At what stage is abortion immoral?

Undesired Walrus

Penultimate Amazing
Undesired Walrus
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Or is it always immoral?

An interesting take by Sagan:

# By the third week, around the time of the first missed menstrual period, the forming embryo is about 2 millimeters long and is developing various body parts. Only at this stage does it begin to be dependent on a rudimentary placenta. It looks a little like a segmented worm.

# By the end of the fourth week, it's about 5 millimeters (about 1/5 inch) long. It's recognizable now as a vertebrate, its tube-shaped heart is beginning to beat, something like the gill arches of a fish or an amphibian become conspicuous, and there is a pronounced tail. It looks rather like a newt or a tadpole. This is the end of the first month after conception.

# By the fifth week, the gross divisions of the brain can be distinguished. What will later develop into eyes are apparent, and little buds appear—on their way to becoming arms and legs.

# By the sixth week, the embryo is 13 millimeteres (about ½ inch) long. The eyes are still on the side of the head, as in most animals, and the reptilian face has connected slits where the mouth and nose eventually will be.

# By the end of the seventh week, the tail is almost gone, and sexual characteristics can be discerned (although both sexes look female). The face is mammalian but somewhat piglike.

# By the end of the eighth week, the face resembles that of a primate but is still not quite human. Most of the human body parts are present in their essentials. Some lower brain anatomy is well-developed. The fetus shows some reflex response to delicate stimulation.

# By the tenth week, the face has an unmistakably human cast. It is beginning to be possible to distinguish males from females. Nails and major bone structures are not apparent until the third month.

# By the fourth month, you can tell the face of one fetus from that of another. Quickening is most commonly felt in the fifth month. The bronchioles of the lungs do not begin developing until approximately the sixth month, the alveoli still later.

So, if only a person can be murdered, when does the fetus attain personhood? When its face becomes distinctly human, near the end of the first trimester? When the fetus becomes responsive to stimuli--again, at the end of the first trimester? When it becomes active enough to be felt as quickening, typically in the middle of the second trimester? When the lungs have reached a stage of development sufficient that the fetus might, just conceivably, be able to breathe on its own in the outside air?

The trouble with these particular developmental milestones is not just that they're arbitrary. More troubling is the fact that none of them involves uniquely human characteristics--apart from the superficial matter of facial appearance. All animals respond to stimuli and move of their own volition. Large numbers are able to breathe. But that doesn't stop us from slaughtering them by the billions. Reflexes and motion are not what make us human.

Other animals have advantages over us--in speed, strength, endurance, climbing or burrowing skills, camouflage, sight or smell or hearing, mastery of the air or water. Our one great advantage, the secret of our success, is thought--characteristically human thought. We are able to think things through, imagine events yet to occur, figure things out. That's how we invented agriculture and civilization. Thought is our blessing and our curse, and it makes us who we are.

Thinking occurs, of course, in the brain--principally in the top layers of the convoluted "gray matter" called the cerebral cortex. The roughly 100 billion neurons in the brain constitute the material basis of thought. The neurons are connected to each other, and their linkups play a major role in what we experience as thinking. But large-scale linking up of neurons doesn't begin until the 24th to 27th week of pregnancy--the sixth month.
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http://www.2think.org/abortion.shtml
 
Every stage. Abortions should take place in a medical facility, not on stage. I mean, I enjoy performance art as much as the next guy, but that's too much.
 
theprestige said:
Abortion is never immoral so long as the child is both inconvenient and a minor.
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How true. Some people are even fine with abortion as murder, without any of those pesky moral justifications (since morality is relative).

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/1/23/54131/7524
Except calling it "murder" is a ridiculous argument, because that purports to speak to the "sanctity of human life" while completely ignoring several assumptions that MUST be made if one is to declare human life "sacred." Among those assumptions: that there is something about human life that makes it more sacred than any other life form - including, but not limited to, mammals, fish, fowl, reptiles and insects.

