| Kasz216 said: Sceintific personhood = consiousness. That's very rigid... As for the brain... not really, 25 weeks was a really unfortunate time to pick... because... it's not hugely more developed. It grows sure, but at around 23 weeks the development of the brain is about done, and it's all about just growing... and if your using growing as your benchmark, a newborns brain is 1/4th that of a full human brain. Also, what I actually don't see is your actual stance on abortion. Clearly you are for it... but at what week cutoff wise... and why? Does the cutoff week change if the baby is mentally impaired or has some sort of genetic disease?
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Several key connections in the brain don't develop until after the 25th week, perhaps most importantly the connections required for sensory input (Thalmic? Something like that). For that reason I think a reasonable cut-off is probably about then - if a country defined the legal limit to be anywhere in the 22-26 week range I'd be pretty ok with that.
As for mentally impaired or genetic disease, that's a tricky ethical question which I don't have an answer to at the moment =P I'd have to think about it quite a bit.
Also I do not believe that your definition of personhood is scientific (or that there is a scientific one) but I get the feeling we're not going to be able to agree on this one =P
