At what point does a fetus become a human being?

[sketcheasy]

a logic based moral system? morality is an issue of ethics. it is a matter of philosophy. yes, there is logic too it, but even non-religious moral philosophies aren't entirely logic based. moral relativism itself is a highly self-contradicting ethical stance on many levels to the point of even being self-defeating. it does not address a point of reference nor does it give a sufficient explanation as to what morality is, where it comes from, and why it is there.

i will not argue that there are moral grounds that can justify killing another human being. and i the issue of zygotes to me is a bit gray, but i will not concede that a fetus is in fact human. it has a beating heart and is consistent with the conventional definitions for life with the exception of reproduction, which won't even develop til the child reaches puberty anyway. to kill it merely because i don't want it, doesn't seem morally sound because it could give me ethical grounds to say, because i don't like you i can kill you. i'm sure you will agree that merely wanting the death of someone that is alive does not justify killing.

 

[01011010]

There are no empirical tests which can be brought to bear on the question of when a feotus becomes a human being, since what is being implicitly argued over is the definition of the words 'human being', and definitions are established by convention. In other words, the two parties in the debate are defining the term 'human being' differently, according to different conventions. The debate is ethical, not semantic or scientific, about what properties must an organism have before it is wrong to destroy it? To argue about "essential" definition of 'human being' is a distraction, and it is not something which can be established by any empirical test.

Someone that makes sense. Thank you.

 

[edel weiss]

Here is a question we might ask someone from China or India. Is it inethical to abort a fetus because it is a girl?

I'm jumping in rather late, but anyway...

Sex determination tests themselves are illegal in India. (I don't know about China). That way you are free to abort your child, but you will never know whether it was a male or female fetus.

This law is, however, flouted with alarming regularity. There are plenty of illegal sex determination tests, and the fetus is often aborted if it's a girl.

Abortion in India has been legal for a long time, upto the 12th week of pregnancy. After 15 weeks it's allowed if the fetus or the mother is at risk, and after 20 weeks it is allowed only if the mother is at risk. There was never too much of an abortion debate in India. The law was decidedly pro-choice, and there was never any controversy over the life of the fetus.
The mother was always given first preference.

Recently, however, a mother with a 25 week old fetus which had a congenital heart defect appealed to the court to be able to abort the fetus. After quite an extensive medical, philosophical and legal debate, the court dismissed the plea, primarily because there was a possibility that the child could live with a pacemaker.

Since then, there's been a debate about abortion. Why do we think that it's okay to abort a 12 week old fetus but not one who is older? These divisions were purely arbitrary ones. Either you say that life begins at conception, or that life begins at birth.

I am pro-choice. I might not ever want to undergo abortion myself because I would not feel good about it, but I think every woman should have the right to choose.

 

[The_Liquid_Laser]

So would you consider it inethical to abort a fetus because it is a girl? Why or why not?

 

[Ishida]

At conception or never.

 

[Samuel De Mazarin]

The only point of classifying something under "human being" is that a human being has rights.

Some say that a fetus is a bunch of cells that cannot be considered "alive" whereas a human being is alive.

A human being is a bunch of cells... one could say that human being (being human) is merely an emergent property of the life that our compositional cells have.

 

[Samuel De Mazarin]

So would you consider it inethical to abort a fetus because it is a girl? Why or why not?

In India, there's a huge problem with patriarchy and male chauvinism, particularly amongst poorer families.... daughters are viewed as major burdens, because one must feed and raise them only to give them away with dowries at the time of their marriage... any sexual "impropriety" before marriage, even if it doesn't result in a pregnancy, often ruins a girl's chances at having a good marriage set up for her by her family, because virginity is seen as necessary for a decent marriage. so, female children are often seen as liabilities... male children, on the other hand, are not at risk of getting pregnant even if they do have sex before marriage, their sexual improprieties are far less harshly judged, they bring in the dowries that avaricious in-laws demand from the brides' parents, and they carry on the family name to boot.

Because men have so much more freedom than women, in most places in India and the rest of the subcontinent of India, and they are seen as financially less draining, many poor parents-to-be will try to determine the sex of their baby, through amniocentesis, and then abort the child if it's a girl. That's why aborting female children is illegal in India: the government's simultaneously trying to curb the growing imbalance of male versus female populations while working on women's equality in more places than just in major cities.

