[Torie]

I don't consider a zygote to have enough of a human nature to be deserving of any legal protections. I don't consider potentiality to be equal to actuality, and thus I don't give much weight to the argument that the zygote in time will acquire more and more "humanness." You I know disagree with all of this. But since these are subjective judgments, and for some, based on the teachings of their religious faith (I have no religious faith), there is no point arguing about it. You just go to your "church," and I will go to mine. Regards.

[Petronski]

I don't consider a zygote to have enough of a human nature to be deserving of any legal protections.

Hopefully no governmental body will ever make a similar judgment about you.

[Petronski]

And if you want proof there is a God, try this thread. ;O)

[johnb2004]

Your argument could apply to many things, like slave ownership. Some may not think certain people are actually people, like the retarded, or severely disabled. Are they less human? What constitutes a person?

[ThomasMore]

acquire more and more "humanness

Illogical.

1) It starts out human.
2) It grows as a human.
3) It dies as a human.

Any other answer is a rationalization of scientific fact.

I don't consider a zygote to have enough of a human nature

When is enough? this is laughable.

since these are subjective judgments

Nothing at all subjective about human life...from conception til natural death. Anything less and we walk the same path that the liberals walk.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Some people think that rape and plunder are okay during times of war. Some religions teach that various classes of people can be reduced legally to servitude, or that it is okay to marry multiple wives.

Shall we rescind our laws in these areas since some people claim they are subjective from their point of view?

Scientifically, there is nothing to tell us that a fertilized ovum is not a new human being. It has human DNA, so it is certainly not a fish or a tree; it is living, so it isn't a rock or a blob of protein, and it is not alike to the woman within whose body it resides, so it is not part of the mother. Everything we can empirically see about it says it is a seperate human being - merely at a different stage of development than you or I.

The real subjective judgement seems to me to be able to claim there is some time where a fine line can be drawn on a human life where we say this side of it has legal protections while that side of it does not.

It is telling regarding liberalism and the abortion ideology that human corpses are treated with greater respect and given more legal protection than live unborn humans inside their mother's wombs.

You can be thrown in jail for dismembering a corpse, but you will be applauded as a progressive visionary for dismembering a baby in the womb.

[AuH2ORepublican]

"I don't consider a zygote to have enough of a human nature to be deserving of any legal protections."

---

A zygote's DNA is different from that of his or her father and my mother, which is why it is incontrovertible that a zygote is a different organism from his or her mother even though he or she is growing in the mother's womb. The difference between a 1-day zygote and a 2-month embryo and a seven-month fetus and a newborn baby and a 6-year-old child and a 16-year-old adolescent and a 32-year-old adult and a 70-year-old elderly person is a difference of development, not of being less human or more human; just like you wouldn't say that the newborn baby is less human than you or I just because the baby can't talk and can't feed himself and can't reproduce and can't do countless other things that most adults can do with ease. Greater development does not equal greater humanity, and thus the least developed human beings of all, zygotes just after conception, are no less human than you and I.

By the way, while I am a religious man, my recognition of conception as the beginning of human life stem not from my religious upbringing (especially since my parents weren't especially religious), but from the logical application of what we have learned about human biology. You do not need to be a deist to recognize that life begins at conception, and if you believe that murder is the intentional taking of innocent human life, and that murder is wrong, then you should also believe that abortion is wrong even if you do not believe in God.

[nickcarraway]

I don't consider a zygote to have enough of a human nature to be deserving of any legal protections.

But who gives you the authority to decide who deserves legal protection? Why do you get to impose your religion on the world? Do blacks deserve "any legal protections?" If some people think they don't how are we supposed to justify that they do? Some people I know don't think conservatives do. etc. etc. Why does the government get to decide who has rights?