b) tell us your preferred legal regime. No cop-outs saying “oh, we’ll leave that to the legislature once from fertilization onward embryos are considered legal persons.” You are advocating changing the law; tell us what kind of world you envision. Is abortion first degree murder, premeditated killing worth a very significant prison sentence and/or the death penalty with aggravators, perhaps a previous abortion? If not, why?

a) would you save your preborn embryo children or the 10-month old baby?

b) tell us your preferred legal regime. No cop-outs saying “oh, we’ll leave that to the legislature once from fertilization onward embryos are considered legal persons.” You are advocating changing the law; tell us what like of world you envision. Is abortion first degree murder, premeditated killing a very significant prison sentence and/or the death penalty with aggravators, perhaps a previous abortion? If not, why?

The fact of the matter is that parents have to do a number of things after birth to insure they don’t kill or endanger their child. Most of the time they have to use their bodies to do this.

Stop. You know I’m talking about medical procedures. Not about having to use your foot to step on a gas pedal to go grocery shopping to feed a child. Really, based on your first paragraph to me, you answered exactly what I meant, so please. No one is required to undergo a medical procedure to sustain another’s life. And based on your answer, you wouldn’t support legislation to require them to for a born person, meaning you are giving the fetus rights that anyone born doesn’t have.

Because not sustaining the life of the embryo typically means you intentionally kill the embryo. In the same way, I’m also in favor of legally preventing people from abandoning infants, toddlers, etc. in trash cans.

Not really. The inevitable consequence of refusing to use your body to continue a pregnancy is the death of the fetus, much like the inevitable consequence of refusing to use your body to give a kidney transplant to someone who needs one immediately to survive is their death. The fetus cannot survive without the body of the pregnant woman. If it could, we would find a way to remove it from the pregnant woman while sustaining its life. That just isn’t possible with the technology we currently have. Therefore, in either case the intentional decision of the person who has to undergo the medical procedure to sustain the life of the other person determines whether the other person survives or not. I don’t think one death is morally worse than the other. Why do you?

Zuzu,
Are you actually arguing that someone is a person or not based on whether you can file a tax-deduction for them? So then a child born 2.5 months premature on December 31 would be a person on January 1 while an overdue fetus born on January 2, would not?

No, I’m arguing that personhood — a bundle of legal rights — is based on having been born, and a good way to know if your child exists as a legal person is to apply for a social security number and determine which year you can first claim the child as a dependent on your taxes. And, yes, as of January 1, only the child born on December 31 is a legal person, regardless of whether that child was born prematurely. The other child in your scenario is not a person as of January 1 because that child was not born until January 2. The due date is not some magical line.

It’s really quite simple. Personhood is a legal concept, not a biological one.

When brain death occurs, humans lose their ability to function as an integrated organism. Human embryos haven’t lost their ability to function as an integrated organism.

BS. A brain dead person can be kept “alive” indefinitely on life support that is much less complex than that needed to keep an embryo alive. We can’t even make an artificial uterus yet, but we can keep brain dead people alive for as long as we care to. So they have far better integrative function than embryos. Even if this were not true, the point is not whether the organism can be sustained, but rather should it be sustained.

He’s provided a number of persuasive arguments and done so with respect and you reply by insinuating that he’s a sexist and a racist.

His argument was that an embryo was the equivalent of a person–as long as the person was a minority or a woman. Not persuasive and extremely racist and sexist. It may not be “cool” to point that out, but it is accurate. Of course, it is nearly impossible to be pro-forced pregnancy and not be sexist: if you see the fetus’ life as more important than the mother’s then you are, by definition, considering her less than human. Not that that belief is always concious, of course. I doubt that most pro-lifers think of it that way. But most slave holders probably claimed that they loved their slaves. Most 19th century husbands probably claimed that they loved their wives.

Maybe those in favor of prosecuting drug addicts would have to go through the experience of kicking heroin?

Not a bad idea, really…On the other hand, I am unaware of any situation in which a person’s only options are rob a bank or live in poverty so number 2 doesn’t work as an analogy.

JivinJ, would I be correct that you believe there is no proper justification for abortion except to save the life of the mother? If so, on what basis would you justify legally requiring a woman to use her body to sustain the life of an embryo but not legally require her to use her body to sustain the life of a born person?

