For those of you that are Christians,
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-bibleforbids.htm is a good thing to check out. Personhood seems to be granted after 30 days. Or when the body somehow is injected with a soul.
Of course this is just your average religious assertion that has no base in science, but nevermind that.
Legally, personhood is granted at birth. One could of course change laws and it'd be quite interesting to have people sue their mother and father for inhaling second/third hand smoke and so forth
. Or any other fantasy suit of your imagination.
Medically speaking, a fetus is not viable to life ex uterus until around week 23, and then only with *massive* medical intervention and a very high mortality rate, and empirical evidence shows that births this early result in a host of various sequela defects, such as with ligaments and so forth. There's a book by Langman (medical textbook) that deals with it more in depth if anyone is interested.
Generally speaking, major organs and so forth are in place around month 3 and spend the remaining time growing and obtaining functionality. I.e the definite transition from embryo to fetus has taken place around month 3.
I've had a brief conversation with my sis on the topic and she indicated that the pragmatic approach on which most laws are based appear to be the distinction between in uterus and ex uterus - i.e the fetus is for practical purposes considered a fetus as long as it is in the mother's womb, and a baby once outside. Not very satisfactory. I'll continue to look into this; I've got a bioethics book laying around here somewhere I really should read <g>.
At any rate, it seems for whatever purposes we ha e with this discussion, it's primarily a legal one.
An embryo is a living entity during its first developmental period. This is important, because it is much more likely to to live than a zygote (i.e the egg after first cell split (zy=2)or a blastomer (egg divived to 8 cells)or morula (16 cells), all of the aforementioned states not having achieved differentiation or cyntysia-formation.
As a last teaser and a very good question: consider the times when a woman's life is threatened by a pregnancy - in these cases it is clear that society views the woman's life as more important than the potential baby's (or baby's, if you're in that camp). If given equal status, we'd have an interesting problem: who should have a right to live? Let nature have it course? Let the woman defend her own life? Let the fetus/babys right supercede that of the woman?
There's a very clear precedent on this one.
This whole topic really is a can o' worms. It's not just about abortion - it's about *everything* that can happen during a pregnancy. Abortion is just one of those things. I'd be happy to explore others. I love such discussions for some twisted reason.
Woman's right vs child, if her life is in danger?
Late abortions like in 7th month are impractical, difficult and dangerous and very much an exception.
