In considering these topics, I'd say
* the human life within a body is generally considered to belong to two stages : the first being embryo the second being foetus. Just after conception, you do not have a foetus but only a set of undifferenciated cells. For about 8 weeks, you still do not have a foetus and the live being does not look like, nor behave like anything human. It would be interesting to check if all medical entities consider the embryo stage ends at the same time. In France, I believe it is 50 days of development. This might mark a time for some people to believe "before" it is an animal, "after", it is a small human. I had the opportunity to see one of my babies just on the 51th day of development, it looks like a human basically.
* another point to consider is medical experiment on human cells. Depending on countries, experiments can or can not be done on embryo cells, and this to a certain stage. In some people mind, this stage will be the difference between making experiment on an animal and on a human. The first being sometimes considered normal, sometimes a crime; the second being generally considered a crime. Again, it might be interesting to note the time limit for such experimenting, with regards to population reaction to such experiments.
* another point of non return is the stage of developement until which abortion is legal (aside from abnormalities issues). Depending on countries, it may be conception, or 10 weeks or more. Often, this stage of no-return may indicate a consensus on when stopping the life is "okay" and when it is a "crime". In France, it is 10 weeks, so definitly when the living being is a foetus. I had the opportunity to see two of my babies at 10 weeks of development, and to lose one exactly at this stage. I know some women feel the need to give a name to such a baby to better assume the grievance. And when abortions are made, babies are usually not shown to the woman, there is a reason for that. But again, it might be interesting to compare stages of maximum abortion depending on countries. It might be interesting to evaluate the consensus on when it becomes a crime to eliminate it voluntarily.
* The next point of non-return is the stage of development, when, when a foetus dies, he is recognised by the law. It receives a name, it may be buried, and it is registered on legal papers. I'd say, again interesting to compare countries. If a country recognise a dead foetus as a dead human at ... say 6 months,... it would be quite illogical not to claim the foetus at this stage is not human in this country...from a legal perspective.
* The near last reference might be the stage at which a foetus can born and be kept alive. Even if he might have been better inside, if he is outside and alive, he is probably human. In best cases, this might be as early as 5 months-6 months, though most will have consequences. But at 5 months-6 months, most women, if asked, would probably agree that their foetus has a personnality. They move or not, they react to your touch or not, they play with you moving around depending on your own reaction, suck their thumbs or not, react to light, noise... differently. It may not be "human", but it definitly has a "specific behavior which makes it unique".
Still and finally, many would consider that being "human" is necessarily being able to live "independently". Which might be at birth... or anytime later... or never for some heavily handicaped people in some people opinion.
This suggest to me this * not everyone agrees there is a foetus personhood and if there is one, not everyone agrees when it happens. Considering the "consensus" on this topic is not a good idea, because NPOV is not about the "general opinion". It is not the mainstream. So an article on foetus personhood seems to me a call for disagreement, since the title seems to imply it exists, whatever what the article contains. This is not so good.
* however, everyone agrees there is a human personhood. The only thing on which possibly some would not agree would be that "some" people are not human. But this is likely to be such a rare occurence, that probably, an article on human personhood would not be questionnable. Do an article on [[human personhood]] and discuss in it the various thoughts across the world, upon when a little one becomes a human with a human personhood. This will probably cause far less objections and you will be able to discuss the topic in length in the article itself.
Anthere
steve v a écrit:
Then we're in agreement that Fetal personhood needs to be an article. I disagree with Skyring's claim that NPOV policy and NPOV terminology should be left to each article. As physical science has rational bearing on issues regarding the concept of universe, so does medical science have a bearing on all medical issues. The view that NPOV rel. rationality rel. science, and POV rel. irrationality rel. claim/belief is not a controversial interpretation of NPOV, IMHO.
Hence we can feel free to state a dominant consensus that at some certain point, a fetus is a human life, and hence marginalize both extreme absolutist views which claim either that "human life begins at conception" or that the issue is entirely "in the domain of woman's choice [until its feet are out]."
Sinreg, SV
PS starting progress on: consolidating issues to Template:Abortion
--- Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
This is a pretty complex question to sum up easily, and there's a huge body of writing on it from all sides (not just political advocates either; there's a huge body of literature in applied-ethics philosophy journals). Some opinions agree that it's a "human life" but argue that "human rights" is a misnomer and ought to be "personhood rights", and not granted automatically to humans but only to persons; others dispute that a fetus is "human" in the sense that the term is generally meant, and instead will only grant it is "of the species homo sapiens" or something similar. There is a whole *other* body of literature on what exactly "personhood" is and means, and once you've established that, still another body of literature on what sort of ethics ought to apply to people who have been deemed "persons" in the relevant sense (fifty flavors of utilitarians, Kantians, and all the rest).
Basically there's nothing Wikipedia can say about this subject that has a consensus anywhere, other than some very basic medical facts like "a fetus is genetically of the species homo sapiens". There is, however, a lot of stuff other people say about it that would be nice to summarize.
-Mark
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