A Well Thought Out Answer On Abortion

The following post was taken from this comment thread...https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=17893637&postID=2853283921249641121

(Well done , Rosemary Cole)

I have some further thoughts on your comments regarding fetuses.

I asked:They are human. If not, what are they?

You answered:"A question for the philosophers. I would proffer "potentially human"."

I hope you don't mind if I comment on your answer.

Firstly, I don't think it is a philosophical question at all. I think it has a basic, scientific answer. Let's think about this together.

1. Is the fetus human?

2. Is the fetus alive?

1. I don't think I have ever heard the abortion advocates use the phrase "potentially human" - they say it is a "potential life." It can't be argued that a fetus is not human any more that arguing that your index finger is not human... or that a piece of your brain is not human. Fetuses are human.

2. Fetuses are alive. They kick, they grasp, they grow. But then one might argue that sperm are human... and they are alive... they "swim" for pity's sake. However, sperm are not alive in the same sense as a fetus because sperm do not grow and they do not have the correct number of chromosones to be called a person. Without changing form completely by joining with an egg, they cannot ever be a human being, they are not complete - they are properly called "cells" of the father - just as an egg is "cells" of the mother. (I would say they both have a lot of potential, though!)

Back to fetuses: they don't breathe. Which brings me to consider your next comment:

"However until such time as they are "birthable" (i.e. capable of independent life outside the uterus) they are not babies "

I note that you use the word "independant life" - does this include independence from breathing apparatuses? (sp)

I have a real problem with your "independant life" stipulation to consider them babies. What of all the people who are dependant on medical measures to live - they are not capable of "independent life" either.

Try a thought experiment: Think of a mother on the birthing table at full term, normal pregnancy. Is that a baby in the birth canal? You know it is. Now go back a week. Is it still a baby? Carry this on for a while. Where does it become not a baby? How far back in the development of the nine months do we go to declare it is not a baby? I have heard doctors of OB/Gyn who have become anti-abortion, changing their mind from pro-abortion, and they say that this thought experiment is what brought them to be against abortion. They know that development of the human fetus is a smooth continuum. There isn't a "bar mitzvah" in the womb - no great change from one thing to another - it is all very gradual - and so impossible to pinpoint a day, or week, that the fetus changes into a human being, into that baby in the birth canal and the day and week before birth etc.... The "big bang" days are conception and birth.

We have to pick one of these:

1. conception
or
2. birth

to answer the question of 'when life begins' ...if we want to be reasonably logical.

If we say that 2. birth is when this thing becomes a person, then it is totally logical that abortion should be allowed during all nine months of pregnancy and it should be without moral trepidation. The people that advocate that partial-birth abortion is OK are actually being consistent with their belief that BIRTH makes someone a person.

On the other hand, if we say that 1. conception is when life begins, then that brings obvious implications with it and a drain on the idea that abortion is OK and without moral consequence.

Now, if you hold that birth is when the fetus becomes human or a person, why do you say that abortion is thing that ought to be avoided at all costs?

One more thing: You said calling this a baby is: "emotive and sentimental (even manipulate) language."

When I was pregnant with our fourth child a couple of years ago and my other kids were 6, 8 and 10, they looked at the 20 week ultrasound and they said it was a "baby." It is common to call what comes out of the womb a "baby". I don't think this is emotive language. It is consistent with the view that life begins sometime before birth.

I think using the word "fetus" in lay discussions evolved in these last decades to avoid guilt over the fact that people knew that the mother on the delivery table (in my thought experiment) is delivering a "baby."