(August 13, 2018 at 5:34 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:(August 13, 2018 at 3:35 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: What? My point was that my argument isn't that a human fetus is a "potential human" in the first place. That was a strawman you created. (I don't even know what that means, honestly. Either a particular organism is a human, or it isn't.)
My argument is that a human fetus IS a human being, just as much as a human infant, human toddler, human child, human teenager, human adult, etc... and so as a human, he/she has the same right to life as a human being in all other stages of life. That is my argument.
No, I explicitly said "potential human being just like a born child is." I qualified the sense in which I used the word human, and did not make a straw man argument. You on the other hand engaged in the fallacy of contextotomy, less formally known as quote mining, and stripped the word human of the context I explicitly provided. But even if I hadn't, the point of my argument was clear in that in ignoring the very real differences between the fetus and the newborn, pro-lifers are engaged in a fallacious and bankrupt argument. But by all means, continue trying to dick your way around the argument with irrelevant deflections and making dishonest misrepresentations of what I actually said if it makes you happy. The rest of us will simply look on and shake our heads at your pathetic display. And I will point out that you are simply doubling down and repeating the argument without bothering to either answer the objection, or even acknowledge it. If you're simply going to repeat empty slogans instead of actually answering my argument, then I don't see any point in your replying at all.
Im still confused on your "potential" hangup, since my point was that it was never an argument that I used, nor one that most pro lifers use as far as I've seen, yet was being projected on to me. I'm pretty sure most of us will say an unborn baby has a right to live because he/she is human, not "potentially human". But whatever, if you want me to retract the strawman comment, so be it. Chalk it up to a misunderstanding on my part, of which I'm still confused about but willing to apologize and let go.
As for differences between an unborn baby and a new born baby, I never denied there were differences. You know who else has differences? Newborns and 30 year olds. Severely mentally impaired people and neurotypical people. This doesn't make one more human than the other. We are all human. Male or female, gay or straight, white or black, disabled or healthy, old or young, regardless of stage of life, etc, we are all human beings and as such have an inherent right to life. History is rampant with people trying to dehumanize other people in order to justify taking away their basic human rights. Slavery, the holocaust, and the killing off of the Indians were all excused by saying blacks/Jews/Indians were not quite human "enough". The abortion argument is the same, by saying that unborn babies aren't humans and so it is ok to take their life. A human fetus is simply a very young human, not some sort of non living non human species.
"Of course, everyone will claim they respect someone who tries to speak the truth, but in reality, this is a rare quality. Most respect those who speak truths they agree with, and their respect for the speaking only extends as far as their realm of personal agreement. It is less common, almost to the point of becoming a saintly virtue, that someone truly respects and loves the truth seeker, even when their conclusions differ wildly."
-walsh
-walsh