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Originally Posted by Blarobbarg
If you don't consider it a human being yet, then morally, the destruction of a "fetus" doesn't matter. If you consider it a yet-developed person, it suddenly gets a lot trickier.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tuna
I think the general consensus is that it's not a human, so that human right don't apply. At least from the pro-choice school of thought.
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First off, in such life and death situations, I think how much moral consideration you should give someone (or something) comes down to how affected it is by the decision, the capacity for feeling pain or happiness about that decision. As an example, you could morally consider to take someone who was a complete vegetable off life support. It's because someone who is that brain damaged lacks the capacity to reflect on or even care about that decision. However, you would probably not consider taking someone who was fully mentally and emotionally functional off life support.
When it comes to the yet-developed person point, for myself, I find it tricky to give a fetus the same moral protection as a healthy adult person because it isn't. Treating it as the person it could be is a fantasy scenario to me. You don't know what's going to happen to this fetus even if you don't abort so you're setting aside the parents wishes in order to morally protect a person who does not even exist yet.
Needless to say, in the question of abortions, I think it is better to make decisions based on the present than what could be.