someone to death to spare myself suffering is not in line with my beliefs. And I’m not demanding anything from anyone. I thought I had already made that clear.
I’m not fighting for anything, unless it’s that ppl stop fooling themselves with clever scientific ‘evidence’ and excuses. You want an abortion? Have one. But have it with the realization that you are destroying an innocent human life. No blinders. No feel-good rationalizations. You fight to prove it isn’t murder because you don’t want it to be murder. Our consciences interfere too much with what we want, and we as a society will end up rationalizing things to the point that nothing is morally wrong if it satisfies the wants of a particular group. I am still waiting for someone, anyone, to explain to me how abortion is moral or ethical.
I recognize that we disagree as to what constitutes “personhood”. However, you are being highly insulting to say that I am simply rationalizing murder because it makes me feel better. I would say the vast majority of persons accept that a human without any higher brain functions is not a person; that’s why we have the phrase “brain-dead” and legally state that a persons whose higher brain is utterly non-fucntional is not “alive”. I am working logically from the philosophical position that what makes us a person is our consciousness–a position supported by many in this world–and I use scientific evidence because it has been shown to be valid for determining the attributes of and components necessary for consciousness. You are claiming that I am rationalizing murder and making up excuses to “fool myself” about what you claim I know is true, and I find that quite offensive. Go ahead and say I condone murder if you think I do from your perspective, but don’t tell me that my position and the arguments and evidence I have shown is simply a cowardly attempt to “feel good”. :mad:
I and others have explained. It does not satisfy you, because to you “personhood” is wholly dependent on whether a person’s body is alive. If someone removed the brain from a human, you would still demand the shell be preserved until death. Given your premises, you will never accept that a brainless human does not have the same rights as a conscious, thinking human.
It was never my intention to insult you. I do apologize. However, why is this subject even debated if “consciousness=personhood” is a given. I say that it’s not a given. If it was a given there would be no need to rationalize it.
I would have to disagree with you and ask you to post the results of that poll. Just because something is legal does not mean that it’s morally just. And I’ve never heard a doctor refer to a “brain-dead” patient as just plain dead. Either a person is dead or they are not. They are not partially dead, or partially alive.
I can understand that and appreciate it. However, from my position, also supported by many in this world, science is not and cannot be a determining factor in deciding what I believe to be a spiritual matter.
You haven’t. You have explained why you don’t think it’s murder, but you haven’t said what is moral or ethical about the act of ripping a child from it’s mother’s body. Do you think that it has nothing to do with morals?
Did you miss the couple of sentences written after that one by Gaudere?
Read n ponder them.
Specifically defining and scientifically and logically investigating a defintion is not rationalization.
Brain death is cosidered legal death in Japan, the UK and the US, just off the top of my head. I never claimed to have a poll. However, who do you think passed those laws, if not the people?
When have you spoken to a doctor about a brain-dead patient? Why do you honor the body’s life above that of the brain?
If you wish to say “it is a matter of faith that a fertilized egg has all the rights of an adult conscious human,” that is your right. I have gone over the logical and scientific support for my position.
Well, it is not killing a person, so we have that out of the way. “Ripping a child from the mother’s body”?! You make it sound as if I go around forcing women to abort. :rolleyes: If a woman determines that she is not in a good position to bear a child, she has the right to decide to prevent the beginning of a new person by choosing not to have sex, choosing to use contraception, choosing to use a morning-after pill or choosing to have an abortion before the fetus gains the capability for sentience. And she has the right to have unprotected sex and to bear the child, if she wishes that as well. Any choice might be moral or immoral or varying shades in-between, depending on the circumstances. It’s about the woman’s right to determine her own life, and as long as another person is not harmed by her decision, I do not see how it can be claimed that it must be immoral. Who ever said it was always moral or ethical to have an abortion? I think a woman who never uses contraception and has multiple abortions is stupidly endangering her life rather than taking reasonable precautions that would be safer. However, she would likely be endangering her life even more to carry the fetus to term. What if she was fed some horror story about contraceptives, or her husband pressures her not to use them? What if she doesn’t have the resources, either mental or physical, to care for a child? She could put the child up for adoption, but what if she is has a less “desirable” child, who is retarded or a minority, who may never be adopted by a loving family? She could not have sex, but what if her husband wants sex but doesn’t want children? And so on, and so on. There’s a lot of factors involved; I think the person best qualified to weigh the options is the person whose body and life are most intimately involved in the situation. That’s what I consider moral and ethical: allowing a woman the right to choose what to do with her own body and her own life.
