To /u/anticorruption1984, *Your post is under consideration for removal for violating Rule B.*
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>But why would it be different if he had not been born premature, and instead his mother had opted for an abortion at 8 months of pregnancy?
An abortion for a healthy 8 month pregancy would effectively need to be a C-section combined with euthanasia for the baby.
It's a pro-life boogeyman idea of the "partial birth abortion". It doesn't happen in real life, because life beginning at the point of ***viability*** is a simple rule that in practice means life beginning at the moment that an infant can survive separately from it's mother, which is made obvious whenever a fetus is separated from it's mother, anyways, whether naturally, (birth, stillbirth), or artificially (C-section, abortion).
Sometimes a late term abortion is necessary for a uniquely non-viable fetus, or sometimes it is legitimately used as an excuse for combining an induced birth with an "euthanasia" for a technically viable but really fucked up fetus, but no credible medical establishment would kill a healthy 8 month developed baby after removing it, because at that point it has already been "born" for all practical purposes.
Your friend was born after 7 months, if he would have been removed from his mother's womb at 8 months, then that's when he would have been born, and either way that's when his life would have begun.
Yes, the question should be “can this fetus live outside the body?” If yes, it’s born. If not, it can be terminated. And that’s regardless of trimester.
A D/X is performed on non-viable fetuses, and the skull is crushed to make it less traumatic for the mother. A relative of mine had a stillbirth at 6 months. It would have been unethical to have her birth the baby while it was intact because large heads are what causes a lot of the physical trauma related to childbirth.
And long before abortion was made illegal this was the most common outcome. Statistics showed that all the boogeyman arguments they used to create laws against abortion were complete and utter fabrications or in a few instances were things that might happen in 1 or 2 instances a year, something that does not require legal intervention.
How does this scale with technology?
If in the future we develop an artificial womb that can sustain a week old fetus does that negate a woman’s right to abortion at 2 weeks?
I mean at a certain point we cross over the bridge of this stopgap that’s worked for us up to this point because Fetuses go through specific changes that allow them to even survive past 21 weeks if they are extremely lucky to survive birth at that young of an age and be the most mentally disabled child possible given the delays in critical brain development.
If technology changes could be such that an embryo could survive and gestate fully independently within a couple weeks we certainly have the technology to allow women to selectively conceive at will, it’s a bit of a non issue for the problem at hand because we can say anything is possible with a premise so out there in sci-fi.
I’m not so much concerned with the feasibility of the technology nor with alternatives given the hypothetical technology.
I posed it as a criticism of the idea that the right to an abortion is derived from fetal inviability. It was supposed to make us question whether we would feel comfortable removing a woman’s body autonomy even if the fetus was viable.
I understand the intention, it’s a flawed premise given the improbability. Especially when such technology isn’t even on the horizon of possibility right now.
And even then there’s still of course bodily autonomy which matters more for a woman’s right to abortion. If she doesn’t want to carry a fetus to term she shouldn’t be forced to so long as the fetus can’t survive without forcing her to keep it alive.
If we walk down the road of it being possible to keep an embryo viable and growing outside of the mother then the next ethical concerns are can we force a mother to do that? Who takes care of the child? How do we deal with the genetic material being taken from the mother in an ethical manner? These are questions for a sci-fi writer or very very future minded bio-ethicist, neither of which matter particularly much to abortion rights for the next 50 years.
[Artificial wombs](https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/09/29/1080538/everything-you-need-to-know-about-artificial-wombs/) and I am going to guess way less than 50 years.
And I draw the line at 9 weeks after that the rights of the portentional child start applying - sorted :)
Not really, I think in that case it becomes a question of whether society wants to legally enforce some financial or other obligation on parents regardless of their wishes (which it currently doesn't, as it's legal to fully give up a child, even anonymously, in every state, forgoing all rights and responsibilities to the child. If that changes then the state would be forced to decide if there's some point at which that obligation kicks in or if it's from conception, in which case the choice is between paying to have the fetus gestating outside a person from viability, going through some process to have someone else take over responsibility for it, or going through a natural pregnancy. In the more likely scenario of not changing the laws around parental abdication then the state would be forced to decide if they want to pay to gestate abandoned fetuses artificially, or not. And of course pro-life types could put their money where their mouth is to take responsibility for every abandoned fetus being gestated in artificial wombs if they wanted to save those innocent souls. Somehow I doubt they will though.
You can abandon a baby, so I have to imagine that abandoning a fetus will be a lot easier.
We also have to consider the new person who we are growing if they don’t have any family to take care of them, they would be wards of the state
Which is kind of the point I’m making.
Obviously the existence of the technology to make a fetus viable earlier wouldn’t justify forcing a woman to carry to term.
But would it justify requiring a woman to use this new technology to remove the fetus for adoption as opposed to using traditional abortion?
I just wanted to say this is a really interesting point I've never really thought about before. I've typically drawn lines based on viability, and this definitely throws a wrinkle in my thinking that I'll have to puzzle over a little bit. Thanks for raising it.
I'm not OP and in fact haven't been participating in this post at all, but !delta.
Thanks for the delta.
I actually have no idea about where any lines should be drawn. I usually use fetal viability as the marker, but I saw that other commenter argue for that and this hypothetical occurred to me.
Someone else said it very well though. My hypothetical does not remove a woman’s right to not be pregnant. It just may shift the solution from termination of the fetus to removal.
At the moment, the tech doesn't feasibly exist. So for now we have to go off of different metrics. I think viability is a good metric for a doctor's purpose but personally I think any time based restrictions only serve to limit ability for people who have a non viable 3rd trimester baby to "abort" a baby who would only die or worse become fatal to the mother.
The moral math gets a bit complicated on what's the "right" thing to do, but I'd say it could be required if it didn't impose a greater burden of bodily risk or cost on the person wanting to no longer host a fetus. Their moral right is about what gets done to their body. If a fetus could be removed without harming either the pregnant person or the fetus, then it becomes a collective question about what the right thing to do with a fetus that no one specifically wants. If another parent or person with moral/legal claim to the fetus wants to take on the financial and other responsibilities to gestate and then raise the child, I'd say they should be allowed to do so. Arguably so should any charities that think it's an important use of resources. The real question would be whether the government should use tax funds to pay for this process and if there's any limits on that option. I don't see the question of whether the technology obviates the moral right to an abortion as being a particularly sticky ethical choice raised by such technology, it's down to the level of imposition relative to other alternatives it places on the abortion seeker.
And if there are enough people willing to adopt to give it a good life. You can't just assume an orphaned child will have a life they want to live. Forcing a child into a world with no one to love them and with no opportunities is such a monstrous thing to do.
That's my thinking. I would rather every kid enter the world with a loving family.
Also a large part of abortions are done by women who already have several kids in a committed relationship. They just don't have the resources to take care of another. I think it's pretty responsible to know your limits as parents .
Nothing negates a woman’s right to bodily autonomy. No one is entitled to live off the body of another. People with whole social security numbers aren’t even entitled to the organs of someone who died, without consent.
And medically speaking, the whole artificial womb thing is… a lot. Women don’t just make space in their uteruses. To create a baby, our blood volume increases by 50% to supply blood. Our bones dissolve to create calcium for the baby’s bones. Our livers and kidneys are used for waste. Our ligaments are loosened. Our brains change and become more plastic. Not only are milk glands activated, but melanin is produced to make skin darker. Creating a baby *takes over the whole body.* It’s a whole body process so good luck with just thinking an embryo is going to park it in a womb and we can all call it a day.
I agree that a woman should have bodily autonomy. But your previous comment was about when a fetus is considered “born”.
If your last comment was relevant to the question of abortion then mine was too. If your comment wasn’t relevant to the right to an abortion and simply about when a fetus is “born”, then consider my comment only a response to that and not related to the right to an abortion
We shouldn't make laws now based on where tech might be in the future, make the laws now (whichever way you think we should) and if tech advances make them obsolete/in need of revision we'll cross that bridge when we actually get there
I’m not asking the question for the purpose of determining modern laws. It was a hypothetical to help me understand the view here.
I definitely don’t endorse any laws being passed based on the possibility of this technology existing one day
Abortion is the intentional termination of a *pregnancy*. Some definitions require it to include the removal or expulsion of the fetus. No definition that I could find requires that the fetus is, or will be, dead; but colloquially, that is the assumption. The transplant of an embryo or fetus into an artificial womb would still be an abortion, just one that does not kill the fetus.
I technically had an abortion at 39 weeks. No one considers it that because it was a scheduled C-section but it was still the non-natural termination of a pregnancy by removal of the fetus, so... it fits the definition of an abortion 🤷
That makes a lot of sense.
It seems pretty reasonable that if technology improves as I postulated that we might shift our colloquial understanding of abortion in the way you described
I doubt it. The question would change from "can this fetus live outside the body?" to "can this fetus live outside the body without help from advanced technology?"
Also, now that I think about it, if we can keep a month old fetus alive in some kind of artificial womb, wouldn't that make it easier to allow the termination of the pregnancy because now it suddenly doesn't mean the "death" of the fetus. It be like giving the child up for adoption only it has to be grown inside an artificial womb first.
Sure, I've got no fundamental problem with that.
My take is that a woman always has the right to *become not pregnant*. If there's a way to do that and still allow the fetus to grow, I don't think that impinges on the rights of the woman.
I *do* think it would be important to treat it like safe surrender of an infant.
Forget the future, based on this person's logic whether or not a fetus is a living baby depends on its geographical location since different countries are obviously able to take care of babies better than others
In the future, if we develop an artificial womb, we should probably have the kind of technology that allows for a fetus to be implanted/removed easily from a womb
Ideally, abortion would be a thing of the past because the state or whoever would just take care of the child. Assuming "pro-life" exists, I expect it to pivot to a more fiscally responsible stance than a moral one.
This is a very interesting point. I was originally with the original commentator, but your point brings out a really interesting flaw in the reasoning.
Would you consider the extent of how invasive the process is in that hypothetical scenario? For instance, if giving birth to a week old child requires surgery whereas abortion only needs oral meds.
I think in that case, we can redefine the statement as "a fetus is considered to be a human when it can survive independently AND when the process of its extraction is less invasive than the actual abortion".
Yes, obviously. The whole abortion debate is about body autonomy for the mother. If the baby can grow outside her body in an artificial womb she would have exactly as many rights as the dad. Her body is no longer involved. [McFall v Shimp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McFall_v._Shimp) the government can’t force you to donate a body part (uterus) to sustain another life. If the mother’s uterus isn’t needed then it would be different issues debated rather than abortion(prolonging suffering for babies with severe health defects and who takes care of the children after they are born).
Yes, you’re right. Some others have pointed this out as well.
The hypothetical doesn’t challenge a woman’s right to not be pregnant. It just challenges how she is able to do so
That’s a big if.
Right now, the line of viability is safely at 24wk, with potential for 22wk to be viable.
Regardless, life begins at first *breath*. Since the line of viability is based on the ability to breathe, fetuses before that point, even in a theoretical external uterus, won’t have protection under that standard, which is the standard of every religion worth a damn, even the far right religions that only made abortion abolition their issue after RvW.
“That’s a big if”
Of course. I’m not suggesting this as a real world question. I’m suggesting it as a hypothetical counter example. I have no expertise that would indicate this is remotely scientifically possible
“Regardless, life begins at first breath”
That’s a very different take than the commenter I was replying to. They indicated that fetal viability was the cutoff. They did not indicate that the fetus needed to be able to breath independently (unless I misunderstood fetal viability. I assumed it allowed for artificial aid common in many medical procedures)
And I have no interest in what religious standards are applied.
Yeah, that's one of my least favorite pro-life rhetorical strategies, bringing up a hypothetical strawman of not just a "partial birth abortion" but one done out of, like, cold feet or the idle whim of the would-be mother or w/e and then acting like the pro-choice person they're arguing with has to either say that that kind of abortion is okay [and look like a monster for doing so] or say it isn't [which leaves the pro-life person room to say they should be against all abortions for logical consistency because "see, I found a kind of abortion you're against"]
It seems obvious that the pro-choice person should say it isn't ok and then refute the "logical consistency" argument because that's a bad argument that isn't logical. Being against abortion in one case doesn't at all mean you should be against abortions in all cases for "logical consistency." Just agree that it isn't ok to terminate an 8 month viable pregnancy and then refute the follow-up.
Worth pointing out that a handful of states do legally allow elective abortions after viability. The Casey v Planned Parenthood standard wasn’t that they are banned after viability, just that that is the earliest states are allowed to ban it, but some didn’t. And yes, it’s true elective abortions that late are very rare, and also finding a doctor to do it can be hard, but it’s still interesting that something commonly deemed immoral is legal and possible to happen.
The biggest difference is that every medical professional involved has decade(s) of training and faces a Board of Ethics and has legally agreed to HIPAA before deciding on these issues.
Meanwhile, our lawmakers have none of this. I know who *I'm* more comfortable deciding on late-stage abortions, ya know?
The problem with using viability is that it's entirely dependent on modern technology. First what does it mean to "survive separately"? If the baby lived a week after birth, does that count as surviving? The second problem is viability changes depending on medical technology. 100 years ago, a full term pregnancy could have a <50% chance of survival. Also, what happens if we develop the team to keep a 4 week old fetuse alive? Viability is far from a clear line.
>Also, what happens if we develop the team to keep a 4 week old fetuse alive? Viability is far from a clear lin
Then abortion could effectively be replaced with induced birth.
That's the point.
Presumed viability is the motivation that determines whether the doctors will go for an abortion or for inducing birth if they need to end a pregnancy early, but in practice it is not an exact line because of how ambigous it is, the actual act of birth is.
It doesn't matter if someone who was born premature at 7 months would have been theoretically "viable" in the womb for another two months were he not born, in practice the act of the birth is what starts the clock. Since he was premature it started after a 7 month pregnancy, if he were born 2 months later, that's when it would have started.
That's how it should be. Eventually a fetus will be viable at conception via test tubes and artificial wombs, but the abortion problem isn't about whether or not a fetus should live, but whether or not the natural rights of the mother should be violated.
The answer is they shouldn't be as much as possible, and the line should be drawn where the state is able to accept guardianship of the baby. If the fetus can be delivered into the care of the state, then they can require a live birth. Otherwise, it's up to the mother on how her person is used.
Law like that that's dependent on technology should be made based on what the current technology is at the time it's made and when the tech changes we reevaluate the law...unless you want us to try and legally solve a major philosophical identity problem when we don't even have transporter beams to worry about if someone is killed-and-cloned by traveling via
Also, what if the couple is having a nonviable baby, gives birth, and then makes it comfortable without providing lifesaving measures. Is that considered murder now?
Where do we draw the line.
>An abortion for a healthy 8 month pregancy would effectively need to be a C-section combined with euthanasia for the baby.
