Help Defining a Person

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Voco Pro Tatiano has postulated:
[sign]I think we all feel it should be seen as murder, but there is real danger of taking the law into our own hands, and that is no less a sin.[/sign]

VPT: Perhaps you would be so kind as to locate and post where anyone in this thread has argued it is time “to take the law into our own hands”. :eek:
2477** Respect for the reputation of persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury. He becomes guilty:**
- of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor;…****
- of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them.
Catechism of the Catholic Church

The first injury against the unborn is not that they have died cruel, merciless deaths but that their personhood has been denied. Therefore, it is an offense against justice and charity to deny unborn children, at any stage of development, whether in vitro or in vivo, their dignity as members of the human family worthy of our respect and protection.
 
Voco Pro Tatiano has postulated:
[sign]I think we all feel it should be seen as murder, but there is real danger of taking the law into our own hands, and that is no less a sin.[/sign]

VPT: Perhaps you would be so kind as to locate and post where anyone in this thread has argued it is time “to take the law into our own hands”. :eek:

Catechism of the Catholic Church

The first injury against the unborn is not that they have died cruel, merciless deaths but that their personhood has been denied. Therefore, it is an offense against justice and charity to deny unborn children, at any stage of development, whether in vitro or in vivo, their dignity as members of the human family worthy of our respect and protection.
Again - thank you, Rosalinda.
 
Again - thank you, Rosalinda.
[sign]VPT: Perhaps you would be so kind as to locate and post where anyone in this thread has argued it is time “to take the law into our own hands”.:eek: [/sign]
No. To my knowledge no-one here has done so.
Unfortunately though, people using the murder argument have already taken the law into their own hands, and not a few doctors and nurses have been killed or injured.
For this reason I raised this caution.
 
It follows logically from this understanding, that the human being under construction, before the closing of the fission window, being divisible, therefore cannot be an individual human being.
If your understanding of English differs from this, then we are stuck in a rut.
Hi-
Thank you.
It’s not a flawed understanding of language, it’s an accurate understanding of science. Again, the science is clear. A human being is created at conception regardless of fission.
You have to understand that you are speaking from your own individual thoughts, beliefs, and rationalities, not from a position of science.
 
Hi-
Thank you.
It’s not a flawed understanding of language, it’s an accurate understanding of science. Again, the science is clear. A human being is created at conception regardless of fission.
You have to understand that you are speaking from your own individual thoughts, beliefs, and rationalities, not from a position of science.
Hi Jennifer,
You have misquoted me again.
I did not say the newly formed embryo was not a human being, I said it was not an INDIVIDUAL human being.
I also accepted, and repeatedly so that a new human being is formed at conception.
But the new life of the new generation is created with gametogenesis.
 
Voco Pro Tatiano
[sign]No. To my knowledge no-one here has done so.
Unfortunately though, people using the murder argument have already taken the law into their own hands, and not a few doctors and nurses have been killed or injured.
For this reason I raised this caution [/sign]

According to the latest documentation I could find only 7 doctors and nurses killed by unstable men who thought abortion was murder. Nonetheless, it is a shameful ploy to raise this ‘caution’ in a debate.

Contrary to your insinuation that pro-lifers are dangerous fanatics the pro-life movement of U.S. has documented evidence of pro-choice violence which proves othewise. As there are more than 7,000 cases I will confine my observations to only two statistics.
People killed by pro-abortion murders, manslaughters
and infanticides (not counting women killed by so-

**called “safe and legal” abortion) ****520 **Other women killed by “safe and legal” abortion (see
this document
for names and documentation on
**the deaths of these women)****360 ****Total people killed by pro-abortionists ****880 **
In summary, then, if we count the murders of only born human beings, the pro-aborts are far ahead of the “pro-lifers” — by a “score” of 880 to 7.
courtesy of Human Life International
:hmmm:
 
The question is not whether abortion is legal. Something can be legal but necessarily moral. The question is not whether abortion is killing or murder. Yes, VPT, is right; murder is a legal term. The question is, ’Can a human person be a person without functioning as a human person?'

Voco Pro Tatiano has vigorously stated he believes abortion is the ‘wanton killing of human life’. This sounds like progress. Even so, just a minute, please, and again I beg his indulgence but this does not square with earlier statements which contradict his pro-life position. "I would define the beginning of the individual as when the CNS begins to take control of the developing body." post 32, VPT.

