bd-from-kg

Scrutinizer:

Forgive me for being rude, but it seems to me that you have suddenly lapsed into incoherence. In what way is one’s personhood “manifested”? Does it emanate from one like an aura of some kind? Or do you have a “rights entitlement meter”? (I envision it as being something like a tricorder from Star Trek.

Also, what distinction are you trying to make between "valuing one's potential personhood" and "valuing the personhood one already has"? To say that someone is a person is to say that we value him in the relevant way. If we value in this way now, he is by definition a person now. And what we value cannot be his "personhood" - i.e., the fact that we value him. I can make no sense out of this.

Finally, if it isn't "personhood" that you really meant, what's the difference exactly between saying (1) Smith has a capability or quality that is "not being currently manifested" and which neither he nor anyone else could cause to be manifested at this time if your lives depended on it, and (2) Smith doesn't have that capability at this time (but might have it in the future)?

On the other hand, maybe this is a joke...

Clarification: As a logician, I generally use the term "incoherence" to mean logically incoherent. Don't worry; it happens to the best of us. I don't really think you're in danger of being hauled off to the booby hatch.

[ April 24, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

bd-from-kg

To all:

The time has finally come to talk about what might constitute a complete criterion for personhood. This is a very difficult question, and I’m not at all sure that my answer is the best one.

In view of the fact that my argument is based on the principle of equal protection, the obvious first step is to consider who is actually given legal protection in our society – i.e., who is considered a “person”. The answer is pretty clear: any human being who has been born, and who is either conscious or has a fighting chance of becoming conscious in the future, is considered a person.

Now this violates my “provisional” criterion in two ways: (1) fetuses (and embryos) are not included, and (2) many individuals who are not capable of cognition (in my sense), and are clearly not going to be in the future, are included. I have argued that the first exception is an anomaly, and it certainly is in the sense that this is the only group that satisfies my criterion but is not given legal protection. But the presence of the second group raises the question of whether my criterion is simply incorrect. Perhaps what our society really values is not cognition, but mere consciousness?

But a litle thought shows that this cannot be right. For one thing, as I pointed out a long time ago, membership in a particular species is not a morally relevant criterion, yet many animals who have at least as much consciousness as many humans who are granted personhood are not considered persons.

So is Singer right? Is our refusal to grant rights to many animals a matter of mere “speciesism” – an instinctive prejudice with no moral justification?

I don’t think so. It’s obvious that we do value cognition, and value it very highly indeed. The horror of Alzheimer’s disease, for example, is precisely that the victim remains conscious for quite a long time while slowly losing everything that makes him human. Similarly, we regard mental patients with great pity and compassion, even if they are not suffering in the least, because their cognitive faculties are badly defective.

So what’s going on?

We need not devote much time to those, like Alzheimer’s patients, whose cognitive faculties were once normal but no longer are. We can all envision the possibility that we ourselves might be in their position someday and want very much to live in society where such people are cared for. This in itself is a sufficient reason for extending legal protection to such individuals. No one is going to be concerned that this is a violation of the principle of equal protection; hardly anyone even thinks of it in terms of this principle.

This leaves the few unfortunates who never did have significant cognitive function and never will. There are at least four reasons why they are given legal protection:

1. They are often valued by parents or other relatives, or even non-relatives. As I have pointed out repeatedly, this is not a moral justification for treating them as persons.

2. It’s undesirable to deny legal protection to anyone who “looks like us”. Allowing such an individual to be harmed would tend to erode the natural sympathy for fellow human beings and the natural revulsion against mistreating one’s fellow man. This isn’t really a good enough reason either, but it should not be dismissed lightly.

3. There is no clear, non-arbitrary line to be drawn between being capable and incapable of significant cognition. We certainly want to give “borderline” cases the benefit of the doubt, as noted earlier, but what exactly is a “borderline case”? What level of cognitive function is “sufficient”? These are unanswerable questions. As we have seen, some people insist that newborns already have sufficient cognitive function to qualify as “persons” on that basis alone. I consider this position untenable for reasons explained earlier, but the fact that there are some who hold it suggests that any dividing line short of unconsciousness would be regarded by some as arbitrary.

