When you get right down to it, there can only be one meaningful standard of what constitutes human life and that is genetic membership in the species homo sapien. There is simply no other viable determining quality of what it means to be human because everyone has a standard of what should or should not be considered a stage of development where human life is sacred.
I know it's terribly cliche to use the slippery slop argument, but there is no way to avoid it with abortion and what constitutes human life. It starts with saying that a first trimester baby is not a baby because it is incredibly undeveloped. Flimsy, but we can go with that. Then society gets used to this and the new frontier is the second trimester. Then we end up a while later debating partial birth abortion. Pretty soon, in the eyes of the legal system, a child in utero is not actually human at all as far as the law is concerned.
The conditioning necessary to accept abortion as a medical right and not a medical necessary evil (such as in cases of ectopic pregnancies) ultimately devalues all human life. It creates a precedent that says so what if you are as genetically human as every born child and grown adult? You're not sufficiently developed to make your right to life trump a "woman's right to choose."
There really is no difference between a late term abortion and infanticide. Sure, it may occur inside the womb where only the doctor will see it until the baby is removed in pieces, but it is infanticide nonetheless. Already society is slowly becoming conditioned to accept the idea that it is somehow different, even though a child who is subjected to partial birth abortion is no less viable than one who has just been born. Just because the descent down the slippery slope is sluggish, doesn't mean we aren't collectively sliding.
Development is not a viable standard for human life because it is a proven fact that there is a peak in human development followed by a decline. Is one at their "most human" at their physical and mental peak? Is a child less human than an adult because it is less developed? If that be the case, then a typical senior citizen is far less human than your average college student because the former are well into the post-peak decline. Perhaps this is why an increasing number of Western countries with weak moral bearings are finding it increasingly difficult to respect the lives of the elderly in matters of euthanasia and quality of life issues.
So clearly, the only standard that can mean anything for what can define one as being human is membership in the species homo sapien. If we budge and say that one person is less human than another, the old problems will arise only with different sets of victims. I for one am not inclined to be optimistic about where we will end up because humanity's inability to learn from its mistakes and not repeat them is only matched by its inability to draw connections between past and present events and trends.
I think there is a lot of truth to that, but I think we started down that path with the civil war. When Union troops marched on their southern counterparts, invading their homes, they introduced the first fundamental blow to the idea of self-determination. That part right there was the moment that our government first said "you serve us, not yourselves or God."
I like to call the invasion of Northern Virginia by the federal army the American version of the crossing of the Rubicon because that was the event that brought our original system of government to its death.
I don't disagree on the "slippery slop", Mike, but
this die was cast when we as a nation turned from the most important line in a legal document ever written originally in the English language:
"We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator..."
Once Big Brother and his Black-robed High Priests of Another god were able to deny the Truth that there is a Creator, that THEY serve HIM, and His Law, then it's all downhill from there.
Who gets to be "human", join their club, who doesn't, and even WHEN, all follow from that Original Governement Sin.
I thought separation of government and religion was part of the US Constitution. So what is a line like "endowed by their Creator" doing in a legal document?
In my opinion, that was the mistake (thanks Mark Call for the thought fodder). Making assumptions about people's religious beliefs (e.g. where people came from) is one of the biggest errors any secular government can make. And the issue of abortion is so tied up with religion, medicine, bioethics and a plethora of other issues that I believe governments should make it legal and let people make their own choices, either to hold to their religious beliefs (if they have them), or to do what they consider to be best for themselves and/or their family.
Certainly, a pregnancy should be terminated as early as possible if it is to happen at all. But it should be acknowledged that sometimes it is not possible to decide until rather later in a pregnancy than is desirable, e.g. when complication arise during the second or third trimester.
Abortion can be a "medical necessary evil", but it can also be an economic one, or, believe it, an ethical one. Is it moral to bring a child to term if you know you can't raise it properly? For example, if the father of your child is abusive and will refuse to put the child up for adoption on any grounds? Under those circumstances, the right to life becomes a right to suffer in an existence over which you have little if any control or power to change. I can't believe that terminating a pregnancy under those circumstances can be called murder. Or if it can, I still can't believe it is wrong.
"I thought separation of government and religion was part of the US Constitution. So what is a line like “endowed by their Creator? doing in a legal document?" - Lucas
There IS no "separation of church and State" in the Constitution for the United States of America, Lucas. (You will find such a statement, in Russian, in communist counterpart(s), however.) (Do a web search on "Danbury Baptist" church, a letter from Jefferson, from which the USSC concocted the bogus "doctrine".)
The raped First Amendment simply says "Congress shall make no law" - which they now do routinely.
REAL legal documents (back when we had a Constitution) frequently referenced God - as the source of Law, dates ("Year of Our Lord One-thousand seven hundred eighty nine", for example). There are precisely four such references in the Declaration (as King, Lawgiver, Judge, as well as Creator. The founders saw the "separation of powers" in Isaiah 33!)
Bottom line is "who is the Author" of Law? If it's fallen man (aka "Big Brother") then the path is clear: taking "economic action" for perfectly logical reasons against "economically useless eaters" and the mentally infirm (that's me, since I don't recognize Big Bro's authority, for example) is equally "justifiable".
Lucas,
The problem is that abortion really isn't moral because you are talking about denying someone the right to live. My point about defining human life based on genetics is that it's the only standard that doesn't have a slippery slope. If you base it on "development," you will end up with a question of whether the elderly are worth the same as the young. We are actually slowly starting to have that problem in the US.
Another thing for you to consider, is that from a libertarian perspective, there can never be a justification for taking another's life against their will. It's one thing to shoot a mortally wounded adult to keep them from falling into a brutal enemy's hands, it's quite another to say that an entire class of lifeforms that are genetically homo sapien's existance is tied only to the whim of an adult.
I started out just doing research on the abortion question. Once you learn of what has happened and how it is leading to cultural suicide you realize what tragedy awaits all of us.
Indeed, there is a lot of tragedy involved. We're already seeing it in cases like Terri Schiavo and Andrea Clark (is that her name?). They're whittling down both ends and I have this feeling that that's only going to be the beginning of our problems. How long before a general respect for human life is gone and people don't care if "undesirables" are treated like subhuman trash and disposed of by the state?
That's interesting, I think that I might have to look that definition up when I get the chance. Actually, come to think of it, that doesn't surprise me in the least because the government frequently redefines things like that for its own purposes. There are a lot of times where I'm glad that I'm not a lawyer because I'd have to scream really loudly "HOW CAN YOU PEOPLE ARGUE THIS CRAP?!!"
Indeed, MikeT. Wanna REALLY get wrapped around the axle sometime? Do a word study from a legal dictionary (Black's, Bouvier's) on the difference between "people" (as in "We the...") and "person".
The latter is a creation of the STATE...with ALL that such implies. There's much more, but it shows where this is headed.