Word: fetus
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...abortion is murder, then a fetus is a person. The absurdity of this viewpoint is glaring. A human being does not come into existence with conception. The essence of man is his personality and his sentience. There is no comparison between an unconscious fetus and "the mentally deficient, senile people, amputees, and paraplegics." If Jimson cannot see such a distinction, then there can be no arguing...
...proposal. Abortion is murder. With conception a new human being has come into existence, with the genetic material to develop into a child and then an adult. Can one pick out a moment in the process and say that up until then it was not human? The fetus is not, as some claim, just a part of the mother's body. It is distinct from her genetically and physically. It may not yet exent all the human faculties that it could later, but then neither do babies after they are born, children, the mentally deficient, senile people, amputees, or paraplegics...
Even if one did not think it certain that a fetus is human, to destroy what might be human is to be willing to destroy what is human. It is exactly this notion that some are less human than others that led to the Nazis' slaughter of Jews, Slavs, and gypsies. Abortion is all the uglier a crime in that it is committed by a person who has, by his own free will, assumed a responsibility for the baby which might result from the act. What sort of love is there in this? The drive for abortion seems rather...
...medical personnel who do not want to take part in abortions. Paralleling the permissive law, on the other hand, Callahan proposes a vigorous public campaign encouraging contraception and discouraging abortion and a social program offering alternatives such as maternal care and child support. Callahan argues persuasively that the fetus' right to its "human life" must be defended and contends that his "middle way" is its best defense...
Perhaps the most crucial problem dealt with in the essays is whether the young fetus is "tissue," as is often argued by those favoring abortion, or "human life," as abortion foes contend. One line of reasoning offered by Princeton Ethicist Paul Ramsey, a Methodist, is pointedly modern. Ramsey contends that science itself now offers evidence of very early "human" characteristics in the fetus, such as discernible brain waves at eight weeks. The findings of genetics, says Ramsey, suggest a much earlier date. Since the individual's unique genetic code, or genotype, is established at the moment of fertilization...