@nola, you cannot wish away my objection on the basis that the examples I gave aren't healthy. Consider my Grandmother when she was in a coma from which it proved impossible to revive her. Did that mean that she wasn't human, just because she wasn't healthy?
Health or otherwise cannot be a distinguishing characteristic of being human. Thus, you still have to say that these cancers are distinct humans; otherwise your ‘life begins at conception’ theory is wrong.

In addition, your claims about the beginning of life discuss the wrong concept of being human. The biological concept of being human is distinct from the ethical concept of being human; these are distinct, because the fact that we are a different species biologically does not by any means imply prima facie anything ethical. In terms of biology, you can accept the premise that human life is defined by the DNA, begins at conception etc. However, that is irrelevant. In terms of the ethical concept of being human (as opposed to being animal), you need to first make a case for human exceptionalism, however the case cannot be specific to the DNA. Instead, it will have to be based around consciousness, rationality, or some similar such thing, and I would accept such an argument.
However, these arguments cannot apply directly to the zygote that is formed by the conception. Thus, either human life in ethical terms (rather than strictly biological) begins not at conception after all, but develops over the period of childhood, either that, or you make a potentiality argument. However, as soon as you do this, we can just continue tracing it back and back. The Sperm and Egg separately have just as much potentiality as the zygote: both can make a human. What of the cells of my body which could be cloned into another human, are they human by their potentiality? What distinguishes these from the zygote?
You see, you cannot really get to the heart of an ethical question by just looking at the biological facts. When we say “killing humans is wrong”, we have a very different concept of human to when we say “human life begins at conception”.

But let’s look at some of the other issues that arise from your “healthy” qualification. We now move from the situation of saying “life begins at conception” to saying “life might begin at conception, assuming that the zygote is one which is healthy enough to reach term”, something that is impossible to determine.
Let’s look at some examples of ill health that dent your case still further:
Embryos with TNF-alpha deficiency, with hemoglobin Barts, or with any number of other genetic ailments-not necessarily understood- that are not going to produce a viable foetus. Meanwhile, other embryos which cannot be distinguished from the first are human. In terms of everything they do, they are the same, except one will be born, the other not. There is no way of telling which is which. Your definition of human is impossible to actually measure.
How about a stillborn? The foetus reaches term, but dies shortly beforehand, possibly through some accident, possibly because of a genetic defect, maybe the defect was one which only sometimes stops the child from being born? Is it true in that case that the foetus is 70% of the time a human, 30% of the time not, if those are the chances of the defect being fatal before the child reaches term?
What of the comparison between your genetically defective foetus, which either doesn’t reach term or is stillborn, and a foetus suffering from anencephaly? Anencephaly is an awful defect where the child- whilst having human DNA and being ostensibly ‘alive’ when born (a newborn is pictured below)- has no brain at birth. It has a brainstem and a little midbrain, but nothing else. As a newborn suffering from this ailment will never have a brain, will never be able to breathe without a ventilator, will never be conscious and will inevitably die within a couple of years. But clearly, since this poor creature (and I can think of no better word for it) will reach term and be born and is biologically a human, to terminate the pregnancy is murder, whereas in the case of the defective foetus, there is no issue?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Enencephaly.jpg
Now, what of children with other genetic diseases like trisomy 13 or trisomy 18, or Tay-Sachs disease, or spinal muscular atrophy, (and there are many others), who will all die in childhood? How about those where death in childhood is likely, but not certain, since some will survive in great, unavoidable pain? Sickle cell anaemia, cystic fibrosis, and common variable immunodeficiency all fall under this category- are they sufficient defects to make somebody not human. Or diseases that don't have a known genetic cause, like tetralogy of Fallot and hypoplastic left heart syndrome, which are major anatomical errors that are lethal in infancy without major surgery? Or other diseases of a similar nature where surgery is sometimes or always impossible? Or those which don’t actually shorten life, but leave the patient unable to communicate, walk or reason? Which of these is human, and which isn’t? What is and isn’t a healthy foetus?
These questions aren’t rhetorical, you need an answer if you are to maintain your position; the simple, ‘healthy’ statement isn’t really so simple after all.
You probably want to say that you aren’t qualified to judge, that only a doctor can, but I’ve laid out the consequences of all these diseases for you. You only really have to ask what, in terms of ethics, makes a human *human*?
Don’t you see that what was once “life begins at conception” has now become “life begins at the potential to be born”, and possibly even “life begins at the potential to reach maturity” “life begins at the having a ‘good chance’ of reaching maturity”?

