Busta said:
That's what I get for acquiescing to the wishes of word-sensitive people. In the past when I have used "Unborn Child" I was instantly accused of...what was it now...."
dishonest pro.life rationalist linguistic hyperbole and sophistry, lies and deceptive enslavement of women"....I hate social polotics.
I was extending the same biologically accurate curticy to you since you were speaking from a biological view.
However, perhaps learning of the legal term "
Unborn Child" (= 'a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.'
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/abortion/unbornbill32504.html )
will help you accept "
child" more readily.
What this all comes down to is that this is semantics. Calling a single celled egg a "human" or a "child" or a "baby" doesn't make it so. Neither does calling a single celled egg a "single celled egg" mean that the egg cannot possess characteristics deemed worthy of rights that would prohibit abortion.
So that is the issue, and applying whatever labels you want does not change the analysis. I agree that a newborn baby possess characteristics worthy of the rights. And I agree that prior to birth, the fetus has the characteristics. But, an 8 1/2 month old fetus is not biologically or physically the same as a single celled egg.
What are the characteristics of a human being that warrant giving it the rights that would prohibit abortion?
If you believe based on your religion that the spirit of a human enters the single celled egg at the moment of fertilization, and upon that basis it has the characteristics of a human life worthy of the rights, fair enough. Everyone is entitled to their religious views, but I would argue that support for that position is not found in the Bible.
Putting aside religious views, if you look at the human characteristics exhibited in the single celled fertilized egg, we find only 1) DNA, and 2) the potential to develop into a human being. It is missing almost all other human characteristics. IMO, these characteristics are insufficient to warrant the rights the supercede other interests at stake -- including the child that would be born if gestation is allowed to continue.
The next question becomes, then, at what point in the gestation peiod does the single celled egg develop sufficient characteristics of a human being to warrant affording it those rights we give other human beings. I agree, that is a tough question.
"I said a single celled egg has no more (or few more) characteristics of a human child than a tadpole."
As I said in my first post, I "disregard the biological rationality as irrelevant", because if one must meet certain mental capacity and physical ability requirements in order to be considered a 'human being', then when one looses any number of those capacities or abilities they are deemed less human by the same measher; because one is either a human being or one is not.
I do not see the logical basis for your distinction. If we say humans have a head and two legs, and two arms, and eyes, and ears, and a functioning brain, and awarness, and potential, or whatever we want to make, at some point, a human who loses enough (or certain vital) characterists IMO does cease to be a human being. A guy who has his head chopped off, for example, I have no problem saying is no longer a human being and I would argue that his interests should not supersede living human being that have their heads. Same thing with the brain. A functioning brain is probably the one thing that makes us most human, and I can see the basis for the argument for focusing on that in terms of determining whether we have a human being or not.