Abortion and Women's Rights

[DeistPaladin]

A fetus in my opinion is not a person until whenever that debatable moment when it becomes conscious of itself. But that's just my opinion on what constitutes a person, for all that's worth. So for the sake of argument let us say that life begins at conception. A fetus is a person from the second that sperm penetrates that egg. A fetus is certainly no more special than other people. So, a fetus has a right to live, but its right ends at its need to use someone else's body to survive. We have established precedent that a person cannot legally be forced to allow the use of their body to save another person. So, you see, person or not is irrelevant. Even a person does not have the right to use another persons body without permission as means to their own survival.

You've given me a good and thoughtful counter argument, advocating viability instead of self-awareness as the standard for when "life", in the moral sense of the word, begins. Fortunately, these two milestones overlap, so the controversy is minimized as academic.

Some would argue that my timeline is too conservative, that the kind of brain development necessary for self-awareness isn't until later. I just use it being as conservative as possible when I debate the so-called "pro-lifer" crowd.