They know that either they need to force poor women to have abortions or to incarcerate them so they can’t have abortions. They just can’t figure out which,
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That’s not entirely satisfactory either, often for many pregnant women. Consider if a pregnant woman was assaulted, say, with a knife to her abdomen, and that killed her baby/ended her pregnancy. The law in turn says that they’ll go after the guy for aggravated assault/possible attempted murder of the mother, but, too bad on the unborn baby, better luck next try?
Or a drunk driver crashes into a vehicle carrying a pregnant woman, causing her pregnancy to fail, but the mother is generally OK. Vehicular homicide, or just a drunk driving caused car crash? These are not just fantasies, actual instances of this have occurred, and in some cases and venues were pursued as murder cases. I know there’s at least a few locations where your definition ISN’T presently the law, even if you think it should be. So, this is not nearly so settled as you would like it to be, or as it is to you personally, either as a matter of law, philosophy, or biology.
Heh, unfortunately, your opinion, stated above, or anywhere else, on when life begins, is only that. As is mine. The people who made these laws, however, have force behind their opinions, and that at a minimum means that it’s not nearly settled for society even if it’s clear and pat to you. Regardless of WHY they hold those opinions, their opinions matter, as a question of what the law is or should be.
Now, I think it’s atrocious if it was used in the manner you described. No question. That doesn’t mean that defining human life as beginning at birth is the only, or even a correct solution. Nor does it mean that having judges make life and death decisions is de-facto bad. In many instances, they’re all we have when matters are disputed. Generally good laws can be abused, and laws with good backing poorly written can be badly abused.
Sounds like this wasn’t even a law, per se, but a judicial opinion, likely from something like a family court judge, which is a cesspool of judicial overreach.
Regardless of the particulars, what’s clear is the question of when life begins is not at all just an interest to biology as you assert, and, as can be seen clearly here, not simply of academic concern, of just when human life starts, and how that can have an obvious impact on human rights. And it seems like a subject that reasonable minds can disagree on, and in fact currently DO disagree on, both here and in society at large. Even without the religious… positions. I for one think it should be something considered independently, without regard to the outcomes we might like to see, or prefer to avoid. After all, if someone is human or not ought not depend on things like if it’s convenient, or supports a popular policy position, just as ones right to free speech generally shouldn’t be dependent on what one plans on saying.
But the point is that there are two separate questions that people like to conflate. One is a biological question which scientists can decide on, another is a sociological question which is entirely unrelated to the biological one. We can argue about the biological differences between two different masses of tissue but those differences don’t confer rights on either.
I’m not saying that people don’t disagree on when life begins from a rights perspective, we know they do, but I am saying that looking to science to provide an objective answer to that question is pointless - and that means trying to draw a line based on biological questions is not irrelevant compared to drawing a line based on the social impact.
The impact of considering fetuses to have their own human rights separate from those of their mother are described in this article - harassment of pregnant women, incarceration of pregnant women, removal of pregnant women’s right to make their own medical choices. The impact of abortion laws have been well documented - dead women and mutilated women. Even if someone is vehemently opposed to abortions, there is little reason to think abortion laws are better than drug laws or prostitution laws at actually preventing the thing they are making illegal. This article is about what a reasonable argument for the human rights of fetuses has to overcome - actual awful consequences for people who are indisputably humans with rights.
We can have philosophical discussions and biology discussions about life and the beginning of life, but the beginning of life, in terms of rights, is stated clearly in the American constitution and in the UN declaration of human rights. These questions about viability, when a fetus can feel pain, etc., don’t really have any bearing on that. Worms are viable and fish can feel pain.
This isn’t an academic matter. If you see someone forcefully and bluntly stating that life begins at birth (meaning that inclusion in the human being club begins at birth) that seems to leave aside philosophical questions and biological nuances, it’s probably because that person is concerned with the well-being of humans rather than with the quibbles of philosophers. Unless an argument about the beginning of life is based in facts about the impacts of the given definition of the beginning of life, its too abstract.
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That’s because of the recent (in our lifetime) push by the extremists to pass laws making it a crime to kill a fetus. If it’s part of another crime, of course, don’t you see, we’re not talking about legal abortion here, nosiree…pushing the legal boundaries closer and closer to their goal of making fetuses, embryos, blastocysts, and even zygotes full legal personages. But not women.
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I’m telling you, it goes all the way back to gametes! Women should be arrested for one to two negligent homicides a month. (What? Men should be arrested for millions of first degree murders a day? I’m not sure about that)
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