Then you have a very low IQ because there is a vast rhetorical gulf between those two things. A big part of that gulf is that the latter is literally not a thing. You can't force someone to do something that requires and can receive no inputs from you, which is caused independently of you, and which persists without you. You couldn't force it even if you wanted to, it's logically nonsense.
I like that you admit that your argument here is a rhetorical sleight of hand; unfortunately for you, it's not a very compelling one. Using this sort of reasoning, one could just as easily argue that refusing to feed a prisoner until they starved to death wouldn't be murder, since starving to death is something which
happens naturally in the absence of food. Would you accept that argument? Because I certainly wouldn't.
The fact remains that by attempting to use the law to refuse access to abortion, you are engineering a set of circumstances where a woman is forced to carry a pregnancy to term against her will. I am not going to let you off the hook for this. Take responsibility for what you are attempting to impose upon other people.
Precisely. A fetus has already begun to exist.
But my contention is not that it doesn't exist; my contention is that it is not a person. A person to me is a human being with an identity, human emotions, and an ability to appreciate the value that their life has to them. A fetus lacks all of these qualities, and as such, I do not consider them a person.
Their potential does not need to be realized. You do not become a human at age 25 when you finish developing. You only need to start the process and have a thing that exists. Once it exists it exists, and it is human. When you build a house, the house exists the instant you lay the first brick. It's just a house that is in construction.
A house which has just began construction is not a house though; you cannot live inside a single brick. The difference between potentiality and actuality is important in this regard, and it's just as important when applied to humans. A child may have the potential to grow into an adult, but they are not an adult, and it would clearly be a mistake to treat them like one.
No, it isn't. The more we learn about death, the more complicated we are understanding the process to be. We now have multiple cases of people being resuscitated several hours after going into cardiac arrest (people who in previous years would simply have been pronounced dead), and there are several hospitals around the world which are experimenting with pioneering treatments to extend the current limits. One such treatment is targeted temperature management, which involves lowering the patient's body temperature to prevent inflammation while the doctors try to get their heart going again. This has been shown to buy the doctors several hours in some cases.
Like it or not, there are now several grey areas surrounding the distinction between life and death within the medical community, and your dismissal of this fact is simply an indication of your ignorance on the subject.
I can and have. Your willful self-delusion does not change this. You are engaging in bad faith, pretending a fact is an open question.
You have argued that a fetus is a person because it has distinct DNA which is established at conception, and I have explained why I disagree with this view. It is not bad faith to simply disagree with someone, especially when I have made the terms of my disagreement very clear to you.
You will not convince me that you don't agree with me. I know you do.
I don't agree with you, and I think your failure to be convinced of this fact has more to do with your inability to understand any opposing viewpoint than it does any intellectual dishonesty on my part.
Absolutely so. There are plenty of rights which adults have that do not extend to children, such as the right to get married, enter into a legally binding contract, and live independently from a guardian. Am I to understand that you think this should change?
None of that is relevant. Only one factor is relevant.
And which factor would that be?
You are defending the indefensible, not me.
I fail to see what is indefensible about considering the rights of a woman above the viability of a zygote.
but I'm not paying any child support if you keep it
