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While the fetus is attached to the mother, it’s her property and she is free to do what she wants with it. Therefore, she can abort the baby at any time prior to being born and the umbilical being cut, at which point the baby is an independent person.

(John)

It matters because the abortion debate is largely about what rights (if any) an unborn baby has. Personhood determines those rights. Killing a person is morally (and legally) different from killing a non-person, so you need to know when personhood starts.

It’s true that you know personhood will start at some point as long as you don’t interfere, but this is for people who do want to interfere without committing a moral (or legal) crime.

Why does it matter exactly when personhood sets in? You know it becomes a person as long as you don’t abort the process.

(Dirk)

Whenever a child may reach independence, it’s certainly well past pregnancy, so it’s not an issue wrt abortion.

Where exactly does a child’s dependency on the parents end? At five years old? When the child moves out? Seems arbitrary.

(Amaro)

Building on #140, it’s more like forcing someone into your home, locking the door, making them depend on you for food and water, and then complaining they’re in your home. Clearly, killing them is not the answer (if they’re a person).

That’s different because the person in your example made the choice to show up, whereas an unborn baby made no such choice.

(Danny)

If you invite someone into your home and they come over you can still change your mind and kick them out. Just because you invited them doesn’t mean they can stay in your home against your will.

(Amaro)

It does if you caused them to be there to begin with.

(Danny)

Someone’s personhood has no bearing on whether you should be able to evict them, right? It’s your property, so it’s your choice.

(Amaro)

Evictionism doesn’t explain why personhood should be ignored.

(Danny)

There’s ‘evictionism’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evictionism

I like this view because it sidesteps the issue of personhood and at what point it arises. It says you’re free to evict anything, person or not. We don’t know how creativity (ie the universal-explainer software mentioned in #119) works so this is handy.

(Amaro)

Parents don’t owe their children anything […].

Yes they do. They are responsible for bringing a helpless being into the world who depends on them.

The result is often tragic. Abortion relieves parents of that responsibility and prevents this outcome.

Adoption

A parent facing the consequences of his/her actions isn’t “force”.

It’s not right to force a parent to take care of a child they didn’t want. The result is often tragic. Abortion relieves parents of that responsibility and prevents this outcome. Parents don’t owe their children anything, and children don’t owe their parents anything.

(Amaro)

I agree that a non-aborted child’s quality of life matters. For that reason, I think the process of giving a newborn child up for adoption should be as easy as possible. I don’t think killing an unborn baby who may as well already be a person and thus have rights is the right way to prevent him having a bad life. Like, don’t punish an unborn baby for having bad parents.

I agree that a non-aborted child’s quality of life matters. For that reason, I think the process of giving a newborn child up for adoption should be as easy as possible. I don’t think killing an unborn baby who may as well already be a person and thus have rights is the right way to prevent him having a bad life.

Blaming the birth on lawmakers or on having had too little time is already a lame excuse if a woman has six weeks to figure out whether she’s pregnant. That’s enough time for a conscientious person. And whose actions resulted in pregnancy? Not the lawmakers’.

A non-aborted child’s quality of life matters, too. One benefit of allowing abortion at any time is that, if a mother decides not to abort despite having had ample opportunity to do so, she is definitely responsible for the child’s wellbeing. Then she can’t blame lawmakers or having had too little time; she can’t evade accountability for the living child as easily.

(Dirk)

Building on #123, cutting the umbilical does not make the baby an “independent person”. The baby still depends on the parents physically, financially, emotionally, etc.

Physical (in)dependence isn’t a valid yardstick because it does not confer rights. The only thing that confers rights to an organism is personhood.

Building on #121, a baby is not a “trespasser”. A pregnant woman ‘invited’ the baby into her womb. Unless she was raped, in which case the rapist ‘put’ the baby there. But the baby is blameless either way and thus can’t be likened to a trespasser.

The linked Wikipedia article says:

Evictionists view a woman's womb as her property and an unwanted fetus as a "trespasser or parasite", even while lacking the will to act. They argue that a pregnant woman has the right to evict a fetus from her body since she has no obligation to care for a trespasser.

If this is an accurate description of the evictionist view, it strikes me as deeply flawed.

A pregnant woman does have an obligation to care for her fetus (at least once it’s a person). She took an action which resulted in the fetus’s existence.

There’s ‘evictionism’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evictionism

I like this view because it sidesteps the issue of personhood and at what point it arises. It says you’re free to evict anything, person or not. We don’t how creativity (ie the universal-explainer software mentioned in #119) works so this is handy.

(Amaro)