Yes.
The fetus.
This is the crux. As you said, it centers around "personhood".
Yes, otherwise killing someone in a coma wouldn't be harm, either.
That's not true. Do we know the person's brain can't perceive anything? Do we know the person will never regain consciousness? If there is really zero possibility of ever even thinking again, what harm is done by pulling the plug? Of course families hope. It's tragic. If there's any chance of enough brain activity to regain thinking again, yeah, that's harm. If not, it's just perceived hope an the cost of keeping the person technically alive. But who wants to make that call for a loved one? Truly tragic.
Why does that logically necessitate that this is the point at which we say it's a person? Again, understand that this discussion is about whether this is objectively true or not. Is this person hood state of being objectively true at the point of conception?Because that's the only concrete point at which we can define a human life as beginning.
Also, while we're at it, I keep forgetting what the term is that you want to use. For me, human life=human person=someone with the same rights as anyone else. I think you said that you believe a human life begins at conception, but that life doesn't become a person until later on, is that correct? So maybe I need to phrase it that conception is the only concrete point at which we can define a human person as beginning. It makes no difference to me which way you phrase it; does it to you?
At the point where distinct DNA forms, it is technically human DNA, and it "be" so it's a "be-ing". So I'd agree that at that point it is human being. Person is really more than that I think. A set of attributes that make the fact that it has human rights apparent. At the point where it becomes distinct DNA, is that the point? It's been my contention that for people who believe in souls it is apparent compared with people who don't.
It's not for the same reason or purpose. I don't disagree with the bit about slavery, that people justified their actions by trying to reason that black people were not fully persons. So their belief was that there was no potential for black people ever to be fully persons. The contention here is that the point in which distinct DNA is formed will develop into a person, fully. It's not the sort of "othering" that was done to justify enslaving black people.And this is the crux of my argument: taking some human lives*, and defining them as not human persons* is in itself harmful to society. One of the main reasons slavery was able to hang on so long was because long after humanity had mostly come to realize that enslaving other people is wrong, some clever folks decided to try to skirt this by claiming, oh, but even though blacks are humans, they're not really persons.
If there's no point other than justifying an excuse to harm other humans, you have a point.If you allow for the possibility of defining some humans as not being persons, that opens to door to anything.
I don't really have a problem with that other than that to make sure we understand that it's not the rights that make the person. It's the person that makes the rights.(*Again, if I'm using the wrong terminology here for you, let me know. Here I am using "human life" to mean any living organism that is a homo sapiens", and "human person" to mean a being that has all the rights we ascribe to "normal" human beings, like the right to life, etc.)
The trouble is every time I bring this up, you keep going back to "but, abortion has been practiced so much throughout history, so it can't be objectively immoral."
Nope! This is the point I've said a few different ways at last a half-dozen times. Whatever you think I mean by that, I don't think you're getting it quite right. I'm using it like this. At most I can say that you don't have a strong signal of its objective morality evidenced by it's universality. It doesn't mean that you're actually right or wrong.
But again I have to stress the importance of the moral objective principles we do agree on, and whether they apply to abortion. I think that I'd agree that abortion is wrong (and not necessarily murder) at the point where the unborn can perceive pain. I don't know when that is exactly. I'm not a scientist. But I do know its wrong to harm others, and feeling pain is harm. And we've already dealt with the harm argument.
Well, yeah, this is the crux we've been going on about. I'd just say I think murder is the unjustified killing of another person. But it's close enough not to quibble. The crux of the disagreement is still "person".That's the notion I'm trying to dispel by using the slavery analogy. As you said above with slavery "It's not so much that not enslaving people IS the objective moral. It's just the logical concrete application of moral principles makes it apparent."
I'll turn that back to you and say: It's not so much that not aborting children IS the objective moral. It's just the logical concrete application of moral principles makes it apparent.
So of course we're back at the million dollar question: what is this logical, concrete application of moral principles that I'm speaking of?
Well, the moral principle we start from, and both agree on, is "Don't murder."
What is murder? Intentionally killing an innocent person. I think we agree on that.
So let's talk about an intentional abortion. It's definitely killing, I think we agree on that as well. Innocent would be pretty hard to dispute, I would think.
The point of disagreement is on how we define "person."
I don't agree that that must be the only definition. You've used the slavery argument to say they defined person in a way that justifies their belief. I can say that claiming this has to be the only definition might suit your belief.My contention; the very core of my argument, is that person must be defined as any living human: any living organism classified as homo sapiens. Any other definition that I have ever heard someone give is either a tautology, internally inconsistent, or it excludes certain people outside the womb who we ought to also consider human persons.
But browsing the interwebz, many definitions list attributes beyond just being live while having human DNA.
For the purposes of morality, I think a minimum requirement would be that it can perceive pain. It's immoral to unjustly inflict pain on another living creature.So, to counter my above claim, can you provide your own definition of "person"?
Here's a thought. If it's immoral to end living tissue that has distinct DNA, does it have to be human? What makes it more immoral for humans than any other tissue with distinct DNA?
The answer may reveal some things.