{"id":4504,"date":"2018-05-22T19:09:38","date_gmt":"2018-05-22T19:09:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/05\/22\/a-common-abortion-mistake\/"},"modified":"2018-05-22T19:09:38","modified_gmt":"2018-05-22T19:09:38","slug":"a-common-abortion-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/05\/22\/a-common-abortion-mistake\/","title":{"rendered":"A Common Abortion Mistake"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is often said that  a human fetus is a potential human life.  Not so!  A human fetus is an actual<\/em> human life. <\/span><\/p>\n

Consider a third-trimester human fetus, alive and well, developing in the normal way in the mother.  It is potentially<\/em> many things: a neonate, a two-year-old, a speaker of some language, an adolescent, an adult, a corpse. And  let's be clear that a potential X is not an X.  A potential oak tree is not an oak tree.  A potential neonate is not a neonate.  A potential speaker of Turkish is not a Turkish speaker.  But an acorn, though only potentially an oak tree, is an actual acorn, not a potential acorn.  And its potentialities are actually possessed by it, not potentially possessed by it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The typical human fetus is an actual, living, human biological individual that actually possesses various potentialities.  So if you accept that there is a general, albeit not exceptionless, prohibition against the taking of innocent human life, then you need to explain why you think a third-trimester fetus does not fall under this prohibition.  You need to find a morally relevant difference — not just any old difference, but a difference that makes a moral difference — between the fetus and any born human individual.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is often said that  a human fetus is a potential human life.  Not so!  A human fetus is an actual human life.  Consider a third-trimester human fetus, alive and well, developing in the normal way in the mother.  It is potentially many things: a neonate, a two-year-old, a speaker of some language, an adolescent, an adult, a corpse. And … Continue reading “A Common Abortion Mistake”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[313],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}