From the academic rigor of two Australian bioethicists:
How could they simply ignore the significances of childbirth? It’s as if they’d never researched the
countless academic references to the Dry Foot Policy of Personhood.
Why are you still misrepresenting the 'dry foot' argument?
And what you linked would be classified as murder in just about all legal jurisdictions - plus it doesn't deal with reality (I know, reality is a hard concept to grasp these days). And you are still not addressing the issue in the OP.
It also kind of pays to
do some research into what you are posting or misrepresenting things:
When we decided to write this article about after-birth abortion we had no idea that our paper would raise such a heated debate.
“Why not? You should have known!” people keep on repeating everywhere on the web. The answer is very simple: the article was supposed to be read by other fellow bioethicists who were already familiar with this topic and our arguments. Indeed, as Professor Savulescu explains in his editorial, this debate has been going on for 40 years.
We started from the definition of person introduced by Michael Tooley in 1975 and we tried to draw the logical conclusions deriving from this premise. It was meant to be a pure exercise of logic: if X, then Y. We expected that other bioethicists would challenge either the premise or the logical pattern we followed, because this is what happens in academic debates. And we believed we were going to read interesting responses to the argument, as we already read a few on this topic in religious websites.
However, we never meant to suggest that after-birth abortion should become legal. This was not made clear enough in the paper. Laws are not just about rational ethical arguments, because there are many practical, emotional, social aspects that are relevant in policy making (such as respecting the plurality of ethical views, people’s emotional reactions etc). But we are not policy makers, we are philosophers, and we deal with concepts, not with legal policy.
Moreover, we did not suggest that after birth abortion should be permissible for months or years as the media erroneously reported.
If we wanted to suggest something about policy, we would have written, for example, a comment related the Groningen Protocol (in the Netherlands), which is a guideline that permits killing newborns under certain circumstances (e.g. when the newborn is affected by serious diseases). But we do not discuss guidelines in the paper. Rather we acknowledged the fact that such a protocol exists and this is a good reason to discuss the topic (and probably also for publishing papers on this topic).
And wow GeoffP.
Six posts in a row and still not able to support your contention (or provide any studies or evidence) that women will not lose their rights with your definition of personhood, or are you able to answer the questions in the OP...
Your clear arguments that you supposedly outlined have nothing to do with reality. Women today are being denied their Constitutional rights and bodily integrity while pregnant. This is not made up or fantastic scenarios. But real life. And this is for women who actually want to have their 'babies'. And you are arguing that the State declaring the fetus to be a "person" will ensure the protection of women? I'll give you a hint, when even right wing pro-life from moment of conception supporters are recognising that declaring personhood will result in untold issues regarding the woman's rights, to the point where they are withdrawing support for such measures, then you kind of don't have a real leg to stand on..
You have provided nothing to support your argument except to demand that we accept it on your say so. Ermm okay.. Who are you again? King of the world? Nup. Important in any way to influence policy? Nope. Involved in women's rights organisations? No proof so far that you are.
Things don't happen just because you believe they will, GeoffP. This may happen in your mythical East Korea, but this is the real world, where real and actual people live and where real and actual women are losing their rights. So your assertion that there will be exemptions.. Even ultra right wing politicians are being forced to admit that there cannot be exemptions when personhood is declared, GeoffP,
because of what personhood legally entails. So I have to ask, which choir are you preaching to here?
So I'll ask you again and hopefully this time you can answer and support your assertion and arguments with something other than your say so.. What happens to the woman's rights when personhood is declared for her foetus? Studies? Anything from reputable sites? Go on, try.
Fetal rights advocates believe that certain restrictions on specific fundamental rights of pregnant women, as a group, are constitutional on two grounds. First, the right of the fetus to be born healthy overrides a woman’s rights to privacy. Second, the applicability of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee should not be strictly applied because pregnant women’s actions may simultaneously adversely affect the health and well-being of another person—-the fetus. Therefore, pregnant women comprise a class separate from non-pregnant persons, and constraints on their fundamental rights to engage in particular behavior should not be subjected to the same “strict scrutiny.
Oh look..
She cannot maintain or have equal rights to the fetus once personhood is declared. What a surprise.
Subordinating a pregnant woman’s rights to the unborn fetus is unique in our system. There are no comparable situations where a male’s bodily integrity is forcibly violated to provide for another “person.” In this regard, the fetus has greater rights than a born person. A born child does not have the right to force his/her parents to undergo any form of bodily invasion, even a blood test, without the person’s consent. Both common law and statutory law have long upheld the right of a person to refuse to allow others to invade his or her bodilyintegrity
In addition to procedural due process and privacy, state intervention of behalf of the fetus has denied (particularly poor and minority) women’s Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection. Pregnant poor women and non white women are disproportionately subject to forced cesarean sections,as well as punishment for substance abuse. Partly because poor women are more often treated at public hospitals, they are more likely to be tested by physicians for drug use. Both addicted and non-addicted African-American women also are less likely to receive adequate prenatal care, thereby increasing the risk of an injured baby. Negative racial and class stereotypes make poor non-white pregnant women easy targets, facilitating prosecution instead of assistance.
More generally, sex discrimination is a major reason for the subordination of women’s rights to those of the fetus. Women are reduced to “vessels” or “potential vessels” that carry the unborn. Pregnant women, and by extension all women are thereby rendered invisible, reduced to nothing more than moveable uteruses.
So yeah, what happens to the mother's rights when personhood is declared again? Please provide some studies to support your assertions. Your say so doesn't really cut it.
I realise that technical and intellectual progress are sadly uneven across the US, but do you burn obstetricians out your way, too? And what's the Church penalty for ultrasound technicians?