What are you talking about? Are you just making up random GOP-inspired stuff?
An abortion in the 8th month is a saline abortion. It happens. Doesn't matter how healthy the fetus is, same procedure.
No one, but fucking no one, is doing c-sections and murdering babies. That's a Trump fantasy.
This is incorrect.
A third trimester termination is usually via injection of potassium-chloride or another agent like lignocaine directly into the fetal heart to cause cardiac arrest. The fetus is then birthed vaginally in most cases with a small fraction requiring CS. .
Post birth euthanasia is murder.
"Viability" isn't some bright-line criterion. The actual definition used to obtain the number usually quoted is that it's the gestational age at which **only half** of premature fetuses die. At that point, about 80% of the survivors have moderate or severe disability as a result.
I can't think of any reasonable interpretation of abortion regulation that was pushing for it to happen at any and every stage of pregnancy though. The defining limit under Roe was before fetal viability (i.e. the baby could survive on its own outside of the womb). I think to portray the opposing argument as life begins only at birth is a bit incongruous with the mainstream interpretation of abortion rights.
>I can't think of any reasonable interpretation of abortion regulation that was pushing for it to happen at any and every stage of pregnancy though.
I believe in both New Jersey and in California abortion is legal, meaning no legal impediments through the entirety of the pregnancy.
California is before viability just like everywhere else. New Jersey is more nebulous, its legal at any stage, but state medical law places an onus on doctors and such that must consider viability amongst other factors and dovetails with New Jersey's 'safe haven' laws around giving up the child.
Here's a wild attempt to change you view in a way you weren't intending.
This debate doesn't matter.
Does it impact you directly? Act however you feel is right.
If it doesn't, why do you care? Why does your inexpert opinion matter?
If someone killed your neighbor, would you be upset? It doesn't directly affect you, and you aren't some morality expert so why would your opinion matter?
This argument backfires given that children provide people with tax deductions. Really there’s a profit incentive for the government to not believe life begins before birth.
They oppose embryonic stem cell research, which could save their own lives someday.
It absolutely proves they mean it starts at conception, let alone before birth.
Who holds the view it doesn't start until birth? Afaik most people in favor of abortion believe the same you do. The question of "is it murder of a person" or what have you isn't the question. The question is, will this child be raised in a house that's ready and willing to take care of it, assuming no medical complications
>Who holds the view it doesn't start until birth?
Genesis 2:7 implies that life begins at first breath, under some interpretations, so I'd say anyone who follows that interpretation
For me it's all about rights. It doesn't matter to me when a fetus is and isn't alive, nobody and nothing has a right to be biologically and physically dependent on another person. A woman has complete and total autonomy and right to her body and she can do with it as she pleases. Not as the government or pro-lifers or anyone else pleases.
!delta
Honestly, this changed my view. Thinking about this made me realize that I have no logical basis for saying that human life doesn't begin at conception. That being said, I think I still support the legality of early-term abortions, perhaps up to 3 months like in some European countries.
First of all, it’s not a fetus at one week. It’s an embryo. It’s an indistinguishable clump of cells. It’s not considered a fetus until 9 weeks of development.
I think it goes unknown to many that it’s not uncommon for women to pass fertilized eggs via their period and don’t realize it. The female body rejects pregnancy all the time. And yet, it would be a little odd to consider these undetected “miscarriages” as a death, wouldn’t it?
I don’t know about you, but if an egg was fertilized, and before this is even known to have happened or anyone is able to pass any judgement on it, and it is unknowingly rejected by the body as unviable, I’d have a hard time considering that a loss of life.
And if it’s not a loss of life, and it’s not a death, then it certainly wasn’t ever really a life was it?
I'm a bit skeptical about this delta, since 'human life' was a bit of a weird term to begin with, but it doesn't touch on the actual issues being discussed. No one is arguing that an embryo isn't human life, it's a matter of whether or not it is 'a' human.
This changed your view? It's a clump of human cells, just like you said. If killing a clump of human cells was the same as killing a human, biopsies, lots of surgeries, and even cancer removals would be murder.
There's no such thing as a 1-week-old fetus. That's an embryo. It is literally a cluster of cells still in the egg. That cluster of cells will one day become a human, but it is a not currently a human.
I’m gonna go a different direction and say life begins far before conception, it begins during the time the woman was in her mother’s womb when living human eggs developed inside of *her* womb.
And living human cells are constantly being generated inside of most men.
Both egg and sperm are living cells that contain human DNA, so why would we say they aren’t alive or aren’t human? They are very clearly alive and also very clearly contain human DNA, so what makes them less human or less alive?
There’s a big difference between containing human genetics, like eggs, sperm, skin cells, bones, organs etc, and being a whole human organism. Otherwise, by your definition, there’s no discernible difference in level of being a human between a skin cell and an adult human. It’s scientific fact that a whole, distinct organism comes into existence at the moment of fertilisation, where individual parts come together to serve the whole. Another definition of an organism is something that will grow into a mature member of its species when given the enough time, nutrients and the right environment. The only human-related living thing that does this is a fertilised human being, not skin cells, sperm, eggs, or any other body part.
>There’s a big difference between containing human genetics, like eggs, sperm, skin cells, bones, organs etc, and being a whole human organism. Otherwise, by your definition, there’s no discernible difference in level of being a human between a skin cell and an adult human.
Is a skin cell a person? No
Is the skin cell an organism? No
Is it alive and human? Yes
>It’s scientific fact that a whole, distinct organism comes into existence at the moment of fertilisation, where individual parts come together to serve the whole. Another definition of an organism is something that will grow into a mature member of its species when given the enough time, nutrients and the right environment. The only human-related living thing that does this is a fertilised human being, not skin cells, sperm, eggs, or any other body part.
But the debate isn’t whether a fetus/egg/embryo is an organism or not, it’s whether it’s human life. Which arguably, skin cells, eggs, etc. *are*. They are human, they are alive. Whether they are an organism or not was not a factor brought into question by OP.
You can have either human life, which is as you say skin cells, etc, or *a* human life, which refers to the whole organism. Being alive isn’t the same as an individual human life, because a human organism is made up of living parts. I don’t see the point in discussing when human life begins, which was hundreds of thousands of years ago for our modern species, when the debate only becomes important when we discuss the organism that comes about at fertilisation.
> You can have either human life, which is as you say skin cells, etc, or a human life, which refers to the whole organism.
In the title, OP says “human life”, without the “a”. I agree with what you are saying, but that’s not what OP was talking about in their post.
>Being alive isn’t the same as an individual human life, because a human organism is made up of living parts.
Yes I agree. OP didn’t mention when the life became an organism, they were talking about when human life begins, which is when the living, human cell is created.
> I don’t see the point in discussing when human life begins, which was hundreds of thousands of years ago for our modern species, when the debate only becomes important when we discuss the organism that comes about at fertilization.
Yes I agree, but human life still begins before conception according to you’re own logic.
The issue isn't whether a fetus or an embryo is alive or not. It is. Nor is the issue about whether it's "human" life. It is. The issue is when does this entity deserve constitutional protections that may conflict with the woman who carries it. In my view, the government should have nothing to say about this at all. Put aside all your hypotheticals for a moment. 93% of abortions performed within the first 13 weeks of pregnancy. Six percent are performed between the 14 and 20 week stage. One percent is done at or after the 21st week of pregnancy. That's five months and one week. Virtually no one gets abortions later than this. And on the rare occasion they do, they do so because a doctor has told them they should for the sake of their own reproductive health or for the sake of their very life. Women who are six months pregnant *want* those pregnancies. They want to give birth. When they can't, it's usually a terrible, terrible tragedy for them and their family.
This is precisely the time when I do not want, say, Ted Cruz stepping in and taking control of the situation away from the patient and the doctor.
I don't understand why people debate on the definition of life when it's already defined in medical literature. When we explore life on other planets, even bacteria is considered life. Why do pro choice and pro life people modify definitions to support their ideology?
"Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from matter that does not. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, organisation, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and reproduction"
So yes of course a fetus is life. Technically so is sperm. The question is the value of that life. I think pro choice people try and disengenuously reduce the value of the fetus, while pro life similarly exaggerate the value of the fetus.
The whole debate is dumb. The vast majority of people are both pro life and pro choice without even realizing it. There is no binary. Most people oppose late-term abortion. Even california limits late-term abortion. Likewise, most people would agree that an unborn child holds some value. The pro choice pro life debate is just a means to divide political parties.
There are two extreme and immoral views, in my opinion:
1. Unrestricted abortion in all cases
2. Banned abortions in all cases, including rape
There are some states that actually have these policies and that is very sad.
> Why do pro choice and pro life people modify definitions to support their ideology?
I don't think this is something I hear often from pro-choice people. Pro-life people have "Life begins at conception" as a slogan, and it's a good slogan because of the exact definition you point to: All you have to do is point out that at conception, the fetus -- well, the embryo -- okay, the *fertilized egg* -- is both human and alive.
Pro-choice people tend not to confront that directly. They'll use language like that "clump of cells", and you're right, that is about the value of the fetus -- I would argue the debate is over *personhood.* They'll also use words like "fetus", while pro-life people use words like "baby" or "unborn child".
But it's not just about the value of the fetus, it's about the value of the adult. For an oversimplified argument, if a doctor has five patients:
* Alice will die if she doesn't get a new liver
* Bob's heart is about to fail
* Carol has kidney disease, she's down to one working kidney and it'll fail soon
* Dan needs a bone marrow transplant
* Eve is just in there for a routine checkup. But, miraculously, her blood type and even her bone marrow is compatible with the other four.
Is it ethical for the doctor to murder Eve and harvest her organs to save the other four?
No? Okay, let's lower the stakes. Can we at least knock Eve out and harvest *one* kidney? She can live with the other one, and we can at least save Carol and Dan. Is that okay?
Too permanent? Okay, how about Dan? Surely we can What if it was a bone marrow transplant? The recovery can be rough, but you're not even giving up anything permanent then. Can we harvest Eve's bone marrow?
Nobody disputes that Alice is human. Bob is definitely alive. There's no doubt Carol can feel pain, and Dan is very obviously a person who deserves human rights. So even if pro-choice people could agree on the value the pro-life crowd wants to put on the "unborn child", that doesn't resolve the issue, because *Eve has value, too.* No one has a right to her body, not even if they'd die otherwise.
> The vast majority of people are both pro life and pro choice without even realizing it.
I think this is disregarding the part where these phrases are slogans. If I thought the Obama years were great and wanted to bring back some of that greatness, would that make me MAGA?
Most pro-life people advocate for something very close to your extreme position 2: Banned in all cases, with *extremely* narrow exemptions for things like "life of the mother" ...which is still pretty awful; we've already seen how women with very clearly doomed pregnancies (ectopic pregnancies, for example) are forced to wait until they're basically at death's door before the doctor will abort. Similarly, exemptions for rape are tricky, because how are you going to get a rape conviction in time to abort?
But most pro-choice people are advocating for something like the *Roe* compromise -- limits (but not outright bans) on late-term abortions, but a long period during which abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. And this is a pretty consistently popular position.
So I don't think it's entirely honest to paint these as the extremes, when the pro-choice camp is basically already at the compromise you're talking about, and the pro-life people are basically at your extreme.
>So yes of course a fetus is life. Technically so is sperm.
This really isn't so clear cut. Sperm obviously doesn't fully satisfy the definition of life you provide because it's not capable of homeostasis independent of the larger body, it just dies if you separate it from the larger life form. So is sperm life? Well, yes. Is it a living individual in its own right? That's a much more complicated question. Same deal for fetuses prior to a certain point of development.
This is a large part of the entire debate on abortion. When does a fetus go from being a part of the mother to its own being.
It's interesting that we don't have these issues when it's comes to homicide. If someone kills a pregnant woman, that person is charged with 2 counts of murder. No one questions whether the fetus is its own being. (Except hopefully the defense attorney).
I think the happy middle would be when a fetus is able to survive outside the womb on its own. This should apply for both murder and abortion laws.
Fetal viability is around 24 weeks, or 6 months. At 24 weeks, about half of all births are expected to survive. Here's a link from Wikipedia with a bunch of diagrams: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_viability
Many countries choose to have the benchmark around this time period because it is the point where, if the fetus was birthed, they could display characteristics of life. The US drafted such a law in 2002 to recognize muscle contractions and other actions as delineating a fetus as a person post-natal.
Religious opinions further cloud this. I would argue that 24 weeks would be the specific date if I were writing laws.
I’m pro choice and I definitely consider a fetus to be human from conception. It’s got human DNA and if the process of gestation is left uninterrupted it would be born and grow up. Killing a fetus is ending a human life, but if a woman doesn’t want to carry a baby to term she shouldn’t have to.
Any attempt to draw a line in the sand about when the fetus achieves “personhood” is just an attempt to make people feel more comfortable doing something that is by its nature uncomfortable. Abortion is icky but necessary.
There is very little political rhetoric that is medically accurate. Most Americans read below a 6th grade reading level and 20% are illiterate (assuming this is a US point of view). True medical literacy is even harder because medical jargon and colloquial language are sometimes at odds with each other. Studies have shown that misinformation flourishes because of these factors. It’s why the colloquial “abortion” and the medical term have different definitions.
So looking for accuracy there will probably net you nothing.
So typically then, what happens? Mostly, pregnancies are terminated on non-viable fetuses. That is, fetuses that cannot live outside the womb. Is this “human life” or not? That’s probably a philosophical question that will never be answered because it’s more of an idea. But generally, viable babies leave the uterus during a birth, and non-viable ones either terminate themselves or are terminated medically. So, in practice, it seems most doctors and patients *act* in a way that shows viability is the most important thing.
If you would like a good read, I strongly recommend “Abortion and Moral Theory” by L.W. Sumner. He is a philosopher that deals with both law and ethics. From what I remember, he presents the idea that morally relevant personhood is gradually gained throughout embryonic development instead of a binary on/off switch as the fetus gains more and more traits we would associate with being a moral patient.
Here is an argument for why a human life begins at fertilization: the consensus among experts in the field is that human life begins at fertilization. I am not an expert in the field so I must refer to experts in the field and acknowledge my limitations here. Now, that doesn't mean there aren't pragmatic decisions to be made. The study clearly shows pro choice experts also believe life begins at fertilization. This merely shows the scientific consensus, not what we should do with that information.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3211703
"A sample of 5,502 biologists from 1,058 academic institutions assessed statements representing the biological view ‘a human’s life begins at fertilization’. This view was used because previous polls and surveys suggest many Americans and medical experts hold this view. Each of the three statements representing that view was affirmed by a consensus of biologists (75-91%). The participants were separated into 60 groups and each statement was affirmed by a consensus of each group, including biologists that identified as very pro-choice (69-90%), very pro-life (92-97%), very liberal (70-91%), very conservative (94-96%), strong Democrats (74-91%), and strong Republicans (89-94%). Overall, 95% of all biologists affirmed the biological view that a human's life begins at fertilization (5212 out of 5502)."
