Your question is a reformulation of the truism that sometimes transitions are gradual. We live with that in life, and try to apply common sense and the desire that the world have the most happiness and the least misery in it, and draw lines.
My line for abortions is someplace close to the first trimester. I certainly know it is not five weeks, because I miscarried at approximately that time, and by no stretch of the imagination was the blood clot and gristle in my hand a human being. It would have become one, had I been luckier; but it hadn't, yet.
It is, as we have seen, possible to stipulate that a tomato seed is a tomato, and a tomato plant is a tomato, but try a BLT with a tomato plant, and you will know you had better be more careful with your stipulations.
And try sleeping on an acorn.
See, it's fine with me if you want to stipulate that anything is anything and you yourself live by it. What I don't like is you stipulating that a divided cell, or a cluster of cells, is a human being, because that is an article of mysticism, and I resent the imposition by government on those who are not mystics.
Substitute religion for mysticism in the sentence; same thing. |
