A secular debate about abortion

[Ronja]

To Iratus Ranunculus - wow! And thank you. Now I know what I'll be reading tonight, when I get some uninterrupted time.

Welcome to the forum. Our Welcomes and Introductions section is here, feel free to post an intro when/if you are so inclined. http://rationalia.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3

[Seth]

I don't feel myself qualified to opine on this topic unless and until my penis has been properly sampled.

Cool. Just so you know upfront Coito - this has all just been an elaborate ruse to lure you in. I have every intention of making full use of your genetic material to my own ends. I'm just a poor girl from a poor family and you sound like you have things going alright for you. And if you want access to the resultant child, you can pay my chartered flights.

That's just the chance I'd have to take. I'll bear that in mind while aiming. I'm pretty sure that choice of target goes a long way to limit subsequent use of the projectiles... Oh, if your packing for your trip over here, pack an extra bottle of shampoo...

Er, it would be way cheaper just to package up the spunk and a turkey baster and ship it to her vial UPS wouldn't it?

[Seth]

So, you're admitting that atheists have no morals...thanks, I've thought that for some time...

Well, if you feel that way, I think we can largely discount the thoughts of an irrational person as irrelevant..
...
In any case, I may have left something out, this took me something like 6 hours and is 16 pages long, single spaced. Forgive me, I did not proof read as thoroughly as I usually do, and if I left something important out, I will deal with it tomorrow.

I sympathize. I'm working on my response, but have an out-of-town meeting this afternoon, so I have to get ready. I will be posting a reply at some point. I want to give your sterling work the careful consideration that it's due. And I really do appreciate the scholarship involved, it's nice to see.

[Coito ergo sum]

I don't feel myself qualified to opine on this topic unless and until my penis has been properly sampled.

Cool. Just so you know upfront Coito - this has all just been an elaborate ruse to lure you in. I have every intention of making full use of your genetic material to my own ends. I'm just a poor girl from a poor family and you sound like you have things going alright for you. And if you want access to the resultant child, you can pay my chartered flights.

That's just the chance I'd have to take. I'll bear that in mind while aiming. I'm pretty sure that choice of target goes a long way to limit subsequent use of the projectiles... Oh, if your packing for your trip over here, pack an extra bottle of shampoo...

Er, it would be way cheaper just to package up the spunk and a turkey baster and ship it to her vial UPS wouldn't it?

Sure, if the goal was to donate sperm.

[Seth]

I don't feel myself qualified to opine on this topic unless and until my penis has been properly sampled.

Cool. Just so you know upfront Coito - this has all just been an elaborate ruse to lure you in. I have every intention of making full use of your genetic material to my own ends. I'm just a poor girl from a poor family and you sound like you have things going alright for you. And if you want access to the resultant child, you can pay my chartered flights.

That's just the chance I'd have to take. I'll bear that in mind while aiming. I'm pretty sure that choice of target goes a long way to limit subsequent use of the projectiles... Oh, if your packing for your trip over here, pack an extra bottle of shampoo...

Er, it would be way cheaper just to package up the spunk and a turkey baster and ship it to her vial UPS wouldn't it?

Sure, if the goal was to donate sperm.

Er, isn't that what the whole thread is about? After all, you can sample the penis all by your lonesome.

[Warren Dew]

Yes - however, unless he saves the condom and examines it for holes, he'll never know.

If the woman has come out and publicly stated she pokes holes in condoms she gives to men, as in this case, the actual condom may not be needed as evidence; her admission, testimony that she provided a condom that was used, and tests showing that she got pregnant with his child may be sufficient.

[Warren Dew]

2)In order for possessing human DNA to be a necessary and sufficient condition for imparting moral value on a being, said DNA must have some quality which makes it special. Said specialness must not be defined. IE. We cannot simply define human-ness as being special. To do so would be circular reasoning. Not that I would put logical tail-chasing past you.

We can define "having DNA conspecific with ourselves" as being relevant - part of the "similarly situated" part of th Kantian approach.

I think that's fundamentally the difference between Seth's position and mine. I don't think ethics should depend on biology - an alien that behaved as a human should be treated as a human, as far as I'm concerned. Seth thinks it should: he values individuals from his species above individuals from other species, irrespective of behavioral abilities. By my reasoning, a creature with the cognitive capabilities of an animal has the ethical standing of an animal, and I feel safe drawing a line at birth based on that reasoning. By Seth's reasoning, it matters whether the creature has human DNA, so he would draw the line earlier. Both of these positions can be self consistent.

Of course, I have an entirely separate reason for being able to draw the line at birth, using the argument illustrated by the terminally ill violinist attached to an innocent person for life support. More on this in a moment, though.

When you get down to it, there really are only two coherent ethical systems, with a few variants of each....

Utilitarianism (Of which hedonistic act and preference are the two primary variations, both of which are coherent. Rule utilitarianism is extensionally equivalent to hedonistic act utilitarianism).

Actually, utilitarianism fails because the lack of objective interpersonal utility comparisons means you can't actually use utilitarianism as a practical guide to actions. At best it can be a pragmatic approximation, like several of the other approaches you describe as being incoherent.

I agree the Kantian approach works.

By the way, utilitarianism also has some consequences that most people don't feel consistent with their intuitive idea of ethics. For example, in the terminally ill violinist hypothetical mentioned earlier in the thread, utilitarianism may dictate that one is obligated to remain attached to the violinist, if the violinist's resulting performances give a lot of people pleasure, even if it reduces oneself essentially to a quadriplegic lfe support system. If most people are religious and suffer annoyance that abortions are performed, it may be that a utilitarian argument would say to ban abortions, depending on the balance of that annoyance against the harm to women - and possibly their children - who are prevented from performing abortions.

Rights-Based Ethics, or Natural rights theory is incoherent from a non-theistic perspective because it requires that morality flow from some property of the universe--which is incompatible with not accepting design and purpose in the universe.

The universe may and does have properties without having design and purpose. The laws of physics, for example, are a property of the universe. I do suspect that getting from there to ethics may require using the Kantian approach.

Anyone who has actually spent time around infants knows full well that they are thinking individuals with cognitive faculties long before they even leave the womb

How do you evaluate what their cognitive abilities are before they leave the womb?

Oh, come on - you see how they respond to stimulus, same as anything else. At five months into her pregnancy, my daughter would calm down and stop kicking when I put my hand on her mother's belly. Fetuses aren't anywhere near a human level of cognition, but they aren't inert lumps either.

A baby does display SOME cognitive ability, but a monitor lizard or octopus displays more. What makes the baby worthy of more careful ethical consideration than these animals? A savannah monitor (Varanus exanthematicus) can count up to six. A human child cannot do this for at least a couple years.

I'd agree with "at least six months". By age 2, some kids can do far more than count to six; I've met one who spoke in gramatically correct sentences with good pronunciation. Still, we're way beyond the topic of abortion by then.

