# Harming a Fetus and Harming a Child **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 14, 2009, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451 "2009-03-14T21:40:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451/1 "2009-03-14T21:40:44Z")
Suppose fetus F is due to develop into child C assuming things procede biologically normally. Suppose I do something to F that results in C’s missing a leg when C is born. By doing that thing I did, did I thereby harm C? ---
**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451/2 "2009-03-14T21:49:26Z")
Yes. F and C are the same entity, with the same linear unity of identity that a child who grows into an adult possesses. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451/3 "2009-03-14T22:44:03Z")
Thalidomide is not your friend if you’re pregnant. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2009, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451/4 "2009-03-15T02:55:13Z")
Yes, if F is indeed intended to become C. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2009, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451/5 "2009-03-15T03:05:16Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Yes, if F is indeed intended to become C. Doesn’t F always become C unless F dies first? Why the caveat? F is always intended to become C. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2009, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451/6 "2009-03-15T03:07:28Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Doesn’t F always become C unless F dies first? Why the caveat? F is always intended to become C. Failed abortion, for example. The intent was to cancel the F, but instead you got a C named Tripod. Given that abortions are generally safe and generally effective, you can’t really blame anyone for moral wrongs in this instance. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2009, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451/7 "2009-03-16T00:45:12Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Failed abortion, for example. The intent was to cancel the F, but instead you got a C named Tripod. > > Given that abortions are generally safe and generally effective, you can’t really blame anyone for moral wrongs in this instance. I don’t fully understand your example. If you fail the abortion, you’ve harmed but not killed F, who is then born and turns into C with one leg. If you successfully abort, you’ve killed F, who will never turn into C. You’re stioll responsible for either F’s death, or F and therefore C’s missing leg. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2009, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451/8 "2009-03-16T08:00:38Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > I don’t fully understand your example. If you fail the abortion, you’ve harmed but not killed F, who is then born and turns into C with one leg. > > If you successfully abort, you’ve killed F, who will never turn into C. You’re stioll responsible for either F’s death, or F and therefore C’s missing leg. The death of a fetus isn’t morally wrong, while as crippling a living person is. ---
**Author:** ![Blue\_Mood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac91a4/32.png) [@Blue\_Mood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blue_Mood)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2009, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451/9 "2009-03-16T08:25:58Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Suppose I do something to F that results in C’s missing a leg when C is born. By doing that thing I did, did I thereby harm C? If you cut off (child) C’s leg and that child grows into adult A, did you thereby harm A? Of course the harm you inflicted carries on as the person grows. However, semantically speaking, the answer would have to be no. In my example you did not harm the adult as there was not yet an adult to harm. The action you carried out was only carried out at one specific time. That action has long-lasting consequences which will impact the person at each stage of their life, but you can’t have harmed an adult who did not yet exist. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2009, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451/10 "2009-03-16T09:15:56Z")
No, at least, not yet. I would say that the harm continues in the present - you have harmed the fetus now - but you haven’t yet harmed the child at that point because it doesn’t exist yet. Likewise, if you cut off my hand, you’ve hurt me today, but you’ve not as of yet harmed the me of tomorrow until tomorrow actually comes around. Assuming i’m still around tomorrow to be harmed, then it’s a fair guess that you’ll have also harmed the me of tomorrow. But that me doesn’t exist yet. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2009, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451/11 "2009-03-16T13:27:50Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > The death of a fetus isn’t morally wrong, while as crippling a living person is. I don’t really see this as a moral question, but ok. So, if killing the fetus is morally wrong, then is crippling the fetus morally wrong? If you go in and cut off the fetus’s leg? Or feed the mom thalidomide? Because it would seem strange that it would be morally wrong to harm the fetus in a small way, but morally ok to harm the fetus in a large way, by destroying it. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2009, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451/12 "2009-03-16T13:36:26Z")
