No, I do see the differences, though I’m sure you and I woudl assign different values to those differences. I would simply argue that a future has value (or not) regardless of the current ability of someone to sense that this future exists. That’s all. Again, if someone argues that the fetus will never have a conscious moment in this life where he perceives what he has lost (or could have lost), I do not dispute that for a moment. But that still does not mean that something wasn’t lost.
Then my advice to you, as it would be to all pro-choicers, is to make sure you don’t base any part of your argument on the notion that a fetus is not an existing human being. If this doesn’t apply to your beliefs, feel free to ignore this sage counsel.
Wow, that’s pretty circular. Yes, he doesn’t have a future, in the same sense that an adult who is murdered no longer has a future.
The act of destroying an entity’s chance at a future can’t possibily be the same justification for that act, unless I’m misunderstanding your point: “It’s OK to kill him. He doesn’t have a future because, well, we’re going to kill him.” You understand I hold exactly the opposite, right? That is, “You can’t kill him, because in doing so you rob him of the future he would otherwise have had.”
You do realize, of course, that one of the first things the Nazis did was to tighten the ban on abortion for German women*; in other words they abrogated the German woman’s right to choose. (There were later rulings which allowed abortion for babies that were not of pure blood).
So if we’re get into a Godwin situation here, you should understand which side you are on.
*Abortion had just previously been decriminalized by the Weimar Republic, essentiallly downgrading it from a felony to a typically non-prosecuted misdemeanor.
The zygote stage lasts about a week and a half after fertilization. How many women do you think get an abortion that early in their pregnancy? Of course abortion doesn’t cause a zygote to suffer, people rarely abort them.
Perhaps that was a bit circular. However, your position is purely tautological. You’re saying that the fetus is a person, and thus should not be robbed of its future. Yet the only reason that it is a person is because it has a future. Let me put it another way. You have indicated that you hold the following two statements to be true:
**A person is defined as a human being with a future.
Killing a person is robbing them of their future.**
Boiled down, we have:
**person = human being with a future
killing = robbing a person of their future**
Now, you also seem to believe that “the reason that a person should not be killed is because it robs them of their future”. So, by simple word substitution:
The reason that a human being with a future should not be robbed of their future is because it robs them of their future.
Quite the tautology.
Not that that’s surprising. When dealing with issues of this nature, it almost always boils down to people having different sets of axioms. It just so happens that your axioms differ from mine.
I don’t particularly have a horse in this race, but I would like to ask whether your position would alter if the natural likelihood were slim, rather than extreme.
Another factor that I consider important is a previously established identity of personhood.
A patient going into an operation already has an established identity AND a potential future. Both are important. This patient has undoubtedly had a lifetime of memories, thoughts, feelings, interactions with others. I assign value to his future because he also has a past and his loss will be felt by somebody.
I may regret this but I’m gonna put my two cents worth in. I haven’t read all the posts yet, but this isn’t the first one of these I’ve done.
I’m sure someone has probably brought this up by now but here goes anyway.
We as a society have decided as a rule (generally), in order for the courts to take a person off of life support they must be brain dead. Yeah, I know there are more specifics but generally speaking LIFE ENDS when the brain is no longer functioning.
Therefore, LIFE BEGINS when the brain functions start, at about 9 weeks IIRC.
Abortions before that date should be of no concern to anyone but the mother AND MAYBE the father.
After that date it is STILL her choice BUT (IMHO) other concerns are becoming more relevant. (ie: rape, health of mother/child, viability, quality of life? etc.)
To me it’s not that difficult to see the line.
If you’re going to argue “potential life”, then whoever stops the rapist could be killing a potential life. That argument is absurd. It is a practically endless spectrum with NO clear answers and way too many excuses.
That’s the way I see it anyway. 
Diogenes I see they’re already attacking the brain death POV.
Problem with that argument is, they say…“but sometimes the person comes back to life”.
Were not talking about the possibility or “potential” of a brain dead patient recovering. They were obviously mistaken when that decision (brain dead) was made. Even then it’s beside the point.
How many times has a person with absolutely NO brain recovered?
So, D/C how’s it going 
One last thing.
