This has been the boogie man hiding behind the abortion woodshed ever since Roe. I don’t think “My body, my choice” is an effective attitude for post-viability abortions. I think that looking at projected viability (”would this child survive if delivered at term”) is a far more effective strategy. “Rights” aren’t absolute in the sense that someone who can’t afford a printing press gets a free printing press — in many ways they are relative. And the right to an abortion after some “typical” viability date shouldn’t be related to the case of an abortion where the viability date is “never”.

I do have a problem with the 28 weeks marker. As Barbara points out, the survival rate of premature babies in the 23-27 week range is very low, yet my next-door neighbor’s granddaughter was born at 23 weeks and is now 8 years old. Was she a person at the time of her premature birth, because at 23 weeks she didn’t have a fully developed brain?

If personhood begins in the third trimester with a working cerebral cortex, does that mean that doctors are obliged to do their utmost to save the lives of the fetuses that are being aborted at that time in order to save the lives of the women carrying them (e.g., surgery, life-support, etc.)? I know many late-term abortions of live fetuses are of fetuses with enormous problems, which is why I ask that question. If these third-trimester fetuses have working cerebral cortexes, I don’t think it’s logical to say they can’t or shouldn’t get full-out medical treatment just because they are being aborted instead of born prematurely. Would the woman then have to sign paperwork that would hand custody over to the state in the event that she doesn’t want to keep the baby?

Cicely:
On what do you base the supposition that women would vote overwhelmingly to support abortion rights and that anti-abortion laws are patriarchal laws? The surveys I’ve seen suggest that men are at least as likely to support abortion on demand as women are, and maybe even slightly more likely.

I’ll offer one very specific case to answer your question, Brandon. I posted this in another thread here on February 9th.

‘Yesterday, in a conscience vote (meaning government members are permitted to vote according to their conscience and not along party lines), the Australian Senate voted on a private member’s bill to take the decision about whether the RU486 ‘morning after’ abortion pill should be made available to women in Australia out of the hands of the conservative Health Minister and put into the hands of the Therapeutic Goods Authority. This would allow the decision to rest on issues of safety rather than religiously informed morality. (Incidentally, Australia’s Health Minister once seriously considered entering a Catholic Seminary and becoming a priest…)

The bill passed (hooray!) by 45 votes to 28. Female Senators from *all* parties co-sponsored the bill and of the 26 women who voted, 23 supported it. Being such a sensitive issue, there was no whooping and hollering etc, but a quiet ‘Well done, girls, well done’, was heard after the result was announced…I offer this in support of my arguement that if only women were permitted to vote on the abortion issue, there would virtually be no issue.’

The key here Brandon is that if ‘only’ women voted. I know there are many, many men who are pro-choice and I don’t mean to dismiss that happy fact at all. Another fact though is that women have had to fight for the right to safe, legal abortions in most places in the world because in most places in the world, under patriarchy, women have not had and do not have control over our own reproduction rights. Issues of sexuality and reproduction are a cornerstone of patriarchal control over women. You have to be able to imagine a different world - one in which women have always been and are still today not only ‘trusted’ to be responsible, but ‘are’ in fact ’solely’ responsible for making decisions about whether or not to terminate pregnancies, because those decisions are about us.

But, I look at personhood from a more strick biological standpoint. (Although Richard Newman has attributed to me great capacity for metaphorical thinking, I am still ignorant of such thinking within my own thoughts.) What is, it seems to me, indisputable from a biological standpoint is that the thing in the womb is a unique human organism. Now does that make it a person. Amp would say no. I would say yes. And never the twain shall meet. (In reality, as I posted over on Richard’s blog, even I am a little wishy washy about pre-implantation.)

I do think that Richard makes a very important point:

but to talk about fetal personhood, especially in the at least implied context of anti-abortion laws like South Dakota’s, without making it explicit that simply entertaining the possibility of fetal personhood creates a context that puts the fetus in direct conflict with its mother is, frankly, already to concede a great deal to the anti-choice position.

It is exactly that kind of concession I would entertain as being a good move toward common ground in the grander debate. And I don’t think such a concession is quite the disasterous thing pro-choicers think it would be. Of course, I also don’t think that supporting contraception education is quite the disasterous thing that my pro-life friends think it is. But that is another topic.

There is no doubt in my mind that the reason why the survival odds of premature babies goes way up between weeks 25 and 27 is increased neural development (which means that baby’s brain can contribute much more to survival by permitting self-regulation of organs). At week 22/23, premature babies cannot survive. The odds increase by about 2-3% for each day after week 23 has been reached, and by week 27 it’s about 80% odds of surviving. Of course, this survival requires extraordinary medical intervention, it’s not by any means a natural survival rate. 32 weeks is really the earliest that you could expect a premature baby to reliably survive even without the possibility of such intervention.

