While I appreciate the 1828 Webster dictionary definitions, none that I saw answered the legal questions. For example, the first definition reflects that a person has a body and soul. What if someone does not believe that. Because Webster said it, ergo it must be true? Your illustration reflects an example in that a person is a thinking , intelligent being. We all know that a fetus will hopefully become that one day, but is not so in its early stages of development. I also appreciate how someone can be a moral absolutist. There is even a ping list here on FR. I can disagree with the logic used while still respecting the opponent.
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.
Well said! But of course, you seem to gloss over the history you just referred to. There is absolutely nothing modern science knows today that would help make a determination as to whether a fetus has a soul or not. That is the issue. You speak of sophistry, but the greatest sophism I have run into is an attempt to use science to prove the existence of a soul...at any stage of a fetal development. The modern Church uses this in an effort to wipe out more than a millennium of contrary belief. There was no scientific breakthrough in the 1860s that led the Pope to his famous decree on abortion. But this is the sole argument for wiping out all of this history. That I would consider as pure sophistry.
But yet, in the end, it is pure faith, not science that rules this issue for those who believe. Why attempt to use science in such a disingenuous manner?
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.
This is a great question. Throughout the history of this Nation, the rights of many have been thwarted or otherwise denied for a variety of reasons. And perhaps this issue is no different. But many of us believe it is, and as such must be addressed. The seven justices were not evil people, as most here believe. But their famous decision only postponed an argument that has yet to take place. You may believe a person is one for purposes of the law at conception, but many do not. If not, then when? That is the issue, and the points I made in an earlier post do apply, Webster notwithstanding. And in the end, the absolutists may be right. Because it cannot be ascertained with certainty the stage that the fetus becomes sufficiently developed to be classified as a person, the Court may rule that 5th Amendment rights apply to a fetus from conception on. I don't believe that will be the case, but it may.
That you prefer to set such truth aside in order to continue this obfuscation of truth into the mutated gray you prefer to support your perspective is quite telling of you and your need to create an alternate reality that allows you to feel good about the dehumanization process you prefer, for whatever reason you prefer it.
Your petty condescension is laughable, not having the dissonance effect you intended. But that was a good try, sport.
While I appreciate the 1828 Webster dictionary definitions, none that I saw answered the legal questions. For example, the first definition reflects that a person has a body and soul. What if someone does not believe that. Because Webster said it, ergo it must be true?
I used 1828 Webster because it gives the meaning of the word 'person' at the time the Constitution was written. The definition demonstrates that there was no phony dichotomy at that time between a human being and a person. It doesn't matter whether someone presently believes or doesn't believe the body/soul distinction; we know what the generally accepted meaning of the word was around the time of the Constitution. So reading back an arbitrary modern distinction between 'human being' and 'person' on the Constitution to make it mean something that was never intended is historically anachronistic and unjustified.
We all know that a fetus will hopefully become that one day, but is not so in its early stages of development
Ontologically speaking, capabilities are limited to the kind of thing to which they belong. Anything that has the potential to do human things, whether now or at any time in the future, is already a human being otherwise it could never have that capability. A turnip can only do turnip things, and does not have and will never have the ability to do uniquely human things. A turnip is the offspring of turnip parentage. A human being is the offspring of human parentage. If a being has the potential of rationality then that being is already a human being because no other kind of being has that nature. We know what a human being is as surely as we know what a turnip is.
There is absolutely nothing modern science knows today that would help make a determination as to whether a fetus has a soul or not. That is the issue. You speak of sophistry, but the greatest sophism I have run into is an attempt to use science to prove the existence of a soul...at any stage of a fetal development.
I am not trying to use science to prove the existence of the soul. I am simply pointing out that we know from science and from metaphysics what a human being is and how and when a human being begins. The soul question in this context is a canard. If you want to talk theology I'll be glad to do so as far as I am able, but it is a different matter.
The meaning of personhood is about as close to self-evident as one can get. A moments reflection should demonstrate it to you: If I ask you the meaning of the proposition, "I was conceived", you would understand exactly what is meant by the sentence, and you would not be able to coherently argue that it does not make sense, or that it is untrue of yourself.
The reason it makes sense to you is that your life has been a continuum from the moment you began to exist. If I ask you when you began to exist, the correct answer is, at the beginning, i.e., at your conception. Therfore, it would be incoherent to assert that you were not a person when you began to exist and only 'became a person' sometime later in your existence. For the most unfortunate example of what I'm saying, see Harry Blackmun's incoherent use of the word, "mother" in his infamous Roe opinion, not to mention his backwoods biology and his self-professed ignorance.
Because it cannot be ascertained with certainty the stage that the fetus becomes sufficiently developed to be classified as a person
As outlined above, the assumption that there is a distinction between a fetus and a person is a category error. If you positively assert that there is some such a distinction, the burden of proof is on you to justify that distinction. We know what the word meant in 1828.
Cordially,