Once again, no one is saying that they are not human.
Staw man.



Not arbitrary. An infant can digest its own food and breathe on its own. And it can be cared for by other humans instead of being physically attached to its source of nutrition and oxygen.



And again..no one is denying that a fetus is human.




NO ONE is denying that a fetus is human. You seem to be caught in some sort of feedback loop. A person is not a person because it's human. A person must have certain qualities as determined by each society. There is no absolute Source for morality which is ultimately what your argument is hinged on..



Sure. Involve the mods as if that is relevant to this discussion. It doesn't strengthen your position in the least.



No woman should be forced to continue a pregnancy.

/Thread.

I know, the thing is you guys are making excuses for why a human being can be arbitrarily destroyed. You don't seem to understand that point.

Not excuses. Just reasons. I do not believe that anyone should be forced to maintain a pregnancy against their will.

Same thing happens in war. Same thing happens in the justice system. Same thing happens in the course of law enforcement. All decisions involving the destruction of a human life are arbitrary when you boil it down. In each instance, the destroyer has their reasons and justifications. One big difference here, though, is we are talking about a human that isn't fully developed and which doesn't have the comprehension abilities. It gets a little squishier when you talk about late-term abortions. But early pregnancy abortions, the kind of life you are destroying is not in the same vein as a fully developed human being. Nature, itself, aborts pregnancies early on. Nature itself has dictated that not every pregnancy is guaranteed to come to fruition. We are a part of Nature. Abortion, natural and man-made is just a phenomenon of human society that isn't going to go away. It is better to allow for these to happen with safety and regulations than to happen in unsafe ways that will guarantee even more death.

OK, I can understand that. I don't want to do that either.

It is possible to avoid unwanted pregnancy without resorting to infanticide. There are extenuating circumstances, of course. But many people today look at abortion as a form of birth control, instead of being responsible with their activities. It's part of the consumerism/instant gratification culture that is ruining our society. I just want to encourage people to consider that.

Abortion is not a natural phenomena.

If people would just let nature take it's course in pregnancy we would be better off.

There is always adoption if the child is unwanted. There is no reason to destroy them.

I see what you're saying; and yet human life is no more "sanctified" than any other life form. People will make mistakes, and most do not want accountability for those mistakes. Abortions simply cannot be avoided, and nor should they. As a society, (the US) we cannot care for another million unwanted children. There are too many people suffering in this world..why cause more suffering?

Look into the US adoption system. Then get back to me..

They can, and they should.



Hey, we could just kill everyone and solve the suffering problem for once and for all. You should be asking that question to the people who don't regulate their own behavior in any way. That's who really causes the suffering.


What is it you think I will find?

I don't think thats fair.

People are using 'aribtary' right now as if it were synomous with I 'disagree'.

Arbitaryness is when the only consideration taken into account is a persons personal opinion on the matter.


Yes and I admited this. I appear to be the only person here not presenting there stand point as complete. I know it has problems.

Frankly the near enough complete moral certainty on the matter everyone else is parading is rather worrying.

I also said that for the time being I thought this could be side stepped to look at the more fundamental issue of personhood, becuase each of these states whilst being in the tradiational sense 'unconscious' is a reversible one (coma's a little more complex as comas are not a one size fits all affair, I'll come out and say it right now that I think upon brain death a human ceases to be a person.).

If you really want to run with it, I do have more to say on the matter, its just at this time mostly conjecture. I don't have the resources to test anything so its just ideas that im trying to keep plausible and fallible.

I just wanted to get to the heart of what personhood was about. They key thesis of which i've allready stated.

Namely a person, is a conscious being.

And this is because a conscious being is capable of meta-cognitive functions, such as sympathy, empathy and other normative valuations.

Again i'll point out another problem here to illustrate how my point is not arbitary (in part because im trying to keep it plausible in nature of being fallible). Namely the existence of phycopaths, people apprently incapable of emotion and apprenlty empathy.

How you'd want to view them morally and by extension the status of their personhood. Is a bit of a problem.

Now correct me if im wrong, but your saying that personhood (and thus membership of the moral community) is predicated on having a unique human genome.

That just seems to reduce personhood to humanhood and make the whole thing rather circular.

I mean yeah your right, its a fact that most humans (other than twins which raises the question of the moral status of people with the same genome, which does happen and also raises future transhumanistic moral questions about cloning and such) have an individual genome.

But what makes it a moral fact?

Your just moving straight from an is to an ought here.


ok...

Could you answer my question.

Is the moral community larger than the human species?

No, that's not what I said at all. I said the concept of "personhood" is a subjective quality and thus not adequate for the task at hand.

Some conscious entities are not capable of those functions, such as a person with a sociopathic personality disorder. They are still people. So such a distinction is thus a capricious and unreasonable distinction.

If by moral community you mean people who are moral I would say it is considerably smaller.

On the other hand, if you mean what entities fall within the purview of morality it is considerably larger. Everything in fact. If there were an intelligent species of aliens their unborn offspring should not be destroyed either, for example.

And some people, because of strokes, for example, are not necessarily "capable of meta-cognitive functions, such as sympathy, empathy and other normative valuations." Are they any less human?

No, we certainly would not. If we let pregnancy take its natural course thousands of women would die.



If a child is unwanted, yes.

There's no way of putting up a pregnancy for adoption.

Tell that to the unadopted teenagers in our country. Yeah, it would be just awesome to have more kids who nobody wants to love.

No, but they are fully developed human adults. A fetus is not.