From: dsholtsi@csl36h.csl.ncsu.edu (Doug Holtsinger)
Subject: Re: Pro-Choice Criteria for Personhood
Reply-To: dsholtsi@csl36h.csl.ncsu.edu (Doug Holtsinger)
Organization: North Carolina State University
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 02:49:55 GMT

In article <YAMAUCHI.92Oct11154251@sartre.ces.cwru.edu> 
yamauchi@ces.cwru.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes:

> I'm curious about the criteria that other people who are pro-choice
> would use to determine whether an organism is a person.  I'm
> pro-choice, but it seems to me that abortion rights activists are
> often unclear about this in their public statements.

Pro-choicers are often intentionally unclear about their definition
of personhood because they're usually unable to express a consistent 
and coherent definition without either accepting infanticide or
animal rights, or both.  

> To me, the most compelling criteria would be one based on
> self-awareness.  Unfortunately, this is rather difficult to measure
> directly.  As far as I'm concerned, the _minimal_ criteria would
> include both brain activity and responsiveness to external stimuli.  I
> realize that this would include some deep coma victims among the dead,
> but it's perhaps not unreasonable to consider deep comas a form of
> (sometimes) reversible brain death.

A definition of personhood based upon "self-awareness" would have
to exclude newborn infants from consideration as persons. There is 
evidence that the neocortex (" higher brain") of an infant is not 
sufficiently developed at birth for an infant to possess "self-awareness".
This definition would also imply that many animals would be given 
personhood status.  

> The use of birth as a defining point for personhood may convenient,
> but I rarely hear pro-choicers give a coherent explanation for why the
> fetus itself is different one minute after both than one minute
> before.  Certainly it's relationship with it's mother has changed, but
> that shouldn't affect whether or not is it a person.

Pro-choicers will often argue that a fetus is inside a woman's body,
and thus, the fetus is not a person, but an infant is a person.
This argument reduces women to mere physical containers. Pregnant
women need not offer any justification for aborting -- the fact 
that a fetus resides within the woman's body is sufficient
justification for abortion. According to these choicers, pregnant 
women might as well be inanimate, non-thinking containers who simply 
harbor a fetus. 

> Still, uncomfortable as it may be to everyone, there's no reason in
> principle why one couldn't extend the defining point to a time after
> birth -- perhaps the first time the infant speaks, or forms meaningful
> sentences, or demonstrates elementary spatial reasoning (e.g. some of
> the early Piaget tests).  I remember reading a paper that argued that
> the "infantile amnesia" experienced by all people results from the
> lack of an ability to encode memories into long-term storage, and
> perhaps one could also argue that self-awareness is limited before
> this capability develops.  It's easy to dismiss "infanticide" charges
> as the ravings of fanatic pro-lifers, but I think it's worthwhile to
> consider the implications of whatever criteria one uses to determine
> personhood...

I would have a difficult time arguing against a pro-choicer who believed
that infants are not persons.  That type of position is consistent,
as is the position that personhood begins at conception. But you'd
still have to deal with the temporarily comatose, those individuals 
who are asleep, the severely mentally retarded, and individuals 
suffering from degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer's. 

While there's a certain emotional impact to the word "infanticide" 
for many people, I don't get upset when a pro-choicer suggests  
that personhood should begin sometime after birth, even though 
I vehemently disagree with the idea.  I realize that a person  
who believes that infanticide is not immoral would not necessarily
commit the act.  


>Brian Yamauchi			Case Western Reserve University
                                ^^^^^
                                I went there. CIT `83

Doug Holtsinger