Posted on 08/06/2003 12:18:38 PM PDT by optimistically_conservative
When does a fetus become a person?
Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Diane Glass, a left-leaning columnist, responds.
SHAUNTI FELDHAHN Asking when a fetus becomes a person is sort of like asking when a bird becomes winged. By definition, a bird is winged. By definition, a fetus is a person. What else would it be -- a horse? But this question, as asked by the pro-choice movement, is not about when a fetus becomes a homo sapiens. It's about when a fetus is enough of an individual to have the rights of any other homo sapiens -- in other words, when it has the right to life. A pro-choice professor at Princeton, Peter Singer, has an interesting answer. He says, with perfect intellectual consistency, that there's nothing special about the demarcation line of birth. If the parents are allowed to abort a baby a few weeks before birth, he argues, they should be allowed to kill the baby a few weeks after birth if that results in greater happiness overall. As he says in Practical Ethics, "A newborn baby, [like a fetus,] is not an autonomous being, capable of making choices, and so to kill a newborn baby cannot violate the principle of respect for autonomy." Being a parent of a new baby myself, that position sickens me -- but it is more honest than the argument that birth brings some fundamental change that suddenly results in 'personhood.' In an earlier column, Diane stated a common liberal position that the qualification for human personhood is free will -- so an unborn baby, dependent on the mother, is not a person.
Well why on earth would you think a fetus lacks free will? Free will is about someone's internal desires and ability to make choices (it is not about the ability to carry out that choice -- you would never say that a quadriplegic lacks free will). And a fetus does make free-will choices in its own little environment. It sucks its thumb for comfort. If you press on it, it gets irritated (or interested) and presses back. And if it's asleep or dozing and you press a buzzer to your belly, the fetus thrashes around and practically shrieks "stop that!" Some experts believe that by 14 weeks a fetus can even feel pain - such as the horrific pain that would surely attend an abortion. An unborn baby has free will, and it wills to live just like the rest of us. So when does a fetus become a person? It's not when you can feel that little warm body nuzzling into your shoulder, and it's not when you can feel little legs pushing against the inside of your ribs. It's not when the ultrasound shows a huge head and little waiflike body turning lazy somersaults before the baby is big enough to be felt. It's not even when a lone heartbeat pulses out of its dark ocean. A fetus becomes a person when the spark of life is launched on its miraculous journey. A fetus becomes a person at the beginning. Where all life begins.
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DIANE GLASS "Where all life begins." Are we really talking about all life? Or just human life?
A fetus is a person when it is independent of a woman's body. Anti-choice advocates stance on fetal rights rests on the assumption we're made in the image of God. All human life is sacred so fetal rights usurp women's rights. To assume human superiority is the height of narcissism and wishful thinking. It's the same kind of mindset of Nazi Germany. We're no more sacred than the ocean or sky. As seductive as it is for anti-choice advocates to mask their arguments with over the top philosophers and overly sentimental descriptions about babies sucking their thumbs, let's talk about what we're really talking about. Granting a fetus rights means a woman's body is the ward of the state. She no longer has rights -- the fetus does. You can't protect fetal rights unless you disregard women's rights. If fetuses are given more rights than adult women other worrisome repercussions are not far along. Pregnant women who smoke, have a glass of wine, do not visit their doctor or do anything deemed inappropriate can be arrested. Their body becomes a weapon and their lives enslaved. A woman's body is not her own. And let's be realistic. Laws affect poor women who have no support network and resources. So while affluent white women are flying to Europe to terminate pregnancies, poor minority women are in the United States having a child they can't afford. This isn't a debate about when life begins. This is a debate about what life we value. If we were so concerned about when life begins our concern would extend to horses, plant life and toads. But it doesn't. This is a debate about "rights," and if we value women's rights over fetal rights. Conservative Christians assume that if we eradicate women's basic rights we'll all be one step closer to heaven where pink-cheeked cherubic angels fly. I think they're headed in the wrong direction. The Bible makes no reference to abortion or infanticide, a common practice in ancient times. Why didn't an omniscient God make His intentions clear? God provided the Ten Commandments as an easy reference guide. 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' is bandied about by anti-choice advocates when defending fetal rights. But perhaps this Cliffs Notes version was too brief. That's kind of vague, don't you think? Why do we kill animals? Doesn't "not kill" mean "not kill?" Otherwise, God would have carved in stone, "Do not kill human beings, born or unborn. But you can kill other animals." Despite their fervent protests for fetal rights these same conservatives eat eggs (chicken embryos) but get out picket signs about their own brood. They rationalize this obvious conflict with Bible school lessons. Human life is better than the rest of the animal world, they argue. We're special. God says so. That doesn't surprise me. When you rule the world, why stop at the female body?
