🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 05 Apr 2005 22:47:14 GMT, NOMAN <Noman@noman.org> wrote:

[snip]

IG:
==>>		[...] why must a properly developing
==>>		human embryo be kept alive long before it has
==>>		reached the stage where consciousness --
==>>		let alone self-awareness -- is possible?
==>>
==>>		A pre-birth homo sapiens may be human, but it's
==>>		not a person, and it's personhood that we cherish,
==>>		because along with personhood comes a life's history.

==>How much "personhood history" comes a moment after delivery?

		One moment's worth.

IG:
==>>		It is your history as a human being -- as a life lived
==>>		-- that makes you different from all other humans who
==>>		have ever lived and ever will live, because no
==>>		two histories are or can be the same.

==>What differs between two babies a moment after birth?

		Everything.  They are two separate, unique
		persons, with utterly individual -- albeit short --
		histories.

IG:
==>>		And although your physical existence may indeed
==>>		begin at conception, your history, your life's story
==>>		begins the moment the umbilical cord attaching
==>>		you to your mother and keeping you a part of her
==>>		body is severed, and you breathe air on your own
==>>		for the first time.

==>All babies share that a moment after the cord is severed. What are
==>their "personhood" differences at that point, that makes them all
==>"different persons"?

		What part of the concept of "unique" are you
		having trouble with?

		Each person's life is different from the life of
		every other person who has ever lived, beginning
		at birth.  No two people have ever experienced
		something exactly alike -- not the first flash of
		brightness pouring through closed eyelids, not the
		feeling of being held by a fellow human for the very
		first time, not the icy rush of
		never-before-felt air into unused lungs.  All of
		those experiences, although "shared" by nearly
		every living human, are yet unique to each, and
		contribute to making each nascent human the
		person s/he will be.

		To deny this is to deny the very uniqeness of
		individual people and so dehumanize them.

IG:
==>>		Until that moment, you are little more than a
==>>		parasitic growth, with no awareness of your
==>>		existence and no individual identity.

==>Who and how is/was that determined?

		An organism that derives its essential nutrients
		directly from the body of another is a parasite.
		There is not a shred of evidence that zygotes,
		embryos or fetuses are self-aware, and any
		organism that is as intricately joined to another
		as a fetus is to its host can hardly be said to
		have an individual identity.

[snip]

IG:
==>>		A person is a once-in-an-eternity occurrence and
==>>		therefore priceless.

==>That's interesting. Terri Schivo was described as basically brain dead
==>yet the Congress/Senate of the US of A deemed she deserved to live.

		Tell me you're not seriously pointing to the
		hypocritical, self-interested and corrupt U.S.
		Congress as some kind of authority on this
		issue.  But just to set you straight, the
		Congress/Senate of the US of A did no such
		thing.
		
==>A "fetus" days before birth has magnitudes more brain activity and you
==>perceive it to be less than worthless cells...... Strange!

		Not strange at all.  Fetusus have no self-awareness,
		no consciousness of their existence and no
		separate identities.  No being before its birth can
		be said to be "worthwhile," because it really hasn't
		begun to live yet.

		In any case, it cannot be said to have rights that
		supersede those of its host.

[snip]

IG:
==>>		If we grant rights to undeveloped human
==>>		organisms, what other rights should they have?
==>>		Should a zygote be vested with the "right"
==>>		to have its host refrain from, say, smoking,
==>>		or drinking alcohol, or eating unhealthy food,
==>>		or engaging in any of a number of activities
==>>		that carry a risk of negatively impacting the
==>>		zygote's development?

==>Certainly, if the "host" has any respect for the "organism".

		That's evasion.  I didn't ask about "respect" that
		the host may or may not have for the lump growing
		inside her.  I asked whether you believe that lump
		has rights that trump its host's rights to act as she
		pleases.

==>That's
==>the difference between women that really want a baby and are willing
==>to forgo the smokes , booze and other things that may be hazardous and
==>the women that want out of their "mistake/situation".....

		Women who "really want a baby" don't consider
		abortion, so they don't figure in this discussion.

[snip]

IG:
==>>		If you answer yes, then who should enforce those
==>>		rights?  How should we punish expectant mothers
==>>		who insist on smoking two packs a day, or drinking
==>>		herself to sleep every night?

==>Not at all. The results of her "excess" will take care of that....

		Are you saying society should regard a pre-born
		person as having the right not to have its host
		damage its development by behaving in a harmful
		manner -- but shouldn't enforce that right as it
		regularly enforces the rights of post-birth
		persons?

		Are you saying fetuses have rights -- but not the
		right to have those rights enforced by police guns and
		clubs if need be?

		Isn't that discrimination?  "Pre-birthism," or
		something?  How do you justify it?

IG:
==>>		(I know!  Let's force her to give birth to a damaged
==>>		or crippled kid.  That'll teach her!)

==>That unfortunately was the choice "she" made..... Who would you like
==>to blame for that?

		Well, if her choice was to abort a baby she was
		so disinclined to have that she didn't bother
		discontinuing activities harmful to it, and she was
		nevertheless forced to carry that fetus to term and
		birth a damaged child, you can bet your ass I'd
		blame the dictatorial motherfucker(s) who abrogated
		her rights to sovereignty over her own body, and I'd
		make the asshole(s) pay every cent of that damaged
		kid's care and treatment for the rest of its life.

IG:
==>>		We should do all in our power to improve life for
==>>		every person born, but that doesn't mean it's logical
==>>		or desirable to extend our concern to blobs of
==>>		tissue growing inside some people's bodies,
==>>		long before those blobs have entered, and thereby
==>>		begun to affect, the world.

==>That is an easy out of a situation one has managed to get themselves
==>into and merely wants an easy way out of their mistakes.....

		"Easy" or difficult has nothing whatsoever to do with
		it.

		The fact is it's absurd to think that a pre-birth,
		pre-conscious, partially developed proto-human
		has rights more worth protecting than the right
		of an existing human to do whatever the hell
		she likes with her own body and everything
		growing inside it.

		Some people do, indeed, value an unborn,
		undeveloped, unformed cellular mass above
		that of living breathing women.  But those people
		are really, really nuts, and I hope you're not one
		of them.

		Cheers.



--
Better an abortion clinic on every streetcorner
than the birth of one more unwanted child.
-Ivan Gowch