I just wanted to make sure I was number 69.

Good to see you updated.

Email coming tonight.

Quickening determined the definition for personhood because of technology, not because of morality. Before quickening, nobody could guarantee that the unborn child was alive, hence the reduced sentence.

Beckwith writes,

This first movement was traditionally called quickening, the time at which some ancient, medieval, and common-law scholars thought the soul entered the body. Not having access to the biological facts we currently possess, they reasoned that prior to quickening it could not be proven that the unborn was “alive.” …

Now, does this mean that our ancestors were not pro-life? Not at all. Legal scholar and theologian John Warwick Montgomery notes that when our ancient, medieval, and common-law forefathers talked about quickening as the beginning of life, “they were just identifying the first evidence of life they could conclusively detect…They were saying that as soon as you had life, there must be protection. Now we know that life starts at the moment of conception with nothing superadded.” *Hence, to be consistent with contemporary science, legal protection must be extended to the unborn entity from the moment of conception.

Furthermore, we now know that the ability to feel the unborn’s movement is contingent upon the amount of the mother’s body fat. It seems silly to say that one’s preborn humanness is contingent upon whether one is fortunate to have been conceived in a body that frequents aerobics classes.

*John Warwick Montgomery, Slaughter of the Innocents (Westchester, IL: Crossway, 1981), 37. For more on quickening, see ibid., 103-19; and David W. Louisell and John T. Noonan, “Constitutional Balance,” in The Morality of Abortion, 223-26.

Abortion is not a “bedrock” issue as Król asserts. At
the beginning of the 13th century, Pope Innocent III
wrote that “quickening” determined the definition of a
person. Quickening was the time when a woman first
felt the fetus move within her. This was the moment at
which abortion became homicide. Prior to quickening,
abortion was a less serious sin. Pope Gregory XIV
designated quickening as occurring after a period of
116 days. His declared in 1591 that early abortion was
not grounds for excommunication. This approach to
abortion which had prevailed in the Roman Catholic
Church for centuries ended at the end of the nineteenth
century. In 1869, Pope Pius IX officially eliminated
the Catholic distinction between an animated and a non-
animated fetus and required excommunication for
abortions at any stage of pregnancy. His rationale had
more to do with economical and political considerations
than moral.

–HP

I’m beginning to think that the use of the word “moral” is a red flag.

I agree with you HP, it is unjust to kill, that is why I am so against abortion. Not only that, the effects of having an abortion on women are horrible. I have visited a few websites in which some have reached out to women who have had abortions. Perhaps if abortion doctors would address the after affects, maybe, just maybe the decision in having an abortion might be reconsidered?

Even the most extreme pro-lifers understand (perhaps subconsciously) the difference between a fetus and an adult. Otherwise, as I said before, abortion would amount to an annual Holocaust…

There is a difference between a fetus and an adult, just like there is a difference between an infant and an adult, each is referring to a different stage of development in ones life.

I am arguing that it is morally wrong to kill a human being, regardless of the stage of development that human being is presently in. In other words, you are just as morally wrong in killing an infant as you are in killing an adult. And yes, that also means that I believe you are just as morally wrong in killing an adult as you are in killing a fetus.

And yes, many on the pro-life side do compare present day abortion to an ‘annual Holocaust’.

… and you could very well make a great argument for killing ever pro-choicer today in order to save the lives of fetuses for centuries down the road.

That’s not necessarily true. There are several reasons why pro-lifers don’t resort to killing pro-choicers.

Some are, as you implied, pacifists. Others are simply against all killing, in all forms and fashions. However, my reasons against killing pro-choicers are much more alligned to this guys.

So no, that doesn’t mean pro-lifers find something fundamentally different from a fetus than an adult.

So I ask again, do you believe in what you wrote above or not, and if you do, than how is my test ‘idiotic’?

Even the most extreme pro-lifers understand (perhaps subconsciously) the difference between a fetus and an adult. Otherwise, as I said before, abortion would amount to an annual Holocaust and you could very well make a great argument for killing ever pro-choicer today in order to save the lives of fetuses for centuries down the road.

But, unlike going into WWII, no sane person would ever propose that because they do in fact realize the difference between a fetus and an adult.

Now, if you say you’d be against using violence to end violence, then we’re going to have some very interesting conversations when foreign policy is up.

There is something I want to bring to your attention, I didn’t have time to discuss this earlier because of my final, but I think there needs to be some clarity on your part regarding this.

I offered this as what I see as a true test to see if one is pro-life or one is pro-choice,

Is killing an already born infant child, regardless of wheter that infant is loved by the mother, regardless of the social connections that infant has to society, just as bad (or more so, even) as killing a grown adult? In other words, are infants and adults both persons in your view?

In response to my pro-life vs pro-choice test, you said,

that’s the most idiotic “test” I’ve ever heard of. An infant is an infant and an adult is an adult. That’s why we have two different words.

The reason this confuses me is that I was under the impression that you had already arrived at this crossroad, and chose the pro-choice position. I remember discussing this with you and commenting that I believed that if most people really knew what their pro-choice views logically lead to, that they would stop being pro-choice. You disagreed. You believed that many would not have a problem with accepting that ones life value is dependent on social connections.

This view of yours was further confirmed when you responded to one of our exchanges with this,

HP, you use the clever analogy of killing “a temporarily comatose person who is suffocated to death.” You are right, neither the fetus nor the comatose person experience any suffering. But there are other aspects you must take into consideration. Has that person formed any bonds in society? Does he have any experience or memory of experience in society? Has he contributed to society?

Likewise, I would strongly advise any pregnant woman who has formed a bond with the fetus inside her not to get an abortion. But you cannot regulate that by law.

Now, you can use the analogy of a grown man who was born in a cave, left there alone from day one, never participated in society, knows absolutely nobody, then fell into a coma and was suffocated by some passerby who felt the cave man would negatively impact his/her life after awaking from the coma. But even in that hypothetical situation, you would have to assume the cave person had a long history of consciousness, which a fetus does not.

So again, I am valuing life inequally. But it’s not just function and awareness of pain. Experience in society, bonds formed with others, and consciousness (self-awareness) all must be factored in as well. (emphasis added)

So I am confused here Oso. You seem to accept specifically what I said pro-choicers must accept, if they are to remain pro-choice. Namely, that a persons worth is dependent on ones ’social connections to society’.

To us pro-lifers, those social connections are completely non-essential. Whether you have social connections or not, you are valuable by the basic fact that you are a human being. To a pro-choicer, those social connections are very essential, for without them, one would be hard pressed to justify abortion.

So which is it, do you believe in what you wrote above or not, and if you do, than how is my test ‘idiotic’?

PS: Or it could be that I have not gotten enough sleep and am completely reading you wrong, either way, it’s an honest question.