Abortion is morally wrong

[Jenny A]

Whether a fetus is ever a person is an entirely separate question from what rights it might have, were it a person. Unless you reach yes on the question of whether it is a person a some point, there's no more ethical question about the decision to abort than there is about removing a tumor.

I want to make it clear that I do not think a fetus is a baby just because it has a little beating heart, much as new parents are thrilled to hear that heart or how attached they get before the fetus if born. Nor do I think how it looks has much to do with the issue. What suggests to humanity to me is a human mind as a aware and functioning as a full-term baby or premi that is aware enough to respond to its environment similarly to a full term baby. I think that that point is pretty darn late in the pregnancy cycle, but I don't know where it is.

Losty is quite right that having had two babies (and a couple miscarriages) doesn't make me an expert in determining when that moment is. But there are cognitive studies of prematurity babies that would give us an indication.

I think however, when the fetus can live outside the mother, is a red-herring. That is completely dependent on current technology. The original supreme court opinion Roe v. Wade pinned that moment at the beginning of the third trimester. The problem is that medicine keeps pushing that date back. Should be reach the point the we can clone animals in an artificial uteruses, we will have pushed that all the way back to the zygote. Ooops.

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Esquilax, I'm out of time this morning, so I won't reply til evening.