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Pro Life / Pro Choice Debate

Junebug said:
That's not what he's saying. His point is that you don't know, ex ante, when someone has lost consciousness for the last time. And he's right.
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Thanks for translating. I should have said "permanently lost the ability to regain consciousness" to avoid the situation of people dying in their sleep (when they went the sleep they lost consciousness for the last time but were still people until death).
 
Junebug said:
It's a pretty straightforward argument. It is a new being with unique human DNA.
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As Townie pointed out, there is nothing particularly special about "unique human DNA." The counter to that is there is a very clear difference between a zygote post conception and a cancerous tumor, in that one has the potential to develop into a person. I'm fine with calling a zygote a potential person.
 
Junebug said:
Like most things in biology, "conception" is a process. If you want to break it down and go with the first mitosis instead of the penetration of the egg by the sperm, I don't have a real problem with that. I think the formation of the zygote, which has in its proneuclei the DNA of the father and mother, is a better definition, but if you want to wait 12 hours that's fine by me.

And call me when a tumor has the potential to develop into something we can all agree is a human/person.

Whether you agree or not is one thing, but the argument is not difficult to understand.
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So a zygote is a person because it has the potential to be a person?
 
If the the GOP can't defund Planned Parenthood, they can't pass a constitutional ban and it wouldn't be ratified any way. Tea Party was only upset there weren't 100 Obamacare repeal votes. Don't understand why the Tea Party doesn't demand multiple constitutional votes. GOP leadership doesn't want to vote since it would just remind social conservatives they're unable to deliver on their primary issue. They've been searching for the right case to overturn Roe vs Wade for more than 40 years, but that hasn't happened. Another Dem President and the court shifts against abortion foes. If ending abortion is their number one issue for some, Huckabee, Cruz, and Santorum aren't the issues. They talk about loopy tactics that are doomed to fail and make the GOP look uninterested and incapable of governing.
 
Junebug said:
No. A tumor is not a human/person because, despite having unique DNA, it has no potential to develop into a person.
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So in order to be a person, an entity with unique human DNA must have the potential to develop into a person?

In other words a zygote is both a person and has the potential to develop into a person. Very straightforward indeed.
 
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jhmd2000 said:
...In other news, "No, Your Honor, as it turns out, I wasn't actually 'Selling drugs.' I was merely 'being reimbursed' for the transport costs between the wholesaler and the consumer, but I can see how you might have been confused. I trust we've cleared this up, so I shall plead not guilty."
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sailordeac said:
good old "shipping and handling," a universally understood euphemism for padding profits
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I guess everyone missed these two dumbass posts where Planned Parenthood is accused of skimming a profit from $50 of prep and transport costs. How nefarious! They should be eating those costs, then there would be no problem!
 
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since financial considerations and advantages play a role in much of the abortion process, both the decisions leading to it and the actual process itself, believing that somehow the trafficking in fetal body parts would be entirely immune from such considerations is simply unwarranted
 
Junebug said:
No. We both know exactly what I am saying. I know you want to try to make it difficult, but it isn't.
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No I actually don't know what you are saying.

What is it that makes a zygote a person? It can't be the potential to develop into a person.

As Townie pointed out, it also can't be having unique human DNA.

It also can't be a combination of the two. It is nonsensical to say that something is X in part because it has the potential to develop into X.
 
i think we just need to wait for all the facts to come out
 
I don't understand how any relatively smart person can be a super staunch religious conservative and be wrong about almost everything
 
RChildress107 said:
No I actually don't know what you are saying.

What is it that makes a zygote a person? It can't be the potential to develop into a person.

As Townie pointed out, it also can't be having unique human DNA.

It also can't be a combination of the two. It is nonsensical to say that something is X in part because it has the potential to develop into X.
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He needs it to be a person because it is convenient for him.
 
wait, you can't believe they'd be super religious and always wrong or you can't believe they'd be super religious but also always wrong? the former seems obvious to me.
 
That a zygote has the potential to be a person makes a fine argument for banning abortion (I don't agree with it, but logically it works), but not for declaring that a zygote is indeed a person. Maybe the former is what Junebug was getting at.
 
Junebug said:
I posted my own views several pages back. I don't view a zygote to be a human/person. However, I don't think the view that it is is terribly difficult to understand. If you aren't able to grasp it, you are either a moron or being intentionally obtuse. Now that RJ is gone, I don't think anyone on this board is the former, so I'm going with the latter.
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If the view is so easy to understand then one who isn't able to explain it must be a moron. If a zygote is a person then surely one could point to a characteristic of a zygote that separates it from non-persons.
 
Any definition that rely on random scientific cutoffs aren't going to work. You can combine a sperm and an egg outside of a body and under certain conditions will continue to divide replicate etc.. but guess what no human will come of it. Additionally the potential to become human has been made possible by pretty much every human cell that exists. A lot of work has been done in the stem field to reverse differentiation of all cell types. If there wasn't such world objection a true completely scientifically made up cloned human is within the realm of possibilities.
 
RChildress107 said:
Consciousness seems pretty important. I can imagine a person without a beating heart or even a body really as long as the person is conscious. I can't imagine a person that lacks consciousness or the capability for consciousness.

If an alien visiting earth asks you what sets people apart from animals how would you respond?
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"Some people kill for fun. Difference."
 
Junebug said:
Think hard. I bet you can come up with something. Maybe start with "has the potential, in the mine run of cases, to grow into a born child" or something like that.

I'm sure I won't be the first person to tell you this, but you utterly lack even the remotest semblance of common sense sometimes.
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That seems awfully similar to "it's a person because it has the potential to be a person," but lets run with it.

What is it about a born child that makes it a person?
 
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