Showing posts with label personhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label personhood. Show all posts

My Letters


There's still a chance to help send one million letters to the White House and Supreme Court! Here are a few that I've written. You are free to adopt them, but please adopt and do not copy; add your own heart to your letter.

#1

To whom it may concern:
I am writing to voice my concerns about abortion.  An abortion clearly violates the fourteenth amendment: "nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". Every single abortion kills a human bing, violates the fourteenth amendment, and the very foundation of this nation: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Some may argue that the unborn, while human, are not people, but that is a dangerous road to take: who are we to define what a "person" is, if not a human being? We have tried that before, with blacks here in the U.S., and with the Jews in Nazi Germany; both of these led to terrible injustices. And now we are attacking the unborn, stripping them of their personhood, with no logical foundation for our claims except our own selfishness. This hidden holocaust is hidden no longer: the American people are waking up, and are horrified to realize their is the blood of over fifty million children on our hands. I urge you to join the fight against abortion.
Please, I am **** years old and this is not the country I want to inherit.
Sincerely,
Grace *********
#2

To Whom It May Concern:
I am writing to voice my concerns about abortion.
Abortion advocates claim that abortion is about women's rights, but that does not make logical sense. Sexism has been dead for decades in the U.S. I am not against women having equal rights: I myself am a young woman, and an ambitious one! Abortion is not about women's rights. Women are physically different from men, and thus able to bear children, but being "different" does not mean they are legally "unequal". Even if we pretend that Nature has made women "unequal" (the ability become pregnant is not an inequality), that does not mean we are obliged to try to erase Nature's "mistake"--ESPECIALLY if it comes at the cost of a human life.
Abortion itself is sexist. It is insulting to women to tell them that they have to be "fixed"; that they need the right to murder their own children in order to be "equal" to men. Our fertility is not a curse. Children are not a curse. If a woman does not want to have children, that is her decision. I will not stop her. However, once a woman becomes pregnant, it's too late to choose to not have a child--she already has one, and it should not be legal for her to kill her own offspring, born or unborn. It is her responsibility to carry the child, give birth, and then, if she wishes, put the child up for adoption. I urge you to stand up against this new Sexism in America, and stop the murder of our children.
Please, I am **** years old, and this is not the country I want to inherit.
 Sincerely, 
Grace *********

 #3

To Whom It May Concern,
I am writing to voice my concerns about abortion.
Abortion is the greatest tragedy to ever occur in all of human history. The death casuality is enormous, 50,000,000+ in the U.S. along in the last few decades, but worse than that, the deaths are legal, by our own hands, and the slaughter doesn't even fix the problem it claims to need fixing: instead, it creates dozens more, and hurts everybody in the world, not just the life that it brutally ends.
The first obvious victim is the woman who undergoes the abortion. She is lied to about the humanity of the unborn, is not given all of the facts, and is frequently denied her right to see the ultrasound before her abortion. She is fed propaganda, in a bizarre new kind of Sexism, that says she can't be equal to a man unless she has the right to murder her own child, within her own body. She is not told about the possible increased risk of breast cancer, increased risk of miscarriages and premature births, post-traumatic stress disorder, or any of the other risks.
Abortion also victimises the father, who gets no rights. He has no say in whether his son or daughter lives or dies.
Abortion victimizes the aborted child's siblings, or future siblings; what would have been her best friend, her cousins, her husband, every life she would have touched. Gone. She leaves a hole before she is even born.
Abortion victimizes the abortionist and the abortion workers. They are deceived into thinking they are doing something wonderful for women, and by the time they find out what they've done, it's too late: they have partaken in the slaughter of millions. It must be horrific to suddenly realize what evil you have caused.
I urge you to join the fight against this terrible holocaust that is ripping apart the fabric of our nation. Please, I am **** years old and this is not the country I want to inherit.
Sincerely,
Grace *******
Notice I looked at abortion from three different angles. That's easier to do than trying to write a concise letter touching on all of them. Also, I obviously left out my age and my last name. That's in case any internet creepers happen upon my blog. :) (Note to the internet creepers: obviously my age does not have four digits, and that is not the length of my last name. The number of asterisks was completely random, so don't waste your time.)

