Abortion due to gender.

[flyingfish]

I do…and I have family that’s been through the Holocaust…

I’ve felt just as physically sick walking next to an abortion clinic as I have a gas chamber in Dachau when I was 18 years old. If I know that torture, death or horror has happened in a place, I sense it and it makes me ill. But I tend to be perceptive anyway. It’s just how I am. I can’t physically stomach cruelty. When I had to do child abuse training, we had to watch a movie where former offenders spoke of their methods and I almost puked all over the floor. I think that’s why I’m so passionate about ending violence of all kinds. I have knee-jerk reactions to it. Even when I’m watching the Godfather or something, I have to excuse myself when the husband beats his wife. I guess I’m like my Muslim friends in the fact that I believe killing one human is killing all mankind.

But even more than feelings, which can deceive, it’s because I know, from my science education (I was a premedical student at one point, I still think of going into midwifery/nursing eventually), from what I know of history and politics, from my faith, and from my own nuanced views about gender (even my pro-choice friends are like, “Dang girl! You’re pro-life and Catholic but you’re really hardcore feminist!”) that it’s wrong. If it is a question of a woman’s heath and they can’t save the baby at all, yes, you have to save the mom. You have to remove a damaged tube from a tubal pregnancy, baby’s gonna die anyway. Otherwise though…absolutely not.

Also, to many, genocide is an intellectual belief. Even emotionally sensitive people can’t fathom cruelty until they’ve seen it. Some people read about Rwanda and can’t feel anything, because it’s so far removed from their daily lives, unlike the Tutsi who saw their family killed yet still managed to live.

I think I’m definitely a lot less emotional than you are. I’m by no means cold hearted, but it takes for me to be able to relate to a person’s story, to imagine their suffering to feel emotional about it. I just can’t do that with the unborn because they don’t have minds, so if I try to put myself in their shoes I end up with feeling like well they’re not aware and don’t feel so what’s the big deal.

 

[mjs1987]

Abortion will not be made illegal until a general culture of life is established. For this to happen, we need to avoid waste and disposing things. The disposable nature of abortion makes it seem no different than throwing away old food to many in society. When you can eliminate the need to waste and get rid of things, you will eliminate the need for abortion. When you do not have to save things and limit waste, it spreads into all areas of your life. Anything that interferes with you having whatever you want, however much you want, when you want it needs to be eliminated and disposed of. Abortion fills the need for guiltless, without consequences sex. Birth control contributes to this because if birth control fails, there needs to be a backup plan. This causes people to not think before having sex and they make really bad decisions. In order to solve most of the problems associated with waste, you need to instill a feeling that life means more than the material world we see here. You will never stop environmental waste or any other kind of waste until people believe they are living the life for Christ.

Where I tend to disagree though with the social justice movement is that they do not seem to accept views on helping the poor and giving more health care as well as stopping environmental destruction that contradict the socialist party line. Social justice issues are issues of prudence when finding ways to solve them. They are not on the same level as abortion or the death penalty. Abortion is an intrinsic evil while the death penalty is an issue of modern society finding a better way to punish individuals for heinous crimes. The churches teaching bears this out because it says that in certain places of the world the death penalty is warranted for social conditions. Remember, the death penalty is not an intrinsic evil. There is plenty of biblical justifications for it. It is an issue of the modern prison system finding a far more cruel way to punish murderers: solitary confinement. Historically, capital punishment served to both punish the individual and send a message to society to not step out of line. Typically, justice was swift and it was often times public so people could see the punishment as an example. The worst punishments such as the English quartering and hanging were reserved for traitors and this punishment was anything but swift though it fulfilled the desire to punish treason and to discourage others from turning against the king. Today, we have prison cells that confine people for life. The long periods of confinement effect people in different ways but the difference between then and now is that modern society values freedom and movement. Confinement in an era of great movement and personal freedom is more of a punishment than death by a needle that occurs years and years after the crime is committed.