Well, ZooMom, accepting for purposes of this post your premise that a fertilized egg is a “person”, what we have here is a situation where there are two people. Let’s say the mother’s life is in danger. She has placenta previa (a placenta attached to the uterine wall but covering the vaginal canal). Early in her pregnancy, she experienced no symptoms, but experienced preeclampsia (high blood pressure relating to pregnancy). Now, sixteen weeks into the pregnancy, the mother is experiencing severe bleeding (a common sympton of placenta previa). She is taken to the hospital, where her physician informs her that, without immediate action, she could go into a coma or convulsions that may lead to her death (eclampsia) - and, inevitably at 16 weeks, the death of the fetus. Alternatively, she could hemmorhage, throw a clot, or otherwise not be in such good shape (results of the placental attachment). Because mom hasn’t had good prenatal care, the only way to save her life is to abort her pregnancy - the condition can’t be managed at this point. What is the moral thing to do? Take one (otherwise innocent but doomed) life to save another? Or do nothing and let both die (the most likely outcome if you do nothing)? I hope you agree that the former is the correct moral choice.
Many laws criminalizing abortion, including the so-called “partial-birth” abortion bills that have been determined to be unconstitutional by practically every court that has addressed the issue, do not contain an exception for the health of the mother. Let’s change the above example so that mom’s condition is brought under control except that she has a better-than-even chance of having a stroke or a heart attack because of an emoblus directly caused by the pregnancy. Again, her physician advises her to abort. The choice now is between her health (assuming that neither a stroke or heart attack will necessarily be fatal) and the fetus’ life. Again, I think the moral choice, informed by the fact that the mother has a right not to subject herself to massive trauma even for the sake of an otherwise innocent life, is abortion, thus ensuring that the woman will survive and regain her health (or at least giving her the best chance of doing so).
I assume, though, that you’re looking for “moral” justification (other than what Gaudere and others have posted, which seems to me to answer this question) for “elective” abortions. Frankly, I can’t think of anything better than what has already been posted, and I think on this point it’s going to have to be an agreement to disagree.
As to the OP, I think that if you believe abortion is murder because each fertilized egg is a person equivalent to you and me, then you must believe any parent who counsels abortion is guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, and every mother who undergoes an abortion is a murderer. Or you can say that it is “justifiable homicide”, but how can you justify it if there is no difference between the personhoods involved?
[/soapbox]
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But you are “scientifically and logically investigating” an axiom–which, of course, we all do. The fact that your logic is sound as it exists after your axiomatic foundation (consciousness = personhood), does not make the axiom true (or untrue). ZooMom’s axioms are no more or less “logical” or “provable” than yours. To ask her where your logic is unsound when she doesn’t accept your premise misses the point, right?
I hold–and this is axiomatic as well–that the potential for conscious thought defines personhood. To ignore the fact that this conscious state will occur if the child is left unmolested, that it will occur in ten seconds or two months or whenever, is an arbitrariness that is more than negligent (if you accept my axiom). And the fact that many (including me) accept “brain death” as justification for removing life support is not at all inconsistent logically, not if this acceptance holds that this “potential” at that point does not exist. IOW, I can logically hold both positions, I think.
BTW, as we all know, universal acceptance of an axiom makes it no less axiomatic. It just makes it more convenient to install it as law. (I hope I’m making it clear that I do NOT hold my own position as superior in this regard.)
Since “brain death” seems integral to the argument, I’ll ask a specific question I’ve asked before:
We know that in extremely rare instances “brain dead” patients have recovered. Assume for a moment that technology is produced that will permit us to identify those rare instances–i.e., people who are “flat-liners” as far as brain activity goes who will regain sentience. There is one such person before you who will regain that sentience in a few seconds. Here’s the specific question: Could you “kill” that person in good conscience? Is there absolutely nothing unethical in terminating this life given a definition that sentience = personhood, and we know that sentience does not exist at this specific moment?
