Your evidence to support that statement is exactly what?
My "evidence" rests in the fact that fetuses (and for that matter, infants) do not possess the capacity to view themselves as independent entities existing over time, and thus lack the capacity to form according preferences and interests about the future in the same manner that grown persons can.
And if you are deemed to have a lesser level or awareness, considering your lack of comprehension... then I guess it is OK to abort you too?
An animal will always be an animal.. a baby rat will be nothing more than an adult rat... a pre-born human will indeed become a human.. barring injury, tragedy, disease, etc
A fetus is not inferior to an adult human, just as an infant is not inferior, just as a toddler is not inferior, etc
But nice try
Again, I did not mention rat fetuses or babies, or even rats, for that matter. I mentioned fully grown nonhuman animals, such as dogs, goats or pigs. Or to simplify matters further, consider an adult chimpanzee, which has an indisputably greater capacity to be aware of its own existence and surroundings than a human infant does. I am merely inquiring as to why it is considered morally worse to kill a human infant than animals with greater levels of self-awareness.
You have cited potential, but I have already rebutted that claim by noting that contraception and celibacy have the same effect of inhibiting potential. I have also noted that claiming X = Y, therefore a potential X = Y is not accurate, just as crushing an acorn is not equivalent to chopping down a 20 year old oak tree. An even more illustrative example came in the way of the chicken and the egg. Though a (fertilized) egg would have the potential to eventually become a chicken, its current attributes (or specifically, lack of sensory attributes) would not endow it with the same capacity to suffer from being dropped into a pot of boiling water as a chicken would possess, despite the fact that it had the potential to become a chicken.
Similarly, despite a fetus's or infant's potential to develop into a grown person, its lack of self-awareness does not endow it with the same capacity to suffer from its own death as a grown person would possess, since the grown person would be capable of viewing him or herself as a distinct entity existing over time, forming preferences and interests about the future, and suffering from the denial of those preferences through being killed.
typical assclown response from the jsander.
