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So what if it is human?
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By Sean Reynolds
Op/Ed
John Kerry has gone on record as stating that he believes that human life begins at the moment of conception. Pro-lifers need to realise that there is no inconsistency here with his uncompromising pro-abortion stance. Many of the worlds leading advocates of abortion on demand and embryonic stem cell research have been arguing that human life begins at conception for a long time.
The argument against abortion (and by extension embryonic stem cell research) is:
It is an intrinsically evil act to intentionally kill an innocent human being; The unborn child is an innocent human being as human life begins at conception; Therefore: the act of abortion is an intrinsically evil act as it intentionally kills the unborn child. For years pro-lifers have argued the case for the second premise, having held to the belief that the first premise was just prima facie obvious to all involved in the debate. But this has changed: Peter Singer in his book Practical Ethics lays out a very strong and legitimate defence of the second premise.
Singer shows that you cannot reasonably dispute that human life begins at conception. He demonstrates that the criterion, such as viability or birth, used by abortion advocates to argue the case for non-humanity of the foetus is flawed. Instead he attacks the first premise: He argues that there is nothing special about human life. He argues that instead there is significance about whether or not an entity is a person, which he defines as being "a rational and self-conscious being". With this definition it is possible that there are some humans who are not persons, and some persons who are not human. In Singer's worldview a newborn pig has a greater right to life than a newborn human being.
Your right to life has nothing to do with your humanity, but instead with the degree to which you are self-aware and rational. (Does this mean that drunks and stoners qualify as non-persons when under the influence?). He argues that our idea of a right to life for all human beings is merely a result of the influence of Judeo-Christian ethics on European thought. After all, Plato and Aristotle argued that the state should enforce laws that prohibited raising deformed children, and exposure was a common practice in Greco-Roman societies because they did not have abortion clinics. Singer is consistent: He advocates infanticide as newborns do not develop self-awareness or rationality until several months after birth, and non-voluntary euthanasia of human beings who have ceased to be self-aware because when you are in such a condition you are no longer capable of voluntarily giving or with-holding consent, hence the act is neither voluntary nor involuntary on the part of the victim.
This criterion is flawed: How much self-awareness qualifies someone for personhood? It is inherently subjective, and given that a human with brain damage can recover to some degree, even to the extent of regaining their self-awareness, do they go from being non-persons to being persons? The substance, the human being that they are, remains unchanged. Is someone who is under anaesthetic a non-person? Who will judge the degree of personhood that someone possesses?
John Kerry is not being inconsistent when he says that human life begins at conception: He merely does not believe that all innocent humans have an equal right to life.
_____________________________
About the author:
Sean Reynolds is an engineering student in his final year at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He also has a keen interest in bioethics issues and likes to write on them. He may be contacted at sean_m_reynolds@yahoo.co.nz
Contact
Sean Reynolds
, NZ
Sean Reynolds - Author, +64 274 485 725
sean_m_reynolds@yahoo.co.nz
Keywords
Abortion
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