[vulturesrow]

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OT?: are you a religious person? What faith/religion do you subscribe to?

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Yes, Roman Catholic.


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I guess your answer is: "a person has a natural, inherent capacity for speaking, reasoning, loving, etc".

I don't think a zygote fits that definition any more than a brain-dead person would.

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Of course it does. The capacity exists. The ability to do so may be undeveloped or damaged, but the capacity exists.

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If Terri was a person, then it should have been illegal for her family to bury her. But, it wasn't.

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You are confusing legality with moral correctness.

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Apparantly your criteria for personhood doesn't allow us to tell when someone is dead. That's not very useful.

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It is useful, it defines what beings are persons and thus worthy of certain fundamental rights. Thats what we are discussing, no?

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Potential is not actual.

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Umm, so lets just allow the killing of infants too since they arent fully developed. Heck the brain doesnt finishing developing until later than infancy so we can pretty much take out any children that dont progress normally in their development.

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So, we have to observe it to find it if has the capacity for personal acts... but not be looking for some sort of "functionality". Interesting. I sure don't see how medical science would be able to use this criteria. "Doctor, please remove this tumor from my body..." "OK, but first let's observe it for 9 months to make sure it's not a person."

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The tumor illustration is wrong because we know from experience that a tumor will never exhibit any capacity for personal acts.