Summations Only

I couldn't agree with you more Larni. I couldn't agree with you any more. When a ship goes down in the ocean, you can't rescue someone else while you your self are still drowning. You have to be reaching from a place of safety before you can ever offer a hand of safety.

I'm guessing you didn't feel the need to back read and see why it became "relevant." But it does become relevant when someone tries to imply that all pregnancy is so risky that termination of another persons life is an acceptable practice just based on that risk alone. See now... the problem with drawing such simplistic lines in the sand, such is this, and saying "anything on that side doesn't qualify as a person," is that there is always a situation that completely eradicates the line. For example, have you considered how many conjoined twins in the world just cringed when they read your comment that implies that one of them is nothing more than an expendable growth?

Except for the fact that you seem to be completely overlooking the countless people who were declared clinically dead in hospitals and yet revived to make a complete and full recovery. Don't forget that when someone is clinically dead, all measurable brain activity stops within 20 to 40 seconds. This fact completely destroys the notion that measurable brain activity is a good criteria for determining person hood. And again those were people who mostly all had a very grim prognosis by the doctors. So how much more is the person hood of someone we can know with pretty good certainty will have full brain activity within only 9 months? First of all I believe, if I'm not mistaken, you are the one who said that person hood was determined by next of kin in the hospital and compared their pulling the plug with an abortion. Secondly "feeling, caring, and knowing" is not what determines person hood. As I pointed out above there are plenty of "persons" who were incapable of all of those things and still held the status of person hood. Again, in all the "other" instances to which you are referring, the prognosis is the key. Sure if a person loses all brain function and the prognosis of a qualified physician is that the person will never again regain said function, then and only then is it even considered to "pull the plug." I doubt you will find many physicians who would declare such a prognosis over a fetus in the womb that the mother is considering terminating.

I happen to agree.But in reality we make immoral choices all the time, just to get by. Abortion is just one of them.That's the world we live in.

I've yet to see anything that can meaningfully be called a "person" that actually lacks a brain. Whilst I suspect that setting any absolute single criteria for human personhood is going to run into difficulties some sort of brain development based position seems more justifiable than most.On what basis are you suggesting we should attribute personhood?

You could open a thread about how one balances the rights of mother and fetus in the Coffee House forum and invite SBR to join in the discussion.--Percy

What on Earth has taxanomic classification of species got to do with deciding whether or not any given embryo or foetus qualifies as a human being or not?Any infertile member of any species is an example of "one organism in any Taxa that does not reproduce". Any human pre-pubescent child would qualify.If ability to reproduce is the criteria then none of us qualify as human until we hit puberty. Are we really going to disqualify 8 year old kids from being human?

Really, because you were replying to a post by Rahvin the major portion of which consisted of discussing the high rate of failure to implant and other forms of spontaneous abortion or miscarriage. Perhaps you could have made it a bit clearer exactly what direction you wished to move the goal posts in in your post rather than expecting us to divine it psychically.So what you are saying is that your reply to Rhavin was actually in the context of a completely different discussion you were having with Perdition about people who were brain dead and fetuses rather than people in comas and the sort of embryos Rahvin was talking about? Perhaps it is I who should be watching you.Also you appear not to know what a zygote is. A zygote is the initial one cell stage after fertilisation and the first few subsequent cell division, this develops into the morula at 32 cells and then into the blastocyst. All this happens within the first 5 days after fertilisation. An embryo is not considered a fetus until around the 9th week after fertilisation. But I suppose equivocating with these sort of distinctions is one of the primary strategies that those who object to abortion favour.TTFN,WK

But no one stated or asserted that so it is irrelevant.Certainly there is a natural risk involved in a pregnancy but it is just one of the factors that would be considered in each individual case. It is up to the potential mother, her doctor and her family to try to evaluate the extent of the risk and in the end, up to the woman to decide if the risk is one she is willing to take. And no, there is no situation that eradicates the line without intentional misrepresentation.I did not say "simply a growth attached to the other" rather I said "simply a growth attached to the mother".The word "Mother" is not synonymous with the word "other".

I could. But based on what I've seen in this thread, I suspect that if he participated at all, he'd dodge difficult questions while pretending that he wasn't basing his entire position on his religion. Since he's already doing that here, I see no reason to open another thread for the same thing.

None whatsoever. You implicated that using the term "ability to reproduce" Was....what was your word???? oh would have silly consequences.I merely assert that that term is in the description of life and that it is there for a reason. Every thing that lives(organisms) reproduces. Incorrect, the organism reproduces on a grand scale daily. Its called Mitosis and Meiosis. http://publications.nigms.nih.gov/...dethecell/chapter4.html Incorrect, as stated above all organisms reproduce. If they did not they would cease to be alive.
http://faculty.evansville.edu/...DFs/8_Cell_Reproduction.pdf Bold is mine
Bio 100 - Cellular Reproduction
1
Cellular Reproduction and Genetics among Eukaryotes
Overview
The perpetuation of living things (reproduction) requires cell division - the splitting of
one cell into two cells
The events that take place inside the cell between one division and the next are
collectively called the cell cycle
And the net results of these events is cellular reproductionFROM WEBSTERS:
life noun \ˈlīf\
plural livesDefinition of LIFE1
a : the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body
b : a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings
c : an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction
2
a : the sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individual
b : one or more aspects of the process of living Edited by 1.61803, : added word organism to distinquish from nonliving reproducing things.

Usually, in those cases, there is still brain activity, but it is often below the threshold of measurment of the devices being used. In other cases, they use a different means of determining clinical death. In either respect, having no brain is clearly a scenario where there is no brain activity. Right? As devices get better, we can be more and more certain as to whether there is measurable brain activity. Regardless, when the odds against a person recovering become overwhelming, there is still moral and legal precedence in terminating the machines keeping the body alive. Just because some people buck the terrible odds stacked against them does not mean we need to continue to use resources and put a family through the grief and pain of false hope on the off chance that their loved one is going to be that one in a million or one in a billion that pulls through.I still say that brain activity is a good measure. Maybe we need to have more development in devices to measure brain activity, but if there's no brain, there's no activity. If there's no activity, measurable or not, there's no person. How can you know with pretty good certainty? In the first trimester, there is still a good chance of miscarriage or self-termination. But regardless, the fact there will potentially be a person in the future has no bearing on the fact that, at present, there is no person in the womb, but there very definitely is a person outside the womb. I used that to illustarte that brain activity is the current measure of whether a "person" is alive or not. Trying to pull the analogy further is a stretch as, in the hospital, you have a very obvious case of previous personhood. In the embryo's case, we have, by the same criterion, an obvious case of no previous personhood and only potential future personhood. You're missing the point. We're not talking about prognosis so much as when a person is considered to be alive. If there's no brian activity, the person is considered dead. In other words, no brain activity, no person. Prognosis generally only refers to people who are still alive, meaning there is still brainf activity, but often the brain activity is such that there si still reason to believe the person no longer exists.For an embryo, if there's no brain, there's no person. If there's no person, there's no moral obligation to keep it alive. That's all it boils down to.

So what exactly is your point? That a zygote qualifies as a human life because it is capable of cellular reproduction? The same could be said of a cancerous growth.What exactly are you saying with regard to the topic here?

Ooh, yes, can we please have another discussion about the definition of life? 'Cos that's so awesomely pointless it makes me puke kittens.

If in fact the fetus has human life how is it different than the woman hosting the fetus? So the answer is yes. It seems pretty clear that there is quite a difference from a woman having a miscarriage and a woman having an abortion. Do you disagree? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------