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"Abortion Arguments Series: Day 2 of 10
"The fetus isn’t a person so it doesn’t have human rights"
In this 10 day series, I'm addressing the top 10 abortion arguments with non-religious rebuttals. (schedule and links in the comments to the other 9)
Yesterday we covered the biology. Many pro-choice people agree the unborn child is alive, human, and a distinct organism.
Which is why they’ll argue this instead:
"Sure, it's biologically human. But being human isn't what gives someone rights. Being a person is. It's just a 'potential person'. A person needs more than DNA. It needs to be born, or viable, or conscious, or able to feel pain. An embryo is none of those things."
Let's take each of those four lines and see if any of them hold up.
—---------------
Line #1: Personhood begins at birth.
Tell me exactly what changes in the 30 seconds between being inside the womb and outside it.
The child's DNA doesn't change. Its brain activity doesn't change. Its heartbeat doesn't change. Its capacity for pain doesn't change. The only thing that changes is its location.
Clearly, traveling a few inches can't be what turns a non-person into a person.
—---------------
Line #2: Viability
They’ll claim: "Once the baby can survive outside the womb, then it's a person."
But think about what this actually measures.
When Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, the Court put viability at about 28 weeks. Today, in a top hospital, a baby can be viable around 22 or 23 weeks.
So did babies at 24 weeks become people sometime in the last 50 years?
And in a rural hospital without a NICU, a baby born at 24 weeks may not survive. In a major city hospital, the same baby might. Does that child have personhood in one zip code but not another?
Viability doesn't measure anything about the child. It measures the medical technology available to the adults around it.
—---------------
Line #3: Consciousness or sentience
They’ll say: "A person needs to be aware. An embryo can't think or feel anything."
Well, you're not conscious when you're asleep. Or under anesthesia. Or in a temporary coma. Nobody thinks you stop being a person during those times.
We know it’s wrong to kill someone in those scenarios not because of what they’re experiencing right in that moment, but because it robs them of their future. Everything they would have thought, felt, loved, and done.
But here's the biggest problem with the "consciousness" argument.
How do we even know?
None of us remember being in the womb. None of us remember being a newborn either. How certain are you that you had consciousness even as a newborn?
So if consciousness is your threshold, at what exact moment does it switch on? And how confident are you in that answer?
Because if you can't say for certain, you're deciding life or death based on a guess.
That's like throwing a grenade into a room without knowing whether anyone's inside and just hoping nobody is. That's quite a gamble.
So notice the pattern. Every time someone raises the bar high enough to exclude the unborn, it starts excluding born people too.
Every one of these lines is a sliding scale. There's only one line that isn't a judgment call…
Fertilization.
It doesn't slide with technology or depend on someone's opinion: the moment a new human organism comes into existence is scientifically clear.
—---------------
Line #4: "It's a potential person."
This sounds sophisticated, but it isn't.
Here's the distinction that matters. A sperm is not a human being. An egg is not a human being. Those are potential. They're parts of someone else, and neither one will ever become a person on its own.
But once fertilization occurs, you don't have a potential anything. You have a living organism of the human species with it’s own DNA that will keep developing into an older version of itself.
And notice how selectively we apply this “potential person” reasoning.
Look at fetal homicide laws which we already have in the majority of states.
When a stranger kills an unborn child, prosecutors don't charge him with destroying a "potential person". They don’t just charge him with assault on the mother. They charge him with the separate death of the unborn child. In at least 38 states.
Somehow that same child is only "potential" when the mother is the one who wants to kill it.
To recap…
Every line drawn to exclude the unborn from personhood... birth, viability, consciousness, "potential," either slides with technology, can't be measured, or strips rights from born people too.
Fertilization is the only line that doesn’t move.
If you can't say exactly when a human being becomes a person, the answer isn't "so it's fine to kill it." It's "don't throw the grenade."
Tomorrow I'll address: "Abortion is healthcare." "
2 comments:
So this person is right that there's no dispute, really, that the unborn fetus is a living human fetus. That's not in question. The question is, indeed, personhood. Or at least that's one of the questions.
