2020 US Presidential election

[John Cracker]

I presume here you're responding to my question on IVF. I'm sorry to be the person to tell you, but according to a study published by the Yale School of Medicine, nearly 1.5 million embryos created for IVF treatments were discarded (or rather, murdered, in your phraseology) between 2004–2013. Does your opinion change? Are women who seek IVF committing an act of mass murder when their bodies, on average, reject the majority of embryos implanted? If so, what should be the legal status of IVF and assisted reproduction?

Thats a tricky question because they arn't actively trying to terminate another life.

First, the operative word in my post was "physiologically." People living in poverty can physiologically exist even if the State does not exist; fetuses, on the other hand, cannot survive without a host womb. Second, I don't believe the State should have the power to force a parasitic physical dependency on anyone (carrying a fetus to term). Return to my very basic example regarding organ donation: should the State force you to donate your organs to save your child? If you say yes, at least you're being consistent in your rejection of bodily autonomy. Finally, we have not concluded that fetuses are "people," the most I'm willing to concede is that they are "living."

No because the child doesn't doesn't fully depend on that match. Do you think that parents should have a legal responsibility to take care of their children? Because that could be considered the state forcing parasitic physical dependence. Lastly if you concede that they are living, then you have to concede they are a person because a person is a living human, no other requirements.

[jamescfm]

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[John Cracker]

Lastly if you concede that they are living, then you have to concede they are a person because a person is a living human, no other requirements.

I have repeatedly asked you to provide an argument in favour of this position and all I have received in response is a semantics game. Obviously when we are discussing personhood we do not mean the ordinary everyday use of the term but the philosophical (and perhaps legal) implications that ascribing personhood creates.

The position that you are positing is problematic for two reasons. Firstly the definition of a foetus as "living" in this sense is somewhat questionable because as you know foetuses before a certain stage in pregnancy would be unable to survive outside of the mother. Secondly (as I have already made clear to you) the definition of something as a person simply because it is alive and possesses human DNA leads to a bizarre conclusion. My left arm is both living and human, by your definition it is therefore a person.

.When your heart stops beating you are considered dead, so why when a fetuses heart beats are they not considered alive?

.Killing a pregnant woman is considered double homacide

I was wrong when I siad no other requirements, their are two more definitions aside from the first one:
A living human. Often used in combination.
An individual of specified character.
The composite of characteristics that make up an individual personality; the self.

A fetus while it does depend on its mother, it is a separate body, and early on they do develop "personalties" in a since, some babies prefer to stay on the bottom others on the top of the womb, in the case of twins I have herd of them hiding behind each other or holding onto each-other, some babies react when they hear different voices, so it seems this would indicate some sort of personality, not as developed as our own but a personality nonetheless.

[Wu Han]

Thats a tricky question because they arn't actively trying to terminate another life.

So manslaughter?

[John Cracker]

Thats a tricky question because they arn't actively trying to terminate another life.

So manslaughter?

Yes. But that probably raises issues i'm not thinking about.

[jamescfm]

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[John Cracker]

.When your heart stops beating you are considered dead, so why when a fetuses heart beats are they not considered alive?

.Killing a pregnant woman is considered double homacide

I was wrong when I siad no other requirements, their are two more definitions aside from the first one:
A living human. Often used in combination.
An individual of specified character.
The composite of characteristics that make up an individual personality; the self.

A fetus while it does depend on its mother, it is a separate body, and early on they do develop "personalties" in a since, some babies prefer to stay on the bottom others on the top of the womb, in the case of twins I have herd of them hiding behind each other or holding onto each-other, some babies react when they hear different voices, so it seems this would indicate some sort of personality, not as developed as our own but a personality nonetheless.

The point about "double homicide" can be disregarded since it is straightforward question begging. Heartbeat as the sole condition for life is not useful because people can be resuscitated after their hearts have stopped beating. In general I would suggest that your attempts to simplify this issue and present it in a black and white manner is not only unhelpful, it undermines some of the arguments that you are trying to make.

