So what?

These restrictions are generally for the protection of the child. I don't see how they strengthen the case for treating a foetus as less than human.

:bowdown:

Less than human? Those are your words.

According to your moral logic, I assume killing a two weeks old fetus is as bad as killing a healthy thirty five year old who is a husband, friend, father, brother, coworker and more?

After all, both are human and so the difference in consequences is not really important?

Ok that was probably a fairly emotive term to use. I was referring to treating a fetus like a fetus.


Well this thread began with a link to discussions about 20 week abortions. At two weeks I doubt that a foetus would even be visible so there is obviously a huge difference between a foetus at this stage and the grown adult. However I think using a person's relationships or lack of connections to establish their overall value as a human being is a bit of a misdirection. We don't use that standard to devalue for example the murder of a homeless drifter.

Murder laws have a normative basis, a law that we shall not kill. Such a law does not make distinctions between people, but that doesn't mean different humans can't have different values. Convicted criminals f.ex have their rights taken away from them. In some states, they can even be sentenced to death. In other words, killing someone because they have been sentenced to death is no longer illegal. They've lost their moral value and thus protection.

Earlier, I used another example with someone who has been in an accident and became severly brain damaged so that they are no longer to perceive, reflect upon, feel anything. That person has to be on life support, or he or she will die. Killing this person may also be legal. My argument then was that a fetus has more in common with this brain damaged person than a healthy adult human being. The mother, on the other hand, likely is a healthy adult human being entitled to moral consideration and protection.

If you admit that there is a huge difference between a two week old fetus and an adult, like you have, then you've already admitted that you too see that different humans have different moral values. Of course they do. If you were to save only one of two people from dying, one of them your child and the other a homeless stranger, you wouldn't think that it matters not which one you save because both have equal worth. Of course you would save your kid because he or she means more to you and the suffering of your kid dying would be greater than if the stranger dies. Well, other people in the world would feel the same if they had to choose between their friend, father, mother, partner, spouse, whatever or the embryo of some woman who wants to have an abortion. Noone in their right mind would say that both are equal anyways and so it doesn't matter.

So when you have to choose, humans do have different values and consequences matter. While "thou shalt not kill" makes sense as a law, it's too simplistic to base your personal idea of human worth on. Unless you really feel in your heart that you might as well save the stranger over your own kid because both are humans, you feel that way too.

I'm **** at this kind of thing, but I think that an important distinction needs to be made between being a human being, and being a person. One involves DNA, and the other involves a set of sometimes nebulous criteria that include but are not limited to: consciousness, ability to suffer...I'm sure I could think of more if I weren't so lazy. Basically I'm just interested to see if Tore might want to expand on that, since I've seen him touch on that, but he hasn't really outright mentioned it. Sorry for asking you to do work, Tore, but you're smart and I'm not. :D

Slippery slope when you allow the government to speak on behalf of your body and your rights to it.

At what point, then, does a fetus become its own body? Surely we don't think unborn children are appendages or benign tumors?

When it comes out of a uterus

or whenever it moves out of mom's basement and stops being a freeloading little bitch