Someone or something is knocking on my front door. When I open it, will that someone or something be my girlfriend or a ten point buck? Since I don’t know what or who it is now, I imagine your advice would be to go ahead and shoot. Should it turn out to be a ten point buck I’ll be happy. Should it turn out to be my girlfriend, well, I guess there is no moral culpability since I had no way of knowing it would be a person. Is that your opinion?
What is the difference?
Thousands of people walk in front of speeding buses everyday too. That doesn’t mean it is OK to push. Life is precarious.
It’s more like “Here’s a set of blueprints. They may be the blueprints for the World Trade Center, or they may be blueprints for a Saturn V. But, right now, they are neither a big office building or a moon rocket–they’re just a set of blueprints. You can neither move into them and set up shop on the 95th floor, nor use them to fly to the Moon and back.”
You didn’t answer my question. Besides, blueprints do not of their own volition turn into an office building given time.
If we have an autofac that if left alone will surround itself with an office building in a few weeks, isn’t blowing up the autofac now equivalent to blowing up the building a few weeks hence?
Is killing a seed today equivalent to killing a plant tomorrow? The net result is the same, right?
Killing a seed versus killing the plant is certainly different. It’s a matter of degree.
Is ripping up a blue print the same as blowing up a building, if the destruction of the plan ends up leading to a building not being constructed? In my opinion, no, they’re different things totally.
Is killing someone who breaks into your house different at point of confrontation versus hunting him down two weeks later? Same end result. Different moral judgment.
Is killing a carrot, which has no consciousness, no self-awareness, no capacity for pain objectionable for even the strictest vegans? Certainly not. But nobody would debate whether a carrot is alive or not. Or a tree. Or a calla lily, for that manner.
Then why, oh why, is killing an embryo without consciousness, without self-awareness so morally repugnant. Oh, because it haspotential for human life. I presume that is one point of your argument. Well, at the time of the “crime,” it was not conscious, and not capapble of knowing what’s going on around it. Like ripping up the blueprint that had the potential to be a building. Two different things entirely.
Earlier you said that we have a moral obligation to feed someone who is starving. I’m not sure I agree.
Last week I had my eyebrows waxed. An absolutely silly procedure done for vanity only. Cost – $15. I did not spend this $15 on a donation to a food shelf. I did not send it to UNICEF, or to starving African children. I spent it on stupid vanity. People starve every day in this world. We have the resources to keep this from happening. We, as a society and as individuals, do not spend those resources to keep this from happening.
We do not fund AIDS drugs in the third world. We don’t fund universal vaccination. We don’t believe everyone has a right to shelter – even though there are homeless who freeze to death every year. I think I have a far greater right to my body - and to see that it isn’t used as a life support system - than to have my money taken for that purpose.
It is your opinion that it has no consciousness. You would prefer to kill it than wait a few years and ask it.
No, it is human, and it is life.
So, would killing someone in their sleep be OK? I’m not conscious and aware of my surroundings about 8 hours a day. Potentially, I’ll wake up. I don’t see how can can say while I’m asleep I’m not human.
What you present is a variation on the Pope’s Ring fallacy.
Q: How many people can the Pope’s ring feed?
A: None. The Pope’s ring has no nutritional value.
I didn’t mean to suggest “I’m doing my part to nuture a system where resource distribution is less of a problem.” I’m not a saint. But I still wouldn’t let a child starve to death on my doorstep.
Paying ransom doesn’t really solve the problem anyway. Some doctor in Africa who refuses to help the sick until his check clears because you didn’t send him fifteen bucks? So what if he gets the money – he’ll just insist on it again in two weeks.
But if you don’t care about charity one way or another, I don’t think that is very wise. Who is going to help you when you need help, if you don’t help others?
What about “dead-beat dads”? Do you think they have a right not to have their money taken away?
It’s not merely an opinion. It’s based on the fact that something with no brain cells can clearly not have a consciousness. Thus, a carrot has no consciousness. The cells in your liver have no consciousness. The blastula that begins after conception is a hollow ball of cells, none of them equal to a brain cell. Furthermore, the brain cells must be devloped past a certain point when they DO appear, in order to consciousness to be possible.
Furthermore, if we wait a few years and ask the child if they recall the goings on in their own consciousness while they were in the womb, the answer will be no.
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Well, that would be because you currently have the capacity for consciousness, even if you’re not exercising it at the moment. The same is not true of the embryo.
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Of course not. Because they are now responsible for the care of a person they created. That person does not exist twenty minutes after conception. Or a week after conception. As someone else pointed out, their choice in the matter was turned over when they decided to have sex…due to facts of biology (i.e., the uterus is in MY body, so I get to decide how it’s used).
What, then, is so special about brain cells that they create consciousness? If you can’t answer that, you really can’t determine whether a blastula is consciousness or not. Regardless, as I said: I’m unconscious 8 hours a night and I would really appreciate no one thinking it is OK to kill me during that time.
