I would invite any of your members of parliament to come round in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit with the under 28 weekers, and see if they can vote for late term abortion after seeing those babies and their families.
Biology says that a fertilized egg is a zygote, a human life. The actual discussion point, then, is the assignment of rights to that life. Logically, if we say that born life has the authority to decide the rights of unborn life, then the door is open to passing legislation that allows one born group to decide the rights of another born group. A door therefore that may condone genocide, slavery, etc.
Murder by Midazolam of the elderly and mentally and physically handicapped in our care (sic) homes. Talk of emulating the Canadian MAID euthanasia on demand system. And now plans to allow babies to despatched any time up until birth.
We are not in danger, as many pundits, of being forced to become transhuman. We are already there in all but name. Shame on us.
Life on Earth began more than 3.5 Billion years ago, based on evidence for fossilized bacteria. And life has continued without interruption since its beginning; a new living cell always arises from an existing living cell. No life arises from a cell that is dead.
To say that a zygote is alive is obvious, but a human zygote can only result by the fusion of two living gametes. Life does not begin at conception, because there was never an interruption of life; a sperm cell and an oocyte are equally alive.
So, make your own judgement about when a fetus achieves personhood, but don't kid yourself with the idea that human life begins at conception. Human life is part of the long chain of all life, and began long ago, perhaps within a few hundred million years after Earth formed (a very short time on the geological scale).
In every corner of today’s world in the West, it is impossible to have a sane discussion on the subject of abortion. This comes as close as I’ve ever encountered.
It's actually not "complicated" at all. A life is a life. Deep down, we all know that life begins at conception. The fact that this is so fiercely debated only exposes humanity's desire to separate ourselves from the consequences of our actions. This really is the easiest and most straightforward debate in our modern society. A person is no less valuable just because they don't add to the GDP yet.
It's a good point and I wonder why the pro-choice side focus on defining personhood quite so much. I'm pro-choice myself but I don't dispute that a fertilised ovum is a human life; I just don't believe it's ethical to compel a girl or woman to undergo unwanted pregnancy to keep that person alive. It's like living organ donation, it's a wonderful thing when it's entered into willingly, and there should be more medical research and social support to make it as easy and safe as possible for the donor and recipient, but nobody should be compelled to donate a kidney or liver lobe or even blood (the aftercare for which is a sticking plaster and a biscuit) even if it's to save another person's life. We don't even currently have mandatory organ harvesting from corpses if they said in life that they didn't want their remains used that way. Personally I think we should harvest the deceased since they won't be harmed, but I understand that we respect their wishes in life. It doesn't seem consistent to me to respect women's rights to withdraw consent for their organs to sustain life only after they're dead.
I just want to point out that in the UK, it is not only fatal fetal anomalies that allow for abortion in the third trimester. Babies with Down Syndrome, a non-fatal condition, may also be aborted. You can look up Heidi Crowter's case if you want to learn more.
I personally believe in equal rights for all humans, regardless of their (dis)ability, race, religion, sexuality, age, etc. When I think about what grounds those rights, if we say it is self-awareness, we exclude newborn infants, which seems intuitively wrong. If we say it is some basic level of consciousness, we would have to grant equal rights to much of the animal kingdom. While I believe animals deserve some rights, I do not consider them equal to humans. The only feature that all born humans share equally is our human nature, which is also shared by the unborn. The first stage of the human life cycle is the zygote, so I believe equal rights begin there.
Bodily autonomy, however, is very important. I certainly don't believe that people should be forced to donate their kidneys. However, in the kidney scenario, I would theoretically have three options.
1. Donate my kidney. Patient lives.
2. Do not intervene. Patient dies of kidney failure.
3. Kill the patient.
Most people believe options 1 and 2 ought to be legal, but option three should not. If we apply the same options to pregnancy, the scenario looks like this:
1. Continue the pregnancy, making every effort to ensure the health of the child.
2. Do not intervene. The pregnancy will progress to its natural end, whether live birth (baby lives) or miscarriage/stillbirth (baby dies of natural causes).
