Darth Wedgius wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2019 6:41 pm
The bill has factors that may be positives to the people behind it, protecting what they may see as human lives. That wouldn't be a positive?
And if someone has to be sentient for their life to count, we're in tricky territory. Anyone in a coma is pretty much up for grabs for whatever organs they have would be good for a transplant.
Ah, but now you're conflating two things. *Coma* is not necessarily the same as *Brain Dead*. A coma patient may one day wake up, and so their sentience still exists, but merely suspended. And so the preservation of their life has value.
A brain dead patient, one who's suffered sufficient damage that they'll never recover? I'd argue that it's keeping their body functioning artificially that's cruel. While we assign the dead a certain level of bodily autonomy, and so harvesting them for organs is illegal, if we can say with a high degree of certainty that a) yes they are truly braindead and b) they have consented (or someone with power of attorney can consent in their name) then yes, using their organs to help those in need is a far better fate than keeping their husk breathing.
So while a fundamentalist may consider fetuses as human beings, they're just factually incorrect for any useful definition of personhood. So much so I tend to doubt their sincerity of belief. Which is why intent entered the debate to start with.
Moreover your entire defense is based on a false premise: that we can value the life of a fetus and the person carrying it equally. If we value a fetus as a full human with all attendant rights, then
necessarily we place it above the person carrying it: they are forced to assume responsibility for another human life for a minimum period of 9 months, with attendant bodily harm, assuming that their medical costs are fully covered and that someone willing to take full custody of the eventual child is in line at the delivery room.
Neither of which is ever true.
Indeed the degree of responsibility we assign to a birthing parent is so high that, when the parent/child relationship is not entered voluntarily, it easily constitutes a form of slavery.
In order for a fetus and its carrier to hold equal rights, you would have to eliminate the latter role. If, for example, artificial out-of-body wombs existed, then yes, a fetus could be assigned personhood without necessarily diminishing the rights of another person. But considering we're probably a century or two away from that technological leap, and even in that far off time it is intensely unlikely that such a procedure would be affordable and widespread, basing law on that scenario is foolhardy.
