For most people that believe that abortion should be allowed there is a point in the development of a baby after which they will say "abortion is no longer allowed". And people try to come up with all sorts of criteria of why their opinion on where the line should be drawn is rational /objective/measurable/ethical and so on. They are fooling themselves that such a line exists, all such lines are arbitrary in the meaning of there is no way to determine that that line is the right/correct/ethical decision. Therefore policing abortion, the legislation required and the checks and so on becomes very messy and we end up with the usual way we deal with these issues I. E. you can abort "23 weeks minus 1 day" but not "23 weeks plus 1 day". In the case of abortion this is even less objective than we usually have because we might have no actual way of determining is it 23 weeks or 23 weeks minus a day.
All I am saying is that there is a line that can be objectively determined for every single baby there has ever been and ever will be and therefore can be straightforwardly policed , defined in legislation and so on.
What you don't understand about that is now beyond my understanding.
You're saying something different now, which makes more sense (or maybe you're just saying what you said before, but more clearly).
To verify: you're saying that, regardless of where one draws the line, it is arbitrary
in the sense that no one position of the line is any better than another position. Whilst I disagree with that notion, that's different from saying that a line drawn by reference to factors that can be determined objectively can also be said to be drawn arbitrarily.
Your 'abortion line' might well be an arbitrary line (in your opinion - not in mine), but is wasn't decided upon arbitrarily (you rationalised its position - by reference to the time of birth).
So, now that we've outstayed that interesting sojourn, are we to focus on the arbitrariness of your reasoning?
Well, as I wrote earlier, whilst birth undoubtedly constitutes a significant event in the reproduction process (as a minimum emotionally and practically), I see little justification in it forming the demarcation between the right to abort or not. It might be absolutely objective, and even convenient (for some), but a '0th' birthday is really no different from a 1st birthday, or any other birthday for that matter. Is it reasonable to confer the right to 'abort' based simply on reasons of practicality and convenience? I don't think so.
The problem is your arbitrary line presupposes aborting a 'birth', like an airline pilot aborting a landing. What we're talking about here is aborting the
development of a human being. To continue the analogy - aborting the holiday completely. Problem is, the holiday has already begun. All we can do is return home as though nothing had ever happened. That's fine unless we've passed to point of no return (insufficient fuel to turn back). The question is: what's the point of no return? I don't know, but it's certainly not the point just before landing at the original destination - it's clearly way before then!
