With all due respect, wfq1513, I don’t see how your posting contributes anything to the discussion. You believe that (1) and (2) are equally bad, but provide no foundation for that belief. It is an affirmation of your belief, but mere affirmations have no logical validity in a well-reasoned debate.
Indeed, in order to establish your claim, we must examine the arguments for abortion – and that’s precisely what we’ve been doing.
In which case, you should not cite its current legality as an argument FOR its legality.
It would remain legal, but it would not prove your point – namely, that it SHOULD be legal.
Besides which, the point remains. YOU made the argument regarding personhood. Ergo, YOU need to define personhood AND demonstrate that your definition is consistent with, and properly rooted in, the historical usage of the term. In addition, you must show that personhood SHOULD be the deciding factor, as you so claim.
I think you have your work cut out for you, so go ahead… please do your research and document the results.
robertligouri:
That’s not what I said. I said all life functions vital to survival. Growth is only one of them. Tumors do not do the others. Fetuses do.
No. Zygotes actually do perform all the necessary life functions, not merely grow.
Chaim Mattis Keller
-=
Indeed, in order to establish your claim, we must examine the arguments for abortion – and that’s precisely what we’ve been doing.
=-
BZZT! Wrong. Like I said, abortion is still legal here. No argument is needed for it. What you need is an argument against it.
Chaim: So what? Growth is all a tumor needs to do to stay alive. And yes, they are alive. And, I must add, still human under your definition.
robertligouri:
Not true. Growth is just one of six functions (as I recall from my old biology courses - the others being nutrition, transport, respiration, elimination and regulartion) that an entity must do to be considered a living being. A tumor does not do them all, which is part of my definition. A fetus does.
Chaim Mattis Keller
]
That’s preposterous. If we are to argue about whether abortion should be legal, then those arguments should be taken on their own merits – REGARDLESS of its current status. Besides which, we have already provided several reasons why it should be illegal, AND demonstrated the fallacies in your own reasoning.
Let’s go over this one more time. It’s current legality says nothing about whether it should be legal. After all, laws change all the time, and there was even a time when abortion was illegal.
Bloody 'ell. Neither does a day-old zygote. And a tumor is just a collection of (living) cells that have deicided to grow funkily. They are still living cells. A z-e-f is a collection of cells that (hopefully) is growing, but not so funkily as to disrupt its enviornment. They are both just collections of cells. Heck, a zygote can be a fertilized egg.
robertligouri:
That is not true. A day-old zygote performs all the functions of a living organism.
May I try to use analogy to make my point? Would you concede that a human zygote/embryo/fetus functionally similar an unborn bird inside its egg?
The unborn bird performs all of those life functions for itself, subsisting on the nutritive material, etc. in its egg’s yolk. By the same token, a z/e/f also does, except the yolk portion of a human egg cell only lasts the zygote for the few days necessary to get to the implantation stage, whereupon it grows its umbilical cord and placenta to achieve access to its vital supplies.
Perhaps it is easier for you to picture the unborn bird as an entity that performs those functions for itself since it is physically separated from its mother. Nonetheless, in function, it is not different from an unborn human; the only difference is what its umbilicus attaches to…whether it be a yolk or a placenta.
A tumor does not. It does grow, said growth being supported by its host’s bloodstream, but all those vital functions are performed not by any systems within itself, but by its host.
Chaim Mattis Keller
I’m sorry to pull a beagledave on you, Chaim, but cite? Cancers are composed of cells, which do all the processes on your list of processes for life. I’m suprised that you had the audacity to point out the taking of nutrients from the bloodstream, what with umbilical cords, and all. Hmm. Who “owns” the umbilical cord/placenta? Even if, and this is a big if, we acknowledge z-e-fs as people, who says that mothers are contractually obligated to provide a safe haven?
And at any rate, we are using your previous definition of human life. And, until you bring in a biology cite to prove that tumors are not alive, they are still people, under your definition.
robertligouri:
I’ll go looking for cites later re: such processes as nutrition and respiration. However, at the very least, cancerous tumors do not perform the process of regulation - that’s why their growth is so uncontrolled…and damaging.
Who indeed? Those are the baby’s genetic material, not the mother’s.
Ah, one of your favorite tactics…changing the focal point of the debate.
Nonetheless, my tenacious nature compels me to play along. I point you back to a statement I made a few pages back which you never responded to, which I shall recap here:
You had made a statement that requiring a pregnant woman to carry the fetus to term is the moral equivalent of requiring a potential organ donor to donate that organ. You commented that only if we consider he who does not donate the organ a murderer does it make sense to consider one who performs an abortion a murderer.
I disagreed. There is a difference between a sin of omission and a sin of commission. In your example, the person does not yet have his organ, and you do not need to actively do anything to cause his death. In an abortion, the fetus already has the metaphorical organ it needs. It is more akin to pulling the plug on someone’s life support machine. In the example I gave, you are paying the electric bills for the life-support machine. The amount deducted from your bank account for it causes you a slight reduction in your standard of living, but not a drastic one - and nowhere nearly enough to bankrupt you. You know that the payments will stop within nine months, and the chances are good that if the patient remains on the machines for that amount of time that he will be completely healthy. The only way to stop those payments from being taken from your bank account is by pulling the plug, thereby killing him. Is it murder to pull the plug?
If we do acknowledge z-e-fs as people (your own words, quoted above) the mother’s not taking away the z-e-f’s safe haven is the same question.
Chaim Mattis Keller
Please find some cites. In my three years of middle and high school biology, I didn’t hear a definition of life akin to what you are using. At any rate, tumors are self-regulating: when they kill their hosts, they stop growing.
