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It is wrong to deliberately kill an innocent person

So, I prefer to word my first premise this way: It is always morally wrong to deliberately—that is, intentionally; that is, knowingly and willingly, one part—kill—that is, force death upon by an act of violence; not necessarily an omission, not necessarily letting die; that's different than killing—an innocent person. By innocent, I simply mean a person that does not deserve death, has done nothing to justify being killed. I put that in in order to abstract from the whole argument about capital punishment. I personally am morally ambiguous about capital punishment. I think I'm against it, but I'm not sure, so By Father Trigilio 

...I don't want to argue on something that I don't feel totally confident about. But I do feel confident that it is always wrong to deliberately kill an innocent person.

What's a person? I'm a person, you're a person. Are all persons human persons? Are all humans persons? What's the relationship between persons and human beings?

Well, there's three possibilities.

One is that all humans are persons and all persons are humans. There aren't any non-human persons, and there aren't any impersonal humans. That's a fairly common-sensical position.
A second option is that there are human persons and there are also non-human persons. Martians, E.T., elves, angels, persons of the Trinity, the Greek gods. You can at least imagine non-human persons—most fantasy is about them—so it's a meaningful concept, whether you believe they exist or not.
A third option is that the term person is not larger than the term human, but smaller. Some of us members of the human race, some human beings, are persons and some aren't. The Nazis believed that Jews were not persons. The Communists believed that Capitalists were not persons. The Supreme Court, according to the Dred Scott decision, believed that black slaves were three-fifths persons, not full persons. That's an option; if you want to argue for that, then you've got an out, because you don't quite agree with the first premise, or you think that the term "person" is ambiguous in the first premise, but in order to justify that you're going to have to make common cause with company that's a little compromised. But we might come back to that option.
All right, there's the first premise: Always morally wrong to deliberately kill an innocent person. https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2008/12/when-catholic-feels-he-or-she-is-being.html
 

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