Now for abortion, we know the life is always innocent. It never committed a crime and it didnt ask to be born. It has fundamental rights to life. Otherwise, the Declaration of Independence is a complete joke and so is the American republic and all other rights that we have. If we dont have a right to life, then we do not have a right to liberty! If life is not allowed to continue from conception, then it becomes arbitrary when it begins. This means the government can decide when you are a life and when you arent a life. I personally am not comfortable with the government having the right to say when a life is worthy of protection and worthy of being killed. This means that if social norms change, that killing any undesirable group can be make legal since the justification will be similar to Roe v Wade. If a right to privacy can be invented to justify abortion, any right can be made up by a judge to justify anything. Respect for life means a respect for truth and law and morality. All three of these things need to be respected and guarded by the people for a society to ever respect life and have liberty. The writings of the Founding Fathers bear this out. This concept is also embodied in divine right of kings theory. The king in theory has power to do what he wants but in reality he cannot and does not because he is bound by the truth, laws and morality laid out by God. Abortion is also similar in that just because we as a nation could permit it (there is no “right” to an abortion, just permitted action) does not mean we should because we are bound by life, liberty and pursuit of happiness or better put truth, law, and morality.

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

I think I’m definitely a lot less emotional than you are. I’m by no means cold hearted, but it takes for me to be able to relate to a person’s story, to imagine their suffering to feel emotional about it. I just can’t do that with the unborn because they don’t have minds, so if I try to put myself in their shoes I end up with feeling like well they’re not aware and don’t feel so what’s the big deal.

See, but you are using emotions. The Holocaust bothers you because you can relate to their life stories and feel sorry for them. But, obvoiusly, the Holocaust happened because too many people *didn’*t feel empathy for the Jews, the Gypsies, and the other populations affected.

But why use emotions to decide something is morally right or wrong.
Was it morally right to execute a major part of a population? No.

How could that have happened? How could so many people participate directly in those murders. Perhaps, their emotions rationalized that, “this population, doesn’t fit our subjective criteria of ‘person’”

And our society is doing it again. Society uses emotions to decide what should be considered a person. The hypotetical little boy, the hypotetical baby son of flyingfish isn’t considered a person, because she emotionally feels she doesn’t want to have anything to do with a little boy.

The Polish woman’s scenario is supposed to tug on our heart strings to say, “Oh, see, we need abortions because she went blind.” :bighanky: That’s dealing with reality just based on emotions. False empathy for a woman, not even knowing if she would have aborted if her vsion was 20/20. We don’t know if she is a scapegoat for pro-abortion groups.

This is the reality, a single celled human being is a human being. It deserves the right to life because it is a human.

Even an atheist, who does not believe in a soul, must concede that humans outrank amoebas, plankton. chickens, mice, monkeys, and dolphins.

I used to be “pro-choice” perhaps more pro-choice than you, Ms. Fish. My heart strings would get pulled when i would hear stories of partial birth abortions to save a mother’s life. but get pulled for the mother, sligtly sad for the baby.

My rationality was no one could do that unless she needed to. Andrea Yates drowned a 6 month old daughter. Did she need to?

But then I used intellect. It took a while, perhaps a year or so of thinking about it. If a mother could abort unborn child, why not her born? Was it location that changed it? If a woman who was raped could abort because she was raped, what about the woman who’s husband got arrested for bank robbery?

When I was faced with the truth that life starts somwhere…
Where? Conception?
What is formed? A human.
But what if it can’t feel anything? So what, it’s human.
But what if it can’t think? So what, its’ human.

An embryo is a human being and deserves the right to life. That is all. No emotions involved.

And BTW, if you have a chance, go to National Geographic, and look at an elephant embryo. See if you can succesfully argue that it isn’t an elephant, it will become an elephant at some point. You might be somewhat startled to learn that an elephant embryo has a trunk, when it is only the size of a paper clip.

 

[LittleSoldier]

I’m not saying people who are anti-abortion don’t do these things, I’m saying they still expend considerable amounts of energy fighting abortion that could be directed toward putting more energy and resources into those other things!

