“I think you need to re-read that definition a couple of times. There is nothing there about ‘independently’ meeting those requirements. How would a car accident victim not meet that definition? How would a fetus not?”

The definition includes “self-sustaining”. A car accident victim on life support is not self-sustaining, neither is a fetus. For the sake of being able to discuss, I’m agreeing that we can refer to a fetus as a “life”.

“re: elderly person – Well, with a fetus, you also have one independent living human being relying on the help from another independent living human being. The difference is in the kind and level of dependence and how the help is administered.”

I disagree. A fetus is not an independent living human being.

“re: life – OK, so are we in agreement then, that scientifically, it is a living organism, which is genetically unique? If so, it isn’t a ‘living squirrel’ or ‘living dog’ so it must be living human, correct? So, is ‘being’ the part you’re having difficulty with?”

Wrong. This is what I agreed with — “Bottom line, once the sperm and egg unite, there is a genetically unique entity…”

I will also agree with “…scientifically, it is a living organism, which is genetically unique”

But a “genetically unique living organism” does not equal a living human being granted protection as a person by the Constitution.

“…So, now you seem to be arbitrarily going against science and defining ‘person’ as someone who has traveled down the birth canal. Can you ground how personhood is acquired through such a process? If I stick you in a sack, do you lose your personhood until I get you back out?”

I agree, birth should not be the qualifier. To be clear…I am not arguing in favor of elective late term abortion either. I believe the question at hand is “when does Constitutional protection come into play?” There is no legal answer. Some states have tried to use viability as a marker by defining it as a specific number of weeks of gestation, but that really isn’t reliable either. Viability can vary by fetus. Until the fetus can survive independent of its host, the mother’s rights usurp and superimposed fetal “rights”. So, I’m asking, how do we judge? Would we pass a law to assign a special government agent to monitor every pregnancy every day past 20 weeks in order to hand down a “pre-birth personhood certification” as soon as all checks for viability are passed? You’d still be relying on someone’s educated guess. A newborn converting from umbilical dependency to air intake is indisputable. Short of a privacy invasion arrangement like above, a live birth is the only quantifiable, inarguable marker.

“re: “meeting the requirements to qualify as a ‘life’ does not necessarily make that ‘life’ ‘alive'” – Interesting, please, do explain!”

You’re right, that was a silly statement. I’ll rephrase: meeting the requirements to qualify as a ‘life’ does not necessarily make that ‘life’ a living human being.

“Your argument was that when organisms are in symbiosis, the dependent one was not life.”

No. My argument is that the dependent organism does not qualify as a living human being, and therefore has no Constitutional protection.

Your “recap” is nonsense garbage. I think you know that.

Jews, women, African Americans, any other ethnicity, are actual living human beings with actual rights. So I’m not headed down any path of moral subjectivism.

My argument remains the same. A “genetically unique living organism” has no rights. A woman does.

The real argument is: At what point in the growth process of the “genetically unique living organism” do we strip the woman of her rights? You say “immediately”, I’m willing to say “when it can successfully breathe it’s own oxygen, independent of me.” But the Constitution says “we don’t”.

I’m honored! Thank you for taking the picture and sharing it via CC!

Excellent summary!
One point on (d): I’m not sure I’d mark ‘consciousness’ as the point, even if we could somehow determine it. Once fertilization occurs, we have that unique human being. Beyond that point, no one really knows at what point ‘value’ should be assigned to that human life. Various criteria could be employed (and I suppose that would be at least a step in the right direction over where we are now), but it would just be arbitrary… and one group could argue against another’s criteria.

One way I’ve heard this presented, is with the building demolition analogy. If you were about to push the plunger to bring a building down, and asked your crew if anyone was still in the building… and they reported that they didn’t really know… would you just push it? In other words, unless we could somehow be certain of the state of the unborn, we’re better to err on the safe side (and preserve life).

Also, a common argument I’ve heard against your last couple of points about women having plenty of reproductive choice is concerning rape, etc. While contributing to a super small percentage of abortions, and being a terribly painful situation, granted, killing an innocent human doesn’t seem to be the proper solution. It does solve a couple of problems (the woman having to carry the baby and the impact that will have), but is quite a horrendous trade-off. One good way to defend against this argument is to replace the fetus with a toddler (‘trot out the toddler’ tactic). So, let’s pretend that when a woman is raped, sometimes she ends up with a 2-yr-old that she must care for for 9 months (we’ll have to pretend she couldn’t adopt him/her out or get someone else to provide care). Would we then say that she would have the right to kill the toddler? Nearly everyone would consider that absurd. Once again, it shows the key issue is that for people trying to be ‘pro-choice’, they have to consider the unborn to be of zero value and not another human being.

