[Vision2020] The Fetus is Not a Baby and is not a Person

[Ralph Nielsen]

Thank you, Nick.

What does God think human beings are worth?

"When a person makes an explicit vow to Yahweh (the LORD) concerning  
the equivalent for a human being, the equivalent for a male shall be:  
from 20 to 60 years of age the equivalent shall be 50 shekels of  
silver by the sanctuary shekel. If the person is a female, the  
equivalent is 30 shekels. If the age is from 5 to 20 years of age,  
the equivalent is 20 shekels for a male and 10 shekels for a female.  
If the age is from 1 month to 5 years, the equivalent for male is 5  
shekels of silver, and for a female, the equivalent is 3 shekels of  
silver. And if the person is 60 years old or over, then the  
equivalent for a male is 15 shekels, and for a female 10  
shekels" (Leviticus 27:2-7).

Note that in the eyes of the LORD a girl or a woman is worth only  
half as much as a boy or a man. And if the person is under 1 month  
old, he or she has no value to God at all.

However, even though a baby and, presumably, a fetus as well, have no  
value to God, an accidentally aborted fetus is still worth something  
to the expectant father. The man who caused the miscarriage must pay  
whatever price the father demands, subject to the opinion of the  
judges. See Exodus 21:22.

In biblical law wives, children and slaves are a man's property and  
must be respected as such.

Ralph Nielsen



Nick Gier ngier at uidaho.edu
Wed May 7 08:58:06 PDT 2008

Good Morning Visionaries:

I'm continually amazed at those Visionaries who still think they can
have a dialogue with Donovan Arnold, but let me just weigh in, once
again, on the issue of abortion.  If you want the entire argument you
should go to www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/abortion.htm.

If one studies human physiology or even looks up things up in a
dictionary, there are distinct and proper terms for the development
of the human species from the fertilization of the egg--it is then
called a conceptus--to its implantation in the womb--it is then an
embryo--and then after that it becomes a fetus.  It is not a baby
until it is born.

On this point, I like to quote a famous Roman Catholic philosopher:
"To admit that the human fetus receives the intellectual soul from
the moment of its conception, when matter is in no way ready for it,
sounds to me like a philosophical absurdity. It is as absurd as to
call a fertilized ovum a baby." (Jacques Maritain)  Maritain is
simply following Thomas Aquinas, declared infallible by Pope Pius IX,
who argued, following Aristotle and in line with fetal physiology,
that the fetus does not have a significant mental live until the
third trimester.

As I have posted many times on this list, our moral, legal, and
religious tradition has not consistently called a human fetus a moral
and legal person until late in pregnancy.  This means that the Roe v.
Wade is the traditional, and therefore conservative, position on
abortion. Roman Catholic philosophers who attempted to use genetic
theory to wrongly fuse genetic identity with personal identity were
just confused liberals.

[snip]