fetus inside a tank hypothetical

Discussion in 'Abortion' started by JoakimFlorence, Feb 18, 2016.

  1. Merwen

    Merwen Well-Known Member

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    IMO the situations are totally different.

    Although no woman should be forced to carry a child she does not want, if the child is in a machine she is not "carrying" it, except, possibly, financially. In this case, the question becomes, what destinies are available for such a child if abandoned by one or both parents?

    Once the child is outside of the mother and developing without her active biological involvement, her greater right to determine the child's future exclusive of the father's involvement no longer makes sense. The parents would therefore have equal rights.

    Barring a clearcut payment contract signed by both parents, the parent who continued to want the child would be responsible for the continuing support of the child. If neither parent wanted the child (we're talking fetus here, not just a fertilized frozen egg) it seems to me the rights of society step in. If there is a waiting list of adoptive families, by court action custody of the fetus could be given to one of them, and they would then be responsible for completing the incubation payments.

    At that point in societal development, only frozen eggs never intended to be incubated could be used for organ harvest, and careful laws around just how and when that would be done would have to be developed.
     
  2. JoakimFlorence

    JoakimFlorence Banned

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    Ah, but once the man voluntarily inserts his sperm into the woman's body, doesn't it now become her property, where she is free to do with it as she chooses?

    What I'm trying to say is that the woman did not "steal" it. She simply let the man deposit his material into her bodily orifice. Then when the man got up to go take a rinse in the shower, she scooped in there and collected out a little sample, for further use later...
    It's really no different than a woman tricking a man into getting her pregnant... except in this case the fetus is just started off in a tank rather than the woman's uterus.

    Ok, what if the woman caught on to the man wanting to abort their child, and she arranged for the fetus to be removed from the tank and inserted into her body, where it would be protected from the man's legal authority? :wink:
     
  3. Fugazi

    Fugazi New Member Past Donor

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    no because this would then fall under fraud. Though it would be very difficult for the man to prove that fraud has taken place.

    Onus here is to prove that the woman tricked the man, care to try?

    Again trying to equate apples to oranges, once the fetus is inside her body then any act that causes injury to her without her consent is illegal .. you see the issue you have is that a tank is not a person, it has no legal rights where as a woman is a person and has legal rights, much to your disagreement.
     
  4. JoakimFlorence

    JoakimFlorence Banned

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    taken from another thread:
    Some very interesting assertions, as they relate to a woman "stealing" a man's sperm and using it to grow a fetus in a tank... :wink:
     
  5. OKgrannie

    OKgrannie Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Really, you're wasting time here, why don't you apply your vivid imagination to writing a novel? Perhaps people would even pay you to be allowed to read it.
     
  6. JoakimFlorence

    JoakimFlorence Banned

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    Ok, would it be ok to perform horrific medical experiments on a fetus in a tank? Use these poor fetuses for medical experimentation?

    And, if we decide to use a viability cut-off for these experiments, how do we decide when viability is? Is it the point at which the fetus can be taken out of the tank and put into an incubator unit? If so, the concept of this notion is completely absurd, because then we have only swapped out one form of mechanical assistance for another. In other words, there's not really any clear cut-off point.

    Or are we going to try to arbitrarily define "viability" as 24 weeks, because that's when it can usually be taken out of a woman, even though no woman's womb was involved here. How does this make any sense at all? You can't try to extrapolate the concept of viability from one situation when the situation has changed completely.
     
  7. FoxHastings

    FoxHastings Well-Known Member

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    You: """ How does this make any sense at all? ""


    Uh, you are the one bringing up bizarre scenarios ....and they don't make any sense at all....
     
  8. Fugazi

    Fugazi New Member Past Donor

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    Look to whether we do now and you will find your answer
     
  9. MegadethFan

    MegadethFan Well-Known Member

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    No, it would not be horrible...

    ...Unless they had a contract, in which case the mother can sue for breach. Depending on your opinion, that breach of contract might be horrible, and I think in this case it sounds like it could very well be.

    Do you think it is horrible? If so, why?
     
  10. JoakimFlorence

    JoakimFlorence Banned

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    Care to take a jab at my horrific medical experiment hypothetical (first post at top of this page) ?
     
  11. MegadethFan

    MegadethFan Well-Known Member

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    Sure, although I would (as in the case of abortions) seek the use of pain meds during such experiments for the fetus unless the utility of the experiment so required it, like with animal testing.

    I agree that the idea of viability extending a right to life is absurd and should not be endorsed.

    The tank in this scenario, assuming these fetuses arent unusual, should therefore be treated similarly to a pregnancy - 9 months/the point of expected birth, would be the cut off point for killing the fetus.
     
  12. JoakimFlorence

    JoakimFlorence Banned

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    Well, thank you for making an attempt at my hypothetical.
    Your view here on this is outrageous, but at least it is consistent.


