South Dakota is introducing a bill that will ban abortion

[Ben Kenobi]

Seriously, saying "all life is sacred" does not preclude the death penalty - for example, one could hold that executing them could end up saving lives, and thus less violations of the sanctity of life.

Skywalker:

The better argument is to make the distinction between innocents. Sanctity of life would then become articulated that it is wrong to kill innocent living human persons.

Of course, I don't buy into this particular qualification, but I have other reasons for the approach that I take, reasons which do not pertain to the abortion debate.

[Ben Kenobi]

No other aspect of law conveys distinct rights or recognition to an unborn child until birth.

If the law did not convey the right to life, does this mean that the right to life does not exist? In short, must a law be articulated in order to be recognised by the courts? No.

Child support and estate law recognize the existence of a pregnancy as an issue affecting future rights once the child is born, and there's a recent push on fetal homicide statutes, but nothing with gives a fetus a distinct set of "rights" separate from that of the mother.

I'm not sure about property rights, and inheritance. I don't think these rights necessarily hinge with this issue. One must first be a person in order to exercise these rights, but the inverse is not always true, that because one is a person, that all of the rights applied to persons apply to you. One such example are voting rights. Why should property and inheritance be the different? Could one not say that they apply to birth, just like one can only vote at 18?

Roe doesn't hinge itself on a definition of when "life" or "human life" begins. The basis for Roe is the point at which the state can assert an interest in the fetus independently from that of the woman carrying it.

But they presuppose that the unborn child is not a person, in wording the case in this way. If the unborn child is a person, then she has rights independent of the mother.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
What's the difference between an embryo and an adult? These are just terms for different stages of human development.

An embryo doesn't have a brain.

Why play the game at all? Why not go for the real, and conclusive bright line of conception?

Because at conception, we'd still be assigning rights to a non-thinking entity. Why assign rights to one non-thinking entity (an embryo) but not another (a sperm cell) or another (a chicken embryo)?

Okay. So at what age do you set the line for sentience? It is useless to say that children are more developed at the end of pregnancy than at the beginning. For something to function as a true bright line, you must clarify your position.

I set the line for functional brain activity at the middle of the second trimester, when the fetus begins to exhibit functional brain activity.

Secondly, what is so special with brain function? Brain function changes drastically over time. As the child grows, their brain becomes more developed, so why are they not considered to become more of a person in adolescence than in infancy?

If an organism cannot think, then it cannot possibly be sentient, and it cannot possibly have a "self." That is what makes brain function so important -- if you assign rights to an organism without any brain activity, then you are assigning rights to a "person" who does not even exist. Furthermore, the person is considered to be "more of a person" in adolescence than in infancy -- infants do not have the right to vote, nor can they serve in the military, nor are they fully emancipated, but persons in late adolescence do have the right to vote and serve in the military, and they are fully emancipated. So, if a "person" is a "rights-bearing entity," then an adolescent is "more of a person" than an infant, and an infant is "more of a person" than an embryo. At the same time, a felon is "less of a person" than a non-felon, because the felon has fewer rights than the non-felon.

Excellent point. Why should we allow sentience to be the hurdle for personhood? Would that not cheapen personhood for adults to be seen as the same as their much less capable infants?

No legal system assigns the same rights to infants as to adults, except in rare cases when an infant is considered to be divine (e.g., if the infant is an emperor of some sort), and even then the infant is not the true wielder of power and is still not equivalent to an adult.

Or what about those darkies and Jews? Wouldn't it cheapen the meaning of personhood to extend the same right to them?

If "darkies and Jews" did not possess functional human brains, then yes. That being said, the strawman is not appreciated.

Right. One need not have 46 chromosomes to be a human person. However, one does need to have human dna capable of growth and development, as found in the zygote from the moment of conception onwards.

Why?

[Ben Kenobi]

Ah!

Waited to see if you would reply. Guess you weren't insomniac like I am.

An embryo doesn't have a brain.

Not in the beginning. However, the child will develop one rather quickly.

Because at conception, we'd still be assigning rights to a non-thinking entity. Why assign rights to one non-thinking entity (an embryo) but not another (a sperm cell) or another (a chicken embryo)?

Why assign rights to an infant that does not meet the test of sentience? Your criteria does not provide proper buffers on either side of the line, in protecting infants and all those you deem to be thinking/ sentient.

The difference between the two, the chicken embryo and the sperm cell, is that neither are a human being. A sperm cell, is merely another cell of the body, while the chicken embryo is just a chicken.

A zygote differs from both, in having the intrinsic capacity to grow and develop, as a human being from conception onwards.

I set the line for functional brain activity at the middle of the second trimester, when the fetus begins to exhibit functional brain activity.

What would you consider functional brain activity? Response to pain? I have reliable sources that say that this occurs much earlier in the pregnancy, around 12 weeks, at the beginning of the second trimester.

