AIBU to think a foetus is alive before birth?

[Mmmchocolatebuttons]

I had a discussion with someone, who believes that a foetus is not alive, until the point they are born. They also asserted that this was not an uncommon view. I have a hard time believing this so I'm putting it to the AIBU poll.

To be clear, I'm pro choice, but I do believe that, for example, a 30 week foetus is factually, scientifically considered to be alive.

Surely, even if you're pro-choice all the way up until birth, you accept that the foetus is alive?

YABU = A foetus is not alive, until birth.
YANBU = A foetus is alive in the womb.

In answer to the OP, a foetus is alive.

But of course, as no living human has the right to use another person's body, blood, or organs non-consensually, even if that would save their life, the foetus being alive has no bearing on the ethics of abortion.

That's a really long way of saying you don't think women should have rights.

That's a really long way to completely ignoring what I said. Of course women can have rights.

They just cannot kill their unborn children.

And no one has the right to deliberately kill an innocent human being—dismembering, poisoning, or crushing their beating heart.

Fair enough. So I presume you'd be fine with induced labour at the woman's request at any point during pregnancy?

She wouldn't be killing the foetus then, just exercising her right - as any other person on the planet has - to not allow another human being to use her body without her consent, even if it results in their death.

You do realise in the UK how low maternal mortality is? It's what 12/100,000? So in the vast vast majority of pregnancies both baby and the mother and child end up fine? I see both lives as equal as deserving of respect.

Totally ignoring the other things that can happen. 1/1000 pregnancies result i the mother developing cardiomyopathy. Whilst that might not be maternal mortality but it can lead to death or require a heart transplant.

If you see 'both lives as equal' then in practice you are treating the woman as a second class human. Can a woman have a coffee or a glass of wine?

What about medical treatment that has an adverse effect on the foetus / embryo / baby? Lets call that 'pregnancy'

For a long time I was taking a medication called methotrexate, I was warned to be extra careful with contraception. It is fairly nasty drug for a human but is devastating to a pregnancy.

So do you start doing pregnancy tests before allowing medical treatment? Pregnancy tests at the off licence?

I really can't help but notice that the pro-choice side overall has more respect for the pregnancy process and the risks to mothers. I don't think the pro-life side necessarily wants to reduce women to potential broodmares, I'm sure in some cases it's genuine concern for the babies, but the downplaying of risks and sacrifices of pregnancy is inevitable.

What a bad argument.

Before viability (currently ~22–24 weeks, and it keeps dropping with neonatal tech), an “induced labour” or early delivery requested solely to end the pregnancy is not “letting nature take its course.” It is a deliberate act that causes death. Doctors do not perform elective early deliveries; they perform abortions. The methods (misoprostol + mifepristone, dilation and evacuation, etc.) are engineered to kill or ensure non-survival. Calling it “induced labor” is linguistic sleight-of-hand to sanitise the intent.

If a mother starves her born infant by refusing to feed it, we call that neglect/murder—not “exercising her right to withdraw bodily support.”

The same principle applies in utero. The fetus is not an invader; it is where it belongs by the natural biology of human reproduction. The procedure actively disrupts a healthy pregnancy to produce a dead child. You cannot “evict” your born toddler from your home and let them starve because “I don’t consent to them using my resources.”

The analogy of starving a born infant doesn’t work here because the child would not be born had the mother not made the decision to continue with the pregnancy. A born child relying on the resources of the mother is not remotely the same thing as an unborn child using the resources of her body. What you’re suggesting here is that a pregnant woman is a second class citizen the minute she becomes pregnant. You only have to look at what’s happening in the USA to see what a slippery slope this is.

You don't seem to have understood what I asked. I'm fine with abortion, and have no need to sanitise the act. You're the one who has an issue with it because it kills the foetus, not me.

