Can human nature be applied to the unborn?

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Can human nature be applied to the unborn?
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Can human nature be applied to the unborn… what? 😉

(PS it’s humans. The nature of the unborn creatures we’re talking about here, are unborn human creatures. One single continuous being, body-soul composite, developmentally moving through the developmental stages of the creature whose nature is human.)
 
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We have a lesson on Biology where our teacher discussed to the whole class that once sperm and egg cells had joined together, it already has human life.
 
ColoradoCatholic said:
So, are you or I people? obviously we become people at some point…

What you said above doesn’t make much sense.
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Sure it does. In a mushy-gushy world where all boundaries are erased so that whatever’s most convenient to the most powerful person in the room can be made up on the spot each time. 😉

Sometimes powerful people decide to define human personhood by skin tone… sometimes by ideology… sometimes by age…

It’s all mushy gushy. Powerful people trying to evade accountability to a standard outside themselves. If they declared a clearly-defined parameter, they might not be able to limbo around it when a case comes up that they find inconvenient.

Not just on the abortion issue. It seems to be a strong trend nowadays, people twisting and crushing definitions into dust, so they can make up ever-new – and ever-changing – definitions that they don’t even hold themselves accountable to, two days later. They just avoid definitions entirely, or keep re-writing the definitions, whenever the last definition they made up interferes with the new power-play they want to make.

And here’s the dangerous thing about that: They NEVER think it’s harmful, in the moment, because they think to themselves: “Well, obviously my intuition will still respect ‘obvious’ boundaries and common sense limitations, even if I don’t categorically define them. I’ll be able to make the obviously “right” decision on a case-by-case basis.” But new human generations keep being born, and standards of “common sense” and what is “obvious”, shift. Subconscious religious values (like believing in universal human rights, or the dignity of the disabled, or the brotherhood of man) might be embedded in one generation of atheists, that literally will not exist in a later crop. And when the new crop of people, lacking the internal values of the old, wanders into the undefined and unbounded categories of using their own “common sense” to decide what to do… even the old generation who set up that system, seems usually to consider the new generation to go way too far.

And to perpetually be baffled by it.

Which is stupid. But that’s a somewhat different topic.
 
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Freddy said:
Just like there is no point at which a child becomes an adult.
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How does it work with a person? Does it go from not being a person, to being 3/5’s of a person, to being a complete person?
 
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FaithHopeCharity said:
I looked up the definition and it defines human nature as the humans distinct psychological and behavioral traits.
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At all stages of development, human beings exhibit the physiological, psychological and behavioral traits that human beings are expected to have at that stage of development. There is no such thing as a human being who is not fully human, any more than there’s such a thing as a woman who is partially pregnant.

If no human being has human rights at conception, then human rights don’t exist at all.
 
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Ok, so this may just be my lack of knowledge in physiology or psychology which, now that I think about it, should have looked more into this aspect of human nature instead of looking into only philisophical or theological explanations.

But, I mean, if it is true that humans at the moment of conception show those said traits, I guess this could be the definition Trent was going for.
 
And a living entity while still a tree, albeit non-sentient (we think), but alive. As a table, however, that wood is no longer considered alive, according to most cultures.
 
A developing person in the womb, although human, according to Judaism.
 
A human being is a person.

How are YOU defining the term, “person”? Do 3 months after birth old babies count? Do they have to he reasonable? 7 years old and above? How are you defining the term? If you are using a different definition then arguing without clarifying this will go round and round.
 
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I’ve honestly never heard a pro choice advocate make an argument around human nature. It’s seems an odd argument to make. I’ve certainly heard the personhood argument.

Mostly, and I thin some Catholics have a hard time with this, is that babies are relatively easy to make…and apologies to anyone suffering infertility…and the loss of one when not convenient or desired is not a deterrent to keeping this baby. When they’re ready, they’ll make another. The extreme high regard for human life isn’t embraced by all. They’ll make one when they want one and eliminate those that they don’t. You’re missing the point (to them) if you insist that all humans, once started, must go to completion. No “personhood” or “nature” is going to really change that view. They don’t think that every pregnancy should be taken to completion with birth. Meanwhile, their own life is in the here and now and overrides any argument that all life is precious and needs to be a forced birth on them.

