But you’re responding to one point while pretending the other point doesn’t exist. All points should be considered together: A fetus is not a person AND there are high-stakes economic and environmental issues at play here AND the government doesn’t have the right to impose these values on a woman.
Seems to me a straight question of neurological development. We know a baby has capacity for conciousness when born; we know a fertilized egg has none. At some point between those two, neurons develop and are organized.
If they somehow managed to lodge themselves in your body, then yeah - I’d say it’s justifiable.
Seems to me that if the first wasn’t true, the other points would not matter. That is, if abortion really was the killing of a “human”, the government would have a legitimate interest in protecting its rights. Whether those rights would trump the rights of the mother not to be so burdened would then be a difficult calculation.
This is the point I fear gets lost in all the crap about arguing over the definitions of “life”, “person”, “human”, “baby”, etc. If there’s a growing object in my body, and if left unchecked it will or could impose serious physical and financial harship on me, and I want it out, then out it goes. And since I want this right for myself, as a reasonable person I have to recognize that others want it, too.
This isn’t really a difficult issue. When we have sufficiently advanced surgical techniques that can remove a fetus and tranplant it into another woman or an artificial womb, then we might have some ethical issues to debate.
Meantime, there have been about 48 million abortions in the U.S. since Roe (at least according to the NRLC). If abortion has a negative effect on society, could someone please point it out to me? I assume it would be unmistakable.
If our culture had a homogeneous belief in the soul, and the time of the soul’s incarnation, we wouldn’t be having this thread.
Me, I believe in the soul. I personally believe it incarnates more or less permanently around 28 weeks or so, based on my own observations and thoughts about the universe and nothing more concrete than that. Many people in western European traditions have and do think it happens around the time of the quickening (15-20 weeks or so). Some don’t think it happens until birth or even after.
If you’re going to convince me that there’s a widespread tradition in “the general culture” (whatever that even means) that ensoulment happens at conception, and not just a 200 year hunch by one very large, very powerful church, you’re going to have to come up with some cites for that.
ISTM that the other points would still matter. Pro-life people always try to frame this debate as a clear cut, good-evil decision. Of course, the situation is far from being so clear cut, due to the involvement of a woman and her body. Adding emotional and economic components to that physical component only further complicates things.
So, this ain’t no simple murder case.
Certainly we’re basing it off ethics. Science alone just marks the boundaries; without ethics, we’d have a guess at when we think personhood is arrived at but simply not care in terms of killing it. Without ethics, the whole point becomes moot, since we could kill anyone, at any time. So yes, we’re basing this on ethics, too. Please don’t assume that pro-choicers don’t give a fig about ethical behaviour; we hold ourselves just a rigidly to our standards, they just don’t agree with yours, and I personally am slightly offended that you consider my views to be deliberately ignoring ethics.
As to your point, i’d first suggest being careful with terms. While I would happily consider a fertilised egg, and indeed the sperm and egg that went to make it, human, the point on which I think the problem hangs is personhood, not humanity. So switching that in; could we find out a baby is not really what we would consider a full person until it’s over a year old? I suppose it depends what your definition of personhood is, really. But I would say it’s actually before that that we should take potential rights into account, since after all, we give rights to animals that are at a considerably lower general capacity in terms of “personhood” than humans are. So I would say that your hypothetical really isn’t all that possible, to be honest; finding out that year-old babies - or even newborns - are intellectually lower/brain-wise in general more stupid than even animals we afford just the most basic of rights would pretty much contradict all the research done on them and their minds so far. It’s a bit like me suggesting that under your own definition, we might find out that actually the sperm and egg don’t truly combine completely until several months after conception, with the various cells of the developing fetus being corrected after that. It’s an interesting hypothetical, certainly, but it would mean you’d have to ignore all the research done so far.
I’m not really sure that counts as being the logically correct choice unless you start off with the premise that removing moral dilemmas and not tying up the police is a good idea. Some would argue that we shouldn’t ignore moral dilemmas (i’d be one of them, I just don’t think there is one necessarily here) and that it is worth the potential enforcement difficulties.
