Quote:
Originally posted by jinx
I disagree. One day before birth it is a fetus with an obligatory dependant relationship with it's mother. They day after it is a person, a living individual, a men created equal.
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What I mean is that physiologically, the baby is the same, only its location has changed. A nine month old fetus is just as capable of feelings as a one day old baby. It reacts to people's voices, it feels and reacts to
pain. I heard of one case (I wish I could confirm but can't) where the womb was not quite full of liquid, and a late term fetus actually was heard crying.
What I am getting at is that legally, you can define anything not yet out of the womb as not possesing rights. But biologically, one is just as fully human as the other.
If you want to argue that the woman's rights over her body superscede those of another human being's rights to live, that is a different argument, and I can see where that is coming from, however what you are saying doesn't connect with me.
Yes, the woman would have had to undergo surgery, but this was a life and death situation for the fully formed human beings inside her. I see this woman as having neglected the responsibilities of a parent to protect her child.
To make up a contrived situation that may or may not be parallel to this mess . A baby swollows a special key that would unlock a vault in which a man is trapped. The man will die by suffocation if the key in not retrieved quickly. Should a surgeon, doing his best to protect the life of the baby, perform surgery and cut the baby to get the key out? Note that in this situation, the baby is incapable of deciding anything. Now what if it is an adult who swollowed the key, and the adult flat out refuses to undergo surgery. If the trapped man dies, is this person responsible in any way for that death?