If a fetal incubator were invented...

Great Debates
1

… would you support its use in lieu of abortion?

Say that an embryo or fetus could be extracted alive and healthy. This procedure is just as safe, if not safer, than a surgical abortion. The embryo or fetus is placed in an incubator where it will develop, barring any major genetic malfunction, into a full-term infant.

I am curious to know if you, pro-choice or pro-life, have problems with this.

Specifically, say the state required a woman who was going to have an abortion to have this procedure instead. Would you support that?

Say that having this procedure is legally equivalent to putting the child up for adoption, therefore the state has is the new guardian and must put up the cost for the incubation. Would you support that?

Say that the procedure can be done on any willing woman, but the incubation is only available for an embryo or fetus if it has a sponsor who will pay the costs of the incubation and who will adopt the baby once it is… er… decanted. Would you support that?

Say that removing the embryo or fetus as early as possible reduces risk of complications from alcohol or drug abuse by the woman. Lawmakers suggest that alcoholic women be subject to the procedure for the sake of the embryo fetus even if the woman is not willing. Would you support that?

Say incubated fetuses become wards of the state and are therefore no longer the responsibility of the “parent” in any way. This procedure is just as safe, if not safer, than a surgical abortion. Abortions are then outlawed. Would you support that? What if the “parent” is still financial responsible? Would you support that?

I’m not trying to come up with an exhaustive list of questions. To some extent, I think the incubator issue reveals a little about how we approach abortion issues.

2

Instead of? No. As a separate option? Yes.

Absolutely.

Yes.

No. If she isn’t willing, all bets are off. Much as I’m against babies born as addicts, no one has the right to forcibly abort a pregnant woman’s fetus.

No. 1. I still would not want the right to terminate my pregnancy taken from me. 2. What guarantees are there that this child will be placed with a loving, supportive family? If some part of my DNA is going to evolve into a child, I’m still going to want to make sure it’s cared for as well as I would care for it. By removing my involvement completely, you are also removing my ability to do the best possible thing for a child that would otherwise have been born to me.

No. Again, still taking away the right to terminate a pregnancy is not acceptable.

It’s an interesting theory. To me, it will always be about control over my body, and how much of it I am willing to give up.

3

FYI, here is another thread on this issue.

The way I phrased the question in that thread was:

If I recall correctly, people had some good arguments on both sides of the issue.

4

The only problem I see with incubating fetuses instead of aborting them is that there’s not exactly a lot of people lined up to adopt black babies or babies with health/addiction problems.

5

I’m not sure I agree that the arguments in favor of the right to choose an abortion would still hold if such an incubator were available. Abortion rights are predicated on the right to control over one’s own body, ISTM. If a fetus can be removed from a woman’s body without actually being killed, but still ensuring that her pregnancy is terminated and she doesn’t have to go through the physical effects of pregnancy, I’m not convinced that there’s any compelling argument anymore in favor of allowing the woman (or anybody else) to choose to kill the fetus.

In those circumstances, I think the woman’s role (and that of the man who impregnated her) would be comparable to that of a man who unwillingly becomes a father when his partner chooses not to have an abortion, or that of a woman who unwillingly becomes a mother because she wasn’t able to obtain an abortion.

I.e., the eventual baby can be put up for adoption if both parents agree. But if one parent wants the baby and the other doesn’t, the reluctant parent is still on the hook for financial support (and still entitled to parental rights).

Haven’t figured out who should be responsible for supporting the fetus while it’s still in the incubator, though. Probably the birth parents and/or the state, although adoptive parents might offer fetal support in order to attract birth parents.

Yes, I realize that such developments would probably result in the birth of some hundreds of thousands more unwanted babies every year, assuming there were enough incubators to keep all those fetuses in, and I don’t think that would be a good thing.