Gaudere, I believe you may have answered this before and I never explored your response as I would have liked to, but it seems apropos here, given the nature of your argument. If there is something troubling about “killing” in this situation, can you explain how this conclusion can exist consistent with the rest of your argument? (I’m sincerely interested–I hope this doesn’t seem contentious.)
She, however, is not accepting that we are arguing from different axioms, and claims I am rationializing murder and that I apparently know deep-down in my heart that her position is true. That’s why I was attempting to show that my reasoning was no more “rationalization” than hers, that I wasn’t starting with the premise “let’s find some excuse to make abortion at any point OK, even though it’s really murder!”.
Yes, but how far back do you stretch this potential? Right now I am not pregnant. Presumably, were I to have unprotected sex tonight, I would get pregnant and eventually give birth. There are a multitude of things I can do before the potential personhood–definied as consciousness–becomes actual personhood. I could decide to make him wear a condom after all. I could insert an IUD. I could take a morning-after pill. I could take RU-486. I could drink a lot of vodka and sit in a scalding hot tub (old method for inducing spontaneous abortion, highly dangerous of course, DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!). I could get a medical abortion. All of these things will prevent the potential consciousness from becoming actual consciousness. If actions to prevent it are not taken, a sperm and and egg will join and develop into a conscious being. If actions to prevent it are not taken, a fetus will divide its cells and devlop into a conscious being.
Consciousness–personhood–is a thread that can incur blips along the way. Nevertheless, the consciousness is all tied together by a line of experience, and it has a start and an end. You do not become a new person every morning when you wake up. The person whose brain is dead for a few seconds does not become a new person when he revives. Let’s say your Uncle Lou suffers from a disease where his brain momentarily becomes dead for a few seconds every week. Still, the “person” of Uncle Lou persists. Now, let’s say he suffers a cataclymic attack of that same disease, and his entire complex cerebrum dies utterly and shrivels away. EKGs are done and establish that there is no longer any consciousess. However, Uncle Lou was a scientist, and set up an experiment that was cloning his brain. As of yet, it is just a few cells. If you leave it unmolested it will become a conscious brain. Now, is Uncle Lou in fact dead? Yes, you betcha; the hardware is utterly missing for him to be conscious, he has no cerebral cortex, and the “person” of Uncle Lou cannot and does not persist. If you ended the experiment of this cloned brain before it achieved consciousness, would it be murder? No, for me; yes for you. Now, you could put the cloned brain into Uncle Lou, but Uncle Lou is still dead; you’re allowing a new person to come into being, an identical twin of Uncle Lou, but Uncle Lou is still gone. So for me, as long as Uncle Lou can still be Uncle Lou, he is still a person. Once Uncle Lou can no longer be Uncle Lou, the “person” of Uncle Lou is gone. With the cloned brain, the “personhood” has yet to be established; there is no person there and there never was. There is no “personhood” of consciousness that could persist, as we had with Uncle Lou when he would be temporatily brain-dead.
Once a person’s consciousness is fully established, I consider them a person until they are utterly incapable of maintaining consciousness. A person who is momentarily brain-dead is not a potential person; to say that woud be to say they were never a person. (If you could show that a fetus had concsiousness before, and is just momentarily quiscient, I would not condone killing it, either.) Preventing a new person from coming in to being is not the same as refusing to do what you can to preserve an existing human. If personhood ended utterly upon momentary brain death, then a person who is revivied would be a brand new person–and they’re not. They are the exact same person they are before, same cells, same memories, same everything. Therefore, the momentary brain death did not end personhood–personhood clearly can persist. Well, what does end personhood, then? Well, if a person will never be conscious again, they have lost their personhood, since the conscious personness of that person does not persist. Obviously, then a person is still a person if they can regain their same consciousness at some point. For the sake of not keeping thousands of brain-dead humans alive on the remote chance that they might come back, we will probably have to make a guess at the odds and allow to die those who have a remote chance of recovery.
