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semm

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B. Royce is arguing that an inorganic life support machine outside of a woman is an extended womb, so you have to be careful when you speak of "outside the womb".

Actually I would disagree that he needs to be careful. Not everyone, well at least not me, is buying his extended womb argument or the precise manner in which he prescribes that a child must be "born".

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Actually I would disagree that he needs to be careful. Not everyone, well at least not me, is buying his extended womb argument or the precise manner in which he prescribes that a child must be "born".
The caution I'm suggesting is not assuming that all people use the word "womb" the ordinary way, and in particular, not getting confused as I did in understanding the argument based on the "womb". I don't advocate using the word to include "extended womb".
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I think you are confusing the potential and the actual; or, to put it another way, you are equating what could be with what is. The fact that a given fetus "can survive without the mother" means the fetus is a potential human being; but an actual human being is not a biologically-dependent parasite on another being's physiology. The referents of the concept "man" do not include such organisms.
I’ve had a chance to dwell on this a bit and you’re correct in that a proper definition of man can’t include an entity living inside of another human and entirely dependent on that human.

If, as you assert, a human fetus can survive without the aid of its carrier at 7 or 8 months, then why don't we just cut the embilical cord at THAT time, then wait and see what happens?
And what would that demonstrate? That one can starve or suffocate a fetus inside a woman’s womb? At 7 or 8 months, when the umbilical cord is cut and the fetus is removed from the womb (thus making it a baby), the child would very likely survive.

Maybe then I don't understand your definition of viability. Are you saying that it is viable when it is possible to remove the thing surgically and it would survive without any additional life support, other than being fed and sheltered? If that's the definition of "viable", then many premature births produce non-viable non-children. Since I presume that you would reject the idea of murdering premature children, this leaves me (and, it appears, others) puzzled over exactly what you're defining "viable" as. Right now that would be somewhere around 6 months gestation, and it's hard to imagine that being a hard physiological wall. I would not be surprised if a 21 week premie survives during my lifetime. If the right to abortion is defined in this way -- "not once it would be possible for the thing to survive" -- then as I said before, it would not be at all surprising if women of the future would have no right to an abortion.

I was operating under the assumption that our discussion of viability dealt with the point at which inside the womb a fetus would become viable, or a human being. Any baby that was born, whether premature or not, would be a child.

I’ve abandoned my earlier position on this because I don’t think a fetus inside of a woman meets the proper definition of a “man”. However, once the fetus leaves the womb and the umbilical cord is cut, it’s a baby, even if it's premature.

….if an incubator goes bad you call a repairman, if a woman goes bad you...
Ask her out on a date? :P

"When it is born---expelled from the mother"... (what is now its mother) "...it is no longer a fetus..." To this I agree. But, if the fetus is not, through natural processes (even when that process is aided, it is at root natural), expelled from its carrier, it still remains a fetus IF it must be hooked up to womb-like apparatus. Its basic condition is not changed just because it can exist for a short while going from the womb to the incubator. It is no nearer to breast-feeding than it was in the natural womb.

Given the importance of precise definitions, I’m curious regarding the philosophical identity of this living, breathing lump of flesh sitting in an incubator. Apparently you’re saying that until it leaves the “womb-like apparatus”, this “fetus” isn’t human and has no rights. If I follow you, a woman who expels a fetus prematurely (so it must go into an incubator) and in an unnatural manner still hasn’t given birth and she really isn’t a mother yet. Exactly when does such a fetus become a baby? Does this also mean that if postpartum depression sets in before the fetus is able to leave the incubator, the woman has the option of aborting it? What would your recommended method of abortion be?

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B. Royce is arguing that an inorganic life support machine outside of a woman is an extended womb, so you have to be careful when you speak of "outside the womb".
Granted.

Okay, let me throw this out: Some woman in the process of bearing a child decides - at the point that the umbilical cord is about to be cut - to strangle her child out-of-womb-biological-womb fetus, and is charged for murder.

The belief of some is that a not guilty verdict against such a mother woman would be a proper and admirable legal conclusion?

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Granted.

Okay, let me throw this out: Some woman in the process of bearing a child decides - at the point that the umbilical cord is about to be cut - to strangle her child out-of-womb-biological-womb fetus, and is charged for murder.