I think you need to re-read that definition a couple of times. There is nothing there about ‘independently’ meeting those requirements. How would a car accident victim not meet that definition? How would a fetus not?

re: elderly person – Well, with a fetus, you also have one independent living human being relying on the help from another independent living human being. The difference is in the kind and level of dependence and how the help is administered.

re: life – OK, so are we in agreement then, that scientifically, it is a living organism, which is genetically unique? If so, it isn’t a ‘living squirrel’ or ‘living dog’ so it must be living human, correct? So, is ‘being’ the part you’re having difficulty with?

re: Constitution – Yes, the Constitution simply speaks of ‘person’ without defining it. I suppose that can be an arbitrary term (if you disregard context). Women were not considered to be persons at one point, nor people of certain races, such as the African race. So, now you seem to be arbitrarily going against science and defining ‘person’ as someone who has traveled down the birth canal. Can you ground how personhood is acquired through such a process? If I stick you in a sack, do you lose your personhood until I get you back out?

re: “meeting the requirements to qualify as a ‘life’ does not necessarily make that ‘life’ ‘alive'” – Interesting, please, do explain!

re: “However, the functions that the organism need to perform in order to qualify as “life” are hinged on the symbiotic relationship.”
Your argument was that when organisms are in symbiosis, the dependent one was not life. My reference to the symbiosis article and example was to prove that point invalid. Am I missing something, or are we talking ‘Uterurian science’ here again? 😉

OK, let’s recap to be sure I’m following you:
1) you are saying there is ‘life’ (scientific) and ‘life’ (Uterus definition), and the two are not the same thing (but that your’s is the correct definition).
2) While living things might be alive (scientifically), if there are certain arbitrary dependencies (defined by Uterus), then they really aren’t alive.
3) Since Uterus declares them to not qualify with the Uterurian definition of life, they have no rights, and can therefore be killed.

So, when the Nazis declared Jews to not be persons, and had the power to enact and enforce that law, they were correct in doing so? Do you realize you’re headed down the path of moral subjectivism; might makes right? Is that what you are intending to argue?

The level of symbiotic relationship isn’t part of what defines life. Most people are familiar with the example of a parasite (not that I want anyone to think of that as a parallel with a human baby, as it isn’t a good parallel… but it proves the point). Another example might be if you were in a car accident, and ended up on ‘life support’ for a period of time. You don’t cease to live because you need that machine to sustain you.
You might want to take a look here for the common criteria of what constitutes life:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life

Bottom line, once the sperm and egg unite, there is a genetically unique entity which is certainly alive. It is not part of the mother. Yes, it depends on the mother, as does an infant, albeit in a different manner…. or as an elderly person might have to one day.

If you answer “yes”, all these other elements are basically irrelevant.

If “no”, why are you defining “birth” as the signifier of human rights?

Does this mean a viable, conscious 9-month baby can be aborted simply because it hasn’t been “born” yet?
Why “birth”? Why not “teething”? Why not “puberty”?

If you answer “yes” to aborting a viable, conscious 9-month baby, why can’t viable, conscious babies that *have* been born be killed too?

According to the definition you provided, the car accident victim does not meet the requirements for “life”. Neither does a fetus. It cannot independently meet those requirements.

The elderly person analogy doesn’t work. When an elderly person depends on another person for support, what you have is one independent, “living human being” being helped by another independent, “living human being”.

But is a fetus a life? Scientifically speaking, yes. Is it a “living human being”? No. Therefore, it is not afforded protection under the Constitution. I think this was your original point(?)

“Bottom line, once the sperm and egg unite, there is a genetically unique entity…”

I agree.

“…which is certainly alive”

I disagree.

I know it is tedious for all to have to bicker over semantics, but meeting the requirements to qualify as a “life” does not necessarily make that “life” “alive”.

Also from Wikipedia: “Symbiotic relationships may be either obligate, i.e., necessary for the survival of at least one of the organisms involved, or facultative, where the relationship is beneficial but not essential for survival of the organisms.[10][11]”

So, you are not wrong when you say “The level of symbiotic relationship isn’t part of what defines life.”

However, the functions that the organism need to perform in order to qualify as “life” are hinged on the symbiotic relationship. A “living human being” has no such dependency.

A fetus is not a “living human being” and does not have constitutional rights. A woman is, and does.

LOL… modification acknowledged. 🙂 I hope my CAPTCHAs aren’t too hard. It was the only way I found to thwart the automated attacks. I was at a CAPTCHA the other day that I had to refresh like a half-dozen times before I found one I even thought I had a shot at.
I hope to respond to your above response soon… things have been pretty busy.

My two cents.
The unborn are (a) alive
(b) human (they’re not spiders or fish)
(c) genetically distinct from the woman (which is why her immune system attacks it)
(d) at *some point* (nobody can say precisely when) they become conscious (this happens *before* they are viable).

As for the “self-sustaining” definition? This is also a semantic, pedantic tactic.
*All* living creatures feed off other living things in one way or another.
There are no “independant” living creatures.
They all suck life out of other lives.

Human moral codes in all cultures have placed serious restrictions on the circumstances under which another human can be killed.
This is not taken lightly by any culture (The feminist perspective I find offensively flippant and superficial).
.
Generally the human killed must be a serious danger to others in some way (invading armies, violent criminals), or have committed an offence so grevious that their existence can no longer be tolerated.
Only pregnancies that threaten the life of the woman could in any way be perceived as “dangerous”.

Do we really want to emulate the few cultures where infanticide is acceptable? Even those cultures are now modernising and reforming.

With so many aware of human rights abuses in the past, it seems odd that one group of historically oppressed people are now demanding the “right” to commit their own abuse against a powerless “other”.

Women have plenty of reproductive “choice”.
There are numerous choices they can make before and/or after becoming pregnant.
Abortion shouldn’t be one of those options.