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this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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Nope.
People would at most say that of an embrio, not a child.
Unlike what the "every sperm is sacred" crowd thinks against all scientific evidence, a ball of cells with no brain activity is as much a child as a piece of human intestine, a toe or the cells flaking of your skin every minute of the day are: they're all mindless bundles of cells which happen to have human DNA - organic things, not persons.
The non-morons who support abortion actually set a time limit on how late in the pregnancy it is legal to do an abortion exactly because having thought about it, they're aware that a viable embrio will eventually transit from mindless bundle of cells with human DNA into person (though you need to be seriously undereducated to call a fetus at even that stage a "child") and morality dictates that once it's a person their life is sacred.
This is why in most civilized countries abortion is allowed up to 12 weeks: because before that tne embrio has no brain at all and is as much a person as a human toe or kidney, but once it does have some brain activity, whilst we don't really know if and how much of a person that early in gestation it is, we chose to consider it as person just to be on the safe side hence with the right to live.
Only the ultra-simpleton crowd would think that the ball of indiferentiated human cells the size of a pea which is the embrio earlier in gestation is a child.
PS: The funny bit is that the people you're criticizing have the same moral posture with regards to children as you do, the only difference being that they're informed enough and have thought about it enough to know that an early gestation embrio is nowhere near the same as a child hence it makes no sense for the rights of the woman that carries said embrio to be suspended in favour of that mindless ball of cells.
The arguments of the anti-abort crowd really just boil down to "Because I'm too ignorant to understand that which has been known for over a century, other people must be thrown in jail"
This is ontologically and empirically false. I don't really have time for debunking this incredibly self-masturbatory screed, but holy shit you have no idea about categorisation of beings or an arguments about the wrongness of killing. (You're not exactly talking to someone as mentally deficient as you).
The cortical organisation argument is simply cherry-picking a worse instance that satisfies the criteria of possibility of human experience. The fact that it is already a human organism is sufficient, especially since cortical organisation doesn't grant consciousness and even if it did by definition it would fail to describe the wrongness of killing temporarily unconscious humans.
You clearly don't even understand the meaning of the words you're parroting there, to the point that you ended up making the case for even later than 12 weeks abortion.
It really is a case of your own ignorance justifying that others must go to jail.
"You're making the case for even later abortion"
Well of course, the 12-week limit is pure horseshit. Literally nobody in ethics makes this argument it's merely invented by supremely ignorant lay persons to pander to both sides.
You only feel that it is an argument for later abortion, because you are affirming the consequent (a laughably stupid logic error to make) by assuming that abortion is already permissible.
Either killing humans is permissible period or it's not. Dependency and development arguments fail to provide exceptions that don't also apply to adults.
Your argument works by creating your very own definition of what it is to be "a human" to then say "you can't kill a human".
Redefining the meaning of the words used and then claiming that you're right because there exists widelly accepted moral rules which use those words - but not as you defined it to be - isn't actual logic, it's wordplay.
The foundation of all your arguments on this is a "trust me" definition of "a human", provided as an unchallangeable, undetailed and unsubstantiated axion - change that definition to, for example, "a human is somebody born from a woman" and that entire argumentative structure of yours collapses since in that alternative definition until the moment of birth a fetus is a thing, not "a human".
So you pointedly bypass the actual hard part that matters the most and were the main disagreement is - the whole "when do human cells stop being just cells that happen to have human DNA and become 'a human'" - with an "it is as I say" definition on top of which you made your entire case. That's like going "assume the sun is purple" to make the case for painting the walls of a house with a specific color.
All this would be an absolutelly fine and entertaining intellectual game, if you weren't defending that people should go to Jail when they do not obbey the boundaries derived from your definition of "a human" and treat as "not a human" that which you chose to define as "a human", which is the logic of the madman.
Nope. You are committing a categorical error.
Human is very well defined biological definition, objects within the human set are classified according to material properties that are empirically observable, you are falsely equating it with the philosophical concept of personhood.
"Change that definition..."
Changing the symbol used to represent an object with the same properties as a fetus, does absolutely nothing to the reasoning. Because we are not reasoning about the symbol represented by the string "human", we are reasoning about objects with shared properties (well you aren't, actual philosophers are). Some of those objects have moral value based on these properties, therefore all objects that have these properties also have moral value. What we call it doesn't matter. It seems so ironic that you whine about wordplay, when you literally confused yourself over it.
My argument is that relying on personhood (which you didn't you hilariously relied on bodily autonomy), is still insufficient because personhood membership does not account for wrongness of killing. Remember our moral principle of who is allowed to be killed is derived from determining what categories we already fundamentally accept are permissible to kill. This is called analytic descriptivism, and you are trying to use it too, you are just completely incompetent. I did not rigorously prove it to be insufficient, because you never actually made the argument, you simply dropped the bodily autonomy argument like everyone does (unless of course you want to accept the premises, and reasoning and deny the conclusion like your intellectual peers in Bedlam).
