Excuse me? Advocated the killing … ? He said no such thing. I suggest you take that back or else post a cite, because I can’t find where he said that.
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This indicates that the “potential” for personhood is not a deciding factor, in his view.
When it is unnecessary, yes. You could charge the parents with contempt for life, especially since there are in modern society very few reasons to do so, if you didn’t want it you could have done something about it earlier, and as long as there are people who are voluntarily willing to take care of it, there is no reason not to say that human rights (insofar they apply to children, mind you) can be assigned to them from birth. Yet I could think of societies which do not have such surplusses, nor access to reliable abortion (though forms of abortion exist longer than the Bible, as the Bible attests) and so on, to allow post-natal abortion.
We, however, can fairly easily afford ourselves the luxury to protect a human life from birth, and since the exact point of “sapiense” (awareness and/or self-awareness might be better terms - though maybe not less problematic) are hard to determine, we can easily afford ourselves a point in time before that actually happens. Viability is not a bad place to start. Even then, there could be issues where, say, sacrificing a 26 week old fetus could be the only way to save the life of a 12 year old sibling. Should that not be permissible?
In more ways then you think. But not nearly as much of a red-herring as all these arguments are NOT leading to any even half-decent scientific argument as to whether a zygote is deserving of human rights.
While I will insist on the importance of assigning as a starting point, I’m not sure. The example you gave could also be seen as a form of suspension of sapience. But I can live with 'human rights aren’t even relevant conversation short of that boundary". It does, in practice, seem to be a pivotal point though, just as we assign certain rights to adults we don’t assign to children and just as someone can be declared mentally incapable for all sorts of legal actions.
It wasn’t directly. Just pondering. My apologies for making it seem as if they were related in a more direct manner.
Again, apologies for being unclear. I was making a distinction between brain activity and mental activity.
Just because a woman isn’t planning to get pregnant doesn’t mean that she isn’t paying attention to whether she might be pregnant or not.
I don’t know what the statistics are on the percentage of pregnancy testing kits purchased by women who are trying to get pregnant as opposed to those who are trying not to. I do know, however, that personally I’ve never in my life tried to get pregnant, but I’ve done early pregnancy tests several times (all negative, thank Og).
Even women who aren’t being especially alert about pregnancy possibilities are likely to notice if they don’t get their period when they expect it, and for most of us the logical next step is to scurry out and buy a testing kit. (Warning: WAG follows.) Since most women menstruate within about two weeks after ovulation, I’d guess that maybe a third to a half of unwanted pregnancies are in fact detected quite soon after conception—maybe not within 10 days, but within, say, 20–23 days.
This doesn’t make sense. If the law is not treating fetuses as fully individual persons, then pretty much by definition, it is not considering them fully individual persons.
I stand by my statement that while “life” is certainly a biological concept, “personhood” is not. There is simply no meaningful biological way to determine which organisms with H. sapiens sapiens genes are endowed with which rights under any particular legal system. (For example, it’s biologically absurd to claim that a human being aged 17 years and 364 days is not an adult while a human being 18 years old is; but the law makes that arbitrary distinction, and similar ones, all the time.)
It is society and its laws that make the decisions about whether and to what extent fetuses have individual human rights, and the decisions depend on how the society defines personhood. Biologists have no more say in that matter than any of the rest of us.
The law does consider them individuals. Remember, Scott Peterson was not convicted for two counts of murder because Laci was 2 people. Insofar as abortion goes, the courts addressed the question by ignoring it.
It only addresses the privacy rights of a woman. The rights of the unborn were never fully addressed. And at the time of Roe it seemed too quaint to consider the rights of the unborn. It was addressing the rights of Roe.
However once the courts start to address the rights of the unborn, abortion only naturally becomes the quaint issue. And their attempts to sidestep only seems to beg the question.
It seems that the page is subscription even though it comes up from a goole link.
