Oddbean

I think that an objective line would be "the point at which, if the process is allowed to go on uninterrupted, it will be overwhelmingly likely to result in a baby." Gestation is a process, there are points in the process that occur all the time that don't result in a baby. Most fertilized eggs don't result in a baby for example. But there are points where it almost always does, and all of them fall after the fertilized egg attatches to the wall of the uterus. If you consider the process as one that exists to result in a baby, then the point in the process which, if left uninterrupted from that point on, it almost always will would be the point it becomes a human being. Just like a baby, if left to grow, will become an old person eventually, so we consider a baby as human as a working age adult. Because otherwise, we cant make either claim, a baby has no agency, it is not objective that it is human except by that same criteria.

would it be less bad to murder an old person, a middle aged person, a teenager, a child? if you want to draw lines about what constitutes a human that doesn't start with a fertilised egg where are you going to allow it to be moved to is it at the convenience of the slut who wants to get nutted in or what? would you expect that someone should be liable for a mistake they make with a firearm that causes harm to others? then i don't think it's really any different i'd even say that the dude who nuts in the girl has liability in this also making the creation of human life an arbitrary line of when you designate it to be valid beyond the actual biological life cycle is not doing real jurisprudence it's making excuses for psychologically immature and pathological people to do things that they should pay for

abortions can happen spontaneously and accidentally at this stage, that doesn't change the definition of human if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, how can anyone know it happened? you can't make a rule about a thing that is not known, of course if a woman has suspicions and tests herself, she and the man who did it are now liable for a human life if it's testing positive for a baby the whole point of making this specious argument about what constitutes human is to narrow it so a politically expedient excuse for murder can be accommodated be it war, assassination, execution, or abortion, which is very popular with slutty whores and immature man-children with sexual maturity and the emotional maturity of a 2 year old child if you move the goalposts, you are allowing them to be moved again... it's human once it contains complete DNA and the capacity and environment to develop and be born

if there was no plan there was no A if you are an adult and you cause something to be put at risk of harm, an ADULT must take responsibility for it, or their freedom has to be limited in order to prevent them continuing to make such bad decisions and causing more harm it is not the fault of the child as it grows up to not be properly educated and trained to fulfill the responsibilities of an adult human if you don't feel regret at a thing which by all measures of jurisprudence constituted harm and you got away with it, then idk, maybe we can't have a conversation

Oh that's what I said? Your reading comprehension is lacking my dude. Your supposition, I responded to it with my reasoning. You just re state the same supposition. That's not a path to a fruitful discussion. I can re explain my reasoning. Life is a process. What makes a human? Hands? Speech? Bipedal walking? All that is true. But a baby can't do any of that. So is a baby objectively human? If so, how do you reason about that consistently? You do it by stating "that is it's fate if it is not killed first". The process of life, if left uninterrupted, that baby will walk and talk and make things. It will do human things, it will behave like a human unless someone stops that process. So it is human, just as a caterpillar is a butterfly. Take that same reasoning back before birth. Will a fetus become a grown adult if it it's life process is not interrupted? Yes. Keep going back. At what point in that process, if left undisturbed, does it become the case that the thing will become a full grown person? Where prior to that, there's no likelihood, just a possibility? That's the objective point where you can say it's a person. Without this, you can't say anyone is objectively human until they can say "yes I am a human". By your reasoning, a baby is not objectively human. We know this is untrue.

I never made the claim that a human has to say it's a human. All my claim is is that it's not objective to pinpoint a specific time when it's a person or not, it's your subjective opinion. At every day of the pregnancy, there is a probability that the zygote, embryo or whatever will not be born. And most of the time, the reasoning for this is not abortion, miscarriage happens often. And your dismissive point adding "uninterrupted" is illogical because it implies that interruptions in a process are Unnatural. People can do everything right and then have a miscarriage, people can do everything wrong and have a perfectly normal baby. But by your logic, if someone has a miscarriage, then they are responsible for the death of a human because it's a human baby from the moment of conception, which is your subjective belief. You can say a baby is objectively human. It doesn't live inside of another organism, it eats and drinks through its mouth, it's consciousness consciousness can be measured and tracked, etc. If you don't think a baby's humanity is different than that of an unborn one and you think that that belief is objective, then how is a sperm or an egg not an unborn baby even before they meet?

