| scottie said: If we are going to call things human merely because they have the capability to develop into humans, then sperm and eggs must be considered human. Males produce trillions of sperm over their lifetime. Lets be optimisitic and say a male has 15 children over his lifetime, he has still murdered trillions - 15 people. You personally have murdered billions, if not trillions of people, depending on your age. Females are slightly better, murdering about (700-number of babies they have) people in their lifetime. So clearly, if we are murdering trillions, what's one more?
So obviously the line in the sand cannot be drawn there. Where then? How about the moment the sperm and the egg join? Sounds nice, but nothing has actually happened. Before, it was a bunch of microscopic cells, now it is a bunch of microscopic cells. So not there either. The only place to decide that the bundle of cells now counts as a person is when it develops sentience - when it is capable of thought. This is why it is wrong to kill humans (and animals imo), because they have sentience.
Aborting a featus, or catching sperm in a rubber, does not at any stage cause any harm to anythign that is capable of feeling sad that it is experiencing harm. Bringing a child into a world where it will suffer due to its inbreeding, causes harm to that child. In my mind, that is a much more serious offense than aborting a bundle of cells. |
There``s more to human life than sentience or reason. That``s science``s way to define humans because that``s what it can do. It``s like looking at a cube from one side and saying that``s all there is to it.
Human life may start as something as simple as a bundle of cells but that is just part of what we are, it is our way of developing; it``s the beginning of our evolution. In the end it``s something that defines us as human beings. It may not be an exclusive way to develop, but it``s still our way.
Personally, this is the religious me talking, but given that, i``m not willing to let something, that can only have a partial view of life, define what are the boundaries of my life in particular or life in general.
