7 minutes before being born the individual fetus is a fetus and an individual person. Identiy as an individual person does not begin at birth.
I thought this was covered in Roe/Wade--that a foetus was not a person? Why are we inventing our own language here? The IS does not equal the MIGHT BECOME or WAS. A foetus is not a sperm, and a person is not a cow. Likewise, Solon is not a corpse, nor a foetus. He was and he will be, but he IS NOT.
A corpse is not a person. It looks like a person; So do many drawings and paintings--but it does not ACT like a person.
If the foetus was a person, as you are attempting to define it, then it would have equal RIGHTS to every other person including the mother. The mother would then owe this other person nothing. None of us in society are required to donate our organs, our bone marrow, our oxygen, our anything--to any other person in society. We are not even required to give blood to another--not a fingernail, not a hair. If another tries to eat us or to take our blood or oxygen--we are entitled to take defensive measures. This is what being a person is about. It is about being SEPARATE from others--about being FREE from others.
Your arguments from desperate measures and extreme cases have no relevance here. Pregnant women are not extreme cases for solving a moral dilemma. The world is full of pregnant women. If the foetus was considered a person with equal rights to life/liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it would turn the moral and rational basis of RIGHTS and "rights" right on its head. Everything the mother did would compromise the RIGHTS of that person: Every argument with a spouse, every bag of chips, every cigarette--every single event.
In the same vein, the LAW, as defender of individual "rights" would be obligated to control every aspect of the mother's behaviour in order to honour the "rights" of these tiny citizens.
A RIGHT is a FREEDOM: It is NOT an obligation. This is why I say again: The problem is, they cannot both have the RIGHT to life. They can each have the indulgence of society, but they cannot both have the RIGHT--because it involves contradiction. My RIGHT to life and liberty DOES NOT require or obligate you to donate your liver; Nor does it enfranchise me to forcibly remove yours. We are separate persons. You have no claim upon me, and vice versa.
<<Now, this is not part of my argument, but a thought: Would a wise and sensible God wastefully stitch souls into blood clots>>
The issue at hand was a fetus 7 minutes before birth not blood clot or even an embryo.
Sorry for the thought...I was extremely out of line.
Oh, btw, I spent several weeks in an incubator after I became a person. I can sympathize with the resemblance of late-term foetuses to persons. I think most peope can, and that in part accounts for the fact that there are no serious issues of disagreement when it comes to late term abortions. It is done so rarely, and the reasons are so overwhelmingly compelling.
In the instances where it is not done, the foetus often ends up in trash can--with a bewildered teen trying to stop herself from bleeding to death. |