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The question I would like this and all such liberals to answer is; Why do you have to kill it? Why not just evict the fetus from the woman`s body-induce labor and deliver it as unharmed as possible from her body and let it take it`s chances? How would that somehow detract from her "rights"? If she believes women have the right to go beyond simple eviction she is under the mistaken belief that just because they are women they have the personal right to arbitrarily decide issues of life and death with out a trial. Why then do these same liberal jerks apose the death penalty for heinous crimes that have been adjudicated? Further more, why have these liberals tried to make it illegal for a person to use deadly force in defense of ones self and property? Hell, in some liberal bastions if you kill a criminal home invader you can be charged with murder. Well I`m, not buying it, I know it has more to do with enforcing leftist ideology then any perceived "rights", not to mention the multi-million dollar business built around fetal tissue.
It certainly is. Essentially says, if an unborn is aborted, but nothing bad happens to the woman, the one who caused th abortion is "off-the-hook." It's only if something bad happens to the woman the "abortion doctor" is in trouble.
Try the verse in context, then look up a good commentary.
(By the way, it is not necessary to shed any blood of the fetus for there to be an abortion. They frequently happen spontaneiously.)
I am not arguing for abortion, only against the bad arguments against it.
Hank
A suckling child is certainly not "independent" of mom's body. So does she also think infanticid is OK?
What is the point of the question? It has nothing to do with either abortion or rights?
Rights pertain to only one thing, the right to do. There is no such thing as a right to have, or a right to what someone else must supply. There is no right to enslave someone else.
No person, born or unborn, has a claim on the life of any other individual. Does every person have a "right to life?" Of course. Does that include an unborn person? Sure.
What is a right to life? Is it a right to demand someone else supply your food, your shelter, your clothing, your health care? Is it a right to demand someone else keep you alive at any price? Of course not?
A right to life means a person has a right to do whatever is necessary to stay alive so long as they do not, by force, interfere in the life of any other individual. Living is something you do, not something that happens to you. The right to life is the right to do whatever is required to live as a human being. This is the right of every person. It is not a guarantee every person will be successful in exercising that right. It is not a guarantee no one will die. It is not a blank check on the the account of other's lives, not even a mother's.
(Those who know me know I am opposed to abortion. Nevertheless, an agency with guns (i.e. government) is not the solution to the abortion problem. So long as that is the one most people choose to support, no real solution is forthcoming.)
Hank
Choice my ASS! It's murder!
Therefore, if I may quote you, "if I asked you, 'Is a sperm cell a LIVING cell?', the only possible answer is yes..." so, contraception "..is clearly the purposeful murder of a LIVING organism."
I think your argument is problematic.
Hank
It would seem, carrying your reasoning to its logical conclusion, that you would personally oppose starving infants to death but would be unwilling to exercise governmental power to stop such neglect. Correct?
I would argue that a sperm & an ovum do *not* meet the biological criteria for life (e.g., they don't grow or reproduce), but that they in a sense "carry" life. But even if we say they are alive, they do not have a complete genetic code, and are consequently not separate organisms.
A zygote, on the other hand, is a complete human organism.
