'Personhood' and rights

[pezzae]

One day, you wake up with a miniature person attached to you. The person says they'll be gone in nine months, but only after an extremely painful separation with potentially serious medical consequences. In the mean time, they will suck nutrients out of your blood stream, whether you have enough to keep yourself healthy or not. They will change

Comments

[pezzae]

Yep, exactly. Biologically, they are parasites, maaaybe in some cases symbionts. Whether or not they're a 'person' doesn't change that.

[jay_is_me]

Not symbionts. Even during a "perfect" pregnancy things like mineral/vitamin leeching from the mothers body (bones :S) will happen. The baby provides no nutrients in return. I think people calling them symbionts are trying to soften the picture!

[rhyannonf]

I read about this earlier on today - it made me incredibly angry. I hope it won't pass the senate, but I won't be holding my breath. Talk about taking a step backwards.

[pyrrha17]

Couldn't agree more.

I like the term parasite-person - I can think of non-foetuses (*cough*) that could take that term...

[nclean]

Well, you might recall from your days learning Latin at UHS, "parasite" originally meant a lodger, and the description of bugs and worms came later.

[daharja]

*chuckles evilly*

[nessbrain]

Here I was thinking you were having a rant about this in a different way :-)

Couldn't agree more with your take on it, how the rights of a proto-person could ever take precedence over the rights of an already-present-person baffles me. The fertilised egg is not viable, it is not self-sufficient in any possible way of thinking, if you get seriously ill during pregnancy and your life is at risk but could be saved through termination doctors will recommend that course of action. But if you want to terminate a pregnancy for non-immediately life threatening reasons, that's murder???

*sigh* religion makes people stupid on this kind of topic :-(

[pezzae]

Yeah, it's funny how I've become more passionately pro-choice in the last few months :o)

This sort of law also makes it more difficult to terminate even when the mother's life IS in danger. I read somewhere that in Ecuador they don't terminate ectopic pregnancies until they rupture the fallopian tube - because even though there is NO chance of an ectopic pregnancy becoming a viable baby, and the mother's life will be threatened, the law forbids doctors from removing the embryo until that threat is immediate.

[nessbrain]

Ok that is just seriously screwed up! Womans life is not in immediate danger right now but may well be at any time and minutes can be crucial so hey, let's just not bloody do anything and play roulette with this womans life. Humanity is really unbelievably messed up in so many ways :(

[traeemery]

I suspect a number of responsible doctors err on the side of caution and make a "judgement call" that the tube has ruptured and begin the procedure.

[maggishness]

I totally agree about the parasite thing.
Hopefully it won't pass senate or get overturned quickly. As my boy pointed out, essentially if someone kills a pregnant woman, it would suddenly be double homicide, or if a woman who didn't know she was pregnant did something which caused a miscarriage...yeah, the possibilities are frightening.

[pezzae]

Uh huh. The next step is laws against all women of fertile age drinking (or working with x-rays, or bungee jumping), for example, because it might harm any fertilised eggs which happen to have implanted.