Potential Human

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Definition: People want the right to kill unborn kids, so they call them 'PotentialHuman's to deprive them of constitutional life protection.

Frankly, I can think of some people walking around today that should qualify as PotentialHuman's!

How many cells must a genetically unique, living human have to have to qualify as Human vs a PotentialHuman?

How many body parts must a person have to qualify as Human?

Is the vaginal opening the "door" that people must enter/exit to enter the world of living Humans?

Japan is now working on incubators (artificial wombs) that they hope to use to grow live embryos. If an embryo is allowed to grow to "maturity", is it still Human? It didn't pass through a vaginal door!

On the other hand, Wikipedia has several pages of stuff on HumanPotential. What if the last kid that was aborted today, would have discovered the cure to Aids? That's HumanPotential - snuffed out. -- BrucePennington

Well, you weren't looking very hard were you? I found it on the first try using 'potential human supreme court'. On my second try I tried just 'potential human' by itself and what do you know, I got a hit of a BBC page explaining the potential human doctrine.

• Thanks for the examples! The Supreme Court one is very interesting. They conclude that a state has an interest in protecting potential human life. Even OConor says that the "trimester" view needs to be re-evalutated as a legitamate measure.
• The BBC article was not very useful.
• Both articles seemed to essentially use the terms PotentialHuman and fetus interchangably. Therefore supporting my observation that the "door" to constitutionally protected Human status is the vagina. -- BrucePennington

• Or a C-section.

• Before you get off-track, the state has an overriding interest in protecting the HEALTHY DEVELOPMENT of potential human life, but it has no interest whatsoever in protecting the life of potential humans. I wouldn't be bothered in the least if the state decided that smoking, drinking (which causes brain damage and capitalism ^W psychopathy) and drug use (including caffeine) while you're pregnant is a criminal activity. It would set a useful precedent. But this does not in any way extend to limiting abortion. -- RK

Potential versus actual: As a general rule, we don't think that potential properties are the same as actual properties, or that potential rights are the same as actual rights. Children are potential adults, but that doesn't give them the same rights or obligations as adults.

The only thing they don't explain is that even if a baby's human rights are only potential, this is sufficient to trump any actions to harm or kill them. In the case of fetuses, the potential rights of the fetus are trumped by the actual rights of the mother forced to carry the fetus to term. Anti-abortionists are diminishing the rights of women by treating them like cows. But this complicates the doctrine unnecessarily and so we say simply that babies have human rights the moment they're born.

• "diminish the rights of women by treating them like cows" - if the fetus is a Human Being, then the woman is commiting murder by killing it. She is no more "forced" to carry the child to term, than she is "forced" to keep her children alive after they are born. The "choice" to kill is always a choice. -- BrucePennington

• No Bruce, this is not only completely false but fundamentally dishonest. A woman who doesn't have the option of inducing miscarriage is in fact forced to carry the child to term and undergo the excruciating pain of labour. And I highly recommend you experience, say, systemic organ failure in order to have some idea what it feels like. I'd say 'torture' but according to POTUS torture is something even more extreme than mere systemic organ failure. In contrast, a woman with a newborn baby has the option to have someone else babysitting them or even to give him or her up for adoption right there and then so she doesn't have to care for them a single day. Bruce, there is a fundamental difference between being physically attached to somebody for the entirety of your day for 9 months, and merely having to get someone to nurse them and change their diaper. If you don't appreciate this difference which is extremely obvious to everyone else, then I highly recommend you undergo the trauma that is pregnancy and childbirth. -- RK

On a more practical matter, more women would go through pregnancy if society weren't so mysogenistic and capitalism weren't so hateful of babies and children. If Republicans want to lower the rate of abortion, let them put their money where their mouth is, let them advocate broad and concrete anti-poverty measures. If Republicans want to reduce abortions, let them support sex education and the free distribution of condoms. These are known to work, and abstinance is also known not to work. But that's another example where religious people have unrealistic fantasies about the way reality works. And another example of how having illusions about human psychology, and human sexuality is a part of human psychology, is deadly. Physics we can argue about. Math? Who even cares? But psychology is a matter of life or death. -- RK

• Sorry, Richard, but current studies show just the opposite of your claims on sex education. I'll bring you some sites.

• I agree that "psychology" can be a life or death matter. It is the psychology of self that is forcing this debate on Life. It is our self gratification that drives us to want unrestricted sex. It is self-centeredness that drives us to want to eliminate the consequences (babies) of having that sex. -- BrucePennington

• Don't bother with sex ed stats. I know that your stats are faked and no more credible than "guns are good" stats. You see, the Netherlands, Finland and other Northern European countries, who have the most advanced sex education and the most liberal attitudes to adolescent sexuality, also have the lowest rates of adolescent pregnancy and disease. This is not just some stats, it's a blatantly obvious self-evident fact.

• As for self-gratification, there's a massive area in between instant self-gratification and self-martyring masochism. And guess what Bruce, NEITHER of the two extremes (one of which you're defending) is psychologically healthy. If someone has sex and they get AIDS or herpes as a result, are they supposed to not get treatment for the disease? Are they supposed to just lay down and die? There are such things as grossly disproportionate consequences. This is why if you whipped your daughter for eating a cookie before dinner, we wouldn't call this a punishment, we would call this child abuse. -- RK