Utter lies, but that seems par for the course.

That's been answered, repeatedly. If you think that the cyst is as valuable as Mrs Smith, then there is something extraneous influencing your evaluation.

That we were all cysts is the ineradicable problem of the act. Had any of these worms wiggled their way into any of our mother’s ears we wouldn’t exist. Mrs. Smith was once a cyst, and therefor she (and everyone now living) would have been reduced to the value of a cyst had she been sentenced to death at that time in her development, at least according to your evaluation. Our beginnings mean that much to you. So far, if anyone has reduced her to the value of a cyst in this discussion it has been you.

It’s a huge straw man because, as is explicit in the arguments, everyone you accuse of being morally wrong for reducing Mrs. Smith is in fact trying to elevate the value of the life you dismiss as a mere cyst, while not reducing anyone else’s. You’re the one defending the killing, after all. No one else is using dehumanizing language to describe the victim of this act.

So the moral high-horse doesn’t stand too far from the ground.

My one objection is that meat is flesh-as-food, flesh that we eat. I think we're in trouble when we start viewing other members of our species as food. But otherwise I fully agree.

Just to add, note that the act of abortion itself, the act of killing this organism, is rarely mentioned in these discussions from an abortionist standpoint. It's all about the relative status of the victim in comparison to the killer or the moral permissibility of a bystander to intervene. The act itself, whether it's the deprivation of the means to survive or the evisceration of the organism with a vacuum, lays hidden behind its vocal defense. The question whether it is it right or wrong to kill this organism remains largely untouched.

Trump goes on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

So, by your logic, you are saying a brain dead child is not a human being. Is that right?

This is the second time I’ve heard the suggestion that a brain-dead human is “meat”. They think a brain-dead child is food.

These definitions are circular.

Ok, if it’s not a human being then what is it?

You can if you want. That's your choice, and it certainly has no moral relevance. An organism just is the physical stuff that it's made of, and that physical stuff is what it is regardless of what, if anything, we call it.

It has plenty of moral relevance because that organism is the recipient of your behavior. In any case, it would be nice to have a single name for the being we're talking about.

But it would be nice to know what type of organism we are ontologically speaking, wouldn't it? Can we not have a word for that?

When it's a zygote call it a zygote. When it's an embryo call it an embryo. When it's a foetus call it a foetus. When it's a baby call it a baby.

The idea that there must be some label that names/describes it from the moment of conception to the moment of death, and that the existence of this label entails moral facts about, is mistaken.

A many-named thing. What do I label it if I want to know what kind of animal it is?

You might as well ask when an embryo pops into existence. It doesn't.

Exactly right. So what should we call this shape-shifting being?

I’ve tried “a member of the species Homo sapiens” or “a biologically distinct human organism”.

Glad to hear your opinion and interested to read your perspective.

If it isn’t an individual human, what is it? The distinct genetic material is there and we know that every human being went through this stage of development. Here is a biologically continuous process and entity that has begun here and ends only at death. So what other kind of entity could it be? Where in time and space does the human being pop into existence?

That’s a lie. Remember when you repeated the “very fine people” hoax? You’re just projecting, and angry, a bad combo.

It was a joke.

No, we've shown with examples that the life of a zygote pales in comparison to the life of a person. For example, if an orphanage and fertility clinic with x amount of zygotes (where x is whatever huge number you want) are on fire, you save the orphanage. In a trolley car situation, you run over x zygotes to save a child (again, where x is any huge number you want).

How about all of them? Then again there would be no orphanage, nor any human for that matter.

You're not making any sense. You claim that moral worth (and rights) are not properties of objects but "a status we afford or ascribe to them" but then suggest that whether or not it is wrong to kill a human is independent of whether or not we afford or ascribe moral worth (and rights) to them.

Do "so-and-so has a right to live" and "it is wrong to kill so-and-so" mean different things to you?

Yes, one is the reason to conclude the other. If you believe the first the other ought to follow. Does that make sense?

