bd-from-kg

Jerry Smith:

Yours was a very thoughtful post. Unfortunately I’m trying to reply to three such posts today on this thread alone, so I don’t have time to organize my response into a coherent argument. All I can do is to reply to some of your points.

Not so. From their point of view the quality that the Nazis valued in non-Jews was the quality of not being human vermin. Were the Nazis wrong only in their opinions about the character of their victims? Would they have been right to exterminate Jews if they had been genetically disposed to be of low character, as the Nazis imagined? For that matter there are some people that I consider human vermin. Does that mean that they don’t have rights? I would answer all of these questions with an emphatic “no”. But surely one’s current level of development is an even less reasonable criterion for whether one should be given legal protection that one’s hereditary disposition to be of good or bad character. After all, the former is a transient property whereas the latter is permanent (and likely to be passed on to one’s descendants besides).

As I will argue at greater length later, there is no such definition that would be non-arbitrary in both theory and practice.

So do babies. In all of these cases, even the ones with nervous systems have very primitive ones; they’re less developed than those of , say, adult cats. The question is whether these differences justify treating them as non-persons. More on this later.

Well, yes, that does seem to be a valid principle. But it seems a little weird to apply it to a fetus. It isn’t exactly “forcibly” deriving subsistence from the mother. Normally the mother conceived as a result of a voluntary act, and her body then voluntarily (if we’re going to apply terms that normally imply purpose and intent to things that don’t have them) made extensive arrangements to accommodate the newcomer.

I’d say that it’s more like a case where I stuck a needle into my arm, collected it, and gave it to you.

How about if I bring you into my house while you’re asleep and lock you in. You now have the choice of eating my food or starving. Naturally you choose to eat. Do I now have the right to kill you for “stealing” my food?

Aside from the fact that, in view of the comments I’ve already made, there is no need for a counter-argument, this isn’t at all clear. Is it true that one has a right to kill an intruder who doesn’t know that he’s intruding and isn’t responsible for intruding, even if there’s no other way to get rid of him and he’s inconveniencing you for a while? I don’t understand the moral principle involved here. When you’re the one who “placed” him on your “property” and he has no way to leave, it seems even less clear.

I find the following argument far more compelling than any of these: If you create another human being because you found it inconvenient to take measures to avoid doing so, do you have the right to kill him – also for the sake of your own convenience?

And as I argued in my reply to tronvillain, this is just flat-out wrong, even after replacing “human being” with “person”.

Are you seriously proposing that our rights (including our right not to be murdered) should be contingent on how much we are able to contribute to society, how many people we are personally connected to, or how many people would suffer grief or hardship if we died? I’m aghast.

A person who is asleep, in a drunken stupor, or in a coma also has none of these qualities. Are such people therefore not persons? Would it be OK to kill someone in a coma because he doesn’t feel pain, is unable to relate emotionally to other humans, doesn’t fear death, etc.? And why is it relevant whether someone has had these qualities in the past? If we’re going to go by the criterion of value, the past is irrelevant. Value is intrinsically a forward-looking criterion. It doesn’t ask “What have you done for me?”; it asks “What can you do for me?”

It’s difficult to remain agnostic on a question which has been settled decisively.

If the legal system were to throw up its hands every time a difficult case presented itself we might as well dispense with laws altogether. For example, it’s not clear exactly when a child should be taken from its parents, so should we just repeal all laws that deal with this question and let the parents decide?

Jerry Smith

Thank you. I hope we can continue a thoughtful discussion.

There are a few points I would like to take a little bit further. In order to do so, I would like to separate my points into two areas of interest:

1) What laws can or cannot say under certain interpretations of the Constitution, and given certain arguments.

2) What laws should or should not say from pragmatic and moral perspectives.

1) Most of what I argued previously had to do with standard pro-choice arguments. These mostly relate to the issue of Constitutional Law. Personhood is not defined in the Constitution, but who gets "equal protection" is.

