Personhood and Abortion Rights

[_Jersey Girl]

That what I am saying...Personhood, not unlike priesthood is much different than a tangible living being. Personhood was used to deny rights to slaves, it is a convenient way to exploit the human rights of others.

I don't disagree with you. I do have other ideas that compete with that concept. For example, a woman's right to make choices about her body, how she views her body, and exercise her beliefs in what constitutes a life, a baby, etc.

I can't bring myself to impose my beliefs on her. I don't live in her head. I don't live her life. I don't experience the world as she does. I am not her. She has as much a right to exercise and act on her beliefs as I do.

We should both have the right to exercise our beliefs and that's what we have. At the moment at least.

Themis wrote, and I am paraphrasing my understanding of our conversation... that a baby in womb (a fetus) is a person but does not have the attributes and I assume rights, of a woman in that they have personhood.

I think you have it right especially as you demonstrated in your examples regarding priesthood and slavery. I'll admit those comparisons were unexpected, but the comparison to slavery in particular tells me how you understand it and I do think you understand it.

I guess we can equate this in a way to the ancient Hebrew priesthood, all of Israel were Jews, "sons" of Jacob, yet not all Jews had the rights associated with the priesthood.

I'll go you one better. How were women viewed in those old Bible times?

At any rate, for me, I see abortion and personhood as excuse to infringe on others rights, in this case a defenseless baby.

Again, I don't disagree.

But I will tell you this, too. I would just as easily support an unwed mother who wanted to keep her baby as I would accompany and provide after care for one who chose not to.

In my world, both hands would get held.

[_Jersey Girl]

I guess we can equate this in a way to the ancient Hebrew priesthood, all of Israel were Jews, "sons" of Jacob, yet not all Jews had the rights associated with the priesthood.

Correction. Not all of Israel were Jews. Technically, only the descendants of Judah, one of the 12 sons of Jacob, were Jews. Because King David was a Jew, Jews became the most dominant of the twelve tribes in the Southern half of Israel, which became the Kingdom of Judah after Israel split in two after the death of Solomon. The Northern half of the divided Kingdom retained the name Israel after the split and consisted of 10 of the remaining tribes, with most of the tribe of Benjamin becoming part of the kingdom of Judah, along with some of the Levites. The 10 tribes of the Northern Kingdom were forcibly removed and dispersed by the Assyrians when they conquered and destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel. What few remained of the other tribes of Israel were more or less absorbed by the Tribe of Judah and became generally identified as Jews.

God bless you friend. I must confess that when I read Markkks comment, I wasn't able to immediately separate if he was talkng from within the framework of Mormonism or straight up from the Old Testament. I've been on these boards too long. I just go with whatever is in front of me any more.

:-)

[_Gunnar]

Jersey Girl, I so admire and respect your take on this issue!

[_honorentheos]

If a person feels that the woman's feelings dictate the limitations on abortion but agree that the woman cannot choose to end the infant at some point, assumed to inherently be at birth, it is by default deciding personhood begins at birth. It's defining when the being that is in question has rights sufficient to legally be on par with or to Trump those of the mother.

That's what the term means. And that is a fairly radical view.

[_honorentheos]

A right to choose to abort a pregnancy has been tied to the number of weeks after conception when the ability of a fetus to survive premature birth is high, defining when the law should consider the fetus to be a person with at least some rights. It's been moving closer to conception as the ability of modern medicine to help a prematurely born infant survive has improved. The article argues this is a flawed metric for assigning personhood given the potential technology and modern medicine could advance to the point a mother's womb becomes unnecessary to the process. Would a fertilized egg that was conceived in a lab and gestated to birth at 38 weeks be a person? I think most people would agree the answer is yes. But I'd guess many would also be a bit squeamish about it's implications.

Supposing in this scenario that a power outage occurs and the artificial womb shuts down, effectively ending the ability of the fetus to continue developing. Say it happens around 17 weeks in, long after there is a heartbeat and the sort of things pro-lifers try to force as evidence a woman is killing a baby when they end a pregnancy early but within the period legally allowed today. Is it an act of God and treated like a miscarriage? Or could the event that caused the power outage lead to murder or manslaughter charges if it proved to be human-caused such as a person blowing a breaker trying to use the toaster, the microwave, and blow dry their hair on the same circuit as the artificial womb?

Purposely terminating life, and removing it from the womb, whether in the first stages of life, or later stages... is different from a accidental power outage. We can justify anything we want and we all do it to different degrees...I guess it comes down to what we can live with as a person.

We can P-hack for any data that will comfort our conscious' for a correct decision. Your benchmark as to what a child is... is different than many if not most in the world, and your evidence is no more concrete and settled than opposing views. A article online, or in a journal is not the end all evidence of the definition of life, nor is a book of faith or religion. They serve as a basis for our ideology, but in the end it is a choice. Laws give a woman the right to choose, but judges with a law degree have no more of a idea as to when life begins as you or I, they are just 9 men or women with the final say, who most the time disagree themselves.

The article stated that as medical science increases, a child can survive out of the womb at a growing earlier age, my point was and is that in the womb, barring a natural problem, a child can survive in the womb from their beginning.

If it survives it is a child, if it does not it is a fetus or less.

These are also very radical views. If I can live with having killed the guy who stole from me no one would suggest that sufficiently address the legality of my taking his life. It's just a much easier lift to see the status of the thief as a person with rights that are not justifiably diminished by my having been harmed to the extent I can take his life as compensation. It's dodging the issue not compromising on it, mostly by not understanding it well enough, I would argue.

[_Jersey Girl]

Jersey Girl, I so admire and respect your take on this issue!

Thank you so much.

[_Jersey Girl]

If a person feels that the woman's feelings dictate the limitations on abortion but agree that the woman cannot choose to end the infant at some point, assumed to inherently be at birth, it is by default deciding personhood begins at birth. It's defining when the being that is in question has rights sufficient to legally be on par with or to Trump those of the mother.

That's what the term means. And that is a fairly radical view.

honor you lost me here. How is this a radical view?

I'd try to feed back to you what I think you said, but I'd fail.

[_Res Ipsa]

Lemmie, I think what you said about the nature of my argument is correct.

EA: I’m not communicating my objection to the property rights argument very clearly. I’ll try again over the weekend.

[_subgenius]

"Implantation is something of a miracle itself: ...

And an acceptable way to celebrate this "miracle" is with skull crushing forceps?

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

"Implantation is something of a miracle itself: ...

And an acceptable way to celebrate this "miracle" is with skull crushing forceps?

Better than the GOP plan of soul crushing neglect, abuse, and poverty.

- Doc