Both humans and flies are living organisms. You seem to be claiming that it is wrong to kill (innocent) humans but not wrong to kill (innocent) flies. You are judging the morality of killing a living organism based on its physical characteristics (specifically in this case the physical characteristics that determine its species).

So why is it wrong to judge that it is wrong to kill some humans (e.g. babies) but not others (e.g. zygotes) based on their physical characteristics but not wrong to judge that it is wrong to kill some living organisms (e.g. humans) but not others (e.g. flies) based on their physical characteristics?

I don’t kill flies because of their physical characteristics but because of what they do. I kill other organisms because I need to eat them, not because they have hooves or fins. But this conversation is about killing members of your own species.

Zygotes don't deserve anything, and so neither deserve to live nor deserve to die.

Many parents would disagree with you. So what is your reasoning?

Elite Hollywood pedophiles, to be precise.

Then what is there to argue? Pro-lifers ascribe moral worth to zygotes and pro-choicers don't. There is no objective fact-of-the-matter that determines one group to be correct and the other incorrect.

We are arguing whether it is right or wrong to kill a human being at this stage in his life. It’s an important question.

But not wrong (and stupid) to judge the moral worth of an organism based on the physical characteristics that determine its species?

I don’t understand where this is going. Do you mean something like believing black cats to bring misfortune?

False dichotomy.

True, I meant they deserve to live or do not deserve to live. So which is it?

The sense of desperation is in the air. The long-discredited media machine is working overtime trying to churn out propaganda, but it ends up being circulated within the confines of the moral panic, bringing few if any converts to their hysteria. The result is that the foam at their mouths get frothier while no one else really cares until they do something stupid, like assassinate a candidate. Their window of opportunity for that option is getting slim, but never doubt the confidence of someone trapped in a moral panic.

It could all work out in everyone’s favor, though, because the media only discredits itself further. No matter the results of this election a bright side to all of this might be their total collapse as an institution.

I didn't say that they deserve to die. I have only said that we ought kill zygotes if it saves babies and that it is acceptable to abort a zygote.

They either deserve to live or deserve to die. The one who seeks to eviscerate the child must face this question, or he has no sense of justice. Everything else is an exercise in excuse-making, in my opinion.

What is the distinction between who someone is and what something physically is, in particular with respect to zygotes? You're the one who often argues against anything like a soul or folk psychology and reduces everything to base biology.

But again, you haven't answered the question. Why is it wrong to judge the moral worth of a human but not the moral worth of a non-human? You're engaging in speciesism without even attempting to justify it.

There is only a grammatical distinction between who and what one is. There is no actual distinction.

Just to be clear, my assertion was that it is wrong (and stupid) to judge the moral worth of a human being based on their physical characteristics. However, it is right to judge the moral worth of human beings based on their actions and behavior.

Well now we might be getting somewhere. Are you suggesting that a living organism has moral worth if and only if someone sees moral worth in it?

That leads to problematic scenarios, such as what if I see moral worth in cows or the serial killer trying to kill you, or what if the pregnant woman doesn't see moral worth in the zygote growing inside her but some random kid half the world away does?

Yes, “moral worth”, like innocence, is not a property of any given object. It is more like a status we afford or ascribe to other things when we consider them morally, at least insofar as I understand the phrase.

The problematic scenario is the one we now find ourselves in. Some pregnant mothers do not see moral worth in their child, do not consider them worthy of moral judgement, and end up seeking its killing. Some have to kill them or die. Some have to kill them or raise the child of their abuser. Some have to kill them or sacrifice their livelihoods. These are very difficult decisions to make and the stakes are very high, but in black-or-white terms, the killing is always selfish act while the birthing is a selfless one.

That does not address my point. I'm not interested in sentiment (unless you want to argue that morality is sentiment).

You claim that all humans deserve to live, but then must also accept one of these:

1. No non-humans deserve to live
2. Some but not all non-humans deserve to live
3. All non-humans deserve to live

If you accept (1) or (2) then you accept that it is appropriate to weigh the moral worth of living organisms. I don't see why weighing the moral worth of individuals within a species is any less disgusting than weighing the moral worth of species within a genus (or higher up in the taxonomy).

