And to believe that the Supreme Court can only make decisions based on absolutes is also (to use your term) feckless.
We should just leave it at that. Your moral absolutism based on what you have been taught is far from what the Church believed for a very long time. My philosophy recognizes that a person relying on faith can by definition ignore all the nuances of science. A person who does not rely on faith must face those nuances, and may in fact not be able to reconcile every one. Both are good people directed by their own moral compasses.
The Science of embryology defines the conception event as the point of new individual. You, on the other hand, are trying to parse and dodge at every turn in order to support and defend arbitrary application of science, to arrive at your desired goal ... which goal is becoming more apparent with each posting. You may claim I have 'no counter argument', but it is just more mischarcterization on your part because you will not be specific when seeking to gray this issue out to your satisfaction.
For starters, before we even get to 'nuances', how about using the definition of the word at the time the Constitution was written?
PERSON, n. per'sn. [L. persona; said to be compounded of per, through or by, and sonus, sound; a Latin word signifying primarily a mask used by actors on the state.]
- 1. An individual human being consisting of body and soul. We apply the word to living beings only, possessed of a rational nature; the body when dead is not called a person. It is applied alike to a man, woman or child.
- A person is a thinking intelligent being.
- 2. A man, woman or child, considered as opposed to things, or distinct from them.
- A zeal for persons is far more easy to be perverted, than a zeal for things.
- 3. A human being, considered with respect to the living body or corporeal existence only. The form of her person is elegant.
- You'll find her person difficult to gain.
- The rebels maintained the fight for a small time, and for their persons showed no want of courage.
- 4. A human being, indefinitely; one; a man. Let a person's attainments be never so great, he should remember he is frail and imperfect.
- 5. A human being represented in dialogue, fiction, or on the state; character. A player appears in the person of king Lear.
- These tables, Cicero pronounced under the person of Crassus, were of more use and authority than all the books of the philosophers.
- 6. Character of office.
- How different is the same man from himself, as he sustains the person of a magistrate and that of a friend.
- 7. In grammar, the nominative to a verb; the agent that performs or the patient that suffers any thing affirmed by a verb; as, I write; he is smitten; she is beloved; the rain descends in torrents. I, thou or you, he, she or it, are called the first, second and third persons. Hence we apply the word person to the termination or modified form of the verb used in connection with the persons; as the first or the third person of the verb; the verb is in the second person.
- 8. In law, an artificial person, is a corporation or body politic.
In person, by one's self; with bodily presence; not be representative.
- The king in person visits all around.
Webster's 1828 dictionary.
We know what a human being is. We know it as surely as we know what a turnip is. We do not have to have exhaustive knowledge to know truly, but it is at minimum a matter of fact that is ascertainable via public, scientific knowledge. What is curious to me is how easily supposedly enlightened, modern, sophisticated, scientifically educated people who want unrestrained power to kill very young human beings will either openly appeal to the scientific ignorance of past ages, or unwarranted and self-refuting philosophical skepticism as ethical justification, as if such sophistry provides grounds for anything.
The question of law boils down to whether all human beings have rights or only some human beings have rights, and whether humans have rights simply because they are human beings or because some other human beings say so.
Cordially,
Following the Civil War the 14th Amendment was adopted. This Amendment allows the creation of the legal person of the corporation. This person exists as soon as the forms are filed and the registration fee paid. This person is potentially immortal so long as fees and taxes are paid in a timely manner. Oddly, this person may own other persons of a similar nature and has stronger rights such as property rights than natural humans have. There is no soul in this person even though it exhibits many of the attributes of life.