Abortion takes the life of a distinct, living, whole human being

I see now that there is much wisdom in what some of the comments have identified. Namely, that debates on this site all too often are reduced to semantics. Therefore, in subsequent debates, I will be sure to define my terms more precisely, so as not to have my opponent define them for me. Before I engage in my opponent's response, I must ask what interaction has taken place with my embryological and medical evidence? It has been all but neglected. Once again, if my opponent disagrees with the proposition, one would expect him to engage with the evidence provided, not reduce the debate to the defining of terms. However, as the opposition has made attacks on my view, a defense is in order. The first attack deals with the notion that the unborn are whole human beings. I will demonstrate how this objection reduces to a counter-intuitive view of human beings and how we understand our own identities. SkepticalDebatee, you see, is confusing property things with things of internal nature. Allow me to explain. He asserts that a fetus is not a whole human beings because it lacks a certain amount of parts; that it is incomplete. Such things as arms, muscle, and organs are, in his view, essential to being a whole human being. But this misunderstands what is under consideration. Never have humans been considered merely a collection of parts, assembled over time. We all understand that our parts can be changed, replaced, or even removed while remaining whole human beings. Or else kidney donors would all be part, not whole humans! Indeed, are amputees only part humans? Or those who are born with abnormalities (such as only one arm), will my opponent concede that such people are not whole? Suppose my opponent suffered an accident in which he lost his legs, who among us would argue that he is now only part of a human? The error in such reasoning then, is that my opponent views the unborn as a property thing. He claims that just as cars are merely sum totals of their parts, so too, are human beings. If you remove the motor or a tire from a car, you technically have only part of that car. For there is no essential nature that defines the car and orders its basic capacities. Property things like my car come into existence part by part. However, we know that this is not true of you or I, and in the same way, we know that it is not true of the unborn. For that matter, it is not true of female toddlers. 2-year old girls do not have a functioning reproductive system, yet they are whole human beings nonetheless. For living things come into existence all at once and then gradually unfold themselves according to their inner natures. We see then, that if humans can only be whole if they have all of their parts, then many war veterans are not whole human beings. >But< if people with less parts are still whole human beings nonetheless, then something else must account for this fact. The only things which can account for a person remaining whole after the loss of a part is a unifying, inner nature; a human nature. In the same way that you, the reader, are a whole human irrespective of your parts, so too the unborn are whole human beings irrespective of their parts. Will my opponent deny this fact? Secondly, SkepticalDebatee attacks the idea that the unborn are distinct. Notice, however, the basis for this rebuttal: That the unborn could be genetically identical to nearly a thousand other people in the world. First, a factual response. Geneticist Dr. Rama Balakrishnan of Stanford University reaches quite a different conclusion than my opponent. In fact, she says "How about a sequence that is 300 bases long? How many different combinations of the 4 bases are possible in these 300 bases? The total number of possibilities will be 4^300,"[1] That is, 4 to the 300th power. We don"t even have a name for such a large number! And that is only one gene 300 base pairs long! Therefore, it seems that this objection is demonstrably false. However, even if it were the case that only few different genetic combinations existed, this argument still fails for the following reasons. Namely, it would not follow that if two embryos had identical genetics, that they would not be distinct. Consider if cloning became commonplace, would genetic unity eliminate each embryo"s distinct nature? Certainly not! A mother could carry three genetically identical twins, yet surely my opponent would not argue that these triplets are not distinct from one another. How then would he be able to say that the unborn are not distinct? And not only this, but how can such a claim be entertained in the face of such overwhelming contrary scientific evidence as presented in my opening statement? It is stated explicitly by Embryologists Ronan O'Rahilly and Fabiola M"ller when they write, "Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed....The combination of 23 chromosomes present in each pronucleus results in 46 chromosomes in the zygote. Thus the diploid number is restored and the embryonic genome is formed. The embryo now exists as a genetic unity."[2] Further, Keith L. Moore & T.V.N. Persaud write, "A zygote is the beginning of a new human being. Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm...unites with a female gamete or oocyte...to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual."[3] To close then, the reader is left to judge whether my opponent"s view of humanity is correct. Are humans merely collections of parts assembled over time? Such that we become only part of a human should we lose some of our parts? I contend that this is not the case. Rather, that we are all whole human beings in virtue of something we all share: a common human nature. If this is not the case, it is hard to see how one can include amputees in being whole human beings. Further, it was demonstrated that my opponents attack on the distinct nature of the unborn was factually in err. But that, even if accurate, would still not support his proposed conclusion. And so to restate, the scientific evidence of embryology in conjunction with medical science demonstrates clearly that from the earliest stages of development, the unborn are distinct, living, whole human beings. I look forward to my opponents response. [1] http://genetics.thetech.org... [2] K. Moore & T.V.N. Persaud, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology (Philadelphia: Saunders/Elsevier, 2008), p. 15. [3] O'Rahilly, Ronan and M"ller, Fabiola. Human Embryology & Teratology. 2nd edition. New York: Wiley-Liss, 1996, pp. 8, 29.