Persons born in or naturalized citizens of the U.S. are granted equal protection. It is true that most court cases have supported the idea of extending equal protection to foreign nationals while they are in the U.S., but strictly speaking and according to its Letter, the Constitution does not grant equal protection to unborn persons. In Roe v Wade, Justice Blackmun laid out the trimester system as a guideline for determining the state's interest in protecting the life of a fetus based on his and the court's understanding that the legal system is based on the state's interest, or in a republican democracy, the interest of the citizens. The guidelines of the trimester system were laid out to provide the best possible protection to the fetus, while still honoring the woman's 14th Amendment right to privacy among other considerations.

I will try to demonstrate by two examples how the 14th Amendment comes into play. One of these is rape. A woman cannot be said to have voluntarily become pregnant when she is raped. Your rebuttals for the argument I presented (on behalf of pro-choice, not on my own behalf) do not speak to cases of rape. The pro-choice contingent can maintain the argument that a woman has the right to use deadly force if necessary to remove an intruder that is a perceived threat, and is helping itself to her bodily resources.

The woman also has a 14th Amendment right to privacy. Pro-Choice, and the U.S. Supreme Court would say that requirements that a woman prove rape is an undue burden on her right to privacy. Related to this, is the fact that all pregnancy is physically degrading, and some is potentially debilitating or life-threatening. Again, the S.C. finds that to require proof of pathogeny from a woman is an undue burden on her right to privacy. I don't know if you are familiar, but these findings weren't made haphazardly. Before Justice Blackmun voted and wrote his opinion, he spent a full year researching the medical implications of pregnancy and abortion.

To take the pro-choice argument further, some would hold that a woman cannot be said to have voluntarily become pregnant merely because she voluntarily had sex (or even because she took no precaution). In the analogy of the intruder, she left the door unlocked and standing wide open. She still did not invite the prowler inside. It was not her choice to 'close the door and lock it after he was in' (your analogy); that occured due to biological inevitability.

Significantly, in NO legal case (now including pregnancy) can a person be required by law to give of bodily resources to another person. If I am driving drunk and strike a pedestrian, and if that pedestrian needs a blood transfusion from me to survive, I do not have to provide it. If a woman has consensual sex and becomes pregnant, if she is to be treated equally (to me) under the law, she cannot be required to remain pregnant.

If a harmless drunk wanders into my house and wakes me up at night, I have a right to defend myself from a threat that I perceive (even if it is not real) using any means up to and including deadly force. If a woman finds herself pregnant, and perceives that pregnancy to be a threat to her life or health, she must be granted that same right to defend herself from the perceived threat.

Please note that much of the pro-choice argument does not depend on withholding equal protection from the unborn. Yet, under the Constitution, the unborn are not granted equal protection.

2) The Moral Debate
We do not have a perfect legal system, and we cannot even hope to have one that fully meets any given moral standard (unless that moral standard is based on the law instead of vice versa). I will leave others to hash out the legal problems of equal protection, right to privacy, and the legal status of the unborn. Let us come back to what is or is not a person.

It is obvious that some people entertain different notions of person: some feel a person is any homo sapiens who has been born. Others believe a person is any homo sapiens who has been fertilized, others, have different standards. Certain statements you have made make it obvious that your definition of a person is any homo sapiens who has been fertilized. You then proceed to prove that under that definition, it is improper to use any conceiveable standard to deny personhood to one of the so-defined persons. This is correct in so far as it goes, but it does not give a moral standard for determining what is the best definition of person. It only shows that if one definition is employed then no more liberal definition is allowed under it.

Your criterion of personhood is membership in the species homo sapiens. Isn't it possible that other criteria, ones that speak directly to our shared moral values, are more appropriate than yours? You said:

I would have to ask you why the definition based on membership in the species is decidedly superior to a moral definition when we are dealing with a strictly moral and not scientific issue? I would truly like to hear your answer, but if there is none, perhaps it is not unwise to remain agnostic on personhood of foetae and work on the problem from other angles.

