Summations Only

I'd like to expand just a little beyond nwr's very good post.I don't think that biologically human life has any value. I don't mourn shed skin cells.I think that self-awareness is what makes human life valuable, while I don;t particularly care about cows and cockroaches beyond preventing needless inhumane suffering.I don't believe there is any divine or spiritual mandate that gives an individual human moral weight. I think, instead, that the moral weight of a person comes from that person's knowledge that they are alive, and that they don;t want to die, and that their own life has whatever meaning they and others attach to it.When thinking about the moral weight of personhood on matters like abortion, I like to use the alien/AI test. It's not any codified test, it's just a check to keep my ethical values consistent.Defining human life as having value simply on the basis of being human would mean that any alien species we could ever encounter, or any artificial intelligence, would be denied moral weight. It may sound silly, but the offense the Klingon characters in Star Trek VI took at the phrase "inalienable human rights" was perfectly valid (this is the first and hopefully last time I have mentioned Star Trek in a moral argument...). Assigning moral value to an individual should be sufficiently broad as to include a non-human sentient species that values its own existence, but not so broad as to include a non-sentient artificial intelligence that isn't even aware that it exists (sentient AI may be possible in the future, and such a being would also carry moral weight).This means that defining moral weight by genetics and biology (ie, when "human life" begins) is an absurdity from the start. I cannot find any reason whatsoever to value a few dozen fetal cells any differently than semen not used in procreation, or a non-fertilized egg - all are potential biologically human lives, but none carry more moral weight than the skin cells I kill in my fingers by typing on a keyboard. It's not our chromosomes that give us moral significance, it's our awareness that we exist and the value we place on that existence.Morally significant human life, that is, personhood, should then be considered to begin at the point where an individual is sufficiently developed to be aware of its own awareness. This too is a difficult moment to identify with great accuracy, but in the case of a human fetus, it seems fairly obvious to me that a clump of cells that does not yet even possess a distinct central nervous system could not possibly be aware of anything, let alone be self-aware. My understanding of human development is that brain waves thought to indicate sentience are detectable in the late 2nd trimester, and this is the point where I begin to attach any moral significance to the growing individual.Theists of course tend to disagree, because they believe moral weight is carried by a "soul" that I don;t even think exists. They can arbitrarily believe that this "soul" attaches to the clump of human cells at conception, or after birth, at baptism, or when the gametes are first grown in the parents' bodies. Needless to say, I don;t find their moral arguments particularly persuasive.

Do you mourn the loss of every fertilized egg that fails to implant on the uterine wall as occurs with most pregnancies? Specifically, do you mourn the loss of those "human lives" to exactly the same degree you mourn the loss of a toddler, or a newborn child? Do you suggest that un-implanted embryos deserve a proper burial and funeral rather than a flush down a toilet?If not, that would denote a rather significant and obvious inconsistency in your moral weights.Why do you believe moral weight is attached to chromosomes rather than minds? The skin cells I shed every day possess the same genetic code as the rest of me; their loss is a loss of "human life" in biologically the same sense as a fertilized egg that simply fails to implant. Why does one carry moral weight and the other not? What gives moral significance to a human being, in your opinion?

I'm sorry to hear that. Clearly you felt (and feel) the loss of your unborn child. For what it's worth, this would be the third trimester and I would consider the fetus to be worthy of moral consideration - it would have a developed nervous system and have passed the point where brain waves can be detected, meaning it could potentially be aware of its own existence.However...your wife has almost certainly had many other eggs fertilized by your sperm, but fail to implant correctly in her uterine wall or otherwise naturally fail to proceed to a point where you could even tell she was pregnant. It's estimated that around 60% of all pregnancies end this way, without anyone even noticing.These embryos would not have had a distinct nervous system - there would be absolutely no way in known biology for them to have awareness of anything, in the same way that a clump of shed skin cells has no awareness because it too has no brain. The embryos would not have valued their own existence, because they would have been physically incapable of being aware of their own existence. Since I derive the moral weight of human life from self-awareness, I would not mourn their loss. I would not consider their failure to develop to even be sad (though perhaps frustrating, if my wife and I were trying to have children and failing), because a clump of not-aware cells is not worthy of any moral consideration.Did those embryos have "souls?" Did they carry (to you) the same moral weight as the daughter who died just 8 weeks before birth, or the children you were able to see grow? If not, then again, there is a massive and obvious inconsistency in your moral reasoning. This question is not rhetorical, I'd like to know your opinion.

