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Originally Posted by pig
fta: agreed. so it's a question of what your default position is, I think. The possible potential of the fetus to become a person, or the possible potential of the woman to live her life without going through the physical and emotional turmoil of pregnancy. Since science can't prove one way or the other about the 'humanity' of the fetus,
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Only because neither language formation nor values formation are in the domain of science. If some crazies redefined 'humanity' as "white upper-class landowners with at least one slave", science would have NOTHING to say to them. Nothing.
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I fall back on respecting the wishes of the "clump of cells" that I can talk to. You and others fall back on the potential wishes of the fetus.
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That's not quite right, though. I fall back on the wishes of both clumps of cells. And when those two clumps of cells have irreconcilable differences, say "that's nine months of my life I'll never get back" versus "that's my life I'll never get back", I make the obvious choice.
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But I default to "the facts are inconclusive, so I go with what I absolutely do know." And that, for me, tends to favor the woman who would be carrying the child.
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But the facts are not inconclusive. We know all we need to know about the z/e/f. We just come up with different interpretations of those facts. We both go with what we
don't absolutely know. If what you're doing is searching for a way to make your position objectively better, I really don't think you're going to find it.
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Re: the question of 'souls' or however you like to put it, that seems to me to be the crux of the question...how do you define a person vs. an automated lump of meat?
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You were the one to bring up souls. And I answered this already. In a word: the blueprint.
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We're talking about the potential for humanity, I think, and whether that potential is seen on a seizmograph or postulated from mathematical models, it doesn't matter to me if you're talking about semen on a bedsheet or a fetus at 6 months...potential to be a fully-realized human doesn't equate to being a human in my eyes. At least not scientifically, although I think it's highly suggestive.
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Again, there's nothing scientific in this disagreement.
The potentiality is hardwired into the organism. It proceeds naturally if not interrupted. It's a physical, real part of the make-up. It's not some wishy-washy "I have the potential to be president", it's concrete and observable.
It's not potential in the way the word is usually used. It's actually a characteristic.
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Originally Posted by filtherton
Well, if you're talking about murder as a legal construct, then no, it is definitely not murder.
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Certainly. No, I'm not talking about the legal construct.
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On the other hand, if what you mean by murder is that someone or thing has killed someone or thing else in a way you find displeasing, well, then fur is murder too.
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Get ready for Mr. Godwin... so the Holocaust was only a mass number of displeasing events? That's all it was, morally? (Hey, at least I didn't do the abortion=holocaust comparison!)
Are you forgetting the other meaning of murder, or dismissing it?