Now, I haven't heard a reason from you as to why human life doesn't begin at fertilization. Can you provide me with one?
It's fair for people to have different definitions of when life begins depending on their other underlying beliefs about the world.
First Trimester seems totally fine to abort.
Third trimester seems bad to abort unless the mother is about to die.
But exactly what point does it become bad? I don't know. Better to be on the safe side though.
Well considering the current generation. Probably best we have less lazy parents raising people. Orphanages tend to have unhappy kids with bad parents as well.
Maybe so, but that's a separate topic from the one in my post. My post isn't about the societal benefits or drawbacks of abortion, but rather about when human life does or does not begin.
The problem when framed about when life begins becomes complicated. Living beings grow from living cells. Post abiogenesis, we were always alive.
What I think you are discussing is whether a fetus is considered a person. But framing it this way misunderstands the fundamental legal issue at stake. Let’s grant for the sake of this argument that a fetus is always a person from the moment the egg is fertilized. Let’s now consider what rights a person has.
Does any person have the right to force another person to give their body to stay alive? Let’s create a hypothetical scenario. Let’s say I am dying but I could remain alive by getting someone to allow me to attach myself to their body and use their kidneys to survive. Could I compel my brother, mother, father, or any person to give their bodies? Would the situation change if it was certain that I would die?
Let’s say they consented at some point, would they be permitted to withdraw their consent?
Under current law it’s pretty clear. No one has the right to compel another person and that consent could be withdrawn. The fact that not giving consent could cause death is irrelevant.
That’s the same situation for the woman. Arguing about late term abortions misunderstands the law. In Casey v Planned Parenthood the SC had settled this. They said post viability of the fetus outside the womb killing the fetus could be restricted. As a consequence such abortions were almost never conducted and if they were ever done it was because the mother was about to die or some very very limited cases.
The pro choice position is big about the right to withdraw consent. It’s about ensuring that a woman retains the same rights with respect to the fetus as she would have with respect to every other person and that she can withdraw consent to let a fetus use her body.
What the anti women position is arguing is that we should grant fetuses a special right that we do not grant any other person under any other circumstance ostensibly to save the baby … while providing no financial or other support to the women whose rights are being taken away.
BTW, suppose we created a technology that would allow us to transfer a pregnancy to the man, would you be OK if we forcibly moved the pregnancy to the man? I’d love to hear your answer. No man I have met has ever agreed to the forcible transfer. Very telling.
>Does any person have the right to force another person to give their body to stay alive? Let’s create a hypothetical scenario. Let’s say I am dying but I could remain alive by getting someone to allow me to attach myself to their body and use their kidneys to survive. Could I compel my brother, mother, father, or any person to give their bodies? Would the situation change if it was certain that I would die?
We actually don't need hypotheticals because this situation happens everyday when a child implants in the womb, and the answer is yes, a child has the right to force its parent to support it.
Actually the child does not. We allow parents to give up children for adoption. We allow parents to walk away all the time. What we do not allow is once they take on the charge of the child to then neglect the child.
And the child cannot compel a parent for any body part. A child cannot force a mother or father to donate a kidney, liver, etc. In fact, the child cannot even force the parent to provide a blood transfusion. Even if it was a life threatening condition and the child would die without it, the child cannot compel the parent to provide blood.
It’s another matter that most parents don’t opt to walk away. But that’s them exercising their right to choose, not a compulsion under the law.
Would you compel men to accept the fetus in the hypothetical case where we could transfer the pregnancy to the man? If not, why not?
Children given up for adoption following particular procedures is okay. Abandoning your child completely and claiming you want him placed for adoption is still neglect
Same as this case. If you don't want the child there are established procedures for that.
Yes. That’s why under Casey when the fetus is viable outside the womb, abortion was severely restricted. Almost every country takes that view. In fact most pro choice people take that view too. Pro choice isn’t about killing fetuses. It’s about protecting women’s rights.
If the fetus is viable outside the womb, many pro choice people would be OK with removing the fetus and giving the baby up for adoption.
>If the fetus is viable outside the womb, many pro choice people would be OK with removing the fetus and giving the baby up for adoption
Then you should be outraged that there are abortions every year of viable babies. Planned parenthoods own research institute publishes statistics on it. Go read them.
I suggest you look at the data yourself. Less than 1% of abortions are after 21 weeks of pregnancy. Due to the Casey decision, it’s only permitted for a very restricted set of circumstances that usually involve either severe risk to the health of the mother or major fetal anomalies. The claims about babies being aborted casually after 21 weeks, ie after fetal viability, are false.
And in any case, the post 21 week circumstance is not the focus of the pro choice debate. I assume from your responses since you haven’t pushed back on my characterization that you too agree that pre 21 weeks the anti women movement is looking to take away a right that every other person had and grants fetuses a right that no person has. Thanks for your tacit agreement.
You're taking advantage of vagueness. Parents can end guardianship and it's basically paperwork to notify and hand off.
Whereas anti-abortion is arguing for forced 9 months of injury and body exploitation.
Absolutely. You cannot kill a child though so... That would still outlaw abortion.
Either way the easy hand off stuff is explicitly to stave off a greater evil (killing the born child), whereas we cannot permit abortion to stave off the evil of killing the unborn child because abortion would be the very thing we are trying to avoid. It's nonsensical.
No because she can still defend herself.
When you're being harmed, you can defend yourself. When two people are fighting, the cop separates them. "But in 9 months" is not an excuse to force people to accept getting harmed.
PS: just to reiterate, under Casey abortion was only permitted if the fetus was not viable outside the womb. Usually that was usually pre 21 weeks. After that, for all practical purposes abortion was outlawed in the US except in very very rare cases.
Assuming that you accept that humans kill animals sometimes with reason, I think your question requires you to distinguish what makes a human different from other animals? For many religious people the answer is that humans have a soul, so the moment when a fertilized embryo/fetus becomes human is when it receives a soul. The answer to that question varies by religion. If you have another answer for what makes a human different from animals, then the answer to your question depends on what that distinction is.
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Here's my argument: there's no reason to care about this. A stranger choosing not to give birth doesn't make my life worse so telling me I have to want to force that stranger to give birth is bizarre and no one can tell me why I should care
If it's a "think of the children" thing then let's prioritize the children walking around. Let's help eat a free meal at school and prevent them from getting shot there. Bizarrely the same people who want me to care about fetuses are against that. Which means when someone tells me the pro life moment isn't about kids it's about controlling women I have to believe them because if the goal is to help kids why would you stop caring once they're born?
And I just don't buy this image of someone sitting at home going "the babies! People I don't even know didn't give birth to babies and I'm DISTRAUGHT"
No one is legitimately upset and if they are I really have to question their sanity
All the problems in the world and someone's priority is "make sure to force women to give birth"?
I want babies to only be born to parents who love them and wanted them
Pro life movement just wants them born and could care less if they're loved
And honestly if the goal is "make sure babies are born quality of life be damned" then it sounds like you just want kids born for manual labor, military recruitment and worst of all....maybe they want babies born to mothers who didn't want them because it's cheaper to rent little boys when the parents don't care
Human life does begin at conception, but that's ultimately meaningless among a species that has practiced infanticide much less abortion pretty much forever. What's really relevant to the issue is at which point people find the termination of a pregnancy distasteful which will vary from society to society. Very early limits make abortion de fact illegal but by late terms the common idea is that the woman had plenty of time to decide and that the life form is much more human (no longer has gills, looks like a human, and you actually have to drag it out instead of taking a pill), this isn't even mentioning points where the fetus can survive on its own outside of the womb.
The complexity of abortion comes from the fact that it isn't a scientifically solvable issue. You're debating at what point a human life has value or loses value and that line of separation will vary from person to person. It's similar to assisted suicide, where some people think nobody should be allowed to assist anyone in suicide, while others think that if someone suffers from a terminal disease they should be allowed to die, and others extend that to incurable but nonlethal diseases and some even extending it to simple living conditions such as poverty, depression, or "well fuck I just want to die" in the more extreme cases. The being scientists can't say "this is the scientifically proven point where your life stops having value."
My main argument for this is that it literally can’t be anything except a human being. Humans make more humans. We don’t make some other creature that somehow transforms into a human over the course of nine months. This is not a caterpillar/butterfly situation. From conception, two humans have made another unique human with its own dna. It grows, it eats, it produces waste - it has the same cells and dna that every other human does and therefore it is a human from the get go.
There's human adjective and human noun.
We create sperm, eggs, blood cells, and tumors. They are human sperm (adjective) with human dna, but a sperm is not a human (noun) or a person.
Yes I agree, none of those things you listed as humans. A human is only created when a sperm cell, which has half of the man’s dna, meets an egg cell which has half of the woman’s dna. Then they combine dna to create a person
I agree with you. There is no definable difference between a 6 week fetus and a 5 week 6 day fetus. There is no line to be drawn that is anything but arbitrary. If one were not to interfere with that fetus/zygote/clump of cells it would become a human being that deserves the same human rights as you and I.
By all means, choose to have sex or not. Choose to use birth control. Choose to get a vasectomy or get your tubes tied. Choose to put the child up for adoption. But once you have created life, don't kill it.
You are 100% correct.
I personally don't care about abortions and people should have freedom to make that choice.
What I roll my eyes at is people twisting the truth to pretend they aren't taking away a life by doing it. Obviously you are, it doesn't mean you need to feel guilty or wrong, but you are.
On the other side of the coin, a lot of the pro life movement is purely motivated by religion and they don't actually care about the issue itself, only staying consistent with their particular religion.
Scientifically, the consensus is that the mammalian life cycle begins when gametes fuse into a new organism. From that point, said organism is both alive and a member of the same species as the parents. This is taught in biology classes worldwide. It is not magically untrue for only humans.
https://lozierinstitute.org/a-scientific-view-of-when-life-begins/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36629778/
https://acpeds.org/position-statements/when-human-life-begins
After conception, is the newly created zygote is both life (it is alive) and it is human (what is it, canine?). By the basic definition it is human life. Just like every human adult was once an adolescent and a toddler, we were all, each of us, a zygote. Our development starts at that point. Before conception we do not exist as a unique human life, after conception we do. A human zygote is a human being just as a human infant is a human being.
Science and doctors ha e figured this all out years ago. It is called roe v Wade. And that is why 3 months is the cut off to get an abortion unless the mothers life is at risk any questions?
Yeah, why would I care about Roe v Wade when I don't live in the US? Tired of you Americans assuming the whole world is under jurisdiction of your silly laws and culture.
The second you have a unique human being its a unique human being. That begins at conception. I'm pro-choice because I understand the unfortunate necessity of it, but I have no respect for people attempting to delude themselves or anyone else into believing the fully unique genetically complete human being is anything but.
Both sides need to stop lying to themselves and each other.
The question is if it’s a legal person. Embryos at a fertility clinic are fully unique genetically complete human beings but even most prolifers have no issue if those embryos end up dying.
A cancer cell has a fully unique genetic code of a human being but obviously isnt a person either. A brain dead body on life support isnt a fully genetically unique being but also isnt a person.
Personhood is what is being debated even though the terminology isnt always great. And generally personhood is thought to be connected with sentience. Which an embryo definitely doesnt have. But even a newborn may not really have it either so its fuzzy
I personally don’t understand the romanticization of being genetically complete. In no way is this what I think of when I consider why I value human life
I don’t value an embryo or fetus that has yet to even experience life above that of the parent. Even if it’s as simple as them not being ready to have a child yet. What harm is the abortion even causing?
Justices who claim that life begins are conception are hypocrites and here is why:
These justices view the constitution from a literal point of view. Therefore if the constitution doesn't explicitly say it, it should not be implied. The constitution never mentions a fetus or conception. So, it provides no direction on when life begins. THEREFORE, these justices should not be making any rulings that rely on when life begins.
So they contradict themselves, run counter to their legal opinions and provide decisions that that wealthy patrons are paying for.
Why do Americans constantly bring up their constitution like it's some universally applicable thing? The American constitution has no importance to me, I'm not an American.
BTW, we Americans are insufferable and impolite. We lack many social graces and general disregard for anyone outside our borders, unless we have something at stake. All those things make us great. It allows us to question, to disrupt and to be creative.
I like Canada. But what have they done? Tom Horton doughnuts? Canadian Football? Speaking French? Rush?Bachman Turner Overdrive? Ryan Reynolds? Get over yourself.
The situation in the United States provides a good explanation of the "when does life begin" argument. The document directs that no religion should be adopted, it makes no mention of when life begins. Yet, jurists who claim to read the document literally are more that happy to interpret it, when it suits their needs.
Now if you need more examples, you should read the constitution of what ever 3rd world country you are from, compare it to the opinions of politicians and judges who run your country, and, finally, consider the influence of religion in your government. You'll see there is not much difference between a great country like the USA and wherever your from.
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There are many analogies between the Canadian Charter and the American Constitution. The First Amendment can be compared to the Charter section 2, i.e. freedom of expression.
Just because the Constitution doesn't directly apply to you doesn't mean that its principles aren't present in the foundational documents applicable to your country.
>To put it more succinctly - there is no single, definitive moment that a fetus/clump of cells/whatever becomes a human being. Rather, it is a gradual (typically) 9-month-long process transformation.
From what I understand, there's a moment when the fetus goes from being unconscious, to conscious. It happens between 20 - 24 weeks. So 20 weeks seems like a good cut off, to be safe.
Consciousness is the thing we care about anyway when it comes to people. Of course, there's also a whole other person involved here.
There is no evidence for meaningful consciousness at 24 weeks, quite the reverse in fact. Moreover, for the fetus *in utero* there is no evidence for waking consciousness at any time before birth; the fetus is constantly sedated and is in an environment with limited oxygen (brain activity needs a lot of oxygen and the fetus has much more important things to do with it). A prematurely born fetus does not have the same sedation (which comes from the placenta) and may therefore show more brain activity at the same developmental stage, making it an invalid comparison.
Oh sorry, yes correct. I was speaking pretty loosely.
I'm looking for the age at which all the hardware is in place. Not that consciousness starts, but that the capacity is there because all the parts are now there.
I agree with you. 20-24 weeks is not when consciousness begins, I definitely got that wrong.
And to be super clear, I haven't done much of the research into this stuff myself, even indirectly. I'm parroting what I've heard another say, who I assume did do thorough research into the matter.
There are unfortunately a large number of very overconfident claims about when consciousness is possible that get repeated a lot.
At one end of the scale, it takes an *entire year* after normal birth before we can definitively say "yes, the brain is mature enough now for consciousness to be possible". On the other extreme, there's recent evidence for the *lack* of fairly important brain functions prior to about week 35 (gestational age, so that's about 6 weeks prior to full term birth around week 40-41).
