I've explained several times. Reformulated. I don't think I can do better. That's fine with me. I'm not trying to convince you of anything. If my ideas interest you, that's good. If they don't, the world is will continue to turn. No. Not at all. I am trying to demonstrate that the usual arguments, all hitched to the ZEF/baby are beside the point. The key to defining the last limit for abortion is our relationship with the newborn. Not the newborn itself. Are you decreeing my opinion to be ludicrous... without any justification? I am not "dictating" anything at all. I am presenting my opinion and explaining my justification for it. How is that "unwarranted"? I do not understand. ' I give up! I have explained too many times already... Not arbitrary at all. Before birth, I use ZEF. After birth I use baby (or newborn immediately after birth). At birth, I use ZEF/baby as a shorthand for the transition. Not arbitrary at all. You might have asked, rather than assume... Ummm... How do you figure "interference from people like me"? I have stated repeatedly that the limit for abortion should be at birth. My OP is about the reasoning that justifies that limit. Dunno...
That is not the way it came over, it came over as there being an actual federal restriction on abortion after a certain time period .. If I have misinterpreted then I apologise.
Fundamental and major are basically the same thing, no word games what so ever .. except for the ones you are trying to invoke. major is a synonym of fundamental. http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/fundamental In reality the changes at birth are both fundamental and major That does not change their status of being a person, so again no word games involved. Yes I understood your meaning, so why not use the correct word for it?
No apology needed. I am not disagreeing with you. I just think that there is a reason for SOME restrictions late into the third trimester.
Is there really a good moral argument for chimps not having rights? I used to want to find one, but gave up. The closest I could come to was loyalty to my own species. We're more sophisticated than them, sure, but they're not less sophisticated than a newborn baby. Legal probably shouldn't be used as a starting point for philosophical discussion about how things should be. Legal is simply the status quo where the powers that be can apply power against violations. The law does not determine what is right, only what is punishable. Yes, that would be an idiotic thing to base the law upon, since souls haven't been demonstrated to exist in the first place. Unless you're calling 18-21 year olds kids, that's not completely true. Kids, the mentally handicapped, the insane, prisoners, and the elderly with dementia are all considered persons. Persons are considered to have rights by default, and those rights are restricted when they are assumed or declared to be incompetent to make decisions in their own self interest, or when others need to be protected from them. This can happen to any adult who is deemed a danger to themselves/others, and while their liberty is restricted in a paternalistic sort of way, they do not cease to be a person in any way. Our society hasn't figured out rights and responsibilities yet, but we've come a long way by distancing ourselves from religion. We should remember that persons have rights by default, but rights cannot be absolute because they come into conflict with one another. I want the freedom to drive down the highway at 150 mph even at my own peril, but it wouldn't be fair to the person I rear-end if I did so. Our society understands that conflict of rights, but we erroneously consider the "right to vote" to be essential because of self-determination. Yet the average person is frankly not competent to make these decisions, so much like we wouldn't ask a non-doctor how to treat a cancer, we shouldn't ask the general public to choose somebody who will control foreign policy. But it is not quite as immoral/stupid to do things this way as it was by divine right in medieval Europe. There probably is an exact "moment of awakening" of the mind, but it's not something we know how to measure yet. It probably can be done through a better understanding of functional MRI. In the meantime, establishing a sort of maximum fetal age as the limit of routine abortion is reasonable. This age would be a point where it is physically impossible for the brain to be developed enough to be conscious in any way. Basic consciousness requires connections between the cortex and thalamus (or the fetal precursor, I forget them name). Before these connections have been established, the mental sophistication of the fetus is actually far less than that of a fish. So from a moral standpoint, fish would deserve more rights than a fetus before sufficient brain development for rudimentary consciousness. Personhood lies in the mind, period. The heart is just a pump, and is more of an essential biological tool (so far) than the foundation of personhood. Doctors just use it to establish death because the brain can't live long without a heartbeat (or ECMO), and the heartbeat is easier to measure than brain waves. Interesting stuff, but not really relevant for deciding what is moral. Babies are cute, but there is no denying that they have a lesser capacity for everything except learning and being annoying. They're selfish and almost machine-like when they're first born. It can easily be argued that a baby is morally worth less than an adult on average, but it's dangerous to compare the value of persons like that and that we should use a lesser standard for personhood than self-awareness. We are emotional creatures capable of rationality. Of course we have an instinct to protect babies - or else our species would die out because people would kill them for how annoying they are crying all night. I don't think so. Something feeling repulsive doesn't tell us if it's moral or not. Doing an autopsy is repulsive, trust me, but it's not immoral. Consider that someday we may be able to incubate babies artificially. Other than what the parents want, what would determine whether it is okay to pull the plug and let the fetus die? It's personhood, which at a minimum requires the capacity for consciousness. Yes, animals have various capacities for this too. And in the end, to the extent that we have the power to not harm them, it would be more moral to not harm them.
That's not an answer to any of my questions. Because medical personnel have bent the rules and euthanized newborns points to a problem (more than one problem), but is not an explanation in this philosophical discussion. My underlying point is that once you open the door to something as subjective as "medical prospects", you are on a slippery slope which will be abused. And while your post #1 is interesting, and I agree that the intangible moral and religious aspects are very black and white, they cannot be eliminated from this subject. It is those moral/religious aspects that drive the entire abortion issue.
My goodness! Such a long and thoughtful Reply. Thank you. I don't have an answer. Unless and until we come up with a definition of "person" that is independent of species, we will always be troubled by the higher animals. And also, perhaps, by AIs. You are right. "Legal" was a very poor choice of word -- not even corresponding to my meaning. I meant "rational". And should have used that word. "Beginning in adolescence" they're surely still kids... and from my perspective, pushing seventy, 21-year-olds look pretty young, too! I wouldn't want to get hung up in semantics, but it seems to me that we use "person" in different ways, here. The legal status of a severely mentally handicapped individual is in many ways closer to that of an animal than a "regular person". No competences whatever are accorded by society or the law. The individual is (supposedly) corporally protected, (because human??) but we know that even that is often not respected when the cameras are not rolling. I think your phrase "they do not cease to be a person in any way" is very kind... but pragmatically not true at all. These paragraphs go a bit afield, but I agree wholeheartedly. I posted an opinion piece on this topic to my blog, so of course it got no reaction whatsoever. While we can surely identify the experts who should be making policy decisions on technical topics, I'm not so sure who should be making decisions linked to "morality". That doubt is a good reason, in itself, for trying to render these policies technical rather than moral! Lots to unpack, here! You use terms like "awakening" and "conscious", as though they are markers of personhood. But they are present in all higher animals... IMNAAHO, it is futile to search for any single moment. I prefer the notion of gradual accretion of characteristics. But if you are looking for a "point of no return", then I would suggest the arrival of self-awareness. Your fish never becomes self-aware. The problem, of course, is that self-awareness comes several months after birth, and we are profoundly revolted by the idea of "post-birth abortion", even if we know that the newborn still isn't a "person". Our revulsion is deep and powerful, even if it is irrational. I don't think it is cultural... which leads me to think that something else is going on... and the explanation is easy to find, once we think about it a little. We humans, despite our pretenses, are not really very rational. Almost all our "thinking" is in fact nothing more than intellectual backfill, to justify a gut-reaction. And our "protect and nurture" reflex at the sight of a newborn is a very, very powerful gut-reaction. Our revulsion at "post-birth abortion" is not rational -- it is instinctive. That doesn't make it any less real, and we would be fools to ignore it. We agree. My point here was that throughout history, the search for a specific "moment of personhood" has yielded multiple results, differing considerably. Which probably indicates that the search is futile. We pretty much agree in these sections. I'm avoiding the notion of "morality" throughout my line of reasoning. My objective, in this OP, is to determine a limit to abortion that does not depend on the promotion of any single one of the thousands of events that occur during gestation. It seems to me that we will never agree on any particular event, because that choice is predetermined by our selection criteria. We are chasing our tails. That's why I started with the chimpanzee. It is undoubtedly more intelligent and more aware than a severely brain-damaged human. So... why is the human a "person" but not the chimp? Why do we (almost 100% of us) find abhorrent the idea of euthanizing the brain-damaged... but not the use of chimps in foreseeably deadly medical research? Because we like to consider ourselves rational, we spend a lot of time rationalizing decisions that are in fact not rational at all. The search for "personhood" is like that. We try to be rational... only to observe that we give a totally irrational importance to our own species... Ultimately, I wonder if this Holy Grail exists at all, and for practical purposes -- the definition of the last limit for abortion, I have tried to avoid "personhood" entirely. Again, thank you for your thoughtful Reply!
Actually... it is an answer. Perhaps not a satisfactory answer from your point of view, but an answer nonetheless... Since you reacted to it rudely and abruptly... I am returning your courtesy... Not an explanation, but an illustration... The interesting thing about slippery slope arguments is that they are almost always slippery slopes, themselves... Morality and religion may be debated until the end of time -- how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Moving the abortion debate out of the moral/religious domain, and into the technical domain, seems to me to be a very desirable thing!
Question. What is the point in searching for the answer of when does someone become a person, what ever answer is arrived at will have a huge amount of bias in it. I suppose as humans we must try to rationalise everything in order to justify. If there is a point of personhood then it lies beyond our understanding and capability to find it. I have conflict concerning absolute truths, again if they do exist then we cannot discover them yet. Every time I see someone declare that such and such is an absolute truth I see where they have injected their own bias into the conclusion.
Excellent question! I agree that the conditions surrounding "the search for personhood" are more or less insurmountable. The search is probably condemned to failure through eternal debate. Perhaps. Or perhaps no such point exists. In either case, I think we would do well to find an entirely different approach to the question of "Until when is abortion acceptable?" The personhood approach seems to go around in circles. Yup! I agree entirely. "Absolute truth" only exists in "faith". In the real world, in science, there is always approximation.
Apologies for not answering each point separately .. difficult from a phone. I see you say that we should look for a different approach to when abortion is acceptable, I feel we already have a pretty decent compromise in place already. I think we should be moving away from the abortion debate and finding ways to stop the unwanted pregnancy occurring in the first place, a good start would be to make comprehensive sex education mandatory in all schools and provide free at source contraception of all types to sexual active people without parental permission if they are under age.
I live in France half the time. I have both passports. Abortion is not an exclusively American topic. Roe v. Wade is indeed a decent compromise, for the time being, but it doesn't apply elsewhere. And it cannot last forever, since the notion of viability is vulnerable to technology. Before Roe v. Wade collapses, we have time to find a better intellectual foundation.
Most Western countries have a similar compromise in place, variations on the actual maximum time limit do vary though. France for example has elective abortion up to 12 weeks .. however after that period of time it is still possible for a woman to get an abortion if two physicians certify that the abortion will be done to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman; a risk to the life of the pregnant woman; or that the child will suffer from a particularly severe illness recognized as incurable. The kicker the pretty much allows elective abortions to be carried out is the highlighted part above, there is no definition of what comprises 'mental health' in the case of a pregnant woman and as such it is easy for doctors to allow elective abortions under the 'mental health' banner. Pretty much most of Europe use the 'mental health' exception in their abortion restrictions and as such those restrictions are moot. As far as any restrictions are concerned I am 100% against all of them, I have yet to find a single anti-abortion person who can show me evidence that a woman who has carried a pregnancy for, lets say, 6 months would suddenly elect to have an abortion. As an example of how not having any restrictions does not increase the abortion rate one only has to look at Canada, where their abortion rate is lower than numerous other countries that have restrictions, including the US, while in Brazil, where abortion restrictions are extreme, the estimated abortion rate is huge.
The pragmatic reality in France is that a woman can get an abortion... whenever. And the health care system pays for it. But there are other countries where the situation is not so good. Poland's crazy-right government wants to roll back women's rights... And let's not forget that across much of Africa and Asia, the situation is downright bad. We need to find a logic that escapes our Judeo-Christian tradition.
Could be. But it is my opinion that if a woman with a pregnancy occurring in her own body decides she wants to terminate that pregnancy...she alone should have the power to make that decision. I understand there are people who want to make that decision for her...and I think those people are way out of order. And anyone who allows a doctor to make life and death decision for them...deserves whatever they get. I will never allow that. A doctor can make a recommendation...and under normal circumstances I will accept that recommendation. But if a woman decides she wants to terminate a pregnancy occurring in her own body...and a physician advises her not to... ...HER DECISION SHOULD TAKE PRECEDENCE.
I can not see a rational for allowing a woman to have an abortion at 8 months for no reason other than she wants one. Even if it is rare it should be zero
as far as Africa and Asia is concerned they will get there their own way, in their own time .. We cannot force a change on to them, we have tried that before and it didn't turn out so well. Religion should be 100% banned from interfering in anything that could effect a society as a whole, it is partly due to religion that it has taken so long to get a decent contraceptive service and acceptance in Africa. - - - Updated - - - doesn't really matter.
Nope it isn't, the relevance of self-defence is on the person facing the decision, not on a third party .. if a police officer says it would be safer for a woman to submit to rape, does that mean she can no longer defend herself? All the doctor can do is give a recommendation, it is up to the woman whether she acts on that recommendation .. of course the doctor can refuse to perform the abortion, but he cannot force her to give birth instead.