Edited for grammar, even though I know it is a hopeless cause

[ March 21, 2002: Message edited by: Jerry Smith ]</p>

Jerry Smith

bd:

some points I left unadressed in my last post:

(where human being=person, according to what you correctly pointed out was standard usage)

Answer: No. I don't think you have adequately shown how this relates to the general issue of abortion, though, given personhood = membership in the homo sapiens species, it does give a moral argument against purely elective abortions in cases where pregnancy resulted from consensual sex.

It is not unreasonable to set a (very low, non-arbitrary) base-line physiological or psychological level of development as a standard in our definition of what is a person. It makes sense to recognize the difference between an undifferentiated mass of cells with a human genome inside and an individual that is readily recognizable as a human, with all of the physiological structures of a human, including the ever-important central nervous system. We must recognize that difference even if it is arguable that the difference is not sufficient grounds for demarcating the two in our definition of person.

I use the term value in the sense of do we, as a culture, assign moral value to or perceive moral value in the individual. When the question is how to define the individual (person vs potential person), one must recognize the importance. When making a definition in a moral framework, moral values about the subject must be taken into account. Many things do impact our perception of or assignment of moral value to an individual: WHETHER (not how much) this individual contributes to the society, WHETHER people will be caused grief if the individual comes to harm (to a moral subjectivist, this may be the most important question), is the individual self-aware, and on and on.

A person who is asleep, in a drunken stupor, or in a coma, presumably has been, at one time or another, awake and with all of the qualities that define a human person. It is a grave matter to reduce the status of an individual once they have taken on the status of human, as you so articulately pointed out in your post.

Moral value, I would argue, is a dynamic criterion. It recognizes the current state of affairs, as well as future potential and past demonstrations of worth.

I hope that I have covered everything now. If not, the uncovered parts will just have to get cold, because I am too tired and too intoxiated to type another

Jamie_L

Jerry Smith seems to have picked up the pro-choice arguement successfully, and perhaps better than I did. Since he's making most of the arguments I would make, I won't waste anyone's time duplicating him.

I would like to add that this is a great discussion considering the hot-button topic at hand. This is the kind of thing the national debate is lacking. Although people are making these arguments, most of the information that reaches the public is shouting and name calling.

Edited to add:

Just had a thought relating to the blood-transfusion analogy. Suppose someone agrees to give the proposed blood transfusion. The transfusion starts, but later the person giving the transfusion changes his mind and pulls the needle out. If the other guy dies, have any laws been broken? I actually don't know the answer to this question.

Second situation: the transfusion starts while the healthy person is unconscious and unaware of the proposed plan. When he wakes up he disagrees with the plan, pulls the needle out, and the other guy dies. Is this legally any different than the first situation?

Jamie

[ March 22, 2002: Message edited by: Jamie_L ]</p>

bd-from-kg

Jerry Smith:

For someone who has no firm beliefs on the abortion issue you seem to be familiar with a remarkable variety of pro-choice arguments and surprisingly few pro-life ones. Perhaps you’ve been unable to locate any of the numerous pro-life internet sites?

Anyway, I combined my responses to your last two posts. Once again I haven’t had time to organize them very well.

If you’re right, the Court has said in effect that abortion law should be controlled entirely by the extremely unusual case of abortion of a fetus conceived as a result of rape. That’s ridiculous. In no other area of the law would this kind of reasoning be given two seconds of consideration by any court in the land. The rational approach is to design laws so as to treat typical cases appropriately and fit in rare exceptions as best one can within that framework. The laws on theft were not written with a guy who has to steal to feed his starving family in mind.

In all other areas of the law, a person is held to have intended a result of his or her act if they intended to do what they did and could have reasonably foreseen that it would have that result. Since almost all women who have sex at all have it on a regular basis, and since this can easily be foreseen to be likely to result in pregnancy, by normal legal standards almost any woman who becomes pregnant would be considered to have done so voluntarily.

