I think the Doc just gave a pretty good response, one i am in agreement with.
The idea that two cells are a “person” is laughable.
It could lead to charges of murder.
But indeed, the whole definition of personhood is critical to the abortion debate. if a baby one day from birth a person? Most would say yes.
Are the two cells which occur right after the sperm hits the egg and it divides a “person”? Is a Egg a person? is a Sperm a person? Most would say No to all three.
where do you draw the line?
Actually, for me it’s
A: Because it’s not true in any rational sense.
Being the incorrigible pedant I am, I’m concerned about accuracy before results. To the extent that if somebody came up with a reasonable argument for “fetuses after point X can rationally be described as persons”, then I would be willing to condition post-X abortions on there being a more pressing need than “I don’t wanna have a kid”. Hate me if you want but that’s where I stand.
And I see that DrDeth is asking a similar question.
Which is more or less what I said. But also there are moral arguments. As the Good Doctor said, a zygote before the end of the first trimester doesnt resemble a “person” at all.
In no way would simply admitting a newly fertilized egg is a person would disarm Pro-lifers arguments. Unless the idea is to disarm their arguments by simply giving in entirely and letting them have their way, even if they allowed the baby would come to term would kill the mother or if the baby to be is the result of a rape. If to them, a two celled spot is a person, then why isnt a egg a person? It’s one step removed. Why draw the line at conception? See- even the anti-abortionists (they arent “pro-life” at all*) draw the line. So since both sides agree a line must be drawn, why not compromise?
- America, due to the lack of Planner Parenthood and similar clinics has a much higher rate of baby death and mother death. This is directly the fault of the anti-abortionist, who are thus killing many babies and mothers.
I don’t, personally, but let’s say I did - it’s not necessary to invoke personhood in order to draw a line, just pick some stage of development and have that be the benchmark, i.e. hypothetically, four months in or upon the detectibility by ultrasound of some physical feature, elective abortion is no longer an option. Why does personhood have to come into it unless there are plans to bring in murder charges at some stage, and I am very confident that this is exactly what pro-lifers would like to do, and “personhood” is a slippy unscientific label that can be moved arbitrary to anywhere in the process, whereas physical development cannot. So somewhere between two-cells and a day before birth is where you want a cutoff? Fine, pick something empirical and argue that should be the cutoff and stick with it.
That’s all well and good, but language by its nature is entirely arbitrary and this issue in particular is not processed with universal or even broad rationality. If it was, I’d see no problem with it and indeed I have asked: okay, so a pro-lifer conceded a fetus is a person - what is the pro-lifer’s response? Velocity says the pro-lifer’s arguments would be blunted. I find this to be ridiculously improbable and anticipate pro-lifers quickly accusing pro-choicers of murdering people, and the reason I anticipate this is that I do not expect rationality from pro-lifers.
If I could expect rationality from pro-lifers, the calculus would be somewhat different.
Why on earth do you think that announcing that blastocysts, or even eight-week fetuses, are people would strengthen the pro-choice side?
Having only one reason to object to legislation instead of multiple arguments might make the argument simpler. But it doesn’t strengthen the argument against legislation to remove some of its components; it makes it weaker.
It’s only one of the answers.
Another answer is because not all pro-choicers believe fetuses are persons; and, as has been previously pointed out in this thread, don’t feel like lying about it.
I’ll also add in here that the anti-choice side is, these days, often claiming not only that fetuses at all stages (and there’s a huge difference between an eight-week fetus and a 38-week, or even a 22-week, fetus) are persons, but that embryos and even blastocytes and single-cell fertilized eggs are persons.
And I’m going to repeat that the word “person” has not only a common-usage meaning, but also a legal meaning. As has been pointed out repeatedly in this thread, granting the use of that word for fetuses, embryos, blastocysts can have legal consequences. It’s not just ‘fine, have it your way, the dress is pink not purple’.
Above all the other reasons, why would I argue something that (I believe) isn’t true? For 20+ weeks, the fetus lacks a brain, the bare minimum for it to be a person, since it’s the minimum for it to be an entity in its own right. And, even then, it’s not like it’s going to suddenly have a thought of self. Without a self, it is not a person. By the time it could possibly be thought of as a person, it has become viable, and then it makes more sense for viability to be the standard. There’s no point in focusing on personhood.
The argument I would make is the same one Cecil made in his two articles. Because they are what convinced me to begin to switch from pro-life to pro-choice.
…not a person.
Hint: He doesn’t really think it will strengthen the pro-choice side.
Heh. Like or plus one or thumbs up or whatever.
It’s not “tortured definition-logic”: it’s acknowledging the complexity of reality.
