Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryzorian
I guess it depends on wether you believe the unborn child is human and has as much right to life as any other human. That's the core arguement really, is the unborn child just a mass of cells that is no more "alive" than your liver, or is it in fact "John, Mary, Wanda, William"?
When is it alive? is it ever alive? can we decide that at 3 months? 7 months? 15 years? How bout late term abortions? should we allow those past 9 months? what about someone who survived an abortion, should the mother be allowed to abort them later when they are a teenager? What if the mother decides the baby's hair is the wrong color? is that ok for an abortion?
Some may laugh off the arguement, but it happened before. It's called ugenics and it was practiced by the Nazi's.
|
*eugenics and it was a bit more complicated than liking hair colour but if that is how you want to simply it to yourself fine, but when telling others about things we need to be more objective and less slap-dash instantly attaching negative connotations without the full picture is never a valid approach.
A more accurate simplification is that Eugenics was the idea that we can genetically select the strongest genes to create a better human race for all humanity. It was corrupted into powerful individual's and group's ideas of what the better genes are, instead of as it was originally intended, based on a scientific approach of what would benefit us the most.
Genetic testing to warn parents if the pregnancy has a chance of certain diseases to give them the chance to abort, is not a dissimilar idea, just not taken as far.
Eugenics was never designed to give individual mothers the choice of hair colour, eye colour and other such aesthetic issues.
I don't think the debate of when something becomes an individual entity or "alive" as you put it goes beyond birth in any circles. So it is ridiculous to suggest that it is theoretically going to be legal to "abort" a 15year old.
Reel in the hyperbole here.
You are right that the debate of when a foetus becomes its own life is where most of the debate on abortion centres from.
For me I believe this moment to be birth, when it becomes separate from the mothers body. Until then it is part of her, like any other, to do with as she pleases. Arguments about it being alive/moving/growing/changing could be applied to tumours so don't interest me.
The only interesting debates on this are around the value we place on it's potential to become life, but if we go down this route we would have to start banning all contraception as that stops potential life, therefore if we allow potential life to be stopped in such ways, we cannot then use it in an argument to deny it being stopped in another method.
Others believe it is the time it could survive on it's own (but with science advancing soon this will be the same as the moment of conception, so again it becomes a near impossible and very impractical situation)
Abortion is the mothers choice as it is part of her body is the nice simple way I can put my views.