A Texas man who said his death sentence was based on false and unscientific expert testimony was executed Thursday evening for killing a man during a robbery decades ago.
Brent Ray Brewer, 53, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the April 1990 death of Robert Laminack. The inmate was pronounced dead at 6:39 p.m. local time, 15 minutes after the chemicals began flowing.
Prosecutors had said Laminack, 66, gave Brewer and his girlfriend a ride to a Salvation Army location in Amarillo when he was stabbed in the neck and robbed of $140.
Brewer’s execution came hours after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to step in over the inmate’s claims that prosecutors had relied on false and discredited expert testimony at his 2009 resentencing trial.
A tumor is a collection of cells that have one or more missing flags that would normally restrict cell growth, allowing it to grow and multiply far beyond what your body is built to allow for. The difference is that as it grows, a fetus will eventually reach a floor of cognitive ability to allow for sentience whereas a tumor will just spread.
I’m not here to discuss the philosophical quandary of valuing one life over another. I don’t want to debate the ethical ramification of arguing on the behalf of a hypothetical man who has never known true autonomy, or a diefic figure who simply decides that from a utilitarian perspective your life is worth less than that of your neighbor. I’m simply saying that sentience is the defining characteristic of intelligent life. I don’t think that should have to be a controversial statement.
An embryo may have the potential to become a human one day but at the moment it is not. Just like an acorn is not an oak tree. I wouldn’t sit under an acorn for shade, nor would I hang a tire swing from it, because it isn’t a tree. It’s an acorn. And an embryo is not a thinking and feeling human being. It’s an embryo.
Now where am I getting this information from? Well I suppose I am applying my own personal understanding of it since I don’t have an exact quote or reference for you. I do not have a degree in biology, but I know someone who does, a lot of someone’s actually. Off the top of my head I can think of 5 people in my close, immediate circle who have studied biology at length, 1 of which has multiple degrees in the discipline and another 2 are doctors. And yes, I HAVE heard “human beings” described as having started to exist in that state from the point of sentience. Matter of fact, while I’m sure some do see it like you do I personally have never heard someone refer to a zygote or embryo as a human being… They call them zygotes and embros… Because that’s what they are, despite what they may potentially become.
But that’s all beside the point. I can see you are just trying to be reasonable and explain that I will not convince anyone this way. And you’re probably right; but I will make a counterpoint. This is not a strawman. Despite what one feels or believes on the subject a fetus under a certain threshold of development is not capable of the very barest minimum required cognitive functions to be considered a human baby. And suggesting that it has more rights Than it’s fully formed human mother is fucking insane.
I don’t really have a counter argument that I would like to make, because it’s not and never was my goal to convince you that your opinion was wrong I only intended to critique the way it was made.
However, I am curious where you would personally draw the line on a human infant becoming sentient. This not intended as a trap or an argument- as a conflicted person, your certainty is interesting.