There is no objectively logical reason to declare a fertilized ovum, invisible to the naked eye, to be a fully human person with the same right to life that a born human person has. If you hold some kind of supernatural belief in “personhood” as a quality conferred by some divine being at the moment of conception, then okay, you consider a fertilized ovum a person. But that’s not a reason for anybody who doesn’t share your beliefs to consider it a person.
Biologically, human beings continuously develop during gestation from invisible nonsentient clumps of cells to very high-functioning infants. There is no objectively obvious point in that development where “becoming a person” happens, because all of the characteristics and abilities that we associate with personhood are constantly changing in a continuous process.
So it’s up to us as members of a society to decide where we think we should draw the line between “not sufficiently a person to have a protected right to life” and “sufficiently a person to have a protected right to life”.
If you really imagine that all people, even pro-choice advocates, secretly agree with you in drawing that line at the moment of conception but the pro-choice advocates are just refusing to admit it, you’re deluding yourself.
But that crucial part of the debate, ISTM, would be of recent vintage save on religious grounds perhaps. Historically, IIRC, the Unborn Are Not Persons for purposes of the civil Law. Even when abortion was penalized it was not the crime of murder, it was an offense in its own. And in the end, it’s the definition for purposes of law that we have to talk about, since as mentioned neither biology nor Deep Philosophy can give us an answer.
(The civil code in my jurisdiction of birth, when distinguishing Personhood between Natural and Legal, defines that natural persons are such human beings as live removed from the mother’s womb, and their personhood is conferred by that fact.)
So, if Person is a social and civil-legal, and also philosophical, condition, not one derived from genome and cell division, then there is no need to “just grant it’s a person”. Is the embryo alive? Yes. Does this organism have a unique genome corresponding to species H. sapiens? Yes. Does that mean perforce it’s a person? Not necessarily.
it’s not just a legal question, it’s also a moral question. And I don’t think a 4 week embryo has the same moral claim on the rest of us that a baby, or an 8 month fetus has.
yes, I have Jess personal experience, but have come to the same conclusion. I am comfortable that a first trimester pregnancy is not a person. A potential person, human life, but not yet a person.
Five months? That’s hard. I’m really glad I never carried a fetus with a major birth defect and had to make a decision that hinged on the exact line.
I think most states do ban late abortions, except when the mother is at risk from the pregnancy.
Yes, and that’s good, but some states ban them even if the mother is at risk. Or they are trying to do so.
But… but… if we admitted the fetus is a person, they wouldn’t do that! Velocity said so!
No, it was Himmler who was into the occult. Hitler thought it was nonsense.
Well, he listened to astrologers, but yeah, Himmler was a nut on the subject. But yeah Hitler wasnt a Christian.
I’m pro-choice and in my opinion it is absurd to claim a fetus is “just a clump of tissue like an appendix”. But it’s also absurd to claim a fetus is a human being. It is neither. Instead, it’s as you said in your OP: * “a unique circumstance not fully analogous to anything else.”*
I would say a fetus is not analogous to a person or an appendix. I think almost everyone on both sides would agree that it’s at least a potential person but to me that’s not the same as a person. Yet considering that a fetus has the potential to become a human being I think it’s deliberately inflammatory to equate it to an appendix.
As to the key phrase introduced by the the OP, I can’t agree with it as-is because “person” is too loaded a term for this situation. I think a better phrase (that still acknowledges the termination of an existence) is:
“Yes, abortion ends the existence of a special group of cells, but it’s a unique circumstance not fully analogous to anything else.”
OP seems to focus on turning a fuzzy word into a word with crisp delineation. A hurricane is different from a gentle breeze, but when does a breeze become a gale? When does a gale become a storm? Language (and especially law) require that firm distinctions be made, but to draw some absolute moral conclusion from the happenstance of the Beaufort scale is a hobgoblin.
Similarly, intent peering at Webster’s entry for {per·son noun \ ˈpər-sᵊn} is not a path to “moral truth” (although it may be a path lawyers are forced to follow when a statute is written ambiguously).
IIUC, next of kin may be allowed to “pull the plug” on a “person” kept alive by that plug. A fetus’s mother may be allowed to “pull the plug” on a “person” kept alive via her umbilical cord. Are these things clearly right or clearly wrong? Life and morality aren’t that simple. What’s the chance that a comatose plugged-in guy might recover? Is a third-trimester abortion the moral equivalent of a morning-after pill? I don’t know. But I shan’t seek the answer by peering at a dictionary definition of “person.”
FWIW, after reading the preceding paragraphs of your post, this comment becomes redundant. If you had a sincere desire to develop the pro-choice argument of thread title, those paragraphs would have been phrased quite differently.
“Shut them up”? Really?? There’s been a lot of whoooshing lately and, assuming this was a joke, you should have inserted an emoticon.