hey macgamer how is the catholic church NOT medieval and hor

[Senethro]

rible
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... AD96ND5LO1

but theres a possiblity that the church will pursue legal action

http://www.radionetherlands.nl/news/int ... s-abortion

i really hope that the threat was made for the audience gallery of all the smug catholics who wanted to risk the life of a young girl to bring her rape babies to term. if they follow through...

fuck the pope (and a bonus fuck netanyahu for persistantly sabotating the peace process with unrealistic conditions for a palestinian state becauseim prety mad bout that right now)

[macgamer]

rible
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... AD96ND5LO1

but theres a possiblity that the church will pursue legal action

http://www.radionetherlands.nl/news/int ... s-abortion

i really hope that the threat was made for the audience gallery of all the smug catholics who wanted to risk the life of a young girl to bring her rape babies to term. if they follow through...

fuck the pope (and a bonus fuck netanyahu for persistantly sabotating the peace process with unrealistic conditions for a palestinian state becauseim prety mad bout that right now)

I heard about this terrible case about a month or so ago. Thankfully the rapist step-father is behind bars. The mother must also bear some of the blame for the rape since she brought such a man into her home. Her prinicpal duty, as with any parent, is the protection of her children, she egregiously failed in that.

This is thankfully a rare case, especially so young. It is most unfortunate that the girl was fertile at the age of nine. However to the point in hand.

You yourself use the term 'rape babies' with which you give the superficial acknowledgement that the twins were actually human persons. A simple question for you then, what do you call the deliberate killing of a human person?

Only if you view those unborn twins as not having been human persons or adhere to utilitarian philosophy could their direct killing be justified.

You cannot have degrees of human personhood, it is either a human person or it is not. So those twins were as much human persons as their nine year-old mother.

I'm not sure where the 'doctrine of the double effect' could have applied here. I doubt that it could have, since any direct killing is unjustifiable. It would only apply in situations where a pregnant mother required life saving treatment which had the likely potential to kill the unborn child, but crucially indirectly. The intention would be to save the mother's life rather than cause the death of the unborn.

An abortion could be said to be 'therapeutic', that is: having the primary intention of saving the mother's life. However part of that process requires the intentional, direct and deliberate killing of the unborn, which is considered to be a human person. Therefore it cannot be justified. Unless of course one subscribes to the utilitarian philosophy of carrying out a moral bad to achieve a morally good end.

So it really depends on whether you accept the twins to have been human persons and that it is not possible to carry out moral 'evils' to achieve moral 'goods'.

The other issue of legal proceedings is matter of the Brazilian justice system to decide, which executes the laws of the state. My personal view is that those who carry out abortions should expect to face justice in parts of the world where abortion is illegal. Clemency should be shown to those having sought it.

[Frank]

You cannot have degrees of human personhood, it is either a human person or it is not.

I'm not entirely confident I ever understood such a position. I'm confident I held such a position for the thinking part of my twenty-one years of being a catholic, but let's be genuine here: we have degrees of personhood. At least insofar as capacity and such are determined. Legally: children are distinct from adults. Pensioners are distinct from bouncing bonny babies.

I'm not sure someone who's crying "Think of the children!" or "Woman and children first!" or "Woman live in the kitchen!" or <etc> would concur...but then they could plainly be wrong.

The unwillingness to divvy up humanity strikes me as...squeamish. Are we unwilling to accept that, fundamentally, people are inherently complicated creatures, that there are differences between the two.

The rape of a baby is indeed popularly viewed as distinct from the rape of a drunken, insensible young chappie of his face on the drug of the hour.

That said, I'm not sure I can agree that the catholic position is untenable (i.e. killing foetuses is wrong). I disagree on definition, but the position itself is essentially just a different choice of where to afford/enforce rights.

[Senethro]

I'm not going to address the issue of personhood because we both know what either side thinks.

You probably can't have degrees of legal personhood (well, you can. Black slaves being 3/5ths of a person etc) but some people can be afforded more rights than others or have overriding rights.

