Indeed.
The argument is whether or not a fetus is a child and, for the sake of the debate, since the overwhelming majority of terminated pregnancies by abortion occur in the first trimester, the argument is whether the fetus is even viable outside the mother at all.
Hm. I'm not sure that's correct. A one-month-old in NICU is not viable outside the care it is receiving, nor is someone in a coma. We do not hold that whether or not one is fed by a tube determines one's humanity.
Furthermore, as you note by implication:
To date, out of the tens of millions (maybe more?) of preemie births, the earliest was twenty-one weeks.
...our ability to keep children alive outside the womb is expanding along with medical knowledge and science. Our humanity equally cannot be determined by whether or not someone else has invented a machine that would help sustain our life were our conditions to suddenly change.
For the sake of the point I was arguing, pro-lifers insist that life begins at conception, thus a single zygote cell is now a child, a person, and persons have rights, yes?
mitigated ones (for example, all children are denied the right to full free speech as we recognize parents' right to tell them to stop making fart jokes in public), but yes.
Thus, according to that argument, the mother is owed an extra five hundred bucks.
I wouldn't be against it at all, in fact, I think that would solve one major potential snafu in the current law - that someone who has not filed 2019 taxes, but who has had a baby in the mean time, will not receive the $500 for the child they are caring for. I think in general we should have focused resources on the unemployed and businesses facing crises, but should such a modification come up before the Congress, you can count on cpwill supporting it.
You happen to encounter a structure fire on your walk home. Being heroic, you rush inside and you encounter a lab setup with hundreds of fertilized eggs and a small crying child. Do you save the child and miss the chance to save HUNDREDS of lives or do you grab "the petri dish" with all the fertilized egg cells and leave the child?
I could quibble about "
in such a scenario I would never recognize what a petri dish contained, as I lack microscopic vision" or "i
n such a scenario I could easily carry both", but, I think, what you are
really asking me is: do I have such courage of my conviction that I would prioritize the life of hundreds of unborn children over that of a single born child?
The answer is that yes - that is the logical conclusion, in a scenario where one is legitimately forced to choose.
If your response is something akin to "That's Horrific!", well, yes. It is. I've been in those situations, where one has to choose between competing lives in a zero-sum trap; it is
absolutely horrific, and contributed not a little bit to years of alcohol abuse on my part.