It is impossible that I "misrepresented" your words when I copied and pasted them. Perhaps you didn't say what you thought you said.......
I see you misunderstood that post as well.
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Heh, is this how you debate?
Cut and paste, cut and paste....giving as little effort of your own as possible?
It's one thing to quote a source, it's quite another to compose your entire post out of someone else’s work.
Don't worry, I can still take it apart.
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The online
Oxford English Dictionary is only accessible by subscription, so it is inadiquit for an online debate because the quotations can not be verified, nor missing definitions in your argument be given from your oun source, by the casual reader.
Fortunately, being that my wife is almost as big a English Guru as Felicity (
though I don't ever recall having any of my love letters spell checked -- badoom, psh), I happen to have my own copy of OED in hard back right here.
ISBN # 0-19-860636-2 © 2002
Published by Oxford University Press Inc., New York.
Page 1004,
Organism:
n
An individual animal, plant or single celled life form. A whole with inter dependant parts, compared to a living being.
Right off the bat I'm not going to accept the argument you cut and pasted into a post because your quote doesn't mach the OED that I have, and I can not access the quote you gave for correction.
I'll sper the server space by leting my point stand, that anything quoted must be verifyable, rather than bore the casual reader with more quotations out of a book they likely do not have themselves.
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Merriam Webster is a mutually trusted dictionary here at DP, so it is Webster that we will use.
Organism
1 : a complex structure of interdependent and subordinate elements whose relations and properties are largely determined by their function in the whole
2 : an individual constituted to carry on the activities of life by means of organs separate in function but mutually dependent : a living being
I notice right away that your source only gives the definition which supports their argument, while the other definition, being totally relevant, is edited out.
Individual:
1obsolete : inseparable
2 a: of, relating to, or distinctively associated with an individual <an individual effort>
b: being an individual or existing as an indivisible whole
c: intended for one person <an individual serving>
3: existing as a distinct entity : separate
4: having marked individuality <an individual style>
Fetus:
: an unborn or unhatched vertebrate especially after attaining the basic structural plan of its kind; specifically : a developing human from usually two months after conception to birth
Also,
"
Child"
1 and "
baby"
1 have pre-birth uses.
A fetus is a "
child"
2 and a "
baby"
2 is a "
child", thus
we can call a fetus a "baby" 3.
Legally a "
child"
4 is one's natural offspring, which is what a
pregnant woman carries.
So, a pregnant woman carries her "
child", her "
unborn child", her "
unborn baby".
This makes her a "
parent", spicificly, a “
mother”.
....which I didn't need to cut and post from any source....
...and the for-referenced:
"
Organism" = "
a living being".
Human DNA = "
human".
"
Organism" + Human DNA = "
A Human Being".
...the definitions of which come from one of the 2 dictionaries your source used, which adds credibility to my claim, which you have yet to counter.
Anyway,
A few logical problems with your sources argument:
Organisms come in many forms, including single celled, but since we are talking about humans at this point, we are referring to mammals, and mammals are not single celled organisms.
1. Only by casting aside the biological facts of what development is can any pre-birth stage of development be dismissed.
2. Given that Embryos and fetuses have more than one cell, your source can only succeed in ruling out Zygotes. No part of their argument, therefore, applies to embryos or fetuses.
What we need to do is look at the markers that are necessary and sufficient to classify an entity as a mammalian organism.
3. What we are doing on this thread is defining "
person", not "
mammalian organism", as no one is forwarding the notion that "
mammalian organisms" per-se should be protected from abortion-on-demand.
In the above quotation, your source has changed the subject from that of an individual’s rights to biological technicalities....which nos not make for a logicly flowing argument.
An argument of dehumanizing unborn children based on biological technicalities is Humanism, and as a religious faith has no place in American law.
One last thing, then I'll let your source go as the argument it presents has no dominion here:
All of these functions are performed for the fetus by the host organism of which it is a part, and the fetus is incapable of performing them independently as long as it remains integrated into the body of the woman. We can safely draw the conclusion that the fetus does not have the markers of, or perform the self regulated life sustaining functions of, independent organism in itself but it is a part of a larger organism (even though the fetus gains an increasing capacity for independent performance of those functions as the pregnancy progresses - which is the purpose of gestation).
Aside from "
viability" being totally ignored, your source shuns the fact that a very young ZEF pumps and purifies it's own blood, and similar.
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In the future, if your going to just cut and post something from another website and put nearly no effort into the discussion yourself, please make sure that it answers the content of the thread which you are placing it in.
You have failed to show that my claim is false, opting instead to post an elaborate Argument of the Consequence.
Developmental stages are irrelevant, the ZEF is logically "
a human being" from conception forward. My claim stands.
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Now then, if you would like to negotiate the legal terms, I and the above definitions are open to allowing abortion through the first trimester.