But if you only have so many resources and have to choose between providing healthcare for say a poor teenager with treatable cancer but who can’t afford treatment, or spending those resources fighting abortion legislation it seems that many pro-life people would choose to spend it fighting the abortion legislation. That is what I don’t understand.

I’m not saying people who are pro-life don’t care about anything other than abortion, I’m saying it seems to be the main priority .

It may seem that way to you because much of the fight for the rights of the unborn takes place here, in forums, in debates, in discussions. And I’m sure it is also true that many prolifers expend more energy in anti-abortion activities. But I would question why that is inappropriate. People do only have so much time in a day. Lots of people work and get home late and have time only to post in a thread or two. Some have more time and can post and also pray in front of abortion clinics. Some prolifers can fight against abortion and also help build houses, as in Habitat for Humanity.

I believe that we are all called by God and if we’re lucky we get to do what He asks of us. We’re not allowed to discuss private revelations and I don’t want to do that, but I feel secure in what I believe God wants me to do.

I also have more time than most because I can’t work; although I’m in chronic pain and that means I can’t participate so much in marches and activities like building houses and such.

I would like to point out that many, many prolifers pray. Prayer is a very powerful tool. Sometimes that’s all I can do.

As for providing healthcare for a poor teenager, that is an admirable cause, but I can’t even provide healthcare for myself, as I am poor, also.

We all do what we can do. Some may emphasize anti-abortion activities, some may fight for legislative reforms, some may donate money, some may just vote.

And that’s all good and useful.

For myself, I have a foster child in the Phillipines. She lives in a one-room shack with her father and her siblings. They are extremely poor and I feel honored to help them. But you wouldn’t know that because what you see is what I post in this thread. There are other activities I am involved in, but I don’t feel it would be appropriate to discuss them here. Let me just say they are very important to me and again, I feel honored to be able to do them.

This is my life. I’ve given it to God and what I do, I do for Him.

Ave Maria! Ora pro nobis.

 

[Joseph_L_Varga]

It may seem that way to you because much of the fight for the rights of the unborn takes place here, in forums, in debates, in discussions. And I’m sure it is also true that many prolifers expend more energy in anti-abortion activities. But I would question why that is inappropriate. People do only have so much time in a day. Lots of people work and get home late and have time only to post in a thread or two. Some have more time and can post and also pray in front of abortion clinics. Some prolifers can fight against abortion and also help build houses, as in Habitat for Humanity.

I believe that we are all called by God and if we’re lucky we get to do what He asks of us. We’re not allowed to discuss private revelations and I don’t want to do that, but I feel secure in what I believe God wants me to do.

I also have more time than most because I can’t work; although I’m in chronic pain and that means I can’t participate so much in marches and activities like building houses and such.

I would like to point out that many, many prolifers pray. Prayer is a very powerful tool. Sometimes that’s all I can do.

As for providing healthcare for a poor teenager, that is an admirable cause, but I can’t even provide healthcare for myself, as I am poor, also.

We all do what we can do. Some may emphasize anti-abortion activities, some may fight for legislative reforms, some may donate money, some may just vote.

And that’s all good and useful.

For myself, I have a foster child in the Phillipines. She lives in a one-room shack with her father and her siblings. They are extremely poor and I feel honored to help them. But you wouldn’t know that because what you see is what I post in this thread. There are other activities I am involved in, but I don’t feel it would be appropriate to discuss them here. Let me just say they are very important to me and again, I feel honored to be able to do them.

This is my life. I’ve given it to God and what I do, I do for Him.

Ave Maria! Ora pro nobis.

Along these lines, I also believe it’s false to paint pro-lifers as single-track and single-minded, as if they didn’t care about anything but abortion. Are we supposed to walk around bragging about what else we do, in addition to supporting the rights of the unborn? OK, here it is: I have a foster child in Honduras whom I support financially, I contribute to whatever causes come up, from malaria vaccines for children in Kenya and Burkina Faso, to food programs and reconstruction in Haiti. In fact I do contribute more to those other causes than to the cause of the unborn, but I hate bragging around about what I do. And I know other people who are just like me. But we agree that the offenses against the sanctity of human life, especially defenseless unborn children and disabled people, are the most egregious offenses of all. Thus, those are the offenses we condemn with the strongest voice. Yet, this doesn’t mean we aren’t concerned or aren’t contributing to other worthy causes.

