[MHGinTN]

How much of a "person" would any of us be without sentience then? This is the same twisted defense of 'killing it before it reaches the arbitrarily assigned start of the individual life, to prevent it reaching that higher, more worthy level, to support the non-human, non-individual speciously applied designation of it, so it can rightly be exploited' argument offered lamely by weikel.

[hocndoc]

Good discussion you've started here.
Why is it that when I read some of these justifications I think of lobotomies? Is it from the movie "The Planet of the Apes" or remembering that lobotomy was legal for mental illness in the "60's? Unruly girls and "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest" and Siberian dissidents were made "non-sentient."