    Again, thank you for attempting to make an answer about when a cut-off point should be.
    I do not think your answer here is consistent though. I mean, why would it be ok to kill at 7 months when the fetus can obviously be taken out of the tank? (7 months = 30 weeks gestation, 95% chance of survival)

    There is no pregnant woman in this hypothetical, so you can't attempt to use the "It's her body" argument.
     
  13. MegadethFan

    MegadethFan Well-Known Member

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    When you say outrageous, do you mean unacceptable? If so, why?

    Well technically infanticide up to about 16 days after birth (if I remember the research correctly) would in most cases be ok, but to avoid killing babies that may have developed sufficient self-awareness I think it makes a practical precaution to not allow infanticide at all except in extreme cases until we can be extremely accurate as to the sentience of all babies. For this reason it is obviously fine to kill a fetus before birth.

    I agree that this is a stupid argument for the most part.
     
  14. JoakimFlorence

    JoakimFlorence Banned

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    quoted from another thread:
    Actually you have raised an interesting point. An embryonic clump of 200 cells can be put away in cryogenic storage and later implanted into a woman, where it can eventually grow into a baby. There it has to stay inside the woman to be able to survive until viability (the most extreme record of a fetus being able to survive long-term outside of the womb was at 21 weeks gestation).

    So between 200 cells and viability (roughly 22-26 weeks) a fetus needs to be hooked up to a woman to be able to survive (at least with the current level of medical technology). This is notable because, theoretically, there is only a definite interval of gestational development where the developing blastocyst-embryo-fetus absolutely needs the woman. This means that, for the sake of hypothetical argument, the so-called "fetus in a tank" concept may not be entirely implausible.

    We can have the zygote in a petri dish, and grow it into the primordial embryonic stage. And we can theoretically take a fetus out of the woman at 24 weeks gestation. But between those two disjunct time frames, a developing human needs a woman to survive.
     
  15. JoakimFlorence

    JoakimFlorence Banned

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    The obvious question is: Would a fetus growing in a tank have a right to life? (assuming there was someone else willing to pay for it)

    This is a question I believe pro-choicers will be reluctant to want to answer.
     
  16. Fugazi

    Fugazi New Member Past Donor

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    For one there is no such thing as a right to life .. Where does this right to life come from, who or what deemed there is a right to life, and, assuming you say someone or something deemed there is a right to life, by what authority do they claim this right for others?

    The fetus in the tank is not causing physical injury to any other person so there is no reason to kill it.
     
  17. Gorn Captain

    Gorn Captain Banned

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    In TWO of his hypotheticals?

    Joakim creates the image of women as "baby-making machines".....here as "tanks" and in his newest as "brain-dead, but keeping the fetus alive."


    Any first year psychology grad students want to take a crack at....why...he does this?
     
  18. tecoyah

    tecoyah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Any rights designated would be secondary to the owner of the embryo and machinery required to maintain it. Otherwise a utility owner can be charged with murder because of a power outage, the machinery operator imprisoned for mechanical failure, or the scientist sued for developing the technique.

    The scenario is almost the same quandary as punishing a woman for a miscarriage or abortion. As soon as the ZEF is given rights...someone else loses them.
     
  19. JoakimFlorence

    JoakimFlorence Banned

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    Thank you for your opinion.

    I see it as a patient hooked up to a life support machine.
     
  20. tecoyah

    tecoyah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    What is the patients name?...or do you need to ask someone else what it is?

    Perhaps 782340198762?
     
  21. diamond lil

    diamond lil Well-Known Member

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    The foetus would belong equally to both donors. One would not be able to interfere with it without permission from the other.

    Therefore if the man killed the growing foetus without permission from the woman, then he would be breaking the law.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/court-uk-woman-cant-use-frozen-embryo/
     
  22. JoakimFlorence

    JoakimFlorence Banned

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    What if the woman had the fetus grown without the biological father's permission? And the man does not find out about it until later. Would the father, in such a situation, have the right to have the fetus terminated?
     
  23. diamond lil

    diamond lil Well-Known Member

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    She couldn't.

    Doubtful, but he could sue the medical facility enabling the foetus to grow.
     
  24. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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  25. edna kawabata

    edna kawabata Well-Known Member

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    I'm sure the legal ramifications would have been worked out beforehand when messing with human life. If "daddy" decides to pull the plug, legal problems will follow and jail time could be possible. The rights of the woman and fetus were violated. The rights of the fetus are dependent on its stage of development, something pro-lifers can not grasp.
    (repost)
    Here is something you may find interesting in the real world....."developmental biologists had thawed dozens of human embryos, placed them into individual culture dishes and watched them grow through the earliest stages of development"......"The embryos would soon bump up against the 14-day rule" and be destroyed.....but "in May, the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) released new guidelines1 that relaxed the 14-day rule, taking away the hard barrier."
    Genocide in a petri dish?
     

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