 

[flyingfish]

But why use emotions to decide something is morally right or wrong.
Was it morally right to execute a major part of a population? No.

I’m talking about emotions because an earlier poster said they were made uncomfortable by how unemotional I was when it came to abortion.

So I’m saying that I get emotional when people with minds get hurt, like women, or victims of the Holocaust, or African Americans who were slaves. But I just don’t feel anything when I imagine fetuses being killed or embryos used to produce stem cells.

Even an atheist, who does not believe in a soul, must concede that humans outrank amoebas, plankton. chickens, mice, monkeys, and dolphins.

I would put adult dolphins and apes ahead of human fetuses/brain dead people to be honest, because there is good evidence that apes and dolphins are self aware.

But then I used intellect. It took a while, perhaps a year or so of thinking about it. If a mother could abort unborn child, why not her born? Was it location that changed it?

Location changes it because once it’s born you can “abort” by giving it away to someone else, you don’t need to physically destroy it.

And BTW, if you have a chance, go to National Geographic, and look at an elephant embryo. See if you can succesfully argue that it isn’t an elephant, it will become an elephant at some point. You might be somewhat startled to learn that an elephant embryo has a trunk, when it is only the size of a paper clip.

I’m not saying that fetuses aren’t human, they are. I’m saying so what if they are? If they don’t have minds, it doesn’t matter to me which species they belong to.

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

I’m not saying that fetuses aren’t human, they are. I’m saying so what if they are? If they don’t have minds, it doesn’t matter to me which species they belong to.

Honestly, how do you think so many people participated in the mass executions that took place during the Holocaust? The victims were dehumanized.

Have you seen Nazi Propaganda films? The Jews were referred to as rats, vermin, parasites. There was no internet back then, but couldn’y you imagine 2 Nazis saying, “I’m not saying the Jews are not human, I’m saying so what if they are?”

You have managed to convince yourself that a small, pre-born human does not deserve rights

Thank God that you don’t live in a society where you are considered of less value, and are striipped of your basic human rights due to completely subjective criteria.

 

[flyingfish]

You have managed to convince yourself that a small, pre-born human does not deserve rights

Not quite, I don’t think it should have precedence over its mother’s needs and wants. I think the anti-abortion position limits the woman’s right to control her body and the course of her life.

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

Not quite, I don’t think it should have precedence over its mother’s needs and wants. I think the anti-abortion position limits the woman’s right to control her body and the course of her life.

The body of her unborn child is not her body. In the early days of pregnancy, the woman’s body changes in subtle ways to protect the unborn. The woman’s immune system becomes weakened in order to accomodate the baby. Often her sense of smell becomes more sensitive in order to detect possible toxins. Her breasts become tender, beginning to prepare to make milk.

Her body naturally goes through these changes to protect the baby.

The pro-abortion position looks at motherhood as a disease to be prevented.

 

[LittleSoldier]

Along these lines, I also believe it’s false to paint pro-lifers as single-track and single-minded, as if they didn’t care about anything but abortion. Are we supposed to walk around bragging about what else we do, in addition to supporting the rights of the unborn? OK, here it is: I have a foster child in Honduras whom I support financially, I contribute to whatever causes come up, from malaria vaccines for children in Kenya and Burkina Faso, to food programs and reconstruction in Haiti. In fact I do contribute more to those other causes than to the cause of the unborn, but I hate bragging around about what I do. And I know other people who are just like me. But we agree that the offenses against the sanctity of human life, especially defenseless unborn children and disabled people, are the most egregious offenses of all. Thus, those are the offenses we condemn with the strongest voice. Yet, this doesn’t mean we aren’t concerned or aren’t contributing to other worthy causes.

I felt kind of uh, icky, even writing about my foster child. I hate bragging, too. I almost deleted it, but decided to let it stay.

I do want to point out that everything I do is done only because God has allowed me to exist.

