I understand
my point is, forgetting the Christian perspective, I want to know what you define life as, that is it.
If I may, there's some terminology being thrown around here that might be confusing the matter.
To start, the issue here is not whether or not the subject is "alive." After all, if "life" was a quality that inherently warranted its bearer protection, we should label ourselves all murderers every time we swat a fly or smash a cockroach, as we just snuffed out a "life."
Naturally, some people will point out those things aren't "human." Very well, but now the argument has shifted from taking "life" to taking "human life." But here is where the water starts to get a little muddy. What do we mean by "human?" If something posseses human DNA, does it qualify as being "human life" and thus warrant protection from termination? If this was the case, we should condemn everyone as murderers who has ever scratched an itch, killing countless thousands of skin cells in the process - skin cells that posses both "life" and "human DNA."
So what is the difference between the living skin cell packed with human DNA and a 1-year old baby? I submit the difference is "personhood." The skin cell, the cockroach, the oranges we kill for our orange juice all lack that quality that we all suppose people to have. So the question isn't whether or not the subject possesses "life" or even "human life," but whether or not our subject is a "person."
Defining "person" is a little murkey, but I think we can all agree that a person is a sentient entity composed of a will, some degree of intelligence, consciousness, self-awareness, and all the many traits that compose someone's personality. Many of these traits, however, require the presence of the brain to develop and function; without the brain, none of these things can be present (or, at the very best, aren't detectable). If this is so, then how can we define a developing zygote or fetus as a "person" when it exhibits none of the qualities that define personhood?
This is not to say these qualities don't exist at some later time in the pregnancy, but at the earliest stages of pregnancy, I submit that the best evidence we have indicates the lack of a person in the womb. The raw materials are there and if all goes right, it will develop, but before the necessary physical pieces are present to enable the existance of sentience, desire, intelligence, consciousness, self-awareness, etc., then there is no reason to suppose that what we're dealing with is a person and if it is not a person, then this physical combination of cells is on the same level as a skin cell, different in degree but not in kind.
In short, if there is no person present at the earliest stages, then there is no person to kill. If no person is killed, then there should be no moral reprimand for killing the physical cells; at least no more moral reprimand than killing any other bundle of physical cells that lack the quality of personhood.
...).
