Diest TKO wrote:Bartikus wrote:
Many unborn are silenced before they are ever able to express their opinions.
Be careful Bart, if this is the path you decide to take the conversation, you ope up the dialogue back up to discussion on the cognative abilities of the unborn. This is probably not the direction you want to take the conversation.
T
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Many who champion abortion in our culture today are willing to acknowledge, on the basis of what we know about human genesis and embryology, that the organism living in the body of a pregnant woman is biologically a member of the human species (I will not here consider the issues raised by identical twinning, save to suggest that in identical twinning one living biological organism was present from conception/fertilization and that, prior to implantation another genetically identical biological organism was generated by a process akin to cloning), but they maintain that this biologically human organism is not a person. According to these people (among them Peter Singer, Michael Tooley, and a host of other abortion advocates), a person is a subject aware of itself and capable of relating to other selves; for them a criterion of personhood is the exercise of cognitive abilities. Since the human biological organism within the body of a pregnant woman is definitely not a conscious subject aware of itself as a self and capable of relating to other conscious subjects, they conclude that it cannot be regarded as a person or the subject of rights that need to be respected by others. They claim that at most this biological organism is a potential person, not an actual person.
The fatal flaw in the reasoning of these advocates of abortion is their failure to distinguish between an active potency and a passive potency or between a radical capacity and a developed capacity. If a passive potency is to be actualized, an extrinsic efficient cause must intervene (e.g., human sperm and ova have the passive potency to become a living biological member of the human species, but this potency becomes actualized only when the sperm is united to the ovum and fertilization occurs). But the living biological organism brought into existence when fertilization is completed has within itself the active potency to develop its own capacity to engage in cognitive activities, which are predictable of members of the human species. Although this living member of the human species does not have the developed capacity to engage in cognitive activities, it has the radical capacity, rooted in its being, to develop the capacity to do so. Similarly, an eaglet has the radical capacity or active potency to engage in the activities predictable of eagles, such as soaring in flight. But in order for the eaglet to exercise its capacity and to soar in flight, this capacity needs to be developed, but it could not be developed were it not present to begin with. Thus the living members of the human species present in the bodies of pregnant women have the radical capacity or active potency to engage in the activities predictable of the human species (e.g., exercising cognitive acts), but in order for them to engage in these activities they need to develop them from within. From this it follows that they are not potential persons, but persons with potential.
Similarly, once living organisms have developed the capacities rooted in their being the kind of beings they are, the exercise of these capacities can be inhibited, perhaps permanently, by disease or accident, but they do not cease being the kind of beings they are. Thus if an eagle's wings are broken, it can no longer soar above the ground in flight, but it remains the kind of being it was and is, an eagle, with the radical capacity, rooted in its being, to soar above the ground. Similarly, some members of the human species may be prevented by disease or accident from the exercise of the activities for which they have a radical capacity or active potency, but they remain the kind of beings they are, human beings, who have the radical capacity, rooted in their being human, to do what human persons do. They are and remain persons.
http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/may/rights.html
