Personhood and Abortion Rights

[_Jersey Girl]

All the above...but mainly trying to justify how women ( or anyone) were treated in the past, as a justification to abort a child. Life isn't easy or is it fair...and we have to set boundaries and make tough decisions every day. We base some on logic, some of faith, some on intellect, and some on stupidity, greed, pride, etc.

What rights are women denied today that justifies taking another persons life?

Let me know when you are ready to answer my questions.

Okay. As I said, justfication wasn't my point. If I somehow came across that way, I apologize for both sloppy thinking and layout. You asked me to answer your questions. I know that I skipped over another one in a previous post and I will get to that.

Q: What rights are women denied today that justifies taking another persons life?

A: I can't think of any specific rights they're denied that justifies taking another persons life. I don't think that society

I can think of plenty of ways in which society responds to women that if they were changed, it might result in lessening the numbers of abortions there are today.

I'll leave it at that for now.

[_Markk]

Okay, thanks. I'm going to try to move forward from here. I'll be as brief as I possibly can.

I think that what you are saying is that my comments in that very long post are an attempt to justify: How women were treated in the past in order to justify abortion.

Because that's exactly what you stated.

My lengthy post was intended to justify exactly nothing.

It was an attempt to identify and explain multiple factors involved in the topic not the least of which is how long it takes for society to change it's views over time, then finally codify them into law.

And even so, the factors that I did raise don't even (in my mind) represent the tip of the iceberg.

I am not sure what that means. Factors for what? If it is not to justify abortion then what are these factors identifying... how others justify an abortion?

If it is just to show how long it takes for society to change, how do we tie that in with the issue of abortion and this conversation?

[_Jersey Girl]

Here is another question that I think I haven't answered yet. I've combed through the thread, stopping at certain points for various reasons, so I might have already answered. Making sure that this gets an answer as per your request.

In your view, is a abortion taking the life of another person...your view seems to support it is...am I correct in that assumption?

Yes you are correct in that assumption.

I stated to that effect here: Do I think that abortion is killing a baby? In the simplest of terms: yes.

I do recognize that while I view the fetus as a person, there are those who view the fetus as a clump of cells (based on various attributes and definitions) and I don't believe that I have the right to impose my views on another person.

(When I mentioned imposing my beliefs about the Pledge or my personally held God belief on others, that's what I was trying to drive at.)

When women have choice it means exactly that. I have the right to choose according to my own views as does the woman who sees things differently have the right to choose according to her views.

I see nothing wrong and everything right about that.

[_Markk]

I can think of plenty of ways in which society responds to women that if they were changed, it might result in lessening the numbers of abortions there are today.

What are some of these ways?

[_Jersey Girl]

Okay, thanks. I'm going to try to move forward from here. I'll be as brief as I possibly can.

I think that what you are saying is that my comments in that very long post are an attempt to justify: How women were treated in the past in order to justify abortion.

Because that's exactly what you stated.

My lengthy post was intended to justify exactly nothing.

It was an attempt to identify and explain multiple factors involved in the topic not the least of which is how long it takes for society to change it's views over time, then finally codify them into law.

And even so, the factors that I did raise don't even (in my mind) represent the tip of the iceberg.

I am not sure what that means. Factors for what? If it is not to justify abortion then what are these factors identifying... how others justify an abortion?

If it is just to show how long it takes for society to change, how do we tie that in with the issue of abortion and this conversation?

Immediate response: You're driving me crazy and I wasn't so far from that at the start. :-)

It is NOT just to show how long it takes for society to change. It is to say that it DOES take time for society to change.

Our laws don't evolve and change until our MINDS evolve and change--> when we begin to think differently about a thing.

[_Jersey Girl]

Taking a little break here. Just marking my place. I'll be back.

[_honorentheos]

When women have choice it means exactly that. I have the right to choose according to my own views as does the woman who sees things differently have the right to choose according to her views.

I see nothing wrong and everything right about that.

