And at that point, late term abortions, you can't even use the Judith Thompson line that it does not matter whether it is a person, even a person can't impose on an unconsenting woman for life support. By the 28th week or so, the fetus is viable.
When it comes to animals we draw the line by how smart they are. that makes sense because it does seem that something like a certain degree of consciuuness and self-consciuosness makes a moral difference for some of the reasons Singer suggests. But if we go that way, how to rule out infanaticide?
Doug's argument suggest that we draw the line earlier, saying that it would be OK to prohibit late term abortions. (This was in fact the view of Roe v. Wade.) So, how about it, feminists? What do you think?
My point is, this is logically very hard stuff, however you come down.
--jks
> JKSCHW at aol.com wrote:
>
> >Neither. It's the logic of the arguments. What makes abortion hard is that if
> >we want to say it is OK to kill fetuses, it is difficult to avoid commiting
> >ourselves to principles that would appear to make it OK to kill newborn
> >infants. As our recent discussion of Singer illustrated, that is a position
> >that few of us will swallow. I know of no plausible answer to this problem.
> >So people like Marta and I who support abortion rights and oppose infanticide
> >are stuck in an awkward bind.
>
> Doesn't "birth" mean anything? Sure there's a continuity between the
> fetus and the neonate, but a 3-month old fetus is still a very
> different thing from an infant fresh out of the womb. Why not be
> worried about spilling one's seed? Every one of those billions of
> spermatozoa is half of a potential life. And all those tampons
> flushed daily down toilets contain material of potential lives.
>
> For most of Western history, abortion was not a problem. It didn't
> become a problem until a bit more than 100 years ago. I think
> Yoshie's right - the "hardness" is a social construction; it has
> nothing to do with the issue (or the non-issue) itself.
>
> Doug