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Originally Posted by parable
you said "...men and women are parasites on other people...That doesn't stop them from being human."
No one is asserting that fetuses are not living or not human.
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That's rather surprising. Normally in a conversation about whether a fetus should or shouldn't be aborted comes down to whether the fetus is alive. The question of whether an alive person does or doesn't have rights is so obvious that it's not even brought up. It's naturally assumed.
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Originally Posted by parable
The question is about them being persons with legal rights.
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There are two classifications for living human being as far as levels of rights: adult (usually 18+) or child (usually less than 18). Assuming you believe a fetus is alive, it is a living human being under the age of 18, therefore it seems reasonable to be that a fetus gets the same rights as any other child. They can't vote, but you can't kill them.
IMHO.
(btw, to DC, all the above is IMHO. I hope that you know the above is what makes perfect sense, to me).
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Originally Posted by parable
In this age of genetic engineering, a chimera might contain mostly human DNA, blended with some other species, but will it be a person? Is the DNA complement the issue? Is so, how is the humanness of that DNA determined so the person-ness can be ascribed?
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Monkeys share most DNA with humans, but that doesn't make them human in any way. They have animal right because they aren't of the species homo sapiens.
Scientists at the University of Rochester recently discovered a copy of the genome of a bacterial parasite residing inside the genome of its host species. That doesn't mean they're the same species, though.
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Originally Posted by parable
As for the issue of having "birth" be the issue, as the law seems to dictate, what exactly does it mean to be "born" and is this really the issue that should determine if a fetus changes into a person at that point?
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Birth is the passing of the fetus through the vaginal cavity or through an incision, alive. The fetus turns into an infant. They are a living member of our species before and after that process (unless something goes wrong).