3. Abortion, which induces fetal demise via suffocation (abortion pills cut off the fetus from its oxygen supply), lethal injection, or dismemberment, depending on the stage and circumstances.
To be consistent, I would say that options 1 and 2 should be legal, and option 3 should not. It is not that I do not value bodily autonomy, it is that I believe killing innocent human beings is wrong.
Moreover, abortion is not in any way a "mercy killing," especially later in pregnancy. The most recent research on fetal pain suggests that pain perception develops some time toward the end of the first trimester, much early than was previously thought by the cortical necessity hypothesis. (See Reconsidering Fetal Pain by Derbyshire and Bockmann, 2019, and Fetal Pain in the First Trimester, by Thill, 2021 for more details). This means the second trimester fetus undergoing a dilation and evacuation abortion can likely feel pain as it is dismembered. In the US, criminals on death row receive anesthetics before a lethal injection. No such mercies are offered to the fetus. I am pregnant right now, and should there be a serious health problem with my baby, I would much rather pursue perinatal hospice than abortion.
Outside of medical triage, I think abortion should be illegal. By medical triage, I mean circumstances where the mother's life is in danger. Any threat to the mother is also a threat to the fetus who relies on her. When you have a threat to multiple lives, you should save as many as possible. I look forward to the day when every NICU has an artificial womb so that we can save both lives, but many times in early pregnancy, we can only save the mother, and we should, even if it requires us to take an action that results in the death of the fetus (many pro-life people do not consider that an abortion, but that is another discussion). Later in pregnancy, an emergency C-section is usually much faster and safer for both mother and child, so it is more feasible to save both lives.
I would strongly encourage everyone to look up the Equal Rights Institute or Secular Pro-life organizations for more information. They are great with both the philosophy and scientific parts of the debate.
I remember being told in my University Political Science lecture in 1980 that the Abortion debate would never be resolved. There would never be consensus on when life begins. It was also pointed out that Pro Choice supporters were using the same argument that American slaveholders and the U.S. Government previously used to suppress the rights of Black and Indigenous Americans — the fetus is not a human life. I remember thinking at the time that the first trimester limit must remain intact and everyone’s passion and good intentions should go toward education and support for unwed mothers. Instead, we have suffered 45 more years of activist debate on both sides of the issue without any benefit to the mothers and unborn children.
We have had a specific case for a while: the disabled have long lived in a world of subjective personhood. Gene screening and late-term abortions are is offered on the NHS for many non-life-threatening conditions. (He says as the father of a wonderful disabled son.) What we're seeing now is the general case catching up.
"...declaring ithat a baby is a baby at the discretion of his or her mother. A baby born at 24 weeks may be left to die, or kept alive with every miracle of modern technology,"
But, (at least in the US, where I am), we already allow parents-or guardians and next-of-kin of adults who cannot speak or decide for themselves-to make such decisions all the time. Many babies born at 24 weeks have a high chance of significant medical issues, at the very least for months after birth, and often for life. Some loving parents choose to provide comfort care, or limited medical interventions, so as not to inflict intense suffering (because though modern medicine is certainly a miracle, as a pediatric nurse I can arrest that it can also be torture, and I don't know a single colleague who has not had the thought with at least one patient that we are taking things too far with our interventions and that that particular patient should be allowed to die with some modicum of comfort).
