wat0n wrote:OK.
If someone was carrying an explosive, chemical and/or biological weapon in his stomach, and threatened to detonate it killing 1 or more persons in the process, I'd have no trouble if a SWAT team cut his belly wide open and deactivated it, and I would not care if they did it while he was alive.
How about you? Would you respect this suicide bomber's bodily autonomy?
Are you implying that the mother seeking an abortion is a terrorist?
No man, you got it all wrong. The example you provide is ludicrous, the people this "terrorist" is threatening are not dependent on him/her. The terrorist is actively trying to kill independent people each of which have their own body autonomy.
Think about it this way, if the water company cuts the water to your house, and you die of thirst... did the water company murder you?
No, I mean a human newborn.
I already went through this already. Society/the goverment recognizes birth as a new entity coming into play. You are not issued a "fornication certificate" when your parents have the sex that resulted in your existence, you are not issued a "fertilization certificate" when the egg is fertilized by the sperm, you are not issued a "heartbeat certificate" nor a "first trimester"/"2nd trimester"/"third trimester"/"Viability" certificates. What you are issue, is a birth certificate.
So it is arbitrary after all. By the way, I'd not say lacking a birth certificate means you can be killed at will.
No. It is not the paper, but rather that now you are 2 independent individuals, each with their own interest and body autonomy.
In the scenario I provided at the beginning of this post, if I was chained to this suicide bomber, would I also be out of luck?
I mean probably, next to a biological, chemical, explosive weapon and chained to the maniac that has all of that... I wouldn't want to be you.
But besides that, I don't know how this example comes into play at all.
If fetuses are not persons I can see why we could just have a more laid back attitude than if they are.
I don't think we should have a "laid back" attitude at all. We can consider them people if you wish, it does not change the equations at all for the reasons I have explained priorly.
I think it is sad, I think we should try to minimize abortions. I think we should prevent teen pregnacies. I think we should educate our youth about safe-sex practices (both for birth control but also for STDs), I think we should provide safe anti-conceptive and reproductive health advise. I think we should de-stigmatize sexual intercourse as to promote teenagers and young adults to seek advise and care early on, I think we should strengthen our social support network so that no mother-to-be feels she needs to have an abortion to move forward with her life because she does not have a husband to help finantially, because she does not have any way to provide child care, etc. I think we should provide assistance for those suffering with substance abuse and/or domestic violence that think raising up a kid in these situations is impossible.
I think there is plenty we can and should do to avoid abortions. I don't think forcing a woman to complete a pregnancy and deliver an unwanted baby is one of those things that we should do.
In that case, I agree. I'm not sure about abortion in general however.
Good, I am glad we agree on something.
So why would you provide that as an example? That's just a stillbirth.
It is not a still birth until it dies. Sometimes it might die hours, sometimes days.
There is a case report of an infant with "anencephaly" that survived 2years+ (although perhaps it was not a true anencephaly but rather microencephaly, not sure, not my specialty).
Now here I beg to disagree, a newborn is clearly a human being (biology is clear) but under a strict definition of "person" based on currently possessing "consciousness" or individuality it's not that clear if it's a person or when does it become one.
I don't understand which part you disagree with.
I think we can both agree a newborn is a human being.
From what you say, it seems that you are tentatively agreeing that consciousness and thus personhood is achieved at some point in the future of this baby but not necessarily at birth. If so... then we agree.
The little that I have read in the matter says that around 5-6 months we start to see early signals of what might be considered conciousness but the caveat is that we are really scratching the surface here. We can probably say with certainty that for a normal infant, it would happen sometime between birth and ~1 year old (at this time it is quite clear they already have personalities and memories and have a degree of awareness about their surroundings). And we can also say with a degree of certainty that prior to birth, when the nervous system is either undeveloped and/or under sedation is unlikely it achieve anything that we can meaningful call conciousness. As to where in that 1 year span things happen, I don't know, I don't know if anyone knows, but I don't think it is important for our discussion given that at birth, the life of the infant is no longer dependent on the mother and an abortion no longer threatens to terminate this life.
There could be national standards, but then again this type of problem already exists for other medical procedures. Using substituted judgment for tissue "donation" is one of them, for example, and those tend to end up in court either way.
The complexities of this are even greater, specially when dealing with minors. Luckily this is rare enough that teams of physicians can potentially directly deal with legal teams and/or judges.
Just not in that elevator, you mean. It seems to me that ordinance applies to all elevators, including those that are meant for the public.
You can also extend it to jurisdictions that ban smoking inside restaurants, regardless of whatever the owner thinks. Or smoking bans in all closed spaces, including those that are not privately owned.
Those are all justified, of course, but they definitely limit bodily autonomy.
No they don't, you don't "have" to be on those places.
I have not given you permision to piss on my bathroom's toilet. I am not limiting your body's autonomy... you can piss on your own, or in a hotel's or in a public restroom or at starbucks, or you can just piss your pants.
I'm okay with a doctor determining that in good faith.
The courts are going to flat out ban it lol. It is not like this is leading towards "doctors and patients making the decisions". There are states that have just one or 2 clinics for the whole state and even those are being threatened.
It's a general question. You can consider the scenario at the beginning of this post for an example, where you are in fact somehow chained to this suicide bomber (I don't know, maybe he's a radical anti-abortion guy who showed up at your workplace).
The scenario is not remotely similar. A pregnant woman is akin a dog with a tick, you remove the tick, the tick dies without blood. You are not going to kill ticks, you are just removing them from your dog. (well perhaps you also want to kill the tick, but thats besides the point
)