an unborn human (aka fetus) is not a legally recognized human. It is not a citizen nor does it have the rights of a citizen or borned person. In the same way people who are vegetarians are horrified that we are killing alive sentient beings (pigs, cows, etc) who can be scientifically shown to to be clearly aware, feel pain, communicate that pain, have emotions (while these are not necessarily true for a first, 2nd trimester fetus). In the same way an abortion video would be disturbing, it is also disturbing to see invasive surgeries, or to see animals slaughtered and hung up for food.
Killing animals to eat them is legal. So, vegetarians and vegans then, for themselves make the decision not to partake. However at this time they cannot legally coerce other people from eating meat.
While I am not a vegetarian I am trying to eat less meat. And I honestly do not get why "humans" get extra elevated rights, even to the extent that the pro life crowd are disturbed by abortions yet having pig pickings. I can only surmise the reason is not based on science and reality, but one belief that humans are "special" the only ones with souls etc. We are a country that people are free to practice a religion, or not practice a religion. Basing the right to abortion and other reproductive access such as birth control on religious reasons (and a particular subset of a religion aka evangelical or fundamentalist christianity) is entirely wrong decision for the United States and for what our constitution states.
To try to throw a question of why humans get elevated rights in for this discussion is ridiculous and requires absolutely no tie in to any specific religion to refute. We're talking about ending a human life here. Unless you're part of some 0.0000001% of people that want murder of humans made legal or eating of animals illegal, you're whole line of logic has absolutely no application. An unborn human is a distinctive human from a DNA standpoint. The only line of discussion that makes any case whatsoever that abortions aren't morally abhorrent is the dependency of the unborn on the mother.
Far more than 0.00000001% would like to make eating of animals illegal. Probably even fewer than that meager percentage think it is a viable thing to propose, that it is a thing that society would collectively agree should be against the law at this time. I am not alone in the opinion though that 100 years from now eating animals will be not only illegal, but unthinkable to most people. (In fact I think it'll be far fewer than 100 years.) But not today. And laws that apply to all of us should be based on things we collectively as a society agree on.
There are two separate issues with abortion: it's morality/ethicality and its legality. Those are two separate things, just as the ethics of eating animals is separate from the legality of eating animals.
Dependency on the mother is one line of discussion, both morally/ethically and legally, but it is the only one.
A fetus is no more a human being than a sprouted acorn is an oak tree.
Whatever you may think of the sentence above, most people would agree with it unless their religion tells them otherwise, and even a lot of people whose religion tells them otherwise would agree with it.
A lot of people, I daresay the majority in this country, would agree that while abortion is not a trivial or frivolous thing, it is most certainly not "ending a human life." It is clearly ending a process leading to a human life. But the idea that life begins at conception is one hard to establish apart from certain religion's doctrines, and we are not supposed to be legislating religion in this country.
First, in my haste and typing on my phone I combined the 0.00001% for making murder legal with making eating animals illegal. My mistake. I mean only the first one not the second one.
The idea of a new human life beginning at conception is irrefutable in scientific terms. A new set of DNA - an entirely different organism from the mother is created at conception. It cannot be argued that it's not life. It cannot be argued that it's not human (as in the species).
No worries on the typo, it happens. I left out the word "not" in a significant place in the post you quoted (obvious where I think from context), so I'll see you your typo and raise you mine.
You are going even farther than the argument I cited, and are claiming that every acorn is an oak tree. I guess it could be, depending on how you define "oak tree." But it is certainly not "scientifically irrefutable" that acorns are oak trees, and most people, including most scientists, would find that definition of "oak tree" more than a little odd.
Whatever the merits of this sort of definition, it is hardly "inarguable" and "scientifically irrefutable."
Simply asserting that something cannot be argued does not make it inarguable. "Proof by vigorous assertion" is not a valid rule of logical inference.
