On 7/23/06, Charlie Bell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 24/07/2006, at 12:01 PM, David Hobby wrote: > > Welcome back. I think you're missing Charlie's point. > To me, his argument is that it is VERY hard to draw a clear > line between things that can turn into adult humans and things > that can't. I advise conceding the point, unless you just > like to argue for the fun of it. : ) Precisely. > > May I propose that you reply: "Anything produced by combining > a human egg and sperm certainly counts as HUMAN. Other things > might also; we'll decide about clones later." What I'm saying is "human" and "human being" is not always the same thing, and "human being" is not always easy to define either. Biology is mess. So is philosophy.
In Robert Sawyer's *Mindscan* he postulates that when Roe v. Wade is overturned the definition of human life the Supreme Court adopts is individualization., two weeks after fertilization. Before that time the cells can be divided and two humans formed. He reasoned that the Supreme Court could not make it fertilization as that would make most Americans guilty of murder as birth control pills work by preventing fertilized eggs from attaching to the uterine wall. It would not be the attachment to the uterine wall as that would leave the status of humans born from artificial wombs in doubt, although that technology was not yet perfected. He may be assuming the Supreme Court is smarter than it is and that the religious fanatics are not as fanatical as they are. I am already hearing the arguments that birth control needs to be banned as well. -- Gary Denton Odds&Ends - http://elemming.blogspot.com Easter Lemming Liberal News -http://elemming2.blogspot.com http://www.apollocon.org June 22-24, 2007 I ncompetence M oney Laundering P ropaganda E lectronic surveillance A bu Ghraib C ronyism H ad enough? _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
