Abortion: can a mother hurt the embryo?

[Subduction Zone]

@PearlSeeker

There is a moral difference between killing someone and preventing a life to occur.

Killing a fetus or embryo implies:

1 killign a human (DNA shows)

2 that has (or will have) conscious and other mental states in the future

A person worthy of human rights is anyone that that 1 and 2


This is not analogous to “not raping a woman”

And that is an argument for abortion. Thank you.

 

[Subduction Zone]

You can't move it beyond that point.

I could have said "You can't move it to before birth". If you can move it without justification so can I.

 

[leroy]

The purpose of the two acts is different. Intent is relevant in moral considerations. Abortion is not cruel. Hobbling a fetus is.

If you think intend is relevant, then the OP is not for you

The OP only applies for those who say “her body her choice” (end of story) (intend is irrelevant) (nobody can judge except for the woman)





I've explained that I don't use the words person or personhood in this context, but you seem to insist on doing so, so I will translate the word into the language that I DO use. If personhood means a right to be born, the fetus doesn't achieve that status until it is sentient. The fetus never had sentience (personhood), and therefore isn't a person or entitled to the rights of people. Killing a presentient fetus harms no people, but giving one fetal alcohol syndrome and allowing it to become a person is immoral.



Yes, but once again, to use your language, a presentient fetus in utero is not a person. Once it's sentient or out of the womb, its status changes (it becomes a "person"), and the moral status of acts that affect it change.



A presentient fetus is not a person in the sense you mean - a creature for which abortion is usually if not always immoral.



I've told you. If you are a presentient fetus, you can be aborted. I understand that you can't find a distinction between a presentient fetus and a sentient one. I do. It's a moral intuition. It's what my conscience tells me. And why do I consider that a reliable judgment? Two reasons. My moral compass has served me well since embracing humanism, and the distribution of people who share my opinion relative to those that share yours. You opinion clusters in groups that attend mosques, synagogues and churches, meaning that it is the result of indoctrination. Mine is seen just about everywhere else. People not subjected to Abrahamic doctrine rarely approve of criminalizing abortion.

That should tell you something about which is the natural position and which is the manufactured one. The feelings that anti-choicers feel are real and compelling to them, and abortion must really pain them the way that foster homes for unwanted children pain others, but that doesn't matter to the unbelievers, whose feelings are just as compelling to them, and weren't given to them by anybody else.

Anyway, bottom line is, I've given you my moral intuitions regarding abortion and where they apply. I cannot explain better than that, and it doesn't matter that others feel otherwise. I will never convince you that mine is a legitimate and moral position, nor will you change convince me that it isn't repeating how you feel any number of times more, so you needn't persist in this line of inquiry. You have my complete answer. This is how I feel and why, and I have no interest in repeating it.[/QUOTE]

Once it's sentient or out of the womb

Well what can I say, I simply disagree, I don’t think being a person is determined based on

1 being inside or outside the womb

2 being or not sentient (in this exact moment)

the first one seems absurd, do I really need to justify it?

The second, would force you to conclude that a someone in coma is not a person, or even if the baby is born unconscious (and needs medical support immediately) he will still be a person,

 

[PearlSeeker]

I could have said "You can't move it to before birth". If you can move it without justification so can I.

It's not without justification. The reason is it's the same body/individual organism - the same person. Before that there is no new individual body/person.

 

[Subduction Zone]

It's not without justification. The reason is it's the same body/individual organism - the same person. Before that there is no new individual body/person.

That is not a justification it is a claim. Could somebody else demand to be hooked into your blood circulatory system because their kidneys do not work and yours do?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Well what can I say, I simply disagree, I don’t think being a person is determined based on

1 being inside or outside the womb

2 being or not sentient (in this exact moment)

the first one seems absurd, do I really need to justify it?

It appears to be absurd to question it so yes, you do need to justify it.

The second, would force you to conclude that a someone in coma is not a person, or even if the baby is born unconscious (and needs medical support immediately) he will still be a person,

No, this has been explained to you multiple times. Your inability to understand the explanation is your fault. An unconscious person is not the same as a never conscious fetus.

