darthrush said:
I’ve got to say that it does sound a bit harsh to deny the opportunity of life to someone who might grow up in hard conditions. Is it better that they never lived or to give them a shot despite the chances of being miserable?One could use that sort of logic to conclude that using birth control is immoral. After all, what if your parents had used birth control? Then you wouldn’t have had a chance at life.
Good point.
I guess it really all comes back to the issue of when does a life truly begin. And to that, I do not know. Any time I define a point along the development of a human, I always feel unsure.
Right. This is why I prefer that laws on this follow scientific opinion rather than religious opinion.
And by science, doesn’t life begin at conception? That’s when the child starts growing anyway, which sounds pretty scientific to me.
“Life” begins long before conception. The unfertilized egg - heck even a red blood cell - is alive, but that doesn’t make it a person. Is it immoral to allow a blood cell to die? Is it immoral to get your hair cut because of the living hair cells that then are killed? The question isn’t whether it is “alive”, the question is at what point does a single fertilized cell become a human being.
Most religions have chosen to define that moment as the time of conception, but that is a wholly spiritual marker, since the only unique marker at that point is DNA - which is present in every cell of our body that we seem to be perfectly ok with when it dies (such as a blood cell or hair cell). In my opinion (and in the opinion of the courts), there are many other more reasonable points along the growth path that are less arbitrary, such as when the brain becomes active for the first time.