Opinion of MY version of ProLife

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Exactly the way I am. Pro-life from the womb to the grave.

So you're for universal healthcare, and for a welfare state that looks out for the poor, with  high levels of taxation on the rich to provide resources to essential services for society, that save people's lives.

Oh wait no...

Well, I am.

^

And I'm a semi-vegetarian and would definitely be a more thoroughgoing vegetarian if I had stronger and more consequent moral behaviors.

Are you vegan?

That's kind of a good question.

No because human life is different than the lives or other animals.

An octopus sea slug has more sentience than an embryo.

But an embryo has the potential to develop into a human being... whereas a slug and octopus are a slug and octopus...

Not the sharpest argument.

I am pro-choice, by the way.

So what? All human gametes have the potential to form human life, and we don't get angry about women having periods.

There's a clear trajectory of something with its own set of genes etc. proceeding through different developmental stages between conception and birth that manifestly isn't the case with cells that have to fuse with cells from an entirely different person first. This has never struck me as a good-faith argument. Just say that brain activity has to be present for something to be a person, or that the soul enters the body at birth along with the breath, or something.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I just think there's a non-trivial moral difference to whether something is genetically a separate entity or not--yes, I think this for religious reasons, but I think there's a non-sectarian philosophical argument to be made for it as well. Now, twinning, there's a thornier conceptual question.

Alas, I am but a humanities person, relatively ignorant of things whereof TJ, for example, could probably say more.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

There's a clear trajectory of something with its own set of genes etc. proceeding through different developmental stages between conception and birth that manifestly isn't the case with cells that have to fuse with cells from an entirely different person first. This has never struck me as a good-faith argument. Just say that brain activity has to be present for something to be a person, or that the soul enters the body at birth along with the breath, or something.

That is implied when one's rebuttal to a pro-life argument is "sea slugs are more sentient then embryos".

I know, but why go beyond that and start piling on arguments that are much worse to boot?