The Unborn Are Persons From Fertilization

Thank you, KeytarHero, for continuing this Debate. In my first posting to this Debate, I stated, "We can generalize the concept of 'person'. What qualities do persons of *any* type possess, that distinguish them from ordinary animals and plants?" Pro has attempted to provide a definition, while also talking about "value".: "...my reason for considering all humans valuable is that we all (unborn and born) have the inherent capacity as moral, rational creatures. Any extraterrestrial or fantastic creature that would exist, if they have the same qualities, [would basically also be persons.]" First, the Universe doesn't care *what* human (or other) *opinions* are, about their so-called "inherent value". If such *actually* existed, then (to pick a "reductio ad absurdum" example) no blizzard would ever kill *any* human, because the blizzard would somehow fail to destroy "inherent value", the same way a blizzard actually *would* fail to destroy a sufficiently and *inherently* strong concrete-and-steel bunker. See how absurd the concept of "inherent value" *really* is? *All* the "right to life" *really* is, is a *subjective* *agreement*, between entities *able* to make such an agreement. Yes, the agreement has widely been extended to encompass various others that cannot understand it. No, that doesn't mean it *must* be extended to encompass *all* others who can't understand it (bacteria and unborn humans, to name two). Next, Pro is misunderstanding the difference between "capacity" and "reality". My pocket has the capacity to hold some money, but that doesn't mean there is actually any money in my pocket. Nor can I go up to the average roadside vendor with an empty pocket and say, "See this capacity for holding money? I want to spend some of that money here, thanks!" Basically, *things* *that* *don't* *actually* *exist* *are* *utterly* *ignorable*. Unborn humans certainly exist, but *none* of them have the *actuality* of ethics and rationality. Just like most ordinary animals, they indeed are not persons! Let's examine some Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) research. Multiple scientific disciplines are involved, from biologists studying the structure of the human brain, to engineers copying things learned ("biomimicry"). We have "neural nets", "multiprocessor systems", "expert systems", "natural language processing", "self-editing software", "genetic algorithms", "Turing Test contests", advances in miniaturization, and even systems that are *evolving* more and more intelligence. ht..../en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network ht......ww.iospress.nl/book/recent-advances-in-artificial-intelligence-research-and-development/ ht......ww.i-programmer.info/news/105-artificial-intelligence/3234-rosette-wins-loebner-prize-2011.html ht......ww.extremetech.com/extreme/105067-mit-creates-brain-chip ht..../en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moores_law ht..../rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/04/04/rspb.2012.0206.full ht..../demesos.blogspot.com/2010/08/evolving-self-oragnizing-soccer-team.html ht......ww.newscientist.com/article/mg20727723.700-artificial-life-forms-evolve-basic-intelligence.html Researchers are very confident that it will be one day possible (and likely, because of continuing miniaturization progress, within 20 years) to build an electronic brain that has *greater* processing power than a human, in *every* respect. It will be a true A.I. that, just like the average adult human, will have Free Will and be able to understand ethics and experience emotions, and be able to "mentally put itself in the shoes of another". Its ancestry will guarantee that it will be rational; we could call it a "machine organism", not a biological organism. Plus, at that time we *could* build such an A.I. system into an automated factory, so that it can construct many more A.I. "offspring". So, per Pro's argument about "capacity" and "inherent value", we *must* let those offspring organisms be constructed in endless numbers (consuming lots of resources), once the factory/A.I. is activated, right? If we prejudicially favor humans over A.I. organisms, then what does that *really* tell us about "inherent value" and "capacity"? Pro's argument is absurd! --that's what it tells us! Next: Most ordinary animals have a "breeding season". Biology strongly urges them to breed when it arrives; the sexes ignore each other "that way" the rest of the time. Also, most female mammals manage to care for their offspring by themselves, and their offspring generally help by being independently active within hours of birth. But humans *don't* have a breeding season, and our offspring are so helpless that the chance of successful child-raising increases a great deal if a female human can obtain assisstance. So: ht..../en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concealed_ovulation Human biology allows females to use sex to encourage males to provide help. We can indulge in sex at almost any time, therefore, not merely when successful breeding might happen. *This* *is* *fundamentally* *important*. Because the *primary* purpose of human sex is not breeding; it is "pair bonding". Of course, humans that indulge in sex *often* enough are relatively likely to do so during ovulation, which can lead to offspring.... A given pair of adults can therefore end up with about the same total number of offspring that some other species will have using the "breeding season" method (assuming both typically produce one offspring at a time). In other words, the fact was not detrimental, that our species shifted its reproductive biology away from the breeding-season model. Certainly humans can specifically target ovulation in a deliberate attempt to breed. But this is *far* from the usual case! Meanwhile, abortion opponents tend to spout nonsense implying that humans "do" follow a breeding-season model, such that when sex leads to pregnancy, the participants "should have known better". Despite hidden ovulation! The next relevant things are some details of the reproductive process. Here's a simple cause-and-effect statement: "Ordinary sexual intercourse causes virginity to end." Truth! Now, what about this one: "Sex causes pregnancy."? *Not* the Truth! Throughout history about 1/7 of heterosexual couples were naturally unable to have offspring, no matter how much sex they had. Some fraction of them never had a pregnancy in the first place, much less a miscarriage. So, if the statement "Sex causes pregnancy" was *actually* as True as "Sex ends virginity", there would *never* be cases like those. What sex *really* does in *allow* some *independent* *living* *organisms*, sperm and egg, a chance to interact. They are *not* *forced* to interact. By the way, the egg *chooses* which sperm --*if* *any*-- will fertilize it: ht..../discovermagazine.com/1992/jun/theaggressiveegg55 Fertilization yields a new and *different* independent organism, a zygote. After a few days it becomes a blastocyst that seeks to implant in a womb. *If* it succeeds (and many don't), *only* *then* does pregnancy begin. But it is not *forced* to succeed, *just* because two adults indulged in sex. Not to mention that its success might only be temporary: ht..../miscarriage.about.com/od/onetimemiscarriages/p/chemicalpreg.htm A huge percentage of abortions are done because various common forms of birth control happened to fail; abortion is thus a "second line of defence" with respect to not having offspring. It is literally not credible for an abortion opponent to claim that those pregnancies were "granted permission". That's like saying that if you can succeed at robbing a bank, you must have had permission. Utterly false, it is! Finally, because we have Free Will, we *very* *often* refuse to accept a given situation. So we irrigate a desert, or put a flood-control dam on a river. Or seek an abortion. The unborn *only* have potential not actual personhood, and they can have low value because they are usually *very* easy to replace!