Abortion and Women's Rights

[DeistPaladin]

You're a lot more progressive than most Christians, especially on birth control and sex ed. Now that I understand where you're coming from, we can discuss our differences in point of view.

Your opinion that life begins with brain activity is noted. IMO, we consider DNA as an identifier of a person, and DNA is determined at conception. Without DNA, there's no there there either. Same with a heartbeat.
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You act as if you made a discovery of an objective fact. You didn't. The factors that determine personhood are a matter of opinion.

Consciousness is what determines our moral obligations toward one another. This is evident in how we have no such obligations toward rocks. We also have no compassion or empathy for technically living beings that only operate on stimulus/response, such as bacteria cells, even though these things are "alive" and have DNA. By contrast, we do (or at least I think should) have compassion for dogs and cats, even though they are not human. If we ever create artificial intelligence that is self-aware and demands the right of choice, we'll have moral obligations toward them even though they are not alive and have no DNA (see a hypothetical scenario in this Star Trek clip).





Where our actions impact the well being of other sentient beings, questions of morality apply. Sometimes these are difficult questions. Sometimes we have to resolve the rights of one vs. another. Sometimes our only course of action is to minimize suffering and damage, choosing the lesser evil. Discussions of morality can be complex and difficult to resolve decisively which is all the more reason we should focus on what the core issue is and ignore all the hot button distractions.

3:25 in the video above: "Your honor, the courtroom is a crucible in which we burn away irrelevancies until we're left with a pure product: the truth."

So I say now just as I did back in my pro-life days, ignore the sexual and lifestyle issues. Sex is a really emotional, hot-button issue so it may be difficult but we need to realize it is irrelevant. It should not be the government's place to punish people for their sexual choices with other consenting adults. Religion is also a hot-button issue but it too is irrelevant. The government is not here to push any religion's agenda. I personally believe, and this may be unpopular with some, that gender issues are also irrelevant. The same rules about rights and choices should apply equally to men and women.

I submit the core points on the issue of abortion are:

• That "Person B" has an undisputed right to choice and to control their own bodies.
  
• That the only issue is whether the above right is trumped by the rights of another being, Person A.
  
• That we need to seriously explore the issue of whether there is a Person A at all.
  
• That the burden of proof is upon the one who would deny the rights of Person B on the grounds that Person A's rights trump them.
  

Now the above video is about a court ruling in favor of a conscious android. Data met the criteria within reasonable doubt. Does a fetus? Let's answer that by first addressing the question of what is self-awareness and what causes it.

While it is true we don't yet fully know what causes self-awareness, the brain is certainly a crucial element. Even if "souls" exist, the brain is still where we get sensory data, we process that data, we think about what it means, we store memory of it in the brain, we access it through the brain and we send command to the body from the brain. If the brain is ever damaged, either through injury, illness or drug abuse, any or all of these functions may be compromised. We may have trouble remembering. We may have trouble thinking. Even our emotions may become erratic or inappropriate. The brain is clearly an essential part.

Now, you are free to believe in souls if you wish. Perhaps the "soul" is some kind of energy that inhabits the brain. Who knows? However, even if you attribute self-awareness to a "soul", such an energy clearly still depends on the brain to think, feel, remember and act within the natural world. Otherwise, Alzheimer's patients could simply use their soul's memory to compensate for what their brain can no longer do. Maybe with damage to the brain, the soul becomes confused? Sure, it could be so, I can't prove otherwise, and I'll be generous and not ask you to prove it is so, but even with this concession, we're still left with the brain being the essential component to our experiences as living beings in the natural world.

Therefore, no brain = no self-awareness.

Whether it is a living being or not is irrelevant. Even sperm cells and unfertilized eggs are technically alive. So are bacteria cells. We have no moral obligations toward them. However, we would have obligations to a hypothetical self-aware android like Data.

Whether it has a heart beat or fingerprints is irrelevant. These are either automatic functions or physical features. We have no obligations toward corpses even though they have the body parts of living beings. We have, I would submit, no moral obligations toward brain dead people who are kept alive only by machines, even though they might have a heart-beat. The issue is whether or not we're dealing with a self-aware being.

So does the fetus have a brain and is there any reason to believe that brain is thinking? Note that a fetus will be jolted with electrical impulses to move muscle tissue as part of its development, so let's not be fooled by that. Does it respond to outside stimuli such as loud noises? Is the brain sufficiently developed to process thoughts and emotions based on our understanding of the brain?

On these questions, the research is in. Week 21 is actually a cautious benchmark. Some believe that self-awareness isn't until much later. As the laws stand now, abortions are on demand in the first trimester, well before this benchmark, and 91% of them happen within this window. As of week 21, it's hard to get an abortion and the mother's life must be in danger. In this case, we're weighing the life of Person A vs. Person B. Person A may not survive anyway. I can't ask Person B to take that risk, let alone require it.

At this point, the anti-abortionists will typically take one of two debate tactic routes. The first is to question whether consciousness is the sole criteria. The second is to speak of "potential" life.

On the first point, just in advance, no I don't consider it acceptable to kill sleeping people. They were conscious before and likely will be after they wake. Since they are a "going concern", they still have rights as conscious beings that are not negated by a temporary condition.

On the second point, "potential" is a weak fall-back position. First, every cell in your body is a potential life with cloning technology. When you scratch your nose, you're committing a holocaust. Second, there is no certainty that the fetus will develop into a human being whereas there is certainty that the mother has rights over her own choices and body.

"Definitely and right now" trumps "maybe someday".