[flagged]
I would agree that at conception we have a human life. But, not that we have a human person. There are no thoughts, emotions, memories, hopes, dreams. There is a very strong potential for a person. But, at conception what makes a person is not there yet.
At some point in time between the human existing a single living cell and the human voting in elections and joining the military, a person develops. But, it’s not a definite transition point in time. It’s a gradient.
Unfortunately, for practical reasons, the law must pick a definite point in time. The consensus seems to be “around the time that the fetus can be kept alive and continue developing independent from the mother using current technology.” A practical choice, for sure.
One might argue that the official transition point should be a bit earlier. But, that’s not the core of the disagreement.
The core seems to be that some living people do not appear to take into consideration the difference between being alive vs. being a person.
While there's legal consensus based on practicality, that doesn't mean people agree with it. Until a properly formal and objective ethical answer can be found, this disagreement will remain.
One could argue that a human body with a mostly-functional brain that will never again be conscious is human but not a person. And, simultaneously argue that a few million human stem cells, none of which are neurons yet, is a personified human. But, that would be a clearly inconsistent stance.
And, I’d argue that consensus literally means that a significant population agrees.
Formally and objectively it could be argued that even shortly post-birth, barely-conscious infants lack the required characteristics of an individual person. But, obviously it would require an unacceptable degree of callousness to terminate an infant. Certainly not a practice we agree should be encoded into law in this modern era.
In general, I find the pro-choice consensus to be reasonably conservative regarding the rights of an embryo vs. the rights of a fully-realized mid-life person. Strongly weighted towards the mother before 24 weeks and strongly weighted towards the embryo afterwards. But, if it comes down to the life of the fully-realized person vs. the life of the potential person, the choice goes to the mother. Or, if the potential is clearly a life of suffering and early death, the ethical choice is to reduce suffering via difficult actions.
Generally, I find that the pro-life arguments are largely based on a lack of consideration. I.e. “Life begins at the instant of insemination.” with literally zero further consideration. Or, on knowingly false propaganda: “Evil baby-killers are celebrating killing babies minutes before birth.”
To my knowledge, neither of those stances were in the mainstream before American politicians accepted that the Civil Rights Movement was not going away.
Before that, The Church saw its role in the abortion issue as charitably offering grief counseling to women who had experienced that difficult choice. After the political situation changed, the role of The Church changed to the demonization of unfortunate women for the purpose of manufacturing single-issue voters for the benefit of specific politicians.
Holding the "a permanently comatose human is not a person" and a "a fetus could be a person" aren't incompatible. The first statement presumes a definitive state to body where as the second statement holds a potential.
A significant portion of the population might agree, but it isn't all. If it isn't all, there's disagreement. It bears reminding, witch hunting was consensus at some point. I think this serves as a sufficient counterproof for majority consensus as a source of objective truth.
I'd like to press on this unnaceptable callousness: if it's objectively proven that newborns lack sufficient potential for personhood, why would there be an issue with post-birth abortion? It's not like the "conservative" approach here is victimless, the guardians of the newborn will have to bear a responsabily they have no duty to, infringing on their right to live. And infringing on this right is as unacceptable as it can get. Of course, this is presume an extreme pro-choice position is true, which I personally find unlikely.
In the end, I find that the majority of pro-choicers (not saying this includes you) aren't much better than religious pro-lifers. Most of the time, there isn't a deeper consideration beyond "my body, my rules" or "the law says humans with at least X age are people". Sometimes, it's even "evil misogynists want to enslave woman into baby factories." At least, the religious pro-lifers are transparent about being about their creed. These pro-choicers stiffle discussion under the pretense of legal consensus, which makes discussion harder.
But, because question of abortion, as you have stated before, is directly related to when personhood emerges, it's also related to the origin of personhood and, going further, human rights themselves. As such, I think there's less consensus on this topic, most just haven't given the proper consideration - we can kind of see it already: not every pro-lifer is against abortion in cases of rape/possibility of mother's death, and some pro-choicers are very strict: a fetus only becomes a person after being born.
Hey! Thanks for the fun, good-faith argument! Such a rarity these days that most folks seem unaware are that arguments even can be collaborative.
Thanks for this one.
Generally brain waves start showing up around mid-to-late second trimester so I think one could reasonably argue somewhere in there.
> There is no clear discrete point, other than insemination where it is not murder vs murder.
Will you actually address this point?