And that brings us back to why abortion is so wrong. My mother’s physician told her to abort me, for health reasons. If she had done so, I wouldn’t be here, typing right now and I wouldn’t be doing what little I’ve managed to do for prolife causes. When a child is aborted there is so much lost. What about the aborted child who could have become a philanthropist, or another Mother Teresa, or pope? It’s true that one could become a serial killer, too, but to take away someone’s chance at fulfilling him/herself is horrifying to me.

This is the first time I’ve ever felt that I had to defend prolifers against a charge which, quite honestly, is understandable. I’m sure lots of people believe that prolifers are concerned only (or mainly) with the unborn. I can see where that belief can come from. And I know many prolifers put their emphasis only on fighting against abortion and that’s fine because letting human life exist is the first and most important step.

Ave Maria! Ora pro nobis.

 

[kimmielittle]

I’m not saying people who are anti-abortion don’t do these things, I’m saying they still expend considerable amounts of energy fighting abortion that could be directed toward putting more energy and resources into those other things!

Hiyas

Where does Social Justice start, if you don’t first defend the innocent? Without the first step protecting the innocent ] Social Justice has ** no platform **. the vast majority of Mothers seeking abortions on demand are not the innocent . They do have a pro-choice stand…abstain.

Governments sole reason to exist - is to protect the weak and innocent …no other reason.

Your analogy of the teenager with cancer IMHO, is reduced to a strawman argument, as there are resources available…i.e, Saint Judes Childrens Hospital for one ]. There exists no 'culture of death ’ laws so far ] to impede that teenager from getting help.

Can we…do we… need to - do more for social justice issues? Of course, and many of us do. But priorities must first be given those who have no voice.

I’m saying they still expend considerable amounts of energy fighting abortion that could be directed toward putting more energy and resources into those other things!

And, IMHO you, spend / expend considerable amounts of energy fighting to silence the voice of the innocent… how can you find any platform for social justice issues, while denying these? How can there be a voice for the Mother - when the unborn future Mother or Father has none?

You can not exclude - to include…this is reverse discrimination - kimmie

As always, just my thoughts

 

[flyingfish]

And, IMHO you, spend / expend considerable amounts of energy fighting to silence the voice of the innocent… how can you find any platform for social justice issues, while denying these? How can there be a voice for the Mother - when the unborn future Mother or Father has none?

You can not exclude - to include…this is reverse discrimination - kimmie

As always, just my thoughts

The unborn do not have voices to be silenced. They don’t have minds, they don’t even know they exist. I don’t think we can come to any kind of an agreement because we have fundamentally different views on what kind of a thing has “rights”.

You think that being biologically human is what counts, I think what species an organism belongs to is completely irrelevant when it comes to personhood and rights.

I think we’ve all said everything we could say. Thanks for the discussion

 

[crazzeto]

I do actually have specific memories from when I was 2 (I know this because my sibling was born when I was 3, and I remember specific trips, being on a plane, being on a beach looking for something we lost that happened before the birth of my sibling).

But I answered you later question multiple times in this thread, if you want the detailed response you can read my previous posts. I don’t want to write another long post repeating something I’ve already said. The short answer is no, killing a toddler should not be considered an abortion.

Sorry, it’s a long thread and obviously I missed it (I did search starting at my question forward though, oh well). Could you give me a post #? Thanks

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

The unborn do not have voices to be silenced. They don’t have minds, they don’t even know they exist. I don’t think we can come to any kind of an agreement because we have fundamentally different views on what kind of a thing has “rights”.

You think that being biologically human is what counts, I think what species an organism belongs to is completely irrelevant when it comes to personhood and rights.

I think we’ve all said everything we could say. Thanks for the discussion

dictionary.reference.com/browse/person

per·son   /ˈpɜrsən/ Show Spelled[pur-suhn] Show IPA
–noun
1.a human being, whether man, woman, or child: The table seats four persons.
2.a human being as distinguished from an animal or a thing.
3.Sociology. an individual human being, esp. with reference to his or her social relationships and behavioral patterns as conditioned by the culture.

