A Corpse or Cadaver is certainly a human being. Is it a person? Should the police be called if a corpse is struck? or cut with a blade? Certainly those of us who revere the dead don't want to see ill come of the temples where our loved ones once lived but we have different standards for human beings that are deceased. We find it perfectly acceptable to put them in boxes and bury them in 6 feet of earth forever.

Is a pregnant woman a person? Can people who don't know her and will never see how she lives make decisions that will have a devastating impact on how she lives? Is anyone fit to judge that her life is less important than a human that isn't yet born.

If an unborn child is a person, do we have the right to put them in a situation where there are deprived of financial and emotional resources that children deserve? Is it moral of force them to be born into a broken home? To face drug addiction? Poverty? violent crime? As people are we allowed to force another person to live and unwanted life?

This debate is so much more than what words we use. It is about whether it is our place to make a decision that has consequences that we may never understand that others will suffer through. People like you and I, that will suffer for our values in ways that we will never know.

Dear Wolf,

Thank you for your reply. I've read a number of your posts today, and they are very good. I'm pleased to be engaging you in a dialogue.

Allow me to respond, and we can proceed from there.

I'm certainly not reducing the issue to a "word" game, nor downplaying its importance. I'm simply attempting to show that the traditional way of framing the abortion problem, namely, "is the fetus a person or not?" is a conceptual muddle. And that's a very real problem, because it leads pro-lifers to the very unfortunate conclusion that abortion is homocide. Remember, "debates" consist in arguments, and arguments depend on language. So pointing out a linguistic confusion in the older formulation of the problem is, in my opinion, the best place to begin reconfiguring the framework in which the problem is addressed.

So let me summarize my position, so that we're both clear on it.

The older formulation of the abortion problem states...

(1) Fetuses are people, therefore abortion is homocide.

My proposed formulation of the abortion problem, following John Locke's suggestion, states that...

(2) Fetuses are human, but not persons. That is to say, they do not meet the proposed criteria of "thinking, intelligent beings who can consider themselves as themselves, the same thinking things in different times and places." Therefore abortion is not homocide.

Do you agree that (2) is a better formulation than (1)?

Still I think that this approach oversimplifies a very complex and broadly impacting issue. while debates are often settled by language the very reason the abortion debate has been so lasting and entrenched is that the issues surrounding it transcend language and definition and the definitions in language used to frame the debate have so often done a disservice to the opinions of those in the debate.

As a people we tend to boil debate down to simple digestible points. This is that, right and wrong, relevant or irrelevant. The problem with the abortion debate is that many people in it tend to ignore key issues in the minds of people who fight for one side or the other when they try to for cleaner arguments.

I certainly agree with you, Wolf. This "very complex and broadly impacting issue" cannot be settled by a simple transition in the way we use langauge, or better, in the way we individuate and employ our concepts. I'd like to add that my intention in emphasizing (what I take to be) a very important distinction between "humans" and "persons" was merely to introduce a new conceptual framework in which to discuss an old problem. I often find this approach very useful when discussions become stagnant.

I'm going to quote you a few times, and try and generate a bit of a critical thinking that way. First, you write...

"...while debates are often settled by language the very reason the abortion debate has been so lasting and entrenched is that the issues surrounding it transcend language and definition..."

It's a little unclear what you mean, in this case. If you mean that the issue that people debate (i.e., real abortions) is not equivalent to the debate itself, then I suppose this is trivially true. I say it's "trivial" only because it doesn't tell us anything new. Of course we assume that "abortions" are not the same thing as "debates about abortions." That would be like confusing the meal with the menu. So I'll assume this is not what you intend to say. However, if what you did mean to say is that the issues involved in The Abortion Debate "transcend language" in such a way that they cannot be adequately discussed at all, then I'll have to politely disagree with you. The literature in bioethics is astoundingly rich, and there have been literally tens of thousands of acadmic papers written on the The Abortion Debate in the last 5 years. People are having very meaningful discussions about the issues involved in the debate. So, if the view that you are endorsing is that the issues cannot be discussed or debated about, I think you're going to far. You're throwing out the baby with the bath water (to use a slightly distasteful metaphor). In others words, claiming that "real abortions" are not identical to "debates about abortions" does not entitle us to make the further assertion that abortions cannot be meaningfully debated about at all. They can be. They are. And words are the vehicles of that debate, and the placeholders of meaning.

Next, you write...

"As a people we tend to boil debate down to simple digestible points. This is that, right and wrong, relevant or irrelevant."

I think you're right about this. People aren't very reflective, and they are very quick to point fingers. That is, they pigeonhole a very diverse spectrum of issues into "good" and "bad" categories, which are uncritically accepted on the authority of a prior set of moral attitudes (usually religious in nature). However, if you refer to my first post, you'll see that I'm not making a moral referendum on abortions at all. Frankly, I don't think that sort of approach has gotten us anywhere. I'm simply pointing out that, given a more refined criteria for what is to constitute a "person" and what does not, we can begin to sort through some of the (seemingly) inscrutible issues that you described as "transcending language."

You conclude by stating...

"The problem with the abortion debate is that many people in it tend to ignore key issues in the minds of people who fight for one side or the other when they try to for cleaner arguments."

I'm not sure that this applies to my initial argument, since I'm not debating "for" or "against" abortion. I don't think we've reached that point in the discussion. But you're quite right, when people debate, they tend to get entrenched in their initial views and are extremely unwilling to be convinced otherwise. They become dogmatists, as it were. There's nothing more unappealing than that.

Have I misunderstood you?

I appreciate the point-by-point but I think you're giving me more analytics than my post deserves. All I'm trying to say is that defining an aborted human as a person or a child or a baby, fetus or being will not change the dogma or religious beliefs or insistance on personal freedom or fear of religious/state opression or simply venal hatred of duplicity that are in the hearts of those in the debate. I do honestly believe that at this time the argument is in an impasse. Those who defend abortion rights are too numberous to be silenced and those who oppose are to vehement to concede.