And oh by the way, there is a strong argument that smoking is probably more harmful after your child is born than before.

it becomes a moral person when its mother freely decides to carry the fetus to term and makes a moral commitment of her own to love and care for the future child

If she changes her mind two months later, does the personhood disappear?

Basically, yes. I favor recognizing and defending a sphere of personal autonomy. I believe that the woman should have autonomy over the use of her body, because the use of her body affects her more than it affects anyone else.

Until she decides to reproduce. While she intends to bring her child to term, then the interests of a future person must be considered. In the lexicon of the current discussion, then the fetus “becomes a person” or “achieves personhood” or whatever. A fetus’s interests might exceed the woman’s interest in her own autonomy when a given course of conduct would have greater impact on the fetus than on the woman. As I have noted elsewhere, my private choice to have a child will likely have social consequences far beyond my sphere of autonomy, or even my lifetime, so society at large is entitled to have a say in the matter. I see potential merit in regulating both a man’s and a woman’s behavior that would produce long-term health problems for a fetus. For example, maybe would could say that no one may buy a pack of cigarettes without signing an affidavit saying that he did not intend to procreate.

Admittedly, these laws would be virtually unenforceable against women because, as a matter of bodily integrity, a woman would retain a right to disavow her intention to bring any given fetus to term until the moment of birth. But the laws might be enforceable against men because the man wouldn’t have the woman’s discretion to disavow a desire to bring the fetus to term.

Suppose that the rare 30th week abortion does not pose some verifiable health risk above normal. If the child has attained some recognition as a person could an alternative to abortion be crafted. First, in the interest of the mother, could the person or entity that may have caused delay against the mother’s wishes be held civilly liable for monetary damages for the burden of carrying the child through the balance of the pregnancy. The measure of damages could be reduction in life expectancy, pain and suffering, and the inherent risk associated with normal child birth, etc. It could be a rather big dollar amount, and be measured subjectively. Second, in the interest of the child, any entity that may have restrained early termination of the pregnancy should have to post a bond that covers the entire cost of raising the child, inclusive of costs that can continue through the age of 25 rather than a cut off of 18 years.

The folks that wish to restrain the woman’s choice want to do it on the cheap by characterization of the matter as criminal, but that need not be the sole inquiry. The folks that wish to restrain the woman’s choice want to do it on the cheap at less than the cost of a condom.

this actually raises a point i’ve been meaning to address. what do we mean by a ‘right to abortion’? i understand it as a right to *end a pregnancy*. i don’t interpret it as a right to *require* that the fetus die. i think a woman who is 30 weeks along should have be able to end the pregnancy in the sense that she choose to have the fetus removed from her body, but i don’t think she has a right to have it killed in the process of ending the pregnancy. personally, i can’t argue in good conscious that a 30 week old fetus is not a human being.

i also think it would be impossible to find a doctor willing to perform an elective abortion (resulting in the death of the fetus) at 30 weeks of development.

if an objector believes personhood is imbued spiritually rather than materially (as many do), then they can blow off all your argument on the ground that you’re a heartless materialist wanker.

Ok, so I’m a heartless materialist wanker. Nonetheless, if you can prove to my satisfaction that 1) there is a spiritually imbued personhood (ie a soul) and 2) that it is inserted in the fetus (or embyo or zygote) sometime before birth, I’ll agree with you that abortion should be at least severely restricted if not outright forbidden after the personhood gets added in. However, I’m very unclear on how you know whether spiritual personhood is there or not. You might argue that since you don’t know it’s better to be safe and assume it’s there. But then why limit the assumption to people? Why not also assume that cows, frogs, amoeba, and E coli have spiritually imbued personhood (bacteriahood?) as well and are equally entitled to protection?

In a test-tube and artificial womb thing, from a legal perspective, there would be absolutely no concern as to the health or free-will over a woman. The balance in Roe would be wholly inapplicable. I pose it not for the likelihood of the resort to clones or artificial wombs but as an analytical tool. Consider that the interest of a test tube baby at the 30th week, whatever it is, would not have to be balanced against the interest of a woman but against the financial concerns of the folks who have created the artificial womb thing. The test tube is really the analytical notion of isolating out the weight a court would give to a woman’s rights in the whole debate over a potential child.

