Are you Pro-life or Pro-choice?

[Final-Fan]

Final-Fan said:

Crono said:

Final Fan, lets go back to this:

"No, the only logical times to define whether a fetus is "human" is at conception or at the moment of birth. Since almost nobody thinks aborting a 9 month fetus is acceptable, the only other logical option is conception. Anything in between is impossible to logically "prove" humanity."

There are plenty of developmental stages during pregnancy. My whole point with this statement is that it is IMPOSSIBLE to scientifically prove at what point a concept such as "humanity" is reached. We can't even define humanity in this discussion in a way that everyone (or even a simple majority) can agree on. This is more a philosophical argument than a scientific one.

HOWEVER, what I said was, since we can't even agree on what the definition of "humanity" is, then its scientifically impossible to determine at what stage in development humanity is reached. Knowing this to be true, then there are only 2 logical time that we can define humanity, at the moment of birth or at the moment of conception.

Anything in between will never be agreed on. Its not black/white, right/wrong at this point. Its pure reason. If you MUST define when a fetus is human, these 2 points in development are the only ones that make logical sense.

Though, I might entertain a compromise from conception to implantation, since eggs fail to implant frequently, and we don't really consider this a lost child.

"Just because we may not be able to pin down exactly when it happens doesn't mean we can't narrow it down at all. If the job of narrowing it down isn't "easy" enough for you, well, there are smarter and more knowledgeable people than you (or me) thinking about the problem"

I would agree with this, if we had CLEAR criteria by which we measure humanity. But we don't, and we never will without someone arbitrarily saying "this is what humanity is." But going by that is no better than going by what an ancient book says.

And please keep the personal attacks to a minimum. I know this is hot topic, but I'm trying to keep things in the realm of reason here. I apologize if it seemed I made a personal attack first (I think my monster comment may have been construed this way), but this was not my intent.

EDIT: Yes, I know it was metalcube who said that. Would you rather I double posted a response to avoid confusion? It was more a comment on relativism, than the argument at hand.

Where we fundamentally disagree is that I believe it clearly IS possible to find at least a range of development after which we can say, "yep, human" and before which we can say, "nope, not yet". Example: A five-week-old embryo looks like this:

That's probably indistinguishable from any mammal and a lot of fishes except at the genetic level. Why is that human except as far as what it will potentially become?

It seems clear to me that at some point after that and before this:

it becomes human. I would be extremely surprised if we ever pin it down to a single moment in time, but we can get it down to a couple of weeks or a few weeks. At the start of those weeks it is no longer OK to abort because, better safe than sorry right? At the same time "better safe than sorry" doesn't mean you need to wear a helmet 24/7 so don't even think about saying "well push it back to conception because we're not sure whether it's at 3 or 4 months".

Though, I might entertain a compromise from conception to implantation, since eggs fail to implant frequently, and we don't really consider this a lost child.

See my discussion with elprincipe. What does the survival rate of the fertilized eggs have to do with anything? Back in the middle ages when infant mortality rates were just ridiculous would it be OK to have abortion? (I seem to recall that way back when they didn't even name infants in many cultures until a certain age, presumably because so many died soon after birth. I could be wrong though.) Why is it human right after implantation and not before? How can you compromise if you believe that human life begins at conception?

I'm glad we were able (thanks to you) to bring our exchange back down to a calm debate.

Since you've responded to me but not to this post, I think you may have missed it. The only thing that really needs to be added is:

This was mostly just a concession in the interest of compromise (like I said originally "I might entertain the argument of implantation vs conception") Emphasis on "might entertain".

My response is merely to restate: How can you compromise if you believe that human life begins at conception?

People who support the right of women to get abortions overwhelmingly do so because they don't consider the aborted embryo/fetus to be truly human yet. Rath believes that feti attain personhood once they are viable, not that they are persons but somehow still OK to kill before and until then.

[edit:  By the way, the viability argument is not based simply on survival rate but on the fetus' stage of development based on ability to survive outside the womb (including artificial wombs and suchlike).  Feti at a certain stage of development, for instance, cannot breathe on their own.  The two criteria are not unrelated but they are very distinct.]

In any case, the central question of the post is of course Why is that human except insofar as what it will potentially become?