"If you weren't defending that people go to jail"
Arguing that an action is immoral, is not the same as arguing that it must be punished. You need a separate argument that immoral actions should be punished or deterred in someway. This is simply a fabrication on your part. In fact if you are such an intelligent logician, can you tell me what logical error you are making here? (Hint: it starts with "affirming", to help you find it since you clearly have no idea).
There is a very large body of philosophical work on this subject, everything you have been arguing is pop philosophy that has been rejected as false for decades to even centuries.
If you were even remotely educated on this topic you would realize that you are intellectually equivalent to a flat-earther. There are so many comical errors I can't address them all.
This discussion however is hilarious to me, next time instead of jerking yourself off over word salad consider that the person you are trying to refute is possibly very knowledgeable on the subject (and possibly has an academic background in it :) ).
I was talking about "A human" not "human" - very different things and the former is definitely not "very well biological definition" (I assume you meant "defined" rather than "definition").
Did you think the quotes were decorative rather than delimitative?
What follows is then mainly bollocks and projecting your misintepretation of my point as somehow a set of inherent personal flaws of mine, always enternaining but not actually making an argument.
You've spent the last several posts saying things like "you do not kill a human" and "it's the same as an unconscious human and you do not kill an uncoscious human" to justify your case but all of the sudden you're saying you haven't relied on the meaning of "a human" which you is inconsistent with the very things you wrote.
Then you delegate the definition of "a human" - aka personhood - to some vague unnamed "philosophers" whilst still failing to provide it and justify it.
Then you restated the same "you don't kill a human" argument this time around using "the wrongness of killing" unless it's "in a category we already fundamentally accept are permissible to kill", whilst still failing to provide a well defined and justified definition for the threshold between "not a human" and "a human" or, in your knew argumentative structure, being a member of a "category we already fundamentally accept are permissible to kill" to not a member. Worse "a category we already fundamentally accept are permissible to kill" is an even more ill defined, vaguer definition that "a human" (starting by who is that "we" that "fundamentally accepts" all those categories and their boundary definitions) - again you're delegating to unamed individuals rather than providing a definition and you even massivelly expanded size of the problem space.
(On the upside, I suppose bring in the very definition of "alive" into the argument will trully fire up on both sides veritable legions of virologists)
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HOWEVER:
I do agree that if as you now say, you're not talking about forcing your moral on others via lawmaking and your take on this is purelly a moral one, then absolutelly whatever ill defined threshold you have in your mind is right for you and absolutellly you're entitled to try and convince others of that - it is indeed a moral choice to believe that, for example, "a human is formed at the time of conception" and from there derive that, morally, what by that definition is a human developing inside a womb is always entitled to the same protections as a human after having been born.
As long as it's about one's moral guidance in one's personal choices, it's all valid and boundary conditions need not be well defined or justified because "I'll know what's right and what's wrong when I see it" thresholds are good enough for personal moral.
The thing is, you've made your case in a post about legal consequences for somebody from anti-abortion law, hence it is implied that your post is justifying the Law (and if it was not your intention to do so, it would've been easy to make that clear) and that's entirelly different because by that point you're not making a case for "this is a moral point of view people should have" (and hence you try to reason people into sharing it) but instead it it's "this is a moral point of view people should behave according to or be harmed if they do not" (quite literally by being deprived of their freedom if they don't) and that's were all the need for clearly defined and justified thresholds arises because in forcing pthers to comply you have two entities with two sets of rights - since the pregnant women is a human, with the right to freedom - and from the definition of when does a piece of organic mater becomes a human also arises the point were some of the rights of the pregnant woman will be denied in favour of the other human: for the purpose of limiting the rights of a human - the pregnant woman - an ill defined threshold of the "I'll know it when I see it" is just an arbitrary threshold to deny that person's rights.
(From the first comment of yours I replied to, I got the impression you totally missed this: the so-called "pro abortion" posture is not in favour of "poor single women having abortions", it's in favour of "poor single women having the choice to have an abortion" - it's not at all about "people should have abortions", it's about people not being forced either way. This is why you often see that position named "pro choice" rather than "pro abortion" - it's not in favour of abortion, rather it's against limiting a woman's choice on that subject.
If indeed there are people out that think "poor single women should have abortions" I'm on the same side as you - I don't think they should: what I do think is that the option to chose to do so or not should be theirs and they should not be punished either way for their choice)
Personally, if indeed your point is a purelly personal moral one were you do not desire that others are forced to comply with your moral then yeah, it's absolutelly valid and needs not even have well defined boundaries between acceptable and not acceptable and I see no harm in tryng to convince individuals to share that moral point of view and act accordingly in their own personal choices.