But the main problem is this: no matter where the cutoff point is set, there will be some individuals who fall just above it and others who fall just below it. Let’s say, for example, that Jane is just above the cutoff and Joe is just below it. Then Joe will be denied legal protection while Jane is given it. This in itself will be viewed (very reasonably) by many people to be unjust. But suppose that both Joe and Jane are killed. Then the person who killed Jane will be treated as a murderer, while Joe’s killer will face no serious legal liability. But by hypothesis Jane and Joe were so close in mental capabilities as to be almost indistinguishable, so this will be regarded by almost everyone as a major, inexcusable injustice. Thus any arbitrary dividing line will prove untenable in the long run as a practical matter.

4. Many people regard basic rights in terms of the “sanctity of life”. These people will never approve or assent to any arbitrary dividing line between “persons” and “nonpersons”; they will regard any such distinction as arbitrary and therefore a violation of the principle of equal treatment. This in itself will tend to undermine the principle.

So there are a number of reasons - some better than others - for the practice of treating humans with severely impaired cognitive function as “persons” even though they don’t meet the fundamental criterion for personhood. It’s worth noting that none of these reasons is applicable to animals. In particular, the distinction between humans and other animals is clear and unambiguous, so provided that we are sure that a given species is incapable of meeting the primary criterion, (3) above offers no reason to treat its members as persons. And certainly the other reasons don’t apply.

To resolve any doubt that “cognition” is really the primary standard rather than “consciousness”, consider what would happen if the number of humans who turned out to be incapable of cognition were really large – perhaps many times larger than the number of humans who were. Clearly in this case we could no longer afford to treat all of the “non-cognitive” humans as persons; we would be forced to “show our hand”, so to speak, and define a criterion unambiguously based on cognition rather than treating personhood as the “birthright” of virtually every human being. This “thought experiment” should clarify the true state of affairs for anyone who thinks about it seriously.

It’s also worth pointing out that the question of whether the reasons given above (or even some I haven’t thought of) for granting rights to nearly all humans are “good enough” to justify the practice is irrelevant to the abortion issue. The only important point is that the reasons are of this sort – i.e., prudential reasons for granting an exemption to the few who don’t really “pass muster” in preference to requiring everyone to pass a “basic cognition” test to qualify for civil rights.

Now once the reasons for our society’s actual practice are clear, we can look again at the current treatment of fetuses. Aside from (4), the “secondary” reasons for granting personhood listed above do not apply to fetuses and embryos. But it doesn’t matter, because they satisfy the primary criterion. They do not slip in under the wire or get in on a technicality, but are fully, completely, no-doubt-about-it persons. Thus the legal status of fetuses before Roe v. Wade was the natural, obvious application of the principles applied to other human beings. It is the post-Roe legal regime that is the anomaly.

And as noted before, obvious anomalies of this kind tend to erode the principle of equal protection. This is not theory; it is happening now. This is well-documented in Vincent Carroll’s fine article, <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a38e7a3f27c2d.htm" target="_blank">The Subtle Slide of Human Life</a>. For example, he notes:

Carroll cites several others who have published similar views, and says:

If this brave new world is the future you want, all’s well. If not, it may be time to rethink your position on abortion.

[ April 24, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

Scrutinizer

bd-from-kg,

It will probably come as no surprise to you to learn that once again my position on abortion is moving back and forth like a tennis ball at a Grand Slam. But hey, I'll use the fact that I'm 17 years old as an excuse for my intellectual immaturity! Works every time!

