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My opinion is human life becomes a person when it emerges from the host body.
Judge Napolitano's is contradictory right out of the shoot: a human life becomes a person at conception because at that point it has POTENTIAL to become fully developed and born. It also has the potential to be absorbed, miscarried, aborted. Potential is just that, having the capacity to become. When one is born they have beat all odds and fulfilled that capacity.
Abortion is not one of the "odds" that a human life should need to beat. That's insulting and ridiculous.
A newborn infant is BY NO MEANS fully developed. At all.
If we're waiting for the individual to be fully developed, a person isn't a person until they're about 25 years old. And then at about 55 they begin to lose capacity, so do they exit the "human" category at that point?
What about people who reach into mid years without ever reaching their full human possible potential - they have CP and never are able to speak or walk?
It is a slippery, slippery slope when we don't just face the obvious fact, that a human being, with a full set of 46 chromosomes that are human, is the beginning of the life.
Ironic that you mention possible exceptions, then state categorically that anything with the full set of chromosomes MUST be a human. Yours is still an arbitrary choice. Allegorically speaking, God only sent us 10 Laws chiseled in stone, and "beginning of life" wasn't one of them. All subsequent laws have been written on paper.
In aboriginal societies, where people lived on the razor's edge of survival, any drain on resources, like a deformed infant, could spell survival disaster for the entire clan. We're all aware that deformed babies where quickly eliminated-- "post partum abortion," if you will. It was considered vital to survival of the group, not murder. At that level of technology/sociology, even completed birth didn't confer "personhood' on the individual.
Many good thoughts expressed here so far. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that we need to stick with an arbitrary definition..... At least with conception or birth as our choice, we have the least arbitrary situations-- those are both something "all or none." If we chose some point in between, we get more and more arbitrary and less definitive: when the 2 chambered heart starts beating? when the 4 chambered heart develops? when the nervous system is capable of reflex activity? when muscles become capable of twitching? When life independent of the womb is possible? You get the idea.
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Originally Posted by ClaraC
Yeah, thanks. I'm pretty sure, as a former childbirth educator and labor coach,.....
Not to change the subject, but if Lamaze is supposed to be "natural," why do you have to sign up for lessons?
My right leaning peers like to call me a leftycuck over this, but I do not consider a human being to be alive until born, AKA, externally expunged form the mother at a natural time to do so.
I consider them more akin to a parasite before then.
A parasite is a creature of another species that feeds on a host. Therefore it is not remotely akin to a parasite.
A newborn infant is BY NO MEANS fully developed. At all.
If we're waiting for the individual to be fully developed, a person isn't a person until they're about 25 years old. And then at about 55 they begin to lose capacity, so do they exit the "human" category at that point?
What about people who reach into mid years without ever reaching their full human possible potential - they have CP and never are able to speak or walk?
It is a slippery, slippery slope when we don't just face the obvious fact, that a human being, with a full set of 46 chromosomes that are human, is the beginning of the life.
Of for Gods sake.
Generally speaking a newborn's body, limbs, organs, etc. are fully developed to survive outside of the womb on its own accord as opposed to a zygote, embryo, fetus. Does this really need explained to you?
Abortion is not one of the "odds" that a human life should need to beat. That's insulting and ridiculous.
Yet abortion happens and that potential life never is. You are free to believe zygotes dont face the possibility of abortion, just as they do miscarriage or absorption or even being stillborn. You can even be insulted by that fact, yet the fact remains.
It's a rabbit hole if you look at it superficially, or if you try to objectively define it, because it's not black or white.
Are serial killers human beings? Yes? And to what degree? ....Why do we kill them?
Some people care about the fetus until it is born, then abandon it after because of the mother's IQ, color of her skin, lifestyle, health and the many other things that make people hate others. It's a popular thing to do nowadays, hate people. Some people love their dogs far more than they love their neighbors.
I consider value in social, conscientious and altruistic human beings. The more you have of those traits the better. You are not born that way, you have to be socialized and cared for to even know of them and understand them.
The worst of humanity is that way most probably because they were born into unsocial, unconscientious and unwelcoming families, if there was a family.
Personally, I feel this discussion is close to being irrelevant.
