To me, the only reasonable positions people can take on this are as follows:
[ol]
[li]If you believe the fetus at eight months is not a person, then:[/li][LIST=a]
[li]If the mother aborts it, no person has died. No one is guilty of anything.[/li][li]If the father assaults the mother and kills the fetus, no person has died and the father is guilty of assault against the mother. (The same as assaulting her and removing some internal tissue that is not necessary for her survival)[/li][/ol]
[li]If you believe the fetus at eight months is a person, then:[/li][LIST=a]
[li]If the mother aborts it, a person has died, but it is “justifiable loss of human life” (justified either by medical reasons involving the health of the mother, or, for some people, justified by giving pre-eminence to a woman’s dominion over her body over another person’s right to life)[/li]
[li]If the father assaults the mother and kills the fetus, a person has died and the father is guilty of assault against the mother and of murder of the baby.[/li]
[/LIST]
[/LIST]
In this thread I see all sorts of criss-cross beliefs on the personhood of the fetus at eight months and whether the father is guilty of murder or not. None of those responses make sense, especially the ones that take into account whether the father considered the fetus a baby.
It should not matter to society whether the mother or father considers the fetus a person.
Society makes a decision on whether someone is a person, and once that decision is made, the killing of that someone is either murder/manslaughter or is nothing.
For example, society has decided that 1-year olds are people, so no matter how much some father believes that his 1-year old is not a person, if he kills it, it is murder.
It’s not clear what society has decided for 8-month old fetuses, but whatever the decision, our conclusion as to what crime was committed, if any, should follow one of the above conditionals (1a, 1b, 2a, 2b). We can’t just pick and choose our conclusions, depending on whim.
There are no “conditional people” who are people for some of us, but not people for the rest of us.