1. This person, presumably a fella, as they usually are, is saying we don't know that the fetus 30 seconds before birth isn't a human. Rather he asked the question, "What changes in those last 30 seconds?"
He then says "Clearly, traveling a few inches can't be what turns a non-person into a person."
But that's not objective proof of any sort. The thing is, we just don't objectively know. We all agree that once a baby is born it is a living human being with some rights, personhood. What we don't authoritatively and objectively know and can't agree upon is: IS there at some point in the womb that that fetus gains human rights? That is an answer that remains a question that remains unanswered.
2. The second question that we don't have an objective authoritative answer to is regarding the notion that human rights are graduated. The 2-year-old has no right to self-determination. The 2-year-old has no right to live autonomously or drive a car, etc. There are all sorts of rights in childhood that children don't have that we do have as an adult.
Is there not rationally a presumed continuance of this limitation of rights into fetushood? There just is no objective answer to this. This guy may be confident in his position but it is his position. He does not get to speak for everyone on this point. Different religions and different people have different ideas about personhood. Why would his singular opinion outweigh everyone else's?
Answer, it doesn't or shouldn't.
He does fine as far as it goes but he doesn't deal with these questions, which undermines his arguments and theories.
Dan
"So this person is right that there's no dispute, really, that the unborn fetus is a living human fetus."
How reasonable of you to accept and acknowledge this reality and agree with the scientific consensus.
1. So, what is your answer? What Changes between the human baby in the change of location between the birth canal and being held by it's mother? By all means, demonstrate that his premise is incorrect. Answer his question(s). Simply asserting that we "don't objectively know) is merely an excuse that enables laws like what MA just passed which allow abortion up to the moment of birth. It's just an excuse to kill babies that are born alive during a botched abortion.
It's not intended to be "objective truth", it's intended to point out that the pro abortion folx insist (as an objective fact) that the baby is NOT a "person" in in the hour before birth but somehow becomes one by traveling less than a foot from one place to another.
Is it not an important question, "IS there at some point in the womb that that fetus gains human rights?"? Is it not a question that those who want to abort a unique, human, child up to the very moment of birth should answer?
Why is there not a definitive answer from the pro abortion side?
2. What nonsense. What we are really talking about in this conversation is one single right, life. Without life, any other rights are irrelevant. If I grant that the right of "self determination" is a right (as you assert), then isn't the entire process that leads to birth an example of nature/biology/YHWH/evolution engaging in "self determination" to perpetuate the human species? Can we not presume that the unborn human baby would prefer to not be dismembered and have it's brain sucked out right before birth?
"Is there not rationally a presumed continuance of this limitation of rights into fetushood?"
Yes, there are rights that accrue with age. But the right to life, is foundational to every other right. That is the only right that matters to this discussion. By depriving an unborn human of it's right to life, you automatically deprive it of all rights. FYI, "fetus.phoetus" is merely a descriptive term that indicates one (of many) stages of natural human development. It's a HUMAN fetus, not just a fetus. It's a HUMAN "clump of cells". Oh, you are a "clump of cells" also.
"He does fine as far as it goes but he doesn't deal with these questions, which undermines his arguments and theories."
The point of the series of posts he is doing is to "deal with" the questions he got from his initial post. His comment section is wide open for people to ask any question they like, and he has a history of answering questions. So, your entire concluding premise is false. It's merely using your presumptions base on only the text of the post, not on objective reality.
That is why I always include the link to the source. If you want to ask these questions (not that they are original or particularly interesting) of the author, feel free. That's on you.
I'll simply note that you pretending that "there is no objective answer..." or the "different religions/people have..." actually answers the questions he's asked or makes a counter argument somehow means that his argument somehow "fails" is a cop out. By all means, prove your assertions.
The simple reality is that MA is only the most recent state to pass a law allowing abortion up to the moment of birth. So, given that reality that it is legally permissible to abort a human child literally 30 seconds before it is born, it seems reasonable to ask the question, "What changes?" in that short period of time and over that short distance.
You asserting that no answer exists, doesn't mean that no answer exists.
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