What makes a human life more "valuable" than the life of a worm? The fact that YOU are a human, of course.

But to the worm, its life is more valuable.

It's ALL relative.

...

Of course, the most powerful reason I have for not feeling guilty about eating meat or having an abortion or yanking a strawberry off the plant and chomping down on it through its innards... is that I do not HOLD life to be sacred. I suffer terribly when someone I will miss dies. I suffer terrible EMPATHY for the surviving loved ones of a dead person -- and empathy for the pain they suffered before dying, if they suffered it. But SACRED?

When I think of the word "sacred," I think of deism, religion, morality... and I'm right back where I relatively started, so to speak.

Naturally (literally), I hold the lives of my loved ones "sacred," in that the loss of them would be a wound to ME.

...

Bottom line: that may well be a human being in there, but it's an awfully TINY one, and I'm going to have to lower the boom. I don't wish to house and feed it for 9 months, let alone 18 years; for reasons whose details are my OWN and NO ONE else's to examine, dissect, judge or measure, I do not wish to carry this potential human being to term. Thusly, I will make my medical decision and MURDER it, if you want to use that term.
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parky76 said:
i am uncomfortable with abortions once the fetus can feel pain.
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When exactly is this? How do you distinguish between "feeling pain" and a simple reflex action? I'm not asking this to be snarky. I don't know the answer and thought you might since you mention it.

I also notice that you used the word "uncomfortable". Is this the same as OP's question of what may or may not be immoral? Do you eat meat? Do animals feel pain?
 
First trimester because that is when the majority of "natural abortions" occur. I figure if God/nature can get away with it then we can.

Bottom line: that may well be a human being in there, but it's an awfully TINY one, and I'm going to have to lower the boom. I don't wish to house and feed it for 9 months, let alone 18 years; for reasons whose details are my OWN and NO ONE else's to examine, dissect, judge or measure, I do not wish to carry this potential human being to term. Thusly, I will make my medical decision and MURDER it, if you want to use that term.
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That attitude seems awful violent.
 
Undesired Walrus said:
Or is it always immoral?
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How do you measure having a bad life against having no life at all?

I don't think it can be done.

I focus on the pragmatic: The largest majority of women affected by outlawing abortion would be those of low income. If I'm right about the sanctity of life, hooray. But if there's even a 0.1% chance that I'm wrong, then I'm just a rich white guy telling poor people how they have to live their lives. Even I'm not that much of a jerk.
 
I think that until we have foolproof universal contraception, abortion will be an unresolvable moral issue. We just need to work on contraception. Even then I suppose people will change their minds though.
 
The problem with debating morals is the fact that there is no standard for morality. For instance, my morals are assuredly different from yours and anyone else. Those that look to their "holy" books have no meaning to an atheist such as myself. It also applies to other theists with not only different books, but even the same book. Look at how many denominations there are for any given religion. They disagree with each other, and I will most likely disagree with them.

A question we can ponder is the stages of development in an embryo. We can test this objectively, and have. When does a baby feel pain? When does a baby begin to think?
When does it's brain form to a recognizable, human description?

Simply saying yes or no to a subject that is as touchy as abortion, whether that hasty response came from a flying, invisible man or not, does not serve the subject justice.
 
first trimester only

second trimester (Or late term - into 3rd trimester) only if the fetus is a threat to the mother's life.

ETA: edit to add clarification - late term or 3rd trimester, the fetus/baby can have the ability to live outside the mother's womb (ICU) but its highly risky.
 
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let me also clarify my position. i believe it is immoral to abort a fetus that could survive outside of the womb without mechanical assistance, and can feel pain.

i think such fetuses should instead be delivered and put up for adoption.
 
It may be immoral for dumb people to have 10 kids.
Having nine, instead, could be for the good of all, despite the implied abortion.

Still, it would be pretty cool if there was a way to keep a 1/2 inch long fetus alive in a fish tank of sorts...if it didn't have to get much bigger.
 
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