Dr Rick

I believe the reasoning of the Supreme Court majority was logically and legally sound, and that the personhood arguement is a logical fallacy imposed to shift the burden of proof.

The personhood argument as it has been posed here is an intellectually dishonest one. Ted and SS aren't posting evidence that a fetus is a person; rather, they are asking us to prove it that is not. Not only are they asking us to prove a negative (a special case of argumentum ad ignorantiam, or argument from ignorance), but they themselves have not defined the criteria for person, and they reject any attempts by others to do so.

Rick

[ November 01, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>

Pomp

rbochnermd,

I believe the reasoning of the Supreme Court majority was logically and legally sound...

I can agree that it's legally sound, but I honestly don't see how a right to privacy bears on abortion. Why would the same right to privacy not extend to killing adult human beings?

...and that the personhood arguement is a logical fallacy imposed to shift the burden of proof.

I disagree. When debating "right to life" types, I generally frame the question as "OK, for the sake of argument I'll grant that a person has a right to life. Now, it's up to you to demonstrate that a fetus is a person." Perhaps the personhood argument as presented in this thread employs a burden-shifting logical fallacy, but I think the argument is dead-on when employed properly.

Dr Rick

A person's implied constitutional right to privacy was the basis of the majority opinion in Roe v Wade. Pregnancy, sex, doctor-patient relations, birth control, and abortion are private matters, the majority held, and a pregnant woman's right to privacy completely supersedes the state's (government's) potential interest in preserving life until the fetus reaches viability. At and beyond the stage of viability, the majority ruled the state's interests in preserving life must begin to be balanced against a person's right to privacy, meaning that the government could impose some restrictions on aborting potentially viable fetuses. This is the reasoning that led to the trimester divisions as to when the state may intervene. As a result, the state may almost never prevent a first trimester abortion, but may more strictly limit third trimester abortions.

There is nothing in the ruling that would prevent the state from outlawing the killing of an adult, child, or baby.

Rick

[ November 02, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>

Clutch

Rick, Right. And their reasoning was, as you say, this: My italics. What makes it a matter of privacy is the claim that the fetus is not an agent possessing a right to life at least until it reaches the point of "viability", and possibly not fully then, either.

Privacy is almost a red herring, then, as far as the rationale for the decision. Were a fetus legally a person, privacy would not constitute any sort of general license to abort. It is because (and to the extent that) the court viewed fetuses as not approaching personhood until viable, that the ruling makes any sense.

As I said, though, even were a fetus a person, it would not be determined that abortion is impermissible. Analogies to kidnapping, self-defense, and so forth, illuminate all manner of cases in which killing another person is permissible. But these are special cases that have to be justified against the presumption that killing a person is wrong. So if a fetus were a person, it would, in some sense, shift the burden of proof.

But that is very different from simply assuming that fetuses are persons and trying to place the burden on others to show that they are not. I agree that this is fallacious, and have argued a couple of times now that our standard practices regarding the developmental attribution of rights positively undermine assigning the rights of persons to fetuses.

mfaber

1......
*************AND*****************
2................
If the end of an individual's life is measured by the ending of his/her brain function ( brain-death as measured by brain waves on the EEG), would it not be logical to at least agree that a "person's" life begins with the onset of that same human brain function as measured by brain waves recorded on that same instrument ("brain-birth")? Anti-choicers like to fling about the MYTH that brain-waves appear as early as 40 days. However, the most recent finding show that <a href="http://www.visembryo.com/baby/week24.html" target="_blank"> intermittent brain-waves, don't appear until the 24th week,</a> (give or take a week) when they begin to activate auditory and visual systems. The brain nor the neural network connecting the brain to the rest of the body aren't complete until shortly after this time. Brain-waves resembling those of
<a href="http://www.visembryo.com/baby/week26.html" target="_blank"> a new-born baby don't appear until the 26th WEEK</a>.

Now consider this fact.. No micropreemie under 23 weeks has ever survived for more than a few hours. Many of them that small (23 weeks), even if they live (2% survival at 23 weeks), have severe neurodevelopmental defects (30% of surviving 23 week preemies) because they weren't sufficiently developed to respond well to life-support. This is primarily due to the fact that the fetal lungs are so immature. There is no technology on the horizon that can improve the prospect of survival because of this limitation. Given these developmental facts, it would seem logical to assume that a "person" is not there until after the 22nd week. (Remember that 50% of abortions occur before the 7th week and 90% have occurred by the 12th week, there is no brain to speak of at this time).

Let's go back in time before the 23rd week, back to the beginning. The vast majority of conceptions (~65%) DO NOT result in a successful pregnancy. (NOTE: A pregnancy is defined as the successful implantation of a zygote in the endometrium or uterine lining---it takes 7 to 10 days after fertilization for the dividing egg to reach the uterus). They are simply washed out as part of the endometrial detritus when a woman has her period (many women have conceived, but the zygote never manages to establish itself in the endometrium).

