From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!arens@UCBKIM
Newsgroups: net.women
Title: Re: Rational Argument Against Abortion
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.744
Posted: Fri Jan 28 18:29:58 1983
Received: Sat Jan 29 06:17:12 1983

From: arens@UCBKIM (Yigal Arens)
Received: from UCBKIM.BERKELEY.ARPA by UCBVAX.BERKELEY.ARPA (3.300 [1/17/83])
	id AA07136; 28 Jan 83 18:29:27 PST (Fri)
To: net-women@ucbvax



The fact that Mike Dolan raises -- that one can point to no precise moment
when a fetus becomes fully human -- doesn't necessarily imply that the fetus
was ALWAYS human.  This is simply another case of a continuous process
leading to a not very clearly defined state.

It could be likened to a child growing up and turning into an adult.
Clearly a 40 year old woman is and adult.  Nothing of substance changed from
the age of 10 to 40, and it is impossible to point to a single moment when
the transition took place.  But nobody claims that a 10 year old girl is an
adult!

What took place was a gradual transition from childhood to adulthood, and
adulthood itself is a "fuzzy" concept that of its nature doesn't allow one
to pinpoint its inception.

The transition from a fertilized ovum to a newborn baby is another case of
this.  Clearly, the newly fertilized egg is NOT human, and just as clearly a
baby 5 minutes before birth IS human.  And there is no single moment along
the way where the transition takes place.  It's a matter of degree.

Abortion on a newly fertilized egg is a medical procedure performed on the
body of a woman, and aborting a soon to be born child is killing it.  But
there is no simple point along the way where one turns into the other.  It
is basically a personal moral decision which the state should get involved
in only in the extreme case.

We have to face it -- not everything is simple and clear.  In the case of
adulthood the state can, more or less arbitrarily, decide that it is legally
reached at the age of 16, or 18, or 21, because the consequences of such a
decision are not too severe.  But the consequences of deciding, necessarily
in an arbitrary fashion, that humanness begins at conception, are VERY
serious.

Yigal Arens
UC Berkeley