Because not sustaining the life of the embryo typically means you intentionally kill the embryo. In the same way, I’m also in favor of legally preventing people from abandoning infants, toddlers, etc. in trash cans.

The fact of the matter is that parents have to do a number of things after birth to insure they don’t kill or endanger their child. Most of the time they have to use their bodies to do this.

But what’s odd here is the original post was talking about human embryos which are currently outside the womb and not forcing anyone to sustain them and whether they are human beings and not whether human embryos inside a woman have the right to life.

JM,
There is a difference between not sustaining someone’s life and intentionally ending that someone’s life, isn’t there?

Plus, I actually think you’re wrong. Parents have to do a number of things to sustain the lives of their born children. Feed them, clothe them, change them, etc. Sustaining the life of a child isn’t something that ends at birth. If parents fail to do these things, they are often prosecuted. I feel born children as well as unborn children have the right not to be killed. These aren’t super-human rights at all. They’re the most basic of human rights.

Jill,
You don’t actually argue they aren’t morally or legally equivalent. You assert it. But what’s interesting here is that the Silver/Lee/George argument had nothing to do with being morally or legal equivalent to born human beings. It had to do with whether human embryos are human beings (members of the species homo sapiens). So I’m wondering why you thought Silver’s arguments are fantasic when don’t now seem to agree with his position.

Zuzu,
Are you actually arguing that someone is a person or not based on whether you can file a tax-deduction for them? So then a child born 2.5 months premature on December 31 would be a person on January 1 while an overdue fetus born on January 2, would not?

Dianne,
Would you want your proposal to work for other things as well? Maybe those in favor of prosecuting drug addicts would have to go through the experience of kicking heroin? Or maybe those that want to prevent desperate people from robbing banks should have to live in poverty? Or those in favor of higher taxes should have to pay the highest rate? Or maybe those in favor of legal abortion would have to do through the experience of being killed?

Did you read the piece by Condic – the link above doesn’t seem to work now? Google – maureen condic brain death first things – and then click on cache to get the cached article from May 2003 – for me it was #3 result for that search. Condic explains the idea behind brain death and why this idea points in the opposite direction of your arguments. Someone who is brain dead has suffered irreversible loss of brain function (not just a lack of immediate brain function). Human embryos haven’t suffered irreverisble damage to their brains. When brain death occurs, humans lose their ability to function as an integrated organism. Human embryos haven’t lost their ability to function as an integrated organism.

By the way, your statement about what Macht said was out of line. He’s provided a number of persuasive arguments and done so with respect and you reply by insinuating that he’s a sexist and a racist. Not cool.

Macht said: “If you want to say a human embryo isn’t a “person,” you are free to do so, but you need to make that argument. You can’t just say it isn’t one.”

And zuzu responded: “Fine. Just try to claim that embryo as a tax deduction and see how the IRS feels about that.”

If you want to say a human embryo isn’t a “person,” you are free to do so, but you need to make that argument. You can’t just say it isn’t one.

Fine. Just try to claim that embryo as a tax deduction and see how the IRS feels about that.

There is a scientific question: Is an embryo a human, i.e. a member of the species Homo sapiens? Yes. I agree that this is a scientific fact.

But when discussing abortion, that question is irrelevant. The relevant question is a legal one: Is an embryo a “person” within the meaning of the Constitution? No, and I believe that it’s completely ridiculous to argue otherwise.

As vehemently as pro-choicers like myself defend Roe v. Wade, I disagree with the court’s reasoning. In their decision, they weighed a woman’s Constitutional/fundamental right to bodily autonomy against an embryo’s/fetus’/unborn child’s fundamental right to life. It seems self-evident to me that an embryo does not have rights under our Constitution and it boggles my mind that this is a concept that is now probably permanently enshrined in our jurisprudence. I think it’s completely nuts.

I am a living, breathing adult woman, a citizen of the United States, and the framers of the Constitution wrote that document with living, breathing citizens in mind. How the fuck can an embryo have rights? Does it have other Constitutional rights? The right to bear arms, the right to free speech, the right to an attorney if it’s charged with a felony? It’s ludicrous.

I think Lee & George use lots of smoke & mirrors and frilly language to conflate the scientific question and the legal question to conclude something like this:

embryo = Homo sapiens = human = person = “person” within the meaning of the Constitution

Bullshit.