That depends on the level of intervention and chances of survival. For the most part, yes, the parents would be responsible for treatment, unless and until the treatment becomes futile, prolongs suffering with no chance of recovery or the baby is already brain dead.
There is no such thing as a NON-valid reason for abortion. No justification is required, but it’s not true at all that just because soemone is pro-choice that they would opt to terminate a pregnancy that would result in a Downs Syndrome baby.
Irrelevant, since we aren’t talking about kids, we’re talking about fetuses.
No “excuse” is required. So what if some people want to take a mulligan on a a pregnancy which might result in a DS baby? What do you care? There’s no victim, so how is it your business.
“Late-term abortion” has no medical definition. That’s a political word used to refer to anything after the first trimester.
Third trimester abortions don’t happen except in highly exigent circumstances, so the dicussion of the difference between a newborn baby and a nine month fetus is a red herring.
Heck, it’s not a label of any great significance. I use “late-term” to describe post-viability abortions (i.e. past 24 weeks or so, though if an abortion is considered under these circumstances, odds are the fetus isn’t viable at all for some reason) and I’m okay with them staying perfectly legal, medical necessity or not.
Mainly, I see it as a useful alternative to “partial-birth”, which is a bullshit label, inaccurate and inflammatory.
That’s nice. Is your thinking on this matter because you think that “late term” fetuses are likely to have crossed a meaningful threshold regarding their status as people, that an “early term” fetus is likely not to have, or did you develop this opinion through methods irrelevent to the current discussion?
No it isn’t. It just happens that part of the range of third trimester to 2 years (which we kind of agreed to at some earlier point) where the fetus/baby becomes a person happens inside a belly.
I think it’s technically accurate to say that birth usually happens between the start of the third trimester of gestation and the post-birth age of two years, so I’m not sure a “No” was merited.
The point of “personhood” obviously depends on how you define “person”. Of course, I think this is only partially relevent to the discussion - I might be more interested in the brain state of the critter in question. If I’m willing to put the axe to a brain dead person who’s unambiguously a person, then it would seem that brain state is more important than personhood, no?
Problem is, brain state’s problematic to detect externally. It’s not enough just to have a brain state; cows have brain states and we’ll kill and eat cows. So we’re logically forced into the position of only* valuing the fetus if it’s achieved a good enough brain state, which is impossible to detect. Uh-oh.
(Excepting “potential person” arguments, which are horseshit.)
Brain state is also problematic from a legislative standpoint for three reasons:
undetectable, as noted.
ambiguous - can you prove that that fetus didn’t get brainy enough when you weren’t looking?
ignores the important fact of the mother’s status - some of us aren’t keen on making women into brood mares, which obligates us to make it possible to end the pregnancy at any time**.
** (This doesn’t obligate us to actually abort the fetus - if the thing is developed to the point of viability, we could at least theoretically extract it alive. This goes double if birth has already taken place.)
So, within the third-trimester-to-two-years range, one can plausible argue that abortions must be allowed until birth, due to issues of womb control. The point of birth is also very detectable and ambiguous, so from an abortion-legalization standpoint birth certainly has a lot going for it. Whether or not the fetus can be called a “person” (by some definition) earlier than birth, even.
It was not a question. It was a statement and it was you who made it. You defend it then.
I said that using adulthood as an example, there is a more or less agreed on standard of what we look for in an adult (sense of responsibility, etc). We have a rule of thumb (legal age) of when that happens since we are not able to measure it with any precision yet we understand that there are cases were the rule of thumb doesn’t apply (criminals at age 17.9) and we have a system to handle those (judges can choose to try minors as adult). From there you jumped to doctors should make abortion decisions. You show your math.
My second response was meant to show that is not just judges who get to make those decisions. We all gauge the mental maturity of our children and act on it. When a 2 year old whacks you in the face with a rattler, you know he didn’t mean it as an act of aggression. When a 19 year old punches another in the face, you know he did. When a 5 year old punches his little sister, only the parent knows whether the kid is aware of what he is doing or not. And the lines are different for different things. Hitting, cheating in a test, lying, all come clear in a child’s mind at different ages.
But don’t get too hung up on what is only meant to be an example and let’s focus on the case at hand. When does a fetus/child become a person (and don’t cop out with a legal answer). When is that child aware of his own existence as a human? When does the narrative of self begin? Again, I don’t expect an answer in the form of a fixed time as it will vary among individuals. I also don’t expect an answer that will allow us to conduct a definitive pass/fail test that we can start applying to all kids. Anything that has the same degree of precision that we get from “responsibility makes the adult” will be ok for “x makes the child a person”.
Well it’s certainly after the age of 1. Few remember anything from when they were 2. But somebody versed in college-level developmental psychology could give a better answer.
But we’re talking about humans after all, so we need a safety margin. I say that thought processes are necessary conditions for humanity and personhood, though they certainly are not sufficient. I would set the earliest possible boundary for personhood in the third trimester.
But at the moment of birth, we enter the social world – which arguably is another highly relevant aspect of humanity. Certain biological transitions occur as well. So to say that birth isn’t a milestone seems ludicrous. Still, I again have to defer to the developmental experts with regards to its importance relative to other milestones. Do any bio-Dopers know of any terrific links?
Hold on to that thought. I will start a new thread on that specific thought since it came to this thread as a bit of a sideline and I am afraid as this thread was already pegged by many as an abortion thread (and one where you cannot just dump the usual one liners at that).
Mostly I am against abortion as a whole, but think that it’s a necessary but disgusting evil. If you can’t decide to have the fetus aborted in the first trimester, as I see it, you had your chance, you missed the window.