If the zygote manages to establish itself, the lucky resident (the embryo) is still not out of the woods because 30-40% of these 1st trimester pregnancies are spontaneously ABORTED (70% show gross chromosomal abnormalities incompatible with life). The bottom-line is that +65% of all conceptions fail (a conception does not a successful pregnancy make!)

If God really endows each and every conception (fertilized egg) with a soul (what theists REALLY mean when they say the conceptus is "alive" and a "person", not merely biologically alive), that makes GOD AN ABORTIONIST, and the biggest mass murderer of all time. (If one believes that personhood begins at fertilization)

References:
1) Facts verifiable from any up-to-date textbook on medical physiology and/or neo-natal care.

2) <a href="http://www.tnr.com/013100/easterbrook013100.html" target="_blank">New Republic: Abortion and the Brain</a>

3)<a href="http://www.pronational.com/news/hsriskrv/PreemieHS1Q2002.htm" target="_blank">The Extremely Immature Newborn—The Dilemma of the Microbaby</a>

When it come to abortions (the only reason we are really having this "personhood" discussion), 50% have occurred on or before the 7th week and 90% have occurred before the 12th week. A functional brain is the sign of life as a person. AT this point NO person exists...not til after 22 weeks (really a bit early, because none survive that young anyway). Of course, if the fetus continues to grow, it WILL become a person! BUT ONLY at the EXPENSE of the WOMAN. People are not merely a means to an end, but ends in themselves. A woman treated as an incubator of a fetus by the law is merely a means to an end and is therefore not being regarded as a person. YOU and other anti-choicers (the Pregnancy Press Gang)want to reduce her to the status of a SLAVE/INCUBATOR. A woman is a person, representing a large investment in time and resources, even on the part of those who regard women as inferior. An zygote/embryo/fetus is only a POTENTIAL person, representing no such investment.

As of today, this year,<a href="http://www.starvation.net" target="_blank"> ~26,400,000 people (one person every 2.43 seconds) will have died of starvation, 75% of them under the age of 5.</a>. This is one reason that I think abortion should be legal and that the "adoption" argument put forth by anti-choicers is a canard. As long as one LIVING child starves to death, I have absolutely no sympathy for adoptive parents whose only problem really appears to be that they can't find a perfectly formed, white BABY to play the game of "Parenthood" with. Let's not forget the 100,000 adoptable childen in the US foster care system. What is their "problem"? Most of them are too "old" (older than 2 years) or not "white". Pressing other womens's wombs into service so that some upper-middle class yuppie couple can have their dream-baby is nothing more than slavery, catering to the gross, self-involved selfishness of those who won't play "house" UNLESS they can have a little white (usually) baby. Bottom-line here is that if we can't care for those already LIVING, it makes no sense to create more of them.

If YOU want to continue a pregnancy...go for it. Just don't expect to press other women into servitude to keep YOU company in YOUR decision or make you feel "powerful" because you got to control their lives (make you feel better about giving up control over your own life).

[ November 03, 2002: Message edited by: mfaber ]</p>

Mageth

Good post, mfaber. Thanks for the stats on spontaneous abortions (which I questioned SirenSpeak about earlier, IIRC). But a little heavy-handed on adoptive parents, IMO (of which I am one. )

mfaber

I don't have a problem with adoptive parents per se. The antichoicers like to scream about the the long-waiting lists of adoptive parents and that abortion has created a "shortage" of adoptable babies. The only "shortage" of adoptable babies is in the perfect American Caucasian baby category. There are in reality plenty of children that need parents here in the US and the worldover. My "heavy-handedness" (my apologies since you took it that way) was to make this point, not take a shot a adoptive parents as a whole.

Pomp

What Clutch said.

Dr Rick

Why?

I'm serious; what is preventing any local town or county council anywhere in the US this week from getting together and passing a new ordinance that prohibits all abortions within their jurisdiction? Many have tried over the past decades, and almost all have been rebuked by the courts.

These attempts at prohibiting or restricting abortions did not impinge upon our right of free speech, our freedom of assembly, or our right to bear arms, so why aren't they law? So perhaps a two-week old fetus is not a person; what does it matter? If a local town council wishes to ban abortions at any stage of gestation, why can't they? What prevents your local government from banning abortions?

It's our right to privacy that stops them, and whether or not a fetus is a "person" isn't the issue; privacy is. No city, county, or state, and not even the US congress, may interfere with a woman's right to an abortion because it is a private matter unless it or they can demonstrate a compelling and overiding reason to do so.

In the first trimester of pregnancy, the courts have ruled that the government may not interfere except to protect the life of the mother; it may regulate standards but not prevent abortions at this stage. They didn't rule on the personhood of the fetus; they ruled that a person's right to privacy supercedes any state's interest in preserving life at this stage of gestation; the state has no compelling reason to overide a woman's right to make her own private decision.

Rick

[ November 02, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>

Dr Rick

mfaber: excellent post.

Rick