"I personally am disinclined to think that killing is prohibited merely on the basis of life alone"

@iwpoe

What other basis do you think could possibly be relevant to abortion generally if any?

"but the standard view would usually hold that the case of an acephalic is not particularly different from a severely disabled person, which we aren't inclined to kill".

This standard assumption seems to me to have problems. I beleive grisez made the remark that an acephalic fetus is comparable to a motorcyclist who had half of his brain smashed in but still had his heart beating, certain bodily functions ect while hooked up in the hospital...if this is true I would not have a problem pulling the plug on him-- his life is through. The only thing keeping him alive is the machine. I don't beleive we should have to  keep people's bodies alive as long as humanly possible.

Sadly acephalic children (especially severly acephalic) are doomed from the beginning. The only thing keeping their body alive is mom. (I had to have an ultrasound the other day and inquired about what kind of deformities had been seen, I was told there was a baby with hardly any head that was " bouncing around because of nerves that were present).

And I think this is where people stand back and say "what about the mom"? She is the one carrying a child that is doomed when disconnected from her.

"In these cases you've got such a gross distortion of the telos of a human body that I'm not sure what to say about it. Is it still even rightly called human? Why? DNA? The instantiation is so distorted that it seems to me like trying to draw meaningful teleological parallels between trees and mulch".

Yes, I think this rings true. I think the the substance view of the person which is championed by people like Robert George and I believe feser too, ends up being like some kind of a mental straight jacket. Does anyone prefer the potential arguments over substance view. I'm starting to think they may have the better defense of unborn human life.

I simply can not say that it is as immoral to destroy a 2 day old embryo (which we know for a fact will not live past 2 weeks gestation-if implanted), than a 10 year old.

Mattman wrote:

"I personally am disinclined to think that killing is prohibited merely on the basis of life alone"

@iwpoe

What other basis do you think could possibly be relevant to abortion generally if any?

Well, keep in mind that I haven't been giving my personal view but rather trying my best to give a fairly easy to understand version of the classical anti-abortion view. My personal view may have reprehensible consequences and I'm not inclined to advocate for it.

That said, if we're not considering the protection of life, it's also possible to think that abortion is characteristic or conducive to certain sorts of vice such that it should be restricted. One might, for instance, think that abortion might be conducive to certain kind of sexual vices and ought to be at least not allowed in an "on demand" fashion. Certain European laws on abortion seem to be constructed around this view- the UK's for instance -where, at the very least, you are required to have some suitably serious cause for seeking the procedure.

Mattman wrote:

This standard assumption seems to me to have problems. I beleive grisez made the remark that an acephalic fetus is comparable to a motorcyclist who had half of his brain smashed in but still had his heart beating, certain bodily functions ect while hooked up in the hospital...if this is true I would not have a problem pulling the plug on him-- his life is through. The only thing keeping him alive is the machine. I don't beleive we should have to keep people's bodies alive as long as humanly possible.

I did add the proviso that certain cases are different. Many views do permit kinds of "letting die". I was thinking of "best case" scenarios, wherein the infant basically doesn't need machine support and just has a severely malformed brain such that he has to be fed through a tube etc. Those cases seem not that different from someone with extreme brain damage or late dementia. Perhaps you do think it proper that we also be able to kill the brain damaged and the severely demented, but then we'll have to revisit the general assumption that the life of a person itself is protected.

Mattman wrote:

Sadly acephalic children (especially severly acephalic) are doomed from the beginning. The only thing keeping their body alive is mom. (I had to have an ultrasound the other day and inquired about what kind of deformities had been seen, I was told there was a baby with hardly any head that was " bouncing around because of nerves that were present).

And I think this is where people stand back and say "what about the mom"? She is the one carrying a child that is doomed when disconnected from her.

I mean, what about her? A general concern for the mother seems irrelevant to the particular question of whether we're entitled to kill someone else.

Mattman wrote:

I simply can not say that it is as immoral to destroy a 2 day old embryo (which we know for a fact will not live past 2 weeks gestation-if implanted), than a 10 year old.

I, again, agree with you, but for reasons you will likely find reprehensible if I spelled them out explicitly.

Mattman wrote:

Also, I think the parents making the decision for the child actually would be the modern view though- say if the girl was in a Catholic hospital or a Catholic country that restricted the abortion. A modernist would believe the government should stay out if the "families" decision.

Usually, but I think this is hogwash, cognitive dissonance, and clearly doesn't fit the view in other important liberal cases where family is generally considered to be just as bad as the state (indeed, even in older abortion cases- 14 - 17 years old -that are still below the age of consent, this is the view many people incline to). After all, the whole point is about protecting the individual from outside influence. "The family" is just closely-related outside influence. Why, in terms of this general idea, is a family declining an abortion any better than the state prohibiting the abortion (in any particular case)?
 

J

Mattman wrote:

When I spoke of a medical need I wasn't talking about aborting for mere convenience. I was meaning if a woman has an infected cervix and her pregnancy can kill her it would be justifiable to scrape the embryo out- thus killing it.

But since the purpose of that operation isn't the bringing about of the death of the fetus, it isn't what at least the Catholic Church means by an "abortion." The details matter quite a lot*, so I can't give a universal answer that covers all such cases -- but in principle such operations are permissible, albeit tragic.

So again I'm wondering what it is you're finding logically incoherent.

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* In this instance, for example, it would matter whether there was some other way to cure the infection, whether it was necessary to remove the cervix itself to save the mother's life, whether the fetus could be in any assisted to survive outside the womb, etc. The point is that there's no blanket prohibition on medical operations that result in the death of the fetus as a not-directly-intended side effect.