Personhood and Abortion Rights

[_Kevin Graham]

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

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

No forceps needed because there's no skull. Nothing even close to being a miniature human form. No bones, no heart, nothing. Just dividing cells in a hollow zygote floating around with only a 40% chance of making it to the beginning stages of pregnancy. You may as well be mourning over all that spilt seed you leave in your bathroom sink. Millions of examples of "life" that you just toss to their deaths every morning. Those are about as much "babies" as the millions of zygotes that never made it to blastocyst stage.

[_EAllusion]

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.

I don't think this is accurate. That's certainly not what the term personhood normally means. There are circumstances where a person's rights Trump's another's such that it is justified to kill someone even though they are a person. It's possible to argue that a fetus is a person while also arguing that a mother should still have a right to remove it from her body. These are ambitious arguments, especially outside the context of rape, but they exist.

[_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.

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.

First, to be clear I'm not arguing for or against this position or saying it's wrong. My point is that it is at an extreme end of the discussion of when a fetus achieves the conditions of personhood and therefore radical.

This hypothetical person has a boundary point where they would agree that the mother would be taking the life of another human person were they to end that life. And they would expect the law to enact justice on behalf of the life lost, those impacted, and society. That boundary just happens to coincide with the moment the baby and mother are separated.

By definition, this is arguing the fetus never has rights. So it never achieves this person's unstated conditions for personhood, which again is the term for the condition where something is considered a person with rights.

So this person in our hypothetical situation has made a judgment where they feel that, for themselves, they might not see the fetus at any stage as lacking the qualities of a human being that they associate with being a human being. But by allowing another person the legal option to end that life at any point up to the moment of birth (whatever that looks like), they are saying even though they feel the fetus has all the qualities of being a human being that they consider important, they never achieve a point when they should be considered a person with the right to life that would weigh in against the right of the mother to end the processes taking place within her that lead up to the birth.

Legally and historically, this isn't how most societies have assigned personhood. It's not to say this is not a charitable view towards the mother, but it's radical in how it only focuses on the mother. If brought up in a debate about when the killing of a pregnant woman might include double homicide because her killing also resulted in the loss of life of the fetus, it would be considered a radical position to argue that, even if the mother was killed by a drunk driver while in labor on her way to the hospital, the drunk drive could only face charges pertaining to the mother's loss of life.

If I take issue with anything in this position, it isn't with the position's outcome per se, but with it's apparent disdain for the legal concept of personhood out of what can only be considered a poor understanding of what that means. By dismissing it, it still takes a stand because personhood isn't an arbitrary concern people are trying to insert into a debate where it wouldn't otherwise exist. The debate is about when the fetus has the right to life. By definition, it's about personhood.

[_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.

I don't think this is accurate. That's certainly not what the term personhood normally means. There are circumstances where a person's rights Trump's another's such that it is justified to kill someone even though they are a person. It's possible to argue that a fetus is a person while also arguing that a mother should still have a right to remove it from her body. These are ambitious arguments, especially outside the context of rape, but they exist.

You are arguing for conditions where rights are in conflict, which happens all the time.

But that's not what is being asserted. It isn't that the person in question is arguing that the rights of the mother are higher up in the heirarchy. That would require first acknowledging that the debate has to consider when the fetus is a person with rights. The stated positions in this thread have been that the whole personhood debate is a diversion and there is no condition where the fetus has rights that would rise above the concern of the mother. Your point requires it in order to determine where the fetus' rights fall in comparison with the mother's rights.

[_EAllusion]

But that's not what is being asserted. It isn't that the person in question is arguing that the rights of the mother are higher up in the heirarchy. That would require first acknowledging that the debate has to consider when the fetus is a person with rights. The stated positions in this thread have been that the whole personhood debate is a diversion and there is no condition where the fetus has rights that would rise above the concern of the mother. Your point requires it in order to determine where the fetus' rights fall in comparison with the mother's rights.

But it's possible to argue that a fetus will never have rights that rise above the concerns of the mother while arguing that a fetus is nonetheless a person with ordinary rights. It's just that in the rights balancing act, the fetus by virtue of what it is doing always loses. Those arguments rely on comparing the fetus to an unwanted intruder or parasite on the body. I don't like these arguments, especially when sex is voluntary, but they seem to be referred to in this thread.

[_EAllusion]

For what it is worth, there is a sizeable segment of the US population that would combine economic populism with social conservatism. Donald Trump appealed a great deal to these people, which makes sense if you just look at his campaign promises and ignore who he actually is. It's possible to support universal health care or a robust social safety net while also being pro-life. The argument that if you are pro-life, you are a hypocrite because you probably also oppose public support of any kind post-birth really doesn't do justice to what a lot of people actually think.

[_honorentheos]

But that's not what is being asserted. It isn't that the person in question is arguing that the rights of the mother are higher up in the heirarchy. That would require first acknowledging that the debate has to consider when the fetus is a person with rights. The stated positions in this thread have been that the whole personhood debate is a diversion and there is no condition where the fetus has rights that would rise above the concern of the mother. Your point requires it in order to determine where the fetus' rights fall in comparison with the mother's rights.

But it's possible to argue that a fetus will never have rights that rise above the concerns of the mother while arguing that a fetus is nonetheless a person with ordinary rights. It's just that in the rights balancing act, the fetus by virtue of what it is doing always loses. Those arguments rely on comparing the fetus to an unwanted intruder or parasite on the body. I don't like these arguments, especially when sex is voluntary, but they seem to be referred to in this thread.

Of course it's possible. But we're talking about it here on a message board where many pages in a thread have divolved into dismissal of the entire concept of fetal rights as an attempt to sidetrack what some apparently think is obvious. It's interesting that the article linked to in the OP set out the debate rather well, I think my follow-up link also supported this, but every time the concept of personhood gets raised on this board it's viewed suspiciously like an attempt to deflect from the underlying "real" issues. Or, on the other side, it's mistakenly viewed as synonymous with attempting to define when life begins.

This example I cited and Jersey Girl questioned serves well to demostrate why a person who is ignorant of what personhood means is still very much participating in the debate - because it's central to it. Due to their naïve attempt to be charitable to the mother in all cases it results in a radical position regarding fetal rights. Removing the debate around when a fetus achieves personhood removes the ability of a person to argue that the fetus has rights in any conditions. Realizing personhood matters is a precondition for your point.

You have the luxury of attempting to debate this with me which only works because we both recognize the starting position is one of competing rights. That isn't doing the larger debate any service, though.

[_EAllusion]

I think all the good arguments for the pro-choice position turn on fetal non-personhood. And, in truth, I find people who are arrogant about being pro-choice even granting fetal personhood to be just as obnoxious as pro-lifers who just assume fetal personhood. There's almost a 1:1 overlap between that group and people who think opposition to pro-choice views only comes from misogynistic disrespect of female bodies and self-determination. It's almost a mirror of pro-lifers who think they're debating with people who are pro-convenience murder in terms of its lack of charity and unwillingness to understand what they're disagreeing with.

All that said, I think at least some posters here get fetal personhood as it relates abortion arguments.

[_Chap]

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. [...] 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.

This is a view completely new to me, one apparently held by certain evangelical Christian groups (though not by any in the rather mainstream traditions that I have had contact with, or read about).

For instance:

Bibleline Ministries: WHO IS A JEW?

Most Jewish people say that a Jew is someone who practices Judaism. In other words, Jews are those who practice a certain religion. Biblically, we must reject this view. It is believed that the Jews espouse this view to avoid persecution or another holocaust. They would like to be thought of as merely a religious group rather than a race.

I have to say that this is completely against my large and varied experience of relations of a professional, friendly and family nature with Jewish people. I have know a number of people who were actively hostile to religious belief who continue to insist on their Jewishness. Most Jewish people, if pressed, use the 'was your mother Jewish?' criterion, or even sometimes more widely as, in effect, 'would Hitler have wanted to kill you for being Jewish?'

Here is the first part of an answer from a religious Jewish organisation:

Who Is a Jew?

Jewish identity is both simple and mysterious.

Simple: A Jew is anyone who was born of a Jewish mother, or has undergone conversion according to halachah (Jewish law). This has been the case since Biblical times and is firmly established in the Code of Jewish Law. The Jews live their lives in accordance with Judaism, the oldest monotheistic religion.

And mysterious. You’ll never hear of an atheist Protestant or a Catholic Muslim, but a Jewish atheist, or even a Jew who converts to another religion, is still a Jew.

