gladiatrix said:
I NEVER separated personhood from humaness... AGAIN that is a strawman of YOUR own stuffing and I challenge you to quote me where I ever said any such thing.
Here is what you say about personhood:
The long and the short of it is that it isn't possible to be a person unless one is developed to a point where one can potentially experience and express that personhood (however limited that capacity might prove to be, i.,e., severely handicapped infants). In other words, let's assume a soul exists, it needs a physical vessel in order to function in this world, no matter how limited that functioning may prove to be. One thing, bringing up PEOPLE (those already born and accepted as PERSONS) who are asleep, unconscious, in a coma, or profoundly handicapped either at birth or through accidental injury is NOT an argument because they are already here and this argument constitutes a "red herring" (changing the subject to avoid arguing about the fetus). This is an argument over the personhood of the fetus not those already here.
From what you have said above, it is clear that you do not believe that the being in the womb is a person. Okay so far, right?
Side note in response to your above statement: (So, the child in the womb isn't "already here?" Where is he/she then)? You try to qualify your arguement here by saying that those who are in comas, mentally handicapped, etc. don't count because they are "already here," but if your definition of personhood truly is that one must function as a person, then you are indeed implying that these people are really non-people, in some way or another. Perhaps you confuse
being a person with
functioning as a person. To function as a person, one must be a person, but one can be a person without functioning as a person - i.e. one who is in a coma.
1.Is a person one who is consciously performing personal acts? If so, people who are asleep are not people, and we may kill them. 2.Is it one with a present capacity to perform personal acts? That would include sleepers, but not people in coma. 3.How about one with a history of performing personal acts? That would mean that a 17-year-old who was born in a coma 17 years ago and is just now coming out of it is not a person. Also, by this definition there can be no first personal act, no personal acts without a history of past personal acts. 4.What about one with a future capacity for performing personal acts? That would mean that dying persons are not persons. 5.Surely the correct answer is that a person is one with a natural, inherent capacity for performing personal acts. Why is one able to perform personal acts, under proper conditions? Only because one is a person. One grows into the ability to perform personal acts only because one already is the kind of thing that grows into the ability to perform personal acts, i.e., a person.
http://www.respectlife.org/articles/kreeft.htm
You have also said:
The real question is not is a conception/zygote/embryo/fetus "alive" and "human'", but when is it a human being. or a "person"
What is understood from this statement:
the thing in the womb is alive
the thing in the womb is human
the thing in the womb is not a human being
the thing in the womb in not a person
there is a difference between being human and being a human being
Therefore, you believe that the organism is human in nature, yet you do not attribute personhood to it. Let's not go back to the appendix so you can argue that the appendix is "human" but not a human being, and therefore the same is true of the organism in the womb. It's an innacurate comparison. The organism within the womb is nothing like an organ within our bodies. This is a new being, not merely an appendage of the mother. It is separate, though for a time it is dependant on the mothers body.
You do not attribute any qualities of human-being-ness to it. Is this being "a human" or just "human?" (I'm learning that I need to clarify every minor detail in order to understand the word games you play). The way I concluded that you separate humanness and personhood, well, it's called an inference, and if it's incorrect, I'm sorry, but that's what you lead me to believe. You get just a bit wordy at times, and perhaps I misundersand you. You have the tendency to hide the essence of your arguement within a lot of talk. If you feel I am misrepresenting what you say, can you explain, in a simple manner please, what you define as humanness, and address whether there are distinctions between human, human being, and personhood.
Gldiatrix said:
You will have to define what you mean by "life". I suspect that what you mean by "life" and what I mean by "life" are not the same.
I suspect you are right - our definitions are very different, indeed. For clarification sake, this is what I now hear you saying about your definition: all cells are alive if they exhibit these seven behaviors or qualities: presence of carbon, organization & complexity, metabolism, homeostasis, response to stimuli, growth and reproduction.
