Do Human Rights start at conception?

[Dannyboy1]

Originally Posted by Akashic_Librarian

I take your point. But I didn't say that. I said human rights begin at birth. And anyway who waits 22 weeks to decide to abort? If you didn't want the baby you would abort as soon as you knew in my opinion.

Even so...I believe that you should be able to abort at any point during the pregnancy, however at later dates this should only be reserved for cases where medical complications could endanger the life of the mother or if the child should die in the womb.

But I don't think you should lie to yourself and think it's okay.

[jeff3]

Originally Posted by Akashic_Librarian

I take your point. But I didn't say that. I said human rights begin at birth. And anyway who waits 22 weeks to decide to abort? If you didn't want the baby you would abort as soon as you knew in my opinion.

Even so...I believe that you should be able to abort at any point during the pregnancy, however at later dates this should only be reserved for cases where medical complications could endanger the life of the mother or if the child should die in the womb.

What's the difference?

[Still Growing]

I always try think in terms of what I think the future holds. We know that our civiliation is barbaric at times. The whole burning witches at the stake for example, slavery or not allowing women to vote.

Yea there must be things that we do now that in the future they'll look back and say "What were they thinking?" !

If you think about human existence and what happens when you die? Well we all know that the heart stops beating.

The heart is the miracle that pumps life through our veins. It delivers nutrients, oxygen, white blood cells, etc. The heart is the little engine that says your body has life.

The baby's heart starts beating at 5 weeks.

I predict that in the distant future that humans will universally accept the 5 week period of when life begins.

I know that today there are adoption issues, rape, insest, and other issues of inconvenience. It could be that in the future that they are able to extract babies at 10 weeks for example. There could some day be a law passed that you must agree to go to the hospital to have the baby incubated if its 5 weeks or older. The mother's wouldn't have to deliver full term but then the babies would have a shot at life.

I am just trying to think with clarity of what I think the future will hold. I know that we can't predict the future but this would be my guess.

What say you?

[Dannyboy1]

and you believe abortion is okay, I want you to look into your child's eyes and tell them it would have been okay to abort them. If you truly believe it's okay, you want them to believe it too, right?

[Still Growing]

Is this to me?

If not what do you think of my prediction.

[Dannyboy1]

Originally Posted by Still Growing

Is this to me?

If not what do you think of my prediction.

I don't know.

[Dan.Linehan]

Originally Posted by Still Growing

Is this to me?

If not what do you think of my prediction.

Lungs begin to form at twenty weeks. It's unlikely viability will be achieved before then - at least for the foreseeable future.

[Dan.Linehan]

Unless someone invents an artificial womb.

[schola]

Originally Posted by Dan.Linehan

I am also pro-choice. I'm personally morally opposed to abortion, but that doesn't mean it should be illegal.

That's an important distinction too. I agree with you.

Regarding legality, the Federal government should have no say either way. It should be left up for the individual states to decide.

[Trezker]

In my opinion this is a personal question. No one other than the pregnant woman has any right to decide what morals she should follow. She should have the right to follow her own beliefs. Making laws against abortion is definitely wrong.

However, when the child is separated from the mother it has the right to live. How exactly to deal with difficult situations after this point gets trickier.

[Still Growing]

Originally Posted by Dan.Linehan

Lungs begin to form at twenty weeks. It's unlikely viability will be achieved before then - at least for the foreseeable future.

Maybe you're right. Maybe in the future it will be after lungs form.

Also it could be possible than an artificial womb could be created.

[Still Growing]

Originally Posted by Trezker

In my opinion this is a personal question. No one other than the pregnant woman has any right to decide what morals she should follow. She should have the right to follow her own beliefs. Making laws against abortion is definitely wrong.

However, when the child is separated from the mother it has the right to live. How exactly to deal with difficult situations after this point gets trickier.

I understand your point however our culture could change over time and opinions like you've formed could change in the mass culture in the distant future.

Certainly it is illegal to kill a baby after birth according to the law and this is not a personal choice. Is there a big difference in the baby one day before she gives birth? Of course not and so this is also not a personal choice. So the question is, "When does the baby have the right to be protected by the State or gov't under law?"

