X-Message-Number: 16470
Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2001 21:21:45 -0500
From: "david pizer" <>
Subject: An argument for preserving frozen persons.

Looking for a way to get your friends and loved ones signed up?

The main argument in the abortion debate now is not whether it is good or
bad to kill a baby human (fetus, zygote or embryo?), most people agree that
it is bad to kill a baby human, but they argue about what is a baby human.
At what stage of pregancy does this tissue become a human?   

The most convincing point that anti-abortionists have come up with so far
is that if you don't know at what stage the zygote-embryo-fetus becomes a
person, then you should not kill it at any stage.  They give the argument
that if you were out hunting and its the last day of the season and you
really wanted/needed to kill a deer, and you saw something moving in the
bushes, but you could not be sure whether it was a deer or a human, you
would agree that you should not shoot at it because it *might* be a person.
 So you should not kill (abort) a zygote-embryo-fetus because it might be a
person.

Many of our fellow humans (non-immortalists) think that frozen bodies are
probably just dead bodies and not really persons.  You can't get them to
agree that frozen bodies are persons, but you might be able to get them to
agree that frozen bodies might be people.   

Or in case of potential efforts to get them unfrozen, (should that even
happen again), we might think about not trying to convince them that these
frozen bodies are persons, (it might be too big a leap for having any
chance of persuading them), but just to agree that these frozen people
might be persons.  

Even agreeing that a zygote-embryo-fetus might be a person often is enough
to convince a person not to have an abortion.  This might be a position
that those of you who are trying to convince friends and loved ones to get
signed up will want to experiment with.


Dave Pizer

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