The "mirror test" is a load of intellectual crap the size of the Great Pyramid.

I see an unsupported opinion, which the entire fields of comparative psychology and neuroscience would disagree with.

Seth is correct; those fields of "science" are wrong. Some adults from primitive tribes fail the "mirror test"; that doesn't make them nonhuman, nor does it show they lack of sense of "self". It just shows a lack of familiarity with how mirrors work.

[Coito ergo sum]

Yes - however, unless he saves the condom and examines it for holes, he'll never know.

If the woman has come out and publicly stated she pokes holes in condoms she gives to men, as in this case, the actual condom may not be needed as evidence; her admission, testimony that she provided a condom that was used, and tests showing that she got pregnant with his child may be sufficient.

Well, her admission that she has poked holes in condoms does not prove that she poked holes in all condoms or this particular condom, so it would depend on the extent of her admission. If she admits she poked a hole in it, fine. If not, a criminal prosecution would probably fail because the news article would be hearsay, she wouldn't have to testify against herself, and evidence of other instances of poking holes would be excluded as "other bad acts" under the evidence rules. The prosecution would not be able to meet its burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt - it's certainly a reasonable doubt that they had regular sex with a condom and it was one of the 1% that got prego anyway.

As for a civil case for fraud, it's likely more evidence would get in, and the burden of proof is lower, so I bet she could be found liable - that is, if the case survived the motion for summary judgment would would argue that there is no claim, like the defendant filed in Phillips v Irons, the Chicago case I described above.

[Iratus Ranunculus]

We can define "having DNA conspecific with ourselves" as being relevant - part of the "similarly situated" part of th Kantian approach.

The problem with that is that you can then use any other arbitrary difference the same way, whether if means anything or not.

I think that's fundamentally the difference between Seth's position and mine. I don't think ethics should depend on biology - an alien that behaved as a human should be treated as a human, as far as I'm concerned. Seth thinks it should: he values individuals from his species above individuals from other species, irrespective of behavioral abilities. By my reasoning, a creature with the cognitive capabilities of an animal has the ethical standing of an animal, and I feel safe drawing a line at birth based on that reasoning. By Seth's reasoning, it matters whether the creature has human DNA, so he would draw the line earlier. Both of these positions can be self consistent.

The problem is that the logic of a racist who makes the equivalent claim, substituting "skin color" for "human DNA" is equivalently self consistent, but also equally arbitrary.

Of course, I have an entirely separate reason for being able to draw the line at birth, using the argument illustrated by the terminally ill violinist attached to an innocent person for life support. More on this in a moment, though.

That is one of my personal favorites.

Actually, utilitarianism fails because the lack of objective interpersonal utility comparisons means you can't actually use utilitarianism as a practical guide to actions. At best it can be a pragmatic approximation, like several of the other approaches you describe as being incoherent.

It is coherent, but not complete. I went into that actually. There is no ethical system which is complete, but they are complete to varying degrees. If a non-distinction between someone's sister and some random woman on the street is the most counter-intuitive thing in it, I will consider it a win. Of course that very deficiency is why I use Preference Utilitarianism. However, were I to do so in that loooong post above, It would have been even longer and the hand cramps would have been intolerable.

The point being, providing meaningful guidance is much different from prescribing every action you could take. A pragmatic approximation is really all you need.

By the way, utilitarianism also has some consequences that most people don't feel consistent with their intuitive idea of ethics. For example, in the terminally ill violinist hypothetical mentioned earlier in the thread, utilitarianism may dictate that one is obligated to remain attached to the violinist, if the violinist's resulting performances give a lot of people pleasure, even if it reduces oneself essentially to a quadriplegic lfe support system. If most people are religious and suffer annoyance that abortions are performed, it may be that a utilitarian argument would say to ban abortions, depending on the balance of that annoyance against the harm to women - and possibly their children - who are prevented from performing abortions.

While this may well be true (and it is), I could equivalently argue that in the case of Kant, one would be prohibited from lying to Nazis trying to find out of there were jews in your closet. Every ethical system does eventually break down, it comes from trying to apply one principle to all circumstances. You cannot really do it, the equation is more complicated than that. I will use math as an example actually.

Suppose I have a set of data that I need to analyze. I run it through table curve to fit a function to it, and the function comes out really bloody complicated and the math for a regression model I need to use is just too damn nasty. However, a linear curve can be used to approximate it. The predictions it makes are not perfect, but decent within the data range I need it for. I will go ahead and use a linear curve--but stipulate that this is what I am doing for the sake of honesty.

The universe may and does have properties without having design and purpose. The laws of physics, for example, are a property of the universe. I do suspect that getting from there to ethics may require using the Kantian approach.

Yes. But those only describe how the Universe is. Not how it Should be. Of course, I can get into a long diatribe about how the question of what "should" be is meaningless, however I will spare myself the pain of writing that.

Oh, come on - you see how they respond to stimulus, same as anything else. At five months into her pregnancy, my daughter would calm down and stop kicking when I put my hand on her mother's belly. Fetuses aren't anywhere near a human level of cognition, but they aren't inert lumps either.

I never said they were inert, only that they were non-conscious.

I'd agree with "at least six months". By age 2, some kids can do far more than count to six; I've met one who spoke in gramatically correct sentences with good pronunciation. Still, we're way beyond the topic of abortion by then.

Statistical outliers not withstanding. A kid a who can do that at age two is very rare.

Seth is correct; those fields of "science" are wrong. Some adults from primitive tribes fail the "mirror test"; that doesn't make them nonhuman, nor does it show they lack of sense of "self". It just shows a lack of familiarity with how mirrors work.

A lot of tests have a false negative rate, which may vary under certain conditions. That does not mean the test is bullshit. It means you need to design a better test. However, until one is available, the mirror test works most of the time. It is also designed to reduce false positives, which will increase the rate of false negatives.

[Warren Dew]

The problem is that the logic of a racist who makes the equivalent claim, substituting "skin color" for "human DNA" is equivalently self consistent, but also equally arbitrary.

It is equally self consistent, but it is more arbitrary. The species has a special place in biology - the members comprise the potential gene pool of all your descendants - so in that sense treating one's species specially is not as arbitrary as doing so with race.

While this may well be true (and it is), I could equivalently argue that in the case of Kant, one would be prohibited from lying to Nazis trying to find out of there were jews in your closet. Every ethical system does eventually break down, it comes from trying to apply one principle to all circumstances. You cannot really do it, the equation is more complicated than that. I will use math as an example actually.

Suppose I have a set of data that I need to analyze. I run it through table curve to fit a function to it, and the function comes out really bloody complicated and the math for a regression model I need to use is just too damn nasty. However, a linear curve can be used to approximate it. The predictions it makes are not perfect, but decent within the data range I need it for. I will go ahead and use a linear curve--but stipulate that this is what I am doing for the sake of honesty.

