Which still raises the question of WHY birth should mark the beginning of personhood. Can you point to any philosophical or scientific precedent for that claim, apart from the abortion debate? If not, then it seems to me that this definition was concocted specifically to justify abortion.
Moreover, what is so magical about the passage through the birth canal, that automatically grants personhood on a human being? There is certainly no reason why a mere change in location should prompt such a change.
And what of prematurely delivered infants? Or infants which are kept in the womb for just a few more seconds, thus delaying their birth? Does this mean that they are fair game to be aborted; after all, they haven’t made the magical journey down the birth canal yet.
So again, please show me that this definition of “personhood” as beginning at birth has some prior philosophical justification, apart from being a convenient means of justifying abortion.
It’s not arbitrary in terms of a definiable “event”…it’s quite arbitrary in terms of human development.
If you’re from the pro choice camp the camp that says “I don’t care about the nature of the organism in the uterus”…than the argument makes “sense” from that framework (like the poster who said that she would abort David Letterman if he was in her uterus). Of course then we’re wasting time talking about definitions of “life” and “human being” etc…since infanticide is okey dokey.
If you’re from the pro choice camp that does consider the nature of what is in the uterus…than the birth event is quitearbitrary.
The fetus/baby is not significantly different from last trimester to birth…in terms of developing the criteria that pro choice folks often refer to …(brain development…sentience…yadda yadda)
To clarify and expand on what JThunder said…I can “understand” how someone who essentially doesn’t have a problem with in utero infanticide would call the birth event the “legal” personhood threshold…where “personhood” means no longer ok to kill.
However, as JThunder pointed out…it’s basically taking a philosophical standpoint (I can terminate the life of whatever is inside my uterus at anytime) and grafting a “definition” of personhood on to that to justify it. That “definition” does not have any medical basis.
Well, birth is a pretty convenient and obvious demarcation point. As for precedents, I’d like to point out that medically safe abortions are a recent phenomenon, and you’re not going to find an ancient “philosophical” point on the subject.
As for a scientific precedent, I’d like to repeat for the billionth or so time that there is major difference between a scientific defintion of personhood and a legal definition of personhood. A ban on abortion would be a matter of legal status, not medical.
There are plenty of “magical” lines in the law (I’ll only discuss law). Perform an action on one side of a national border and it is legal. Step five feet to the left and perform the same action, and you may be guilty of a felony. The simple existence of the arbitrary line is not enough to invalidate the law; but that line should be well-drawn, and birth is a pretty well-drawn line. I’d have to ask where you would draw that line, given the choice? An outright ban suggests the line is drawn at 0 weeks, which I personally find unacceptable. Can you suggest a compromise?
What about them? If they’re outside of Mom, they’re “born.”
I don’t know why you keep mentioning the birth canal, as though I would bother making some kind of distinction between a vaginal birth and a C-section birth. Heck, I’ll even concede that a medically induced birth counts, as well as a birth which has been medically delayed (by a “few more seconds” or even several hours or days). I don’t understand what point you are trying to make.
In any case, you’re talking about the extreme borderline case of (possibly) aborting an eight- or nine-month fetus. As I said earlier, an ethical doctor should advise a patient that she may as well see the pregnancy through, rather than try a risky late-term abortion. I’m prepared to leave that decision to the doctor and the patient. It certainly has little relevance to a safe, simple first-trimester abortion.
My philosophical justification is that persons should have as much control as possible over their own bodies. I define a woman as a person, and a fetus as not a person. So, if the women wishes to abort the fetus, that is her call to make. I do this because taking away that choice strikes me as an unfair intrusion into the woman’s right of self-determination. I do this because I care more about women than I do about fetusses, and legal issues are based entirely on these kinds of distinctions.
I’ve tried to make this argument for a lonnnnnnng time .
We’ve reached consensus that “personhood” is strictly a philosophical notion… Please pass that message on to the numerous pro choice folks in these debates who have been arguing otherwise.
Convenient, yes, but that has no bearing on its correctness.
As for obviousness, there’s nothing obvious about it, as evidenced by the lack of precedent for this claim.
Note, however, that I’m asking for a precedent – that is, some indication, outside of the abortion debate, that personhood begins at birth. The fact that “medically safe abortions” are fairly recent is beside the point, since I’m specifically asking for a precedent that isn’t based in abortion rhetoric.
Which has no bearing on the matter at hand. Some laws are just; some are unjust. Some laws are poorly designed; others are not.
