Women have a responsibility to more than themselves

As for personhood, given what I have read, I would say that consciousness and the ability to feel pain (28th week), gives one a prima facie duty not to inflict pain and that would include I think a prima facie duty not to euthanize. This would also mean that I would be committed to a pretty thorough going vegetarianism, which I am by virtue of this argument. The reason why I shy away from birth though is because viability begins at the 23rd week in technologically developed countries. If birth was the criteria, then a 24th week premature baby born would have personhood, but a 37th week fetus, who is more developed would still be eligible for abortion. That seems problematic. As for full ontological personhood, most likely Singer is right that it occurs several weeks after birth (consciousness, intentionality, rationality, minimal communicative ability, and self-awareness), perhaps 3-4 of these are necessary for full personhood, but only 1 is required I think to justify moral obligation not to euthanize without significant overriding reasons (quality of life, mother's health, etc).

 

Well souls no. But minds yes. I would argue that the brain is necessary for mind (I'm not a Substance Dualist). The neurological differences between mammals are one of degree, not of kind. But I don't think it is controversial to say that newborns lack the kind of cognitive abilities that pigs or cows have. And since, all have the ability to feel pain, it would seem that we have an obligation not to inflict it.

 

You make the mistake of thinking something has to be complicated, couched in big words and esoteric crap.....it doesn't..

I would think you'd be able to respond to a one liner.....but I'm not going to go out of my way to make it more complicated to meet your approval....the abortion debate doesn't need that.

It's obvious you just have no good response, no rebuttal, or you'd offer one. You just keep stating I'm wrong but have never said why....

 

Well ,you could've at least showed how what women do to other people(children) relates to abortion, you haven't so far....
Abortion is not assault, not child abuse, not murder.....if you think it is, prove it.

 

Actually this doesn't follow either. I would engage an argument, if there was an argument to engage. I gave you several reasons why your responses don't merit a substantive response (see the list of logical fallacies). If you want to take each of my claims point by point, and have a reasonable thoughtful discussion, I'm open to the conversation. But to respond to statements that glance over what I have said, mischaracterizing it, ignoring it, or without engaging it, would be a waste of everyone's time. Lastly, there is nothing esoteric in what I have written. If I wanted to be obtuse I could have said something like

-Patriarchal hegemony posits a presumed universality upon the feminine/masculine binary by locating its essentialist representations as embodied within transcendental subjectivity itself. This idealism, tied to to Kant's constituent apperceptive moorings and ensconced within ahistorical linguistic representations, obfuscates how ideological myopia under-girds the various cultural and juridical constructions of gender identities. Furthermore, this hegemonic estrangment is predicated on debilitating exclusionary practices, which preclude re-negotiations of gender identity via performative modalities (including that of discursivity) which allows for a more meaningful navigation of the intersubjective cultural intersectionalities where authentic identity emerges.

- Now that would be esoteric language.

 

So what? How is this relevant to abortion?

 

Merely showing how the language of anti-choice embodies question-begging assumptions and given that the same technique can be applied to obviously bad situations - being anti-choice when it comes to child abuse is good. So being anti-choice in some contexts is a good thing (this could apply to abortion as well) even if it sounds like the opposition is against freedom (as it was slyly intended to do). In other words, the language is question-begging and carries with it the power to demonize dissent.

 

On the surface that seems like a reasonable threshold (the capacity to experience pain). I used to consider that as a logical threshold for personhood because I thought fetal response to pressure and sound might indicate the capacity for thought. Actually the brain stem is functional much earlier than the cerebrum, so the brain stem handles basic functions like heartbeat and reflex actions with no thought or memory involved. If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, any noise it makes is moot. Reflex movements just mean the sensory nerves and the motor nerves and the brain stem are operational. They do not prove the brain is able to recognize or experience pain. In fact, there is strong evidence that the mechanisms of thought and experience are not available to the cerebrum until the last month or so of pregnancy. At that point you might have a case for extending the "benefit of the doubt" into those last few weeks of pregnancy, but I would say we have no moral authority to do so because the mother (by the last month of pregnancy) has already demonstrated more actual care and concern for the life of her potential child than a whole church full of pro-life advocates. If that woman is contemplating an abortion so late in the pregnancy, she is probably dealing with a crisis, and the government should not interfere. We risk becoming like Ireland (so afraid of finding a reason to justify the abortion that we let the mother die).

