ShadowsOfParadox
Well-known member
Or DO you.
Or, is what you have instead, the enforced manifestation of otherwise fallow potential?
Abortion: When is a fetus a human?
- Thread starter Abhorsen
- Start date
Or, is what you have instead, the enforced manifestation of otherwise fallow potential?
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
So, Abhorsen, to try to make a 'comprehensive' 'life begins at conception argument in counter to some of your points:
1. If a zygote splits into identical twins, there was still clearly distinct human life before the split. That two distinct persons developed out of one cell still has that cell being a distinct entity from the mother. Life, and then more life, does not make an argument that the first life wasn't life before the more life was added.
2. With your somewhat creepy example of a decapitated body being kept alive through technology, the question to ask is 'is there a chance for recovery?' The detached head could be united with the body, and restored to fuller functionality. The detached head could be given specialized equipment to interact with reality through (I've heard a story of a paralyzed stroke victim that manipulates a computer interface purely through eye motion), this detached head still has personhood. The rest of the body is not going to re-develop a head and into a person.
3. In your case of a detached stem cell, it's a bit more complex. The stem cell in and of itself is 'human life,' but it is not a person. Part of how cloning works is to provoke behavior from cells that they do not normally exhibit; if you went through this process and created a zygote, then yes, at that point it's a human life. Because at that point it is in the process of developing into a full human.
'Life begins at conception' can very simply and easily create a clear binary of personhood/non-personhood. You can argue about fringe cases, but they aren't that hard to answer if you have a good grasp on logic and coherent ideological framework.
1. If a zygote splits into identical twins, there was still clearly distinct human life before the split. That two distinct persons developed out of one cell still has that cell being a distinct entity from the mother. Life, and then more life, does not make an argument that the first life wasn't life before the more life was added.
2. With your somewhat creepy example of a decapitated body being kept alive through technology, the question to ask is 'is there a chance for recovery?' The detached head could be united with the body, and restored to fuller functionality. The detached head could be given specialized equipment to interact with reality through (I've heard a story of a paralyzed stroke victim that manipulates a computer interface purely through eye motion), this detached head still has personhood. The rest of the body is not going to re-develop a head and into a person.
3. In your case of a detached stem cell, it's a bit more complex. The stem cell in and of itself is 'human life,' but it is not a person. Part of how cloning works is to provoke behavior from cells that they do not normally exhibit; if you went through this process and created a zygote, then yes, at that point it's a human life. Because at that point it is in the process of developing into a full human.
'Life begins at conception' can very simply and easily create a clear binary of personhood/non-personhood. You can argue about fringe cases, but they aren't that hard to answer if you have a good grasp on logic and coherent ideological framework.
If we are going to start considering potential children lost, then every time a sperm dies from old age, we have to mourn the potential loss of humanity. This also gets rid of the clear line argument for conception being the beginning of human life.
Sure, but those new lives were not created at conception. That's my point here. By your definition, there would be life that doesn't begin at conception. These splits usually happen 4-5 days after conception and both parts of the splits would be made of many cells. So then we have at least one life beginning much later than conception.
I agree that if the head is preserved and kept active, that would be a human life, my curiosity is if the body would count as a human life, even if the head completely dies. I too don't think the body is human, because it has no brain activity. Why does your definition of human life consider this a human though? Here's a better example: if the zygote develops into a fetus without a head, is that a human life? Can it be aborted without killing a baby?
See, in my view, the zygote is 'human life' but not a person. If you allow that logic here for stem cells which can be turned into zygotes, why not with zygotes themselves?
This is why I like the first occurrence of electrical signals in the brain. It's binary, and it doesn't seem to have any of these exceptions hanging around. Do you (or anyone else) have any arguments against this? I'm honestly interested in hearing them, because I want to develop this opinion.
Not at all. I would say that a mass crime wave would definitely be the fault of the state if there are no jobs, no route into work and no real way to seek gainful employment. An individual murdering their baby is a murder, a mass wave of young women seeking abortions is something going very wrong with either the way we treat motherhood; or the way that we raise our girls.
Shipmaster Sane
You have been weighed
A single murder is a murder, a thousand murders is a thousand murders.
I disagree on that. A single murder is a murder, a thousand murders is a clear trend that you're having a lot of murders.
Shipmaster Sane
You have been weighed
Something being a trend doesnt spontaneously evaporate personal responsibility. Humans are not a collective of ants, you never stop being responsible for your choices no matter how many people make that choice.
It does not evaporate it, but it does explain why the act itself becomes more common; punishing a single person when the trend is that large waves of people are engaging in the action doesn't stop the action. If we want to reduce the abortion numbers then outright banning it from the get go isn't really a good thing, but rather we should engage in a prolonged campaign of reducing the attractiveness (attractiveness is a terrible word for it, but it's the best descriptor I could think of) of the abortion when compared to simply having the child.
Discouraging casual sex, making it easier and more economical to have children rather than abort them, teaching girls that abortion itself is wrong would be better than simply banning it outright. By all means I would like abortion banned except in the most life threatening cases; but I also think that the desire to blend up your baby and toss it into a bin bag didn't emerge overnight once the option was presented, and that tackling where that desire has come from would ultimately be better in the long run.