Sorry for the rambling nature of the post; it is early in the morning for me and I may have to dig up my old metaphysical philosophy books if I want to express myself more clearly. It may be a while before I can respond, too.
As an aside to you, if a fertilized egg is as much a person as a fully conscious human, would you consider it moral to force a woman to carry a fertilized egg and give birth to a child if it would seriously harm her health? You have two lives of equal worth in your eyes, both the egg and the woman…despite the fact that the woman may be crippled for life, should we be able to legally demand that she carry a pre-sentient fertilized egg against her will until birth?
**I stretch it back to the point where the entity comes into being–when the fertilization occurs. At that point we have a being whose potential is a good bit more than theoretical. I don’t, for example, hold that not having sex or using birth control (when that birth control is not an abortion in disguise, as some methods may be) is to deny a potential being the right to existence (BTW, I think this sentence is a quadruple negative, a new record for me).
**
But why is having once had consciousness an important distinction, but having the potential for consciousness (in the absence of having already achieved this state) unimportant? If it is just the current state of consciousness that it important, then the momentarily brain dead patient has no rights. If it is not merely the current state, why would the past state possibly be more important than the one that will likely be achieved in the future? I now understand your definition of personhood as not merely a state of consciousness then, as I surmised from your prior posts–it is a state that exists, at least at certain moments, divorced from whether or not consciousness currently exists. Again, if that’s the case, why isn’t it at least as logical (if not more so) to assign personhood to someone with the future potential for sentience?
“Preserving an existing human being” when referring to a brain dead person cannot be meaningful if sentience is the sole determination of personhood. If it’s not the sole determination, then shouldn’t a potential for thought be “king”–what’s the difference whether you once had consciousness if you won’t in the future? It is not relevant, as you have pointed out. I agree that we could ethically remove life support. But if consciousness is likely to emerge, that’s extremely compelling to me under any circumstances. I think you agree, but only if consciousness once existed. Again, not sure why that’s an important distinction.
I believe the mother’s well being is as important as the unborn’s, and that there may be terrible situations where decisions to abort might have to be made.
You said, “Most people in the world agree…”. Just wondering where you got your figures. And I didn’t know that Japan was a democracy. I thought I had said this already, but maybe not…why do people insist on saying, “Well, it’s legal.”, as if that settles any moral questions. If it was illegal, would you then agree that it was immoral?
I have worked in pediatrics for the last 7 or 8 years, and before that in a local hospital. I have talked to many doctors, and seen the medical records of many patients, including patients who were comatose, or otherwise “brain-dead”. Time of death is always recorded when all bodily functions cease, not when the EKG comes back flat. The patient is still referred to as ‘the patient’ or by their name, not as ‘the body’ or ‘the corpse’. I honor life, period. I already said why.
So you are saying that morality is not even an issue here.
I did no such thing. Are you saying that I’m going around forcing women to get pregnant so that they can have children they don’t want? Don’t be silly.
I’m with you up to here…these are the options for responsible people.
This is where we split. These are the options for people who don’t want to take responsibility for consequences of their bad judgement. None of my kids were planned. But does that abdicate my responsibility for them once they were conceived? **"…before the fetus gains the capability for sentience…" ** That reads to me like, “Quick! Kill it before it wakes up!” I’m very sorry, but can imagine how horrible that sounds from my point of view?
Why did you say, “…bear the child…” instead of “let the fetus grow”? That indicates to me an unconscious recognition that it is a child. 
How so? Very, very, few women die in childbirth, or during pregnancy, as a direct result of that pregnancy. Women were designed to be pregnant and give birth. It’s natural.
Then she needs to get educated and stop being a doormat.
Any idiot can have sex, but it takes a neuro-surgeon to be a Mom?
Are you saying, that based on these very slim “what-if’s”, a woman would make the moral and heartfelt decision to kill her child rather than take the chance that no-one will care for or love a child that she doesn’t even love or care for? 
I say that she has a responsibility to the life growing inside her, and that after giving the child up for adoption, whatever it’s condition, that she has discharged her responsibility. Why would she care what becomes of it after that?
