New Iowa Law Restricts Abortion To Before Most Women Know They're Pregnant

[Rev. Rye]

If I were to choose, I'd pick when the fetus first develops brain activity. Death (the generally accepted end of personhood) is generally determined when brain function stops, so it should make sense to start when it's first developed. And that usually happens sometime around the end of the second trimester, and while it is a bit before viability, it happens around week 20 at the earliest. Before that, it's no more sensate than a stone; this is why there's no comparison between someone who's been born, but has substandard cognition, and a fetus that hasn't developed any.

So are you arguing that they are not even alive (the fetus)?  I think that science would disagree. The ability to reproduce is also a qualifier for life as well, but we don’t say that the young or the old who can’t reproduce at the time, are not alive.

So is a person in a medically Induced coma, or in a coma from an accident (but thought to recover) still a human?

I'm saying that brain activity is THE crucial qualifier to count as human life. Individuals can and do go their entire lives without reproducing, but with no brain activity, nothing else can happen. Someone in a medically induced coma or someone in an accidental coma, but still expected to recover, still has brain activity. It's less than usual, but it's still there, and, in the case of someone in a coma from an accident who's still expected to recover, that's WHY they're even expected to recover in the first place. If activity in the cortex is gone, all chances of a recovery go down the toilet, because it's irreversible.