Shipmaster Sane
You have been weighed
You're shifting the issue from the morality of it to the hypothetical legality of it. Just because you dont have the resources to catch and punish a million murderers all at once doesn't mean that murder is no longer murder.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
Just because there are additional conditions under which a human being's life can begin, does not mean conception no longer is such. Put another way, just because a person can be killed with a knife, does not mean a gun no longer counts as being capable of killing.
And a sperm by itself is not a human life. Neither is an egg by itself. They are still genetically distinct as subordinate parts of the human whose body created them, and without the process of fertilization will not start growing into a mature human being. This is why conception/fertilization is the boundary line.
The head and brain demonstrably are the key mechanisms through which human volition acts. People born paralyzed from the neck down are capable of learning to speak, reason, make moral choices, etc.
The body is 'human' in the genetic sense, but it is not a human being. It is the built-in toolkit most human beings use to interface with the world, but it is not the essence of what it means to be human.
If a zygote develops into a fetus without a head, that's a miscarriage. Which is a very tragic thing for anybody to have to suffer from. If I recall the terminology correctly, it is not an abortion, it's a stillbirth.
From the context of a Christian worldview, and thus involving beliefs I know not everyone agrees with, I consider the brain to be the soul's primary control interface with the body. The soul is what gives personhood, and the brain is the primary tool through which the soul uses the body to interact with the world. If the brain is destroyed, this destroys the soul's ability to use the body it inhabits effectively, and generally kills them besides.
The zygote is a person, because it is a unique instance of humanity that given natural course of development, will turn into a fully-mature human being. A stem cell is not before an external process manipulates it into forming a zygote, because it is not a zygote or any further part of the process to becoming a human being. That's pretty simple and clear-cut, I don't understand why this is a problem for you.
Personally, I see various methods of cloning and similar as only being different from natural sexual reproduction, in that they're a lot harder, more awkward, and more likely to result in birth defects or miscarriages.
Stepping again into the Christian worldview, Biblical literature is very clear on abortion at any stage being morally wrong, unless an unhealthy pregnancy is going to kill the mother (not have some mild risks, will kill the mother), at which point it is morally mandated.
I don't agree with your position, but I find it to be pleasantly much more logically coherent than most people these days. You have a clear-cut standard that makes sense within your ideology. Most peoples arguments that support abortion at some point, but not at another, are ideologically incoherent and irrational, fairly clearly the result of trying to reconcile their conscience to the massive cultural pressure to legitimize abortion.
Conception is just as binary. I don't get why you have such a hard time with it.
No I'm not. I have always been talking about the legality of it, in my very first post I said that I do not think that anyone has the right to perform an abortion unless doing so would save the life of the mother. But the trend of women getting abortions is new and is a result of a failure of society; it is fathers failing to raise their daughters, men and women failing to take responsibility for that child, the state failing to offer alternative services and the failure of the community to condemn the action. Individuals can do as individuals do, but they will never actually do it individually; everyone is a production of the society that is itself a product of the state. The mass wave of abortions is a symptom of a deeper sickness within society rather than simply a collection of individual actions.
Shipmaster Sane
You have been weighed
They are, but they are also the result of your environment. Fault can be diminished or increased by how, and where you were raised. A girl going in to get an abortion is to me killing a baby; but the fault doesn't rest with her entirely, but in how she was raised, the society around her and the willingness of her community to allow that abortion to happen. If she was raised to not have casual sex, if her partner was raised to take responsibility, if her society encouraged alternatives to killing the child and if her community condemned her then the likelyhood of her going for that abortion, or even considering it is diminished. An abortion is a failure of the mother, the father, her mother and her father and of society itself.
Reducing it down to 'this was each individual persons fault, and theirs alone' is vastly simplifying the problem.
almostinsane
Well-known member
I think it's important to bring up how abortion became forced upon the US. Abortion was illegal by default for most of our history. For the longest time, we held to the common law definition of murder where murder was defined as the loss of opportunity for continued life without violent intervention from the murderer.
Roe vs Wade was built on a pack of lies by two activist, ambitious lawyers, typical of judicial activists:
Roe vs Wade was built on a pack of lies by two activist, ambitious lawyers, typical of judicial activists:
Okay, cool. This is what I was trying to establish, that by your definition there are multiple points at which a person can be considered 'created' for lack of a better term. Usually, this is at conception, but also when a zygote splits and becomes two twins, or when an egg cell is given a nuclear transfer to create a clone (like Dolly the sheep), and maybe more.
Am I stating your point correctly? (this might come across sarcastically, but it really isn't. I want to know exactly what you think starts life)
Exactly, but how is that different from a zygote. It has the built-in toolkit needed to create a human, but could be argued isn't one yet. I'm not seeing the difference between a zygote and a headless body in regards to being a human.
If it is born, then you would be correct, as then it could not survive outside the womb, and would die. But while the fetus is in the womb and since it has continuously developed from a zygote, at what point would you consider it to die? When it becomes obvious that a head will not form? when the fetus leaves the womb?