This is exactly where we are not bridging the gap. It’s not ‘her own life’, it’s the life of the child inside her that she is making a choice for. What is more intimate than the body and life growing inside her? You differentiate between ‘life’ and ‘person’…I do not.
I know this is getting very long, but I want to address one more thing. In the matter of a life-and-death pregnancy, where the child would definately not live to viabilty, or the mother was in danger of dying and medical technology could not preserve both until the child was viable, I would not consider these instances to be willful abortion. These would be classified as medically necessary. And remember that in these cases, the parents want the baby, and through no fault of their own were not able to carry to term. These types of abortions have never been called into question as immoral, because there is no other alternative. I think that everyone will agree that the vast majority of abortions are willful and done when there is no perceived threat to the mother or child.
ZooMom:
I’m not sure whether I should hope you’re joking. Japan has been a democracy since we set up their government after WW2.
Speaking for myself, I believe that killing a person is generally immoral. I do not believe that killing a fetus is immoral, because I don’t believe that a fetus is a person.
Holy shades of the “Pro-life: compassion or punishment?” thread, Batman!
Why are Christians and pro-lifers always so quick to use their opponent’s choice of words as an indication that the opponent really does “see the light?”
Are you denying that pregnancy + childbirth is less safe than abortion?
Are you denying that raising a child takes a certain amount of skill, patience, wisdom, etc. that is not involved in the physical act of sex?
You equate responsibility with punishment?
I think any medical professional would tell you that any unnecessary intrusive proceedure carries a greater risk factor than doing nothing. How many doctors do you know that would remove your tonsils or appendix just because you didn’t feel like carrying them around anymore? Most doctors won’t even perform tubaligations unless the woman has already had two children or there is a medical reason to ensure no future pregnancies. That’s why women can’t get voluntary hysterectomies anymore. The risk is not justified.
I am a mother of four. I know exactly what is involved in raising children. I also know that I was clueless about the subject before my first child. Instinct does not make a good mother. You have to learn as you go. If a woman truly does not want children, then she should ensure that she does not become pregnant in the first place. Once she does, however, she has a responsibility to the life that she has helped to create.
ZooMom:
The argument “these women shouldn’t be getting abortions, they have to take responsibility for their mistakes!” sounds like punishment to me.
As it happens, I looked this up last night for another MB… mortality rate for live birth from 1987-1990: 5.1 deaths per 100,000 mothers. Mortality rate for surgical abortion from 1980 to 1990: 0.76 deaths per 100,000 mothers.
I can find the cites if you want.
I would hardly compare tonsils or an appendix to a growing fetus. If leaving your appendix alone would cause it to expand to a million times its size, causing you to go through all kinds of physical and mental changes, and then it would have to be painfully removed months later, and you’d have to support it for a couple decades, I think the doctor would be happy to take it out for you.
OK, how is this different from what I said?
I agree with the first part. I disagree with the second. To me, that’s like saying “If you don’t want to get mugged, don’t walk downtown at night. But if you do get mugged, you better deal with it yourself because it’s your fault.”
Bob Cos:
The way I see the issue of defining personhood is it is as if I have been handed a large pile of unbound papers and asked to find the book in it. The first page is blank. I start flipping through the pages. Blank, blank, blank…ah, here’s some words. This is the start of the book. I continue, reading the pages as I go along. Chapter one, two, three…fourteen, fifteen…hey, what’s this? A blank page? Is the story over? Flip to the next page. Ah, here it picks up right where it left off; the story is continuing. Chapter sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, blank page, blank page…hmmm…blank page, blank page, ah, here’s the story again. Dum de dum dum dum…Chapter nineteen, twenty, page 152, page 153, blank page, blank page, blank page, twenty more blank pages, forty more blank pages, eighty more blank pages, nope, no more pages left, no more chance that there could be any text left in the story. The story ended at page 153.
