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So what is the difference between a potential and an actual human being?
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MamaJewel
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Yes, a woman has mastery over the fetus within her, but it is unethical for her to ask a doctor to destroy it if she and the human embryo are in homeostasis.
Ethical doctors are not here to destroy a distinct individual at any stage of existence. Not on a woman’s orders, not on a supervisor’s orders, and not on a rogue leader’s orders.
During this century medical researchers will develop an artificial womb for the products of conception to grow in until a fetus reaches viability. This could very well happen within the next 10 years.
How will humanity ethically treat the fetus in natural and artificial settings? How will humanity legally treat the fetus in both settings?
Medical ethics is already struggling with the ethical debate of extending the Day 14 Rule to Day 28 for human embryos in a lab setting.
If a way to keep a fetus alive in the lab until week 24 gestational age occurred tomorrow, the human race would certainly have a major ethical dilemma on its hands concerning such a fetus.
Elective abortion has set precedence for a doctor to legally (and ethically) the take the tools of medicine to destroy a healthy fetus in its natural environment in the name of “choice”.
Yet, a doctor in a lab setting is expected to end research and destroy a human embryo by Day 14 post-fertilization (before it develops its primitive streak (aka a distinct individual) at the start of gastrulation) or face scrutiny as an unethical researcher.
Those are two very different, hypocritical approaches for medicine to take.
If the human embryo is a distinct individual in a lab environment as gastrulation commences, then a human embryo is a distinct individual in utero inside the woman as gastrulation commences.
Human individuals have human rights.
What gives a woman the right to bodily autonomy as a human being, gives the human embryo its right to autonomy as a human being. Both have a right to be let alone. It’s not the place of medicine to destroy, experiment on, or manipulate one for the sake of the other, if both are in homeostasis.
In the future, medicine will not be able to maintain ethical practices toward the embryo in a lab environment because law will say that location doesn’t make a difference when it comes to the products of conception. If it can be manipulated in one environment, it can be manipulated in others.
In the practice of medicine,
first, do no harm.
Do good.
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MamaJewel
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Certainly not in utero up to 24 weeks in my state.
That said, in vitro, an embryo does not have a right to life at all. We don’t make a bio-mother of an in vitro embryo undergo an implantation attempt so the embryo can have a chance at life. Yet, at the same time, we don’t allow researchers to continue to grow it in a petri dish to see how long they can get it to live either.
In other words, medicine, ethics, and law can’t really make a definitive cohesive determination on the status of the human embryo.
Just an fyi, in case you’re interested, here are some legal-perspective links regarding custody battles over human embryos.
https://www.thomasmoresociety.org/?s=rooks&submit=Search
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o_mlly
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You claim that the mother may in the extreme enforce her right to self-determination against the child’s equal right to self-determination because she can, i.e., has the power to do so.
In the extreme means the use of violence against the child’s natural right to life. You claim the mother may exercise her right to kill the child up to the child’s birth.
The mother and child are in a collective relationship. The mother desires to secede from their union using extreme violence, i.e., termination of the other’s life (infanticide).
Applying the same principles to other collectives in which one had “mastery” over the other and wished to secede, would you justify the Kosovo genocide in 1998-1999, supported the elimination of the Kurds in Iraq and support the elimination of the Tibetans in China? If not, why not?
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Hume
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I think that’s exactly what the Catholic Church should invest a lot of time and effort into - a way to carry fetuses to term without a woman’s body.
If a woman could immediately surrender her fetus to the Catholic Church, I’d say ban abortion tomorrow.
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Hume
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My claim is that the fetus uses the mothers body and as a fundamental matter of self determination she can refuse this use.
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Hume
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Just as a note, 24 weeks is a place where survival becomes possible with some consistency. By then 99% of abortions in the US have taken place.
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o_mlly
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In a collective, the individual uses others. Without the others, the individual cannot thrive or even live. The fundamental need for the other is the same in the collective as with mother and child.
The Nazis had “mastery” over and decided that they wanted to rid themselves of the Jewish problem by killing the Jews. Same basic principles as your argument. Mother wants to rid herself of the child problem.
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Hume
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Lol, abortion is such an in-grained issue with some that they’d even tacitly argue in favor of socialism to try and make a point against it.
The problem you encounter is that Jews are people. Fetuses aren’t. At least, not in a way that hijacks a mother’s right of bodily self-determination.
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o_mlly
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After you finish lol’ing, grab a polysci book and read up. All forms of political organizations include citizen interdependence. We are social creatures.
So, some people are not human beings, is that what you’re now saying? Or is it that mom gets a special pleading exemption from the principles you’ve laid out. Either way, your argument fails.
Hijack? Now you really don’t mean the child is involved in criminal behavior simply by existing, do you? That would be absurd. The child is solely the effect of mom’s act (along with the father) and now you say the child is the cause of mom’s dilemma. No, that does not follow either.
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Hume
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Don’t you wish… lol
Ok, so why does the existence of a fetus override a woman’s right to govern her own body, in your view?
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o_mlly
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Looks like you’re abandoning your argument. OK, that’s a good thing.
My argument? This reads pretty good:
In the order of rights, life is primary. Take away a person’s right to life and all talk of other rights becomes merely academic. No one has a superior right to life, only an equal right. The child’s right to life may only come into question if the child’s very existence threatens mom’s life.
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Hume
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Not at all. Not even within a million light-years of correct, as might be expected.
I’ve offered the central argument and asked why you think it doesn’t apply.
So, put bluntly, a woman must be made to gestate a fetus she does not want inside her body per your views, yes?
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o_mlly
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No, she is free to do evil.
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Hume
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So that means you’re pro-choice, then?
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o_mlly
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Trying to be clever? Not at all. I acknowledge free will, that is, we can make choices to be saints or sinners. We ought to make certain choices instead of others.
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Hume
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Ok, so I think that’s my position.
The woman must be free to choose and we should do all we can to make the choice of life as appealing as possible.
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o_mlly
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The woman is by nature free to choose. I’ll go along with the notion that society is obliged to prevent direct abortions morally and prudentially including criminal actions against those who aid and abet in their support of direct abortions. For the distraught mother, some mitigation of guilt is in order. Not so for the helpers, they murder.
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Hume
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Ah, so the nuance of your position is that yes, a woman inherently has the right to choose, but she has no right to medical aid with her choice, even if the aid was offered voluntarily.Hume:
The woman is by nature free to choose. I’ll go along with the notion that society is obliged to prevent direct abortions morally and prudentially including criminal actions against those who aid and abet in their support of direct abortions. For the distraught mother, some mitigation of guilt is in order. Not so for the helpers, they murder.
Am I tracking?
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o_mlly
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Is pregnancy a disease?
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