Pro-life advocates keep telling me the newborn does not even possess enough self-awareness to qualify for personhood so what reason would there be to extend the "benefit of the doubt" to any point prior to actual birth?

 

So all you wanted to say was that "anti-choice" can be applied to any situation under the sun where there's a choice (no, really? ) ....and echoing Zeffy, so what?

 

It's obvious you just have no good response, no rebuttal, or you'd offer one. You just keep stating I'm wrong but have never said why....you don't like my style, that's your excuse for talking about me rather than addressing what I wrote.

If you have a point about abortion, state it.....


Well ,you could've at least showed how what women do to other people(children) relates to abortion, you haven't so far....
Abortion is not assault, not child abuse, not murder.....if you think it is, prove it.

 

And the whole demonize dissent thing - you left that part out -THAT was the point of the concern. It's kind of a big deal.

 

What "demonize dissent thing" ? Why is it a big deal?

 

Some pro-choice advocates hold this too. But they also advocate for infanticide (Michael Tooley, Peter Singer) . Mary Anne Warren kind of does, she argues there is nothing unjust done to an infant that is killed since they aren't persons, but since someone wants to adopt it, it would be to deprive those prospective parents the right to adopt. Most of the pro-life arguments I am aware of argue for personhood at conception (usually due to DNA,or potentiality, or having a future that is robbed - Don Marquis). Since I find the current state of neurology to be somewhat suspect (no account of what consciousness even is), I am somewhat suspicious of claims that say well the brain demonstrates the ability to process pain, but not experience. How can one account for the conceptualization of experience, if the science can't account for the nature of consciousness itself? So I error earlier than the last month - 28th week. As for late term abortions, I would argue that you are probably right in that these are almost always for health issues, but I merely leave open the caveat that if it is for trivial reasons, there would seem to be at least prima facie duty to deliver at that point (since we are past viability).

 

I am willing to believe that our individual personality (self-awareness or spirit or soul or whatever you want to call it) exists outside the physical realm (even if I cannot remember what I was thinking before my birth). If the soul exists outside the physical realm before conception and after death, I am convinced that it must require a functional brain in order to manifest itself in the physical realm. If we are just our minds, the product of a complex bio-mechanical brain, then we certainly need a functional brain to have personhood.

If the doctor is concerned that the fetus might experience pain (especially in the last few weeks of pregnancy) he can administer drugs to block any possible sensations. I would be more concerned about the potential for self-awareness in those last few weeks (versus the presence of pain receptors) and that is why I believe there might be some reason, in those last few weeks, for the the pregnant woman to consider the potential personhood of the fetus.

 

[MENTION=71380]Adorno[/MENTION] Still waiting for a response to post #74 please.

 

You analogy fails on numerous points, which I have already supplied and as yet you have failed to respond to. Post #74 awaits your response.

Personhood or consciousness is irrelevant to the abortion debate, whether the unborn are deemed as person or not makes no difference to the legality of abortion .. in fact the unborn being deemed as persons only serves to strengthen the abortion debate in favour of abortion at any time, for any reason and the state being required to pay for it.

The whole argument of whether the fetus feels pain, or is conscious etc is nothing but a red herring designed to distract from the real issue concerning abortion which is not what the unborn are, but what they do.

 

How do we know it takes more than nerve cells and brain stem to experience pain? We have seen that some people have Congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP), also known as congenital analgesia which makes them unable to experience pain even when they have all of the "wiring" to do so. Something in the brain did not make the final connection, so they do not actually "experience" any pain that normal people would experience.