And I'll add, you already accepted with the trolley problem that the lives of five zygotes are worth less than the life of one baby, so why the about-turn?

I don’t think all humans deserve to live.

It’s less a matter of sentiment and more a matter of justice. Two unjust conclusions have been made about these beings. One, that they are morally worthless, and two, that they deserve to die.

These are the conclusions of dehumanization. You judge the moral worth of a human being based on their physical characteristics, and not because who they are and what they’ve done. In this case, separate human beings according to their stage of development. Segregate them in the mind, then theorize unrealistic scenarios wherein you are forced to choose between these beings and the ones you prefer morally who should live or die. Base all further conclusions on this unjust analysis. This is all it takes to justify their killing.

On the other hand, many people who want have children afford moral worth to the child they are carrying, believe he deserves to live, so much so that they will sacrifice their own security and resources for him to survive. No trolly problem or dehumanization will convince them otherwise. I suspect this is a more instinctual rather rational exercise, but so long as someone sees moral worth in them, the being is not morally worthless.

That’s false. He explicitly asked them to investigate illegal voting. You keep repeating the one phrase his enemies do, but leave out the rest of the call. The elector scheme wasn’t to “overturn the election”, but to force a recount. You have problems with recounts? You don’t like to investigate illegal voting? Fine, but lying about it turns people away from your cause. One of these days your comrades are going to say “I’m tired of being lied to”.

Oh, there's that infamous phrase from the Jan 6 speech, "fight like hell". @NOS4A2 likes to interpret that phrase as being in the context of campaigning for an election, "a hard fought campaign". Now we see the intended context very clearly, to fight after the election, to subvert the legal outcome. Of course, that was already obvious to anyone but NOS, because the Jan 6 statement was nearly two months after the election.

You guys tried to play it off as calling for violence. Once proven a stupid idea you pivot to something equally as ridiculous.

Tell that to the vast majority of parents who have children, that the child they have created and are carrying is morally insignificant and it doesn’t deserve to live.

As established by the trolley problem, the moral worth of a human-as-zygote is less than the moral worth of a human-as-baby (and in fact, the moral worth of five humans-as-zygotes is less than the moral worth of one human-as-baby).

The moral worth of a human-as-zygote is equivalent to the moral worth of a plant.

I understand the position. A human-in-utero is morally insignificant. I just don’t understand how one can reach that conclusion. I suppose his worth might increase and decreases with his cell count, or, he is morally worthless until he is in my phone book, but who knows?

But weighing the moral worth of human beings in various stages of their development so as to decide who are morally permissible to kill is a disgusting business. We’ve left ethics entirely and have approached an exercise in excuse-making and dehumanization, in my opinion.

Plant ethics. Sure. But we’re talking about the killing of a human being.

There is a “should” for the one committing the act of killing. Should I or should I not take this course of action? But I appreciate the honesty.

I think it's not wrong, or at least negligibly wrong, or at least less wrong than forcing the mother to carry the child to term and birth it (much like it's less wrong than allowing a baby to die).

Assuming that no one is forcing the mother to carry the child, and everyone believes it is wrong to intervene, should she or should she not kill her child?

The act of abortion is the act to which we need to apply our ethics, but remains completely unresolved.

I didn't say it's right. I said it's neutral. The moral worth of a zygote is negligible, as shown by the trolley problem.

But you think it’s right so long as the mother desires it, up until and including species extinction.

I misread and thought you were asking about me going back in time and then someone terminating my grandmother's pregnancy, and that it would be a Marty McFly in Back to the Future situation.

But as for the question as asked, that really depends on how time travel works. Does the future still exist in some sense but changes as the past is changed? That would change my answer. If the future doesn't exist then no, it wouldn't be wrong to terminate the pregnancy (but it may be wrong to have gone back in time as that would have erased what was the present and is now the future).

I was trying to test your intuition of whether the zygote has more moral worth if you knew who she would become: the mother. I didn’t even mean your own mother, but I guess that makes the stakes higher.

