a fetus isn't a person; it hasn't developed any of the characteristics that define personhood besides a shared DNA structure.
A twenty-one week old fetus can survive birth - the older of the two I know about is now approaching his sixth birthday. If we were talking about the morning after pill then what you said could be relevant, but there can be no defense of late term abortion when medical science is rolling back the point of viability and exposing just who is being killed.
I can't think of a way to say this without it sounding condescending, so please understand that that's not the intended tone here.
Are you familiar with the idea of averages and statistics? Because you're making the standard leftist woman argumentation that, just because they can think of a single incident that doesn't 100% align with the statistical norm, this disproves the whole idea.
Yes, a miniscule percentage of non-viable fetuses can be artificially forced to complete the gestation cycle IF we apply the frankly astounding capabilities of modern medical science. This doesn't actually disprove anything I've said, though, and in fact supports my argumentation. They're still not viable organisms at that stage; if they were, they wouldn't need advanced NICUs and trained clinicians with specialized knowledge. And even these artificially sustained humans don't achieve personhood until many years post birth, because they STILL need to keep growing to develop the necessary brain complexity.
For early and mid-term abortions, no naturally viable human is being killed. For very late term abortions, a viable human is being killed, but no person is being killed. At worst, you've wasted the energy and resources you've spent gestating the child to that point, but the actual spark of personhood is maybe 1/5th of the way to being ignited at the time a baby is born.
but the actual spark of personhood is maybe 1/5th of the way to being ignited at the time a baby is born.
Says who? By that logic it should be legal to kill a toddler up to the point they become self-aware (I'm guessing that's the arbitrary metric you're using to denote 'personhood').
You're making this distinction between a 'human' and a 'person' that is entirely in your own head.
PK Dick wrote a short story about just that: the future society where you are only considered "human" if you can do some simple calculus. Before that? You can be "recycled" at the whim of your mother (NOT the father!), usually around age 8 or 9. He got more hate mail, back in the 60's! for that one than all the rest combined. Actual mail, eh? Someone paid money to tell him that they hate him.
Daemon Knight had a similar story. Until you turn 16? Your parents can send you "to the adoption agency" which sounds great, eh? Except the 'agency' just keeps you for 6 months, then harvests your organs. The chance of actual adoption is close to zero.
So kids in that story are amazing. They get up in the morning, cook & clean, pay close attention in school, never get in trouble!
The story is about such a boy, 14 and his parents decide to go on vacation on another planet. It's too bothersome to take him along, or even ask relatives to care for him, so they order him to go to the "adoption center". Dark!
Well, in this case, says me, because I am the ultimate arbiter of my morality, much as you are of yours.
Also, you're moving away from the debate. You've brought the question of legality into it, making the depressingly common attempt to take "legal" and "good"/"moral" together, when the two have zero bearing on one another.
And self-awareness is an intersting metric to consider, but even that paltry standard disqualifies huge swathes of people across the globe from personhood, let alone my preferred standard of self-actualization. Think about the average "doctor, lawyer, engineer" who dindu nuffin, or the average pajeet, or the average "refugees welcome" leftist. Many of them would, I think, at least be able to look in a mirror and identify the self and how the self differs from the not-self, but how many have a proper internal monologue, or the ability to imagine and rotate the apple, or even to comprehend the idea of second order effects, let alone predict them?
No, there's more to personhood then the mirror, and we tend to bet on humans since we are the sole species on this planet currently able to produce st least some members that qualify as persons, even if large numbers never make it that far.
You could, perhaps, make a solid argument in the wasted POTENTIAL of any given aborted fetus or baby, that he or she may have one day become a person and contributed to the sprecies at large, but no one ever does. It's always just "muh humans are le special" argumentation for an inherent worth that simply doesn't exist.
Also, you're moving away from the debate. You've brought the question of legality into it, making the depressingly common attempt to take "legal" and "good"/"moral" together, when the two have zero bearing on one another
Replace 'legal' with 'moral' then. Same principle applies. You're focusing on technicalities like a redditor.
And self-awareness is an intersting metric to consider, but even that paltry standard disqualifies huge swathes of people across the globe from personhood, let alone my preferred standard of self-actualization. Think about the average "doctor, lawyer, engineer" who dindu nuffin, or the average pajeet, or the average "refugees welcome" leftist. Many of them would, I think, at least be able to look in a mirror and identify the self and how the self differs from the not-self, but how many have a proper internal monologue, or the ability to imagine and rotate the apple, or even to comprehend the idea of second order effects, let alone predict them?
Again, this whole distinction of human vs. person exists entirely in your head based on what appears to be some arbitrary IQ threshold you've invented.
So killing a human is OK, but killing a "person" is wrong?
Reductive nonsense; you should know that's not what I've said.
Killing a human is morally equivalent to killing any other animal, absent special considerations. Personhood is one of these special considerations; you would certainly understand how one might be more reticent to arbitrarily execute a brilliant scientist or artist then a random beggar off the street for the same crime, for example. The doer and thinker carry more value to their existence that the eater or the junkie.
What's the difference? Aren't all "persons" also humans? Or can chimps be "persons" too?
I'm not going through the whole thing again. If you don't understand by now, you can't understand at all.
No, chimps or other great apes can't be persons. They lack the minds for it.
That's the secret sauce. A mind. Not just a brain running pattern recognition subroutines built into it by millions of years of evolutionary pressure.
And a great many humans alive today have nothing more than a very complex pattern recognition engine made of meat in their skulls, so they are not persons.
You said killing a fetus is OK because it isn't a person. Therefore killing humans IS ok, because fetus are humans.
