You write, I’ve had the same argument used against me by vegetarians. Didn’t make me swear off meat either.

Except in this case we are dealing with human life.

You write, You define a human being as the sexual product of a man and woman, with a complete genetic code.

This is not *my* definition, this is the scientific definition, I am merely borrowing it. You keep insisting that all human beings are persons, something that I completely agree with you on, Mitch. But what you fail to see is that people on your side, the ones who have thought this through much more than you have, don’t agree with you.

If you think Peter Singer is a ‘wacko’, than take the new liberal blog left 2 right as an example. It is a blog composed of liberal philosophy professors and lawyers that got together to, as swerve left says, “takes on the post-election koan of how the left can better communicate to the right”. This blog is fairly representative of the left, and is linked to by several liberal blogs.

One of the posts on the blog discusses abortion, the liberal author writes,

Of course, many opponents argue that abortion is murder on the grounds that human life begins at conception — which is true but irrelevant. The life cycle of a human being does begin at conception, but what’s relevant is when the human being becomes a person, with a person’s right to life.

So you see, even liberals agree that human life starts at conception.

This is not something that I cleverly invented to justify my pro-life views, or something that I personally like. This is something widely agreed upon by both sides. This is something that you can not argue against, it is held by scientists. How else do you think scientists decide if something is a dog, or a cat, or a fish, or whatever? They dont wait until the dog reaches maturity, they know from the moment of conception that that ‘blog of cells’ is a member of the ‘dog species’ and will grow into a full grown mature dog given time.

So yes, a zygote, embryo and fetus are all human beings, just at different stages in life. They do look different than what you see everyday, for example, from infants, but so does the infant when compared to an adult. An 80 year old man looks very different than a two day old infant, but the two are both fully human, just at different stages in life. They may exhibit different human functions through each stage, but both are still fully human.

In addition, your gradualism answer has more problems than it solves. Beckwith writes,

If personhood is only a developing, gradual thing, then we are never fully persons, because we continue to grow, at least intellectually and emotionally and spiritually. Albert Schweitzer said, at 70, “I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.” But if we are only partial persons, then murder is only partially wrong, and it is less wrong to kill younger, lesser persons than older ones. If it is more permissible to kill a fetus than to kill an infant because the fetus is less of a person, then it is for exactly the same reason more permissible to kill a seven-year-old, who has not yet developed his reproductive system or many of his educational and communications skills, than to kill a 27-year-old. The absurd conclusion follows from defining a person functionally. Someone who is fully human cannot gradually become more fully human. Certainly it is true that the unborn human physically develops gradually, as is true of humans at later stages (e.g., infancy, childhood, adolescence). But it does not follow from this fact that the unborn human is any less human than the infant, the child, or the adolescent. They are nonetheless fully human although they are gradually developing.

You also write, Same thing is true for animals, by the way. We already know that gorillas and other higher apes have powers of language. They are capable of showing love. A recent article described that gorillas are even able to MOURN. Should we consider them to be human? If not, why not—because they have a different genome?

Throughout this discussion it has been a shared premise that a human being is ipso facto important and valuable. We can discuss whether this premise is true or not, or whether other species should also be included similarly important another day. To open up that discussion now would completely blow up this discussion and send it on a different tangent that I am currently not prepared to take (I leave to Mexico on Saturday).

You define a human being as the sexual product of a man and woman, with a complete genetic code.

You seem to like that definition because it provides a clear, bright line between “nonhuman” and “human.” It’s like water turning into ice. At 32.1 degrees F it’s water, at 32 degrees it’s ice.

However, there is no reason to assume there is a single point of transition between tissue and human. Your “proof” has consisted of thousands of words EXPLAINING the definition, but nothing at all PROVING the definition.

Whereas my observation—which is shared by most Americans—is that becoming human is a PROCESS. It’s not like water turning into ice, it’s like … congealing butter. At the one end, you have melted butter, something that’s definitely liquid. On the other end of the process, you have a stick of butter, something that most people would say is solid. Put it in the freezer and you could kill somebody with it. But there is no single point in the process where the butter “freezes,” where it makes an abrupt transition from liquid to solid.

