Now you wonder: where exactly do my hand and the foetus differ? In truth, they don't. My hand is to my body as the foetus is to the mother. The first cannot survive when remove from the second. I could very well cut off my hand right now, and neither you nor anyone else can tell me otherwise.
But a hand will never grow into a fully grown human that can support itself. It takes less than a year for a fetus to stop requiring the nutrients of the mother, while the hand will take the nutrients for your entire life. Your hand = you. In a sense, your hand has rights, because it is you. If somebody decides to tie you up and blast your hand apart with a machine gun, they are going to pay the consequences.
Now this begs the question: if the foetus and my hand are so strikingly similar then what's the fuss about;
Because they aren't that similar. A fetus is separate from the mother, while your hand is you.
why is no-one protest about self-mutilation the way they do about abortion.
Because what you do with your hand/foot/body is up to you. A fetus is not part of the mother. It is half created by the mother, and half created by the father. Even if it was completely created by the mother, it would not be part of the mother. Attached? Yes. Part of her living functioning body? No. It is no more part of her body as a tapeworm is.
For the answer I'm going to have to go to where your arguments and your entire stance stems from. You're giving the foetus personhood, sentience, humanity, a 'soul', blah blah whatever you want to call it. Why? Don't know, don't care. Maybe it's because of your misguided sentimentality of the clump of cells.
Is it truly misguided to care about a life?
Fact of the matter is the foetus does not have any sense of individuality at its early stages of development simply because it does not have any organ to process its sentience. When pro-choicers revoke the foetus of any rights and call it 'not human' what they mean is this: my sixteen month old cousin cries when hungry, sleeps, gets up, laughs when I make a face; a foetus does not. It can't. It's basically a vegetable.
It does not cry when it is hungry because it is not hungry. It obtains its nutrients directly from the mother. It does not laugh when you make a face because it cannot see you.
I wake up, make breakfast
by myself when I'm hungry, am capable of educating myself, and laugh at Jay Leno. A child of sixteen months cannot. Does this make it less than me? Certainly not. It has not fully grown yet.
Your cousin of sixteen months cries when hungry, sleeps, gets up, and laughs when you make a face. A fetus cannot. Does this make it less than your cousin? Certainly not. It has not fully grown yet.
Of course you could very well bring up the 'potential developed human' as nearly everyone does when I present them with the hand analogy, but as you or some other enlightened individual said during the course of this debate, 'we are not looking at what could be, we are looking at what is'.
And why are you not looking at what could be? With the rare exception of a miscarriage, all pregnancies end in a newborn child, which will grow into a toddler, which will grow into a teenager, which will eventually grow into an adult that will reproduce children of his or her own.
There are three parts of the life of a fetus. What is, what will be, and what was. What is is that the fetus is rapidly growing into a newborn in nine months. What will be is a newborn that has grown past the fetus stage, and from there it will go through the process of life. What was was two people had vaginal intercourse, with full knowledge of what could happen if the condom broke/birth pill didn't work/they had unprotected sex, and the sperm met the egg. A pregnancy is not an accident. If you know how sex works, it is not an accident.
Is the fetus considered a citizen of the United States if it hasn't been born yet? Does it come under the protection of United States citizens? If according to our founding documents, everyone is created equal under God, does an unborn fetus count as equal to a fully grown woman if it isn't being done created yet?
Has the child fully grown even after it is out of the womb? Definitely not. The child is barely over a foot tall, cannot support itself with food, water, or warmth, and is more of a burden than it was in the womb.
Yet, this child has most of the rights as a fully grown adult (excepting things like drinking, voting, etc.). It still has to grow to full height. It has to learn to speak. It has to learn to move. It has to grow the ability to control its bladder. It cannot grow facial or pubic hair, or ejaculate. It is nowhere NEAR fully grown, but it has more rights than any fetus a few months younger than it.
In other words, nothing that anyone can say will qualify a fetus as non-human in your eyes, because you say we just cannot assume when a fetus becomes human, so abortion is too much of a risk. ...right?
It is always human. When human sperm mets a human egg, a human is created. The fetus is always human. It doesn't become a bear. Not a snake. Not a lamb. A human.
Actually capable of breathing of his own accord, perhaps.
It can breathe on its own accord because it has grown the ability to do that. A human fetus cannot do that because it has not grown the ability yet. Like a toddler hasn't grown the ability to ejaculate.
I have a question for pro-choicers. Why do you care if the baby feels pain? If feel it is moral to murder it, why do you care at all if it feels pain?
