Why do you keep putting absolutes in my mouth? I know this is the Pit, but you might at least respond to what I’m saying instead of getting three letters in and assuming the rest. Personhood is *necessary *for a killing to be a murder, but it is not the sole criterion. A woman who is bludgeoning me to death with a crowbar is certainly a person, but that doesn’t make it murder if I kill her in defense. The personhood of a fetus must be at least one necessary condition to have a reasonable debate about the ethics of abortion.
Trespassing isn’t exactly a perfect parallel, since the trespasser is knowingly and willingly impinging on the property of another person without permission, while a fetus didn’t choose to be conceived. The fetus is consuming resources from a woman who may not wish to provide them; however, a woman who has given birth cannot abandon the baby if she does not wish to care for it. There is clearly some difference between a fetus (which can be legally terminated) and a baby (which cannot be legally abandoned); I submit that that distinction is personhood.
Babies can, in many states, be dropped off at a safe haven. The person accepting the baby will try to get information so the child’s background can be established, but the mother is not required to stick around for questioning.
I’m not putting anything in your mouth - I asked a question and used an analogy.
Why? I can stipulate that the fetus is a person and still argue for abortion rights, which suggests to me that fetal personhood is not a critical element.
Not necessarily - picture a wandering Alzheimer’s patient who has decided your home is his childhood residence. He’s neither knowingly nor willingly impinging, but that doesn’t mean you have to accept him as your permanent guest.
Actually she can, in a number of venues that have “safe haven” laws.
I submit that “personhood” is a useless standard, but “location” is far more concrete.
Sorry I wasn’t more clear. I meant “abandon” in the sense of “just dump in a garbage can somewhere.” I.e., decide that she no longer wanted to provide for the baby’s welfare, but without making any accomodations to ensure that someone else would. Comparable to how one aborts a fetus without transplanting it into a new womb, was what I was going for.
You were sounding ridiculously accusatory when I first read the post. My apologies if that was not your intent–I’m on a very short fuse today.
It is *a *critical element. It is not necessarily *the only *critical element, nor have I ever claimed it to be such. However, it does seem *to me *to be a very important one, at least with regards to U.S. law. (See above discussion of abandoning a baby without making some kind of arrangements to have its needs cared for, versus aborting a fetus, which necessarily removes the ability to care for its needs.)
I disagree. Consider the case of Yoshihiro Hattori: the man who shot him was acquitted (controversially) in the criminal trial but was fined more than half a million dollars in the civil trial. If I get in a car crash and am thrown onto your lawn and knocked unconscious, do you have the right to shoot me in the head because I’m trespassing, even though that was not my intent, I have no way to remove myself, and I’m not causing you any harm? What if you refuse to allow EMTs onto your property to treat me? If “location” were the most important distinction, surely you’d be within your rights to withhold that medical treatment from me–after all, I’m on your property.
A fetus is a unique circumstance, not comparable to any other, because it is entirely dependent on the mother for life up until a certain point of its development. Unlike an Alzheimer’s patient, it cannot be removed from one’s “property” without killing it. We have laws in place that after birth, a baby cannot be just left anywhere to die if a parent decides they don’t want to care for it anymore; however, a woman can terminate a pregnancy legally. What is the difference between the baby and the fetus? Both are dependent on a parent for lifegiving support without which they will die. The baby is a person; the fetus is not.
We’ll just have to disagree on that. As far as I can tell, it’s a dictionary-debate dead-end, and unusual cases like Hattori’s or wacky hypotheticals like car-crashed unconscious interlopers waiting for barred EMTs are unconvincing.
All the more reason that the decision should be hers and hers alone. Or at least I don’t see the benefit of the state taking his decision away from her.
So?
One is inside the body of another human, one isn’t. That’s a far more compelling distinction than trying to devise some kind of “personhood” test. Since it’s all a matter of arbitrary definition; fine, a fetus is without argument or debate 100% a person.
It’s critical in that if everyone were to agree that the fetus was not a person, it changes the argument substantially. Kind of like how for a crime to be murder, the victim had to be alive at the time. There’s various other things that also have to be true for it to be murder, but if everyone agrees they were already deceased the debate is pretty much over.
(Yes I’m aware of those who desperately argue for “potential people”. They haven’t got a leg to stand on, and their potential legs don’t support the weight of their argument.)
See, if I considered a fetus 100% a person, with all the rights and sentience and that, I’d consider that a strong argument for anti-abortion, because you can’t reasonably wheel a paraplegic into your house and then shoot them for trespassing. If the fetus isn’t a person, though, then fire away.
But if a mentally incompetent person wandered into your house and tried to rape you with an object 10cm in diameter, you would arguably be in imminent danger of serious bodily harm, and legally justified in killing that person to defend yourself. Even though the person killed wasn’t morally culpable for putting you in danger, and even though they are a fully-fledged person.
