Originally Posted by tore

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 lack 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.