Like consciousness? Or do you say it's irrelevant because even if it was conscious you'd still abort it? I suspect the latter.
How about 1000 fetuses? How about if that 1 woman did it to herself (illegally trying to kill her fetus)?
This is not an absolute rule which makes it merely a preference and not a rule. If the woman is willingly pregnant, the fetus does have rights and if - for the sake of a hypothetical example - a woman gets unwillingly pregnant, but later on realises that she actually wants to be a mother, the very same fetus has gone from having no rights to having rights. This is a serious issue I am yet to have the Pro Choicers to explain.
I was assuming it didn't come into being all at once. The whole point is that the capability (neural scaffolding) is NOT there before 20 weeks. 20 weeks is a scientifically conservative point to use, based upon the observation that the brain hasn't even developed yet in a way that would make consciousness on a minimal level physically possible (thalamocortical connections, or even connections to the precursor to the thalamus). Certainly there is a difference between consciousness being "switched off" versus never being achieved in the first place (inanimate objects, individual cells, and preconscious fetuses) or impossible to regain which is the real definition of death. The difference should be obvious. It took a lot of denial or ignorance to say that other ethnicities were subhuman. To say somebody isn't a person only because of a difference in their appearance (and maybe culture), while they are able to talk, express emotions and thoughts, is pretty different from a fetus inside a woman's body, whose development hasn't even made it possible for them to feel pain, let alone express it. A better comparison would be non-human animals and their capacity for suffering. That's a harder subject ethically. The treatment of preconscious fetuses is not truly an ethical dilemma.
Ethically, the fetus has no rights in either scenario. What changes with a woman's preference is really the same as if she were deciding whether to have a knee replacement. It's her knee and it's a decision that will have a profound impact on her life. Going against her wishes either way is unethical. The knee doesn't have rights either way because it has no mind of its own and so has no stake in anything.
A knee doesn't have arms, legs, and a brain though. The woman can get her "knee replacement", she just has to wait a couple months. Is that so unreasonable? In the socialized medical system in Canada, for example, because of the long waiting lists, it can oftentimes take longer to get a knee replacement than a woman would be waiting if she were pregnant. Anyway, getting pregnant is sort of like an 80-year-old woman trying to move heavy furniture; it's not that surprising when something happens. Sex = small possibility of a baby Choose your partner carefully and try to make those chances as small as possible, but be prepared. Pregnancy is completely natural, and unlike a knee popping out of place her body is completely designed for it. Trying to get un-pregnant is as unnatural as elective plastic surgery. The other option is, if a woman does something she regrets, to pop a hefty Plan-B pill the day after. That probably wouldn't jive with many women's lifestyle though. If a woman (like if she was raped) wants to preemptively get her uterus sucked out and get a shot of estrogen for good measure, that's always on the table. Many women wouldn't want to do that after every time they had sex though.
FoxHastings said: ↑ It is inherently despicable and barbaric to let a woman die to save a fetus. 1,000 or one million...doesn't matter. It is despicable and barbaric to let a woman die for a fetus. To save her own life? YES, why not?
FoxHastings said: ↑ Consciousness of a fetus has nothing to do with a woman's right to have an abortion No where in that post did I concede anything....are "imagining " things because you're losing the debate?
FoxHastings said: ↑ Duh, the unborn have no rights... just because you want to give them more rights than anyone else doesn't mean they have rights now, they don't. A big NOPE on that! Pregnant women do NOT get to decide who has rights and who doesn't....and neither do you. A fetus has no rights until birth.....consider it explained...
And "they" were wrong. Blacks were BORN persons who should have had rights. Wanna bring in slavery? OK , let's....it's slavery to force women to gestate and give birth, that was done to slave women.... Want women to be OWNED like animals and forced to gestate ?, that's what was done to slaves Did you want slave women?? Sounds like it.
Frankly I think it more prudent to discuss the economics of childbearing/ raising in a post industrial economy. Industrialization and urbanization has a serious impact on the economic value/ or detriment of large families and the capacity to feed those large families. We can discuss how the pressures to produce sufficient savings to accommodate longer lifespans beyond the median work age, and how higher mortality rates of young men in modern warfare, and broad disruptive nature of warfare accross larger and larger geographic areas, helped produce more pressures for women to join the workforce, leaving even more disincentives for lots of children. We can then discuss how the resulting social changes including the women's movement, contraception and no fault divorce impacted the culture. After all that, you can put the role of sex 'for recreation' as opposed to procreation in its historic perspective. You'd have to design a society where it makes economic sense for a woman to have and raise 7 kids, to change the way we see sex, and that is just not going to happen. We are no longer spending our lives farming plots of land and raising our own workforce on the farm.
You're talking about utilitarianism and the greater collective good. That argument could potentially extend further and lead to forced abortions in the future. After all, then it becomes not about individual rights but what's best for society. We already saw this taking place in China 10 to 20 years ago.
What ARE you babbling about ? And, as usual , you cherry picked my post so you wouldn't have to face those INCONVENIENT facts: And "they" were wrong. Blacks were BORN persons who should have had rights. Wanna bring in slavery? OK , let's....it's slavery to force women to gestate and give birth, that was done to slave women.... Want women to be OWNED like animals and forced to gestate ?, that's what was done to slaves Did you want slave women?? Sounds like it."""""""""""" YOU sure don't like anything inconvenient...
I am going to ask you to reread the edited and expanded post, and see if you understand what I mean better. I am not talking about what is good for society, but what is in the economic interest of its foundational unit - the family!
Yes, bump off one of the kids so she can better take care of the other two. She can always adopt. There's no shortage of childless families waiting to adopt for healthy blue-eyed babies. Even Jewish babies are in big demand.
Maybe my point is just too complicated for you and I should just give up. It has to make sense to have lots and lots of kids, for increased procreation to become more important to women. They are not going to want lots and lots more mouths to feed, in a society where you cannot feed those mouths, and Grandma and Grandpa with only one income. High procreation levels work in rural societies much better than urban ones because it is easier for young people to produce value younger and older people to stay valuable longer. .
So I take it you approve of twin reductions - killing one twin at random because the woman only wanted one of them.
