At 11th Hour, Georgia Passes “Women as Livestock” Bill

[robert l. bentham]

This question of the beginning of personhood is bigger than this one-dimensional argument about pro-choice versus pro-life.

As a tangental debate, suppose a late-term mother-to-be is violently assaulted resulting in the death of her unborn child in a premeditated attack intent on causing this outcome. What specifically is the perpetrator guilty of? If we are asserting that the fetus is not a person, then he cannot be guilty of murder in any degree. Presumably there is a lesser crime of "illegal termination" ?

late term mother to be tells me, that to that woman anyway, it is a child....

 

[cecilia]

It's my assumption from her statement that Cecilia considers a person to exist only after birth, but it's an assumption. I was hoping she'd be able to confirm it or correct it.

for me - once a fetus is outside MY body and lives on it's own, then it begins the next process of it's growth. It is now a separate creature.

However, my point is that I would never tell any other women how she is supposed to feel about this process. THAT is none of my business.

btw, two more interesting aspects to this discussion (to add fuel to the fire):

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/20-wee...oma-fetus-feel/story?id=13116214#.T4IN0h-aU3r

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/05/uteruses-how-do-they-work

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

As a tangental debate, suppose a late-term mother-to-be is violently assaulted resulting in the death of her unborn child in a premeditated attack intent on causing this outcome. What specifically is the perpetrator guilty of? If we are asserting that the fetus is not a person, then he cannot be guilty of murder in any degree. Presumably there is a lesser crime of "illegal termination" ?

Lot's of people aren't persons. We have arbitrary lines for most of these things based on age but that doesn't necessarily cover things very well - it's just a rule of thumb.

People under 18 aren't persons in the way that people 18 and over are. Minors have fewer rights and cannot contract. Infants don't vote and can't drive and that's no bad thing. In some cultures you're not any kind of person until you are 8 (meaning you have survived through the worst mortality years that carry off so many children and therefore you are worth investing in).

A fetus is less competent than the average infant in that under most circumstances it doesn't do "living" very well. While an infant requires care and maintenance from the mother (in particular) but another human carer could be substituted, a fetus will require much more intensive care and with generally less favourable outcomes.

Many fertilized ova are not destined become people - they fail at an early stage. They can fail at any stage. They can partially fail. Is a baby born without a brain a person? Should they, having been born, be allowed to naturally die within hours or, having the rights of people should we throw every necessary resource at them to keep it's metabolic processes going for 76 years?

As for the case above if a pre-born child is not a person then whosoever causes the loss of a pre-born child in contravention of the parent-to-be's wishes has committed a serious property crime in addition to an assault on the person of the mother. Or the case could be couched in other legalese justifications. However, the child is the legacy of the parent and if the parent decides they don't want to be represented in the next generation that is something that affects the parent and child directly but might not be the business of the rest of us. If someone else makes that decision against the parent and child then that is a violation of the parents will to reproduce. A child is a ward of the parent but the parent may be unwilling to take on that responsibility for many reasons - some of which may seem frivolous to others - like, the child is disabled...

One could argue that then those sort of people should not do the things that make babies and so we just push back to whether contraception itself is a crime against humanity because of all the ova that don't get fertilized and thus rob potential people of ever getting the chance to be people - and the very fact that men produce orders of magnitude more sperm cells than there are ova means that trillions of sperm are denied their right to become people.

The universe really doesn't care about our morality - it is utterly oblivious and indifferent to us so we have still births and sudden infant death and all sorts of plagues of sudden and uninvited deaths. We can draw our arbitrary lines and each can convince themselves that their lines are the right ones but reality will always confound us. We just look for reasonable compromises which are generally based on the distribution of power. People will generally try to maximize their evolutionary outcome by having the children they can support well rather than too many and that depends on their environment whereas slave owners would rather maximize their herd and maximize the necessity for the herd to slave.

 

[the_leander]

With respect, that's not really answering the question. Also, it prejudices the argument by presupposing that the only reason for abortion is that the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother (and her dependants) and hence any opposition is inherently "anti-woman". I seriously disagree. First of all, unless the implementation of said law is utterly bone-headed, the necessary safeguards should be in place to ensure that abortions after any legal limit can still be carried out where deemed medically necessary. In short, the situation you describe above should not happen.