In other words, there is no individual human being until six to eight weeks when the brain is divided into 3 parts for emotion and language, seeing and hearing. Voco obliged us and looked at the photo posted on the Priests for Life website. At that point Voco acknowledged the embryo is sufficiently developed. The question remains a sufficiently developed what? Has a ‘marker event’ been passed in his estimation that would mean we can safely recognize the personhood of this embryonic child without further dispute from him?

I hesitate to draw even this conclusion from his voluminous writing. So the question remains,
[sign]’Can a human person be a person without functioning as a human person?'[/sign]
 
The question is not whether abortion is legal. Something can be legal but necessarily moral. The question is not whether abortion is killing or murder. Yes, VPT, is right; murder is a legal term. The question is, ’Can a human person be a person without functioning as a human person?'

Voco Pro Tatiano has vigorously stated he believes abortion is the ‘wanton killing of human life’. This sounds like progress. Even so, just a minute, please, and again I beg his indulgence but this does not square with earlier statements which contradict his pro-life position. "I would define the beginning of the individual as when the CNS begins to take control of the developing body." post 32, VPT.
Please Rosalinda,
I have said, and said over, and you still misrepresent me.
1/ A new human life begins with conception.
I hope we are ALL happy with that.
2/ That human life can be an individual AFTER the fission window has passed, believed to be about 8 days after conception. Passage of this window does not change the actuality of the human being, only its potential. It is now indivisible, hence an individual.
3/ At 8 weeks the CNS is sufficiently developed to show activity. Thus at this time personality is beginning to form, showing the presence of a person.

It is IRRELEVANT whether the human life has the form of an individual, or person. It is human life.
Prematurely terminating a pregnancy without attempting to save the infant alive, or destroying an in vitro embryo is wanton killing of human life.

I have actually stated that terminating a pregnancy prior to the fission window closing is a more serious matter than a later termination, because potentially more than one life will be destroyed.
In other words, there is no individual human being until six to eight weeks when the brain is divided into 3 parts for emotion and language, seeing and hearing. Voco obliged us and looked at the photo posted on the Priests for Life website. At that point Voco acknowledged the embryo is sufficiently developed. The question remains a sufficiently developed what? Has a ‘marker event’ been passed in his estimation that would mean we can safely recognize the personhood of this embryonic child without further dispute from him?

I hesitate to draw even this conclusion from his voluminous writing. So the question remains,
[sign]’Can a human person be a person without functioning as a human person?'[/sign]
Legally, a person is only a person AFTER being born.
Only a born person can be murdered.
Already unbalanced hot-heads have, tempted by emotional language, taken what they consider the law ought to be, into their own hands.

We are talking about sin, wickedness, yes, even evil, but beware of calling it murder, or there could be blood on your hands.
 
Ronald E. asked:[sign]Does love have any question about when a person becomes a person?[/sign]

Love leaves no choice.
 
Legally, a person is only a person AFTER being born.
Only a born person can be murdered.
Already unbalanced hot-heads have, tempted by emotional language, taken what they consider the law ought to be, into their own hands.

We are talking about sin, wickedness, yes, even evil, but beware of calling it murder, or there could be blood on your hands.
Your hectoring tone with “cautions” is becoming very tiresome.

Although you seem to be unaware of the fact, until the laws changed in the States (most in the early 70s), killing of the unborn was usually considered to be murder. That FACT means that for more than half of our lives, some of us abided by the same moral and legal law as found in the Ten Commandments and in Holy Mother Church. The changes in laws/regs of the USA mean nothing in terms of the actual immorality of actions in this case (and others). So as you “warn” people on this forum to beware of wrong usages in language lest they have blood on their hands, or of violence against abortion providers, I must suggest, strongly, that you are addressing the wrong audience.

You seem to hold a minority opinion on this thread, allowing for the unthinkable use of abortion to save the life of the mother, that one “allowance” being a horrific negation of every aspect of motherhood, the condition that calls one to be willing to protect one’s children even unto one’s own death. As you blithely skip over this serious flaw in your thinking (one flaw among many) why on earth would you expect that you are in a position to issue warnings to anyone on this thread regarding morality?
 