At any rate, you've done a very good job of defending the moral equivalence of a foetus and a comatose man. I now think I was convinced that there are morally significant differences between them by an equivocation on the term person. It could be argued that the comatose man was a "person" (self-conscious, having a concept of death and a desire to live) before the coma and will be the same person when he comes out of the coma, but what does it mean to say he will be the same person when he comes out of the coma? Surely that means he will most likely simply have the same personality, the same ideas, etc., but surely continuity of personality has no moral significance whatsoever! I accepted this equivocation on the term "person" and was thus led to believe that though the foetus isn't yet a person, the comatose man is a person during the coma because there is a continuity of personhood during the comatose state. But there is no continuity of self-consciousness; there is no continuity of a desire to continue living; the only continuity is a vague continuation of his personality, and that seems to have no moral significance whatsoever that would justify distinguishing him from a foetus.

Having said that, however, there is still a brain-bending difficulty with your criterion that I'm finding very difficult to get around. But maybe with your cleverness a solution will be found that I haven't yet reached. Instead of referring to "what is a person?" and answering it with your criterion, I've advanced a very similar version of your criterion as a moral argument that would make it wrong to have an abortion. It reads as follows:
P1. It is wrong to kill an individual that will naturally and foreseeably possess future personhood.
P2. A foetus is an individual that will naturally and foreseeably possess future personhood.
C. It is wrong to kill a foetus.

That argument seems to make sense of our intuitions about the poor comatose man who could otherwise be justifiably killed, but I've got a bit of a quandary about it. This may seem very airy-fairy and sophistical, but I'm having difficulty spelling out the moral significance of the fact that a foetus is an existing, individual entity. Why not have similar concern for the potential of an abstract, not-yet-existing entity?

Now, it seems obvious that according rights to a non-existent abstract entity is the epitome of the ridiculous, but in practice we do seem to care about the futures of currently non-existent entities. Let's consider a woman who is addicted to heroin. She is not currently at a point where she can give up heroin, and she knows that if she conceives a child, that child will similarly become addicted. She therefore (if she's rational at the time) decides to not conceive a child now, but rather waits until she's at a point some time in the future where she's clean before she conceives. If she had conceived the heroin baby, a majority of people would think she had done something wrong. There are philosophical arguments that you haven't done anything wrong to the child because that's the price the child pays for existence -- if you had done differently the child wouldn't even exist. But our intuitions seem to tell us that it would be wrong to purposely conceive a suffering and miserable child when you could just as easily have waited a while before conceiving a different one. And if we have this concern for a non-existent entity such that we purposely refrain from conceiving it for its own sake, it is hard to see how we shouldn't similarly value the potential of an abstraction by fitting it into your criterion.

Saying that we ought to value the potential of an abstract non-existent entity seems ridiculous, because using a contraceptive would be wrong when it is natural and foreseeable for an entity to arrive that will develop into a "person". But basically the problem I have is simply in trying to explain why it is morally significant for something to be an existent, individual entity as opposed to a merely abstract one. Why should we value the potential of an existent entity over the potential of a non-existent one?

My mind is spinning; I've probably made every logical error in the book. So please, for my own sake, expose the gaping holes!

Regards,

- Scrutinizer

[Edited for trivial italics and joining two paragraphs together - Scrutinizer]

[ April 24, 2002: Message edited by: Scrutinizer ]</p>

Jerry Smith

bd-from-kg,

Hi again!

I am going to defend my position against "future cognition" until my position becomes untenable or "future cognition" fails. I am not a philosophy major, but the standard of future cognition as a mark for recognizing rights is anything but compelling to me. I cannot imagine a civilized society basing a system of rights on a moral principle founded on such a nebulous proposition.

Of course such an individual is still a person, but to our understanding of personhood, depending on how acute the case of amnesia, he might well be a different person.

We may have to wait to see what the technology says, but if a person can emerge from a coma as a person at all, there is little chance we will find that he was ever not engaged in the kinds of brain activity that mark cognition.

More on this in the abstract, but further down the page.

