Secular reasons for and against legalising abortion

[The Grand Nudger]

Actually, personhood happens when the law says it does. Historically, that is at birth.

-and even then, we often don't have the full reach of legal personhood. Even after a child is born it takes many years before that limited personhood becomes meaningful (IE, before they or an advocate can refer to their legal personhood to invoke a full range of rights). Even after that milestone is reached (the transition from minor to adult) those rights based in or conferred by legal personhood are still not absolute. They are as conditional as they had ever been - as evidenced by the fact that we can and do remove the property of persons, imprison persons, execute persons, etc. Similarly, we cannot always side with two persons simultaneously in a conflict of rights/interests even when those provisions of personhood -do- apply, though we may very well side with neither.

Just as added info...and as a way of fleshing out why "because unborn children are people" doesn't work as an argument against abortion. They aren't, and even if they were, so what? You'll need more. For example, if we did decide to classify unborn children as having legal personhood, we would still need to address why their legal personhood should be given deference over the mothers legal personhood and all rights and protections that it confers her. At the very best, I could imagine a compelling argument for regulation might be made (most states have trigger laws on late terms, at present, afaik), but not prohibition.

@Chas
I think that even if we referred to when the child were able to be extracted from the womb we'd still have to deal with the nasty bit of sentencing a woman to at least 7 and a half months of pregnancy. It would be an exception, for sure, because we generally don't charge one "person" with a crime for failing or refusing to put their own life and limb down in service of ensuring the life of another "person". I'd say that if the state wanted to force (or attempt to force) her to carry, they'd have to compensate - at the least. If we just set a bar against late terms some sort of compensation would still be in order. She shouldn't have to foot the bill for delivery and childcare, for example - and obviously we'd have to be willing to absorb alot more wards of the state...and properly fund those programs as well. Otherwise we're saying something like: "We're going to force you to accept the risk and deliver this child, lay the bill on you, then neglect the child that we forced you to have in the first place." The puppy mill approach to reproductive policy...lol. I know that's not what you're proposing, I'm just thinking out loud. Something tells me that the pro-life crowd would just let it rest at sentencing a woman to pregnancy and motherhood. The irony here is thick, because that would seem alot, to me, like impregnating a girl and then washing your hands "hey, whatever the consequences of the load I just blew are- they're all on you sweetheart. I did what I came to do".