After-birth abortion: why should the baby live

Quote from Epiphyte : I'm arguing in a way that sidesteps the whole person/not-person argument.

Which is the whole purpose of the paper and thread. Just say you don't accept the premises:

Quote : (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant

Quote from Danman114 : What if (for the woman) it's a burden to bring the infant all they way down to an adoption center (or some other place people safely leave babies)? Why would their be an obligation of the mother to ensure the infant is safely delivered into the care of another if that obligation doesn't similarly exist for a fetus?

If you somehow find yourself with an infant and then abandon her I am sure you will will be charged with child endangerment.

Also dominion over inside of your body is a different beast from your desire not to even pick up the phone.

Come on, you can do better than that "argument."

Quote from Danman114 : Is there a real difference in the intrusion on a woman between saying, "You have an obligation to carry to term" versus "You have an obligation to pick this child up, safely put him in the car, and drive him somewhere where someone will take him in."? It's really just the severity of the obligation placed upon the woman people are arguing about, right? Supposedly a woman carrying the child and giving birth is worse for the woman than safely giving the child up for adoption.

It's also the nature of the obligation. One is an obligation on your own body and well being. Like being forced to give blood. The other is like finding a very ill person in need of help in your room. You can make a phone call, or have a friend take the person to a hospital. It has little to do with your own physical body. Of course, in most instances a woman will give birth in a hospital where she should be able to give up the baby.

Quote from msummers80 : Which is the whole purpose of the paper and thread. Just say you don't accept the premises:

I don't think the premises really affect my argument much. I'm for equal treatment for fetuses and babies.

Quote from TRNT : ....on whom?

On someone...

Quote from OhNoItsDEVO : On someone...

Be specific.

Is that someone obligated to allow the use of his organs and body?

Quote from TRNT : Be specific. Is that someone obligated to allow the use of his organs and body?

No of course it's not the same as having the baby inside of you.

Quote from Epiphyte : I don't think the premises really affect my argument much. I'm for equal treatment for fetuses and babies.

Ah, so you want to grant rights to life to both, but with the fetus you reject that due to the requirement of a woman's womb? You are bringing ambiguity into the conversation, then.

Quote from msummers80 : Ah, so you want to grant rights to life to both, but with the fetus you reject that due to the requirement of a woman's womb? You are bringing ambiguity into the conversation, then.

Sure. I'm trying to answer your question about there being something special about being inside the womb.

Quote from Epiphyte : Sure. I'm trying to answer your question about there being something special about being inside the womb.

So a non-person has rights as long as they aren't in the womb. That is an interesting stance. By what moral argument do we acknowledge these rights?

Quote from msummers80 : So a non-person has rights as long as they aren't in the womb. That is an interesting stance. By what moral argument do we acknowledge these rights?

I'm saying they could both have rights. Just that one's rights are overridden by those of the mother.

One could give them rights on the grounds that they are a higher order living organism that is wholly dependent on humans to live.

Why do you think that infanticide is not justified based on the premises you introduced?

Quote from TRNT : If you somehow find yourself with an infant and then abandon her I am sure you will will be charged with child endangerment.

But why? What is more 'endangering', leaving the child where it is 1 hour after birth, or aborting it 1 hour (or month) prior to birth?

Quote from TRNT : Also dominion over inside of your body is a different beast from your desire not to even pick up the phone.

I agree, I said it differs in the degree of burden placed upon the woman. Are you talking about something else?

Quote from Epiphyte : It's also the nature of the obligation. One is an obligation on your own body and well being. Like being forced to give blood. The other is like finding a very ill person in need of help in your room. You can make a phone call, or have a friend take the person to a hospital. It has little to do with your own physical body. Of course, in most instances a woman will give birth in a hospital where she should be able to give up the baby.

The second example is totally to do with your own physical body. It may not be that you are being told to share the body with another being, but you in this case we are telling the woman what she can and can not do with her own body.

Isn't this something the pro-choice folks are always clamoring about? Their rights over their body?

Quote from Danman114 : The second example is totally to do with your own physical body. It may not be that you are being told to share the body with another being, but you in this case we are telling the woman what she can and can not do with her own body. Isn't this something the pro-choice folks are always clamoring about? Their rights over their body?

I think we can agree that the second example involves far less of a sacrifice of your own body. Carrying a baby to term and giving birth are quite different from making a phone call. I know that might not be a satisfying fulcrum of a discussion (a matter of degree), but as I've said, it's difficult to draw analogies with respect to abortion as it's quite a unique event. The water is murky.

Quote from shhaggy : No but someone else can take care of it. It doesn't have to die. A baby in the womb before it gets to (whatever the viable point in time is, maybe 24 weeks? 28?) will die.

actually it's 21.7 weeks now.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-0...ks/2604188

Quote : A German baby born after only 21 weeks and five days in the womb has equalled a world record for surviving premature infants.