Tuesday 15 July 2008

What is a person?

In his essay proposing a solution to a problem related to drug use, an important point in Pong's essay is that a foetus is a person and therefore has the same rights as any other human being. Do you agree? What is a person, and at what point does a human foetus or child become a person? Do only human beings have rights? Can there be non-human persons? Would they have rights?

4 comments:

  1. i think the person mean the one who born and spend their life on the earth but it is hard to decide that a foetus is a person or not because they will become the person in the future someday so in my opinion i think a foetus is not a human also they dont have rights. when you pregnant,it means that one person is going to be on earth and you have to take care them,althought you dont want that child but the child already born in your body. this means that it is your duty. well,... human have a right to do what they wants but not the non-human because they cant talk or make the decistion.

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  2. From what I've found, In fact, there is only one state in the U.S., South Carolina, that has a law to punish addicted pregnant women, the fetus is not a person in almost country. However, I quite agree with the term "fetal right" because it is very specific for the fetus which(I change who to which) is hard for me to justify they are human or not. The fetus have a sign of living things, so it's unbearable to me to see some people deal with it like something which has no life. Anyway, it's just my feeling, maybe it's wrong, maybe someone can prove that the fetus has no feelings, no pain, no ability to think, the fetus just has ability to do a little move sometime which make me think it's a person like us.

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  3. I think the laws should says that a foetus can be human at the age of 8 weeks, he has everything same as normal person (if he isn't abnormal foetus) judge by the doctor or something like that. When he is a people completely by laws he will have the right to protect himself while he stay alive in his mother's womb. Before that, the foetus belongs to his mother and he is non-human persons (by laws). So i agree with 6 later years in his mother's body that the foetus is a person who have right(same as one children).

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  4. I think, in science view, fetus becomes person since the fertilization occurs (sperm+egg->cleavage->bastula->gastula->embryo->fetus) because it has contained the combination of father's and mother's DNA. However, I don't think that fetus should have rights as any other human being. The point I think is that although fetus is a person, it has still depended on mother. For example, fetuses can't be alive without receiving nourishment from their mother through placenta and they also depend on their mother's metabolism. Therefore, fetuses haven't still ability to control themselves (because brain and other systems in their bodies may be still in progress) and also still can't decide to do sth by themselves. This is the reason why fetus should not have rights as any other human beings.(It is comparable to disabled adults who also don't have the same rights as normal adults)

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