If you hurry, you can still have them postmarked in March! The instructions for mailing them are here. (By the way, the Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally I co-organized was awesome. 250+ people showed up for my local rally, which was more than I expected! And last I checked, over 60,000 people showed up to rallies nation-wide--they're still counting! I hope you were able to attend one...NOW GO MAIL A LETTER!)

HURRY!
All images found via Google Images. No copyright infringement intended.

Defining Person (Part 1)


I have dealt before with the concept of personhood and how it relates to abortion (if fetus=person, abortion=murder), but after reading more materials I wanted to get a little deeper and a little more organized in discussing personhood.

Before you can decide if a fetus is a person or not, you have define "person".

Everybody (except perhaps weirdly twisted philosophy students) would call this a person.
<><><><> <><><><> <><><><>
Smart, Pretty, Successful
Businesswoman
This is also a person.
<><><><> <><><><> <><><><>
Homeless Drunk
Even this is a person.
<><><><> <><><><> <><><><>
Hitler
How does Dictionary.com define "person"? (So sophisticated, I know.)
1. a human being, whether man, woman, or child: The table seats four persons.
2. a human being as distinguished from an animal or a thing.
3. Sociology: an individual human being, especially with reference to his or her social relationships and behavioral patterns as conditioned by the culture.
4. Philosophy: a self-conscious or rational being.
If we relied on the first three definitions, there would be no argument. Human being = person. But we've become too smart to be satisfied with such a simplistic definition, and thus we must get into the abstract (and often arbitrary). I say "abstract", because there are multiple definitions of "person", both current and past definitions, that don't just stop at "human being". In other words, person = human being, but human being =/= person.

There are many, many different definitions of "person" other than "human being", which, frankly, gets into the realm of the ridiculous. But I will be covering many of them, starting with the simplistic, then going into the more convincing, and then into the ridiculous.

What's the difference between this human being
<><><><> <><><><> <><><><>
Smart, Pretty, Successful
Businesswoman
and this human being?
<><><><> <><><><> <><><><>
3-Day Old Embryo
The first obvious difference is the physical appearence. However, while physical appearence may indicate a difference in personhood status (as the physical appearence of a daisy and a rose indicate different species), physical appearence or physical facts does nothing to prove the personhood of one or the other, because personhood does not have to do with the physical world. Personhood is an abstract concept. A rose is a symbol of love, but love is an abstract concept. In our minds, a rose = love, but in the real world a rose is nothing but a rose.


This
<><><><> <><><><> <><><><>
Lady Cassandra (Doctor Who)
and this
<><><><> <><><><> <><><><>
Horta (Star Trek)
look vastly different from this
<><><><> <><><><> <><><><>
Pretty, Smart, Successful
Businesswoman
but that means nothing to the abstract concept of personhood.

Another difference is their environment. A fetus is in her mother's womb. A businesswoman moves all around, going into many different environments and doing many different things. Our current laws, illogically, follow this mindset. A 23-week-old premature, but otherwise healthy, baby can be born and immediately taken into intensive care and everything done to save her life. A 23-week-old "unwanted", but perfectly healthy, fetus (notice the difference in the terminology) that poses no danger to the mother, can be aborted.
23-Week-Old Preemie

It gets even more confusing. Sometimes, if a 23-week-old fetus survives the abortion, attempts are made to save her life...and succeed. Why? All that changed was the fetus's location. At least be consistent, abortion advocates. If there's nothing morally wrong with aborting a 23-week-old "unwanted" fetus, logically, there's nothing morally wrong with killing a 23-week-old "unwanted" fetus. The fetus did not change. The mother did not change. The staff did not change. The only thing that changed was that the fetus is now one foot away from where she was five minutes ago.

In my next post I will get into deeper definitions of personhood that branch off of the two addressed here: namely, level of development and dependency.

(I have also decided to, for now, go to one written post per week, on Fridays. Tuesdays may feature videos, suggested articles, or short news updates. This will allow me to organize my time better and have higher-quality posts.)

All images found via Google Images. No copyright infringement intended.