If you rolled over in bed tomorrow and found Frank lying beside you, who says "Hi, I'm your new Kidney-mate. I'll be sharing your kidneys for the next year until I can get a transplant. We're going to have such good times, they'll make a buddy movie out of us in 20 years." So, you're tied through various tubes to Frank and will be forced to suspend your life while you take him to his doctor appointments, eat a diet that meets his medical needs, attend his Stronger Together kidney-mate support group along with all the other happy couples, and generally have your life revolve around him. In the later account of your life your dignity will be sacrificed as you are portrayed going through various comic capers and wacky escapades.

Are you morally obliged to do this?

I say you are not. The whole thing was non-consensual and infringes on your personal freedom. I think you would be quite within your rights to yank the tubes from your body and leave Frank to expire (but you can at least hold him until hes gone).

Additionally, why claim a halo for doing nothing? Inaction is an action and by not aborting the twins there is a reasonable probablility of death for the mother (and highly probable death for the twins). Just because her death would be "natural" does not mean cowardly inaction is somehow morally safe.

[macgamer]

I'm not going to address the issue of personhood because we both know what either side thinks.

You probably can't have degrees of legal personhood (well, you can. Black slaves being 3/5ths of a person etc) but some people can be afforded more rights than others or have overriding rights.

I'm very pleased that you raised this point, since you've really hit at the heart of the issue of abortion. It is a conflict of human rights. The James Crichton Society published an essay of mine which had that very hypothesis. Is the James Crichton Society still going?

If you rolled over in bed tomorrow and found Frank lying beside you, who says "Hi, I'm your new Kidney-mate. I'll be sharing your kidneys for the next year until I can get a transplant.

I addressed this very moral problem in the essay. This scenario I think dates back to the 1970s at least. It is a variant on the foetus as an intruder argument.

Are you morally obliged to do this?

I say you are not. The whole thing was non-consensual and infringes on your personal freedom. I think you would be quite within your rights to yank the tubes from your body and leave Frank to expire (but you can at least hold him until hes gone).

This example is not suffiently analoguous to pregnancy, the womb is the natural environment of the unborn and it has not been placed there or intruding. We no longer believe sperm have microscopic people inside them, instead we know and understand that human life is formed within the woman. Her eggs and the man's sperm go to produce it. Rape cannot change that fact.

Whether it has a right to claim sustenance from her would be the other consideration. It is not possible, yet, for a woman to chose to eject the unborn into an artificial external womb. So its removal or ejection - abortion results in its direct killing. The example of a someone with kidney failure is not scientifically accurate in itself (dialysis), but also the removal of the dependent adult is not the same of the removal of an unborn child which is entirely dependent and incapable of surviving outside of the womb. The kidney patient is still for the most part self-sufficient. The unborn is also not an intruder in a way that the kidney failure suffer is intruding.

On the point of personal freedom, unborn children do not, for the majority of the 9 months, tie pregnant women to beds in the way the example case would

Additionally, why claim a halo for doing nothing? Inaction is an action and by not aborting the twins there is a reasonable probablility of death for the mother (and highly probable death for the twins). Just because her death would be "natural" does not mean cowardly inaction is somehow morally safe.

I believe in one of the articles your cited above it mentioned caesarian section, which would have been a work around and justifiable under the doctrine of the double effect. A caesarian section could have been performed relatively early (at a point when the twins had some chance of surviving in an incubator), on the grounds of saving both the mother's and those of the twins. The intention would have been to save the life of the twins not to kill them. If they died in the attempt, that would have been an unfortunate consequence, but clearly not the intended outcome. I hope you see the distinction.

[Thalia]

The longer the pregnancy lasted, the more dangerous it would have been for the mother. But the earlier the children were born, and this is even more true of twins because they essentially have to share everything the mother can offer, the more likely they would have been to suffer from defects as a result of their organs not being completely formed - the worst of this being the huge risk of brain damage. Even if a premature baby survives, they still have a much higher risk of a lot of health problems - it isn't a good life if that happens.

It's always really bugged me - this idea that because humans are so 'special' we should preserve their life at all costs - sometimes the costs just are not worth it. If a pet dog or cat is suffering every day of their life we would euthanise them and put them out of their misery - it's illegal to offer that same relief to a human.

[Senethro]

Its this kind of thing that drives me to minimum effort posting on the internet. You've addressed the analogy instead of the point its making. You've sidestepped the issue of whether your inaction is as bad as action.

