[Vision2020] Thanks for the good comments/corrections

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

Greetings:

I want to thank Mylenda for her incisive comments and corrections to some of my language in my abortion arguments. I did, however, make a clear distinction between people with Down Syndrome and others; and the books I consulted did use IQ as a very rough measure of mental life.  Incidentally, the highest Down Syndrome IQ measured was 100.

For better or worse we have a legal, religious, and moral tradition that has defined personhood in terms of mental capacity.  (As a vegetarian I'm quite willing to reframe the issue in terms of the ability to feel pain, but then most abortions occur before the fetus feels pain.)  In my discussion I tried to make that threshold as low as possible so as to avoid the charges of eugenics, but I see that I have to be even more careful in my formulations.

As far as types of personhood, I've followed Roland Puccetti's analysis of possible persons (each of us sitting on our stars looking down at potential parents), potential persons (the conceptus, embryo, fetus until the 3rd trimester), beginning person (=child) with rights but not duties, actual person with rights and duties, and former person (brain dead).

It's getting late, my brain's tired, but I appreciate your comments very much.

Nick Gier