You are right, the guy in a coma had a will, he had emotions and he has social bonds, friends, familly, etc that still think and care about him. That's a lot more than a 12 weeks old fetus which doesn't and never had anything like that.
Yet no hospital will “pull the plug” on a John Doe who is in a coma - whose will and emotions are undetermined with no known social bonds.
They’d send him to a long-term care facility and their lawyer would arrange to have a legal custodian appointed to him.
Even if they decide that continued care is not feasible - they wouldn’t make that decision based on their own personal feelings - and they wouldn’t suck his brain out of his head or rip him limb from limb with forceps.
They would simply stop providing life-sustaining care and wait for him to expire naturally.
They would not actively kill this individual - like they do with the unborn - but leave him to his natural processes.
If you were to leave an embryo to its natural processes - it would develop and grow into a fully formed baby.
Abortion runs contrary to everything doctors do professionally - saving lives - doing no harm.
We tend to respect the bodies of the dead more than those of the not-yet-born.
It is true that a grown man has more and is more developed than a 12-week old fetus - but he also has more and is more developed than a newborn.
If you want to use the whole “a fetus is less valuable than a grown man” argument - to justify killing the fetus - then you should be able to consistently apply it to a newborn as well.
That is why I do not believe that any human being is less valuable than another and their worth should never be considered in regards to whether or not they should be killed.
A man in a temporary coma is just like a man sleeping. I already answered that question, but will do so again, no because a lapse in consciousness doesn't eliminate or cancels someone's will. An embryo having no will cannot make the same claim.
The point is that the
will of the man in the coma - whether it is known or not - is irrelevant if we
know he will wake.
Even if the man in the coma had a living will that stated, “Suspend all life-saving care in the event of coma” - no one would consider it if they
knew he would wake.
We all
know - generally speaking - that the unborn child is going to wake. Whether or not it has will is irrelevant.
We should not destroy any human for being in a temporary lapse of consciousness.
It's also important to note that the man in a coma doesn't actively harm anybody while an embryo can.
Are you talking about the extreme minority of “abortion” cases where the mother’s life was in danger as a result of the pregnancy?
Are you going to use this outlier to justify the vast majority of “elective abortions” decided based on the inconvenience of the not-yet-born’s existence?
Sexual development is a bit more complex than that and so does DNA interraction. Please refer to the field of epigenetics.
No - it is very simple. XX chromosomes make a female and XY a male.
Many traits are decided at the moment of conception - like eye color, hair color and sex.
The single-celled embryo is the original copy of a new and unique human being’s complete genetic code.
No, they aren't decided at conception since children can be abandonned or die at birth (or even prior to death in case of sibblings and fathers). A sire isn't a parent and sire isn't a social bond, it's a genetical fact, a bond would imply an emotional connection and reciprocal rapport. Parenthood is more than just producing a child, it's taking care of it, raising it, educating it.
You are trying to make this more complicated than it is.
A father can be described as either the biological father or as the male parent. Or both.
For example - I am the father of the child my wife miscarried and I would also be the father of any child we decided to adopt.
A child can have two or more fathers depending on how their family life shakes out.
Biology determines parentage while social bonding determines parenthood. Both create fathers.
I know you want to look at this issue from only one angle - ironically applying your own spin to these definitions - but this stuff can get messy.
Besides - you have yet to justify why you believe social bonds of any kind are even necessary to justify if a human being should be killed or not.
Would you argue not to execute a rapist and murderer because he is someone’s son?
I already answered this question too. I'll say it once again. No, you cannot kill someone who doesn't feel pain because they have a will and emotions. Embryo who are selectively aborted are incapable of ALL those characteristics: will, emotions, sensation and social bonds.
You have yet to explain why all of those characteristics are necessary to determine the value of a human life and whether we can justify killing them.
A human being as in a person is a philosophical concept that is composite of both a mind, a mental identity and a body.
I just told you to skip the abstract - but your head is still up in the clouds.
Let’s go back to Merriam-Webster - which defines “person” as “human” or “individual” - it then defines “individual” as “a single human being as contrasted with a social group or institution”.
Since a “child in utero” is a “human being” - it is a person or individual.