If I believe that, then why in the hell do we adminster to the folks who are likely to die? Cancer, accidents, elderly, etc. Euthanasia actually makes sense in these terms. Ease their pain and put 'em to sleep. Especially, the old folks, they’re gonna die anyway…wait a minute, hmmm…here we go with that potential stuff again. Reckon we’re all gonna die potentially. Hell, I bet I could argue in favor of suicide from this standpoint.
Besides, what exactly IS the likelihood of survival and also without the heroic means that are taken in many cases to insure survival. I mean, if you’re gonna play the “let GOD decide” card, you gotta really mean it. Because many survive because of technology. If it’d been up to GOD…there would be a lot more deaths than there are presently (mothers too).
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. I made my point, no need to ramble on.
But what was lost is exactly what is lost when two people don’t concieve in the first place: i.e. there never comes to be a being that can care about whether or not it is alive or dead. Both early abortion and non-conception prevent that future. And that’s clearly very different from killing a being that DOES care about whether or not it, for instance, might be shot in its sleep (regardless of whether it would be conscious at the time).
My ‘position’ is that a fetus can be considered a potential person because of it’s likelihood of becoming one (and nothing more. I am on the fence). So, if the likelihood were slim, my position would change to say that a fetus is a ‘possible’ person.
I have been digging my own grave for a while in this thread. I don’t really have a definite position on weither we should or shouldn’t abort. I waded in with agreement of the basic statement in the OP - “A fetus is a future person” and got ‘stuck’ so to speak.
And all those people saying things like - in that case a rapist and a victim are a future person, a horny guy and fertile woman, a sperm and egg, etc… - Those arguments are silly rhetoric because surely conception is THE cut off point before which a new life is only a thought, and after-which it is a LIFE!
I am not religious but I value life. If that makes my thoughts on this issue irrational then, well, I don’t know what to say.
Abortion as a means of birth control?? I’ve said it before; If a person does not understand the concept of contraceptives (ie. that which prevents conception) then said person has no business engaging in the act. If people have heterosexual sex, the entire process is a biological means of special perpetuation. If you fuck and end up getting pregnant ( or getting someone pregnant) the parties involved should not be suprised that it happened.
A little responsibility for one’s actions is in fact required.
Beside which, it baffles me as to how someone does not see the difference between a sperm (every sperm is sacred…Monty Python, right?) and egg, and a fetus (sperm has fused with egg, dna strains have merged, cellular division has begun)
Analogous except for the key difference: one has a mind and the other doesn’t. The implication here is that you think both babies are people, which would lead to the categorisation that the body of a man whose head has been chopped off and put on life support is equally a person. Since that absurdity makes the definition meaningless you have to add a qualification and the presence of a mind is perfectly appropriate for that. My definition also works for the conjoined: my definition makes siamese twins two people but yours implicitly makes them just one.
To begin with, my definition says nothing of current sentience, it merely requires that the thing has been sentient ie. it has a mind. So a state of temporary brain inactivity would not matter and the being would still be a person so long as that mind remains.
The fetus is indeed losing its chance of a future but as Apos pointed out, there is no ‘he’ in the fetus and that lack of a mind is why I don’t think an embryo or an early fetus is a person.
Feel free to argue that a potential person has value but there’s no benefit to using your definition of a person, a definition that very few peo… sentient adult human beings use. The argument only rests on the notion of personhood because of what we ascribe to be the criteria for personhood, acceptance of your new definition would simply mean that we no longer have a simple word for what the argument rests on. To an extent I agree that a potential person has value, but I don’t think it has much; certainly not enough to force a woman to carry the fetus to term. But when the fetus has sentience it has a much greater value, a value which still must be weighed against other factors.
A question to the “My rights end where your nose begins” statement. This infers that the mother of said fetus has the right to determine the life or death of that fetus because why? Because the fetus has no nose as of yet? because the fetus has no opinion …yet? By that logic these women who drown their babies of up to two years of age (they may have a nose, but no real idea what they’re losing and no discernable opinion) are justified. After all, it came from their body, lives off their income and by their hand. Their choice, right?
I feel like I’ve been taking CRAZY Pills here!
It’s a tautology in the same sense that you could make any belief one, I think. For example, I could say that only one who has property can have his property rights violated, say by someone else stealing his stuff. I also could posit that it is wrong to deprive someone of his property rights. You could torture this belief into the same type of statement: “I believe that a person with property should not be robbed of their property because it robs them of their property.” That doesn’t make it a real tautology, I don’t think, nor does it make the belief meaningless.
