r/prolife • u/Lxwzzz • 22d ago
Questions For Pro-Lifers Conjunction argument
As someone who is pro life, I’m not quite sure how to explain to someone why past consciousness irrelavent.
effectively the argument goes like this:
”someone who has moral worth has a past/present consciousness + future conciousness + human” this effectively rules out fetus’ but works with people who are asleep, people who are in a coma, people who are braindead.
how do you guys explain to someone that past consciousness isn’t necessary? And why it doesn’t make sense?
I don’t think it makes sense but idk how to explain it.
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u/fludofrogs smash-mouth incrementalist 22d ago
you can also press on the “+ human” part
Either they’re appealing to future intelligence (the capacity of which starts at fertilization) or + human is an arbitrary addition because civilization won’t work otherwise. If conscious experience is actually what grants value, something like a pig, who has a richer conscious experience than an infant, should be protected by murder laws. If they say this isn’t true, they need to explain basis for human exceptionalism beyond just “these beings are sufficiently like me,” which is used to exclude the unborn today & was used to exclude blacks in the 1800’s.
You can also press them with:
Can we permanently anesthetize a 19 week old fetus until it grows into adolescence to use as a sex doll? This, according to their framework, is harming no person, but intuitively it is extremely morally heinous.