 

[crossfire]

Exactly, if the human is unconscious in this exact moment, (but will be conscious in the future) then nobody would kill this human, everybody would regard him as a person, and nobody should kill him, even if his existence bothers someone else. (assuming that this human is not a criminal or something like that)

So the same should be said about the embryo,

1 the embryo is a human (DNA test show this)

2 and it will be conscious in the future (in most of the cases)

So if the combination of 1 and 2 is not enough to establish personhood what else are we missing?

Actual sentience. A woman has gained sentience, while a fetus has not. The fetus has never gained sentience and has not become a sentient being. You can't exert will you never developed.

A corpse of a once sentient being would have more bodily rights than a pregnant woman if abortion rights are denied. (You don't have the right to harvest the organs from a corpse unless the sentient being that the corpse once had explicitly expressed the desire to donate its organs after death. You can't just assume the corpse was an organ donor. Likewise, you can't just assume that the sentient woman has consented to host a fetus within her body.)

Further exploration of this concept:

Now another scenario regarding the question of mutilating a presentient fetus and growing the body: an alternative scenario might be developed whereby a fetus is mutilated to the point that it can never gain sentience, and the body is grown as a source of harvestable organs, or even for use as a non-sentient surrogate for growing fetuses to viability, such as the "Axolotl Tanks" of the Bene Thalaxui from the science fiction Dune series. This would certainly require a much deeper exploration of the ethical implications surrounding this.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Actual sentience. A woman has gained sentience, while a fetus has not. The fetus has never gained sentience and has not become a sentient being. You can't exert will you never developed.

A corpse of a once sentient being would have more bodily rights than a pregnant woman if abortion rights are denied. (You don't have the right to harvest the organs from a corpse unless the sentient being that the corpse once had explicitly expressed the desire to donate its organs after death. You can't just assume the corpse was an organ donor. Likewise, you can't just assume that the sentient woman has consented to host a fetus within her body.)

Further exploration of this concept:

Now another scenario regarding the question of mutilating a presentient fetus and growing the body: an alternative scenario might be developed whereby a fetus is mutilated to the point that it can never gain sentience, and the body is grown as a source of harvestable organs, or even for use as a non-sentient surrogate for growing fetuses to viability, such as the "Axolotl Tanks" of the Bene Thalaxui from the science fiction Dune series. This would certainly require a much deeper exploration of the ethical implications surrounding this.

Yes, but according to the Bible woman are just possessions. In fact Biblical marriage is a man hooking up with his wife, and his second wife. and the maid. Ooh, and the concubine (I always wanted one of those). And who knows who else. A man just can't hook up with another man.

Aaah . . . The good old days Maybe I should become a Christian.

 

[Alien826]

Yes, and we usually “play safe” and don’t do anything that could kill another person, for example if you are about to demolish a building and you see a shadow that may or may not belong to a human (you don’t know), you would not demolish the building until you are 100% sure (or nearly 100% sure) that there is not a person inside the building.

So by that same logic, if you don’t know with a very high degree of certainty that the embryo is not a human, you shouldn’t kill it. In other words pro life people have the benefit of the doubt

Agree?

You keep calling it a person, despite the fact, as you seem to admit, that is not settled.

By your logic we would not only not demolish the building, we would keep searching so long as someone thinks there might be a person in there somewhere. And no amount of fruitless searching would make any difference, because even the slightest possibility that there might be someone there, even a claim from someone that can't back it up, overrides any benefit that might be gained from the demolition. In your world all the old buildings would stand there forever. Maybe they would have built a hospital on the site?

Perhaps, not, but you don’t have to value potentiality as high as you would value actuality in order to be prolife.

The alternatives are usually not

1 ether you kill the fetus (potential consciousness and other mental states)

Or

2 the mother dies (actual conciseness and other mental states)

You don’t have to argue that a person in coma has the same value as a conscious person, in order to give the person in coma the , in the same way you don’t have to value the fetus as much as you value a born human in order reject abortion………

I am not saying that a fetus a person in comma and a normal person don’t have the same value, all I am saying is that you don’t have to agree with this statement in order to be prolife.

In other words, simply being alive trumps all all considerations. Remember that 10 year old girl, raped by an adult, who had to go to another state to get an abortion? It's not just life or death.

