Abortion, Potential Persons and the Slipery Slope

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9113394/Killing-babies...

The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”....They argued: “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.”

Rather than being “actual persons”, newborns were “potential persons”. They explained: “Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’.

This is the fundamental problem with the objection to abortion that foetus's are not "people" but are merely "potential". The argument can be used far too broadly and can justify the killing of a newborn child. So my question to those who use the "potential" argument, is how do you distinguish between a newborn and a foetus, keeping in mind that Oxford professors can't seem to manage it.

[hannah rose myers]

When you are in the hospital and you can't be awake to make the choices about your life and your body guess who does. usually your parents and whatever choice is made you have to trust them. It is not that different when the baby is inside the parent. It may not be the best choice or maybe it is. either way it is the parents choice to make. because the fetus does not have a voice or a frontal lobe which seriously affects their ability to make choices

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

either way it is the parents choice to make. because the fetus does not have a voice or a frontal lobe which seriously affects their ability to make choices

 

Surely the lack of those things means that you should be allowing it to develop them before you destroy it. 

[hannah rose myers]

Maybe but no matter what there will never be an all encompassing law, statement, or argument about abortion, there are to many factors and what ifs. you have you pregnant:

rape victims

teenagers

really dangerously sick people

impoverished people 

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

Rape victims should still have to carry the child to term. While I am of course fully aware of the fact that it's an emotional issue for the woman, the fact is that it will be a worse issue for the foetus. Why should it die, when it didn't do anything wrong. I agree it's very sad for the woman, but it's even sadder for the foetus.

Teenagers? Why should they be exempt from this. The only instance they should be considered for an abortion is if they are too ill to be able to have one, and doing so would be a matter of life or death for them.

Sick people I can understand the issue with, but I really think abortion should only be an option in that circumstance if the baby presents a clear and present danger to the woman's health, not an abstract one.

Impoverished people can simply give the baby up for adoption. Again, I am aware that doing so is very emotionally draining, but what is worse? The woman being emotionally drained or the child never getting to fully feel these emotions at all.

And before you make any arguments that suggest that foetus's don't have any feelings, or aren't worth protecting, let me point out the well recorded incidents of people who were foetuses where the abortions failed who have had vivid nightmares about it afterwards.

[hannah rose myers]

 All of the emotional instances you mentioned you assumed I was talking about just the mother but they are not the only ones affected. do you think it would be easy being the child of a rapist and a rape victim. and when it comes to adoption thousands of children are put up for adoption. True some get great loving parents but those who don't  soon grow too old to be desirable by most people for adoption. and then there is the foster care system which sometimes works and sometimes tosses kids around from family to family some good some bad, separating siblings. Ultimately it is still the women's choice what she does with the baby, you can't control it. 

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

All of the emotional instances you mentioned you assumed I was talking about just the mother but they are not the only ones affected. do you think it would be easy being the child of a rapist and a rape victim.

Of course it would be difficult, but here's the bottom line. It is better being alive than dead

and when it comes to adoption thousands of children are put up for adoption. True some get great loving parents but those who don't  soon grow too old to be desirable by most people for adoption. and then there is the foster care system which sometimes works and sometimes tosses kids around from family to family some good some bad, separating siblings.

The fact that the adoption/foster agencies arn't perfect doesn't make them worse than the child being dead

Ultimately it is still the women's choice what she does with the baby, you can't control it.

I don't believe that's fair, because ultimately, the baby is not hers. It is its own. She doesn't have the right to abort it, any more than I have the right to kill you.

[Yotey]

The fact of the matter is, that the fetuses are using someone else's body to sustain their own. Pregnancy is no small undertaking, even if the mother plans on offering her child up for abortion, the doctors visits, hospital costs, dietary needs, and loss of time at work can be staggering, especially if she is already in a low income bracket and has other children to care for.   

Consider the example of organ donation, say there is an imaginary circumstance where one person needs an organ of yours to live, but donating that organ would require considerable time and risk on your part. Of course, you can opt to donate it anyway, and that would be admirable but now consider this. What if you had children of your own who needed you there actively taking care of them? What if you were a single parent and had no one else to help you with the daily, energy requiring tasks of getting them up, feeding them, getting them ready for school and so on? What if your income alone supported your children or your aging parents? What if you had your own mental and physical health problems that would put your own life and well being in real jeopardy, and say, for hypothetical sake, that if you don't survive the surgery, then the organ would be damaged and the other person would die regardless. 

Yes, if you don't do it, someone else will die, but there are tons of factors that would contribute to your decision, and would you really want to government of your area telling you that you MUST give this person your body, time and energy regardless of your own situation? That is what pro-life legislation is asking of pregnant women. 

You can argue that a fetuses is a full person with full rights, even though they have no memories, consciousness, or, in abortions that are not medically nessicary, even the ability to feel pain. But that does not give them the right to use a women's body against her will. To me the difference between organ donation and removal is simply mechanical, at the heart of it is one person allowing another to use a part of their body at their own risk. You can argue the personal morality, but I find the idea that a third party can come in an demand one outcome as slightly terrifying. 

Legally, you can kill someone for being in your house trying to take your tv (maybe they need it to feed their grandparents, 6 kids and 3 stray kittens, we don't know right?) but women are demonized for what is essentially removing a human seed, that may, although unwittingly, threaten their lives, their careers, and their ability to care for themselves and their current families. 

I'm not saying it's easy, but then, that is sort of my point. 

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

You can argue that a fetuses is a full person with full rights, even though they have no memories, consciousness, or, in abortions that are not medically nessicary, even the ability to feel pain. But that does not give them the right to use a women's body against her will.

No, it doesn't. But this argument falls down in one important respect. It isn't the fetus's fault that it's there. This argument makes the fetus out to be some kind of vampiric figure, attacking young women and living off them, and thus making them the "victim". Where as in truth, the fetus is there for one reason. The action of the man and woman who copulated to create it. So if you accept that it has human rights, you have to criminalise abortion.

[Eystein,]

I have shared these scientists views to some extent for quite some time actually and I think the 'potential person' agruement is very valid. Of course no one can pinpoint exactly at which point a human being become a person of 'moral significance', which I'm sure is subjective anyway... (or at least much sooner than you could expect an infant to have an opinion.) Becoming a person, or human with a sense of self is a continuous developement, but I'm convinced that the process doesn't really start until the fetus is out in the world and start making experiences.

Even though I'm convinced that new born babies are not capable of contemplating the value of their life, or having the notion of self, I can't say I very much appreciate the killing of babies after birth though. I mean, we got to give them a break, they've just popped out. They're awake and paying attention to the best of their abilities, and learns new things continuously. We need to have a buffer anyway, since we can't know exactly what's going on in their inexperienced but more and more cognitive brains.

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

Even though I'm convinced that new born babies are not capable of contemplating the value of their life, or having the notion of self, I can't say I very much appreciate the killing of babies after birth though. I mean, we got to give them a break, they've just popped out. They're awake and paying attention to the best of their abilities, and learns new things continuously. We need to have a buffer anyway, since we can't know exactly what's going on in their inexperienced but more and more cognitive brains.

See this is what I mean "We've got to give them a break" applies further back. The zygote itself is also doing the best it can to pay attention to the wider world, but because it doesn't have the organs nessecary yet, its building them. It's in the very early stages, but that is what it is doing. It's not really reasonable to draw an arbitrary line and say "You have to have them, but you don't need to be able to use them fully yet". By your standards of "trying" even the Zygote is doing that.

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

Nonsense. A zygote is a fertilised ovum which then undergoes cellular mitosis. On the fifth day (in humans), it is then called a blastocyst. A zygote has neither brain nor nervous system (as you note). It is not' doing the best it can to pay attention to the wider world' in any sense.

Of course it is. It is in the process of laying the earliest foundations for all those things you mention (brain, nervous system). It pays attention in the way an organism of its size can, and it sets the stage for the more broad abilities of perception in later developmental stages. That laying the foundation is what I refer to when talking about the Zygote "doing the best it can to pay attention to the wider world".

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

There is no 'trying', 'doing its best' or any such notion with regards to the development of a zygote.

Of course there is. Let me ask you this, if it did not do what it normally does, would the later baby have a brain stem? No. Then it can be said, with accuracy, that it is trying to sense the wider world. The only difference is that it does not have the organs to do so yet, so it is building them. It has all the instructions on how to build them in its geneome.