That gives the background an my first link was from 10/13/05 and stated that the child is now 11 months and a judge is goin to hear the mother’s deportaion case
In other words, the fetus is a non-person, and can therefore be killed with impunity. He them proceeded to assert that newborns are not persons either. When AFAIKnow asked when infants become persons, he said,
If the non-personhood of a fetus is sufficient justification for killing it, and if a newborn below 3-6 months is a non-person, then the newborn can be killed just as the fetus can be. That is the logical conclusion to draw from his claims, and it is abhorrent.
The bottom line is that, while the newborn is a non-person may someday become a person (according to his view, at least), this is not sufficient grounds to protect its life. Again, according to his view.
This viewpoint is similar to those espoused by Dr. Peter Singer, a professor of bioethics at Princeton University. Unlike most of the pro-choicers here, Singer does acknowledge that there is no relevant distinction between the unborn and a newborn infant. His solution, however, is to permit the killing of newborn children.
Abominable? Certainly… but that’s the logical conclusion to draw, if we insist that consciousness, sapience, or other such qualities are the relevant factors in determining who can be killed and who should be spared.
As the Scott Peterson case showed, the law does treat the fetus as a distinct individual person. This is also shown in the various fetal infanticide laws.
The problem is that this principle is not applied consistently. In certain cases, the life of the fetus is upheld, but when it comes to abortion, this principle is ignored.
Correct. I admit that birth is a somewhat arbitrary line to draw, but if society wants to draw it an earlier than neccesary point I can be ok with that as long as it does not interfere with a woman’s sovereignty over her body.
Just as there’s nothing magical about turning 18 or 21, there’s nothing magical about being born. It’s just where society has decided to draw the line.
No. Just because I don’t think they are full persons doesn’t mean I think you can do anything to them.
Cats and Dogs aren’t “sapient” either, but I wouldn’t say they can be killed freely. At least you can’t kill them in a cruel manner. There are still rules regarding how they can be treated.
There is a complicated difference here. Two parents, who want this baby, and who under normal circumstances would be having one. That means that currently, the law makes a distinction between an involuntary abortion and the voluntary abortion. Say that I broke in, and burned your lottery ticket. You had a picture of that ticket, and it turns out to win 2 million bucks, except you can’t cash it. What would happen in court? On the other hand, I burn it myself, then it turns out to have won 2 million. What would happen in court?
But I’ll give you that the U.W. law probably doesn’t deal with either case too clearly. What it has done, is deal with the right of a woman over her own body, and find no evidence for the law dealing with persons before birth. The number of cultures that consider an unborn child a person are in the minority.
It has not sought to find a clearer distinction over at what point a person is considered a legal person. Under the circumstances, I think justices have been dealing with the issue as justly as they can, but the law could be more specific, certainly.
But only if you define the unborn such that it is an individual person whose rights should be protected, and at the cost of those of the mother. I find arguments for doing so to be very weak, so far. Stating that a human being starts as soon as a zygote comes into being as sufficient grounds for awarding full protection under law, at the cost of a woman’s autonomy over her own body at that
Maybe worth-while not glossing too easy over the latter: 9 months of hormonal roller coaster rides, morning sickness, increased weight, increasing, leaking and sometimes painful breasts, back-pains, potential lasting afflictions, frequent medical checkups, risk of complications, emotional attachment and related psychological and life-decision choices, post-natal depression, etc. - I’m sure those who have been pregnant themselves can add a whole host of other issues)
Which would be consistent with the theory, but showing the same single-mindedness as those who feel that a human life starts at conception and therefore deserves protection from that point as if it was a person.
Advocating the killing of newborn is still not the same thing as determining that a newborn hasn’t yet attained ‘personhood’. You can see Blalron meant no such thing, and you could have known that before. Advocating the killing of newborn would be saying “hey everyone, go ahead and kill your newborn children!”. That isn’t equal to or doesn’t even logically follow from determining that personhood comes up after birth and therefore a newborn doesn’t necessarily require full personhood status.
