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Except in cases of rape, the mother is responsible for the baby’s existence.

A baby with a nervous system may be a person and thus have rights.

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.

Shouldn’t the father have some say? He shouldn’t get to dictate what she does with the baby, but shouldn’t he have some say? It’s his child, too, after all.

Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?

Shouldn’t the father have some say? He shouldn’t get to dictate what she does with the baby, but shouldn’t he have some say? It’s his child, too, after all.

It’s true that potential beings cannot have rights. But once a fetus is a person, it’s not a potential being anymore. It’s then an actual being.

It’s not the birth that turns a fetus into a person – it’s the running of the universal-explainer software I mentioned in #119. And that might occur before birth.

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.

Many suggestions around abortion can be evaluated by asking at whose expense? Whenever the answer is at the baby’s, something is wrong, since the baby did not make any decisions and thus cannot be held responsible.

A lot of the problems around abortion will go away with better technology. (Dirk)

There should be a pill for men, too. That would really shift the power dynamic, too. (Martin)

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.

I don’t see why forgetting things that happened before age 3 is meaningful here.

Building on #164, rights do not depend on the presence of any specific skill or knowledge.

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.

I use David Deutsch’s concept of the universal explainer.

(John)

How do you define personhood?

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.

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.

Once the fetus is a person, it can’t be property.

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)

We already have laws for how to deal with neglect.

(Danny)

Parents facing the consequences of their actions isn’t “force”.

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)

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.

Whenever a child may reach independence, it’s certainly well past pregnancy, so it’s not an issue wrt abortion.

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).