No introduction really, except this seems to me to be the real basis of any debate about banning or restricting abortion, the arguments for all sides seem to depend on this particular point; if this is not correct, please say so and why. I didn’t find any recent threads on this specific topic.
I might also have framed this as “Is abortion murder, and why do you think so?” but I think this approach is marginally less emotional, and more amenable to nuance.
Logically, there seem to be three possible points where a fetus might begin being regarded legally as a person: at fertilization of the egg; at birth; or at some point in between, depending on the development of the fetus.
I hope that most folks who answer will especially address the “why” part of the question.
It is customary for the OP in GD threads to open with their own view, but all I can say is that on the whole, what makes sense to me is that personhood would come at or near birth, but I am open to being persuaded by reason. A fertilized cell is clearly not a person, it is only a potential person. I don’t know enough about viability to say when a pre-birth fetus might be able to survive outside the body, so if that is the point of personhood, identifying it reliably might be an issue. It seems to me the definition of personhood should fit all situations, including current and future research and practices towards ex-utero pregnancies.
When: When it is born
Why: Because the personhood rights of the pregnant person outweigh any potential rights of the fetus.
Longer: When the pregnant person decides, with the help of qualified medical advisors, that the pregnancy should continue and the fetus should be treated like a person.
OK, you can ask a mod to close the thread, because this tricky question has finally been answered!
As far as legality goes, it depends on where you happen to be. In the US, it varies by jurisdiction and context (criminal, civil, and constitutional law). In Europe, the period ranges from 12 to 24 weeks for various legal protections, and in religious legal systems, it often aligns with specific theological interpretations. In my view, there is no single answer, as opinions vary widely and none is definitive.
I think any sort of halfway compromise like “person at 2 trimesters but not at 1 trimester” is nonsensical. It should either be right after conception, or right after birth, but no sort of threshold in between in utero. Those two are the most clear-cut definition moments.
And I’m not sure which of those two time points is more appropriate.
I don’t think it matters. It could be from conception, as long as the mother’s rights are paramount.
To put it differently, if there’s a little person inside me that won’t get out on their own, it doesn’t matter how it got there, I get to choose when it’s time to exit my body. It doesn’t matter my gender, the age of the little person, how it got there, etc, I get to choose when it’s time for it to leave. Same goes for anyone. No one gets to hijack another person’s bodily functions without their express consent, which can be withdrawn at any time.
This is why I always felt the pro-choice approach of trying to debunk the pro-life “Abortion is murder” claim was kind of counterproductive. The pro-choice view should be, “Even if it’s murder, so what? The mother’s rights are paramount. This situation isn’t analogous to any other homicide situation. In no other murder situation does a person’s survival depend on someone else’s body.”
I think that is nonsensical. If a person is a person, they are a person due to properties intrinsic to them, not due to an experience they have or have not had yet. The only logical answer is either viability or some benchmark of cognitive ability.
Logically, I think personhood begins at birth. Emotionally, I feel the fetus is a baby months before birth. My negative emotional feelings about abortion increase the closer it is to the end. I have little concern about an abortion a few weeks after conception, but I feel like it’s ending a baby’s life if it’s late in the pregnancy. However, that doesn’t mean I’m against abortion late in the process. It’s just that I feel worse about it when the fetus is basically a baby that just happens to still be inside the womb.
You’re right, I was thinking of really late term abortions. Although, even early abortions benefit from a consultation with a medical provider - should it be a medical or surgical procedure, for example.
However, I’m willing to modify my statement:..when there’s a chance of medical complications for the pregnant person…
IMHO this makes no sense. One could argue, as you and others in this thread have, that the rights of the pregnant person outweigh any personhood rights of a fetus. IMHO, however, the legal and moral status of those rights have no bearing on whether or not a fetus is a person.
This is where I’m at as well. A person is a person due to intrinsic properties. At what point the law should grant them rights is a legal and moral debate. The answers to those aspects of the debate are orthogonal to the personhood of the fetus, which, IMHO should be based on science.
The answer to the question of when a fetus becomes a person should be, IMHO, whenever the brain of the fetus is developed enough to have acquired sentience. The exact time that occurs likely varies from fetus to fetus, and AFAIK there has been no definitive determination made by the scientific community on this matter, but my guess is somewhere around 20 weeks gestation is probably where the correct answer is.
“Logically”, i.e. medically/scientifically, there’s no clear point at which a fetus attains “personhood”, except that it sure isn’t at the moment of conception and it definitely is at birth.
Capable of surviving in most instances outside the womb seems a reasonable line of demarcation, except there’s nothing reasonable about the abortion debate.
Well, science can’t answer the question, so you’re not even answering the question.
I’m saying the fetus has no rights other than what the pregnant person grants it, and a person has rights outside of what’s granted to it by a relative.
Fetuses aren’t sentient at twenty weeks. Newborns are probably not sentient.
I mean, that’s clearly not true, though. The spurious example of a doctor performing an abortion that’s not medically necessary at 40 weeks is spurious precisely because no doctor would perform such a procedure, and the reason that no doctor would perform such a procedure precisely because we all understand that it would be wrong to do so.
You’d have to define what you mean by sentience but I do not agree.
I would like to mine the SDMB brain trust on this. In the 1970’s I read a journal article addressing the abortion issue. It was an analysis of why the rights of a fetus were of lesser moral or ethical significance than the rights of an adult or a baby after birth. The article was written by a Roman Catholic nun. She cited (among other things, as best I can recall) the inability of the fetus to regret its loss of opportunity, the fact that the fetus had not formed a network of two-way attachments, was not a contributor to the culture, and other things. I have looked repeatedly for the original article in recent years and have never found it. Anybody else recall it? The reasoning presented was thoughtful and would contribute to this discussion. Sorry my memory is so leaky…
I don’t even think a newborn is self-aware. That’s the problem with trying to define it that way. I had a newborn. It did not seem very self-aware. When we took it to the doctor, the doctor put out her finger for the baby to grab, and when the baby grabbed her finger she said, “It’s all reflex. A newborn is a bundle of reflexes. Parents think it’s affection but it’s just reflex.”
That seemed to be the case, and since I seemed unable to anthropomorphize my newborn, I was very bored.
They don’t call it the fourth trimester for nothing. My understanding is that humans expel the fetus earlier in development than other mammals because we’d die in childbirth more than we already do if we had to deliver that big ol’ head.
So no, let’s not define personhood at sentience.
I’m fine with defining it at birth, since personhood to me means it becomes a citizen of the country and gets a social security number and all that. You know, when it has legal rights.
I’m also more of a Schroedinger’s fetus person. My baby, even when I was bored, was still my baby, and I still look back on his development in utero as the place where he started existing. My son clearly views all fetuses as babies. We have not had that conversation yet, and he’s so sensitive he might have a hard time with it.
To me it’s not a question of personhood so much as entry into the world. For me that happens at birth. Birthrights depend on it and it is biblical even for Jesus - Gal 4:4, even for Judas (Matthew 26:24, also in Mark 14:21, and Paul stands on his birthright not to be executed too soon. And it is the point where Jews historically and for the most part currently place the start of this life and protection under the law What happens before that? We exist but as I take it in another realm. PS 139:15 “My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth,”.
Most of abortions of that type are dire situations where the fetus has a not conducive to life issue or it will kill the mother. That is not the responsibility of anyone but the mother and a qualified doctor to decide. Personhood starts at birth when the life of the fetus does not depend on another person’s body.