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<font size=4>Good Morning Visionaries:<br><br>
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
<a href="http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/abortion.htm" eudora="autourl">
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/abortion.htm</a>.<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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
<a href="http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/fetalbrain.htm" eudora="autourl">
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/fetalbrain.htm</a>.<br><br>
Repeating himself again, and again, and again until anti-abortionists
come up with a decent counter argument,<br><br>
Nick Gier</font></body>
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