Period. That's it, right? I won't disagree with what you
have stated, however, your definition seems to be severely lacking. You are not talking about the definition of human life at all, but merely biological life in general. Obviously, for you, the definition of human life is in absolutely no way applicable to a fetus until it is outside of the womb. Do you not distinguish in any way between the living cells found throughout our world, and the living and growing organism in the womb? Sure it has all the things in your list, but it exhibits many other qualities that you fail to mention and recognize and which are essential to a full definition of human life.
Gladiatrix said:
What you refuse to acknowledge is that you have yet to define just what you mean by "life" NOR have you given an EVIDENCE that "life", as you have defined it, is really the EQUIVALENT of a human being.
Life: the state or fact of existing. The organism is biologically alive and in the case of human life, it is a unique human being and a developing person.
You have given no evidence that the life in the womb is nothing more than a lump of cells that are alive, but have no real meaning. Can you PROVE that the fetus is nothing more than you say it is? We all agree that abortion kills
something. This whole issue hinges on what that something is. You don't honestly
know. Since it is obviously highly debated when "life begins," the burden of proof is on you, because
if I am wrong, I have killed no one. We always air on the side of human life in our society - why is abortion different?
The logical conclusion regarding life is that the developing organism is a human being because beings do not change from one thing to another - their essence is always the same despite developmental changes. This is why I believe that personhood and humaness are inherent in beings created by other human beings, despite their stage of development. If you believe that beings do change into different types of beings, and therefore the child in the womb is not a human being, then you need to explain how that can be and what it is.
The unborn child differs from a newborn child in only four ways--size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency--and none of those differences are good reasons for disqualifying it as fully human. -Scott Klusendorf of Stand to Reason
What does not make sense about that?
When you believe personhood begins (I think):
Gladiatrix said:
In this case all that I would require is that a fetus be developed enough to be sentient (the appearance of cortical brain-waves or "brain-birth", occurring at 22-24 weeks) and have the most minimal organ development compatible with life outside the womb (23 weeks, no preemie has survived that is younger, and only 2% of these do with the most intensive life-support
Viability is really not an arguement for personhood. Degree of dependancy does not alter personhood. If viability makes one human than all those who have pacemakers, are on kidney machines, etc. would not be considered human. There is no difference between an unborn baby who is "plugged into" it's mother and a full grown adult who is plugged into a machine, in terms of humanity. You try to dehumanize the unborn because that is the only way you can truly attempt to legitamize your stance on this issue. Let's think about the other groups in the last couple hundred years who have tried to make humans "non-persons," shall we.....(it is a legitimate comparison, whether you like it or not). Pro-choicers like to call abortions "the termination of a pregnancy," but perhaps we should start calling it "the final solution to the pregnancy problem."
No other line than conception can be drawn between prepersonhood and personhood. Birth and viability are the two most frequently suggested. But birth is only a change of place and relationship to the mother and to the surrounding world (air and food); how could these things create personhood? As for viability, it varies with accidental and external factors like available technology (incubators). What I am in the womb-a person or a non-person cannot be determined by what machines exist outside the womb! But viability is determined by such things. Therefore personhood cannot be determined by viability.
http://www.respectlife.org/articles/kreeft.htm
Conception is the very beginning of a new and living (alive even according to your definition) human (by the fact that one kind begets the same kind, therefore, it can be nothing other than human) organism. It is the earliest stage of human development. it is what newborns look like about 9 months before they are born.
I was once an unborn child in the womb. I was once a zygote! I existed in this physical world nine months before my mother and father saw my face. Did you exist before your birth? We as humans sustain our identity through change. It's common sense. An infant, a child and an adult are all in very different stages of development and are capable of different things, yet each human is all of these things at a certain stage in their life, just as they were a fetus, an embryo, a zygote.....A human being never changes into a different type of being.
It is always what it is, therefore the stage of development has nothing to do with whether or not it is a human being. Almost every cell in our bodies are replaced every seven years or so - yet we are the same person. A ninety year old woman's face is wrinkled and sagging - she may no longer be able to walk, or perhaps even to talk coherently or reason correctly - yet she is still the same being that she was as a girl of 16, as a young child, and in the womb. That is just a fact, and if you insist that it is not the same being, you need to explain it to me carefully, because right now, I don't comprehend how you can make a valid arguement here.
