Is a 22-week-old unborn baby a person? What about a baby born after only 21 weeks and 6 days in the womb?
The question of personhood should be even clearer after Amillia Sonja Taylor left the hospital as a fairly healthy 4-month-old.
If you argue that Sonja is a person, but that it is acceptable to abort babies at her same stage of development, then you place the issue of personhood on nothing more than location of the individual.
Is it logically to argue that somehow “magically” Sonja became a person upon leaving her mother’s womb? I say “magically” because no change has taken place to Sonja except where she is located. To argue that Sonja could have been killed minutes before being born, but not a second afterward is difficult logic to defend.
Many place the limit of abortions on the viability of the baby. Here we have the smallest child ever to survive. Who’s to say tomorrow a smaller or younger baby cannot survive with advances in science?
Many say that because the child is part of his mother and is provided for completely by the mother that the child is not a person. Again, simply an issue of location. Disagree? Here’s a simply question. Is it right to kill a baby who has been born, but is still attached to the umbilical cord? That child is still receiving everything from the mother and has only moved from inside the womb to outside.
The life and presence of Sonja continues to raise the quesiton of whether we as a culture will allow the location of a child to determine their personhood.
There are a couple of things going on in the abortion debate. I think most sane people believe that a fetus is a person before birth, esp. in the last trimester. However, many libs try to balance this with their idea of limited moral government and personal freedom, and are unwilling to employ the law to protect the unborn. They also feel like the personhood of a fetus is debatable, and so they want to leave it up to the mother. So even if it is a “person,” that’s no guarantee that a lib would want to protect it by law. At least, that’s my impression.
The problem with this logic, imho, is that they put too much weight on personal autonomy, and not enough value on protecting the life of the helpless child.
And as I mentioned in Citizens for Reasonable Abortion Limits, I agree that the age of viability is wholly dependent on technology, and is a moving target, so I doubt that even libs would want to rely on that for personhood’s definition. I still think that using the definitions that we use for the end of life as a guide is a good starting place – that is, brain waves and heartbeat. And as I said, that would place the age of personhood somewhere between 4 and 8 weeks.
Of course, neocons argue that personhood begins at conception, but as I’ve argued, even if you think that, I believe that using the markers of heartbeat and brainwaves are more defendable and perhaps more appropriate for public policy. This stance also allows some leeway for women to have early abortions if need be (though it’s a very narrow window), and it also would allow for ESC research.
Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!
How awesome! That made me cry. I am so glad their baby survived.
Codeine.
Codeine 222. Codeine.