I know “strawman” is a favourite term of redditors, but you have to be careful to use it accurately. If you really think I have attacked a strawman, you have to clearly point it out, otherwise your readers may suspect you of grandiloquence. I’ve reread my post and I don’t see it.
I was making the point that, without the belief in a soul, a blastocyst seems (to me) clearly disqualified from the category of person. See my further comments to Liempt above, and respond to this directly please. How can a microscopic cluster of cells be a person?
Fetal viability has a specific meaning in obstetrics and prenatal medicine. It refers the survival rate of the fetus when born at various stages of pregnancy, given current best practice in post-natal care. Some fetuses survive when others don’t, but the survival rate is a number that can measured. It is not something I just made up, and it does not refer to the survival rate with the aid of magical technologies that don’t exist yet, that may or may not be invented one day.
To clarify, the viability of the fetus is significant to personhood because of the apparent relationship between viability and the development of structures on which (in my view) personhood depends, specifically structures of the brain.
Even assuming sex implies a women’s consent to pregnancy (accepting a risk is not the same as consenting to the reality – does a mountain climber consent to a broken neck when he accepts the risk it may happen?), why can she not withdraw consent? Particularly in the first trimester when, in the view of many reasonable people, the fetus is not a person?