Asmodean:“It has independent rights when it is born. Its kind of dependent before that”
Actually if we want to argue then a child is pretty much dependant for several years after that. If there were no one there to take care of it would die. So is killing a three year old OK as well?
Why not?
This whole thread sounds kind of like the “egg or the chicken” to me. I believe that once a woman is pregnant then there is a life to take care of. Why else do people stop smoking when they find out that they are pregnant? Or quit using drugs then as well?
It is because they have a child to think about. People can justify abortion anyway they want to but it is still a life whether it is dependant or not. It is still there and considered in future decisions. Who cares whether the lungs are formed or not? The brain of that embryo will not be fully functional for several years. I believe that anyone who argues that life begins much later are just trying to justify in their minds that abortion is not murder.
BTW, I support abortion. I think that it is necessary. If a mother would let a doctor chop up and puree’ her unborn child then what kind of a mother would she be to that child if she gave birth to it?
Harsh? Surely but we don’t need more neglected children than we already have in America. Adoption would be a good thing in this situation but the fact is that the mother would usually choose to keep the child in vain rather than let someone else raise it.
Mr2001–thanks for the link. I knew I had torn into that article before, and I was about to go looking for it. Some night when I can’t sleep I should write a more thorough rebuttal.
Essentially, she’s arguing in circles. She defines a human being as beginning at conception, and then takes an assorment of scientific definitions, pro-choice arguments, and straw men and declares them “myths” because they don’t jive with her definition.
I don’t fault the author for her opinions. I fault her for statements such as
She is trying to give her opinions the weight of scientific fact.
Science has no definition of “human being” in this context. We can objectively say that it is human (as opposed to, say, opossum), and that it is genetically complete. We can say that it has the capacity to grow. The question of when it should be considered a “person”, however, is not one of fact. It’s a question for forums like this one.
I assumed my answer would be taken in the context of the OP:
When is a fetus a human being with independant rights?
Since you either didn’t read the OP, or don’t feel constrainted to limit your pithy ripostes to its confines, I will assume that you actually consider a four year old child to be a fetus. The mind reels.
Did you read the first paragraph? She comes right out and says "The question as to when a human person begins is a philosophical question. " How is that different from your statement here?
Thank you for responding, Scylla. I note that the only distinction your OP drew was between a fetus at 90 days and one at day two or three. As you stated, there is no discernible difference between 89 and 90 days. So why day 90 instead of day 89? That, your OP did not answer.
Which leads me to answer to my own question: Of course it’s arbitrary! Nothing per se wrong with that, either. We draw arbitrary lines all the time, and 90 days is as defensible as 89 or 150 or one week. As a lot of us were arguing in the other thread, a lot of anti-abortion folks seem fundamentally uncertain of their own beliefs on the subject. I just wanted to see how certain you were of yours.
(And before you yell at me for “anti-abortion,” I understand that you generally oppose abortion, but not a woman’s right to an abortion.)
Of course, there are lots of points that are most certainly not arbitrary. Conception, implantation, brain function, and viability all come to mind. Seems to me those points are a lot more relevant than the medically meaningless “trimester” system.
On further reading…I think I should clarify. Like I mentioned earlier in this thread, there seems to be a semantical problem in some of these kinds of debates. It wold appear that you would use the terms “human being” and “person” interchangably…
If I read you correctly, you say that the organism at fertilization “is” human, but not necessarily (at least as established scientifically) a human being. I think that the author is saying that the organism is a distinct individual…that it is human…and so uses the term “human being” to describe such an organism…separating the notion of “personhood” from that definition.
I have a tought time defining what level of mental development equals humanity. Is it an IQ test? Complexity?
Your average dog’s brain is more complex and would probably demonstrate a higher IQ than a newborn. Is a dog then human?
The first trimester is basically the putting together the elements of a child. The next six months are development (I grotesquely oversimplify, but you get my drift.) Errors occur, and a woman is much more prone to spontaneously miscarry during this period, then after. If she makes it through the first trimester ok, we are very likely to see a child, barring incident.