Sigh…no other living creature has been ever considered a person. Just humans are persons. Elephants, always elephants. Chimps, always chimps. But you have decided that some humans are not persons.

70 years ago Jews were not considered persons.
150 years ago Afro-americans were not considered persons.
2000 years ago, the Romans thought Christians were appropriate to feed to the lions, to burn as torches.
Today, woman in Saudi Arabia are sentenced to caning because they accept bread from a non related man.

You have all the freedom in the world, because you were conceived, grew, were born, learned to speak, sit at a computer and type.

Where did flyingfish start her existance? She claims she started at ther first memory at 2.
I know she began at her conception.

And back to the animal kingdom, near my home live trumpeter swans. They are beautiful animals. They are tagged around their necks to track them in order to protect them. They often swim by with their little cygnets. Just try going near one though, mama swan will go into attack mode.

Sad, that birds are more “humane” than some of us.

 

[flyingfish]

Sorry, it’s a long thread and obviously I missed it (I did search starting at my question forward though, oh well). Could you give me a post #? Thanks

Sigh, it is a very long thread and I would similarly have to look through it to find the post numbers.

I’ll just summarize what I think:

1. I think that only organisms whose brains are capable of generating minds (i.e. self awareness/thoughts) qualify for things like right to life. It doesn’t matter to me if the organism is a human, a dolphin, an alien, AI, whatever. If it can have a mind (even if it’s on and off), it has rights. If it has no ability to make a mind, it might as well be an inanimate object or a complex, but mindless, piece of technology and it makes no sense to talk about its rights.
2. From what I have read of neuroscience and psychology, embryos, fetuses, and even newborns do not have brains sophisticated enough to generate minds.
3. Embryos, fetuses etc. live inside their mother, a person, who for various reasons may need or want to end a pregnancy. Because the mother thinks/feels and so on and the fetus doesn’t, her needs and wants take precedence.
4. Once the baby is born, I still don’t think it should be considered a person until it becomes complex enough to have a mind. But at the same time I don’t think the woman should be able to kill it if she feels like it. She can give it up for adoption if she doesn’t want to be a mother. If someone else were to kill her baby, it would still be a crime because he would be destroying a complex organism that has intrinsic value (but not as much as a person) and also he would be doing a lot of damage to the parents of the baby who may have wanted it.

4a) In some extreme circumstances, such as when there is no one to adopt the baby, and the woman may be too poor to feed it and her existing children, it would be acceptable to simply let the baby die since otherwise it would have to take resources needed for the survival of persons.

 

[crazzeto]

Sigh, it is a very long thread and I would similarly have to look through it to find the post numbers.

I’ll just summarize what I think:

1. I think that only organisms whose brains are capable of generating minds (i.e. self awareness/thoughts) qualify for things like right to life. It doesn’t matter to me if the organism is a human, a dolphin, an alien, AI, whatever. If it can have a mind (even if it’s on and off), it has rights. If it has no ability to make a mind, it might as well be an inanimate object or a complex, but mindless, piece of technology and it makes no sense to talk about its rights.
2. From what I have read of neuroscience and psychology, embryos, fetuses, and even newborns do not have brains sophisticated enough to generate minds.
3. Embryos, fetuses etc. live inside their mother, a person, who for various reasons may need or want to end a pregnancy. Because the mother thinks/feels and so on and the fetus doesn’t, her needs and wants take precedence.
4. Once the baby is born, I still don’t think it should be considered a person until it becomes complex enough to have a mind. But at the same time I don’t think the woman should be able to kill it if she feels like it. She can give it up for adoption if she doesn’t want to be a mother. If someone else were to kill her baby, it would still be a crime because he would be destroying a complex organism that has intrinsic value (but not as much as a person) and also he would be doing a lot of damage to the parents of the baby who may have wanted it.

4a) In some extreme circumstances, such as when there is no one to adopt the baby, and the woman may be too poor to feed it and her existing children, it would be acceptable to simply let the baby die since otherwise it would have to take resources needed for the survival of persons.