Voco Pro Tatiano has reiterated:
[sign]Legally, a person is only a person AFTER being born.
Only a born person can be murdered.
Already unbalanced hot-heads have, tempted by emotional language, taken what they consider the law ought to be, into their own hands[/sign]

Yes, we are well-aware of the present lack of legal status for the unborn. Which is precisely why it is necessary not to use “fuzzy” language open to misinterpretation. Maybe we can’t legally call abortion “murder” but we can certainly call it butchery. Take a look at this one photo of an 8 week old embryonic child who has been dismembered and beheaded from abortion.

priestsforlife.org/resources/photosbyage/weeks16.html

Can anyone look at such a photograph and not feel “emotion”?
Do you really believe that just because this child could move and began showing “functions” of a person that it was not already a person from day one?

Finally, dear Voco, it most certainly is relevant “*whether the human life has the form of an individual, or person.” *This destruction will continue until the unborn children are recognized by law as individual human persons with the full protection the status of personhood would give them.

Sorry if you think your viewpoint has been misrepresented. However, you have a propensity for giving with one hand and taking with the next.

[sign]At 8 weeks the CNS is sufficiently developed to show activity. Thus at this time personality is beginning to form, showing the presence of a person.[/sign]

Does this sound familiar? Would you agree with the following statement?
“A human being” is a biologically whole individual of the species. Even a human being born with no brain is a human being, not an ape; but it is not a person because it has no brain and cannot do anything distinctively human: think, know, choose, love, feel, desire, commit, relate, aspire, know
itself, know God, know its past, know its future, know its environment, or communicate-all of which have, in various combinations, been offered as the marks of a person.
Professor Peter Kreeft, “Human Personhood Begins at Conception” ewtn.com/library/PROLIFE/BEGINSCN.TXT

Whether you realize or not, you have created a class of human beings who are non-persons based on carefully crafted ambiguities. Many, if not all of your arguments, are pro-choice ones. Individuation, functionality, potentiality, the body/soul split and last but not least the “violence” myth are all pro-choice arguments. Your posts would not have attracted so much attention if the language hadn’t been so familiar already.
 


Finally, dear Voco, it most certainly is relevant “*whether the human life has the form of an individual, or person.” *This destruction will continue until the unborn children are recognized by law as individual human persons with the full protection the status of personhood would give them.

Sorry if you think your viewpoint has been misrepresented. However, you have a propensity for giving with one hand and taking with the next.



Whether you realize or not, you have created a class of human beings who are non-persons based on carefully crafted ambiguities. Many, if not all of your arguments, are pro-choice ones. Individuation, functionality, potentiality, the body/soul split and last but not least the “violence” myth are all pro-choice arguments. Your posts would not have attracted so much attention if the language hadn’t been so familiar already.
IMO, voco, you have locked yourself in a box; the lock is on the inside and the key is in your hand. Why you would choose to live that way is known to you alone. Your “warnings” to others here are meaningless since you choose abortion as acceptable in certain circumstances. Abortion is never acceptable to faithful RCs.
 
voco - this news flash seems to have your name on it:

from the Chicago Sun Times, today:

"Man accused of slipping mistress abortion pill
WISCONSIN | Faces attempted murder charge

November 30, 2007
BY DINESH RAMDE
APPLETON, Wis. – A married man has been charged with attempted murder for slipping his mistress a drug that authorities say caused her to miscarry twice.

Manishkumar M. Patel, 34, of Appleton, was charged Thursday afternoon with seven felonies and two misdemeanors, including attempted first-degree murder of an unborn child.

His attorney said he expected his client to plead not guilty.

Manishkumar Patel and his girlfriend, 39-year-old family physician Darshana Patel, have a 3-year-old child together, authorities said. He is married to someone else.

Darshana Patel became pregnant two more times with his child but miscarried in December and September.

About a week or two before her second miscarriage, Manishkumar Patel bought her a smoothie at an ice cream shop, Outagamie County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ryan Carpenter said. Darshana Patel noticed white powder on the rim and, feigning illness, took the drink back to her office.

Suspecting she had been slipped mifespristone, the abortion pill also known as RU-486, Darshana Patel sent a sample of the smoothie to a lab and it tested positive, Carpenter said.

‘‘The allegations are devious, diabolical and disturbing,’’ Outagamie County Court Commissioner Brian Figy said.

A legal immigrant from India, Manishkumar Patel owns a number of gas stations and other businesses in the Appleton area, Carpenter said."