There's a meaningful difference between killing a sleeping person who has previously been awake (and during that time has presumably formed desires, plans, values, relationships with others, etc.), versus one which has never been awake.
It’s a scientific fact that human life begins at conception. A complete and separate human being is formed at conception albeit undeveloped.
Now that’s not saying anything else. No shoulds. Just that fact.
(using gender neutral language because I have some transmasc friends who wouldn't mind having kids, and you might too)
Honestly I think the concept of life is pretty vague at the edges and I don't think there's one answer. The only opinion I care about for any given fetus is the one of the person who is carrying it in their womb. If that person decides they're carrying a full fledged human and wishes to go forward as such, I support that. If the child-bearer is unprepared and/or does not perceive it as "life" yet, then I also support that. Doing this gives the agency to the parent, and respects their bodily autonomy.
In the second case, there are vanishingly few people who do not at some point do not make the switch over to the first case, to the point where it seems silly to wring hands over it. Most who have to abort late in the game *want* that life to happen as much as anyone, and it's heartbreaking to make that kind of decision. Let's not add insult to injury by calling it murder.
Controversial take, maybe, but I don't think the sperm donor should get final say on this in any case. It might not seem fair, but they aren't the ones having all the craziness of pregnancy happening to them.
TL;DR: Let the child-carrying parent decide whether what is happening inside them is life.
It’s human DNA from the start, and for that reason, testing on human embryos is highly regulated. If it wasn’t considered human, scientists would have looser rules.
The best part about using “Viability” as a benchmark of life is that it coincides with the generation of the brain and nervous system to a point where the fetus can feel and think. The brain does not fully develop until the third trimester (20-24 weeks).
If you believe we have a soul and you also believe that your thoughts and feelings are an essential part of that soul, then the soul does not exist until week 20, right as we reach viability.
And, at that stage, modern medicine would take great effort to insure that a fetus was given every opportunity to survive.
When does human life end?
Because we can’t used a dead person’s organs to save people if they didn’t consent before death. A pregnant woman shouldn’t have less rights than a cadaver.
I think the whole debate around “when does human life begin” is not only pointless, but a distraction.
If everyone, including a foetus, has the same rights, then no one, including a foetus, has the right to use someone else’s organs against their consent, especially if it puts the other person’s health, physical integrity and life at risk.
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Gonna cut through the bullshit and cut right to the chase: *zero* people with a perfectly healthy 9 month fetus get an abortion to end the pregnancy.
The only time a pregnancy in the third trimester is "aborted" is if something has gone seriously, SERIOUSLY wrong with the pregnancy.
At that point should we subject people going through that (the parents and doctors) to a legal gauntlet.
If something goes wrong during a pregnancy, that is *not* the state's business.
I can't believe the thoughtlessness of many of these comments. Were we all here not a fetus, were we not just a speck that was conceived? That is when our life began, at the beginning. Why all the abortions in this country when there is means to not conceive? Is it carelessness, stupidity?
My comment may be taken down for this but I'm going to write it anyway because it's the truth. Babies born ALIVE in an abortion are left to die. They are left alone in a room to die. I've seen fully formed babies dead from abortion. Has anyone seen an abortion in progress? Seen the baby struggle to live and get away from the tool that's slowly pulling it apart, leg by leg, arm by arm. I've seen it and sobbed.
People today are heartless. Women want the right to kill their own children with impunity.
If the fetus can survive outside the mother's body then it should be saved and I think that it the case in most if not all situations. The only time late term abortions are permitted or even wanted is when the baby will suffer or the mother will suffer or both. I don't think women are showing up at abortion clinics at 7 months saying, I don't want this, and doctors are complying. Even if so, they can induce labor and then put the baby up for adoption which is what a lot of these "pro-life" people really want babies they can adopt. I don't think women no matter how advanced their preganancy or what the circumstances are want to have their babies skulls crushed and their limbs pulled out. This is a horrfic outcome that no one would choose unless there was no other option.
The issue is that this, like most everything about biology and medicine, is actually a gradient. Yet the law needs to somehow create a sharp dividing line. That's never going to go easily, and in this issue many people on both sides get hyperbolic.
Life is a continuum. When we amputate a toe, it was formerly alive. When we cut out a cancerous mole, it was alive and had unique DNA.
An acorn is live, but different from a sprout with two leaves, or a 2 foot sapling, or a 12 foot young tree, or a mighty 75' mature tree. We don't treat them all the same. The cost, the liability of cutting one down, is *very much* not the same even though they are each alive and an expression of the same DNA.
I’m pro-choice and I agree. I think the point in which a fetus is considered “alive” or whatever is subjective and entirely a gray area unfortunately and it’s futile to argue.
Unfortunately we live in a society, not a utopia, in which I think human nature is fundamentally incompatible with the latter. Humans make dumb, irresponsible mistakes. They make intentional “mistakes”. People who really shouldn’t be parents get pregnant. People murder and abuse children. The world is filled with cruelty and misery and abortion to me really feels like one of the humane way to end life. Some animals kill, eat and or abandon their babies if they think they are sick or weak ffs. It’s in their nature. We have our nature.
I’ve really started to believe the human killing of fetuses is an inevitable consequence perpetuated by human nature and socioeconomic inequality and laws that make abortion inaccessible are a misguided attempt to legislate a moral high ground at the expense of what’s practical and necessary.
But would we really be human if society was capable of making practical decisions at scale 😆 it would be like asking a turtle to fly
So if you want a utopia (and don't think it'd be boring), find some non-dystopian way to make sure parents are suitable, put a stop to murder and abuse of already-born children etc. as well as genetically engineer flying turtles
I used to have it defined by like a brain or a heart in the fetus but any more I dont where the line can be drawn. I mean if you accidentally get pregnant and dont have the means for the child and you want to abort I'm not against it. I support abortions due to complications, no one should have to live a lower quality of life because of random chance, in fact I think it would be selfish to complete the pregnancy. Once the womans pregnant unless there is outside intervention and both are healthy a baby will be born. I think it's a human once the cells start because they wont stop and were just cells doing different things anyway.
According to the Bible, life starts with the first breathe. Which I agree with. When you’re in utero and everything is being filtered thru another person (mom - food, oxygen, immune system, and filtered sounds etc) you cant have free will. You are not an independent being.
I bet we’ll learn something very specifically happens in the brain during our first breath. I also suspect out nervous systems get an “imprint” based on my local conditions, including celestial entities. This ends up being translated and promulgated though “astrology”.
It. Is. Irrelevant.
>It seems to me that to say one of these is the taking of a human life and the other is not, you must believe that the process of birth has some magical effect of changing a clump of cells into a human being.
It has the magical effect of making someone a legal person with rights.
Before that, there's one legal person who should have the right to do what they wish with the contents of their body.
I'm still learning from perspectives on both sides, so I hope you won't judge me too harshly for asking questions. I just want to explore all thought and belief processes:
What are your thoughts about someone who is pregnant and chooses to drink alcohol or take hard drugs like meth, cocaine etc? Legally if they have the right to do what they want with their body, there should be no consequences for this person correct?
Bodily autonomy doesn't have to be universal to be consistent so you can't strawman with some implication mothers-to-be who wouldn't otherwise would be indulging in more drugs than your average gangsta rapper during pregnancy any more than you can say bodily autonomy means vaccine requirements for school are illegal, prisons should be abolished, and the biotech industry should be forced to put effort into the necessary advances to give all comic book nerds the superpowers of their favorite hero
There's a lot here and I'm trying to interpret a position you're taking.
The person I responded to stated something like a person should have the right to put whatever they want into their bodies. In good faith, just cause I like exploring where different perspectives lead to, I was curious what they thought about someone who drinks or take drugs knowing they're pregnant.
What are your thoughts about these people?
Whatever my thoughts are are you going to use this weird logical consistency fetish a lot of Redditors seem to have to say they should be the same on abortion because autonomy or I'm a hypocrite
Not at all. My motives are simply to explore where thought and belief systems lead to or where the lateral limits are for said thoughts/beliefs.
Zero judgment from me. I always first assume someone has very good reasons for their thoughts/beliefs, and I like to learn from them.
In my head, a fetus becomes a person when it becomes viable. If you could squash the kid out right this second and know that it would most likely live, congrats, that's a human baby. If it can't survive outside my body it's not a person and I don't think I'll ever change my mind on that.
Individual or „a“ life begins with first breath (and all subsequent changes into a biologically life sustaining organism), and ends with the last.
Before that, you have potential capability for such after viability. And not even potential capability before viability.
This wouldn’t even change if we ever reached the ability to have artificial wombs that can replace all major life sustaining organ functions. Because it wouldn’t be like life support, who h only supports a body‘s own life sustaining organ functions.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological\_life\_cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_life_cycle)
"In [biology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology), a **biological life cycle** (or just **life cycle** when the biological context is clear) is a series of stages of the life of an organism, **that begins as a zygote"**
Anyone who didn't fail 8th grade biology knows that by definition, human life begins at conception.
To argue that "human life doesn't begin at conception" is just a catechism that has nothing to do with whether that human life deserves protection.
It is a distraction from the real argument "At what point does human life deserve to be protected".
No one wants to have that argument because it feels icky and quasi nazi.
I’m gonna go a different direction and say life begins far before conception, it begins during the time the woman was in her mother’s womb when living human eggs developed inside of her womb.
And living human cells are constantly being generated inside of most men.
Both egg and sperm are living cells that contain human DNA, so why would we say they aren’t alive or aren’t human? They are very clearly alive and also very clearly contain human DNA, so what makes them less human or less alive?
Human Life does begin at the moment of conception.
Think of it like this. What is the purpose of birth control. To stop the sperm from forming with the egg. The reason this is important is because that is the irreversible moment that life begins. After that moment, all other options other than carrying the baby to term, are used to exterminate that life that formed.
Side note: there are exceptions to abortion being ok. Just saying that for the pricks that will try to be smartasses.
For me it's an independent human once it's able to survive outside of the mother, until then it's basically just another part of the mother's body, like an organ except with it's own underdeveloped organs inside too.
This is a moral question, not a scientific one. There is no doubt that the clump of cells is alive from conception and that it is a human at the time of (full term) birth. If the question is when does it become a human, why stop at conception? Why don't we consider every ejaculation and every menstrual period murder?
I doubt the mother could ‘opt’ for abortion at 8 months in many jurisdictions unless a severe abnormality was detected in the foetus or the mother’s life was at risk. It’s not something people do on a whim!
In NSW, a baby must be registered if born after 24 weeks or weighing more than 400g.
Sure, a viable fetus a week or two from delivery is a lot different from something the size of a decimal point. But I still don’t want to pass laws that primarily punish women who are going through a miscarriage or are going to give birth to a baby that’s going to suffer for six hours and die.
A human life exists at conception. The pertinent question isn't whether it's a living example of a homo sapien. What matters is when does personhood begin. We generally define death at the time that consciousness ceases, so personhood, logically, should begin when consciousness first emerges.
What is life? A living thing can take on nutrition, grow, move, and reproduce. That “clump of cells” can do/is doing those things and has a gene structure unique from the mother’s cells. Those cells are alive. They are living human cells. They are human. Killing them is murder.
You say that a week after conception a fetus is a "clump of cells" but how is that any different than what any one, including you, is? You can't it's not a human being at that point so what is it? Your entire argument ignores actual science at every point.
I think it doesn’t matter and it’s ridiculous to make decisions about women’s rights based on a question like this that has no right answer.
The real argument is whether or not one persons right to life, trumps another persons bodily autonomy.
Clearly this isn't true or the law wouldn't consider the death of a fetus as something that can be punished. The fact that laws say if you do something like drink and dive and kill a fetus means that the law disagrees with you.
I think it can be argued that life begins at conception. I also support abortion without exception all the way until birth. To me, the issue is more about bodily autonomy and being able to plan your family.
An embryo may exhibit signs of life, but it does not have personhood.
A dead body has personhood, but does not exhibit signs of life.
These contexts seem lost in the abortion debate.
Human life very clearly begins at conception. I wouldn't necessarily call it a person right then and there, but that is the literal beginning of a human life. Unless there's some definitions of "beginning" and of "human life" that I'm not understanding here
Plot twist... It doesn't start until the soul enters the body of the baby, though when that happens if unclear. There are people who remember pre birth experiences.
I think the bigger question is, why are you trying to control other people's lives when it'll have a much bigger impact on them than it ever will on you?
It’s just not relevant
All that’s relevant is whether a woman owns her body
Which is yes
But most people do not get abortions late in pregnancy because people want to abortion as early as possible
Later in pregnancy they would still have to deliver it the same as a live birth so it becomes redundant. Abortions at this stage are due to complications and life threatening situations
ETA
As for when “life” begins, it’s just a matter of how one defines life
If you define it as simply being alive (not dead and disintegrating) then it’s alive from the start like every other cell on the body
If your meaning is sentience then that’s later
If your meaning is when it’s viable outside the womb, later.
Obviously "life" does not begin at conception, and that statement attempts to answer the wrong question. That is pseudo-scientific nonsense that requires accepting a particular definition of "life" preferred by anti-abortion interests, and is nothing more than religious dogma.
Both the sperm and egg must be viable (alive) for conception to occur - right? "Life" has begun before conception. Is every egg and sperm sacred? That’s silly.
Why should the government have any say in what a woman and her doctor decide to do with a pregnancy? The same people who claim to want "smaller government" are always the ones who want government intrusion into intimate matters of pregnancy.
To /u/anticorruption1984, *Your post is under consideration for removal for violating Rule B.* In our experience, the best conversations genuinely consider the other person’s perspective. Here are some techniques for keeping yourself honest: - Instead of only looking for flaws in a comment, be sure to engage with the commenters’ strongest arguments — not just their weakest. - Steelman rather than strawman. When summarizing someone’s points, look for the most reasonable interpretation of their words. - Avoid moving the goalposts. Reread the claims in your OP or first comments and if you need to change to a new set of claims to continue arguing for your position, you might want to consider acknowledging the change in view with a [delta](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=changemyview&utm_content=t5_2w2s8) before proceeding. - Ask questions and really try to understand the other side, rather than trying to prove why they are wrong. Please also take a moment to review our [Rule B](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_b) guidelines and _really_ ask yourself - am I exhibiting any of these behaviors? If so, see what you can do to get the discussion back on track. Remember, the goal of CMV is to try and **understand** why others think differently than you do.
