[lotsofpulp]

> Given the technology, there’s no reason a fetus couldn’t live at any stage of development

This cannot be true, and just because a fetus could live does not mean the quality of life is worth living. Not to mention the staggering costs of NICU healthcare.

The numbers I was asking about were specifically post 20 week, as a reply to parkingrift’s concerns.

[jonhohle]

Babies survive outside the womb prior to 20 weeks. That will continue to go down as technology progresses. What does cost have to do with whether someone is a person?

[lotsofpulp]

Sorry, I misread “given the technology” as today’s technology. But then I do not see how the concept of viability is legal fiction. Medical science can keep fetuses born after x weeks alive with y probability, and that y is near 0 or 0 before x weeks.

Cost had to do with practicality. It does not seem reasonable to expect a society to invest $10M into raising a 1 week old fetus that will need 24/7 support to live. Point being that there are limits real life and a purely philosophical exercise is not useful.

[jonhohle]

It’s legal fiction in that the concept was created in a court to justify why a person at a certain developmental stage wasn’t really a person. It’s not a scientific definition, a “law” of nature, or previous cultural definition. The idea was created to advance a legal argument. It’s fiction in that the value chosen was arbitrary then, is not a discrete event or time period, and by the same standard, is earlier than when defined and will continue to be earlier as technology advances.

The practicality of saving a life is certainly different than the legal justification to end a life. The point of technology being able to support development outside of a womb is evidence, imo, of the organism being independent from the mother. If that organism is individual and human, (s)he should have the full rights of all persons.

To me that means finding options that don’t involve terminating lives when the mother decides they are not prepared to parent. Right now the options outside abortion place significant strain on mothers, but as a society, 50 years have been spent not investigating alternatives and going all in on abortion. It’s already possible to transfer embryos fertilized in a lab successfully into an unrelated host.

Ultimately it is a philosophical argument. I can’t find any argument that has convinced me that a human is a human regardless of the stage of development or capabilities of the person. I’ve argued that “viability” will continue to be earlier for the past 20 years and haven’t been wrong about that yet. It’s currently limited by technology, but that shouldn’t impact the rights of individuals (in this case the unborn).