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What is the point of even introducing this personhood concept in the first place? The concept of "personhood" here has no applications other than justifying abortion (or maybe killing people like Terri Schiavo) and is completely independent of the rest of most pro-choicers' moral system. Why introduce an ad-hoc moral concept just for this one purpose? And why should pro-lifers like me find this convincing?
Well whether a life is or is not a person is an important moral factor in deciding how immoral it is to kill that life. Everyone has a concept of personhood. I wouldn't consider it an ad-hoc moral concept. For example, people generally don't consider taking animal lives equally immoral as taking human lives. In the case of a fetus, the concept is fuzzy, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I think many people (and pro-lifers) consider late-term unborn fetuses to be people, which is why they find killing them horrifying, so I wouldn't say that it's not a convincing argument. I can see why others may believe otherwise, just like how people wouldn't consider a single-cell fertilized egg to be a person (although they may believe it still has enough moral worth that it should not be killed because it may eventually become a person, which is also valid).
Thanks for the response! I disagree with you that this makes a case for personhood (as a distinct concept from "being a human organism").
I don't agree. in my moral system the only relevant factor is whether it's a human being or not. I can't think of any non-abortion/consistent life ethic issues in which not making this distinction would lead to a conclusion that you'd disagree with.
This issue can be resolved by just deciding axiomatically that human lives are important and animal lives are not. This is what I do in my moral system. There's no need to introduce a concept of personhood separate from being a human organism to resolve this issue normally. Moreover, I think even among animal rights people, the unironic belief that "animals are people too" is pretty fringe.
I'm aware that lots of people use the concept of "personhood" to talk about abortion, including some pro-lifers. I'm just not sure what it gets you outside of the context of the abortion debate, which is what I mean when I say it's an ad-hoc concept. I think you can recover the entirety of most pro-choicers' morality, aside from abortion/consistent life ethic stuff, by just defining "person" to mean the same thing as human organism. I don't even think this runs afoul of what most people who believe in animal rights think. But pro-choicers introduce this extra "personhood" concept that doesn't play any role in their other beliefs to resolve this one issue, rather than taking the simpler route of just defining everything in terms of being a human organism.
I'm not saying the pro-choice position is inconsistent. I'm saying that it requires introducing extra complexity to your moral system that isn't used for anything else. Is there any issue, aside from consistent life ethic/abortion stuff, in which you must appeal to personhood as distinct from being a human being in order to arrive at the normal position?
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