AP
 
voco - this news flash seems to have your name on it:

from the Chicago Sun Times, today:

"Man accused of slipping mistress abortion pill
WISCONSIN | Faces attempted murder charge

November 30, 2007
BY DINESH RAMDE
APPLETON, Wis. – A married man has been charged with attempted murder for slipping his mistress a drug that authorities say caused her to miscarry twice.

Manishkumar M. Patel, 34, of Appleton, was charged Thursday afternoon with seven felonies and two misdemeanors, including attempted first-degree murder of an unborn child.

His attorney said he expected his client to plead not guilty.

Manishkumar Patel and his girlfriend, 39-year-old family physician Darshana Patel, have a 3-year-old child together, authorities said. He is married to someone else.

Darshana Patel became pregnant two more times with his child but miscarried in December and September.

About a week or two before her second miscarriage, Manishkumar Patel bought her a smoothie at an ice cream shop, Outagamie County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ryan Carpenter said. Darshana Patel noticed white powder on the rim and, feigning illness, took the drink back to her office.

Suspecting she had been slipped mifespristone, the abortion pill also known as RU-486, Darshana Patel sent a sample of the smoothie to a lab and it tested positive, Carpenter said.

‘‘The allegations are devious, diabolical and disturbing,’’ Outagamie County Court Commissioner Brian Figy said.

A legal immigrant from India, Manishkumar Patel owns a number of gas stations and other businesses in the Appleton area, Carpenter said."

AP
Interesting.
It seems that the law is beginning to move. This indeed does make sense.
I can see the legal person boundary being pushed back to potential assisted independence, that is, when the foetus is potentially viable, with medical support. This could be as early as twenty weeks!
I doubt though if it will be pushed back to before eight weeks, but we never know.
This is then Wisconsin: Is this expected to become federal?
It will be interesting to see the outcome.
 
These are the words of John Paul II on the nature of love, the person and the soul. Familiaris Consortio, On the Christian Family in the Modern World
  1. God created man in his own image and likeness: calling him to existence through love, he called him at the same time for love.
    God is love and in himself he lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in his own image and continually keeping it in being. God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion. Love is therefore the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being.
    As an incarnate spirit, that is, a soul which expresses itself in a body and a body informed by an immortal spirit, man is called to love in his unified totality. Love includes the human body, and the body is made a sharer in spiritual love.
ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP2FAMIL.HTM

Note again the words, man is “an incarnate spirit” that means an embodied spirit. This is a more profound way of understanding the person than Aristotle’s definition of man as a “rational animal”.

To quote St. John’s University professor of philosophy, Alice Ramos,
[sign]The human person signifies what is most perfect in nature. Human beings are part of nature, and yet they also transcend nature.[/sign]
 
Interesting.
It seems that the law is beginning to move. This indeed does make sense.
I can see the legal person boundary being pushed back to potential assisted independence, that is, when the foetus is potentially viable, with medical support. This could be as early as twenty weeks!
I doubt though if it will be pushed back to before eight weeks, but we never know.
This is then Wisconsin: Is this expected to become federal?
It will be interesting to see the outcome.
Again, for whatever reasons, you seem to have missed the larger point.
Changes in law are simply “changes back” to previous law.

Here you go - again:

"Texas Court: Fetus Death Can Be Murder
November 22, 2007 - 2:46pm

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Texas laws allow the killing of a fetus to be prosecuted as murder, regardless of the fetus’ stage of development, but they do not apply to abortions, the state’s highest criminal court has ruled.

Wednesday’s ruling by the Court of Criminal Appeals rejected an appeal by Terence Lawrence, who said his right to due process was violated because he was prosecuted for two murders for killing a woman and her 4- to 6-week-old fetus.

The court ruled unanimously that state laws declaring a fetus an individual with protections do not conflict with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling that protects a woman’s right to an abortion.

The Supreme Court has emphasized that states may protect human life not only once the fetus has reached viability but 'from the outset of the pregnancy,’” the court said. “The Legislature is free to protect the lives of those whom it considers to be human beings.”

Lawrence was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life for the 2004 shooting death of his girlfriend, Antwonyia Smith, and the couple’s unborn child. Lawrence shot Smith after learning she was pregnant with his child, according to court documents.

