Only if you have some strong justification for making birth the demarcation line. In other words, it’s only “straightforward and sufficient” if you can identify why the preborn does not merit the protection that a fully born infant deserves.
If I was making an argument that “personhood” is the necessary and sufficient achievement, then I’d agree there’s no real difference-- neither a fetus not a newborn would “merit protection” for that reason. If you want to claim it would somehow be acceptable to kill an infant because it doesn’t “merit protection” for having not yet achieved “personhood”, I’d direct you to arguments against unnecessary animal cruelty.
It’s fundamentally a question of whether the mother’s rights supersede the rights of the fetus or whether the rights of the fetus supersede the rights of the mother. Hopefully we agree that women have human rights and responsibilities. Presumably we do not agree on the topic of fetal rights and responsibilities. I would say a fetus, not being separate from the mother, has no separate rights… the fundamental question resolves in favor of the mother.
Even if it is eventually agreed that a fetus deserves some rights, it does not follow that the fetal rights would supersede the mother’s. e.g., In a complicated pregnancy in which carrying to term would put both the mother and fetus at significant risk of death, abortion is a logical conclusion. What of a pregnancy where carrying to term is likely to present a significant risk of death to the mother, but the fetus could be expected to live? Again, abortion would still be a logical conclusion, because the fully realized rights of the mother trump whatever rights we might wish to ascribe to a fetus.
Birthday renders that conflict irrelevant, a “fully born infant” is separate from its mother. A “preborn” is not. Thus the choice of using it as a demarcation line.
Well, a born infant is not totally separate from its mother (or some caretaker). The infant absolutely requires support from another for its survival. Likewise a “preborn” requires the support of its mother. The difference being it can only be the mother who provides that support…it can not be handed to another party as could be done with a born infant. However, once the option exists to allow someone else to assume care (viability) then I think it is reasonable to say the mother’s fundamental rights are no longer at issue. Options exist for her at that point that do not exist to her prior to viability.
The bottom line is that your argument assumes that physical separation is indeed a sufficient demarcation line. It’s a clear line of separation, but I haven’t seen any justification for its sufficiency. What about a newly born infant that’s still connected to its mother through an umbilical cord, for example?
I think it makes sense to consider the options available at any point in the pregnancy. When you have a fetus that is nearly full-term and healthy, delivering it live and aborting it both involve a risky medical procedure, but one results in a live human baby while the other does not. To me, choosing to abort at that point is rather like throwing away a life.
It’s also very arbitrary to say that a fetus is “not separate” from the mother until birth–I would say, just as arbitrary as declaring a zygote to be a human being. The mother and fetus are neither entirely separate nor entirely merged.
I find no moral distinction between terminating a life in utero because it is potentially physically deficient in some way, and terminating a life of any age outside the womb for the same reason. If it’s morally OK to terminate a near-term life in utero so that the being will not suffer from the effects of the deficiency, it’s equally moral to terminate the life post-birth.
As a physician, I agree with you that the term “abortion” is used differently by lay-people, but I don’t consider the word “hijacked” in a negative way. We just use it differently, and as you are aware, we as clinicians do need to make it clear to laypeople how we use the word.
I personally hold that early-term abortions are not of consequence because the fetus has not developed enough, and that late term abortions are no different morally from killing newborns. Whether or not killing a newborn is appropriate is open to question depending on the rationale for euthanizing it. As more time elapses post-birth, I find no further moral difference, but I notice that it’s part of human nature to form bonds with humans of all abilities and disabilities, and these bonds render it more traumatic to terminate lives which have begun to be lived beyond the womb.
Is it always so clear?
What about babies with anencephaly? IIRC it is usually not diagnosed till late term (post viability anyway) and if the baby is born alive (good chance of it being still born but not always) its prognosis for continued life beyond a few days at the outside are virtually nil. So bad to the point that I do not believe doctors will attempt any overt life saving measure…just some basic comfort and let it die of its own accord.
Aborting such a baby would be morally equivalent to you to killing a newborn? The impact on the mother of delivering such a baby is of no concern?
Good points. There are many conditions where a fetus can survive just fine inutero but does not fare well in the outside world. This is the case with Triploidy babies… On the rare occasions they are carried to term, they usually die within 20 minutes after birth.