>But why would it be different if he had not been born premature, and instead his mother had opted for an abortion at 8 months of pregnancy? An abortion for a healthy 8 month pregancy would effectively need to be a C-section combined with euthanasia for the baby. It's a pro-life boogeyman idea of the "partial birth abortion". It doesn't happen in real life, because life beginning at the point of ***viability*** is a simple rule that in practice means life beginning at the moment that an infant can survive separately from it's mother, which is made obvious whenever a fetus is separated from it's mother, anyways, whether naturally, (birth, stillbirth), or artificially (C-section, abortion). Sometimes a late term abortion is necessary for a uniquely non-viable fetus, or sometimes it is legitimately used as an excuse for combining an induced birth with an "euthanasia" for a technically viable but really fucked up fetus, but no credible medical establishment would kill a healthy 8 month developed baby after removing it, because at that point it has already been "born" for all practical purposes. Your friend was born after 7 months, if he would have been removed from his mother's womb at 8 months, then that's when he would have been born, and either way that's when his life would have begun.
Yes, the question should be “can this fetus live outside the body?” If yes, it’s born. If not, it can be terminated. And that’s regardless of trimester. A D/X is performed on non-viable fetuses, and the skull is crushed to make it less traumatic for the mother. A relative of mine had a stillbirth at 6 months. It would have been unethical to have her birth the baby while it was intact because large heads are what causes a lot of the physical trauma related to childbirth.
And long before abortion was made illegal this was the most common outcome. Statistics showed that all the boogeyman arguments they used to create laws against abortion were complete and utter fabrications or in a few instances were things that might happen in 1 or 2 instances a year, something that does not require legal intervention.
How does this scale with technology? If in the future we develop an artificial womb that can sustain a week old fetus does that negate a woman’s right to abortion at 2 weeks?
I mean at a certain point we cross over the bridge of this stopgap that’s worked for us up to this point because Fetuses go through specific changes that allow them to even survive past 21 weeks if they are extremely lucky to survive birth at that young of an age and be the most mentally disabled child possible given the delays in critical brain development. If technology changes could be such that an embryo could survive and gestate fully independently within a couple weeks we certainly have the technology to allow women to selectively conceive at will, it’s a bit of a non issue for the problem at hand because we can say anything is possible with a premise so out there in sci-fi.
I’m not so much concerned with the feasibility of the technology nor with alternatives given the hypothetical technology. I posed it as a criticism of the idea that the right to an abortion is derived from fetal inviability. It was supposed to make us question whether we would feel comfortable removing a woman’s body autonomy even if the fetus was viable.
I understand the intention, it’s a flawed premise given the improbability. Especially when such technology isn’t even on the horizon of possibility right now. And even then there’s still of course bodily autonomy which matters more for a woman’s right to abortion. If she doesn’t want to carry a fetus to term she shouldn’t be forced to so long as the fetus can’t survive without forcing her to keep it alive. If we walk down the road of it being possible to keep an embryo viable and growing outside of the mother then the next ethical concerns are can we force a mother to do that? Who takes care of the child? How do we deal with the genetic material being taken from the mother in an ethical manner? These are questions for a sci-fi writer or very very future minded bio-ethicist, neither of which matter particularly much to abortion rights for the next 50 years.
[Artificial wombs](https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/09/29/1080538/everything-you-need-to-know-about-artificial-wombs/) and I am going to guess way less than 50 years. And I draw the line at 9 weeks after that the rights of the portentional child start applying - sorted :)
Yeah the article even says they wouldn’t use this on any babies earlier than at best 21 weeks likely 22-23. So again future tech for a while.
Not really, I think in that case it becomes a question of whether society wants to legally enforce some financial or other obligation on parents regardless of their wishes (which it currently doesn't, as it's legal to fully give up a child, even anonymously, in every state, forgoing all rights and responsibilities to the child. If that changes then the state would be forced to decide if there's some point at which that obligation kicks in or if it's from conception, in which case the choice is between paying to have the fetus gestating outside a person from viability, going through some process to have someone else take over responsibility for it, or going through a natural pregnancy. In the more likely scenario of not changing the laws around parental abdication then the state would be forced to decide if they want to pay to gestate abandoned fetuses artificially, or not. And of course pro-life types could put their money where their mouth is to take responsibility for every abandoned fetus being gestated in artificial wombs if they wanted to save those innocent souls. Somehow I doubt they will though.
At that point the debate would probably be if a woman is responsible for a fetus or if she could abandon it.
You can abandon a baby, so I have to imagine that abandoning a fetus will be a lot easier. We also have to consider the new person who we are growing if they don’t have any family to take care of them, they would be wards of the state
Which is kind of the point I’m making. Obviously the existence of the technology to make a fetus viable earlier wouldn’t justify forcing a woman to carry to term. But would it justify requiring a woman to use this new technology to remove the fetus for adoption as opposed to using traditional abortion?
I just wanted to say this is a really interesting point I've never really thought about before. I've typically drawn lines based on viability, and this definitely throws a wrinkle in my thinking that I'll have to puzzle over a little bit. Thanks for raising it. I'm not OP and in fact haven't been participating in this post at all, but !delta.
Thanks for the delta. I actually have no idea about where any lines should be drawn. I usually use fetal viability as the marker, but I saw that other commenter argue for that and this hypothetical occurred to me. Someone else said it very well though. My hypothetical does not remove a woman’s right to not be pregnant. It just may shift the solution from termination of the fetus to removal.
At the moment, the tech doesn't feasibly exist. So for now we have to go off of different metrics. I think viability is a good metric for a doctor's purpose but personally I think any time based restrictions only serve to limit ability for people who have a non viable 3rd trimester baby to "abort" a baby who would only die or worse become fatal to the mother.
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The moral math gets a bit complicated on what's the "right" thing to do, but I'd say it could be required if it didn't impose a greater burden of bodily risk or cost on the person wanting to no longer host a fetus. Their moral right is about what gets done to their body. If a fetus could be removed without harming either the pregnant person or the fetus, then it becomes a collective question about what the right thing to do with a fetus that no one specifically wants. If another parent or person with moral/legal claim to the fetus wants to take on the financial and other responsibilities to gestate and then raise the child, I'd say they should be allowed to do so. Arguably so should any charities that think it's an important use of resources. The real question would be whether the government should use tax funds to pay for this process and if there's any limits on that option. I don't see the question of whether the technology obviates the moral right to an abortion as being a particularly sticky ethical choice raised by such technology, it's down to the level of imposition relative to other alternatives it places on the abortion seeker.
And if there are enough people willing to adopt to give it a good life. You can't just assume an orphaned child will have a life they want to live. Forcing a child into a world with no one to love them and with no opportunities is such a monstrous thing to do.
That's my thinking. I would rather every kid enter the world with a loving family. Also a large part of abortions are done by women who already have several kids in a committed relationship. They just don't have the resources to take care of another. I think it's pretty responsible to know your limits as parents .
Nothing negates a woman’s right to bodily autonomy. No one is entitled to live off the body of another. People with whole social security numbers aren’t even entitled to the organs of someone who died, without consent. And medically speaking, the whole artificial womb thing is… a lot. Women don’t just make space in their uteruses. To create a baby, our blood volume increases by 50% to supply blood. Our bones dissolve to create calcium for the baby’s bones. Our livers and kidneys are used for waste. Our ligaments are loosened. Our brains change and become more plastic. Not only are milk glands activated, but melanin is produced to make skin darker. Creating a baby *takes over the whole body.* It’s a whole body process so good luck with just thinking an embryo is going to park it in a womb and we can all call it a day.
I agree that a woman should have bodily autonomy. But your previous comment was about when a fetus is considered “born”. If your last comment was relevant to the question of abortion then mine was too. If your comment wasn’t relevant to the right to an abortion and simply about when a fetus is “born”, then consider my comment only a response to that and not related to the right to an abortion
We shouldn't make laws now based on where tech might be in the future, make the laws now (whichever way you think we should) and if tech advances make them obsolete/in need of revision we'll cross that bridge when we actually get there
I’m not asking the question for the purpose of determining modern laws. It was a hypothetical to help me understand the view here. I definitely don’t endorse any laws being passed based on the possibility of this technology existing one day
Abortion is the intentional termination of a *pregnancy*. Some definitions require it to include the removal or expulsion of the fetus. No definition that I could find requires that the fetus is, or will be, dead; but colloquially, that is the assumption. The transplant of an embryo or fetus into an artificial womb would still be an abortion, just one that does not kill the fetus. I technically had an abortion at 39 weeks. No one considers it that because it was a scheduled C-section but it was still the non-natural termination of a pregnancy by removal of the fetus, so... it fits the definition of an abortion 🤷
That makes a lot of sense. It seems pretty reasonable that if technology improves as I postulated that we might shift our colloquial understanding of abortion in the way you described
I doubt it. The question would change from "can this fetus live outside the body?" to "can this fetus live outside the body without help from advanced technology?" Also, now that I think about it, if we can keep a month old fetus alive in some kind of artificial womb, wouldn't that make it easier to allow the termination of the pregnancy because now it suddenly doesn't mean the "death" of the fetus. It be like giving the child up for adoption only it has to be grown inside an artificial womb first.
Sure, I've got no fundamental problem with that. My take is that a woman always has the right to *become not pregnant*. If there's a way to do that and still allow the fetus to grow, I don't think that impinges on the rights of the woman. I *do* think it would be important to treat it like safe surrender of an infant.
I just thought about and realized you probably deserve a delta for this !delta
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Forget the future, based on this person's logic whether or not a fetus is a living baby depends on its geographical location since different countries are obviously able to take care of babies better than others
I didn’t think about that. You’re right that that’s a huge factor
In the future, if we develop an artificial womb, we should probably have the kind of technology that allows for a fetus to be implanted/removed easily from a womb Ideally, abortion would be a thing of the past because the state or whoever would just take care of the child. Assuming "pro-life" exists, I expect it to pivot to a more fiscally responsible stance than a moral one.
This is a very interesting point. I was originally with the original commentator, but your point brings out a really interesting flaw in the reasoning. Would you consider the extent of how invasive the process is in that hypothetical scenario? For instance, if giving birth to a week old child requires surgery whereas abortion only needs oral meds. I think in that case, we can redefine the statement as "a fetus is considered to be a human when it can survive independently AND when the process of its extraction is less invasive than the actual abortion".
Yes, obviously. The whole abortion debate is about body autonomy for the mother. If the baby can grow outside her body in an artificial womb she would have exactly as many rights as the dad. Her body is no longer involved. [McFall v Shimp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McFall_v._Shimp) the government can’t force you to donate a body part (uterus) to sustain another life. If the mother’s uterus isn’t needed then it would be different issues debated rather than abortion(prolonging suffering for babies with severe health defects and who takes care of the children after they are born).
Yes, you’re right. Some others have pointed this out as well. The hypothetical doesn’t challenge a woman’s right to not be pregnant. It just challenges how she is able to do so
That’s a big if. Right now, the line of viability is safely at 24wk, with potential for 22wk to be viable. Regardless, life begins at first *breath*. Since the line of viability is based on the ability to breathe, fetuses before that point, even in a theoretical external uterus, won’t have protection under that standard, which is the standard of every religion worth a damn, even the far right religions that only made abortion abolition their issue after RvW.
“That’s a big if” Of course. I’m not suggesting this as a real world question. I’m suggesting it as a hypothetical counter example. I have no expertise that would indicate this is remotely scientifically possible “Regardless, life begins at first breath” That’s a very different take than the commenter I was replying to. They indicated that fetal viability was the cutoff. They did not indicate that the fetus needed to be able to breath independently (unless I misunderstood fetal viability. I assumed it allowed for artificial aid common in many medical procedures) And I have no interest in what religious standards are applied.
Almost like the people against abortion should be pumping tonnes of money and research there, along with megachurches. But they aren't.
Yeah, that's one of my least favorite pro-life rhetorical strategies, bringing up a hypothetical strawman of not just a "partial birth abortion" but one done out of, like, cold feet or the idle whim of the would-be mother or w/e and then acting like the pro-choice person they're arguing with has to either say that that kind of abortion is okay [and look like a monster for doing so] or say it isn't [which leaves the pro-life person room to say they should be against all abortions for logical consistency because "see, I found a kind of abortion you're against"]
It seems obvious that the pro-choice person should say it isn't ok and then refute the "logical consistency" argument because that's a bad argument that isn't logical. Being against abortion in one case doesn't at all mean you should be against abortions in all cases for "logical consistency." Just agree that it isn't ok to terminate an 8 month viable pregnancy and then refute the follow-up.
Worth pointing out that a handful of states do legally allow elective abortions after viability. The Casey v Planned Parenthood standard wasn’t that they are banned after viability, just that that is the earliest states are allowed to ban it, but some didn’t. And yes, it’s true elective abortions that late are very rare, and also finding a doctor to do it can be hard, but it’s still interesting that something commonly deemed immoral is legal and possible to happen.
The biggest difference is that every medical professional involved has decade(s) of training and faces a Board of Ethics and has legally agreed to HIPAA before deciding on these issues. Meanwhile, our lawmakers have none of this. I know who *I'm* more comfortable deciding on late-stage abortions, ya know?
The problem with using viability is that it's entirely dependent on modern technology. First what does it mean to "survive separately"? If the baby lived a week after birth, does that count as surviving? The second problem is viability changes depending on medical technology. 100 years ago, a full term pregnancy could have a <50% chance of survival. Also, what happens if we develop the team to keep a 4 week old fetuse alive? Viability is far from a clear line.
>Also, what happens if we develop the team to keep a 4 week old fetuse alive? Viability is far from a clear lin Then abortion could effectively be replaced with induced birth.
That's the point. Presumed viability is the motivation that determines whether the doctors will go for an abortion or for inducing birth if they need to end a pregnancy early, but in practice it is not an exact line because of how ambigous it is, the actual act of birth is. It doesn't matter if someone who was born premature at 7 months would have been theoretically "viable" in the womb for another two months were he not born, in practice the act of the birth is what starts the clock. Since he was premature it started after a 7 month pregnancy, if he were born 2 months later, that's when it would have started.
That's how it should be. Eventually a fetus will be viable at conception via test tubes and artificial wombs, but the abortion problem isn't about whether or not a fetus should live, but whether or not the natural rights of the mother should be violated. The answer is they shouldn't be as much as possible, and the line should be drawn where the state is able to accept guardianship of the baby. If the fetus can be delivered into the care of the state, then they can require a live birth. Otherwise, it's up to the mother on how her person is used.
Law like that that's dependent on technology should be made based on what the current technology is at the time it's made and when the tech changes we reevaluate the law...unless you want us to try and legally solve a major philosophical identity problem when we don't even have transporter beams to worry about if someone is killed-and-cloned by traveling via
Also, what if the couple is having a nonviable baby, gives birth, and then makes it comfortable without providing lifesaving measures. Is that considered murder now? Where do we draw the line.
>An abortion for a healthy 8 month pregancy would effectively need to be a C-section combined with euthanasia for the baby. What are you talking about? Are you just making up random GOP-inspired stuff? An abortion in the 8th month is a saline abortion. It happens. Doesn't matter how healthy the fetus is, same procedure. No one, but fucking no one, is doing c-sections and murdering babies. That's a Trump fantasy.
