Rather than attack someone’s concept of fetal personhood, why not try to convince them of the existence of female personhood?
I’d say that its up to the carrier of the child - up until the child is born ‘naturally’ - as in when it is full term*. After it is born - it then has protections of being a “child” (and there are known procedures/processes in place to handle that child should the mother no longer wish to keep it).
There are any number of reasons that a person may choose later in the process to abort, none of which is any of your (or mine) business - forcing them to make a ‘snap’ decision earlier in the process is actually more harmful than a ‘late term abortion’ is (conceivably).
*we’re not talking/concerned with premature births here for the sake of this, a premature ‘natural’ birth that results in a viable child is a child.
I used your link to start a new thread.
At this point, it becomes a semantic argument of what we mean by “personhood” and you’re entitled to your preference there. Regardless, there is a legal ramification to being considered a living human, which includes the right not to be killed without a legally justifiable cause. The issue here is whether a fetus or embryo should have the same legal status (for the most part) as a child does. Whether we call it “personhood” or something else doesn’t really matter.
Valid point.
I disagree. Law has to make a decision one way or another: a fetus either has the legal status of a child, or it does not. (Or it has some third legal status, to be defined.) Remaining mute on the subject is not at all possible.
Is a dog a person? Legally, no. The law can’t stay on the sidelines on that one, either, and it doesn’t.
Currently, according to US law, a fetus is not equivalent to a child. However, some states are passing laws that make it more like a child than it was before (e.g., if someone murders a pregnant woman, they can get the equivalent of two murder charges rather than one.)
That’s great, thanks!
Re: The law not taking a position is by definition neutral. It allows the individual patient and the physician to make the decision. You object to that only because you dogmatically oppose the decision that they might come to.
This isn’t true. Leaving aside life-death questions for a minute, people disagree on whether moderate corporal punishment of children (serious stuff I mean, not the occasional spanking a two year old) is moral or not. In some countries it is, in many it isn’t. As far I know, it is legal in the United States. You could call that a ‘neutral’ position, ‘leave it up to the parents’, but it isn’t really a neutral position. Leaving it up to the parents only makes sense if you’re operating on the presumption that moderate corporal punishment of children is either not bad at all, or at least not bad enough to override parental rights.
Would you agree that American laws, as compared to the laws of some European countries, could fairly be called ‘pro corporal punishment’ rather than neutral? Leaving it up to the parents isn’t a neutral position, any more than banning it would be. I don’t think there really is a neutral position here.
Re: I disagree. Law has to make a decision one way or another: a fetus either has the legal status of a child, or it does not. (Or it has some third legal status, to be defined.) Remaining mute on the subject is not at all possible.
Yea, this.
Granting the embryo/fetus some third legal status would be interesting, but it seems to me if it has any quasi-personal or semi-personal status at all then it should have the right to life. Without that, none of the other rights much count. A prima facie right to life, maybe, which could be overridden in the case of medical emergencies.
Sounds pretty neutral to me. Outlawing it would be anti, and mandating it in schools for disciplinary measures might be an example of a pro-corporal punishment stance.
I disagree – American laws are neutral on corporal punishment. Staying out of it is pretty damn neutral. Just ask the Swiss.
Re: Staying out of it is pretty damn neutral. Just ask the Swiss.
About that, some people would argue (with justification) that the Swiss decision to ‘stay out of it’ in WWII was an abdication of moral responsibility, and was objectively pro-Nazi. Some wars it makes a lot of sense to stay out of. Against the Nazis, not so much.
(Not to Godwin the thread, but you did bring it up. And no, I don’t think abortion is comparable to Nazis- I think many or most pro-lifers are just mistaken about the moral status of the embryo not malicious).
It was a flippant remark, but the Swiss were truly neutral. I think neutrality in the face of the Nazis is wrong, but it’s still a ‘neutral’ position, not a ‘pro-Nazi’ position. It’s just not anti-Nazi enough to be the morally right decision, IMO.
In the same sense, not outlawing corporal punishment (and not outlawing abortion) is a neutral position. A pro-abortion position would be to mandate abortion, or to impose financial sanctions and hardships on those who do not choose abortion.
So, right now, the US government is neutral on corporal punishment and neutral on abortion. You might see such neutrality as wrong, as the Swiss neutrality against the Nazis may have been wrong, but it’s still neutral.
This is applicable to folks on both sides of the argument, isn’t it?
The one I hear the most often is the one where John the Baptist recognizes Jesus while they are both still in the womb, indicating that ensoulment (at least in the case of prophets and deities) can occur before you draw your first breath.
I agree. Both sides of the argument do this. Assuming away the issue of personhood isn’t going to convince anyone who isn’t already convinced on the personhood issue. Assuming ensoulment at conception isn’t going to convince anyone that isn’t already predisposed to believe it.
