Originally posted by Scriabin
you have made an unwarranted assumption that is not based on fact, but only on belief.
until and unless a child is delivered alive and lives on its own outside of the mother's body, there is only an assumption by you that a person exists beforehand.
your use of the word "definitely" does not make it so.
your use of the phrase "needs to be recognize ...[text shortened]... ny probative weight regarding the 14th amendment or the concept of substantive due process.
I don't think you read my post very carefully. I didn't state that a fetus is a person, I said "after birth there is definitely a person". I can't think of any situations in which a baby would not be considered a person under the law, unless it were stillborn or possibly brain dead at birth (can anyone confirm the legal status of a brain dead fetus?). Maybe there's confusion because of the way in which I used the word "baby" to differentiate between the born (baby) and the unborn (fetus, zygote, etc...). If that's the case, then fair enough, I'll be more specific next time.
However, consider this: before conception there is no person, but every person is a product of conception. At some point in between, logic dictates that there is a switch from non-person to person. The only assumption here is the one made by you, that "until and unless a child is delivered alive and lives on its own outside of the mother's body" there is no person. The transition between zygote and person may be gentle or sharp, depending on the definition of "person" chosen, but logically the transition must exist if we are to recognize people as "persons" being something fundamentally different than a large collection of self-replicating DNA.
With regards to probative weight, due process and the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution, I have to plead ignorance of the law. A cursory glance reveals that the 14th amendment is very similar to the 5th amendment in that "No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ....", with the 14th amendment being more specific "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ..." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process#Text_in_the_United_States_Constitution). In the case of abortion, it seems the only question should be whether or not a fetus meets the definition of "person" at some point in its gestation, not that if it were recognized as a person then should either the 5th or 14th amendments be applied in protecting its life, but I understand that Roe vs. Wade dealt with the mother's right to privacy under the "liberty" umbrella instead. It was probably a wise decision on the court's part to sidestep the issue of whether a fetus can be a person under the law, but it's interesting to note that although the court didn't recognize a fetus as a person, it still saw fit to restrict the mother's abortion right due to conflict with the state's interest in that "it has still another important and legitimate interest in protecting the potentiality of human life." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_vs._wade#Supreme_Court_decision) If the court didn't implicitly think of a viable fetus as having some right to life, why would the state protect it at the cost of the mother's liberty? This is only speculation of course, but interesting nonetheless.
(For the record, (a) I agree that a woman has the right to choose, and that this choice should be unfettered without compelling counter-interests; (b) I do not believe that a person exists at conception, but I do believe that it does become a "person", if not in a legal sense than in a definitive sense, at some point before birth (otherwise it's difficult to answer the question "what meaningful difference is there between a baby about to be born and the same baby right after it's born?" ); (c) I do believe that defining the word "person" is an extremely difficult task in general, one compounded by the difficulties involved in demarcating the transitions between non-life and life at both ends of the spectrum - birth and death; and (d) I do think that the decision in Roe vs. Wade to impose restrictions based on the viability of the fetus was a reasonable compromise.)
Planned Parenthood donation
07 Jun '09 16:55
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