Ideas are one kind of cognitive function. The same argument would apply to future cognition, were it valid. Of course a person's ideas may have more or less merit, or even be a detriment, but it is not on the basis of the merit of their ideas that we recognize their rights. It is on the basis that they do have ideas/cognition (or in your case, future cognition) that we recognize their rights. Freedom of conscience is implicitly recognized by our constitution.

Why? We may not be able to know whether the cognitive activity that is important is taking place in this individual, and we may have to assume that it is and give the benefit of the doubt to the individual. This doesn't mean that if we could find out, we would still consider the truly brain-dead to be persons... Lets see how the converse of this could apply, not to a comatose person, but to a doomed person.

If a doctor only gives you 24 hours to live (i.e., your future potential for cognition has run out), at what point does it become OK for me to kill you? At 23 hours and 55 minutes after the diagnosis? 58 minutes? 59 minutes and 59 seconds?

A) This is not true. A brain dead person presumably is carrying out absolutely no cognitive functions while in her coma. If she is: if a medical miracle could revive her and she would have retained memories/ideas/personality, then she would of course be a person (and not IMO brain-dead) while in her coma. If a medical miracle could revive her to a fetus-like state where she would have to develop her intelligence again starting from just the basic hardware, then yes, while she was in the coma she was brain-dead, and probably should not be considered a person.

B) I am no more prepared to say that a zygote is a person than I am to say that a brain-dead person is. If what you say is true, I still have to choose a definition of person that is unacceptable to me in some way: I can find no way around it. Better to focus, as you say, on the relevant moral principles.

You have gone on and on about your thinking that my definition is no good, listing among your reasons that it excludes the sleeping, drunk, and infants. You also stated this:
Going on...

On the face of it, this idea seems to represent an extremely limited view of rights.

A person can have enough moral autonomy that she has meaningful moral agency while not having what we consider basic rights protected in the United States: for instance, government by consent, the right to security against unreasonable search and seizure, "right" to pursuit of happiness, etc.

Perhaps more importantly, what do you consider the meaning of "entitlement"? Is entitlement a natural state, or does our society simply recognize and codify into law, a "sense of entitlement."?

As you point out later in your post, cognition is a process. Our future cognition is caused by our biology, but determined by our present and past cognitive activities. If my current cognitive processes change, my future cognitive qualities will change as a result.

It is also true that future cognition can result from non-cognitive activity (i.e. in the case of fetal development). However, it is only relevant to the idea of personhood as a function or quality of our present state.

If medical science found a way to restore brain function to a brain-dead individual, we would have the capacity to create a new person from an existing individual. The brain-dead individual would then have the same potential for future cognition as any person surviving on a respirator or other artificial life-preserving measures. Are we then obligated to revive the corpse so that the family will have an infant in an adult body to name and raise?

I do not think that cognition is limited to consciousness. I think that consciousness is merely an aspect of cognition. Brain function does not cease when I am asleep: instead, I can actually remember many of my dreams when I awake. The mode of activity changes, and I cannot act as a moral agent while asleep, but the person remains, and remains active. In a coma (the kind that you can revive from), the activity is more restricted, but the person remains, and to a minimal extent, remains active.
I have not claimed that they can. On the contrary, I have specifically claimed that they can not. The individuals of which you speak, if of the species h. sapiens, consist only of the dead, the brain-dead, and young fetuses/embryos, zygotes.

I do stretch the meaning of cognition, because I have no better word to describe the activities of the mind, whether conscious or otherwise, that are morally relevant to the discussion of rights.

I think that with effort, anyone reading my posts will be, nevertheless, able to recognize the meaning.

Ok. To try to get on the same page: the human mind is unique, not only in the way it conceptualizes, anticipates consequences, empathizes, etc... but also in the way it learns to do these things. It learns rationality, empathy, etc... by interaction with other minds and with its environment.
In addition, the human mind maintains and preserves the conceptualizations, understanding of consequences, empathetic feelings,etc.. through periods that are not typified by consciousness. These traits of cognition are not common to other animals.

