PRO-ABORTION ARGUMENT:
"The fetus may be alive, but so are eggs and sperm. The fetus is a potential human being, not an actual one; it's like a blueprint not a house, an acorn, not an oak tree."
PRO-LIFE ANSWER: Part 4
Comparing preborns and adults to acorns and oaks is dehumanizing and misleading.
When an acorn is stepped on, the forest experiences no moral dilemma. When a "toddler' sapling or a "teenage" oak dies the "mother tree" does not weep, nor do the sapling's siblings. We naturally value oak trees more than acorns. Unfortunately, the comparison encourages us to make a quantum leap of concluding we should value bigger and older people more than smaller and younger ones (specifically, the unborn). But what are reasons for valuing the oak tree over the acorn? They are not moral or humanitarian, but simply pragmatic. The oak tree serves us well, either aesthetically or for the lumber or fire wood it can provide.
Acorns are plentiful and expendable. But why are they expendable? For the same reason the oak tree is also ultimately expendable--it isn't a person, only a thing.
A baby, however, isn't a thing, it's a person. The unborn are not more expendable because they haven't developed into infants, nor infants more expendable because they haven't developed into toddlers, nor teenagers more expendable because they haven't developed into adults.
______________________
PRO-ABORTION ARGUMENT:
"The fetus may be alive, but so are eggs and sperm. The fetus is a potential human being, not an actual one; it's like a blueprint not a house, an acorn not an oak tree."
PRO-LIFE ANSWER:
Something nonhuman does not become human by getting older and bigger; whatever is human must be human from the beginning.
Dr. Thomas Hilgers states, "No individual living body can 'become' a person unless it already is a person. No living being can become anything other than what it already essentially is."
Dr. Paul Ramsay says this:
Thus it might be said that in all essential respects the individual is whoever he is going to become from the moment of impregnation. He already is this while not knowing this or anything else. Thereafter, his subsequent development cannot be described as becoming something he is not now. It can only be described as a process of achieving, a process of becoming the one he already is. Genetics teaches us that we were from the beginning what we essentially still are in every cell and in every generally human attribute and in every individual attribute.
_________________________________________________
"The fetus may be alive, but so are eggs and sperm. The fetus is a potential human being, not an actual one; it's like a blueprint not a house, an acorn, not an oak tree."
PRO-LIFE ANSWER: Part 4
Comparing preborns and adults to acorns and oaks is dehumanizing and misleading.
When an acorn is stepped on, the forest experiences no moral dilemma. When a "toddler' sapling or a "teenage" oak dies the "mother tree" does not weep, nor do the sapling's siblings. We naturally value oak trees more than acorns. Unfortunately, the comparison encourages us to make a quantum leap of concluding we should value bigger and older people more than smaller and younger ones (specifically, the unborn). But what are reasons for valuing the oak tree over the acorn? They are not moral or humanitarian, but simply pragmatic. The oak tree serves us well, either aesthetically or for the lumber or fire wood it can provide.
Acorns are plentiful and expendable. But why are they expendable? For the same reason the oak tree is also ultimately expendable--it isn't a person, only a thing.
A baby, however, isn't a thing, it's a person. The unborn are not more expendable because they haven't developed into infants, nor infants more expendable because they haven't developed into toddlers, nor teenagers more expendable because they haven't developed into adults.
______________________
PRO-ABORTION ARGUMENT:
"The fetus may be alive, but so are eggs and sperm. The fetus is a potential human being, not an actual one; it's like a blueprint not a house, an acorn not an oak tree."
PRO-LIFE ANSWER:
Something nonhuman does not become human by getting older and bigger; whatever is human must be human from the beginning.
Dr. Thomas Hilgers states, "No individual living body can 'become' a person unless it already is a person. No living being can become anything other than what it already essentially is."
Dr. Paul Ramsay says this:
Thus it might be said that in all essential respects the individual is whoever he is going to become from the moment of impregnation. He already is this while not knowing this or anything else. Thereafter, his subsequent development cannot be described as becoming something he is not now. It can only be described as a process of achieving, a process of becoming the one he already is. Genetics teaches us that we were from the beginning what we essentially still are in every cell and in every generally human attribute and in every individual attribute.
_________________________________________________
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