Not life...viability.
So, according to your definition, would an unborn child at 26 months of development be considered a human life in America where sufficient medical technology is available to allow him or her to survive but not so much a human life in a third world country where such technology is not available?
A human life? Yes. Viable outside the womb? No.
Would your legal definition of human life have to change every time younger and younger preemies survived outside of the womb?
Not the legal definition of "human life", but rather the legal definition of "viability", which gives "personhood" to that human life, along with all the associated legal rights.
Viability = Personhood = Rights
Non-viability = Not a person = No rights
Unless of course you believe humans have souls. I do not subscribe to that belief. It has no scientific basis and is nothing more than magical thinking.
“Unless of course you believe humans have souls. I do not subscribe to that belief. It has no scientific basis and is nothing more than magical thinking.”
There are four peer reviewed, controlled, scientific long term hospital studies of near death experiences in print, including the pioneer study printed in the British Medical Journal “The Lancet”, in 2001. All four of them have produced statistically similar results.
Those results are that about 20% of people experience a largely similar series of events at the time of clinical death, including departing their body, moving towards a light, encountering a being, having a life review, being told it is not yet their time, and going back.
This is four-times duplicated and verified (there are more studies being performed) scientific evidence which supports the idea of a detachable soul. The concept of a detachable soul is not proven, but it is not mere “magical thinking” there is controlled, peer reviewed science that is evidence in its favor. There is no published study which has contradicted these four controlled hospital studies. The evidence is there. Go look it up for yourself. Start with the first study, published in the Lancet. The others you have to pay medical publications to get, but you can review the abstracts if you wish. Or you could take my word for it, as I am not making it up.
There IS scientific evidence for a detachable soul.
Non-viability = Not a person = No rights
Unless of course you believe humans have souls. I do not subscribe to that belief. It has no scientific basis and is nothing more than magical thinking]
By your convoluted logic, only humans within certain parameters have “rights”. Even a right to life. So I’m assuming that you’re definition of “viability” includes people with severe physical and/or mental disabilities? If that is true, basically you are saying that the disabled aren't really “persons” and therefore; do not have “rights”. Who decides the big question of viability? What exactly does that mean? Does a cancer patient that cannot walk cease to have “viability”?
Throughout history, personhood, rights, etc., has varied upon whom you ask, but civilized societies seem to have achieved some consensus on the issue, which you obviously choose to ignore.