Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxd.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxd!rlr From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) Newsgroups: net.abortion Subject: Re: The Status of the Fetus and Its Rights Message-ID: <1546@pyuxd.UUCP> Date: Sun, 18-Aug-85 20:30:46 EDT Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1546 Posted: Sun Aug 18 20:30:46 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 23-Aug-85 07:18:49 EDT References: <429@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA> Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week Lines: 316 >>The fact that a person's age is determined by his/her date of BIRTH, not >>the date of conception, [ROSEN] > The date of birth is more easy to find out than the date of conception, and > until comparatively recently we didn't know much about fetal development. > [THOMAS NEWTON] And still, despite our newfound knowledge, we have a person's age beginning at birth. Ever see the books "The First Twelve Months of Life" or "The Second Twelve Months of Life"? Can you take a guess as to when the first 12 start? That's but one example of how we determine when a human life begins. >>the fact that the person is only an autonomous living being once it is BORN, ^^^^^^^^^^ > That says it all. The person in the womb is dependent upon another person for > support. But it doesn't make the one dependent upon support any less human. Newton, it's amazing how you can attempt to twist someone else's words to try to make a point, and fail miserably. It is a person, an autonomous living being ONLY once it is born. Did *I* make references to a "person" in the womb? Or did you? *THAT* says it ALL!!!!! That says a lot about who is running a clean argument between the two of us. >>As I mentioned before, it is a legitimate concern to ask about arbitrary >>criteria like ">= x years old" for determining humanness. It is not >>legitimate to try to stretch that concern to things for which the definition >>does not apply. > And I suppose the people who want to see the most restrictive definition get > to decide on the validity of everyone else's definition? When the U.S. got > rid of slavery, it wasn't because everyone suddenly said "blacks are human"; No, people had known that for some time (despite bogus non-science that still perpetuates to this day). In fact, it was precisely because they wanted to get rid of the hypocrisy, because they knew there was no moral way to support it. There is no such hypocrisy here in our debate. At least none coming from me. >>It is up to those who would stretch the definition to provide hard proof >>that it should be stretched, and to precisely what point it should be >>stretched. >> >>there is no consensus as to what the terms mean > Given these two statements, why shouldn't we go by "It is up to those who > would restrict the definition to provide hard proof that it should be > restricted, and to precisely what point it should be restricted."? Because it's a stupid thing to go by. The demarcation point of life is at birth. It is you who wants to stretch it. > After all, there have been lots of atrocities committed on "subhumans" who > were later found to be human after all. I haven't heard of any atrocities > that resulted from going the other way: assume human until proven otherwise. By this logic, we should never remove the heads from department store mannequins. After all, they might be human. The fact is they weren't "later" found to be human, they were already known to be human; it was foul bigots who in their personal insecurity blame other people for their problems who label some people "subhuman". >>If true, and it is a living parasitic organism, are you thus denying the >>rights of human being to remove such parasitic organisms from their bodies >>on these grounds? > Go ahead and kill all the tapeworms, bacteria, and viruses that you want. But > don't kill other human beings. I'm not proposing that we do. I'm proposing that similar organisms in the body (like fetuses) be dealt with in the same way if the person wants to. Unless you can prove that these are human beings. Unless you can show how they can exist in a physically autonomous separate state from the bodies they inhabit. >>Let's look at ALL the factors leading to the conclusion that a woman has >>the right to remove a fetus from her body. >> >>1. her rights to her own body: I think all except Mr. Rosenblatt, who >>seems to think that rights stem from your ability to convince people that >>you have them, would agree to a human being's rights to his/her body. >>The question thus becomes "Are there factors that outweigh this? Are there >>other 'rights' that are being ignored?" [NOTHING TO SAY HERE, TOM?] >> >>2. its parasitic nature: already discussed. No one is demanding that a >>woman MUST remove the fetus, but given wht it does to her body, surely >>her wishes take precedence over anything usurping nourishment from her >>and causing changes to her body against her will, if indeed the fetus can >>be thought of as doing these things "wilfully". If a woman has the >>right to remove things from her body as a general case, what are the >>grounds for granting an exception to a fetus? > As to the first part of #2, clearly everyone does not agree with you. You mean some people are DEMANDING that women remove the fetuses within them? Care to substantiate that? Or are you referring to "parasitic nature"? Who doesn't agree with that, and why? > Note that fetuses are younger than newborn infants, Yes, they are -x months old. Whatever that means. > and we