Arguably there is no choosable point which would not cause those problems.
The argument shouldn’t be whether or not abortion is killing a human, it should be whether or not the activity damages society. Can those opposed to it give an explanation of how abortion degrades our social compact? Does it create disorder? Does it lead to other bad things? Since opponents always bring up the murder aspect, let’s start with that as an example. If we allowed murder, bad things happen - vendettas, family disputes, revenge killing - society devolves or falls apart - it’s pretty cut and dry. Lets take that walk with abortion now.
Just wanted to say that having never heard of “quickening” as a term referring to pregnancy, but having seen Highlander, I became highly confused here.
Interesting mental image though. 
I feel abortion has always been more of a question of ethics. Also, if they are considered a human, is it murder then? Not so decimating to society, if anything, it betters most people’s lives, hence the attraction in the form of birth control. But there are certain things humans should not do to each other out of respect of the Golden Rule, or just being able to sleep at night.
First, my stance. A fetus is not a person. They do not have the rights that we give to sentient humans. I am strongly pro-choice, although I really wish no one ever had to make that choice.
For those that argue that abortions should only be allowed in cases of rape, incest and/or if the mother’s life is in jeopardy:
If a fetus has rights, including the right to live, why do those rights go away in the above circumstances? I can’t think of any situation, involving 2 or more people where, where you would walk up to one who isn’t actively threatening another and say “Your being here puts the life of that other person at risk, so we’re going to kill you to save them.”
In other words, how do you justify saying “I accord you the rights of a human, including the right to be born, 99.8% of the time (or what ever percentage is correct). The other few cases, I’ve given that other person priority over you.” Or is it all a sop, to try to make an abortion ban more palatable to a person leaning towards pro-choice?
Being mostly anti-abortion seems like being a little bit pregnant.
Not nearly that dramatic. It’s a term used for the first time fetal movement is felt by Mom.
I’m basing this on what people generally believe in the world around - a vague sense that the moment of conception “matters” because that is when the soul begins, not some sort of well-worked-out theology - and there is plenty of evidence in this thread alone that the notion is widespread.
Moreover, your own cite quoted above supports this. You have yourself provided the “cite”.
I’ll point out that it is hardly central to my own thesis, as I happen not to belive in a “soul”, and I don’t think that the moment of conception is the relevant moment.
Which, depending on the mom, could be as early as 10 weeks (I felt this at 10 weeks with my 3rd pregnancy - but I knew what to feel for)…and some mothers NEVER KNOW they’re pregnant until they’re halfway through labor, which means they don’t feel it or don’t know what they’re feeling. Again, too subjective.
Sorry RT, I never mean to offend. I mostly speak rhetorically or hypothetically. I wouldn’t label myself as either “pro-life” or “pro-choice”. It’s one of those things I maintain agnosticism on, out of sheer lack of data. Nothing personal intended!
This seems to bring up the study cited in Freakanomics which indicated that legalizing abortion benefited society by reducing the crime rate.
The good thing about the pro-choice position is that it shouldn’t matter whether or not I or anyone else agree with you about the time of ensoulment or even if the soul exists. So long as you’re not trying to enforce your view on anyone else, you get to act according to your beliefs and no one elses.
Doesn’t that make life simpler for everyone?
Well, I disagree.
To my mind, starting off with quite different premises (namely, that it is the protection of what makes us uniquely human - our conciousness - that should attract legal rights) is what gets one to choose that point; the fact that such a choice does not generally lead to moral dilemmas is simply a happy coincidence.
I agree that one should not ignore moral dilemmas, but I simply don’t think this case really creates them.
The problem with this is that if you take the notion that a fetus is actually “human” seriously, then it has rights which ought to be respected. As a society, we generally support children’s aid societies because we do not believe that a person has a right to treat their child any way they like … so it follows that determining when a fetus becomes a child is important.
For me, I’m pro-choice because I don’t believe that a fertilized egg is a “child”.