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Agreed. So there's something other than viability that makes someone a person, then, since we agree that people on iron lungs are, in fact, people.

It clearly isn't. I just got done arguing against it above. Viability changes. As has been pointed out it would make the distinction of personhood varied, and it makes no sense to say that a premature baby of today would not have been a person fifty years ago. So it clearly does not make a distinction between born and unborn, because many of the unborn can be considered viable. Further animals are viable. Viability isn't enough.

Then you haven't been reading my posts. I haven't started with the conclusion fetuses aren't people so people are -blank- in any of the posts. Rather I've said very specifically that we must look at born adults, see what they have, and then reflect on it and compare it to animals and other things that we do not consider persons. Viability is clearly not enough, again, because animals are viable.

I'd argue differently. Those who suffer from PVS lack thought. We can medically tamper with the cerebral cortex and mess with someone's thoughts and memories. There's a clear link between the frontal lobe of the brain and conscious human thought. There's a clear link between the medulla oblongata and base functions like heartbeat and breathing. I think it's been well established in medical texts that if you ******** with the brain, you ******** with thought and personality. But that's mostly a tangent.

Killing of animals is only illegal where undue pain is present. I can go out, adopt a dozen dogs, and shoot each of them in the head. People may look down on me, but my dogs have no right to life that is protected or that should be protected. They have a right not to be harmed in our society only because we sympathize with their abilities to feel pain.

Would it be cruel to kill a fetus? If it can feel nothing... no. It would be no more cruel to kill it than it would be to cruel to my foot to amputate it.

If I were in a PVS, if I completely lacked a brain... would it be cruel to "pull the plug" or euthanize me? Hell no! I'm gone already... all I am is a shell with a heartbeat completely unable to understand or trully feel pain.

What would a fetus be prior to personhood? A proto-human? A pre-person? It would be a fetus.

Brain activity at 8 weeks... the important question to ask: is it just a few electrical charges, or is it in the form of waves that are comparable to newborns? I think you'll be surprised by the answer (or maybe it just doesn't matter to you).

And I haven't changed it recently... I'm terribly disorganized. I promise it'll get updated soon u.u; It just might take another week. I've got a s**t load of school work, and while I don't mind making a few posts here and there in this guild... I don't have the time to organize the buttload of information I've recieved in the past two months u.u;;

Penguin spoon:

Potential - not yet a function that is present and able to be used.
Capable - the function is present and able to be used even if it isn't presently being used.

"Capability requires internal mechanisms to be utilized in order to be activated"

" A fetus, at the moment of conception, has a DNA structure with a "roadmap" to bring itself into conciousness"

The mechanisms required to maintain thought = the developed and functioning cerebral cortex in the brain. Fetuses in the early term clearly do not have a developed or functioning cerebral cortex. They have potentially functioning and potentially developed cerebral cortexes based on the DNA roadmap you mention... but they do not have developed and functioning cerebral cortexes at that moment.

Hence they do not have the capacity, the capability, or the function present to them at the moment.

Fetuses aren't merely "not using" their brains (as a person who holds is breath is merely not using his lungs at the moment)... the fetus doesn't yet have a brain that is able to be used (in much the same way a man in an iron lung does not have lungs that are able to be used).

Capability implies that all it would take is using the organ.
Potential implies that it doesn't yet have the organ and still needs to develop it.

It cannot be said to have the function of thought if the ability to use it is not present there... just as you cannot say a man with no lungs has the ability to breath but just isn't using.

Why?

I agree that we ought to treat them properly... but cats have no right to life that they can claim against us. I, personally, think we should not torture animals because they can feel pain... their ability to feel pain gives them a right to not be hurt. However do they have a right to life that is comparable to a human? No... So why not kill them painlessly?

Then what is it? That's what I'm getting at. The only functionality you've given as really usable is viability.

Well, but I think there is obviously something outside the brain, call it a soul or whatever, that has to do with thought as well. Maybe not concsious-fully-connected-to-the-body thought, and probably it requires the brain to fully express itself, but if there weren't something else, there's plenty of unexplained things that shouldn't happen. Like brain dead patients becoming un-brain dead.

Fetuses aren't "gone already," if anything, by your definition, they aren't "there" yet. Which means that they will be there.

And the people who fight for abortion rights always want abortion to be seen as normal, and if you look down on abortion, you are a horrible person.

Amputating your foot and killing a fetus are incomparable. For one thing, your foot can feel pain, or rather you can feel pain in your foot. For another, the time when fetuses start feeling pain is debated so it just depends on who you ask as to whether and when fetuses feel pain.

Fetus is an age designation, of sorts, like infant, prepubescant, or teen. It's not defined as a "Non-person human." And, as I said, animals are fully animals from conception. Why are humans not fully humans until birth?