echidna

True, and as such we are discussing subjective arbitrary definitions, but I would suggest that self-survival, given that many full-term babies today are incapable of it, is not a good one. I would expect parents of such children to be suitably outraged at the thought that their baby who has a fully functioning infant brain, should be a lesser person than another baby who doesn’t have a heart defect or a kidney disorder.

elwoodblues

Maybe listing out the possible arbitrary lines could help this discussion a bit. Here, I'll start.

Female egg, unfertilized.

Female egg, fertilized.

Several days after fertilization.

Several weeks after fertilization.

Several months after fertilization.

Third trimester.

Nine months after fertilization.

Birth.

That's eight different options. The first is mentioned simply for completeness, so it's really 7 rough categories for when a cluster of cells 'becomes' a human being.

Another thing I'd like to mention. What definition are we after here? A medical/scientific one? Or a legal one?

A scientific definition will abide arbitrariness, but the less arbitrary the better in that field.

A legal definition, on the other hand, can be incredibly, even wholly arbitrary. What's so special about the age of 18? Or 21? Nothing at all.

Big difference between the two. And it serves well not to confuse them.

Dr Rick

No, and no.

I'm not saying personhood is hard to define; I'm questioning the relevance and utility of framing the abortion debate this way in the first place.

What does the defintion of "person" have to do with the abortion debate?

I've never said it was okay to kill "others," but I still wonder how you condone the killing of spermatocytes but not fertilized ova?

<strong> Abortion is a 'defense' of the maternal self.

<strong> Following this logic, what right other than self-preservation is there to kill a sperm?

<strong> You did, to some degree: you claim a priori a fetus is a person.

<strong> None of the qualities you listed here apply anymore to a zygote than a gamete.

<strong> You probably meant my "pro -choice" stance.

The same is true of you; you have no justification for saying a sperm is not a person, but it is just convenient to do so for your pro-life stance.

Rick

[ October 27, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>

Alonzo Fyfe

I agree with this. Even if the fetus is a "person" -- there are certain things that an individual need not allow another "person" to do to her. Nobody has an obligation to allow another "person" to use one as a life-support system.

Heck, even giving blood is voluntary -- let alone donating a kidney or bone marrow.

Yet, I still think that the question of personhood is still an important question. Personhood determines the situation in which it would be wrong to use one as a life-support system -- it puts constraints on the behavior of others. But not ABSOLUTE constraints. Those constraints are prima facie reasons to do or refrain from doing certain acts.

I use "inflicting pain" as my litmus test for personhood. The capacity to feel pain and having an aversion to pain is sufficient for a prima facie morally relevant reason for others not to cause one pain to exist. Or, more generally, the existence of a desire itself implies a prima facie reason for others not to thwart that desire. But a prima facie reason can be outweighed.

Writer@Large

When we encounter a sentient alien speicies, or create artificial intelligence in the lab, or evolve into eloi and morlocks, we can consider such distinctions, and revise our definition accordingly. But until then, such speculative events only serve to cloud an already cloudy debate, and it stands that we identify "person" as "human" by neccessity because humans are all we know and acknowldge to be persons.

I've already stated that any distinction here would be arbitrary, because there is *no* clear-cut divide between "life" and "un-life." If you were to take this to the extreme, sperm can survive for up to seven days in lab conditions, and several hours exposed to the air. Are we to afford sperm the same protections we afford babies? Of course not. At some point, the arbitrary barrier needs to be decided; it should be both practical and generous, neither draconian nor superfluous. But it will always be arbitrary.

The last time I looked, the man with a pacemaker was not a gestating fetus. Don't cloud the issue.

And how would the courts recognize such internal criteria? Legislate them? Because, let's face it, that's what is at issue here. We're looking for a legally-binding definition of "person," one that can be used to set restrictions on abortion practices. And if you thought viability was an arbitrary barrier, just try and come up with an applicable list of "internal criteria" for personhood.

Again, you're clouding the issue. We're not talking about a man at the bottom of a lake; we're talking about a gestating proto-life not fully developed. The man at the bottom of the lake is in an alien environment he was never meant to survive in; the fetus is in perfectly natural surroundings, and it has not developed the ability to survive in what we can label the "typical" human environment. They are two completely seperate occurances, and one can be safely debated and classified without the need to invoke the other.

There is no way that abortion can be legislated in modern society without viability as a factor. It simply isn't possible, without outlawing the practice entirely, "just to be on the safe side." And that option is impractical and needlessly restrictive.

--W@L

Writer@Large

But those are exceptions, not the rule. If we are to decide this as a society, it has to be on the basis of common occurance. When does the common fetus become viable? Once that common occurance has been defined and accepted, exceptions can be made, either as a general rule, or on a case-by-case basis. We do this sort of thing all the time in the courts, and in life: commonality and exception are the norm. Why can we not apply the same practice here?

--W@L

GeoTheo

Rick,
I thought I made it obvious that a sperm is part of a person's body so therefore cannot enjoy status as a seperate person. You seem to disagree with me out of sheer will power. You certianly have not given any logical reason for objecting.
Are all of the cells in your body seperate people?

GeoTheo

If abortions are OK because a fetus can be construed as a type of parasite than ifanticide would be justified also. A baby outside the womb is very dependant on the mother and can still cause a great deal of mental and physical stress.
I think it can be argued that children are parasites for life. People have likened having a kid to a type of death, since from that point on the exist not only for themselves any more but to provide for their children. It is not really clear to anyone when this obligation ends either.

edited for spelling

[ October 28, 2002: Message edited by: GeoTheo ]</p>

Jamie_L

I strongly encourage anyone really into this topic to read some of the threads The Other Michael listed in his post. They covered a lot of this before. I participated in several of those threads, and found them both stimulating and enlightening. After that, I'm not so sure how much I want to involve myself in another thread of the same type.

Well, I guess I want to involve myself to make another post.

My current thinking is that a fetus becomes a person roughly around the time the central nervous system develops. I think this coincides with Alonzo's rough concept of the point at which a fetus can start feeling pain. I'm not really up on the time-scale for this, but I actually think it would peg personhoood considerably before the start of the second trimester - but I'm not sure.

Jamie

Dr Rick

A spermatocyte can survive outside of the body better and is more independent of another body than a zygote is. If dependency on another person's body makes some living thing a non-person, a devoloping fetus certainly qualifies.

<strong> Absolutely not, in my opinion. So what do you believe makes an embryo but not a gamete or a cancerous tumor a person?

Rick