Does a 12-week old fetus have the same human rights as a full-grown person?

Asked by: noah364
  • What do you know?

    If we deny rights to an unborn child where is the line drawn? When the child is born? There has been scientific studies that show an unborn baby dreams! Even before they have seen the world they imagine! If you think that this a small matter you are wrong. Who are you to decide whether that baby deserves to live? Do you know what they will do? Maybe a 12 week old baby girl who just got aborted had the ability to find the cure for cancer? Now we'll never know. If a baby was just born does the mother have the right to exterminate that life? Of course not!! They won't remember anything from that time, but they still deserve to live. There was once a time, long, long ago when you were that small. Would you care if your mother decided to end your life then and there? Any sane person would. Who can understand someone else's mind better than themselves? How are doctors supposed to know if an unborn child is thinking?

  • Human rights are not dependent on development

    Human rights, by definition, extend to all humans by virtue of being human. Some may argue that the size of a foetus's brain disqualifies it from human rights, but this would imply that infants have less human rights than teenagers, which is absurd.
    Some may argue that a foetus does not have an interest in human rights and so should not be subject to them, but with this logic we could enslave people from birth so they are not aware of their right to freedom, and thus we would be justified in withholding that right. This is also absurd.
    In short, ignorance of one's rights does not negate one's rights.

  • I personally believe it does

    It's still human life, whether it's conscious or unconscious. Abortion is a judgement call on the part of a woman, or a couple. Is it right or wrong? To me it's wrong and it surprises me how many folks are okay with this. I think human rights apply at the moment of conception. I'm open-minded about a lot of things, but this is a personal area of great concern for me and I'm against abortion (except when a mother's life is in grave danger).

  • There's not enough detail in this question.

    Currently, in many places around the world, a 12 week old fetus doesn't have the same human rights as a full grown person. I assume you mean "Should" instead of "Do", and in that case, yes it should, just as an elderly person and a child should have the same human rights. Both are human and therefore, deserve human rights. Also, when you say "full-grown person", I'm not sure whether you mean a child or an adult or an elderly person or what. But I guess it doesn't matter, because as long as it's another human being, then my answer is the same: yes, a 12-week old fetus should have the same human rights as any human person.

  • Of course they do

    Of course fetuses should have human rights. Fetuses can tap rhythms to music, twins play games with each other, and they have a fully developed nervous system by the end of the first trimester. This means that when you abort one, it feels the agonizing pain. Many are reported to have tried to crawl away from the doctors and their weapons. Even if you pretend that its not alive, you just deprived a person of childhood, having friends, growing up, having fun, falling in love, getting married, having kids, being a parent, raising a family, growing old with the ones they love, and to die as an accomplished person. Is it the kid's fault that their parents hate them?

  • Well developed tiny person

    At this point the fetus has all the main features well developed already, arms, legs, beating heart etc and looks like a tiny baby. The are also moving around etc. Why do we dare to assume they are not "conscious" or not sufficiently intelligent to be considered human? Brain size has little to do with intelligence, but even if it did as a child I had a pet baby mouse, just about that size, but clearly conscious, thinking and very intelligent. Of course I think tiny human babies have vastly more inherent worth than a mouse though. Do you think you're 6mth old is worthless and not "human" due to their inability to walk or talk and their total dependence on you? No? Then why is you're tiny baby in the womb worth less than your helpless newborn?

  • Both are members of the species homo sapiens.

    Only thing to debate is whether a fetus is a person. Scientifically it is a homo sapiens or human. I personally consider something that is human deserves to have rights.

    Others may disagree saying that only a person has rights. Only problem with that is that there is a lot to debate what has personhood. Does a person who is in a coma have personhood, does a person who is legally dead have personhood (you can still be revived is some situations)?

  • Its not a sentient being.