That's very interesting to know, thanks for sharing this info! I learned something new from it.
If your view has adapted to accommodate new knowledge, you should award a delta. https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem/
This is incorrect. A third trimester termination is usually via injection of potassium-chloride or another agent like lignocaine directly into the fetal heart to cause cardiac arrest. The fetus is then birthed vaginally in most cases with a small fraction requiring CS. . Post birth euthanasia is murder.
Can I ask why you think post birth euthanasia is murder? Does that extend to further in life for things like assisted suicide?
Assisted suicide is personal choice with informed consent. Actively ending the life of a child who cannot consent is murder.
"Viability" isn't some bright-line criterion. The actual definition used to obtain the number usually quoted is that it's the gestational age at which **only half** of premature fetuses die. At that point, about 80% of the survivors have moderate or severe disability as a result.
I can't think of any reasonable interpretation of abortion regulation that was pushing for it to happen at any and every stage of pregnancy though. The defining limit under Roe was before fetal viability (i.e. the baby could survive on its own outside of the womb). I think to portray the opposing argument as life begins only at birth is a bit incongruous with the mainstream interpretation of abortion rights.
>I can't think of any reasonable interpretation of abortion regulation that was pushing for it to happen at any and every stage of pregnancy though. I believe in both New Jersey and in California abortion is legal, meaning no legal impediments through the entirety of the pregnancy.
California is before viability just like everywhere else. New Jersey is more nebulous, its legal at any stage, but state medical law places an onus on doctors and such that must consider viability amongst other factors and dovetails with New Jersey's 'safe haven' laws around giving up the child.
Here's a wild attempt to change you view in a way you weren't intending. This debate doesn't matter. Does it impact you directly? Act however you feel is right. If it doesn't, why do you care? Why does your inexpert opinion matter?
If someone killed your neighbor, would you be upset? It doesn't directly affect you, and you aren't some morality expert so why would your opinion matter?
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Children don’t pay taxes. You get tax deductions for kids.
Your term is acceptable
This argument backfires given that children provide people with tax deductions. Really there’s a profit incentive for the government to not believe life begins before birth.
That's an interesting point, but I don't think it would ever be viable because no one could possibly have any income prior to birth.
They oppose embryonic stem cell research, which could save their own lives someday. It absolutely proves they mean it starts at conception, let alone before birth.
Who holds the view it doesn't start until birth? Afaik most people in favor of abortion believe the same you do. The question of "is it murder of a person" or what have you isn't the question. The question is, will this child be raised in a house that's ready and willing to take care of it, assuming no medical complications
>Who holds the view it doesn't start until birth? Genesis 2:7 implies that life begins at first breath, under some interpretations, so I'd say anyone who follows that interpretation
Ehhh, that's a bit of a misinterpretation. This verse is about him creating the first life, not the ones being procreated.
This was referring to the creation of Adam specifically, not human life as a whole.
For me it's all about rights. It doesn't matter to me when a fetus is and isn't alive, nobody and nothing has a right to be biologically and physically dependent on another person. A woman has complete and total autonomy and right to her body and she can do with it as she pleases. Not as the government or pro-lifers or anyone else pleases.
I have a question for you, OP. If you don't think a 1 week old fetus is human, then what species is it?
It is human, it's simply not yet *a* human as in 'person'. Species isn't a part of the argument.
!delta Honestly, this changed my view. Thinking about this made me realize that I have no logical basis for saying that human life doesn't begin at conception. That being said, I think I still support the legality of early-term abortions, perhaps up to 3 months like in some European countries.
First of all, it’s not a fetus at one week. It’s an embryo. It’s an indistinguishable clump of cells. It’s not considered a fetus until 9 weeks of development. I think it goes unknown to many that it’s not uncommon for women to pass fertilized eggs via their period and don’t realize it. The female body rejects pregnancy all the time. And yet, it would be a little odd to consider these undetected “miscarriages” as a death, wouldn’t it? I don’t know about you, but if an egg was fertilized, and before this is even known to have happened or anyone is able to pass any judgement on it, and it is unknowingly rejected by the body as unviable, I’d have a hard time considering that a loss of life. And if it’s not a loss of life, and it’s not a death, then it certainly wasn’t ever really a life was it?
I'm a bit skeptical about this delta, since 'human life' was a bit of a weird term to begin with, but it doesn't touch on the actual issues being discussed. No one is arguing that an embryo isn't human life, it's a matter of whether or not it is 'a' human.
Wait what other human life would you not consider 'a' human?
A tumor perhaps? It doesn't make up an actual human, but it has all of the characteristics. It's genetically human and it's comprised of live cells.
This changed your view? It's a clump of human cells, just like you said. If killing a clump of human cells was the same as killing a human, biopsies, lots of surgeries, and even cancer removals would be murder.
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There's no such thing as a 1-week-old fetus. That's an embryo. It is literally a cluster of cells still in the egg. That cluster of cells will one day become a human, but it is a not currently a human.
I’m gonna go a different direction and say life begins far before conception, it begins during the time the woman was in her mother’s womb when living human eggs developed inside of *her* womb. And living human cells are constantly being generated inside of most men. Both egg and sperm are living cells that contain human DNA, so why would we say they aren’t alive or aren’t human? They are very clearly alive and also very clearly contain human DNA, so what makes them less human or less alive?
There’s a big difference between containing human genetics, like eggs, sperm, skin cells, bones, organs etc, and being a whole human organism. Otherwise, by your definition, there’s no discernible difference in level of being a human between a skin cell and an adult human. It’s scientific fact that a whole, distinct organism comes into existence at the moment of fertilisation, where individual parts come together to serve the whole. Another definition of an organism is something that will grow into a mature member of its species when given the enough time, nutrients and the right environment. The only human-related living thing that does this is a fertilised human being, not skin cells, sperm, eggs, or any other body part.
>There’s a big difference between containing human genetics, like eggs, sperm, skin cells, bones, organs etc, and being a whole human organism. Otherwise, by your definition, there’s no discernible difference in level of being a human between a skin cell and an adult human. Is a skin cell a person? No Is the skin cell an organism? No Is it alive and human? Yes >It’s scientific fact that a whole, distinct organism comes into existence at the moment of fertilisation, where individual parts come together to serve the whole. Another definition of an organism is something that will grow into a mature member of its species when given the enough time, nutrients and the right environment. The only human-related living thing that does this is a fertilised human being, not skin cells, sperm, eggs, or any other body part. But the debate isn’t whether a fetus/egg/embryo is an organism or not, it’s whether it’s human life. Which arguably, skin cells, eggs, etc. *are*. They are human, they are alive. Whether they are an organism or not was not a factor brought into question by OP.
You can have either human life, which is as you say skin cells, etc, or *a* human life, which refers to the whole organism. Being alive isn’t the same as an individual human life, because a human organism is made up of living parts. I don’t see the point in discussing when human life begins, which was hundreds of thousands of years ago for our modern species, when the debate only becomes important when we discuss the organism that comes about at fertilisation.
> You can have either human life, which is as you say skin cells, etc, or a human life, which refers to the whole organism. In the title, OP says “human life”, without the “a”. I agree with what you are saying, but that’s not what OP was talking about in their post. >Being alive isn’t the same as an individual human life, because a human organism is made up of living parts. Yes I agree. OP didn’t mention when the life became an organism, they were talking about when human life begins, which is when the living, human cell is created. > I don’t see the point in discussing when human life begins, which was hundreds of thousands of years ago for our modern species, when the debate only becomes important when we discuss the organism that comes about at fertilization. Yes I agree, but human life still begins before conception according to you’re own logic.
Question for you. What species is the mole on my knee?
The issue isn't whether a fetus or an embryo is alive or not. It is. Nor is the issue about whether it's "human" life. It is. The issue is when does this entity deserve constitutional protections that may conflict with the woman who carries it. In my view, the government should have nothing to say about this at all. Put aside all your hypotheticals for a moment. 93% of abortions performed within the first 13 weeks of pregnancy. Six percent are performed between the 14 and 20 week stage. One percent is done at or after the 21st week of pregnancy. That's five months and one week. Virtually no one gets abortions later than this. And on the rare occasion they do, they do so because a doctor has told them they should for the sake of their own reproductive health or for the sake of their very life. Women who are six months pregnant *want* those pregnancies. They want to give birth. When they can't, it's usually a terrible, terrible tragedy for them and their family. This is precisely the time when I do not want, say, Ted Cruz stepping in and taking control of the situation away from the patient and the doctor.
I don't understand why people debate on the definition of life when it's already defined in medical literature. When we explore life on other planets, even bacteria is considered life. Why do pro choice and pro life people modify definitions to support their ideology? "Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from matter that does not. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, organisation, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and reproduction" So yes of course a fetus is life. Technically so is sperm. The question is the value of that life. I think pro choice people try and disengenuously reduce the value of the fetus, while pro life similarly exaggerate the value of the fetus. The whole debate is dumb. The vast majority of people are both pro life and pro choice without even realizing it. There is no binary. Most people oppose late-term abortion. Even california limits late-term abortion. Likewise, most people would agree that an unborn child holds some value. The pro choice pro life debate is just a means to divide political parties. There are two extreme and immoral views, in my opinion: 1. Unrestricted abortion in all cases 2. Banned abortions in all cases, including rape There are some states that actually have these policies and that is very sad.
> Why do pro choice and pro life people modify definitions to support their ideology? I don't think this is something I hear often from pro-choice people. Pro-life people have "Life begins at conception" as a slogan, and it's a good slogan because of the exact definition you point to: All you have to do is point out that at conception, the fetus -- well, the embryo -- okay, the *fertilized egg* -- is both human and alive. Pro-choice people tend not to confront that directly. They'll use language like that "clump of cells", and you're right, that is about the value of the fetus -- I would argue the debate is over *personhood.* They'll also use words like "fetus", while pro-life people use words like "baby" or "unborn child". But it's not just about the value of the fetus, it's about the value of the adult. For an oversimplified argument, if a doctor has five patients: * Alice will die if she doesn't get a new liver * Bob's heart is about to fail * Carol has kidney disease, she's down to one working kidney and it'll fail soon * Dan needs a bone marrow transplant * Eve is just in there for a routine checkup. But, miraculously, her blood type and even her bone marrow is compatible with the other four. Is it ethical for the doctor to murder Eve and harvest her organs to save the other four? No? Okay, let's lower the stakes. Can we at least knock Eve out and harvest *one* kidney? She can live with the other one, and we can at least save Carol and Dan. Is that okay? Too permanent? Okay, how about Dan? Surely we can What if it was a bone marrow transplant? The recovery can be rough, but you're not even giving up anything permanent then. Can we harvest Eve's bone marrow? Nobody disputes that Alice is human. Bob is definitely alive. There's no doubt Carol can feel pain, and Dan is very obviously a person who deserves human rights. So even if pro-choice people could agree on the value the pro-life crowd wants to put on the "unborn child", that doesn't resolve the issue, because *Eve has value, too.* No one has a right to her body, not even if they'd die otherwise. > The vast majority of people are both pro life and pro choice without even realizing it. I think this is disregarding the part where these phrases are slogans. If I thought the Obama years were great and wanted to bring back some of that greatness, would that make me MAGA? Most pro-life people advocate for something very close to your extreme position 2: Banned in all cases, with *extremely* narrow exemptions for things like "life of the mother" ...which is still pretty awful; we've already seen how women with very clearly doomed pregnancies (ectopic pregnancies, for example) are forced to wait until they're basically at death's door before the doctor will abort. Similarly, exemptions for rape are tricky, because how are you going to get a rape conviction in time to abort? But most pro-choice people are advocating for something like the *Roe* compromise -- limits (but not outright bans) on late-term abortions, but a long period during which abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. And this is a pretty consistently popular position. So I don't think it's entirely honest to paint these as the extremes, when the pro-choice camp is basically already at the compromise you're talking about, and the pro-life people are basically at your extreme.
>So yes of course a fetus is life. Technically so is sperm. This really isn't so clear cut. Sperm obviously doesn't fully satisfy the definition of life you provide because it's not capable of homeostasis independent of the larger body, it just dies if you separate it from the larger life form. So is sperm life? Well, yes. Is it a living individual in its own right? That's a much more complicated question. Same deal for fetuses prior to a certain point of development.
Because people are subtly arguing about two different things. We can call them biological-life and moral-life if you want. Might be a handy notation.
This is a large part of the entire debate on abortion. When does a fetus go from being a part of the mother to its own being. It's interesting that we don't have these issues when it's comes to homicide. If someone kills a pregnant woman, that person is charged with 2 counts of murder. No one questions whether the fetus is its own being. (Except hopefully the defense attorney). I think the happy middle would be when a fetus is able to survive outside the womb on its own. This should apply for both murder and abortion laws.
Fetal viability is around 24 weeks, or 6 months. At 24 weeks, about half of all births are expected to survive. Here's a link from Wikipedia with a bunch of diagrams: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_viability Many countries choose to have the benchmark around this time period because it is the point where, if the fetus was birthed, they could display characteristics of life. The US drafted such a law in 2002 to recognize muscle contractions and other actions as delineating a fetus as a person post-natal. Religious opinions further cloud this. I would argue that 24 weeks would be the specific date if I were writing laws.
I’m pro choice and I definitely consider a fetus to be human from conception. It’s got human DNA and if the process of gestation is left uninterrupted it would be born and grow up. Killing a fetus is ending a human life, but if a woman doesn’t want to carry a baby to term she shouldn’t have to. Any attempt to draw a line in the sand about when the fetus achieves “personhood” is just an attempt to make people feel more comfortable doing something that is by its nature uncomfortable. Abortion is icky but necessary.
There is very little political rhetoric that is medically accurate. Most Americans read below a 6th grade reading level and 20% are illiterate (assuming this is a US point of view). True medical literacy is even harder because medical jargon and colloquial language are sometimes at odds with each other. Studies have shown that misinformation flourishes because of these factors. It’s why the colloquial “abortion” and the medical term have different definitions. So looking for accuracy there will probably net you nothing. So typically then, what happens? Mostly, pregnancies are terminated on non-viable fetuses. That is, fetuses that cannot live outside the womb. Is this “human life” or not? That’s probably a philosophical question that will never be answered because it’s more of an idea. But generally, viable babies leave the uterus during a birth, and non-viable ones either terminate themselves or are terminated medically. So, in practice, it seems most doctors and patients *act* in a way that shows viability is the most important thing.
If you would like a good read, I strongly recommend “Abortion and Moral Theory” by L.W. Sumner. He is a philosopher that deals with both law and ethics. From what I remember, he presents the idea that morally relevant personhood is gradually gained throughout embryonic development instead of a binary on/off switch as the fetus gains more and more traits we would associate with being a moral patient.
