Question to pro-choicers: what traits does a fetus need to be considered a person?

What type of attributes or traits exactly does a fetus have to possess in order to be considered a person worthy of human life?
Or are there some of you who believe no matter what traits it has, even if it's a baby, it doesn't matter so long as it's inside someone else?




Please try to define vague terms like "sentience" if you use them.

 

I'm Pro-Choice. First, all fetuses that result from human intercourse are worthy of human life. But like any 5 year old child caught in a war in the Middle East or Southeast Asia, environmental issues play a part in the ability of life to become or remain valid. Many of those circumstances are beyond a Mom's control. We must all deal with environmental circumstances in our individual lives that we don't have direct control over, and sometimes those circumstances involve loss of innocent lives. From a religious perspective, God gave us freedom of choice on most life decisions. For centuries we've used that freedom to make war on each other for selfish or childish reasons, killing millions of living humans in the process. God gave us the choice to stop a partially developed fetus when that fetus might come into a world environment not conducive to its own well being. That choice was God given. Man has the power to inflict preventative laws against that right, but doing so would be an infraction against the innate freedoms granted to any mother by God. I might add that while abortion ends the development of a fetus, it does no harm to the soul within that fetus, and that soul can and frequently does choose to return to that same mother in a later pregnancy.

 

Having a brain capable of consciousness is the key.

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/19/books/chapters/the-ethical-brain.html

Pro-lifers often point to reflexes away from noxious stimuli as proof of pain, but what they refer to is a spinal reflex that doesn't require a brain at all. A real, non-reflexive reaction to painful stimuli is evidence of a conscious existence, and makes sense given that this is the time that the thalamus and cortex start to be connected, which is required to experience pain, and respond to it.

This happens to be around the same time it can survive outside of the womb, but that's not really the basis for my argument at all. If you could incubate the zygote from week 1, it wouldn't change the fact that it isn't a person until at least 23rd week and so there should be no moral value assigned to it beyond what the mother assigns to anything in her body.

The situation does become more morally difficult in the 3rd trimester. There is a separate and valid pro-choice argument that abortion should still be okay given the absolute right to control her own body, but for now I will just acknowledge that it is a morally difficult situation, while before about 23 weeks, it should not be considered a moral dilemma at all.

 

Full complement of human DNA, any race or just the human race.

 

Being born and functioning in exactly the same basic way as all people, even if they need the help of medical science to do so.

 

A fetus is legally considered a person AFTER it is born.

Since live births only occur in the 3rd trimester that corresponds with RvW under the Law of the Land.

 

OK, let's add your thread title to all the other different questions in your OP , ""Question to pro-choicers: what traits does a fetus need to be considered a person?"""

And state the obvious that oou have been told a thousand times and you were NEVER ABLE TO REFUTE IT


To be considered a person one has to be BORN.

Can you explain why you can't seem to get that concept and have to keep asking and asking????

IF you can't refute it, and you can't, then why not ACCEPT it and quit asking????

 

It needs to be alive. If it isnt then you dont need to kill it in the first place.

 

But a dead fetus will kill a woman unless it is removed which usually happens in the 3rd trimester AKA late term abortions.

 

It’s continuity of life so any stage instead of an arbitrary point which keeps changing.

 

Those people are killed everyday.....

 

What "arbitrary point" is it that "keeps changing"?

 

Do you really believe that? No moral value whatsoever until the 23rd week?

 

What do you mean by "moral value".....and what has that got to do with your OP?


The ONLY value life (in any form) has, is that which others place on it.


The 23rd week is when a fetus is viable...it has no other meaning.

 

Absolutely. Less moral value than the chicken that died for my lunch. Why? Because it has never had a mind and could not suffer at all, or had any kind of thought, even the most rudimentary one that less sophisticated animals have.

 

No it's also around that time that brain development reaches the level where consciousness is possible. Viability is irrelevant to me.

 

Like Fox said, that's a nonsense question, as a fetus can't be a person, by definition. People are born, by definition. That's how all human societies have defined it over all of human history.

If you want to change that, you'll have to do better than "BECAUSE I SAY SO!". You'll have to demonstrate why your new system is vastly superior. That will be difficult, being that your new system is so confusing. Biology is messy, and it's not kind to pro-life beliefs. Birth was chosen because it's very practical, because it's such a clear dividing line. Make that clear line fuzzy, and all heck breaks loose.

So, would you care to rephrase the question so that it makes sense?

I agree that sentience is not a good dividing line, being that's fuzzy as well, and it raises bad issues of whether born people are really people. That's why I don't talk about it, except to refute bogus pro-life claims about it. I don't talk about viability for similar reasons.

DNA, of course, is a non-issue. Basing personhood on DNA is scary eugenics thinking. What happens if someone decides your DNA is inferior?

I agree that moral worth increases as the fetus grows, but moral worth is a totally different thing than being a person. Bald eagles have moral worth, but they're not people.

 

Is this one of those liberal inconsistencies where more value is placed on animals than unborn human life?

 

A functioning brain

And organs mature enough for survival

 

Some adult humans don't even have that.

A medical patient in a coma, or a child born with polio placed in an iron lung.

 

Would you consider the brain 'functional' if it's sucking its thumb?

 

nevermind

 

I eat meat, but eating meat is more unethical than destroying a fetus that has never had any kind of mind. I don't get what's confusing about that.

 

But it's not irrelevant to law and abortion or pregnancy.

 

Yeah they're totally wrong about it though. Viability is a technological issue. If we had the technological ability to sustain an early embryo without the mother's body, the moral value of the embryo would not change.