The belief of some is that a not guilty verdict against such a mother woman would be a proper and admirable legal conclusion?

That's an interesting question. If the baby/fetus (you pick) is outside of the womb, but the umbilical cord hasn't been cut yet..... can the woman still abort the baby/fetus?
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Okay, let me throw this out: Some woman in the process of bearing a child decides - at the point that the umbilical cord is about to be cut - to strangle her child out-of-womb-biological-womb fetus, and is charged for murder.
You're compounding the question with another variable (don't!!). The law should, at present, prohibit that act. It is not absolutely certain that the de-wombed homo-lump is completely free of rights -- that has not been unquestionably resolved. The law must protect rights, and given the severity of the rights violation in one case, the law must err in favor of the child. If it can establish beyond question that a homo-lump has no rights until the flow of blood through the cord is stopped, then we have a no-question about it answer to the legal question. So don't interject legal questions and presume that they are equivalent to ethical ones. Morality is about your decisions, and law is about others judging certain of your decisions. Let's first decide what act create rights.
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To go back to the beginning: as I see it, the question should be What is the dividing line between fetus and baby? I'm assuming a normal context---a healthy pregnant woman gives a natural birth to a normal healthy baby. the unnatural, the exceptional, the rare cases, should be discussed after, not before, the usual and normal.

The answer to the above question is simply, A fetus, whole, or any part thereof, is that which is in the womb;

when it is free of the womb, which includes cutting the umbilical cord, you have a baby, a human being in its first natural state---free. The purpose of rights is to protect this ferst free natural state from the initiation of force by others.

If a pregnant woman wants to abort her fetus at the last hour, it is her, the right she herself was born with, and which she does not forfeit because she is pregnant, to do so. Being pregnant is not a crime.

As you can see, to me this is a very simple issue. I see no need to make it complex. Historically, of course, the initiators of complexity regarding this issue have been the Christians with their idea that at conception God plants a soul in "the seed of life". But the human soul is self-made, and begins when the faculty of volition is free to perceive the world around it with its senses, free to move its arms, legs and head---free, as a new, soveriegn, independent, end-in-itself individual.

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The purpose of rights is to protect this ferst free natural state from the initiation of force by others.
I would put it somewhat differently: 'Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational'; 'A "right" is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life'; 'The purpose of government is to protect rights, Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law'.

In other words, I would emphasize the "necessary for survival" aspect, and say that rights are what need protecting. I don't see why this "first, free natural state" has significance. The matter is simple: when a child is born, it is a person. The temporary existence of blood flow through the umbilical cord is irrelevant, and the child has as much right to demans that the mother be arrested for initiation of force for her refusal to let the child loose to be on its own as the mother has to kill the child because she has stopped the doctor from cutting the cord -- none. One Siamese twin does not have the right to murder his conjoined brother just because some blood flows though shared veins (except: if the other half injects himself with a poisonous subsrtance that will cause him to die). Ordinarily, mothers do not suddenly die because they have a newborn somewhat attached to them via an umbilical cord for a few minutes.

If you can show me that it is necessary for a mother's proper survival to kill the newborn child while the cord is attached, then I will grant that the mother has the right to kill her newborn. So I agree, this is a very simple issue.

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But the human soul is self-made, and begins when the faculty of volition is free to perceive the world around it with its senses, free to move its arms, legs and head---free, as a new, soveriegn, independent, end-in-itself individual.
Does this mean that you're sticking with your earlier statement that a fetus remains a fetus if it isn't born naturally and is placed in an incubator?
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On the "drawing of the line", it's very clear where the religious right wants it: they object to the so called "morning after pill". They want to draw the line within the first three days of conception. Wal*Mart refuses to keep the drug, and is being sued by some women for not doing so (supposedly they can be forced -- under some drug-licensing law -- to stock drugs that people would routinely require). At the other end, Walgreens fired some of its pharmacists who refused to dispense the drug, and they are suing Walgreen for doing so.

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You're compounding the question with another variable (don't!!). Let's first decide what act create rights.
Cool... but can we stop using such bizarre terms as "homo-lump?" The people around me think I'm going crazy every time I laugh as I read that. :P

The human soul is self-made, and begins when the faculty of volition is free to perceive the world around it with its senses, free to move its arms, legs and head---free, as a new, soveriegn, independent, end-in-itself individual.
Well, since everything else applies (IMO) post "dewombing" and pre cord cutting, what is the significance here of independence? To hijack an example, are Siamese twins independent?

