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| CHALLENGE |
| Tuesday, January 18, 2005 |
| For 15 years I have engaged in debate about the abortion issue, and I have yet to have an pro-abortion advocate answer this question directly?
Is a human fetus human life?
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posted by Jack Mercer @ 1/18/2005 04:31:00 PM   |
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| 1 Comments: |
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No, but that does not solve your 15-year problem since I am not pro-abortion. A fetus is a nascent life. Even when people are sustained by nothing but machines, unable to respond, we say they are in a vegetative state. Part of the problem here is that too many people on the extremes of this issue see in only black or white: that an organism can only be alive or dead. This is similar to the idea that people "come out of" comas, yet there are 9 stages of coma, roughly half of which involve the capacity to walk, eat, converse, and manage things like clothing.
The trouble here is that people want to fix where life begins, and that really is where the debate has moved for many. Unless there can be agreement on that issue, there is little hope of moving the debate forward. If people believe in the quickening of the soul at conception say it is a life, fully endowed, then they will never listen to those who believe that life begins when the child able to perform normal bodily functions free of external support. And there are more in the middle.
The beauty of the Calvinist perspective, if I may throw this in, is that it circumvents discussion on the issue. Indeed, anyone who believes in predestination must acknowledge that we each play parts determined for us beforehand. If that is the case, the point is moot. The elect will live righteously according to the plan because they can do nothing else. Likewise, the rest will live lives of sin, but for that, they can only be judged by the higher being who created the plan, and then not too harshly as the pawn (the people) had no choice.
And so we are back to the beginning. Without concensus (using that in the original sense) on the issue of whether or not a fetus is a human, the debate will remain locked.
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No, but that does not solve your 15-year problem since I am not pro-abortion. A fetus is a nascent life. Even when people are sustained by nothing but machines, unable to respond, we say they are in a vegetative state. Part of the problem here is that too many people on the extremes of this issue see in only black or white: that an organism can only be alive or dead. This is similar to the idea that people "come out of" comas, yet there are 9 stages of coma, roughly half of which involve the capacity to walk, eat, converse, and manage things like clothing.
The trouble here is that people want to fix where life begins, and that really is where the debate has moved for many. Unless there can be agreement on that issue, there is little hope of moving the debate forward. If people believe in the quickening of the soul at conception say it is a life, fully endowed, then they will never listen to those who believe that life begins when the child able to perform normal bodily functions free of external support. And there are more in the middle.
The beauty of the Calvinist perspective, if I may throw this in, is that it circumvents discussion on the issue. Indeed, anyone who believes in predestination must acknowledge that we each play parts determined for us beforehand. If that is the case, the point is moot. The elect will live righteously according to the plan because they can do nothing else. Likewise, the rest will live lives of sin, but for that, they can only be judged by the higher being who created the plan, and then not too harshly as the pawn (the people) had no choice.
And so we are back to the beginning. Without concensus (using that in the original sense) on the issue of whether or not a fetus is a human, the debate will remain locked.