If you follow the metaphor, the start of the story–the start of personhood, defined by the first conscious thought–doesn’t start until it actually, well, starts. There may be gaps in the middle, but as long as the story can continue past the blank pages, it’s not done yet. Once there’s no more chance that you’ll find any more pages left with writing on them–once you’re sure they’ll never be another conscious thought in that human mind–the story is over, the person is dead. I’m concerned about existing stories, and making sure they have their chance to say what they mean to say, rather than all the potential stories that could be written; I value one conscious person over a thousand potentials. I personally count my current life as having more value than all the potential persons that might have existed had another sperm bumped into my mother’s egg because I’m actually here, consciously thinking and feeling right now, and those potentials never did. Since I do not want my story to end before it absolutely must, I do not support allowing anyone else’s conscious life to end before it absolutely must (unless they wish to die, but that’s another debate). However, if I will never think again, go ahead and kill my body–the “me” is gone forever. And I am similarly casual about anyone preventing the possibilty of “me” from ever occurring; if I never had the conscious ability to care whether I lived or not, I cannot have been harmed or have lost anything, since “I” never was. Those potential people who might have existed had another sperm fertilized an egg have lost nothing, since their “I” never existed; so too would “I” have lost nothing if “I” had never been, since there would have been no “I” to lose anything! Before a thing exists you cannot harm it, so you cannot harm a consciousness before it exists. After it exists, yes, you can harm a consciousness, a person. Preventing a once-existing consciousness from continuing its existence is different than preventing a thing from ever existing; you cannot hurt a thing that never-was.
You, Bob, see things differently; for you the blank pages at the beginning of the book possess “potential writing” and are part of the book; you say if I allow blank pages in the middle of the story as not ending the story so long as the the story continues after them I must allow blank pages at the beginning as being part of the story too (though your definition does not work well with my metaphor, but that’s hardly surprising ). You can see, though, I hope, that the story metaphor explains why I consider the period before the capability of conscious thought as not possessing “personhood” yet allow interruptions in the consciousness to not end the personhood so long as the same “story” continues later.
As long as we’re critiquing each other’s definitions of personhood, I have a moral dilemma for you, too 
: We have Uncle Lou, who suffers from the disease that momentarily ceases his higher brain functions. This time, though, instead of his consciousness coming back naturally after a period of time, you have to actually take action yourself to cause him to regain consciousness. They have created a marvelous Wondra Pill, available at the local supermarket for a couple hundred bucks (locked up in a glass case with the Dom Pérignon). You give the person suffering from this disease the Wondra Pill, and they will completely recover with no ill effects. Say you happen upon your Uncle Lou after an attack of this disease. Do you have a moral obligation to acquire a Wondra Pill and give it to Uncle Lou? By my definition of personhood, yes you do (assuming spending the money on the pill will not starve your three children, etc.); the story ain’t over 'til there’s no reasonable chance that there can be any more pages with writing on them, and there’s a damn good chance that by taking this action you will find some more pages with writing on them. You should do what you can to preserve existing person’s lives and allow their consciousness to continue even past minor gaps, but you are not under a similar obligation to take action to make potential personhood become actual personhood.
Now, I’m guessing you’d probably give the Wondra Pill to Uncle Lou, rather than bury him. So by your definition of personhood, you will take personal action to convert potential-consciousness personhood into actual-consciousness personhood. There is a positive moral obligation to do so. OK, so I have in my fallopian tubes right now a fertile egg. This egg will never become a conscious person unless I take personal action; the potential is there, it just will not be realized unless I make an effort. Just as with Uncle Lou, the potential for consciousness is there, but he will never again become conscious unless you to take action to convert that into actual consciousness. So if I have a moral obligation to take action to convert Uncle Lou’s potential consciousness to actual consciousness, do I not have a similar moral obligation to take action to covert the potential consciousness of the egg into actual consciousness, via trotting over to the local bar/sperm bank and getting knocked up?
ZooMom: Mr2001 pretty much answered for me, and quite ably too.
If I may also respond…The comparison of Uncle Lou (whatever consciousness he may currently be in) with an egg in your fallopian tubes is an inaccurate comparison.
from http://www.terravista.pt/enseada/1881/lifebegi.html
In sum, a mature human sperm and a mature human oocyte are products of gametogenesis—each has only 23 chromosomes. They each have only half of the required number of chromosomes for a human being. They cannot singly develop further into human beings. They produce only “gamete” proteins and enzymes. They do not direct their own growth and development. And they are not individuals, i.e., members of the human species. They are only parts—each one a part of a human being. On the other hand, a human being is the immediate product of fertilization. As such he/she is a single-cell embryonic zygote, an organism with 46 chromosomes, the number required of a member of the human species. This human being immediately produces specifically human proteins and enzymes, directs his/her own further growth and development as human, and is a new, genetically unique, newly existing, live human individual.
