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(a)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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