When Is Human Life A Human Being?

http://www.freebritannia.co.uk ^ | 6/16/2003 | Marvin Galloway

[XBob]

300 - "a life is a life at the moment it is conceived!"

How are you going to prevent the deaths of your mis-carried zygotes? Are you going to have a funeral and grieve for each one?

Are you going to save and analyze each of your menses, to assure that you recognize and grieve for each un-emplanted fertilized egg?

Or are you going to not have sex so as to prevent conception?

You better make some sort of commitment to back up your words, if you wish to commit others work off your commitment abiding by your beliefs.

What commitment are you going to make to back up your words?

[tuna_battle_slight_return]

Excellent!

[XBob]

"a life is a life at the moment it is conceived!"

And to make you understand the idea better, if you accidentally and unknowingly run over and kill a small child, in your car, is that child any less dead, or are you any less guilty of doing it?

It seems like, according to your standards, we should have all fertile women in this country up on trial for manslaughter, at a minimum, perhaps with the exception of lesbians and nuns.

[XBob]

nbttt There is only a right to do, not a right to have. Those who are incapable of doing, have as much right as anyone else to do whatever they can. Rights cannot confer the power to do on those whose own nature prevents them from doing.

[UnChained]

Ok, Iv'e read post 201 in it's entirety.

While I agree with the public policy stand that the article seems to support, I don't agree with the logic that it uses to get there. I hesitate to criticize this piece since it so much resembles your own writing. I don't want to flame someone as gracious as you. I find myself in essential agreement with you on the issues of abortion and cannibalism.

The article repeatedly used the term "human being" without ever addressing the "beingness" of the creature under discussion. I focused on the brain as the likely place you would have to look to figure out the mechanism of being if such a mechanism exists. But, since I believe in life after death, I don't think that being is always dependent on the presence of a "functioning integrated whole organism" Yet, there does seem to be a link between that organ which seems to allow higher cognitive function and Self-awareness. This perceived linkage is intuitive I suppose.

The article never seems to address BEING other than applying the term inapropriately as part of a sophistry. The article starts off talking about human ORGANISMS and then switches to human BEINGS without establishing a logical basis for the validity of the new terminology. The article drives home point after point with each more applicable to a biologic human ORGANISM but instead uses the term BEING throughout. It seems like an underhanded and fallacious way to try to sway the audience. It may be that all human organisms are beings, but I've never seen that proven logically. The article doesn't cause me to waver in my sense that the central issue in human life is the I AM. The biological arguments skirt the issue.

I can easily entertain the notion that there is a full fledged intense sense of self or I AM in the single celled, just conceived human. I don't pretend to have any logical basis for making that this assertion is true however. The article makes that assertion in an offhand way repeatedly as it builds to it's logically weak conclusion.

The arbortionist will concede your argument by saying "Ok it's human, but so what? It's still not a person." The pro-abortion crowd has an internal sense of what constitutes human life that differs with yours apparently. Dare I say it again? The issue is BEING. That is what needs to be addressed frontally in this debate.

Can you define life in such a way that you could help an alien mechanical intelligence accurately identifiy life from non life?

I suspect there is no fool proof string of words you could concoct as a definition that would work consistantly.

Made of protoplasm? Includes Hot dogs.
Irritable? Doesn't include many bacteria.
Reproduces? Doesn't include mules.
Metabolizes from its evironment and grows? Includes fire.

We know that a mule is alive intuitively even though it's hard to pin down a flawless definition of it's livingness. In similar manner many abortionists and I have an intuitive sense that a human is truly alive only if it is a sentient being. They are inclined to ascribe no sentience to the unborn while I am just the opposite.

I could easily tolerate abortion and cannibalism if it could be absolutely be determined that the human organisms involved were not self aware. BTW, I'm aware of the can of worms this opens about various unconscious states but I've pretty well dealt with those worms already.

Let me close my opus with this.

Since we haven't established what makes a being a being scientifically, it's presumptuous and immoral to risk killing what may be human beings through ignorance. Therefore, I propose a moratorium on all abortion and exploitation of unborn humans until that question can be answered conclusively.

[XBob]

hank, I think we need to pass a law to have all fertile women save and analyze each of their menses, and when they find a fertilized egg, they need to have it implanted in their uterus.