If an organism cannot think, then it cannot possibly be sentient, and it cannot possibly have a "self." That is what makes brain function so important -- if you assign rights to an organism without any brain activity, then you are assigning rights to a "person" who does not even exist.

One can easily raise all of these critiques and charges against an infant, that she does not have a 'self concept' or can be aware of their own surroundings, or does not even have a concept of what it means to be a person.

Rather, I believe that personhood is intrinsic in all human beings, and cannot be taken away, and does not require an individual to 'discover' this truth in himself, in order to be exercised. For how can a child defend themselves from powerful people? They cannot. So society must protect them from harm, in acknowledging their personhood, rather than throwing them in the dumpster.

Furthermore, the person is considered to be "more of a person" in adolescence than in infancy -- infants do not have the right to vote, nor can they serve in the military, nor are they fully emancipated, but persons in late adolescence do have the right to vote and serve in the military, and they are fully emancipated. So, if a "person" is a "rights-bearing entity," then an adolescent is "more of a person" than an infant, and an infant is "more of a person" than an embryo.

No, that is not true. One need not be able to vote, in order to be a person, otherwise, you would now be justifying killing children up to the age of 18, because they are not granted all the rights available to adults. Clearly, this is an absurd conclusion, so personhood must be something else than the current capacity of an individual.

This is why I argue for intrinsic capacity, in that the child will eventually develop and attain all the qualities we associate with adults, given time, food, shelter, and loving care. This is no different for an infant than for an embryo.

No legal system assigns the same rights to infants as to adults, except in rare cases when an infant is considered to be divine (e.g., if the infant is an emperor of some sort), and even then the infant is not the true wielder of power and is still not equivalent to an adult.

Again, why not infanticide? If we consider infants and children to be less than fully persons, why do we not kill them?

If "darkies and Jews" did not possess functional human brains, then yes. That being said, the strawman is not appreciated.

Same as your strawman, that to extend personhood, somehow cheapens personhood. Argues a zero-sum gain, and treats personhood as a currency to be bartered and sold.

How can we barter, what is not ours in the first place?

[Datajack Franit]

I think it's a good move but there are no exceptions for rape, malformations and mother's life at risk

Plus, in the US you can always go to another state and abort there

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Why assign rights to an infant that does not meet the test of sentience?

What is this "test of sentience"? I don't recall ever stating that there was any such definitive test.

Your criteria does not provide proper buffers on either side of the line, in protecting infants and all those you deem to be thinking/ sentient.

Again, thinking is a necessary condition for sentience, therefore an entity that does not think cannot be sentient. Seeing as how there is no set of sufficient conditions for determining sentience, we must use the necessary conditions as sufficient conditions until additional conditions can be qualified. You have implied that there is some sort of test that provides necessary and sufficient conditions for determining sentience, but you'll need to substantiate this implication.

The difference between the two, the chicken embryo and the sperm cell, is that neither are a human being. A sperm cell, is merely another cell of the body, while the chicken embryo is just a chicken.

A zygote differs from both, in having the intrinsic capacity to grow and develop, as a human being from conception onwards.

The ability to become a rights-bearing entity does not make one a rights-being entity.

What would you consider functional brain activity?

The same criteria employed in determining whether a patient is brain-dead, i.e., no electrical activity and/or no blood flow. Lack of a brain in, e.g., the zygote or embryo, would constitute non-functionality.

One can easily raise all of these critiques and charges against an infant, that she does not have a 'self concept' or can be aware of their own surroundings, or does not even have a concept of what it means to be a person.

Do you propose that there is a means of determining whether a thinking entity as a "self concept?" What tests accomplish this feat?

No, that is not true. One need not be able to vote, in order to be a person, otherwise, you would now be justifying killing children up to the age of 18, because they are not granted all the rights available to adults.

This is a strawman. An infant being denied the right to vote does not in and of itself justify the infant being denied the right to life.

Clearly, this is an absurd conclusion, so personhood must be something else than the current capacity of an individual.

This is an absurd conclusion merely because you are treating rights as an all-or-nothing affair, which they clearly are not (unless you propose to give infants the right to vote and serve in the military). If a person is a "rights-bearing entity," is the only satisfactory operationalization of the term "person," then an entity with more rights will be "more of a person" than an entity with fewer rights. However, if entity A is "less of a person" than entity B, then this does not presuppose that entity A has no rights.

This is why I argue for intrinsic capacity, in that the child will eventually develop and attain all the qualities we associate with adults, given time, food, shelter, and loving care. This is no different for an infant than for an embryo.

You don't assign infants the right to vote despite the fact that they may eventually reach the age of 18, so why do you assign embryos the right to life based on the fact that they may eventually become sentient?

Again, why not infanticide? If we consider infants and children to be less than fully persons, why do we not kill them?

This "fully persons" term is bogus. If a person is a "rights-bearing entity," then nobody (except perhaps some sort of god-emperor) is a "full person," because nobody has, e.g., the right to kill indiscriminately.

Same as your strawman, that to extend personhood, somehow cheapens personhood. Argues a zero-sum gain, and treats personhood as a currency to be bartered and sold.

The fundamental problem with using the whole-body definition of personhood is that it is by necessity inconsistent in its treatment of some classes of non-thinking human entities (e.g., zygotes and embryos) and other classes of non-thinking human entities. For example, imagine that you've undergone a radical surgical procedure to cure you of some terrible illness, whereby your brain has been separated from the rest of your body. Your brain is kept alive, is fed stimuli, and has a limited ability to interact with its environment (e.g., through a speech machine). Your body is also kept alive, and is hooked up to a simple machine that stimulates its muscles so as to prevent them from atrophying. Which entity, the brain-ben or the body-ben, is "you"? And why? If the answer is "neither," then were did you go? If the answer is "both," then do you mean that there are two Bens until the brain-ben and body-ben are reattached? When they are reattached, what happens to the second Ben? To be consistent in your treatment of an embryo and your treatment of body-ben (both of which are non-thinking human entities), then you would have to claim that Ben has somehow bifurcated, that there are now two persons where before there was only one. Which Ben has the soul? Or did your soul bifurcate as well? If, on the other hand, you simply reject the thought experiment, then please justify your doing so. There won't be any point in my trying to justify my stance further if you resort to arbitrarily rejecting my arguments.

[Elok]

I've been over this same ground before. Here's where it eventually leads:

A fetus/embryo is undeniably HUMAN; the test by most people's standards is whether it is a person at that point. But defining personality in terms of anything but humanity itself opens up a very big can of worms. Brain function? What kind of thoughts does a newborn baby have that are so important? Are the profoundly retarded "not persons?"

You can say that before it has a brain a fetus is just a lump of biological reactions, but by current scientific definition as I understand it, thinking is itself just a biological reaction. And thoughts aren't very meaningful as such until a long time after the child comes out of the womb. A newborn child has roughly the same level of cognitive function as a gerbil. An infant's "thought" isn't anywhere near sentience. It's still at the stage of action and reaction without thought proper. What is so distinct about "thinking" as a facet of biology if it doesn't accomplish anything more significant than any other facet of the child's biology?

What can be said is that an embryo and a sperm are two very different things. A sperm has twenty-three chromosomes, as opposed to forty-six. All of those genes originate from a single person, so there is nothing distinct about them. Until it fuses with an egg, it will never change shape in any way. The embryo, by contrast, is neither mother nor father, but a combination of both genetically, and will become an adult human in time. The question is, what's the significant difference between an embryo and a baby? Yes, it's just a clump of cells, but full-grown people are just really, really big clumps of cells. So what?

To forestall UR's inevitable response, I know that, if we "turn on" a certain biological switch, we can turn normal cells into developing humans. In the same vein, we can jerk off to make the body think it's having sex with a woman and try to fertilize empty air. That doesn't say anything about the meaning of human existence, or the emotional impact of sexual intercourse, to me.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Elok
A newborn child has roughly the same level of cognitive function as a gerbil. An infant's "thought" isn't anywhere near sentience. It's still at the stage of action and reaction without thought proper.

Do you have any evidence to support this claim? All evidence that I've ever seen on the matter suggests that infants reason much more effectively than many of us would assume. Hell, just run a google for "infant cognition" to get the gist of the results of scientific research on the matter.

What is so distinct about "thinking" as a facet of biology if it doesn't accomplish anything more significant than any other facet of the child's biology?

"Thinking" is what separates Man from the rest of the terran species. I'd say that makes it pretty damned important.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by loinburger
There won't be any point in my trying to justify my stance further if you resort to arbitrarily rejecting my arguments.

You'll find this discussion to be sans point, then.

[loinburger]

I just remember the time that some schmuck at SDMB said "Sorry, I don't do thought experiments, I don't like them," or something to that effect.

[Last Conformist]

... that the life of a human being begins when the ovum is fertilized by male sperm

Is it only me, or does the above line seem to suggest that women are not human? I mean, a "male" sperm presumably is one with an Y chromosome, and ova which develop into women are of course never fertilized by such.


I don't figure anyone will dispute that a zygote is human. What one can discuss is whether it's a human.

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
I don't figure anyone will dispute that a zygote is human. What one can discuss is whether it's a human.

My penis is human, but I don't expect him to get the vote any time soon...

[Last Conformist]

My point exactly.

And it's a good thing penes can't vote, or we'd have way to many dumb blondes as MPs ...

[Elok]

Er, have you ever been around a newborn? I first met my niece when she was ten days old and, though I loved her even then, it was pretty obvious there wasn't a lot going on upstairs. She certainly wasn't self-aware. At 2-3 months she was pretty sharp, but it took a while for her to develop a concept of "self." Any scientist who thinks a newborn could possibly be self-aware is smoking something.

And thought is not what separates us from animals. You ever hear of dolphins? How about chimps, or ravens?

[Imran Siddiqui]

it's a good thing penes can't vote

I thought men had the vote