Husband&Father, Good post, I appreciate your contribution to the discussion. Allow me to respond to a few of your points:
The link between "personhood" and brain activity is an arbitrary one made up for the convenience of the pro choice advocate.
At best it is mearly a personal definition without the support of the medical establishment (who do not try to establish personhood in the metaphysical sense) and in defiance of common sense.
It's not quite just brain activity that establishes personhood, it's sentience, being self-aware, having interests. A living creature lacking sentience is a vegetable.
Legally, a person is declared dead at brain death. I think this supports the notion that being self-aware is crucial to being a person.
Further, the premise that fetus’ do not have brain activity until 20 weeks is completely false. The brain is still developing to be sure and will continue to grow in capacity as the pregnancy works to term but the movements (yawning, thumb sucking, stretching etc.) that pre 20 weak babies routinely demonstrate (as well as their reaction to noises) are much to complex to be mere reflexes or automatic. Nope, the brain is quite active.
This could very well be true. I will not oppose the statement that a fetus could be sentient at 20 weeks.
However, saying that there is sentience at conception, at the zygote stage where the unborn is merely a collection of stem cells, is indefensible. Thus logically, there is a line between conception and 20 weeks where the unborn transitions from non-sentience to sentience.
The brain activity argument is bogus. If brain activity determines personhood than does diminished brain activity (brain damaged accident victims) diminish personhood. Is a mental illiness victim who had a frontal lobotomy only half a person?
Again, it's not just brain activity that is the issue, it's having self-awareness, having interests. A lobotomy patient may still be self aware, and was once self aware. Likewise, such a person may still have interests, and once had interests.
This is distinctly different than a zygote at a week that is not capable of and never had, to that point, self-awareness and/or interests.
If the brain activity has to be a certain type and quality of brain activity then we have to admit that some 5 year olds (retarded, comotosed) are not people. The whole stupid theory falls apart.
If the 5 year olds in question
1.) are not physically capable of self-awareness and have no interests in themselves or anything else
2.) never had self-awareness/interests, and never will (because they are incapable).
then I would say that yes, they are not people, they are human vegetables.
Abortion advocates know right from wrong, that’s why they must always qualify their support for abortion. They can’t just say "I’m for abortion period" they have to say "I’m for abortion…er…up until 20 weeks…because…you see…a baby does not have brain activity…well not much brain activity until 20 weeks…so I’m for abortion up to 20 weeks…but I will not condemn those who are for abortion after 20 weeks…because even though I…personally…believe that the baby is a person after 20 weeks others may not and who am I to say when a person…er…fetus…is a person…even though I decided that it’s at 20 weeks…and I know it’s true because I read it on the Internet…"
I argue that the position to allow abortion up to a point in pregancy (when the fetus becomes sentient) is a reasonable compromise between the rights of a sentient fetus and the rights of a mother carrying a very early non-sentient zygote which is naturally aborted in a sense a majority of the time, anyway.
Now I have a question for you (or anyone else that wishes to respond)
Is it your position that everything that is human in nature and alive is a person and should be given full rights as such? The reason I ask is because internal organs, human cells, etc are alive, and human in nature, yet are clearly not people.