Most, if not all, scientists would agree that the definition of "oak tree" or "living human being" is not a scientifically addressable question. Forms and particulars have not been considered a question of "science" since before the modern era.
I should have addressed your acorn/oak tree analogy earlier. It seems to be a flawed analogy. It's about plants not animals. This is important because you have something very specific in plants that doesn't happen with animals - that of seeds.
It seems you're talking about potential versus something actualized. Yes, unborn humans do not have the same functionality as born people (and certainly adults) and have much more on the potential side of things than the actualized side. However, back to your analogy, the flaw to me is that an acorn is pure, 100% potential, separated from the life and growth process. That's why the analogy doesn't compute. An acorn can sit on a shelf and never be put into the ground to grow - it's not actively alive. At conception, the new DNA is present, and it's actively moving on with growth. It's already in the life cycle in a way that an acorn on a shelf may possibly never be if it stays up on the shelf. That unborn human can have something go wrong with it somewhere along the process of growth. It can then stop growing and die. In which case it would no longer be human life because the life part is out of the equation.
You're claiming I'm saying it's inarguable because of circular reasoning - that it's inarguable because it's inarguable. That's not it at all. I'm saying it's inarguable because there are simply no scientific arguments to refute it, and I'm not seeing any evidence to the contrary in terms of specifically definable words - not a polling of people whose biases would come into play; just the actual words used and definitions for them. Scientists might say that the definition of a "living human being" is undefinable, but that's because it's merging with philosophy.
An unborn human is human life, and not just that, it's distinct, human life based on the definitions of the words. It's of the species of human. It's distance DNA wise, a separate, unique individual from its mother. It's life - it's living, growing, an active part of the cycle of growth. If people want to say it's not distinct, human life, they are going to have to reach outside of these very basic definitions to do so. That's why it's inarguable. I don't mean to be snarky, but if people want to mean something besides what comes out of those three words, they should use different words.
I 100% agree with you that science can only give so much input on it. However, they are completely able to give input that an unborn human is distinct, human life. They are not equipped to comment beyond that. People can say it's not of the same quality of human life, of the same worth of human life, of the same caliber or type of human life - but then, again, where do we make the distinction? Babies are totally reliant on their parents - at a different phase of the life cycle but certainly still not of the same caliber as a fully adult, self-sufficient person.
All of this can be argued, but it helps to start at a similar basic framework, and I have not seen any reasoning for why the label of distinct, human life can be taken away from an unborn human.
My original analogy was a *sprouted* acorn. I removed the sprouted part because you appeared to be saying that simply having a distinct set of human DNA was sufficient to be a full human being. If that's all you need, then the analogy works just fine. Every acorn has a distinct set of oak tree DNA.
I only removed the *sprouted* condition because it seemed like you were doing so. Much if not all of your objection above applies to the acorn being unsprouted.
So: Ok, so let's sprout it. Is it an oak tree then?
As for the rest: I don't mean to be harsh, but you are either being or unintentionally giving the impression of being (based on what I know of you so far, I assume the latter) intellectually dishonest about your use of "inarguable" and "irrefutable". If by those words you mean what you seem to be saying the second time, then I agree with you. Science does not and cannot argue that a fetus is not a living human being, nor does it nor can it refute the claim that a fetus is a living human being, because those sorts of claims are not scientifically addressable.. If you mean that the question of whether or not a fetus is a living human being is not a scientific question, and cannot be addressed by science, and that science does not and cannot establish whether it is or isn't, then we are in agreement. But if that is what you really mean, that is not what you gave the impression of meaning in the original quote.
If it is not a scientific question, that also means that science does not and cannot argue that a fetus is a living human being, nor does it nor can it refute the claim that a fetus is not a living human being.
