if the fetus is developed far enough to where a doctor can perform heart surgery on it to save its LIFE is it a life then?
Perhaps but this is a bit of a red herring. The simple fact is that not all life is equal. Plants, for example, are alive and we "kill" them by the billions. Cats are alive and we put them down by the truckload. So - and please pardon my use of the word "ok" - it seems that
some lives are "ok" to terminate. So clearly, whether the fetus is "a life" or not isn't the salient point. Indeed, what comes into play is
personhood. In other words, is the fetus a
person?
Well... maybe. Consider the example I mentioned previously: a fetus which has
hydranencephaly. This means that the fetus doesn't actually have a brain - the space inside its skull is simply full of cerebro-spinal fluid. A baby born with this condition
survived to age 12. It was undeniably alive. But what it a person? I submit that it was not. The essence of what we are is our brain - it's what makes you, you - and the body is just a portable life-support system for that brain.
To prove to yourself that this is the material difference, consider how differently we treat a human who requires life support to live but is brain-dead vs. one that is not brain dead. Both are humans and both are alive. One is a person and one is not. It's acceptable to unplug one, but it's not acceptable to unplug the other.
So the question to ask is: is a fetus a person? I think that we can be fairly certain that prior to about 10 weeks, the fetus is not a person: the brain hasn't yet developed. After that, the situation becomes a bit fuzzier.
or does it have to be delivered? does it have to be out of the womb to be alive? now everyone knows that there's ZERO physiological difference between a live baby that was born 2 minutes ago and a baby that is 5-6 months into gestation. They're both viable human beings. but the law still ignores that in some states. so neither side wants to rely on science to determine when a life begins because it blows both sides definitions out of the water.
Again, the problem isn't when life begins - a question which science can definitively answer. The problem is when does personhood begin? Things there are fuzzy. Science can tell you when a brain forms and when it electrical patterns typical of conscious humans are present. What you do with that information is up to you.
I just don't like it when liberal pro choice people try and use science to mock and ridicule the opinion of pro lifers that life begins at conception. because their definition of when a life begins is just as laughable and arbitrary.
Well, to be fair, it's a pretty laughable claim that a zygote is a human baby, for exactly the same reason that it's laughable to claim that an olive pit is an olive tree. It can
develop into one, but it
isn't one now.
I'll leave you with a question. Assume, for a moment, that we all agreed that fetus is not only alive but that it's person from the moment a single spermatozoon fertilized an ovum. What does that mean for abortion? Can a woman be
forced to carry a pregnancy to term? Does she lose the right to self-determination and to exercise control over the body? Is she, in essence, to be seen as nothing more than a walking, talking incubator?