[MHGinTN]

You wrote, "Since we haven't established what makes a being a being scientifically, it's presumptuous and immoral to risk killing what may be human beings through ignorance. Therefore, I propose a moratorium on all abortion and exploitation of unborn humans until that question can be answered conclusively." ... [That is one of the most reasonable suggestions I've read at FR in quite some time. May I add a note or two? ... There will always be a need for some pregnancy terminations, and a rare few where the unborn at a very early age in their individual lifetime cannot be saved in the process of ending the pregnancy. But that should not be construed to assert the right to kill an individual alive human organism. Now, about being and organism.

Conception of a human being is not so complex as many would suppose. When the gametes of human male and human female unite, a human third individual lifetime begins as evidenced by the process of cell division (growth). On rare occasions, the embryonic life will fail to produce any meaningful organism beyond the initial embryonic construction of an encapsulation (the first evidence of the placenta) and we may take that to mean the individual life conceived has failed to develop further, failed to survive into the age that transitions to fetal age. If the conceptus in normal circumstance is conceived from human gametes (or using human ovum and nuclear material from a somatic cell, as in cloning), the conceptus is in the human species. That reality also carries the truth that the surviving organism is a human being ... a human individual life 'being' in time and space. The surviving human life cannot 'be' a rabbit or squirrel because it/she/he is a human 'being'. If the lifetime begun at conception is stopped before birth, it is the lifetime of a human being that has been ended. At some point, the science of Biology must meld with a non-science means of reasoning in order to convey something more than the organismal realities, but Biology dictates that the alive, surviving human organism is a human being, no matter at what age we find the organism. Thus I have tried to connect the dots, so to speak, between the rationale used when organ harvesting is contemplated and the aliveness of the embryo who constructs its own organ(s) for survival in its environment, as found in the normal process of biological growth and devlopment.]

[MHGinTN]

You offered, "I could easily tolerate abortion and cannibalism if it could be absolutely be determined that the human organisms involved were not self aware."

Would you consider functioning to survive as in the same category as 'self awareness', for the earliest ages along the continuum of an individual human lifetime? ... That is what the human being is actively seeking to do, survive, when it first builds its placental encapsulation. Is it awareness like a non-anesthetized adult human being? Hardly. Does that effort to survive fit with your final comment in your post? I think it does, because we are considering a human being (without the later organ called brain which mediates the functioning integrated whole at later ages along the continuum begun at conception), but a human being who is quite exactly normal for its age achieved, alive, functioning for survival, and building the forms (organs and tissues) it will need to survive at later ages in its already running lifetime.

[MHGinTN]

Human conception begins a human being's individual lifetime. To end that lifetime, one must euthanize the already alive, struggling individual human being. Embryonic stem cell research and research cloning (therapeutic didn't go over as well as the exploiters had hoped, so they switched to a more obfuscatory term) seek to do just that, euthanize individual human beings at their embryonic or early fetal age, in order to harvest their body parts, in an effort to bolster selected lives deemed more worthy of that unalienable right called LIFE.

[UnChained]

"The unborn's status should be determined on an objective basis, not a subjective or self-serving definitions of personhood."

Yet the only definition that makes sense is sentience. We "merely" need an objective means of detecting sentience.

Sentience isn't intelligence, it isn't education or socialization. It is the process within you of you being aware of yourself being aware of yourself being aware. It is the I AM in you that makes you a being. That is the life that we were endowed with by our creator. That is what we believe lives on when our bodies have stopped functioning.

There is evidence that the process of self awareness continues in those who are medicated, comatose or just sleeping. I believe that it is logically inescapable that we die if there is any interuption in self awareness. Any resumption of awareness after an interuption would be a new new awareness perhaps with the memories of having lived before the interuption. It's sort of analogous to the following scenario:

Bones' Nightmare

Imagine that the transporters of Star Trek were possible.
The transporter and replicators of TNG are essentially the same technology.

With the transporter, a pile of matter, like a human body is dismantled and turned into energy. The energy and the information needed to reassemble the person is sent to another location.

With the replicator, energy from the warp engines are used to provide the raw material to build something using some assembly information that was stored earlier.

Consider the implications if something goes wrong during a ship to ship transport.

McCoy gets on the transporter and the technician starts the transport and the following occurs:

The originating transporter scans the Doctor's body and sends the information along with the energy to the other ship. By a mysterious malfunction The Enterprise's transporter draws ship's power and using the information still in the pattern buffer re-asembles Bones on the Enterprise just a moment later.

