A heartbeat, it's own bloodtype, a nervous system, and measurable brainwaves. Yet not a human being?

Question

How can anyone say that a fetus is not a human being? It's a stage of human developement as much as infancy, or adolescence. The issue is not "pro-life" and "pro-choice." It is about the murder of that fetus. Should a woman have the right to kill her children?

How can you say that? Those things that I listed in the question don't make it a human being, but just being able to survive on it's own does? What about a premature baby? It can't survive on it's own. It needs an incubater, much as a fetus needs it's mother.

Answer 1

In my opinion, it's may be a fetus, but it's not a human being until it can survive outside the womb. Until then, it's dependent on it's host for survival, and is not actually a person yet. Since you can't murder something that's not a person, then abortion is not murder. If you don't agree with abortion, just simply refrain from getting one done, but don't step on the rights of others to choose.


Edit after reading your additonal details - There's a big difference between being unable to survive in the womb, and being able to survive in an incubator. When a fetus is too young to survive outside the womb (even in an incubator), then that's when it's not a person yet.

Edit after reading other's answers: I love it when people read the first two lines of my text, and not the entire text. If you scroll down to the end, I've got a couple of paragraphs that covers exactly what you said. You may call this "crap", but I call it "my choice". I'm a happily engaged woman and I'd have an abortion in a heartbeat if I got pregnant. Thank goodness I live in a country where women are valued and respected as more than baby machines.

Excerpted from website listed below:

A fetus does not have a right to be in the womb of any woman, but is there by her permission. This permission may be revoked by the woman at any time, because her womb is part of her body. Permissions are not rights. There is no such thing as the right to live inside the body of another, i.e. there is no right to enslave. Contrary to the opinion of anti-abortion activists (falsely called "pro-lifers" as they are against the right to life of the actual human being involved) a woman is not a breeding pig owned by the state (or church). Even if a fetus were developed to the point of surviving as an independent being outside the pregnant woman's womb, the fetus would still not have the right to be inside the woman's womb.

What applies to a fetus, also applies to a physically dependent adult. If an adult say a medical welfare recipient must survive by being connected to someone else, they may only do so by the voluntary permission of the person they must be connected to. There is no such thing as the right to live by the efforts of someone else, i.e., there is no such thing as the right to enslave.



Questions concerning rights:

What is the source of all rights?
Rights are scientific, moral principles that guarantee freedom of action in a social context. The source of an individual's right to life is one's nature as a rational being. Rights are requirements necessary for an individual to live as a rational being (human) in a society of men (see Man's Rights by Ayn Rand, published in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal).

Is abortion a right?
Abortion is an inalienable right. Abortion is not a violation of any right, because there is no such thing as the freedom to live inside (or outside) of another human being as a parasite, i.e., against the will of that person.

This principle applies to both fetuses and adults. As a woman has a right to choose who she has sex with (as her body is her property), so is it a woman's right to choose what can and cannot remain inside her body (as her body is her property). As it is evil for someone else to dictate the use of her body by raping her, so it is evil for someone else to dictate the use of her body by forcing her to remain pregnant.

As their is no such thing as the right to live inside another, whether the fetus is removed, because of incest, or rape, or "convenience" does not matter politically whatever the reason, it is the woman's inalienable right.

Is abortion murder?
Murder is the taking of the life of another human being through the initiation of physical force. Abortion is not murder, because a fetus is not an actual human being it is a potential human being, i.e. it is a part of the woman. The concept murder only applies to the initiation of physical force used to destroy an actual human being, such as when "pro-life" terrorists bomb abortion clinics.

Isn't the fetus "life", and thus has a right to life?
A right is a moral sanction to freedom of action in a social context. Rights only apply to human beings, because only human beings survive by the use of reason (unlike cows, trees, bacteria and fetuses). Rights only apply to human beings, because only human beings and not parts of beings survive by reason. A fetus has no rights, as it does not need freedom to take any actions, but survives on the sustenance of its host. The only rational action it must take is nothing, i.e. wait for itself to develop using the sustenance provided by its host.

What is the capitalist view on abortion?
Under capitalism (a social system based on the principle of individual rights) abortion is an inalienable right. Any one who advocates the outlawing of abortion (especially in the first few months of pregnancy) like Steve Forbes is an enemy of individual rights in principle, and thus an enemy of capitalism. As for those on the Left, who think one can have a right to property without a right to one's body, they are guilty of context dropping.