Currently our mass culture sees the gap between conception and before birth as the baby still being attached to the woman's body. The idea that "its the woman's choice" is not because the baby has no rights its because the woman's right trumps the undeveloped baby's rights in our current system. The lack of development is what makes it a personal choice based upon what we view development to be. Our culture says that a woman should not be forced to carry a baby to term or told what to do with her body.

Its my prediction that when technology is more advanced and babies are able to be developed outside the mother's womb that the woman's right over her own body will no longer be an issue. At that time the culture as a whole will examine the inconvenience caused by forcing a woman to carry a baby to term will no longer be an issue. Most likely the State or Federal gov't will then say that the baby's right to live will trump the woman's right to abort.

The baby's individual rights today are at X weeks however as technology advances I think that the weeks will not go longer but instead will be shortened. Logically as technology advances so too will what we view a baby's survival rate out of the mother's womb.

Technology is advancing so quickly that I think in ten or twenty years I'll look back on this post and my prediction will come true. What do you think of my logic?

[NightSpirit]

Originally Posted by Still Growing

Is this to me?

If not what do you think of my prediction.

I think you are right and that our ideas on person hood will change as medical science improves. They just came up with a way to measure brain activity in the womb way earlier than they could before, for therapeutic purposes of some kind.

If they approve gay marriage before then, the incubated babies will be available for them to add to their families.

[Still Growing]

Originally Posted by NightSpirit

I think you are right and that our ideas on person hood will change as medical science improves. They just came up with a way to measure brain activity in the womb way earlier than they could before, for therapeutic purposes of some kind.

If they approve gay marriage before then, the incubated babies will be available for them to add to their families.

Sure why not.

[Elrond]

We can ponder our whole lives when an zygote/embryo/fetus develops an awareness/consciousness, or when a spirit possesses it.

However, there is one thing that gives the platform for your personality, your abilities, and indeed everything that makes you more than a mere cluster of cells: cognitive ability. It can also be fair to guess that consciousness springs forth from cognitive brain functions, moreso than any other part of a human. "I think, therefor I am." It can be argued that before the fetus/embyro/whatever has developed cognitive functions, it is just an organ that is dependent on the womans body, and therefor a part of the womans body, not a separate entity.

If a person becomes braindead, "it" doesn't have the rights of a cognitive person. The rights to take medical decisision on behalf of the cognitively deceased person is passed on and those with that responsibility can pull the plug if they so decide. You could say that it is because it is impossible for the braindead person to have any further say in the matter, but I would challenge you to find someone that thinks that ending the life of that person isn't the most reasonable decision to make. The person is gone.

[Dan.Linehan]

Originally Posted by Elrond

If a person becomes braindead, "it" doesn't have the rights of a cognitive person. The rights to take medical decisision on behalf of the cognitively deceased person is passed on and those with that responsibility can pull the plug if they so decide.

Great point.

[Still Growing]

Elrond,
Good points.

So we are discussing when a baby has a right to life and should not be aborted. I threw out that in the future it might be when the heart starts beating, someone else said maybe its when the lungs are developed. You are saying when the fetus has thoughts; is this correct?

How many weeks do you propose?

[Elrond]

Originally Posted by Still Growing

Elrond,
Good points.

So we are discussing when a baby has a right to life and should not be aborted. I threw out that in the future it might be when the heart starts beating, someone else said maybe its when the lungs are developed. You are saying when the fetus has thoughts; is this correct?

How many weeks do you propose?

There is no concrete right or wrong in this, but there are "benchmarks" that are more reasonable than others. I would say that the fetus can be considered to be a human when it starts to develop cognition, as this is what makes us more than a cluster of cells. It is what makes our personality and it is reasonable to assume that this is a likely point at which awareness springs forth. At least it seems more likely than that consciousness is linked to bodily functions like breathing and heartbeat. I am not sure of this, but I think that cognition precedes the ability to independently breath (developed lungs).

Though the point at which cognitive abilities are developed seems like a reasonable benchmark to me, i won't say that this makes it a human in the full sense, in that it has all the rights of a human outside of the womb. There are also the womans rights one must consider. It seems logical that the rights of the fetus grows as it becomes more developed. So the rights of the fetus vs. the rights of the woman could be a tipping scale, and their rights would at some point be very close to each other. Though the woman will probably have more rights, since a pregnancy should be able to be terminated if it becomes a danger to the woman, though I'm moving into the gray areas of ethics now...