The techs on the two ships tell each other that they have the Doctor on their ship. After some checking, they realize the malfunction and want to set things right. The Enterprise's tech explains it all to Bones and then asks him to stand by a moment while the transporter disintegrates him. Bones leaps off the pad and says to the tech "

"You ain't gonna kill me with that Damned thing!"

"I'm afraid you don't understand Sir, You're already on the other ship." the tech soothingly answers.

"That's not me over there." Bones yells hysterically.
"Distintegrate him!"

The technician confers with this counterpart for a a minute and then answers: " I'm afraid he doesn't want to go either Sir."

The truth is in this story neither person is the real McCoy, they are both new beings created minutes earlier with the memories of having lived a lifetime. Each one has their own I AM or sense of self.

It's more subtle to realize that ANY interuption in awareness has the same consequence. If you interupt the process of being you die. If it restarts then you have a new being. I believe that is why God designed us to dream when we sleep. We are still the same being because there is no interuption. We don't remember usually but our I AM never stops. Atoms and cells come and go but we live on as long as we are a continuous process of self awareness.

I said i'ts subtle and few will agree on the face of it. But the logic is inescapable.

[MHGinTN]

You've a mistake way back at the beginning of your syllogism: There is evidence that the process of self awareness continues in those who are medicated, comatose or just sleeping. I believe that it is logically inescapable that we die if there is any interuption in self awareness. The first sentence is incorrect (an anesthetist can correct you), thus the second sentence has no merit as axiomatic to the rest of your post.

[UnChained]

" Would you consider functioning to survive as in the same category as 'self awareness', for the earliest ages along the continuum of an individual human
lifetime? ... That is what the human being is actively seeking to do, survive, when it first builds its placental encapsulation. Is it awareness like a
non-anesthetized adult human being? "

I'm not a member of PETA. Functioning to survive is common to all life, I don't equate it with self awareness. I have spent a lot of time dwelling on the ramifications of self awareness. At the core of my being is a life within a life. The process of me perceiving my existence is me. Me being aware of myself is the I AM that I possess. That is the self that I preserve.

It's interesting that you mention adults as a standard to measure self awareness. I have often speculated that since this self perception we experience ebbs and wanes, that there may have been a time when our sense of self was significantly more intense than we experience ordinarily. Some glimpses into the inner life of children have led me to believe that we all may have forgotten what it is like to be REALLY ALIVE.

As I said earlier, it's conceivable to me that there is no explainable mechanism for the phenomenon of being. That would make it a miraculous thing that could easily be attached to a just conceived human organism. The self awareness of the unborn could make you and I seem like the walking dead by comparison.

[MHGinTN]

I'm fond of believing that the little ones smile and coo so much because they've so recently been more in His presence than in ours. The following story was sent to me some time back ... I think you'll enjoy it.

Smell Of Rain: The story of Danae comforted on God's chest

A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the Doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing. Still groggy from surgery, her husband David held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news. That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency cesarean to deliver the couple's new daughter, Danae Lu Blessing.

At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound and nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature. Still, the doctor's soft words dropped like bombs. 'I don't think she's going to make it', he said, as kindly as he could. "There's only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one".

Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Danae would likely face if she survived. She would never walk, she would never talk, she would probably be blind, and she would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation, and on and on.

"No! No!" was all Diana could say. She and David, with their 5-year-old son Dustin, had long dreamed of the day they would have a daughter to become a family of four. Now, within a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away.

Through the dark hours of morning as Danae held onto life by the thinnest thread, Diana slipped in and out of sleep, growing more and more determined that their tiny daughter would live-and live to be a healthy, happy young girl. But David, fully awake and listening to additional dire details of their daughter's chances of ever leaving the hospital alive, much less healthy, knew he must confront his wife with the inevitable.

David walked in and said that we needed to talk about making funeral arrangements. Diana remembers 'I felt so bad for him because he was doing everything, trying to include me in what was going on, but I just wouldn't listen, I couldn't listen.' I said, "No, that is not going to happen, no way! I don't care what the doctors say; Danae is not going to die! One day she will be just fine, and she will be coming home with us!" As if willed to live by Diana's determination, Danae clung to life hour after hour, with the help of every medical machine and marvel her miniature body could endure.

