When does human life begin?

[Kaitzilla]

Life begins at conception of course.

Biologists all agree on this, and I would never disagree with The Science.


But how about personhood?
When does that mass of cells becomes a real human being?

After that point, purposeful abortions logically become murder.
A pregnant woman dying to a villain becomes 2 murders.

At birth?
Is it when the fetus can survive by itself?
When the first heartbeat occurs?
At conception?

Are contraceptives murder?
The day after pill?


As self-replicating organisms, we are vulnerable to cancers that emulate the bodies' ability to rapidly generate another person.
https://pointofview.net/viewpoints/a-fetus-is-like-cancer/

When does one become two?


I personally have no idea when personhood starts.
I was born 2 months early with no ears developed yet.


Are people disturbed when pregnant women are arrested for drinking+smoking? (child abuse)
https://www.nationaladvocatesforpregnantwomen.org/criminal_prosecutions_against_pregnant_women/

How about the woman who died in prison for having a miscarriage?
(26% of pregnancies end in miscarriage and 74% in birth.)

The personhood question is central to the abortion debate raging right now whether the procedure is ethical, and when.


I guess the origins of humanity fit this thread too.
If we were dumb animals that ate magic mushrooms (psilocybin), had a mind + reality trip of expanded consciousness, and became sentient, that bears discussing also.

 

[Birdjaguar]

And don't forget:

• Souls and ensoulment
• Do aborted babies go to heaven?
• Is pre birth life more important that life after being born?

 

[João III]

Are people disturbed when pregnant women are arrested for drinking+smoking? (child abuse)
https://www.nationaladvocatesforpregnantwomen.org/criminal_prosecutions_against_pregnant_women/

Not sure how active I'll be in this thread, but just to add to the quoted above, per the CDC,

"There is no known safe amount of alcohol use during pregnancy or while trying to get pregnant. There is also no safe time for alcohol use during pregnancy."

 

[El_Machinae]

"Life starting" is a heuristic. Two alive cells fuse to become a competent embryo. Insignificantly different from a somatic cell being infected with a virus to become a competent embryo. Insignificantly different from a somatic cell being bathed in membrane-crossing proteins that becomes a competent embryo. And that will be the same heuristic as bathing a somatic cell in hormones.

I put the mark on sentience, since (Golden Rule time) I value my own sentience. If I suffer an injury that leaves me sentient, please fix me. If I suffer an injury that destroys my sentience, but a new one can be regenerated from it ... meh. In terms of 'life starting' as a heuristic, it's insignificantly different from cloning from a somatic cell. Then we're into the copy problem ... except we're not. The copy is a new person, not the same person, despite the continuity.

Personhood is a fascinating question from the transhumanist end of things, too. We're going to have digital intelligence sooner than later. We're discovering that animals have an internal mind in ways we just didn't predict from Dualism. Of course, these then value 'sentience' as a foundational component. And since I include it in 'sentience', then it's a broader question.

 

[Kyriakos]

There's a joke according to which, when an engineer becomes 40 years old, they take him to the backyard and kill him - because he/she is no longer the same (inferred: not that good).
Much like with the ship of Theseus, while the ship (your sentience) is continuously there, it gets altered all the time. So while you may value your sentience, it is highly unlikely it is that similar to what it was years ago.

Regarding animals, while they may "value" sentience (or not), humans can't witness that, which is why you commonly see (eg) people get a new dog of the same breed when the old one dies, and often name it the same. The dog is obviously a different creature from its predecessor, but can't communicate much so it doesn't matter.

Being a unique individual has to include being able yourself to experience yourself as a continuation of what you were, but not even that may be enough if we go into copies. The copy, in theory, may have exactly the same memories and thus not realize it was created later. But the original - if destroyed, say during the copying - will perish at that point, and will obviously experience its demise.

 

[amadeus]

In the eyes of the law, in the eyes of morality? I don’t know, but at least in the former we can codify that.