Likely true. To extend the hypothetical:
If one of these extra-terrestrials reproduced by something analogous to cellular division, and if the offspring did not develop a "personal" kind of cognition until it was 2/3 separated from the parent ET, would we grant the 1/3 separated offspring "personhood"? If the ET could make a conscious choice to abort the reproduction, separating the 1/3 offspring from itself to die without its parent, would we make that illegal?

They are developing something we anthropomorphize as personalities. The development of those pseudo-personalities is something endearing to us, but not a requisite for the recognition of rights.

What do you mean by "more developed"? Sure, puppies and kittens are more mature (for their species) from the womb than human babies are, but are you suggesting that they are more developed in a cognitive way?

I have been around both new-borns and six-month olds. I grant you that new-borns have few outward signs of the processes that are going on inside their minds. I don't have access to EEGs or any other objective measure of the kinds and levels of development that are going on in a new-born cerebral cortex. My strong suspicion (based on what they have learned by six months) is that the results would indicate that we are completely justified in assuming their cortex was engaged in high-level cognitive activities of learning.

You quote Dr. Singer:
Why are these the only fair and relevant characteristics? And on what basis does Dr. Singer conclude that chickens are better off in the rationality department than late-term human fetuses? Anything objective, or just his hunch? How do you measure rationality in an infant, fetus, or in a chicken for that matter? You almost certainly have to rely on behaviors... in that regard, chickens have a distinct advantage, because they have a physical construction that allows them much more opportunity to behave according to their 'rational' judgements than human fetuses or babies have.

With the obvious exception of non-cognitive, strictly physiological preparations for future cognition, almost all of the "preparations for future cognition" do come under the umbrella of actual current cognition.

See segment above.

A computer is not maintaining memories(data/instructions) while turned off. The memories remained stored on some sort of mechanical medium while turned off. This is a poor analogy, because our minds cannot retain memories, etc, when our brain ceases to function, even for a few minutes.

Stasis and dormancy are not processes, but in nature they are often a part of a process.


Dormancy is usually a defensive mechanism designed entirely to preserve the processes of life (among which is cognition, in humans) during adverse conditions. In that they serve as a means of preserving thoughts, memories, etc..., dormant periods do characterize the long-term processes of cognition. Therefore, it is proper to say that an individual in a dormant state is in a stage of undergoing cognition.

Of course I value the potential for enjoying a book, etc. Of course we value the future potential to do a (valuable) thing. The question is which kind of value is important here, the value of doing the thing, or the value of potentially doing it in the future?

You make it sound kind of hopeless. Each thought, each feeling, only has value because of the potential it creates for future thoughts or feelings that we will only value for the potential they create for future cognition....ad infinitum. Do we ever reach a point where we value our cognition for its own sake?

"Results from" is the wrong formulation. Future cognition is, in one sense, a feature of present cognition. Our chief consideration is whether an individual is a cognitive one or not. If it is, we presume it will be in the future as well, but even if it is not cognitive in the future, we still value it now.

If an individual is not cognitive now, then whether it will be in the future becomes a secondary matter. It may be involved in the decision of a couple whether to have a child, or the decision of a woman whether to carry a fetus to term. If a fetus is not cognitive now, we know it has the potential to become so, but why are we obligated to provide the means for it to, and to try to ensure that it does?

Of course I do, and I will particularly want to be left alive a year from now. I don't want to die today because I do not want ME: the person that I am today, with all thoughts, memories, etc. - just as they are today - to cease to exist. It isn't just because I don't want the person I will be a year from now to be dead -- that has more to do with why I don't want to be killed a year from now!

Given the choice between observing and participating in the process (of "bringing out [the children's] full potential), or being able to skip all of that and watch them graduate and go to work, I think most parents would choose the former. Else, why do they have children? Why not just introduce themselves and make friends with other full-grown adults?

What does this suggest about which values are important to personhood?