Point four is a conflict with everything else you said, and you create point 4a because of this. Your post shows exactly what length one must go to, to justify abortion. Here you try to make your standard “a mind”, but what exactly is “a mind then”, your definition is already so relitivisic that this question is truly up for interpetation.

Your responce shows the wisdom of the pro-life opinion. When it comes to the question of human life, college philosophy ought not be necessary to determain whether or not something has a right to life.

Ultimiatly this touches on my points in a previous thread “what is the greatest weakness of athism”. Consider this my exhortation to you to go ahead and read that thread. Ultimatly, you have proven again that the greatest problem with athiesm, is that athiests have no rights.

You demonstrate my points in spades in your resposne RE abortion. One does not have a right to life, rather… One has an opinion that they should be allowed to live. But when a greater power comes on the scene, that power due to it’s strenght ultimately determains whether or not you have the right live.

If you accept this, then you accept that Hitlers treatment of the Jews durring WWII was correct and morally consitant.

 

[flyingfish]

Sigh…no other living creature has been ever considered a person. Just humans are persons. Elephants, always elephants. Chimps, always chimps. But you have decided that some humans are not persons.

plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/

Personhood. What is it to be a person? What is necessary, and what suffices, for something to count as a person, as opposed to a non-person? What have people got that non-people haven’t got? This amounts more or less to asking for the definition of the word person. An answer would take the form “Necessarily, x is a person if and only if … x …”, with the blanks appropriately filled in. More specifically, we can ask at what point in one’s development from a fertilized egg there comes to be a person, or what it would take for a chimpanzee or a Martian or an electronic computer to be a person, if they could ever be. (See e.g. Chisholm 1976: 136f., Baker 2000: ch. 3.)

We can illustrate the point by considering a particular answer to question 1:

Necessarily, a person who exists at one time is identical with a person who exists at a second time if and only if the first person can, at the first time, remember an experience the second person has at the second time, or vice versa.

That is, a past or future person is you just in the case that you can now remember an experience she had then, or she can then remember an experience you are having now. (This view is also sometimes attributed to Locke, though it is doubtful whether he actually held it.) Call it the Memory Criterion.

The Memory Criterion may seem to imply that if you were to lapse into a persistent vegetative state, the resulting vegetable would not be you, as it would be unable to remember anything: you would have ceased to exist, or perhaps passed on to the next world. But in fact it implies no such thing. Assuming that a human vegetable is not a person, this is not a case involving a person existing at one time and a person existing at another time. The Memory Criterion tells us which past or future person you are, but not which past or future thing: it says what it takes for one to persist as a person, but not what it takes for one to persist without qualification. So it implies nothing at all about whether you could persist as a vegetable. For the same reason it tells us nothing about whether you were ever an embryo. (Olson 1997: 22–26, Mackie 1999: 224–228).

That said, the Somatic Approach has the virtue of being compatible with our beliefs about who is who in real life. Every actual case in which we take someone to survive or perish is a case where a human animal survives or perishes. The Psychological Approach, or at any rate the view that psychological continuity is necessary for us to persist, does not share this virtue. When someone lapses into a persistent vegetative state, his friends and relatives rarely conclude that their loved one no longer exists, even when they believe that there is no psychological continuity of any sort between the vegetable and the person. (They may conclude that his life no longer has any value, but that is another matter.) And most of us believe that we were once foetuses. When we see an ultrasound picture of a 12-week-old foetus, we ordinarily think we are seeing something that will, if all goes well, be born, learn to speak, and eventually become an adult human person. Yet none of us is in any way psychologically continuous with a 12-week-old foetus.

Just an example, that issues about what is a person are far more complex than whether something is biologically human, and serious philosophers have thought deeply about this issue.

 

[flyingfish]

Point four is a conflict with everything else you said,

What specifically does point 4 conflict with? I am guessing you think that I should say the woman should be able to freely kill her newborn before it develops a mind?

I don’t see why you think this. I don’t think for example that I should be able to go and destroy your car, and I don’t think that you should be able to kill your dog just because you feel like it. Even if the newborn can’t have a mind, it still has intrinsic value the way an animal might, and it still has value to its parents the way a possession does.

