xivrox wrote:meidei wrote:I'm pretty sure everyone here is against infanticide, as it is a form of homocide.
This thread suggests otherwise, a fetus is a human too (or not?)
Well, fetuses aren't considered to be 'babies'. Technically a 'baby' has been born. I think that was meidei's point.
xivrox wrote:So you need to
look like one. When does one “become a human” anyway? Is it after developing into a fetus? Later (when)? Or (
) at birth? I was taught it’s the moment of fertilisation, which to me is the most logical one.
I don't think that's necessarily a logical moment. To me, if I think about human life, it's all a big continuum really. The egg cells are alive, the sperm are alive, stem cells are alive, cancer tissue is alive. Chimeric individuals are alive, are they two human beings? I don't think one can
teach anyone when human beings become human beings, unless one first defines it very specifically. For some Christians, for example, "becoming a human being" is somethimes linked to being given a soul. But then the schools of thought on when that happens differ quite a lot. But if we ignore souls, then it's back to biology, which doesn't settle into the clear-cut way humans like to categorise. But for me personally a buch of undifferentiated cells definitely is not yet a human being.
xivrox wrote:Yes, it is messy. I prefer when people have choices than when they don’t, and (roughly) that they should have liberty to do anything as long as they don’t harm others. The problem is that when you’re pregnant it’s not only about you anymore… Abortion is equal to harming another human being, the biggest harm there is: taking their life away.
Yes, it's a conflict of interests. But personally I've come to the conclusion that it is not morally sound (in my moral system) to conclude that the interest of a fetus can trump the bodily autonomy of a grown woman. There is just no way I can make that work if I also believe in people's bodily autonomy. So for that reason the issue is settled for me --- not because I don't think the fetus has any interests at all. Grown women just have more and only one can be given precedence.
xivrox wrote:No, no detaining, or anything you describe here, that’s horrible as well.
Thank you. I really needed to hear that from someone on the abortion-opposing side. You're the first so far, so thank you.
xivrox wrote:But they should take the responsibility and expect that harming (and especially killing) another human being is punishable by law…
But what if they don't? This is what I meant when I was talking about "stern words" not being enough. If you make abortion illegal, and worse, make it a punishable crime on par with homicide, you may need to "walk the walk" and exercise some really coersive power over women whose cases may be very hard to ethically pinpoint. The woman in this case stopped eating. That is, she made her own body stop eating. She was starving her own body. If this is enough to count as killing someone else (a human being no less!), then that effectively means that a pregnant woman is no longer the owner of her own body. Her body primarily belongs to the fetus. Are you ready to go down that road? I know you don't endorse the type of coersion that the woman in Ireland endured, but if you want to make those kinds of laws you may
have to. If abortion is homicide, is miscarriage due to some kind of action (like stopping eating) homicide? If a fetus counts as a human being and has primary right to usage of another's body, don't we need to make sure it gets to use it, so we aren't complicit in homicide? Don't we as a society then need to incarcerate pregnant women who we deem to be a threat to the life of a fetus? How do you make such harsh rules without having harsh consequences? I don't think you can.
I can't see any other way of not inadvertently (or deliberately) promoting a type of slavery (someone else owning your body and its functions) than having legal abortion that women can resort to on personal discretion. No panels, no psychiatric evaluations, no "only if you were raped or are suicidal" clauses. Swift, safe, affordable legal abortion coupled with ample good quality sex education, affordable contraceptives and a social security net for parents is the best way to truly minimise both abortions and the negative mental and physical effects surrounding unwanted/unplanned pregnancies.
xivrox wrote:But I find it terrible to even think about a mother who wants to kill her own child, whenever I hear in TV how another baby was splashed on the ground or something (which is equal to abortion)… It’s just beyond my understanding.
These are apparently babies? I think there are many ways society could aid women who are pregnant and have recently given birth, so that they never feel so trapped that they will resort to killing a child. Legal abortion is one of those ways.
xivrox wrote:And who cares about the billions unborn children undeveloped fetuses that will be killed aborted on the way, they’re not humans anyway.
In the process of trying to get a
wanted pregnancy, the female body usually spontaneously aborts a good deal of fertilised eggcells and even implanted ones in various stages. Do you ever lose sleep over those trillions of lost human beings?