Abortion/Consciousness/Life

[answer-is-42]

You're being greasy with your use of the word conscious/ness. When we say that people are "unconscious" -as to say asleep or passed out (or knocked out on a choice cocktail)..we are not referring to the same thing as when we are are speaking of peoples "consciousness". To be unconscious is not, amusingly, to lack consciousness. I guess that's just an amusing holdover eh?

You've dreamt before, I imagine, it should be easy to understand from there. But, rights -are- modified when a person is in a coma. You can actually pull the plug on a person in a coma. Try that shit with a guy that's up and talking, hell, can't even pull the plug if he begs you to. I'm sure I'm just preachin to the choir though, doc.

Not sure you know at all what you are talking about. First of all, discontination of life support is an ethical question, not a phsyiological one. I have personally experienced awake, communicating people requesting that their life-sustaining medical interventions (not just ventilators, but pressors, anti-biotics, pulmonary meds, etc) be disconnected, it's not fun but you are EXACTLY WRONG that it cannot be done, it can and is done. In fact that is the ethically easiest situations. The hard ones are the ones you are flippant about - an unresponsive person whose wishes are unclear or more likely whose MPA's wishs are in conflict - stopping care there is very hard. Sorry you don't know what you are taking about other then your crash course from Grey's Anatomy, but real life ain't like that.
Next, the previous person required consiousness as a requirement for human life- this is the medical definition of consciousness. If I recall, you wouldn't respond to me on another thread without giving a definition of "god" (still waiting for your response there after I gave one) - so let me ask you then - what definition of conscionsness would you like to use to define human life? please be specific so we can be talking intellegently.