The reason that this dividing line doesn’t sit very well with me is because it’s basically technology-dependent – not too long ago a child born prematurely would have almost certainly died, but now the child at least has a chance to be kept alive and develop in an incubator. So does this mean that the definition of a “person” has changed by virtue of technological development? I can’t buy that – the technology hasn’t changed the child in any fundamental way (it hasn’t given the child a robotic brain or taken away its soul or whatever), it’s simply a means of keeping a human alive who would previously have died – it hasn’t changed the definition of “personhood” any more than the invention of the pacemaker or penicillin.
Also, even after birth a child is dependent for many years to come, but that doesn’t excuse mothers who abandon their newborns in trash dumpsters or whatever have you. It shouldn’t excuse that same mother a couple weeks previously either, IMO – that that stage the fetus has been exhibiting brain activity for several weeks, and is for all intents and purposes as much a person as is the newborn.
No, if we were to truly play God, we wouldn’t have to have this discussion at all. We would be killing firstborn sons, newborns and adults alike. There would be none of this silly “personhood” stuff.
The definition of a being that can survive without draining the health-resources of a specific other being changes with the course of technology, yes. I don’t consider this a problem, but I’m also not looking to define ‘person’ in the first place; the whole ‘personness’ question strikes me as resorting to theology, which I’m not willing to do.
A being that can survive without being attached to a specific person has the option of being invested in by others, should they choose to do so. A being that cannot survive without being attached to a specific person cannot be provided for by people other than that specific person. This seems to me to be a qualitative difference, not a semantic one.
What is this nonsense? No human being can survive to 1 year without necessary resource draw and dependency.
Try a qualitative difference that actually describes something before birth, and this whole line of reasoning might actually make some sense. By that definition, all people with various forms of crippling illness are subject to murder on a whim, without the possibility of accountability for the person murdering them.
In this day and age, I’d also point out that beings who can survive without attachment to another human being are few and far between. I would be shocked if the worlds best trained survivalist could even retro-actively do such a thing without going insane.
In that sense, the entire line of this arguement is pointless.
You adopt the semantic game played in the Irving link: she says “‘personhood’ begins when the human being begins—at fertilization” and then pretends that there is some huge difference between personhood and human-hood (or that one is “philosophical” and one is not) when she’s really using the terms interchangeably. This becomes apparent in your reply when you accept the definition of murder as the unlawful killing of a human being (disingenuously shifting the focus to the word “lawful”) when you very well know that the word “person” could be substituted in the statutes with absolutely no change in their meaning.
The point of my original post was that the religious right’s discussion of abortion is far more politically, ethically and philosophically responsible that the religious left’s. The right’s focus is squarely on the issue that YOU find determinative of the debate (personhood); indeed, you express the same outrage at me for what you perceive as a failure to address that very issue (as if we weren’t, in fact, debating it, and as if you didn’t, in fact, know my position from my previous posts on the matter).
The RCRC’s conduct is hardly a strawman; my original contention is that they are revolting irresponsible in their approach to the question. They offer counseling to pregnant women on the premise that abortion is a question of “expressing one’s spirituality” and “learning about one’s self” without suggestion that the status of the fetus/person/human has any bearing on the decision.
The term “lump” denotes a disorganized, structureless collection of objects. Since the fetus is not a lump of cells, by any stretch of the imagination, such an objection is irrelevant.
Raving Atheist: Attacking the religious left in order to justify your stance on personhood is indeed a strawman, since nobody else in the debate has stepped forward to defend the religious left’s approach.
You didn’t answer my question: Please give your side on this “personhood” debate. You’ve yet to offer any justification for your position on personhood – you’ve stated your position, sure, but a debate consists of stating a position and then justifying it. All of your posts fall more under the category of “rants.”
Also, I’m still not seeing where I’m playing a semantic game. I said in my first post that the biological definition of a human is insufficient, seeing as how a brain-dead patient is still biologically a human being even though the patient is a “soulless” lump of flesh. I suggest that you offer a counter-argument for this contention before you throw around meaningless dismissals of the same contention being applied to an unborn child.
Not sure exactly what you’re saying here. Are you accusing God of something? And what do you mean by silly personhood stuff? You consider yourself to be a person, don’t you? I don’t think you or I have the right to declare that a person isn’t a person in certain cases. Once a life is created, and the cells start to divide, we have no right to do just as we please with it, IMHO. Nor do we have the right to start killing off old folks, even if they are a body just laying in a bed.
