[nateb2022]

> The whole point of this paper you're citing is that the scientific definition isn't relevant to the ethical debate.

I don't think we have the same reading of the paper. Scientific facts inform ethical decisions, they are antecedent to them. We can't decide whether something is good or bad if we don't understand what it is.

But to the point, the comment I was responding to wanted to assert that pro-life arguments rested on some "unscientific" premise that a "lump of cells" is a "child," which is actually scientific consensus; my citation of that paper was to refute that claim.

Whether or not it is ethical to end a human child's life under certain circumstances is a moral question, but the fact that it is in fact a human child is scientifically settled.

[mullingitover]

> I don't think we have the same reading of the paper.

Strong agreement here.

> Scientific facts inform ethical decisions, they are antecedent to them.

Sometimes, as your paper is saying is the case, they're orthogonal to them.

> but the fact that it is in fact a human child is scientifically settled.

From your article, emphasis mine:

"While this article’s findings suggest a fetus is biologically classified as a human at fertilization"

The problem you have is that this paper doesn't discuss children at all, merely that a fetus is of the human species. It's basically tautological so of course it's essentially unanimous. A human fetus is a human fetus and not, say, a chicken fetus.