Even the mother, if her life is at risk? Is the mothers life less morally worthy than the unborn child?Let's put it another way. You and I are trapped by a deranged supervillain, who gives us a diabolical choice: he will try to kill us both. There is a slim chance that we will both survive. However, one of us could sacrifice his life in a distraction that would almost certainly save the other person.Am I morally obligated to sacrifice myself to save you? Are you morally obligated to sacrifice yourself to save me?If our lives are equally valued (ie, we're both human beings), then while it would be morally praiseworthy to sacrifice oneself in defense of another, it is not morally obligatory. One can only be morally obligated to sacrifice oneself if the sacrifice would preserve more "moral weight" than the value of the sacrificed individual, such as sacrificing one for the lives of a hundred.Is a mother morally obligated to sacrifice herself to preserve the life of an unborn child? If so, then you must be placing more moral weight on a fetus than you place on the mother - which opens a number of other moral consequences as related to miscarriages, such as a pregnant woman becoming guilty of homicide if she has a miscarriage due to smoking, drinking, heavy exercise, or even just not staying in bed the entire time to make sure she can't fall.If not, then you must support abortion in the case of a threat to the life of the mother.Any other position is logically inconsistent. Which position do you take?

Neither the Bible nor Science tell us when exactly it becomes white.We can never know for certain.Therefore we should determine morally correct action by assuming that it was white from the very beginning, so that we can err on the side of caution.Anything less is obviously chromacide./anti-choice question-dodger

I completely agree with you.I was simply re-writing the post I replied to from the perspective of shadow and other typical pro-lifers. "We aren't sure when, so we jsut assume it happens at the beginning to err on the side of caution," and so to them a clump of cells that doesn't even possess a single neuron and likely will never implant is just as morally significant as a toddler. More so even, because their positions require the value of the clump of cells to be greater than that of the mother's life, because she is (to them) morally obligated to risk her own life in favor of the clump of cells.

I disagree, because there is an uneven application of moral worth in each case.If a woman takes the Morning After pill, which prevents the implantation of a fertilized zygote on the uterine wall, effectively causing a miscarriage, most Pro-Lifers (basically anyone who believes that moral considerations for procreation begin at conception, like you) beleive that, essencially, a murder has occurred. A motehr has taken an active role in ending the life of her unborn child, and you are saddened and outraged.If a woman miscarries without knowing, a perfectly natural version of teh above events where the only difference is intent and a pill, you are not saddened, and not outraged.Your moral consideration is for the act of the woman, which is different in each case, and not for the loss of the zygote, which is the same in both cases.Let's transplant the issue to adults. If someone kills my grandfather, I am sad for his loss, and the killer has committed a crime.If my grandfather dies of natural causes, there is no crime...but I am still sad for his loss.If you really considered zygotes to be persons, worthy of moral consideration on the same level as the mother, then it wouldn't matter whether the miscarriage was natural or induced - you should be sad either way.You were sad when you lost your unborn daughter just 8 weeks before she was due to be born. Were you sad for the children you have lost by natural means during the first few weeks of pregnancy? Are you sad about them now, knowing that 60% of all pregnancies end this way without the mother's knowledge, to the same degree that you are sad about your unborn daughter? Does the knowledge that, when your wife has her period, on some months the discharge contains a fertilized zygote, which you claim you consider a child, actually make you just as sad as when your wife had her much later miscarriage? If "human life" begins at conception, then both the 4-celled zygote and the almost-born daughter were children deserving equal emotional attachment, equal protection, and equal sadness for their deaths.I don't think you actually care as much about a zygote as you do about a fetus 8 weeks from being born. I don't think you cry for their loss as you cried for the loss of your daughter 8 weeks before she was born.And that being the case, you agree that the moral weight of a zygote is less than a fetus in the late third trimester; you agree that the moral weight of an unborn child is acquired incrementally as it develops and becomes closer to becoming what you would feel is a person.And that means that your actual application of moral weight is inconsistent with your beliefs on abortion. What you're feeling right now is cognitive dissonance as you attempt to avoid the fact that you are holding mutually contradictory beliefs simultaneously.I think you only care about the action of the mother, who you see as a baby-killer if she chooses to have an abortion.