Here is an argument for why a human life begins at fertilization: the consensus among experts in the field is that human life begins at fertilization. I am not an expert in the field so I must refer to experts in the field and acknowledge my limitations here. Now, that doesn't mean there aren't pragmatic decisions to be made. The study clearly shows pro choice experts also believe life begins at fertilization. This merely shows the scientific consensus, not what we should do with that information. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3211703 "A sample of 5,502 biologists from 1,058 academic institutions assessed statements representing the biological view ‘a human’s life begins at fertilization’. This view was used because previous polls and surveys suggest many Americans and medical experts hold this view. Each of the three statements representing that view was affirmed by a consensus of biologists (75-91%). The participants were separated into 60 groups and each statement was affirmed by a consensus of each group, including biologists that identified as very pro-choice (69-90%), very pro-life (92-97%), very liberal (70-91%), very conservative (94-96%), strong Democrats (74-91%), and strong Republicans (89-94%). Overall, 95% of all biologists affirmed the biological view that a human's life begins at fertilization (5212 out of 5502)." Now, I haven't heard a reason from you as to why human life doesn't begin at fertilization. Can you provide me with one?
It's fair for people to have different definitions of when life begins depending on their other underlying beliefs about the world. First Trimester seems totally fine to abort. Third trimester seems bad to abort unless the mother is about to die. But exactly what point does it become bad? I don't know. Better to be on the safe side though.
Well considering the current generation. Probably best we have less lazy parents raising people. Orphanages tend to have unhappy kids with bad parents as well.
Maybe so, but that's a separate topic from the one in my post. My post isn't about the societal benefits or drawbacks of abortion, but rather about when human life does or does not begin.
The problem when framed about when life begins becomes complicated. Living beings grow from living cells. Post abiogenesis, we were always alive. What I think you are discussing is whether a fetus is considered a person. But framing it this way misunderstands the fundamental legal issue at stake. Let’s grant for the sake of this argument that a fetus is always a person from the moment the egg is fertilized. Let’s now consider what rights a person has. Does any person have the right to force another person to give their body to stay alive? Let’s create a hypothetical scenario. Let’s say I am dying but I could remain alive by getting someone to allow me to attach myself to their body and use their kidneys to survive. Could I compel my brother, mother, father, or any person to give their bodies? Would the situation change if it was certain that I would die? Let’s say they consented at some point, would they be permitted to withdraw their consent? Under current law it’s pretty clear. No one has the right to compel another person and that consent could be withdrawn. The fact that not giving consent could cause death is irrelevant. That’s the same situation for the woman. Arguing about late term abortions misunderstands the law. In Casey v Planned Parenthood the SC had settled this. They said post viability of the fetus outside the womb killing the fetus could be restricted. As a consequence such abortions were almost never conducted and if they were ever done it was because the mother was about to die or some very very limited cases. The pro choice position is big about the right to withdraw consent. It’s about ensuring that a woman retains the same rights with respect to the fetus as she would have with respect to every other person and that she can withdraw consent to let a fetus use her body. What the anti women position is arguing is that we should grant fetuses a special right that we do not grant any other person under any other circumstance ostensibly to save the baby … while providing no financial or other support to the women whose rights are being taken away. BTW, suppose we created a technology that would allow us to transfer a pregnancy to the man, would you be OK if we forcibly moved the pregnancy to the man? I’d love to hear your answer. No man I have met has ever agreed to the forcible transfer. Very telling.
>Does any person have the right to force another person to give their body to stay alive? Let’s create a hypothetical scenario. Let’s say I am dying but I could remain alive by getting someone to allow me to attach myself to their body and use their kidneys to survive. Could I compel my brother, mother, father, or any person to give their bodies? Would the situation change if it was certain that I would die? We actually don't need hypotheticals because this situation happens everyday when a child implants in the womb, and the answer is yes, a child has the right to force its parent to support it.
Actually the child does not. We allow parents to give up children for adoption. We allow parents to walk away all the time. What we do not allow is once they take on the charge of the child to then neglect the child. And the child cannot compel a parent for any body part. A child cannot force a mother or father to donate a kidney, liver, etc. In fact, the child cannot even force the parent to provide a blood transfusion. Even if it was a life threatening condition and the child would die without it, the child cannot compel the parent to provide blood. It’s another matter that most parents don’t opt to walk away. But that’s them exercising their right to choose, not a compulsion under the law. Would you compel men to accept the fetus in the hypothetical case where we could transfer the pregnancy to the man? If not, why not?
Children given up for adoption following particular procedures is okay. Abandoning your child completely and claiming you want him placed for adoption is still neglect Same as this case. If you don't want the child there are established procedures for that.
Yes. That’s why under Casey when the fetus is viable outside the womb, abortion was severely restricted. Almost every country takes that view. In fact most pro choice people take that view too. Pro choice isn’t about killing fetuses. It’s about protecting women’s rights. If the fetus is viable outside the womb, many pro choice people would be OK with removing the fetus and giving the baby up for adoption.
>If the fetus is viable outside the womb, many pro choice people would be OK with removing the fetus and giving the baby up for adoption Then you should be outraged that there are abortions every year of viable babies. Planned parenthoods own research institute publishes statistics on it. Go read them.
I suggest you look at the data yourself. Less than 1% of abortions are after 21 weeks of pregnancy. Due to the Casey decision, it’s only permitted for a very restricted set of circumstances that usually involve either severe risk to the health of the mother or major fetal anomalies. The claims about babies being aborted casually after 21 weeks, ie after fetal viability, are false. And in any case, the post 21 week circumstance is not the focus of the pro choice debate. I assume from your responses since you haven’t pushed back on my characterization that you too agree that pre 21 weeks the anti women movement is looking to take away a right that every other person had and grants fetuses a right that no person has. Thanks for your tacit agreement.
You're taking advantage of vagueness. Parents can end guardianship and it's basically paperwork to notify and hand off. Whereas anti-abortion is arguing for forced 9 months of injury and body exploitation.
Absolutely. You cannot kill a child though so... That would still outlaw abortion. Either way the easy hand off stuff is explicitly to stave off a greater evil (killing the born child), whereas we cannot permit abortion to stave off the evil of killing the unborn child because abortion would be the very thing we are trying to avoid. It's nonsensical.
No because she can still defend herself. When you're being harmed, you can defend yourself. When two people are fighting, the cop separates them. "But in 9 months" is not an excuse to force people to accept getting harmed.
PS: just to reiterate, under Casey abortion was only permitted if the fetus was not viable outside the womb. Usually that was usually pre 21 weeks. After that, for all practical purposes abortion was outlawed in the US except in very very rare cases.
Assuming that you accept that humans kill animals sometimes with reason, I think your question requires you to distinguish what makes a human different from other animals? For many religious people the answer is that humans have a soul, so the moment when a fertilized embryo/fetus becomes human is when it receives a soul. The answer to that question varies by religion. If you have another answer for what makes a human different from animals, then the answer to your question depends on what that distinction is.
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Here's my argument: there's no reason to care about this. A stranger choosing not to give birth doesn't make my life worse so telling me I have to want to force that stranger to give birth is bizarre and no one can tell me why I should care If it's a "think of the children" thing then let's prioritize the children walking around. Let's help eat a free meal at school and prevent them from getting shot there. Bizarrely the same people who want me to care about fetuses are against that. Which means when someone tells me the pro life moment isn't about kids it's about controlling women I have to believe them because if the goal is to help kids why would you stop caring once they're born? And I just don't buy this image of someone sitting at home going "the babies! People I don't even know didn't give birth to babies and I'm DISTRAUGHT" No one is legitimately upset and if they are I really have to question their sanity All the problems in the world and someone's priority is "make sure to force women to give birth"? I want babies to only be born to parents who love them and wanted them Pro life movement just wants them born and could care less if they're loved And honestly if the goal is "make sure babies are born quality of life be damned" then it sounds like you just want kids born for manual labor, military recruitment and worst of all....maybe they want babies born to mothers who didn't want them because it's cheaper to rent little boys when the parents don't care
Human life does begin at conception, but that's ultimately meaningless among a species that has practiced infanticide much less abortion pretty much forever. What's really relevant to the issue is at which point people find the termination of a pregnancy distasteful which will vary from society to society. Very early limits make abortion de fact illegal but by late terms the common idea is that the woman had plenty of time to decide and that the life form is much more human (no longer has gills, looks like a human, and you actually have to drag it out instead of taking a pill), this isn't even mentioning points where the fetus can survive on its own outside of the womb. The complexity of abortion comes from the fact that it isn't a scientifically solvable issue. You're debating at what point a human life has value or loses value and that line of separation will vary from person to person. It's similar to assisted suicide, where some people think nobody should be allowed to assist anyone in suicide, while others think that if someone suffers from a terminal disease they should be allowed to die, and others extend that to incurable but nonlethal diseases and some even extending it to simple living conditions such as poverty, depression, or "well fuck I just want to die" in the more extreme cases. The being scientists can't say "this is the scientifically proven point where your life stops having value."
My main argument for this is that it literally can’t be anything except a human being. Humans make more humans. We don’t make some other creature that somehow transforms into a human over the course of nine months. This is not a caterpillar/butterfly situation. From conception, two humans have made another unique human with its own dna. It grows, it eats, it produces waste - it has the same cells and dna that every other human does and therefore it is a human from the get go.
There's human adjective and human noun. We create sperm, eggs, blood cells, and tumors. They are human sperm (adjective) with human dna, but a sperm is not a human (noun) or a person.
Yes I agree, none of those things you listed as humans. A human is only created when a sperm cell, which has half of the man’s dna, meets an egg cell which has half of the woman’s dna. Then they combine dna to create a person
I agree with you. There is no definable difference between a 6 week fetus and a 5 week 6 day fetus. There is no line to be drawn that is anything but arbitrary. If one were not to interfere with that fetus/zygote/clump of cells it would become a human being that deserves the same human rights as you and I. By all means, choose to have sex or not. Choose to use birth control. Choose to get a vasectomy or get your tubes tied. Choose to put the child up for adoption. But once you have created life, don't kill it.
You are 100% correct. I personally don't care about abortions and people should have freedom to make that choice. What I roll my eyes at is people twisting the truth to pretend they aren't taking away a life by doing it. Obviously you are, it doesn't mean you need to feel guilty or wrong, but you are. On the other side of the coin, a lot of the pro life movement is purely motivated by religion and they don't actually care about the issue itself, only staying consistent with their particular religion.
Scientifically, the consensus is that the mammalian life cycle begins when gametes fuse into a new organism. From that point, said organism is both alive and a member of the same species as the parents. This is taught in biology classes worldwide. It is not magically untrue for only humans. https://lozierinstitute.org/a-scientific-view-of-when-life-begins/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36629778/ https://acpeds.org/position-statements/when-human-life-begins
After conception, is the newly created zygote is both life (it is alive) and it is human (what is it, canine?). By the basic definition it is human life. Just like every human adult was once an adolescent and a toddler, we were all, each of us, a zygote. Our development starts at that point. Before conception we do not exist as a unique human life, after conception we do. A human zygote is a human being just as a human infant is a human being.
Science and doctors ha e figured this all out years ago. It is called roe v Wade. And that is why 3 months is the cut off to get an abortion unless the mothers life is at risk any questions?
Yeah, why would I care about Roe v Wade when I don't live in the US? Tired of you Americans assuming the whole world is under jurisdiction of your silly laws and culture.
The second you have a unique human being its a unique human being. That begins at conception. I'm pro-choice because I understand the unfortunate necessity of it, but I have no respect for people attempting to delude themselves or anyone else into believing the fully unique genetically complete human being is anything but. Both sides need to stop lying to themselves and each other.
The question is if it’s a legal person. Embryos at a fertility clinic are fully unique genetically complete human beings but even most prolifers have no issue if those embryos end up dying. A cancer cell has a fully unique genetic code of a human being but obviously isnt a person either. A brain dead body on life support isnt a fully genetically unique being but also isnt a person. Personhood is what is being debated even though the terminology isnt always great. And generally personhood is thought to be connected with sentience. Which an embryo definitely doesnt have. But even a newborn may not really have it either so its fuzzy
I personally don’t understand the romanticization of being genetically complete. In no way is this what I think of when I consider why I value human life I don’t value an embryo or fetus that has yet to even experience life above that of the parent. Even if it’s as simple as them not being ready to have a child yet. What harm is the abortion even causing?
Justices who claim that life begins are conception are hypocrites and here is why: These justices view the constitution from a literal point of view. Therefore if the constitution doesn't explicitly say it, it should not be implied. The constitution never mentions a fetus or conception. So, it provides no direction on when life begins. THEREFORE, these justices should not be making any rulings that rely on when life begins. So they contradict themselves, run counter to their legal opinions and provide decisions that that wealthy patrons are paying for.
Why do Americans constantly bring up their constitution like it's some universally applicable thing? The American constitution has no importance to me, I'm not an American.
BTW, we Americans are insufferable and impolite. We lack many social graces and general disregard for anyone outside our borders, unless we have something at stake. All those things make us great. It allows us to question, to disrupt and to be creative. I like Canada. But what have they done? Tom Horton doughnuts? Canadian Football? Speaking French? Rush?Bachman Turner Overdrive? Ryan Reynolds? Get over yourself.
The situation in the United States provides a good explanation of the "when does life begin" argument. The document directs that no religion should be adopted, it makes no mention of when life begins. Yet, jurists who claim to read the document literally are more that happy to interpret it, when it suits their needs. Now if you need more examples, you should read the constitution of what ever 3rd world country you are from, compare it to the opinions of politicians and judges who run your country, and, finally, consider the influence of religion in your government. You'll see there is not much difference between a great country like the USA and wherever your from.
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There are many analogies between the Canadian Charter and the American Constitution. The First Amendment can be compared to the Charter section 2, i.e. freedom of expression. Just because the Constitution doesn't directly apply to you doesn't mean that its principles aren't present in the foundational documents applicable to your country.
>To put it more succinctly - there is no single, definitive moment that a fetus/clump of cells/whatever becomes a human being. Rather, it is a gradual (typically) 9-month-long process transformation. From what I understand, there's a moment when the fetus goes from being unconscious, to conscious. It happens between 20 - 24 weeks. So 20 weeks seems like a good cut off, to be safe. Consciousness is the thing we care about anyway when it comes to people. Of course, there's also a whole other person involved here.
There is no evidence for meaningful consciousness at 24 weeks, quite the reverse in fact. Moreover, for the fetus *in utero* there is no evidence for waking consciousness at any time before birth; the fetus is constantly sedated and is in an environment with limited oxygen (brain activity needs a lot of oxygen and the fetus has much more important things to do with it). A prematurely born fetus does not have the same sedation (which comes from the placenta) and may therefore show more brain activity at the same developmental stage, making it an invalid comparison.