The same applies to a convert. To provide an extreme case, let’s say a female convert changes her mind and reverts to her original religion. Any children she now has will be Jewish—because she is still Jewish.

But don’t imagine that beliefs are irrelevant. It’s only through acceptance of all the beliefs, practices and ideology that a person becomes Jewish.

But that’s not enough. A person who was not born Jewish and has not converted according to Jewish law may hold all the beliefs and keep all the laws and practices of Judaism and still not be a Jew. That seems more like a tribal identity than a religion.

Here’s the greatest mystery of Jewishness: Once in, there’s no way out. You can join the team, you can fumble the ball, but you can’t quit. No one can throw you out—not even G‑d.

So is Jewishness a tribal identity, an ethnic identity or a religion? We can’t seem to fit it into any of these boxes. And how do we explain why this identity, once adopted, can never be erased?


Jewishness as Permanent Citizenship

Perhaps Jews are permanent citizens.

Citizenship is one of the landmark innovations of the Western world. In his series of lectures, “Epochs of European Civilization,” historian Geoffrey Hosking lists citizenship and the closely related idea of the nation-state among the four ideas that distinguish modern Western civilization.4

Before there were nations, there were kingdoms. Kingdoms The idea of citizenship was born not in Athens or Sparta, but in the Sinai peninsula. have subjects. The king makes you his subject. It’s not your identity—it’s that of the king.

To have a nation-state, you must build a strong sense of identity from the bottom up—which is the idea of the citizen. Citizenship implies a sense of responsibility between citizens, along with certain privileges, such as the right to own property, or to have a say in legislation.

Where did these two ideas of the citizen and the nation-state originate? Hosking insists it was not in Athens or Sparta, but in the Sinai peninsula, with the birth of the Jewish nation.

At Mount Sinai, every Jew, man, woman and child, became a team player in a fledgling nation. When they took over the Promised Land, every Israelite became landed—with ownership of his inherited plot of land for perpetuity. During the time of the Judges, the people had no king to unite them, but they were held together by a sense of common lineage and destiny. The law was absolute, but it’s interpretation and application was always discussed, principally amongst the elders, those most respected by the people. The identity of the nation depended on every individual doing his or her part, and behaving in accordance to the law.

So we could explain Jewish identity very much as that kind of participatory citizenship, continuing throughout history, even as we have left our land and are without a monarch or central authority. We are citizens of a mobile, distributable, highly-resilient nation—quite similar to the World Wide Web.

That explains how Jewishness is inherited regardless of your parents’ conduct—just as citizenship is inherited.

It would also explain why someone who wants to become Jewish must commit to keeping all the rules, while someone who is already in and flagrantly breaks the rules remains a Jew. That’s no different than citizenship. Even a traitor remains a citizen—albeit a jailed citizen.

But the permanence of it—that remains a puzzle. Although it is rare today for a nation to denaturalize a citizen, it is certainly common and accepted for a citizen to renounce his citizenship. What is it about this most ancient form of citizenship that makes it irrevocable by both G‑d and man?

[_Chap]

I think all the good arguments for the pro-choice position turn on fetal non-personhood. And, in truth, I find people who are arrogant about being pro-choice even granting fetal personhood to be just as obnoxious as pro-lifers who just assume fetal personhood. There's almost a 1:1 overlap between that group and people who think opposition to pro-choice views only comes from misogynistic disrespect of female bodies and self-determination. It's almost a mirror of pro-lifers who think they're debating with people who are pro-convenience murder in terms of its lack of charity and unwillingness to understand what they're disagreeing with.

All that said, I think at least some posters here get fetal personhood as it relates abortion arguments.

In my view this thread demonstrates the extreme difficulty of trying to deal with the complex ethical dilemmas of abortion by writing down explicit legal rules. We do it because in an advanced western society we can't avoid doing so, not because it is likely to avoid conflicts about this issue.

There is just no way of writing an abortion statute that will not, from time to time, produce results that are widely seen as excessively limiting the rights of a pregnant women, or conversely as extending them to an unreasonable extent.

Incidentally, I find the concept of 'personhood' so hard to define clearly that I don't think it helps much to try to use it to find a simple way through the ethical labyrinth round this issue.