Why do parents become so emotionally distraught when, while they are still young and fertile, their child succumbs to SIDS? After all, with a little bit of time, they can have another child, with equal potential for future cognition...

(Edited twice for UBB Code)

[ April 25, 2002: Message edited by: Jerry Smith ]</p>

Scrutinizer

In response to my own post, it now seems quite clear that we can still have concern for non-existent entities (such as in the case of a baby that would be addicted to heroin if we conceived it) without ascribing such non-entities rights. We could simply base our concerns about whether to conceive or not conceive based on utilitarian principles rather than a rights-based principle.

Regards,

- Scrutinizer

Bubbly

Re: Abortion, whether the debate is that the cells are a person or not, or whether it is entirely the choice of the woman to maintain the pregnancy or not...I don't believe these are the crux of the issue.

I believe the main error in supporting abortion is a matter of the heart, and what I mean by this is that a person is interrupting the possibility of life for their own convenience (selfish motives/purposes). It appears life is not valued by people choosing abortion, and these people do not behave maturely in thought through the consequences of the act of having sex, nor do they consider others and do not take responsibility for their actions. I believe this to be immature in human reasoning/thought, and we (as the human race) are beckoned to evolve into a higher level of consciousness to choose wisely in all decisions, and especially those with the severest of consequences (as abortion).

It's as simple as this...having sex=liklihood of pregnancy. Abortion=cessation of the liklihood of bringing forth a life. Abortion=Selfishness+Thoughtlessness...Abortion is a matter of the heart condition & about doing all the right (wise) things from the very beginning, & learning not to hurt our fellowman or ourselves.

I heard it said once, about a woman (who supported abortion but not the death penalty) asked a man (who did not support abortion) if he supported the death penalty, to which he replied, "Yes, because I believe the guilty should be punished for the innocent...mercy to the criminal may be cruelty to the people...but m'am, you believe that the innocent should die and not the guilty"...

I thought that was interesting to contemplate...

(1st time poster)
Bev

Jerry Smith

Bev, I share your feelings about elective abortion for convenience. I agree that those few individuals who choose abortion for purely trivial reasons are morally bankrupt.

On the other hand, well... see my next post.

By the way: Welcome to the Infidels Discussion Board!

Jerry Smith

This judgement is made on the disputed basis of "future cognition". I would like to remind everyone why it is drastically important that we get our idea of personhood right, before we start recognizing the rights of the embryonic or young fetal unborn.

If a zygote, embryo, or young fetus is indeed a person, then we must protect its life using the full force of the law. If this creature is indeed a person, then a woman who aborts and/or her abortion provider are liable for murder: a capital crime.

If, in fact or in principle, an embryo is a person, then a woman's right to choose how her body is used (and by whom) is drastically curtailed.

Unwanted pregnancy has many potentials for harm. An unwanted pregancy is a risk to a woman's life, it creates a risk of permanent debilitation, a risk to her overall physical health, her psychological health, and a most certain risk to her general welfare.

If an embryo is a person, and therefore a woman who aborts is a murderer, then in some cases, a woman may be required to face some or all of those risks purely against her will. A woman who has been coerced to have sex by a drunk and belligerent husband will have to face all of those risks without a choice, and without recourse, since she cannot prove she was coerced.

A woman who fears for her life or long-term health, and who may actually suffer death or long-term disability must placidly accept the inherent risks in cases where a pathological condition exists but cannot be diagnosed.

A poor woman who obeys the dictates of her body, but piles contraception on top of contraception in order to avoid pregnancy may find that she is in a position where she must quit any job that she may have, carry a new "person" around with her for nine months, find a way to support this helpless person from her already-below-subsistence level income, and forgo any thoughts she may have had for extricating herself from poverty in the years to come.

Now all of these good and legitimate reasons for our society to wish protection for abortion become irrelevant in the face of the principled personhood of a first and second-trimester fetus. We must protect that life to the fullest extent of the law, and make the penalties for abortion equivalent to the penalties for pre-meditated murder (something no society has ever done to my knowledge).