In the case of the Kantian method, though, the issue is merely a practical one having to do with the intelligence or computing power one has available. In the case of utilitarianism, the interpersonal comparison issue is a mathematical problem even on the theoretical level: you don't have any units that you can use to figure out where the data is in the first place.

I'd agree with "at least six months". By age 2, some kids can do far more than count to six; I've met one who spoke in gramatically correct sentences with good pronunciation. Still, we're way beyond the topic of abortion by then.

Statistical outliers not withstanding. A kid a who can do that at age two is very rare.

Statistical outliers need to be handled. If the statistics were such that there were fetuses that could do that at 8 months, when they are generally viable without assistance, the ethics of abortion at that stage would become much stickier, even ignoring, as I do, the presence of human genes. It's not clear that you can stab the dependent violinist in the back when disconnecting him when you can disconnect him without killing him. Fortunately, two years is more than enough margin in this case.

A lot of tests have a false negative rate, which may vary under certain conditions. That does not mean the test is bullshit. It means you need to design a better test. However, until one is available, the mirror test works most of the time. It is also designed to reduce false positives, which will increase the rate of false negatives.

To the contrary, we don't know that the mirror test works at all as a test of self awareness. Philosophers who believe in the mirror test are like the drunk who looks under the streetlight for his keys because there is light there, even though he dropped the keys half a block away where it was dark: they are using the test because it's easy to administer, not because it has any chance of being correct. They are wasting their time when they should be figuring out how to get a flashlight.

[Seth]

As a preface, I concur with Ronja, wow! And thank you. And it's wonderful to meet someone who appears as willing as I am to put some real effort into a rebuttal. And now back to our regularly scheduled debate....Which I've had to shorten due to posting limitations:

1)Having a metabolism is a necessary but not sufficient condition for imparting moral value upon a being.

2)In order for possessing human DNA to be a necessary and sufficient condition for imparting moral value on a being, said DNA must have some quality which makes it special. Said specialness must not be defined. IE. We cannot simply define human-ness as being special. To do so would be circular reasoning. Not that I would put logical tail-chasing past you.

This syllogism relies on the notion that "moral value" is some sort of physical object that is either a component of the organism or not, like DNA or an eyeball.

The failure is in that premise. Moral value is a philosophical construct, not a physical object. Therefore, as a philosophical construct that occurs only in the mind of man, it has no objective reality. This also means that the mind of man can place whatever moral value it wishes upon anything, including DNA and zygotes. How that moral value is expressed in society is also part of a philosophical construct called "law." How the law is created, and what it is comprised of, is universally a matter for each society to determine.

Therefore, in sum, the moral value of a zygote is whatever society says it is, and the protections afforded to a human zygote as it develops into a mature human being are entirely a matter of societal preference. Just as the moral value of a zygote is determined by society, so is the moral value of the mother, and just as the laws of society may protect, or not protect the zygote, the laws of the society may protect, or not protect the "privacy" and/or autonomy of the mother. There is no objective right to personal autonomy that would prevent society from banning abortion or imposing a duty of gestation on a mother.

There are very few coherent ethical systems. Most of them either fail at being logically consistent, or fail at providing meaningful moral guidance.

Sounds like we may be in for an excellent discussion of the meaning of the word "coherent" and the phrase "meaningful moral guidance," and how your construction of it applies to actual human behavior and happiness. But I'll let you proceed so as not to clog things up just yet. We may want to spin the philosophical discussion off into its own thread to address the "coherent ethical systems" question. That's my suggestion.

There is a "coherent ethical system" that believes that the zygote has worth because of the potential that it will develop properties commonly ascribed to "persons" in the law.

There are two fallacies here. The first is is begging the question, where you assume without basis that human-ness is somehow worthy in and of itself of moral consideration (You did not state this flat out in this particular statement, but it is implied by context), and then use that as a premise to state that future persons have worth in themselves. The second is a form of non-sequiter called a legalism fallacy, where you equate something being legally true, with something being morally true.

I do not assume without basis, I state on the basis of long-standing human behavior and belief. As I said, moral value is a human philosophical construct, not an objective truth, and therefore it is not "incoherent" for society to grant moral value to human DNA above all other DNA. The second argument is not non sequiter, it's merely a reference to the fact that moral value, and moral behavior is defined and regulated by the philosophical construct called "law."

In your case, this argument is self-defeating, because in our case, abortion is perfectly legal.

Only for so long as, and where, it is perfectly legal. The point being that no objective facts constrain society from making abortion illegal. You illustrate the "begging the question" fallacy again because the real question we face in the abortion debate is "why should society continue to permit abortion?" Simply stating that abortion is legal because abortion is legal is classic fallacy.

In order to create a coherent ethical system you cannot simply claim something is moral or not. You must generate some sort of principle or set of principles which can be consistently applied to provide ethical and moral guidance to decision making.

Tautology. One can "generate some sort of principles" for ethical and moral guidance simply by claiming that something is moral. In other words, because all sets of principles that provide ethical and moral guidance are philosophical constructs, any statement of principles has precisely the same value for guidance as any other statement, from the objective standpoint. A moral principle that it's okay to kill someone who gets in your way is objectively no different from a moral principle that says it's not okay to do so. Philosophically, however, the word "moral" has meaning: "concerned with or relating to human behaviour, esp the distinction between good and bad or right and wrong behaviour."

The meaning of the word implies philosophical constructs of "good" and "bad" behavior, and such distinctions are entirely subjective to the particular society wherein the moral code is applicable.

Therefore, there is nothing objectively opposing the generation of a "set of principles" to guide ethical and moral conduct that includes assigning the moral value "a zygote is a human being whose individual rights are to be respected in law" as a part of that set of principles.

This is where I largely diverge from many actual ethicists (I am afterall, a biologist). I do not accept many of their premises, such as the idea that an ethical system must necessarily be complete, and universally applicable to all moral questions. There are a variety of moral principles that may or may not be universally applicable, such as various formulations of the concept of justice. I generally find however that a combination of preference and hedonistic utilitarianism generally captures these.

What I am basically doing is imposing logic on something we have evolved to do intuitively, and removing some of the cultural and evolutionary baggage (like US vs THEM thinking that justifies racism and such)

That's where your argument fails. You cannot "remove cultural and evolutionary baggage" from moral codes, because moral codes are inherently culturally subjective and their memes do, in fact, evolve along with the culture.

Consider the question (and I choose this one deliberately to be a bit silly): Why is it OK to kill and eat a chicken, and not a person?

In other words, what differentiates a chicken from a person?

If you simply claim “a person is human”, that is insufficient. First, it is circular. Second, it cannot deal with other cases such as “Is it OK to eat the sentient space-faring inhabitants of the planetary system Gamma Alpha IV?” in a satisfactory way. You must come up with a set of principles that is universally applicable and self-evidently true.