But you are also trying to answer the question with a law that begs it. And it seems you are trying to justify a law with the law itself. That is circular logic. No law states that the unborn is not a person that doesn’t deserve protection unless both parents want it. The only law that allows that does not even address the status of the child at all. Only the mother’s.
Then you better have a good and solid criteria for stating under what circumstances a life begins. Else, I can (and in fact will) claim that the normative state for an arbitrary cluster of totipotent stem cells resulting from a developing zygoe is not personhood. By opening the door to non-axiomatic argument, you’ve kind of painted yourself into a corner; by what standard can you call one of two identical cells a human life, and the other just a cell?
And you, by your very existence, have strangled out at least dozens of unborn children. You monster. The cell that contained you choked the developmental potential from any number of unborn children. Had the other cells been freed from the cruel fate of your development, any of them might have grown up to be lawyers or doctors. Instead, they were forced to be mere cells for your development.
Or, you can not contend that the organisms cease to exist. (Or that they do, but it’s not a horrible moral dilemma. Of course, this kind of kills the anti-abortion argument against single cells.)
You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. I have yet to see one line of reasoning for why conception is the start of a new, distinct human individual. (You’re welcome to present a list of qualifications as to be one, and explain how everything you consider a person meet the qualifications and everything you don’t doesn’t.) Until you do, I rebut your experts thusly: No, it isnt.
Very well. I claim that the normative state of a single cell that might, under certain circumstances, grow and develop into an infant is not personhood. I welcome your attempts to demonstrate otherwise numerically.
Darn right. I have the testimony of some of the world’s foremost experts in genetics and embryology. (Still proud of that ‘A’ in high school biology, robert?)
You can claim any number of things. Heck, people once claimed that Africans were not fully human. Fortunately, I have the weight of medical testimony on my side.
Perhaps you missed the part where I presented Dr. Francis Beckwith’s argument? If the “teased out” cell is indeed identical to the zygote, then it IS an individual human organism. In other words, it is NOT “just a cell.”
Excuse me? Are you suggesting that in the course of my embryological development, my blastocyst cast off one of its cells, and then re-absorbed another human cell? Do you have a medical cite for that?
And even if that were the case, this would not have been a willful act on my part. Only a fool would cast moral blame for an act that was beyond the other person’s control.
(BTW, the definition you said that reabsorbing the cell would produce achimera; however, your own cite shows that to be untrue. The Wikipedia entry that you cited clearly states that a chimera is produced when to organisms with different genetic codes are fused. Twinned cells have the same genetics. Better review those high school science books, youngster!)
Hey, you’re the one who insisted that your scenario disproves the notion that life begins at conception. I’m just showing that your conclusion does not logically follow.
Reasoned themselves into? Master Liguiori, you’re explicitly claimed that life does not begin at conception. Sheesh.
Let’s see. A panel of world-class experts vs. one guy who proudly trumpets his ‘A’ in high school biology. Gee. I wonder who has more credibility in this matter.
But if you want scientific reasons, fine. At conception, you have someting that is genetically distinct from the mother, and thus, no longer a part of the mother organism. It has human genetics. It exhibits all the signs of life – growth, metabolism and reproduction, to name a few. It will continue to grow within its natural environment, until such circumstances occur that end its existence. It is a new human organism, and the experts in this field declare it to be so.
Oooh. You’re demading “numerical” proof for a concept (personhood) which is non-numeric, as any sixth grader should know. This alone demonstrates that your claim is simply hogwash.
And it’s also clear that you don’t understand the meaning of the term “normative” either. As long as you’re looking up the word “chimera,” you might want to study that term as well.
Your claim to “expert” opinion is ill-founded. The issue of “personhood” is not subject to scientific definition, it is a philosophical queston, a moral question, perhaps even a theological question. What is most emphaticaly is not: it is not a scientific question. No experiment can resolve the issue.
As regards “personhood”, the opinion of a highly trained geneticist has just as much significance as mine own: not much.
