Reply #54: :Partial Birth" abortions [View All]

I don't see that either Dr. Dean nor I nor the DLC have endorsed the ban on the mythical "partial birth abortion." Nor do I see that any of us have endorsed any of the other specific pieces of legislation which the anti-choice movement has advanced.

As you say, Roe v. Wade already limits (actually, allows the state to limit) third trimester abortions. And yet somehow, the anti-choice forces have managed to frame the debate in such a way that we as a party appear to be advocation what most of us do not - abortion on demant up until the instant of birth.

My take on the whole issue is this:

The basic interest of the state is the protection of human rights. This obviously includes the rights of the woman. It also (at the very latest at birth) involves the rights of the fetus/baby (don't get excited, I'm just trying to span the time which includes birth). That is, after birth, nobody disputes that the baby has rights. Prior to conception, nobody dispute that the egg has no rights. So the important ethical question is what can the state determine (in a religion-neutral fashion) about the question of when human life begins?

My proposed answer (which I am perfectly willing to reconsider in greater depth) is that there can be no such thing as meaningful human life consonant with the concept of "rights" without at least the capacity, past or present, for conciousness. And that conciousness is not possible without the neural connections in the higher brain neccesary to support thought. Those connections form in week 26 of gestation and later. From this, I come to the conclusion that the woman's rights are the only rights in question prior to week 26, but after that time the emergent humanity of the fetus brings into play the issue of the rights of the fetus, which must then be considered in greater and greater proportion up until the time of birth, when the rights of mother and child are exactly equal.

The virtues of this argument, from my point of view, are that it is based solely in reason without reference to any particular religious view, that it is nonetheless ethical in that it makes human rights paramount, and not least that it leads to what I, at a gut level, feel to be the right answer.