That is correct. Do you think government is the only or best way to deal with this possibiltiy? So far, the government has never prevented such a case. It is only able to come in after the fact and cause lots of trouble. It never brings back the poor victoms. Is that what you favor?
Hank
From the moment I was conceived, I was me.
Thank you, Mom and Dad.
I think that's an unwarranted presumption. Even some worthless, amoral people will tend to avoid certain activities if they know an "agency with guns" may come after them for it. So I would not agree that enforcement of laws against child neglect don't act as a deterrent.
In any case, I think you have a stronger case on this issue than abortion. I would disapprove of a woman who acts irresponsibly while pregnant (heavy drinking, etc.), but I would not support prosecuting her for that as her bad treatment of her child is passive and not intentional. BUT abortion is not a passive act that may have incidental consequences for someone -- it is an intentional, active killing. If government cannot do something so basic as protecting a defenseless person against violent, unjustified aggression, then there is no point to its existence. I'm a libertarian, but not an anarchist -- the government DOES have a proper role, and it is the protection of people's inherent rights from violation by others.
Secondly (excepting rape), I would argue that people who have sex have already, by doing so, agreed to provide sustenance for whatever offspring results. They cannot selfishly change their minds once they have placed a child in a situation from which it cannot be extracted.
As for any other way to deal with, say, child neglect, I can't think of anything better than an "agency with guns" except maybe for vigilante justice, which in reality is just another form of local government, an informal "agency with guns."
In 1772, four years before the Declaration was signed, Samuel Adams wrote a short piece entitled Rights of the Colonists as Men. His words included the following:1Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of selfpreservation, commonly called the first law of nature. All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another. When men enter into society, it is by voluntary consent. Every natural right not expressly given up, or, from the nature of a social compact, necessarily ceded, remains. All positive and civil laws should conform, as far as possible, to the law of natural reason and equity. As neither reason requires nor religion permits the contrary, every man living in or out of a state of civil society has a right peaceably and quietly to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience.
Good grief!
Hank
Here is the problem, I think. The kind of people who would actually be guilty of the kind of child neglect government is supposed to prevent, are not prevented from that neglect by the threat of government. The kind of people who might be concerned about government interference in their lives, are not the kind of people who neglect their children in the first place.
So, the first strike against the "agency with guns" scheme is that it does not work. Want proof it does not work? How man child abuse cases did you hear of thirty years ago? (Maybe you didn't hear of any, since I do not know how old you are, but I can tell you, they were very rare.) The number of laws and agencies and personnel the government has to prevent these 'crimes' has steadily increased in those same thirty years, with a corresponding increase in abuse and neglect cases. It doesn't work!
The second, and much more important fact is, once the government has the kind of power it needs to interfere in the private family lives of individuals, it will use that power both irresponsibly and (since the agencies set up to carry out such policies must be funded) to further its own power. It will definitely end up using that power against innocent people causing more harm to families and children than would ever be caused by the individual incidents or private individuals.
Most people care a great deal about children, all children, not just their own. Not every one does, but many of us do. There is nothing in the world preventing us from taking private measures which offer "no-strings-attached" help to those kinds of people whose desparation or ignorance or just plain irresponsibility might lead them to abuse or neglect their children. If this will not work, what makes you think forcing people at the point of a gun to "help" these people will work?
Hank
This is a rediculous statement? First of all, in America, the right to life is "self evident"...it comes from our Creator, not from our Mother. The Constitution protects that right to life (life, liberty and the pursuit...) without any caveat about proximity or age.
You're arguing that it's ok to murder a person who is dependent upon another for any basic need! By your standard many others would be at the disposal of their caretakers.
To say that we have a right to life, but as a society have no obligation to defend it, is to say we have no right at all but only a priveledge subject to the wim of a completely separate individual (our mother).
It's a circular arguement to say that Americans have a right to live except for during the first 9 months because ALL RIGHTS are irrelevant if we DON'T SURVIVE those first 9 months. None of us would be here.
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