Consciousness doesn’t require memory. I’ve forgotten things which have happened to me, that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.
I beg to differ. An embryo clearly has the capacity for full and apparent consciousness, it simply takes a while.
Huh? Why should their be something special about the labors he has to go through to support these other people? He didn’t create a person. He created a blastula. That the blastula somehow turned into a “person” couldn’t possibly be his fault.
[quoteThat person does not exist twenty minutes after conception. Or a week after conception. As someone else pointed out, their choice in the matter was turned over when they decided to have sex…due to facts of biology (i.e., the uterus is in MY body, so I get to decide how it’s used). [/QUOTE]
I’m all in favor of your free decision on how you wish to use your body, but it seems odd you insist on some special autonomy you don’t extend to others.
And perhaps there’s a third group, who just feels that abortion doesn’t fit into their personal morality scheme. I’m a well educated, married, Christian woman. I am personally opposed to abortion for my body, and if a woman asked me for advice on a pregnancy I wouldn’t advise her to have an abortion (just like I wouldn’t advise someone to order the Mahi Mahi, I don’t eat it, don’t like it, so how can I recommend it?) so I suppose that makes me pro-life. But I am pro-birth control, sex education, sex recreation :), and handing out condoms in school…I don’t sit around on a moral high horse :: cough :: alloran :: cough :: telling women what to do with themselves, I just do what’s right for me.
I agree with whoever said that we’re not going to change anyone’s mind on this issue, ever…but I just wanted you to know that all of us pro-lifers aren’t out bombing clinics or old blue hairs sitting around lamenting today’s youth.
Being against abortion certainly does NOT make you pro-life. Being FOR the criminalization of abortion does. If you do not want abortion to be ILLEGAL, regardless of your personal opinion of the procedure itself, you are pro choice.
i’m pro choice because the idea of a mother killing her own fetus does not offend me they way a mother killing, say, her five year old child would. the line for me is consciousness, which i don’t think kicks in until after you’re born.
Actually, I think all parties legally responsible for the child should have the ability to terminate their parental rights during the first two trimesters. That means that “Dad the sperm donor” who was entrapped by “Bimbo looking for free ride” should be able to say “no thank you” to child support payments, provided he does it during the first two trimesters of pregnancy. Bimbo would be responsible for serving him notice of his impending financial responsibilities. Then, if she decides to parent the child solo, she knows it will be solo. Or she can decide to make an adoption plan or abort. I believe myself to be in the minority on this belief.
You are not a saint - neither am I. Nor am I a martyr. I am not interested in supporting a “potential humman” at my own physical, emotional or financial expense unless it is of my own free will. The birth of my daughter (who was very much wanted) cost all three.
Parenting a child - whether emotionally, physically, or financially - gestationally or post-natally, is too important a task to give to people who haven’t committed themselves to it.
By this reasoning you can’t be sure that a carrot isn’t conscious. Yet I presume you eat something.
You never answered me before. You appear to make a moral distinction between the taking of human life and the taking of non-human life (carrots and cows and so on), on the grounds that humans are “persons” whereas cows and carrots are not. This is fine as far as it goes, but what is it about human living organisms that make them “persons” which non-human living organisms presumably lack?
Darn these long threads–you can’t see what’s just been posted, even if you preview your own post.
Oh well, andros and I are breathlessly awaiting jmullaney’s response. Hey, andros, shall we found a chapter of People for the Ethical Treatment of Carrots?
Yeah, adros – but I am not now, nor have I ever been a carrot. I am human though, and as such I know humans can be conscious. If consciousness is merely an illusion created by chemical reaction, why should life be held sacred at all? Since no one has yet explained the roots of consciousness to me, you can’t arbitrarily decide when it starts. But I understand your argument. I still don’t like an idea that says is basically OK to kill someone as long as they aren’t aware that you are doing so.
Interesting. There might be some unintended consequences of such a law. And I don’t see why the parents should lose the right to abdigate the more self-supporting the child becomes – seems like it should work the other way round. But it is nice to see someone suggest a new idea.
I don’t think you should have that freedom taken away from you. I’ve never understood the pro-life position.
Yeah, but the old “burning the village to save it” routine never ends up being as good an idea as it sounds at first.
:eek: After you didn’t answer about a half dozen of my questions! But, OK – all is forgiven. Now, the answer we’ve all been waiting for…
I don’t know!
And since I don’t know, as a general principal I will maintain it is wrong to kill beings which have the capacity for consciousness.
I have tried talking to cows and chickens. They do not talk back. If they are conscious beings in the same manner as homo sapiens sapiens they do a fine job of hiding it, and as such I’ve washed my hands of the whole matter. On the other hand, I have it on good authority that most well cared for zygotes will be up and talking and running about it a matter of a few years.
