Yes, of coure that’s what I did.
Does this board have a bigger :rolleyes:
An infant is also permanently brain dead if the mother kills it. Bip, try to stick with the very point you were raising. You pointed out that a conjoined twin could “dispose” of his twin if said twin were brain dead, then pointed out that the unborn go through a long phase where they are the equivalent of brain dead. I answered your question regarding future sentience. If you feel the mother gets to make the call regardless, don’t toss out red herrings .
Excuse me, this caught my eye:
I’m a woman who has had unprotected sex once or twice at a time when I thought pregnancy was unlikely. I’ve also used birth control which is less than 100% effective. I have been lucky enough never to have had to cope with an unwanted pregnancy but as a simple fact of life, that was a risk. I object to characterizing a woman with an unwanted pregnancy as “friday night’s slut.”
I’m also not so sure that outlawing abortion will result in more effective contraception. Among other things, from what I’ve read from the pro-choice side of things, I understand that some people who oppose abortion also oppose contraception and that research on effective contraception has been hampered by the efforts of anti-abortion organizations. I’ve also read opinions on a different message board that forms of contraception which prevent the implantation of an embryo should also be made illegal because a fertilized egg is also a fetus or a child, therefore preventing its implantation in the uterus of a woman would also be a form of abortion.
CJ
Every miscarriage would not result in a homicide investigation – something like a third to a half of all pregnancies result in miscarriage. Even if the economy were in fabulous shape and lots of money found its way to police departments, there’s just no reason to investigate every miscarriage.
And if a parent must name a child in utero, I’d think that gender-ambiguous names like Lee and Kelly would become much more common. Or maybe people would just call the kid “Baby” until the child’s sex was discovered, either by sonogram or birth, and then have a naming party. Maybe they’d have two names in mind while the sex was unknown. That’s what DH and I did.
Another thing that nobody has brought up – parents would get a tax break on unborn babies. And they’d have to apply for SSNs really, really early. You could still use the SSN as the identification for the kid; if you found out you were pregnant on Dec. 31, you could get an SSN by Apr. 15, couldn’t you?
It’s always easy to make these sort of pronouncements about the ‘Other.’ I’d imagine that things are very different when the ‘friday night slut’ is your daughter, or sister, or mother (yes, there are women who have abortions early in life and then go on to raise a family when they are ready for it). Just ask John McCain. Even with his pro-life, anti-abortion, whatever you wish to call it stance, it was a difficult question for him to answer.
It’s a complex issue- that’s why the only people involved should be the woman, her doctor, and her own conscience.
I’ll admit, posts like this make me much more “pro-abortion” than I would normally be.
(There’s another thread where I commented that sometimes some of the posters say things that are so ridiculous it makes me think they are actually for the other side. This is one of them.)
Julie
Julie, you rock.
Nope. The obvious change would be that murder would be defined as the killing of another person who is not a fetus. Killing a person who is a fetus isn’t murder, it’s abortion, and it’s legal.
Move on.
And legal or illegal, it’s what people have done, still, do, and shall continue to do. And it should be legal. And, should it be made illegal, I will help provide the service illegally.
AHunter, you’re sort of missing the point of the OP. The idea being explored is that society changes and equates a fetus to a baby. Your statement is that society would then distinguish between a fetus and a baby, which is the exact opposite of the position the OP would like to explore.
“What would change if we decided a fetus is a baby?” The answer is most certainly not “We’d give more rights to babies than fetuses.”
Sorry about the poorly expressed idea in my last post. Here is the point I was trying to get at:
If someone is brain dead but possibly resuscitatable, do they have the right to life support and possible resuscitation at the inconvenience and against the wishes of the person who will provide life support and possible resuscitation?
Another point: If fetus = baby, would it then become illegal for parents with very low chance of a fetus surviving (for whatever medical reason might exist) to attempt to get pregnant? Since they would be willingly placing their fetus-baby in a situation where he/she will probably die?
Cheesesteak, I don’t think I’m missing the point.
The point is, “No one should have to remain pregnant involuntarily”.
I don’t care how “human” or “fully a person” etc. that with which she is pregnant happens to be.
If you magically transport me into the womb of a person and attach my bloodstream to hers, she should have the right to have me removed, and I’m sure as hell human and fully formed and I can even vote.
The right to abortion is not posited on “fetus ain’t a baby yet”. The right to an abortion stems from “She who has a uterus gets to decide what, if anything, gets to be in there and stay in there”.
Short of a binding Precoital Agreement signed by the mom in question, in which she acknowleges the likelihood of pregnancy and stipulates that if it does result she will not seek an abortion, I see no reason to ever refer to anything other than her wishes as far as whether or not an abortion should be performed. And even then I’d say she’d have limited rights to have the agreement nullified if remaining pregnant were a threat to her life or health.
