Ireland has turned its back on life.

The historical view on personhood is irrelevant and and we shouldn't create arbitrary qualities that fetuses have that post birth humans usually don't because it devalues the significance of human rights. Human rights should apply to people regardless of their earliness in development.

1) Have you opened a dictionary recently? It's filled with meaning informed by historical use. Why would the historical meaning of personhood, in particular, be irrelevant?

2) Identifies the arbitrary qualities of fetuses to which you make reference and make an argument as to what makes them arbitrary.

3) "Human rights should apply to people regardless of their earliness in development." You are entitled to this opinion, but I disagree with you, and the UN disagrees with you26218-3). And while this position may limit the scope of human rights, it does not deplete their significance.

Its position with respect to the womb should be irrelevant because within 100 years, we will likely have the technology to artificially support a person after they are fertilized.

4) You are arguing that position with respect to the womb should be irrelevant based on what you view to be the likelihood (but not certainty) that certain technology may exist in 100 years. First of all, we should not be determining the allocation of legal rights today based upon what technology may look like in 100 years!!! At the very least, DON'T SPECULATE - wait until that technology to get here! And make an argument as to why such technology is likely, and provide sources from the web.

5) Furthermore, based upon the applicable reasoning of Roe v. Wade (which I have already explained to you twice), explain how the reasoning of that case would apply to such technologies such that under the Court's framework, personhood would commence after fertilization.

If its position and reliance in the womb mattered, then humans would attain personhood at earlier times as technology progresses which makes absolutely no sense.

6) You're still not understanding the reasoning of Roe. Personhood has nothing to do with viability. Personhood is a function of birth status. The only technology which can accelerate personhood is that which allows birth at an earlier point in gestation.

The distinction between born and unborn is really an artifact of our lack of technology.

7) What are you talking about? 500 years ago, human beings fell into two categories - either born and unborn, and with all the advances in technology, human beings still fall into two categories - either born or unborn. That distinction has withstood advances in technology.

Furthermore, if self-reliance was a necessity for personhood, then almost nobody in modern society would be a person. If someone needs to be more self-reliant than a fetus, then people in ICUs are not people.

8) I never argued that self-reliance was a necessity for personhood, DO NOT put words in my mouth. What my argument did was provide an explanation as to why our society has formulated a concept of personhood such that it commences at birth. That explanation set forth a confluence of multiple factors all occurring at the time of birth, OF WHICH self-reliance was just ONE.

Your point about self-reliance includes that it is also the first time they are not part of the mother. This distinction is false because the fetus is never part of the mother....

I have changed this sentence:

Overall, it is at birth that the human being exists without being a part of the person who formed it.

to read as

Overall, it is at birth that the human being exists apart from the person who formed it.

That resolves that objection and leaves my conclusion unaltered.

/r/prolife Thread Parent