Your belief is inconsistent, else you would be screaming about the moral imperative to find ways to save the 60% of pregnancies that fail prior to even being detected.Ef every zygote is a human being with this "soul" thing you imagine might exist, then every human zygote carries equal moral weight to a fully grown human being.If every zygote carries equal moral weight to a fully grown human being, then the same moral imperative to save the life of an adult (curing diseases, performing heart surgery, performing CPR, etc) applies to those zygotes who fail to implant on the uterine wall or otherwise fail to develop further.If the same moral imperative to save life exists, then you should be advocating for new laws and medical technologies to help those poor human zygotes implant and develop properly, to the same degree that you advocate cancer research; more so, because the number of "children" who die because zygotes fail to implant in a given year would dwarf most other causes of death.If the same moral imperative exists, then just as a drunk driver is held morally accountable for anyone he kills while driving, so too would a mother be morally accountable for miscarrying due to alcohol or tobacco use.If the same moral imperative exists, then every woman who aborts a child and every doctor who performs an abortion is a murderer, and the rest of us are all accessories. You should think that everyone who supports a woman's right to choose is a supporter of baby murder.The lunatic fringe of the pro-life side is actually the only pro-life stance that is remotely logically consistent with their professed beliefs. If a zygote is a human being the same as a toddler, your moral imperative would be to overturn Roe v Wade at all costs and make abortion a capitol offense exactly the same as murder, including in cases of rape, incest, or a threat to the life of the mother.If this is not the case, then your "belief" is a sham. You believe that it is good to believe that a zygote is a full human being with a "soul" and that abortion is murder, but you do not actually believe that those things are really true. You believe in being pro-life, but you don't actually carry those beliefs to their logical conclusions. Your beliefs are inconsistent, meaning you don't really believe that human life begins at conception in a morally relevant sense."Human life" began in the distant past, and we are all just continuations of the species. I don't get upset over nocturnal emissions or menstrual discharges even though every sperm and egg are potential people. I don't get upset in the least over abortions prior to the second trimester. I sympathize with mothers who have miscarriages when they desired the baby (for their loss, even though the embryo may not yet have developed to the point that I would be sad for it) or when the miscarriage happened after the second trimester (when I would be sad for the loss of a developing person that ould have had at least the beginning of a brain capable of sentience), but couldn't care less when some human cells die; it makes no difference to me if a clump of brainless human cells die in a womb or when I stub my toe.And I certainly don't buy into the "soul" bullshit. There is no such thing as a soul. Nobody has one. They don't exist. If a "soul" is your personality and essence and can exist independently of the brain, then damage or chemical changes to the brain could never cause personality changes, all of psychiatry and most of neurology would fail utterly to function the way we actually observe in reality. You don't have a soul, my sperm don't magically get a soul when they merge with an egg, I don't have a soul, an aborted fetus didn't have a soul, the doctor who aborted it never had a soul, they are fiction, an imagined bit of wishful thinking that allows irrational people to avoid the scariness of death and the cessation of existence by imagining some intangible immortal component that will allow them to bypass the fact that your consciousness, personality, memories, and everything else that defines you and makes your life have more meaning than that of a bacterium resides entirely in the physical and chemical interconnection of neurons in your brain, and not at all in some mystical woo-woo bullshit fairytale "soul."That's not opinion, that's fact There is no more such a thing as a "soul" than the Earth is flat. The idea of some nonphysical mechanism for personality is completely and utterly mutually exclusive with the observed facts that brain damage and psychoactive medications alter personality as if a car had gotten a new driver entirely, and not at all in the same way that damaging the steering column of a car alters driving habits. The idea of the "soul" and the actual, real-world, objective, reproducible empirical evidence are incompatible; it's one or the other. And evidence from nature always trumps faith for anyone who actually gives two shits about the truth as opposed to how nice a lie can make you feel.

Which betrays the inconsistency of your beliefs. We tend to be sad over the perfectly natural or accidental deaths of human beings, yet we shed no tears over the fact that by far the majority of "people" (under your definition) who have ever lived have been flushed unknowingly out with the rest of the vaginal discharge during a menstrual cycle.Murder causes outrage in addition to sadness over the loss of life...but you feel only the outrage at abortion, you apply none of the emotional or moral significance to the "poor souls" who never even grow a heart. If a method of policing miscarriages in attempts to prosecute "negligent or abusive" pregnant women were available, would you support such prosecutions? We knew that. But do you support making abortion a capital offense on the same level as murder? That's the question I actually asked. Because you're saying that abortion is the willful taking of a human life, just like if a mother killed a toddler, correct? So shouldn't they have the same penalties? Shouldn't women who abort fetuses go to life in prison or possibly even be sentenced to lethal injection, just like with any other premeditated murder? If not, your beliefs are inconsistent. I detailed the evidence below, you simply ignored it. Allow me to reiterate.If personality resides in a nonphysical "soul," then brain damage and chemistry cannot possibly affect personality. Yet we know from consistent, repeated observation that brain damage and alterations in brain chemistry via psychiatric medication do affect personality. Antidepressants lessen or remove depression. Anti-anxiety medications reduce or remove anxiety. Mood stabilizers stop bipolar sifts between manic and depressive episodes. Anti-psychotics stop paranoid delusions and hallucinations. A blow to the head can alter a person's likes and dislikes and general personality. Electroshock therapy can cure severe depression. Alcohol, marijuana, LSD, and other substances can cause temporary extreme changes in personality.If personality and consciousness actually resided in a "soul" rather than in the brain, altering the chemistry or structure of the brain should have no effect on personality. Alcohol might blur your vision and mess up your balance, but it wouldn't make you more sociable or less inhibited. We observe that it does, and therefore the "soul" hypothesis is disproven. It is inconsistent with observations in reality.You don't have a soul, and never did. And neither do zygotes.