I might be a little lost on this as you seem to be joining two or more separate ideas into one, or rather maybe multiple results that can each come from the same multitude of source. The line that is really confusing me is the "exact modification of the ovum that resulted" part. I think you need to restate this section before I can properly respond to it. I honestly can't say that I agree or disagree with it because I'm not sure what you are saying.
I'm saying this. A woman's ovum carries her genetic code. Her ovum's cell membrane remains as the cell membrane of the zygote that forms after spermatic fertilization, and nutrient in the ovum is the basis of initial growth of the zygote as a morula and blastocyst. So she can claim that the zygote is not an equal merging of her ovum and some guy's sperm, but is basically her ovum, with the same cell membrane, except that spermatic fertilization has genetically modified it. The question then becomes whether or not she has the right to claim that she did not approve of this particular genetic modification and has a right to prevent its being grown into a human being.
In rape pregnancy, she has such a good case for making that claim that it can hardly be challenged. Nonetheless, even in cases where she consented to sex but not specifically to spermatic fertilization of an ovum, she still may have a good case. She could argue, for example, where genetic defects are detected later in the embryo/fetus and would result in a born child with genetic defects for which there was no known medical remedy, that there was nothing wrong with the original ovum, so the recombination that effected the genetic modification produced the defects, and she did not consent to a defective genetic modification. Hence, she would claim that the state had no right to demand that the embryo be grown, because, she, as the owner of the original ovum, did not consent to that particular genetic modification. She would have the right to object because the membrane of the zygote was the same as that of the original ovum, so the zygote was basically the same cell but had undergone genetic modification by addition of genetic material, centrosome, etc.
I think you combined two totally different points there. First off I was noting that the possible argument could be made that a blood transfusion was the transference of part of one's life, and I guess by extension, one's organs. However, I would not agree with that. One may be able to provide to another life sustaining substances, such as blood and organs, but that does not mean that part of one's actual life goes along with it.
As to a "right" to something,....well that is a topic probably best for another thread and section altogether, but just to touch on the surface of it, as I see it, a right to something does not automatically result in a requirement for another to provide it. A right to something, tangible or not, simply means that the government cannot legally restrict it from you. Mind you that's a rather simplistic summary, but as I said we can go more into depth in an appropriate thread. So yes, IMHO, everyone has the right to the transfusion of another person's blood or organs, but they have no right to take said items by force.
What I meant by what I said is this. It is already true that, legally, no one has a right to a transfusion of YOUR blood or to one of YOUR organs to save his/her life. You have the right to refuse to provide that blood or organ to others, even if you are the only person with compatible blood or organ available in time to save the other's life. And you are correct - they do not have the right to take it by force. But this means that the right to a blood transfusion or organ is entirely contingent on availability of voluntary donations, because, even if you have the right a blood transfusion, you do not have a right any particular blood but that which is already yours.
I simply referred to the fact that this legal fact was used by J J Thomson as a basis for her "A Defense of Abortion" - given that legal fact, the embryo/fetus does not have a right to one's tissue for making the placenta, the nutrient/oxygen/antibodies of one's blood, the use of one's body, without one's consent, not even to save his/her life.
My other claim, that the pregnant woman is providing the embryo with part of her life, and not just nutrient/oxygen, etc., is related to research on growing embryos in the lab and a key fact in embryo survival in the womb. Unfortunately, as a law prevents growth of a human embryo longer than 14 days, evidence on the former comes only from non-human mammalian embryos. Even when mammalian embryos are provided in the lab with what appears to be more than enough nutrient/oxygen to survive, they all die after a life span not longer than a doubling of their maximum pre-implantation duration (which varies by species). Though such embryos continue living if implanted in a live female, they die immediately if she dies, as her body parts do, even though more nutrient/oxygen is present in the uterine environment.
If the embryo were a distinct organism, because more nutrient/oxygen is still available, it should not die either in the petri dish or in the female so immediately upon her death. Unless we can pinpoint what else the live female is providing to the embryo, there is no explanation as to why it dies in both cases except one: living as part of the female body, the embryo has been participating in that body's life and has that received part of it as have all of its other body parts. If so, it is not a distinct organism in terms of life, because its life has been supplied by the female who owns the organism it has been biologically connected to.
WOW! That is going so way off base from what I was trying to imply/say. All I was saying was the we as humans take in on a regular basis more than our bodies require. We breath in more oxygen with each breath (under normal conditions) than our bodies take out to use. Thus the basis of why the breathing part of CPR works. The same happens for food and the like. My point was that instead of transferring part of her life to the ZEF, she's merely being a conduit for those excess items (which because they are excess are not part of her life) to find their way to the ZEF. I was looking at it from a pure biological/mechanical POV with no intention to going to any kind of political leanings.
It does not matter that the oxygen and nutrient seems to be in excess - if it is inside her blood and organs, it belongs to her body exclusively. If the embryo were not biologically attached to her body, it would not receive any of this nutrient or oxygen, which might very well improve her health and well-being. And in fact, during mammalian pregnancy, such symptoms as the female's shortness of breath are a result of the embryo/fetus being an oxygen-using burden on her bodily systems, though I admit that, in cases of extreme hardship in the area of lack of nutrition, adequate calories, etc., an embryo/fetus is much more likely to be spontaneously aborted.
However, since you mentioned it in your post, you are wrong in that she gets to decide in whatever amount to consent to give with regards to the ZEF. She either consents to allow it to continue to make use of her body (by what ever mechanisms) by keeping it, or to reject it from her body (abortion). If she decides to keep it she cannot regulate how much of what it gets. Unless you are aware of some extraordinary bio-feedback techniques that most women are not?
She cannot regulate how much use of her body the embryo or fetus gets, I agree, but she can decide to cause suffering to herself by eating much less food or poorer quality food, which will result in even more negative consequences for the embryo of fetus, and that alone can make spontaneous abortion more likely. I agree on a rights basis, though, that she has a right to abort the embryo or fetus, and that is, ultimately, the right to give zero use of her body.
Transporters. I mean if we are projecting so far ahead as viable working AU, we can theorize working transporters also. Slight tounge-in-cheek aside, the point is there is much in the way of methods we have today that earlier generations could not even conceive of,even while still conceiving of the results. As such there is much we will come up with in the future, method wise that we cannot conceive of now, such as a method of removing a ZEF, intact with as little or even less stress/trauma/invasivness as the pill today. Determining a desired result and then working towards a viable method, including creating new technology or discovering new knowledge to make that method work, is the principle of most research and invention. Right now we envision the cure to the "common cold" with no real knowledge of how to make it work. That doesn't mean that we can't envision how we handle the results of success. We can envision working AU's. We of course, mechanic aside, have to look at and discuss not only the ethics of their use, but what other areas they will affect. Since we cannot yet know in what will be required for them to work, so we have to look at different ways it could possibly work. Including the possibility of there being a method for transference that fits the criteria I've been putting out. As such we can then look at the ethics and rights of both the contributors of the genetic material to the ZEF.
And I am honest enough to say that given what we currently know, I can't think of how it would be done either. I'm just not willing to say that it can't be done.
By the time human beings have sci fi transporters, realistically, they will have contraception sufficiently successful as to prevent all pregnancy by mistake, values sufficiently practical as to eliminate the continued growth of all genetically defective embryos, and techniques sufficiently effective as to prevent the development of all defects during growth or to reverse any that arise.
