On 17/07/2006, at 6:50 AM, jdiebremse wrote:
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Charlie Bell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 15/07/2006, at 3:43 PM, jdiebremse wrote:
We weren't discussing abortion.
Yes we are. We are talking about conceiving a number of
children,
and "eliminating" the children of the undesired sex.
As I pointed out elsewhere, this is the main assumption of
difference. If you regard an undifferentiated pre-implantion ball
of cells as a "child", then of course you're going to have a
different view to those who think humanity and sentience and so on
are sliding scales (that an adult has more rights than a child has
more rights than an infant than a foetus than an embryo than a
zygote than an ovum).
I know that it is oh-so-fashionable in these parts to say that
everything comes in "shades of grey", and contrast that to pale-
conservative JDG who sees things in black-and-white, but sometimes
things really are in black-and-white. To put it another way, the
right to life is like virginity - either you have it or you don't.
(Apologies to the former UN Ambassador from Brazil on that one.)
There is no sliding scale on the right to life. Either the
organism has the right, or it does not.
The question is, at what point does the "organism" become a fully-
fledged member of the group? You say at conception. Possessing a full
complement of chromosomes suddenly makes you fully human. Well,
others disagree. Some think it's when implantation occurs. Others, at
the point where the foetus is capable of independent survival (this
is approximately my position at present). Others still, at birth or a
specified time thereafter and still others, at the point when the
child achieves full self-awareness.
A blastocyst is not a child to most people, John. Many, possibly
most according to some studies, zygotes *fail to implant*
and "die" in the toilet or soaked up in a panty-liner. The wastage
is naturally huge. Clearly, until they're able to implant,
they're disposable, *biologically* speaking.
Sorry, Charlie, but this is not sound logic. The logical conculsion
of what you are saying is that "if the infant mortality rate is
high, then infanticide is morally acceptable." I hope that makes
it clear.
Utterly false connection. An infant is an independent and individual.
A blastocyst is not.
Its completely irrelevant how many children die
naturally in determining whether or not it is acceptable to kill a
child. The same applies to the fetus, blastocyst, zygote, and even
to the cow - the number that would die naturally is completely
irrelevant in deciding whether it is moral to intentionally kill
another.
And if we want to talk biologically, from the very moment of
conception, that which you refer to as a zygote, blastocyst, and
fetus, are all nevertheless individual members of homo sapiens
sapiens - *biologically* speaking, of course.
Saying that something which *cannot* survive without biological
support from an adult is an "individual" is stretching the definition
beyond breaking point.
You're using the classic language of emotion to make your point -
talk of "killing children" and "aborting embryos". These are neither,
they're balls of cells. They might contain 46 chromosomes, but until
they're implanted in the uterus, they're never going to be anything
else.
Cancer is undifferentiated balls of cells too. Is a tumour a "human"?
Charlie
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