Picking up where we left off

Skewbie sent me an email about human-ness, and reminded me that I hadn't picked up where I left off. So here's me, picking the discussion back up, brushing it off, and seeing whether time has make wine from the grapes of my thoughts.

Before, I had come to the conclusion that, to pick at this concept of right to life in fetuses (fetii?) I had to either say that rights like the right to life aren't granted right away OR the right to life isn't a fundamental right OR that there was some superseding reason that overcame the fetus' right to life in the womb.

If we assume for the purposes of the argument that there is a fundamental right to life (which I am not convinced that there is [death penalty]) and we assume that the baby gets the right to life from conception (which I'm not sure I agree with), then all we're left with is the idea that there must be something else that legally overcomes the baby's right to life.

One of the big arguments is that the life of the mother can take precedent over the life of the fetus if the mother's life is in danger. Most of the States' abortion laws leave the exception for life of the mother - some even include the general health of the mother.

So that seems to be a universally accepted superseding reason to deny a fetus the fundamental right to life.

Are there other reasons? Some people argue that the fetus is a part of the mother's body, and as such the mother has the right to do with it as she pleases. Almost a fetus-as-property argument. If the mother "owns" the fetus just as she "owns" her body, then the fetus' right to life is not yet developed to a point of overtaking the mother's interest in her body. Looking at this idea, though, I could bring out a probably-ridiculous idea: does one Siamese twin have a greater interest in the shared body than the other Siamese twin? If there is this idea of "my body, my business" then where does the law draw the line? Does it help that both twins are of the same developmental stage at the same time?

Other people argue that the baby will be developmentally disabled or fatally disabled and so would not live beyond a few days/would live a half life/would live a life of extreme suffering, and so the mother is doing the baby and everyone involved a favor (that sounds insensitive, I know, but I mean it in the best sense) and sparing them the misery and suffering. I'm not sure what the legal phrase for this is. It almost sounds like an argument that could be used for assisted suicide, another sticky spot in the law.

I can't think of any other reasons people have for saying the rights of the mother supersede the right to life of the fetus (if it has one). If you have another reason why the fundamental right of the fetus to live should be trumped, sound off. I'm sure there are reasons I've forgotten.


Finally, I want to link the article I was sent that reminded me to get back on this. This article suggests that life is more of a sort of continuum, and that it's tough to say where a human life begins. And I feel like the author is making a distinction between biological "life" and legal "life".

But, the article does say - unless I am misreading it - that the little zygote is not human.

"I'm also confident that the freshly fertilized zygote is not human, either. There's more to being human than bearing a cell with the right collection of genes."

So maybe our definition of human needs another look at. Not now, but sometime down the road...