Slashdot Mirror
Sequencing the Unborn
sciencehabit writes "What if you could read much of your child's medical future while it was still in the womb? Taking a major step toward that goal, one fraught with therapeutic potential and ethical questions, scientists have now accurately predicted almost the whole genome of an unborn child by sequencing DNA from the mother's blood and DNA from the father's saliva (abstract)."
Called it! That's a strawman. We're not talking about a newborn, we're talking about an embryo.
And you just demonstrated, again, begging the question.
What is begging the question? Why, its the fallacy of beginning your argument by assuming the thing to be argued. And what did you just do, in an argument that is basically about whether or not an embryo is a human? Why, you started with the assumption that it isnt.
If you were to take anything from this, its that in future discussions you should to argue your point, not assume it.
Issues of begging the question aside (addressed in my other post-- apoligies for double post), there are several issues in your post.
First, the recognition of a newborn's rights has nothing to do with the availability of safe havens and adoption agencies. Even if such things were utterly unavailable to a couple, just about every human being with a functioning conscience would find it to be pretty heinous if the parents were to kill their child (except perhaps in the most extreme of cases, and even then....). The fact that we cant just move an unborn child (two can play the semantics game) from one womb to another has no real relevance to its status or right to live.
Answering your point, no, I don't think letting the parents decide whether abortion is right or not for them is only ethical if we assume life does not begin at conception.
And thats precisely because YOU dont think human life (or more precisely humanity) begins at conception, which is the exact point I was making.
Legalizing abortion doesn't endorse abortion, it only leaves the ethical question up to the people who deserve to make the choice: the parents.
Ill make my example more crystal for you. If we were discussing the clear-cut killing of an innocent in cold blood, and your response was "well, I have my own opinions, but I dont think the state needs to take a stance on it, each individual should decide for themselves whether its OK for them to kill another".... you dont see a problem there? Once you grasp that, you will understand WHY pro-life (or anti-abortion) folks want abortion to be illegal. Their view doesnt give two shillings what your personal opinion is, the results (unborn child killed) remain the same, and the fact that their parents thought it was OK isnt really a mitigating factor.