Jamie_L

bd-from-kg:

Your post about equal protection is elloquent, impassioned, and worth serious consideration. However, I don't think it is necessarily relevant to defining a distinction between a non-person-embryo and a person-fetus.

For just about all of history, people have only been people after they were born. Even our Constitution really only recognizes citizens that are "born" in this country, not citizens waiting in wombs to be born. Birth has always been a logical, rational point to declare someone a person.

Now, as we start to get into the legal issues of abortion, we rethink this. Is a full term baby still in the womb really not a person? I say no. Then we go farther back. And farther. And some of us go all the way back. Fertilized = person.

Is an embryo really a class of persons? It is a dramatically different entity than the comparissons you make in your post. It's not the same as saying "a jew is not a person" or "a woman is not a person". It is a fundamentally different entity. I don't think we are standing on any kind of slippery slope at all by saying so.

Like others have said, perhaps we've hit an impass. But your posts continue to shape my opinions, so I'll continue to read them.

Jamie

WJ

All!

Since I'm a big fan of existentialism, the last post reminded me of the 'essence and existence' of [human] Being itself.

The reason it follows that abortion is logically 'wrong', I hate those words-wrong, logical , is because Being is a process. Your own existence was, and is still is, completely and naturally dependent on time. When you interupt any part of the *process* of life beginnings (in this case), it is one in the same-you would not exist. To exist is a predicate. Therefore, there would be no such thing (noun)existence.

So maybe the next question is choice *volitional existence* as responsible Beings.
And the answer relates to the denial of that Being's existence while in the *process* of becoming. Or, preventing that thing from becoming a fully developed existing Being.

I believe if you think about things say, like 'time, process, existence, and Being' it puts a different light on the whole argument. No?

1. A Human being is dependent on time for its existence.
2. Physical existence is not a timeless concept.
3. Therefore, to be a human in this physical world requires a process of time.

I welcome correction.

Walrus

Jayhawker Soule

So, if your parents chose not to have sex, you would not exist, and, therefore ...

WJ

...and the parents existence required time in order to make that choice.

bd-from-kg

Jamie_L:

It wasn't intended to answer every possible question regarding the unborn. But it's certainly relevant to the abortion issue in that it lays the real issue out clearly. In order to avoid undermining (if not destroying) the principle of equal protection, pro-choicers have to show that there is a morally relevant difference generally accepted by our society which justifies denying legal protection to the unborn (or to some of the unborn if your position is that only some of them are "non-persons"). And it had better be pretty good, because our society does not accept any moral principle that justifies treating any other human beings as non-persons except for some who are totally nonfunctional and have no chance of ever being otherwise. At the very least, this shows that the burden of proof is on the pro-choice side.

But I was not under the delusion that this argument is decisive in itself. I'm working on a post summarizing the case for the criterion of personhood that I proposed earlier (or one closely related to it).

For just about all of history (including a large chunk of American history) slavery was considered perfectly acceptable. So what?

But as a matter of fact your claim is incorrect. In both Christian and Islamic countries a fetus has been considered a person after a certain point (long before birth), and the logic involved has caused both the Catholic Church (and many Protestant ones) and virtually all Moslem legal authorities to conclude that the unborn child is a "person" from the time of conception once it became clear that the new human life actually began at that point.

So what? No one is a citizen in any case until they reach their majority, which comes long after birth. The Constitution distinguishes clearly between citizens and "persons". Even the Roe v. Wade Court (which was clearly looking for grounds to justify its preordained conclusion) said only that it was not clear whether the latter term was intended to include the unborn. And the Constitution gives all persons the right to life (as well as certain other rights).

That depends on whether the obvious differences between embryos and adults can be shown to be morally relevant to the issue of whether the former should be treated as "persons". If not, denying them legal protection is arbitrary. And this will indeed undermine the principle of equal protection.

[ March 27, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

Jayhawker Soule

I honestly don't know if your seeking to contibute to the question, purposely trivializing it for effect, or simply trolling. When you say that abortion is wrong because it interrupts a process, you are doing more than making a clever existentialist point: you are condemning a good many people of committing a fairly serious "wrong" and implying that those who "commit" abortion should be dealt with differently than they are today. I'd suggest, instead, that "process" is inseparable from "change", that what exists at some arbitrary process beginning is not what exists at some arbitrary terminus, and that the acorn is not the tree.

bd-from-kg

ReasonableDoubt:

Wow. Nothing gets by you.

WJ

Doubt,

You lost me on that one

As I've said, there are so-called exceptions to logic with which I presented(like there are in much of life in general). The examples I gave were emminent death of the mother-making it justified to kill the baby in hopes that the mother can conceive again in the furture, etc..


In otherwords, to become fully human affords the ability/opportunity of making choices. But if you don't allow the 'thing' to become a human, how can 'it' make those choices? (We must first exist to even make choices).

Does that help?


Walrus

Jayhawker Soule

I find myself surprised by the sarcasm. Sorry if I offended you at some point.

Danya

No, legally it isn't. At least for now.

Someone elses religious beliefs mean very little to me especially when I am making a decision as important as having children.

I see no way it has undermined the equal protection of any citizen since abortion was legalized over 20 years ago. What are you saying?