It has to do with the sacredness of life. If you're opposed to killing a little two-cell blastocyte, aren't you opposed to wars? All of them? Every soldier who dies would have been able to produce millions and millions of sperm. All those potential children are lost, along with the father's life.

I'm just trying to grasp the subtleties here.

You can't think all life is sacred, or you'd be dead of starvation.
If animal life is sacred, you should be a vegetarian.
If intelligent, feeling life is sacred, you'd care more about chimpanzees, bonobos, &c. Hell, one day you should care about advanced AIs.
If human life is sacred, you should be anti-war, anti-death penalty (on moral grounds, not effiency), and pacifist.
If this is all, in the end, about sacred magical souls, then sure, whatever. But I want to find out what exactly is sacred here.

TGM - Before I respond, did you read the article I posted? If not, I see no need to go into a bunch of detail to respond to what I would deem the "splattering" method of debate in which you post a bunch of various points in the hope that a few manage to somehow stick. From my experience in doing debate in high school, this seemed to be a viable tactic (mostly because of lousy judging in my opinion), but I have no interest in dealing with it here because I lack the time.

As far as the personhood topic you brought up in the middle of that somewhere, I already addressed that in some prior posts, so you can see my response there.

I will ask you a quite specific, directed, question, however. Should a perfectly healthy human life be able to be killed to serve the convenience of the mother?

Look, the development of a human organism into adulthood from conception is a gradual one. In it, there are only two genuinely well defined points, conception and birth. Trying to use either as a defining point for being a *person* leads to absurdities- the pro-life argument is quick to point out the absurdities in the "at birth" position, but then in defending their own with qualifications like "healthy" they actually move away from their own position, "at conception", in the face of it being absurd.

The only acceptable position to take philosophically is that there are characteristics that define personhood, not points in biological development; that personhood is not a binary- you can show some or most but not all of the characteristics; and that this questions are simply not as clear cut as the pro-life case claims.

I also maintain that it impossible to fulfill the characteristics of personhood when still a foetus.

that wasn't in response to the previous post, but in addition to my previous post.

@Ghost, as much as I hate to defend nola, I think his position with your examples is that human death is bad, but two human deaths is worse, so in cases where doing nothing will kill two humans, mother and child, it's better to have just one death, the child.

"TGM - Before I respond, did you read the article I posted? If not, I see no need to go into a bunch of detail to respond to what I would deem the "splattering" method of debate in which you post a bunch of various points in the hope that a few manage to somehow stick. From my experience in doing debate in high school, this seemed to be a viable tactic (mostly because of lousy judging in my opinion), but I have no interest in dealing with it here because I lack the time."

I skim read bits of it, and read the summary in full- you will no doubt forgive me for not reading all 30 pages when clearly only some will be relevant.

It said "When a human life begins is a question of science", which is missing the point. There is a massive distinction between being a human organism and being a person with moral rights, i.e. being "ethically human"

My argument is not scattered. I made a single case, refuting the idea of "healthy" as a criterion (I could make many others, don't tempt me).

Being a human organism is not the relevant point.
and
Being healthy is not a relevant factor
Therefore you must argue on the basis of potential rather than health
This leads to a quagmire that drags you away from your original position.

"As far as the personhood topic you brought up in the middle of that somewhere, I already addressed that in some prior posts, so you can see my response there."

At a later time, I shall re-read your posts and then complain when I find that they haven't met the full force of my argument.

"I will ask you a quite specific, directed, question, however. Should a perfectly healthy human life be able to be killed to serve the convenience of the mother?"

