I have split your quote and addressed them out of order
What I should have said is that someone should speak for its rights.
Speaking for the rights of something that has no rights
It is true I don not know when the fetus becomes sentient, but I do think that that some point before birth it becomes something of worth, something that has rights that are separate from the mother and certainly something that is more than just a "clump of cells".
About 30 weeks. It cannot be sentient until it has a functioning brain
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/14767059209161911
"It is concluded that the basic neuronal substrate required to transmit somatosensory information develops by mid-gestation (18 to 25 weeks), however, the functional capacity of the neural circuitry is limited by the immaturity of the system. Thus, 18 to 25 weeks is considered the earliest stage at which the lower boundary of sentience could be placed. At this stage of development, however, there is little evidence for the central processing of somatosensory information. Before 30 weeks gestational age, EEG activity is extremely limited and somatosensory evoked potentials are immature, lacking components which correlate with information processing within the cerebral cortex. Thus, 30 weeks is considered a more plausible stage of fetal development at which the lower boundary for sentience could be placed"
....that is well into the third trimester.
You are right we have no way of knowing what a fetus would want, so we have to assume it would prefer to live, just if a patient were to come into a hospital unconscious, the doctors assume the would prefer to receive life saving medical care. They err on the side of life.
False equivalence: a fetus is not a person (
"potential person" doesnlt count).
Additionally, a fetus has no way of
"knowing" anything, since it does not have a functioning brain until, at the absolute minimum, 18 weeks, far more likely 30 weeks.
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