I won't propose any set week, since I haven't been able to find out when this development happens. But I do not think it happens before it becomes a fetus.

I have read some of your posts on the possibility that science might make it possible to take a fetus out at a certain stage and develop it fully outside of the mothers womb. I don't know how or if that would be possible for a fetus to be taken out when it starts to develop the nervous system or whatever in the foreseable future, and I won't try to discuss it since I'm not well versed in the technology nor the biology of this subject. But something that might put the idea of being able to take out "pre-babies" prematurly might be the predictions of yesteryear. Or more specifically, 20-30 years ago. On an episode of That 70's Show, Eric Forman in some context mused over the impracticallity of food-consumption and nonchalantly stated that in 20 or so years, food could just be consumed through pills, anyway. And though this was a sitcom created in our time, I am sure there were people that were thinking about similar possibilities.

There doesn't seem to be much of that going around now, 30 years later, nor have I heard of any advance in that department. One of the more obvious reasons being the fact that people like food. And obviously there are many practical reasons. But one of those reasons that are interesting in this context is the fact that it is very hard to create an artificial food that is as healthy as a real food. There are so many benefitial layers to real food: enzymes, minerals, fiber, complex carbohydrates, di-carbohydrates, specific fats: colestrol... the biology and chemistry is too complex to go into, and probably too cumbersome to reproduce satisfactory outside of nature, atleast fora very long time to come. Plus you had to compress all of that into a pill, and even if you did, it would than take a very long time to digest it fully (because of the small surface).

Similary, maybe the ability to develop a fetus outside a womb is too difficult, too expensive or too cumbersome compared to what you get out of it. It is likely a combination of the three, and if so, it will not be an option for the masses, since child-bearing in most cases is something that one can endure and come out of relatively unscathed.

[Elrond]

Some people say that human life begins at the stage of the zygote, because the soul or whatever you call it takes possesion of the apparatus at that point. Though this is not an unreasonable stance, may I ask when a human stops being a human? Should a human that is brain dead and is being sustained mechanically have any human rights, does it have an awareness? When a person dies, at what point of decomposition does the soul leave the body?

This is something that I have never seen discussed, but I don't see how it varies greatly from debating at which point the soul or awareness enters the body. Intuitivley, this might seem more obvious; it seems pretty obvious that the soul exits the container when the container is dead. But it isn't a given. The cells aren't dead yet, and if a zygote can be considered to be a human (a cluster of cells), than a newly deceased person can also be considered a person, even if that person has no hope of development.

[Akashic_Librarian]

Elrond by yoru own reasoning a baby should only have rights when it can consciously decide. Thats the impression I got from your analogy. But in that case the child would be about 9 - 10 before it can decide, and thats highly unreasonable wouldn't you say?

I propose that as long as a baby is inside a person that baby has no rights. It is only until that baby is seperate from the mother can it have right.

[Elrond]

Originally Posted by Akashic_Librarian

Elrond by yoru own reasoning a baby should only have rights when it can consciously decide. Thats the impression I got from your analogy. But in that case the child would be about 9 - 10 before it can decide, and thats highly unreasonable wouldn't you say?

That's highly unreasonable, I agree. What's also unreasonable is to guess that I mean something when I have given you absolutely no basis or reasoning to even entertain the possibility that I hold that opinion. On the contrary, my reasonings have thus far only implied that it is reasonable to give the fetus at least some human rights whilst it is still in the womb, after a certain point of development.

You need cognitive brain functions to be able to consciously decide. In fact, you need cognitive brain functions for a lot of things, and it is indeed developed prior to the age of 9-10. It is developed while you are a fetus, maybe even before that. Using the reasoning you applied to me is like saying:

Me: You may have human rights when you develop ability A. Having ability A gives the basis to develop abilities B, C, D, E and F, in that order.
You: So, you must have ability D to be able to have human rights?

In this context, A=cognitive abilities and the rest is all the development that can occur with ability A as its basis. Maybe you just misunderstood what I meant with cognitive functions.

