Healthy baby aborted at 15 weeks

amcalester wrote: »

There’s no heartbeat at 4 weeks.

Why lie?

Lol. Not that it matters since you don't seem open minded.

https://www.babycentre.co.uk/s1001602/your-pregnancy-at-5-weeks

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Ermmmmm ok. What has this to do with me given I never told anyone "when there is or is not another human life growing."?????



You will have to take it up with "people" then as you are not describing me here. I do not choose what I believe. The evidence, argument, data and reasoning offered for a position dictates to me what I believe, and why.

You said:
'But again you will find it comes down to a distinction between different meanings of the word "human". Some of which apply to a fetus, and some of which do not.'

For every reason you give, a counter argument can be given. The 'evidence' as you put it is not objective and really is someone's opinion of when a fetus becomes human.

Muzzymor wrote: »

Clearly the fundamental ethical disagreement here is about whether you believe that just because a "foetus" doesn't have sentience right now it's ok to kill it

You have certainly correctly identified the core difference in our positions. But you use that as an excuse to not discuss it further. Which is a shame. I can defend my position in that regard. I am wondering can you. But now we will never know.

But here is a thought experiment that the last Anti Choice speaker I tried it on literally ran away from. If I developed a fully functioning General Artificial Intelligence but it had a 5 hour "turn on" time before it attained sentience. Then I turned it on and 3 hours into the 5 I unplugged it, I deleted the program, and I used the parts to make a toaster..... morally and ethically what have I actually done wrong?

Put another way..... upon what would you base the idea or claim that something not sentient has a right to become sentient.

Muzzymor wrote: »

I believe aborted foetus's would be just as alive as I am now if people didn't kill them. You can call that projecting

Nope THAT I would not call projecting at all. Your projecting was something else entirely. What you describe here I 100% agree with in fact. I 100% agree with you in thinking that if we did not kill it, it would be just as alive as us later on most likely.

No disagreement there. The disagreement lies in the fact that you have not established any argument as to why that mutually accepted fact places a shred of moral or ethical onus on our shoulders. Other than you personally believe it to be so.

amcalester wrote: »

You said 4 weeks, then changed to ~ 1 month and now it’s 5 weeks.

Kinda seems like you’re changing your story to suit a narrative.

I never mentioned 4 weeks.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

If you say so. But I note you are saying you CAN do so but not ACTUALLY doing so. That is no small difference. And I wonder if maybe the claims of being able to do it, in lieu of actually doing it, suggest the claim you CAN might not be true.



Until we discuss what we each think the evidence actually is, which we have not discussed yet, how can you pre-declare what form it will take?

Okay, you've stated you base your view of when a fetus is human on evidence. Please provide such evidence and the timing of when this change occurs. As mentioned I believe there is no evidence, there are opinions though.

ToBeFrank123 wrote: »

This to me is key. If 2 doctors signed off they have a case to answer as they are potentially a danger to others and probably shouldn't be practising. If 2 doctors didn't sign off then whoever carried out the abortion broke the law if the abortion happened in Ireland.

And running a single test no matter how allegedly accurate always carries risks. At minimum 2 tests should be required.

To be Frank, everything you’ve said there is incorrect.

kaymin wrote: »

I was replying to another poster who accused me of lying. But now that you said it, an absence of a heartbeat dictates when someone is dead so the corollary is that a heartbeat indicates when someone is alive.

No it doesn’t.

I’ve seen plenty of people without a heart beat who were very much alive, and plenty with a heartbeat who were very much dead.

kaymin wrote: »

Okay, you've stated you base your view of when a fetus is human on evidence. Please provide such evidence and the timing of when this change occurs. As mentioned I believe there is no evidence, there are opinions though.

Well an error I first have to fix in what you asked.... is that my position on abortion is NOT at all based on "the timing when the change occurs". We in fact do not know that 100%.

No my position on abortion is based on periods we know it has not occurred. Which is different and important.

Well as I said a few times, the differing meanings of "human" are important here. I will use human with a small h to mean biologically human. I will use Human with a capital H to mean a Sentient Person.

I believe, like you I think, that the fetus is human since conception.

I do not believe a fetus at 12-16 weeks is Human however. Because.... and this is the evidence bit..... we know generally a list of pre-requisites for sentience and the fetus at that age simply has none of them.

