A human fetus becomes a person at the moment of conception or until government says otherwise. The true question has never been legaly ruled on to my knowledge.
Naw, if they refuse to leave, you can call the police, who can use lethal force if they still refuse to leave.
I’m not too worried about it, either way. In a society with safe, legal, available abortion, anyone who doesn’t want to be pregnant will deal with that early on. Pregnancy is pretty, um, evident most of the time. And getting rid of an unwanted pregnancy is generally a high priority, because it gets more and more evident over time.
So the number of cases where the woman doesn’t want to carry the baby, and doesn’t want it decanted into an incubator, and has waited until late enough that the fetus has a lot of human characteristics is going to be tiny, and mostly involve some medical issue. And most of the medical issues will involve women who previously wanted to bear the child, so most of them will want the artificial womb.
I mean, there are a lot of people, and I’m not saying that it will never happen that a woman 7 months pregnant will want to stop being pregnant and won’t want the fetus moved to an incubator. But it will be rare enough that it won’t be a major social issue no matter which way the law goes.
Exactly my feeling.
Hence I’m not willing to entertain sacrificing the principles of bodily autonomy and pregnant peoples’ right to choose for any kind of outlandish misleadingly vivid arguments about partial birth abortions or “dead babies”.
One thing that should be remembered in this kind of discussion is that people don’t always realize they are pregnant right away. In some cases, they don’t discover it until the moment the baby is coming out. So at any time in the pregnancy, there’s a chance that the person just found out. Someone may be considering an abortion at 35 weeks because they just found out they were pregnant at 35 weeks.
Another reason is that the person may have waited a long time in order to get the funds necessary to pay for the abortion. Or they may have waited until their birthday so they would be old enough to have it done without parental notification.
In these kinds of late term cases, the person and fetus may be completely healthy. There might be no medical reason to do an abortion. Regardless, for the purposes of thought experiments in topics like this, it’s helpful to ponder how you’d feel about late term abortions when there isn’t any health risk to the pregnant person.
You’re extending the hypothetical but again no. Police can (in theory) only use lethal force when they have reasonable cause to believe a person poses a threat of serious physical harm to officers or the public. A police officer cannot tell you to move along, and then shoot you if you refuse.
I am pretty sure the law will intervene if the intruder handcuffs themselves to you and demands food and water.
Sometimes instead of tortured hypotheticals I wish we could just acknowledge that abortion is a unique case. It’s unique because of the nature of the relationship between the pregnant person and the fetus, and it’s unique, dare I say, because it involves something that’s happening to a woman’s body without her consent, in a world where women’s bodies are often treated as objects to exploit and control, and it’s unique because of the impact that unwanted childbirth has on a woman’s economic and social freedom. It’s not that I don’t think an argument can’t be made on the basis of autonomy alone, but I think such arguments divorced of context often mislead people to believe it’s not actually about the oppression of women. It’s very much about the oppression of women. To the extent that the personhood argument is irrelevant, to me it’s irrelevant because oppressing a woman physically, socially and economically vis a vis forced childbirth is a greater moral concern than killing a fetus.
They can’t use lethal force to tell you to leave a public road. I’m pretty sure they can if you refuse to leave private property. That’s how landlords remove recalcitrant ex-tennants. Do you really think that if i break into your house, sit in your kitchen, eat your food, pee on your floor, and absolutely refuse to leave that you just have to put up with me?
And with abortion, we aren’t talking about “property”, we are taking about your actual body. With a fetus that’s shoving your organs aside, eating your food, and dumping its wastes into your blood.
The concept of what constitutes a human being was discussed in RvW. Clearly the progression of time was taken into consideration and is reflected in discussions of the 3 trimesters.
The case of RvW was not based around what is or isn’t a human being. It was based on privacy of the mother. This is why it came apart legally.
The failure of RvW created a legal vacuum that has been filled by a mishmash of State law. This will eventually reach the US Supreme Court where the primary definition of life will be argued. IMO the State laws regarding “first heartbeat” will fail because a person is not defined by a heart or kidney, or other support organs. It is now routine replace such organs and as such do not define a person.
It will likely be determined by brain activity. Here it becomes more complex legally. Electrical activity can be measured early. But from a legal standpoint the argument is going to be electrical activity that resembles human brainwaves and not just rudimentary impulses. So it would be far later than first heart beat.
I predicated my claim about few late-term abortions on early abortions being legal, safe, and available. If you are going to look at cases where they weren’t safe or legal or available, sure.
As for those rare cases of teenagers who didn’t realize they were pregnant until the baby shows up… First, i think they are greatly overstated. Second, to the extent those people actually exist (and aren’t just making excuses) they will just have a baby at nine months under any legal or technological set up.
When I use the bodily autonomy argument, it’s very much with the oppression of women in mind
Although I’ve been careful to mostly say “pregnant person” because in our brave new world, a pregnant man is not an impossibility.
ISTM there is a spectrum here:
Life starts at:
Egg fertilized → 1 second after the baby is born.
So:
No abortion when egg fertilized → Abort 1 second before the baby is born.
Both extremes are absurd. The answer has to be in-between the two.
To me, I think the first trimester is a good balance. The mother has plenty of time to know if she is pregnant and enough time to decide if she wants to continue with the pregnancy. After that, she has made her choice and there is no going back.
I think this balances the rights of the mother to make a choice and the rights of the fetus which, at some point, surely should not be aborted.
It’s a bit arbitrary but I think it is pretty close and the best we can do.
ETA: This does not consider abortions for medical necessity…life of the mother and such.
I see personhood as a bundle of attendant rights, duties, powers, and immunities; but not all persons have the same bundle. Personhood isn’t a binary yes or no switch.
