Yesterday at 06:24 PM Cancer To Iniquity said this in Post #101
So, you cannot tell me why I as a fetus was not any less of a human person than I was today or was as an infant, but you would have considered it ethically acceptable for my mother to have had me killed?
Actually I can, it all has to do with development. For instance, a fertilized egg is not a human BEING in any shape, form, or fashion. Of course, every fertilized egg, even under optimal conditions, does NOT result in a successful pregnancy and the odds are that a fertilized egg will simply be flushed out of the mother without implanting (nature is very "wasteful' in this regard). Is this "murder"? No, for the same reason that burning the plans for a house is not the equivalent of arson of a house. Even if the zygote (what the dividing egg is called before it implants in the uterus) manages to stake a claim to a friendly uterus, it will be 5 months+ before it has developed to have even the remotest chance of surviving outside the mother.
Why not? Why was I any less a person one infinitesimal moment before birth than after?
-jon
I'll take a shot at that question, which essentially asked what I call the "personhood" question (my "standard answer" one might say to it). My apologies for the length, but this question does not have a simple answer.......
THE QUESTION OF "PERSONHOOD"
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
intermittent brain-waves, don't appear until the 24th week, (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 new-born baby don't appear until the 26th WEEK.
THE DILEMMA OF THE MICROPREEMIE
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 3 to 7 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!)
Anti-choicers often quote Psalm 139:"Truly you have formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother's womb. Remember that conception takes place in the Fallopian tube and the zygote takes up to 7 days to reach the uterus.
There is NO justification for claiming that ensoulment occurs at conception (where does it say so?). There is also no reason to ban birth control devices that interfere with ovulation AND implantation of the zygote (trophoblastic stage).
This is especially true when one considers that God seems to considers 65% of these 10 day old "humans" to be expendable at some point before the end of the first trimester (either don't implant in the lining or are spontaneously aborted)
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) New Republic: Abortion and the Brain
3)The Extremely Immature NewbornThe Dilemma of the Microbaby
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). 37% of women who get abortions are Protestant, 31% are Catholic and 24% claim no religion. (Data from the Center for Disease Control and the nonprofit Alan Guttmacher Institute which collect the only national abortion statistics. Guttmacher counts more abortions because it directly surveys clinics.)
Another stat to chew on...95% of abortions ARE used as a form of birth control for the following reason---->
Good, affordable birth control and family planning information ARE NOT available. Most abortions (78%) are obtained by women in DEVELOPING contries where birth control is not readily available and/or is as illegal as abortion usually is. Only 22% of abortions are obtained by women in DEVELOPED countries. Many statistics links on abortion pro and con
Birth control devices have failure rates, even when used judiciously (hormonal birth control always carries with it a 1% probability of failure). Many women won't seek it because they have had it ground into them that "nice" girls don't have sex (especially the pre-marital kind) and preparing for sex (seeking birth control) is evidence that they aren't "nice" girls. I see abortion as a solution to these failures of both technology and good judgment.
WHY ADOPTION IS NOT A PANACEA
As of today, this year,
~37,650,000 people (one person every 2.4 seconds) will have died of starvation, 75% of them under the age of 5.. 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 (usually) 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 the "perfect" 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.
LET'S DO SOME MATH.....
In any one year since Roe v Wade, there have been ~1.1-1.4 million abortions per year. Now there are only 50,000-75,000 couples seeking babies to adopt. Imagine how easy it would be to sate the desire of adoptive couples for children, the market runneth over!!! Quite a short-fall in the parents department!
A question to anti-choicers: Any recommendations on what to do with all the tens of millions of unadopted infants anti-choicers plan on enslaving women to produce? A "life" means more than just getting born, there are at least 72-79 years of AFTER the birth bit (education, food, health care, a job, and last but not least LOVE that goes with that 3 score and ten!!)
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WHAT ALL THIS MEANS TO A WOMAN[/size]
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. Most anti-choicers 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. The bottomline for me is that the rights of a fully grown woman outweighs the "rights" of a fertilized egg/embyo/fetus until the fetus has developed to a point where a "person" is truly present (22+ weeks). Let's back that down to 20 weeks, the point a which the American College of Gynecology puts "viability" (even though none survive before 23 weeks). Just my opinion, of course....
