Concerning the question of whether and when a fetus is ever a human being, I'd like to address some semantic confusion. Human is both a noun and an adjective. When we say a human fetus, we don't necessarily mean that the fetus is a human. After all we also talk of human hands, human corpses, human hearts, and human desires and no one makes the mistake of thinking any of those things is a human being.
So my question is, what is it that makes a human being a human being for purposes of being considered a person morally?
Personally, if find the idea that sperm entered egg and thus instant person hood unconvincing. As someone, I'm pretty sure it was Chas, noted in this thread or another recent one, fertilized eggs sometimes split and become twins. Or if there are two fertilized eggs in the uterus one sometimes fuses with and absorbs the other. If we can't tell if we have one person or two, we really don't have any. We just have potential human beings.
I get in trouble with strict pro choice advocates because I don't think exiting the uterus is a magic moment of person-hood. In late pregnancy, the development of the fetus in the uterus and the child outside it is pretty much the same. Both feel pain, react to stimuli, and brain development is pretty much the same. Both can survive outside the mother, but one is inside and one is outside. It seems an arbitrary distinction to me.
Many cultures relied on the distinction of "quick" versus not quick. Quick has meant alive as in "the quick and the dead," and that is roughly the context meant when asking is the pregnancy quick, except that those cultures defined quick as moving in the uterus so as to be felt by the mother.
I don't find that distinction helpful as there are many things not human that move of their own volition or involuntarily. Additionally, whether a woman feels the movement depends largely on her weight (thin women feel movement earlier) and the size of the fetus.
What determines it for me is brain development and a working nervous system. If the fetus's brain development approaches that of a born child and it can feel pain, then that is a human being and not just a potential one. The reason I define a human being this way is because I think it is our brain that makes us essentially human.
How would you define a human being and why?
So my question is, what is it that makes a human being a human being for purposes of being considered a person morally?
Personally, if find the idea that sperm entered egg and thus instant person hood unconvincing. As someone, I'm pretty sure it was Chas, noted in this thread or another recent one, fertilized eggs sometimes split and become twins. Or if there are two fertilized eggs in the uterus one sometimes fuses with and absorbs the other. If we can't tell if we have one person or two, we really don't have any. We just have potential human beings.
I get in trouble with strict pro choice advocates because I don't think exiting the uterus is a magic moment of person-hood. In late pregnancy, the development of the fetus in the uterus and the child outside it is pretty much the same. Both feel pain, react to stimuli, and brain development is pretty much the same. Both can survive outside the mother, but one is inside and one is outside. It seems an arbitrary distinction to me.
Many cultures relied on the distinction of "quick" versus not quick. Quick has meant alive as in "the quick and the dead," and that is roughly the context meant when asking is the pregnancy quick, except that those cultures defined quick as moving in the uterus so as to be felt by the mother.
I don't find that distinction helpful as there are many things not human that move of their own volition or involuntarily. Additionally, whether a woman feels the movement depends largely on her weight (thin women feel movement earlier) and the size of the fetus.
What determines it for me is brain development and a working nervous system. If the fetus's brain development approaches that of a born child and it can feel pain, then that is a human being and not just a potential one. The reason I define a human being this way is because I think it is our brain that makes us essentially human.
How would you define a human being and why?
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
