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Originally Posted by JinnKai
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.
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I don't fully understand why someone with the unexercised capability to do a and b has less worth than someone who has previously done a and b but is not now doing them. It certainly strikes me as counterintuitive to value a permanently vegitative adult more than a healthy infant with the potential to do future good. Why should the past history and non-existent potential of the disabled adult trump the non-existent past and rich future of the newborn? In my mind, this is a similar situation to deciding whether to give treatment to a terminally ill citizen with a distinguished record or a newborn infant: you just seem to get more bang for your buck with the infant.
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Originally Posted by JinnKai
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.
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Here is the fundamental problem your framework seems to present: both fetuses and newborn infants have a total lack of history of a and b and would therefore belong to the same moral level. However, I think we can conclude that killing an infant for reasons other than saving the life of an adult is wrong. But if we are willing to make this claim, how is it possible to continue defending abortion on demand?
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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
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