don't hold infants to be responsible for their actions. Meaning we never punish children for wrongdoing in an effort to educate them and set them straight. (Some punish just for the hell of it, out of some pleasure of power over the kids.) This is clearly not true. > We DO hold parents/guardians to be both > (a) reponsible for their children's actions, and (b) responsible for taking > good care of their children (this precludes things such as killing them). > Also note that it is logically impossible for fetuses to cause their own > conception, since they don't exist before that point. To which I say: So? What relevance does this have to the argument? All the adults you refer to were once fetuses, and THEY didn't cause their own conception, thus (by your logic) THEY shouldn't be held responsible either. > The grounds for granting an exception to a fetus is that it is human, it is > alive, and it is not responsible for its presence in the womb. If it's human, why must it occupy another person's body? What if someone kidnapped you, hollowed out your skull, and chose to live in your head. Could you have him evicted? How? He's not "responsible" for that act, obviously he is not of sound mind. What kind of bogus argument is that? Clearly it does not qualify as a physically autonomous being at all, because it cannot live outside the environment it occupies. A better example: people who have lost their jobs and have no money are evicted from their apartment for not paying their rent. Are they exempt from eviction because they are not "responsible" for their predicament? >>3. inability to survive in the open world as an autonomous living being: >>if a woman has the right to remove things from inside her body, > Not everyone thinks that this applies to fetuses. Then remove them from the woman's body and see if they survive. I think this would be far more inhumane than abortion by any standards. >>and if we cannot find a valid reason why fetuses should be an exception to >>this rule, > But we can. YOU can, based on your bogus assumptions and preconceptions that I think I've dismantled here and elsewhere, but which you persist in re-asserting in the spirit of contempt for the argumentative process. >>then clearly a woman should be able to do so. The fact that fetuses so >>removed cannot survive, > Most cannot survive given current medical technology, but this does NOT > prove that fetuses are necessarily dependent upon other persons' bodies. > Remember the people who said that heavier-than-air flight was impossible? Then what I said above applies: take the fetus of the body of the woman who doesn't want it inside of her and do with it what you will. Put up or shut up. >>and in fact, would undergo a pretty pathetic end to their existence if >>just extracted and left on their own, indicates that the humane thing to >>do is simply to terminate their existence prior to having them endure a >>grueling and protracted end. > The humane thing to do is to let them live, i.e. don't abort them. The humane thing is to let tapeworms live, too. After all, don't they have rights, too? >>If they could, then perhaps they "should". But the fact that they can't >>tells me that they weren't fully alive in the first place, that they >>required the environment of a LIVING HUMAN BEING'S BODY for sustenance. > Where's your hard proof that this is necessary? Don't bother even trying to > construct a 'proof' for late-term fetuses, as we already have counterexamples. Late-term fetuses, as you call them, are beyond the scope of legal abortion in any case. Yes, they can be saved. And in the cases where the mother has carried the fetus to term with the intent of giving birth, every attempt is often made to do so. But this has little to do with the arguments about legal abortion. If you are seeking "hard proof", why not do what I suggested above: remove a fetus from a woman's body during the early part of pregnancy, and do whatever you like to sustain it, and take responsibility for any grotesque deformities that occur, causing a barely functioning human at "term" (whenever and ifever "term" is, and if indeed it would be human at all). >>(This is very different from saying "well, WE need air and food for >>sustenance".) > Why? What's so special about depending upon plants and animals? The whole > ecosystem is just one huge web of dependencies. I'm not occupying an animal's insides for sustenance. Furthermore, if I was out there seeking my own food from animals, do I have a "right" to do this? Is the animal powerless from stopping me from using it for food? Is a woman "powerless" to choose to have a fetus removed from her body? Same rules apply. >>Given this, and given a person's rights to their health and their bodies, >>I see no human rights being violated. > But not everyone would agree with your premises, or with the premise that a > person has UNLIMITED rights to control of their body. If someone has > absolute rights to control their body, what right do you have to prevent them > from strangling someone else? After all, they were just exercising their > right to close their fingers, and if they happened to be around someone else's > throat at the time, too bad... Ever hear "your right to swing your fist ends before it hits my face"? You have the right to your OWN body, not to others. Something anti-abortionists could learn a little about when trying to impose their will on others. >>>Some seven month old fetuses can survive outside of their mother's bodies. >>>Admittedly, they require incubators, but even normally born infants require >>>a degree of care not