I’m going to have to disagree with you on that. There’s a reason why 3rd trimester abortions are very rare, and very controversial. Many people, including myself, think of that late term fetus as something very similar to a newborn, and deserving of rights. Especially considering that many late term fetuses can survive outside of the womb, since premature babies seem to do fairly well. I doubt that your average pro-choicer thinks that an abortion in the 8th month is no more troubling than in the 1st.
Under the OP’s conditions, abortions might be legal, but they would be an awful lot more troubling than they are today.
The OP was clarified to include that abortions are illegal. He was asking what would change besides the legality of abortion.
I agree.
For myself, I fully acknowledge that a fetus is a human being. I don’t even much care if someone wants to say a fetus is a person, though I think “personhood” requires a more thorough philosophical investigation.
But I do not believe that anyone’s life must be preserved at the expense of an unwilling party. I do not believe that, as in the case of cojoined twins, the fetus and the woman have equal claims on the body. Requiring a woman to remain pregnant against her wishes fits my definition of torture–and we do not, as a society, condone or require that people be tortured, especially when they have committed no crime.
Julie
Alright. This is the STRAIGHT DOPE on abortion:
It is wrong. It is homicide, no matter what. I understand that you MIGHT have to do it if the mother will die (and this should be in VERY RARE cases), but killing a person is homiceide, unborn or not.
People might say, “Oh, but a woman has the right to control her body. It’s her body!” I agree, her body is her body. But the fetus, unborn baby, whatever you want to call it, is NOT part of the mother’s body. She is simply providing it nourishment while it grows so that it can survive on it’s own when it is born (And by that I mean breathing and drinking milk from the mother). Take DNA samples from the unborn baby or fetus, and the mother. They are different! OH MY GOSH. THE FETUS IS NOT PART OF THE WOMAN’S BODY!!!
Being pregnant shouldn’t be torture, or a burden! It should be a task that the mother loves. Thinking “Wow, I am taking care of an unborn child… Inside me! I have the responsibility of taking care of this child, and I love it! I love my baby.” If you would want to have an abortion, don’t have sex in the first place! I know most women who get abortions are unmarried. And that brings up another point- Don’t have sex before marriage! It’s wrong and only brings heartache.
“What if a fetus is a baby?” Why wouldn’t it be? Tell me one GOOD reason why a fetus should not be considered a baby. It is a fetus becase it is unborn. It looks the exact same inside the mother’s body right before it is born AND just after it is born! It’s not just a blob of flesh 5 minutes before birth, and then all of a sudden it develops human features!
Think about it.
Alright. This is the STRAIGHT DOPE on abortion:
It is wrong. It is homicide, no matter what. I understand that you MIGHT have to do it if the mother will die (and this should be in VERY RARE cases), but killing a person is homicide, unborn or not.
People might say, “Oh, but a woman has the right to control her body. It’s her body!” I agree, her body is her body. But the fetus, unborn baby, whatever you want to call it, is NOT part of the mother’s body. She is simply providing it nourishment while it grows so that it can survive on it’s own when it is born (And by that I mean breathing and drinking milk from the mother). Take DNA samples from the unborn baby or fetus, and the mother. They are different! OH MY GOSH. THE FETUS IS NOT PART OF THE WOMAN’S BODY!!!
Being pregnant shouldn’t be torture, or a burden! It should be a task that the mother loves. Thinking “Wow, I am taking care of an unborn child… Inside me! I have the responsibility of taking care of this child, and I love it! I love my baby.” If you would want to have an abortion, don’t have sex in the first place! I know most women who get abortions are unmarried. And that brings up another point- Don’t have sex before marriage! It’s wrong and only brings heartache.
“What if a fetus is a baby?” Why wouldn’t it be? Tell me one GOOD reason why a fetus should not be considered a baby. It is a fetus becase it is unborn. It looks the exact same inside the mother’s body right before it is born AND just after it is born! It’s not just a blob of flesh 5 minutes before birth, and then all of a sudden it develops human features!
Think about it.
Sorry I posted that twice, i don’t know how that happened…
Julie: You said, “Requiring a woman to remain pregnant against her wishes fits my definition of torture–and we do not, as a society, condone or require that people be tortured, especially when they have committed no crime.”
Why do you think the woman got pregnant? Because she had sex. Do you think sex was a torture for her? If she was raped, yes. Then I could understand why she would be upset about the pregnancy. But if she had sex willingly, she should have considered that she might get pregnant then. If she didn’t, she should just accept the fact that now she has a living being inside of her, and that baby may grow up to have the cure for cancer or something, and save her life if she gets it! Whoa.
Wow, you ought to submit that to Cecil. I bet he’d publish it in his column.
If human cloning became common, and the fetus had exactly the same DNA as the mother, would she then have the right to choose?