[macgamer]

Its this kind of thing that drives me to minimum effort posting on the internet. You've addressed the analogy instead of the point its making. You've sidestepped the issue of whether your inaction is as bad as action.

My apologies, but I thought that was implicit. I shall therefore be explicit: inaction in this case, would not be a bad action in so far as you would not be directly killing the unborn twins or the mother (directly) for that matter.

However, as I added at the end, certain action could be taken to safeguard the lives of both the twins and the mother.

[Senethro]

Oh look, its still not sticking. This idea of "direct" action is a false one. Inaction is the same as pressing a button which has a significant chance of killing the mother.

Fine. Whatever. Now introduce the concept of limited medical resources as is the case for the majority of the population of Brazil. Are the odds of the twins surviving high enough to take resources away from other cases and to put any additional stress on the young mother.

[macgamer]

Oh look, its still not sticking. This idea of "direct" action is a false one. Inaction is the same as pressing a button which has a significant chance of killing the mother.

You like analogies, here are a couple:

1) Someone deliberately pushes other person in front of a train.

2) One person witnesses a second individual standing on the edge of a platform in an area they know to be weak. They either choose not to or are unable to warn the second person in time, whereupon the edge of the platform collapses and they fall into the fall of an on coming train.

Now consider in each case whether someone has been murdered.

My own conclusions:

1) A simple case of direct and deliberate killing, a murder.

2) In the case of the first individual choosing not to warn the second, they clearly have not murdered the second, since they had no involvement in causing the platform to be weak or indeed causing the second individual to stand there. In short the first individual did not cause the death of the second, the first acted merely as a witness. However the decent thing to do would have been to warn the second. If an attempt was made but it failed and the second still died, then clearly there is no culpability whatsoever.

Fine. Whatever. Now introduce the concept of limited medical resources as is the case for the majority of the population of Brazil. Are the odds of the twins surviving high enough to take resources away from other cases and to put any additional stress on the young mother.

On issues of the deliberate killing of someone who is not an attacker or a risk to society, circustances cannot be used to justify it (I say this to grant killing in self-defence or for capital punishment where resources do not allow for the secure detension of offenders who are serious risk to society).

In terms of medical resources there was still clearly sufficient resources for an abortion to be conducted, although granted the resources depend on the stage of development at which the abortion takes place. Yes I appreciate that incubators are very expensive, but as I stated earlier, a compromise time for the caesarian section could have been determined that would have maximised the survival of both the twins and the mother, taking into considering the medical resources available.

[Senethro]

Oh look, its still not sticking. This idea of "direct" action is a false one. Inaction is the same as pressing a button which has a significant chance of killing the mother.

You like analogies, here are a couple:

1) Someone deliberately pushes other person in front of a train.

2) One person witnesses a second individual standing on the edge of a platform in an area they know to be weak. They either choose not to or are unable to warn the second person in time, whereupon the edge of the platform collapses and they fall into the fall of an on coming train.

Now consider in each case whether someone has been murdered.

My own conclusions:

1) A simple case of direct and deliberate killing, a murder.

2) In the case of the first individual choosing not to warn the second, they clearly have not murdered the second, since they had no involvement in causing the platform to be weak or indeed causing the second individual to stand there. In short the first individual did not cause the death of the second, the first acted merely as a witness. However the decent thing to do would have been to warn the second. If an attempt was made but it failed and the second still died, then clearly there is no culpability whatsoever.

I talk about how the direct/indirect action thing is false, meaning in this specific case and you demonstrate direct/indirect exists in a general sense.

How about I modify the second situation of your analogy so that the second individual is already on the train tracks with the train approaching and has requested your help to pull them back onto the station platform. Here, not taking direct action, because God wants them on the train tracks, looks like sheer douchebaggery. (If you want an analogy involving the twins, not simply the mother then give the second individual a couple of petri dishes)

Fine. Whatever. Now introduce the concept of limited medical resources as is the case for the majority of the population of Brazil. Are the odds of the twins surviving high enough to take resources away from other cases and to put any additional stress on the young mother.

On issues of the deliberate killing of someone who is not an attacker or a risk to society, circustances cannot be used to justify it (I say this to grant killing in self-defence or for capital punishment where resources do not allow for the secure detension of offenders who are serious risk to society).

