Posted on 08/06/2005 9:39:34 PM PDT by beavus
A cluster of cells isn't a human. Example: an amputated finger.
A finger by itself has no conscience, no mind, no rights. It's cluster of human cells, but a not a person.
You know that is a silly arguement. I am not a 20 or 30 year old, I've had many years to 'think about this'.
Where do you think you came from and when did you 'begin'??
I am not sure what you are wanting to say with this question, but I find the question to be philosophically rich from many points of view.
A religious question? But beavus it is undeniable that a human zygote and all pre-birth stages are human. They cannot be anything else. They do not develop into anything else besides the later human stages we normally "identify" with.
Here's one answer from my LifeEthics.org blog:
Anyone with a high school biology course should understand that the embryo is not some construct that can be separated from the later, adult being. The embryo is what that being (in this case human -- or why not use apes or mice in the first place?) is the exact being who would/will be born, get a birth certificate, walk, talk, maybe learn to read and earn a Ph.D. in philosophy if he's so lucky. (We'll talk about why apes but not human beings, later -- but look at my tag line for one reason.)
However, the level of functioning isn't necessary for membership in the species, either. Otherwise, (with the right reasoning such as national security, happiness, wealth or health), we'd be justified in discriminating against those who can read and those who can't, those who can bear children and those who can't, or even based on ancestry, religion or the amount of pigment in the skin.
http://www.LifeEthics.org
But is science able to make a measurement of rights? Surely nucleic acids don't possess rights. An interesting thought experiment would be to consider a trip to an alien world. How could you examine a thing to determine if it had rights? Science fiction commonly poses that hypothetical regarding artificial intelligence.
So, what are rights, and how do we know if a thing has them? Although biology may result in the manifestation of those properies that define rights, it is not biology, but rights that we care most about.
I believe the intellectual debater's term for your last post would be "cop-out".
What exactly do you believe and when do you think YOU became YOU???
(The argument that exposure to air and light changes a fetus to a human seems even less convincing.)
If someone believes a fetus is ever alive, I don't see why they wouldn't go back all the way to conception. A sperm and an egg may fit some requirements for life, but neither one grows up to be a person.
That is just the begining of the story of that unique human. The moment the cells make their first division they become subjected to environmental factors. If you don't what that means, just read the warning label on your next can of beer.
A sperm is alive as well. Why does it have fewer rights than a conceptus?
And, although there is clearly a time when sperm is integrated with egg, there is no meaningful beginning time in the continuum of the process of conception. That is not an argument against a conceptus having rights, only a recognition that there is no meaningful beginning.
How can you tell a conceptus has rights? How can you tell anything has rights?
I would say I "began" as a self-aware, conscious person around the age of 3.
Before that I think I would say my brain was not yet developed enough to support a mind.
Most Freepers would say someone has rights merely because they exist, so we're not going to get anywhere with this.
And, although there is clearly a time when sperm is integrated with egg, there is no meaningful beginning time in the continuum of the process of conception. That is not an argument against a conceptus having rights, only a recognition that there is no meaningful beginning.
There is a moment before which the egg is not fertilized and after which it is. That's where you draw the line.
A sperm is alive as well. Why does it have fewer rights than a conceptus?
Because a sperm is not alive. It can't reproduce with other sperm, it doesn't take in nourishment and it doesn't grow.
So, chromosomes have rights? If you were to see a printout of the nucleic acid makeup of a dog cell and a human cell, could you say, "There are rights!" or "No rights here!"
Surely 'rights' was a valid concept long before anyone knew anything about chromosomes, or even cells.
It has not happened yet, but the day is coming when an in vitro fertilization will be followed by "in vitro" gestation to full viability. The artificial environment will be a lot more complicated than a test tube, but I think that most of the function will be automated, so it will not require a lot in the way of attention.
I believe that the product of this process will be as fully human as you or I. And once it happens, even a single time, the argument about viability is totally and permanently destroyed, as it deserves to be.
It seems obvious to me that both an egg and sperm have rights of privacy and when they combine those rights double. Then they have twice the right to be left alone.
Coward, lol!! Don't you want to be called 'dumb' and 'you can't think' and nice things like that??
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