Although I had thought I would avoid this whole thread, I guess I am going to second Justin's response to Max's charge of "logical incoherence."
Earlier Max derided those who worry about "defining a person." But that really is what it is all about, isn't it? I must say that I see a lot of good reasons for drawing a very sharp line at birth, in addition to those listed by Justin. For one thing there is a theory held by more than a few religions that the soul enters the body at the time of birth, and in particular with the beginning of autonomous breathing. I note in this regard the link between the word spirit and words for breathing (inspiration, respiration, etc.). This is no accident.
Now, I do not necessarily buy into such arguments. But I would note, Max, that if you don't think birth is a major boundary, then you don't have much of a basis for drawing an earlier one. You suggest that during the third trimester there is "a baby in the womb." Well, why stop at the third trimester? Why isn't there "a baby in the womb" in the second trimester? What becomes the criterion for assigning rights? Survivability outside the womb? Existence of a brain? Evidence of reactions to stimuli in the womb? The lines on those things range from somewhere in the second trimester to well down into the first trimester. And, of course, we have the claim of the "pro-lifers" (still jack-booted in my book, at least some of them) that you've got to take it all the way back to conception.
Well, Max, the bottom line is that once you start making claims about the "rights of the unborn" you are on a slippery slope that has no clear end or boundary. I'll stick with giving the rights to the mother as long as the baby is still inside, even if only partially so. Barkley Rosser On Sat, 21 Nov 1998 09:22:07 EST JKSCHW at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 98-11-20 14:24:31 EST, you write:
>
> << Put another way, if there is an expectant mother,
> mustn't there be an expectant child?
>
> Begs question. You can call a woman so is exoectant an expectant woman oe a
> pregnant woman. She';s not a mother unless she has a baby, so you can't argue
> from the fact that we call her a mother, if we do, that therefpre the fetus is
> a baby.
>
> >I've always been "pro-choice," but the air has
> been slowly going out of that balloon for a while
> now. I've yet to hear a logically coherent argument
> for it.
>
> The issue is tough, but there is a large literature on the subject. You can
> geta good sample in anlmost any good intro ethics texts.
>
> (1) Judith Jarvis Thompson has a famous article in which she argues that even
> if a fetus is a human and has as much a right to life as you or me, it does
> not follow that abortion is wrong. The argument turens on the idea that I do
> not have a right to the use of your body to keep me alive, even for a minute.
> So if I would have to be hooked up to you to live, you would be justified in
> saying, Solly Chollie, it's inconvenient, even if that would kill me. The
> analogy is obvious.
>
> (2) Them there are the arguments that turn on whether fetuses are people.
> These generally operate by remarking that people have features--rationality,
> linguistic capacity, etc., that fetuses don't have. The argument hasa lot of
> force against people who are carnivores--surely we think it's OK to eat cows,
> but a grown cow is a lot more rational, etc. thana fetus. If we found
> something as dumb asa fetus on Mars, we certainly would not conclude there's
> intelligfent life there.
>
> The problem with this line of argument is the line-drawing issue. Newborns
> aren't smarter than fetuses, so it must be OK to kill them if it's OK to kill
> a fetus. Thus Singer and Michael Tooley.
>
> Various philosophers have wrestled with the issue. My own solution is
> characteristically pragmatic. Line drawing is arbitrary, so we can draw the
> line at birth in part because that respecxts the strong feelings lots of
> people have about infanticide and in part because we think it would be bad for
> _us_ if we casually killed newborns. That doesn't get rid of thye
> artbitrariness, but it provfides a reason for drawing the line where most
> people think it should be drawn.
>
> > Any defense of womanhood must, it seems,
> grant some standing to the baby in the womb.
>
> Whyzzat?
>
> >And
> it seems incontrovertible that at some point in
> the third trimester, at the least, there IS a
> baby in the womb. >>
>
> Hardly. AT least if "baby" you mean "personw ith moral standing."
>
> --jks
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu