A thought experiment - and example of how pathetic your statement and premise is: What if the 'baby' were infected with the T-virus and was about to horrifically kill the medical personnel in the room, then decimating Raccoon City? Would it still be considered part of the mother's body even though it was an undead horror hell-bent on destroying the world because it ripped out the doctor's throat before he could cut the cord?
That would be a different thought experiment and a different premise. But sure, if you want me to play along. I believe the imaginary example you describe would be similar to the life of the mother exception, in terms of how we'd go about handling it from an ethical standpoint. So yes, if the existence of the fetus was imminently threatening the lives of hundreds of people, I don't believe most pro-lifers would object to killing it. Satisfied now? My thought experiment is just trying to illustrate how absurd the premise of some pro-choicers is, that it's not a person inside the woman but outside it magically becomes a person. The most extreme example of which is that you could keep taking the fetus out of the woman and putting it back in, over and over again, and watch the status of the fetus's personhood keep flickering back and forth.
So? That isn't happening at present.....and your idea that a fetus can just be taken out and "put back in" is ridiculous.....Hint: It's a lot more involved than that. It wouldn't matter anyway. Why would doctors take out a fetus to do surgery and then kill it? What has that got to do with abortion?
I just question your ethical system, FoxHastings. If we keep following the premises in the ethical framework you are propounding to their logical end we will end up at absurd conclusions. That's why you were forced to conclude, for example that a woman has the right to kill her fetus outside the womb at 22 weeks, or that personhood can be turned on and off, depending on whether it is inside the woman at the time. I don't think you were really comfortable believing that, but you were forced to conclude that in order to keep your overall argument consistent.
It's not just FoxHastings' POV, it's the Supreme Court holding in Roe v. Wade. In terms of jurisprudence, there aren't any absurd conclusions with regard to the fetus & abortion there. The trimester system established in Roe determines when abortion is essentially @ the woman's will, when the state can begin to regulate the process, & when the state can impede abortion. The point of determination for when the fetus can be aborted is fetal viability outside the womb, however delivered. Personhood in legal terms isn't a switch, no matter how convenient a mechanical Worldview would be. & yes, fetal viability is defined by whether the fetus survives deliverance - if it's born, then it's a baby.
No matter when you draw a line of personhood, it will be controversial. Posting pictures or making half baked logical arguments does not get at the issue at hand. I believe this will always be more of a philosophical question rather than a scientific one. These types of questions will have people from both sides cherry picking scientific findings to support their argument. My stance on abortion is that it is a woman's choice. It is their bodies and their lives. We have plenty of children in this world that need a good home. Forcing another child to be born that is not wanted, not able to be cared for or too much of a burden is not good for the child nor anyone involved.
But despite all this, you still want to apply a different standard to a baby at 5 1/2 months gestation than a baby at 8 months gestation who has just been born. Shouldn't that same reasoning apply to a baby at 8 months gestation too? Being born has nothing to do with it. You speak of being born as if the child did not exist yet. That's not the case. Forcing a child in the womb to "be born" will not hurt them anymore than the situation they are already in. Yes, ideally the child shouldn't have been conceived, or possibly should have been aborted in the very earliest stages of pregnancy (before 5 weeks?). But to say that being born is doing the baby a disservice is nonsense. Unless you believe in assisted suicide. Do you believe in also "helping" all those unwanted babies sitting in orphanages??
I see you know you have no argument but your own fantasies . I can tell because you didn't use the quote feature and you have to pretend /ASSume you know what I'm thinking by saying , ""I don't think you were really comfortable believing that"""... I was NOT "forced to conclude" anything because you think I was... I never said personhood could be "turned on and off"....that was you but sometimes people can't think clearly when they're fantasizing and have no argument....... And , of course, you know you 're losing when you can't address: :: So? That isn't happening at present.....and your idea that a fetus can just be taken out and "put back in" is ridiculous.....Hint: It's a lot more involved than that. It wouldn't matter anyway. Why would doctors take out a fetus to do surgery and then kill it? What has that got to do with abortion?
Why the hell would a woman undergo surgery like that just to abort later? That's nice. (Said in Mrs Brown's voice)
Thank you for additionally pointing out that the poster has no knowledge of what pregnancy entails or how it works
This is the same as the other thread; only with a picture. How many desperate reaching threads do we need. No one is supporting killing babies.
It is difficult to believe you cannot grasp such extremely simple fact, so I will attempt to clarify in a way that might be understood. See days no baby till it getses bornded from da mommy. Till den it aint no peoples an lives in her tummy onna counta it prolly cint be a ivin' afore dat. The fetus is alive because of the woman it lives within and thus is a part of her.
Looks like an appendage to me. The word "individual" appears throughout our founding documents. It means separate, unconnected. That picture definitely is not separate and unconnected. But I have supported abortion rights of the parents up to the 54th trimester.... so what do I know.
My question to you is are you attacking abortion overall, or just this specific argument in and of it self? There have been plenty of positions I have supported, but had to attack specific arguments for the same position because they were improper.
Yah, I'm sure you and Einstein were just like that. A critique of thought experiments: "Another explanation for the failure of logic and observation alone to advance medicine is that unlike, say, physics, which uses a form of logic -- mathematics -- as its natural language, biology does not lend itself to logic. Leo Szilard, a prominent physicist, made this point when he complained that after switching from physics to biology he never had a peaceful bath again. As a physicist he would soak in the warmth of a bathtub and contemplate a problem, turn it in his mind, reason his way through it. But once he became a biologist, he constantly had to climb out of the bathtub to look up a fact. "In fact, biology is chaos. Biological systems are the product not of logic but of evolution, an inelegant process. Life does not choose the logically best design to meet a new situation. It adapts what already exists. Much of the human genome includes genes which are 'conserved' i.e., which are essentially the same as those in much simpler species. Evolution has built upon what already exists. ... "For logic to be of use in biology, one has to apply it from a given starting point, using the then-extant rules of the game. Hence Szilard had to climb out of the bathtub to look up a fact." (My emphasis - from The Great Influenza, John M. Barry, c2004, Viking) So - thought experiments don't scale to biology, let alone to ethical/legal issues, for the reason stated above. It's a complete non sequitur.
That's a very interesting quote. +1 on coming up with an intellectually compelling argument Well, if the ethicality of abortion is not logical, however, that leaves us with appeal to emotion, something pro-choicers have also complained about in the past. Unless you can think of another framework to approach it.
Abortion is an emotional and contentious issue. There are reasonable folks on both sides. One side posts threads like this, about near term babies. On the flip side, they don't want to consider the life or health of the mother, or rape victims. One thing is for certain. The think tank of the Republican Party wants this issue to stay right where it is - legal and emotional. This is their top issue for capturing the rural vote in America. With that in mind, don't expect any number of nominated Supreme Court judges to make any difference. After all, it was Warren Burger, a Conservative judge, appointed by Nixon, who cast the deciding vote in the Roe vs Wade decision.
You are quite correct, Repubs have been conning Anti's into voting for them for over 45 years based on the "promise' that they'll do something about abortion....Anti-Choicers don't seem to realize they've been duped.
OK, then it should be able to be taken out of the woman at any time and set on a shelf to grow on it's own.....CAN IT?
I don't know. What if the woman was lying in a coma brain dead with the fetus in an incubator right next to her, an umbilical cord connecting the two? Would the fetus be a "person" then?
