My issue with the abortion debate is that no one can empathize with the woman in question like her family and those close to her.
I don't think that anyone but that woman and her family should have a say. You cannot regulate morality.
No one is pro-abortion. I think that gets lost with people that want to make abortion illegal, which is just stupid.
Making guns, abortion and drugs illegal is just stupid and won't work. People will do them or own them anyway.
So, your definition would be completely subjective-- that is, it's completely up to the feelings of the mother with no way for an observer to corroborate it.
Does that mean a 21 y/o who was the product of an unwanted pregnancy and abandoned by his mother should be denied voting privileges having not achieved "personhood" as you've defined it?
I understand what you're saying, and actually agree with you, but that line of thinking clearly doesn't clarify the answer to the question.
after 21 weeks of pregnancy.
The genetic code of our species. If you carry it, you are a human being.
As for personhood, that's tied to a whole mess of philosophy and sentiments that I don't think will help us reach a sensible, objective conclusion.
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.
Have to agree with this one. Barring stillbirth, the functional organism that emerges will be a human being. But that is only the physiological part of the equation. That is Homo sapiens. Philosophically, there's a lot more to it than that.
No, not mentioning the word nor the endless argument.
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.
"Becoming a human being" is a spectrum, much like a germinated seed becomes a birch tree. No one would look at a just-germinated seed and declare it to be a birch tree. It has all the genetic material that it will ever need; it cannot become a pansy or a holly bush or an oak tree. It will continue to grow, but for quite a while no onlooker can say that it IS a birch tree. No one would call it a tree yet. They would call it a sprouted seed perhaps, later a sapling. It would not yet possess the physical characteristics of a birch tree. But, given the proper environment, someday it will. Will that happen instantaneously? No, it is very gradual, a spectrum.
So it is with human development. All of the genetic material is present at conception. But this zygote, this single cell, must grow in the proper environment, with proper conditions, to become an embryo, then a fetus, eventually possessing the full form and physical characteristics of a human. It is not black and white, in my opinion, when precisely during this development it becomes a human being.
At conception, the fertilized egg has the potential to become a human being. I would strongly disagree with anyone claiming that a single cell IS a human being.
A human being is a biological organism, Homo sapiens, defined by its genetic complement.
A person can refer to a human being of course but it’s a term wrapped up in legal definitions created by humans. Napolitano, who I also like, said a human being is a person at conception. I disagree with that because it’s clear we permit abortions for a limited time after conception and there are no charges of murder.
That tells me that we define when a human being is enetitled to protection as a person under the law, it doesn’t “just happen” at conception. Blacks were once not treated as persons deserving protection under the law in this country not long ago.
Regarding the statement that the fertilized egg deserves protection under the law because it has the “potential” to develop into a human gets us no where. Within probably the next 15 years, I bet we will be able to produce a human fetus, complete diploid set of chromosomes, from non-germ cells.....then what? This capability might already exist; I know the Chinese are pushing some limits that the U.S. has been reluctant to explore.