So I guess you and your fellow pro choicers are gonna rush right out to adopt and care for the children in Ethiopia or Uganda…who WILL die unless provided for…surely you would consider them to be sentient/viable/conscience …yet you’re letting them die? Where is “your” moral responsibility?
BTW…in case my user name didn’t clue you in…that pesky Y chromosome that I have seems to preclude implantation of anything in me thanks…
Hey, in a few more years, maybe we can get it so men can experience pregnancy too! If so, would you let me implant my little zygotes in you? You’d be saving a human life! 
sure…check back with me when you’ve saved all those sentient Ethiopian babies
Waaal…if someone was actually actively and legally killing Ethiopian children at some clinic in town, I think I would. (Particularly if he was cool, like Starvin’ Marvin. I’m so tacky. 
) I would care for Marvin for the time it took to find him a foster home. Now: Let’s say there’s a clinic in town that performs abortions, but will implant the fetus in another person if they desire it. You can adopt the kid out after s/he is born, although the child’s prospects may not be good for adoption. You will also likely have to take time off work, suffer from various ailments and weight gain and run a slight risk or death or serious injury from the birth. Would you do it? Would you ask your wife to do it?
I’d have to agree with Gaudere. Starvation in my own local area I would try to intervene in. Jumping into the mess of feuding warlords on the other side of the globe, no.
Why aren’t you investing your energy into trying to repeal the european laws which have long allowed abortions and RU-486?
If we can get back to the question. You stated that life is a fertilized cell. Now if you are living near any major metropolitan area in the U.S., there are fertility clinics, easily accessible, that are consigning to oblivion what you consider to be human lives.
A very little effort would be involved in visiting the clinics and offering to pay to have your wife (who knows about usernames on this board…) or some fellow female pro-lifer implanted with one of the fertilised eggs they have.
Now given how you can do this, it is going on in your area, and it is perfectly feasible, why aren’t you? Could it be you don’t consider those ferilised eggs to be human beings afterall?
I was going to use the “tree-and-book” metaphor: If you cut down a tree and let it rot, did you destroy the book that could have been made from it?
This is what my mother, my two brothers and I had to decide fifteen years ago after my father suffered a massive stroke. He was stricken at home on a Saturday, was rushed ten miles to the nearest hospital and was declared brain-dead the following Monday. (Our doctor told us that he would not have had a chance even if he had been stricken in the hospital itself.) We were assured that he had no higher brain functions at all and, for that matter, even his autonomic functions had ceased; machines were keeping his heart pumping and his lungs breathing. We told them to “pull the plug.” They did so. His heart and lungs stopped within moments. He was dead and, for all intents and purposes, had actually been dead for nearly 36 hours as far as they could determine. The fact that it had happened on a weekend and that the EEG specialists were off till Monday had actually been a blessing because it allowed us all time to grieve for him and say our farewells.
This is not a decison I would wish on anybody.
I agree; if I had never been conceived, would I have noticed? No.
One hopes that if we meet an ETI with more chromosomes than we, he/she/it will accord us the same favor.
You know I’m pro-choice, but I’m going to point out here that clones and twins may not be unique to one another, but they are certainly unique to the rest of us.
You can’t be “sorta unique”, Jab. Either you’re genetically one-of-a-kind or you’re not.
Gaudere, interesting answer. It does illuminate your position a bit more, though I still have roughly the same confusion (which is not without precedent; perhaps you have a ton of bricks handy for use in your response). Am I being obtuse in reading it as restating your position–with more detail, and contained in a very cool metaphor—but without answering the specific questions I had re: your philosophy?
IOW, I asked why the unborn entity, just because he has not yet achieved consciousness, is any different than Uncle Lou by virtue of that fact (all right, I hadn’t named him Uncle Lou yet; I think I was picturing a Cousin Benny). Your response restates your belief, but does it clarify this particular distinction? When you stated, “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,” I would still ask why something that once existed—but apparently doesn’t now according to your definition—gets special dispensation, how you could hurt something that “isn’t now.” Perhaps your point can’t be clarified, just as my own core beliefs, beyond a certain reasoning, can’t be proven or explained.