There is a possibility that humans die by accident, from disease, we don't say that that means we can't objectively call them human or that because of this fact it is OK to kill them. Same with one developing in the womb. Nobody holds anyone responsible for an accident happening to somebody unless it's the result of negligence. I don't see any inconsistency here whatsoever. By "uninterrupted" I mean deliberately interrupted. > It doesn't live inside of another organism This is irrelevant. Living inside another person is part of our natural life cycle. It's part of the nature of the human being, just as a butterfly spends time in a cocoon. All the other details that you say make a baby human are the same as my examples earlier, it talks, it walks, they aren't the reason we call it a human. A baby on a feeding tube is still a human. If you use these as the criteria then of course it's going to be murky to you. Find the fundamental differentiator, not a list of most-of-the-time criteria with tons of corner cases and caveats and you'll see my point. > If you don't think a baby's humanity is different than that of an unborn one and you think that that belief is objective, then how is a sperm or an egg not an unborn baby even before they meet? I've told you already, the criteria that is most objective is, at what point in development does it occur that, if the process is not *deliberately* interrupted, more than likely it will result in a baby. That's the point you can call it a person. This precludes sperm, eggs, even fertilized embryos, most of which go unnoticed.

None of what your saying is objective fact. Again, I don't think abortion is wrong, but defining it at the moment of fertilization is not objective because personhood is not a scientific fact, it's subjective philosophy. And your point about uninterrupted process, is basically just a short hand for viability. Which has changing goalposts every decade. You dismissed my point about living inside of another organism because of circular logic btw

> None of what your saying is objective fact. Again, I don't think abortion is wrong, but defining it at the moment of fertilization is not objective because personhood is not a scientific fact, it's subjective philosophy. I do thing abortion is wrong. I did not define personhood as the moment of fertilization. The goal of subjective philosophy is to get closer to objective reality, saying that can never be achieved means saying that philosophy and morality are irrelevant. We can just define person hood however we want, throw pur hands up and say "welp, subjective!" and treat whoever we want however we want. That is obviously not our goal here. We are trying to find that place where it's immoral to snuff the zygote. I say, that place is when it's probably not going to spontaneously snuff itself. > And your point about uninterrupted process, is basically just a short hand for viability. Which has changing goalposts every decade. No, it's not. "Moment of viability" is the point when the fetus could survive on it's own outside the womb. This is of course constantly changing with medical technology, and the moving goalposts are not just that, but things like "detectable heartbeat", "can it feel pain" etc, not just with viability, and usually by pro abortion people. I'm not talking about any of that, I'm talking simply, if left undisturbed, does this thing become a baby by itself. An egg, no. A sperm, no. A fertilized embryo, also no. So when? That's the answer to this question, "is it murder to stop the process of development?" Because that's what we are doing, we are trying to find an objective point when it does, you're saying it doesn't exist, but then you can objectively tell me that smothering a newborn is murder, I would guess you think that aborting the day before the due date is murder, those are objective facts, but at what point does it become murder, you say there's no objective measure of that. I'm saying that's not true, and not only that but that it is absurd, if you can claim that killing a human at any age is murder objectively then you can pinpoint when in the life cycle that becomes the case, and further I'm offering a coherent argument for a specific moment, a specific part of the process, not reliant on time or any of that, reasoning why I think that, if your only argument is "no that can't be it because there isn't one" youre arguing with the wind. >You dismissed my point about living inside of another organism because of circular logic btw Living inside another organism is part of our natural life cycle. To say it isn't a human being in that part of the life cycle is the actual inconsistent thing here. Humans are dependent as babies on their mothers for survival for quite a while, so should the mother be able to just not feed it? See, that's entirely inconsistent. As organisms, we live inside our mothers for a while. We are still organisms, and a specific type of organism, a human being.