So who decides if a human is a "person" or not? The government? If the junkie on the street cleans up & writes several popular novels, is he suddenly a person? Says who? The overlap between beings with human DNA and persons is 100%. 100% of humans are persons & vice versa.
Now I'd allow that there's "persons" who aren't actually humans, they just look like humans. Based on them not having a soul. That that's an entirely different can of fish, eh? Then we get into the problem of animals having souls (they do!) & so forth.
A twenty-one week old fetus can survive birth - the older of the two I know about is now approaching his sixth birthday. If we were talking about the morning after pill then what you said could be relevant, but there can be no defense of late term abortion when medical science is rolling back the point of viability and exposing just who is being killed.
I can't think of a way to say this without it sounding condescending, so please understand that that's not the intended tone here.
Are you familiar with the idea of averages and statistics? Because you're making the standard leftist woman argumentation that, just because they can think of a single incident that doesn't 100% align with the statistical norm, this disproves the whole idea.
Yes, a miniscule percentage of non-viable fetuses can be artificially forced to complete the gestation cycle IF we apply the frankly astounding capabilities of modern medical science. This doesn't actually disprove anything I've said, though, and in fact supports my argumentation. They're still not viable organisms at that stage; if they were, they wouldn't need advanced NICUs and trained clinicians with specialized knowledge. And even these artificially sustained humans don't achieve personhood until many years post birth, because they STILL need to keep growing to develop the necessary brain complexity.
For early and mid-term abortions, no naturally viable human is being killed. For very late term abortions, a viable human is being killed, but no person is being killed. At worst, you've wasted the energy and resources you've spent gestating the child to that point, but the actual spark of personhood is maybe 1/5th of the way to being ignited at the time a baby is born.
Says who? By that logic it should be legal to kill a toddler up to the point they become self-aware (I'm guessing that's the arbitrary metric you're using to denote 'personhood').
You're making this distinction between a 'human' and a 'person' that is entirely in your own head.
PK Dick wrote a short story about just that: the future society where you are only considered "human" if you can do some simple calculus. Before that? You can be "recycled" at the whim of your mother (NOT the father!), usually around age 8 or 9. He got more hate mail, back in the 60's! for that one than all the rest combined. Actual mail, eh? Someone paid money to tell him that they hate him.
Daemon Knight had a similar story. Until you turn 16? Your parents can send you "to the adoption agency" which sounds great, eh? Except the 'agency' just keeps you for 6 months, then harvests your organs. The chance of actual adoption is close to zero.
So kids in that story are amazing. They get up in the morning, cook & clean, pay close attention in school, never get in trouble!
The story is about such a boy, 14 and his parents decide to go on vacation on another planet. It's too bothersome to take him along, or even ask relatives to care for him, so they order him to go to the "adoption center". Dark!
Lordlavalamp is the sort of person that small communities quietly dispose of in the woods. You can't have reptiles like that around people you love.
Well, in this case, says me, because I am the ultimate arbiter of my morality, much as you are of yours.
Also, you're moving away from the debate. You've brought the question of legality into it, making the depressingly common attempt to take "legal" and "good"/"moral" together, when the two have zero bearing on one another.
And self-awareness is an intersting metric to consider, but even that paltry standard disqualifies huge swathes of people across the globe from personhood, let alone my preferred standard of self-actualization. Think about the average "doctor, lawyer, engineer" who dindu nuffin, or the average pajeet, or the average "refugees welcome" leftist. Many of them would, I think, at least be able to look in a mirror and identify the self and how the self differs from the not-self, but how many have a proper internal monologue, or the ability to imagine and rotate the apple, or even to comprehend the idea of second order effects, let alone predict them?
No, there's more to personhood then the mirror, and we tend to bet on humans since we are the sole species on this planet currently able to produce st least some members that qualify as persons, even if large numbers never make it that far.
You could, perhaps, make a solid argument in the wasted POTENTIAL of any given aborted fetus or baby, that he or she may have one day become a person and contributed to the sprecies at large, but no one ever does. It's always just "muh humans are le special" argumentation for an inherent worth that simply doesn't exist.
Replace 'legal' with 'moral' then. Same principle applies. You're focusing on technicalities like a redditor.
Again, this whole distinction of human vs. person exists entirely in your head based on what appears to be some arbitrary IQ threshold you've invented.
So killing a human is OK, but killing a "person" is wrong?
What's the difference? Aren't all "persons" also humans? Or can chimps be "persons" too?
"A person's a person no matter how small!"
Reductive nonsense; you should know that's not what I've said.
Killing a human is morally equivalent to killing any other animal, absent special considerations. Personhood is one of these special considerations; you would certainly understand how one might be more reticent to arbitrarily execute a brilliant scientist or artist then a random beggar off the street for the same crime, for example. The doer and thinker carry more value to their existence that the eater or the junkie.
I'm not going through the whole thing again. If you don't understand by now, you can't understand at all.
No, chimps or other great apes can't be persons. They lack the minds for it.
That's the secret sauce. A mind. Not just a brain running pattern recognition subroutines built into it by millions of years of evolutionary pressure.
And a great many humans alive today have nothing more than a very complex pattern recognition engine made of meat in their skulls, so they are not persons.
You said killing a fetus is OK because it isn't a person. Therefore killing humans IS ok, because fetus are humans.
So who decides if a human is a "person" or not? The government? If the junkie on the street cleans up & writes several popular novels, is he suddenly a person? Says who? The overlap between beings with human DNA and persons is 100%. 100% of humans are persons & vice versa.
Now I'd allow that there's "persons" who aren't actually humans, they just look like humans. Based on them not having a soul. That that's an entirely different can of fish, eh? Then we get into the problem of animals having souls (they do!) & so forth.
You're subhuman