Lawrence’s appeal argued that he should not have been prosecuted for the death of the fetus because it was not viable. Supreme Court precedent in abortion cases has established that states have no compelling interest to interfere before a fetus would be old enough to live outside the mother’s womb, he said.

However, the court said abortion precedent is based on the premise that a woman wants to have the procedure.

“The ‘compelling state interest’ test, along with the accompanying ‘viability’ threshold, has no application to a statute that prohibits a third party from causing the death of the woman’s unborn child against her will,” Presiding Judge Sharon Keller wrote.

(Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Texas laws allow the killing of a fetus to be prosecuted as murder, regardless of the fetus’ stage of development, but they do not apply to abortions, the state’s highest criminal court has ruled.

Wednesday’s ruling by the Court of Criminal Appeals rejected an appeal by Terence Lawrence, who said his right to due process was violated because he was prosecuted for two murders for killing a woman and her 4- to 6-week-old fetus.

The court ruled unanimously that state laws declaring a fetus an individual with protections do not conflict with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling that protects a woman’s right to an abortion.

“The Supreme Court has emphasized that states may protect human life not only once the fetus has reached viability but ‘from the outset of the pregnancy,’” the court said. “The Legislature is free to protect the lives of those whom it considers to be human beings.”

Lawrence was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life for the 2004 shooting death of his girlfriend, Antwonyia Smith, and the couple’s unborn child. Lawrence shot Smith after learning she was pregnant with his child, according to court documents.

Lawrence’s appeal argued that he should not have been prosecuted for the death of the fetus because it was not viable. Supreme Court precedent in abortion cases has established that states have no compelling interest to interfere before a fetus would be old enough to live outside the mother’s womb, he said.

However, the court said abortion precedent is based on the premise that a woman wants to have the procedure.

The ‘compelling state interest’ test, along with the accompanying ‘viability’ threshold, has no application to a statute that prohibits a third party from causing the death of the woman’s unborn child against her will,” Presiding Judge Sharon Keller wrote."

AP

“The laws” you quote as laws are BRAND NEW law, less than half a century old.
 
It does seem that American law on this subject is in an utterly hopeless mess.
If killing a foetus is murder, then abortion is murder, unless the defence of self defence is valid. That is, the foetus is a threat to the life of the mother, (and thereby also to the foetus), meaning that not aborting the foetus will not save the foetus.
If though, abortion is legal, then killing a foetus cannot be murder, and US Law is an a|s|s to end all a|s|s|e|s.
 
In defining personhood and when it begins seems to be based on a value system that needs to be clarified. It also seems necessary to explore the influences that contribute to the women and men that support abortion. We define ourselves daily as human beings based on how we perform and measure our worth by a set of standards that is generally culturally determined. It seems that the standards of culture and faith are in opposition. Culture uses performance standards and competition to give people they have the “freedom” to be anything. In this concept of freedom and personhood we become either a positive contributing object or a negative object if we do not fit in to this system of measurement. Women who are created by God to bring love into this world are then left with the choice to compete for their value or not. If we measure our value by our success or failure in this system we are then treating ourselves as only objects who really have not reached personhood as yet because we have not accepted ourselves as truly human. Those who support abortion essentially see the unborn as an object because they are objects themselves and are in the process of trying to define themselves through a value system that is flawed. There is too much to describe here. When the liberal is standing up for women’s rights he is standing up for her right to compete in a system developed by men based on competition and survival of the fittest.
 
Yes, Ronald E. I agree wholeheartedly with your comments. Abortion “rights” have reduced women to toys for sexual gratification without any responsibility for the new life which may result from the act of procreation. Too often, it is the woman who is assaulted and murdered along with the child in her womb by a man frustrated that the woman has refused to exercise her “choice” to abort.

If Voco Pro Tatiano thinks the legal system is a mess in U.S. look to Canada where there is no law for the protection of the unborn victims of crime. Last year the Conservative government blocked such a bill from even being introduced to Parliament for debate. Last week, on November 21, bill C-484 was introduced to the House of Commons to make it a criminal act to kill a child in utero who was wanted by the mother. As the law presently stands, the aggressor can only be charged with the death of the mother: the unborn child is not a person until it is completely born. (Sorry, if that sounds awkward but there is no ban on partial birth abortions either in Canada)

Should any Canadians be reading this post, now is the time to contact your MP’s to vote yes for this important bill.
lifesite.net/ldn/2007/nov/071121.html
 
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