-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 06:38 AM 12/4/97 -0600, William H. Geiger III wrote:
An intriguing selection of NewSpeak being used here. The forcible ending of another humans life is wrong (add in the standard caveats for self-defence).
A fetus is not a human being. End of logic chain. Proof:The defining characteristic of humanity is our recursive self- awareness -- our ability to think and know we think. Consciousness, in other words. Consciousness exists as an emergent property of our immensely complex neural network. No neural network, no consciousness. No consciousness, no humanity. A single cell is not conscious. It cannot be. It has no senses to receive information, no mind to process the information received. It cannot be considered human. A newborn baby *is* conscious. Brainwaves from all parts of the brain register. It is human. Therefore:At some point between conception and birth, the developing fetus crosses a line fron non-human (and thus, removable without any ethical worries whatsoever) to human (and thus, only removable under the normal conditions when it is proper to kill, such as a threat to the life of the host). This line can be defined by the beginning of detectable brain waves from the higher parts of the brain, which usually occur around the sixth month or so. At this point, consciousness -- and thus humanity -- has begun. It is only at this point that the fetus has become a rights-possessing organism. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQA/AwUBNIcfBzKf8mIpTvjWEQIJvACeLfUKA21OH8qygFlZ3YWYDVgChHMAn29F FrapAwfMo2Gz/FUM9qOsZQuY =Pifn -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----