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Originally Posted by Deckard
From what I understand of what you're saying, the factor of 'potential life' does seem to be what this boils down to when you refer to the fertilized egg developing into a unique human being.
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This is what I find interesting about cacophony's position as I understand it. I don't think she needs to agree that it boils down to potential life. I've always thought that it is the materialist/reductionists (those who don't believe in a soul for example) who have the most justification to criticize abortion and I guess stem cell research as well.
If you believe in a soul as what separates life from matter, then its your obligation to pinpoint the time and place where the soul enters into the mix. Which obviously can't be done empirically, and that means you just shake your bible, praise god, and play pin the soul on the uterus.
But if you believe that humanity is simply genetic code, brought through several stages of life where the embryonic stage is really no different than puberty as they are all transformations on the same set of DNA, you must say that something "human", therefore sacred, begins when the unique genetic code, unique and never to naturally reoccur, is created - the zygotic stage.
I mean its actually an argument that can be made, where as arguments based on the soul or even some mystical essence of humanity are generally arbitrary and outside observation.
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Here's what I think. As I see it, the line we're inclined to draw is essentially an arbitrary one based on how we instinctively feel ie. that interfering with one stage of complexity/development feels acceptable, while the other just feels wrong, or as you say, feels like cannibalism.
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this is where you and I agree. there is something cultural, personal going on here. Even more so, I think you and I want to just maximize the happiness (utilitarianism) because these embryos are on their way out to the land fill anyway, other people's suffering could be alleviated, and its not like using them will promote creating more abortions/embryos to satiate the scientists' needs. But at the same time there is an irrefutable line to be drawn (categorical ethics) when it comes to human life found anywhere from the constitution to the 10 commandments.
We're not going to solve which system of ethics is better equipped to guide our lives.
So at this point I think cacophony's right. Lets keep it out of public funding. Even I have to admit that Bush's ban on embryonic stem cell research has probably done noting more than encourage scientific breakthroughs in the field in the attempt at getting around the sticky issue of embryos. which means a lot of this whole conversation is moot, and the democratic push to overturn this ban could very will just be some kind of smug needling.