 |
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.
for ajc.com
For more information,
I suggest:
 |
|
|
DIANE GLASS
AJC columnist
"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?