Abortion/Consciousness/Life

[Esquilax]

A brain dead person has a history of being too.....yet the reason you pull the plug has nothing to do with that history of person-hood but rather the lack of expectation of future person-hood....or future being. The fact that we pull the plug on brain dead people is evidence that a history of person-hood....a history of being....isn't what confers moral protection.

The OP is making the claim that pro-lifers are inconsistent because they are willing to pull the plug on an unconscious brain dead person but find it morally reprehensible to abort an unconscious fetus. I am showing that it isn't inconsistent....and in fact the opposite is true. When you take the position that future expectation of person-hood is what is deserving of moral protection everything makes sense. It is okay to pull the plug on a brain dead person because there is no expectation of future person-hood. It is wrong to kill an person under general anesthesia because there is a future expectation of person-hood.

Uh, except that you're wrong: future personhood has nothing to do with it. If it did, the same moral protection would be extended to sperm, and any line you attempted to draw to make this not so would be entirely arbitrary.

In fact, the reason one pulls the plug on a brain dead person is because their brain is dead. We actually have a pretty good handle on the basics of neurology, and with a brain dead person we're able to furnish anyone who cares to listen with plenty of real, scientifically derived evidence that the brain is no longer functioning to such a degree that medicine cannot repair it. In the same way, we can produce the same level of evidence toward the fact that a zygote also doesn't have a functioning brain, and hence the same moral considerations can be applied to this.

Future personhood is patently ridiculous, as a method of deriving moral standards for life, as not only are the lines one would draw entirely arbitrary- the same argument could be used to preserve all sperm and eggs and, in fact, to broach the idea that women should remain pregnant all of the time. After all, they have a moral obligation to future persons that don't yet exist, but will if they're perpetually pregnant!- but one could easily make arguments against it. For one, personhood isn't assured even in pregnancies carried to term; complications and miscarriages do happen. It could easily be argued that the ultimate fate of any given fetus is just as probably death than life, and you would have no argument against that that doesn't rely on special pleading. Additionally, one could envision a scenario in which a woman looking for an abortion today would, upon being denied this due to "future personhood," be unable to further her career such that she has the resources available to have the multiple children she wants to have, because of the one child she was forced to have early on. In that circumstance- and don't even give me an excuse about how rare that is, because you don't know, and in fact hadn't even considered that in your argument- you've actually prevented children from being born that would have been, had the abortion taken place.

I could go on, but my point is clear: "future personhood," is an inapplicable argument.

The OP's fixation with consciousness actually causes inconsistencies. If it is okay to kill a fetus because it is unconscious.....why then is it wrong to kill unconscious sleeping human being?

It's only inconsistent if you refuse to acknowledge that a sleeping person's subconscious mind is still active. It's inconsistent, if you're somehow unable to comprehend the difference between "dormant mind," and "literal absence of even the physical structures which cause the mind." If you're willing to throw out all of modern medical science and even simple logic then yes, I guess it would be inconsistent.