What is a person?
1) Basic personal attributes include reason, free will, and self-consciousness.
2) Human beings are living organisms that possess these three superbiological powers.
3) These capacities can be rendered inoperative in humans by two conditions: disability or immaturity.
– Disability (disease, deformity, etc.) can hinder operation of these personal powers permanently. With immaturity, self-consciousness begins to operate at around 4 yrs. old, while reason and free will begin to be operable at around 7.
4) All organisms with these tri-personal capacities – potential or actual – are persons.
This means all human beings, of any race, sex, size, disability, or stage of maturity (from conception to death), are persons.
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Those who support abortion fall into one of three camps:
a) They are genuinely ignorant of the preborn’s humanity, due to cultural brainwashing.
b) They are willfully ignorant of the preborn’s humanity, leading to diverting from the truth by denial and/or rationalization.
c) They know the preborn is human being but don’t care, prioritizing other more self-centered values over the child’s life.
These people (c) disagree with the foundational principle upholding civilization, that intentionally killing an innocent human being is a moral absolute, always wrong despite intent or circumstances.
– There is no moral culpability with a, if the ignorance is through no fault of their own. Hence, category a are people with a disordered will; but category b and c are people with an evil will.