New Restrictions on Abortion Have Real World Consequences

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Sorry to backtrack but I'm still thinking about the whole personhood thing.

I'm a strong believer that in many areas of contention in life, one finds that nature knows best.
For instance, the reason we are hard-wired to want to love and protect babies is that human babies are born at a lower level of development to many animals and are quite helpless for many months, so their survival depends on the depth of that bond.
A fetus in the womb does not provoke anything like the same reaction. Yes, parents will keep ultrasound photos in their wallets, but this is based around their hopes and dreams of the baby-to-be.
Most (not all) pregnant women will have the sense to take care of themselves in order to protect the developing fetus. But it is only during the process of labour and giving birth that the oxytocin levels in the mother spike to the unprecedented levels that typically cause her to fall absolutely, crazily in love with her baby.

So I can understand the logic of Mikah's argument that the moment of conception is the start of a human and should be accorded the same rights as other, postnatal humans. But I can't feel it. We are not hard-wired to fall in love with fetuses.

I suppose the difference between Mikah's viewpoint and mine is that he is placing the logical definition of personhood above the emotional. Whereas, despite my acknowledgement that conception is the starting point of a human life, I can't recognise a fetus as being exactly the same as a person. I'll admit it's not logical. But maybe that's why logic is traditional in the male realm and giving birth is in the women's?

It's more complicated than that. In particular, my experience of pregnancy was totally different. Feeling my child inside me was a super-strong bond. There's just neither pictures nor words in our culture for it so it's hard to share.
Mourning after miscarriage is not very socially accepted and despite it, it's quite common.

I think when talking about "woman's choice", we should always acknowledge that this choice is often tragic and that whatever the choice turns out to be, that woman likely needs a lot of support.

Not sure if this should have a trigger warning, with talk about miscarriage?
Hopefully those triggered by such discussion would not be on this thread.

So I don't think my view and yours are completely opposed, Magz.
I too felt strongly protective towards my unborn children while pregnant (and it was during my first pregnancy that I truly understood that a person's life does not begin at birth but well before) - but I'm not sure that protective feeling is universal, especially if we consider girls and women who fell accidentally pregnant and do not want to have the baby.

The point I was trying to make was more about nature knowing best, and perhaps I can give another example, taking your mention of miscarriage:

Miscarriage is nature's way of terminating a pregnancy when the fetus is not viable and is not uncommon. Around 1 in 4 pregnancies will miscarry within the first 20 weeks (most within the first 12 weeks).
I'm glad we're finally moving towards being able to speak openly about miscarriage and allowing parents to grieve the lost child. I had not intended to minimise the devastation of losing a child by my discussion of personhood.

The point I was trying to make, perhaps clumsily, was that because early miscarriage is relatively common, perhaps it is a part of nature's plan that we might not see the fetus at that stage as fully and completely a person? That maybe this is nature's way of tempering our grief, so that while we might mourn the loss of our baby-to-be, we are not also mourning the loss of a self-aware person? If we were to consider the fetus as such, would that not increase the grief and guilt and trauma involved, to no benefit?
Well, that was my thought.

My experience of motherhood goes even firther, I was witnessing personhood developing in my babies.
It's a continuous process from a zygote to a self-aware person and it's not yet done at birth. Any legal cut-off will be arbitrary in some way.

Well, I'm happy taking conception as the start of a person's life, just making the observation that it is the point of lowest level of development, and very far removed from the developmental level of a baby, let alone an adult human.

Yeah, I can see it's a fuzzy concept. I've said there is a stage early in fetal development where I'm considering it to have started a human life, but not yet be completely human - more of a person-in-development than a functional person - and you are right, I'm not sure where one would place the cut-off point between potential-person and we-absolutely-must-not-kill-for-any-reason person. I believe that decision may be best made by a medical professional with expert knowledge in fetal development, which I am not.

When we are talking about timing of terminations, I don't think that decision is entirely arbitrary, either and is usually based on medical and humanitarian considerations - for instance, I believe most countries would not allow it in the late stages of pregnancy. However the medical and humanitarian barriers seem to become less strong as we move to earlier stages of fetal development. And I do believe that as we get to earlier stages there may be situations where the reasons for termination might become greater than those against. Not many situations, perhaps, but a few.

That's the thing.....when life truly "begins" is a philosophical question, not a scientific one.

There are no hard and fast answers, and people will always disagree. This is why I believe in leaving the decision to the woman and her doctor, not governments, and unaffected third parties.

Respectfully, I disagree.

Before conception, ova and spermatazoa are already alive -- they are living, single-celled organisms.

Whenever an ovum fails to be fertilized, it is expelled from the body ... and dies.

Whenever a sperm cell fails to fertilize an ovum, it is expelled from the body (maybe for the second time) ... and dies.

Should a woman face legal charges every 4th week?  Should a man face legal charges whenever he has a wet dream or ejaculates anyplace other than into a woman's uterus?  Should they both be held legally accountable when all of their attempts at natural conception have failed?

These are questions that (sadly) are usually answered by lawmakers who have little or no understanding of reproductive biology other than what they see in pornographic videos.

When life begins is inherently a biological question. Biology literally, as in using basic Greek etymological root deconstruction, means "the study of life" from "Bio" which means life and "logia" which means writing or studying of.

Yes, the actual philosophical question is: when does a fetus become a human?

There's a difference between the beginning of "life" and the start of being "human."

As Fnord pointed out, gametes are already alive. Life doesn't begin, it continues.

But when does it become "human?"

And, frankly, in relation to abortion, I don't particularly care as no human has a "right" to use my body.

That's the philosophical question.

I believe you also don't, ahem, "invite" such situations, for as much control as you have over it.

I'm asexual, so, no. But I also believe consent to sex isn't consent to pregnancy.

I think informed consent does include clear picture about pregnancy, STDs, other problematic possibilities if they exist and all planned precaution measures.

I mentioned thing like prevention and access to care for several pages, but certain other Mikah's seemed to be fairly dismissive of such measures, and instead chose to focus on george floyd, back criminals, and theft analogies - in addition to deciding how women should be punished, of course.

Conservatives be like "but, if we prevent these things, then who will we punish?!"



A valid point. It's not exactly informed consent if the person hasn't been fully informed. Pregnancy is not the place for "caveat emptor!" mentalities.