Opinions of a Wandering Waif

This is an article that examines what makes life meaningful.  It was posted at my board, in a discussion about abortion and personhood. 

IMO, the article establishes, in its own terms, very clearly, that a fetus cannot be a person, before 24 weeks:

A quick answer is that we need receptors in the skin to detect threats to tissue and those receptors need to be connected to parts of the brain that can interpret the threat. The receptors, the connections and the relevant parts of the brain are all developed by about 24 weeks gestational age. Thus the fetus can feel pain after 24 weeks but not before. You can perform this same trick with respect to other sensations such as vision, hearing, taste and so forth.

[…]

My retort to the idea that the brain does it can be stated simply – whatever it is that nervous tissue does I am quite certain that it does not feel because cells cannot feel. Only persons can feel.

[…]

The beginning of explicit intent is there in the act that now picks out specific stimuli and organises the various responses into a form of action. Initially, it is the stimulus and caregiver that controls the infant’s action through interaction and reward. The intent is explicit for the caregiver but also implicit in the scenario. As the infant increasingly absorbs the rules of the game she is able to shift her focus from the toy to the caregiver and to herself thus stepping between different points of view within the act. The infant begins to emerge to herself as she absorbs the implicit intent of the action and adopts the viewpoint of each external element.

The outline of an ‘I’ (or a self) develops. It is this ‘I’ who experiences.

[…]

I think Derbyshire is also saying that until the concept of “I” develops, the critter is on shaky grounds in its bid for personhood, too. 

I remember reading of some cultures that don’t consider a born human a person until after the age of 3.  And in Judaism, we may not ritually mourn the death of an infant, less than a month old.

Arguing that a woman has no right to rid her body of a parasitic clump of insensate cells is misogynistic.  After 24 weeks, there is a sliver of a chance that there is concern for the fetus, but before that, and most certainly to claim its personhood at conception, is just bullshit to cover the misogyny. 

—emphasis mine ~ waif