The difference in the case of temporary vegetative states as oppose to permant vegetative state and fetuses is that the former already has a history of personhood and has a reasonable chance of revovery. A fetus has no history of personhood and so, isn’t a person in the past or the present, and - if it is aborted- in the future.
A person in a permanent vegetative state is already dead. He/she has ceased to exist as a “person” and has no chance to ever regain that personhood.
And yet, there’s a problem with this, also. Sometimes people wake from very lengthy comas. I knew a young man who had been in a coma for 9 years before he woke up. Another man recently woke up after 19 years in a coma.
Now, in the Schiavo case, it may be obvious due to physical degeneration of the brain that she can never, ever, wake. But I don’t think we can say that about all individuals who are in “permanent” vegetative states. How permanent is 9 years? How about 19? Even if these instances of waking up are rare as snowflakes in August, I think it’s risky to say “Rarely does one wake, therefore they may all be treated as non-persons.” (This argument, incidentally, is similar to the one used to counter the death penalty: some occasionally are proved to be innocent.)
Chotii, I’m only talking about people who have no chance whatever of recovering consciousness. Not a statistically low chance, but a physiologically impossible chance such as the Schiavo case. By permanent, I mean permanent like when the person no longer has a cerebral cortex or has suffered a similar injury to or loss of tissue in the cognitive part of the brain.
I also think that in long term vegetative cases, like I said, disconnecting life support should be a legal option for family memebers, especially if the victim has specified such a wish prior to becoming so incapacitated.
To addrss the original OP, I would almost certainly abort, unless I had had severe difficulty and was absolutely tied to the idea of having a genetic child of my own (that is, one with my genes).
You see, I figure that had I chosen to have children, I would have had a limit on the number of children I would have had. Let’s say that was two. Then the choice here is to let this child grow up (if s/he could survive) in pain and possible retardation, or to allow one of the millions of other potential children wandering around my ovaries to come into being. Either way, one child is born, another isn’t. I believe that I would choose to bear that child that had the best shot at a happy, comparatively pain-free existence. That would mean aborting this fetus. Or foetus, if you’re a Brit.
WOuld this be a selfish decision? To some extent. Lord knows, though, no one who tries to be a good parent to any degree makes selfishness their highest priority. Had I chosen to have children, I would have wanted them to have the best shot at being happy and healthy that I could. Sure, the disabled child could grow up to be another Hawkings or Beethoven, or at least a happy being who loves life. But at that stage of things, I’d go with the odds.
Of course, I’ve never been pregnant or faced with a decision like this. It’s possible that actually carrying the fetus would change my attitude.
Sorry, just got to this. Why would a “history of personhood” be relevant if the entity does not possess “personhood” at the moment? The “history” is not relevant to one who will not regain sentience, according to your statement. It appears only to carry weight if there will be future sentience, and seems only to serve as a way to justify abortion.
A temporarily vegetative being who will possess sentience at some point in the future is identical, in its current state, to some fetuses in that regard: he is a mass of cells without self-awareness, perception, or any brain activity at all. If we are obligated as his fellow man to respect his life, it is because he will at some point in the future possess sentience, according to your own beliefs. Explain how the “history of personhood” is a meaningful qualifier–i.e., something other than an arbitrary distinction that allows you to assign rights to one being but not to another. This “history” certainly has no value to the temporarily vegetative being. He lacks the capacity to value anything.
This concept of “personhood” is either important or it is not. If the absence of sentience excludes the possibility of personhood, than it does so for the temporarily vegitative being as well. We should be able to kill him with impunity.
From an objective standpoint, the brain structure that contains this persons personality is still intact and already exists at the present moment. It is like a computer harddrive filled with information but the computer is switched off. If hard drive A is completely blank, and hard drive B has somebody’s life work in programming on it, I think a meaningful distinction can be made between the two even if hard drive B can’t be easily accessed at the present time.
The temporary vegetable still has all the relevant characteristics of “personhood” (i.e. memories, personality, etc.) extant within the physiology of his brain. These are physical properties, not theoretical, philosophical or “spiritual” ones.
A person in a state like Schiavo’s has had those properties destroyed. They no longer exist.
A fetus never had them to begin with. A personality is like software. In a fetus it hasn’t been installed yet, in Schiavo, it’s been erased. In a temporary state, it still exists but the hardware has been damaged making the software temporarily inaccessible. It’s still there, though, and it can presumably be recovered (albeit, there may be some degree of “corruption”).
With Schiavo, there’s nothing left to recover. It’s all gone. The hardware is melted.
In a fetus, nothing has yet been installed. It’s blank. There is nothing to “lose.”
A newborn child doesn’t have memories either, and its personality is indistinguishable from that of a late-term fetus. In fact, the only different between a newborn and a late-term fetus is passage through the birth canal.
So if the lack of memories and personality is indeed sufficient grounds for killing a fetus, then why shouldn’t we condone the killing of newborns. Heck, even liberal “bioethicist” Dr. Peter Singer of Princeton University recognizes that there is not relevant distinction between a fetus and a newborn. Instead of giving up abortion though, he advocates the freedom to kill newborns insteads.
Do you really want to go that route?
Like I said before, in the basically theoretical case of third trimester, elective termination of pregnancy (something that doesn’t actually happen IRL), just deliver the fetus alive and make it a ward of the state or something. The woman has the right to get it out of her body, that doesn’t mean it can’t be removed intact.