I agree. No matter which laws are on the books, somebody’s axioms are being served. Too often each “side” believes that only the other side’s philosophy can be reduced to an axiom, while their own is a tidy little syllogism, devoid of any aspect of faith.
But his lifetime of memories are currently a matter of complete indifference to him if he is currently without brain activity. In fact, he is not even capable of indifference.
Isn’t that the condition–the lack of sentience–that renders the fetus a non-person (or at least it has been suggested in this thread)? The fetus cannot feel, it is argued, he cannot have an emotion, he cannot value the future that is possible for him. His capacity, by definition, forbids it and at the same time and for the same reasons makes him something other than a person. He is simply a mass of tissue, devoid of the capacity for awareness and feeling that define a “person.”
Well, our adult who temporarily lacks brain activity is just such a mass of tissue, completely analogous in this regard.
And how could someone else’s sense of loss be a factor that would affect this definition of “personhood”? Someone else feeling grief over a mother having an abortion–does that change the status of the fetus for you?
Without the metaphor it means that I have the liberty to do whatever I want so long as it doesn’t harm you or otherwise interfere with your rights.
The argument is that the fetus’ presence harms the mother and the fetus does not have the right to do such a thing. There are two grounds on which to then allow the abortion:
- The fetus has no right to life. There must be an interest in a right in order to have that right and since the fetus is not sentient it has no such interest.
- The mother’s right to liberty outweighs the fetus’ right to life because it is the fetus infringing the mother’s right.
Your post doubts the first point, but the interest doesn’t have to be realised in order for it to exist. Eg. until now you might not have ever formed an opinion on whether you wanted the right to move your hands, but you do have an interest in being allowed to move your hands and if asked the question you almost certainly would say that you wanted the right.
If the mother gives birth then she is voluntarily giving up her liberty by allowing the baby to depend on her. The baby does have an interest in avoiding harm and so killing the baby or leaving it to die (since it is dependent on her) does harm it.
Yes, I have conceded that killing an sentient entity and a non-sentient entity are different to the extent that one cannot possibly be aware of his loss. This is inarguable.
You seem to hold it as axiomatic that something cannot have rights unless he can be aware of those rights, that something cannot be lost unless the person is aware of that loss. I do not hold that axiom. My friend, the patient temporarily without brain activity, is another example where I believe your philosophy, if applied consistently, would wrongly permit someone’s life and future to be destroyed. This axiom, I think, permits that patient to be killed–there is no “person” to be wronged by this decision, not if we say sentience defines “personhood.”
Stating that the “current sentience rule” doesn’t apply to anyone who previously possessed sentience always feels to me like a qualifier that serves no purpose but to permit abortion. It feels inconsistent–if future sentience is valuable in the adult patient scenario, to whom is it valuable? The adult has the same sentience as a fetus.
For me, their “personhood” does not rely on their current sentience.
Let me clarify. I am not a “life at any cost” guy. Death is a part of life, and permitting death to occur naturally can be the most humane decision available. So, to address your analogy, I would say that even if a decapitated body on life support were possible, it would indeed be an absurdity–i.e., it would be an attempt to prevent the natural process of death (which very naturally follows from decapitation, I am told ;)) from proceeding.
So, the person in your analogy (an unlikely one, to be sure) is at best a human being kept “alive” by super-human means to no real purpose, though I believe that permanent brain death generally marks the other boundary for “personhood” (can we reattach the head in this hypothetical, like Ray Milland’s was to Rosey Grier in The Thing With Two Heads?). In any event, a fetus ain’t in the same category, with a future where he is not permanently without brain activity. At least I think that’s what I believe in re: headless entities. I haven’t considered decapitated bodies on life support at great length. I’ll give it some more thought.
BTW, where’s beagledave? He loves these hypotheticals ;).
Huh?
Why would prior sentience define a “current” person? What is a “mind”? Can one who has no brain activity be said to have a “mind”? I don’t think so. You definition is unclear to me. Is sentience the spark that creates a mind? If so, if that “spark” is gone, even momentarily, can that entity be said to have a mind, right at that moment? I don’t see how.
Again, what is a “mind” without sentience? This particular person’s brain, at the moment under discussion, is nothing more that a mass of tissue. There is no “he” to value the future he has, not at the moment. Very similar to a fetus, I’d say.