Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site watmath.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!bstempleton From: bstempleton@watmath.UUCP (Brad Templeton) Newsgroups: net.abortion Subject: The myth of humanity (moral article) Message-ID: <7053@watmath.UUCP> Date: Wed, 29-Feb-84 23:47:54 EST Article-I.D.: watmath.7053 Posted: Wed Feb 29 23:47:54 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 2-Mar-84 07:07:47 EST Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario Lines: 42 Note how I flagged this article as talking about the moral issue, namely, is abortion right or wrong? Many people like to debate when a fetus becomes a human being. The two camps pick upong conception and birth. anti-abortionists claim (fairly correctly) that the birth distinction is arbitrary. I would like to suggest the the conception distinction is just as arbitrary. Yes a fetus is human, as is an adult person, as is a zygote, AND as is a sperm-egg pair (unfertilized) as is a skin cell. They all have all the genetic material, and with the exception of the skin cell (for now, until we can clone a human, which is possible in theory) they all can be made into a thinking human being (What I'll call a "person") if we want to. Barring the injection of a soul by god, what is the difference in potential between an egg and a zygote? A modern biochemist can take an egg and fertilize it in vitro with a high success rate. So the two potentials are within an order of magnitude. Only a chemical reaction which we understand part of remains in the way. And it's a chemical reaction that likes to happen, and which we can make happen fairly reliably. How can it not be murder to destroy an egg which has a sperm on the way in and yet be murder to destroy the finished product ten seconds later? How can there be any line based on the chemical reactions of DNA? If we are to draw a line, we must use another critera. If you look around, I think you'll see it is the developed mind that makes the human unique. When the brain is dead, the law says the person is dead. In is the mind that distinguishes us from the animals and makes us special. So here is my proposed definition: Human cells are not a person unless there is (or has been, with the possible chance of remission) a developed human mind of capability beyond that of the animals we kill for sport, food or experimentation. To be conservative, we should say the capability should be way below that of those above animals. For example, it is estimated dolphins and some simians are beyond infants, but the question is too hard to decide easily in this case. -- Brad Templeton - Waterloo, Ont. (519) 886-7304