Well, an acorn is an oak tree at the beginning of its development, but an acorn isn't an oak tree and saying it is doesn't make it so -- that's simply an esthetic, or philosophical, "feeling", or sense of things, that you're sharing. It's a kind of poetry.
They are different entities, and a lot of things have to happen before an acorn becomes an oak tree, and most acorns don't become trees. For an egg to become a chicken, lots has to happen, circumstances, resources. For an egg to become a baby, a lot has to happen, including being found by a sperm and not falling out as half or more of them do. (I've read an estimate that as many as 60 - 80% is possible, though 40 - 50%is the usual estimate.)
I don't think any abortion that causes pain to an embryo or fetus should be performed. If it is, it's an outrage. I'm against pain. That's why I support choice. Forcing people to bear unwanted children is a pain factory.
The "requirement" that they "watch" something? And required to get "counselling"? Who would be doing the requiring? The counseling? It's kind of futuristic or something. Would raped little girls be forced to watch, too? .
I'm a woman who lost a planned pregnancy and very much wanted pregnancy. You just told me what "women" feel. Hmmmm, Grainne.
Do you really think that a clot passing painfully causes the same grief as a stillborn baby? I feel I would have died of grief if I had had a baby born dead. I have almost died of grief in my life -- I know what that is. When I miscarried, I was disappointed, and cried, and was depressed for a week or so. That early miscarriage wasn't in the top ten losses and occasions for suffering and grief, in the real life of a real woman who knows what losses are. I envy any fertile woman who suffers great grief over the loss of an early pregnancy for what an easy, cushioned life she's had!
If I had had any doubt that I could become pregnant again, the loss of my only chance to have a baby would have been a terrible, terrible, thing, and occasion for the profoundest grief, to me, as would have having some physical problem that would have prevented me from having babies.
All sexually active fertile women lose many many fertilized ova during their menstruating lives. Billions upon billions, trillions, quadrillions, of them are sloughed out by females each year. Is this a momentous tragedy? A holocaust? Is 'God' killing babies, or are those simply fertilized ova sloughing out for whatever reason before they become babies?
Should we make our highest medical research priority retaining those zygotes in uteruses? For someone who asserts authoritatively that zygote of a few cells is a baby, I'd say the answer has to be yes.
Now I'm tired of talking for the twentieth time on SI about abortion rights. Here's my last statement: I am opposed to late abortion and am opposed to state-enforced gestation by American women of either zygotes or embryos.
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