In terms of medical resources there was still clearly sufficient resources for an abortion to be conducted, although granted the resources depend on the stage of development at which the abortion takes place. Yes I appreciate that incubators are very expensive, but as I stated earlier, a compromise time for the caesarian section could have been determined that would have maximised the survival of both the twins and the mother, taking into considering the medical resources available.

Done much ob/gyn and neo-natal medicine? You know for a fact that there are solutions to maximising survival rate without incubators that give good results after week 22? Is surgery an acceptable trauma for the child mother?

[macgamer]

How about I modify the second situation of your analogy so that the second individual is already on the train tracks with the train approaching and has requested your help to pull them back onto the station platform. Here, not taking direct action, because God wants them on the train tracks, looks like sheer douchebaggery. (If you want an analogy involving the twins, not simply the mother then give the second individual a couple of petri dishes)

Well if the abortion was simply the assisting of someone off railway tracks that would be fine. However it is more like throwing two more bystanders onto the rails so that the original person could climb to safety at the expense of the lives of the two bystanders.

Done much ob/gyn and neo-natal medicine? You know for a fact that there are solutions to maximising survival rate without incubators that give good results after week 22? Is surgery an acceptable trauma for the child mother?

Abortion is still traumatic and that is the alternative, it was also pretty catastrophic for the twins.

[Senethro]

For whatever reason, those two bystanders have lived all their lives on the tracks and do'nt have a realistic chance of being removed.

Abortion rarely results in the death of the mother. We must have very different understandings of trauma.

[Thalia]

The fact is, the laster you leave the children inside the mother, the more danger her life is in - twins are more likely to be born prematurely and more likely to be a lot smaller than single children. If you were to push for holding off the C-section as long as possible for the twins, then you run the risk of the mother going into labour prematurely anyway and all three dying. If you were to have the C-section before that became a possibility, the children would be even more premature and the possibilities of brain damage or other organ damage are huge. These risks increase with twins because twins essentially share everything in the womb, meaning that they don't develop as quickly as single children. So, by your method, you would be consigning two individuals to the possibility of a brain-damaged, unhealthy life where they may never get to live as fully fledged individuals. And yes, i do weigh our humanity along a scale - someone with severe brain damage is not as much of a person as you or i am and they never will be; in that same measure, children are not as high on the personhood scale as adults either, the difference being that they generally do move along that scale as they grow older - but in this case, the probability would say that they wouldn't.

On a related note, I honestly believe that i would rather be dead than continue to function following severe brain damage or degradation. If what makes you a person is gone, you're nothing more than an injured animal, desperate to survive, but unable to understand the world around you or what survival means. If you never have that personhood in the first place, i'm not really sure i beilieve you can count it as murder, any more than putting a dog down is (and that maybe sounds belittling, but i really loved all the pets i've had that have been put down but i was still able to recognise that it had to be done - not doing that for a human in suffering is just cruel.) Do some research on what very premature babies have to suffer through, and a lot of the time never recover from, and maybe you might have an inkling of why it was better all round just to end their growth now.

[Haunted]

Hello thread

You yourself use the term 'rape babies' with which you give the superficial acknowledgement that the twins were actually human persons. A simple question for you then, what do you call the deliberate killing of a human person?

You call it killing. Killing enemy soldiers is not murder, killing by self defense is not murder. Murder is defined as "unlawful killing", ergo abortion is not murder (not where it is legal anyway).

Only if you view those unborn twins as not having been human persons or adhere to utilitarian philosophy could their direct killing be justified.

No, killing is already justified in certain circumstances (see above) without any consideration towards utilitarianism or the definition of human personhood. Incidentally, your postulates mean that it would be perfectly justifiable to kill absolutely anything that isn't human without further consideration.

You cannot have degrees of human personhood, it is either a human person or it is not. So those twins were as much human persons as their nine year-old mother.

We can and do. Age of consent? Age of criminal responsibility? Humanity is not an absolute, it is absolutely impossible to justify this. We develop gradually, as individuals and as a species, there was no 'first' human, with it's parents being apes and it's children being human, it was a gradual change, not an absolute change.