The temporary existence of blood flow through the umbilical cord is irrelevant, and the child has as much right to demans that the mother be arrested for initiation of force for her refusal to let the child loose to be on its own as the mother has to kill the child because she has stopped the doctor from cutting the cord -- none.
I'm not sure I got you here; you're saying that in such an example neither has the right to initiate force against the other?
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Well, yeah, but what I was trying to get at was whether the the developing being, at that point, was a (right-bearing, or at least force-prohibited) "anyone," as opposed to homo-lump :) status.

I was taking what you said as, while you weren't explicitly establishing that "post womb pre cord cut" developing beings had a right per se to what you described, at the same time the mother/woman doesn't have a right to act against this developing being - not because you 100% wish to use rights to refer to this developing being, but

The law must protect rights, and given the severity of the rights violation in one case, the law must err in favor of the child.
that you think this may possibly be correct... or at least that this developing being (post womb pre cut) might have some non-right protection.

I myself am not so sure that this is simple, but my intent wasn't to complicate for the sake of complication; I just wasn't totally sure what you were saying.

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while you weren't explicitly establishing that "post womb pre cord cut" developing beings had a right per se to what you described, at the same time the mother/woman doesn't have a right to act against this developing being - not because you 100% wish to use rights to refer to this developing being, butthat you think this may possibly be correct... or at least that this developing being (post womb pre cut) might have some non-right protection.
I am saying that if it is an instance of "man", it has rights, which should be protected. I am not completely certain that it is -- I'm looking for arguments that focus on the essential nature of man and man's method of existence, and not the presumption that it does or does not have rights, as though this is something that we intuitively know. Your mistake above is in referring to it as a "developing being". A 1 year old is a "developing being", and I would even suppose that you are developing. "Developing" isn't a characteristic that precludes being man. All the evidence that I have seen indicates that when a child is born, it is "man", and that cutting the cord does not confer manhood.
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I am saying that if it is an instance of "man", it has rights, which should be protected. I am not completely certain that it is -- I'm looking for arguments that focus on the essential nature of man and man's method of existence, and not the presumption that it does or does not have rights, as though this is something that we intuitively know. Your mistake above is in referring to it as a "developing being". A 1 year old is a "developing being", and I would even suppose that you are developing. "Developing" isn't a characteristic that precludes being man. All the evidence that I have seen indicates that when a child is born, it is "man", and that cutting the cord does not confer manhood.

I have re-thought this and I agree; cutting the cord does not confer manhood. The cord is just a temporary leftover from a previous state, the state which was left behind upon ejection from the womb.

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I'm looking for arguments that focus on the essential nature of man and man's method of existence.
Well, on the nature of rights, why is independence a necessary criteria for having rights (and what is meant by "independent?")

Your mistake above is in referring to it as a "developing being". "Developing" isn't a characteristic that precludes being man.
Ah, but that's the beauty of it. All of the other terms being used for a [ ] whose status in terms of possessing rights is unknown, carry presumptions one way or another. "Fetus," "biological parasite," "unborn," and "homo-lump" can be presumed to be rightless. "Child," "infant," even "human" connote having rights.

"Developing being" works because it can refer to either a right-bearing or rightless entity. And in cases where the status is in question, such a vague phrase seems proper IMO.

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  • 1 year later...
I get the objectivist position on a womans right to an abortion, what I dont understand is the objectivist position on when life begins. It cant possibly be that life begins at the moment of birth, can it?

But whether it's life or not is not relevant. What matters is when the living thing qualifies as a human being.

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Okay, so you're looking for "cognition" and "brain development" to get a better understanding of what ought to be legal. Could you be more specific about what you mean by cognition in this context? If there is some stage at which the fetus reacts to stimuli in the way a non-vertebrate might, or if there is a further stage where the fetus reacts with non-human mammalian responses, would that be what you're looking for? For instance, are you looking for things like the presence of nerves and feelings of pain like a chicken might feel, or are you concerned that the fetus may have something more? In other words, are you looking for something in the cognition that is distinctively human as opposed to non-human mammalian?

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In other words, are you looking for something in the cognition that is distinctively human as opposed to non-human mammalian?