Well, the simple answer is "A chicken is not a human being." This is not circular, it's objectively true. Whether the moral code of society allows the eating of non-human organisms cannot be objectively or universally defined because all moral codes are inherently subjective. Moral codes do not attempt to answer every question with the same answer. They approach issues one at a time and construct moral rules based on the circumstances that present themselves. For example, in orthodox Jewish culture, it is morally improper to eat pork. The moral requirement is found in Jewish dietary laws, which purport to come from God, but many people see the practical, objective origin of this moral code in the danger of trichinosis and other pork-borne diseases that were endemic thousands of years ago. It's reasonable to believe that the moral code "don't eat pork" began as a way of protecting Jewish communities from the ravages of disease, just as the Kosher laws about cleanliness do.

But the objective basis of the moral code does not mean that the moral code is itself objective truth, as can be seen from the fact that today, many people eat pork without getting sick through the advent of medicine and moral codes regarding the raising and processing of meat for public sale and consumption.

So, when it comes to the residents of Gamma Alpha IV, the moral code applicable to them is not objective, it's subjective, and depends largely upon how tasty they are when boiled and served with drawn butter.

I will use “suffering is bad”. The statement is a bit more complicated than that, but for short-hand it works. The existence of pain and suffering can be generalized to every living thing on this planet, and probably all others which have life, even though it may be perceived differently. It is self-evidently true, because our own experience tells us that this is so. We do not like to suffer, and because other organisms or even computational intelligences will experience this in some way, we do not require external validation. The concept does not need to be a property of the universe. It just needs to be a property of the entity under consideration.

This argument fails through the conflation of "pain" and "suffering" into one thing upon which you base a moral decision. Pain is a response to damaging stimuli. It's purpose is to warn the organism that damage is occurring so that the organism can take action to avoid that damage. It's an evolved biological response and can be objectively measured by science, insofar as the stimulus/response reaction is concerned. But "suffering" is not an objective measure of anything. The word itself means "to undergo or feel pain or distress." It's a description of an event of pain. But to come to the conclusion that "suffering is bad" requires a value judgment that is also not objective, but subjective.

There was a series of books called "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever" by Stephen Donaldson in which the protagonist is afflicted with leprosy, which kills the nerve endings, making him insensible to pain. As a result, he is constantly having to "self-audit" and inspect himself for injuries like cuts that could become infected. In his case, the LACK of "suffering" was actually the "bad" thing because the suppression of the natural pain response left him open to much more serious consequences should a wound go unnoticed and become infected.

So, it is incorrect to state that "suffering is bad" as if it were an objective truth. Some suffering is both good and useful. When a child touches a hot stove, he is burned. Through this suffering he learns not to touch hot stoves, and by extension to check the temperature of objects before touching them if there is a risk of being burned. Pain is a stimulus that triggers a response. Suffering, or the presence of pain over some period of time may or may not be "bad," depending entirely upon the circumstances.

This being the case, your use of the analogy is flawed.

In addition to being circular “it is human” fails especially this last criteria. Because there is NO objective criteria upon which to make the distinction between a human, and a duck, lizard, or any other organism.

But you have chosen this statement for it's circularity while ignoring other objective facts that render it invalid. The argument "it's not a chicken" carries with it a presumption that there is something different about a human that a chicken does not possess as an objective characteristic. And that difference is that unlike chickens, humans are conscious, sentient beings capable of engaging in reason and abstract thought and formulating philosophical abstracts like "ethics" and "morals." Chickens are not.

Therefore your argument fails because of a fallacious premise that chickens are in no way different from humans.

The reason why it is wrong to blow my brains out tomorrow is the same reason it is wrong to torture mice. It causes suffering, not only to me, but also to the people who love and otherwise care about me. Oh, and it will cause annoyance (a form of suffering) to the poor bastard who has to clean up the mess.

Cats "torture" mice. Dogs torture cats. Coyotes torture dogs. Wolves torture coyotes. Is it objectively "wrong" for them to do so?

Now, in the case of torturing mice, it may be easier, depending on the circumstance, to justify it. Say for example that causing mice some mild discomfort and perhaps a slightly increased mortality rate may help cure a disease. In this case, it might be possible to justify it, because if you do not take this course of action, the people afflicted by the disease will suffer far more.

You have concocted a moral code out of whole cloth here, and without any foundation other than an undefined reference to "right" and "wrong." Why is it "wrong" to torture mice, in an objective sense? If you cannot describe an objective argument as to why it's "wrong" to torture mice (and the "suffering is bad" argument is no longer valid), then you are admitting that a moral code that holds torturing mice to be "bad" or "wrong" is simply a subjective judgment that you have made without any firm rational basis.

There is also a sort of weighting issue. A single mouse may be “worth” less, by which I mean they suffer less than a single human. This is because not all suffering is necessarily equal. The physical pain felt by a human and a mouse is probably identical. So if I stab a mouse, and then correct for body size and stab a person, the pain will be the same. However the suffering will not be. A human can for example suffer existential angst, and dread that a mouse does not have the cognitive capacity for. Still, that is a quantitative not qualitative difference. A difference in amount, not a difference in kind.

Here, you simply confirm my statement above that a man is not a chicken and has moral value because man has decided to place moral value upon human life to a greater degree than that of chickens or mice. Humans have greater moral value than mice because they are conscious, sentient, thinking, reasoning beings, and as a species, has the capacity to assign moral value. Mice and chickens have no capacity to assign moral value. Thus, your "weighting issue" argument disproves your own argument that human DNA has no greater moral value than chicken DNA. Human DNA has greater moral value because humans say it does, and indeed BECAUSE humans have the capacity to make such rational arguments in the first place.

Not relevant. It is rational to distinguish between natural biological processes like the miscarriage of a zygote from a deliberate act intended to kill that zygote/blastocyst/embryo/fetus. This is a red herring fallacy.

Actually, it is relevant. Ask yourself, why do you care about intent? Should it not be the result of an action or inaction that matters?

If I CAN save someone from falling off a cliff and choose not to, am I not just as guilty of their deaths as I would be if I had shoved them? I take no deliberate action, I simply keep walking. How does intent warrant a meaningful distinction?

The meaningful distinction is an argument about individual liberty, individual rights, and individual responsibility for the consequences of one's actions. It is not objectively wrong for one to stand and watch someone commit suicide. It is only a moral wrong in some philosophies and social structures. One strong argument that disfavors your claim is that it is the right of the person to throw themselves from a cliff and kill themselves because they are free individuals with a right to determine the course, and end, of their own lives without interference by others.

The natural consequences of one's actions are not moral issues, they are simply consequences. Morality implies actions or inactions, things that people actually do or do not do that they have some obligation to do or refrain from doing TO OR INVOLVING OTHERS.

In a society comprised of only one human being, there is no moral code. That individual is at absolute liberty to do or not do anything at all. All consequences of his actions fall only upon himself, and there is neither excuse nor justification required for any action.