But no the future doesn’t exist in the past.

And as shown by the trolley problem killing five zygotes is less wrong than allowing one baby to die. Killing ten million zygotes is less wrong than allowing one baby to die.

The moral worth of one zygote is so negligible that killing it is less wrong than forcing a woman to carry it to term and birth it against her wishes.

It doesn't follow that it is right to kill zygotes.

That depends on whether or not killing the zygote in my grandmother's womb would kill me and my mother, because killing me and my mother would be wrong.

It wouldn't kill you because you weren't born at that time. It would just kill your mother. Her moral worth decreased in proportion to how far we travelled back in time to the point that it is negligible.

No, I think killing a human being in its zygote stage is wrong because he doesn't deserve it. I was trying to appeal to your utilitarianism.

If you could take a time machine and go back to the time when a mother was an innocent zygote, would it be ok to kill her then?

Refusing to procreate doesn't involve the act of killing.

If it's the mothers' desires, yes.

But it would mean the end of the species.

It's neither right nor wrong. It's morally neutral. We've established from the trolley problem that five zygotes deserve less moral consideration than one baby. And I'll go so far as to say that one million zygotes deserve less moral consideration than one baby. Each individual zygote deserves negligible moral consideration, and certainly when compared to the moral consideration of a woman being forced to carry to term and birth a child.

Is it morally permissible to kill all zygotes then?

Develop into human beings. Interesting.

But also, why does it matter? Why is it wrong to kill something that develops into a human being but not something that develops into a fly?

I don’t care about flies and am at constant war with them. It’s wrong to kill a human being when he doesn’t deserve it. Flies deserve it in virtue of their very nature.

As I said, in the scenario under consideration these are living zygotes growing inside an artificial womb. When we have to choose between doing nothing and letting one baby die or doing something that causes five zygotes to die, what should we do? We should do the thing that causes five zygotes to die.

Fine, we should kill zygotes if and only if no mother is present and doing so will stop a train from running over babies. Now, absent those conditions, is it right or wrong to kill zygotes?

And? It's not the biological stuff that's morally relevant. Ants are biological. Flies are biological. So what?

Flies don’t develop into human beings.

We're talking about whether or not it is wrong to kill zygotes. The manner in which the zygotes are killed is presumably irrelevant.

Your deflection is telling.

If they are out of the womb they are already dead. Convenient.

There are 46 DNA molecules, each tightly coiled around proteins, contained within cytoplasm and a cell membrane.

All of which are biological.

We can assume, for the sake of argument, that we are technologically advanced and have developed artificial wombs within which the zygotes in question are growing.

Isn’t that convenient. Remove the one act under discussion from the argument entirely.

Recall that it is the abortionist who must justify the act of killing. These thought-experiments are excuse-making for killing. We’ll need to come up with some better ones.

You said "this biology ... is present from the very beginning ... of every human being’s life." Except it's not. The genetics is present but the morphology and physiology aren't.

You believe there are just two sets of genes swimming around in there?

Then the moral dilemma concerns whether to kill a baby or an adult. We're concerned with whether to kill a baby or a zygote. So for the sake of argument we can assume that the zygote is not growing inside a woman but an artificial womb.

To kill a zygote you abort it. Go give abortions.

OK, construct a trolley-car type scenario (or any scenario really) where you refuse to sacrifice zygotes to save actual persons.

Try it with the human zygotes still in their mother, where they are generally found. For some reason you removed the mother entirely.

This is false. There's more to biology than genetics – there's morphology and physiology – and more than the stuff already contained within a zygote is required for it to grow into a baby (e.g. nutrients from the mother).

This is a misrepresentation. I never said nor implied biology was equal to or less than genetics.

Words have meanings/usages - and your inconsistent statements render your arguments meaningless. Just to give a contrast, I disagree with @Bob Ross but his position is clearly articulated and understandable. I'll give you the last word if you want.

And you think corpses are food. Articulation is one thing, bad ideas are another.