QuestionQUESTION: I was looking to do a survey to learn more about the particular stance people have on the prolife/prochoice issue, but I really don't know the particulars about prochoice. Do you know the commonly refered to time frames for things? Like when a woman is caring a fetus versus something else, when the nervous system arrives, when it shows signs of interacts, or when it becomes self-aware, etc? I talked to a very prochoice woman once and asked her for all the reasons for being prochoice and she said there were so many, and yet she wasn't able to really give me any detailed feedback.
ANSWER: Hi James :)
I definitely have some great resources for you! And they're trusted, medical based and bias free, just the facts we know. It can be overwhelming because there is SO much information that helps show why the pro-choice reasoning is beneficial.
"Like when a woman is caring a fetus versus something else"
Can I ask for some more clarification on what you mean by this? Sorry!
As for time frame in general, pregnancy is divided into three trimesters, each with 3 months. 89% of abortions, for example, are done in the FIRST trimester.
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"when the nervous system arrives"
It doesn't so much 'arrive' as it does develop over time.
"The fifth week of pregnancy, or the third week after conception...is when the baby's brain, spinal cord, heart and other organs begin to form."-http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/prenatal-care/PR00112
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"when it shows signs of interacts"
Well any organism that has a cell-just one cell, that's all it has to be will react to attempts to remove/bother it. So embryos will seemingly "go away" from the tube used for an abortion, but it's not because of the abortion itself, its because it doesn't wanna go anywhere!
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,964142,00.html
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"when it becomes self-aware"
Well, that's up for debate, and can be quite a complex answer
http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_when.htm
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QUESTION: Well when I say not a fetus I mean at some point it is an actually baby, or before a fetus maybe a zygoid, or something? Different names associated with different stages, and the reasons for the seperate names? As far as self-awareness I assumed that might be an easy one in the sense that some monkeys or apes from which humans evolved are shown to be self-aware on some level as adults, while others even as adults don't seem to be aware of much beyond enjoyable or painful stimulous. There must be stage in humans when they aquire more than apes would as adults?
AnswerWhen the sperm joins the egg, that product is called a zygote. At this point though, pregnancy has not occurred, as a pregnancy isn't considered begun until this zygote eventually implants into the uterine lining. The zygote divides rapidly, and becomes a blastocyst, traveling towards the uterus. From then on, it's an embryo until the 8-10th week where it becomes a fetus. Different kinds of development are happening at these different stages, and it helps medically to differentiate.
Baby is a term individuals apply at different times. The fetus is a fetus until it is birthed, at which point it's a baby.
Well...how would you define the self awareness of the fetus? How do you define self awareness? If you go with the dictionary definition, a fetus never has self awareness. We don't develop such until at least after birth, and for the first few years.
