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CrimsonCatholic
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CharlesDarwin
Guest
But we have already established that whether it is alive or not does not matter
what matter is if it is a PERSON or not
you say yes but prevent no argument for that position
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NE_Catholic
Guest
well? when is fetus a person?
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CharlesDarwin
Guest
if you had read a SINGLE post I have made before you posted your canned responses you would already know
when beta waves are detected
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CrimsonCatholic
Guest
Suppose a woman who is pregnant maybe 8months 3rd trimester, walks into a bank. Bank gets held up by robbers who shoot the woman, she survives but the baby doesn’t. Robber Joe get charged with man slaughter etc…
Same woman, pregnant 3rd trimester, goes to an abortion clinic, and Joe performs the abortion killing the child, and is paid, and goes free.
is that okay?
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antroji
Guest
This is a wonderful analogy! Thanks.
I have been recommended a way to view this matter that is from a somewhat different footing. I don’t believe that many on here will agree with it, but I find it worthy of consideration, at least in terms of understanding a different world view. So, though it is in a pretty severely shortened form, here it is:
The question is akin to asking about the nature of life in general. And it kind of goes with the question some people ask about there being life elsewhere in the galaxy. I’m not meaning to embark here on sci-fi, but that question is illustrative of what may be a crucial point in understanding. and here is what that point is: that the outcome of a question is very much framed in the structure of how it is asked. I offered the life on other planets one for that reason.
You see, if we ask “is there life on other planets?” we are intrinsically, or semantically, assuming that by “life” we mean “forms.” So the question in that form is kind of unanswerable, though it has been attempted both by speculation about statistics and by simple faith, as well as by a few more obscure ways we won’t go into.
But what if we understand life to be Life, as in either the creative power of God, or of, in the case of materialists, those principles that got us here from a chemical soup. We can then see that either of those are as far as we can tell omnipresent in and even as Universe. So as subtle as it might be, we can say that Life always is, as a Principle, neither beginning nor ending, but continuously acting as a pressure on matter to form kinds of vehicles for kinds and degrees of awareness.
One of those forms is the human form. As Christians we believe that the human form is animated by a factor called “soul.” As some of us see it, this soul factor is present from conception. But we know, I’m sorry, believe, from our teaching, is that this soul changes toward an ultimate disposition when the body is cast off. (This is where some interesting research in NDE’s and OBE’s might apply.)
But let’s accept that there is change in whatever it is that we essentially are. To be a little more universal, let us call it “awareness.” So in the beginning that awareness is completely part of the process of intrauterine development, or matrix (no, not the movie!) state as material and has no self awareness, which feature is necessary in making decisions which have the dimension of responsibility. In fact, that is the first of nine nameable stages of awareness, each successive one incorporating and yet transcending the previous. This is a necessary process, and proceeds byt the awareness or soul factor freeing itself from less comprehensive and inclusive states to greater ones.
Say then that the womb (oven) is stage 0. The following could be 1) the sensoriphysical, where the newborn has not yet differentiated itself from the world, its awareness being fused both with what it is and what it senses. The sense of identity is physiocentric and its job, around 5-9 mths is to differentiate boundaries between itself and the world. 2) Succeeding in that, the awareness becomes capable by about 2yo of differentiating boundaries between its emotional self and the world. 3) From about 2-4 and 4-7, the awareness learns to use first symbols, then concepts. 4) around 6-7, up till about 11-14
the awareness of rules and roles form. And most importantly, this being by Church definitaion, that “age of reason,” the awarenes begins to include the ability to put one’self into another’s shoes! This stage forms the social scripts of an individual. At this stage the awareness has de-centeralized from matter to emotion and what is essential egocentrizm to sociocentrism. This is crucial, because the majorityof us stay pretty much at this level. It is why religions, reaces, cultures, poitical parties, and groups of nearly any discription don’t get along with one another. 5) This is where the sociocentric awareness can grow into a world centric viewpoint, where the self can identiy beyond ethnocentricity. 6) Thai si where actual and practical self reflexive awareness begins to mature. The individual can think aobut thinking, their own thinking, in an objective fashion. The body and mind become integrated and under conscious contorl. And this is where most orthodox catagorization stops. And here the awareness is on the brink of the transpersonal. At 7) the ego is no longer merely personal, and sees with greater depth and breadth than their own personal self. 8) and 9) I won’t go into here.
All that is to say that bing in or popping out of the oven isn’t the end of it, and neither is the recipe the biginning. It is much more thatn that. The implications, if one is capable of comprehending them, are monumental. Well, OK, they are to me. But take it or leave it. I’m just saying that mabe we limit ourselves by framing questions in limited ways.
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Newbie2
Guest
A month old (born) baby doesn’t have the cognitive ability to realize it is alive. OK with snuffing them out?
Again, something a month old (born) baby lacks.
And does someone who is under anesthesia lose personhood during that period? They do not have a “conscious brain” at that time. Or someone who is “brain dead”, survives and revives. It’s happened. Do they lose personhood and then regain it?