Maybe people would be more comfortable in such cases if, instead of aborting these fetuses, the MD simply induced labor and let the fetus die “naturally” outside the womb. I personally see no difference morally, but maybe others do.
A born infant is not attached to any particular individual. That parenthetical bit is the key point. Responsibility for care can be transferred to someone who wishes to subsume their will to the needs of the child.
The logistics associated with matching donors and recipients makes it likely that in some cases, even where the donor considered “fetus transplant” preferable to abortion, it would still not be feasible. So it merely being theoretically possible to transfer the fetus is not the same as being able to do so in actuality. “Fetus transplant” would need to aproach a level of risk and availability equivalent to abortion before the issue you propose would be ripe.
“Viability” doesn’t justify enslaving someone as a biological life-support machine.
What about it? Working from the principle of supersession, the mother is within her rights to do the minimum necessary to resolve the conflict. Cut the cord. Problem solved.
Please don’t come back with some ridiculous scenario where cutting the cord dooms the newborn to certain death and pretend it’s a valid concern. It’s similar to the “viability” trope… post-viability abortion was never commonly elective, IIRC.
I agree that would be a very difficult choice to make and I’d hope the woman would weigh every option available. Ultimately, it is not my business to make that choice for her.
The point is that it’s very not arbitrary to say they’re separate after birth.
And given that arbitrariness, I don’t feel comfortable trying to force someone to choose the way I think is right. It would be up to each individual woman to decide for herself how much she weight she places on each variable or factor and how comfortable she is with each option available.
Huh?
I think you missed my point which was not a fetus transplant (doubt it can be done).
A pregnant woman who passes viability of the child I believe has less of a case to make for being shackled to the baby. She has had ample opportunity to abort the baby prior to that so, it seems to me, she has chosen her route. Once viable the fetus I think deserves more consideration than an, “Oops…decided I don’t want it now afterall because my boyfriend dumped me.”
Further, after viability presumably the baby can be delivered…get it out of her system as she wishes. She can then give it up for adoption or whatever and be done with it. Since that option exists I do not see how it is onerous on the woman to get the baby out alive and hand it off.
You’ve given an example where it’s the woman’s bad judgment that got her into the situation and which you wish to deny her a way out… why? Why isn’t it “I tried getting a job to support myself after my boyfriend was killed, but no one will hire a pregnant woman. How am I supposed to live, much less raise a child?” or would that be too sympathetic an example?
How about if it’s “Conditions upon which I based my assumption of being able to have this child have changed. I am no longer in a situation where this is a good choice.”? Is there some benefit to forcing a woman to remain pregnant against her will and better judgment?
It’s unlikely you could find a doctor that would induce at 23-28 weeks for elective reasons.
How is killing a newborn morally different from killing it in utero just prior to being born?
The discomfort which arises from killing a newly-born baby instead of killing it in utero is not the result of a moral difference. The morality of it cannot be said to be different from killing it an hour earlier. The discomfort is instead related to the fact that maternal (and perhaps other) bonds form once the baby is outside the uterus to a greater degree than they form before the baby has ever made an appearance as a separate human being. This creates a practical difference of how best to kill the infant.
Of course the impact on the mother is a practical concern. But the question at hand is whether or not there is a moral difference. There is none.
We should avoid confusing practical differences from moral ones. There’s a practical difference between killing an unseen person behind a curtain and killing someone as you look into their eyes. There is not a moral difference.
Perhaps we disagree on this but once viability has been achieved I think the fetus does obtain some rights to life. It can live apart from its mother. As such its rights enter into the equation.
Life throws us curve balls all the time. A woman cannot kill her boyfriend (legally/morally anyway) because she lost her job and decides he is a hassle now she’d rather not deal with. When she gets pregnant she has ample time to assess her situation and choose to abort if she wants to. After 24 weeks if she has kept the baby then I think it is a choice she is stuck with. This is not buying Jays potato chips and throwing them out because she decides 3/4 of the way through the bag she prefers Lays.
Bottom line we all make decisions and those decisions have ramifications. Sometimes things change and we may wish we had chosen differently. Nevertheless it is the path YOU chose. Deal with it. That’s life.