Once it’s out of the body it becomes a person (in that it is no longer part of someone else’s body).
The number of cases where a woman would carry a pregnancy to eight or nine months and arbitrarily decide to terminate for no reason are ridicuolously small, though.
Well then, what about second trimester fetuses that are delivered prematurely? These fetuses can survive as early as 17 weeks into the pregnancy. By your logic then, the mother should feel free to kill these prematurely delivered infants, if she so desires (say, because she had a change of mind about keeping the child).
Incidentally, I’d like to point out that you have yet to provide any basis for your definition of “personhood.” Since you’re the one who claims that this is the relevant deciding factor, it seems to me that you should have such a definition prepared – one which was firmly established prior to Roe v. Wade (as opposed to, say, a “definition” which was conveniently developed afterwards, in order to justify abortion).
Once it’s out of her body, she no longer has any rights over it. As long as it IS in her body, she’s the ONLY one that has any rights.
As for a definition of “person”: I’ll stick with the very sensible legal definition. No reason to concoct a new definition concocted simply to serve an anti-choice agenda.
No, those characteristics don’t exist. The vegetative state, by definition, precludes memories, personality, etc., while that state persists.
“Inaccessible” is a meaningless euphemism here. There is no “person” to access the physical “software,” not if sentience marks the boundary of personhood. And the physical form that permits personality to exist–i.e., our bodies–is not the personality itself. “Personhood” either exists without sentience as a necessary condition or it doesn’t.
I believe my point still stands until you can show why a temporarily vegetative person at that moment is afforded a right to live. That right can certainly not be a function of the value that person assigns to his existence or to his past–that capacity does not exist. The “software” that makes possible personality is not, by itself, a person or a personality; otherwise the permanently vegetative person would not be removed from life support.
But they DO exist. These are physiological properties. They are physically present in the meat of the brain. They have not yet been lost. The “person” has not died yet.
What makes you think there isn’t any sentience in such a person? It’s there. The person is just in a hibernative state. Brain activity has not ceased functioning.
[quote[I believe my point still stands until you can show why a temporarily vegetative person *at that moment* is afforded a right to live. That right can certainly not be a function of the value that person assigns to his existence or to his past–that capacity does not exist. The “software” that makes possible personality is not, by itself, a person or a personality; otherwise the permanently vegetative person would not be removed from life support.[/QUOTE]
I already said that I would define a “permanent” vegetative state as a state in which the physiological material of “personhood” has been destroyed. When the part of the brain which thinks and remembers no longer exists, the “person” no longer exists.
I can’t give a direct cite, but this comes close. It happenned fairly recently in the U.K. and was front-page news.
They do not exist. The physiological properties that allow for a sentient being to remember are not, by themselves, memories. The absence of brain activity, the loss of sentience, render the physical properties mere potentiality with regard to memories or personaility. And I know what you think about “potential” persons.
Well, perhaps you and I have a different definition of “vegetative.” Just to be clear, I am referring to temporary “flat-liners,” people who have no brain activity. An example of a temporarily vegetative individual would be certain patients who have experienced extreme hypothermia. They exhibit no brain activity, but can in certain instances recover. So, what makes me think there isn’t any sentience in such a person? The absence of any brain activity.
Yes, I understand you said that. This does not clarify your point regarding temporary vegetative states.
Er…Was it you who gave the news story cite about “17 weeks” earlier in the thread? Because the baby in that article wasn’t born at 17 weeks. His twin miscarried at 17 weeks, and he himself was born well after 30 weeks. I don’t think there’s been a baby (who lived) born yet that was younger than 22 or 23 weeks gestation.
More here .
There’s potential, and then there’s potential.
If a person in a temporary vegetative state wakes up, he will have his memories and personality back (at least most of them). He won’t have to relearn every little thing he’s experienced in his life. Obviously those memories are stored in his brain. Quibble about whether those are “memories” or “physiological properties that allow for a sentient being to remember” if you want - the fact is something’s still there.
A fetus, OTOH, is a blank slate. The potential it has is the potential to become a person, to form memories and personality from experiences that have not happened yet, not to regain something that already existed.
When does the “blank slate” start becoming a “non-blank slate”? Before, during, or after birth? Maybe it’s the first time you open your eyes and notice your surroundings, even in-utero? Hearing your mother singing, even in-utero? Feeling your mother turn to her side in bed in-utero? Memory and passage through a birth canal are not mutually inclusive and to decide when to abort (or kill, if memory kicks in after birth) based on the “blankness of the slate” is not really a good indicator to base the decision.
As for pain, everyone experiences it in their lives, disabled or not. Some far worse than others, disabled or not. We’ve worked with genetic disabilities, and also with brain trauma disabilities that occurred after-birth. I know several disabled people who have NO perception of pain. Pain knows no boundaries when it comes to people with disabilities or people in car accidents, or burn victims, or arthritis, etc., etc. Again, not a good indicator to base a decision on.
<mini-rant>
I guess what I am saying is this…The decision to abort is a selfish one by the parent(s) and nothing more than that. To base the decision that the potentially disabled fetus is going to go through a life of pain and suffering is just a selfish cop-out by the parent(s), when we see people of all ages who are not disabled going through pain and suffering every day. To say “I don’t want him/her go through the pain”, is like saying you don’t want him/her to be human like the rest of us…what the hell is “right” about that?
</mini-rant>