It's funny, because i was just in the process of editing my post you just quoted to include the following paragraph (which is in the post now btw):TorqueConverter said:I'm a pro-choicer, but for the sake of argument it can be argued that a severely retarded person is not self aware in the same manner as a fetus is not self aware. It is OK to treat the severely retarded as if they are fetus? What about infants, are they capable of understanding? Is an infant the same as a fetus? The argument of what and what does not deserves moral protection goes nowhere fast. Either you give too much moral protection or too little. This is one of the reasons why the argument of a woman and a woman alone having a right to her body, irregardless of moral protection to the fetus, has worked for so long in pro-choice.
My arguments in this case would be that even VERY severely retarded people are at least on the intelligence level of a newborn baby. I consider babies, and even fetuses who have passed a certain stage in the mothers womb (typically ahead of the legal abortion period), to be developed enough for it to be considered murder if killed (abortions at a late stage included). An infant is very much developed, and is capable of feelings a wide array of emotions (although they are limited in how they can react to those emotions. They mostly react to any negative emotion with crying for example, compared to a grownup who will react to different negative emotions in different ways). So yes, there is a big difference there.Let me ask you a question for a minute: If the 'right to live' should be defined by whether or not we are human (in which case the fetus wins out over the animals), rather than intellectual capabilities (in which case, the fetus loses out to the animals), then why isn't it considered murder to shut of the medical ventilator of a person who is (partially) braindead. After all, that person is still human, even if his intelligence is at fetus-level.
A person who is brain dead, on the other hand, is in a much worse state than that, easily at the level of an early infant, or perhaps even lower than that (a truly brain dead person might as well not have a brain). That's why it's not considered murder to shut off the medical ventilator keeping a brain dead car crash victim alive, and i agree with that assessment.