Yes, I know my views on this matter (explained often enough passim) are well out of step with most other peoples\’ but if viability is the guide, if someone is not human if they cannot live outside the womb and is if they can, well, this seems a pretty strong argument:
The data, for births in England and Wales, showed that eight of the 152 children born after 22 weeks\’ gestation lived for a year or more.
At 23 weeks, 44 of 283 children survived. At 24 weeks, almost half – 198 of 474 – of babies survived. Of the 201,173 abortions in England and Wales in 2006, 1,262 were at 22 weeks or more.
Use those odds of survival: some 5% or so at 22 weeks rising to 40% ish at 24 weeks. And again, use viability as the guide to whether this is a human with rights or not.
Does someone (or if you prefer, something?) who is 5% human have a right to life? 40%?
Not sure about viability=humanity tbh. Does that mean someone with a 5% chance of pulling through after an accident has lost 95% of their humanity. Or that we get progressively less human as we age and bits start falling off (no mother-in-law jokes please).
What happens under your argument if treatment of very prem babies improves to the extent that now 10% can survive at 22 weeks… do the 5% that previously died suddenly attain humanity?
Reducing humanity to an arbitrary number would suit the abortion industry but surely you must acknowledge the limitations of the attempt?
It also depends on your definition of “survival”. If you consider a deaf, blind baby with minimal brain function and in a coma as having survived then yes but I just see it as prolonging the suffering of the parents.
“Does that mean someone with a 5% chance of pulling through after an accident has lost 95% of their humanity.”
I interpret this statement differently, as a Yes/No: i.e. can this individual survive? No: not human
The problem with that is obvious. Grown adult on life support in ICU: not viable on their own implies not-human.
I don’t think we want to go there.
I have examined children who had suffered massive brain damage at birth. They have extreme cerebral palsy. One patient was a boy of 7, blind, deaf (obviously unable to speak) whose only sense re communication from his parents was touch. He loves being held, touched and fed. Jeez sometimes I could cry…………….if I could get my hands on the bastard who’s neglect caused this………..but that’s another matter and professional detachment prevents me from telling parents what I actually think,. However, this poor boy is protected by the law, as he passed down a 6 inch long, elastic tunnel. Others are removed from the uterus surgically and are also deemed human beings.
At 24 weeks a ‘foetus’ can be macerated and removed quite legally. This is utterly disgusting and vile murder as far as I am concerned.
And what will happen when, Oh Brave New World, we can bring babies to term througfh artificial wombs? This will happen. Too posh to push will become too posh to gestate. You heard it here first!