I guess my real question here is what is your definition of human life is. I know you think it starts at conception et al., but what does it include and when does it end? Mine is pretty simple: life starts when electrical activity begins in the brain and ends when electrical activity permanently stops in the brain.
I don't so much have a hard time of it, but I want to attack the idea to see if it holds up. That's how I learn my positions on things. I take a position, argue it, hopefully lose, then either get a better argument or change my position. If I win, then I don't learn. This is how I left the left, starting with guns, so this process has proved very valuable to me.
As for conception, it doesn't seem as binary to me, for the above reasons. I want to either figure out if I'm right or have someone show to my satisfaction that I'm not. I'm going with electrical signals because it seems like the clearest demarcation I can find. There does also seem to be an argument for a messier 'life on a spectrum' definition, that I cannot refute, and so need to do more research on it.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
Yes, there are a couple points where life could be considered to begin, when we're getting to this level of high-detail specificity. They're inclusive though, not exclusive or anything else. What I mean by this, is that conception is always the start of a new life, and the split of a twin (full split, not the partial-split you sometimes get with a non-viable conjoined twin) is always the start of a new life.
You've yet to ask a question regarding the boundary between life and death that I have not been able to answer to my own satisfaction; have the answers been to your satisfaction as well?
PeliusAnar
Well-known member
This is why The Sietch is amazing. People can actually have this type of conversation and discussion without flying off the rails. +1 to everyone.
I will say this discussion has been enlightening for me. For me conception always seemed a bit too early as a dividing line. A mass of cells is not a creature or a human. This is why when I shed my skin or clip my nails, it doesn't bother me. Sure contraception uses different cells, but with cloning, stem cells, and other tech it always seemed that the line was very grey. This personally annoyed me. I mean take all the fertilized eggs people create for IVF. Are they human beings that are frozen? Is that cruelty? I hate these type of unclear things. On the flip side, many babies can survive outside of a womb a very short time into pregnancy and this time has gotten lower and lower as technology improves, so late term abortions should be equated to murder.
I used to go with the argument if the baby can survive, it shouldn't be aborted. The problem with this argument is that it places different values on human life and tends to under value poor people. A baby born in a rural area might only be capable of surviving at 24 weeks while a baby born to a rich couple in a city might be able to survive at 21 weeks. I view all human life as equal so that crushed that idea.
I then went to the first tri-mester for abortion. It is enough time for the mother to know that she is pregnant and make a decision. Still this is not a scientific line in regards to abortion. Since brain activity is at 8 weeks, I think this is a good standard and after reading the arguments here, have become fairly convinced it is a good and clear dividing line. When a group of cells becomes a baby, an organism capable of independent thought. While medical technology can't support a baby outside the womb that far back, I think this is a good dividing line. Both between the right of the mother to make a choice and the baby to live.
I will say this discussion has been enlightening for me. For me conception always seemed a bit too early as a dividing line. A mass of cells is not a creature or a human. This is why when I shed my skin or clip my nails, it doesn't bother me. Sure contraception uses different cells, but with cloning, stem cells, and other tech it always seemed that the line was very grey. This personally annoyed me. I mean take all the fertilized eggs people create for IVF. Are they human beings that are frozen? Is that cruelty? I hate these type of unclear things. On the flip side, many babies can survive outside of a womb a very short time into pregnancy and this time has gotten lower and lower as technology improves, so late term abortions should be equated to murder.
I used to go with the argument if the baby can survive, it shouldn't be aborted. The problem with this argument is that it places different values on human life and tends to under value poor people. A baby born in a rural area might only be capable of surviving at 24 weeks while a baby born to a rich couple in a city might be able to survive at 21 weeks. I view all human life as equal so that crushed that idea.
I then went to the first tri-mester for abortion. It is enough time for the mother to know that she is pregnant and make a decision. Still this is not a scientific line in regards to abortion. Since brain activity is at 8 weeks, I think this is a good standard and after reading the arguments here, have become fairly convinced it is a good and clear dividing line. When a group of cells becomes a baby, an organism capable of independent thought. While medical technology can't support a baby outside the womb that far back, I think this is a good dividing line. Both between the right of the mother to make a choice and the baby to live.
D
Deleted member
Guest
Let’s bear in mind that we’re arguing over degrees. In Abhorsen’s plan the world would be a better place and we would have a clear-cut separation on defensible grounds between abortion and murder.
Not really. I still don't see how you draw the line between life and death with the zygote being human life, but a living body without a head being not human life, especially in the case of the fetus without a head. Could you give a definition of human life?
Also, even if I accept that your definition makes sense, it still seems much less clear than mine.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
It's the difference between 'personhood' and 'living tissue.' A headless body on life support is still a mass of human tissue, but it does not have personhood, and it will not gain personhood, because it has no chance of growing a new head. The same for a miscarried baby that did not develop a head, or any other developmental defect sufficient to result in miscarriage.
If someone chopped off one of my toes, the detached toe would be 'human' but not 'a human.'