Let me put it this way: the life of a baby is considered intrinsically valuable.....when? After birth? It is no more different the moment it is removed from the uterus than its state the moment before. It is the same being; the only change is its location.
Even if the change in location has no effect on the ontology of the fetus, it does mean that one may guarantee its survival without infringing the rights of its mother.
I have explained at length why birth is the primary ritual by which we create the ontology of "person" and imbue its life with value. You chose to react to these statements with impatient petulance rather than rebut them.
For what it's worth, I don't ever consider any life intrinsically valuable. I don't believe in intrinsic or inherent or essential value at all. Value is an activity that people do, not a characteristic that objects possess.
Human life has an questionable start date: conception. To assign it any later is completely arbitrary and frankly unfair. Day 45? Day 46? Day 47? There is no difference between the 3 days.
I disagree. Conception is far more arbitrary and less important than birth; in terms of potential futures, I believe that both uterine implantation and the deposit of sperm in a vagina are less arbitrary and more important than the fusion of sperm and egg.
There is no such thing has half of a life or a third of a life; it either has life or it doesn't. The life doesn't exist before conception but it does afterwards....whole and complete.
Life does exist before conception--a sperm is alive, an egg is alive. Neither will live for very long if they do not fuse to begin the construction of an organism, but both are indisputably alive.
The life of a fertilized egg is at the furthest possible remove from being "whole and complete". It has yet to construct even part of the whole; it is the least complete object that can possibly exist.
And that that biological miracle is something that ought to be revered in the highest of standards. As advanced as we are as a species, we are completely unable to do it on our own. And we as people who take pride in and fight tooth and nail to protect our own individual achievements ironically have no concern for an achievement in which we are unable to replicate.
This is where I toss you on the horns of true dilemma, both prongs of which fatally impale your position even as they serve as pillars to support mine.
Either:
You are wrong to claim that we are unable to do it on our own. We can do it at a moments notice with nothing more than two inter-fertile humans and a few minutes of sweaty poking. You yourself have repeatedly championed the moral and ontological significance of this act of creation.
Or:
Our lives are nothing other than the death of life that we cannot create on our own. Every moment, every movement, every action, every last iota of our energies is thieved, murdered, and eaten away from biological miracles that we cannot replicate,
in precisely the same way that we are unable to replicate the life that you would so especially preserve. What gives you the right to destroy life to preserve your own?
My view of "personhood" isn't really philosophical. Did the baby embrace the light of the sun, stare in wonderment at flight of a bird, choke on the stringent smell of "clean", have its name officially recorded, etc. In other words: is the baby out of the mom?
A baby may or may not have had any of these experiences. A fetus by definition has had none of them.
So many unfair questions in which the premises are describing their conclusion.
I consider these questions quite fair, inasmuch as I value equity.
My premises do not describe their conclusion; that's your position. I value persons for their personality, their agency, their perspective. What I would hold sacred is the entity that can see me seeing it see me, a mind that may perceive my own. Therefore, and only therefore, do I value the lives of persons.
The creation of life (from which there was none) is much more distinctive physically and realistically than going from one random moment to the next.
Sperm fusing with egg
is going from random moment to the next, and it is far less physically and realistically distinctive than birth, uterine implantation, or even just fucking. Life is an ongoing process; it is not a creation and is never created. People create many things, but they have yet to create life. If life exists, you may know by the fact of its existence that it is not "from which there was none"; it is "from which life was before."