You can possibly reach those mothers that have a strong religious belief in the uniqueness of human life. I don’t think it will ever work on the irreligious or non religious. The value of human life is what needs to change, not the definition of nature or personhood.
 
1Lord1Faith said:
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Freddy:
Just like there is no point at which a child becomes an adult.
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How does it work with a person? Does it go from not being a person, to being 3/5’s of a person, to being a complete person?
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Does a child go from a child to an adult?
 
meltzerboy2 said:
And a living entity while still a tree, albeit non-sentient (we think), but alive. As a table, however, that wood is no longer considered alive, according to most cultures.
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Don’t treat the metaphor too literally.
 
Pattylt said:
… The extreme high regard for human life isn’t embraced by all. … babies are relatively easy to make … and the loss of one when not convenient or desired is not a deterrent … make one when they want one and eliminate those that they don’t … their own life is in the here and now and overrides any argument that … life is precious …
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Pretty much sums it up. A lesson in economics on supply and demand: If supply is exceedingly abundant and the demand absurdly low then the price is 0. Human life is worth less than every other commodity in the marketplace.
… their own life is in the here and now and overrides any argument that … life is precious …
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And one other principle neatly discloses the core selfishness of this mindset: My life is really the only precious life.
 
I don’t think it’s a very good analogy, but I can go along with it. I’d say that the fundamental being (that of being human) doesn’t change between the stages of child to teenager to adult. They are all stages of development. There are legal definitions of the terms child and adult, and there are also subjective uses of those terms. But yes, a child goes from a child to an adult.

None of those terms are used in order to deny a human of their fundamental right to live ordinarily at that particular stage of development. That is where I think the analogy fails. Using the personhood argument to deny a human being the right to live is something entirely different from trying to p(name removed by moderator)oint the moment a child becomes an adult. Of which is either a legal matter or a subjective matter.

So, now that I answered your question maybe you’ll answer the question I asked you.
 
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o_mlly said:
Pretty much sums it up. A lesson in economics on supply and demand: If supply is exceedingly abundant and the demand absurdly low then the price is 0. Human life is worth less than every other commodity in the marketplace.
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Don’t fully blame the woman for this, though. Society has always tended to devalue motherhood in an economic/financial sense. Most businesses wouldn’t hire married women because they would place children above the business. Maternity leave was almost unheard of. Insurance offered policies that had no pre or post natal care to keep costs lower for predominantly male companies. If a child was sick, it was always assumed that mom is the one that had to miss work. Women entering the workforce after an absence due to raising children were considered unskilled. Even the attitude that children are to be seen but not heard isn’t that old.

Some of this is changing but motherhood in general is still not seen as a worthy profession by many! Mostly though, children are not rare and so don’t hold a higher calling in our society. This may change if more and more people don’t have enough children to replace our society…especially in an economic/financial sense. To me, one of the most pertinent points of the Handmaids Tale was the intense value placed on having children in a society where childbirth became extremely rare. Exploring how society might respond to such a situation, the book looked at it through a fundamentalist religion point of view but I can imagine other groups responding in various ways…all of which would make abortion moot. When having children becomes rare enough to actually force changes on society, one response will be the horror of aborting any child. Their value will dramatically change in everyone’s mind. What I’m unsure of is, will that be what it takes?
 
I think human nature in the unborn

Biologically, at the time it begins to have human nostrils. Human nostrils is different than other mammals nostrils, and therefore differentiate it from all other creatures.

And also spiritually (bible):

Gen 2:7
7 Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living person
 
But what about humans who are born with deformities that make their nostrils different from a “normal person”? I feel like there is no criteria that all humans have in common to consider somone fully human a person unless its human nature. But its so difficult to accurately define that…
 
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