no "but".

Rights don't exist. "Rights" is a convenient fiction used to regulate human interactions.

My issue with abortion has been, and always will be one of equal rights under the law, not one of morality.
If a woman can kill a human simply because s/he is inconvenient and funny looking, then, in the name of "equal rights", I should be allowed to go around killing illegal aliens for the exact same reason.

I find it amusing that this person you cite considers chimpanzees and German Shepherds to be human...

Again, condescension is not argument.
It does not behoove me to "read below the surface". The burden is upon you, the author, to make yourself understood.

I dinged myself.

You are a very smart person, you have a strong basis for your conclusions. I wonder why you spend time calling people names like dumb it serves no productive purpose. You are wasting your talents.

I apologize you didn't call someone dumb. Here is what I saw: Doesn't sound as if you're trying to go back to square one. Sounds to me as if you're trying to find some "clever" way of wiggling out of a moral dilemma for you. It's not clever. It's dumb.
Read more at http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/36...

>I wonder why you spend time calling people names like dumb

Where did I call anyone "dumb"?

>Ayn Rand is entitled to her profits because she has property rights.

Why does she get to exercise property rights over "Atlas Shrugged", and not over "On the Road"? Because she created "Atlas Shrugged" and she didn't create "On the Road."

Too subtle for you?

>I'm sure you're not comparing a child to property, because obviously if it was property you could do whatever you like with it, just as AR can do what she wants with her profits.

You're a joy to debate because you're always so consistently wrong. On the other hand, your predictability at being wrong so consistently also makes you somewhat boring to debate. Yes, I am going to compare the child to property. "Property" means "the right to EXCLUDE use by someone else." It doesn't necessarily mean "If I own something, I can do anything I want with it." In any case, the child has its own rights — specifically, the right-to-life — which precludes the parents from doing just anything they want with it, such as killing it, enslaving it, torturing it, etc. Since a sheaf of manuscript paper with "Atlas Shrugged" scribbled on it is a non-human, non-living thing, it obviously doesn't have a right-to-life that could limit, or constrain, what its creator might want to do with it.

Are you clear on the difference between a sheaf of papers and a human child? They are both examples of "property", with the former having no countering rights, while the latter has a right-to-life constraining what its creators (mommy and daddy) can arbitrarily decide to do with it.

Furthermore:

First you write "I'm not going to read through the essays you've written", and then you write "I'm glad you loved my question but I wish you would answer it."

Try going back to square one: try reading the essays I've written. They actually answer your questions.

>On the surface, you make it appear as if you are conceding her point.

Then I suggest you read below the surface. For example, try reading the entire post and not just my justifiably sarcastic interjection at KH's silly accusation.

KH's post was a classic, almost stereotypical example, of Godwin's Law. Look it up if you're unacquainted with it.

>You say an embryo is a human being but in early stages of development.

Correct.

>Development you say? into what?

Development into a later stage of human being. It's an entity called a "human being" from the get-go. It doesn't morph into a "human entity" at some arbitrary point decided on by a federal judge or by Leonard Peikoff.

>Human is meant by Dr. Peikoff to mean a living organism possessing a rational faculty,

I give Peikoff credit for meaning what he says and saying what he means. You're now telling us that we give Peikoff too much credit: that he actually meant something he never said. He never said anything about "possessing" a rational faculty.

>Potential human is very accurate, if you use Dr. Peikoff's concept.

Except Peikoff said nothing about that concept. It was YOU who said it, and it is YOU who claim to speak on behalf of Peikoff, clarifying for us what you believe he meant.

>If it continues to develope, then it will be human. If it stops developing, but somehow stays alive, it will not be human.

If it continues to develop, it will change from a human at the embryo stage to a human at the fetal stage, then if born successfully, it will change from a human at the fetal stage to a human at the infant stage. Then from a human at the infant stage to a human at the young child stage. If it doesn't get hit by a bus, it will develop from a human in the young child stage to a human in the adolescent stage. Then it will develop from a human in the adolescent stage to a human in the young adult stage. Then from a human in the young adult stage to a human in the adult stage; then to a human in the middle-age adult stage; then to a human in the senior-citizen stage.

It's a human being at every single stage of its development; it merely changes FORM not IDENTITY. A is A, remember?

It doesn't morph from "non-human" (or "pre-human") to "human" at some arbitrarily drawn line in the sand, drawn for convenience to prop up political arguments for killing it when it interferes with one's social calendar. That's really all Peikoff's argument amounts to.

>If we use your concept of human, then I need to ask why you think humans have rights since the rationalization you're using to justify an embryos' rights seems to go: embryos are human and humans have rights; therefore, embryos have rights. Well, what attributes of humans is the source of their rights? Do embryos possess that attribute or is it under development?

The right-to-life depends upon one being biologically human, not upon the exercise of rationality. If we use your concept of human, it follows that babies have no rights, since they are not conceptual/self-conscious/fully-rational beings. It would also follow that any human being at any stage of development — adolescent, adult, senior — in a non-conscious / non-conceptual / non-rational state (coma, anesthetized, sleeping) would have no rights until and unless he or she awakens.

"females-who-have-given-birth rarely "live" for their kids in the broadest sense of the word"

As I said, if you won't live for your child once you created him/her, the badge of "mother" doesn't apply.

"...live with it and its consequences"
Sometimes the consequences can and do involve a needle and a very long nap.

The problem with Rand's argument (plz to be digging her up and reanimating her so I can slaughter her in this debate... would do my ego so much good) is one of definitions.

"A blob of protoplasm"... why, gee... you just described Stephen Hawking.

If her indifference to the humanity of a blob of protoplasm is allowed to be exercised by others, then sooner or later it can be applied to coma patients, to quadriplegics, severely retarded, not-so-severely retarded, eventually to where you get monsters like me willing to deny the humanity of non-Americans.

The *only* rational determinant of humanity which allows full freedom of the individual, *is* the genetic code. If it's genetically human, regardless of the existence of tail, of limbs, of specific internal organs, of sex... it is then human.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionar...

EconomicFreedom... "Boo-hoo" is not an argument, nor does it counter her assertion. On the surface, you make it appear as if you are conceding her point.

Great, there goes my last hope for marriage...

(that's a joke, khalling, put down the phone...)