Abortion & Politics: the basics

[Qwark]

palou said:

Qwark said:
Just solve it scientifically, after a foetus gets a brain and is aware its alive an abortion shouldn't be legal anymore. Before its a bunch of cells that are building, but have not created an being that is actually alive or aware of that.

I don't like the idea settling this religiously, because the US knows freedom of belief, which counts for religious people and Atheists. Democratically trough a referendum is going to be influenced to much by populism. I am very much pro choice, but I am not a female or a theist, but an atheist male and a liberal. Scientists should answer this question though. Mainly whether abortion is baby murder. Also after how many weeks past impregnation is abortion killing q sentient self aware being.

I am an atheist.

 

Nonetheless, I question myself if killing a fetus, even unconscious, is moral or not.

I think it is best to answer it with philosophy; what makes baby murder wrong in the first place? Because it should be joticed that a newborn is still at least a year and a half off reaching the intellect of a pig. Few would classify killing the latter as equivalent to a murder. We protect the baby because it will be a human in the future, and it would be wrong to take away the right of said future human to exist (the same reason why murder is condemned in the first place.) But can the same not be said of a fetus? The developpment that occurs in the stomach is a fairly fix process; so we would know just as much what kind of human the detus would have become as for a newborn.

I see your point, I would however point out if we can murder something that is not yet alive, we stop a process which is creating live. After something is alive it is murder nonetheless whether it's human or anyting else. Happens to be we are humans and we consider ourselves way more important than any other form of live. If we are goig to judge based on purely potential we could also argue about the use of protection in the first place. Which makes sure a fetus will never be formed in the first place (which is way better than killing an unaware and uncounsius fetus, dont get me wrong). I do see the ethical problems with legalizing abortion and people shouldn't just get one, because it is convenient, there are better constructions for that. Even though that's a entirely different discussion. For people who don't have another solution than having an abortion it should be legal until the fetus is a self aware being, since you can't murder anything that isn't actually alive yet in my opinion.