If we were to find a single drop of blood - we could easily determine if it is from a human or not - but we wouldn’t devalue our results by asking some philosophical question like, “Sure it’s human - but did it come from a person?”
A “child in utero” is a human being and a human being is a person as well as an individual with a unique and complete genetic code.
Any qualifiers you try to apply to “person” could be used to determine that certain already-born human beings are not “persons” or “individuals”.
It is not consistent and it is not reasonable.
I refer to you to the famous " two captain Kirk" philosophical thought experiement on identity and you are absolutely right that genetics and epigenetics have a roll, they produce the mind which an emergent property. The mind as a special value, but the body not so much. That's why people who no longer have any significant brain activity are considered dead.
I just want to talk about the facts.
I mean - I could get all philosophical or religious and talk about the worth of souls and what not - but that’s not what I have been focusing on here.
No medical doctors, biologists, geneticists or lawmakers are running to the philosophers to decide what is or is not human and if we should determine a person’s worth based on their characteristics.
I just want laws and definitions to be reasonable and consistently applied.
A brain dead person is not considered dead because of some philosophical concept concerning identity or mind - but because their body’s functions stop if life-support is removed.
A human being as a member of the homo sapiens species of animal is a taxonomical category based on a variety of common characteristics and genetical traits. Taxonomical category are ontological, thus also philosophical concept. All science derives from philosophy up to a certain point.
So - are you arguing that philosophers should decide the value of human life and what murder is?
How is that different than arguing that religion should do so?
You can also consider the idea of body transplantation. If I lose a kidney and receives one from Gerald, it's no longer Gerald's kidney, it' mine even though it has Gerald's DNA.
A “child in utero” is a human being - a person or individual - not a kidney.
If an unborn child was the same as a kidney - why put any restrictions on “abortion” at all?
Why all your talk about the eight-week or twenty-four week mark?
Why not wait up until the due date to pierce its skull and suck out its brain and then dismember it with forceps?
I mean - it’s just a polyp, right? A tumor? A growth? A kidney?
Except - it’s not. It’s a human being. A person. An individual with it’s own unique and complete genetic code - separate and distinct from the mother.
Imagine that I am very unlucky and lucky at the same time and basically am reconstructed from the bottom up following accidents: new heart, new spleen, new kidneys, new liver, new skin, new arms and legs, new heart, etc. I would still be me even though my body is completely different and contains a variety of different people's DNA and perhapse even some animal ones (xenotransplantation is considered a promising field in the future and human organ transplant in animals have been successful).
You would still be a human being. A person. An individual whose unique and complete genetic code could be analyzed and differentiated from all the pieces from others put into you.
So - if we were able to take a random embryo and successfully implant it into the uterus of a random woman - are you claiming that that embryo would cease to be an individual with a unique and complete genetic code?
This woman would all of a sudden have twenty fingers and toes? Four arms and legs? And a penis if the embryo happened to be a male?
These are characteristics that the woman would suddenly obtain because this embryo was implanted into her uterus?
Or - is it not at all like a kidney - but a separate and distinct human being?
That’s really cool about the animal organs though.
When did I used the term: free will?
Nuance.
How can you prove that you actually have will - rather than all your decisions being predetermined?
And I wanted to avoid all this philosophical stuff!
I disagree. Yours do. Your definition of human can exclude some people like people with severe generical defect for example or members of a certain ethinicity based on a phenotype or a genetical varience. That's what neo-nazi and hereditarian groups do today. They class human values based on genetical traits and characteristics.
What? That’s what
you did - not me.
You were the one that said in Post #918, when we were talking about the intrinsic value of human beings that, “Everything has some value, but that value changes depending on its characteristics.”
I expressed my contempt for this idea and have maintained that all human beings are equally valuable.
I never argued that anyone should be excluded or considered less valuable than others.
I have no idea how you could have come to this false conclusion about what I have said other than intentionally doing so in an effort to misrepresent me.
You do realise I had adressed all those points and disagree with these statements? I'll try to reformulate the argument in more simple terms so you can understand it more easily since it seems to be so difficult for you.
I’m not having any difficulty at all - I just think it’s stupid.
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