Skin cells are living human cells (they are human life). They have a full compliment of genes and it is theoretically possible for them to become a human being.
That's a whole 'nother ethical argument. But this particular argument isn't about what may or may not be theoretically possible. A skin cell, in it's natural state, will never be anything other than a skin cell.
What they lack is cognitive function. No self awareness. No ability to suffer. No hopes and dreams. No memories.
And they don't even have the potential to develop that if left to a natural developmental cycle. Skin cells don't have hearts and brains and fingers and lungs. Fetuses do have those things and will develop into a full adult.
No we cannot. This is factually incorrect.
Huh?
A skin cell is a skin cell that will always be a skin cell. It will never be a complete human being. A fetus is a complete human being in an early stage of development. Sperm and Ovum are closer to a fetus than a skin cell, but they are still not complete human beings. Those are plain scientific facts. I'm genuinely confused as to how you feel I might be factually incorrect.
Again, this is factually incorrect.
You cannot point to a pile of parts and say that is a car. A car has the form and function of a car.
A car is not a human being. It does not develop the way we do. Cars never have rights.
Prior to viability the fetus doesn't even have all of its parts. You are pointing to wheels and a transmission and declaring that it is a car.
A fetus has all it's parts around the end of the third month. They just aren't fully grown. By that logic, a newborn doesn't have all it's parts either.
If there was a compelling interest to address whether or not a newborn met the criteria for person hood then we could have that discussion.
We currently do not allow people to kill their newborns. It's considered murder. If newborns are not complete human beings yet, by your own "parts" analogy, then being a complete human being is not a current definition of when it's acceptable to kill someone.
A person (for lack of a better term) in a persistent vegetative state does not have the legal rights that other humans have.
That's another issue that is murky at best and should be left for another thread.
Again, if there were a compelling need to address the person hood argument as it relates to newborns we could have that discussion. We may very well have the discussion as it relates to others. That's another discussion.
...that is intimately related to this one. It also serves to illustrate the flaws in any definition based on having a complete set of "parts." A newborn doesn't have significantly more "parts" than it did the day before birth. In fact, all the parts were present from much earlier in the pregnancy. If it's an issue of having all the parts, fetuses have them.
It's not a basis to declare that a mass of tissue that is incapable of self awareness, an appreciation of suffering, no memories or hope for the future, should be considered a person or a human being.
So by that definition, you don't consider a baby under 6 months a human being? They don't have memories, hope for the future or self-awareness.
Like skin cells, sperm and ovum, the fetus does not have what we have come to think of as a human being.
Exactly, and neither does a newborn. Yet we protect newborns.
Now, that doesn't mean that every human being that doesn't meet the criteria should be or can be legally euthanized. Ethics and law are complex.
That is also my argument. My solution to the complexity is to allow local communities (States, Counties, Cities) to draw those lines where they feel comfortable with them.
As a society we believe that a woman has a fundamental right to an abortion because her life matters to us.
That is not a universal belief. And that does not mean that we all think the fetus' life is worth nothing. As you indicated, it's a complex balance between the woman's rights and the unborn's rights. The argument is over where the fulcrum is.
She can think and feel. She does have memories, hopes and desires, she can suffer. It's this combination of facts that make the delineation of viability and self-awareness so important.
Important to you. I value all humans the same, even if they don't all have the same capacity to form memories, hopes, desires or experience suffering.
Again, this is factually incorrect. Evolutionary biologists reject this as arbitrary and special pleading.
Any evolutionary biologist would admit that a zygote is the earliest stage at which a mammal could be considered to be a complete individual. Immediately before that, the mammal did not exist.
The cessation of a fertilized egg prior to implantation isn't even called abortion. 50% of all fertilized eggs will be lost due to failure to implant.
Yes. That part is true. And if a woman had certain kinds of BC, implantation would be near impossible. There's no problem with this, for me.
This is all fairly reasonable. So let's stop with defending people's feelings about microscopic tissue that cannot think, hear, feel, touch, be self aware or worry about its future.
But that's what the argument is all about. You see microscopic tissue, they see a human being. You are not any more objectively right than they are.
Let's stop with this "philosophical" argument about when life begins. There is no clear delineation. Ever. Conception does not magically/fundamentally make two cells special.
OK. So when does it become special? You must understand that some line is crossed at some point where we decide to give a human being protection.
They are no more a human being a millisecond before conception than they are a millisecond after. You are simply choosing an arbitrary line that you think fits some magical criteria. It doesn't.
By your arguments, there is really nothing special about a human being at all. We are all just lumps of cells and fluids. There is never a magical moment when the Blue Fairy makes us into real boys and girls. Why can't we just freely kill each other since there really isn't any intrinsic magical value? Because that isn't the actual philosophy we live by. There is a line, as arbitrary as it is, that we philosophically draw at which point we value a human life. You have one personally, even if you won't share it here. Most people have a line close to 1st trimester or maybe a little past it. Very few people have a line in the 3rd trimester.
When a woman's quality of life and health is at risk then her wishes trump that of the fetus and other people have no right to interject their pet philosophical valuations into that.
What makes the woman so special? What makes a newborn special? They are both just aggregations of cells. What actually makes them different is that we all agree to a philosophical construct of the value of human life. If different communities have different constructs, that should be up to them to set.
