bcjh , BiryaniEater10 & LivingKick #wingnut reddit.com

(bcjh)
There’s no such thing as women’s rights in this subject, it’s about children’s rights.

If you tell any pro-choicer “well what about the child’s rights?” after they tell you that “it’s a woman’s choice” their next attack will always start the core of the argument that it’s “not a child…”

“It doesn’t have consciousness”

“It doesn’t have memories or sentience”

“It’s not breathing”

All of these arguments can be dismantled by any snappy Ben-Shapiro-esque argument about how sentience doesn’t matter and science. So I just felt like ranting and people hate it when I call it children’s rights or say “but doesn’t the child have constitutional rights!?”

(BiryaniEater10)
Wait why doesn’t sentience matter though? I’d agree that you can’t use the fetus not being alive as a stand-alone since it has potential consciousness anyways but sentience can’t be irrelevant.

(LivingKick)
Because drawing the line at sentience could be construed as ableism and discrimination based on developmental stage (age) which, for reasons related to Godwin's law and eugenics as a whole, should be avoided as possible grounds for what might be dehumanisation. Furthermore, if sentience is the defining characteristic, then that means that those who are comatose, brain dead or unconscious would, for that time, lack personhood which should be avoided on the basis that stripping personhood is never a good thing as it is now open to do unimaginable and harmful things to them as they have no personhood protection.

It just makes more sense to have the line be at the most inclusive and reasonable point possible out of an abundance of caution to avoid possible dehumanisation, which is why many PLers would view sentience as irrelevant as being a whole human organism, alive and having that capacity or potential for consciousness/sentience alone is enough.

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