1. If you mean biologically human life, then I would say that the answer is undetermined. It depends on whether or not they are ethically a person.
2. If you mean a person, I refuse to answer on the grounds of irrelevance. I reject the idea that the zygote or foetus can be considered a person. That is my objection to your position, your question diverts from my objection without countering it.

Stukus - War is bad, but that does not mean it is not also sometimes necessary. There are bad people, and sometimes they start running countries and start wars. Other countries have to defend themselves. In a world in which everyone was always good there would be no war, but we definitely do not live in that world.

I am opposed to the death penalty on moral grounds, but the reason I listed my explanation as such is that in more ancient societies, it was not really possible (due to resource constraints) to imprison someone for 40 years, whereas now we have no such difficulty. As a result, in cases of capital crimes, that person was executed so as to prevent them from killing more people. When we commit criminal acts, we voluntarily revoke some of our rights (like the right to freedom) and have to pay the consequences.

"@Ghost, as much as I hate to defend nola, I think his position with your examples is that human death is bad, but two human deaths is worse, so in cases where doing nothing will kill two humans, mother and child, it's better to have just one death, the child."

Either:

He maintains that the cancers etc. are human persons and we should regret their passing. I consider this to be plainly absurd, and regardless, the points about anencephaly are still valid.
Or
He maintains that they are not, in which case all my criticisms of the 'healthy' requirement are valid.

I can see that if the mother is going to die anyway, you don't save a doomed foetus in any case, but my point is that his idea of being human is wrong.

TGM - So you agree that personhood is a completely arbitrary definition that we can make (at least it so appears). That essentialy means, that, for any reason, a living member of homo sapiens (in whatever state) can be defined to be not a person. I would obviously disagree with this (because I find the two to be inseparable) and I will also state that the belief that you can be human but not a person is highly dangerous.

Now, typically, this normally starts out with the unborn and sometimes those in a vegetative state. However, it can progress (because again, it is arbitrary) to cover more individuals until entire swaths of what used to be persons have had their personhood defined away. Next tends comes the mentally handicapped (note how the weaker people tend to be the first targets). After that comes the generally undesireable members of society, and after that, anyone who the government just does not like. While this sounds implausible, you are also probably quite aware that it has happened before in history, and I am going to take a guess and say that, unless we realize the implications of being able to define personhood arbitrarily, it will happen again.

Due to the aversion that some have to glassware (and possibly to reproduction without sexual intercourse) (I'm not clear on the objection to IVF), I'll offer the following dilemma reformulated to be entirely glassware-free and having the required (inferred) sexual contact:

Ethical Dilemma #3: You are a firefighter entering a building - you can turn down one corridor to save 3 young pregnant women (some might even be carrying twins, for all you know) or turn the other way and save 5 young not-pregnant women. No one else is coming in to save them and you most likely won't have time to make a second trip. Who do you save? (the building is not a fertility clinic so you can rest assured that the pregnant women had the appropriate sex to get to their state and that no glassware was involved) ...so, who get's your help?

" the main discussion of normal, healthy babies that are aborted largely for the sake of convenience" - so really the major objection is not that these women have a choice to make, but infact that they do make the choice for conveniance sake - they choice they make is wrong and thus must be made illegal OR at least inconvent - is that a correct assesment of your position?

I don't understand the rape/incest allowance, or as TMW put it, 'with the fairly universal rape/incest exception'. (I'm not sure how he figures its fairly universal, but his nonsensical musings never have basis in reality).

But why would there be an exception for rape/incest? If you believe that abortion is murder, how is it any less a murder based on how the child was conceived? Can someone how is pro-life but allows for that exception please explain it?

I've been ignoring this thread and hoping it would go away, but it isn't going to, so I'll get involved. :D I have read over most of the posts, but may have missed 1 or 2 so don't yell at me if I repeat some stuff. :D

@Dexter/TMW- I wasn't aware that there was a 'universally accepted' abortion rule for rapes and/or incest(lol, wtf?). I can see why there might be a grey area for rape victims, but how does incest get involved at all? I think that if the girl was under a certain age (teenagerish) then it might be best for her long and short term health to get an abortion. But that is the only reason that I can think pro-lifers would justify it with.

