Religion
Related: About this forumGuest Post: Atheism, #GamerGate and Abortion: A Rationalist Perspective
This is a guest post from Allen Harris, an outspoken voice in the atheist and GamerGate communities. The views expressed in this post are those of Allen Harris and not necessarily those of Godless Mom. You can follow Allen on Twitter by clicking here. If you want to be a guest blogger on godlessmom.com, click here.
Posted on December 13, 2015 by Godless Mom
I recently (well, not really recently, but recently enough) had a rather surreal experience with a Twitter personality whom I like and respect a lot, @PolitiBunny (who has since either changed her Twitter handle or deleted her account). We were tweeting back and forth about abortion and I brought to the discussion my argument that the propriety of the right of abortion must end at 16 weeks (although in fact I meant between 12 and 16 weeks).
Bunny seemed to be rather stunned, saying (not in a menacing or judgmental way, just as an aside of surprise) that she considered the position to be unreasonable (that is, she thought it was WAY too long into the pregnancy to allow abortion).
I went on to explain that, as a non-religious person who hasnt had children, my ability to decide the propriety lies solely in developing a rational metric. The lines of reasoning that led to this metric are as follows:
We kill animals, plants and insects all the time. Some for food, some for sport, some because theyre pests.
We have a problem killing humans, therefore a rational foundation must be established to determine why killing, say, a monkey isnt murder but killing a human [without cause] is.
The greatest substantive difference between apes, monkeys, dogs, cats, or other animals and humans is a quality one might call sapience the ability to intuit a rational, deliberate decision which leads to controlling oneself to do something that isnt explicitly instinctive. In essence, this is called executive function
This executive function lies almost exclusively in the prefrontal cortex
Therefore, the substantive difference between other animals and humans, which makes humans protected life, must be the emergence of the prefrontal cortex
The prefrontal cortex forms and binds with the rest of the brain (and is therefore able to function executively) between 12 and 16 weeks
Therefore, the life isnt protected until between 12 and 16 weeks
http://godlessmom.com/guest-post-atheism-gamergate-abortion/
gcomeau
(5,764 posts)...rather than "life" which is ridiculous to use, he's still wrong in his conclusions.
The point at which the fetus attains sapience is not relevant. A 5 year old, there could be no argument, has sapience and a right to life. However, that right to life does not extend to a right to appropriate the use of another person's body to preserve that life.
If the 5 year old can't do it, neither can the fetus. Pregnancy must be consensual, PERIOD.
rug
(82,333 posts)gcomeau
(5,764 posts)....that consciously allowing the pregnancy to continue for an extended period of time and not electing to abort during the usual medically recommended period in which to do so constituted tacit consent to the pregnancy barring late pregnancy medical complications, thus conferring on the fetus the "right" to complete the pregnancy and be born... but the argument gets tricky and treads on dubious moral ground. After all, consent can always be revoked. Rapists can't say "sure she said no, but sometime before that she said yes so I had consent!"
No matter how you slice it, if consent is withdrawn you're forcing a woman to go through a birth against her will. I'll grant the hypothetical possibility a compelling enough case could be made to justify that under some circumstance, but not easily.