What Mace said – viability outside the womb. My position on this has been that the woman has a right to have the fetus removed from her body. If that can be done without killing it, then great. If not…oh well.
Do you believe that society has the obligation to take extreme measures to keep an expelled fetus alive, no matter the cost?
Do you believe that society has the obligation to take extreme measures to keep an abandoned infant alive, no matter the cost?
If you answer “no” to the first question and “yes” to the second, could you explain why the different answer?
Daniel
Look, self awareness can’t be the defintion of “personhood”, or the point at which the right to life vests, because under that criteria infanticide up to 1 year old would be legal.
We’ve had one poster here on the Dope (Blalron) who argued just that. But I tend to think that’s a pretty fringe position.
So can we all agree that any definition that permits infanticide is a flawed definition? Yes, some people and some cultures actually do or did decide that infanticide was acceptable, but is that what we want today? Do we want a law that gives dolphins human rights but not 1 year old babies?
Of course, in my opinion Bricker’s “unique DNA” test fails also. There are people who share DNA, there are people who have two fused cell lines with distinct DNA. Identical twins are two people, not one, chimeras are one person, not two. Conjoined twins are two people, not one, despite the fact that they share a body.
The point is, there is no scientific way to determine what a “person” is. There is no scientific way to determine who should have the right to vote. There is no scientific way to determine who should have the right to life. These are ethical, religious, and legal ideas, not scientific ones. The question we should be asking ourselves is “what kind of society do I want to live in?” And if others come to some different conclusions, by what criteria can we claim that we’re right and they’re wrong?
I have no problem with the idea that we need not grant a right to life to a developing fetus that still lacks any brain activity. It seems pretty reasonable to me, in fact that’s the position I advocate. But that isn’t because it’s a scientific fact that said fetus isn’t a human being with a right to life. It’s an arbitrary moral decision. It’s a reasonable decision, from my point of view, and if people disagree with me I might try to convince them my position was reasonable. But I couldn’t prove that my belief was the only correct one…it’s just one that I’m comfortable with, one that I can live with.
It’s scientific only in the sense that it isn’t contradictory with any scientific evidence. But I could choose some other criteria, for instance, that only entities who are able to successfully fight for their lives have the right to live. That’s not inconsistent with scientific evidence either. But not many people would subscribe to such a doctrine. I wouldn’t want to live in a society founded on that principle, but that doesn’t mean the principle is wrong, just that I don’t want it.
Now, there are ethical propositions that depend on scientific justifications that are just wrong, like claiming that since fetuses have no brain activity they cannot be human beings. However, it’s factually wrong that fetuses have no brain activity, since a “fetus” refers to the stage after an embryo yet before birth, so a 40 week unborn baby is a fetus, despite the fact that they could have more brain development than a 30 week old premature baby.
So back to abortion. What sort of regulation of abortion do we as a society want? None? Really? What sort of rights does a woman have over a fetus developing inside her body? Absolute rights? Is that what we want? What sort of intervention are we as individuals or as a society prepared to take if someone disagrees with us?
And even if one believes that criminalizing elective abortion isn’t helpful, what about, say, arguing that one ought not to have an elective abortion? Is there anything morally wrong with trying to convince people that abortion is generally the wrong thing to do? Or with holding a position about the ethical status of the fetus that is more nuanced than others? There are some here who seem to argue that any nuance in discussing the moral status of unborn babies is wrong–since any wavering on the issue could or would lead to criminalization of abortion.
The thing is, there are lots of ethical questions that depend on an acceptable ethics of abortion. Take genetic engineering. If an unborn baby is just a thing, then genetically engineering a human embryo is no more problematic than engineering an ear of corn. But could we ethically modify an unborn baby to be a circus freak, or an subnormal slave laborer, or a headless clone for spare parts? If the fetus is just a thing, why not? It seems to me that a pretty simple ethical doctrine allows us to forbid such things, the doctrine of implied consent. If an unconscious person is brought to a hospital they are provided with medical care even though they are unable to consent to that medical care, because we recognize that almost all reasonable people would consent to such care, and if you don’t consent you’d have to make some sort of effort to make sure you don’t get unwanted care. So we can easily imagine that an unconscious person (the unborn baby) would consent to be treated for genetic disease, or perhaps even performance enhancing treatments, but almost no one would consent to be turned into a circus freak or sub-omeguloid laborer.
What’s wrong with the idea that a fetus has some sort of moral significance, even if perhaps it isn’t the same significance as 1 week old baby? Or that more and more moral significance attaches to that unborn baby as it develops, such that a fertillized egg or totipotent cell line has moral significance only in that it can’t be used to create monsters, a fetus with no brain activity has more moral significance but isn’t subject to coercive state protection, a fetus with brain activity can only be destroyed if it has gross abnormalities or harms the mother, and a viable unborn baby can’t be harmed?
That’s a distinct possibility, alhtough I think other considerations come inot play when the technology for artificial wombs becomes available. Didn’t you participate in the GD thread aboout that very subject a few months ago?
But that amounts to the very same thing. We don’t define when killing is OK based whether or not “personhood” can be achieved. You said an ectopic pregnancy couldn’t be considered a human being, and **Bricker **asked you to define human being. You said it had to have the potiential to develop “personhood”.
