Expanding the Public Sphere through Computer ... - ResearchGate

APPENDIX A. TALK.ABORTION: AUGUST 9, 1994 138
>No. But you are forgetting something. Abortion is legal in most states
>throughout the entire 9 months of pregnancy. Pro-choicers have never
>addressed the issue of when a person becomes a human being. If it is not
>at conception, when is it? Why? To illustrate the point, I offer the
>following hypothetical situation:
>
>Two women become pregnant on the same day. Let us a assume a standard
>9-month pregnancy. The first woman delivers her child 2 months early
>(after only 7 months). The child survives. The second woman aborts
>her baby the day after the first woman delivered her child. If the
>first woman kills her baby, she will be charged with murder. The
>second woman walks away.
>
>How can you justify this from a medical standpoint? What is the difference
>between the first and second baby? Place of residence? I admit that
>3rd trimester abortions are rare, but they are legal. In most states,
>abortion is legal up to the moment of birth. How can this be justified
>medically? No one on your side of the issue has addressed these perfectly
>legitimate medical questions. They just say that the unborn child is
>not human, offer nothing to prove it, and then go on to talk about
>reproductive choice and mysogyny. This may wash with some people, but
>I never bought it. These issues have never been fully explored. If,
>it can be proven that unborn children are human, we have not choice but
>to make abortion illegal. We simply cannot tell people that it is OK
>to kill children.
>
You bring up an interesting point. However, 3rd trimester abortions
are heavily regulated in most if not all states and require
hospitalization and must pose a legitimate health risk to the
woman (RvW allows the states to decide what a legitiamte health
risk is and who determines it).
Within these parameters, the state has an interest in protecting the
welfare of its citizens (child and mother). Since the child is not
posing a risk to the mother’s health, and since society has decided
to extend certian protections to its citizens, the state may act against
the first mother. In the case of the second mother, the state must
again act to protect the welfare of its citizen (the mother).
If you ignore the fact that there are restrictions and limitations
on late abortions (actually on all abortion procedures), it is still
possible to note fundamental physiological differences between a fetus
in utero and the newborn, even a premature newborn.
I feel that a medical procedure can be justified if the risks associated
with the procedure outweight the risks associated with condition the
procedure may treat. Once you determine if a procedure is justifiable,
it is up to the health provider and the patient to determine if the
procedure is ethical, and that is something that cannot be determined
scientifically, but rather is based on such abstractions as faith,
moral belief and the ever-changing approval of society.
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--Bruce
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Bruce M. Cameron
bmc@mayo.edu