Monkeying Around With Personhood

Wesley J. Smith has written about a case in Argentina in which an orangutan named Sandra has been declared by the court to be a non-human person. This ruling essentially would grant Sandra her freedom because it is unethical to hold people captive unlawfully.

The BBC has even written about litigation in the United States to try to get Tommy, a chimpanzee living in captivity, recognized as a "legal person."

Read the rest at the Life Training Institute blog.

A Critique of Paul D. Simmons' Biblical Case for Abortion, Part I

I'd like to now turn my attention to an essay written by Paul D. Simmons, called Personhood, the Bible, and the Abortion Debate. Nothing saddens me more than when a self-professed Christian calls him- or herself pro-choice and actually defends the abominable practice of abortion. I'm not actually sure whether or not Dr. Simmons considers himself a Christian. I couldn't find a decent biography of him on-line. But an honest perusal of the Scriptures will show that God loves children, and would consider abortion nothing less than child sacrifice. Simmons' article is rather lengthy, so I'll be splitting it up into parts.

A Critique of Judith Jarvis Thomson's A Defense of Abortion, Part V

For part one of this series, you can go here. For part two, this is where you should be. For part three, follow this link. And here’s part four.

Does Abortion Harm the Preborn?

In my last article, I gave a discussion of various arguments against fetal personhood, including the Functionalist view. I presented a detailed analysis of why presently exercising self-awareness does not make one inherently valuable. This will be a follow-up to my last article, presenting a detailed analysis on whether the ability to feel pain or exhibit consciousness makes an entity inherently valuable, followed by a discussion on whether the unborn is actually harmed by being aborted.

Arguments Against Fetal Personhood

In my previous article on Personhood, I explained that what makes us “persons” (if you must use the term) is our inherent nature as rational, moral agents. While I tend not to focus on personhood arguments unless the topic is broached by the other person, I can only see one reason for disqualifying the preborn from personhood: in order to justify killing them. Any definition for personhood given by a pro-choice advocate works equally well to disqualify some born people from that same status (most notably, infants). But most pro-choice people would not follow their definitions to the logical conclusion and support infanticide.

On Personhood

It’s an uncontroversial fact of science that the preborn conceived of a human male and human female are human beings (biologically) from fertilization. But does this mean that just because they’re human beings we can’t kill them? There are times when it’s almost universally accepted that it’s acceptable to kill a human being, such as in self-defense. But what if they are innocent of any wrong-doing deserving of being killed? Science can show us that something is human (e.g. you, me, infants, the preborn, etc.), but it can’t show us whether it’s wrong to kill humans. That’s where philosophy steps in.

The Substance View

I have given you my own basic argument for the pro-life position. But now I’d like to examine two more arguments, what I consider to be the two strongest arguments for the pro-life position. The first is by a Catholic philosopher, whose argument is grounded in intuitions that most people agree with. The next argument will be by an atheist (I’ll leave who it is a mystery, but those who are well-read in the abortion issue will likely know who I’m talking about).

Pro-Choice Graphic

There’s a graphic that’s been going around trying to illustrate that the unborn are not persons. There are four panels: the top-left panel has an egg on a plate to illustrate that it’s not a chicken, the top-right panel has an acorn to illustrate that it’s not a tree, the bottom-left panel has a caterpillar spinning silk to illustrate that it’s not a dress, and the bottom-right panel has a sperm fertilizing an egg to show that it’s not a person.

When Does Personhood Begin? Part II

Previously we looked at some of the arguments and assumptions made to assert that the unborn either are not humans or are not “persons”.

When Does Personhood Begin? Part I

Once you have established that the unborn are human from fertilization, the next step is to ask when we should assign basic human rights to a human individual [1]. The right to life is the most fundamental of all rights since without it you can’t enjoy any other rights. It’s pretty difficult to enjoy freedom of speech if you’re not alive to speak in the first place.

Response to a Logical Argument for Abortion

This is a response to a video on YouTube I came across entitled Is Abortion Murder? The Logical Answer! by video blogger DixonRants.