This is not to say that on these accounts we must conclude that a fetus is not a person. Whether a fetus is a person or not should be considered strictly on the qualities it has, relative to our principles of equality of persons.

If we are to take the unprecedented step of recognizing the personhood of the young fetus, embryo, and zygote, we must not do so lightly. We must do so with full confidence in the verity of the facts and propriety of the principles that lead us to that position.

Otherwise, women may needlessly be enslaved to the task of nurturing a mindless, thoughtless, careless, unfeeling organism for months at a time, at the expense of her own health, welfare, and moral autonomy.

I hope this will help everyone to understand why I cannot lightly accept a system that places such weight on a principle like "future cognition" - a principle which places an individual with no capacity for cognitive thought, or even for emotion or feelings, on a basis that its protection is more important than the protection of the welfare of fully one half of the thinking and feeling members of our society.

[ April 26, 2002: Message edited by: Jerry Smith ]</p>

dk

dk:I'll run with the first half of the question...

To intentionally kill someone without justification defines murder, as in “Thou shall not murder” or more generally promulgated as “Thou shall not kill”. We can haggle around the edges of intent and justification for homicide but no amount of logic chopping changes the moral principle. The wanton destruction of human life defies reason, hence is wrong. Why? Because its simply impossibility to reconcile the wanton destruction of human life with future events; the repercussions of the act are incomprehensible, so the act of murder defiles the actor as the tool of the actors own subjugation, but not limited to the actor. Why? Because deprived of reason (or self knowledge) people are incapable of acting in their own self interest. People that fail to understand “murder” are degenerates, and by extension nations, societies and cultures that sanction the wanton destruction of human life are degenerate i.e. immoral. There is no justification for murder, that would be justifiable homicide.

Perhaps personage is the wrong question, the right question being “Is an embryo or fetus a human life?” This is a biological question that reduces to “Is an embryo or fetus an organism”, because if an embryo or a fetus is an organism then it is by extension human.

The alternative is to postulate that an embryo or fetus is a parasite, malignant growth or STD.

But if an embryo is a parasite, malignant growth or STD then what are you and I? Since there are no discernable magical properties evident in a women’s birth canal to “abracadabra” change a parasite, etc. into a person, then this line of thought is self defecating because it calls into question the personage of all human beings.

So we are back to…

the wanton destruction of a human life
-verses
the justifiable destruction of a human life
I
Its absurd to postulate a pregnant women can evaluate (reason) the repercussions of abortion, that would be called a rationalization i.e. a self-justifying explanations for irrational act.
.
Therefore I would suggest to understand personage in the context of Roe v. Wade we must answer the question,
“Why does our society sanction the wanton destruction of human life?”
-----------
I really enjoy reading your posts by the way!!!
dk

[ April 26, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]

[ April 26, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>

Jerry Smith

dk: My position is that our censures the wanton destruction of human life. Abortion advocacy is not wanton: it is done for protecting the greater interest, freedom and choice of members of our society.

It is my belief that to place decisions about early term abortion into the hands of a woman and her physician is to emphasize the correct relationship between a society and its members, and between the society's members and the pre-cognitive forms of human life that sometimes grow inside them.

The deliberate killing of a person, a denizen with cognition (be they human or extra-terrestrial) must be justified before the law, else it should be sanctioned as murder: this based on our principle of the right (of persons) to life, and equal protection thereof.

The deliberate killing of a non-person, an organism that can neither think nor feel (be it human, animal, or extra-terrestrial) need not be justified before the law, except if the state has a special interest in protecting that individual.

Early term abortion falls in the latter category, and it is certainly a reasoned justification that a woman's knowledge of her overall fitness to carry a pregnancy to term, and the overall impact on her life (together with her doctor's guidance), place her in the best position to make a morally sound choice about whether to continue the pregnancy or to abort..