At one end of the process, you have a single, fertilized cell. Not human, no more than a paramecium is human.

On the other end, you have a baby. Definitely human. As a matter of fact, I’d say that the fetus becomes COMPLETELY human well before birth. How much before? I don’t know.

At some point in the middle of this process, we reach a point where reasonable, moral people must say, “This fetus has developed enough humanity that killing it would be wrong.” But I can’t tell you when that point is.

Same thing is true for animals, by the way. We already know that gorillas and other higher apes have powers of language. They are capable of showing love. A recent article described that gorillas are even able to MOURN. Should we consider them to be human? If not, why not—because they have a different genome?

That’s life. We sail into an uncertain future without enough data to make decisions, and yet we must make those decisions anyway.

I don’t know what constiutes a person, but I know that a single-celled organism is NOT a person, no matter how it was produced and what its genetic structure is.

You say I am:

no different than the slave owner who also ‘felt’ that black people were not persons. Or the sexist who ‘felt’ women were inferior to men, or the nazi who ‘felt’ jews were not persons.

I’ve had the same argument used against me by vegetarians. Didn’t make me swear off meat either.

I have shown you that scientifically there is a big difference between ovum and sperm, on one hand, and conception on the other. I have also argued that there is no fundamental difference between conception and any other stage of development(zygote, embryo, fetus, newborn infant, adolescent etc).

What more can I do? You just respond with ‘well I don’t see it as a human being’, with no logical or scientific arguments supporting your claim. What kind of response is that? If you don’t want to deal with the logical side of this, or the scientifical arguments, how do you come to any conclusion on any topic? How would you feel if every person simply responded with, “I just know liberals are wrong, wrong on everything”, without ever giving any supportive reasons. There is no possibility for dialogue after that.

If your whole foundation for what constitutes a human being is based on what you personally ‘feel’ is a human being, than you are no different than the slave owner who also ‘felt’ that black people were not persons. Or the sexist who ‘felt’ women were inferior to men, or the nazi who ‘felt’ jews were not persons.

It all becomes subjective than, and a fight over power. What’s to seperate you from the person who feels a ninth month pregnancy should also be aborted, over any reason the mother see’s fit. Or what’s to seperate you from this?

THE DOG: “Meow.”

(The dog scratches its chin, begins to lick itself clean quite thoroughly.)

ME: “That’s not a dog, it’s a cat.”

YOU: “Of course it’s a dog!”

(YOU proceed to lay out a well-reasoned, well-researched, well-written and lengthy proof that it’s a dog.)

ME: “It’s not a dog, it’s a cat. I know a cat when I see one, and that’s definitely a cat.”

YOU: “Can you prove that it’s a cat? If not, you will be forced to assume that it’s a dog, because of my well-reasoned, well-researched and lengthy proof that it is one.”

ME: (attempts to refute the proof that it is a dog, even though I can’t really prove it’s a cat.)

YOU: “Since you have not proven that it is a cat, we must, therefore, in the name of erring on the side of safety, decide it’s a dog.”

ME: “Oh, fine, it’s a dog then.”

DOG: “Meow.”

(The DOG sharpens its claws on the sofa, coughs up a hairball, and then goes to sleep.)

I wrote this,

Individually you have sperm and ovum. But once the two join, scientifically you have something new. It is a scientific fact that individually sperm and ovum are merely parts of their owners. Since they each have the same DNA of the owners. However, at the moment of conception, this union of the two, creates something new, a new DNA. This new entity has a DNA this world has never seen before, and will never see again. And this new entity, like the infant, and the adolescent, has a designed nature that will guide it to other stages in human life.(emphasis added)

What part of this do you disagree with, and why?

I’ve already shown that the ‘you’ is basically present from conception until natural death. Ive shown a clear scientific difference from the moment of conception to before, and explained that nothing fundamental changes.

*SIGH* You’ve done neither of those things.

‘I don’t agree with you and I am not telling you why’

Where do you go from there?

I’ve already shown that the ‘you’ is basically present from conception until natural death. Ive shown a clear scientific difference from the moment of conception to before, and explained that nothing fundamental changes.

What am I missing?