Is there an objective non-arbitrary way of drawing such a distinction?

I ask this because I'm not exactly certain on how Objectivism define an organism as "human". Because if we're talking about the capacity to reason, it would seem that a toddler would not qualify as a human. I'm not even sure if there is a significant difference between a newborn babe and a fetus one or two months prior to inception.

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I think it does matter that the fetus is not a physically seperate entity before birth. It is completely dependent upon the mother at that point, and this dependency changes significantly when it is born. Granted, it cannot go out and hunt wild boar at that point, but it is a very significant (first) step towards becoming an independently functioning, rational being. I think just before birth and just after birth the difference in the extent of rationality of the fetus/baby is probably nonexistent, but being outside the womb in the real world is an extremely important step towards realizing the potential that is their rational faculty (because they need percepts, and tons of them, before they can ever conceptualize). I think it would be fair to say that a fetus, which is highly limited in its ability to develop its rational faculty at that point because of its deprivation of sensory data (mainly visual ones), is much, much more distant from being able to actualize its potential for conceptual thinking than is a newborn baby.

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I think just before birth and just after birth the difference in the extent of rationality of the fetus/baby is probably nonexistent, but being outside the womb in the real world is an extremely important step towards realizing the potential that is their rational faculty

I think it is an important step, but not the most important step. Would it not make more sense to either induce birth or ride out the last month or so of pregnancy and put the child up for adoption rather than terminate it? One would have to question the rationality of a mother who would terminate in the eighth month of a healthy prenancy for lifestyle reasons. It seems to me that at some point between conception and birth the line is crossed between potentiality and actuality of human life. Why not let medical science determine that point, and allow abortions to take place up to that point. Being the uncle of a child born in the eighth month of pregnancy, I cannot view any third trimester abortion as anything short of infanticide. Supporting abortion up to the moment of birth is barbarism.

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Would it not make more sense to either induce birth or ride out the last month or so of pregnancy and put the child up for adoption rather than terminate it?
No, it would not make any sense, unless you assume that a woman has no rights when she is pregnant. Maintaining the contradiction that a non-person has rights that negate the rights of a person is what makes no sense.
Why not let medical science determine that point, and allow abortions to take place up to that point.
Because there is no medical / scientific issue at work here. It's a simple point, that only people have rights, and a fetus is not a person.
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I think fletch hit this one square. My chain of reasoning is as follows:

1. If an infant has the right to life at birth (which we all agree it does), it has the same right 10 minutes before birth. Nothing in its nature is essentially different.

2. Following the timeline back, at some point in its development it acquired the essential characteristics which confer rights. We can disagree about when that is (and can't know exactly when it happens for any particular fetus). But for the purposes of first-term abortions, it's irrelevant (as I will show).

3. The right to life does not include the right to live inside another person's body without her consent. Therefore the mother has the right to have the being inside of her removed whenever she wants. However, if the being has the right to life, and it's possible to remove it without killing it, then she has the obligation to do so. It's analogous to the case of an univited visitor in your house who's not threatening you but just won't leave. You have the right to physically drag him out, or have the police do it, but you don't have the right to shoot him dead and drag out the body. However, if he has somehow attached himself to the wall in such a way that removing him will kill him, you can still remove him; his death is no longer avoidable without violating your rights.

So as I see it, there are three categories of abortions:

Before the fetus is viable outside the womb, abortions should clearly be allowed, whether or not it has rights. There is no way to remove it without killing it. The vast majority of abortions are in this category.

After the fetus has acquired the characteristics which give it rights and is viable outside the womb, abortions of convenience should be forbidden; as fletch said, if she wants the kid out, induce labor. (However, there are plenty of cases where something goes wrong with the pregnancy and the only way to protect the life and physical health of the mother is to abort, so a blanket ban like the recently-passed law isn't the answer either.) Ninth-month pregnancies are in this category; probably eighth-month as well.

Between these is a gray area where either viability or possession of rights, or both, can be debated. As medical science gets better at keeping premature babies alive, the point of viability moves earlier; at some point, it might predate full brain function. (For all I know about the subject, maybe it already does.) In this area, I'd be comfortable letting a doctor certify that in his expert opinion either the fetus isn't viable or doesn't have a working brain, and allow an abortion based on that. In any case, not many abortions are done at this stage.

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