I’m not a legal expert but I think even in states where abortion is legal, your can be charged with double homicide if you kill a pregnant person. So it seems like some variations of law already kind of de-facto assume that if the pregnant person wanted the baby, it should count as murder. I’m not 100% sure how it works though.
This is super complex for me, because I am pro-life AND pro-choice.
If it was only up to me, the male, I would want the child carried to term. (Although I am just really a sperm donor, who will have very different responsibilities after birth)
But the mother has the final word. She is carrying the baby, she decides. As they say, her body, her choice.
The idea of liberty begins with owning your body. I consider that inalienable. I can’t have any further discussion about property rights or even the Second Amendment without the first sentence being known, understood, and agreed upon.
That said, if a fetus can live outside of a womb equivalent to a premature baby then it should have all the rights of a baby. At that point it doesn’t directly need the life force of another and so attains full personhood.
So, a woman who drinks a glass of wine after that point in her pregnancy is contributing to the delinquency of a minor? If she’s an addict and takes drugs and miscarries, that’s premeditated murder? If she rides a roller coaster too late in her pregnancy and miscarries, that’s deranged indifference to human life?
If the fetus is severely deformed, but would survive for a few years after birth at least, having an abortion at that point is murder?
That women is responsible for negligence and neglect, surely. A mother smoking a crack pipe in a car with her kid would be the same. I have no desire to get into legal punishments or even have thought about if any would be appropriate. The OP asked when I thought personhood begins and answered.
Maybe you should think about it, because giving fetuses full personhood rights would come with that. So, attempted murder or deranged indifference to human life for taking a roller coaster ride later than recommended?
I’m not sure what you mean by “contributing to the delinquency of a minor”, but a woman who drinks regularly during pregnancy is obviously responsible if her baby has fetal alcohol syndrome, no? Not in the sense that there should be legal consequences, but her actions clearly caused the condition, it didn’t happen randomly.
It seems pretty clear that they were talking about moral weight, not legal status.
One can take the position that a fetus beyond a certain level of development is morally equivalent to a person but should not have the same legal protections because of other factors like the bodily autonomy of the woman.
Alright. I am comfortable with consequences for expecting mothers who destroy a viable fetus very near their birth date.
From a moral perspective I’d be inclined to agree, but from a practical perspective I don’t want the government checking every miscarriage to make sure it was really a miscarriage.
Not near the birth date, after 22 weeks or so. So, if you drink a couple of glasses of wine, some of that alcohol will go to the fetus. You’re not allowed to give babies wine (or other drugs), so you’re contributing to the delinquency of a minor, even if nothing bad ever comes of it, and should be arrested for that (according to you).
The problem with drinking during pregnancy isn’t that you are ‘contributing to the delinquency of a minor’, it’s that you have a very high chance of giving your kid a severe mental disability that will impact them for life. There’s a very good argument to be made that this is morally equivalent to child abuse.
The problem is that there are also very serious privacy and bodily autonomy concerns involving pregnant women that have to be weighed against that.
This paper has a good breakdown of the issues involved:
If the minor has full personhood rights, as per @Sitnam, then feeding a minor person drugs or alcohol is illegal on its own, aside from any fetal complications. Take it up with them.
This varies by jurisdiction. Babies are sometimes given a taste of wine for ritual reasons in Judaism, and small children are often given a bit of wine on the Sabbath. This is legal in many jurisdictions.
Yes, if you drink so much that your baby has fetal alcohol syndrome i believe you have done something morally wrong. But it takes a great deal of alcohol consumption to do that, not, “a couple of glasses of wine”. And as fetuses are incapable of being “delinquent”, you are certainly not guilty of that. Possibly of harming a minor that you have a duty to protect. But if you don’t drink enough to harm yourself you probably won’t harm the fetus (at least not in a way that can be statistically measured), either.
That was my impression as well but according to the study I linked earlier it may not be correct:
I asked my wife and she reminded me that when she was pregnant that is indeed the new guidance doctors give - the suggestion that a glass of red wine a day or a week is OK that my parents remembered from before I was born is considered obsolete.
No known safe level does not mean “we know it to be dangerous”. And while it’s certainly possible that a drink a week might increase the risk to the fetus, they say, “may” because, to the best of my knowledge, no one has found a statistically significant increase in risk.
My father, who was a well-regarded research physician (and liver doctor) used to say that if you can’t find statistical significance, the biological significance is generally negligible. There probably is a small increased risk over the population, but it probably manifests in rare cases where the mother or the fetus doesn’t process alcohol well. Might that be you or your baby? Yeah, it might be. But the world is full of risks. Walking across the street is risky too.
Also, clear messaging has certain benefits, especially as the same people who may be drinking enough to significantly damage their fetus also tend to have an expansive view of “moderate drinking”.
I am not much of a drinker, so i mostly didn’t drink alcohol when i was pregnant. But i toasted my brother’s wedding with champagne. And when i went into labor at an inconvenient time of day, my doctor suggested a glass of wine to slow the labor a bit, and i took her advice.
I think you’re missing my point and who I’m responding to. @Sitnam says that, after the point of viability, the fetus is a full person, with all the rights that come with it. If you took an infant onto a roller coaster and it got hurt or killed, you’re going to be charged with something (endangerment, deranged indifference, murder).
If a pregnant woman goes on a roller coaster after she should, and the fetus is injured, does she get charged with one of those things? That’s what having full person rights implies.
Even if the fetus isn’t injured, the pregnant woman has still endangered it.
Was @Sitnam talking about legal rights or moral rights?
“All the rights of a baby” seems like legal rights to me. Personhood is a legal concept anyway, so this whole thread is about legal rights, no matter how many times you claim otherwise.
…why?
It’s also a philosophical concept:
It’s about both, and I’ve addressed both.
Maybe @Sitnam can come back and clarify, but in their next post or two, they were fine with at least some consequences for endangering a fetus.