I think there is a moral difference and it is in that first sentence I quoted. The impact on the mother IS a moral consideration. How will it affect her to birth a baby with the top of its head gone, brain exposed and alive yet 100% a vegetable and doomed to die in hours or a few days? How will she respond seeing such a thing come out of her? How will she cope with her baby a living dead thing and waiting for it to actually pass on? If a mother chooses to go through that then fine…perhaps some would. Likewise if a woman chose not to saying she cannot bear to go through that anguish how is it moral to force her?
In the admittedly extreme case I am proposing the baby is not merely retarded or has a birth defect…it is a vegetable…it lacks the part of the brain for higher reasoning. Indeed I think you could add in the morality of keeping it alive as opposed to euthanizing it. It is just weird to let it lie there and wither away. There is NO future for that baby. None. (I suppose since it is a vegetable there are no worries that it is suffering…still seems odd and silly to me to decide the best action is to let it die of its own accord…why is THAT moral?)
You’re taking a very simplistic approach to the term “viability” but it’s not so black and white. An 800 gram fetus at 26 weeks gestation may in fact be technically viable, meaning it can *survive *outside the uterus, but the likelihood is extremely high that a baby delivered at that stage will have major disabilities (mental retardation, deafness, etc) and would be in the NICU for months ($$$$).
So the idea that a woman carrying a baby she doesn’t want should simply forego the abortion and just deliver the baby and put it up for adoption is unreasonable.
I agree but the mother can abandon the baby and let the state worry about it if she wants to so it is no longer her problem.
As for when viability occurs it is a fuzzy line but I believe the courts have said 24 weeks. I did some work for the Variety Club of Iowa awhile back and got to personally visit a baby born after 25 weeks which, at the time, I was told missed the earliest a baby was born and survived by three days (for all I know that “record” has been beaten since then). Despite the possibilities for health and mental issues that baby may have faced I cannot conceive of anyone suggesting it should be killed.
Are we willing to make that a priority for “the State?” The State doesn’t want to make sure ordinary kids get decent health care. “The State” doesn’t really like welfare…they like to get parents to pay for the upkeep of their own children? “The State” has been doing deficit spending - and is likely to do more.
I have a cousin who is disabled an in State care because her parents can’t afford her care…it isn’t exactly a quality of life situation. A hell of a lot better than it was 100 years ago.
Such a thing already exists in most states. Nebraska is changing its abandonment laws because it specified no age and now parents from around the country are dropping off teenagers. Most states have such laws but limit the age to a few weeks old.
Agree or disagree with that as you like…it seems to be the case. If you disagree with it petition your state legislature to stop it. Till then the mother can walk away legally after giving birth.
If that procedure is still taught, that is - there’s a number of med schools and med students who aren’t teaching or learning these procedures any more because of fears of legislation, personal ideology that has no place in medical education or practice, decisions of higher ups, constraints placed by insurance companies or malpractice lawyers, or what have you. And if the procedure itself is made illegal, I can see how doctors might refuse to perform it for fears of prosecution, regardless of the situation it was performed under. This knowledge - knowledge of how to do necessary, life-saving procedures - is being lost because it happens to be attached to other, “distasteful” results as well.
The truth is that “partial-birth” or late term abortions comprise a vanishingly small percentage of abortions, and are nearly always performed for valid, medical reasons. But it’s far simpler to use horrifying pictures and descriptions in an attempt to further the cause of legislating morality than it is to understand the facts and circumstances under which these procedures are performed.
You’ve arrived at supersession. We agree a woman has rights as a fully realized human. We do not agree what rights, if any, a fetus has. As discussed earlier “viability” isn’t sufficient, IMO, to warrant superseding an adult human’s rights and enslaving them as a biological life support system. Cows are both viable and separate beings, but we kill them at our convenience. In reference to our own humanity we try to minimize unnecessary suffering and cruelty of non-human animals. Given the debate about when “personhood” begins (i.e., when a fetus/newborn becomes a “human” in a meaningful sense), I would, again, leave it up to individual choice as to what they consider “necessary”.
What if she’s taken that ample time to assess her situation and made her decision… but now, after 24 weeks, the situation has changed unexpectedly? If she had had that new situation to assess she would have acted differently, but you propose she be “stuck with it” for failure to see the future?
Punishing that dumb slut for getting knocked-up out of wedlock. Gotcha.
Abortion is a way to “deal with it”. There’s a flippant belittling mythology that a girl that found herself five months pregnant and recently abandoned would find any course of action easy.