But, if your issue is actively killing a foetus, as your prior comment indicated, then logically speaking you should be fine with the pregnant woman simply revoking consent and ending the use of her body by inducing labour. If the foetus is viable, it can be saved, and if not, it won't be, but the woman is only exercising the same right that everyone else has.

After all, no one else on the planet can force a person to donate the use of their body non-consensually, even if they will die without it. People can't even be forced to do something as minimally invasive as giving blood in order to save someone's life. So it's all morally consistent, and ethically sound. Right?

Also, once a child is outside of a person's body, they can relinquish it to an organisation, and also don't need to provide it with the invasive use of their body. However a woman cannot 'relinquish' a foetus, only remove it, either alive or dead.

But you're clearly full-blown anti-abortion, so I imagine there's probably little point in engaging in further discussion.

The child already exists—the “decision to continue pregnancy” does not create or negate its humanity. Framing gestation as “unauthorised resource use” reduces the child to a trespasser and ignores causality—the mother’s voluntary act (in almost every case) created the dependency.

Pregnancy does not revoke any constitutional or human right. Women retain full legal personhood: they can vote, work, sue, own property, and receive medical care. Pro-life laws impose one narrow limit—no intentional killing of your own innocent child—exactly as we already limit parents post-birth.

Again CDC data from the USA shows maternal mortality falling!

I don't think that it's unreasonable to aspire to more than not being dead.

I also think that the days of seeing pregnancy as something that just happens is long over. Most people want to have as much control as possible over something as significant as a pregnancy because it has such a big impact. Even when there was no reliable contraception it didn't stop people having sex, I don't think that modern people are different. I'm not sure many people are comfortable with the idea of enforced pregnancy as punishment for being sexually active.

Induced labour pre-viability actively causes the death of a non-viable fetus. The child is not dying from any independent disease. It is thriving and growing until you deliberately end the pregnancy.

Intent + direct causation = killing.

AAPLOG is explicit in that elective induced abortion’s purpose is a dead baby.

Parents already owe positive duties to their dependent children. You cannot withhold ordinary care from a born newborn (holding, feeding etc.) even if it “uses” your body and resources. Neglect is a crime.

You cannot “relinquish” a fetus without either (a) allowing natural development or (b) actively killing and removing it. The fact that the fetus requires the womb is biology, not a license to kill. Location (uterus vs. NICU) does not determine moral status any more than moving a newborn from one hospital room to another does.

Not a "punishment" but "taking responsibility for your own orgasms" as Charlie Kirk would say.

Your inconvenience shouldn't allow you to terminate another human life.

Again, I can't take anyone seriously when they trivialise the risks of being pregnant like that. A family member of mine was left disabled after a stroke that was brought on by pre-eclampsia. That was bad enough and these were pregnancies that she'd chosen to have.

If a non-viable fetus is a 'child', can't you call a sperm a child? Neither can stay alive without life-support of differing kinds. Sperm certainly has the potential to be a child if you don't jizz it into a sock doesn't it. Perhaps we should be prosecuting all men who wank for terminating potential human life.

You can in fact relinquish care of an infant to the proper authorities, and therefore not be required to care for it. Also, caring for an infant is hugely different to gestating a foetus, which involves physical trauma and permanent damage to the body, and the risk of death.

By your logic, anyone refusing to allow another innocent person the right to use their body, if the lack thereof will kill them (for eg. a blood transfusion) is killing them, and morally repugnant. Bu even parents are not required to donate the use of their body (blood, organs etc) to a born child.

Your issue is clearly not saving lives, as otherwise you'd be in favour of enforced blood, marrow, and post-death organ transplants for all. Your issue is controlling women, and only women.

One could say that an abortion is taking responsibility for your own orgasms.

Additionally there are many reasons a wanted and planned pregnancy may be better off terminated, due to high risk to the woman's health, or foetal nonviability, very sadly for the pregnant woman. What then?

You don't take responsibility by killing another innocent life.