I think persons (as I define them) should take precedence over non-persons, hence I think abortion should be okay, because in that case the needs and wants of the woman outrank the value of the fetus.

Ultimatly, you have proven again that the greatest problem with athiesm, is that athiests have no rights.

You demonstrate my points in spades in your resposne RE abortion. One does not have a right to life, rather… One has an opinion that they should be allowed to live. But when a greater power comes on the scene, that power due to it’s strenght ultimately determains whether or not you have the right live.

If you accept this, then you accept that Hitlers treatment of the Jews durring WWII was correct and morally consitant.

I don’t think anyone has “rights” as such given to them by some cosmic standard. I think the language of rights is our language, and the concept of rights is a concept we have come up with and agreed upon. This wasn’t always the case. Not that long ago slavery was considered okay, women were treated as inferior to men, child labor was okay, domestic violence was okay, there was no legal concept of spousal rape so a man could force his wife to have sex with him without it being a crime.

Only relatively recently we have invented the language of human rights, and whatever you might say about atheism secular countries have embraced this concept, with secular societies being some of the best places to live in.

Also, just because I have lost faith doesn’t mean I don’t believe in objective moral standards. I do, because our nature is not arbitrary. People have specific needs (like we need food, water, we need to be in the sun, our brains benefit from learning). There’s plenty on which to form an objective moral standard without requiring an extraneous authority such as a deity.

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

Sigh, it is a very long thread and I would similarly have to look through it to find the post numbers.

I’ll just summarize what I think:

1. I think that only organisms whose brains are capable of generating minds (i.e. self awareness/thoughts) qualify for things like right to life. It doesn’t matter to me if the organism is a human, a dolphin, an alien, AI, whatever. If it can have a mind (even if it’s on and off), it has rights. If it has no ability to make a mind, it might as well be an inanimate object or a complex, but mindless, piece of technology and it makes no sense to talk about its rights.
2. From what I have read of neuroscience and psychology, embryos, fetuses, and even newborns do not have brains sophisticated enough to generate minds.
3. Embryos, fetuses etc. live inside their mother, a person, who for various reasons may need or want to end a pregnancy. Because the mother thinks/feels and so on and the fetus doesn’t, her needs and wants take precedence.
4. Once the baby is born, I still don’t think it should be considered a person until it becomes complex enough to have a mind. But at the same time I don’t think the woman should be able to kill it if she feels like it. She can give it up for adoption if she doesn’t want to be a mother. If someone else were to kill her baby, it would still be a crime because he would be destroying a complex organism that has intrinsic value (but not as much as a person) and also he would be doing a lot of damage to the parents of the baby who may have wanted it.

4a) In some extreme circumstances, such as when there is no one to adopt the baby, and the woman may be too poor to feed it and her existing children, it would be acceptable to simply let the baby die since otherwise it would have to take resources needed for the survival of persons.

Now I will summarize the truth.

Human beings are the highest form of creation on this earth.

No creature, be it an ameoba, a plankton, an elephant, a chimp, a fancy computer, an AI,. a dolphin, a lion, an orangutan, an ape who can sign, a parrot, chinchilla, a mouse, a flea are higher than a human.

So even the most delicate, fragile, simple human is worth more than a dolphin, or an ape.

It is a human being, as is flying fish, as am I, as is my son born at 28 weeks. As my 2 unborn babies that died before they could be born, as was my 103 year old grandmother.

Because one is human, the right to life applies to him/her.

We do not have the right to take an innocent human life!

There has been ample evidence of what happens when we use subjective reasoning to determine what is a human.

Flyingfish, you live in Canada, where your rights are not going to be taken away.

Thank God for that

 

[crazzeto]

No offence flyingfish, you already affirmed your belief that born childern should be allowed to die, at least under certain cases. I’m having trouble believeing, that when it gets right down to it, you’ll have any real desire to stop anyone having an abortion at any point for any reason.

Or letting their child starve to death in a trash can…