In addition, some laws are indeed arbitrary, e.g. the requirement of driving on the right side of the road. Such laws make no claims regarding the inherent superiority of one scheme or the other, however. This does not parallel the abortion issue though, since the pro-choicers here aren’t merely claiming that birth is a possible milestone. Rather, they are saying that birth must mark the beginning of personhood.
But you are not treating birth as an arbitrary dividing line. Rather, you are saying that birth is the beginning of personhood. In fact, you expliclity disagreed with roberliguori, when he said that it was arbitrary.
So which is it? Is your definition arbitrary, or is it inherently correct?
So at least we both agree that they’re persons. This at least shows that the nine-month period is not necessary for defining personhood. So what is? Why should the mere shift in location be necessary for conferring personhood?
I raise this issue because of your claim that birth marks the beginning of personhood. This suggests that if one can delay birth for just a few more seconds – by physically preventing the baby from emerging from the womb – then its personhood is delayed and it can be justifiably killed.
Heck, it’s only in the century or so that legal personhood was extended to women and as recently as 150 years ago, legal personhood was denied to blacks in southern U.S. states.
I don’t understand the point of your question. Legal personhood, as I understand it, means you have inalienable civil rights, which you can invoke and which the government may not violate. In most cultures, the percentage of citizens who have been granted legal personhood has grown, helped along in the U.S. by the 13th and 19th amendments. So far, that expanding circle in the U.S. has not reached the unborn. I can’t think of a single culture in which it has, but I’ll admit I’m not bothering to do a lot of research into a pointless question.
—Which still raises the question of WHY birth should mark the beginning of personhood.—
It shouldn’t.
But arbitrarily extending the legal rights of human being to fetuses is just as sloppy and arbitrary.
Look: we developed our modern consensus concept of rights in the context of thinking about specific sorts of beings. We called them human beings, but the reality is, our consideration when those ideas were formulated did not include all beings that could, under some definition of the term, qualify.
So, while you can certainly legitimately extend the definition of human being to include fetuses, you cannot simply extend all the previous connotations along with it. They have to be justified with some further argument as to why the same rights should apply to “human beings”(fetuses) who are, nevertheless, quite different from the “human beings”(non-fetuses) for which we originally built a case for moral and legal rights. And these arguments can’t just be a matter of arguing definitions (as you seem to think it is): you have to go back, look at what arguments you think justify moral and legal rights of adults, and present a case why THESE arguments, or perhaps new ones, would also apply to fetuses. Jumping up and down saying “it’s a human being! it’s a human being!” gets us nowhere.
Well, you have a legal remedy: you can exercise your first amendment rights and campaign/petition for a change in the law, and you can vote for representatives sympathetic to your cause.
Your opponents on this issue can do the same, of course.
All laws are arbitrary. They represent an attempt to codify fair and just behaviour, and satisfy most of the people most of the time, while protecting individuals from abuse.
That only begs the question. What other milestone(s) are you proposing? As I said, a total ban on abortion would suggest the milestone was conception. If this is your view (with a few additional milestones set for cases in which the mother’s health is at risk), then I feel it represents an intrusion into civil rights. Can you suggest another milestone, say, 30 weeks?
I disagreed with him because his statement was badly written. I find setting birth as an arbitrary line is acceptable, but also that the line is well-drawn and can’t be changed on a whim. The national border example I gave was to illustrat this. It may seem foolish that an action suddenly becomes illegal if you move a mere five feet ot the left, but that line you are crossing does not fluctuate. A judge cannot declare that you were “close enough,” using his own discretion as a guide. Ideally, either you were in violation of the law or you were not, with no grey area. Birth (by which I mean the point at which a fetus is completely removed from its mother’s body) happens to be a convenient line.
When laws are drafted, it’s with the understanding that they can never perfectly match justice. There are simply too many opinions on what is just and what isn’t, and trying to write a law that satisfies everyone only gaurantees that particular law will run to hundreds of pages and be full of asterisks and qualifiers and exceptions. To avoid this, laws represent compromises between conflicting views. Probably no-one is happy, but at least most of the people are reasonably satisfied.
My definition is arbitrary. I am not claiming it is inherently correct. I am claiming that alternatives that take away a woman’s right of self-determination are worse.
Got a better alternative? 32 weeks? 30? 20? 10?
Partial birth abortions represent the closest borderline cases, and I can imagine laws being drafted banning that particular procedure. I’m skittish about such laws, though. They would have to be very well written and their scope very well defined. Birth is an easy milestone to define. I’ve yet to see a similar line that could be drawn during the pregnancy which says without a doubt that on this side it’s okay and on this side it isn’t.