What I said regarding to consciousness: it is reasonable to believe that awareness is tied to brain functions. Consciousness and awareness does not equate having the abillity to consciously decide, whatever you mean by that. It simply implies awareness.

[MariaIsabel]

Originally Posted by schola

That's an important distinction too. I agree with you.

Regarding legality, the Federal government should have no say either way. It should be left up for the individual states to decide.

Why do people always say that? W It's still the government deciding, only on a different level.

[MariaIsabel]

Originally Posted by schola

That's an important distinction too. I agree with you.

Regarding legality, the Federal government should have no say either way. It should be left up for the individual states to decide.

Before Roe v Wade, it was up to the states to decide, which is why the case was brought to federal court.

I think people should look at exactly what the Roe v Wade decision said. I am not very internet savvy. I can't find that information to link to this post, but I do know that one thing everyone keeps bringing up -the viability question- is taken into account in the court's decision. You cannot get an abortion legally in the third trimester unless your life is in danger.

This is not something that I normally talk about, because I believe this is a private issue that will never be settled and usually ends in a screaming match because it juxtaposes two opposing and very strong ideas about freedom. People who are against abortion will have their personal moral reasons for being so. Likewise, people who are for abortion rights have theirs. One thing that has always intrigued me, though, is the following and I would like to ask the anti-abortion people their opinions.

Fertility clinics. Thousands of eggs are fertilized, frozen and then after a certain time, they are destroyed. Do you have a problem with that?

As well, what about the morning-after pill that keeps a fertilized egg from implanting. Is that immoral? I've always wanted to know what people thought about that.

[Lauxa]

In primitive human societies, if a baby was malformed or unwanted it would be abandoned and left to die.

In other primate societies, as well as human history, when males conquer a new territory the suckling infants are killed so the females regain their fertility sooner.

In this society, a person must reach the age of 18 before being granted full rights and responsibilities. Before this point, parents are responsible for punishing their children and can legally take actions against children that would be forbidden against an adult.

I'm not sure what the point is. Maybe just that societal norms define what we consider to be moral or immoral, that the example of nature is brutality, that it is our prosperity that enables us to even have these conversations.

[Still Growing]

I have an idea.

Why don't we create a pill that enables women who were raped or where insest occurs to take in order to stop from becoming pregnant. We'll call it the morning after pill.

We'll then allow abortions for those who wish to have one very early in the pregnancy before the embroy develops into a baby for those who believe in abortion but we'll create these adoption agencies to take the babies from mother's who don't wish to raise the child.

We can then create a system that serves everyone.

Oh wait, this is the system we have now.

[Akashic_Librarian]

haha nice post

[JimOfferman]

Abortion is no simple choice between right and wrong, but rather choosing the lesser of two evils: end the life of the unborn child or force it to grow up in a family that does not want it.

Personally, I think the latter is much crueler...

[Elrond]

Originally Posted by JimOfferman

[...] end the life of the unborn child or force it to grow up in a family that does not want it.

...or adoption.

[Ninja]

Originally Posted by Elrond

...or adoption.

You conveniently forget that this is much, MUCH more traumatic for the mother*. And then I'm not even touching the mental and physical effects (a lot of them permanent!) of having to fully carry out a pregnancy. As far as I see it, an embryo is like a virus: not dead, but not alive either. It may become a living being if you wait long enough, but you can't [rabid pro-life mode]OMGWTFBBQ MURDER!!!111!!one!![/rabid pro-life mode] something that isn't alive. It is like removing a parasite. That is also why I am generally not very impressed when giddy friends show me ultrasounds of their seven week old "unborn child".

*Not always, but often. This is because a lot of the women wanted an abortion but were pressured into going through with the pregnancy.

[Ninja]

Originally Posted by Dannyboy1

and you believe abortion is okay, I want you to look into your child's eyes and tell them it would have been okay to abort them. If you truly believe it's okay, you want them to believe it too, right?

I actually asked my mother if she would have aborted me if she could go back in time. She said that I was planned, but that if she had concieved me 5 years earlier, then yes, she would have aborted me.

I'm glad that she was/is willing to consider abortion. It just proves even more that I am a wanted child.