re: #377 Nyet

There are three possible situations:

1. A fetus is never a person. It becomes a person upon birth.

2. A fetus is a person sometime before birth.

3. A baby is not a person for some time after birth.

Position 1 is untenable (if we are talking about actual personhood, not legal simplifications, which change from law to law): there is nothing going on in the brain of the fetus that suddenly makes it into a person during birth.

Positions 2 and 3 are both logically tenable, though they have different practical consequences in certain cases (e.g. punishment for infanticide).

One practical thing that may be noted in is that — semantic precision notwithstanding — 99% of the people in the U.S. at this time who use the term ‘personhood’ in connection to an embryo or fetus are willing to put the rights of the unborn ‘person’ over the health, sanity, preferences and life of the pregnant woman.

Positions 2 and 3 are logically tenable, but the philosophical discussion is going to be emotionally charged, given the consequences.