We’re not discussing a “viable unborn baby”, Lemur. And nothing in your voluminous post addresses anything in my previous post.:
A fetus implanted in a fallopian tube will never develop higher brain functions.
A fetus implanted in a fallopian tube will never develop awareness.
A fetus implanted in a fallopian tube will never develop “personhood.”
Remember? El Salvador? Pregnant women being forced to risk their lives for absolutely no reason whatsoever?
<heartless bastard> Cost, for one thing. A foetus or premature baby often needs a lot of medical help (including equipment and in medical personnel terms) in order to just get to the stage the infant is at, and *then * it requires all that the infant needs on top of that. Would the medical system be able to cope with that obligation towards all expelled foetuses, as it does with abandoned infants? And if so, that’s still money, equipment, personnel, and time that could be going to help an adult (who it seems everyone is using as the benchmark for “personhood”). </heartless bastard>
Right. And a fetus implanted in a fellopian tube does not have that potential.
While I can see that line of reasoning, I’m not sure it’s really the one you use. Imagine an abandoned infant who, it’s immediately obvious, has a disease whose treatment is enormously expensive. Imagine an early-stage fetus who, it appears, is healthy. It’s easy to imagine circumstances under which the fetus would be less expensive to raise to adulthood than the born infant would be; but I have trouble imagining that our society would therefore accept killing the infant in order to save money, but would raise the fetus.
John, I don’t think I participated in that earlier thread; my apologies if I’m covering old ground.
Daniel
No one disputes those facts. But they are not the reason why it’s OK to abort.
Or, they are not the sole reasons, since we can think of instances when all those things are true, but we still don’t allow the individual to be killed. (We may allow the individula to die, but we don’t allow active killing.)
The reason you think it’s OK is because you don’t define a fetus as a human being. But that isn’t a scientific fact, it’s a moral judgement. **Bricker **defines a human being differently than you do. He’s not wrong, objectively, he just starts with different assumption. And yet he still thinks it’s OK to abort in that case because of the threat to the health or life of the mother.
No problem. I just thought I remembered you having particpated. And it’s not like we all agreed on one conclusion, but there were many staunch pro-choicers who said they could see outlawing abortion if the the fetus (or whatever) could be removed without harm to the mother and implanted in an artificial womb. I was not one of them, though.
No. No. No. Again, John, I am specifically addressing ectopic pregnancies, not viable pregnancies. If there is intervention on behalf of a medical professional, the fetus will die. If there is no intervention on behalf of any medical professional, an ectopic pregnancy will resolve itself when the fallopian tube bursts. The fetus will die. The woman who was pregnant may die. Either way, the fetus will die. There is no possibility of development for an ectopic pregnancy, with the exception being cited before; it was a “miracle baby” because the odds against successful reimplantation are so astronomical as to be zero. Do you see the distinction I’m making, here? I’m not discussing all pregnancies, just ectopic ones.
C’mon, John, c’mon. Give a real world, ripped from the papers example of a individual, a real life breathing human being, that’s comparable to a woman with an ectopic pregnancy.
Really? In Great Debates? That’s hard to believe. 
Daniel
I think you have. I don’t have any problems accepting Blackmun’s Roe v. Wade as the current law.
Of course, as any citizen is entitled to do, I am working to CHANGE that law as best I can. But for the moment, I certainly acknowledge its validity.
It’s funny that some of these RCC positions can lead to sterilization when the RCC won’t allow women willingly to get sterilized or use birth control. If the church forces it on you, it becomes a “good.” If you want it, it’s “bad.”
IMHO no, no, yes. The first two cases are wrong because a person has to live with the bad results of your engineering; in the third case, there is no person.
First, like **Left Hand of Dorkness ** said, “self awareness” is largely being used as a shorthand; that’s why I called it “necessary but not sufficient”.
Second, I do think chimps deserve more rights; not as much as a human ( So no, no voting for chimps ) but more than most animals.
Third, the mirror test is not exactly the most precise of methods; I’d hardly legalize the killing of one year olds due to it.
Fourth, since abortion is about killing a fetus and not a one year old or a chimp, it doesn’t matter.
It has nothing to do with "goal posts, and everything to do with certainty. I am certain that a two month fetus is not a person; I am not at all certain of that once the brain is fully formed and operating.
Assuming we know someone isn’t a person, age doesn’t matter; that’s why organ harvesting the brain dead is ethical. Invent a reliable “personhood detector” and I can answer your question.
I said :
His definition would only fix the first argument ( not the clone one, despite what he says ). Not the rest.
In what way ?
Well and good. Do you agree with Justice Blackmun’s definition of “personhood”?
I absolutely agree with Justice Blackmun that a fetus is not a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.
snerk Which doesn’t really answer my question, but I’m ready to let it drop.
Do you ever answer a yes or no question with either yes or no? 
Yes.
Seriously, I don’t think you were asking what you think you were asking, to paraphrase Inigo Montoya.
Blackmun’s comment about personhood was very limited. He was addressing the issue of abortion being prohibited completely because the unborn being was a “person” within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. He concluded, correctly, based on the history of the amendment, the common usage of the word, and the few court decisions that addressed the issue that it was not.
Notably, he does not go on to say that the unborn are not persons, or alive, or entitled to some legal rights and recognition. In fact, to the contrary, he says:
So don’t go to Justice Blackmun for a legal definition of personhood. I do not think he means what you think he means.