Some reading material randomly picked:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfarrell/2018/04/19/tracing-consciousness-in-the-brains-of-infants/
https://prochoiceplus.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/lets-talk-about-sentience/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/14767059209161911
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1472648310622109

And if you are interested similar for farm animals:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e372/be1b7005c6d0b0782037e5a5bdb0511bc853.pdf

But basically the summary is simple. We have developed an ongoing understanding of what is required for sentience. And the things on that list are simply missing in a fetus at 12-16 weeks development.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

You have certainly correctly identified the core difference in our positions. But you use that as an excuse to not discuss it further. Which is a shame. I can defend my position in that regard. I am wondering can you. But now we will never know.

But here is a thought experiment that the last Anti Choice speaker I tried it on literally ran away from. If I developed a fully functioning General Artificial Intelligence but it had a 5 hour "turn on" time before it attained sentience. Then I turned it on and 3 hours into the 5 I unplugged it, I deleted the program, and I used the parts to make a toaster..... morally and ethically what have I actually done wrong?

Put another way..... upon what would you base the idea or claim that something not sentient has a right to become sentient.



Nope THAT I would not call projecting at all. Your projecting was something else entirely. What you describe here I 100% agree with in fact. I 100% agree with you in thinking that if we did not kill it, it would be just as alive as us later on most likely.

No disagreement there. The disagreement lies in the fact that you have not established any argument as to why that mutually accepted fact places a shred of moral or ethical onus on our shoulders. Other than you personally believe it to be so.

If you can't figure out my view from what I already posted then further discussion won't really help. But I'll lay out my position and leave it at that. I am 100% not asking you to agree with me.

Sentience is something that's argued as a justification for abortion by the pro abortion people as one of the loopholes of when it is actually ok to end a human life, if you look above you'll see a post where I stated I don't agree with its use in these arguments.

My view is that a human life that is already developing is a human life, with all the potential etc that entails. To end that life is in my view therefore wrong, regardless of current sentience or lack thereof.
As I said, we can surely agree that in the vast majority of cases were a feotus not aborted, it would develop sentience or whatever other thing you use to differentiate between foetus life and human life that has a value in a matter of weeks. That foetus would naturally become a human who I assume in most cases would be quite pleased not to have been killed.

I understand your standpoint and I also understand mine. In mine I simply have to accept that due to how I see the world, I am not ok with abortion at any stage when a human life is already in motion. Any other stance would be hypocritical of me and also result in perpetually arguing semantics with people like youself, as fun as that is

If you kill a 20 year old you rob them of experiences they would have had had you not killed them. You don't say, well you died at 20 so you never had those experiences/ they weren't yours and you had no right to them because the future doesn't exist and all you are is what you were at the moment you were killed age 20. It would be reasonable to assume that had said person not been killed they would have had experiences at 30, 40, 50 etc and not just been in the perpetual state of being 20.

Likewise if you end a human life before it reaches sentience, it was still a human life, it would have been sentient and had experiences/hopes and dreams/loved and been loved etc if you hadn't killed it and a human life has been robbed of its potential as much as a 1, 10, 80 year old who gets killed was.

If doctors remove a child's reproductive organs before they reach puberty, it's not a moral argument to turn around and say "you hadn't actually reached sexual maturity at the point we removed them so you haven't actually lost anything". Likewise removing the possibility for sentience from a human life that hasn't reached sentience but will in a few weeks doesn't hold up because it conveniently ignores the fact that the only reason sentience won't happen is because you interferred.

Muzzymor wrote: »

If you can't figure out my view from what I already posted then further discussion won't really help.

But I never indicated I can not figure out your view. Your view is in fact plain as day. It is the basis for your views, and the arguments supporting them, that remain thus far opaque however.

Muzzymor wrote: »

Sentience is something that's argued as a justification for abortion

Already you are wrong. Which is funny because I explained this already in a post not 2 pages back. Sentience is NOT used to justify abortion. It is used to point out that there is no requirement for justification in the first place! If you can not get that much right, I can see why you are unwilling to converse.

Muzzymor wrote: »

by the pro abortion people

I have yet to meet a single "pro abortion" person in my life. If you are aware of any, send them my way please.

Muzzymor wrote: »

My view is that a human life that is already developing is a human life, with all the potential etc that entails. To end that life is in my view therefore wrong, regardless of current sentience or lack thereof.

I share that view, but I know what it means too. In terms of TAXONOMY it is certainly a human life. But that is about all.

However your "therefore" is a non-sequitur to what comes before. You are using "therefore" as a placeholder for an explanation you have not actually offered here.

Muzzymor wrote: »

That foetus would naturally become a human

The fact you acknowledge it will BECOME a Human means you also 100% agree with me it is NOT a Human now. You can not have your cake and eat it there. You are either X or becoming X. You can not be becoming if you already are. Careful with your language, you are shooting yourself in the foot with it.

Muzzymor wrote: »

If you kill a 20 year old you rob them of experiences they would have had had you not killed them.

You would, but I do not see that as relevant. The only relevance here is you have ended the life of a sentient agents with rights to whom we should have moral and ethical concern by virtue of it BEING a sentient agent. That it might or might not have had experiences later on, is relevant solely because you decree it to be so by fiat. I am not seeing any actual arguments supporting that decree yet.

Muzzymor wrote: »

I'm not interested in thought experiments about hypothetical AI

Yeah as I said the other guy ran away from it too. I expected you to also. You did not disappoint.

The same thought experiment is doable with you yourself however. If our technology reaches a point where I could instantiate your consciousness on silicon, and I then offered your loved ones a choice to either take your prone body home, or the terminal containing YOU.... I think we both know which they will pick AND why.

Candamir wrote: »

You’ve a rather narrow view point there. Of course they weren’t walking around. But very much alive (patients on cardiac bypass have no heartbeat for example. Much easier target for the surgeons)

The point of the point was to point out the inaccuracy of your point. Presence or absence of a heart beat does not dictate if someone is alive or not.

In fairness your argument is very weak.

A CVS should not be taken as definitive. The sample collected from a CVS is a mixture of fetal and maternal dna.
Geneticists will always advise an Aminocenthesis on foot of a poor CVS result. This is soley fetal dna and higher accuracy. The problem is that you need to wait until 15+ weeks to take this test. Termination has no limits when it is a ffa and so there was no rush to complete the termination.
Yes campaigners refused to listen to concerns over misdiagnosis for fear of compromising repeal. Assurances given that this would never happen, terminations would be almost impossible after 12 weeks, strict guidelines, three doctors, counselling!!! Any parent with a misdiagnosis was silenced, told they had a choice. That this could happen was flagged many times by many families, the comback always being that those with concerns were "misogynistic, religious zealots, lacking in compassion, scaremongers, forced birthers"

I know the geneticist in NMH as he advised me over my CVS which yielded almost a carbon copy of the results this family received. His immediate recommendation was that I must do an amnio as there was the chance the issue was mosiac and to rule out the possibility of sample contamination.

Rushed debates, rushed legislation, rushed introduction of services dressed up as compassion and healthcare without full consideration or acknowledgement that mistakes could happen.
The right to life was cited during the campaign as being non important and that women were the greates protectors of a childs right to life. What do this family do now? Can't see them suing for wrongful death of a child that has no constitutional rights or protections regardless of the procedures that were followed.

seamus wrote: »

That's needlessly prescriptive. The margin for error varies between tests.

For example, the odds of two false positives with HIV is astronomically unlikely. "So why not do a third, just to be sure"; because realistically that doesn't give you anything. You're more likely to get a false negative on the 3rd test than 3 false positives in a row.

Same for these tests. The margin for error differs between tests, so the requirements for making an accurate diagnosis aren't as simple as saying, "All tests must be done thrice!". In some cases you won't have enough samples. In others you will delay or confuse the outcome unnecessarily.

kaymin wrote: »

In fairness your argument is very weak.

What argument?

kaymin wrote: »

I was replying to another poster who accused me of lying. But now that you said it, an absence of a heartbeat dictates when someone is dead so the corollary is that a heartbeat indicates when someone is alive.

Whatever you think it is, at least it’s not blindingly inaccurate like your above statement.

The presence, or absence of a heartbeat does not dictate whether someone is alive or dead.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Well an error I first have to fix in what you asked.... is that my position on abortion is NOT at all based on "the timing when the change occurs". We in fact do not know that 100%.

No my position on abortion is based on periods we know it has not occurred. Which is different and important.

Well as I said a few times, the differing meanings of "human" are important here. I will use human with a small h to mean biologically human. I will use Human with a capital H to mean a Sentient Person.

I believe, like you I think, that the fetus is human since conception.

I do not believe a fetus at 12-16 weeks is Human however. Because.... and this is the evidence bit..... we know generally a list of pre-requisites for sentience and the fetus at that age simply has none of them.

Some reading material randomly picked:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfarrell/2018/04/19/tracing-consciousness-in-the-brains-of-infants/
https://prochoiceplus.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/lets-talk-about-sentience/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/14767059209161911
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1472648310622109

And if you are interested similar for farm animals:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e372/be1b7005c6d0b0782037e5a5bdb0511bc853.pdf

But basically the summary is simple. We have developed an ongoing understanding of what is required for sentience. And the things on that list are simply missing in a fetus at 12-16 weeks development.