Only when another human being appears do obligations to do or not do a thing appear. This association with other humans is what necessitates and causes moral codes to come into being in the first place.

The basis of moral codes ARE found in nature, however. Evolved behaviors of social animals (in this case we'll use wolves) is one of the bases for a natural moral code that you blithely dismiss without substantial consideration because you believe that such natural moral codes can only be based in superstition and theistic notions. This isn't the case.

Observations of nature, I believe, reveal to us the natural basis of rights, which are a component of a moral code. Below is a discussion of this thesis that I've been pondering for some time:

The Organic Basis of Rights
By Seth Richardson
© 2011 Altnews

The genius of the Founders of the United States and its Constitution is in their deep philosophical and political thinking and debate about the fundamental principles of government and society, and their discovery of principles of liberty and constrained government that resulted in the creation of the most successful political and social model in the history of the world. We don't see that kind of careful political thinking on original principles much today, and that's why, at least for me, the Founding Fathers are revered, not as supremely intelligent, but as unusually skilled in deep political and ethical thinking, far beyond most of what we see today. They were not more intelligent, they were simply more wise and careful thinkers.

For those who do not believe in deity, who are non-theistic in their beliefs, I believe that there is an objective, scientific and philosophical basis for what the Founders attributed to deity. For non-theists, the practical effect of referring to a Creator, and the assertion that our rights are granted by God, not man, is to ensure that the rights that we enjoy are not derived from the ever-changing political philosophies of man, but are an inherent part of our nature as living beings and thinking humans. It is the inherent nature of our rights that makes them unalienable, and non-theists must have an objective, intellectual basis for finding those rights to be inherent if we are to avoid having our rights characterized as state-granted and subject to the whims and caprices of the public will.

The Founders took as a principle that a Creator exists, and they wisely decided that because subjective rights, those that are subject to the whims and caprices of the ruling class, were not effective in protecting individuals against the tyranny of despots and their fellow men. So, they moved rights beyond the power of either man or government to grant or deny, into the philosophical realm of "natural rights" precisely in order to prevent what they rightly saw as the dangers of despotism and majoritarian tyranny that inevitably occurs when one man, or one group of men, are permitted to determine what rights another man, or group of men, may enjoy.

The Founders resorted to deity and religion because such beliefs were ubiquitous in their time and they did not see any need for any other rational basis for such rights. But it is true today that there are many Americans who are not theistic by nature, and it is likewise true that they ought to enjoy the same rights as any other person, and that therefore we should seek an objective, rational basis for our unalienable rights.

In the context of Creator versus Nature, whether a Creator exists or not is not terribly relevant to the philosophical construct of natural rights. Rights, in that non-theistic sense, accrue simply by virtue of our existence as human beings and the necessities of nature for social constructs to regulate behavior in communities. Rights are clearly a product of our intellect, but this does not mean that their origin cannot be derived from observations of our natural world and natural behavior. Natural rights are founded in natural principles, which is what gives them their intellectual strength when applied to human behavior outside the theistic realm.

For that reason I have for some time been trying to construct a logical and rational argument that derives our inherent rights as a function of natural processes, which I see as a companion to theistic belief, not in opposition to it. I call these derivations the Organic Rights, which are derived from organic laws of nature and natural behavior.

Every organism needs life, autonomy, the resources to survive, and the ability to reproduce in order to exist both as an individual and as a species. The Organic Rights are expressions of these fundamental organic needs as applied to human society, and it is my claim that human society cannot survive unless it respects those fundamental organic needs of all human beings any more than a species itself cannot survive if it does not fulfill the underlying organic needs. Thus, I express those fundamental organic needs as the Organic Rights, because without societal recognition and protection of those rights, individuals cannot survive and society cannot exist.

Every organism on earth seeks to preserve it's own life. This instinct is seen everywhere in the natural world as a function of evolution. Every individual organism seeks autonomous life in that it will defend itself and its life when attacked by another organism. Therefore, the First Organic Law is that all living creatures pursue autonomous survival and will engage in self-defense to prolong life. From the First Organic Law I derive the following Organic Rights:

The First Organic Right is the right to life, for without the right to life, there is no purpose for any philosophical construct, and death is the result.

The Second Organic Right, the right to individual liberty, emerges because all living creatures strive for organic autonomy and individual liberty, even if they live in social community.

The Third Organic Right is the right to self-defense, because all living creatures naturally defend their lives when attacked, to one degree or another.

Next, we observe in nature that all living creatures will seek to find and obtain that which is necessary for their survival. Fundamentally this is energy, which comes in many forms. In addition, higher creatures will seek out shelter against the elements as well, as a part of the necessities of survival. From this natural behavior I derive the Second Organic Law; all creatures seek to obtain and secure to their own use the resources necessary for survival.

From this Second Organic Law I derive the Fourth Organic Right; the right to seek out, obtain and reserve to one's exclusive use the resources necessary for survival, which is more simply stated as the right to the exclusive ownership and use of private property.

The Third Organic Law is that all creatures seek to reproduce and pass on their genetic material as a function of evolution.

From this I derive the Fifth Organic Right, which is the right to reproduce, more complexly stated as the right to form a relationship with a mate, engage in reproductive behavior, create a family and raise one's children to adulthood.

Thus, I derive natural rights directly from natural behavior, without resort to deity or a Creator, but rather simply by reference to our nature as living beings. Those rights are inherent, and superior, and unalienable, and not derived from any social construct of mankind because they are necessary components of our very existence and being, without which no man, and no living creature, can survive and flourish.

This places at least these five Organic Rights above any inferior human social construct, and therefore places them beyond the power of others to disparage or deny as a matter of general social policy. Society may not morally deprive an individual of his Organic Rights absent some misbehavior on the part of the individual that makes it necessary to do so.

This construct does not disparage the concept of a Creator, or of God, but rather it simply describes the basis of superior unalienable rights from a non-theistic direction, for the benefit of those who choose to exercise their religious freedom non-theistically. It also serves to resolve the objections of non-theists to idea that our rights are divinely inspired, but without disparaging the beliefs of those who adhere to the firmly religious historical context of the Founders.

Moreover, that point was made primarily to illustrate that there is no property of the universe that really gives a shit about fetuses. If some property of the universe (or a deity) where aghast at all of those dead “babies” there would not be so many. You have demonstrated a disdain for atheists apparently, not sure if you were being sarcastic or not, so I will say this. If there is a god, god is the greatest abortionist of them all.

Which is an entirely non-sequitur argument. Whether the universe "gives a shit" about fetuses or not is irrelevant to the question of whether society gives a shit about them. Nor is your anti-theistic rant particularly useful.

First off, you cannot incur an obligation toward gravity. Gravity acts upon you. You do not do it any favors.

It's an analogy. Besides, one is not incurring an obligation to gravity, one is incurring an obligation to oneself and society to accept the natural consequences of gravity, or pregnancy.

