{"id":9209,"date":"2012-11-16T13:01:30","date_gmt":"2012-11-16T13:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/11\/16\/oreillys-abortion-mistake\/"},"modified":"2012-11-16T13:01:30","modified_gmt":"2012-11-16T13:01:30","slug":"oreillys-abortion-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/11\/16\/oreillys-abortion-mistake\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill O’Reilly’s Abortion Mistake"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other night Bill O'Reilly said that a fetus is a potential human life.  Not so!  A 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

Bill O'Reilly is not the brightest bulb on the marquee.  And like too many conservatives, he has an anti-intellectual tendency. If I ran these simple ideas past him, he night well dismiss them with his standard Joe Sixpack "That's just theory" line.  And that's unfortunate.  Still, it's good to have this pugnacious Irishman on our side.<\/span><\/p>\n

Companion post:  Why are Conservatives Inarticulate?<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Addendum 11\/17<\/strong>:  Alex L. writes,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Could you add an addendum to your post on Bill O'Reilly explaining why you think a fetus is a human being?  To me that sounds odd — like saying that a tadpole is a frog.  What makes a fetus so different from a tadpole or an acorn, that whereas an acorn is not an oak and a tadpole is not a frog, a fetus is a human?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Well, a tadpole is<\/em> a frog, it is the larval stage of  a frog.  Of course, a tadpole is not an adult<\/em> frog, but it is a frog.  Morphologically,  a tadpole is very different from an adult frog.  It has gills not lungs, a tail not feet, etc.   But there is more to it than morphology.  Biologically,  a tadpole is a frog.<\/span><\/p>\n

We should also note that human beings, unlike frogs and butterflies, don't have a larval stage.<\/span><\/p>\n

An acorn is not an oak tree.  But a tadpole is a frog, and a fetus is a human being.  So your last sentence is just wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other night Bill O'Reilly said that a fetus is a potential human life.  Not so!  A 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 … Continue reading “Bill O’Reilly’s 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":[313,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion","category-conservatism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9209","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=9209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}