Jinto

Remove the IF. I don't feel that it is morally nessecary to protect any nonperson. Period.

Endict me for depraved indifference then. I really don't think that it is reasonable to place an overwhelming responsibility on me because of the careless action of another human being. I am not responsible for feeding every hungry man who comes to my door, I am not responsible for clothing every naked man, and I am not responsible for warming every freezing baby.

Life holds meaning because of its content. I am willing to die for liberty, and I am willing to kill for liberty. As for a logical contradiction: that's only true to someone who is too cowardly to die for freedom. I've no use for life without freedom, and therefore don't mind dying for it.

While the emotive language you use to describe this is unfortunate, this statement is essentially correct.

Aside from the fact that I have never advocated killing humans based on age/I.Q./current location (that is a gross strawman), I should point out that that is still not fascism. Fascism is "A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism." Killing humans because of their age/I.Q./current location is not included.

This is simply false.

What the fuck are you talking about?

This from the person who argued that because the cells of a fetus were independent organisms that the fetus is an independent organism?

You asserted that there were no ways to redefine human to discriminate against a group of people. I falsified that assumption. Apparently, LWF can't tell the difference between an actual argument and rhetorical devil's advocate.

Devil's advocate, but in what way is sperm not an independent life-form? They can live up to five days on their own after ejaculation.

As opposed to LWF, who doesn't bother to read the constitution before telling me what it says about the personhood of black people.

They are.

As opposed to LWF, who does not understand that since the UDHR says nothing about unborn humans that he cannot use it to tell me that unborn humans have rights.

Human family only requires taxonomoic similarity at the family level. LWF does not understand that you cannot just add criteria onto words to say "well obviously this is what they meant." If LWF wants to give me an argument from authority, then he has to stick to what that authority actually says, not what he wants it to say.

And if another living member of genus homo were found, LWF would immediately limit human family to be specific to the species level. The fact is, he's not interested in preserving the life of all sentient species, he's just interested in preserving the life of one. From the tolerant people of the world: <deleted by moderator>.

False. I can't relate to your sense of morality, but I still consider you a person.

LWF doesn't understand that the UDHR does not protect the rights of unborn humans (even though he does understand that it doesn't apply to them).

Really? Then why is it that at the beginning of every single article you see the word "everyone" or possibly "no one," everyone being defined in the dictionary as "every person?" If they were so adamant about this "human" thing, then shouldn't they have used the words "every human?" I think that they just used "members of the human family" out of convenience and nearsightedness, not to mention the fact that it sounds better. Certainly, I've never heard of any UN complaints about legalized abortion. Your whole UDHR argument is an argument from authority, taken out of context, where the authority that created that document has expressed a distinct lack of the concerns you atribute to them.

And LostGirl, I know the feeling. Every day I wake up to find another of LWF's posts and I wonder "do I really want to face another blast of illogic?"

Dominus Paradoxum

While I can't presume to speak for others, In my case this certainly is true, and it is no contradiction. And jinto, I can't believe you said that you would leave a baby on your porch to die.

yguy

Implicit in the definition of "human being" up to now has been that we are products of bisexual reproduction. This can't be lightly tossed aside. For all we know, the first "successful" human clone will be a Frankenstein's monster with a pretty face, devoid of even the faintest wisp of humanity.

long winded fool

How can you be guaranteed the right to liberty without the right to life? Take away only the right to life, and it is illegal for me to enslave you or to prevent you from pursuing happiness, but it is legal for me to kill you. The right to life is a logical prerequisite to liberty and pursuit of happiness.

long winded fool

Careful LostGirl, while it may be legally justifiable by claiming you felt personally threatened, would it be morally justifiable? Imagine that you knew the rapist and were familiar enough with him to know positively that he wasn't going to kill you, he was just going to do the act and leave. Think of a man that is capable of making such a horrible mistake, possibly in extreme anger and confusion, but you know is not capable of murdering you. (I won't offend you by positing family members.) While you may be legally justified and justified in the eyes of your friends who care about you more than him to shoot him in the head before he attacks you, are you justified in your own conscience? Could you really end his life to prevent him from raping you (hurting you physically and emotionally for a given ammount of time, where you end his life forever) with a clear conscience? You might want to, but should you? Is it really a perfectly moral thing to do?

Is it permissable to kill a fetus in order to stop the co-option of my body which will come to affect every aspect of my life, if I do so long before the fetus has any chance of surviving with out me?
Personally, I think I can, and I would.

What about the analogy of living out in the middle of nowhere and finding a baby on your doorstep? The baby cannot possibly survive without action taken by you and you alone. Like Jinto, can you knowingly fail to bring the baby into your house, feed, and nurture it until it can be taken off your hands and consider yourself to be acting morally?

Secondly, I'd like to compare the personhood/human being status of a fetus as an individual organism or example of a unique homo sapiens, to a hypothetical idea. I get the impression this sort of thing is encouraged by some people in this thread.
What if, after death, your body was raided and a portion of living cells, living tissue was removed before they totally died. The rest of your body, most certainly your brain, is left to rot in a coffin somewhere whilst the living tissue is stored in a self-contained apparatus which provides them with everything they need to continue living at the level of cellular (ie, organelle) function. These cells could be maintained in this living state indefinitely. They would comprise a totally unique specimen of homo sapiens genome, with the potential to one day be cloned into an embryonic stem cell and one day become you again. It would be more of an individual organism than a fetus.
Is this something you would want for yourself? What would the rights of this self-contained "bottle" of you, as opposed to a fetus?
Ah, Sheri S. Tepper, who is an author who recently published a book called the Visitor, is the originator of this bottling idea. Credit where it's due.

Interesting proposition. First, the bottle of human cells would not be more of an individual organism than a fetus. It may be a more independent organism than a fetus. Independence, of course, being no criterion for whether a thing is an organism or not. Secondly, the solution is very simple. Is the life form a living member of the family Hominidae and genus homo? If so, it has human rights. If not it does not. While the mass of cells which represent a part of an individual human may have the potential to become an idividual human, it does not have human rights until it does. A fetus is already an individual human. A part of a member of the family Hominidae and genus homo is not a human being, though it may be a collection of cellular organisms which once belonged to a human and may one day produce a human. Only an actual human can have human rights. The "bottle of me" ought to have the same fundamental rights as sperm and egg cells. The conceptus ought to have the same fundamental rights as an adult human.