One more thing, if we start picking and choosing who has the right to live based on certain criteria that we decide on, which could be changed at a whim, then what’s next? How low will man go in his inhumanity to man? Scares me.
S1. A man has his leg severed in a freak accident. Medical workers are quick to the scene, though, and not only do they save the victim’s life, but they are also able to affix the leg to a machine that keeps the leg “alive.”
Q1. Which is the person: the legless man, or the severed leg? Why?
S2. Another man suffers an even more freakish accident – his arms are severed, as is his entire body below the ribcage. Medical workers are again quick to the scene, though, and they are able to affix the man’s head-and-torso section to a machine that will keep it alive, and are also able to affix the man’s arms and abdomen-and-legs section to another machine that will keep said parts alive.
Q2. Which is the person: the man’s torso-and-head, or the man’s arms and abdomen-and-legs? Why?
S3. Yet another man is suffering from some freakish futuristic disease, and the only way to save him is to remove his brain. The brain is attached to machines that will feed it with nutrients and that will also provide artificial sensory organs, artificial speech organs, and artificial mobility organs. The body-sans-brain is hooked to another machine that keeps it alive.
Q3. Which is the person: the man’s brain-plus-machines, or the man’s body-sans-brain? Why?
-Note that “both” and “neither” are also possible responses to the “which is the person” questions, but if you answer “both” then you’ve got a lot of explaining to do…
Hmm, I think I’d probably say that any part that included the brain would be considered the person because that’s where the consiousness is and self awareness and relation with the physical world around us. The brain controls the body. Of course, I myself consider people to be more than just bodies. We’re body, soul, and spirit.
I’m interested to see what others think about your examples.
Of course if you buy into that line of reasoning, than any zygote/embryo/fetus without a fully developed brain is “not yet a person”…and subject to elective abortion.
That’s why I don’t play the “personhood” game (see earlier reference).
FWIW, I’m also not big on hypothetical medical “experiments” for purposes of an abortion debate. We can craft pretty near any hypothetical being (ummm lessee…we take the cerebrum of a teenager and graft it onto the brain of an orangutan…is it a person or an orangutan) for these kind of discussions, to suit a particular viewpoint…they’re not really rooted in current reality though.
I reply: this is exactly what Lilairen is saying; a being that has the ability to survive without physical attachment to a specific person can otherwise seek nurturing from others. Babies are included in this category. If I give birth to a baby, and get hit by a train the following day, others can nurture the baby.
A fetus (or unborn person) that/who has not achieved viability can not be sustained on non-maternal nurturing from others. Thus, her distinction.
It apparently follows from her argument, that viability is the stage wherein the rights of the fetus/unborn person should begin to be considered vis-a-vis the mother’s rights.
And, subsequently, they may (or may not) trump the rights of the mother. (Though I don’t think this was the substance of her argument.)
Lilairen was talking about, and I’m clarifying – physical attachment to another specific individual. Your response above is insincere at worst, obfuscatory at best. Your survival without being grafted to your mother is the salient point, not your ability to survive without companionship.
On the contrary, it’s insightful and non-inflammatory. It seems that much of the abortion debate stems exactly from what point the rights of the fetus must be considered vis-a-vis the rights of the mother.
I think there are three “green lines” supposed by abortion-thinkers (pro-life and pro-choice). One is conception (His4ever?), one is birth (AHunter3?), and the third is viability (Lilairen?).
And that, despite the scientific advances of keeping premature newborns alive, this distinction is ethically meaningful, insofar as it can form a green line whereupon the interests of the unborn can be weighed against the interests of the mother.
Just because viability is harder to pin down doesn’t make it less worthy of discussion. In fact, it makes is possibly more worthy of debate.
Understood, which is why I noted that “neither” would be a fine response in my book (as long as it was justified, of course), because hypothetical medical experiments run the risk of begging the question and/or of being just plain ridiculous. “I take a human heart, and cut it in half. Which half is the heart?” “That’s a stupid question, because neither half is the heart – they’re both ‘half of a heart.’” My response would be similar to a question like “You take the left lobe of a human brain and graft it to the right lobe of a monkey brain. Is it a human?” “That’s a stupid question. Who cares?”