But in any case, it doesn’t really matter whether the woman is held to have voluntarily become pregnant. If you drive while drunk and get into an accident, you may not have gotten into the accident voluntarily but you’re still responsible for the results.

First off, forget the business about falsely perceiving a “threat”. Women do not have abortions because they think the unborn child is threatening them.

Now let’s review the situation to make sure I’ve got it straight. You leave the door wide open and a harmless drunk wanders in. It’s obvious that he means no harm and that there is no need to “defend” yourself, but you shoot him dead anyway. (To make it a good analogy, let’s say that you do it to keep him from getting some food from the fridge). And you think that you have a right to do this without incurring any legal liability? Try it; you’ll be in for a huge shock. People have been convicted for shooting actual burglars in cases where they can’t show that they had rational reasons to fear bodily harm.

Of course it was her choice to “close the door and lock him in”. Look. Suppose that you press a button that you know might cause someone to be locked in your room with no way out. If it happens that it does have that result, it’s on your head. You’re responsible. The fact that you didn’t know that it would happen is irrelevant. You are not free to kill the “intruder” for “stealing” your food to stay alive.

Equal treatment under the law means being treated the same under comparable circumstances. Being pregnant is hardly comparable to being forced to give someone a blood transfusion.

Now let’s try to get back to something resembling reality. A fetus is not an “intruder”. It is not a vampire. It is not a drunk who wandered into someone else’s house. It’s a perfectly innocent, helpless little human being who has never done anyone harm or even wished anyone harm. It obtains nutrients from its mother through a completely natural, wholesome, cooperative process in which the mother’s body participates just as “voluntarily” as the child’s. All of us came into existence via this process that you compare to an “intruder” who “steals” your food and even “takes” your blood by force. To speak as though the child were some kind of vampire or criminal is outrageous. The natural human feeling for small, innocent, helpless fellow humans is one of tender compassion. Even if you feel that you have to kill it, it should be with a sense of loss and regret. To speak of these little creatures the way you (and many abortion advocates) do is inhuman. If you have to think of them as criminals, as intruders, as burglars out to steal your stuff, in order to feel comfortable with the idea of killing them, maybe you need to rethink your position.

Yes. But it doesn’t make sense to simply propose a standard. Moral arguments are not conducted in a vacuum. You have to show how the proposed standard is not just an arbitrary one picked out of the air to support one’s own position. Ideally, you should be able to show that it derives from the fundamental moral values of the society in question. Failing that, you should be able to show that it is consistent with the other ethical decisions that are made regularly by the members of that society. Or (a really tough sell) you can try to show that the fundamental moral values of the society are wrong and should be changed.

This is a complete misinterpretation of what I’ve been doing. I’ve been primarily concerned with showing that various pro-choice arguments are fallacious and pointing out that to get anywhere one has to propose and justify a particular criterion of personhood.

My actual criterion is not membership in the species. Here is that criterion that I advocate:

Anyone who will naturally and foreseeably become capable of cognition is a “person”.

(Some other human beings are also “persons”, but this condition is sufficient for personhood. The details of who else qualifies are probably not relevant to this debate, although I’m prepared to discuss them if necessary.)

This criterion is based on the moral values that are widely shared in our society, as I argued at length in the <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=14&t=000370&p=5" target="_blank">twelve-week-old fetus</a> thread.

The question you proposed to remain agnostic on was not when a “person” comes into existence (i.e., at what point this new human being should be given legal protection) but “when life begins”. This is a scientific question, and it has been answered.

What do you mean, you don’t see how it relates to abortion? It’s an exact description of the vast majority of abortions. This is not an analogy!

Why? Please explain why this is “non-arbitrary”. In other words, state the moral principle involved here. Then explain why it doesn’t imply that we should extend legal protection to wild dogs but does imply that we should extend legal protection to newborn babies.

Of course there’s a difference. But if “recognizing” this difference doesn’t mean extending legal protection to the latter and denying it to the former, what’s your point?