I took a lesson from the kitchen. Say I’m cooking chili. Is it chili when I start sauteeing onions? When I add meat? Beans?
If I just throw everything in the pot at once, it doesn’t become chili. I have to add and build in the proper order.
At some point in the process, the basic elements have been added, and are blending together properly. While it may not be done for several hours, it is unmistakably chili.
I dunno. Probably it would be a person. I’d wonder about lack of sensory and hormonal input though. It probably wouldn’t remain a person for long unless you could give it some anologues to these. It’s a tough question.
Fear itself:
I see. So you believe a woman may have an abortion up to delivery at her discretion? A full term viable infant may be cut up and dissected from the womb at her whim, even after the onset of labor?
I should add that this formulation applies to humans of the non-fetal sort as well. If I wake up tomorrow and find that you have somehow attached yourself to my bloodstream and are dependent on the nutrients thereof for the continuation of your life, your right to remain alive is entirely subservient to my willingness to allow you to continue subsisting on my blood.
I’ve read your posts quite carefully. You distinguished days 2 and 3 from day 90. You admitted “there is very little difference between a fetus at day 89 and day 90.” Still, you have pointed out no distinctions whatsoever between days 89 and 90. From this, I conclude that day 90 is essentially an arbitrary choice. If not, why not day 89 or 91?
My point, in case it wasn’t made clear enough above, is that from conception to birth, there are a whole lot of moral grey areas. Yet you insist on dividing the morality of abortion into black and white, using an arbitrary dividing line of 90 days of gestation. I find this distasteful.
The complex cerebral contex, the necessary part for our consciouness, does not even begin to develop until after well after the first trimester. I consider “capacity for consciousness” to be an necessary element of a person, so I would not say that all the important elements for a person are there during the first trimester.
I draw the line at capacity for consciousness, self-awareness. And no, a newborn does not have the IQ of a dog; newborns may not know very much and don’t have as many useful instinct as dogs, but they learn amazingly quickly. Dogs certainly can’t learn to read in three years. Don’t confuse helplessness and lack of physical coordination with stupidity. Anyhow, even given a human with a dog IQ (how do you measure a dog’s IQ, anyhow?), so long as that human is conscious, capable of thought, I’d consider him/her a person (if not the most enthralling person at cocktail parties).
You answered the brain-in-a-jar question (sorta), so you do concede that a person can still exist even without the physical characteristics you demand for “personhood” in a fetus. I think this shows that the mind is more important for you in determining personhood than the body. And what about my second question, about a baby born with only a brain stem, capable of a few reflex reactions but not self-awareness? Does that human have the same rights as a fully conscious person? Does that human have the same rights as the brain-in-a-jar? (The brain-in-a-jar can communicate, incidentally. “Hi Scylla!”, he says)
I appreciate everyone maintaining a modicum of decorum on this thread. It has remained (surprisingly) free of the violent opinions I see so often in threads of this topic, those opinions being the reason I don’t get involved in them usually. Also, that I haven’t figured out the rights and wrongs, the “whens” and “ifs” of the whole abortion issue for myself yet, so I don’t think I can try to float my opinion onto someone else.
I think abortion is murder, but what I haven’t figured out yet is when is it murdered and when is it just the removal of a potential life. I appreciate Scylla’s starting this thread. But, I also feel a woman has a right to do what she wants with her body, so you see my quandry.
If I may ask one question of you all (I don’t think it’s too much of a hijack): When a partial-birth abortion is performed for the sake of the mother’s health and the child would have been viable, how is a partial birth abortion different than doing a c-section or giving her medications to begin labor in order to preserve the life of the child? Medical opinions only please. I understand the issue of a woman being able to choose at any point to terminate her pregnancy; I’m looking for some kind of medical reasoning behind it.
I apologize in advance if this is too much of a hijack - it just seemed pertinent on the topic etc.
