3738

Well either is true depending on who wins. Not voting is voting for the winner. You can’t be neutral on a moving train.

I see this as a lazy argument. You’re saying we should draw the line there because the line is clearest there. (I mean sex causes pregnancy, so maybe we should just outlaw sex altogether. No sex, no abortion. It’s a reductio ad absurdam.) It’s really the only non-religious argument you have, but it is problematic because it’s not consequence-free for the mother. What if she’s been raped? Do you make an exception then? If so, why should the fetus’s rights be different because of how they were conceived? What if the pregnancy will endanger the mother’s life? Whose life is more important? There is a whole morass of moral ambiguity opened up by choosing the so-called “clearest line.” Jurisprudence around abortion like, say, Roe v Wade, establishes a trimester system with increasing legal recognition of the fetus as it develops. I think that makes sense. Most pro-lifers do not.

3739

My cheek cell has the same DNA as the fertilized egg I grew from. You could extract that DNA from my check cell, implant it in an egg cell, and grow a new human from it. You don’t protest when I scratch the inside of my cheek. Why is the cheek cell less human?

3740

Not trying to argue - it just happens to intersect with stuff i’ve been thinking about lately - but i don’t think this is true.

To put it more philosophically, a “chariot” isn’t just a wheel and an axle and a seat and a yoke some horses, it’s the way they are organized that makes them a chariot. But, if i grab a handful of playground sand and declare “Here is my chariot!” because all stuff is stuff and stuff becomes one thing and ceases to be that thing and reverts back again, ect, then somewhere I’ve missed the point. The “state of Chariot” might exist in some Platonic sense out in the world of potentiality, but you don’t actually have a chariot until all the pieces are correctly put into position and the mechanism is actually doing its function.

Being, in other words, doesn’t exist until it has been actualized. Otherwise you end up with this Buddhist regress where everything is the same as everything.

3741

Thread cop alert: this foray into the ethics of abortion will likely take over this thread for the next week or so. How about creating a new thread about it instead?

3742

The cheek cell is not going to become a person without application of medical science. But, once it’s been implanted into the egg cell so that you “grow a new human” (your words!) at that point it becomes a different person.

A clone of you of course, but still a different person. Much like how identical twins are different people in spite of having the same (or nearly same) DNA.

3743

Don’t worry, I’m running off for a while! It’ll die down in the meantime.

3744

But at what point exactly does a tangent become a derail? First post? Third?

3745

When it reaches escape velocity, obviously.

3746

Seconded!

3747

Someone who is brain dead has human DNA, a human body, and even a beating heart. Yet legally they are considered dead and are sent to the morgue, possibly with an organ harvest en route.

What distinguishes a zygote from a brain dead patient?

3748

Um…are you sure about this? If their heart is beating on its own, they are alive. No physician is going to ship a guy with a beating heart to the morgue, brain dead or not.

3749

Thirded.

3750

Not true. In fact, if the heart stops beating, they are no longer a candidate for organ donation.

3751

Terry Schiavo flashbacks incoming

3752

Are there any “pro-life” male candidates that haven’t forced their mistress to get an abortion? The amount of research you’d have to do in order to never vote for a candidate that has ever wavered from their “pro-life” stance must be overwhelming. It seems to be mainly a position of convenience for a large number of politicians.

3753

Terry Schiavo had severe brain damage but was not brain dead. Anyone who can breathe on their own is not brain dead, by definition.

3754

I really don’t know what you’re talking about, and I have direct experience.

My mom died two years ago. But before we removed her life support, she was alive, but with no brain activity. Nobody was rushing us towards the morgue. Nobody ever suggested she was dead. They never even said “brain dead,” and instead talked about seeing no brain activity, but there were definitely both doctors and nurses who suggested it was not necessarily the end.

If we had wanted, we could have kept her “alive,” hooked to those machines that oxygenated and circulated her blood and kept her heart beating, forever.

She had a very clear end-of-life document, though, so we all knew that she would want us to end it.

But I think you’re wrong here.

3755

But only one of those is correct. Votes for a losing candidate are essentially nothing.

To me, the difference is the existence of a conscious mind capable of perceiving pain and experiencing suffering.

If you take an embryo, it lacks a functional Central nervous system. It has no neocortex, and is incapable of actually perceiving anything. It’s not self aware.

To me, that’s what separates a person from a non person. It’s also why i consider some animals to be “people” for the purposes of such an evaluation.

3756

Bravo!

3757

Brain death has a very precise definition, even though it’s frequently misused by the public. “No brain activity” is kind of vague, and could possibly refer to someone in a coma (i.e. unresponsive) or someone with no cortical activity (which is the “conscious” or “higher” part of the brain). Thus, I have no idea what your mother’s circumstances were.

However, when someone is declared brain dead, they are legally and irrevocably dead. A death certificate is signed and they can’t receive any more treatment, just like someone whose heart is no longer beating. In some cases the family is allowed a little bit of time to say goodbye, but then the deceased must be disconnected from life support. It doesn’t really matter if the family wants the deceased kept there - just like it wouldn’t matter if the family wanted someone to remain in their hospital bed even after their heart stopped.