Indeed, this is also a factor in many of the abortions performed at the latest gestational age; a mother goes for their final, 36-week ultrasound, or for the anatomy scan typically performed around 28 weeks, only to find that the fetus she had been told was doing fine actually has a devastating abnormality that is incompatable with being able to sustain life outside the womb. An example would be a disorder-the name escapes me-in which the kidneys don't function or develop. While lack of kidneys alone can be overcome relatively simply in a newborn compared to some other fetal abnormalities, the kidneys are essential to the development of the fetus's lungs. This cannot be overcome; these babies will typically go to term without issues since lungs aren't as essential in a fetus, but once the umbilical cord is cut the baby will invariably suffocate (even if on a ventilator-the lungs simply cannot exchange gasses). Some parents choose to carry the baby to term and provide palliative care at birth, and hold their baby as it dies. But, I certainly don't fault those who make the anguishing decision to abort in order that their baby does not have to struggle for air as it leaves the world, and that they don't have to watch as it does so. Here in the US these parents are often heckled outside the abortion clinics, cruelly told things like "your baby is perfect!" and "you can still turn back!" by protestors who have no idea of the situation about believe these parents are murdering a perfectly healthy baby that they simply don't want. Nothing could be farther from the truth. And, the few providers who still do these procedures routinely wear bullet-proof vests at work and home (one was fatally shot as he attended church some years ago) and many have given up doing the work altogether because it's too dangerous.
I wrote all that out to illustrate that sometimes the line between palliative care of a baby doomed to die, and late-term abortion, can be thinner than we often think.
That life begins at conception, that “if it’s not a baby you’re not pregnant” seems a given and everything else is sophistry but certainly sophistry that is here to stay.
Your last lines about blurring the edges of personhood in old age likely allude to the next broken ankle on the slippery slope of modernity. We are 62, with enough retirement money and familial support in the form of five children who get along and can share helping out if necessary not to feel threatened by the future. Our parents lived independently until death and we hope we can too. But there are simply too many boomers living too long for them all to be cared for indefinitely. People live too long today. That sounds weird but I have witnessed the ways in which ties to family and the current times slip by the late 70’s. Younger elders remain interested in their children and grandchildren, few care very much about great grandchildren. It is one of the reasons it is such a disgrace that such old, old men are running for president.
Countries rushing to enact poorly thought out, in Canada’s case truly diabolical assisted suicide legislation are like corporations seeing those savings on the bottom line and forgetting the business they are in, which in this case is the business of protecting the people.
There will be increasing pressure for the lower classes to take themselves off the scene “with dignity”, while the oligarchs pursue immortality.
My sincere condolences on your miscarriage. Since you have shared that experience in such a public forum, I hope this question is okay and not too painful. If it is not okay, please ignore as my intent certainly isn't to cause further distress.
I often wonder, though, about how we can possibly assign personhood to zygotes and embryos when such a significant percentage will miscarry. At least 25% of zygotes will terminate themselves, often before the woman is even aware they exist, and usually-at such early stages-because there is a devastating chromosomal abnormality that does not allow for even normal fetal development much less life outside the womb. So I wonder about these certificates of baby loss... It would seem to imply that the miscarried embryo or fetus was a life, but only if the mother was aware she was pregnant (whether the awareness came before or during/after the miscarriage)?
And since so many early miscarriages are sort of a natural, though imperfect, way for the human race to have babies that have some chances of survival, and so many miscarried early fetuses never actually had that chance at all-they were in a sense doomed to miscarry from the time that egg combined with that sperm-are we really grieving the actual life, or are we grieving our hopes and dreams for the potential life? Please understand, the grief is valid and intense no matter what. But, many couples who struggle with infertility experience some level of grief every month when yet another pregnancy test is negative. There was never an actual life to grieve, yet there is absolutely grief-grief for the hopes, the dreams, the family that cannot be. I don't think even the most extreme anti-abortion people would suggest that we provide a certificate to those couples that a pregnancy was lost, and yet the feeling-according to some who've been there, as I have no personal experience with this matter-can be much the same.
So, I guess what I'm wondering is, how do we separate the hopes and dreams of the woman or couple, from the actual reality of the condition of the fetus or embryo? A parent whose child dies unexpectedly at 14 years old likely had hopes and dreams for that child to grow up, have a career, have a spouse and children of their own. Yet legally we consider them to have lost a 14 year old. Not a 30 year old, and certainly not the grandchildren that are not to be. At the same time, we recognize that emotionally they are processing all those losses. But that doesn't change the fact that the child was never an adult or a parent.