@animals' rights- Question- Are Humans supposed to be the protectors of nature or something? If no, then why should we worry about the rights of Chimps as much as the survival of members of our own species. If yes, then you should also agree that Humanity is superior to animals.

@nola you said: "So you agree that personhood is a completely arbitrary definition that we can make" and "unless we realize the implications of being able to define personhood arbitrarily, it will happen again" So you concede that the definition is arbitrary and are arguing for awareness (and thus taking care making our definitions so that they do not become a slippery slope). I can get on board for that. Am I missing something or are we in actual agreement?

@ people saying that a person has a right to their body- Perhaps, but let's accept that the fetus is a living being for a moment. Assisted suicide is illegal, except in Oregon (http://www.growthhouse.org/mortals/mort2523.html), and I believe that this is something that should fall under the same category. Allowing a person to kill themselves is one thing, but actively participating is another. So when you say that a woman has the rights to her body, sure, but that doesn't mean that the medical community should be allowed to help her kill the child.

@ people arguing with Nola on pages 1 and 2 about when life begins- I haven't seen a single one of you give evidence to support your argument. You criticize her/him(?) (I assumed Nola was a girl's name...) for using evidence from the church, but you can't provide any evidence to support your own opinion. So until you do, yes Nola is entitled to call your beliefs unreasonable.

Dexter_Morgan - No, I would argue that personhood is not definable as distinct from human life. That is the point I was making. If personhood and human life are the same thing, then we have not engaged in defining some human life as a person and other as not. If personhood and human life can somehow be separated arbitratily, then there are severe implications to that (which I mentioned).

Orthaic - Having an abortion for any reason other than the significant threat of death is one made for convenience. So, what I am saying is that in most cases, women have abortions because it is more convenient for them than to carry the pregnancy to term. This is what I am saying is wrong. I would argue that the use of the word "choice" is a poor one as well. It is like saying, "On the way to work today, I made the choice to run the guy next to me off the road and into a telephone pole because the color of his car annoyed me." That is not some sort of benign choice, it is a horrible act. Thus abortion, while it meets the "technical" definition of choice (in that everything we do is a choice), it is a choice in the same capacity as my previous example.

@Stukus- "It has to do with the sacredness of life. If you're opposed to killing a little two-cell blastocyte, aren't you opposed to wars? All of them? Every soldier who dies would have been able to produce millions and millions of sperm. All those potential children are lost, along with the father's life."

The rightness of wars should bed determined on a case by case basis. For example, with WWI and WWII America had no choice but to get involved. It is wrong to be the aggressor in most cases, but there is a lot of justification to fight a defensive war. Also, the reasons behind the war and the possible outcomes should be taken into account. You can't just say all wars are bad, because that is untrue.

Sperm/Eggs are not distinct life forms. Both of these are just re-arrangement's of the adult's genes. I have no problem killing some skin cells, and no problem with the death of some sperm. You say the death of a million potential children, but you can't be serious, can you? Even during sexual intercourse the vast majority of sperm dies and only one survives (I was that one, you can be impressed if you like).

The death penalty is also another topic all together. I personally believe that the death penalty should be used only in cases of clear guilt and in murder cases, and a few others that fall under that same horrifying crimes categories. The difference is that there, once again, is justification for this. the person has taken someone's life and is a threat to do so again. How many Serial killing fetuses have you heard of?

@Hunter49r: So, for you, the problem is not the killing (or the respect for life in general)but the circumstances of the killing? Therefore you agree human beings (individually or as a society) have a right to subjectively decide whether someone should live or die.

@Corwin- I see the trap you are trying to set, and I refuse to be taken in. :D

In EVERY culture, murder is wrong, so there is little to no subjectivity involved there. And in WWII we got involved to protect the life of innocents, at the expense of the lives of the aggressors and people that decided to fight for these innocents. Is war wrong? Yes, but I think that everyone would agree we were not wrong in fighting that war. I understand that women are going to find way to 'get rid' of unwanted babies regardless of the law, but I have a big problem with government sanctioned abortions.