Once again, are you seriously proposing to make your rights contingent on whether (in the judgment of some government officials) you contribute to society, your death will cause anyone grief, etc.? If not, what are you saying?

So what? So has a dead man.

Value derives from the future, not the past. Although the value we place on someone is often caused by events in the past, it is based on the future. For example, my love for my wife is caused by things that happened long ago, but I value her for the joy I expect to experience by being with her (and for other things, but all of them are in the present and future).

This can be illustrated nicely by looking at the example of a man in a coma. Whatever he might have done, whatever joy he may have caused in the past, if we are certain that he will never come out of the coma we will not consider it a crime if someone pulls the plug on him. On the other hand, if we have a reasonable expectation that he will recover, anyone who does this will be charged with murder. Clearly his rights, if any, depend on what we think about his potential; what we think he may be capable of in the future, not on what he’s done, or been, in the past.

Heaven help us if our rights are made to be contingent on our perceived “moral value” or “worth”. Whatever these terms mean, they can only refer to what some other people think about us. And in the nature of thing, if these things are to relate to our legal rights in some fashion, the people involved will be government officials. To say that our rights should be contingent on anything of this sort is to say that the government would get to decide, on a case-by-case basis, what rights we have. But this would mean that we have no rights for all practical purposes.

This idea has been tried many times, for many millennia, in many, many countries. The result is always catastrophic for the average Joe. The Founding Fathers recognized this and wisely decided to make our rights independent of our perceived “moral worth” or “value” or anything of the sort. Instead, they had a new idea: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all mean are created equal, that they were endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It’s worked pretty well. Do you really want to throw this away for the sake of the convenience of a few?

Viti

bd-from-kg

Can you please explain why this seems to contradict your views in this thread?

<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=52&t=000082" target="_blank">IVF Ebryos</a>

Why are purposely created embryos somehow "involuntary" and so not in need of the same protections?

Danya

bd from kg your entire last post can be applied to IVF embryo's. The fact that you 'change the goalposts' to exclude infertile women from being responsible for the embryo's they create voluntarily is hypocritical. Maybe you are the one that needs to re-evaluate your feelings on this issue not the other way around.

I assume you are not a woman who has ever been in a position to know this and since I am I can tell you that you are wrong.

[ March 22, 2002: Message edited by: Danya ]</p>

Jerry Smith

Fair question. The fact is that a few years ago, I got on the USENET abortion forum and plead (for personal reasons) for each side of the abortion debate to make an effort to understand the other. I made some of the same points you are making, and was roundly shot down. Some of the more reasonable posters went to lengths to point out their own positions and how they justified them. I was, like you, primarily concerned with the issue of elective abortions in cases of consensual sex.

I don't visit web-sites to learn the arguments. The ones I know come from being involved in the arguments, and this experience has stuck with me. I am familiar with the pro-life arguments, but I am emotionally biased toward those, and I don't pay as much attention to them because they normally don't represent a challenge.

The first thing that was pointed out to me was that consensual sex isn't always consensual. It was pointed out to me that the vast majority of incidents of rape and other forms of coercive sex go unreported. I cannot link to supportive research (I have seen some, though), but I can acknowledge that I have seen plenty of anecdotal evidence in the matter. My ex-wife was 'date-raped' more than once, and once by someone who was at the time an extremely close friend of mine. It, too, went unreported and unprosecuted. Had she become pregnant it would have been absolutely impossible for her to prove that she had been coerced.

It is arguable that the rational approach is to design laws that treat all cases fairly, giving the benefit of the doubt to the person who stands to be censured by the law.

Driving drunk is illegal. If you get into an accident which harms someone, you are (up to a certain point) responsible for the results.
Consensual sex is legal. If you get pregnant as a result of engaging in it, you are responsible for the result. This can (and does) mean a lot of things.
1) You are responsible to choose between carrying the pregnancy to term which will add to your responsibilities, or aborting the pregnancy before a Person is developed because you cannot fulfill additional responsibilities.