That's interesting but ultimately it comes down to your opinion as to whether a human who hasn't become sentient but is likely to become so should be saved. I believe they should. My understanding is that a human may not become sentient until possibly as late as 30 weeks - when you look at images of them at that stage they are very much a human even if they don't qualify as Human by your standard.

Just to add, who decided that the ability to feel, perceive, or to experience subjectivity at a point in time should determine whether you live or die? And how accurate are these tests of sentience?

mvl wrote: »

Yeah, that's what I also knew. So would you know why they use CVS in here at all, if it is riskier than amniocentesis (higher chance of miscarriage) and detects less no of defects ? - is it only the CVS availability before 15 weeks ?

CVS can be done earlier thats why they do it I assume but contrary to Rhona Mahony and Boylan saying it is 99.9% accurate it is not! No decision to terminate should be made on the basis of this test. In my case a scan showed there may be an issue. I was not at the correct gestation for the Amnio which is more Accurate so a CVS was performed. I was so anxious to find out what was wrong I did the CVS before I even knew what I was doing! FISH results showed no T18 ,21 or 13 but 2 weeks later devestated to find out the conclusive results showed an extremely rare trisomy. Only 11 babies born in the world with this issue! Heavily pushed to abort. 100% assurances given my child would die.
Geneticist took different approach and reccomended Amino and explained the limitations of CVS. Reassured me, no mention of termination at all.


This is another thing I am trying to find out: have they been advised for amnio and didn't take it ? think I've read today amnio can be recommended after 15 weeks in AUS, so they could have waited for that...

Not sure but as far as I can see their FISH results which are less accurate came back positive but the 2 week detailed profiling of each chromosome came back negative. I had the opposite my inital FISH results were negative but final results were positive. Had to wait for an amnio for a.few weeks then another few weeks to get results which showed my baby was fine. placental mosasicm not full blown Trisomy! His placenta was abnormal and this was monitored he was induced early as placenta malfunctioned but they expected and monitored for this.

To add I'm currently 16 weeks pregnant and I was offered testing in NMH even though there was no clinical indication to do so. This was something I was not offered pre repeal! Overtesting when not clinically necessary opens a can of worms with the potential for mistakes to be made!

kaymin wrote: »

That's interesting but ultimately it comes down to your opinion as to whether a human who hasn't become sentient but is likely to become so should be saved.

For me it is not opinion. It is inevitable if you ask and honestly answer a simple question series:

What is morality, ethics and rights. Specifically what are they FOR? What do they do? Why do we have them?

I think when you realise the answer to those question, the conclusion about the massive ethical difference between a sentient agent, and a potentially MAYBE sentient agent, is absolutely massive. And there is no coherent basis upon which to afford the potential one any moral or ethical concern at all.

kaymin wrote: »

when you look at images of them at that stage they are very much a human even if they don't qualify as Human by your standard.

Oh certainly in terms of biology and physical shape and appearance they are entirely human. But what has, for example, shape got to do with anything? A mannequin in a clothing store is more human shaped than most fetus. Yet we have ZERO ethical concern on that basis for a mannequin. It would be ridiculous for us to have any.

Shape, taxonomy, biology.... I am not seeing why these are focal points for morality. THAT they are a focal point for your ethics is clear, do not get me wrong. WHY is the what is unclear.

As I said before if I instantiated your consciousness in a computer and removed it from your body.... I doubt many loved ones would have much concern for your body any more. And I think we both know why. And it has NOTHING to do with your shape or biology in that moment. Would it?

kaymin wrote: »

Just to add, who decided that the ability to feel, perceive, or to experience subjectivity at a point in time should determine whether you live or die? And how accurate are these tests of sentience?

I do not think it SHOULD determine if it lives or dies. I think it should determine whether we should have any moral or ethical concern for it. Specifically whether it should have rights. If a fetus should have a right to life, I want to know why. It is human shaped.... not so much a reason for me. Nor do I see why it should be.

As for the accuracy of tests, I am not clear I know what you mean. It is deeper than that. It is more the accuracy of the science that has determined what the pre-requisites for consciousness and sentience even are in the first place. And if those things are absent, which they are in a fetus, we therefore have NO basis to think it is sentient.

There is no real "sentience test" per se in other words. There is a great line in a movie I saw once where an AI is created. The government agent comes to meet it and says "Can you prove you are conscious?" and the AI simply replies "Can you?".

Which of course, he can't.

But if we list the reasons we might have to think something sentient, a fetus at early stages pretty much has the same number of them as a rock. It is not that we test it for sentience. It is that we have NO reason to think it is there.