4 ms·

A fetus isn't a person. It's not sentient. It doesn't have hopes and dreams. Defining a person as someone with hopes and dreams is nice poetically, but not gre

A fetus isn't a person. It's not sentient. It doesn't have hopes and dreams. Defining a person as someone with hopes and dreams is nice poetically, but not great legally. Quite a few adults go through life without hope or dreams, but are still people. A one month old child isn't developed enough to have hopes and dreams, but is a person. Stepping away from the metaphor of hopes and dreams, you can start to observe REM movement in utero at 28 weeks. So in a literal sense, it is likely fetuses do dream. This isn't an easy issue with a clear science driven answer. A clump of four cells isn't a person, but there is a very reasonable case for 39 week old fetus being as much of a person as a 1 day old infant born at 38 weeks.

trs8080 4y ago
> Stepping away from the metaphor of hopes and dreams, you can start to observe REM movement in utero at 28 weeks. So in a literal sense, it is likely fetuses do dream. > A clump of four cells isn't a person, but there is a very reasonable case for 39 week old fetus being as much of a person as a 1 day old infant born at 38 weeks. But only 1% of abortions in the US happen after 21 weeks [1]. So there's a blanket ban despite 99% of abortions happening before that 28 week cutoff? How does that track? [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/ss/ss7009a1.htm#T10_down https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/ss/ss7009a1.htm#T10_down