Well as I said above, if it´s complicated and we can’t know if the fetus is a person or not // lets play safe and not kill it, (just in case he is a person)

You can use Pascal's wager

Imagine 2 persons, John and Mike John is prolife because he thinks that the embryo is a person, and john is pro-abortion because he thinks that the embryo is not a person. (this is the only reason he is pro abortion)............both agree that killign inocent persons is horrible and wrong.

John is an pro life activist, Mike is a pro abortion activist, both are very influential, both have many followers and both have succeeded in changing other people minds on the subject.


Now imagine that in 30 years someone presents absolute evidence that the embryo is a person .

Mike (the pro abortion activist) will feel guilty and feel like **** for being the cause of death of perhaps thousands of innocent people, one can hardly imagine the depression and sadness that he would feel.

Now imagine that someone presents evidence that the embryo is not a person.

John would feel stupid, for wasting time in saving a bunch of useless cells, and perhaps a little bit guilty for convincing woman to take care of the embryo for 9 months (sacrificing social life, gaining weight, and perhaps losing 1 semester of college)…….. but he will not feel nearly as bad as Mike

SO my point is that the potential consequences of supporting abortion are very bad compared to the consequences of being pro life, // so if this is hard controversial and we have incomplete knowledge you should pick the pro life side.

First, I don't think there's any hope of establishing personhood based on science. Science can tell us things like when the fetus starts feeling pain, and so on, but "person" in this context is not a scientific term. It's always going to be decided on the basis of emotion. In other words people will always disagree.

That said, and granting what you say for the sake of argument, let's add a few things. John, if he is honest, will know that he's wasted a lot more than his own time. What about all the women whose lives were negatively impacted? Mike might feel bad to some extent, but he may comfort himself by thinking of all the good that has been done to adults.

 

[Valjean]

Are you saying only your past matters? You can't be deprived of your future experiences? My neighbor next door was a fetus before. If he didn't survive as a fetus there would be someone else my neighbor.

But a potential doesn't have a future. You and your neighbor are accidental beings.

Consider my brother Sam.
Now, I don't have a brother Sam. My parents never conceived or gave birth to a Sam,. Of course, Sam was a possibility, there was a potential Sam who might have been produced, but none ever was.

Does this potential Sam care that he was never born? Did I or my parents, at any point, have any obligations toward Sam? Were we ever in a position to help, harm, or mistreat Sam? Are we selfish in ignoring Sam? Are my parents blameworthy for not giving birth to Sam?

Perhaps my father wore a condom on the night Sam might have been conceived. The egg and sperm that would have produced a Sam died. Was this a sin? Did my parents do this potential Sam wrong?

One has no obligations to a potential. Actions that might affect a potential are blameless. A potential, whether a gamete, zygote of fœtus, has no claim to moral consideration. One has no obligations toward it, and there is no way to mistreat it.

So don't use a realized being to justify or condemn a past possibility.

 

[Valjean]

So this what distinguishes one person from another is already written in the genetic code and in the process of developing and can later be observed.

No! Both nature and nurture are involved. How you're raised has a huge affect on your personality.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Y
1 It´s wrong to kill innocent people

2 abortion implies killing innocent people

3 therefore abortion is wrong.

Here's the same logic:

1. it's wrong to kill innocent people

2. refusing to donate a kidney implies killing innocent people

3. therefor not donating is wrong

So as you can see it doesn’t matter if I pick the child or the 1000 embryos, none of the premises would be affected in either case, and the conclusion would still follow.

According to your very own logic, picking the child would mean that you sacrificed 1000 lives to save one, while you could have sacrificed 1 to save 1000.

If you disagree with that, then that means that you don't even agree with your own logic.

1like everyone else I have an emotional link with children that I don’t have with a fertilized egg, (I would also save a Dog rather than 1000 rats for the same reason)… if one of those eggs happens to be my son I might change my mind, who knows.

2 I would have no idea what to do with the eggs anyway, so what is the point of saving them, if they are going to die anyway.

3 even if I save them i´ll bet that there are no 1000 uterus waiting to support those eggs, so saving them would be almost pointless if they are going to die soon anyway.

Everybody is going to die anyway. Both the born and the unborn.

I might be wrong, perhaps the best option is to save the 1000 eggs, but even I am wrong that does nothing to falsify the argument above (in red)

It exposes that you don't fully support your own argument involving "personhood" etc.
If you did, you'ld consider 1000 human embryo's more valueable then 1 human.