An abortion could be said to be 'therapeutic', that is: having the primary intention of saving the mother's life. However part of that process requires the intentional, direct and deliberate killing of the unborn, which I considerto be a human person. Therefore it cannot be justified. Unless of course one subscribes to the utilitarian philosophy of carrying out a moral bad to achieve a morally good end.

Fixed.

So it really depends on whether you accept the twins to have been human persons and that it is not possible to carry out moral 'evils' to achieve moral 'goods'.

The third choice is that the unborn are fully humans but that killing is justified under certain circumstances (which it already is).

Oh the church are being really helpful and excommunicating everyone involved but not the man who raped her
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7926694.stm
Wonderful stuff the catholic church.

[macgamer]

Hello thread

Hello Haunted, I hope you're well. I was wondering when you'd show up I found it rather unusual that there were only three people arguing against me.

You call it killing. Killing enemy soldiers is not murder, killing by self defense is not murder. Murder is defined as "unlawful killing", ergo abortion is not murder (not where it is legal anyway).

Killing can be justified in certain circumstances (I acknowleged this above) however as was discussed above the developing child cannot be considered an intruder or attacker.

No, killing is already justified in certain circumstances (see above) without any consideration towards utilitarianism or the definition of human personhood. Incidentally, your postulates mean that it would be perfectly justifiable to kill absolutely anything that isn't human without further consideration.

I think human personhood is quite important really, granted one does not consider whether each individual one meets the criteria for personhood, it is assumed and quite rightly too. Since determining the application of human personhood on a complex set of criteria upon which scientists cannot agree, makes a clear interpretation nearly impossible. Human personhood as I've argued before (see our pleasant debates on the Barack Obama inauguration thread: http://www.thesinner.net/mb/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=28837) is attained when a human life comes into existence.

In terms of animal rights, which I presume you are hinting at hear, should and still are grounded on the limiting of cruelty and undue stress. Yes certain animals rightly have protection, due such from their intrinsic roles within ecosystems, which require them to maintained at particular levels. Or naturally pets, it wouldn't do for someone to go around killing all the domestic cats in an area. The primary reason being that they are owned.

We can and do. Age of consent? Age of criminal responsibility? Humanity is not an absolute, it is absolutely impossible to justify this. We develop gradually, as individuals and as a species, there was no 'first' human, with it's parents being apes and it's children being human, it was a gradual change, not an absolute change.

Your relativism cuts me, a little part of me dies everytime I hear 'x is not absolute. The idea that humanity is not absolute is a dangerous one and quite sickening. I could suddenly decide that Guardian readers have a reduced level of humanity and therefore are not due the rights of full humans. We indeed develop, but from conception to death there is no transmutation of what were are as a species. We begin and remain human beings.

As to the evolution, the definition of a species cannot be agreed upon really (although broadly a genetically distinct community of individuals which are greatly reproductively isolated from other genetic communities) nor can the methods by which speciation occurs (allopatry vs. sympatry). What we do know is that humans are distinct and single species.

[...] which I consider to be a human person.

Fixed.

The third choice is that the unborn are fully humans but that killing is justified under certain circumstances (which it already is).

Well is it really justified in the nine year-old mother with twins circumstance? The twins not attacking her, nor are they intruders which can be justifiably ejected since they have a right to life. If the nine year-old child were to have died they the rapist would have been responsible for her death, not the twins since they had no intention of killing her and they have no choice whether to continue developing or not. Although interestingly marsupial foetuses can.

Oh the church are being really helpful and excommunicating everyone involved but not the man who raped her
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7926694.stm
Wonderful stuff the catholic church.

The BBC, the best source for a misunderstanding of the Catholic Church. A little word on excommunication, the rapist is de facto excommunicated by his raping the nine year-old. Procuring and conducting an abortion is a mortal sin and carries de facto excommunication. The announcement is de jure issued by Archbishop José Cardoso Sobrinho. It seems that he has chosen to highlight their excommunication, although he should have also highlighted that of the rapist too, just to put it into context.

This article http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/mar/09030601.html gives more information as to the case, including the length of time the abuse had been taking place, since the age of three, which highlights the mother's negligence of continuing to allow such a man into her home, and the point that doctors said the life of the nine year-old was not in danger.