Questions concerning the fetus:

What is a fetus?
The concept fetus is used to denote the unborn human from the end of the eighth week after conception to the moment of birth, as distinguished from the earlier embryo (the product of conception from implantation in the uterus through the eighth week of development). A fetus contains all the organs and has the basic human form.

Is a fetus a human being because it has a complete set of human DNA?
A fetus is human, in the sense that it contains human DNA; however, a fetus, like an embryo, is not a human being, as it has no means of independent physiological existence (as does a baby, child, or adult). As such, it is a potential human being, just like an acorn is a potential oak tree. It contains all of the DNA of an oak tree, but it is not an oak tree (See also Leonard Peikoff on Abortion: Real Audio).

Is a fetus a human being because it has a complete set of human DNA?
A fetus is a potential human being, and not an actual individual, because it does not have physiological independence outside its host the pregnant woman.

(Toward the end of a woman's pregnancy, a fetus does have the physiological means to live independently outside its host, the pregnant women, which makes the birth of a healthy child possible, though it remains physically dependent until birth. At birth the fetus becomes a physically independent baby/child.)

Doesn't a fetus have rights because it is "life"?
Life is a state of a cell or organism characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction. A fetus is life, just as an embryo, a sperm, an ant, an acorn, and a tree, are all life. All these forms of life have no rights. The characteristic of life is necessary to possess rights, but it alone is insufficient (see below).

Is a fetus an independent being?
A being is a physically independent entity. A fetus is physically/physiologically dependent on the woman (host) for its survival especially during the early stages of pregnancy. Only upon birth is it physically independent of the woman's body, an actual independent being. A baby, in contrast, though 'socially' dependent on the actions of other human beings for its survival, is physiologically and physically independent of the body of its mother.

(An argument can be made that a viable fetus that is fully developed (physiologically independent), but still inside the womb (physically dependent), should not be aborted, but should be delivered early.)

Is a baby a fetus?
A baby, infant, or child, is not a fetus. A baby is an actual human being. A baby, or adult, is a fetus actualized, just like a young oak tree is an acorn actualized.



Questions concerning sex and choice:

If a woman chooses to have sex with a man, and she becomes pregnant, then doesn't a fetus have a right to be inside her?

The short answer is no. To understand why let us take the worse case situation: suppose a young college girl is brutally gang raped by a mob of college students (who were taught by their philosophy professor that morality is a matter of numbers and there are ten of them, and one of her) resulting in the girl becoming pregnant.

According to the view implied in the question, the fetus she carries would have no rights because she did not "choose to have sex." So she would be justified in killing the fetus, because she was raped, and did not "choose to have sex." This begs the question: was it the fault of the fetus that the girl was raped? Did the fetus choose its means of conception? Of course not. So why destroy the fetus, because the woman did not choose to become pregnant?

The problem with such an argument is that it brings down the abortion question down from a question of rights to the matter of competing non-choices: the rights of the woman because of her non-choice of becoming pregnant versus the "rights" of the fetus because of it's non-choice in deciding on whether to be conceived.

According to this view, the source of ones right to life is whether ones parents chose to have consensual sex or not. This is nonsense. Rights are based on the fact of man's nature as a rational being, and not on the sexual inclinations of one's parents.

This brings us back to the original question: "If a woman chooses to have sex with a man, and she becomes pregnant, then doesn't a fetus have a right to be inside her?"

Clearly, if the woman chooses to have sex, their would be no justification for her being forced to carry the fetus, as the essential issue is not a matter of sexual history, but a matter of rights. As their is no such thing as the right to live inside another, whether the fetus is removed, because of incest, or rape, or "convenience" does not matter politically whatever the reason, it is the woman's inalienable right.

Answer 2

If we were all the same, wouldn't that suck? Yup... If everything was entirely one system, then where does free will come in? I know the world could be better, I think if everyone had enough to survive and there were none who had more than others, it would be better. We would need incorruptible leaders and powers, though who would strive for the best for everybody and respect everyone equally and everyone would be treated the same also, and I think it would help if people were more social also, and were not deceived into going to war, driking flouride in their water, etc.

Answer 3

You're right but pro abortion folks would have a lot of guilt if they accepted your argument. They are in a lose lose situation. They say they are pro choice they can't even admit they are pro abortion.

Its so sad when you think of all the children that will never be because of abortion.

Having a child would be such a hardship for them maybe its for the best that they don't become mothers. What would a childs life be like with a mother that would kill him for being a burden.
Too bad birth protection or abstinence wasn't the choice they were in favor of.