Metaphors are slippery things. I think that both of our metaphors are pretty seriously flawed. You didn’t mention room and board for the patient afterwords, nor the fact that the payment can bankrupt some people.
And do remember that tumors have different genetic material then their hosts. Example: UV light causes thymine to bind with another thymine, causing skin cancer and a really freaky genetic code.
-=Ah, one of your favorite tactics…changing the focal point of the debate.=-
Alright, smarty-pants. Prove that tumors are not alive. Cite a definition of life, and point out how a collection of malignant cells don’t fit that definition. If you can’t, then either Tumors are People, Too!, or you need to revise your original definition.
Robert, how about we just circumnavigate this utterly redundant line of argument that tumours are somehow ‘the same’ as people by adding a corrolary onto the definition that Chaim didn’t have to give in the first place, thusly:
Seems reasonable to me. Of course we could just add another corrolary along the lines of They will eventually grow arms and legs and other human type stuff and have done with this silly revision and re-revision of a definition that it was your job to provide while you grasp at withered straws desperately poking around for a new ‘flaw’. It would save time at any rate.
Besides, Chaim wasn’t providing a definition of ‘life’ he was providing a definition of human life which a tumor patently is not and more importantly never can be. That pretty much renders your whole objection obsolete.
I tried looking for a cite which gave a definition of life but the trouble was that I found an abundance of cites, each with a different definition. In other words, scientists themselves cannot agree on what is a cast iron definition of ‘life’. This is bad news for you because, as JThunder and beagledave have pointed out to you countless times the pro life side doesn’t need to provide any definition. I personally feel that CMKeller is being overly obliging in providing you with a definition which you can (fail to) tear to pieces. I would have just ignored you until you did your homework and fulfilled your part in this argument by coming up with your definition. In fact, that is what I’m going to do until you decide to oblige us in the same way we have obliged you.
Besides, robertliguori, your argument doesn’t hinge on a definition of life or of human beings. Rather, your line of attack hingers on finding a definition of personhood – presumably because one can not show the fetus to be anything other than human.
In this thread and others, beagledave and I have repeatedly cited medical textbooks which show that human life begins at conception… and even if you don’t accept that, the unborn is already recognizably human by the time most abortions occur. In order to justify abortion then, one must either deny that killing innocents is wrong (as some do claim), or one must resort to an artificial definition of personhood… one with no precedent outside the abortion debate.
It seems to me that you’re applying a double-standard here. You want us to prove that the fetus is a person, but for tumors, you demand proof that they’re “not alive” – a decidedly lower standard.
I realize that you are responding to the definition that Chiam presented, and that’s part of the problem… Mind you, I know that Chaim’s responses to you have been well-researched and meticulously well-written. Chaim’s definition, however, can only address the scientific aspect of human being-hood, whereas your argument against the fetus rests on personhood, which you are treating as a different concept.
Hmm. I remember reading about a tumor that developed teeth. Cite in a minute. Come to that, if a z-e-f is aborted, then it won’t develop all tissues. 
And I have my own definition of personhood, which is different from all of yours, presumabley. I was just pointing out that CMKeller’s definition was lacking.
And, for a little SDMB kung-fu: JThunder, I assert that oocytes and sperm cells are “human life”.* By the standards you have presented, it is your obligation to explain why fertilized oocytes are people, and unfertilized ones aren’t.
And, assume that I don’t have a definition for personhood handy. Assume that I leave this thread alone. True, you will have the oppertunity to defeat all my points. However, even if you did so, you would not have proven your own. I don’t need to present a case to “win” this argument. I don’t need an attack. Hell, the one biology cite provided cited one bit of medical evidence (chromosome number), which I nailed (my skin cells have 46 chromosomes. They aren’t people. Ergo, 46 chromosomes != human being).
Look, you can say a person is anyting you want it to be. You can arbitrarily say that a zygote, blastocyst, embryo, fetus, newborn, etc. up to old person is a human being. Since it is arbitrary, I can’t attack this definition. ** SO WHAT? ** Abortion is legal here. We do not assign personhood to skin cells or oocytes, fertilized or no. If you want it assigned to z-e-fs, than you have burden of proof
You can assert anything you want. Bald assertions do not make for valid arguments.
NO. By the standards I presented, the burden of proof rests on the one who uses the “personhood” argument. This has been pointed out to you several times, by several people.
In fact, you seem awfully eager to deflect the burden of proof onto others. I think we can all see why.
If abortion were outlawed in this country, I, and many other women, would learn to perform them!
Underground support groups would collect data on reliable foreign doctors willing to perform abortions and would refer women to them.
Pressure groups would be formed to repeal such a law.
In essence…we’d start all over again. And make no mistake…we’d start again!
Is that the best you could do, JThunder? Like I said, to “win” this debate, I don’t need to present a case. I just need to poke holes in yours.
Look, my shirt is not a person. My computer is not a person. The trees in my yard are not people. X is not a person until proven otherwise. Therefore, you get to lift burden of proof. Think for a sec: you are asking pam2 to give person status to something she does not view as a person, at possible expense to herself. I’m afraid that you are the one who needs an argument.
If you have any links, please repost them.
Revised working definition of irony:
In other words, if we can’t prove that the fetus is a person, you feel justified in condoning its death?
That’s simply absurd. If you’re hunting in the woods, you don’t shoot at something unless you know that it’s not a fellow human. Your logic is akin to shooting at targets until someone else proves to you that it’s not human.
Besides which, you presented a specific defense for abortion, so the onus of proving your argument rests on your shoulders. Not ours. Yours.
And moreover, beagledave has cited medical texts which show that human life begins at conception. You have yet to refute any of those texts. So please, get going.