Let me put it this way. Everything that happens in your life is a result of your choices, everything. If someone chooses to go on a killing spree or to start a genocide, then that is fine, but they have to live with the consequences, and one of the more likely consequences is death. If you put yourself in a bad position (ie. riding with a drunk driver), even if you didn't do anything wrong, then you also have to live with whatever happens. Everything that is in my life, both good and bad, are a result of conscious and unconscious decisions that I make on a day-to-day basis. One problem I have with abortions is that they takes away any choice that the baby might have.

"Having an abortion for any reason other than the significant threat of death is one made for convenience" - what about someone who can't afford to feed their child? Where their society refuses to offer them support?

It is not just quantity of life, quality also matters.

And more importantly untli it is no longer dependant on the mother's body for support it is just a parasite which she is kind enough to host - 'life' is not some magical thing which begins at conception, it is this whole other amazing thing - i like to use the word process here a lot. There is no single point where we can say,"and yes the soul is entering the body now" - it is a process of development, and proceeds slowly over time.

It ends in death, and there is a fuzzy definition there aswell. There is no clear point of death,, when the heart stops beating the brain is still active, the brain can die and the heart be restarted, it is even possible to keep a brainless body alive indefinetly...

I guess i hope we can all agree with this point, with a process there is no single POINT where life begins, (where suddenly there was sperm and egg, and now there is life!)

I can't tell you when life begins to deserve the protection of it's mother or it's society but i do not think it is for Our governments to tell us when to live and when to die.

Orathaic - By definition, the offspring of any species is not a parasite because parasites are by definition of a different species than their host.

And yes, human life does actually begin at conception. This was addressed quite clearly earlier. Neither a sperm nor an egg is a life; it is only a partial cell. Once the two are fused together, a human life is created. Whether or not this is a person is often debated, but whether or not it is a life is not so much (though I have nonetheless been arguing about it here for a bit). Again, though, if you think the government should not be allowed to decide who gets to live and die, then why do you think one individual should be able to make that decision for another without consent?

Finally, I should probably address the whole "quality of life" issue that was brought up. There are societal solutions for this, and it makes no sense to kill people due to resource constraints. If it did, then parents should also be able to kill off their young children when they have a hard time feeding them, but, with very few exceptions, I don't see anyone proposing that as a good idea.

@Nola: "why do you think one individual should be able to make that decision for another without consent". This is done when a doctor has to perform an abortion for medical reason (to save a mother's life, for example). Even if the fetus was doomed anyway, nobody asks if he/she is OK with his/her life being interrupted before the natural death occurs. If you're OK with this type of abortion then you make the notion of interrupting life a subjective one.

"parents should also be able to kill off their young children when they have a hard time feeding them, but, with very few exceptions, I don't see anyone proposing that as a good idea. " - this is a regular occurance in some cultures where food is scarce and contraception is non-existant, the value in those cultures of the life of a baby is lower than that of a healthy adult, and thus one must be sacrificed. This may be less common today, but in some tribes in the arctic circle (i want to say innuit but i'm not sure of the correct word) i'm sure it continues.

Secondly to your other point - "why do you think one individual should be able to make that decision for another without consent? " because that 'other' isn't a person yet, and that other has no right to feed off the women it has attached itself to - in medical situations a doctor would be right to favour the mother's life before the child's (though a mother can refuse treatment) nevertheless the life does not BEGIN at conception - the sperm cells are alive (but not protected by any culture) life doesn't magically appear, it changes from one form to another, millions of sperm die and one fuses with an egg. They are still just a snigle cell at that point, and yes they are still alive as they were before.

The question is when do these cells earn human rights (say as defined in the universal declaration of human rights for want of a better definition of rights) Firstly we shed cells all the time, they die and we don't care - scientists will soon be able to grow entire humans from the discarded skin cells of an adult (but are only trying to do this to grow stem cells from an adult line of skin cells - for emotional ethical reasons they are not allowed try growing human clones) Still we would chop off a humans arm if it saved their life - because a life isn't just some group of cells. It is an abstract concept (which is why we are having difficult with our definitions, we all have different ideas of what this abstraction means) This concept of what is a life differs from culture to culture, what freedoms we expect to expierence, what joys and pains we expect - this bundle of cells is not a human life - so yes I would also save a chimp or most any great ape if i meant sacrificing one human embryo.