 

[Ivy]

A professor I once had (a huge crush on) a class with characterized an embryo/fetus as a human becoming. God he was hot.

 

[Samuel De Mazarin]

everything is becoming

 

[The_Liquid_Laser]

In India....

Heh you did the same thing as edel weiss. You explained the cultural situation in India while avoiding the question.

 

[Samuel De Mazarin]

Heh you did the same thing as edel weiss. You explained the cultural situation in India while avoiding the question.

No... I answered a question someone asked.

 

[millerm277]

Since then, there's been a debate about abortion. Why do we think that it's okay to abort a 12 week old fetus but not one who is older? These divisions were purely arbitrary ones. Either you say that life begins at conception, or that life begins at birth.

I think the problem is, that for most people, they, don't believe that "conscious life" begins at conception or birth, but somewhere in the middle. Therefore, since we have no real way of telling when exactly that occurs, you get arbitrary divisions that attempt to define it for people.

I'm male, and Pro-Choice.

 

[Samuel De Mazarin]

I figure with modern screening technology and advanced medical knowledge, people should generally be able to isolate most potentially traumatic birth defects in a baby well before the 20th week... therefore, it seems that's a pretty good cut-off. But I'm not well-verse in medical knowledge, so I wouldn't know about defects that are only detectable, say, in the 6th or 7th months... but it seems in poor taste to abort a fetus a two or three months away from birth... why wasn't the decision made much, much earlier?

 

[edel weiss]

So would you consider it inethical to abort a fetus because it is a girl? Why or why not?

Yes, I would think it is inethical. Parents should have a child because they want to have a child, not becuase they want to have a girl or a boy. I believe that in some places people are allowed to abort a baby because of its gender if they've already had two or three children of the same gender before.

The cultural situation in India is quite a problem. The sex ratio in the last census was 933 females for every 100 males. It's not just in the poorer families, either. The rich are equally likely to sex-selectively abort. The situation is so bad that the government has requested people - Give birth to your daughters and leave them with us - We'll bring them up. Some States even try to give incentives to families who have daughters by paying them. Imagine that. Paying people to raise a daughter.

 

[Splittet]

Back in my early philosophical days I was dealing with this question, but by know I find it irrelevant. The problem was always being able to undefine fetuses as human being, but still having all dysfunctional people defined as human beings. If you take the moral absolutist point of view it is wrong to kill a human being, then you cannot be pro-abortion. I think one really only can use the biological definition of what a human being is, everything else becomes arbitrary and has too big issues. Since I am not a moral absolutist I have no problems with abortion though.

 

[Samuel De Mazarin]

The cultural situation in India is quite a problem. The sex ratio in the last census was 933 females for every 100 males. It's not just in the poorer families, either. The rich are equally likely to sex-selectively abort. The situation is so bad that the government has requested people - Give birth to your daughters and leave them with us - We'll bring them up. Some States even try to give incentives to families who have daughters by paying them. Imagine that. Paying people to raise a daughter.

You're pretty much spot-on in what you're saying, though I don't think the rich are "equally likely to sex-selectively abort". I think economics is a major factor in gender-based abortions and I've rarely heard of upper-middle class families aborting their babies because they're female. This is not to say that the wealthy are more moral, but rather that they're less bound by the cultural mores which affect women of lower economic standing.

An example... it's far easier for an upper-middle class family to deal with a girl-child: they know that because the girl will go to a good school, like Cathedral in Mumbai or the Doon School, and, following that, a great college, like St. Stephen's College in Delhi, the girl will be far better equipped to get a job and also to find a mate, since that family will be more able to pay her dowry (if a dowry is demanded... more and more wealthy families are also less tradition-bound)... for a girl born in the slums or a village, her life is instantly dedicated to making money, to bringing in bare essentials for the family unit by doing farm labor, becoming a servant, or even begging. There's no time for school, so the girl has very little ability to break out of her economic situation. Her only chance at marriage is really dependent on how much a boy's family wants to have her and how much dowry the girl's family can cough up. A few members of my family who employ teenage girls as cooks and maids pay their dowries when the girls get married.

