Attempt At A Mutually Respectful Abortion Discussion

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EmmaSowl said:
Does that mean “Yes, Terri Schiavo ceased to be a human being”?
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Yes, it does. She became a corpse, with some bodily functions artificially kept in “motion”.

It is possible to place a fresh corpse unto a live-support machine, which will keep some of the functions “alive”, but it is still a corpse due to being brain-dead. We are our mind, the functionality of the brain.

The brain consists of two parts, the conscious (grey cells) and the subconscious (white cells). The white cells are responsible for the “lower” bodily functions, the grey cells provide the “higher” functionality - thinking.
EmmaSowl said:
Baby is not at all final.
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Indeed. But it is the point when she becomes a biologically independent being. When she ceases to be a “parasitic / symbiotic” entity. And that is NOT arbitrary or artificial. All the other steps you cited are artificial, and yet they are significant. We don’t allow under-age people to drive a car - for example.
EmmaSowl said:
But it still needs caring. So again, is it a human being?
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Caring is not relevant. When we are in a hospital, we need a lot of caring, but it is NOT a body-to-body connection, “sucking” nutrients from the “host”. And that is NOT arbitrary. Yes, it is a human being.
EmmaSowl said:
I’m afraid the doctor analogy doesn’t work for me. It is all about arbitrary lines drawn to show the completion of arbitrary tasks/learning.
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No analogy is 100% accurate. Yes, the lines are somewhat arbitrary. Just like all the characterizations are, and still we use them. The analogy shows the quantitative and qualitative changes to reach / deserve a new level of categorization. Up until the point where there is a “sufficiently” advanced functionality of the brain, we cannot speak of a “human being”.
 
What do you define as sufficiently developed brain/ mind complex? At what point is the mind sufficiently developed to achieve personhood?
 
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So even if the average fetus meets all the characteristics of life (characteristics of a living being: movement, respiration, sensitivity, growth, the ability to reproduce, excretion, nutrition) and a part of the human species since it has its own set of unique human DNA, it still is not a human being because of its inability to conceptualize at that period of its life?
 
Abrosz said:
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sara4:
What do you define as sufficiently developed brain/ mind complex?
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Being able to conceptualize.
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We’ve been down this road before; this is not your criterion. I pointed out earlier that a nine month fetus just before birth has a significantly more developed brain than a six month preemie, yet you (apparently) would grant that the child born at six months is in fact a child, while holding that the fetus is not. The problem with arbitrary standards is that they cannot be defended as anything other than arbitrary.
 
Ender said:
We’ve been down this road before; this is not your criterion. I pointed out earlier that a nine month fetus just before birth has a significantly more developed brain than a six month preemie, yet you (apparently) would grant that the child born at six months is in fact a child, while holding that the fetus is not. The problem with arbitrary standards is that they cannot be defended as anything other than arbitrary.
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You misrepresent and oversimplfy my stance. The 6 month old preborn is no longer dependent upon the bodily resources of the mother, so it does not have a parasitic / symbiotic relationship any more.

To be biologically independent is NOT arbitrary. And it has nothing to do with the development of the brain.
 
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Abrosz said:
To be biologically independent is NOT arbitrary. And it has nothing to do with the development of the brain.
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Exactly so, therefore brain development cannot be a criterion for personhood. As for biological independence, of course it is arbitrary as it has nothing to do with the nature and state of the fetus. Whether its dependence is biological or artificial is utterly irrelevant to its development. It may matter to the mother, but it doesn’t to the fetus. The personhood of the fetus exists independently of its relationship to its source of life support.
 
I’ve skimmed this thread, but I offer the following observations…

1 - There is no such thing as “value-less” empirical science. One brings value-assumptions to bear on data to interpret it in a useful way… especially when one claims something like, “The science says a person is defined by frontal lobe activity.” That’s just fantasy-land. You have an idea about what a person is before looking at “the science.”

2 - The fundamental error - in basically all threads like this - is twofold. First, a failure to realize that ethics is about happiness. But more to the point, second, the “metaphysical error”… As some have pointed out, the being in the womb is the same being out of the womb, at every phase of its existence - or else we could not say “it” at all, but only “these”. So, if there is some criterion about the activity of this species of thing in order to qualify not to be killed at will, then we can discuss it honestly as such - but to pretend that the substratum has changed “fundamentally” is more than problematic, it is incoherent.