After fertilization the single-cell human embryo doesn’t become another kind of thing. It simply divides and grows bigger and bigger, developing through several stages as an embryo over an 8-week period. Several of these developmental stages of the growing embryo are given special names, e.g., a morula (about 4 days), a blastocyst (5-7 days), a bilaminar (two layer) embryo (during the second week), and a trilaminar (3-layer) embryo (during the third week).14
and …
Myth 1: “Prolifers claim that the abortion of a human embryo or a human fetus is wrong because it destroys human life. But human sperms and human ova are human life, too. So prolifers would also have to agree that the destruction of human sperms and human ova are no different from abortions—and that is ridiculous!”
Fact 1: As pointed out above in the background section, there is a radical difference, scientifically, between parts of a human being that only possess “human life” and a human embryo or human fetus that is an actual “human being.” Abortion is the destruction of a human being. Destroying a human sperm or a human oocyte would not constitute abortion, since neither are human beings. The issue is not when does human life begin, but rather when does the life of every human being begin. A human kidney or liver, a human skin cell, a sperm or an oocyte all possess human life, but they are not human beings—they are only parts of a human being. If a single sperm or a single oocyte were implanted into a woman’s uterus, they would not grow; they would simply disintegrate.
Again, so what about that moral responsibility to pick up all the fertilized eggs at fertility clinics and implant them in you and your fellow pro-lifers, beagledave?
My defintion of personhood is consciousness, not number of chromosomes. I find this preferable, because say we meet an alien race with only 23 chromosomes, yet they can think as well as we. I think it proper to accord them personhood. Since we have already wandered so far off into magic philosophylands as to posit a capablity to diagnose “temporary brain death” and diseases that cause temporary brain death and the Wondra pill, let’s pretend that there is a disease that removes half your chromosomes, yet your brain still functions. Are you still a person? Heck yeah. Chromosomes don’t matter, growth doesn’t matter (a computer-brain could not grow, though it could change, but as long as it is conscious I’ll consider it a person); only the story of consciousness matters. I do not speak of human life, but only of personhood. An egg has potential consciousness, achievable by action on my part. Uncle Lou has potential consciousness, achievable by action on part. If you wish to define “person” as “a human life possessing no less than 46 chromosomes” or “a human life possessing no less than 46 chromosomes and the potential for consciousness”, very well, but I was not aware that was a part of the defintion. It also excludes computer brains and aliens and the conscious human afflicted with Halving Chromosomes Disease, which distresses me. I think a better response would be a definition of personhood that does not depend on human genes or chromosome count. I think your mention of chromosomes is inappropriate if we are trying to define personhood, though it does show a pit stop on the move from potential consciousness to actual consiousness, much like my ::cough:: mention of the stages of brain growth at at which point consiousness actually is possible and at which it is not.
Speaking of which, your source should not try make philosophical statements as if they are scientific facts.
Dearie me. Clones and identical twins are not persons then, since they are not genetically unique?
Sheesh, I could as easily say “destroying a fetus would not constitute abortion, since it is not a human being.” Sez who? I think there is a radical difference between a conscious life and an unconscious one, too.
So is killing an irrevocably brain-dead adult, or a baby born without a brain. The question is, is it the murder of a person, and what is a person exactly? If a person is defined as “possessing the potential for consciousness” then my point still holds; if you want to argue for potential for growth or number or chromosomes or unique genetic content, you may exclude sentient aliens, computers and clones, which I think is a bad move.
Life begins with the release of the egg into the fallopian tubes. That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it. The egg will wither if not fertilized…yet the fertilized egg will wither if not attached, and the embryo will wither if the attachment is poor… Perhaps you could argue life begins when the egg attaches? But then the arguments about number of chromosomes determining personhood falls flat.