[macgamer]

[...]someone with severe brain damage is not as much of a person as you or i am and they never will be; in that same measure, children are not as high on the personhood scale as adults either.

If I earnestly believed that I would be a keen advocate of involuntary euthanasia of the mentally handicapped as well as infanticide up to the age of two years or whenever children become sufficiently self-aware. I'd probably be giving alzheimer's patients a push too, it would save a lot of money on care and the research too.

Do some research on what very premature babies have to suffer through, and a lot of the time never recover from, and maybe you might have an inkling of why it was better all round just to end their growth now.

Death is not a moral good in itself so directly hastening it or inducing it is not justified by attempting to relieve suffering which is a good aim. Palliative care fits into the doctrine of the double effect, so that drugs may be administered to relieve the suffering which are likely to hasten death. The intention is to relieve the suffering rather than pursuing death as a solution.

[Thalia]

I believe that death can be a good solution. I also believe that i would rather be dead than suffer from alzheimer's disease - i would no longer be the fully functioning person that i am now and my continued existence would only serve to cause emotional suffering in my loved ones. I would probably think that if i had any level of severe brain damage that prevented me from functioning on a conscious level. I accept that others would rather live on for the sake of being alive but i know i'm not the only one who would think death the better option and resent not being allowed that option.

My point about severe brain damage is that they aren't capable of voluntary action - their brains don't necessarily work even as well as that of an animal's. There is no 'involuntary' because they can't conceive of the consequences any more than a pet could. But we don't put pets down just because they can't understand us, nor would i argue that we should do the same for any human - but i do think that sometimes death is the best means of ending suffering and if they are suffering then a human shouldn't be kept alive just because they're human. There's nothing special about being human except what we decide there is. And i dont think there's anything particularly honorable or moral in bringing a life into the world when you know that suffering is all they're going to experience, unless they're so doped up on drugs that they're hardly aware of anything at all - what a life. I bet they'd be so grateful to you for saving them if they were actually capable of experiencing anything.

Actually the way you talk about it sounds more like you're trying to have people avoid dirtying their hands - don't kill people, it's immoral. I would rather do something immoral if it was the right thing for someone i cared about than do nothing at all.

And about the twins being intruders or attackers - whatever their intention (or lack thereof) their inevitable growth would have most likely killed the girl. Life is about survival - the girl survived, they didn't. There was nothing moral or immoral in that. If there was a food shortage and someone i didn't know or care about died because i only shared my food with my family so i could ensure that they survived - i refuse to feel guilty about a situation like that and i would refuse to feel guilty over choosing my own survival over that of a foetus.

[Ian Sutherland]

The BBC, the best source for a misunderstanding of the Catholic Church. A little word on excommunication, the rapist is de facto excommunicated by his raping the nine year-old. Procuring and conducting an abortion is a mortal sin and carries de facto excommunication. The announcement is de jure issued by Archbishop José Cardoso Sobrinho. It seems that he has chosen to highlight their excommunication, although he should have also highlighted that of the rapist too, just to put it into context.

Actually, the Archbishop said exactly the opposite.

'When asked why he did not excommunicate the stepfather who sexually abused the girl, Gomes Sobrinho said: "He committed an extremely serious crime. But that crime, according to canon law, is not punished with automatic excommunication." '

(Quoted from http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show ... rtion.html )

[Haunted]

Killing can be justified in certain circumstances (I acknowleged this above) however as was discussed above I do not consider the developing child an intruder or attacker.

Fixed.

I think human personhood is quite important really, granted one does not consider whether each individual one meets the criteria for personhood, it is assumed and quite rightly too.

Provided the criteria are objectively defined then why not? Do we define a 100,000 year old human to have 'personhood' (whatever 'personhood' actually is) ? What about Homo sapiens idaltu or Cro-magnon? Were they human?

Since determining the application of human personhood on a complex set of criteria upon which scientists cannot agree, makes a clear interpretation nearly impossible.

It hasn't been done therefore it is impossible? What has history told us about such statements? Oh and since it's clearly impossible that must mean your definition is therefore correct by default?

Human personhood as I've argued before (see our pleasant debates on the Barack Obama inauguration thread: http://www.thesinner.net/mb/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=28837) is attained when a human life comes into existence.

