|
Babies as a fuel source
"The practice of including fetal remains among trash dumped into “waste-to-energy” furnaces has gone on for several years," A glimpse into our brave new world stripped of moral absolutes. I’m not sure if we're that from Soylent Green….looking at our terminally sick and aged population as a source of reclaimable protein. Hitler and Stalin might even be re-packaged as men of vision and forthought. |
|
This is a topic where I often see people who couch themselves as defenders of science and reason come off the rails trying to avoid the scientific and ethical conclusions of a detailed look at embryology. Life does not begin at conception, it is a continuous process leading all the way back to biogenesis. Embryos are not just a part of the mother's body but, from the moment the sperm and egg exchanged genetic material, a genetically distinct individual has been present. At no time was the embryo not human, it's genetics can be sequenced and identified as human. Without question we are then talking about a new living human individual in terms of science, which we also observe will grow to be an adult living human individual if conditions are right. At this point science has nothing further to say on the subject because the remaining questions are ones of ethics and morality. People like to introduce the idea of "personhood" which can most rightly be described as the point at which a society decides to grant legal recognition to something. The question and debate then is over how personhood and the human rights that come with them shall be assigned. I've always sided with John F Kennedy's quote that the rights of man (living human individuals) come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God (are intrinsic to human identity). Persons who refuse to assign personhood to something clearly a living human individual must claim their flag from the camp that assigns rights arbitrarily, and may not lay claim to the flag of the camp which holds that rights are inherant. Most fascinating of all to me is how many "libertarians" pick up the arbitrary rights flag. Lastly, we understand that not all rights are absolute and that human rights are often in conflict with each other. Certainly children have limited rights compared to adults, and I'll agree much can be discussed in the specifics of those limitations, but the discussion must occur with the scientific and rational point that we are talking about living human individuals with an intrinsic right to life to be balanced with other people's rights, and that we are not discussing "just tissue" or an "unperson". |