    It doesnt perceive anything. It might as well not even be alive yet. Now what is the difference between preventing birth with condemns and killing a fetus that isnt really even alive yet. The only think that would make it wrong requires it to first feel and think. If the fetus cannot feel and think yet then why not kill it. On the other hand i think having a kid is a selfish and cruel thing. Your insuring that countless others (some of your descendants) will suffer greatly and be miserable their whole lives wishing they had been aborted. Life is cruel. So why bring a kid into this life? Happyness is not important. It is not important for you to be happy. What is important is preventing pain suffering and misery for others. The only way to do this is to stop breading. After all i dont expect you to understand as slaves had kids knowing their children were going to live horrible lives and wish they were never born but they were selfish and wanted to have sex just like you idiots that say yes. Your selfish and want kids for your own pleasure and if those kids displease you youll throw them out on the streets without ever even asking yourself is this kid at fault or is there something causing its ill behavior. F you and f your "god" for putting these moronic ideas and fallacious ideals into your head. What about the womans rights? If a woman doesnt want to have a baby why should she have one? Do you really want to make a woman have a kid who hates kids. Yea that will be a great life for that kid. F you pain suffering and misery causers (breeders)!

  • I do not think so

    Before you can answer this question, you must answer another. What is the difference between a rock and a 12 week old fetus? How about everyone thinks back to when they were a 12 week old fetus. Hmmmm, I certainly cannot. Maybe everyone should be asking the fetus this question.

  • The fetus is human, but is not a human being

    It's true that a 12-week old fetus may be made up of human cells and DNA, and may be its own organism, but it's brain is so ridiculously tiny, and has such little activity, that it can be said to have little to no consciousness, sense of self, or sense of, rather, anything. True, it may, in the future, become a human being, capable of a sense of self and of consciousness, but in its current state, it holds little to no value as a human being. Killing it would be like stepping on a bug. You'd be robbing it of nothing, as it has little to no sense of any sort of life or existence.

    A full-grown person, on the other hand, has a vested interest in keeping him/her self alive and well. They have a sense of themselves, of their surroundings, and can make an infinite number of decisions. They are completely conscious, and are therefore completely deserving of any human right.

    Awarding the same rights to a 12-week old mindless lump of growing cells as to an individual with a distinct personality, identity, and consciousness is a disgrace against the individual.

  • Humanity =/= Personhood

    A non-thinking, non-feeling entity does not deserve the title of person, period. It doesn't matter what sort of DNA they have. If we have an organism, biologically human or no, like the 12 week fetus that can't think, feel, suffer, or experience the world around them in any way; that is less "human" where it really counts than the average cat or dog, what sense does it make to label them as persons and grant them legal rights? There are certain things involved with being a person with rights, and a fetus fails the test miserably. Not everything human is a person.

  • The Fetus isn't self aware

    This argument may sound horrible, but the only reason people view abortion as wrong is because they get overly attached to something just because it looks human.

    The only thing that separates humans from animals is that we have a clear sense of self awareness(There are some other species that are self aware, and I think they should as well have the same rights as humans). To say that we get privileges just by being human is quite frankly arrogant, even by saying because we are anthropomorphic is in itself speciesist. The only logical way to justify giving ourselves more rights than animals is through self awareness.

    This being said, fetuses are not self aware. They may be able to feel as we do, but they don't think as we do. It is arrogant of us to give them more rights because they look like us, or are the same species as us. If they are not self aware, they shouldn't really be granted any more rights than a chicken.

