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A message board that I frequent has had an interesting topic running on the banning of smoking, and through the power of the internet and random argument structure it brought us around to smoking and pregnancy, and the "violation" of the rights of unborn children
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Concerning the meaningfulness of rights-based speech: Well yes it is assuming that it is meaningful, but the fact of the matter is that rights-based speech is accepted as meaningful by the system(it establishes the system), therefore working within the framework that is established (whether it ultimately makes sense or not) I'm attempting to establish something else that makes sense.
Things are drastically different for one simple reason, when unborn all the child's life functions are dependant upon one being, the mother. When born the life functions (breathing, metabolizing) sustain themselves; once a child is born anyone can take the child and raise it, not neccessarily the mother. If the mother does not want a living, born child she can simply offer it up for adoption, whereas prior to that no such thing can be done. The baby cannot be moved to a new mother to continue growing, it is (given current medical constraints) confined to its location.
I don't know if our morality assumes self-sustaining, but I feel that our definition of right-holding human does.
As for conjoined twins, I would probably argue that they, too, are a special case that merits differnt rules then the generally established ones. For the most part, conjoined twins are exceedingly rare, rare enough that I would argue we wouldn't want to base our decisions around such a rare case. Add on top of that rarity the even bigger rarity of conjoined twins who cannot be seperated given that only one of them would survive now you're looking at a very rare case indeed. At that point, I would argue you simply establish some other rule to apply, but we wouldn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. Attempting to justify scraping the system based on such a rare occurence is not something that seems prudent to me.
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I think I'm understanding your argument more, now. What you want to say is that we have a normal set of rights that we confer onto anyone who has a certain set of properties, one of which is self-sustainability. Now, you're not necessarily arguing that fetuses don't have any rights, but we can't assume they have the normal set of rights, sicne they don't fulfill the requirements.
In slightly other terms, all persons automatically have a certain set of rights. Fetuses do not fulfill the requirements of being a person, so they do not automatically get those rights. Instead, they are a "special case" - we shouldn't assume anything about their rights, but instead evaluate them specially and carefully.
If that is, indeed, a fair charaterization of your argument, I think it makes sense. If a fetus has a right to life, it will have to be argued for in some other way than "of course - everyone has a right to life", and I think that's good. Fetuses simply aren't the same as non-fetuses.
By the way, on "sustainability" - at some point before a fetus is actually born, it is fully capable of living outside of its mother; it just happens not to. Do those fetuses have sustainability, or not?
P.S. Thanks for the comment about "good, thoughtful reactions". You're always able to challenge my assumptions, and I'm glad I can provide insight for you as well.
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In the case of the fetus with sustainability but still within its mother's womb I would say that that issue essentially takes care of itself, thusly:
The only way to abort the baby at that point is through a partial-birth abortion, and those are (were, now that they are banned) not done unless the life of the mother is at stake. People don't carry a child up to the third trimester and then decide to abort it, and even if they did the partial birth abortion requires just that- partial birth. If the baby can survive on its own (thereby meeting the sustainability requirement), instead of aborting it you simply deliver it, absolve the mother of any duty to care for it, and place it up for adoption. But, like I said, the cases of someone wanting to abort a baby in the third trimester simply because they don't want it are extremely rare, if any exist at all. Mostly such claims are just scaremongering attempted by the anti-abortionists. Its particualraly effective because by the third trimester you have a very recognizable human baby.
You do seem to understand, though, and you've repeated it in an effective and accurate manner (which is the strongest indication of understanding). If I were to summarize with the assumption that people understand my specific definitions I would say it thusly: A fetus that lacks the ability to sustain its own body functions independant of the mother it has established its existence within does not neccessarily have the full rights and privilages granted to persons that can do so. This does not mean it has no rights, only that we cannot blindly apply the same set of rights to it that we apply to born persons.
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