Actually, the Georgia law in question had precisely no such provisions in it's previous incarnation and what provisions it has now are woefully inadequate, not to mention part of a much larger wedge. And life of the mother isn't the only thing to consider: Still births and genetic deformities that would make it impossible for the child to survive birth or much long after happen. Many of these deformities only become apparent after the 20 week period. This was covered in one of the previous threads whereupon, like RobertB, I was accused of being a eugenicist and supporter of infanticide.

A question in return: Are you going to argue that a woman should be forced to carry to term a child that has absolutely no chance of survival rather than end it as quickly and cleanly as possible?

Again, given your statement that "a fetus is not a person", the question is, at what point do you consider a live-born baby to be a person?

Up to the mothers intention.

I don't see how, given the spectrum above, how a fetus in the later stages of development can be considered any less a person than a newborn baby.

There are laws in place that cover this the 24 week rule in the UK is there precisely because it's on the boundaries of what would likely survive an emergency caesarian.

I seriously can't imagine you could ever say to a mother-to-be that loses her baby in the final days of her pregnancy "Come now, don't upset yourself. It wasn't a person, you know? Not really. Just a potential. Plenty more ovulations left to try again with."

Strawman.

 

[Karlos]

Sorry, I don't have time for a full response but I can't let this go by

A question in return: Are you going to argue that a woman should be forced to carry to term a child that has absolutely no chance of survival rather than end it as quickly and cleanly as possible?

Never. Have I even said anything that hinted this is what I think? I said that unless the legislation was entirely "bone headed" (I believe those were the exact words) there'd be exclusions in place for medical necessity, rape etc. Any complication serious enough to result in non-survival after birth would fall under the former in any sensible legislation.

By the gist of your post, it seems this wasn't the case, which implies the specific legislation was unfit for purpose.

Strawman.

No sir, I have more respect for my fellow posters than that, no matter what our differences of opinion may be.

It would have been if I'd have suggested "I can imagine you saying X", which would have been ad-hominem too.

What I was trying to highlight there is that for all the individual commitment to the assertion that a "fetus is not a person" when it comes to defining one's stance on artificial termination, it's just not a view I'd expect anybody to use in the case of natural termination, i.e. miscarriage or stillborn.

What it seems to come down to, if a mother-to-be doesn't want the baby and it's aborted (artificially) then that's fine observer X because it wasn't a person and the woman's needs come first. But in the converse case where the mother did want it and it was aborted (naturally), then I'm sure a softer, perhaps entirely contrary stance would be taken by same observer X because anything else would be seen as grossly tactless to sat the least.

 

[the_leander]

By the gist of your post, it seems this wasn't the case, which implies the specific legislation was unfit for purpose.

Sadly not, even the "in the event that it risks the mothers life" provisions were last minute. I think it was the threat of the legislators being arrested for manslaughter was the only reason that caused them to add them. Sadly, you can find other states either having passed eerily similar legislation just recently or are about to. Kansas for instance, is looking to add a requirement that doctors be ordered not to divulge any information to a woman that might cause her to choose a termination, which obviously would include the fact that the foetus was incapable of survival.

If you've not been watching, in the past 2 years there has been a steady increase in these sorts of laws being enacted. This is concerted and done with the specific intent of rolling back women's rights by the ultra conservative religious right. The scary part is that some of these tactics are now starting to filter over here too now.

What I was trying to highlight there is that for all the individual commitment to the assertion that a "fetus is not a person" when it comes to defining one's stance on artificial termination, it's just not a view I'd expect anybody to use in the case of natural termination, i.e. miscarriage or stillborn.

What it seems to come down to, if a mother-to-be doesn't want the baby and it's aborted (artificially) then that's fine observer X because it wasn't a person and the woman's needs come first. But in the converse case where the mother did want it and it was aborted (naturally), then I'm sure a softer, perhaps entirely contrary stance would be taken by same observer X because anything else would be seen as grossly tactless to sat the least.

Indeed, my apologies, perhaps I simply misread your post, thanks for clarifying.