[Vision2020] The Fetus is Not a Baby and is not a Person (Was Sali . . .)

[Donovan Arnold]

Gier writes:
   
  "I'm continually amazed at those Visionaries who still think they can have a dialog 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."
   
  I am continually amazed that a guy can be so egotistical and self absorbed as to write pages and pages on his nonsensical drivel, publish it in on the Internet and expect us to all go flocking to it like it was anything the more exciting than a turd floating in the toilet at the far stall. 
   
  He never once attended a Graduate Student Council Meeting, in which he was suppose to be our adviser, sat back while the undergrads looted our funding,  and was soundly shot down on his idiotic nonsensical proposals to the Faculty Council. 
   
  So why anyone would listen to this Christian Hater on the merits of an unborn soul is well beyond me.
   
  Best Regards,
   
  Donovan


Nick Gier <ngier at uidaho.edu> wrote:
  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.

The other distinction that needs to be made is between the biological category of being a member of the human species and the moral and legal category of being a member of a class of beings called persons, which include God (if such a being exists), ETs (more likely), apes and dolphins (most likely with their big brains), and human beings.

In line with animal rights philosophers, I'm quite willing to switch criteria from significant mental life to ability to feel pain, but fetal physiology also gives a even wider consensus in its conclusion that the fetus does not feel pain until about the same time it experiences the explosive brain development between 25-33 weeks.  See the slides from the fetal brain at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/fetalbrain.htm.

Repeating himself again, and again, and again until anti-abortionists come up with a decent counter argument,

Nick Gier =======================================================
List services made available by First Step Internet, 
serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994. 
http://www.fsr.net 
mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
=======================================================

       
---------------------------------
Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile.  Try it now.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20080507/2df92245/attachment.html