In case you didn’t notice, robertliguori is contesting the notion that life begins at conception. (Consider his statement, "Then you better have a good and solid criteria for stating under what circumstances a life begins. ") THAT is the point which I am addressing, and it most certainly is a scientific matter.
As for personhood, the burden of proof rests on those who insist that personhood IS the proper distinguishing factor, and that personhood somehow differs from humanity. So far, none of the pro-choicers have offered any criteria for personhood that would not also permit the wanton killing of newborn children (or in some cases, the mentally infirm). In other words, the lack of any definitin for personhood is your problem, not mine.
Actually, I think it says quite a bit about you that you think the rights of personhood simply come from having human DNA, whether or not the would-be person is capable of intelligent thought. God forbid any sentient aliens ever visit the Earth while you’re around.
I said nothing about killing non-persons with impunity. I even said “Perhaps it should be illegal to kill post-natal puppies and kittens, too.”
Again, those are your words and your conclusion, not mine. I have not defended the killing of any being except when there’s no other way to evict it from a person’s body. I find it telling that you have to misrepresent my position in order to argue against it.
To answer your second question first: no. I think my seat-saving analogy, which you quoted (and presumably read) earlier, explained that quite well.
I assign personhood to a body that is currently conscious and sapient, or a body that belongs to an established person who will regain sapience. When I fall asleep at night, I’m still a person because I was conscious before then and I’ll be conscious again in the morning. I have memories and a personality that were there before I went to bed and will still be there when I wake up, and I’ve had unique interactions with people who will remember and miss me if I don’t come back. I am a known quantity.
A brain-dead body that was once sapient and never will be again is essentially a corpse. The consciousness that inhabited it isn’t just temporarily suspended, it’s dead.
A body that has never been sapient is interchangeable with any other. Like a snowflake or a state-issued license plate, it’s only unique in a way that doesn’t really matter. It has no memories, no personality, and no third party has seen it doing anything different from any other fetus that has ever existed. It’s an empty vessel for a consciousness that may or may not come into existence at some point in the future.
Er, is that it? Your claim, your entire claim, is that one act of conception results in one life because the experts say it does?
That’s kind of my point. Absent the reasoning that your fine medical minds used to reach their position, you’re reduced to trusting experts. Trusting experts without any understanding of their reasoning is bad.
Then gestation is murder, as it prevents dozens of cells identical to the zygote from developing into anything but bits of zygote.
See, when most people embrace a premise that leads to a conclusion like that, they examine their premise pretty damn closely.
Difficult to prove in the specific case, although it is believed to happen with fair regularity. However, the teasing-out is not actually necessary; you just agreed that the cell is an individual human organism by virtue of its composition.
Very well. We can lay the blame on your mother, then. She is, after all, ethically responsible for the lives in her womb, yes? She has an obligation to preserve all of the individual and unique human lives, even though in so doing she prevents any of them from actually differentiating, yes?
Review them yourself, and pay special attention to transcription errors. You can easily get a chimera (albeit one nearly identical to cells that didn’t separate and recombine) that way.
Of course, I note that you’re no longer claiming that the various cell clusters that make up conceptus can and do smush together and divide apart without drastically affecting their potential to develop into persons, which was the reason I brought up an extreme example of said smushing together.
Indeed. I am also claiming that absent the reasoning and/or evidence that these experts used to arrive at their decision, their conclusions are worth considerably less than my Magic Eight-Ball. If these experts have stated why they believe that life begins at conception, the testimonial would have considerably more weight.
Many kids of cancer also fits all of those criteria for life. Are they also unique people?
Is chemotherapy therefore attempted murder?
Rather, you’re the one claiming that a cell identical to a fertilized egg cell is a human person, while not being outraged at the subsumption of all of these people into the bodies of another. Up to a certain point, any of these cells is equally as viable as the one that produced them all. Most of them will not become anything even remotely recognizable as people. Why, then, do you claim that the default status for something that might become a person is personhood?
Also, in what manner did I use the word ‘normative’ incorrectly?