2) You are responsible for carrying the pregnancy to term and all of the responsibilities that come with the creation of a Person, unless the pregnancy severely threatens your health or life.

3) You are responsible for carrying the pregnancy to term, without regard to your own health or life.

The debate (about abortion in the case of consensual sex anyway) hovers around these options or alternatives to them.

I am inclined toward number 2 on a moral basis, but this is not codified into an ethic in my case. It remains a preference yet to be so codified.

How has this been established? I cannot imagine how this conclusion has been reached, especially in light of the fact that many pregnancies do threaten the woman's health or life.

Just because the drunk is harmless does not mean that it is obvious to you that he is harmless. If a person feels a threat to their life or health, that person has a right to deal with that perceived threat using necessary means up to and including deadly force.

Suppose further that pressing this button has more similarities with sex than merely the chance that a person will become dependent upon your bodily resources as the result of you pushing it.

For instance:

You can never push the button without the help of another person, whose body will not be used by the inmate for sustenance.

You can be forced to push the button against your will.

Your biology consitently urges you to push the button at least occasionally, and your body begins to malfunction if you never push it.

You can employ methods of pushing the button that greatly reduce the possibility of a person becoming dependent on your body for their survival. Those methods are not able to completely eliminate that risk.

You will never be able to prove that you did employ the safety methods in the future.

Now you say that in this case if a person A becomes dependent upon person B's bodily resources as a result of this 'button-pushing' it is on person B's head. What does this mean exactly? That person B no longer has sovereignty over what happens in their own body once the button is pushed?
This would entail that Person A gains a claim on Person B's body.
Yet, in a similar situation, where Person B has clear responsibility for negligence, such as when Person B was driving drunk and struck a pedestrian, Person A has no legal claim against Person B's body or bodily resources.

True, but only because of understatement. Giving a blood transfusion is a minor burden. Providing lving space inside one's body, a 9 month long blood transfusion, and an exit pathway which places more stress on the body than any other biological event is a much greater burden. For the purposes of the discussion, though, a forced blood transfusion will suffice. If we cannot require that of a person no matter what level of negligence, then we cannot require the provisions of pregancy of someone because they have probably become pregnant through more minor negligence and still call our system 'equal protection.'

I understand your feelings about this, and I recoil at the terminology when applied to a cuddly baby too. However, this is the II, and here, no matter what our sentiment, we do have to acknowledge the fact that the fetus has important qualities in common with an intruder and a parasite. If we cannot do so because of our emotional reaction, we will have to grant the pro-life viewpoint the benefit of the doubt, because we cannot refute these points or deal effectively with them.

And now to the toughest section of the debate, no matter what your position:
Can you go first? Can you show how this definition:
... "is not just an arbitrary one picked out of the air to support one’s own position?" Does it, "derive from the fundamental moral values of the society in question?"

I would agree with the statement that your definiton "is consistent with the other ethical decisions that are made regularly by the members of [our] society," but I cannot see how that is criterion enough for applying it uniquely as the only definiton sufficient to deal with the moral issues of abortion.

I have tried to provide alternative standards by which to define personhood, each of which should also be consistent with other ethical decisions regularly made by members of our society. I have tried to provide alternative standards by which to define personhood that had intuitively appealing characteristics such as physiological and psychological lower limits of development. Why must we reject these and why must we accept yours?

I may have misspoken. I did intend to convey the idea that it was not unthinkable to remain agnostic on the point of when a "person" comes into existence. My apologies if my choice of words created confusion.

Please check: my words were "...relates to the general issue of abortion", not "... relates to your perception of the vast majority of abortions."

Well, assuming a very low and non-arbitrary lower limit standard is taken as part of the definition of personhood (as per my statement), it would have to be non-arbitrary because otherwise it would not be the kind of limit I described. (?!)