However, I think abortion rights (which I wholeheartedly support at present) are based on the right to control one’s own body, and that although that right outweighs any early-term fetal right to life, it doesn’t imply that the fetus (even at an early stage) has no rights at all. I can’t come up with a valid reason for permitting feticide if the fetus can survive outside the mother’s body, any more than I can think of a valid reason for permitting infanticide, no matter how many unwanted fetuses or unwanted babies there may be.

(However, I’d say that procedures like the “morning after” pill, which are used before there’s any evidence that a fetus even exists, would still be legit under such circumstances.)

As for forcing substance abusers to surrender their fetuses to the incubator against their wills: nuh-fucking-uh. Mandatory drug counseling or some such, okay, but the woman’s right to control her own body is still primary here.

6

First, let’s make sure we have the definitions right. For humans:

Embryo: 0-8 weeks
Fetus: 8 weeks - birth

You can define other subdivisions, but the OP mentioned those two terms…

I agree with Maureen’s responses (with the elaboration noted below), but would add that if the state (ie, society) were to require this option, then the state should be prepared to pick up the tab of incubating the fetus and raising the child.

There is one other piece of subtelty to this discussion that I would add. I’m willing to recognize that an 8 month old fetus has a “right to life” in the sense that it should not be aborted at the whim of the mother. On the other end of things, a 1 month old fetus does not have any claim to a “right to life”. It really can be characterized as “a clump of cells”, and can’t reasonably be called a human unless we invoke some religious argument.

So, the question becomes: at what point inbetween do we agree that the embryo or fetus has a “right to life”. Is it when the baby could survive outside the womb (all technological help inlcuded)? Or is it when the heart starts beating, or there are detectable brain waves, or when some other physiological milestone is passed? I think this is the key question to be asked, and that I’d be willing to say that until that agreed upon milestone is reached, the embryo or fetus does not have a right to life. I don’t know enough about fetal development to know what all the options are, but I suspect I’d settle for something related to the functioning of the brain, whether that is the presence of brain waves or the ability to feel pain or something along those lines.

Once that milestone is reached, I think it’s fair to invoke the incubator idea propsed in the OP, assuming such technology is available. But I find the hypothetical situation of assuming that this technology is as safe as pregnancy for the mother and as safe as in vivo development for the fetus to be so far beyond our current technological capabilities as to be nothing short of SciFi.

7

I’ve often wondered about this. Currently the official legal reason why states have to allow abortion is because pre-viability an abortion in which the child dies is necessary to end the pregnancy (and the SCOTUS feels a woman should have the right to end a pregnancy.) Post-viability the state is permitted to prohibit abortion of an otherwise viable fetus excepting in cases of the mother’s health. And states can also pass laws which require the medical professionals to take steps to save the fetus once it is post-viable.

If viability was meaningfully possible at any point in a pregnancy, then legally speaking states wouldn’t be going against Roe or any other abortion decision if they required fetuses to be removed and kept viable (Planned Parenthood v. Casey specifically ended the trimester framework and said states can step in whenever viability occurs.)

What this would mean for society is anyone’s guess. Maybe we’d see a return to large-scale orphanages like in years past, or like you see in China and some other countries.

For many people this would simply mean more adoptable children would be available as there would be more white babies on the market. So these orphanages would probably be populated by black babies without good prospects of being adopted.

8

I think I agree.

I would agree with this, too. In such a circumstance, I don’t see any reason why the mother should have any more say than the father over the fate of the embryo/fetus.

We’d still have to decide at what point to consider the developing embryo/fetus/whatever a human being. Before that point, we would probably treat it as we do fertilized eggs of, say, a couple seeking fertility treatment. After that point, it would be imperative that it be given the opportunity to live and develop into a fully grown human being. But this wouldn’t have to interfere with the mother’s “right to control her own body.”

9

It also should be noted that women do not have the right to abort viable fetuses on a whim at any stage in the pregnancy. As of right now viable fetuses only exist around twenty-two weeks or later (typically later, I think.)

Laws can and are crafted which specifically prohibit aborting a fetus that would otherwise be viable.

