At what time is a fetus a “person”?
That’s the relevant question.
I mean, everytime I wank off i kill 280 million potential lives.
It is? Why? What’s the difference between these scenarios:
A. Personhood attaches at conception
B. Personhood attaches at birth
If the difference is “we don’t legally kill persons”, then I have to point out that, yes, we do and have been doing so for quite a long time.
Do you realize that what you’re asking is basically ‘why don’t pro-choice people make an argument that would justify prosecuting abortion and/or miscarriage as homicide by anti-choice people’? Are you aware that anti-choice lawmakers have already passed laws defining a fetus as a person and attempted to prosecute women under such laws? (And yes, in at least one case the prosecution was for a miscarriage, not an abortion). I don’t get how someone who is aware of what ‘fetal personhood’ laws are and how they are used could ask this question, it’s pretty obvious that allowing miscarriage to be prosecuted as manslaughter is not a result that pro-choice people want.
The problem with relying purely on the unconscious violinist argument is that it automatically cedes the moral high ground. While a person isn’t obligated to tie themselves to the circulatory system of the violinist to save his life, doing so would be an altruistic act, and so therefor more moral than letting him die. Thus those who give birth are more moral than those who don’t. So if you do have an abortion you are necessarily a bad person.
I personally think the best way to view a pregnancy is as an opportunity. With it comes great joy but also great responsibility and possible hardship, in some ways analogous to a job opportunity. If you have been applying for a really great job, and think that you are going to get it, but it falls through at the last minute you could be heart broken. One could get a sudden offer that that they weren’t expecting and decide to take it, or decide that the time is not right just now. One could also make the choice not to take it, but still feel have mixed feelings about whether they should have taken it or not, and maybe later regret that they did not take it. In any case its the choice of the individual.
So sure it not just like any other piece of tissue, but its not a person, at least not yet.
Because it’s not a unique set of circumstances We have laws already that allow the killing of a person if that person is attaching itself to another person’s body and drinking their blood. Apply the existing laws to fetuses and every abortion become protected as a form of self-defense. Hell, in Texas you can kill someone for breaking into your house or vehicle. Certainly, your body should be entitled to a similar level of defense.
You’re doing exactly what I talked about in my previous post. You’re assuming that your beliefs are universal and that the people who are arguing with you know they’re wrong and are just not admitting it.
I question the premises of this argument. Let’s say you have a belief system that posits an afterlife. The possibilities are you can go to a good place or a bad place after you die and spend eternity there. Your actions during your lifetime will determine which one you go to. And you believe that a human life begins at conception.
In such a scenario, wouldn’t it be moral to kill a person before they are born? A human before birth has had no opportunity to do anything wrong; they’re guaranteed to go to the good place. But if you allow that person to be born, you are creating the risk that they will do something wrong and go to the bad place when they eventually die. You should act morally and protect your fellow human beings by killing them before they can screw up.
Heck, if a person (an unambiguous fully-formed adult walking talking person) told me they were going to go to school, college, work a job, have a family, vote, use Facebook, drive a car, etc. but first they wanted to continually punch me in the stomach for nine months, I think I would prefer having to option to decline.
Because both sides are warring for the votes of people in the middle.
Some pro-choice people do make that argument. I’ve seen it made quite frequently.
Others don’t make that argument because they don’t think a blastula is a person, and/or don’t think an embryo is a person, and/or don’t think a fetus is a person. As all stages were rolled in together in the OP’s question, I’ll point out that anyone who thinks a single fertilized cell isn’t a person wouldn’t make that argument because they don’t think it’s true.
There are some who don’t make that argument because “person” has a legal meaning, and they don’t see a fertilized egg, or a blastula, or maybe an embryo, or maybe a fetus as properly coming under that legal meaning.
And there are probably some who don’t make that argument because they expect the next thing the anti-choice person would say would be ‘then of course abortion is murder!’
And that last group has some justification for that. As I said, I’ve seen the suggested argument made, a number of times. But I have not ever seen it “essentially shut up most pro-life arguments in one fell swoop”. It might do so for some anti-choice people, I suppose. But it doesn’t seem to do so for many others.
And the way for pro-choice people to win this battle is to cede 90% of the argument to the anti-choice crowd? That’s absurd.
A man whose brain has turned to mush is no longer a person. I think that a fetus without a working brain (at least) is not a person. But I’m a man and it really doesn’t matter what I think. The only person (and she is a person) who counts is the woman with the fetus inside of her.
When do you think personhood begins?
How come men who go around impregnating women aren’t consenting, then, to child support, medical bills, school bills, and so on? Plus half of whatever it costs for the woman to recover from the pregnancy. That fetus is created by leaching from the woman’s bone, blood, muscle, sinew, and life.
How exactly does the use of the personhood label accomplish this (or anything, really)? If a pro-choicer shrugs and says “Okay, a fetus is a person,” then what is the pro-lifer’s next step?
Well, back before women had rights, it was after “quickening”. That was when the woman could feel the fetus moving. Up till then, it wasn’t abortion, it was considered bringing back the regularity of “the courses”. These services----and the often-dangerous “medicines” that were used----were advertised even in Catholic newspapers. Legalized abortion was not a break with the past. It was just putting it on the books and making it official----plus ensuring that women no longer risked death to refuse to be broodmares.
Then the pro-lifer doesn’t have much left to say. If a pro-choicer says, “Fetus personhood or not, if a woman wants to abort, she should have the right to abort,” what rebuttal do you give to that? The pro-choicer has just acknowledged the full length and depth of the pro-lifer’s argument and ***still ***dismissed it.
Which is what several Dopers in-thread have also alluded to - the whole debate over whether a fetus is a person, or at which point it becomes a person, is irrelevant in the eyes of many pro-choicers. And which has left me curious why you don’t see more pro-choice politicians simply saying, “Fetus personhood is irrelevant” in the public square.
For that matter, Velocity: you’ve obviously heard the argument. But you say you’re “pro-life” – so it hasn’t changed your mind. Why do you think it would change the minds of everybody, or nearly everybody, else who’s opposed to the right to end a pregnancy? And if you don’t think it would change minds, why do you think it would end the debate?
Perhaps the OP thinks that’s a convincing argument. I really don’t think a vast majority of pro-lifers are going to be satisfied with that answer. I mean, if the point is to shut someone up, maybe that would do it for some people? If the point is to actually change minds, no I don’t think so.
It wouldn’t necessarily change minds - abortion is one of the most intractable and dug-in issues that there is - but it would shift the debate towards more favorable turf for the pro-choice side. Because right now, the pro-choice side has been playing this tortured definition-logic game of whether a fetus is a person or not, or when it becomes one (is it at 2 weeks? 4 weeks? 6 weeks?) etc.
By saying, “Fetus personhood doesn’t matter, abortion should be legal no matter what,” the pro-choice side would suddenly have itself a much simpler and clearer stance, and the pro-life side would suddenly have to scramble for a new defense/approach, because much of what the pro-life side has been based on - the argument that a fetus is a person - would suddenly no longer matter in the debate.
What rebuttal? Seriously? The pro-lifer’s rebuttal is to accuse the pro-choicer of wanting to kill people and pointing to the pro-choicer’s own words as evidence.
Because accusations of baby-killing will follow. Why invite it?