Roe v Wade is on deck

[bilby]

Arguments regarding personhood date back millenia, have no concensus, and have no objective basis from statistics to rely on onee thing to justify one choice over the other. The only consistent thing is that legal provisions generally only apply to an individual post birth.

Do tell.

Murder in California law - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Code defines murder as "the unlawful killing of a human being, or a fetus, with malice aforethought"​

I conditioned my statement with a "generally". Finding an exclusion isn't breaking the veracity of my statement. As far as most governments are concerned, life begins at birth: life insurance, health care, social security, dependents, disability coverage, birth certificates, etc...

The phrase "... a human being, or a fetus..." implies that that law considers these to be different things.

That is, this law had to be specifically worded to override the default legal assumption that legal provisions only apply to an individual post birth.

That apparent attempt at rebuttal is actually giving support to your position.

Had the law considered a fetus to be a class of human being, it either could have not mentioned it at all; Or if there was felt to be a need to clarify that the one is a subset of the other, it could have said "... a human being, including a fetus...".

But it doesn't say that. It specifies two groups which are protected from unlawful killing, only one of which is "human being".

 

[Bomb#20]

The arbitrariness and subjectivity of a threshold tell us jack squat about the objectivity of the properties of entities far removed from the threshold.

So go with the only reliably identifiable moment of transition from fetus to baby. Duh.

Fetal heartbeat?[/sarcasm]

"We don't know whether a 20-week fetus is a person. But that doesn't prove we don't know that a 30-week fetus is a person. Therefore the law should presume a 39-week fetus isn't a person." doesn't strike me as an argument that can be proven correct with "Duh.".

 

[Elixir]

But that doesn't prove we don't know that a 30-week fetus is a person.

Right. Of course that doesn’t prove it. Our inability to know it, proves it. The proof (of any X week fetus’ personhood) is its biological autonomy; the point at which it is a “baby” or “child”.
Of course that doesn’t mean an X-Y week fetus is NOT a “person”.
But I do not favor devaluing the mother’s life to equality with that of the fetus she may be carrying.
Why do you?

 

[Bomb#20]

The Code defines murder as "the unlawful killing of a human being, or a fetus, with malice aforethought"

CA.
They have hired a board of psychics to divine the malice and aforethought of doctors who perform abortion?
Or is it the “unlawful “ part that needs litigating?

No and no. Abortion is lawful in California. The point of the law is if some ruffian kicks a pregnant woman in the belly intending to harm the fetus and causes a miscarriage, California law considers that not just a crime against the mother but also a crime against the fetus.

Arguments regarding personhood date back millenia, have no concensus, and have no objective basis from statistics to rely on onee thing to justify one choice over the other. The only consistent thing is that legal provisions generally only apply to an individual post birth.

Do tell.

Murder in California law - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Code defines murder as "the unlawful killing of a human being, or a fetus, with malice aforethought"​

I conditioned my statement with a "generally". Finding an exclusion isn't breaking the veracity of my statement. As far as most governments are concerned, life begins at birth: life insurance, health care, social security, dependents, disability coverage, birth certificates, etc...

Fair enough; but you did say it's a consistent thing. It's not consistent.

The phrase "... a human being, or a fetus..." implies that that law considers these to be different things.

That is, this law had to be specifically worded to override the default legal assumption that legal provisions only apply to an individual post birth.

That apparent attempt at rebuttal is actually giving support to your position.

Not so much.

if x < 10 or x % 2 == 0:
     print(x)

implies that Python considers single-digit numbers and even numbers to be different things? The or means six is not an even number?

Had the law considered a fetus to be a class of human being, it either could have not mentioned it at all; Or if there was felt to be a need to clarify that the one is a subset of the other, it could have said "... a human being, including a fetus...".

But it doesn't say that. It specifies two groups which are protected from unlawful killing, only one of which is "human being".

No, it specifies two groups which are protected from unlawful killing without specifying to what extent the groups overlap, if at all. There was not felt a need to clarify whether the one is a subset of the other. Quite the reverse -- there was felt a need not to clarify it. Clarifying that point was not necessary to achieve the purpose of the legislation and would have served only to convince legislators on one side or the other of the abortion controversy not to vote for it. We see the same choice in any number of SCOTUS decisions, when the justices chose to rule on narrow grounds and left clarifying some larger issue to a future case.