I hope that makes some sense. And again I do hope it doesn't seem callous as that is certainly not the intention.
I always find this hand-wringing tone, when speaking about when life begins, or what represents a life, infuriating. No one hems and haws, say, when discussing the policies of the third Reich towards the Jews. The third Reich was wrong to classify Jews as less than human, killing them at will. We hanged several top Nazi officials because there was NO EXCUSE for them to have such a belief about the Jews. Similarly, today we do not hesitate a moment to declare chattel slavery wrong. “Good people” jump at the chance to denounce chattel slavery. I have personally turned down the opportunity to have children because I chose to honor the FACT that life begins at conception (thank you IVF warlock in La Jolla). We know too much to hold onto the fence-like position of knowing when life begins but suspending the extension of our moral code to that newly obvious domain of life (it’s not that new - even classical people understood a pregnant woman was carrying another person).
Can we please grow up, acknowledge that life begins at conception, and act accordingly with our moral code? We expect men to fight to protect wives, girls, strange women, and even whole societies, due to the belief that women’s safety should come before that of men. Is that fair? No. Do men accept it? Yes, because men implicitly expect women to bear children and create the next generation, they (men) are willing to step into their role of being expendable in the name of protecting women. It is time for women to feel, and accept, their righteous responsibility - to nurture and protect children from the moment of conception. No more hemming and hawing!
"In its wake, who else might we unperson and in what circumstances? When do disabled or elderly people lose personhood, for example, and in whose gift does this reside? Whose interests take priority, and why? Those who advocate decriminalising late stage abortion in the name of compassion may yet find that the changes they advocated did more to free those with power, than to protect those without it."
It's not an open question, not hypothetical. We know the answer. We have seen what happens, elsewhere.
I would invite any of your members of parliament to come round in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit with the under 28 weekers, and see if they can vote for late term abortion after seeing those babies and their families.
I hope they could not, yet I fear they might.
Biology says that a fertilized egg is a zygote, a human life. The actual discussion point, then, is the assignment of rights to that life. Logically, if we say that born life has the authority to decide the rights of unborn life, then the door is open to passing legislation that allows one born group to decide the rights of another born group. A door therefore that may condone genocide, slavery, etc.
Murder by Midazolam of the elderly and mentally and physically handicapped in our care (sic) homes. Talk of emulating the Canadian MAID euthanasia on demand system. And now plans to allow babies to despatched any time up until birth.
We are not in danger, as many pundits, of being forced to become transhuman. We are already there in all but name. Shame on us.
Life on Earth began more than 3.5 Billion years ago, based on evidence for fossilized bacteria. And life has continued without interruption since its beginning; a new living cell always arises from an existing living cell. No life arises from a cell that is dead.
To say that a zygote is alive is obvious, but a human zygote can only result by the fusion of two living gametes. Life does not begin at conception, because there was never an interruption of life; a sperm cell and an oocyte are equally alive.
So, make your own judgement about when a fetus achieves personhood, but don't kid yourself with the idea that human life begins at conception. Human life is part of the long chain of all life, and began long ago, perhaps within a few hundred million years after Earth formed (a very short time on the geological scale).
In every corner of today’s world in the West, it is impossible to have a sane discussion on the subject of abortion. This comes as close as I’ve ever encountered.
It's actually not "complicated" at all. A life is a life. Deep down, we all know that life begins at conception. The fact that this is so fiercely debated only exposes humanity's desire to separate ourselves from the consequences of our actions. This really is the easiest and most straightforward debate in our modern society. A person is no less valuable just because they don't add to the GDP yet.