You said:
<<The idea of a new human life beginning at conception is irrefutable in scientific terms. A new set of DNA - an entirely different organism from the mother is created at conception. It cannot be argued that it's not life. It cannot be argued that it's not human (as in the species).>>
The wording of this, as it would normally be understood, indicates that you are saying that science irrefutably demonstrates that human life begins at conception. To say that something is "irrefutable in scientific terms" would normally be taken to mean that the scientific evidence FOR the claim is conclusive. Within the context in which this statement was made, even moreso.
Likewise "it cannot be argued that it's not life" would normally be taken to mean that the claim that it is life is so abundantly established that it is scientifically absurd to think otherwise.
You do not appear to be taking the position that science is agnostic about this question in general, and you cannot possibly be so naive as to not know what your phrasing means in ordinary English.
If this is all just a matter of disagreement as to phrasing and language, which most disagreements in this world seem to be, the remedy is easy, even if not all that popular in this world with regard to controversial things. Natural language relies on context and nuance and etc. That's what makes poetry fun but it sure leads to plenty of pointless controversies. Language can be unclear, so just clarify the language and come to agreement about what is really meant and move on.
So: is the point at which human life begins a question science does or can answer?
Sorry about missing the sprouting acorn part from before in your comments. I mean to address the issue with even a sprouted oak but forgot. The difference is in the nuance of tree having connotations of adulthood. We typically wouldn't call a sprouted acorn a tree because the word tree has connotations of maturity. I do think we could very rationally call it an oak and call it alive just like we would call an infant an infant human and alive but not an adult. So, no, I wouldn't call a sprouted acorn an oak tree, but I certainly would say it's an oak and it's alive.
Thanks for the explanation. I believe I see how I was unclear and chose poorly in my wording. I would say this, there is absolutely nothing inarguable philosophically - that's kind of the point :-), but there are certain things that we are on pretty solid ground scientifically. Inarguable even on a scientific standpoint is probably a poor term because science tries to continually improve and learn, so even previous thought certainties can be deemed incorrect. So, inarguable or irrefutable were poor choices to begin with.
Hopefully, this will make my point clearer. To break down human life, human would mean of the species of homo sapien. It would seem hard to argue scientifically that an unborn child is not of our species. It would seem to me that by all scientific definitions of what life is that I have seen, an unborn human meets them all. It is growing, takes in energy, self repairing, etc. So, yes, science can answer the question of at which point human life begins - with the caveat that it can only do it scientifically in scientific terms - but it can answer it, if not inarguably :-), then at least on pretty solid ground.
What it means to be really human is also a philosophical question, and that's what is debatable and has been discussed in everything from science fiction books about programmed robots to any number of other things. Science cannot speak to this. This is what I was alluding to about what rationally be debated - whether or not an unborn human is a "worthwhile" life or of "what caliber" of human life it is, and so on. That's debatable because that's philosophy.
The reason this issue is so much on my mind is because I feel that when people argue against calling an unborn human - human life or when they are adamant in arguing against pro-lifers who say that abortion is ending a human life, it's because, ultimately, they want to distance themselves from unborn humans. They want to make them an "other." Not worthy or worthwhile - and history has shown it's much easier to do that when you try to dehumanize the person first. Numerous atrocities have occurred because a certain group of people have been made out to be "other than me," and, as I see it, unborn humans have been put into that category to make things easier. If the topic of abortion is discussed rationally and thought about, I can't fathom how it can't at least be a gut-wrenching decision on whichever side you come on. Pro-life people often do a poor job of empathizing with the mother. They tend to focus on consequences of having sex and all that, but I do know that I can only imagine how terrifying it must be to be in many situations that surround abortions. On the flip side, pro-choicers, in my view, often do a poor job of realizing the seriousness of the allowance that a mother can end a human life. It's treated with a cliche her body her choice, which is an oversimplification because of the very thing we're talking about. It's her body yes, but it's her body in that it's supporting another human life, distinct from her. I think the wording and avoiding the concept of the unborn human being an actual, real, human life is done to make it easier to wash one's hands of the seriousness of the issue.