Once again I am not asking for a semantic definition of a person, I know what someone means when they use the word in ordinary speech but that is not the matter at hand. The classification of a foetus as a person in the philosophical sense means that we will owe to them whatever duties we owe to other people and that they will be entitled to the same rights as an ordinary person.

For the sake of argument let us suppose that we accept your definition of a person as a "living human being" with a "specified character" and "composite of characteristics that make up an individual personality". On initial reading this appears a more compelling account until we consider the very vague conditions under which you consider a foetus to have a personality.

If a personality is just the ability to sit in a particular position then that is a very low bar to clear. Returning to my previous (deliberately absurd) example my left arm prefers to hang at the left side of my body whereas my right arm prefers to hang at the right side. Each of my arms in this sense has a "personality" and should be considered a different person.

Even if we were to deny this characterisation as accurate (which I don't think is fair) the criteria that you have set forth presents more obvious problems. Individuals with dissociative identity disorder (DID) are known to maintain multiple distinct personalities but we do not literally think that they are different persons. If we accept the definition of personhood that you have proposed then we must accept that someone suffering from DID is actually multiple distinct persons and this would entail (for example) giving them multiple ballot papers in elections. For these two reasons I think your proposed definition of a person fails pretty clearly.

I can concede your right that that should not qualify something as a person, so your original statement concerning what qualified as a person:

.self-awareness
.they cannot communicate
.they cannot reason and they do not have the capacity to feel pain

It is possible as early on as 12 weeks babies feel something like pain (https://www.lifenews.com/2020/01/20/sci ... -12-weeks/) however when they can feel pain exactly is unproven. Babies do recoil during abortians (https://pregnancyclinic.org/does-the-ba ... -abortion/) so that does indicate stress/pain and maybe even self awarness (the page doesn't say self awareness it just seems to me that would indicate something like that). They actually might start crying inside the womb which is a babies form of communication (https://www.webmd.com/baby/news/2005091 ... le-in-womb), they also listen and learn (https://www.webmd.com/baby/news/2013010 ... arn-womb#1).

[jamescfm]

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[John Cracker]

I can concede your right that that should not qualify something as a person, so your original statement concerning what qualified as a person:

.self-awareness
.they cannot communicate
.they cannot reason and they do not have the capacity to feel pain

It is possible as early on as 12 weeks babies feel something like pain (https://www.lifenews.com/2020/01/20/sci ... -12-weeks/) however when they can feel pain exactly is unproven. Babies do recoil during abortians (https://pregnancyclinic.org/does-the-ba ... -abortion/) so that does indicate stress/pain and maybe even self awarness (the page doesn't say self awareness it just seems to me that would indicate something like that). They actually might start crying inside the womb which is a babies form of communication (https://www.webmd.com/baby/news/2005091 ... le-in-womb), they also listen and learn (https://www.webmd.com/baby/news/2013010 ... arn-womb#1).

I made no statement regarding what criteria should be adopted to consider someone a person, I only listed off some of the most commonly cited in the literature. Note that in most cases these are not "either/or" but all have to be met. As I have said I don't have any strong views on which of these criteria should be adopted or whether we might need additional qualifications on top of them.

Given that you are the side that wants to massively infringe the individual liberty of women it is really up to you to present a compelling argument for your position. The criteria that you have outlined above apply far more to animals than they do to foetuses. Even if we are generous and accept that a foetus feels pain and is self-aware (this is very contentious) then you would have to accept that most animals are persons and immediately grant them all the same right to life that you are seeking to extend to foetuses.

My view is that babies are living and that they are their own person, they may not feel pain or be able to reason from the start, but I believe they should be given a chance and I think that they should have the same constitutional rights that a new born baby has. I think that in the case of the mothers life in abortian is okay, but in most other cases I believe they are infringing on the rights of the baby. And I would not have to accept animals as people because I never said that the capacity to feel pain and self awareness was the only thing that defined a person, I was just saying that early on in the pregnancy it is possible for them to feel pain. I don't realy know what criteria I would give to define a person, its a tricky question because most of them would extend it to far (ie: animals) or narrow it down to much (ie: leaves out people in comas ect.), but let me ask you this does a fetus have value?

[John Cracker]

The debates will be awesome.