It's a good point and I wonder why the pro-choice side focus on defining personhood quite so much. I'm pro-choice myself but I don't dispute that a fertilised ovum is a human life; I just don't believe it's ethical to compel a girl or woman to undergo unwanted pregnancy to keep that person alive. It's like living organ donation, it's a wonderful thing when it's entered into willingly, and there should be more medical research and social support to make it as easy and safe as possible for the donor and recipient, but nobody should be compelled to donate a kidney or liver lobe or even blood (the aftercare for which is a sticking plaster and a biscuit) even if it's to save another person's life. We don't even currently have mandatory organ harvesting from corpses if they said in life that they didn't want their remains used that way. Personally I think we should harvest the deceased since they won't be harmed, but I understand that we respect their wishes in life. It doesn't seem consistent to me to respect women's rights to withdraw consent for their organs to sustain life only after they're dead.
I just want to point out that in the UK, it is not only fatal fetal anomalies that allow for abortion in the third trimester. Babies with Down Syndrome, a non-fatal condition, may also be aborted. You can look up Heidi Crowter's case if you want to learn more.
I personally believe in equal rights for all humans, regardless of their (dis)ability, race, religion, sexuality, age, etc. When I think about what grounds those rights, if we say it is self-awareness, we exclude newborn infants, which seems intuitively wrong. If we say it is some basic level of consciousness, we would have to grant equal rights to much of the animal kingdom. While I believe animals deserve some rights, I do not consider them equal to humans. The only feature that all born humans share equally is our human nature, which is also shared by the unborn. The first stage of the human life cycle is the zygote, so I believe equal rights begin there.
Bodily autonomy, however, is very important. I certainly don't believe that people should be forced to donate their kidneys. However, in the kidney scenario, I would theoretically have three options.
1. Donate my kidney. Patient lives.
2. Do not intervene. Patient dies of kidney failure.
3. Kill the patient.
Most people believe options 1 and 2 ought to be legal, but option three should not. If we apply the same options to pregnancy, the scenario looks like this:
1. Continue the pregnancy, making every effort to ensure the health of the child.
2. Do not intervene. The pregnancy will progress to its natural end, whether live birth (baby lives) or miscarriage/stillbirth (baby dies of natural causes).
3. Abortion, which induces fetal demise via suffocation (abortion pills cut off the fetus from its oxygen supply), lethal injection, or dismemberment, depending on the stage and circumstances.
To be consistent, I would say that options 1 and 2 should be legal, and option 3 should not. It is not that I do not value bodily autonomy, it is that I believe killing innocent human beings is wrong.
Moreover, abortion is not in any way a "mercy killing," especially later in pregnancy. The most recent research on fetal pain suggests that pain perception develops some time toward the end of the first trimester, much early than was previously thought by the cortical necessity hypothesis. (See Reconsidering Fetal Pain by Derbyshire and Bockmann, 2019, and Fetal Pain in the First Trimester, by Thill, 2021 for more details). This means the second trimester fetus undergoing a dilation and evacuation abortion can likely feel pain as it is dismembered. In the US, criminals on death row receive anesthetics before a lethal injection. No such mercies are offered to the fetus. I am pregnant right now, and should there be a serious health problem with my baby, I would much rather pursue perinatal hospice than abortion.
Outside of medical triage, I think abortion should be illegal. By medical triage, I mean circumstances where the mother's life is in danger. Any threat to the mother is also a threat to the fetus who relies on her. When you have a threat to multiple lives, you should save as many as possible. I look forward to the day when every NICU has an artificial womb so that we can save both lives, but many times in early pregnancy, we can only save the mother, and we should, even if it requires us to take an action that results in the death of the fetus (many pro-life people do not consider that an abortion, but that is another discussion). Later in pregnancy, an emergency C-section is usually much faster and safer for both mother and child, so it is more feasible to save both lives.
I would strongly encourage everyone to look up the Equal Rights Institute or Secular Pro-life organizations for more information. They are great with both the philosophy and scientific parts of the debate.