So IMHO, even if a fetus is a person, it is possible that abortion is still justifiable in terms of self-defense. Massive stretching and likely tearing of the vagina isn’t even necessarily the greatest insult to the body caused by pregnancy, and the only way to prevent the fetus from doing these things to a woman is to abort it.
On a personal note: I had the misfortune to do an ambulance run with a crew that found a baby dead in a trash can. With all the really icky stuff I’ve seen that is the one thing that makes me the angriest when I think of it. Truly a waste. We’re a state that allows someone to drop a child off at the hospital and instead someone threw that newborn away to die. It still makes me tear up to think about it.
Not really. There already exist circumstances in which persons can be legally killed. If the fetus isn’t a person, it’s moot, and if the fetus is a person, the next argument (and in fact the only argument I’ve been bothering to make) is that under the circumstances, another person’s rights take priority.
Therefore, personhood for the fetus doesn’t matter unless you’re willing to disregard the rights of the other person involved. I’ve yet to see a compelling reason why we should.
And everything you don’t like makes you angry - gotcha. Really piss poor way to live and I’d think if you had any brains you would understand why I had trouble understanding why anything you don’t like makes you so unreasonably upset.
Well, at least being pissed off about this makes some sense.
A fetus can die, just as skin cells die every day
The expelling of a dead fetus. Now you define miscarriage.
I do not recall you discussing the ethics of anything actually.
It is? That reminds me - wasn’t it you that was going to show where science proved that life begins at conception? Cause, ya know, I haven’t seen anything out there that proves that a fertilized egg is any more alive than the egg was prior to fertilization, and as far as I know it still isn’t an issue for anyone when a woman flushes unfertilized eggs.
OMG, do you actually consider yourself pro-choice? And if so, you actually think other people are making it look bad? :eek:
See, **begbert **here gets the point I was making.
Childbirth isn’t remotely comparable to rape.
I have a right to shoot a gun. I do not have a right to shoot a gun if it is pointed at your head.
When one person’s rights intersect another’s, things get complicated.
Mainly just stupidity. But I can understand how you, being *deeply *stupid, would be bothered by that.
Yes, skin cells are alive. A fetus is alive. A mosquito is alive. My dad is alive. A virus is (maybe) alive. A dog is alive. A tree is alive. A blade of grass is alive. But only one of these things is a person. And the killing of only one of these things can be murder. I’ll leave it as an exercise for you to figure out which one.
I’m just emphasizing the best final result. If you want to follow specious arguments to their dead ends, wasting a lot of time and getting the same result anyway, I can’t stop you.
Case in point. You first need an arbitrary definition of “murder” (i.e. it must involve the killing of a “person”), and then an arbitrary definition of “person” (i.e. whether or not a fetus counts as one). Why bother? The hairs you split in the manner you like can be split by someone else in the manner they like, with just as much arbitrary validity.
Because you asked a question and I answered it. And obviously I was listening to you because I went to the trouble of detailing the problems with your argument (as opposed to simply ignoring it or characterizing it as “blah blah blah” or something).
Fine–you’re reading, but not processing or comprehending. We’ve been talking in circles for pages; I’m having enough of that shit with people in other threads to deal with it here, too.
Yes, and I’ve concluded that your reasoning is faulty, i.e., you’re a fucking moron who’s just plain missing the point. Which is why I’m done. And yet, you keep talking…
I calmly invite you to point out the flaws in my reasoning as I have endeavored to do so in yours and will summarize thus:
Having the status of “person” (however such is determined) does not immunize one from being legally killed - there already exist well-established situations where this can happen.
Therefore, giving a fetus (or anything else, really) the status of “person” does not convey this immunity, either. It simply changes the discussion from the theoretical and arbitrary world of word definitions to the more concrete world of situations. Endless debate can be had on what is a person and what being a person means, and what rights a person has, etc. A woman who has an object inside her body (even if that object is a person) who is not allowed to choose to remove it describes a much more concrete situation with actual real-world effects. Of what value is an analysis of personhood in comparison? At most, it offers a comforting rationalization for one’s views:
-A fetus is not a person, therefore aborting it is no big deal, or
-A fetus is a person, therefore aborting it should be illegal, regardless of what this does to the woman.
As a result, I simply shrug at such discussions and agree to call a fetus a person if that is what the other person wants because it ultimately makes no difference.
Buddhism disapproves of abortion, but the Dalai Lama, for one, believes that each case should be judged on its individual merit and that abortion for foetal abnormality might be the lesser of two evils.
Hinduism’s stance is similar to Buddhism, many Hindus believing that the foetus is ensouled in a gradual process between the 3rd and 5th months.
Until the 17th century abortion until quickening was not considered murder- Christian beliefs about whether abortion=murder and at what point a foetus has a soul have changed over the centuries. The Catholic church’s current stance is at the more extreme end of the spectrum. http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_hist.htm