A mother can chose not to carry a fetus to term. A mother cannot choose to harm a fetus that she chooses to carry to term. Children born addicted to drugs are routinely taken away from their mothers. I would love to see a trial for a woman who wanted a chld to be born with no arms so she illegally gets and takes some thalidomide. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2009, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451/13 "2009-03-16T13:47:20Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Suppose fetus F is due to develop into child C assuming things procede biologically normally. > > Suppose I do something to F that results in C’s missing a leg when C is born. > > By doing that thing I did, did I thereby harm C? I think there’s a lot of discussion swept under the rug in formulating the hypothetical like this – how does one establish that the fetus is ‘due to develop’ into the child? Any number of things could happen between now and then, and your action is certainly part of those – what if, for instance, without your interference, the fetus would by some contrivance of circumstances have never been born? Your harming of the fetus would then have saved the life of the child, even though it may suffer by some measure because of what you did! One could also argue that the child with the missing leg is a different entity from the child that has two legs, and thus, any action (or lack thereof!) that leads to one being born instead of the other means that one of the two is denied existence, so you’d be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2009, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451/14 "2009-03-16T14:01:02Z")
IMHO this is as example the fruit (result) of the knowledge of the tree of good and evil. We know that cutting off f’s legs will have some end result, as time goes on that tree will produce fruit of kind we don’t know. f’ may develop into a very angry c when c finds out what you did to him (and he won’t care that you assumed he was a different entity, or non-person). c may develop into adult a, never knowing why, with that nagging question in the back of his mind. Perhaps ‘a’ will come to peace with what was done, forgive you (the cutter off of his legs) and it may eventually turn out for the good. meanwhile we always bear the consequences of our action (we reap what we sow, even if we don’t know what type of seed we planted). So yes it is morally wrong, as we are interfering with God’s plan by changing and we then bear the weight of the outcome personally, along with those we have hurt. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2009, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451/15 "2009-03-16T15:19:21Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > I don’t really see this as a moral question, but ok. So, if killing the fetus is morally wrong, then is crippling the fetus morally wrong? If you go in and cut off the fetus’s leg? Or feed the mom thalidomide? Because it would seem strange that it would be morally wrong to harm the fetus in a small way, but morally ok to harm the fetus in a large way, by destroying it. I think what **Revenant Threshold** said provides material for a response to this point. He argued that you can’t harm something that doesn’t exist, which means that by harming the fetus, you have _not_ thereby harmed the child. If the fetus is carried to term, then it will _come to be_ that you have harmed the child. But if the fetus had not been carried to term, you would not have harmed the child–because the child will not have existed. If you kill the fetus, the child never comes to exist, and so you haven’t harmed the child. I haven’t decided what I think about this line of reasoning\*, but it does seem on a first glance at least to answer your point. -Kris \*It may have the counterintuitive result that I’m never harmed at any time except _now_, whenever now is. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2009, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451/16 "2009-03-16T15:21:56Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > I think there’s a lot of discussion swept under the rug in formulating the hypothetical like this – how does one establish that the fetus is ‘due to develop’ into the child? I don’t understand. I said “assuming things procede biologically normally.” Are you saying you don’t know what it means for things to procede biologically normally concerning a fetus? (That’s a question, not a challenge.) > [@](#): > > Any number of things could happen between now and then, and your action is certainly part of those – what if, for instance, without your interference, the fetus would by some contrivance of circumstances have never been born? That would mean things were not going to procede biologically normally. > [@](#): > > Your harming of the fetus would then have saved the life of the child, even though it may suffer by some measure because of what you did! > > One could also argue that the child with the missing leg is a different entity from the child that has two legs, and thus, any action (or lack thereof!) that leads to one being born instead of the other means that one of the two is denied existence, so you’d be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. I’ll be interested to see if anyone actually wants to make that argument. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2009, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451/17 "2009-03-16T16:06:55Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > I think there’s a lot of discussion swept under the rug in formulating the hypothetical like this – how does one establish that the fetus is ‘due to develop’ into the child? Any number of things could happen between now and then, and your action is certainly part of those – what if, for instance, without your interference, the fetus would by some contrivance of circumstances have never been born? If we’re talking about a fetus and not an embryo, it’s likely that both nature and his mother intend for him to come to term because this creature becomes a fetus at 8 weeks’ development and most miscarriages happen by 10 weeks and abortions by 12 weeks. So unless we’re thinking that this loss of limb occurs in the first 4 of the 32 weeks he is still developing, it’s likely that the child **would** become C without someone acting to harm it. I don’t like the argument that harming F doesn’t result in harming C because C “doesn’t exist yet.” Without interference F would become C, so how can that argument be made? Can we make this same argument about something else and have it make sense rather than be a rationalization for our actions? Hmmm. Let’s say I own a peanut factory, and I know that there is a samonella problem with the peanuts. I don’t do anything about it, and allow those peanuts to be processed into peanut butter, which is eventually bought by another company and used for peanut butter crackers. You buy some of those crackers and die of food poisoning. I didn’t poison you because you didn’t eat my peanuts, you ate peanut butter crackers which didn’t exist yet when I was aware of the problem. I’m not responsible for your death, right? Or are the peanuts and the peanut butter crackers connected, even though there has been a lot of change since the peanuts existed in their raw form? ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2009, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451/18 "2009-03-16T16:25:11Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > I don’t understand. I said “assuming things procede biologically normally.” Are you saying you don’t know what it means for things to procede biologically normally concerning a fetus? (That’s a question, not a challenge.) It’s clear what you mean by biological normality – that the fetus is carried to term, is born and develops into a healthy child. But it seems to me that this biological normality is a complete red herring – an arbitrary way to connect the fetus to one of its potential end-products, with the added (implicit) claim that it’s somehow the ‘right’ way. It’s certainly a _possible_ way, but, in order to establish a sort of continuity of identity, you’d have to argue that it’s the _only_ possible way. In other words, ‘child C’ isn’t the guaranteed outcome of the fetus’ gestation and birth – there are numerous different possibilities, due to environmental influences, genetic predispositions (that can either be triggered or not), and simple chance. Your biological normality merely selects one (or actually, a couple – I’d think there are several different outcomes of biologically normal gestation) over the others in an arbitrary fashion, and posits this as the ‘correct’ identification between fetus and child. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2009, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451/19 "2009-03-16T16:43:12Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > Let’s say I own a peanut factory, and I know that there is a samonella problem with the peanuts. I don’t do anything about it, and allow those peanuts to be processed into peanut butter, which is eventually bought by another company and used for peanut butter crackers. You buy some of those crackers and die of food poisoning. I didn’t poison you because you didn’t eat my peanuts, you ate peanut butter crackers which didn’t exist yet when I was aware of the problem. I’m not responsible for your death, right? Or are the peanuts and the peanut butter crackers connected, even though there has been a lot of change since the peanuts existed in their raw form? :dubious: How’s that even remotely analogous? In your example, you put things in motion (or let things be put in motion) that resulted in harming somebody; the same thing would be to hit me in the head with an axe, and claim that the axe did it. That the peanuts changed form is wholly irrelevant, since there is a direct connection between your (lack of) action and the harm it causes. If the peanuts were an analogy for the fetus, and the peanut butter one for the child, and if your action on the peanuts had brought possible harm to the peanut butter, then there’d be a connection to the case at hand; the way you put this, however, you merely have engaged in a clear-cut case of negligent homicide. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2009, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451/20 "2009-03-16T16:56:32Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > I don’t like the argument that harming F doesn’t result in harming C because C “doesn’t exist yet.” Without interference F would become C, so how can that argument be made? Can we make this same argument about something else and have it make sense rather than be a rationalization for our actions? Hmmm. I think you’re misunderstanding. The argument isn’t, that because C doesn’t exist yet, you aren’t to blame for any harm you cause ever. Just that you aren’t causing any harm to C _yet_. Because C doesn’t exist. Once C does exist, and presuming your harm to F has carried onto C, then yes, you’ve caused them harm, then. To go with your peanut butter analogy; when your peanuts are sitting in your factory, ready to be shipped out to make peanut butter crackers, you’ve done no harm yet. But once you start giving people food poisoning, then you’ve done harm, even though the precipitous action was a while ago. You’re very much reponsible for my death - you just weren’t responsible for it when the peanuts were sitting in your factory, because I wasn’t yet dead. Seems reasonable enough to me. The part at which we seperate harm is not the changing nature of the actioned-upon object, but time. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/harming-a-fetus-and-harming-a-child/489451.md?page=2)