I assume you are wanting me to give you a definition and defend it. I suppose that is a reasonable request for the defense of the idea that such a definition is possible. Very well, I will give it a shot:

Any individual of the species homo sapiensAND possesses OR has possessed the physiological structures necessary for awareness of self, OR, Any homo sapiens whose experience of harm or whose demise would demonstrably cause grief to any individual(s) described in this definition who is/are intimately acquainted with the individual in question is a Person.

This definition clearly excludes wild dogs, as they are not individuals of the species homo sapiens. This definition is consistent with the other ethical decisions that are made regularly by the members of our society.

You may object that this definition is ad hoc, and would be correct to do so. However, it need not be made in an ad hoc way by its nature. It is merely on account of the fact that I was under pressure to produce the definition that it is, in this case, ad hoc.

Once we recognize this difference, it may actually become useful in decisions of personhood, or in decisions of extending or denying legal protection.

Where it concerns government officials, we must hope that they will make their legal judgments on the basis of the moral code of the citizens. Being a citizen does make me a person de facto according to the rules used in this nation. But, yes, I think whether I have what can be recognized as value according to the common moral framework is relevant in determining my status. At the same time, anyone who can reply to this question does have value according to the moral framework. There are individuals who cannot (e.g. wild dogs), but would answer "no" if they could, but that does not compel us to change this aspect of our standard!

Have you ever seen a play by Shakespeare? Read an essay by Einstein? They are dead, so we cannot offer them protection of their right to life, but if we could, wouldn't we?

So beef cattle have a right to life protected by the Constitution? No, the framers of the constitution made our rights very much dependent on certain 'values' and 'moral worths': that is why they extended rights only to those persons who were citizens of this nation. Since then, we have learned to find moral worth in more persons (women, black people) and made them citizens. Since then, we have found that it is morally proper to extend certain protections to foreign nationals who are our guests as well. We lament the fact that we were so short-sighted as to de-value persons in the past; but must we automatically value every organism, or even every homo sapiens as a person merely as a knee-jerk reaction to having discovered our past mistakes?

If not, what is the justification for the definition of person that includes even a one-cellled fertilized egg?

bd-from-kg

Let me catch up on a couple of things that slipped between the cracks with the long replies to Jerry and others.

callina:

You have my deepest sympathy. I have known several couples where the wife had a miscarriage, and even that is a terrible, heartbreaking experience. To have had to terminate your own fetus’s life to protect your own must have been an emotional trauma beyond my imagining.

I do not consider adoption to be a “cure-all”. The point of my comment to Danya was that adoption could easily accommodate the very small number of cases where the mother might be thinking of having an abortion because she fears that the child would not have a “good life”. In fact, this solution is so obvious, and so obviously appropriate in such cases, that it is hard to believe that many mothers who care enough about the child’s welfare to be concerned about such things are actually choosing abortion over adoption. Since there are far fewer babies available for adoption today than there are couples who want to adopt, adoption would seem to be a “win-win” solution in such cases. Rather than giving the baby death in preference to a “low-quality” life, she can give it a good life and give joy to a couple who desperately want a child.

Note: The “unadoptable” children you refer to are either not babies (not a problem in this context) or have serious chronic health problems or handicaps. Although it’s possible that any baby might have serious problems of this kind, this hardly seems to be an adequate reason or motive for an abortion.

Danya:

I have no idea how anyone reading what I said could imagine that I meant anything of the sort.

bd-from-kg

LadyShea and Danya:

I see no inconsistency between the position I’ve taken here and the one I’ve taken in the IVF thread. The criterion that I proposed for “personhood” is the same in both threads, and it clearly includes fetuses but excludes test-tube embryos. In fact, this is the same criterion that I proposed in the “twelve week-old fetus” thread, at which time I hadn’t even thought about IVF procedures, so (unlike Jerry’s) it cannot be argued that this is an ad hoc criterion designed to yield the desired result.

Jerry Smith:

With family duties, etc., my weekends are actually busier than my weekdays. I won't be able to reply to your latest post until late Sunday or (more likely) Monday.