Second, how is your argument any different from making the following claim?

“A female voluntarily engaging in sexual intercourse, and then changing her mind after three minutes while the guy is still pounding away is obligated to not use lethal force to enforce his egress from her vagina should he refuse to leave voluntarily”

The two are equivalent, if you consider the adult human and the fetus to be equivalent in terms of their moral worth

Well, interesting enough, a female may be justified in using deadly physical force if what was consensual sex becomes forcible rape. That's a matter of some legal nuance which I'll be glad to illuminate you on if you like, since I have no small experience in interpreting criminal law statutes.

Likewise, nothing prevents society from making it a crime to procure or provide an abortion, in the interests of the rights of the fetus.

Of course, keep in mind, Natural Rights Theory is not a coherent ethical system, because it relies on an unwarranted set of metaphysical assumptions which cannot be validated.

Not necessarily, as I point out above in my exegesis on the Organic Rights. Just because you choose to dismiss natural rights theory because of a purported "metaphysical" basis doesn't mean you're right that there is no objective natural basis for rights.

If I am on a trolly car, and the brakes fail (thus precluding me from stopping the thing) and I am faced with two choices which I can see through security camera:

On one set of tracks—which I am on, I can see a troop of Deaf and Blind people who are drunk, have poorly trained seeing-eye dogs, and who's feet are stuck in the tracks. We will stipulate that they will remain on the tracks until crushed, and that I know this.

On the set of tracks I am not on, there is a group of very soundly sleeping children (say Snidely Whiplash drugged them and put them there) who may or may not wake up in time to get out of the way.

I have two options. I can switch the tracks, or not.

Lets say I switch the tracks, and the children do not wake up. They die. Did I intend to kill them? Of course not. I intended to not run over the Helen Keller society. Killing the children was a risk I knew about and must take some sort of responsibility for, but did not intend.

Let us consider your trolley example in light of the Doctrine of Double Effect as cited by you:

The conditions provided by Joseph Mangan include the explicit requirement that the bad effect not be intended:

A person may licitly perform an action that he foresees will produce a good effect and a bad effect provided that four conditions are verified at one and the same time:

1. that the action in itself from its very object be good or at least indifferent;
2. that the good effect and not the evil effect be intended;
3. that the good effect be not produced by means of the evil effect;
4. that there be a proportionately grave reason for permitting the evil effect”

It would be wrong to throw someone into the path of a runaway trolley in order to stop it and keep it from hitting five people on the track ahead; that would involve intending harm to the one as a means of saving the five. But it would be permissible to divert a runaway trolley onto a track holding one and away from a track holding five: in that case one foresees the death of the one as a side effect of saving the five but one does not intend it.

This analysis applies directly to your example. Presuming arguendo that you have a duty to act at all, which is not a given, in one case you act, you perform a positive action that leads to the death of the children. In the other, you do not act, you simply do not change tracks, and the Helen Keller's are killed. The two are not morally equivalent, and the Doctrine of Double effect demonstrates this.

In the case of not acting to save the Helen Keller's, you are not responsible for the presence of the Helen Keller's on the tracks. They have placed themselves in that situation, knowingly or unknowingly, prudently or imprudently, with intent or by accident, and they will suffer the natural consequences of their actions: they will be hit by the trolley. The moral responsibility for their deaths lies with them, because they made all the required choice that placed themselves in peril. You have done nothing other than allow the trolley to proceed on it's scheduled and customary track.

On the other hand, by changing tracks you have taken an action for which you may be held accountable, and under the Doctrine of Double Effect you have committed a moral wrong. The children were on the tracks by force. Moreover, they were confined to tracks that, absent a voluntary action on your part, would NOT result in their deaths. You made a conscious choice to value the lives of the Helen Keller's over those of the children, and you imposed YOUR moral judgment upon the children WITHOUT their consent. Therefore, you made an immoral and unethical decision, and yes you absolutely DID intend to kill them, rather than allowing the Helen Keller's to suffer the natural consequences of their imprudent behavior. You chose death for the children, and that's "intent." (perhaps not legally, but certainly philosophically and morally)

Therefore, your analogy is fatally flawed because your conclusion is not supported by your own philosophical citations.

In the same way, having sex is intended for pleasure—to fulfill a nearly irresistible biological drive. Getting pregnant however is not something I intend (you know, were I straight, and female. Ah, the joys of being able to sleep with men, and never ever ever get pregnant...). It is a risk, but not an intention. This is called the Doctrine of Double Effect.

Yes, it's a risk. It's a well-known risk. It's likely a calculable known risk. And the harm involved is highly disproportionate, which suggests, again according to your own citation, that abortion is a moral wrong:

A doctor who believed that abortion was wrong, even in order to save the mother's life, might nevertheless consistently believe that it would be permissible to perform a hysterectomy on a pregnant woman with cancer. In carrying out the hysterectomy, the doctor would aim to save the woman's life while merely foreseeing the death of the fetus. Performing an abortion, by contrast, would involve intending to kill the fetus as a means to saving the mother.
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First, it is a misinterpretation to claim that the principle of double effect shows that agents may permissibly bring about harmful effects provided that they are merely foreseen side effects of promoting a good end. Applications of double effect always presuppose that some kind of proportionality condition has been satisfied. Traditional formulations of double effect require that the value of promoting the good end outweigh the disvalue of the harmful side effect.
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For example, a physician's justification for administering drugs to relieve a patient's pain while foreseeing the hastening of death as a side effect does not depend only on the fact that the physician does not intend to hasten death. After all, physicians are not permitted to relieve the pain of kidney stones or childbirth with potentially lethal doses of opiates simply because they foresee but do not intend the hastening of death! A variety of substantive medical and ethical judgments provide the justificatory context: the patient is terminally ill, there is an urgent need to relieve pain and suffering, death is imminent, and the patient or the patient's proxy consents.

The primary issue when it comes to voluntary abortion as regards your system of comparative harm is the disproportionate negative effects on the fetus, meaning death, as compared to the effects of gestation on the mother, meaning the discomfort of gestation and the pain of delivery, and including the potential, but not normal risks of an abnormal gestation. The effects on the mother are temporary, not usually permanent, and soon forgotten. The effects on the fetus are irrevocable, final, and fatal. Therefore, the "proportionality" portion of your cited Doctrine of Double Effect are violated, and the abortion is immoral.

The ONLY way in which you can salvage this argument is by the fallacious presumption you stated at the outset that a human fetus has no moral value. Only by dehumanizing the fetus can your conclusion be validly reached. As we have seen, that is a failed argument, and thus your present argument also fails.

Of course, if you do not accept the Doctrine of Double Effect, you defeat yourself again. Afterall, if the women invited the fetus inside her body because she took a course of action which could lead to it being generated, YOU have an equal share of the responsibility, because by having sex with her, you are the one who voluntarily placed it there, thus incurring a similar obligation.

