The living fetus is not a human being. It is a fetus within a human being. If it is living as a human being outside of a human being, then it becomes a human being, as a birth of a human being has taken place. The significance of an actual birth where a fetus becomes a human being is much more important that you are understanding from a legal perspective. This distinction of of a living human being that it is meeting the requirement of surviving outside of a woman's body is central to the understanding of the difference between a fetus and a human being. I'll let you try to guess why this distinction is so important and clearly indicated in the Constitution. I have to admit, it is fun to watch your continually shifting and flailing around.
The fetus, once born, is not able to survive on its own. It cannot feed, clothe or take care of itself. Physiologically, the day it is born it is technically only one day older in development than the day before when it was in the womb. Your definition of "human being" is not backed up by biology or any science for that matter. It's simply your opinion. The Constitution indeed defines a human being as a person that has been born. But the Constitution does not define the biological organism. It defines the human in terms of its rights. No rights are currently granted to the fetus. But that does not make the fetus a non-human. I think you're the one flailing around - your lack of understanding of simple biological facts and fundamental science is appalling.
The fetus, once able to survive outside of the mother's body is born to the status of human being. Not a nanosecond before that birth event does the fetus have designation as a human being. Before birth, it is just a fetus, not a child, not a human being, not a baby. There is an absolute biological fact of before and after the birth process, it has to do with location within or outside of a woman's body. The Constitution specifies a human being as a product of birth very clearly for designation of American human rights. This is quite significant from a legal point of view. Human life begins at birth. Period. The separate existence of a human mother and a human child happens after the birth process, not before it.
What is that "absolute biological fact" - the fetus is the same the day before it is born as the day after - it has exactly the same genetic makeup. It is a human the day before and the day after. The separate existence argument doesn't hold. The fetus is separate from the mother except that the mother is feeding and nurturing the fetus. Fetuses born at 3 months are given artificial incubation to complete the process. Does that mean the premature infant is not human? The Declaration of Independence says the following: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. â That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," Many took this statement include white men only and to exclude women and blacks. There isn't a single statement either in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or the Declaration of Independece which defines a fetus as being less than human. The abortion laws represent the majority of the thinking in this country. But biology and all of science agree that a fetus is human and that it is alive.
No, it is not the same. It has not breathed a breath of air outside the womb. "But biology and all of science agree that a fetus is human and that it is alive." No, biology doesn't say a living fetus is a living human being. The Constitution is very specific about birth and only the status of "born" designating certain rights, not a nanosecond before that birth. Prior to being born, there is no assignment of any specific rights written into the constitution to the unborn. Now, the successful legal argument so far has been made that if a woman is killed with a fetus inside of her, and that fetus was of a term that it could have reasonably survived outside of the mother via a birth procedure, then the person who killed the woman can be found guilty of murder of the fetus with the same type of penalty as the murder of a born human being. So, they are taking the stand that born and likely could have been born are legal equivalents. A legal challenge to that is coming though in as much as assignment of rights are going to unborn, which opens the door to all kinds of problems that the right-wing right to lifers in general do not want to face. It places born and unborn yet likely able to be born on the same platform, no clear distinction between them, and that means technically any child physically born of illegals in Mexico, who were in America when that child could have been born earlier via a forced birth, should have the same rights as those born here. The sword is going to cut both ways on principle. As science shortens the curve to when a fetus can actually be brought to a born status, then so too does the rights of US citizenship and the corresponding legal rights begin before birth. We could eventually see a time when foreigners visit America legally or illegally, conceive a child that scientifically could be born though a harvesting process the same day of conception, who would have to be granted US citizenship on the basis of a legal equivalency of born and unborn but likely to survive a birth process. Still, until a fetus takes the first breath outside of the womb and is able to live outside of the human body, it is an existence dependent on a woman's body. The idea of forced birth by the state no matter how the conception began should be repugnant to anyone who values freedom over servitude to the state.
Your rationale is based solely on the law as it stands and not science. Science does indeed say that a fetus is a human genetically and is alive. What people do based on the law is a completely different issue. While I understand the necessity for definitions with regard to who is entitled to what, it does not negate the point that a fetus is human and is alive. Throughout this whole conversation it has become very evident that people avoid calling the fetus a living human because it somehow places it in another category that they don't want to deal with. I agree with the abortion law as it stands. But I am not afraid to say that abortion is taking a human life. If we all agree that abortion is permissible, then why is it so hard to say what it is. Convoluted arguments about in utero and ex utero simply mask what every scientist knows - the fetus is of the human species and it is alive. And with that, I will end my participation. Thanks for the argument.
Science simply does not take a stand on what is life of a singular human being beyond specific brain function being the determinate factor of what constitutes human life for a human being. Biologically speaking human life never ends, as if it did the human species would end. So they designate the concept of human life as a species which is a continuum, separately from what constitutes a human life as a singular human being. Science says when a human being's life ends, i.e. this happens when there is no longer a particular brain function as measured by scientific equipment. If in a fetus we can record no brain activity scientifically at least equivalent to what constitutes the brain activity of a living human being, then a fetus is not a living human being as it doesn't display the requirement we have for what is life of a human being. It has not achieved that status. It may, it may not. A human being placed in a condition of cryonics preservation is not determined to be a human life, though the theory is that the human being can be brought back to human life. It doesn't matter if they froze Ted Williams hoping to bring him back to life at a later time, he was dead, dead, dead and not a human life once his brain died. How we determine death scientifically of a human life...the manner in which we declare the end of life, should be the way in which we should apply science to the idea of when a human life begins.
Webster's Dictionary provides the following as one of the primary definitions of "life": "An organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction." Clearly, under this definition, a fetus in ANY stage of development is "alive". And it then follows that abortion is the ending of life. You can call it killing, you can call it murder, you can call it whatever you want. But it is killing. Now I happen to believe that a woman has the right to do whatever she wants with her body, or her fetus. But she takes the responsbility for her actions, and the consequent results, as we all do for our own actions. HOWEVER, the fact that abortion is "legal" doesn't remove the moral obligation from the person receiving the abortion or the person providing it. It doesn't make it the right thing to do, and it is CLEARLY ending a life. NOT a POTENTIAL life. But a LIFE.
"Webster's Dictionary provides the following as one of the primary definitions of "life": An organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction." Fetus's don't have the capacity to reproduce. Neither do sterile men or women. Try again, please.
Abortion is a symbol of thought that predates time and space. The world isn't what you think it is. It was born of a murderous thought. Everything in it perishes. Abortion is just another way in which everything perishes. Eventually the mother will perish. Eventually the government will perish. Eventually the sun will perish. Jesus