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Same question, different way of putting it only this time the senario is even further from what happens. Debate what you already put and I already refuted or just step down, this is getting extremely tedious.

I got my mom's views but I'm going to get other lawyer's views as well, that way there's more than one. Also I'm not saying anything about the abortion debate as I want the opinion's to be as unbiast as possible.

I'm getting at the fact that if THIS arguement boils down to personal opinion, as in the contitutional part, than there's no sense in using it as an arguement.

However the entire abortion debate isn't based off of personal opinion so there's nothing of the sort for choicer's to get lifers to understand.


Once again, personal opinion. I believe that a human life IS a human person.

Ok.

Not necessarily. It's a reasonable line to draw when deciding a woman has rights over a mass of flesh that can't think or feel. Constitutionally, that's really the only way it can be.

Of course, that still is my opinion...so I see your point. It is still a very valid argument, however. There is a big difference between conscious beings and non-sentient, unfeeling masses of tissue--a difference that has significant clout in the lawmaking process.

I've yet to hear an argument that did not cite personal opinion as reason, from lifers or from choicers.

Well, you are entitled to your opinion.

Though I just can't comprehend your position. Personhood, to me, lies in an individual's ability to feel emotion and to form bonds with other people. I cherish sentient life, and I believe humans are beautiful creatures who deserve only the best. I also have a healthy respect for animals who can feel pain.

But that's another debate.

The level of an adult human. And I am speaking of sentience and emotional for a fish. You see, a fish isn't human so unless it has another determining factor there would be no law in order to protect its rights. However a human is a human and so that is the determining factor. We cannot take out all of the mentally handicapped people and do with them as we please, simply because they don't reach the same level of brain capacity as the rest of us. This doesn't make them any less of a person.

It's a viable argument if I can persuade my opponent that my definition of a person is a more worthy definition than theirs is. It isn't about personhood, though, it's about whether entities that cannot think or feel should have rights that supercede the rights of entities that can, regardless of whether or not they are a person.


The relevance is this: you need to rest your beliefs on a consistent foundation. If you grant rights based on personhood, and your definition of person involves being human then, if fish ever progressed to the stage where they could think or feel, you couldn't grant them personhood rights, because they aren't human. Granting rights based on species alone is speciesism, unless you define why those species have merit.

That's why my definition of 'person' involves the ability to think, or at least having the equipment with which to do so. This means that I can demonstrate why, within my boundaries, humans deserve rights and fish do not and not be accused of having unfounded species bias. However, what it also means is that, within my boundaries, fetuses do not deserve personhood rights. They especially do not deserve rights that no other human has.


Most mentally handicapped people reach a higher level of cognition than fetuses, than animals. We kill animals and this is acceptable because they do not reach the same level as us, yet they supercede the level at which a fetus can cognise. If we could prove that animals were of the same ability and emoptional capacity as humans, there would be an uproar so it obviously is not whether or not something is human that matters.

Speciesism is just as invalid as racism, whether or not it's the basis on which we make laws. You can't make arbitrary distinctions and use them to justify your behaviour without showing why those distinctions are in place. By showing those distinctions in the case of humans vs. animals, you disqualify the fetus from having rights that supercede the rights of an animal.

If the basis on which we make laws is the fact that we're of different species (arbitrary boundaries drawn up for classification purposes by biologists!), then I think those ideas need to be shaken up. We need to start making laws that have logical bases.

This point has already been debated throughout the pages.


Hense me stating that they would have no claim to HUMAN rights, but I would fight for their right to fish rights.

However this whole fish thing, isn't that great of an arguement. As fish are a species, and the entire species would have to evolve in order to be viable for such rights, a fetus is a human. A species which has already evolved to such a degree. The fetus simply hasn't developed fully, just as I haven't developed fully. It doesn't make me any less of a person than my mother.


Already been covered, once again.


Why, if a species was the same as us in everyway except being human, would we be the ones to make their laws? Are you suggesting that we should make laws for them, or should they perhaps make their own laws? If they should make their own laws, why? Why should they not be forced to abide by our laws, if you want to treat them completely as equals?

Like I've stated before, we as humans make laws to protect the human race. It's the way of things, and has been for awhile. It is not our job, as humans to design and inforce laws for another species. And many people would think it was wrong if we did so. Why is that? For the simple reason that they are not humans, as in they do not have our DNA. For that reason we would feel it wrong to impose our HUMAN ethics and values on them.

Would we perhaps make a law in order to protect them? Yes, probably. But it would be a law for humans to follow, not the creatures of whatever species. If we were to make a law stating it was illegal for us to kill one of them, we could not therefore make it illegal for one of them to kill one of them.

So yes, I do differenciate between different species. So sue me.

As well as mutations and differences found in neither parent. But this isn't the point, you knew exactly what I was saying. You and I probably have some similarities somewhere in our make-up somewhere, it doesn't mean jack all.


That's your problem. I've already refuted that question and if you don't like my answer debate the answer I've given with something that I haven't already answered. There's too uneven a lifer:choicer ratio for me to repeat myself to everyone who isn't satisfied with the answers I've already given.


As above.


I'm not fully developed either, neither is a pre-teen, a toddler or an infant. And I suppose it's better for a person to kill an infant than it is for them to kill me, right? Because the infant may or may not have developed to the same level as I have.

Right. No. What we have to base this on is what we have, period. Not developmentally but just what we have. And what we have is a living human being.


Neither can my sister, that doesn't mean I think we should be able to kill her.


Reaching much? Humans can institute laws in which to protect certain creatures, however those creatures are not obligated to abide by ours laws. However the laws in a certain country every human must abide by (With a few exceptions.) male, female, black, white, it doesn't matter.

If people tried to bring to court that women should not have to abide by certain laws because they are different, they would lose. This is because they would first have to give up their personhood status and since all humans are persons (In Canada and the US atleast.) it wouldn't work.



For the same reason the "anti-murder, anti-stealing, anti-incest, anti-wife-beating" people impose their ethics and values on others and make laws for the entire human race.