 

[Elixir]

So the CA law against “murdering” a fetus is irrelevant to this discussion. The scenarios under discussion do not involve aggravated assault.

 

[laughing dog]

The arbitrariness and subjectivity of a threshold tell us jack squat about the objectivity of the properties of entities far removed from the threshold.

So go with the only reliably identifiable moment of transition from fetus to baby. Duh.

Fetal heartbeat?[/sarcasm]

"We don't know whether a 20-week fetus is a person. But that doesn't prove we don't know that a 30-week fetus is a person. Therefore the law should presume a 39-week fetus isn't a person." doesn't strike me as an argument that can be proven correct with "Duh.".

If you exclude fetus from the the definition of person, then, yes, it can proven correct with "Duh". Duh.

The issue for many posters is whether a fetus is a person.

 

[Elixir]

The issue for many posters is whether a fetus is a person.

Right. B#20’s point may be going over my head, because it reads to me like he believes the “personhood” of a fetus can be positively determined, or is an automatic property of fetuses, embryos and blastocysts. He won’t state his belief simply, which seems like a tell.
If that’s the case, “personhood” is a totally vacuous term IMHO.

Should it become routine to clone a human from a DNA sample, will hair, fingernails, dandruff flakes etc. become “persons”?

 

[Bomb#20]

The issue for many posters is whether a fetus is a person.

Right. B#20’s point may be going over my head, because it reads to me like he believes the “personhood” of a fetus can be positively determined, or is an automatic property of fetuses, embryos and blastocysts. He won’t state his belief simply, which seems like a tell.

I guess after 4000+ posts you can be forgiven for not keeping up with the thread, but I stated my belief on that point simply three weeks ago in post #4008: "A fetus isn't a nonperson one day and a person the next -- it's in a gradual process of becoming more and more personish over a period of weeks. Three months: 0% personish. Seven months: 100% personish. Five months: somewhere in between. How far in between? Heck if I know. Not my field of specialization."

B

Post in thread 'Roe v Wade is on deck'

Mar 2, 2025

In the first place, if that was the substantive distinction in your mind, why the devil didn't you say that,

How many times and in how many ways do you wish I had said it?

At least once would have been nice.

Are you arguing the point or just attacking my delivery or lack of it?

Lack of delivery. If you brought up your horse, or an equivalent, in any post prior to your tirade at Emily in #3781, I didn't see it and I presume she didn't either. If you did, feel free to point out where; but if so, #3781 would have been a good place to remind her instead of...

• Bomb#20

If you overlooked it, that could account for some of your subsequent behavior. Now might be a good time to address some of the points I raised in it.

Should it become routine to clone a human from a DNA sample, will hair, fingernails, dandruff flakes etc. become “persons”?

No. Did you have a pertinent point?

 

[Elixir]

Seven months: 100%

Based on what?
I mean, okay, but … who says? And who says when the “7 month” fetus was actually conceived? All just for legal purposes of course. We need to know exactly when you had sex with whom! If you don’t know and the fetus that may (or may not) be 7 mos in utero, should die for any reason, we need FACTS!

 

[Bomb#20]

But that doesn't prove we don't know that a 30-week fetus is a person.

Right. Of course that doesn’t prove it. Our inability to know it, proves it.

You're assuming facts not in evidence. You haven't established we have an inability to know it.

The proof (of any X week fetus’ personhood) is its biological autonomy; the point at which it is a “baby” or “child”.

Well that doesn't make any sense. Biological autonomy has no logical connection to personhood, and any normal person can think of counterexamples. Your horse is biologically autonomous and that doesn't make it a person. Back in the 1800s transfusions were performed directly person-to-person, without our modern blood banks. The guy receiving such a transfusion was not biologically autonomous. That didn't make him a nonperson.

But I do not favor devaluing the mother’s life to equality with that of the fetus she may be carrying.
Why do you?