Oh yes and human existence is defined as the point human personhood is attained? You spin me right round. I don't think you ever answered comepletely the exact point that a human life comes into existence on that thread. "Conception" is a sequence of events afterall, and within it there is no single moment between non-life and life (unless you wish to argue that their is indeed such a moment/step?).

In terms of animal rights, which I presume you are hinting at hear, should and still are grounded on the limiting of cruelty and undue stress. Yes certain animals rightly have protection, due such from their intrinsic roles within ecosystems, which require them to maintained at particular levels.

How about they have protection simply because it is immoral to kill or maim without good reason? Whether they are essential to the ecosystem shouldn't come into it. This sounds horribly homo-centric.

Or naturally pets, it wouldn't do for someone to go around killing all the domestic cats in an area. The primary reason being that they are owned.

Yikes, so animal rights are merely property rights?

Your relativism cuts me, a little part of me dies everytime I hear 'x is not absolute. The idea that humanity is not absolute is a dangerous one and quite sickening. I could suddenly decide that Guardian readers have a reduced level of humanity and therefore are not due the rights of full humans.

Rather a non-sequitar. Just because something is not absolute does not mean that any individual therefore has the right to define it. Rain is not absolute, there is a spectrum of rain. You don't treat every drizzle as if it were a hurricane in order to protect the sacred idea that rain is absolute.

We indeed develop, but from conception to death there is no transmutation of what were are as a species. We begin and remain human beings.

And who defines what a species is? Yeah humans. Phylogenetic taxonomy, as all good amateur biologists will know, is not an absolute science, it is not full of discontinuous leaps from one species to the next, it is a slowly developing spectrum with species defined at arbitrary points by humans, simply because we love to label things. You are different to your parents, going by the idea of taxonomy being absolute you could be considered to be another species.

As to the evolution, the definition of a species cannot be agreed upon really (although broadly a genetically distinct community of individuals which are greatly reproductively isolated from other genetic communities) nor can the methods by which speciation occurs (allopatry vs. sympatry).

Ah you mildly anticipated me here. The mechanisms of speciation can be defined quite easily, and it's usually easy to tell which method caused the speciation event (slightly harder to tell between parapatric and peripatric though).

What we do know is that humans are distinct and single species.

Yeah.... no. Cro-Magnon were homo sapiens. As I said above, species aren't distinct at all. That they are distinct is an outdated pre-darwinian idea. A paper came out last year where a researcher had cultured e.coli for 20 years subjecting them to certain selection pressures. After 20 years he had successfully bred them to metabolise citrate, something e.coli cannot do by definition, yet they are e.coli.

[...] which I consider to be a human person.
Fixed.
Facepalm.jpg

So....care to elaborate?

Well is it really justified in the nine year-old mother with twins circumstance?

When the doctors said that she was physically unable to give birth to one let alone two babies then that's an easy 'yes'.

The twins not attacking her

Putting her life in danger against her will?

nor are they intruders

In-trude [verb]
1. to thrust or bring in without invitation, permission, or welcome.

If the cap fits...

which can be justifiably ejected since they have a right to life.

You are asserting things without justification. Right to life? Says who?

If the nine year-old child were to have died they the rapist would have been responsible for her death, not the twins since they had no intention of killing her and they have no choice whether to continue developing or not. Although interestingly marsupial foetuses can.

Oh why not regress the responsibility further back and blame her mother for birthing her in the first place? You can be responsible for inaction as well as action. If someone is hanging off a cliff and you can save them but you don't, aren't you somewhat responsible for their death via your inaction?

The BBC, the best source for a misunderstanding of the Catholic Church.

Yes damn the liberal media and their lies.

A little word on excommunication, the rapist is de facto excommunicated by his raping the nine year-old.

Hmm, why would all those child raping priests still be allowed to continue their profession then?

This article http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/mar/09030601.html

It sounds neutral and objective already.

which highlights the mother's negligence of continuing to allow such a man into her home, and the point that doctors said the life of the nine year-old was not in danger.

I do not dispute that the mother must bear some responsibility, even if she were being coerced and even if it were violent (I'm not sure if that's what happened but it's worth covering this clause).