Re: Defining human

Eugene Leitl (eugene@liposome.genebee.msu.su)
Mon, 9 Mar 1998 18:42:31 +0300 (MSK)


On 8 Mar 1998, Nico MYOWNA wrote:

> > [...]
> Yes, that's the question. If the fetus acquires human rights, we can't

Oh yes, suddenly there is a glowing class-11 protective forcefield
springing up all around it, spelling OFF LIMITS! in large neon letters.

Ain't it just a label, a consensus model in the minds all around that
clump of tissue rather than a mystical property the object itself? (My,
then the poor thing must positively collapse under the content load its
poor underdeveloped self has to bear). As belief homogeneity is a myth,
ain't basalt-slab-engraved human rights just a myth? Ain't this all just
about lobby-pressed market values of lobby members, or what?

> abort him, because he have fatal defects or will come to birth even in
> these instances. If we justified an abortion even in these instances, we
> are murders of human beings and justified a selection of humans to kill
> handicapped people.

Fetus is not people. Even a newborn infant is not a human being, just a
larva bearing the potential to become one. For the record, if there was no
Singularity eugenics would be a singularly great idea. Uravnilovka just
can't dig it. Imnsfho.

> I think, a fetus isn't a human being with a free will; it's a part of the

Please define free will. It does mean different things to different
people. Just now, it doesn't mean diddlysquat to me.

> mother in his first 0 to 100 or 180 days. A fetus is a being with the

Oh, so now it's part of the mother. By the DNA identity it's also part of
the father. Are you allowed to trade the placenta (to cuisinart it into
pate)? By all rights you must reimburse the embryo.

Maybe we are trying to apply the inapplicable? And inasmuch can laying on
the the legalese too heavy help us heah'? Maybe just speaking legalese
won't help us too much here, after all?

> potential to be an human being with human right(s) in the future.
> >
> > >When I drive by the local abortion "clinic" every day, I am acutely aware
> > >that I am driving by a Nazi or Stalinist death camp.
> >
> > I think that just about ends the discussion, don't you?
>
> I think that people who think in that way don't really know the holocaust.

Have you known 'the Holocaust'? What does it mean to 'know the Holocaust'?
Being one of the gassers? The gassed ones? The onlookers on the street?

> They belittle and play down the holocaust; the jews in Nazi germany have
> hadn't teoretical human rights like the fetus. Jews i Nazi germany have

Theoretical human rights is just what they are: theoretical. If there is
no muscle to enforce them, as well you just can go off to hunt the snark.
Which means, you'd bloody make sure you actually have the muscle.

> had human rights like other human beings and the Nazis *have denied* this
> human rights. A fetus is only for a small group of foe of abortions a

A self-defined class of people attempted extermination of a much more
fuzzy (since not only self-defined) class of people. Nothing new, so far.
As the lattermentioned were unable to prevent the abovementioned (well,
they were Untermenschen), the action almost succeeded. Now what do we
learn from that?

ciao,
'gene

> human being.
>
> Sincerely,
> N. Myowna .
>
>