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Does Personhood Begin During Pregnancy?
Published in Christopher Kaczor, The Ethics of Abortion, 2023
The same point can be made about the second argument for the importance of quickening, which holds that since movement is one of the essential principles of life, then the movement of something on its own indicates that the being in question is a living being not identical with the woman. Hence, only when the human fetus can generate her own movement does she begin to have moral importance. But since this movement takes place well before it is sensed by the woman, quickening is not important but rather the beginning of fetal movement at seven or eight weeks.
Day 2
Published in Bertha Alvarez Manninen, Dialogues on the Ethics of Abortion, 2022
Ok, I won’t use it anymore. Let’s consider some other possibilities. What about quickening? When the woman can first feel the fetus move inside her. The Catholic Church used to say, hundreds of years ago, that this is when the fetus first gained its soul.
Pre-conceptual and antenatal care
Published in Helen Baston, Midwifery, 2020
There are a range of physical parameters that the midwife uses to estimate gestational age. The uterus is a pelvic organ until 12 weeks gestation when it becomes palpable above the symphysis pubis bone. Further landmarks enable the midwife to estimate approximate gestation; for example, the fundus is palpable midway between the symphysis pubis and the umbilicus at 16 weeks, at the umbilicus at 20–22 weeks and at 32 weeks it is midway between the umbilicus and xiphisternum. There are many factors that the midwife needs to consider when making this estimation, however, including variations due to the possibility of multiple pregnancy, lie of the baby, if the woman has a full bladder and if she is overweight. Additionally, if a woman has felt fetal movements or ‘quickening’ as this is usually between 16–24 weeks (or earlier in subsequent pregnancies).
Images, science, and rights of the early modern fetus
Published in Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, 2021
Jewish tradition, based on Talmudic interpretation of scripture from Exodus 21:22-23, discusses the reparation extracted from someone outside the family who might have caused a miscarriage in a pregnant woman. The interpretation does not consider this miscarriage as murder of the fetus, but does require payment to the family for the loss of life. Jewish tradition does not consider the fetus a person until after the actual birthing process.12 Catholic tradition that existed through the early modern period dates to ancient Aristotelian theories and Augustinian interpretation that ensoulment began at 40 days for males and 90 days for females.11,p19 This timing of ensoulment continued until 1869, when Pope Pius IX dropped the distinction between fetus animatus and fetus inanimatus, making any intentional removal of a fetus at any stage of pregnancy an excommunicable offense.13 English common law between the 16th and 18th centuries designated a pregnancy as “official” at the time of quickening, or about 14 to 18 weeks’ gestation.13