You draw the line as fine as you can to the best of your abilities and the limitations of data. We are not using a single fetus as our example, but rather the average statistical development of fetus’ in general from which individuals vary.
Arbitrary is without reason. I have reasons. You may disagree with them, but they are not arbitrary.
Embryologists have broken down fetal development and described it by weeks months nand trimesters, and derive useful information by doing so.
It is a classic problem. Set your measuring units too fine, and you lose statistical accuracy. Set them to wide, and you lose useful data.
90 days is the end of the first trimester, the third month, and the twelth week. Those are the data blocks that are available to work with. For purposes of our discussion day 90 is day 89. It is also day 86,87 and 88. It is an eminently useful data block, but not if we draw it down any farther.
It is a reasoned and calculated division chosen to provide maximum usefullness, and accuracy. Therefore it is not arbitrary.
Day 90 is defensible.
Day 89 is not.
Do you find all units of measure distasteful? Are you angry that an inch isn’t a millimeter.
Are you primarily interested in arguing semantics? I’m not, and I think I’ve been more than patient.
If you had a brain in a jar available, why were you asking me if it’s a person? (Hi brain.)
Re: deformed brainstem. Not a person, IMO.
A 3 month fetus can laugh, sleep, move, react emotionally to stimuli.
What is capacity for consciousness? How big does the brain have to be to hold it? How complex?
I’m not sure that a newborn has that capacity. I have a kid, and I think it was several months at least before there was a concept of self. Before that it was just need, and emotion, and sensation.
A lot of brain development goes on after birth because of the 10cm size constraint of the cervix. I don’t think capacity for concioussness is there yet at birth.
Then we also have to define conscioussness, which is always tough.
I have a border collie that I’ll wager is conscious. Awareness of self, capacity to plan, emotional need, initiative both within and without defined parameters in pursuit of goals, ability to defer gratification, ability to gauge emotional reactions in others before the fact, he has all these and more. Is he human by your definition?
Uh, I would hope not or we are going to have to start prosecuting any number of infants as soon as they leave the womb. In utero “murders” happen quite a bit. One of two twins absorbs the other, gets strangled on an umbilical cord, etc.
gaudere
“I draw the line at capacity for consciousness, self-awareness.”
But geez, that’s a very flimsy and whimsical line in itself. This would lend, if Piaget(sp?) is to be believed, that even a one-year old might very well be non-human, no?
scylla
“Are you primarily interested in arguing semantics? I’m not…”
Well, perhaps you aren’t interested in it but it is IMO almost entirely unavoidable. Rereading your OP lends some truth to the matter as you did semi-casually sling around terms that, were we not to argue semantics, normally include a bit more than strictly medical speak (which is then how you defined human being, through development from the human DNA).
So, when you want to rigidly define a pretty abstract term and then fail to do so, semantics is the most likely debate.
But hell, I think it is a pertenent debate anyway.
People occasionally suffer massive loss of cortical tissue, with little effect. I recall reading about (that means don’t ask me for a link,) people who had suffered diseases of the brain in infacy. Their skulls were mostly filled with spinal fluid, and there was very little brain matter. Yet, they were fully functional and normal humans. So, how much grey matter do you need for CoC.
Hopefully a Doctor will come rescue me concerning my previous example by providing specifics.
Unless you can distinguish the development of a fetus at day 89 from one at day 90, choosing day 90 is inherently an arbitrary decision. Nevertheless, you still refuse to either distinguish them or admit the nature of your choice.
And those same embryologists will tell you that those trimesters you (and the Supreme Court) are so beholden to are intended to provide rough approximations of fetal development. My point is that nothing magical happens on day 90, so there is no good reason to selcet that as the magical day when abortion becomes immoral.
Beautiful logic there. Day 90 is identical to day 89, yet completely different when it comes to defending abortion rights. Whatever.
Of course. Why else would any of us be contributing to this thread?