Election 2004: The 5MV District

[Gatac]

Now, of course, I have not established the personhood of the fetus, so I will: It grows, it uses energy, it develops, and it has the potential to produce fertile offspring with other members of homo sapiens. To wit, it shares every major trait of a newborn or a pre-lingual two-year-old.

If I were a soulless devil's advocate, I would now throw in that except for the last thing (which is Potential to Complexity), there isn't much of a difference between an early fetus and any other cluster of cells. Sure, it lives, but so does the mold in my petri dish.

This is an old philosophical problem. At what point does the child cease to be simply a part of the mother and become an indepedant life in it's own right? It is a hard question, but the morality of this, I leave up to the mother. I don't know if anyone should be getting an abortion for this or that reason, but I feel they should have the right to do so. The laws are (or should be) a set of rules that deals with the individuals place within a society. Does society at large have a say over whether or not someone should have a child, moreso than that person herself? I see this as far more morally reprehensive.

We could go further into ensoulment, but do we really want the law to do that? The last time the Supreme Court ruled on personhood, it stated that black people were 3/5 of a person. Women, for many of the same reasons, couldn't vote until the '20s, and many of the same issues apply today in gay marriage.

I agree that this is a difficult topic and laws pertaining to it are bound to be unsatisfactory, but does this mean we have to err on the side of the greatest possible restriction? Surely, a lot of abortions are made for medical reasons; do you want to condemn all these people to die or suffer lifelong complications from a miscarriage? Granted, not all cases are so clear cut; indeed, the majority is not. But outlawing abortion, you're opening up a whole new area of criminal behaviour. People who want abortions will get them, but I'd rather they go to a clean hospital and have it done by a professional than having to look for a less than legal alternative. (Compare to drugs...I don't personally use any, but look how much the core problem is amplified by driving everything underground.)

Also, I don't mind a good political debate as long as it's within this dedicated thread. When you have namecalling all over the board, then the problem starts.

Gatac