Unfortunately, though, edel weiss reminds me that it is still true that even in economically better-off families in India, women are frequently pressured (or, in Indian English, "pressurized") into marriage, since a woman unattached to either father (family) or husband is a maverick who's flouting the social order.

 

[edel weiss]

You're pretty much spot-on in what you're saying, though I don't think the rich are "equally likely to sex-selectively abort". I think economics is a major factor in gender-based abortions and I've rarely heard of upper-middle class families aborting their babies because they're female. This is not to say that the wealthy are more moral, but rather that they're less bound by the cultural mores which affect women of lower economic standing.

Unfortunately, though, edel weiss reminds me that it is still true that even in economically better-off families in India, women are frequently pressured (or, in Indian English, "pressurized") into marriage, since a woman unattached to either father (family) or husband is a maverick who's flouting the social order.

True... I suppose I mean that a wealthy family would be be equally likely to abort a female fetus if they already have a daughter/s. They don't mind having a girl. But they still want to have a son.

Pressurised isn't a real word?
And here I thought that my English was too good to ever be Indian English!

It does seem in poor taste to me to abort a baby two-three months before it is due. I think that's because at that point, it is possible for the baby to survive without it's mother. Could that be a point where the fetus is said to be a human being? The point where, if for some reason it is born early, it can still survive?

 

[Samuel De Mazarin]

Pressurised isn't a real word?
And here I thought that my English was too good to ever be Indian English!

No no! Pressurize/pressurise is a real word alright... but generally in America and, I believe, the UK, I haven't heard pressurize utilized as a transitive verb between both a human agent and human object... usually "pressure" suffices... so one might say "The strips of balsa wood were pressurized into solid blocks" but on the other hand "John pressured Maya into marriage."

Your English generally reads perfectly... in fact, I believe I was the only one who used 'pressurize' in this thread.

Indians who speak English aren't necessarily speaking "Indian English"... and "Indian English", for that matter, isn't a bad thing... that's why I regularly prepone appointments when slots open up in my schedule...

It does seem in poor taste to me to abort a baby two-three months before it is due. I think that's because at that point, it is possible for the baby to survive without it's mother. Could that be a point where the fetus is said to be a human being? The point where, if for some reason it is born early, it can still survive?

Ah, I guess you're saying an infant doesn't need its biological mother for survival postnatally... well, then we get into social services and foster homes and that's a sticky situation... more people need to adopt...

 

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Yes, I would think it is inethical. Parents should have a child because they want to have a child, not becuase they want to have a girl or a boy. I believe that in some places people are allowed to abort a baby because of its gender if they've already had two or three children of the same gender before.

The cultural situation in India is quite a problem. The sex ratio in the last census was 933 females for every 100 males. It's not just in the poorer families, either. The rich are equally likely to sex-selectively abort. The situation is so bad that the government has requested people - Give birth to your daughters and leave them with us - We'll bring them up. Some States even try to give incentives to families who have daughters by paying them. Imagine that. Paying people to raise a daughter.

Thank you for your input. I like to hear the answer to this question from someone who has a different cultural perspective than I do. In the US abortion comes down to which is more important: the "rights" of the fetus or the economic well being of the mother/parents. In India their is a third dimension, because India is chauvinistic in their views toward newborns, since parents will be financially rewarded with a son, but financially penalized with a daughter. So in your view it seems that chauvanism is the most important issue, then the economic status of the parents and thirdly the "rights" of the fetus.

Also I think it shows how culture affects our views of morality. In India the disproportion in male and female #'s is an issue making the gender bias be more important. In the US one of our issues is children raised without a stable environment like in a single parent home or by teenagers who are not financially stable. I think this is a big reason why abortion is permissible in the US. The vocal minorities on each side of the issue either talk about "right to life" or "woman's right to choose", but in reality the silent majority is content to let abortion happen, so they don't have to deal with as many people raised in unstable homes. It may not be an ideal solution to most, but it is a convenient one.

 

[ygolo]

Can you tell I ride the fence here? As usual.

The "fences" in issues like this are actually Great Walls. They give a great vantage points for what is on either side, and there is plenty of room there.

I've agreed with every post of yours on this thread so far.