  • Sentience, and humanity, require development

    What is sentience? The ability to think critically, to understand basic concepts of the world and/or the self, and the ability to feel in ways beyond mere physical sensation. It might be said by some that a fetus at 12 weeks has some of these abilities, if not all, but I strongly disagree. As adults, we possess these abilities, because we have had the time to develop them through both nature and nurture during our lifetime. To say then, that a 12 week old fetus, which has no knowledge of what life is or what it entails, or even has a conscious knowledge and understanding of what it is feeling, has the same rights as a fully-matured adult is folly. I am fairly certain that detractors will simply state that as children we did not yet possess these abilities, and this is true. Yet, the question does not revolve around children, but fetuses and adults. They are not equal, mentally, physically, or emotionally. To deprive a fetus of the right to life is not, I think, a cowardly or "evil" thing to do, particularly since, as another on this discussion stated, it has and will have no memory of its time on Earth, and thus whatever pain it may feel is comparable to an animal, which most people I know who are pro-life have no trouble eating, despite the knowledge that animals feel pain from being slaughtered. The way I see it, you cannot do one thing and say another rightly, which is exactly what that is. If you are willing to ignore the pain of animals but not that of fetuses, which are essentially non-sentient animals, then you are a hypocrite. One does not become human simply by being the sum of human parts, i.e. an egg and a sperm. By that logic, one might say that the muscle tissue grown in labs for testing has a right to life as well, or the right to develop naturally. This is, of course, bogus. Humanity, or what we consider to be humanity, is merely the sum of our experiences, feelings, and knowledge of the world. Thus, as fetuses do not fit that description and are not technically human yet, they do not deserve the rights which a human adult does, not that it would have the same rights as a fully grown adult anyway due to the incredible disparity in those ways which I have already covered.

  • No, because they simply don't

    Doctors aren't arrested for murder when they perform abortions, so I'd assume that they don't have the same human rights. Human rights are a human invention, there's no law of the universe that automatically applies them to anything we don't each personally apply them to. So I don't think whether the fetus is conscious or not really matters... We could have a grown adult that we globally decide not to give human rights. It would be morally questionable, but I believe morality is also subjective so what's morally right depends on what we all decide ourselves. Even if it is morally wrong, that doesn't mean that something has to have human rights by some law of the universe, but just that we should really consider giving it human rights.

    It's simply not true in the real world. Whether the fetus SHOULD have human rights is often up for debate, but there's reasons they should and there's reasons they shouldn't... The fact that it's technically human doesn't automatically give it human rights, and because we all pretty much see the life of a full-grown person as being more valuable than that of a fetus means that we shouldn't feel it should necessarily have the SAME rights as a full-grown person.

  • Fetuses have no consciousness, nor any memory, nor any will to live.

    A fetus does not care if it dies, because it is incapable of caring. It has no sentience, therefore making it incapable of thinking, thus meaning that it cannot have a desire to live. It has no memory, so it cannot remember living and has never enjoyed anything worth being memorable anyways. Some may say that abortion is wrong because you are robbing that fetus of its 'possibility of life', but by that logic, condoms and other forms of birth control would also be evil because you are preventing the fertilization of the egg. Many abortions are also because the parents cannot support the child. If they were born, they would be subject to abhorrent living conditions and would not get any of the attention or teaching they need, leaving them in a worse condition than if they had just slipped away peacefully without even knowing it.

  • No. It isn't a person.

    This may sound horrible, but it is no more than a vegetable at 12 weeks. It is merely a cluster of cells - it can't think, it doesn't have emotions, and it couldn't even survive as an independent organism. I understand pro-life people, but if a child isn't given full human rights, and a carrot isn't given any human rights, a group of cells that are parasitic should not be considered human, even if they have the potential to be given a few decades.

    Besides, if we're talking about abortion here, this argument makes even more sense, as the mother is a sentient being, and the foetus can't carry out some of the simplest brain functions. If the mother needs to have an abortion, it's no different than the mother needing to get rid of a parasitic worm, or a tumour. The sentient being's needs should always out way a group of simp, single-celled organisms.

  • I assume a fetus has the right to vote.

    Does a fetus have the right to divorce?
    Does a fetus have the right to freedom of speech?
    Does a fetus have the right to bear arms (if the government fails)?
    Does a fetus have the right to join the military?
    Does a fetus have the right to a lawyer?
    These are all human rights that a fetus DOES NOT have. They do have the right to be born and to be fed.

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