Terr, is it your position that it is never okay under any circumstances to kill a human?
No. As I posted several times. In this thread. The fact that you apparently missed.
I know you wouldn’t. The question is why.
My reason for not killing the baby is that I see it for what it is now. A living, breathing, feeling human being. That’s why it is irrelevant for me, whether it has any potential.
The fertilized egg at the beginning of pregnancy is no such thing. It does not think of feel or suffer. All it has is potential. And again - potential is not relevant for me. That is why I do not object to killing the fertilized egg.
Almost certainly 19 of 20 would say child (and the 20th would say niño). “Infant”, to me at least, describes a quite young child typically one who is not yet walking at which point they become a toddler. I think the argument would be better phrased as discussing “child” rather than “infant.” Or if you prefer it could be asked what do you call a human who is not yet a toddler, to which you’d probably get “baby” as an answer, but you’d have a chance at “infant.”
In any case, I’d think most people would exclude all but late term fetuses from whichever word was under discussion. There is no necessity that a language have a word that mean “all X excluding Y”. What do you call all humans you aren’t middle-aged or all humans who aren’t teen-agers? We certainly don’t have words for those in English.
Let’s go to the opposite end of the spectrum. What do we call all humans who are over, say, 54? “Old” perhaps, but old is a generic word not connoting people. Let’s suppose we decide to call them “dotans.” Does dotans include those on life support? I would hope so. Does it include those are brain dead but are being kept “alive” because they are organ donors whose organs have not yet been removed? I would hope not because that would make the removal of the organs criminal I’d think.
So if “brain death” is the end of life, isn’t “brain birth” its beginning? When is that? I don’t know, but it’s certainly later than conception.
Just yes or no would have sufficed. Anyway, let’s grant that “human” is an accurate descriptor from conception to decomposition. If we’re not to assume that a human is unkillable, then it’s fair to discuss what circumstances might justify killing a human.
If your point is that people, before having considered the issues carefully, giving off-the-cuff ill-considered responses, might confuse “a child” and “a human life that’s not an adult,” we’re in complete agreement. Similarly, if you ask these people to describe “a pet that’s not a cat,” a lot of them might say, “dog.” That doesn’t mean I’m going to buy a Kong toy for my goldfish.
I do not think I would follow that line of argument. If I were to accept that the fertilized egg at conception is a human being in the same sense you and I are (and I do not accept that) then I would probably disagree with abortion. The reason is that none of the circumstances where I consider the killing of a human being to be justifiable applies here.
I believe the relevant question is not whether or not a human being may be killed but rather at what point a human being comes into existence.
Ok. Circumstances:
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wartime, under certain conditions, subject to certain rules
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as punishment for killing another human or humans under especially egregious circumstances.
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in self-defense, if you (legally: reasonably) think the human is about to kill you
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to prevent the death of another human, under some circumstances
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controversial, but I agree with it: if the human in question is fully mentally competent and formally and firmly asks you to do it.
Only (4) above can possibly apply to abortion. As I already posted, I would agree to abortions that are necessary to save the mother’s life.
So if you’re forced to give an answer for the moment “human life” begins, what is it? To me, the most logical answer is when the sperm fertilizes the egg as that is the absolute beginning, genetically speaking, of what this organism will be: a human. Those that have seriously thought about this and have chosen a later time at which the organism becomes “human” are probably just trying to justify killing it without guilt.
If we’re giong to designate abortions as a form of infanticide, then I’m OK with infanticide and mothers should have a right to that particular form of infanticide, i.e., infanticide prior to birth.
Trying to paint the deed with increasingly lurid descriptive terms doesn’t make it any more wrong. It’s also still part of her body and I think she’s the best judge of whether or not to bring that life into this world, and she retains the moral authority to make that decision up until the moment of birth. (I’m OK with Roe v Wade as a compromise but only if people leave Roe untrammeled with restrictions and if abortion services are available and affordable everywhere).
I’m fine with that list so far. Now add this one:
- abortion, under circumstances deemed appropriate by the pregnant woman.
In other words it doesn’t fall into some other category. It’s its own category. There’s no other situation quite like it.
“It’s ok to kill the baby if the mother wants to”. I don’t consider that correct. But I bet you guessed that already.
Thing is, very few “pro-choice” advocates are honest like that. If they were, abortions would be prohibited.
We’ll have to disagree on the path, even if they all lead to the same place.
This is nonsense based on the fallacy of the mountain.
I drop a grain of sand on the ground. Is it a mountain?
I drop another on the ground. Is it a mountain?
I keep doing this until there’s a pile of sand 20,000 feet tall. Is it a mountain?
After the first grain, it’s clearly not a mountain. When it’s 20,000 feet tall, it’s clearly a mountain. Agreed?
So I want you to identify the exact moment–the exact grain of sand–that I drop that changes the pile from being simply a pile of sand into being a mountain.
If we apply the same logic to this problem that you applied to the question of when life begins, the only acceptable answer is that it’s a mountain as soon as the first grain of sand is dropped.
And here’s where your nonsense gets offensive. Those that have thought seriously about the problem and have chosen a later time at which the organism becomes (and I’m deliberately going to use the phrase “a person” rather than “human” because I don’t think biological taxonomy controls ethics) a person are not trying to wipe away guilt: they’re rejecting the fallacy of the mountain in favor of more careful thought. Your lack of understanding of your own fallacious thinking indicts you, not others.
WHile we’re at it, can we call the embryo the Patron Saint of Mercy And All That’s Good, and Honorary Professor of Neurolinguistics at Yale?
Because you’d be equally right to say, “very few ‘pro-choice’ advocates are honest enough to say, ‘It’s ok to kill the Patron Saint of Mercy And All That’s Good, and Honorary Professor of Neurolinguistics at Yale if the mother wants to.’”
The embryo is not a baby. The embryo is not a carrot. The embryo is not an adult. The embryo is not a saint. The embryo is not a professor.
When pro-choice advocates refuse to use the word “baby,” they’re being far more honest that people that call an embryo a baby.
Not completely. A fertilised egg is comprised of a mixture of the parent’s DNA, after all.
So would a natural feritlised egg carried by the biological mother be worth less than a fertilised egg implanted into a surrogate? The surrogate is carrying an egg with even more unique (though I don’t actually think that works with “unique”. Even more different.) DNA than the egg in its biological mother’s womb.
That’s not a criticism of pro-choicers, though.
I was replying to AHunter3. Your refuse to admit that the embryo is “human life”. He agrees it is. So if you prefer:
“It’s ok to terminate the humam life if the mother wants to”. I don’t consider that correct. But I bet you guessed that already.
Thing is, very few “pro-choice” advocates are honest like that. If they were, abortions would be prohibited.
What, if anything, is the difference between “the mother wants to terminate the fetus” and “the mother wants to terminate the human life”, stipulating that the sentences are referring to the same thing?
This is…how do I put this…untrue. As I just said, I don’t think that “human” is the controlling word for determining moral subjecthood. Of course an embryo is human life, just as the skin cells on my left pinky are human life. But neither those skin cells nor an embryo are a baby.
If I get a manicure, I’m going to kill some human life. It’s ok to terminate the human life if I want to. Given a fetus in a woman’s belly, it’s ok to terminate the human life if the woman wants to.
The difference between killing human life and killing a person is fundamental. I do not dispute that pinky skin cells or embryos are living cellular clusters with human DNA. I dispute that either are persons, that either are moral subjects.