Again mother's life exception laws exist. Again foetal non-viability is a tiny tiny %

What about the vast majority of pregnancies were both mother and child can have a healthy birth?

I disagree with the other arguments but they at least make some sense. No-one says a sperm is an individual human being. Human life begins at conception when a new zygote is formed. That is when your unique DNA code is formed.

See my comment above.

The law allows safe-haven relinquishment or adoption for born infants—precisely because society recognises the child's right to life.

Abortion is not "relinquishing care." It is the deliberate destruction of the child.

Your own example proves the pro-life point. We draw the line at killing. Pregnancy simply requires you to let the child continue its natural developmental process (which ends in birth, after which relinquishment is available). You are not "required to care for it" forever—you are required not to kill it.

Pregnancy is unique—because it is the only way a human being enters the world. That doesn't make the unborn child's right to life evaporate.

Most changes reverse post-partum. Permanent effects like diastasis recti or stretch marks are cosmetic or minor. Society does not let parents kill born children because caring for them causes "trauma" (sleepless nights, financial strain, emotional exhaustion).

Maternal mortality is low in the developed world. NHS even say 98.6% of pregnancies have no major health issues.

Pregnancy is not "forced organ donation." It is the natural consequence of the act that created the child. You are being asked not to evict and kill your own son or daughter from the only environment in which he or she can survive.

Refusing a blood transfusion to a stranger is passive withholding—you let nature take its course. Abortion is active, intentional killing.

We do affirm a specific, limited negative duty to not kill your own offspring. That is not "enforced transplants." It is the same principle that stops you from smothering a born infant because you don't want to change nappies.

Your entire post rests on treating the unborn child as less than human, or as a mere "clump of cells" with fewer rights than a born infant. Science (distinct DNA, heartbeat by 6 weeks, brain waves, pain capacity) shows it is as alive and is as deserving of life as anyone else.

I think it comes down to who is anyone to decide what health risks someone should be prepared to take or what permanent bodily changes you should accept for the life of another person. In my experience this is a very unique thing, some people are more risk averse than others and most people are going to feel differently taking these risks for a loved one.

Even accepting the humanity of the foetus, personally I find that debate just turns into an unhelpful semantic debate, when you look at the history of womens health I think the harms of banning safe abortion are very obvious.

Quite staggered by the dismissal of womens pain and long term health impacts of pregnancy and childbirth.

Pregnancy simply requires? How on earth do you get to have an attitude that women should just have to continue with pregnancy because its 'nature'. Utterly bizarre.

One third of women experience long term health complications after pregnancy ranging from pain, to incontinence to mental health. Even your dismissive attitude to diastasis recti is just staggering.

I have been fortunate to have easy straightforward pregnancies and births, with one that was more complicated. But these were pregnancies I chose. The final one I considered termination, for a variety of reasons that wasn't the right choice for me, it did result in a very traumatic complicated birth and a child with complex needs. I had no idea they would end up with complex needs. But it was my CHOICE to contine with the pregnancy and that should never be taken away.

How anyone can be so dismissive of womens lived experiences, to the point of giving unborn fetus rights over their body is reallyunfathamoble to me

If you dont agree with abortion, dont have one but you dont get to minimise and ignore the reality of other women or choose for them.

I would have more respect for you if you weren't so dismissive.

www.who.int/news/item/07-12-2023-more-than-a-third-of-women-experience-lasting-health-problems-after-childbirth

I think I also struggle with the idea of reducing women of childbearing age to gestational carriers. What I mean by that is that according a strict pro-life position a woman must be prepared to put a pregnancy first, irrespective of any other career or educational plans, any health considerations, any responsibilities to her born children or other loved ones that need her to stay well or any other dreams or talents she has.

Women are as unique, complex and multifaceted as men and being told that actually no, as soon as that fertilised egg implants any other potential you have becomes irrelevant to your duty to contribute to the birth rate, it's not easy to swallow.