Being dehumanized can cause significant psychological harm. Zygotes, blastocysts, and fetuses often feel alienated, isolated, and humiliated, which can lead to anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem. Chronic dehumanization, like in cases of systemic discrimination, can contribute to long-term mental health issues.

I think it works to negate the conscience.

Dehumanization is the method. I’m curious what it does psychologically, as the behavior that commonly follows it is rarely moral.

Humans are single-celled for a few days at best. But no need to reiterate the position.

You’d just be repeating evasions anyways. They all contain reasons why you accept her choice, not whether the act itself is right or wrong.

I get that you accept her choice. You don’t need to restate your opinion on that matter. But I do want to hear the reasoning behind why think it is right to kill a human zygote.

I've already explained to you in past posts why it isn't wrong to kill a zygote or embryo or early stage foetus. I only interjected now to explain that you were misrepresenting @Banno. He is only saying that having an abortion is morally acceptable; he is not saying that women should have an abortion.

If it isn’t wrong then is it right to kill human in his early stages?

Except there is a human being on one track and no one on the next.

Right or wrong, moral or immoral, good or bad, correct or incorrect…these are the reasons informing why someone should or shouldn’t perform some behavior on another. The behavior in this instance is killing a living human, and the choice whether to do so or not lies with the moral agent.

You lack any insight on whether she should or shouldn’t pull the lever, or you think it doesn’t matter. I’ll reframe the question. Why is it morally acceptable for a mother to kill her offspring?

Of course she can do whatever she wants. But she has to choose to do something or not do something. What should she choose?

You can’t say, can you? Your ethics leave the building on this one question, whether it is right or wrong for a mother to abort her offspring.

It’s a normative question. Of course it isn’t true or false.

I’ll put it in a language you might understand. There’s a trolly coming down the track, about to split in different directions. A mother stands at the lever can can choose where the trolly can go. Down one track lies her offspring. On the other is nothing. Which way should she send the trolly?

I do understand, I’m just asking why you can’t answer the question when we all here have the capacity to discern whether or not someone else should perform some behavior or not perform some behavior. Ought she or ought she not abort her offspring?

It’s a simple question: should she kill her offspring? Should she abort or not? Why or why not? Why can’t you guys answer this?

But that's the thing. Categories are mental objects that can represent the world as it is only to a degree. Our categories tend to fall apart when we attempt to distinguish one thing from another with finer detail. Astronomers have the same problem in defining what it is to be a planet. This is why I am saying that there is a grey area. Your boundaries might not line up with others, and since there is no clear boundary, it is up to you, and you alone, to decide what you want to do with your boundaries. If you can't even clearly distinguish what it is to be a human in these grey areas, then your foundation for limiting what others can do in these grey areas is not as solid as you think.

My concern isn’t so much the taxonomy but the flesh-and-blood entity that you are justifying killing. I don’t require categories to tell me when it is or isn’t appropriate to take a life, and I don’t need to dehumanize someone. Simple justice and dignity suffices to inform how it is appropriate to treat another living being.

So if it isn’t human life what kind of life would you suggest it is?

And there we have it. Mother’s should kill their offspring when they are cysts. At least we’re out with it.

No one here is, I think, arguing that abortion be made compulsory.

Assuming that it is optional, the mother has every right, and no one would intervene, should she kill her offspring? Is it right or wrong to do so? Is it just? The answers to these questions ought to inform one’s position.

Even if a mother has greater value than her offspring, and all the “qualities” observers prefer, it doesn’t follow that she should kill them, as if both of their lives are at stake. In most cases only one life is on the chopping block.

As yet the question of whether she should or should not end the life is unresolved. But only evil would weigh the value of an innocent life to justify his killing. This is the game being played here.

I insist that an adult pregnant woman, for example, is a person. I think we all agree there.

There was a time when they were not considered persons. It was the same with slaves. It’s the same instinct and language at work in this discussion, where a mere designation is used to justify all sorts of ill behaviors.

Show me where I stated it isn't. Also, show me a person who has eaten all types of meat and/or wants to eat all types of meat.

Fine, you don’t consider meat as food. I’m only stating that every dictionary does.

a miscarriage(abortion), is the act of killing the organism, which is wrong.

Why is absolute morality only absolute sometimes and relative some other times?

We’re speaking about the medical procedure some people choose to terminate a viable pregnancy. You’re equating this with the natural and spontaneous death of a fetus.

My issue is the identity of indiscernibles. She’s some other being one minute then a human being the next, while anyone watching this supposed change can see that one organism isn’t replaced by another.

Rather, it is a kind of being or animal or organism whose life begins at this time and ends that time, after which it decomposes. “Viability” is too squishy of a continuity principle for me. I want to be able to point at something and say “that’s a so-and-so” without having to check its vitals. There needs to be a taxonomical term for this being and “human” or “man” suffices.

But I’m still interested to read what other non-human being precedes us.

It would be but Biden possessed stolen documents for decades and nothing happened. If you watch the appeals to the New York civil case the appeals judges noted it was the first time this has ever happened, and it’s not looking good for the prosecution. Bragg’s case was a completely novel legal theory, with a judge whose daughter works for the Biden/Harris campaign. And they’re on record campaigning to get Trump. So where is the outrage?

They politicized the justice system. Biden’s DOJ went after him. Attorney Generals campaigned on going after him and they cooked up frivolous cases. They locked up at least two of his advisors.

That says more about us than it does about him honestly. Fact is, even if Trump loses (an apparent coin flip at this point) it'll only be a matter of time before the next lunatic comes in that people will find reasons to support. It's happened before in Germany, it's happening now, and it will happen in the future.

Trump’s enemies have set the blueprint. The crying wolf and the hoaxes are one thing, but Trump’s enemies have also used the state to go after him. Now we have a discredited media, a two-tiered justice system, a political intelligence community, and a swath of activists ready to head the call. The lunatics are already here.

Not everyone consider meat as food, nor does everyone who eat meat as food consider every kind of meat as food.

Show me any definition that states otherwise.

Did the mother kill all the zygotes/embryos/fetuses that were miscarriage? Was the mother wrong for having miscarriages since, by your definition, it's the act of killing all those organisms?

Miscarriages are not the intentional killing of a human life, so no.

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.