The personhood of the fetus

"Oh, you pro lifers are just religious fanatics, Christian fundementalists, trying to impose your morality onto me. There should be seperation of choice and state, don't force your religion into my

That's what the typical pro choicer says. Well, science proves that life begins at conception. And being pro life doesn't depend on being Christian or religious. Athiests can be pro lifers, too.

http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/1909/atheist_secular_and_prolife.aspx#.UT60gKJnoqI

I will use the pro life athiest's arguement to help prove my position.
"According to SPL member Julie Thielen, who identifies as a gnostic antitheist atheist, the best ways to reach secular people with the pro-life message are through biology and an appeal to human rights.

“When the sperm meets the egg, a genetically complete human being is formed, and all that is required for maturation is time and nutrition,” Thielen said. “As complete human beings in the most vulnerable stages, there should be protections afforded. As a society we are judged by how we treat the most vulnerable—the young, the aged, the infirm, those who can’t speak for themselves. The unborn belong here.”

For many, the historical argument for human equality is the strongest secular argument in favor of life.

“History has many lessons about human beings who were not legal ‘persons,’” said Hazzard. “What seems like common sense to one generation—‘Of course Negroes aren’t real people’—is horrific to the next. What criteria can we set that will prevent this from happening? Every criterion proposed to exclude the unborn can also be used to exclude others. Consciousness? Then it’s fine to kill someone in a temporary coma; they merely have ‘potential.’ Physical independence? So much for conjoined twins. Human appearance? Discrimination based on appearance has been some of the most insidious of all. Birth? Totally arbitrary; there is no ‘personhood fairy’ residing in the birth canal, conferring rights upon exit. At the end of the day, human rights are for all humans. If we don’t protect them for the weakest among us, they’re rather worthless.”

Absolutley correct. Sperm and egg have no right to life, and they are not human beings, just potential human beings. To quote a Christian website, gotquestions.org, with their actual scientific arguements (that don't bring up Christianity at all).

"Science tells us that human life begins at the time of conception. From the moment fertilization takes place, the child's genetic makeup is already complete. Its gender has already been determined, along with its height and hair, eye and skin color. The only thing the embryo needs to become a fully-functioning being is the time to grow and develop."

Pro choicers bring up a lot of intelligent arguements, and I give them credit for that. I acknowledge the vailidity of their arguements, they're not stupid at all. However, they're not recognizing that if a fetus is a person, their arguements are invalid. And a fetus is a person, based on scientific evidence of a genetic human being beggining at conception. And I'll quote the pro choice counter arguements with my own counter arguements, right now!

Here's what pro choice people usually say. They acknowledge that an unborn child, a fetus, embryo, even a zygote, is a human being, a member of homo sapiens species, but not a person. They say, "Well plants and animals are alive, but they're not persons". But an unborn child is a member of the homo sapiens species, just like anybody else. What makes it not a person? Give me some reasons, pro choicers.

The Nazis rationalized the Holocaust by arguing that different ethnicities were not persons. I don't mean to bring up godwin's law, but that's a good arguement that comes to mind, to me.

Personhood doesn't begin at birth, that's just cultural traditions of measuring your age, which is a refutation of a pro choice arguement that i just said.

 

No human, person or not, has the right to use my body or anyone else's for any purpose, including life support, without the ongoing consent of that person. See how easy it was to refute that?

 

The problem with that argument is that so many scientists disagree with it.

 

http://www.slate.com/id/2120872/
"a member of President Bush's Council on Bioethics, describes in his book The Ethical Brain, current neurology suggests that a fetus doesn't possess enough neural structure to harbor consciousness until about 26 weeks, when it first seems to react to pain. Before that, the fetal neural structure is about as sophisticated as that of a sea slug and its EEG as flat and unorganized as that of someone brain-dead."

 

Personhood does not main having human DNA, otherwise a cell would be human. The fact that sex and hair colour was determined already in the zygote does not make it a person - it makes it, if you will, the blueprint of a human. A potential human that does not yet think, feel, empothize or even form rudimentary ideas and is thus not a person. You could argue that it's a human, well then I honestly don't care for humans. I care for people - for example a dolphin fits the definition of a person - it can think, feel, empathize and form ideas. Many scientists want dolphins to be considered "non human persons".

A fetus is not a person.

 

And your plan to stop abortions???

 

I have often wondered...if we are persons before birth, why did we feel the need to make up these terms:

Prenatal (sperm fertilizes egg - birth)
Embryo - fertilization - 8 weeks after fertilization)
Zygote, the single cell stage which occurs after fertilization
Blastocyst, the stage prior to implantation, when the embryo is a hollow sphere
Post-implantation embryo, the period 1 – 8 weeks after fertilization
Fetus, (10th week of pregnancy - birth)

It just seems to me rather pointless if we should simply call it a person.

 

Just a couple of points

Your premise stating that "science believes life begins at conception" is false. Science, at least not legitimate science, does not believe this at all.

Biology states that animate does not come from inanimate.

There is no valid scientific basis for the premise " a single cell at conception is a human being" and it is by no means a member of the club "homo Sapiens"

There is no significant difference between the zygote and any other human cell. A heart cell is not a human, nor is it a homo Sapiens lacking the characteristics sufficient for membership in either club.