 

For the same reason using the term anti-lifers would be - it characterizes the opposition in terms that undermine their character, thus "poisoning the well" in such a way that the whatever they say immediately seems suspicious.

 

I forgot to respond to this point from your prior post:

I would not want to see the US go as far as Ireland (where it would appear that you have to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the mother's life is at risk to get an abortion). I think we can agree that a woman who has carried the child this far should be able to get an abortion if there is any risk to her life, but there may be grey areas where some people would not agree.
What if it will just cripple the mother (and would it matter if she has two other children to raise)?
What if the baby would be born without a brain (I mean anencephaly, not holoprosencephaly)?

 

Anti-Choicers ARE against women having the choice of abortion or gestation.

To me, people who want to take away that right are making themselves "demons"....no one has to do it for them.

Everything they say isn't suspicious, it's just always wrong.

 

I think most people settled on the terms "pro-choice" and "pro-life" as shorthand for the two ends of the spectrum because they do not demonize either side. I cannot speak of other groups but Operation Rescue used to remind their activists to use terms like "pro-abortion" and "baby-killers" when speaking of the opposition.

 

Okay. But I'm not sure why that poses a problem. My only point here was to suggest that neurology has yet to account for consciousness. As for mind being separating from the brain, it seems difficult to account for how a non-material entity (mind -as it is described under this theory), can interact with the brain - a material entity (particularly given the law of inertia).

 

Pain is basically an interpretation of pressure and/or temperature. CIP just reminds us that without a functional cerebrum, the nerves (of the fetus) might detect pressure and route that signal to the brain stem where it could cause a reflex reaction, but until the last few weeks it would be impossible for the fetus to experience that signal as pain. That is why I do not believe the presence of reflex response indicates that the pregnant woman is obligated to preserve the life of the fetus from that point on.

I do not claim to understand how the metaphysical mind can bind to the physical brain. I accept as a matter of religious faith that the mind (or spirit or soul) may be eternal and it inhabits the brain for a period of time. I believe in freedom of religion, so I support your right to believe that the soul/spirit/mind does not exist apart from the brain.

 

But surely you can see how this is used to skew the discussion. People who are anti-abusers are anti-choice too. People who are anti-genocide are anti-choice too. Some anti-abortionists couch the debate in terms of competing rights (IF the fetus is an equal person to the mother, then there are competing concerns: the right to life and body of the child and the right to life and body of the mother) - so the question that is being debated is when does one person's right legitimately infringe on another's? The dilemma is that abortion renders the idea of absolute rights obsolete, since there are competing rights - the right to life, autonomy, and right not to be harmed of the fetus, and the right to life, autonomy, and the right not to be harmed of the mother. Saying one is anti-choice (hence anti-freedom) seems to beg the question to one side - since both the mother and child are rights bearing entities. Both sides restrict rights. What would you say to those extremists who say, if the baby is viable, we are not going to infringe choice, we're just going to kill the mother and harvest the baby? Is killing in this case, a restriction of choice in that it prevents her from making choices later on? Wouldn't this be an even more egregious restriction of choice than just preventing the choice about abortion, since it would remove all future choices (including abortion choices), all future experiences? Is this still anti-choice? If so, then both sides are anti-choice, since killing restricts choice - the fetus is prevented from making future choices, what differs is merely which side of the coin you are on. If the fetus is not a person, this is all moot.

Although, the discussion of rights itself is just within a possible social framework. There are many social scientists who argue that rights are mere fictions that do not exist objectively, merely as agreements between citizens. That brings up a whole other element of concern. How do we justify rights themselves?

 

Big Glaring Flaw : The fetus is NOT a child and has no rights, it is not a born person.

In this forum I will only deal with "Pro-Choice" or Anti-Choice(at times laughingly referred to as "Pro-Life") in reference to abortion not buying cars or getting tattoos....just as they apply to abortion....