I say that because when I was around 20 I walked out of a catholic church's mass because the priest started talking about this very topic in his homily. I didn't agree with the position of the catholic church on the issue. I'm just short of 70 now, and for half a century this nation has been involved in exactly this discussion, and I can't see that the overall viewpoints of Americans on the issue has budged much. The -- basically -- two sides of the issue is exactly where the two sides of the issue was 50 or more years ago.
We seem to be frozen in time over this issue, and it has really devolved -- in my view -- from an issue people had heartfelt concerns about to an issue that is being used as a political football that, for many, has ceased being about a moral position.
Personally, I feel this discussion is close to being irrelevant.
I say that because when I was around 20 I walked out of a catholic church's mass because the priest started talking about this very topic in his homily. I didn't agree with the position of the catholic church on the issue. I'm just short of 70 now, and for half a century this nation has been involved in exactly this discussion, and I can't see that the overall viewpoints of Americans on the issue has budged much. The -- basically -- two sides of the issue is exactly where the two sides of the issue was 50 or more years ago.
We seem to be frozen in time over this issue, and it has really devolved -- in my view -- from an issue people had heartfelt concerns about to an issue that is being used as a political football that, for many, has ceased being about a moral position.
I wouldn't say it is "irrelevant." Humankind has always been intrigued by the mysteries of life and death, of which this topic is a major one. It is interesting to ponder.
I posted earlier that the beginning of human life is a spectrum. Death also is a spectrum. The precise moment is not always known, and it changes with technological advancements. My ex was "clinically dead" many years ago; he is very much alive today. There are many survivors of "near death experiences" with stories similar to my ex. So, on the death end of things, there seems to be a "passage," a time and place where the person could return to the earthly life or move on to the next life. During those minutes of being "in limbo," were they dead? (They were "dead" by medical definitions of no heart beat, no breathing, no responses). Most people, for whatever reason, are not given the choice to return to earthly life. They may still experience a "passage" of "slipping into death" rather than it occurring in an exact nanosecond. Life and death is not black and white.
I believe it's that same kind of "passage" on the front end too. There is a gradual development of physical characteristics, of brain function, of consciousness, of all the things that make a person a person.
I don't know if OP had a hidden agenda about abortion, but to me that is a separate issue. The zygote is absolutely scientifically *alive.* Once that egg and sperm have joined, the process of mitosis begins; cells replicate and divide over and over again. THAT is the process of life (the individual egg or sperm do not divide and grow, so they are not exhibiting this most basic attribute of something that is "alive.") But being "alive" and being a "person deserving of the full protection of the law" do not have to be the same thing (and in my opinion, they are not).
I wouldn't say it is "irrelevant." Humankind has always been intrigued by the mysteries of life and death, of which this topic is a major one. It is interesting to ponder.
I posted earlier that the beginning of human life is a spectrum. Death also is a spectrum. The precise moment is not always known, and it changes with technological advancements. My ex was "clinically dead" many years ago; he is very much alive today. There are many survivors of "near death experiences" with stories similar to my ex. So, on the death end of things, there seems to be a "passage," a time and place where the person could return to the earthly life or move on to the next life. During those minutes of being "in limbo," were they dead? (They were "dead" by medical definitions of no heart beat, no breathing, no responses). Most people, for whatever reason, are not given the choice to return to earthly life. They may still experience a "passage" of "slipping into death" rather than it occurring in an exact nanosecond. Life and death is not black and white.
I believe it's that same kind of "passage" on the front end too. There is a gradual development of physical characteristics, of brain function, of consciousness, of all the things that make a person a person.
I don't know if OP had a hidden agenda about abortion, but to me that is a separate issue. The zygote is absolutely scientifically *alive.* Once that egg and sperm have joined, the process of mitosis begins; cells replicate and divide over and over again. THAT is the process of life (the individual egg or sperm do not divide and grow, so they are not exhibiting this most basic attribute of something that is "alive.") But being "alive" and being a "person deserving of the full protection of the law" do not have to be the same thing (and in my opinion, they are not).
I do agree with you on this, that's the question "What constitutes life?" From what I do know, when the egg and the sperm combine to create the zygote something remarkable happens, and I call this life. Now this zygote has only one purpose, to become a human being, it will not become birch tree nor will it become a frog, dog or anything else, it will be a human being. This is just the beginning of its journey, and that journey is racked with perils if it overcomes these perils it will, after 9 months, emerge as, what we call, an infant.
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