Abortion
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I’m pro abortion but I have some pro life in me.
Banning the abortion of a zygote seems ridiculous. So does aborting a seven-month-old fetus.
Why not go with: you can abort until the nervous system develops.
Clearly, a fetus without a nervous system can’t be sentient and thus can’t be a person, right? And as long as it’s not a person, it doesn’t have any rights.
According to https://www.neurosciencefoundation.org/post/brain-development-in-fetus, “an embryo’s brain and nervous system begin to develop at around the 6-week mark.” And: “At as early as 8 weeks (about 2 months), you can see physical evidence of the brain working (the electric impulses) as ultrasounds show the embryo moving.”
This idea is for viable pregnancies only. Other considerations may apply for non-viable ones.
Clearly, a fetus without a nervous system can’t be sentient and thus can’t be a person, right?
It’s not considered a fetus until week 9, at which point the nervous system has already begun building.
The correct word to use here is ‘embryo’.
There are some practical considerations, too.
There’s no point allowing abortion only in the first six weeks because many women don’t realize they’re pregnant until later.
(Danny)
It’s arguably a sexually active woman’s responsibility to monitor whether she’s pregnant.
If it weren’t her responsibility, then a burden would fall on the baby, which can’t be right because the baby only exists because of the mother’s choices.
Home pregnancy tests are affordable and reliable. According to https://health.clevelandclinic.org/how-early-can-you-tell-if-you-are-pregnant, “[h]ome pregnancy tests can detect pregnancy just two weeks after ovulation”. So there’s plenty of time.
A non-aborted child’s quality of life matters, too. One benefit of allowing abortion at any time is that, if a mother decides not to abort despite having had ample opportunity to do so, she is definitely responsible for the child’s wellbeing. Then she can’t blame lawmakers or having had too little time; she can’t evade accountability for the living child as easily.
(Dirk)
Blaming the birth on lawmakers or on having had too little time is already a lame excuse if a woman has six weeks to figure out whether she’s pregnant. That’s enough time for a conscientious person. And whose actions resulted in pregnancy? Not the lawmakers’.
I agree that a non-aborted child’s quality of life matters. For that reason, I think the process of giving a newborn child up for adoption should be as easy as possible. I don’t think killing an unborn baby who may as well already be a person and thus have rights is the right way to prevent him having a bad life. Like, don’t punish an unborn baby for having bad parents.
Why would a fetus without a nervous system not be a person?
Because personhood is not the result of something physical but of having and running the right software.
Specifically, it’s the universal-explainer software David Deutsch outlines in his book The Beginning of Infinity.
This software presumably can’t run in the baby before its nervous system is formed to some sufficient degree. At the earliest, it’s when the nervous system reaches computational universality. (Does anyone know when that is?)
There’s ‘evictionism’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evictionism
I like this view because it sidesteps the issue of personhood and at what point it arises. It says you’re free to evict anything, person or not. We don’t know how creativity (ie the universal-explainer software mentioned in #119) works so this is handy.
(Amaro)
The linked Wikipedia article says:
Evictionists view a woman's womb as her property and an unwanted fetus as a "trespasser or parasite", even while lacking the will to act. They argue that a pregnant woman has the right to evict a fetus from her body since she has no obligation to care for a trespasser.
If this is an accurate description of the evictionist view, it strikes me as deeply flawed.
A pregnant woman does have an obligation to care for her fetus (at least once it’s a person). She took an action which resulted in the fetus’s existence.
Building on #121, a baby is not a “trespasser”. A pregnant woman ‘invited’ the baby into her womb. Unless she was raped, in which case the rapist ‘put’ the baby there. But the baby is blameless either way and thus can’t be likened to a trespasser.
Evictionism doesn’t explain why personhood should be ignored.
(Danny)
Someone’s personhood has no bearing on whether you should be able to evict them, right? It’s your property, so it’s your choice.
(Amaro)
It does if you caused them to be there to begin with.
(Danny)
If you invite someone into your home and they come over you can still change your mind and kick them out. Just because you invited them doesn’t mean they can stay in your home against your will.
(Amaro)
That’s different because the person in your example made the choice to show up, whereas an unborn baby made no such choice.
(Danny)
Building on #140, it’s more like forcing someone into your home, locking the door, making them depend on you for food and water, and then complaining they’re in your home. Clearly, killing them is not the answer (if they’re a person).
Where exactly does a child’s dependency on the parents end? At five years old? When the child moves out? Seems arbitrary.
(Amaro)
Whenever a child may reach independence, it’s certainly well past pregnancy, so it’s not an issue wrt abortion.
Not a doctor but AFAIK we already have medical knowledge about when physical dependency in particular ends. For example, doctors will sometimes deliver a baby prematurely when continued pregnancy would be dangerous for the mother.
(Danny)
When developing rules for society, we run into many arbitrary lines. More important than drawling the lines correctly is retaining the means to redraw them over time.
(Logan)
Why does it matter exactly when personhood sets in? You know it becomes a person as long as you don’t abort the process.
