I'm sorry for being a bastard and walking away from this thread. I forgot to subscribe to it, and didn't see your reply until now. 
You both raise the same (very good) points ..
reductio absurdum indeed.
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To that end, consider which ones of the following can do neither a nor b:
-a newborn infant
-an adult in a persistent vegetative state
-an adult who is sleeping
Which, if any, of these three categories of people lack both a and b?
Which, if any, lack the moral status of a human being?
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What IS the difference between a human adult who is sleeping and a fetus?
This question inspired a great deal of thought, and while I believed it implicit in the definition, I will explicitly specify a concept of "history."
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I define a morally significant human being as someone who can (a) make an autonomous decision, (b) communicate that decision, and (c) has a history of such actions.
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This provides a structure for the differention between a sleeping human adult and a human fetus or young infant. Until such time as the organism has DONE a and b, I will consider it similarly to an organism who CANNOT do a or b. You'll note that this once again includes cases such as "an adult in a persistent vegetative state" as being a morally significant human.
It also does not include young human infants (those unable to make and articulate the autonomous decision) as being morally significant. At first, this may appear to be brash - it would seem to advocate the killing of human infants without any necessary moral consideration. Alas, it does not.
By refusing to include them as morally significant HUMANS, I only specify that they should not recieve the same moral consideration as a human being under a, b, and c. Any decision regarding the life or death of such an organism would be dependent on your definition of the lower levels of moral significance. My personal belief is that there are lower declarations of moral significance such as those for animals. Human fetuses and young adults belong to a level between those of animals and those of morally significant human beings. A primary example of using these levels for moral judgement is that in a case where a morally significant human being competes with a being from a lower level for life, the morally significant human should be perserved at the cost of the lower level organism. This provides for the case where an abortion is necessary for the survival of the host parent. Similarly, it allows us to believe that killing an animal to persist a human being is moral.
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Would you say that a person hooked up to a respirator has less moral worth than someone who is not? Does a man who lives in an iron lung but continues to work from home have less moral worth than a perfectly healthy and independent deadbeat who contributes nothing to society?
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If you do indeed recognize my definition of a morally significant human above as being valid, then we have a construct to work from. Having established that those not explicitly included in the definition are not morally significant, we can specify that all persons above are morally significant. But where does that get us? By my definition, it only specifies what LEVEL of consideration is necessary. We should avoid the death of this organism at all costs, etc. However, within this level there certainly exists a stratification between highly significant and less significant organisms. I'd obviously not claim that a deadbeat contributing nothing to society is equal in significance to one actively contributing. For this, I provided the clause above:
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...contributes to human society in a symbiotic (rather than parasitic) manner. This is not to say that he is worthless -- only that on the scale of moral judgement, a living-breathing- "I can interact with" human deserves far more consideration than a shell of a being hooked to machines and artificial life preservation devices.
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In your hypothetical cases, someone who is hooked to an iron lug but continues to work from home is providing for society in a symbiotic manner. The lung persists his life, and his work persists society. Someone operating exclusively from welfare and not providing any economic or societal benefit would be operating in a much more parasitic manner. Therefore, while both being morally signifant humans in definition, the "deadbeat" belongs to a much lower class of human. He or she still deserves the consideration being a member of humanity, but not nearly the same as a providing member of humanity.