Thread: Abortion Ethics

Originally Posted by gwahir

Well, the life of an individual being certainly starts at conception, but of course the conceived foetus is at that point no more alive than a tree.

Does it begin at conception? At conception, two gametes are swapping DNA and forming into a zygote. Is that the beginning of an individual life? This is a rhetorical question, really. In my view, to call something "life" when one means "alive like a tree/skin cell/bacterium" is a little misleading.

Originally Posted by gwahir

(Also, once again, you are merely claiming that murder is the most vile act we can commit against one another; I completely disagree.)

(Fine, ignore that part of my post. Murder isn't good and is to be avoided. That's the social contract. I happen to think it makes very good sense. Are there more vile things? Who knows - you're welcome to your opinion, but it's not really the point of what I was saying. Forgive me for using the phrase "most vile"!)

Originally Posted by gwahir

The only point that is satisfactory, to me, is personhood. Personhood -- as opposed to being-a-human -- makes a being's life valuable, and the potential for personhood is why the killing of foetuses and babies is unideal (but not impermissible).

So you think it's "unideal but not impermissible" to kill any child under the age of three? Supposedly that's around the age we start to become self-aware, which is the closest thing to "personhood" I can imagine. I realize I'm just playing Devil's advocate here, and it's hard to put much heart into it because it's not that important to me, but I just don't see how this argument for the pro-choice camp works. When is someone a person?

Originally Posted by solecistic

Does it begin at conception? At conception, two gametes are swapping DNA and forming into a zygote. Is that the beginning of an individual life? This is a rhetorical question, really. In my view, to call something "life" when one means "alive like a tree/skin cell/bacterium" is a little misleading.

Well, perhaps, but there doesn't seem to be another one that holds up to any scrutiny. Heartbeat is arbitrary, brain activity is speciesist.

Originally Posted by solecistic

(Fine, ignore that part of my post. Murder isn't good and is to be avoided. That's the social contract. I happen to think it makes very good sense. Are there more vile things? Who knows - you're welcome to your opinion, but it's not really the point of what I was saying. Forgive me for using the phrase "most vile"!)

Hah, I'm actually not nitpicking. I think murder has no impact on the person you're murdering.

Radical, no? But a subject for another thread.

Originally Posted by solecistic

So you think it's "unideal but not impermissible" to kill any child under the age of three? Supposedly that's around the age we start to become self-aware, which is the closest thing to "personhood" I can imagine. I realize I'm just playing Devil's advocate here, and it's hard to put much heart into it because it's not that important to me, but I just don't see how this argument for the pro-choice camp works. When is someone a person?

Someone's probably a person at about three. When they have an idea of who they are, who other people are and some kind of conception of time (so that they are able to have preferences -- the ability to have preferences, I think, makes you a person). Killing a child of under three -- assuming it was instantaneous and painless -- doesn't hurt the child, but the people who are attached to it. It is an incredibly vile thing because of the inconceivable pain it'd cause those people, not because it is ending the life of a being who, after the act, would not be around to suffer for it afterwards.