[Vision2020] Credibility: Roger's and Mine

[Nick Gier]

Hi Roger:

State medical authorities, not me, are in charge of setting the time 
tables for enforcing Roe v. Wade.  Legislators should trust them.

Given the lack of brain development in the fetus (the brain cells are 
even connected, Roger!), I could have chosen 27-29 weeks, but I chose 
to be on the safe side with 24 weeks.  But again I'm not the one to 
decide this.

If the Supreme Court had used my personhood argument rather than 
their weak viability criterion, it would be medical authorities, not 
me, who would decide the cut-off point.  The history of law shows us 
that philosophers and jurists have propose and legislators and 
experts dispose and fix the specifics of the law.

You seem to ignore the problems with conception.  The possibilities 
of twinning and cloning make it equally ambiguous.  Besides there is 
no qualities that the early fetus has that all animal fetuses do not 
also have.  I have some really good vegetarian recipes for you, 
Roger, if you choose to be logically consistent pro-life.

Thanks for the dialogue,

Nick

chose 24 weeksAt 10:09 AM 9/2/2008, you wrote:
>Nick
>You hinted at medical opinion at being a basis for when a a fetus 
>becomes a person. You are on somewhat more solid ground there than 
>you are with religion or legality. Killing the jews was legal under 
>the Nazis and religion is oll over the place. You site 24 weeks a 
>being the cutoff point. Is that set in stone.  Could it be 165 days 
>170 days 168 days or 167 days, 12 hours 10 minutes and 37 seconds.
>Roger
>-----Original message-----
>From: nickgier at adelphia.net
>Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:47:44 -0700
>To: lfalen lfalen at turbonet.com
>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Credibility: Roger's and Mine
>
> > Hi Roger,
> >
> > You need to read my article to see the documentation on the 
> historical position of the Catholic and Protestant churches. My 
> claim was based on tradition, not what current thinkers 
> believe.  Many of them are flaming liberals in changing a 
> traditional position on abortion that has solid scientific foundation.
> >
> > Neither Calvin nor Luther said anything about abortion, and 
> Thomas Aquinas' position was that the fetus becomes a person "at 
> the completion of man's coming into being."
> > The great Catholic theologian Jacques Maritain agrees with 
> Aquinas: "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."
> >
> > And if you had followed the Vision discussion between Ted and 
> myself, you would have remembered that I set 24 weeks as the 
> cut-off point for abortion, which is pretty much how state medical 
> boards are interpreting the 1973 Supreme Court decision.
> >
> > Conception is not your "clear demarcation" point, because 
> twinning can happen up to 16 days, and what was once a conceptus 
> with one genetic identity is now two individuals with the same 
> genetic identity.  That, and the possibility of cloning every 
> somatic cell, proves the absurdity of identifying genetic and 
> personal identity.
> >
> > My stand on favoring abortion before 24 weeks and rejecting the 
> death penalty at all times is morally and legally 
> consistent.  Executing Duncan, a moral and legal person, or anyone 
> else is state sanctioned murder, but taking the life of a 
> non-person is not.  You continue to speak of "innocence" but cows 
> and pigs are just as innocent as early fetuses, and yet you have no 
> compunction about having them killed.
> >
> > Thanks for the dialogue,
> >
> > Nick
> >
> > Nick
> > You state that legal and religious traditions have held that a 
> fetus is not a
> > person until late in pregnancy. I dont think that Catholics and 
> Evangelicals
> > would agree with that.  By saying late in pregnancy you still 
> have not set an
> > exact demarcation point. This  can be somewhat of a sliding 
> scale.  For myself I
> > do not know what the correct answer is. I may be somewhat in 
> agreement with
> > Obama on that narrow point. At least the Catholics and 
> Evangelicals have a clear
> > demarcation point.
> > You still run the risk of killing the innocent and sparing the guilty. If
> > anybody deserves the death penalty it is Duncan.
> > On a related issue why would California what him extradited to 
> try him there. He
> > has already been sentenced to death, they should save the 
> expense. The same
> > holds for the guy who killed a Moscow student, some one in Boise 
> and in Nevada.
> > Boise can keep him. Latah does not need the expense.
> > Roger
> >
> >
> > You also need to read my article to see that I
>
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"Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to 
human affairs."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Abstract truth has no value unless it incarnates in human beings who 
represent it, by proving their readiness to die for it."
  --Mohandas Gandhi

"Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot be 
discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each 
part by itself. . . .We must keep our attention fixed on the whole 
and on the interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our 
intellectual life. It is impossible to make a clear cut between 
science, religion, and art. The whole is never equal simply to the 
sum of its various parts." --Max Planck

Nicholas F. Gier
Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho
1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID 83843
http://www.home.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/home.htm
208-882-9212/FAX 885-8950
President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO
http://www.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/ift.htm

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