No, a dead body cannot have a heart beat.
And a sleeping or anesthetized person could be killed and not even know it, so why do they deserve rights?
Curious arguments, methinks.
po18guy
Well-known member
To interject here, the only way to produce a person, in any of his or her forms or at any stage of personhood, is to begin via the contact between egg and sperm. No contact, no human life, no person. The artificial separation of life from personhood lead to the enslavement of millions of Africans. I would not dare argue the morality of that. But, in that case, man also artificially separated morality from legality. Trouble ensues when man arbitrarily separates that which is inseparable by its nature.
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sinnerdexter
Guest
This is an interesting question, probably worthy of its own thread. There’s two points to address:
- When do we consider an entity a person?
By 8 months, the child is already conscious, it can suck its thumb and enjoy music. You’ll note that this is entirely consistent with what myself and many others were saying, that personhood depends on the mind, and that there is no specific point at which you can say something becomes a person.
- But what about the case where the fetus is not developed to the point where we consider it a person? In this case, the abortion would not be murder since it does not kill a person. But somehow it seems very wrong for someone to forcefully kill the fetus against the woman’s consent. It would clearly be assault&battery, but would it also be murder? It would seem like it should be about as serious, yet it cannot be called murder without also making the abortion murder. Perhaps it is granted “honorary personhood” by virtue of the mother intending to carry it to term? After all, she might already have named it, bought clothes for it, even made long-term plans for it’s education, etc., as well as would probably have given it a funeral if it died.
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sinnerdexter
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Not quite, though in practice that is how it is done. There’s no reason it can’t be done by cloning (though there are some problems with that), in the near future it will also be possible to create egg cells from adult cells (we can already make sperm from stem cells).
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CharlesDarwin
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Id be very interested to see your sources for this claim. but since I know you don’t have any…
either way perhaps “realize i was alive” was a poor choice of words, but the point is a clump of cells is not sentient a baby and a close to full term fetus is as well
You have never met a baby with a functioning brain? really? did your mother have any children that lived?
since a sleeping person nor a person who is in even a coma let alone just anesthesia never loses low level beta waves…no they do not lose personhood.
you really should do some research about this topic before you post or else you just end up seeming foolish.
I can lop off 100% of your brain, leaving only the stem, and you would breath and have a heart beat. so is this person still alive?
because they are sentient, conscious beings? Beta waves define personhood, you have yet to provide any other means of measuring that quality that doesn’t fall apart in a few seconds.
if you thought before posting this, it doesn’t show
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CharlesDarwin
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indeed today women can go in and have sperm with their DNA created, so a lesbian couple could have a daughter.
one lady provides the stem cells for sperm
one lady provides the egg
it is Invitroed into her womb and wallah
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NE_Catholic
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And when is that? Have you no personal belief?
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NE_Catholic
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yet, you refuse to answer the question: WHEN IS A FETUS A PERSON/HUMAN?
you gave the criteria, “brain activity”, but not the time. 1 month? 12 months? When?
You must have some opinion that does not come from someone else.
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CharlesDarwin
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no i said beta waves not brain activity…big difference.
I trust peer reviewed data. Legally my personal beliefs, nor yours, matter. we must show objective reasons for the laws we make(or we SHOULD) so when objective peer reviewed data shows beta waves start…usually around the beginning of the 3rd trimester.
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sinnerdexter
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We keep on debating with no definition of the words we use and the way we use them, a person under anesthesia is temporarily unconscious but he has brain activity he is not brain dead, and no one who is brain dead has ever recovered, some people who were mistakenly diagnosed as brain dead may have recovered but no truly brain dead people have ever recovered. People who drown in cold water have been revived as long as 30 minutes after they drown but not because they are being revived from the dead, the cold has kept them from really being dead.
Obviously at some point a unborn human becomes a person, we know it’s not at one month or two or even three because we don’t venerate the embryo at this stage if it dies. We do how ever consider an 8 month old child to be a person and an 8 month old who was delivered dead would probably be buried and given the same veneration as an adult person or near to it at least, i think this says it all…
A fetus with no higher brain development is not as yet a person, by your definition every cell in the body is a person because they contain the genetic code to be a human.
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NE_Catholic
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Bravo! Was that hard? YOu actually made a decision base on YOUR criteria, science supplying the data. I make my decion based on science also, MY criteria is different. Either way, both are OPINIONS, but one is more accepted thus the law.
Legally, I agree. Decision on abortion is the sole right of the mother, except in extenduating circumstances. Science could actually help with late term abortions by keeping the baby alive and available for adoption or the father (who has no decision in the matter)
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NE_Catholic
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point of order (yet again): we are only talking about the cells that become the fetus when the egg & sperm are united. All other references to cheek cells, spit, etc. is just static and distracting. I stay on point on this subject.
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NE_Catholic
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see my above post.
A better question for Catholics is: “When does a fetus have a soul”?
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