I just checked the old conversation, and it seems that if I’m reading you right, semantically, the 24 week fetus is a victim of murder, and the 23 year old fetus is simply a case of the mother shedding a non-person from her womb, and is not murder in any sense?

24 week viability equals personhood? Or some gradual allocation of rights as the fetus gets closer and closer to delivery? I’m not sure prima facie, how the latter model could work. Can one possess a little bit of personhood? It seems either you are a person or you aren’t.

And what about this fetus?

http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0220/baby.html

Survived after a birth at less than 23 weeks. Certainly seems to meet your viability criteria, after all, baby survived on it’s own. So it seems if viability is the determining factor of personhood, we must move back our “time of personhood” week count as medical technologies increase. So, presumably, if we reach a point where 20 weeks becomes viable outside the mother, then we must should continually revise how late we can ethically perform abortions.

I don’t think we can switch up the criteria to “viability without medical intervention” either, unless you want to have it follow that babies that need medical intervention upon birth to survive are somehow not persons.

It would also seem that as soon as the technology exists to take a fetus from a pregnant woman, put it in an artificial environment, and bring it to term, that the viability question is largely solved. So if we get there, will you support the idea of a ministry of in utero child protection, wherein we mandate the removal or transfer of the fetus to willing surrogates, or artificial government run womb centers?

Viability seems to carry with it the gradual transfer of rights from mother to fetus as technology improves, theoretically to the point of conception.

It also seems rather wrongheaded to suggest that if a 23 week fetus was not a person in 1983, when it wasn’t viable, but would be a person all other things being the same, had it been conceived in 2020 where it was viable.

Thoughts?

~ I.

Vex,

You obviously recognize the philosophical implications of a “total mother control” paradigm. Are you ready to abandon it? Are you willing to admit that the reproductive rights of a person should be restricted in some ways? Perhaps with an eye to the potentiality of the nascent person in utero?

The fact that the abandonment of the position is practically problematic is irrelevant. If it’s a flawed position in that the logical conclusions of the position are unacceptable, then shouldn’t someone committed to logic and science abandon the flawed model, and look for a better one?

Personhood at 40 weeks – 1 day? 39 weeks? 38 weeks?

24 weeks?

Full moral status at personhood?

Either way, can you in good conscience, hold the old “total reproductive rights” position any longer?

~ I.

You obviously recognize the philosophical implications of a “total mother control” paradigm. Are you ready to abandon it? Are you willing to admit that the reproductive rights of a person should be restricted in some ways? Perhaps with an eye to the potentiality of the nascent person in utero?

The fact that the abandonment of the position is practically problematic is irrelevant. If it’s a flawed position in that the logical conclusions of the position are unacceptable, then shouldn’t someone committed to logic and science abandon the flawed model, and look for a better one?

Personhood at 40 weeks – 1 day? 39 weeks? 38 weeks?

24 weeks?

Full moral status at personhood?

Either way, can you in good conscience, hold the old “total reproductive rights” position any longer?

~ I.

I also think it would be better for a reproductive specialist to work with the childless rather than the six-kidded, but again, I wouldn’t mandate against it. People are free to make their own choices.

Maybe the thing to do is figure out how to help people become more community minded, more altruistic, less concerned with gobs of cash and materialism. Then maybe some folks (like doctors) would make choices more in line with ethical principles instead of the principle of the bank account.

boob jobs are risky, and … well …. stupid. But the risk that you take when you opt to have one is a risk that affects only you. Turning your uterus into a clown car affects not only you, but the children that you carry. Both the doctor and the mother should have considered the risks to the children more carefully.

Totally agree. But this is where I get into philosophical trouble. Does this mean that women shouldn’t have control of their reproductive systems? For example, should women be forbidden abortions because it clearly represents the greatest risk possible (death) to the fetus? If the rights of the fetus (or fetuses) trump the rights of the woman carrying them, well, that’s a right pickle isn’t it!

Yet clearly the babies need to be considered. And a fetus is an impending-baby. So… when does the fetus get rights of its own, independent of the mother?

http://mine.icanhascheezburger.com/view.aspx?ciid=2373989

Is there anything the Duggers can’t do?