Implications of Viability when Considering the Advancement/Accessibly of NeonatalTechnology
Updated Thesis
If a fetus obtains the right to life the moment it is viable, then as neonatal technology and/or access to it improves, the moment a fetus obtains the right to life moves to an earlier point in gestation.
Definitions
Fetus – The unborn offspring from the end of the 8th week after conception (when the major structures have formed) until birth. Up until the eighth week, the developing offspring is called an embryo.
Right to Life – The inherit right to live possessed by all human persons.
Viability – The ability to potentially live outside the mother’s womb, albeit with artificial aid.
Neonatal Technology – Technology of, relating to, or affecting the newborn and especially the human infant during the first month after birth.
Gestation – The period of development in the uterus from conception until birth; pregnancy.
*UPDATES ABOVE*
Thesis
If a fetus obtains rights the moment it can survive outside the womb (viability), then as medical technology – or access to it – improves, so do the rights of unborn children.
Implications
1) African Fetus gains rights later in pregnancy than American Fetus.
Say a woman in Lakartinya (a rural village in Kenya) and a woman in Phoenix are both impregnated on Halloween night. Now suppose both pregnancies advanced to 24 weeks. Due to access to medical technology that would sustain the life of Phoenix Fetus, that fetus would become ‘viable’ earlier than Lakartinya Fetus. In other words, Phoenix Fetus would be considered a human person, with all legal rights afforded, before the Lakartinya baby, despite the fact they were both conceived on the same night and at the same point of development.
We can even imagine a scenario where Lakartinya Fetus is conceived earlier than Phoenix Fetus, yet still considered ‘merely’ a fetus – a ‘potential person’ – at a later stage of pregnancy than Phoenix Fetus.
2) 1911 Fetus gained rights later in pregnancy than 2011 Fetus.
I am not an expert on medical technology by any means, but I believe it would be safe to assume it has advanced in a relevant way over the past one-hundred years.
If this is the case, then those that that look to the presence of viability when determining fetal personhood must say that a fetus conceived in 1911 became a person at a later point in development than one conceived in 2011.
This would make the question of whether or not a fetus at a particular point in development is a right-bearing person a sort of ‘sliding scale’ – as the years increase, the number of weeks required for a fetus to be considered a human person decreases.
I see these as just a couple of reasons why viability should not be looked at as the determining factor when assessing the personhood of unborn children.
Just read some of this, I think it’s an interesting proposition you have made.
It seems that if “a fetus obtains rights the moment it can survive outside the womb” is true, then even the American baby fetus that is healthy and a week from being delivered still has no rights considering it is still within the womb.
It seems what you’re trying to say may be more along the lines of this (let me know if I’m not making sense):
If a fetus obtains rights the moment it can survive outside the womb, then, as medical technology improves, so does the potential of that fetus reaching the point of attaining rights.
Based off of the statement “a fetus obtains rights the moment it can survive outside the womb,” it seems that the right of life will never reach within the womb while the child is being born. By definition, the child will never receive rights until post-birth, no matter how much more technologically advanced societies may be. The only thing that increase is the potential of attaining rights.
But that’s of course building off of an assumption about human rights and fetuses.
What I’ve said above may not be what you are trying to say, but the assumption that a fetus only attains rights outside of the womb necessarily implies that no matter how advanced technology is, the fetus will never gain rights within the womb.
I’m still new to this, but when proponents of viability say “the moment it can survive outside the womb,” what they usually seem to mean is the moment the baby could be delivered and have at least a 50/50 chance of surviving, with the aid of available medical technology weighed. I don’t think they mean that the actual attainment of rights happens post-birth (although there are plenty of others that do), but the ability to survive if they were in fact removed from the womb – something which can be possessed while still in the womb. So a baby a week away from being delivered – still in the womb – would be viable, and it would not be morally acceptable to abort him/her, since viability = right to life.
My point is that under this view, as medical technology improves, the point in development at which a fetus obtains the right to life becomes earlier and earlier. This seems odd, since we would in a sense be saying geographic location, economic climate and time period play larger roles in the assessment of a fetus’s personhood than some quality of the fetus itself.
Let’s say Norwegian Fetus is 24-weeks-old. Let’s also say that in Norway, you cannot abort a 24 week baby, because after considering the medical technology available to the mother, he/she is considered a viable person with rights. Now, what would happen if we flew the mother to the Congo? Within a strict viability framework, the fetus would no longer be a person with rights, even though they were a considered a person prior to the flight. Should the rights of an unborn child be determined by fluctuating variables like geography, economic status, or time period? I would say no.
I freely admit I am being a bit sloppy, so any feedback is greatly appreciated!
This is a question of ethics: what ought one to do in this predicament?
There are metaphysical assumptions being made about what human nature is and when life for a human starts, and all of this is assuming an epistemology – that the knowledge of this is possible.
We are thinking, rational beings with individual bodies. Thinking is non-physical and an attribute of the soul, our bodies are physical: We are a non-physical and physical unity, body and soul, A and non-A – at the same time but in different respects.
The implication of my statement above is that there is a soul that thinks, and that it is not equivalent to the brain. There is no question that the soul and the brain work together, but they can’t be considered synonymous – equating something with the non-physical qualities of true and false with physical qualities such as fast and slow (atoms in the brain) is to say “A is non-A” and to lose all meaning.
There is an assumption being made in the viability argument: A fetus obtains the inherent right to life the moment it can live outside the mother’s womb with or without artificial aid.
The right to life assumes that the being holding the right is alive, whether they hold this right consciously or not. Does it make sense to claim that a fetus isn’t an actual human (body and soul unity) until a certain point in development? Or due to the fact that the being is alive, and a human, the unity is there?
If the soul is not the same as the brain, and the body is alive and continually developing (even post-birth), knowing that this being is a human, it cannot be considered anything other than a body and soul unity, even if the brain isn’t developed yet (the soul cannot be equated with the brain).
Human nature must first be established before asking whether a fetus at a specific point in time is considered a living human.
What do you think?