I remember being told in my University Political Science lecture in 1980 that the Abortion debate would never be resolved. There would never be consensus on when life begins. It was also pointed out that Pro Choice supporters were using the same argument that American slaveholders and the U.S. Government previously used to suppress the rights of Black and Indigenous Americans — the fetus is not a human life. I remember thinking at the time that the first trimester limit must remain intact and everyone’s passion and good intentions should go toward education and support for unwed mothers. Instead, we have suffered 45 more years of activist debate on both sides of the issue without any benefit to the mothers and unborn children.
We have had a specific case for a while: the disabled have long lived in a world of subjective personhood. Gene screening and late-term abortions are is offered on the NHS for many non-life-threatening conditions. (He says as the father of a wonderful disabled son.) What we're seeing now is the general case catching up.
Lord have mercy upon us.
"...declaring ithat a baby is a baby at the discretion of his or her mother. A baby born at 24 weeks may be left to die, or kept alive with every miracle of modern technology,"
But, (at least in the US, where I am), we already allow parents-or guardians and next-of-kin of adults who cannot speak or decide for themselves-to make such decisions all the time. Many babies born at 24 weeks have a high chance of significant medical issues, at the very least for months after birth, and often for life. Some loving parents choose to provide comfort care, or limited medical interventions, so as not to inflict intense suffering (because though modern medicine is certainly a miracle, as a pediatric nurse I can arrest that it can also be torture, and I don't know a single colleague who has not had the thought with at least one patient that we are taking things too far with our interventions and that that particular patient should be allowed to die with some modicum of comfort).
Indeed, this is also a factor in many of the abortions performed at the latest gestational age; a mother goes for their final, 36-week ultrasound, or for the anatomy scan typically performed around 28 weeks, only to find that the fetus she had been told was doing fine actually has a devastating abnormality that is incompatable with being able to sustain life outside the womb. An example would be a disorder-the name escapes me-in which the kidneys don't function or develop. While lack of kidneys alone can be overcome relatively simply in a newborn compared to some other fetal abnormalities, the kidneys are essential to the development of the fetus's lungs. This cannot be overcome; these babies will typically go to term without issues since lungs aren't as essential in a fetus, but once the umbilical cord is cut the baby will invariably suffocate (even if on a ventilator-the lungs simply cannot exchange gasses). Some parents choose to carry the baby to term and provide palliative care at birth, and hold their baby as it dies. But, I certainly don't fault those who make the anguishing decision to abort in order that their baby does not have to struggle for air as it leaves the world, and that they don't have to watch as it does so. Here in the US these parents are often heckled outside the abortion clinics, cruelly told things like "your baby is perfect!" and "you can still turn back!" by protestors who have no idea of the situation about believe these parents are murdering a perfectly healthy baby that they simply don't want. Nothing could be farther from the truth. And, the few providers who still do these procedures routinely wear bullet-proof vests at work and home (one was fatally shot as he attended church some years ago) and many have given up doing the work altogether because it's too dangerous.
I wrote all that out to illustrate that sometimes the line between palliative care of a baby doomed to die, and late-term abortion, can be thinner than we often think.
That life begins at conception, that “if it’s not a baby you’re not pregnant” seems a given and everything else is sophistry but certainly sophistry that is here to stay.
Your last lines about blurring the edges of personhood in old age likely allude to the next broken ankle on the slippery slope of modernity. We are 62, with enough retirement money and familial support in the form of five children who get along and can share helping out if necessary not to feel threatened by the future. Our parents lived independently until death and we hope we can too. But there are simply too many boomers living too long for them all to be cared for indefinitely. People live too long today. That sounds weird but I have witnessed the ways in which ties to family and the current times slip by the late 70’s. Younger elders remain interested in their children and grandchildren, few care very much about great grandchildren. It is one of the reasons it is such a disgrace that such old, old men are running for president.
Countries rushing to enact poorly thought out, in Canada’s case truly diabolical assisted suicide legislation are like corporations seeing those savings on the bottom line and forgetting the business they are in, which in this case is the business of protecting the people.
