The Loran of the past didn't believe in human evolution and I've seen nothing to suggest you've changed, so who knows what you are thinking. But the reality is there is no essential boundary between genome that is a human and a genome that is not.
The very fact that you've had to degenerate to this level of rank sophistry to save your argument is quite telling, to say the least.
Humans evolved from organisms that were not humans and their isn't necessarily a hard cutoff point between the populations.
This is pseuodoscientific pap, and another excellent reason not to trust science at all (i.e., AGW) when its being driven by feverish ideological or psychological agendas. Human's evolutionary history is utterly irrelevant to homo sapiens sapiens fundamental taxonomic status and stasis as a unique species bounded by absolute biological barriers relative to other species. Those biological barriers are absolute between species as close as wolves and foxes, or between dogs and coyotes, and human sperm, when combined with a human female egg, can produce no possible outcome than a new human organism. There is no other taxonomic class to which a developing human embryo can be assigned.
This is why intellectual and philosophical Nazis such as yourself must be watched, and watched closely, in their ongoing moral relativist project of the diminution and degradation of humanity qua humanity as only worthy of protection and concern if and only if they - the secular anointed - determine that such is proper. And the reasons for such an anti-human cultural cleansing of the entire Judeo-Christian/classical liberal moral and ethical tradition are the same ones that drive the other manifestations of the leftist impulse to the nihilistic destruction of culture, and indeed, the secular humanist war on culture itself - the environmental movement, the animal rights movement, ideological anti-natalism, the myth of overpopulation, the cult of eroticism etc.
Its all of a piece, and our little god "libertarian" Delusion, worshiping at the pagan alter of "social science," holds court, deciding who shall be considered "human" and who shall not (having already moved well beyond deciding who is a "person" and who is not).
It's like trying to say at what temp hot became cold. Likewise, human populations have the ability to evolve into non-humans. An accumulation of enough or the right kind of genetic differences will do that.
The evolutionary argument is moot. Humans are a distinct and settled taxonomic class, and their humanness is grounded, biologically at least, in that settled, phylogenetic stasis. There are other aspects and criteria of humanness, however, that neither biology nor social science is capable of taking into account.
I understand the potential argument Droopy. I referenced it. I even linked to an example of it. Saying that an entity has the potential to develop certain traits is different than saying it currently possesses those traits. If you think of embryos as persons with potential rather than potential people, great. I'm not disputing that in this thread because that's not what we are talking about.
I see you've lost this aspect of the argument as you're not even paying attention to what I've been saying throughout, regarding this semantic question. Well, we can move along then...
Now, here's the next question: Assuming a child makes its way out of the birth canal, and is lying there on the table in the hospital. Its cleaned up and taken to the mother to nurse and be held and cuddled. At what point, after exiting the birth canal, are moral protections and barriers to be erected around a human infant? Is it a "person" at the time the doctor spanks it? One hour later? A week? Some months? How long, and upon what basis do we make this determination?
This is more the kind of thread you want to be in.
I knew you'd dodge that question, and this is also why I used the term "Nazi" to describe the general philosophical tendency and logical implications of the entire reductionist, scientistic, secular humanist worldview upon which your philosophy, and that of the rest of the western Left, is grounded.
Human beings become both "human" and attain "personhood" if, when, and under those conditions that a tiny coterie of alienated, culturally isolated elitist intellectuals with a deeply adversarial attitude toward the traditions, values, and cultural patrimony of the culture surrounding and supporting them, who's primary test of the truth and legitimacy of their views is the acceptance of those views by their peers within a similar social, intellectual, and professional milieu, determines for the benighted, unwashed masses below them that such classification is warranted.
The acid test of
convenience abortion on demand - which is the fundamental question of abortion since
Roe, is
inconvenience; or, as Tarski said it best already, interruption or distraction from "life goals."
There is no logical or rational delimitation as to what class of human beings the concept of "person" can be removed as the culture develops ever more expansive - and less tolerant - attitudes toward such interruptions and distractions.