Okay, so a friend shared this. My first reaction, of course, was that most people don’t look like that because they aren’t white. Also, no 12 week fetus looks like that. Their skin is see-through and their proportions are slightly different. The amount of development is about right, but (since the fetus is not bright red, you can’t see it’s brain, and it’s holding up okay outside of a medium of buoyant fluid) you know it’s a sculpture and not the real deal.
So, to answer the question: No, that isn’t a person, that’s a piece of plastic.
I’ve seen super-premies – that were (presumably) twice as old as this doll supposed to be – and they are not cute. They are creepy. That is NO judgement on their worth or whether medical interventions should be used to extend their lives or whether they should illicit the same love we extend to other newborns. It’s just true. They are not cute.
What I find disturbing about this image on a fundamental level is that it’s relying on “Cute” = “Person”. (That sorts of cuts into the mantra that a blastocyst is a “person” since they are downright impossible to see with the naked eye – but whatever.) It’s also implying that anyone who actually knew what a fetus looked like in various stages (as if that information isn’t readily available) would deem a 12-week fetus a “person”. Further, that if we acknowledged the 12-week fetus as a “person” that we would see it’s abortion as “killing”.
So, I thought – how would the legal standing of a fetus actually change if the fetus were legally considered a person.
The obvious means of trying to figure this out is to make connections with other similar situations that involve someone who is already legally considered a “person”. So, in what circumstance does one person give of their body to someone who is considered another person; who, if that sacrifice is not made, will die?
I quickly found “The Living Donor Bill of Rights”.
As I read thought it, I expected to find a statement of the rights of consent. However, a strong statement did not exist because, well, there really isn’t anyone who seriously thinks that we should be kidnapping people, strapping them to hospital beds, and cutting out their organs against their will. It sort of went without saying.
There were, however, a few relevant passages:
“The living organ donor has the right to make a decision about donation in a setting free of coercion or pressure.”
and
“The living organ donor has the right to informed consent based on clear information at each step of the evaluation and donation process. The consent for evaluation should be separate from the consent for surgery.”
So, in essence, you can’t force someone to be a living donor nor does consent to possibly be a living donor make you obligated to be a living donor.
Also,
“The living organ donor has the right to expect that if, during the perioperative period, it is discovered that the donor organ is unsuitable in any way for the recipient or that removing it (or some portion of it) will put the donor at risk for previously unforeseen complications, the procedure will be aborted.”
So, in this situation, if there are unexpected complications, “the procedure will be aborted.”
Think about this.
In situations involving living organ donation, someone’s life or quality of life is at stake. In many situations, if the donor decides not to “go through with it”, the possible recipient will die. There are situations where a compatible donor is almost impossible to find, and that person making a sacrifice of themselves is the only means of life.
How different would it be, if we thought of a fetus as a person? How different would it be, if we did not think of the fetus as part of another human being, but an autonomous individual that happens to be surviving only by the bodily sacrifice of another separate autonomous individual?
Perhaps those who support “personhood” should think this through, because under the law there is no “person” who is entitled to the body of someone else.
The law, as it is written now, does not protect a “living donor” to a viable fetus from being legally compelled to sacrifice their body for that fetus unless they are going to die.
Currently, even when complications arise concerning the donation, not only are doctors not compelled to “abort the procedure” but they can be punished for saving the “living donors” life.
So, in the end, if a fetus is a person, and the lives of fetuses were treated the same way as the lives of other “persons”:
1) Consent to possibly sustain their life through donation would not be considered consent to do so.
2) The person whose bodily donation is sustaining their life could expect the donation to be “aborted” in the case of unforeseen medical complications.
3) The person whose bodily donation is sustaining their life could refuse to continue doing so at any stage in the process.
Those are not rights that pregnant people have, because the life of a fetus is currently given more consideration than a “person”.
This was a good run at a complex wall of ignorance. Unfortunately, it’s hard to convince those opposed with a complex argument, when they can’t even see the impracticality of granting legal status to a POSSIBLE human, before they’ve grown enough to be able to survive. If you give rights to an “UN”, such as the unborn, you’ll have to grant equal status in employment toward anyone unqualified, because they MIGHT later become qualified.
What gives a fetus precedence over a living/working healthy person? Why is their life *seemingly* more important than the mother’s to certain people? I’m asking only because I cannot understand why and I would like to be enlightened, although, I almost can see why people would think that way with the help of the comment before mine because they MIGHT later become the next Einstein or [insert famous/talented people here].
It’s pretty simple.
If you think that God’s Creation is perfect and that mankind’s decisions are what make it imperfect; you will see the fetus as the perfection of God devoid of human choices and the pregnant person as sinful, lacking in virtue, and of much less value since not only have they lived long enough to have made choices, someone has had sex with the person.
To some religious people, sex makes someone corrupted by sin, and the only virtuous reason for sex is procreation. So, a girl or woman who has sex and rejects the procreative element of sex – is – to them – a horrible sinful creature.
That’s why when you go to some pro-life spaces, you get a lot of people saying things like, “keep your leg’s shut if you don’t want a baby” and other tropes that shame girls and women for having sex.
They also ignore men as having responsibility – since their value is not as altered by sex as a girl or woman’s value is. (You know, that whole “virgin” “slut” thing.)
That’s how you can have a bishop ex-communicate the mother of a child incest victim for allowing her to have a life-saving abortion – but not ex-communicate the rapist.
Because the mother killed someone who was perfect and the rapist violated someone who wasn’t. In their words, “…the elimination of an innocent life, was more serious.” http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/05/25/490171/brazil-excommunication-for-abortion/
It also explains why (even though many pro-life groups claim to believe life begins at conception), they refuse to support policies that actually reduce abortion and reduce the number of fertilized eggs that are discarded by the body – which birth control does.
Because it’s not actually about protecting fetuses for MANY of those in these groups – it’s about punishing girls and women for embracing the “sin” of sex devoid of the “miracle” of pro-creation.
That also explains why many Christians are pro-life and think of it as a religious stance, even though the Bible is completely silent on the issue.