I would still describe both Uncle Lou and the unborn kid as entities with a potential for consciousness, a potential that will be realized (in my example—I’ll get to your question in a second) by the rest of us simply doing no harm. The “story” will continue for both. You don’t want your story to end before it absolutely must. But your story would have, had your mother aborted you. I suspect your response would be, “But I would never have known; ‘I’ would never have come into being, according to my definition of personhood.” To which the reply might come, “Yes, that’s just the point! The world would have been robbed of Gaudere—specifically Gaudere—and Gaudere would have been robbed of that life.” The fact that most of us would have been ignorant of these facts doesn’t render them irrelevant. Why isn’t this still troubling? I guess that’s just another form of my question. Let me stop chasing my tail; I’m getting dizzy.
As for Uncle Lou, you are correct, he gets the Wondra pill (with a Dom Pérignon chaser), if I get a vote. The unfertilized egg, however, is simply a thing—i.e., matter that does not assign any ethical obligation to the rest of us do-gooders. Why? Well, again, my definition of personhood deals with a potential for consciousness that is not theoretical, but that currently exists–that’s the boundary for me, for the same reasons that Uncle Lou deserves protection and respect. The fertilized egg, like Uncle Lou, is in the club immediately; he gets all the rights and privileges of membership, and we’ll teach him the secret handshake when he comes out. An unfertilized egg, if left unmolested, will not gain consciousness, it will not grow, it won’t do anything (the bum). If this clarifies things, I would say we are as obliged to take action on a fetus in peril as we would be for Uncle Lou—taking care, of course, that we do not harm the mother. You are not morally obliged to be perpetually pregnant, only not to interrupt one that has already begun.
How do you rob someone who doesn’t exist?
I certainly agree the world would be a poorer place without Gaudere, but that does not grant us the authority to rob Gaudere’s mother of the right to do with her body as she fits. Until Gaudere reached consciousness, Gaudere was just another part of her mother’s body. We no more had the right to force her to keep Fetal Gaudere if she didn’t want it anymore than we could force her to keep a kidney she might want to donate to someone in need. Neither, of course, can we force her to give up that kidney for someone else’s benefit.
That of course is complete nonsense. Biologically…genetically…embryologically… the individual is distinct from her mother (thanks for the use of the term “mother” though). Her mothers’ kidney is not genetically different, or blood typed different from the rest of her. Again from http://www.terravista.pt/enseada/1881/lifebegi.html
as for the fetus-brain death comparison…from the same URL
'Myth 13: “A human person begins with ‘brain birth,’ the formation of the primitive nerve net, or the formation of the cortex—all physiological structures necessary to support thinking and feeling.”
Fact 13: Such claims are all pure mental speculation, the product of imposing philosophical (or theological) concepts on the scientific data, and have no scientific evidence to back them up. As the well-known neurological researcher D. Gareth Jones has succinctly put it, the parallelism between “brain death” and “brain birth” is scientifically invalid. “Brain death” is the gradual or rapid cessation of the functions of a brain. “Brain birth” is the very gradual acquisition of the functions of a developing neural system. This developing neural system is not a brain. He questions, in fact, the entire assumption and asks what neurological reasons there might be for concluding that an incapacity for consciousness becomes a capacity for consciousness once this point is passed. Jones continues that the alleged symmetry is not as strong as is sometimes assumed, and that it has yet to be provided with a firm biological base.’
As for implantation of fertilized eggs… It would appear that the respondents are willing to care for endangered babies if it is “convienent” (in the same neighborhood etc…). As Gaudere pointed out to me (and I agree) …the resultant pregancy from an implantation would not be “convienent”. Tell you what…I won’t consider you (and other pro choice folks) callous toward sentient babies in danger…and I won’t consider you indifferent to starvation (however inconvienent it might be to address the situation)…if you would extend the same courtesy towards pro life folks…
Needless to say, most folks make daily decisions about how to address moral and situational problems in the world. Some send money to UNICEF…some work for the Peace Corps…some work to lobby politicians about problems…some work as journalists to publicize problems. Because I am not picketing outside the state prisons where executions are held, does not mean I am pro capital punishment.
If you really wish to maintain that a lack of eagerness on my part to impant fertilized eggs in my wife is a sign of a lack of committment to a pro life belief on my part…or a belief that the individuals are not “really human”…I don’t suppose there is much else I could say could change that.
Wow, I think this is exactly where I jumped on this carousel. jab1, I’ll assume you’re simply stating your disagreement with my position and not asking me to explain the whole thing again. Let me know if I’m misunderstanding; I’d be happy to cover anything you think I’ve missed.