 

[Kaitzilla]

People become adults around 30 I'd say.

Spoiler :

We all answer the phone like that, right?

Whenever I hear the word personhood, for some reason I'm reminded of the last P.O.W. from World War 2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/András_Toma

He was captured at 19, put into a mental institution at 22, and did not have a human conversation for 50 more years.
No one spoke Hungarian, so they thought he was just babbling gibberish the whole time.

Thankfully someone noticed, and he got a few years of life at the end.


A more religious view of personhood arises with the question of Catholics and babies who die before being baptized.
I know the service gets rushed if they think the baby won't make it.
https://www.chausa.org/publications...er-december-2004/-baptizing-deceased-infants-

Even after being baptized twice as a baby, the Baptists want to do it to me again as an adult a 3rd time.
Weirdos.

 

[Akka]

But how about personhood?
When does that mass of cells becomes a real human being?

I'm always surprised that people seem puzzled at this, while the (theorical) answer appears to me to be pretty obvious.
Our thoughts are what make us a person, and thoughts are created in the brain.
If it hasn't grown a brain, it's not (yet) a person.

The practical aspect is of course harder - do we consider the fetus needs a fully-grown brain, or is the first activity enough ? So there is this grey area.
But we can safely consider that as long as no brain activity exists, no person does, and once a brain is fully grown, it's definitely a person.
I've yet to see someone make an actual argument against this that doesn't involve some religious BS.

 

[Yeekim]

Whenever I hear the word personhood, for some reason I'm reminded of the last P.O.W. from World War 2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/András_Toma

Jesus everloving Christ.

 

[Gorbles]

If life begins at conception, that means bacteria are also alive (and this is commonly agreed upon). Which begs the question of how relevant this is to the legality of personhood, which is what's actually being discussed.

Unless we're actually discussing morality, which is a lot murkier. But would be a funny tangent considering how much life we as humans extinguish on a daily basis. Which is why I think most folks would want to stick to personhood.

And don't forget:

• Souls and ensoulment
• Do aborted babies go to heaven?

The (supposed) separation of Church and state should render these pretty irrelevant. Certainly, if people want to rely on what is essentially Christian (or Abrahamic) theology as a backstory for the importance of humans, we should at the very least open this up to other major religions (Islam for example also being Abrahamic, but often weirdly skipped over when people try and insert religious morality into legal issues).

 

[Snowygerry]

Life begins at conception of course.

Biologists all agree on this, and I would never disagree with The Science.


But how about personhood?
When does that mass of cells becomes a real human being?

After that point, purposeful abortions logically become murder. (...)

Not necessarily - "murder" is a legal qualification (illegal killing)

and if local law states a killing is not illegal, it is not murder.

Anymore than an execution, or killing in self-defence or war is murder.

The question then becomes -

"Who, and under what circumstances, has the legal right to end a life ?"

 

[Senethro]

Jesus everloving Christ.

Callousness and disinterest in the humanity of others are very dangerous. People are scared of evil but are content to live with brutality.

 

[IglooDame]

I'm always surprised that people seem puzzled at this, while the (theorical) answer appears to me to be pretty obvious.
Our thoughts are what make us a person, and thoughts are created in the brain.
If it hasn't grown a brain, it's not (yet) a person.

The practical aspect is of course harder - do we consider the fetus needs a fully-grown brain, or is the first activity enough ? So there is this grey area.
But we can safely consider that as long as no brain activity exists, no person does, and once a brain is fully grown, it's definitely a person.
I've yet to see someone make an actual argument against this that doesn't involve some religious BS.

Same. How many weeks into a pregnancy is "initial brain activity", on average?

 

[Fippy]

When they can start playing Civilization.
Sorry i felt like making a lighthearted comment

 

[Akka]

Same. How many weeks into a pregnancy is "initial brain activity", on average?

