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Superseded by #134. This comment was generated automatically.

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)

Parents don’t owe their children anything […].

Yes they do. They are responsible for bringing a helpless being into the world who depends on them.

The result is often tragic. Abortion relieves parents of that responsibility and prevents this outcome.

Adoption

A parent facing the consequences of his/her actions isn’t “force”.

It’s not right to force a parent to take care of a child they didn’t want. The result is often tragic. Abortion relieves parents of that responsibility and prevents this outcome. Parents don’t owe their children anything, and children don’t owe their parents anything.

(Amaro)

Superseded by #128. This comment was generated automatically.

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.

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.

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’.

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)

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.

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 #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.

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.

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 how creativity (ie the universal-explainer software mentioned in #119) works so this is handy.

(Amaro)

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?)

Why would a fetus without a nervous system not be a person?

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)

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 but, at which point the baby is an independent person.

(John)

Superseded by #114. This comment was generated automatically.

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.

Superseded by #112. This comment was generated automatically.

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.

Superseded by #110. This comment was generated automatically.