Sklansky on Abortion

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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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That makes sense. When you said you could make the argument without reference to God, I was under the mistaken assumption that you didn't have a religious motive for making the argument. My apologies.


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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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ca·pac·i·ty
n.
1. Ability to perform or produce; capability.

It doesn't have the ability or capability to speak, reason, or love. If you mean that in the future it might be able to (if it ends up being one of the lucky zygotes that end up implanting in the uterine wall and developing without being miscarried), then a sperm might be able to also. With the additional "luck" of finding a suitable egg to implant.

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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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How does your criteria help determine when someone is dead? How can medical science use your criteria to determine when it would be OK to bury someone?

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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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An infant has a functioning brain. It is a person.

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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.

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How do we know the tumor isn't a person? Maybe it looks like a tumor at first... but after we observe it kinda looks like a person? (This isn't science fiction, by the way.)