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Regardless of your intention to not argue about boundaries per se, it remains an argument against boundaries and is refuted by argument establishing the inevitability of boundaries. Furthermore, your explanation of why you claim there is a contradiction, "(for it is a child in both cases)", is petitio principii because establishing when personhood begins and rights apply is the question to be answered. I will not concede that the object of our attention is a child in both cases. I find the epistemological method you seem to employing here is intrinsicism. Intrinsicism in general is the assertion that the 'thing in itself' is a value, and in this particular case that 'human flesh has rights', with no thought of justification or considering of value to whom and for what purpose, or of what causes rights. All through our lives we take action with respect to things which do not exist. That is called planning ahead. Yet the existence of the plan and even the carrying of it into action is not the same as the ultimate object of the plan and action. Taking action right now for the benefit of the child you expect to have does not imply the child exists right now, anymore than my saving for retirement right now implies that I am retired right now. A faculty of rationality is an attribute of some consciousnesses, and consciousness itself is not an entity but the action of awareness, a type of relationship between subject and object, knower and known. Reifying 'faculty of rationality' as though it were an independent entity or attribute not premised on awareness is another instance of thinking like an intrinsicist. I'll concede that the sensory input in the womb is greater than zero, but the sensory input to an adult in a sensory deprivation chamber is also greater than zero. Being rational, indeed remaining sane, requires sensory input above some threshold level which is itself not zero. See http://en.wikipedia....ory_deprivation . Since an adult cannot keep his consciousness from disintegrating under conditions of sensory deprivation, I cannot give credence to the notion that a fetus can gain consciousness, the human style consciousness that underlies rights, in similar conditions and especially not with the additional factor that a fetus has never known any other condition. This is could be said to be true for for all mammalian infants. Not all mammalian infants have rights, so all of this is nonessential to thinking about rights.

As Peikoff says,any one answer to a philosophical query pressuposes an entire philosophy.

Getting pleasure out of seeing others frustrated isn't exactly a sign of a rational mind.

I would say that yes, at zero or insignificant cost, you are morally obligated to help a stranger, and I believe that this position is consistent with my understanding of Objectivism. All people have the potential to be rational value producers, and indeed almost all people are, to some extent. Very few in society produce nothing of objective value, and while almost all have mixed premises, almost all rely on reason to some extent (remember the characterization of the morality of death as impotent, and dependent on the morality of life; altruism can never be practiced consistently without resulting in imminent death). Now, with a stranger, all of this value is potential, rather than actual; you don't actually know the person. However, value is value. To avoid gaining a value with very little or no cost attached is just like any other failure on your part to adhere to your code of values; it is a moral failing. As others have said, zero cost situations are not realistic, and in reality you must weigh the potential value you place in strangers against the costs imposed. Different people have different mindsets about how likely strangers are to be worthwhile people (Some are optimistic, others cynical), and there is room for rational disagreement over such a matter (to a certain degree; either naivete or misanthropy is irrational). Additionally, different people assess costs differently (although in general, anyone with well-developed feelings of self-worth and self-respect will take impositions on their own life seriously). Thus, in any realistic situation, evaluation of alternatives must be made. However, in such a fictitious situation, where one of the alternatives is costless by design, a failure to help a stranger indicates either a failure to live up to one's value system or a misanthropic view of humanity, either one of which is irrational and therefore immoral.