There will be increasing pressure for the lower classes to take themselves off the scene “with dignity”, while the oligarchs pursue immortality.
My sincere condolences on your miscarriage. Since you have shared that experience in such a public forum, I hope this question is okay and not too painful. If it is not okay, please ignore as my intent certainly isn't to cause further distress.
I often wonder, though, about how we can possibly assign personhood to zygotes and embryos when such a significant percentage will miscarry. At least 25% of zygotes will terminate themselves, often before the woman is even aware they exist, and usually-at such early stages-because there is a devastating chromosomal abnormality that does not allow for even normal fetal development much less life outside the womb. So I wonder about these certificates of baby loss... It would seem to imply that the miscarried embryo or fetus was a life, but only if the mother was aware she was pregnant (whether the awareness came before or during/after the miscarriage)?
And since so many early miscarriages are sort of a natural, though imperfect, way for the human race to have babies that have some chances of survival, and so many miscarried early fetuses never actually had that chance at all-they were in a sense doomed to miscarry from the time that egg combined with that sperm-are we really grieving the actual life, or are we grieving our hopes and dreams for the potential life? Please understand, the grief is valid and intense no matter what. But, many couples who struggle with infertility experience some level of grief every month when yet another pregnancy test is negative. There was never an actual life to grieve, yet there is absolutely grief-grief for the hopes, the dreams, the family that cannot be. I don't think even the most extreme anti-abortion people would suggest that we provide a certificate to those couples that a pregnancy was lost, and yet the feeling-according to some who've been there, as I have no personal experience with this matter-can be much the same.
So, I guess what I'm wondering is, how do we separate the hopes and dreams of the woman or couple, from the actual reality of the condition of the fetus or embryo? A parent whose child dies unexpectedly at 14 years old likely had hopes and dreams for that child to grow up, have a career, have a spouse and children of their own. Yet legally we consider them to have lost a 14 year old. Not a 30 year old, and certainly not the grandchildren that are not to be. At the same time, we recognize that emotionally they are processing all those losses. But that doesn't change the fact that the child was never an adult or a parent.
I hope that makes some sense. And again I do hope it doesn't seem callous as that is certainly not the intention.
I always find this hand-wringing tone, when speaking about when life begins, or what represents a life, infuriating. No one hems and haws, say, when discussing the policies of the third Reich towards the Jews. The third Reich was wrong to classify Jews as less than human, killing them at will. We hanged several top Nazi officials because there was NO EXCUSE for them to have such a belief about the Jews. Similarly, today we do not hesitate a moment to declare chattel slavery wrong. “Good people” jump at the chance to denounce chattel slavery. I have personally turned down the opportunity to have children because I chose to honor the FACT that life begins at conception (thank you IVF warlock in La Jolla). We know too much to hold onto the fence-like position of knowing when life begins but suspending the extension of our moral code to that newly obvious domain of life (it’s not that new - even classical people understood a pregnant woman was carrying another person).
Can we please grow up, acknowledge that life begins at conception, and act accordingly with our moral code? We expect men to fight to protect wives, girls, strange women, and even whole societies, due to the belief that women’s safety should come before that of men. Is that fair? No. Do men accept it? Yes, because men implicitly expect women to bear children and create the next generation, they (men) are willing to step into their role of being expendable in the name of protecting women. It is time for women to feel, and accept, their righteous responsibility - to nurture and protect children from the moment of conception. No more hemming and hawing!
Only the Catholic Christian stance on abortion is coherent. Every other stance is relativist and subjective.
"In its wake, who else might we unperson and in what circumstances? When do disabled or elderly people lose personhood, for example, and in whose gift does this reside? Whose interests take priority, and why? Those who advocate decriminalising late stage abortion in the name of compassion may yet find that the changes they advocated did more to free those with power, than to protect those without it."
It's not an open question, not hypothetical. We know the answer. We have seen what happens, elsewhere.