Reading the Roe v. Wade decision and the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision are informative and everyone should read them. The SCOTUS doesn’t believe that killing a fetus is an inviolable right. Maureen has practically walked into a slippery slope. She argues she should be allowed to murder a fetus simply because there’s the chance it would go to a bad home. That’s not a-okay. You don’t have the right to murder a born child that is being taken away from you by the government simply because you’re afraid foster care will be harmful to the child.

Roe v. Wade is a classic rights weighing argument. The idea that pre-natal life has no rights, or that it isn’t legally meaningfully is folly. Roe v. Wade states this explicitly. Pre-natal life and the welfare of pre-natal life falls under the purview of the state the moment the fetus reaches viability.

If a fetal incubator was in existence that could make it reasonably sure a fetus at any stage could be brought to term, then viability would practically exist from the moment of conception on. And thus, under the decisions reached in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the state would have under its authority the protection of that pre-natal life all the way from conception.

The state could not prevent the removal of said pre-natal life, as the SCOTUS recognizes a woman has a right to end a pregnancy but not the right to end a viable fetus. The woman only has the legally protected right to end an unviable fetus because of the fact that doing so is, with current technology, the only way to end an early-term pregnancy. But the state certainly could, and in fact certainly should, outlaw abortions that involve the killing of viable pre-natal life in light of the existence of fetal incubators.

Obviously for this law to fit in the framework of the Casey decision there would have to be exceptions for health reasons (if a murderous abortion was the only way to end the pregnancy safely, for example.)

Virginia’s current law is a good example of what should probably happen in the case of a fetal incubator being invented:

C is the interesting one. Most states regulate their abortion law on the trimester framework to this day, instead of the viability framework that is provided in Casey.

Simply expand this law to cover abortions throughout the entire pregnancy (requiring measures for life support of the product of any abortion in which there is viability) would be quite constitutional I think. Or at least it woudl quickly become so if the SCOTUS was confronted with a fetal incubator.

10

Precisely. And the SCOTUS cases which have developed abortion law in this country make it quite clear that you can destroy a fetus to end a pregnancy precisely because, pre-viability, it is really the only way it can be done. If viability was meaningfully possible from any point in the pregnancy the entire rational behind abortion law as laid out by SCOTUS decisions would be thrown out the window.

Maureen’s argument is one of that defies logic, it has nothing to do with “control of your body” as to what happens to the fetus once it is removed. And you shouldn’t have the power to kill it in the removal process if that is not medically necessary. If you want to end a pregnancy under this incubator scenario it’s still obviously possible, you just lose the right to kill the fetus on a whim in the process.

11

The “it’s partly my DNA so I should get to decide its fate” argument is a potentially dangerous one to use here, too. The same logic could be used at present to argue that a reluctant father-to-be should be able to insist on an abortion, rather than allowing his genetic offspring to be born and placed into suboptimal care.

However, John Mace raises an interesting point about whether there’s a post-conception period during which an embryo/fetus might be considered to have no human status and no right to life even if it would be viable in an incubator at that stage.

As you point out, Roe and Casey don’t really determine such questions because at present, there’s no practical point in considering whether a pre-viable embryo/fetus has any right to life (unless we’re going to argue, with the anti-abortion advocates, that such a right not only exists but even outweighs the woman’s right to choose an abortion).

At present, the only two options for a pre-viable fetus are to leave it in vivo or kill it. And the woman’s right to control her body is held to give her the right to make the choice between those options, so the question of whether the fetus at that stage has even a minimal right to life is kind of irrelevant.

But if the OP’s “fetal incubator” existed, it wouldn’t be irrelevant any more. In those circumstances, might we end up deciding with John that the embryo/fetus simply isn’t meaningfully human at all up to a certain point in its development, even if it could be viable in an incubator before that point?

As I said, I think “morning-after” pills would still be legitimate, in the absence of any knowledge whether an embryo even existed or not, even if an incubator could keep it alive if removed. So I guess that puts me in the position of arguing that a possible embryo need not be considered human up to, say a day or so after its possible conception.