Answer 4

I don't feel that abortion is right but you have to look at what will happen if we don't allow them to be legal. If we were to not allow them, then we would be creating laws that would cause these women who would do it anyway to get this unsafe procedure dine on the streets. And we all know that when people are being paid to do illegal procedures, it encourages organized crime as well as prevents proper safety standards from being imposed. Furthermore, it is not the governments right to dictate the use of ones own body whether it be morally right or not. The parent must be the one to ultimately decide this. If they are going to bring into this world a kid they will beat and mistreat, or worse, scar with alcoholism and drugs before it is born, can we truly force them to have this kid?

Answer 5

Life begins at birth, not at conception. If it did, we would count our lives from the day our mothers were knocked up. A fetus may have all the physical characteristics of a human, but none of the psychological.

Answer 6

so instead of using all this energy to villanize those who get abortions, why not put it towards the technology to suck out the fetus and put it in an incubator so it can continue to live without needing a host body that doesnt want it?
also, you can prevent a lot of damage done to those fetuses that would have been born 'drug babies' if forced to be carried by drug addict mothers.

should a woman be forced to have children she doesn't want or cannot care for?

Answer 7

Thanks for sharing, but medically and legally speaking a fetus is not "viable" (I'll explain that to you so you can understand what you're reading) meaning it cannot survive on its own (independently of the mother) until it is at least 5-6 months along, I believe.

Answer 8

You are not asking a question; rather, you are using this forum as a soapbox from which to spout your own ideology. You are obviously not even remotely interested in listening to alternate points of view; your mind is made up already. The answer you will choose as 'best answer' will be one that validates your own opinion, not the most balanced or thoughtful. In short, you are in search of a 'rubber stamp'.

Answer 9

Should a fetus have the right to murder its mother????? Happens all the time yet thats not something you are concerned with huh? You disgust me!

Answer 10

Absolutely not.

Should a person have the right to kill an innocent person?

im sorry rita, but that is absolutely crap.

" A fetus does not have a right to be in the womb of any woman, but is there by her permission. This permission may be revoked by the woman at any time, because her womb is part of her body."

Did the fetus ASK to be there? Did it INVADE the woman? NO. The woman has made a conscious decision, knowing full well that her actions have the potential of creating a human being that will be a part of her (because SHE MADE THE HUMAN).

It has nothing to do with churches or governments, it is about LIFE. The most precious gift on earth.

Answer 11

It's all in the spin.
Even Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmerk could justify their killings to themselves. The correct question is not whether we should allow abortion but if this type of action is proper in civilized society.
Allowing a mother to kill her unborn is, in my mind no different than a mother killing her born children and I regard women who favor abortion in the same light as Andrea Yates, Susan Smith, Diane Downs or even Dana Schlosser.

If one cannot accept the responsibility that follows ones actions, they are not emotionally adult enough to be making the decision to participate in an activity that stands a very good chance of creating a pregnancy and certainly do not possess the maturity to decide another's fitness for life, whether it's growing inside her body (because of her actions) or standing six feet away.

Stating that a pregnancy is an "accident" is similar to intentionally driving a car into a lake and claiming 'it sank by accident'.

The icing on the cake for feminism is that fathers do not share a similar 'pass to deny becoming a parent' as women do. They want the father forced to abide by the mother's decision. She may kill it, keep it, abandon it after birth or allow strangers to adopt it, all without his knowledge or consent.
If she chooses to kill the "mass of tissue", he must accept her decision even if he wants a child; if she decides to allow this "parasite" to become a born child, he must pay her child support (or otherwise financially help support her unilateral decision).
She may claim to be too poor to raise a child but he is given no such consideration regardless his poverty level. (According to feminism, all men are born rich, get the best jobs and rarely share their wealth with women unless forced by government). In fact, he faces the threat of jail for not supporting the result of her sole decision. If the mother cannot, or will not, fully support the child, the government will step in and assist then pass the cost on to the father, who is almost always as poor as the mother.

As I said, it's all in the spin. Whether blamed on post-partum depression, charges of abuse, poverty, being overwhelmed, just deciding not to take responsbililty for one's actions, or listening to the little voices. Whatever it takes to salve the conscience of those killing the life they created is all that is needed.

How is it manifested? Easy. Ask a feminist if men should be able to freely breed with no more obligation than women have toward any pregnancy. In other words, should men be given the ability to refuse any connection to any pregnancy he helped cause other than paying for an abortion?
If women can simply abandon their child a few days/weeks after birth, why can't men?
If women can decide that the time is not right to become a parent, why can't men?

The answers to those questions simplify the understanding that abortion is just another advantage for women that are denied to men at the cost of the lives of the most truly innocent.