From: sa114984@longs.lance.colostate.edu (Steven Arnold)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Re: WILL THE REAL MISOGYNISTS PLEASE STAND UP? Case 1.
Keywords: abortion, rape, sexual battery
Date: 15 Sep 92 20:27:37 GMT
Organization: Colorado State U. Engineering College, Ft. Collins, CO 80523

In article <z2wn9na.ray@netcom.com>, ray@netcom.com (Ray Fischer) writes:
|> sa114984@longs.lance.colostate.edu (Steven Arnold) writes ...
|> >In article <-cnnv-b.ray@netcom.com>, ray@netcom.com (Ray Fischer) writes:
|> >|> 
|> >|> So then, this is rather wordy intro to the question: what is a human being?
|> >
|> >A human being, medically, is the organism which results from the union of
|> >the sperm and the egg, causing a "joining" of chromosomes, one set from the
|> >father and one set from the mother, which creates a new "instruction set" which
|> >from then on directs the ontogenesis of the new organism.
|> 
|> I wasn't aware that medicine had defined "human being."  I thought they 
|> dealt in bodies and body parts.  Which medical textbook(s) did you refer
|> to?

	In "An Introduction to Medical Genetics, 3rd Ed." by J.A.F. Roberts, we
read: "A human being originates in the union of two gametes, the ovum and the
spermatozoon.  These cells contain all that the new individual inherits
organically from his or her parents...The child, and finally the adult, is what
he is at any time during his existence because of the hereditary constitution
which he originally received..."
	Dr. Roberts' book was, for some time, a standard college textbook on
genetics.
	Dr. Andre Hellegers, former professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the
Georgetown University Hospital and director of the Joseph and Rose Kennedy
Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction and Bioethics in Washington D.C.
says: "...there is not any question of when, biologically, a human life
begins...[it] is at conception and to say that it begins at any other time is
biological nonsense..."
	Dr. Malcolm Watts, writing in a pro-legal-abortion editorial in the
September 1970 issue of California Medicine, says: "...The result has been a
curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human
life begins at conception and is continuous, whether intra- or extra-uterine,
until death.  The very considerable semantic gymnastics which are required to
rationalize abortion as anything but taking a human life would be ludicrous if
they were not often put forth under socially impeccable auspices."

|> >	The definition for "person," on the other hand, is a matter of personal
|> >opinion.  The definition necessarily involves value judgements, and in the case
|> >of abortion it involves value judgements of the most bizarre kind.  
|> [frothings deleted]
|> >Rationalizations abound, but they all fail on one point or another.  Anyway, in
|> >the end, even the rationalizations themselves are mere opinions, value judgements
|> >containing many debatable assumptions.  What are the rationalizations for the
|> >rationalizations?  I don't know.
|> 
|> In other words, you admit that you can't come up with a definition, but
|> expect everyone to accept your word that a zygote is a person.

	I admit that any definition I might arrive at is susceptible to error.  I
know that some human beings are certainly persons.  I know that every human being
who does not die first is either a person at all times or will become a person. 
I do not know exactly when the transformation will take place or even if there
ever is a transformation.  Since I do not know and cannot know which living human
beings are persons and which are not, it would be an unwarranted assumption for
me to conclude that some living human beings are not persons.  I am not asking
you to take my word for anything; I am merely asking you to acknowledge that you
do not really know when personhood begins, that any such division among living
human beings is a leap in the dark, that we are not entitled to make such
decisions on behalf of other human beings.

Steve
Newsgroups: talk.abortion