Post snipped
Just a quick quibble with the Violinist Analogy. In the VA, the person is forcibly attached to the violinist against their will. It is a rather crappy analogy unless it is pointed towards rape victims only, it falls apart when the sex is consensual. If a woman knows that pregnancy is a possible result of sex and has sex anyway, the resulting child isn’t forced upon her. The woman took the chance and lost the bet. This includes sex with birth control, as we all know that birth control isn’t perfect*.
As far as attacking fetal person-hood goes, I think that could be a two-edged sword for the pro-choice crowd. I am politically neutral on abortion but would prefer that abortions would happen to avert serious health risks to the mother. However, I have no real dog in this fight and don’t want it banned though I believe the moral issues are a lot more complicated than either side wants them to be.
Now, say the government gets a group of scientists together and they come up with a definition of a person. And it turns out that a fetus meets that definition at, say, 2 months (example only). Well, the time abortions are allowed just got shortened quite a bit.
Slee
- Yeah, some adults aren’t totally clear on the whole birth control thing. Need better education.
For the violinist thing, the ‘against their will’ bit doesn’t matter as compared to abortion (to me, at least). Sex is normal human behavior. If it turned out that eating fish included a small percentage chance of waking up attached to a violinist, it’s still reasonable for someone to have the right to sever the connection with the violinist after eating fish. Any and every individual has the right to expel anyone or anything from inside their body (or from utilizing their body), at any time, and for any reason. It doesn’t matter if they engaged in some risky behavior before, or even ‘invited them in’, metaphorically speaking… once you want them out, they have to get out. And if the won’t, you are free to expel them by force.
+1
Here’s some news out of Idaho:
And…
It seems to me that these children meet the definition of “personhood.” And yet, in Idaho, currently you are allowed to kill innocent persons by denying them access to medical treatment.
And in news that is surprising to no one, Rep. Perry (mentioned above who opposes changing the law) claims to be “pro-life.”
Just because someone consents to an activity, that doesn’t mean they have consented to every possible outcome of that activity. When I drive, there is a good chance that someone will smash into me. That doesn’t mean that I consented for them to smash into me.
Many people support a rape exception, and there is nothing inconsistent about it. Recalling the standard Violinist Analogy: does it matter if I actually invited the violinist to the connection, as opposed to being kidnapped and forced into the procedure against my will? Or, to make the analogy a bit tighter, suppose the Violinist Defense Group put on a “reverse lottery” that paid ticket-holders $100 but with a 1% chance that they would be selected to connect to the Violinist; and I took many tickets in the false hope that I wouldn’t “win”?
Reasonable people can differ on the answers but it’s not reasonable to suggest that no distinction can be made at all. The element of choice affects our placement on the moral hierarchy. This isn’t a controversial position at all and is deeply embedded in our culture; both legally and intuitively, it’s why we have so many variations on the notion of homicide.
That’s true, but invites an obvious a point of contention. How to we classify outcomes between ones that are reasonable, expected, and predictable vs. ones that are not? To take the flip side of your analogy: if someone drives drunk and kills someone, they don’t consent to having their bodily freedom taken away when we lock them up. And yet we do anyway, because as a society we’ve decided that accidents are a fairly predictable result of DUI, even if the driver had no ill intentions at all.
It doesn’t seem like there’s an automatic way to divide consequences between these two categories, as it hearkens to the very notion of free will.
I disagree again. Not having laws about corporal punishment is a neutral position in that it allows, for instance, some schools to engage in it and some to ban it, according to culture or whatever other factor. The law taking a position, as someone already pointed out, would be either universally banning it or conceivably even mandating it. The law taking no position on abortion – i.e.- there being no law – leaves the matter open to individual, cultural, and religious interpretation as well as medical judgment and medical ethics. Having strong anti-abortion laws essentially supersedes all of these, forcing a narrow and often religiously-based viewpoint on everyone, and in the worst cases of really bad legislation potentially even putting the woman’s life in danger contrary to medical judgment.
Of course it’s possible. We know what a “person” is in the ordinary meaning of the word, and when legal statutes begin with phrases like “every person commits a crime who …” or references to “causes harm to another person” we don’t generally find it necessary to define what a “person” is. It’s only when laws try to insinuate themselves into novel territory, such as declaring that a corporation or a fetus is a “person”, that such definitions explicitly come into play. That takes a deliberate and pro-active decision by a legislative body to take a position.
Of course I understand that the absence of law has consequences that are different than if a law had been enacted, but that’s not an argument about neutrality. Neutrality means that individual women, their families, and their doctors retain decision-making power without it being forced on them by force of law.
Amen, brother, nicely said!
I don’t think this really changes my point, though. I don’t think most people who commit a DUI consent to being put in prison, since (I think) most people don’t want to go to prison. What they consent to is driving drunk.
The law has decided that driving drunk is a crime and people who drive drunk have to suffer criminal consequences, but that’s been decided on grounds other than the issue of consent.