Hard to take away a choice they never had the right to in the first place.
Okay, but that's kind of what I was asking. Why don't they have the right? It is, after all, a human right to have family.
At what point does a sperm+egg become sapient? To be honest it's probably sometime after their born, the human brain takes awhile to develop, but in the first few months you really are just talking a clump of cells that if you squint really hard is starting to get some of the functionality of a human being. The exact point at which they get that functionality is like the "how much do I have to shave the back of a chair off before it becomes a stool" problem, it's a vague category and a gradient rather than a clear line.
Here's a description of babies at 24 weeks, when you can still abort in America (again, based on quick google, any evidence to the contrary welcomed. I couldn't believe the figure myself):
At a Glance
Bulking up
Your little bean is putting on more and more weight, much of it coming from accumulating baby fat along with growing muscles, organs and bones.
Rock-a-bye, baby
Baby's auditory system is rapidly advancing, which means if she frequently hears a certain song now she's likely to recognize it and feel calmed by it when she's born.
White-haired baby
Your baby is still sporting white eyelashes, eyebrows and hair, all of which have yet to acquire pigment.
So yes, the line is hard to draw. But I daresay most would draw it before "looks human and remembers things from this point after birth."
Conraceptives are fine, right? That prevents the potential for a human, so clearly potential-to-be-human isn't the issue.
Well, technically you'd say that contraceptives prevent the formation of a fetus. A fetus is a potential human.
Morning-after pills are clearly okay, right? That's just recently fertilized egg cells, so clearly fertalisation isn't the issue.
A few weeks? Well then it's basically still just a clump of cells.
20-odd weeks is survivable, usually with extreme medical intervention, but the distinction between patient and corpse is always going to be determined by scientific advances. (Like how cryogenic freezing is killing a person and hoping future medical advances make it not killing them).
Aaaaaaand then you jump from "clump of cells" to "viable outside the womb," waving away the development this implies by saying "without hospitalisation they'd die." Well yes, they would. And next time you have a heart attack, it is likely the same will apply to you.
Hence the "Hey it's a complex, grey topic without easily defined lines so let's just give the woman the right to safely choose because the alternative is them going for a coat hanger and a bottle of vodka to try and achieve the same end".
Ah, the old "parents know best and should be trusted implicitly to make decisions that are best for their dependents" argument. Yes. That always holds water.
And still that's discounting the horrors of rape. An abortion and a rape baby are both potentially traumatic, if a woman decides the former is less so than the latter I'm not going to stop them.
Rape is a grey area, yep. Termination of a pregnancy which will result in severe complications for the mother (assuming she wants it) is not grey.
Other than that, I agree with your statement. There is a sliding scale. As a fetus becomes more developed, it becomes more characteristically human. Is a fetus a human? Personally? I simply don't know. Is the seed the plant? What I do know is that it develops rapidly. By week six, you see ears, arms, facial features.
And it strikes me that disposing of a "clump of cells" is one thing. But disposing of something with definable features? Something else entirely.
Dragdeler:
Yeah right because bAbyKiLlerS make such great mothers. And there are no disadvantages to growing up in an orphanage.
You're right. Life is hard. People who are in bad positions should never have been born. Black slaves. Sex workers. Sweat-shop workers. They are all unarguably worse off than an orphaned child put up for adoption. Let's go ask them their opinion on that analysis...................
If you worry about fetal matter I never ever want to hear you complain about overpopulation. That particular set of contradictory belief stinks like a medieval town.
I won't, don't worry. And fyi medieval towns weren't all that bad, depending on where you were.
Despite a few millenia of our best attempts at patriarchy and controlling women, stemming out of the male insecurities about paternity, ultimatively, we never had, nor will have that power. Tough cookie.
Oh, great, now I'm a sexist who seeks to control women's bodies for the thrill of power it gives me and the way it assuages my own personal inefficiencies.
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