Thought experiment -

Does this hold true if we were talking about a mother choosing to have their baby smothered to death at 1 week old? 1 month old? 1 year old?

If you answer no, there is a point when the mother doesn't get to choose to end the life processes involved without the state enforcing a form of justice, you are effectively saying that the status of the fetus is not the same as that of a baby. And while you probably won't call it that, it's effectively saying the fetus lacks the status of being a person.

[Guest]

I should mention that I don't think that is specifically a criticism of the results of your thoughts. It's a critique of the foundations for it. I personally come down in a similar place if I would argue for the legal limit of abortion in the range of 20 weeks for reasons I've stated elsewhere and will repeat.

I think the question of personhood status demands that we not consider the fetus in isolation, but rather as mother-fetus. The relationship between the mother and the fetus involves internal dynamics that we might compare to an employee's relationship to a company where society has relationships with the company that affect what circumstances allow for engaging with the employee as a separate party and when the employee might be afforded different protections or be defined differently than they would outside of this context.

Within this model of thinking, the development of the fetus involves an accrual of traits over the course of development that I attribute to "becoming a person" which I described in the other thread. But the accrual of rights associated with those traits aren't the entire picture because they are dependent on the mother's involvement to maintain them as part of the fetus/mother relationship until they become "vested" when the baby is born at which point the baby independently possesses the necessary traits of personhood.

Based on this, I tend to agree with the legal precedent discussed in the OP's article that it should be legal for the mother to choose an abortion before the point the fetus could reasonably live separated from it's mother in the sense that the fetus isn't "vested" in it's accrual of traits associated with personhood - even if part of the definition includes the potential to become a self-aware human being. But a drunk driver that kills a pregnant woman is, in relation to mother/fetus, responsible for the deaths of two persons even if the fetus was not past reasonable viability outside of the womb. At the point of birth, even if the baby isn't actually a self-aware human being just yet, it's birth vests it with the rights of personhood on the grounds it is independently existing separated from the mother and it's potential to become such has changed.

It's full of holes, of course, as any reasonable person would be able to articulate examples that challenge it. (If the mother stopped feeding a baby, could it really survive on it's own? is an obvious one) But it's how I think the argument best addresses the broad brush strokes of typical legal dilemmas involved in both considering when an elective termination of a pregnancy should be allowed but not preclude the legal concerns associated with the non-volitional abortion of a pregnancy caused by a third party such as through an act of violence against the mother.

[_Markk]

Does this hold true if we were talking about a mother choosing to have their baby smothered to death at 1 week old? 1 month old? 1 year old?

If you answer no, there is a point when the mother doesn't get to choose to end the life processes involved without the state enforcing a form of justice, you are effectively saying that the status of the fetus is not the same as that of a baby. And while you probably won't call it that, it's effectively saying the fetus lacks the status of being a person.

She will correct me if I am wrong, but I think she is saying that it is a person, but that due to history and many other factors, a Woman has earned a "higher right" over the rights of the fetus, to abort their child in the womb. She doesn't like it, but supports it.

[_honorentheos]

Does this hold true if we were talking about a mother choosing to have their baby smothered to death at 1 week old? 1 month old? 1 year old?

If you answer no, there is a point when the mother doesn't get to choose to end the life processes involved without the state enforcing a form of justice, you are effectively saying that the status of the fetus is not the same as that of a baby. And while you probably won't call it that, it's effectively saying the fetus lacks the status of being a person.

She will correct me if I am wrong, but I think she is saying that it is a person, but that due to history and many other factors, a Woman has earned a "higher right" over the rights of the fetus, to abort their child in the womb. She doesn't like it, but supports it.

That's trying to avoid the point. There is a threshold where it stops being negotiable to end the life processes involved and becomes a legally punishable taking of a life. Where the threshold is essentially equates to when you or she acknowledges the being as a person. Just because you may personally think it's a person or should be treated as one before that threshold, if you say society has not right to stop the mother from electing to end the life processes after that point you aren't defining it as a person. It's just a fuzzy conceptual idea of a person.