So, the college I’m at had the Pro-life people pay a visit, and that apparently started a protest. So this made me think about the issue. Now, since I am neither female nor pregnant, I would like to make it clear that I am not telling anyone who is whether or not to have an abortion.
However, how is abortion not murder? This seems to be an unavoidable issue. More specifically, when does the fetus become “human” rather than a lump of flesh? Arguably, it had human DNA since the chromosomes combined in conception, and this DNA is what separates a human lump of flesh from other lumps of flesh. But that would mean a skin tissue culture is a human, which is weird, IMO.
No, it seems we must pick a point from conception to birth where the fetus becomes a human. But fetus development is pretty much continuous, except conception and birth. This relates to the “heap paradox.” If the baby is human at birth, was human just before? There isnt much difference, so yes. How about 5 seconds before that? Same story. If you continue this logic, it was human before the zygotes met. So when you kill someone, do you also kill the hundreds of potential people that they could have made? That seems weird.
There is something in the interval which can be discreetly identified, since a baby is not a uniform heap, we can look at the development of certain organs. I think the one to look at is the brain, the center of conscious. My opinion is that the fetus is human when the brain is Turing-complete, and therefore capable of the computations required by conscious thought. While difficult, this could be pinpointed to within a much smaller time frame.
But I am pro-choice. A few reasons. First, some women have some pretty good reasons to want an abortion. Second, the world is overpopulated, and we should stop reproducing. Because of this, I would actually encourage, but not mandate, that everyone not have kids, or cancel their kid-producing process. Excluding these, killing a fetus because it is “inconvenient” seems rather callous.
Disclaimer: This article is a matter of opinion. I realize that you could agree with the statements I rejected as “weird.”