This would only apply if true. If, however, the male takes reasonable efforts NOT to inseminate the woman, your argument fails on the intent of the man, through your own reasoning, such as it is.

Now, because a large component (a significant thrust, if you will pardon the pun) of your argument is that because of that she can “suck it up and deal with it” basically, then guess what...

Men have the same obligation. They get to suck it up and deal with child-rearing as well. Even if the women stole his sperm by punching a whole in the condom. Afterall, it is foreseeable, therefore if it happens to him, he must have intended it and invited it to happen to him. He then incurs the obligation of dealing with the child.

And if he has incurred an obligation in that regard, then he also incurs rights regarding the disposition of the fetus. Either/or. Either the man incurs obligations and rights, and the woman incurs obligations and rights, or the woman claims sovereignty (and therefore no obligations) and the man is relieved of any obligations. This is a principle of law known as "equity."

In the same way, a person who is against abortion has an opinion, but is not a stakeholder.

This is where they (and I) disagree. They, and indeed the State, have an interest in protecting human life in general, and in particular that human life that cannot speak for itself and therefore must be protected by a guardian ad litem, which includes minor children, the mentally incapacitated, and the fetus. Even the Supreme Court accepts this "stakeholder" position of society as legitimate and valid, based on a long examination of the history of abortion going clear back to the Greeks, which is why it left open the authority to regulate or ban entirely abortion after the 2nd trimester. Society, you see, does not accept your nihilistic vision, and does, or at least is empowered to in fact grant "personhood" to fetuses based on their potential. And if a fetus at one stage of development can be granted "personhood" rights, a fetus at any stage of development can be granted those same rights, because the recognition, acknowledgment and protection of the rights of legal persons is not a matter of objective fact, it is a moral decision made by society as a whole. If one lives within a society, one is bound to that society's moral code.

You can attempt to make a distinction between an existing future person, and a non-existent future person. However, this distinction is meaningless. This is true for a variety of reasons.

1)As I have established, and can do so in more depth, being human is not special and that the same ethical rules apply universally.

You have asserted it only. Thousands of years of philosophical thought on such matters have failed to establish such nihilism or indeed any moral philosophy as an absolute objective truth, so don't bother getting too big for your britches.

I can equally well make the argument that because we must treat a future chicken (a fertilized egg) as extensionally equivalent to a chicken, that I must anesthetize chicken eggs before I crack them open and fry them up for breakfast. The problem here is that an egg does not possess the same properties as a chicken. Regardless of it's status in the future, I cannot and should not treat it the same way.

If society wishes to place moral value on chicken embryos, it can do so, and it can require particular conduct towards future chickens if it chooses to do so. The sole support for your nihilistic vision of society is that you choose to suspend time when making moral judgments about the moral worth of organisms. Your argument boils down to "If it's not a sentient being that meets my subjective criteria for dispensing rights at the moment that I decide such a moral determination should be made, I'm free to destroy it at will." Reality brutally intrudes on this time-stopping nihilism. I doubt even the inhabitants of Gamma Alpha IV are going to look favorably upon your philosophy, or your dinner plans for their developing lobster-children. Certainly if you tried to kill my 20 month old nephew on the premise that he cannot pass a "mirror test" to your satisfaction and is therefore not a sentient being worthy of respect, it would be you, or Peter Singer, who would end up pouring out your lifeblood on the floor. I absolutely guarantee that. And that is an expression of a moral code held by a rather large number of people in the US alone. Indeed, I'd say that that particular moral code exists in every single human being on the face of the planet EXCEPT dangerous psychotics like Peter Singer and his ilk. Utilitarian nihilism is simply a psychotic break from evolutionary reality and does not represent the thinking of society as a whole, and hopefully never will.

2) How do you evaluate what their cognitive abilities are before they leave the womb? A baby does display SOME cognitive ability, but a monitor lizard or octopus displays more. What makes the baby worthy of more careful ethical consideration than these animals? A savannah monitor (Varanus exanthematicus) can count up to six. A human child cannot do this for at least a couple years.
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So, let us take a baby and compare it to a lizard. A lizard can do all of the things a newborn can. Why should we not extend the same level of concern to a lizard?
...
Once we have started admitting the future properties of a thing into consideration, the actual existence of the thing stops mattering. Why? Because we extend the same logic again. If a thing does not currently have a set of properties, but we are basing ethical decisions on its future state, it follows that existence can also be a property which we may extend. Hence leading to an infinite regress.

(quotes extracted and combined to conserve space)

Sophistic nonsense. Once again you have to stop time and nihilistically disregard the normal course of fetal development to prop up your vacuous logic. A human fetus is not a lizard. A lizard will always be a lizard even when it is mature, and short of eventually evolving intelligence as a species, it will never individually develop sentience and the rational abilities that a human fetus will, in the normal course of things, always develop. Future potential is a perfectly valid criteria upon which to base moral decisions about how we treat human beings because human beings have a well-known and well-established pattern of intellectual development. It does not lead to "infinite regress" because the pattern of development of human intellect and sentience is both predictable and unique in our world.

[Seth]

2)In order for possessing human DNA to be a necessary and sufficient condition for imparting moral value on a being, said DNA must have some quality which makes it special. Said specialness must not be defined. IE. We cannot simply define human-ness as being special. To do so would be circular reasoning. Not that I would put logical tail-chasing past you.

We can define "having DNA conspecific with ourselves" as being relevant - part of the "similarly situated" part of th Kantian approach.

I think that's fundamentally the difference between Seth's position and mine. I don't think ethics should depend on biology - an alien that behaved as a human should be treated as a human, as far as I'm concerned. Seth thinks it should: he values individuals from his species above individuals from other species, irrespective of behavioral abilities. By my reasoning, a creature with the cognitive capabilities of an animal has the ethical standing of an animal, and I feel safe drawing a line at birth based on that reasoning. By Seth's reasoning, it matters whether the creature has human DNA, so he would draw the line earlier. Both of these positions can be self consistent.

Not quite, Warren. We are distinguishing human DNA from other DNA on our planet, and DNA is merely a placeholder for sentience and reasoning ability. We're talking chickens and humans at the moment. When it comes to other organisms that may demonstrate intelligence, I, like you, do not necessarily value human DNA above, say, dolphin DNA, as an objective matter. Intelligence and sentience is indeed a factor in moral codes, but what is being disregarded is POTENTIAL sentience that is a natural and known product of development of the fetus.

Iratus engages in nihilistic disregard of potential by attempting to stop the clock on development of intelligence at some arbitrary point he chooses in making a moral decision about killing an organism. This is not in the least bit rational. A lizard will never develop into anything but a lizard, with a lizard's level of intelligence. A human fetus, on the other hand, under normal circumstances will develop all of the attributes that all human moral codes recognize as worthy of respect and autonomy.