No, that’s all right, I’ll just read that part again.
But Uncle Lou and the egg will not gain consiousness if left alone. Why help Lou and not the egg, if the only thing that matters for evaluation of personhood is potential for consciousness, a consciousness that can be acquired only by your direct action in both of those cases?
As another note, you say a unfertilized egg does not rank as a potential person since it will not grow or gain consiousness if left alone. Now, I’ve covered the potential consiousness issue; what about the fact that an egg cannot grow and a fetus can? Well…a sentient computer cannot grow, nor reproduce. It can change. The egg can change, too, it must to live at all and presumably grew/was produced from another cell. So I cannot accept “capability for further growth” as a requirement for personhood.
sen·tient (snshnt, -sh-nt)
adj.
Main Entry: sen·tient
Pronunciation: 'sen(t)-sh(E-)&nt, 'sen-tE-&nt
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin sentient-, sentiens, present participle of sentire to perceive, feel
Date: 1632
1 : responsive to or conscious of sense impressions
2 : AWARE
3 : finely sensitive in perception or feeling
There are no sentient computers now, but I see no reason why it is impossible for a computer to ever have sense impressions (just add some sensors!) or be self-aware. Mostly I use “sentient” because I get tired of typing “conscious” all the time, and I’m much less likely to misspell “sentient”.
fair enough…carry on 
Bob Cos:
Speaking for myself, I’m not any more troubled by the idea that I might have been aborted than by the idea that my parents might not have met at all and I never would have been conceived, or the that one of the millions of other sperm might have gotten there first and I’d be a totally different person, or that my parents could have decided to have another child but didn’t so s/he’ll never exist.
I’m having a tough time thinking through the computer example, though it’s interesting. “Grow,” as I considered it relevant, meant that it was an entity that would develop–particularly (but not only) consciousness, sentience, its thought processes. This process may be more difficult to explain in computers or aliens (or maybe not), but it certainly exists the moment an egg is fertilized and probably well past the point of birth. To the extent that an entity exists that already possesses sentience, I would agree with you: “growth” is not required to define personhood. I might call the computer’s capacity to “change,” as you described it, a kind of growth, though.
To play out the computer analogy here (hey, you started it:)), I would say that if you had a sentient computer, if someone turned him off for a moment, you would not be ethically OK in destroying the computer’s components. Why? Because you would effectively be obliterating the existence of something that is real–real right now, even though the power’s out at the moment. He’s the equivalent of a fertilized egg or Uncle Lou–he’s real, he’s in front of you, he doesn’t currently have sentience, but he’s definitely in a different category than the toaster oven. Gaudere, I suspect you’d agree with this (given your thoughts on Uncle Lou), that it’d be wrong to make the computer scrap iron at this point. Perhaps you’d say that a computer that has been assembled but not yet turned on is in a different catgory, that this would be the equivalent of a pre-sentient baby. These distinctions still seem arbitrary to me, since all of 'em will be sentient momentarily, and that’s the key for me.
To stretch your example to its limit here, I would also describe the unmined metal ore that will ultimately become components of the computer as the equivalent of an unfertilized egg. It is matter, nothing more. At a certain point it becomes something else. For me, that is when it becomes an entity with a potential for sentience (perhaps more easily defined for humans than computers). For you, it’s when sentience exists (though Uncle Lou gets a free pass, which still seems an inconsistency to me). As I stated before, even when the unborn kid and Uncle Lou require positive action on our part to survive, we are obligated ethically to make this action. Why? Because they are persons in my definition, entities who deserve respect and protection (for the reasons noted).
Unfertilized eggs, unmined metal ore, the salad you’ll eat tonight that could be transformed into the matter that will become an egg, the dirt that is currently growing the lettuce for your future salads–none of these things assign any ethical obligation on us. And who we meet, every sexual act that we engage in (or don’t engage in)–really, every act we will or won’t do, whether it’s sexual or not–could possibly have an effect on who will or won’t be born. If we had a backward-looking crystal ball, perhaps we could know for certain. We might even determine that a new ethical obligation exists that doesn’t currently, given what we would know with this crystal ball. But it’s all theoretical before that point. A fertilized egg, right now, is no longer theoretical in this sense. If someone’s parents had never met, someone won’t be born. They (the parents) also wouldn’t have known the implications of this at the time. The same cannot be said about someone who has an abortion.