You're assuming facts not in evidence again. The only thing I've said about the relative value of the mother's and fetus's lives is:

"Worth" to whom? A (38-week) fetus is worth more than the mother to the fetus, but the mother is worth more than the fetus to the mother*. If you're looking for a judgment of their objective worth, ask somebody who believes in that sort of metaphysical nonsense.​

 

[Bomb#20]

Seven months: 100%

Based on what?

Based on when a woman gives birth at seven months pretty much all of us regard what comes out as a premature baby, not a miscarriage. If the mother doesn't want him at that point the rest of us see this as a reason to look around for an adoptive family rather than a reason to pull the plug on the incubator.

 

[Elixir]

when a woman gives birth at seven months

Certainly when a woman gives live birth at seven months, the product is a baby person. Same at six or eight months.
I don’t think anyone is arguing otherwise.

That is an argument for …. well … my argument.

 

[Emily Lake]

What I personally believe is that there likely exists a circumstance where the scenario you so broadly described would in fact be the better choice.

Can you describe a hypothetical circumstance in which you think it would be ethical and appropriate to terminate a healthy third trimester fetus that presents no known health risk to the mother? I'm not asking for hard data, I'll be content with a ferinstance.

And that it is not MY choice or YOUR choice to decide. Nor is it lawmakers' choice to decide nor law enforcement's choice to make.

But it *is* the lawmaker's decision to make when it pertains to euthanasia, is it not? Providing guidelines for when it is allowable or defensible to deprive someone of life seems like a reasonable thing for lawmakers to do.

I don’t think it should be the law maker’s decision re: euthanasia. I’m not certain it is in every state.

Do you think that any person should be able to request medically assisted suicide for any reason? Or do you think it should be allowable only in certain situations?

Here's the thing that keeps getting conflated in this thread - it keeps getting framed as being "the lawmaker's decision" when in actuality, it's the doctor's decision, and the lawmaker is only setting the boundary conditions within which the doctor can make the decision.

And those boundary conditions exist because the lawmaker is literally defining an allowable exception to what would otherwise be considered murder.

 

[Emily Lake]

I may be mistaken but I believe you wish a return to Roe v Wade? It is quite possible that laws could be written to favor saving the fetus no matter the risk to the mother in 3rd trimester pregnancies.

"It's possible that someone could totally bastardize your proposal to do something completely different from what you've proposed, something you've explicitly stated you don't support... therefore you support killing mothers!!!!1"

Come on Toni, you're better than this. You're arguing with me about my views and my proposed approach to it, but you're holding up as a counter to my views something that I explicitly reject. If someone were to write laws that favor saving the fetus regardless of the risk to the mother I would not support those laws and would advocate against them.

I genuinely don't mind having my views challenged, and having people disagree with my views and perspective. What I am infuriated by is people who continue to ignore my views - regardless of how many times I've stated them clearly and explicitly - in order to argue against something I haven't said and don't support... and use that strawman to berate me with. Which has happened a lot in this thread.

 

[laughing dog]

What I personally believe is that there likely exists a circumstance where the scenario you so broadly described would in fact be the better choice.

Can you describe a hypothetical circumstance in which you think it would be ethical and appropriate to terminate a healthy third trimester fetus that presents no known health risk to the mother? I'm not asking for hard data, I'll be content with a ferinstance.

And that it is not MY choice or YOUR choice to decide. Nor is it lawmakers' choice to decide nor law enforcement's choice to make.

But it *is* the lawmaker's decision to make when it pertains to euthanasia, is it not? Providing guidelines for when it is allowable or defensible to deprive someone of life seems like a reasonable thing for lawmakers to do.

I don’t think it should be the law maker’s decision re: euthanasia. I’m not certain it is in every state.

Do you think that any person should be able to request medically assisted suicide for any reason? Or do you think it should be allowable only in certain situations?

Here's the thing that keeps getting conflated in this thread - it keeps getting framed as being "the lawmaker's decision" when in actuality, it's the doctor's decision, and the lawmaker is only setting the boundary conditions within which the doctor can make the decision.

A distinction without a difference - politicians are limiting the possible allowable health care decisions.

