Adora

Even if it's true, so what? Human beings don't condem killing. They condem killing for the wrong reasons, and of the wrong people. Babies are cute and emotionally investible, therefore we're meant to care if one of them die moreso than some POW who's tortured to death.

Mr. Aardvark

I would say that the difference is that I am convinced that the victims of the inquisition were persons, but I am not convinced than an embryo is a person. Human life doesn't equal human person. After all, a tumor in my body is genetically human and alive.

maurile

What value do you place on an egg cell and a sperm cell just before conception? Is there a logical reason for valuing a recently fertilized egg a great deal more than a soon-to-be-fertilized egg (with the sperm an inch away)?

In either case, it's all the same material, with all the same potential for growing into a full-fledged insurance salesman, if nurtured properly.

Columbus

[QUOTE]Nearly zero. At that point they are just two haploid cells. They are each part of a person, but not either of them is a person.
Yes! Once the sperm and egg unite there is a new individual human that has never existed before. A person who is unique. A person who deserves their life at least as much as anyone else does.
There are some circumstances under which the child is doomed. A tubal implantation means the pregancy will kill both the child and the mother. Some babies are so malformed that their life is guaranteed to be short and painful. But these kinds of unfortunate events are rare and not the cause of most abortions.

It is the same material, but not the same potential. Before fertilization there is only the parents. Afterwards there are still the parents, but also a child. Three separate human persons.


They are not different life-forms, they are different stages of the same life-form. They are all humans. As such they all have the same value and rights. They may have different abilities, and so earn additional rights. But the right to continue living is the most fundamental right and cannot be taken away from anyone.

Having 46 chromosomes is something that zygotes and adults have in common, as opposed to sperm and egg cells. What difference are you talking about?
I can differentiate between the economic value of an adult and a zygote. That's not what I'm refering to. I am refering to their personhood. What no-one has yet done is explain how they differentiate between the personhood of a zygote and an adult. One thing all humans have in common is that they were once a zygote. Another is that they all have personhood.

A zygote did not "become" you. You were a zygote. The difference is important.

Tom

Family Man

Columbus, try to understand this. I fully understand the moral dilemmas of abortion, and unlike many atheists, I am not unsympathetic to your position. However, I don't think aborting a fetus, especially in the first trimester, is the moral equilvalent of murdering a human being, because a zygote does not have the cognitive thought or independence of action that a fully formed human does. (And for the record, the thought of my mother aborting me does not bother me. I never would have realized I existed.) If I was on a jury where a woman was accused of murder for aborting a fetus, I could not and would not vote to convict her just as I wouldn't vote to stone a woman for cheating on her husband. The punishment ought to fit the nature of the transgression, and I'm content to leave it the individual's conscience in the case of abortion. (In case you're having trouble understanding me, if I were a woman I would not have an abortion because of how my own moral understanding; I am not comfortable, however, imposing my views on others in a moral gray area that this is.)

What really bothers me about the anti-abortion movement is its tendency to overstate the moral issues. To me, abortion is a morally questionable act, but an understandable and forgiveable one. The murder of thousands and the torture of hundred of thousands is morally unforgivable and to compare the two makes me think that the proponents of such a view are morally unhinged.

laestrella

I wouldn't do it, but i'm not if a place to tell people what to do with their lives. if they want to live with the fact that they killing a living creature inside them that's fine. Whatever. their choice not mine

long winded fool

Good point. This is absolutely true. Not all humans are equal. Some humans are worth more to human society than other humans. It is reasonable to conclude, then, that those humans who have moral worth can and should do with as they please those humans who do not have moral worth, correct? Or rather have less moral worth, since it is not a discrete scale, and assuming that humans who have comparatively great moral worth always do such things in order to make their own lives more worthwhile. (Of course, we can occasionally overlook it when someone of great worth destroys someone of little worth for reasons other than bettering himself or society, after all, no one of worth is going to miss the worthless human.)

But who gets to decide which humans have worth? Isn't it always those humans who already have worth and value? Is this begging the question? I don't think it actually is, because "worth and value" in this latter case are simply euphemisms for power, and power does have the ability to dictate terms. The person who gets to decide who has worth and who doesn't is the person who has the ability to decide and to enforce his decision. That "person" used to be the white christian male. Now it is expanding to include more than just white christian males, but we still maintain our freedom to exclude from the right to life those humans that we the powerful decide do not have worth. And, contrary to what some pro-choicers might assume, this line is nothing but arbitrary. There is no science involved. Yes it is drawn through an objectively different portion of the human species than it used to be, but it is no less an arbitrarily drawn line.

long winded fool

What if they choose to kill a living creature outside of them? What if that creature is human? What if it is an adult? When does it become your business? Why?

laestrella

1. killing a living creature outside the body isn't always bad. Consider hunters , they keep the population of certain species down. It's a good thing.

2. If the creature is human then it's murder... i believe we all know this.

3. See my number 2.

4. If you consider abortion as the disposing of a tiny life form... no matter how old inside a woman. Then It should be up to her. end of story.

maurile

No, it is not reasonable to conclude that humans with more "moral worth" should do as they please with those of lesser "moral worth."

Are you okay with bug-squashing? If so, does that mean you favor a general rule that says: Those animals who have more moral worth should do as they please with animals of lesser moral worth?

Not every slope is prohibitively slippery. Just because I should be allowed to squash a bug, that doesn't mean Pious Paige should be allowed to squash Lying Linda.

You've lost me. When somebody claims that the fellow who runs the homeless shelter down the street has more moral worth than Kim Jong-il, he isn't making a statement about their relative power.