necessary for older members of our species. Are seven >>>month fetuses human, then? If not, why not? [private mail - name withheld] >>Yes, there is surely a point at which a fetus is close enough to being a >>living human being that it *could*, with medical assistance, be sustained >>through the end of the fetal period to the point where it could be >>disconnected from supporting equipment, and thus be a living human being. > Did everyone catch that? Now you not only need to be independent from other > human beings, but from MACHINES as well for Rich to consider you to be a > living human being. Indeed. If you are connected to full life support because your body does not pump blood or perform bodily functions, the law says you are dead. And in fact you are. To claim that you are alive (in this case) is to claim that a sewage or irrigation system or an airconditioning system is alive. There is a big difference between a living person temporarily using machines to recuperate and get back to a fully functional state and a person (or fetus) that cannot function without machines and has no hope of ever functioning without full life support of machines. > Tell me, Rich, is an adult who uses a dialysis machine not a 'living human > being'? If doctors connect a patient to a heart-lung machine during a major > operation, is the patient not a 'living human being' during the operation, and > thus subject to being killed by any random who wants to kill him/her? If not, > then how do you justify calling seven-month and older fetuses not human, even > by your definitions? 1) I answered most of these questions in the previous paragraph. 2) I did not call any fetuses human above. (A blatant and foul misquoting by Newton.) What I did say was: >>Yes, there is surely a point at which a fetus is close enough to being a >>living human being that it *could*, with medical assistance, be sustained >>through the end of the fetal period TO THE POINT WHERE IT COULD BE >>DISCONNECTED from supporting equipment, and THUS be a living human being. > Or could it be that treating fetuses consistently would > force you to the conclusion that younger fetuses might be human also? Or sperm cells? Or ova? Or individual body organs? Note again that I did not say that fetuses, older or not, are necessarily human. That occurs at birth. After all, what is birth is not the fully grown fetus saying "I'm ready, let me out", metaphorically speaking. >>(The nature of distinguishing between different degrees of supporting >>equipment is important, but not relevant, because we are talking about >>supporting equipment that eventually is removed to allow an autonomous >>living person to continue [or start] living. > Under your definition, a dialysis patient is not human, because the support > equipment never goes away. Even if one were connected to it permanently (most kidney patients need it at intervals), enough of one's other body functions are taken care of by the person's own body that he is of course still human. Even an artificial heart serves such a purpose. In fact it becomes a part of the person's body. Does the mother become a part of the fetus' body? Vice versa? >>Support by machines that perform all necessary life functions, without which >>the person would cease to live, where there is no hope of ever acheiving >>autonomy in life [again?], this is not life by any reasonable definition. >>To claim that it is would mean that an airconditioning system is alive by >>this definition.) > Dependence upon a person or a machine isn't the right measure. A closer > approximation would be "does this person have any non-brain-dead life left?" > Fetuses, healthy children or adults, and people on dialysis machines do. A > person in a coma who is expected to snap out of it also does. A person who > is brain-dead doesn't. But since a fetus is not a person in that it has not functioned autonomously, this does not apply to them. This is not an assertion of the type that you persistently make ("a fetus IS a person, it IS, it IS, it IS"). Physical autonomy is one of the fundamental pieces of the definition of "living" in the context we are using it. >>. . . My question: what does this have to do with a woman who WANTS to >>remove the fetus from her body, rather than a woman who doesn't? The >>limits to abortion do not reach into the time of pregnancy at which >>doctors have even attempted to save a fetus from such a circumstance as >>I describe, certainly before the point at which a fetus can be saved and >>expect to live a life as a human being. > But if a late-term fetus is as much a human being as a newborn infant (and > I don't think anyone can rationally dispute that), doesn't it suggest that > earlier-term fetuses might also be human? Newton, shut it. Nowhere above did I even imply that the fetus, even in late term, qualifies as a physically autonomous human being, yet you insist that I did so as to screw around with my argument. A late term fetus is not "just as much a human being as a newborn infant", it merely has much more of a chance of surviving a disruptive removal from the womb (say, due to an accident) and eventually be weaned off of medical equipment to become human. Please desist from such twisting in the future. > And if so, doesn't that throw a major monkey wrench into your arguments for > allowing abortion? If I make your assumptions, yes. Unfortunately for you and your position, I don't, and I think I have shown gaps and assumptions in your reasoning that are invalid. -- "Meanwhile, I was still thinking..." Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr