Originally posted by rah
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The only time that killing a person is not murder is if it is done by the state in war or as punishment (and people argue about that).
The only sane and reasonable discussion is if the child in the womb is a person or not. I think it is obvious that once there is brainwaves, a heart, and all the other things that humans have (just not independent breath, and there could be indepdent breath if it was brought outside of the womb) then it is a person.
This is based off of the scientific materialistic argument, if the physicalities exist then existence.
Some fringe people like Che will say that humanity depends on social, not purely material, existence. Religious people (a good deal less fringe) say that it depends on the existence of a soul (a spiritual dependence). Neither of these are the commonly held position of scientific materialism.
The fact that we are do not follow the precepts of scientific materialism here is due to some sort of common insanity/psychopathy/irrationality.
JM
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