Seeeeeee, clear and direct answers are easy to provide, why cant you?

Clear, direct and self-contradicting.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Yes, and with abortion you violate bodily integrity of the embryo/fetus/...

No, you don't.
Sounds like you don't even understand what bodily autonomy actually is all about

 

[Subduction Zone]

Yes but you explained based on a strawman

All I am saying is that location doesn’t determine personhood, and given that you haven’t claimed the opposite, I will assume that you agree, if you have a different point such as “it doesn’t matter you can kill it anyway” it would be irrelevant for this particular point

No you are the user of strawman arguments. Those arguing against you have probably racked up 1,000 freebies. Quit using that argument.

I would rescue the child

See how easy it is to provide clear and direct answers ?

Would you like a justificacion?

Well the pro life arguments says

1 It´s wrong to kill innocent people

2 abortion implies killing innocent people

3 therefore abortion is wrong.

So as you can see it doesn’t matter if I pick the child or the 1000 embryos, none of the premises would be affected in either case, and the conclusion would still follow.

Why would I pick the child?

1like everyone else I have an emotional link with children that I don’t have with a fertilized egg, (I would also save a Dog rather than 1000 rats for the same reason)… if one of those eggs happens to be my son I might change my mind, who knows.

2 I would have no idea what to do with the eggs anyway, so what is the point of saving them, if they are going to die anyway.

3 even if I save them i´ll bet that there are no 1000 uterus waiting to support those eggs, so saving them would be almost pointless if they are going to die soon anyway.

I might be wrong, perhaps the best option is to save the 1000 eggs, but even I am wrong that does nothing to falsify the argument above (in red)

Seeeeeee, clear and direct answers are easy to provide, why cant you?

Thank you for an almost honest answer. The reason that you would pick the child is because you do realize that those embryos are not people. They are not persons. if you thought that they were then you would have done a terrible evil to allow 1,000 to die when you saved one.

The rest of your post was refuted directly above.

 

[Sheldon]

Now here is the problem. Due to a raging hangnail on your left pinky finger you will only be able to rescue one.

Brilliant...

 

[Sheldon]

I see that you still do not understand the consequences of intent. This is something that a seventh grader could understand.

Well, most 7th graders, theres always one....

 

[Sheldon]

The conflict is women's right to bodily integrity vs. embryo's/fetus' right to bodily integrity.

Well that's your argument, I've yet to be convinced as to why we'd grant rights to an insentient blastocyst to use another person's body against their will, when we don't grant sentient individual such rights?

(there is no right to use someone else's body).

Indeed not, let's hope sanity prevails, and it stays that way.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Also he is still comparing sentient individuals to an insentient blastocyst or foetus. It's a false equivalence, and the reasons have been explained enough times by now surely. Though abortion for me is abut bodily autonomy, and as I said, it could be in there writing poetry, it still wouldn't be moral to let it use a woman's body against her will. The question has been put to several anti-choicers, and not one has accepted they would be ok with someone using their body against their will.

I get so tired explaining the same thing time after time after time. There are massive walls of cognitive dissonance to get over.

I finally got another poster to admit that Exodus 21 22 had been changed after Roe v Wade. And then it took him a while to see what the change meant. He would still not admit that it was due to Roe v Wade.

In case you did not know Exodus 21 22 is about two men striving and a pregnant woman getting accidentally struck. Before Roe v Wade almost all Christian Bibles interpreted what happened next as a miscarriage. A lost of a fetus or embryo. They would not have notices the loss of a blastocyst. If there was only a miscarriage the penalty was to be a fine. But after Roe v Wade it was changed to "premature birth" because Christians could see that a miscarriage, the death of a fetus, ending in only a fine meant that the Bible did not think that fetuses were people.

So it was changed. Rather awkwardly if you ask me. Now it looks like they were all one happy family after the fight. Even though they ignore the fact that in those days a premature birth was almost always a death sentence to the baby.

 

[PearlSeeker]

A potential, whether a gamete, zygote of fœtus, has no claim to moral consideration.

Zygote is not just potential. It's an actual new individual organism.

 

[PearlSeeker]

No, you don't.
Sounds like you don't even understand what bodily autonomy actually is all about

Then let's just say the right to live. Without providing this right enjoying of all other rights is impossible.