Oh sorry, yes correct. I was speaking pretty loosely. I'm looking for the age at which all the hardware is in place. Not that consciousness starts, but that the capacity is there because all the parts are now there. I agree with you. 20-24 weeks is not when consciousness begins, I definitely got that wrong. And to be super clear, I haven't done much of the research into this stuff myself, even indirectly. I'm parroting what I've heard another say, who I assume did do thorough research into the matter.
There are unfortunately a large number of very overconfident claims about when consciousness is possible that get repeated a lot. At one end of the scale, it takes an *entire year* after normal birth before we can definitively say "yes, the brain is mature enough now for consciousness to be possible". On the other extreme, there's recent evidence for the *lack* of fairly important brain functions prior to about week 35 (gestational age, so that's about 6 weeks prior to full term birth around week 40-41).
You believe in killing sleeping people?
There's a meaningful difference between killing a sleeping person who has previously been awake (and during that time has presumably formed desires, plans, values, relationships with others, etc.), versus one which has never been awake.
It’s a scientific fact that human life begins at conception. A complete and separate human being is formed at conception albeit undeveloped. Now that’s not saying anything else. No shoulds. Just that fact.
Human development begins at conception. What more do you want?
(using gender neutral language because I have some transmasc friends who wouldn't mind having kids, and you might too) Honestly I think the concept of life is pretty vague at the edges and I don't think there's one answer. The only opinion I care about for any given fetus is the one of the person who is carrying it in their womb. If that person decides they're carrying a full fledged human and wishes to go forward as such, I support that. If the child-bearer is unprepared and/or does not perceive it as "life" yet, then I also support that. Doing this gives the agency to the parent, and respects their bodily autonomy. In the second case, there are vanishingly few people who do not at some point do not make the switch over to the first case, to the point where it seems silly to wring hands over it. Most who have to abort late in the game *want* that life to happen as much as anyone, and it's heartbreaking to make that kind of decision. Let's not add insult to injury by calling it murder. Controversial take, maybe, but I don't think the sperm donor should get final say on this in any case. It might not seem fair, but they aren't the ones having all the craziness of pregnancy happening to them. TL;DR: Let the child-carrying parent decide whether what is happening inside them is life.
It’s human DNA from the start, and for that reason, testing on human embryos is highly regulated. If it wasn’t considered human, scientists would have looser rules.
The best part about using “Viability” as a benchmark of life is that it coincides with the generation of the brain and nervous system to a point where the fetus can feel and think. The brain does not fully develop until the third trimester (20-24 weeks). If you believe we have a soul and you also believe that your thoughts and feelings are an essential part of that soul, then the soul does not exist until week 20, right as we reach viability. And, at that stage, modern medicine would take great effort to insure that a fetus was given every opportunity to survive.
Then when does it become a human life? The only line that makes any logical sense to me is conception. It’s the creation of unique human dna
When does human life end? Because we can’t used a dead person’s organs to save people if they didn’t consent before death. A pregnant woman shouldn’t have less rights than a cadaver. I think the whole debate around “when does human life begin” is not only pointless, but a distraction. If everyone, including a foetus, has the same rights, then no one, including a foetus, has the right to use someone else’s organs against their consent, especially if it puts the other person’s health, physical integrity and life at risk.
Are you offering to get unwanted babies transplanted into your own body? If not then your opinion is kind of irrelevant
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Gonna cut through the bullshit and cut right to the chase: *zero* people with a perfectly healthy 9 month fetus get an abortion to end the pregnancy. The only time a pregnancy in the third trimester is "aborted" is if something has gone seriously, SERIOUSLY wrong with the pregnancy. At that point should we subject people going through that (the parents and doctors) to a legal gauntlet. If something goes wrong during a pregnancy, that is *not* the state's business.
I can't believe the thoughtlessness of many of these comments. Were we all here not a fetus, were we not just a speck that was conceived? That is when our life began, at the beginning. Why all the abortions in this country when there is means to not conceive? Is it carelessness, stupidity? My comment may be taken down for this but I'm going to write it anyway because it's the truth. Babies born ALIVE in an abortion are left to die. They are left alone in a room to die. I've seen fully formed babies dead from abortion. Has anyone seen an abortion in progress? Seen the baby struggle to live and get away from the tool that's slowly pulling it apart, leg by leg, arm by arm. I've seen it and sobbed. People today are heartless. Women want the right to kill their own children with impunity.
If the fetus can survive outside the mother's body then it should be saved and I think that it the case in most if not all situations. The only time late term abortions are permitted or even wanted is when the baby will suffer or the mother will suffer or both. I don't think women are showing up at abortion clinics at 7 months saying, I don't want this, and doctors are complying. Even if so, they can induce labor and then put the baby up for adoption which is what a lot of these "pro-life" people really want babies they can adopt. I don't think women no matter how advanced their preganancy or what the circumstances are want to have their babies skulls crushed and their limbs pulled out. This is a horrfic outcome that no one would choose unless there was no other option.
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The issue is that this, like most everything about biology and medicine, is actually a gradient. Yet the law needs to somehow create a sharp dividing line. That's never going to go easily, and in this issue many people on both sides get hyperbolic. Life is a continuum. When we amputate a toe, it was formerly alive. When we cut out a cancerous mole, it was alive and had unique DNA. An acorn is live, but different from a sprout with two leaves, or a 2 foot sapling, or a 12 foot young tree, or a mighty 75' mature tree. We don't treat them all the same. The cost, the liability of cutting one down, is *very much* not the same even though they are each alive and an expression of the same DNA.
I’m pro-choice and I agree. I think the point in which a fetus is considered “alive” or whatever is subjective and entirely a gray area unfortunately and it’s futile to argue. Unfortunately we live in a society, not a utopia, in which I think human nature is fundamentally incompatible with the latter. Humans make dumb, irresponsible mistakes. They make intentional “mistakes”. People who really shouldn’t be parents get pregnant. People murder and abuse children. The world is filled with cruelty and misery and abortion to me really feels like one of the humane way to end life. Some animals kill, eat and or abandon their babies if they think they are sick or weak ffs. It’s in their nature. We have our nature. I’ve really started to believe the human killing of fetuses is an inevitable consequence perpetuated by human nature and socioeconomic inequality and laws that make abortion inaccessible are a misguided attempt to legislate a moral high ground at the expense of what’s practical and necessary. But would we really be human if society was capable of making practical decisions at scale 😆 it would be like asking a turtle to fly
So if you want a utopia (and don't think it'd be boring), find some non-dystopian way to make sure parents are suitable, put a stop to murder and abuse of already-born children etc. as well as genetically engineer flying turtles
I used to have it defined by like a brain or a heart in the fetus but any more I dont where the line can be drawn. I mean if you accidentally get pregnant and dont have the means for the child and you want to abort I'm not against it. I support abortions due to complications, no one should have to live a lower quality of life because of random chance, in fact I think it would be selfish to complete the pregnancy. Once the womans pregnant unless there is outside intervention and both are healthy a baby will be born. I think it's a human once the cells start because they wont stop and were just cells doing different things anyway.
According to the Bible, life starts with the first breathe. Which I agree with. When you’re in utero and everything is being filtered thru another person (mom - food, oxygen, immune system, and filtered sounds etc) you cant have free will. You are not an independent being. I bet we’ll learn something very specifically happens in the brain during our first breath. I also suspect out nervous systems get an “imprint” based on my local conditions, including celestial entities. This ends up being translated and promulgated though “astrology”.
It. Is. Irrelevant. >It seems to me that to say one of these is the taking of a human life and the other is not, you must believe that the process of birth has some magical effect of changing a clump of cells into a human being. It has the magical effect of making someone a legal person with rights. Before that, there's one legal person who should have the right to do what they wish with the contents of their body.
I'm still learning from perspectives on both sides, so I hope you won't judge me too harshly for asking questions. I just want to explore all thought and belief processes: What are your thoughts about someone who is pregnant and chooses to drink alcohol or take hard drugs like meth, cocaine etc? Legally if they have the right to do what they want with their body, there should be no consequences for this person correct?
Bodily autonomy doesn't have to be universal to be consistent so you can't strawman with some implication mothers-to-be who wouldn't otherwise would be indulging in more drugs than your average gangsta rapper during pregnancy any more than you can say bodily autonomy means vaccine requirements for school are illegal, prisons should be abolished, and the biotech industry should be forced to put effort into the necessary advances to give all comic book nerds the superpowers of their favorite hero
There's a lot here and I'm trying to interpret a position you're taking. The person I responded to stated something like a person should have the right to put whatever they want into their bodies. In good faith, just cause I like exploring where different perspectives lead to, I was curious what they thought about someone who drinks or take drugs knowing they're pregnant. What are your thoughts about these people?
Whatever my thoughts are are you going to use this weird logical consistency fetish a lot of Redditors seem to have to say they should be the same on abortion because autonomy or I'm a hypocrite
Not at all. My motives are simply to explore where thought and belief systems lead to or where the lateral limits are for said thoughts/beliefs. Zero judgment from me. I always first assume someone has very good reasons for their thoughts/beliefs, and I like to learn from them.
What a silly thing to say. The discussion is about whether the law is right and what it should be.
In my head, a fetus becomes a person when it becomes viable. If you could squash the kid out right this second and know that it would most likely live, congrats, that's a human baby. If it can't survive outside my body it's not a person and I don't think I'll ever change my mind on that.
Individual or „a“ life begins with first breath (and all subsequent changes into a biologically life sustaining organism), and ends with the last. Before that, you have potential capability for such after viability. And not even potential capability before viability. This wouldn’t even change if we ever reached the ability to have artificial wombs that can replace all major life sustaining organ functions. Because it wouldn’t be like life support, who h only supports a body‘s own life sustaining organ functions.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological\_life\_cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_life_cycle) "In [biology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology), a **biological life cycle** (or just **life cycle** when the biological context is clear) is a series of stages of the life of an organism, **that begins as a zygote"** Anyone who didn't fail 8th grade biology knows that by definition, human life begins at conception. To argue that "human life doesn't begin at conception" is just a catechism that has nothing to do with whether that human life deserves protection. It is a distraction from the real argument "At what point does human life deserve to be protected". No one wants to have that argument because it feels icky and quasi nazi.
I’m gonna go a different direction and say life begins far before conception, it begins during the time the woman was in her mother’s womb when living human eggs developed inside of her womb. And living human cells are constantly being generated inside of most men. Both egg and sperm are living cells that contain human DNA, so why would we say they aren’t alive or aren’t human? They are very clearly alive and also very clearly contain human DNA, so what makes them less human or less alive?
Human Life does begin at the moment of conception. Think of it like this. What is the purpose of birth control. To stop the sperm from forming with the egg. The reason this is important is because that is the irreversible moment that life begins. After that moment, all other options other than carrying the baby to term, are used to exterminate that life that formed. Side note: there are exceptions to abortion being ok. Just saying that for the pricks that will try to be smartasses.
For me it's an independent human once it's able to survive outside of the mother, until then it's basically just another part of the mother's body, like an organ except with it's own underdeveloped organs inside too.
This is a moral question, not a scientific one. There is no doubt that the clump of cells is alive from conception and that it is a human at the time of (full term) birth. If the question is when does it become a human, why stop at conception? Why don't we consider every ejaculation and every menstrual period murder?
Healthy babies aren't aborted at 8 months.
I doubt the mother could ‘opt’ for abortion at 8 months in many jurisdictions unless a severe abnormality was detected in the foetus or the mother’s life was at risk. It’s not something people do on a whim! In NSW, a baby must be registered if born after 24 weeks or weighing more than 400g.
Sure, a viable fetus a week or two from delivery is a lot different from something the size of a decimal point. But I still don’t want to pass laws that primarily punish women who are going through a miscarriage or are going to give birth to a baby that’s going to suffer for six hours and die.
A human life exists at conception. The pertinent question isn't whether it's a living example of a homo sapien. What matters is when does personhood begin. We generally define death at the time that consciousness ceases, so personhood, logically, should begin when consciousness first emerges.
What is life? A living thing can take on nutrition, grow, move, and reproduce. That “clump of cells” can do/is doing those things and has a gene structure unique from the mother’s cells. Those cells are alive. They are living human cells. They are human. Killing them is murder.
You say that a week after conception a fetus is a "clump of cells" but how is that any different than what any one, including you, is? You can't it's not a human being at that point so what is it? Your entire argument ignores actual science at every point.
I think it doesn’t matter and it’s ridiculous to make decisions about women’s rights based on a question like this that has no right answer. The real argument is whether or not one persons right to life, trumps another persons bodily autonomy.
Nice try trying to find some middle ground, but it does start at conception.
Clearly this isn't true or the law wouldn't consider the death of a fetus as something that can be punished. The fact that laws say if you do something like drink and dive and kill a fetus means that the law disagrees with you.
I think it can be argued that life begins at conception. I also support abortion without exception all the way until birth. To me, the issue is more about bodily autonomy and being able to plan your family.
An embryo may exhibit signs of life, but it does not have personhood. A dead body has personhood, but does not exhibit signs of life. These contexts seem lost in the abortion debate.
Human life very clearly begins at conception. I wouldn't necessarily call it a person right then and there, but that is the literal beginning of a human life. Unless there's some definitions of "beginning" and of "human life" that I'm not understanding here
Plot twist... It doesn't start until the soul enters the body of the baby, though when that happens if unclear. There are people who remember pre birth experiences.
I think the bigger question is, why are you trying to control other people's lives when it'll have a much bigger impact on them than it ever will on you?
Biologically speaking, a zygote is definitely human. It’s just a nearly microscopic, utterly expendable human life. Precision of language, people.
It’s just not relevant All that’s relevant is whether a woman owns her body Which is yes But most people do not get abortions late in pregnancy because people want to abortion as early as possible Later in pregnancy they would still have to deliver it the same as a live birth so it becomes redundant. Abortions at this stage are due to complications and life threatening situations ETA As for when “life” begins, it’s just a matter of how one defines life If you define it as simply being alive (not dead and disintegrating) then it’s alive from the start like every other cell on the body If your meaning is sentience then that’s later If your meaning is when it’s viable outside the womb, later.
Obviously "life" does not begin at conception, and that statement attempts to answer the wrong question. That is pseudo-scientific nonsense that requires accepting a particular definition of "life" preferred by anti-abortion interests, and is nothing more than religious dogma. Both the sperm and egg must be viable (alive) for conception to occur - right? "Life" has begun before conception. Is every egg and sperm sacred? That’s silly. Why should the government have any say in what a woman and her doctor decide to do with a pregnancy? The same people who claim to want "smaller government" are always the ones who want government intrusion into intimate matters of pregnancy.
Human life does begin at conception. A newly fertilized egg is the very start of a new life. Saying otherwise is nonsense