Kelly of the Phoenix
Well-Known Member
Way back when I was a CNA, there was a guy who had stopped eating and his family refused a feeding tube. We were LIVID because he was a big, stocky guy and starving to death would take awhile. We all just kinda prayed God would take him quickly. I don't know if he was on comfort meds like morphine or anything. I've never worked with hospice but I share a lot of their outlook. I'm fine with respecting patients' desires (even if they're really, REALLY dumb), but I believe that when the body is clearly shutting down, that's a sign the end credits are about to roll and putting the last five minutes of the movie on slow-mo isn't going to change that.Until near death, when the "pro-lifers" insist that the dying person suffer as long as possible.
And a cluster of cells with neither a functioning nervous system nor anything else really may be human genetically, but it is not a PERSON.We also have secular, reality based, science to use.
While science let itself be bamboozled by racists for a long stretch of its history, the problem with this false equivalency is that we can prove black people have reasoning skills, nervous systems, etc. You will NOT get that from a zygote, no matter how you try to stretch it. If a single celled human is a PERSON, then so is every other single celled organism, and we shouldn't use antibiotics because we're killing "life".Where I live, it didn't used to include black people.
And chimeras, conjoined twins, etc are also problems when it comes to pro-life arguments. Not that they should be destroyed, but if there are clearly two genetic "people" in one body, how do we say the soul works then?Here’s the illuminating kicker: we don’t hold funerals for miscarriages. If the fetus is a living human being, why wouldn’t we?
Are identical twins, who were born of a single cell, the same soul?
I'm for it for practical reasons, but I believe that free birth control could make both sides happy.Not everyone has the same moral views. Personally I'm against abortion, but I don't think the government should get involved telling people what to do.
EXACTLY. Lots of things are alive but we kill them anyway. Our immune system kills life 24/7. It is impossible to live without killing SOMETHING. What matters is sentience/personhood.You shouldn't be asking whether there is life, but whether the soul has presented itself. Your other questions, and answers, proceed from that point.
I mean, sometimes people will claim that election fraud is rampant and "dead people vote". Well, they SHOULD if human is the only qualification for personhood, because just because they're dead doesn't mean their species changed.
Not for those who believe in various types of afterlives.It doesn't matter what you believe, human beings begin at conception and end at death.