IIRC it's about 12 weeks, which (probably not coincidentally) was the upper limit for abortion here (now I think it's been postponed to 14 weeks).

 

[Snowygerry]

IIRC it's about 12 weeks, which (probably not coincidentally) was the upper limit for abortion here (now I think it's been postponed to 14 weeks).

14 weeks is from the last menstruation I think, which is regarded as 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Edit, that is rather late in fact - in such a case, with a healthy foetus and no other complications for the mother, doctors here will argue against it, and try to persuade you to just have the baby.

But it is strictly speaking legal, and thus not "murder".

 

[EgonSpengler]

Callousness and disinterest in the humanity of others are very dangerous. People are scared of evil but are content to live with brutality.

I was chatting with a woman yesterday about the possibility that SCOTUS could overturn Roe v. Wade, and she was very upset that there was a leak at the Supreme Court. She told me, quite candidly, that she couldn't care less about whether RvW is overturned or not. I can't help noting that she's quite wealthy and could fly herself or either of her daughters anywhere in the world and pay whatever it's likely to cost, without (much) regard for whether the procedure is legal, only that it's safe and discreet. She and her family could literally drop what they're doing right now and be in Australia the day after tomorrow, if they wanted to. Financially, for them, it would be the equivalent of me treating myself to a new phone, or something.

 

[Narz]

When one can dream life begins.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Life does not begin at conception. It begins at abiogenesis, at least 6000 and probably over 4 billion years ago. Sperm, eggs, and skin cells are equally alive. Conception is just life continuing in recombinant forms.

The concept is a soul is not particularly religious, as it is something Christians borrowed from Greek philosophy which is not especially compatible with old testament scripture or necessary to the Christian/Pharisaical doctrine of the resurrection of the body. The idea of any soul "going to heaven after death" is also superfluous, as the proper biblical view is not a soul escaping the physical word for heaven but being restored and translated to a glorified body in the new age once there is a new heaven and a new earth. What happens in the intermediate states is largely irrelevant. Medieval and renaissance Christian works dealing with the soul did not even bother trying to justify the idea of a soul with any appeal to scripture, instead just repeating arguments from men like Plato which are based not on divine revelations but on objective observable physical phenomena which are better explained by modern biology and neuroscience.


The legal positivist view of murder is deplorable. In it, no Jews, Roma, etc were murdered in the Nazi death camps, as their executions were all legally sanctioned. Morality does not come from law, but law ought to be informed by morality.


A heartbeat is irrelevant to personhood. A person with an artificial heart that pumps continuously instead of pulsing is no less a person. What many conservatives call a heart beat is not actually a heart beat either, just disorganized electrical phenomenon in tissue that would eventually become a heart.

Viability would always be a moving target dependent on the state of technology. Once artificial wombs ae developed it might make abortion always illegal.


I tend towards the view hat the most reasonable cutoff for when the state has some interest in regulating abortion is once the fetus develops the capacity to suffer. Since suffering is subjective and hard to measure, the best proxy is probably once it has the nerve connections that allow it to sense physical pain. That is around 20 to 22 weeks.

I'd be happy with taking the more conservative estimate and banning abortion after 20 weeks so long as there are exceptions for both extreme birth defects like Anencephaly (which would prevent the baby from ever feeling pain, and would mean certain death within days at most) and for the life of the mother.

A woman has an equal right to kill in self defense whether that means aborting a baby or shooting a mugger whose gun was trained on her.

There should never be exceptions for rape or incest. Those imply that the purpose of the abortion ban is not to protect innocent life but only to punish girls or women for having consensual sex.

 

[Narz]

Medieval and renaissance Christian works dealing with the soul did not even bother trying to justify the idea of a soul with any appeal to scripture, instead just repeating arguments from men like Plato which are based not on divine revelations but on objective observable physical phenomena which are better explained by modern biology and neuroscience.

This bit I don't follow.

How does one get a soul from observable physical world?