I am much less concerned with the spiritual aspects, endless debates about deities and whatnot, of an abortion prior to the 28th week than I am with the empirical and physically measurable effects of alcohol consumption during the first 28 weeks, where the child is carried past the 28th week. The intention of the mother during the first 28 weeks to ultimately give birth to the child, I would believe, does come with a duty not to consume alcohol and likewise gives the state an interest, a purely secular-based-interest, during this period from conception through the 28th week to restrain alcohol consumption. The interest of such a mother is that of a desire to drink, which is a far cry from the spiritual and/versus secular debates about a woman’s desire to end a pregnancy during the first 28 weeks, or later.

To recap, Roe does not dismiss in total all concern for the child just because it is in a womb. Think of religion as an alternative, and perhaps mutually exclusive, legal system to define the rights and responsibility of individuals in their private and public lives. If the Pope had his way and prohibited contraceptives with the force of law it would be so dismissive of a individual liberty as to render them void, far more expansively than just within the abortion debates. The consideration of spiritual beliefs, and sexual activity regulation, are thus a poison to the simple challenge of examining a secular resolution that is compatible with individual liberty. Secular law is filled too with arcane phraseology and formulations, Roe included, that can be as odd as any that any religion leader can dream up in the name of their religion. The absurdity is illustrated most clearly with the disregard for government restraint upon drinking by a mother that plans to carry a child full term, for which secular analysis is sufficient all by itself. Roe is not a religion, at least it should not be. It is just a momentary line drawing that is preferable to choosing between the moment of birth versus the moment of conception based on spiritual beliefs.

The head has to be all the way out. IMO (as someone who’s done a lot of work in the history of medicine) this is because getting the baby’s head out is the tricky bit. In the Bad Olde Dayes, before reliable Caesarians, if the head was too large to come out or was inextricably “hung up” the doctor/midwife sometimes had to either break the mother’s pelvis (which didn’t even always work), kill her, or take the baby out in bits.

(and having seen the instruments used and read textbooks explaining how to use them, even the most distorted, sensation-mongering accounts of “partial birth abortion” have not fazed me.)

The fact of the matter was that by the time it came to this — usually after several days of labor — they weren’t going to save the baby, it would be all they could do to give the mother a fair chance at life. The legal/moral guidelines were a way to help people (the woman, her family, and the medical people) through a horrible experience. I never heard of any particular theological uproar about it, either, which I suspect is because by the time it came down to such choices the woman would have suffered a *lot*, and no-one could say she was getting off easy or doing it for convenience.

It’s not that I think that these two questions are necessarily unrelated, but to talk about fetal personhood, especially in the at least implied context of anti-abortion laws like South Dakota’s, without making it explicit that simply entertaining the possibility of fetal personhood creates a context that puts the fetus in direct conflict with its mother is, frankly, already to concede a great deal to the anti-choice position.

I have said this in other discussions, but it is for this reason that I have always appreciated the Jewish approach to this question, which is to say that until the baby has emerged a certain distance from the woman’s body–and I don’t remember what that distance is–it is not considered an individuated person and so it cannot ever be legally assigned the same rights as the mother.

This does not mean, however, that Jewish law does not recognize the fetus as a living thing that possesses a kind of “right to life,” a term which makes me cringe, but I do think it is accurate in this case. You are, for example, required to violate the Sabbath–an infraction that, in Biblical times, was punishable by death–in order to save a fetus that would otherwise die, but because it does not exist physically as an individual, its “right to life” can never trump the mother’s.

If you are interested, I wrote about this in a little bit more detail on my blog.

I have never seen an argument that artificial full clones would be anything other than persons, presumably the legal siblings of the person cloned. The moral dilemmas occur if the artificial clone has no brain, in which case by Amp’s standards and my own it would not be a person. It couldn’t walk around or breathe on its own, either.

All sarcasm aside, I’m really tired of seeing the hypothetical woman making a choice that doesn’t ever seem to appear as happening in real life. Where is the hypothetical doctor willing to perform the abortion at that point?

I find it a really insulting and hurtful argument tactic, considering the vast majority of women (in fact I’m not aware of any woman that this isn’t the case with) that would have to go through the procedure, go through it due to something being wrong with either them or the fetus, and are not only having to deal with the abortion, but also the fact that they are losing a pregnancy they want.

Why don’t examples like this appear as… Suppose a woman were to have an elective abortion at week 30 for the sole purpose of maintaining her health because she was diagnosed with cancer during gestation, and the doctors told her that she could either begin chemo or risk it and wait for 10 weeks, in the process weakening and further traumatizing her already ill body through childbirth. Do you think this is a morally legitimate choice, an act equivalent to murder, or something in between?

Why must the sordid example that is more myth than anything realistic be the example that people have to make their moral stands on, rather than the real situations which are far less ‘easy’ for a person on either side of the fence?