If we decide that an embryo/fetus up to two days or one month or 8 weeks or whatever isn’t human and has no right to life, even if it could be viable in an incubator, that brings up the question: who has the right to make the decision to kill such an embryo/fetus, and under what circumstances?

12

I don’t think so. Currently, many adoption agencies allow the pregnant mother to interview prospective parents and review applications they submit. Why should this be any different? If there is a child of mine out there, I want to know it’s being well provided for. I’m not refusing the right of women to choose this option. Simply that, if this is going to be an option, abortion should not necessarily be completely outlawed.

13

No, it doesn’t defy logic, it simply makes a different logical argument.

One must ask oneself if a zygote (ie, a fertilized ovum) can reasonably be defined as a human life. I have yet to see a non-religious argument to that effect. Where in the devlepoment process is it reasonable to call the embryo or fetus a human? What exaclty are you “killing” when you teminate a pregancy at 1 week or 4 weeks and how is that substantially different from getting rid of fat cells during lipo? I say this in all seriousness.

We will one day be able to clone humans from skin cells. That day will come long before the OP’s incubator will be invented. Will that make getting a facial the equivalent of having an abortion at 8 months? No. We cannot call something human simply because we have the technology to make that something into a human.

14

How about that it’s rather cruel to force an unwanted, unloved, unsupported child into the world just to make some kind of religious/phillosophical point ? Basically, we are talking about a child born as a political tool, then discarded upon birth.

I agree with Martin Hyde on something ! :eek:

Ok, disagreeing again. Killing a fetus isn’t murder, as it’s not a person. Killing a child is murder, because a child is a person.

Re the OP : I oppose any use of coercion. If either parent wants the baby, they should gain custody, or if they arrange an adoption. Otherwise, terminate it. In my opinion, the default choice should be to terminate the fetus.

15

Because adoption agencies don’t allow the pregnant mother the alternative of killing her infant if she decides she doesn’t like any of the adoptive parents. She may have some say in the infant’s ultimate destination, but she doesn’t get to decide whether it will live or not.

Well, if we don’t justify infanticide on those grounds, I don’t see how we can justify feticide on them.

Again, the only currently recognized justification for feticide is that the woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy (which at present can be accomplished only by feticide/embryocide or whatever the term is) outweighs any right to life possessed by the fetus.

If, however, a woman can terminate a pregnancy at any stage without requiring feticide, then we have to tackle the hard question of what fetal rights really are.

Hmmm. Point.

16

That’s no reason to not allow a woman the right to interview the prospective parents. As I said, I believe it should be an option in addition to abortion. If a mother chooses the option of this procedure, then she agrees not to terminate the pregnancy. However, it is still my child, and I have a responsibility to it to make sure it’s well cared for. Whether it’s grown inside my body or decanted in a jar makes no difference.

17

But AFAICT, according to our current understanding of abortion rights, there would be no justification for continuing to permit abortion if this incubation procedure were available. If a woman can terminate a pregnancy at any point without committing feticide, why allow feticide at all?

18

Yes, our current abortion law is built around the viability of the infant. But I don’t see why we should constrain our analysis of this hypothetical technology by a legal argument made in the absence of that technology. We’ve never had to consider the viability of a 1 month old embryo.

19

Right John, I know you’re saying that (and I think you make some good points), but so far I don’t see Maureen saying that.

AFAICT Maureen is simply out to defend a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy (a position with which I agree). But given the OP’s technological premise, there’s no reason why that right should require us to continue permitting feticide, since feticide would no longer be required for pregnancy termination.

20

An infant is not a fetus. A fetus is not a person; it’s not even an animal. It has no rights, morally at least.

Bolding mine. As far as I know, it’s an anti abortion political term; it has no “correct” usage. As for the rest, the fetus has no rights, so any desire of the mother outweighs it’s nonexistent rights.

It’s not hard : None. Does a tumor have rights ?

Why not ?