(Dirk)
It matters because the abortion debate is largely about what rights (if any) an unborn baby has. Personhood determines those rights. Killing a person is morally (and legally) different from killing a non-person, so you need to know when personhood starts.
It’s true that you know personhood will start at some point as long as you don’t interfere, but this is for people who do want to interfere without committing a moral (or legal) crime.
While the fetus is attached to the mother, it’s her property and she is free to do what she wants with it. Therefore, she can abort the baby at any time prior to being born and the umbilical being cut, at which point the baby is an independent person.
(John)
If the baby is a person, the mother has a responsibility to it. She can’t just be allowed to kill it. That makes no sense.
(Danny)
Physical (in)dependence isn’t a valid yardstick because it does not confer rights. The only thing that confers rights to an organism is personhood.
Building on #123, cutting the umbilical does not make the baby an “independent person”. The baby still depends on the parents physically, financially, emotionally, etc.
This mistake strikes me as an instance of the wider mistake of granting or withholding rights based on physical differences.
Obligations to care for another person seem illiberal and coercive.
(John)
Obligations are only coercive if they are unchosen. People know that sex can result in pregnancy.
More generally, when you take an action that you know (or should know) can result in some obligation, then that obligation is not unchosen.
Fudging unchosen and chosen obligations is why some of the pro-abortion crowd strike me as people who just want to be able to act without consequence or responsibility. Similar to other women’s ‘rights’ issues (which aren’t about rights but special treatment and privileges).
You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.
I’m not sure newborn babies are “people” in any meaningful sense yet.
In which case, even ‘aborting’ 6 months after birth would be fine.
A child does not seem anything like a functionally complete person until somewhere between 9 to 15 months old. Most people cannot recall memories from before age 3.
I’m skeptical a newborn is anything more than a robot until their creativity comes online.
It would be gross and upsetting, though, so let’s settle for abortion up until the child can be delivered and adoption for any unwanted babies.
(John)
It would be gross and upsetting, though, so let’s settle for abortion up until the child can be delivered and adoption for any unwanted babies.
That’s an inversion of morals and emotions. The emotional response should come after you form a moral judgment, as a result of that judgment. Conversely, moral judgment shouldn’t be the result of an emotion.
A child does not seem anything like a functionally complete person until somewhere between 9 to 15 months old.
Basing personhood on ‘functional completeness’ is fudging smarts and intelligence.
Building on #164, rights do not depend on the presence of any specific skill or knowledge.
I don’t see why forgetting things that happened before age 3 is meaningful here.
I wasn’t talking about forgetting things. Memories might not even be stored before age 3.
(John)
According to WebMD:
Most babies will start walking between about 10 and 18 months old, although some babies may walk as early as 9 months old.
And they retain that ability. So something must be being stored here.
They also start saying basic words by age 1, which they retain as well.
It’s possible creativity, and with it, personhood and rights, only comes online after birth. For example, the universal-explainer program may be partly memetic, as David Deutsch argues in The Beginning of Infinity. In which case creativity only comes online upon exposure to other people.
But that’s highly speculative. The program might as well be wholly genetic and start running before birth.
If the fetus has "developed a nervous system" but is not yet capable of surviving outside the mother (even with all the technological knowledge of medicine), why should the mother have an obligation to carry it to term?
A baby with a nervous system may be a person and thus have rights.
having rights doesn't mean you get to be supported by others that don't want to support you
Except in cases of rape, the mother is responsible for the baby’s existence.
That the baby can’t survive outside the womb sounds like an additional reason to carry to term, not a reason not to do it.
it's not a reason in one direction or another, if other people are willing to save the baby and take care of it that seems like a win-win
You had originally described (#201) a situation where the fetus “is not yet capable of surviving outside the mother (even with all the technological knowledge of medicine)”, meaning premature delivery would be impossible.
If, contrary to #221, premature delivery is possible and others want to “save the baby and take care of it”, then sure, go ahead as long as there are no downsides for the baby. But that’s not abortion, so I don’t see how this stance is a criticism of my abortion stance. Abortion means the baby dies.
If my nervous system isn’t working because of coma, is it ok to kill me?
Clarity is suggesting it wouldn’t be okay, thus whether the nervous system is functional can’t be the determining factor.
I think it’s not okay to kill someone whose nervous system stops working later in life if it may work again.
They’ve already been a person and may well continue to be a person. That can’t be said of an organism that has never had a nervous system.
It’s arbitrary. A functioning nervous system does not imply complex thought.
Right, but the absence of a functioning nervous system implies the absence of sentience [see #107]. So I don’t think it’s arbitrary.
But if an accident removes the entire brain yet the body somehow stays alive like a vegetable, then yeah I’d say it’s okay to pull the plug.
Is that fair? It’s interesting how abortion and euthanasia are kind of related in this way.
i agree that morally the cutoff point should be personhood, though i think that probably happens later than the development of nervous system
Personhood presumably does come in later on, but we don’t know exactly when. Since the development of the nervous system is the earliest possible point, that’s the time we should choose if we want to be careful.