Even then, I can imagine the “D&X procedure” (the same used in partial-birth abortions) being applied in the seventh or eight month if it becomes medically clear that if the pregnancy is not ended immediately, the mother will be at severe risk from heart failure, hypertension, diabetes, etc. Thus, an exception to the proposed ban already has to be made. And what defines hypertension, for example, if not an arbitrary line? It’s at best the well-educated guesses of a few doctors.
In the absence of a well-defined law, I’d generally prefer no law at all.
Awww, I’m so sorry that legal debates upset you so much.
—Partial birth abortions represent the closest borderline cases, and I can imagine laws being drafted banning that particular procedure.—
You don’t need to imagine. The Senate just passed it’s version of the ban, 64-33.
—I’m skittish about such laws, though. They would have to be very well written and their scope very well defined.—
I doubt you’re going to be very happy with just passed in this respect, being neither well written nor particularly concerned about giving any scope at all.
Flight, I agree 100%. I think we disagree only in the conclusion. You think that since there is no other way, the pregnany woman is stuck with it. I think the fact that there is no other way allows the option of abortion to exist.
I understand that there are holes in the ‘donating’ theory of mine. That’s because it is an analogy, and an analogy can’t be exactly the same as the situation at hand, and still be an analogy. I was using the analogy to try and illustrate my view, without some of the more ‘pro-baby-butchering’ emotion being involved. It didn’t work, I’ll admit, so I’ll withdraw the analogy.
Without an analogy, I’ll try another way to explain it. The thought of being forced to incubate another human being for nine months against my will is repugnant to me. It dehumanises me and makes me feel I’m worth nothing but a vessel for another life. If I don’t choose to have a child, yet are forced to do so, that is telling me that this little human inside me has more rights to my own body than I do. It is unacceptable to me that someone else has control over my body to that degree.
Thank you for your kind words, Flight, but unfortunately I must disagree. I can name several others (including you) who haven’t resorted to cheap shots. This debate is much more civilised than other abortion debates I’ve read.
Also, there is nothing at all open about my mind on this issue, I’ve been decided on this since I was 13 and first considered having sex. On one hand you could say I have an open mind in terms of the fact that I have read arguments (particularly JThunder’s and Bob Cos’) that have persuaded me to their point of view in terms of when life starts, what is a human life, etc. In that regard, I find it vaguely amusing to watch them debate with others, while I agree 100% with the points they are making, yet am still pro-choice. However, just as they will never budge on their view on the sanctity of human life (and I don’t expect them to, I even understand and sympathise with their view and frustration) I too, will never budge on my belief that it’s my body and I shouldn’t be forced to birth another just because other’s prioritise differently. On that point my mind is as shut as theirs, then double-clamped, sealed and made completely water-tight
My degree is in Crminal Justice (minor in Economics.) I’d prefer you not casting aspersions simply because you have no other course left to run. Do you always try to discredit everyone who knows more about a given area than you do? You’re being wrong about something is not grounds to act like a three year old.
Also…
Hey there pointdexter. Those are the same statement. You only chose to see them differently when you realised you were talking to someone who is not a novice or laymen in the field (In fact, it is very important to my job to accurately discern such differences.)
Anyway, I’ve not heard thing one about what your AOR in life is, so please understand that I cannot take your comments seriously.
Also, you may address me agian when you are not a sociopath anymore. Till, then, just gonna hafta ignore ya. No offense. Take Care.
Goo,
This is the only reasonable argument I’ve seen for “the other” side. Particularly your assertion that you disagree that a fetus has “more” rights to you than you do. Which is precisely why I agree some lattitude should be given in cases of medical peril for the mother involved.
I have to admit that is a tough one to argue. In the end I still disagree, but only b/c the fetus involved has even less choice to be there than the mother to put it there. But at this level, I will admit that it really is something to be called based on the way an individual sees it.
Not saying I would ever endorse abortion at all, but I cannot poo-poo someone feeling the opposite for that reason alone.
Nice to see the old “It’s not alive/It is alive” put aside for the moment. Well Done.
Cheers then
Does that mean we can wrap this thread up, hold hands and sing Kumbaya ?
Seriously, thanks for your response, IEatFood!. Even if we finally disagree, I think that noting the other person’s point of view, and respecting it is important.
Though I feel very passionately about the issue, I try to respect other people’s opinions wherever possible.
The only thing I will never have any respect for in a debate (Subject does not matter), is people latching onto cliches & not presenting anything useful. Alas, I spend far too much time responding to that crapola though…
What? You mean you could buy and sell women as property until 100 years ago? You murder a woman without punishment? A woman could not own and run a business? A woman could not be head of state? A woman could not own property until 100 years ago? A woman could not own a patent or copyright?
