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Originally Posted by tore
Take a good look at my post and you will see that I do. I also added "generally lacking in capacity to suffer for the decisions made by its mother". A person who has been born generally does have the capacity to suffer, emotionally, physically, socially. That is as long as they are of health. When people who have been in an accident are severly brain damaged to the point where people may call them vegetables, they are often taken off life support. The idea is that when it's just a body with no consciousness in it to feel neither pain, joy - perhaps even no perception of its environment - then it's okay to "kill".
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Good point, but I honestly don't think that the capacity for suffering works as a consistent criteria either. Would it be alright to kill somebody if the death was quick, painless and unexpected? If not, then I don't see what the capacity for suffering has to do with the distinction between that scenario and killing a fetus.
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In the present when the decision to abort is made, the fetus generally has more in common with that braindead person on life support than it does a grown, healthy human with regular human rights.
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There is of course one key difference between a fetus and a vegetable: the fetus (if healthy) is on course to wake up. If we knew for a fact that someone in a coma would wake up after 9 months, would it still be alright to kill them?
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I think the distinction between having the ability to feel, think, reflect and perceive - or not - is an important one and it's also one widely used in other situations. As a moral idea, it is widely accepted. F.ex a vegetarian may think it is better to kill a plant than it is a pig because the plant suffers less from getting killed.
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That's a hazy line to draw, though. Do you think newborns possess all of those qualities to the same extant as a 5 year old? If not, isn't it still equally wrong to kill both?
edit - Interesting article on the topic:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...iousness-arise
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Should we protect the "interests" of the fetus (it has no interests) or the interests of the mother (she does)? Of the two, the one who can feel, reflect, perceive and so on is the mother and so it is her interests/rights we should look after.
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I'm inclined to agree with you here, for practical reasons. I still think we're side stepping the moral question to a certain extent.
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How is it not rational? It's pretty much calling it what it is without getting tangled up in future possibilities and human emotions. How is it more rational to portray it as a person with thoughts, feelings, perceptions, life experiences, etc. when it isn't?
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It's not rational because while the phrase is technically correct, it's too reductionist. Like Lateralus pointed out, that phrase applies just as much to us as it does to an embryo.
It's also not rational to give a fetus the attributes you just listed (thoughts, feelings, etc). I don't see this as the obvious alternative to "just a lump of cells" though.