Ignoring or evading the facts of developmental potential is simply an intellectually dishonest way of bolstering an irrational argument. His entire argument is founded and constructed upon the false premises that a fetus has no moral worth because at any particular point in time it does not display adequate sentience to suit his personal metrics for "personhood." But that's a vacuous and sophistic argument because human fetuses develop into thinking, rational human beings in the ordinary course of things. To ignore this creates a fatal flaw in his reasoning.

[Coito ergo sum]

Not quite, Warren. We are distinguishing human DNA from other DNA on our planet, and DNA is merely a placeholder for sentience and reasoning ability. We're talking chickens and humans at the moment. When it comes to other organisms that may demonstrate intelligence, I, like you, do not necessarily value human DNA above, say, dolphin DNA, as an objective matter. Intelligence and sentience is indeed a factor in moral codes, but what is being disregarded is POTENTIAL sentience that is a natural and known product of development of the fetus.

The potential is not being "disregarded." What is being acknowledged is the difference between the potential and the actual. They are two different things.

Iratus engages in nihilistic disregard of potential by attempting to stop the clock on development of intelligence at some arbitrary point he chooses in making a moral decision about killing an organism. This is not in the least bit rational. A lizard will never develop into anything but a lizard, with a lizard's level of intelligence. A human fetus, on the other hand, under normal circumstances will develop all of the attributes that all human moral codes recognize as worthy of respect and autonomy.

It's o.k. and moral to kill intelligent humans under certain circumstances. Intelligence is not the test, obviously, or there would be no death penalty or right to kill in perceived self-defense, or perceived defense of others.

Further, something that has the potential to become conscious or intelligent or sentient is not conscious or intelligent or sentient. A is A, and B is not A. So, a potential can be treated as what it is - not actual - until it actually becomes actual.

Ignoring or evading the facts of developmental potential is simply an intellectually dishonest way of bolstering an irrational argument.

Stop that. Nobody has ignored or evaded, just posted a contrary argument. And, it is not intellectually dishonest to find that potential humans are not the same as actual humans. They aren't.

His entire argument is founded and constructed upon the false premises that a fetus has no moral worth

It is NOT based on that premise. The fetus has moral worth. That doesn't mean it can't be aborted. Dogs and cats have moral worth, but they can be killed when humans can't, and killing them is never considered murder. Cows have moral worth - we can eat them - but if someone had a cow on their property that they used for target practice with darts and started torturing it, they'd be arrested for animal cruelty. Just because something has moral worth doesn't mean it can't be killed, and just because it has less moral worth than a born human doesn't mean it has "no" moral worth.

Moreover, a fetus is a potential, as you stated before. Therefore, under the principle that different things may be treated differently, a different rule on abortion than on homicide can be rationally created.

because at any particular point in time it does not display adequate sentience to suit his personal metrics for "personhood." But that's a vacuous and sophistic argument because human fetuses develop into thinking, rational human beings in the ordinary course of things. To ignore this creates a fatal flaw in his reasoning.

It's neither vacuous nor sophistic. You use these terms to hand-wave away an argument.

Yes, human fetuses develop, sometimes, into thinking, rational human beings, but that means that they AREN'T thinking, rational human beings. QED.

The fact that A is A, and B is B, means that A may be treated like A and B may be treated like B. Even if A may develop into B, we are not logically compelled to treat A like B until A actually develops into B.

[Coito ergo sum]

Say what you want about Ayn Rand - she nailed it on abortion:

An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn).

Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?

“Of Living Death,”
The Voice of Reason, 58–59

Never mind the vicious nonsense of claiming that an embryo has a “right to life.” A piece of protoplasm has no rights—and no life in the human sense of the term. One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months. To equate a potential with an actual, is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable. . . . Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives. The task of raising a child is a tremendous, lifelong responsibility, which no one should undertake unwittingly or unwillingly. Procreation is not a duty: human beings are not stock-farm animals. For conscientious persons, an unwanted pregnancy is a disaster; to oppose its termination is to advocate sacrifice, not for the sake of anyone’s benefit, but for the sake of misery qua misery, for the sake of forbidding happiness and fulfillment to living human beings.

"A Last Survey,” The Ayn Rand Letter, IV, 2, 3.

If any among you are confused or taken in by the argument that the cells of an embryo are living human cells, remember that so are all the cells of your body, including the cells of your skin, your tonsils, or your ruptured appendix—and that cutting them is murder, according to the notions of that proposed law. Remember also that a potentiality is not the equivalent of an actuality—and that a human being’s life begins at birth.

The question of abortion involves much more than the termination of a pregnancy: it is a question of the entire life of the parents. As I have said before, parenthood is an enormous responsibility; it is an impossible responsibility for young people who are ambitious and struggling, but poor; particularly if they are intelligent and conscientious enough not to abandon their child on a doorstep nor to surrender it to adoption. For such young people, pregnancy is a death sentence: parenthood would force them to give up their future, and condemn them to a life of hopeless drudgery, of slavery to a child’s physical and financial needs. The situation of an unwed mother, abandoned by her lover, is even worse.

I cannot quite imagine the state of mind of a person who would wish to condemn a fellow human being to such a horror. I cannot project the degree of hatred required to make those women run around in crusades against abortion. Hatred is what they certainly project, not love for the embryos, which is a piece of nonsense no one could experience, but hatred, a virulent hatred for an unnamed object. Judging by the degree of those women’s intensity, I would say that it is an issue of self-esteem and that their fear is metaphysical. Their hatred is directed against human beings as such, against the mind, against reason, against ambition, against success, against love, against any value that brings happiness to human life. In compliance with the dishonesty that dominates today’s intellectual field, they call themselves “pro-life.”

By what right does anyone claim the power to dispose of the lives of others and to dictate their personal choices?

“The Age of Mediocrity,”
The Objectivist Forum, June 1981, 3

[Warren Dew]

Certainly if you tried to kill my 20 month old nephew on the premise that he cannot pass a "mirror test" to your satisfaction and is therefore not a sentient being worthy of respect, it would be you, or Peter Singer, who would end up pouring out your lifeblood on the floor.

I would note that lack of humanity is not carte blanche to kill beings. Your dog is not a human being, but I'd still be in the wrong to kill it, even if you are allowed to kill it yourself.

Not quite, Warren. We are distinguishing human DNA from other DNA on our planet, and DNA is merely a placeholder for sentience and reasoning ability. We're talking chickens and humans at the moment. When it comes to other organisms that may demonstrate intelligence, I, like you, do not necessarily value human DNA above, say, dolphin DNA, as an objective matter. Intelligence and sentience is indeed a factor in moral codes, but what is being disregarded is POTENTIAL sentience that is a natural and known product of development of the fetus.

I think the "potential intelligence" argument is a much weaker argument from a logical standpoint than an "own species" argument. For now, though, let me ask a question. How do you reconcile this argument with your acceptance of the "morning after pill" preventing implantation? An unimplanted embryo still has the potential to develop into intelligent life.