The hypothetical “body without a brain” is directly analogous to the real-life “body with a dead brain” (or "brain-dead patient). It’s certainly not a given that the “brain-dead patient” is analogous to the “unborn child prior to level of development,” since (as noted in the site you linked to) there isn’t exactly a discrete difference between the neuro-physiology of an unborn child at level of development and an unborn child at [Y] level of development. My contention is that the site I linked to that provides evidence that there is no brain activity prior to the third trimester demonstrates that there is a discrete difference between the neuro-physiology of an unborn child in the third trimester and an unborn child in the first or second trimester, but I grant that this isn’t a given and am open to a different kind of “personhood story” should said story prove to be more reasonable than the one that I have provided.
Oh, that clears it up. So all people are people except for unborn babies and many conjoined twins who share organs, right? Those people aren’t people, so they can be killed at whim. Unless there’s a gray area here about physical dependancy on another’s body for life too.
That’s the problem with making black and white calls on these sorts of things, people on both sides can always come up with an exception to our “rule(s)” that we’d be horrified to agree with.
When you said a body without a brain, I imagined a body literally with the brain physically removed. Of course, I do not buy into the line of reasoning that an unborn baby without a fully develped brain isn’t yet a person. Some of the scenarios you come up with don’t have roots in current reality, as you stated.
First, I don’t find that we’re too far off from growing a baby without ever using the act of sex or the physiology of a female body. We just need a 9 month old pre-recorded feedback device with simulates motion, surrounding sounds and conversations and heart beats and such. I don’t see why we can’t nail this process down pat after learning to simulate the bio-chemistry of the parent. Eventually this won’t even matter when we can create children from the ground up after having all of the code detangled - we can choose which boichemistry it will require.
The interests of the mother are not relevant. A human being should realize that if they don’t want to be raped and become pregant from that rape, or have a situation where her life is being comprimised for the life of the child; she needs to commit suicide as fast as she can, before her reproductive organs begin to function.
If I get hit in the head by a meteor, it’s my own damn fault for not killing myself earlier. I understand that I’m consenting to live in a universe where meteors can hit me and kill me.
The only viability which needs consideration is the viability of a child who has the possibility of being immoral. These are the only children beng protected by ‘right to life’ , as they’re the only ones who believe in such a thing; and spend their lives abusing such a silly concept to ‘control’ those around them. If it wasn’t for these few mentally deranged human beings, pro-choice would be the most logical choice I think. There are no other possible ‘viabilities’ for human beings than the few I listed earlier. Only one of them cares about the pro-life stance, and that is by necessaity the immoral being. The others either don’t care, can’t care or only care about making sure that when they’re dead, they will really be dead. The existence of immoral people is irrelevant to the other three possibilities. The other three possibilities are necessary in order for pro-lifers to find meaning in life - because they’re interested in other stuff and pro-lifers abuse them easily to bring ignorant and demented glory to their lives. There is only one of these combinations which will kill or abuse other people; and it is by definition the pro-lifers, everyone else self-regulates.
I think the logic is as clean as logic gets. shrug
I think it addressed all three of those points you brought up and doesn’t leave any untold contradiction, and doesn’t exclude any system.
I found Lilairens post to be filled with holes and as such, completely irrelevant as a point with regards to this issue.
I’m a woman and what is relevant is: who here has the right to participate with me and my doctor in a decision about my body. Why does everyone (pro-life and pro-choice) make this so complicated? It’s so easy for so many people (especially men, I’ve noticed)to philosophize about morality, hypothetical situations, when is a fetus a person, etc., etc. I go to my doctor and find out I’m pregnant. It’s between him and me. Period. You aren’t sitting in the doctor’s office with me, you don’t know my circumstances, and you don’t even know I’m pregnant. I have a right to privacy, just as all of you do. Before you can even weigh in with an opinion, I have to tell you I’m pregnant and that I plan to have an abortion. The fetus/baby is a part of my body. What I do with my body is MY business. What, if anything, is done about the pregnancy is between me and my doctor. If the baby is delivered and living apart from my body, then and only then does it become anyone else’s business. I am not pro-choice and I am not pro-life. If I were faced with having to make such a decision, I can’t tell you which way I’d go, but none of you have a say in it.