But as those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana. Because Danae's underdeveloped nervous system was essentially 'raw,' the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort, so they couldn't even cradle their tiny baby girl against their chests to offer the strength of their love. All they could do, as Danae struggled alone beneath the ultraviolet light in the tangle of tubes and wires, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl. There was never a moment when Danae suddenly grew stronger. But as the weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce of weight here and an ounce of strength there.

At last, when Danae turned two months old, her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the very first time. And two months later, though doctors continued to gently but grimly warn that her chances of surviving, much less living any kind of normal life, were next to zero, Danae went home from the hospital--just as her mother had predicted.

Today, five years later, Danae is a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life. She shows no signs, what so ever, of any mental or physical impairment. Simply, she is everything a little girl can be and more-but that happy ending is far from the end of her story.

One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in Irving, Texas, Danae was sitting in her mother's lap in the bleachers of a local ballpark where her brother Dustin's baseball team was practicing.

As always, Danae was chattering nonstop with her mother and several other adults sitting nearby when she suddenly fell silent. Hugging her arms across her chest, Danae asked, "Do you smell that?"

Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, "Yes, it smells like rain."

Danae closed her eyes and again asked, "Do you smell that?"

Once again, her mother replied, "Yes, I think we're about to get wet, it smells like rain.

Still caught in the moment, Danae shook her head, patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced, "No, it smells like Him. It smells like God when you lay your head on His chest."

Tears blurred Diana's eyes as Danae then happily hopped down to play with the other children. Before the rains came, her daughter's words confirmed what Diana and all the members of the extended Blessing family had known, at least in their hearts, all along. During those long days and nights of her first two months of her life, when her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Danae on His chest and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well.

[UnChained]

"an anesthetist can correct you"

We currently lack the understanding to determine whether sentience is occuring or not by any kind of scientific observation.

There is anecdotal evidence of some individuals remembering time under anesthesia and during coma. Without understanding the mechanism of self awareness, no one can assert whether it is occuring during coma or anesthesia without making some major assumptions.

[MHGinTN]

Brain wave patterns do not support your notion, I'm afraid.

[UnChained]

Thanks. That's pretty neat.

I once heard of very young children who were observed saying to an infant. "Tell us about God again, we're starting to forget..."

[MHGinTN]

Since this thread appears to be now ignored, I shall share with you an aside, a thought so outisde the box that I wouldn't share it usually.

You are familiar with the butterfly, the cocoon, and the caterpillar. Have you ever considered the parallel of our placenta (the cocoon) and our embryonic life within the placenta (the caterpillar within the cocoon) that emerges months later to live in the air world (the butterfly state of existence), leaving its cocoon, er, I mean placenta behind as it flutters off in the air world? Is our adult body the cocoon that restrains our human spirit as we develop for the later existence that follows our air world stay?

[MHGinTN]

The caterpillar and the butterfly are the same organism, it just looks and functions differently at different ages along its lifetime continuum.

[UnChained]

"Brain wave patterns do not support your notion, I'm afraid."

Two things, For brain waves to matter we must first assume that the process of being is a mechanistic, neurological phenomenon. It might not be mechanistic. I enjoy thinking about the possiblity of self aware machines but I seriously doubt they are buildable.

Secondly, Aren't brain waves a counter indication of thought? Brain waves are a rythmic oscillation occuring in regions of the brain that are essentially idle and have gone to screensaver mode.

[XBob]

387 - Ah, here is the post I was looking for.

"Just how is a woman supposed to plan a funeral for a sloughed-off fertilized egg? Women are rarely aware when their fertilized eggs are sloughed off. "

This is exactly what MHGinTN and hocndoc are arguing for.

That It is immoral to purposely abort (or allow to die) a fertilized egg.

Therefore, and hocndoc, is it not quite technologically feasible today, to find a 'sloughed off fertilized egg' in the menses?

If their view prevails, we should return to the criminal penalties for abortion which existed prior to roe-v-wade, and we must start an immediate program to screen every fertilized woman's meses for fertilized eggs, and put them on life support (preferably by implanting them in the 'owner's uterus.

Ignorance is no excuse for condoning allowing 'people' to die, when the technology exists to save their lives.

Hocndoc, I am running behind. What do you propose to solve this giant problem of mass murder? And what punishment do you recommend for women who dump their 'babies' into toilets or sanitary napkins? It seems that recently there have been several incidents relatively recently where this has happened with more advanced fertilized eggs, by women/girls who 'didn't know they were pregnant'.