# Fuck the Motherfucking Pope

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-the-motherfucking-pope/540182>\
**Category:** The BBQ Pit\
**Created:** [May 20, 2010, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-the-motherfucking-pope/540182 "2010-05-20T21:15:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 650

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**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 2010, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-the-motherfucking-pope/540182/650 "2010-05-26T19:45:44Z")

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> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#):
>
> Well, it’s a question of how late. If the fetus is developed enough to survive outside of the womb, I’m pretty sure it would be murder to abort it. (Haven’t women/girls been charged with murder/manslaughter for delivering babies and dumping them in the trash?) And prior to that point, I doubt there’s enough brain activity going on for it to qualify as a person.  
> .  
> .  
> .  
> Because yours is made up, while mine is based in biology. Again, I ask you, if you don’t think with your brain, what do you think with? The brain is \*the single organ \*responsible for personhood.

But that’s still simply you asserting that. Again looking to the coma victims who aren’t thinking – do they lose personhood during their coma and regain it upon returning to more measurable brain activity?

I’m reminded of the case of Carrie Coons, a woman from New York who was diagnosed as persistently vegetative, so much so that her family had petitioned the court for permission to remove the feeding tube. Evidently relying on the **Shot From Guns** Guide to Life, the courts agreed. But before the order could be carried out, she woke up and began talking.

Here’s a [list of](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/24/falsely-diagnosed-coma-rom-houben) other purported cases with similar circumstances.

ETA:

> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#):
>
> That’s not an _end_. That’s a suspension.

Except when the doctors declare it an end?

So when is it actually an end, and not a suspension?

> [@Steve MB -- let's talk about domestic violence again](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/steve-mb-lets-talk-about-domestic-violence-again/540131/112):
>
> So you’re saying that if a woman is at risk of serious illness or death, she should not be allowed\* to terminate the pregnancy unless it’s almost absolutely certain that it will cause her death (i.e., to the same level as an ectopic pregnancy)? What’s your cutoff for when the woman is allowed to kill the fetus to preserve her own health or life? Even ectopic pregnancies aren’t \*certain \*death–merely obscenely likely.

(This is cross-posted to avoid a continuing hijack)

I am saying that when a woman is pregnant, there are two patients’ interests which should be considered in any medical decision.

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