We are not the protectors of all nature, we are the most destructive thing nature has seen in about 65 million years. (more toxic than nuclear radiation - as the sucess of flora and fauna in the Chernobyl exclusion zone shows) I however have compassion for other creatures, and choose to judge what is and what is not a life - one fertilised egg can be made every minute - one adult primate can take decades to grow and develop.

Corwin - It is subject to the terminology you just outlined, but for this specific type of interruption of life, that is about it.

Orathaic - As to your first paragraph, that is why I said with very few exceptions no one prosposes this as a good idea. However, for practical purposes our current society is the one relevant for discussion.

As to your second paragraph, the definition of personhood has come up a number of times. I really don't want to repeat myself once again (please read my post 11:36am EST for more detail), but to define a person as distinct from a human life is a very dangerous path to tread.

As to your third paragraph, my skin cells are not their own life, they are a part of mine. There is plenty of literature that explains this (including the article I posted previously), so I will not re-explain it again here. The concept of what is life is a strictly scientific matter, not a cultural matter. The concept of which life is and is not valuable, however, is what is often debated (see notes on the second paragraph).

As far as your last paragraph, I do have compassion for other creatures, but that is strictly secondary to human life. I also find it a bit disturbing that you feel that you can be the judge of what is and is not life - who appointed you?

a person, and a human life are one and the same; life is a process and does not have specifically defined end points (start or finish) We are perfectly used to the idea that different levels of development entitle different status in our society. I see that you are loath to go down the slippery slope of devaluing human cells which might given the right enviroment create a human person but given our current population and the unsustainable habits current among the vast majority we are not going to have to worry about such things.

Given that a Skin cell can be turned into a pluripotent stem cell (not currently a complete reversion to normal stem cells which can become any tissue, but just to multiple types of tissue) and given that a stem cell can create a new human person - but that human cloningresearch is blocked for ethical reasons - i would argue that a single skin cell has as much right to protection as a single fertilised egg (to 'abort' one of these we just need to prevent it from attaching to the womb lining - this can happen through the use of the morning after pill or sinmply having sex while the womb lining is not fit for attaching - the so called 'rythm method' of contraception)

Fortunately i was gifted with this factulty as a human, I can judge and discern things I am as capable as the highest supreme court judges in the US, though perhaps not as praciced or bogged down with politics and legal frameworks. I am not appointed to judge your life, or anyone's besides my own - However in this Hypothetical situation where i have been appointed to choose between a single ape and a single fertilised egg cell, i guess it was the hypothetical appointer.

And as i mentioned this has all been discussed before, you can go look up the other thread if you wish to see the long conversation i had.

Orathaic - Your "life is a process" argument, when applied to human beings, is frankly flat out false. We have pretty clear definitions for death (though the few minutes around death are a bit fuzzy, when you are good and dead, you are dead, and when you are not, you are alive). I already posted something earlier that clearly described that we KNOW that human life begins at conception, this is not something still subject to the realm of opinion. Science has clearly demonstrated and acknowledged that the biological life of human beings begins at conception. If you disagree, then you are welcome to post something from a reputable source that says something to the contrary, but otherwise, please refrain from stating that human life does not have a specific beginning and end; it does.

Now, the status of that life is a completely different argument which I have been trying to separate out here. If you are willing to do that, we can debate whether or not human life in different stages should have different values (which, I might add, is quite distinct from having different rights). I would argue that personhood is not differentiable from human life, but I think that is what you are trying to do.

Finally, a skin cell can not, by itself, turn into a distinct person at all. In order for this to occur, a bunch of significant interventionist scientific manipulation must be done, but by through no natural means will this ever occur. Prior to this manipulation, the skin cell was not a human life (but rather part of one) just as an egg and a sperm are not a human life, they are potential components of one.