3 - The distinctly “moral” error in this debate is looming, in the repugnant argument that the child is “dependent” and “parasitic” while in the womb… First, the child remains dependent for quite a while after, just in a different mode - and we all depend on other people, unless you are Rambo or something going hunting for wild boar in the jungle to make dinner. Second, and more importantly, it opens up the possibility that there is the following egregious principle: it is never required to suffer for the sake of another human being. (You can see the dependence on the metaphysical point above - that is the more fundamental issue.)
 
Abrosz said:
She became a corpse, with some bodily functions artificially kept in “motion”.
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But she could breath without help. How is a breathing person a corpse?
Abrosz said:
We are our mind, the functionality of the brain.
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Says who? And if true, why do you assert that a newborn baby is a human being?
Abrosz said:
When she ceases to be a “parasitic / symbiotic” entity.
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Why is that the line? Why is it impossible for one of the human stages to be “parasitic/symbiotic”?
Abrosz said:
When we are in a hospital, we need a lot of caring, but it is NOT a body-to-body connection, “sucking” nutrients from the “host”.
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When healthy adults are in a hospital, they need caring. But healthy babies need caring all the time and cannot conceptualize one thing. Just like Schiavo, they can breath, but they cannot think and they must be fed. Why do you classify the two cases differently?
Abrosz said:
Up until the point where there is a “sufficiently” advanced functionality of the brain, we cannot speak of a “human being”.
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Who decides what is “sufficiently advanced functionality of the brain” and why do you apply the term differently to a baby than to Schiavo?

Forgive me for responding late. My power went out, and when it returned, it took me days to login to this site because CA never sent me any requested emails to solve my forgotten password problem. I was shocked just now that I was logged in. Fingers crossed that I’ll be logged in again tomorrow.
 
A respectful question, if I may. How can you say that a woman has dominion over her body when the fetus is most emphatically NOT part of her body, down to even separate and distinct DNA?
 
EmmaSowl said:
But she could breath without help. How is a breathing person a corpse?
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Breathing is not a sufficient criterion to declare someone a human being.
EmmaSowl said:
Says who? And if true, why do you assert that a newborn baby is a human being?
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Says neuro-science. If you take a full-blown human being, and start replacing each organ with an identically working substitute (either transplant or prosthesis) the person will stay essentially the same. The only organ for which it does not apply is the brain. Maybe some time in the future we can have an artificial brain, and then we can revisit this question.
EmmaSowl said:
Why is that the line? Why is it impossible for one of the human stages to be “parasitic/symbiotic”?
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Sucking the life of a real human being is fundamentally different from needing to be fed and cared for. Is this not obvious?
EmmaSowl said:
When healthy adults are in a hospital, they need caring. But healthy babies need caring all the time and cannot conceptualize one thing. Just like Schiavo, they can breath, but they cannot think and they must be fed. Why do you classify the two cases differently?
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Without a frontal lobe there is no person.
EmmaSowl said:
Who decides what is “sufficiently advanced functionality of the brain” and why do you apply the term differently to a baby than to Schiavo?
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This is a too open-ended question to answer in a specific way. You could ask: “when is a medical student sufficiently knowledgeable to be considered a doctor?”

Just ponder: why do we celebrate the birthday and not the conception day, of the quickening day? Why don’t we assign a social security number to an unborn? Why can’t the unborns inherit? If you can answer these questions, you will get the answer to your other questions.
 
Abrosz said:
Just ponder: why do we celebrate the birthday and not the conception day, of the quickening day? Why don’t we assign a social security number to an unborn? Why can’t the unborns inherit? If you can answer these questions, you will get the answer to your other questions.
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Because it is convenient.
 
Abrosz said:
Is that all? Or maybe there is something more fundamental than that? Maybe society realizes that the event of birth separates the biologically dependent fetus and the actual human baby.
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Speculation, but I have a feeling people don’t care much or at all about being biologically independent when they have a party.
 
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