From another site I visit.
Seen here
There are a lot of different pro-choice
arguments out there. Most of them revolve
around the ideas of bodily autonomy and
personal privacy %u2014 that is, a
pregnant woman should be allowed to decide
for herself whether or not she continues
the pregnancy, and the government should
not be empowered to legally compel her to
remain pregnant against her will. There
are a lot of moral, legal and ethical
arguments as to why the government
shouldn%u2019t be able to do this, and why
women should not be forced to sustain a
fetal life. I%u2019m not going to get into
those here. Instead, I%u2019m going to
address the standard pro-life view that
life begins at conception, and that we
should invest every fertilized egg, embryo
and fetus with full personhood rights. And
I have a few questions about that.
The ultimate pro-life goal is the passage
of a Human Life Amendment. The texts of
such an amendment vary, but they generally
include the basic idea that:
The paramount right to life is vested in
each human being from the moment of
fertilization without regard to age,
health or condition of dependency.
In other words, life begins the moment a
sperm fertilizes an egg. Personhood begins
here. Sounds simple enough, right? But I
have some questions and concerns (numbered
for easy answering from the multitudes of
pro-lifers who I%u2019m sure will be happy
to address them):
1. How do we determine our population? If
a person is a person at the moment of
conception, then we need to seriously
re-evaluate how we calculate the number of
persons world-wide. How do we track each
conception? Have women make daily doctor
visits to check? Implement some sort of
required daily home test?
2. How do we determine our death rate?
Somewhere around half of all fertilized
eggs naturally don%u2019t implant in the
uterine lining, and never develop into
fetuses, let alone babies. Does our death
rate just go up a few million with the
passage of this amendment? The medical
community has traditionally defined
pregnancy as beginning at the point of
implantation precisely because so many
fertilized eggs don%u2019t implant. Should
we change this definition?
3. Should every %u201Chuman%u201D death be
investigated? If so, how? As it stands, if
a person dies (and especially if
they%u2019re found dead), there%u2019s
often some sort of investigation,
especially if there%u2019s reason to
believe that another person caused their
death. So, first, how do we recover all
the %u201Cbodies%u201D of the fertilized
egg-people? Do we insist on checking every
pad and tampon for evidence of human life?
Every pair of panties? Every toilet bowl?
And if we find a fertilized egg, should
the police be called? I mean, if you find
a baby in a dumpster, you call the police.
If you find a used tampon in the trash,
should you do the same thing? If a woman
goes to the hospital for a miscarriage,
should she be investigated as a potential
murderer or child abuser? Should there be
laws about the proper disposal of dead
egg-bodies, the way that there are laws
regulating the disposal of born human
bodies?
4. Pro-lifers claim to value each and
every human life, from the moment of
conception. That%u2019s why, they say,
they want abortion to be illegal %u2014
because it kills a person. And there are
indeed a lot of abortions. But the
abortion rate pales in comparison to the
rate of fertilized eggs that don%u2019t
implant and %u201Cdie%u201D by being
naturally flushed out of the body. Yet
there is not a single pro-life
organization (at least that I can find)
dedicated to finding a solution to this
widespread, deadly epidemic. The
%u201Cdeath rate%u201D of unimplanted
fertilized egg-persons almost certainly
far exceeds the abortion rate and the
death rate from AIDS combined. Why the
silence? Why no mass protests or funding
drives or pushes for research?* Where is
the concern for the fertilized egg-people?
5. Should fertilized eggs and embryos get
social security numbers? What benefits
should they be entitled to?
6. What responsibilities and legal
consequences should pregnant women face?
Should Child Protective Services be able
to step in if a pregnant woman does
something that could potentially damage
the fetus %u2014 like eat tuna or drink
coffee or exercise heavily? What if a
woman isn%u2019t pregnant, but makes her
body inhospitable to a fertilized egg
%u2014 say, for example, that she uses
birth control, which thins the uterine
lining and makes it difficult for a
fertilized egg to implant? What if
she%u2019s anorexic? Some anorexics may be
able to ovulate, but may not be able to
sustain a pregnancy, or even have enough
nutrients to allow for implantation. Can
such a woman be prosecuted or otherwise
punished for creating an environment that
was deadly for an egg-child? What if a
pregnant woman had a miscarriage, and it
could be linked to some behavior %u2014
going skiing or flying or not eating
properly? We already prosecute pregnant
women when they use drugs during their
pregnancies. If a pregnant woman otherwise
does harm to her fetus, should she be
prosecuted for child abuse? Neglect? If
she miscarries, can she be tried for
homicide?
7. I%u2019ve asked this one before, but I
rarely get a straight answer: If a woman
intentionally terminates a pregnancy in a
pro-life nation, how much time should she
do? If a fetus is a person and a woman
intentionally terminates the life of that
fetus, should she go to jail? Be up for
the death penalty? In almost any other
circumstance, a person who intentionally
kills another person %u2014 or who pays
someone to do the killing for them %u2014
is prosecuted. Why should women who
terminate pregnancies be exceptions? And
if women who terminate pregnancies should
be excepted because they just don%u2019t
know better, should the same hold true for
women who intentionally kill their born
children? For women who intentionally kill
strangers?
8. If a fetus is entitled to use a
woman%u2019s body to sustain its own life,
should we begin researching other ways for
humans to share bodily functions? It could
save lives, after all. If, say, my kidneys
fail and there is a way that you and I can
be physically attached for about a year,
can I can use your body to clean out my
own? Sure, it will mean that you will be
less physically mobile, it%u2019ll require
you to take time off of work, it will
significantly alter your health, and
getting me off of you when I%u2019m ready
will require you to go through a long and
expensive process which re-defines the
meaning of pain, but if a fetus has those
rights, why don%u2019t I?
9. Should women be liable in civil court
to the estates of their fetuses or
fertilized eggs? Say a woman miscarries,
or her egg never implants, and one can
make the argument that her actions
(drinking a glass of wine or horseback
riding or not eating properly or being
overweight) contributed to the miscarriage
or non-implantation. Should she be liable?
10. What about men? How do we establish
the paternity of a fertilized egg? What
obligations do men have to the eggs they
fertilize?
11. What about in-vitro fertilization?
Clearly it would be wrong to destroy any
fertilized eggs in an IVF clinic, since
those eggs are people, but what of the
fact that without being implanted in
women%u2019s bodies, those eggs will never
develop? Is it morally acceptable to leave
those egg-people in a freezer for their
whole lives, or should we compel some
people to carry them to term?
12. How should we handle pregnancy-related
complications? Say a woman is pregnant,
and while giving birth isn%u2019t going to
kill her immediately, it%u2019s going to
weaken her body to the point that she will
almost surely die within a few months of
birth. Abortion is a definitely no-go,
right? What if giving birth will probably
kill her? We usually don%u2019t know for
100% absolute sure that childbirth is
going to kill a woman; doctors are usually
only able to predict that it is likely to
kill her. But of course, the likelihood
%u2014 even a strong likelihood, and even
a near-definite likelihood %u2014 that
someone is going to kill you is not enough
to pay for someone else to kill them
first. And what if it is 100%? Why does
the woman%u2019s life take precedence over
fetal life if they%u2019re both human
beings invested with full personhood
rights? And how should we deal with
ectopic pregnancies? Go the Catholic route
and require that the woman%u2019s whole
fallopian tube be removed rather than just
take out the egg? That still kills the
fertilized egg-person.
What else would you like pro-lifers to
answer?