Corporate persons, for example, can sue, be sued, hold property, and enter into binding contracts. They can commit crimes and are sometimes entitled to restitution. But they lack inherent liberties of natural persons such as the right to marry, vote, or claim personal privacy.
A minor child possesses legal personhood but lacks capacity. Children may sue (typically by and through a parent or guardian ad litem) and be sued, but are often shielded from liability by their age. Generally speaking, children may own property and enter into contracts; however, most agreements with children are voidable at the child’s election unless it provides “necessaries” like food or medical care. Children have limited liberties–they cannot marry or vote, and their right to personal privacy is subject to the parent’s control.
Unborn children cannot sue or be sued, own property, enter into contracts, marry, vote, or claim personal privacy. They are incapable of committing crimes but may be entitled to restitution and inheritances, contingent1 on birth. Their legal presence is primarily contingent or protective rather than as an independent legal actor. For example, the state may appoint a guardian ad litem in rare interventions involving maternal substance abuse, treating the unborn as a ward.
An animal, or at least a non-human animal, exists outside the bundle of personhood rights and duties. Animals lack capacity for litigation, property ownership, or contract. While they cannot exercise rights, they are subject to the law’s reach indirectly through orders of protection and destruction, which act on humans but affect property such as animals.
The same could be said of real property as of animals. The law recognizes in rem suits against property (traditionally land or ships), but technically the law only extends to human interests in such property.
My framework doesn’t answer every question raised here.
I would distinguish natural/moral rights, such as the rights to life or personal dignity, from personhood rights, which arise by operation of law. Law is inherently amoral and can be good or evil. For instance, animals arguably deserve some respect for their lives and autonomy. The law is largely silent on that matter.
Conflict of rights is not addressed without resort to particulars. Why may the state intervene to protect an unborn child from its mother’s substance abuse? Why may the state intervene to protect a newborn from its mother’s substance abuse? Is there a distinction, and if so what, when, and why?
In my country’s history, there were legal slaves who were subjected to legal duties and liabilities without enjoying the corresponding rights, privileges, and immunities. Today, we rightly see such a scheme as unjust. There is something to the comparison between a mother forced to carry a pregnancy to term and a slave.
If there ever was an analogy to a fetus, I think it would be a case involving a parasitic twin. Historically, the dominant twin’s survival took precedence over the parasitic twin’s biological dependence on the former’s body–this may support the mother’s health over her pre-viable unborn child. I am unsure what history has to say about health concerns not immediately threatening survival.
~Max
1 Contrast current practice granting the unborn property rights contingent on birth with the novel “Schroedinger’s Fetus”, granting the unborn rights at the mother’s election, mentioned upthread.
Okay, so why is the status of a fetus instantly downgraded once medical necessity/life and health of the mother come into the discussion? Why is the decision of the mother less important than her life and health?
In the vast, vast, vast majority of late term abortions the mother wanted the baby. The mother is not aborting to be rid of some pest. She wants the baby. She is looking forward to the baby. Sometimes bad things happen. No one’s fault.
Usually the baby is non-viable. If not sitll-born it will die minutes after birth. I will spare you descriptions of some of these maladies as they are very unpleasant. And the mother giving birth is at great risk to her life.
What would you choose? Risk your partner’s life to deliver a still born baby or one horifically malformed who would be in torment for its few minutes of life? Or choose an abortion, save your partner and try again?
Late term abortions are rare and only ever done under extreme circumstances. True everywhere in the US…even states that are ok with abortion.
I suppose there may be a case where the choice is give birth to a healthy baby and lose the mother or end the baby and the mother lives. Heckuva choice. Who would you say gets to make that choice?
I’m in agreement on the non-viable situation. But what I am saying is that if the rights of a fetus can be lowered given a short list of circumstances such as life and health of the mother, or rape and incest, why can’t a mother’s decision to end the pregnancy, at any point for any reason, be added to that list? Why are there exceptions for some things and not others?
I do not think there are exceptions. Most current law is the woman has a choice in the first trimester of pregnancy to abort. Enough time to know she is pregnant and to make a choice.
After that, if she did not get an abortion, than that is also her choice. Now she is locked in to carrying the baby till birth (barring extreme circumstances…see earlier post).
If you are one who suggests that there is no choice as soon as the egg is torpedoed by a sperm then I am not sure what would change your mind.
The opposite, actually. What I am saying is to not limit decision-making about ending a pregnancy to just the first trimester or extreme circumstances, but to any time and any reason the mother chooses to end it.
That seems crazy to me.
As I mentioned earlier, there is a spectrum of the development from sperm meets egg to delivery. If someone in the delivery room killed the baby a minute after birth that would clearly be murder. Is one minute before, when still in the mother, really any different?
But it is not murder to abort early on. Heck, most women self-terminate pregnancies all the time. Often they do not even realize it happened. Do we have funerals every time and stress over it? No.
So, somewhere along that line a flip happens where the fetus has rights of its own. Granted it is a gray area but the first trimester seems a reasonable line to draw. It may be a bit arbitrary but seems pretty close.
So no…mom cannot tell doctors to abort the baby while she is in labor. No doctor would ever do that. There is a timeline for her choices. And no choice is a choice.
Agree. First trimester seems reasonable and most pregnancy terminations probably happen there. And as you say no doctor is going to do an abortion past some vague point, so that is self-limiting in a way. But there is a long in-between period that’s more fuzzy. Stuff may happen during that time making the fetus non-viable, so an abortion is okay in that circumstance. But if a mother decides to end a pregnancy during that time without a “good” reason, then it becomes problematic, and it shouldn’t. It’s like a switch is flipped at the end if the first trimester and the right of the fetus now supercedes the right of the mother, which to me seems wrong.