Quote Originally Posted by gwahir View Post
mr e: there is no question that a baby is not a person. a baby is not a person, by any reasonable or philosophical definition of the word. "human with brain function" is not a workable definition of person, even if it might be a colloquial one.
Huh? When does a baby become a person then?

Also, it was once thought that babies were just crying, eating machines. It's now known that their mental functions are more complicated than that.

sycld has raised the real interesting point, although his own personal answer to it is a little disappointing. the question is: given that (hopefully) none of us fall victim to the "potential" argument (lest we decry contraception, as well as any man/woman who is not constantly having procreative sex), is there a relevant philosophical difference between a late term foetus and a baby? well, intrinsically, no. a one-day-old baby is no more developed mentally than a foetus.
one day from birth.
What does this argument have to do with contraception? I think you're a little confused here.

And when/if brain-scanning technology gets more and more sophistocated and finds brain activity starting in miniscule amounts earlier and earlier?
Anything resembling normal brain activity appears only around 12 weeks. Before this there's some EEG readings, but nothing resembling fully developed brain activity. (Note that electrical potentials are present in most any living organism, including plants, which would show up on an EEG.) For more info: http://eileen.250x.com/Main/Einstein/Brain_Waves.htm

It's just like pre-term birth viability: there's pretty much a hard limit of 21 weeks that a pre-term birth has any hopes of surviving outside of a womb.

We pretty much know the limits here.

it's also no more aware or sentient or "feeling" than, say, a crab. but crab-killing is not nearly as fraught with controversy. poor crabs.
Gwahir, if you want to know why I get so annoyed with you when we debate, it's in large part because you're so willing to pull "facts" like this one out of your ass. This is totally untrue.

a false dichotomy relying on the assumption (and it is one) that intrinsic qualities of the individual infant are the only things to take into consideration. other things involved are

-the effect on the mother (not just on her health, which is less contentious, but on her "freedom"; ie. freedom to not have a baby in her belly)
-relationships forged with outside world
-status as dependent/independent
...etc

it's also a false dichotomy on the assumption that birth and abortion-via-foetus-killing are the only options

one compromise is to say a woman may elect to have a foetus removed from her at any point, but can't decide to kill it (in other words she can have it yanked out whenever she wants, but if it can be kept alive by other means then it must be)

to respond to the question posed at the top of this post -- i would say that the real relevant difference between a baby and a foetus (and a crab, for that matter) is its connection and importance to persons. i'm not saying i've solved it, but it's the best answer i have.



edit: on topic, the biggest shame in this story is that it will probably used to negatively paint abortion by anti-abortionist assholes.
Look, I understand the whole thing about a woman controlling what happens to her body. That's why I'm completely in support of abortion, in America 80% of which occur within 10 weeks of conception, ~90% of which occur within 12 weeks, and less than 1% of which occur in the "late-term" (21 weeks or later). All the anti-abortion propaganda shows images of the results of those very rare late-term abortions.

Not only that, but first trimester abortions are very safe medical procedures. However, ~50% second trimester abortions are accompanied by some medical complications (http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/795001-overview).

What I want to see is abortion being legalized and the stigma removed so that women can get them early on.