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I'm not going to edit this article yet, but I think a major issue in applied ethics it's leaving out is the viability of the fetus outside the mother's womb. The article in its current form focuses strongly on the right of a woman to do what she wishes with her own body -- however, if the fetus can live just find outside the mother's womb (perhaps in an incubator), this is no longer really the issue. The issue then becomes whether she has a right to take positive action to destroy the fetus, despite an option to remove it from her body without destroying it being available. I'd say this is probably a good 50% of the current academic abortion debate, and as medical technology moves the date of viability further backwards, it will become essentially the only important issue -- the "parasite" argument will no longer apply, since the fetus will not physically need the mother to survive. --Delirium 02:53 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Regarding when human life begins, let me point out an issue of consistency. If you hold that a new human life begins at conception, then all forms of abortion mean the death of a human life. This includes natural, spontaneous abortions, such as happens to something like 50% of all fertilized eggs before they can even implant in the womb. They, too, represent the death of a human being. True, they are not something we can prevent (at least with present technology), but there is also the issue of how we normally deal with deaths of human beings, such as disposing of the body in a dignified fashion, with appropriate ceremonies, and mourning the loss. Nobody does anything like this for spontaneously aborted fertilized eggs. Indeed, such eggs are liable to be passed out with the woman's menstrual flow without her ever realizing that conception took place.
Does this situation bother those who consider that human life begins at conception? If not, why not? After all, a human being is a human being, right? Ldo 04:12, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I hold that mammalian (including human) life begins at conception, and therefore that all forms of abortion result in a human death (with the rare exception that some aborted human fetuses do, in fact, survive).
What appears to Ldo to be an inconsistency is not, in light of a distinction. The issue is one of the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. Some humans are born so badly deformed that they die within a few months or years. This is sad, but is also entirely different from the case where they are deliberately killed. The moral issue is whether the killing is deliberate or not. Another example would be an ectopic pregnancy. Here the offspring can not be saved by current medical science, but failure to remove the woman's offspring will result in her own death. In this case, the death of the offspring is not deliberate; there is simply no way to save him/her.
As to no mourning or loss, I think it's safe to assume that you have not experienced a miscarriage. When a miscarriage is known to have occurred, or is even suspected to have occurred, there very often is mourning and a deep sense of loss.
Yes, human beings are human beings. All human beings are going to die sooner or later. The issue is not whether any human being dies, but rather of whether innocent human beings are killed deliberately. Verax Tue Sep 16 22:18:58 PDT 2003
I have reverted:
- The anti-abortion ("pro-life") argument is that a Homo Sapien embryo is the offspring of a Homo Sapien father and a Homo Sapien mother, and that all members of the species Homo Sapiens are human beings. The pro-abortion ("pro-choice") argument is that which members of the Homo Sapiens species are members of the human race is a matter of debate or convenience; if a woman so desires, she can choose to exclude her embryo from the human race, and can therefore choose to kill that embryo without considering the result as the unjust killing of a human being.
You can't call these the pro- and anti- positions; it was correct before, at least with regard to calling this the extreme pro- position. It's not the mainstream pro- position, which is that personhood does not begin at conception. The claim is that the foetus is not yet a person (though it is human). It would be an extreme claim that the woman can choose to exclude the foetus from the human race. Evercat 02:21, 18 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I have included:
- On the other hand, is a fetus a disposable part of a woman's body...
I think pro-abortionists would not expect a physician to amputate someone a member simply because they ask him/her to do it. This is what I want to stress by "disposable" which may not be the proper term, though. Obviously, that is the extreme pro-choice statement, but I think it fits in with the "On the other hand... statement". Pfortuny 13:49 Thu Oct 9 2003 (UTC).
- This is my opinion, but I thought that using the word disposable in that context was a bit POV. I think I understand what you were getting at, but using that word seems to imply that pro-choicers think that fetuses are disposible, which I think would especially offend any pro-choicers who happen to be expecting mothers. I don't think that's what you meant to imply, but like you said above, "disposable" really isn't the proper term. I think it's right to say that the heart of the issue is a clash of two rights, so I tried to change it to just list the two rights that are "clashing": The right to life and a woman's right to control her body. I also added a bit after the paragraphs about "extreme" stances, trying to mention some of issues that concern the less extreme factions, including the issue of "viability". - Eisnel 05:22, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)