I think a person should able to request a medically assisted suicide for any reason.

 

[Emily Lake]

There's this thing called adoption, it's been around pretty much forever. Even animals have been known to adopt and rear someone else's offspring.

So you believe in forced carrying to term.

In the third trimester, when there's no fetal defect and no known risk to the mother, yes I do. Are you just catching on to this now?

No, I just thought such a position is the province of nutjob religionists and dystopian science fiction.

Meh. I think it's the province of nutjob hardliners and dystopian carelessness to kill viable and healthy fetuses for no good goddamned reason, so I suppose that makes us equal on this.

Realistically... you can view it as nutjob and dystopian, but the overwhelming majority of woman support the same view I hold. Because once you step outside the realm of philosophical academic discourse, just about everyone acknowledges that a fetus in the third trimester is a baby. And pretty much everyone would agree that if someone forcibly killed that baby against the mother's will, it should be treated as murder. And while it might suck for some people sometimes, you can't have it both ways - it can't be murder if it's against your will and healthcare if it is your will.

 

[Emily Lake]

If she had actually gone to the actual website advertisement where she could have seen this:

View attachment 49823

"delivery of a stillborn". It says nothing about actually killing the fetus.

Wow, you're kind of digging all the way down into pedantry here. It's an abortion. It's not removal of an already stillborn fetus. The fetus is killed in the process, so that by the time it's actually removed, it's stillborn. But it's not stillborn when they start the procedure.

Can you show me from the description of the procedure the point where the fetus is killed?

Still waiting for an answer.

I can't show you something that isn't present on that site. That said, it's beyond absurd for you to pretend that removal of a stillbirth is being called "abortion" and that it only ever gets applied to infants that have already died prior to the mother seeking out abortion services.

 

[ZiprHead]

If she had actually gone to the actual website advertisement where she could have seen this:

View attachment 49823

"delivery of a stillborn". It says nothing about actually killing the fetus.

Wow, you're kind of digging all the way down into pedantry here. It's an abortion. It's not removal of an already stillborn fetus. The fetus is killed in the process, so that by the time it's actually removed, it's stillborn. But it's not stillborn when they start the procedure.

Can you show me from the description of the procedure the point where the fetus is killed?

Still waiting for an answer.

I can't show you something that isn't present on that site. That said, it's beyond absurd for you to pretend that removal of a stillbirth is being called "abortion" and that it only ever gets applied to infants that have already died prior to the mother seeking out abortion services.

The site you linked to is a directory. If you had clicked the link in the directory you would have been taken to the web site of the actual clinic doing the procedures.

It's like you got your information from the White Pages of the phone book and extrapolated your your imagination onto the directory listing.

 

[Emily Lake]

That’s why Ems is so upset; her values seem to cherish a hypothetically viable 28+ week fetus equally with the life of an adult who has memories, friends, family, relatives, a birthday and all those things none of us remember not having, even though at one time we didn’t. I reject that equivocation.

"Ems" is displeased because 1) I don't support murder and I'm not willing to turn a blind eye to it and 2) I'm just plain sick and tired of you (and others) blatantly mischaracterizing my position in order to denigrate me and impugn my character.

Also... by your framing, you would have to conclude that a 70 year old is worth more than a 2 year old. And in this particularly context, that would imply that if the 70 year old decided that the 2 year old was inconvenient or they didn't want to take care of them any more, you would condone the 70 year old murdering the 2 year old.

The 70 year old has a whole lot more memories, friends, family, birthdays, etc. right? So they're more of a person than a 2 year old, given that the 2 year old has really quite few of those things.

 

[Elixir]

I can't show you something that isn't present on that site. That said, it's beyond absurd for you to pretend that removal of a stillbirth is being called "abortion" and that it only ever gets applied to infants that have already died prior to the mother seeking out abortion services.

Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence? It makes no sense to take decisive action like criminal punishment on that basis. You are presuming that there was a point when they "killed the baby" in some cases. How many cases are there altogether?

you (and others) blatantly mischaracterizing my position

Broken record, Emily. Please tell me what I said (without paraphrase if possible) that mischaracterizes your position, and what the correction would be other than "not that".