Abortion and Human Value

To get to the point: abortion has to be based on something and not grounded in personal or religious reasons.

My opinion is that what gives humanity value is tied closely to ideas of intelligence, viewpoints, ideas, sentience, comprehension, thoughts and concepts. This is both why I value animals and why I value them less than humans (but more than objects, and that I value objects that contain ideas more than objects that don't etc etc). This is why I would value an alien culture and an artificial intelligence.

I also believe that the value of a human life comes from potential and different/independent life. Therefore a human that will never be able to think again is less valuable than a human that cannot think now, but is capable of it in the future. (Like... in a dreamless sleep or something.)

The combination of these two leads me to believe that abortion is reasonable practice until the child is capable of being born and living independently. Currently this date is set at something like 20-24 weeks.* (Unless complex thought begins before then, of course, and it would appear that week 17 is the earliest potential time complex thought may occur. Whatever the case, the most conservative choice for avoiding committing wrong should be selected. Within reason of course, protecting zygotes is not a good place to draw the line.)

This is not based entirely on the first value - sentience. Children are on the intelligence level comparable to animals for an extended period of time. Logically speaking, they should then have the same value, moralistically speaking. I think that this is rationally true. I still find it a repulsive idea to kill a child, more so than to kill a dog, but I believe this is for two or three reasons.

One is that I have been taught all my life that animals are less valuable than they truly are. We should be thinking of them far closer to equals than we currently do.
Secondly, I believe that children are probably treated as more valuable than they actually are. I know this sounds horrible, but it isn't saying a heck of a lot. Children are treated as the absolute perfect good. The "saintly, innocent" and so forth. They are not. They are, at the most, humans like the rest of us. They are capable of evil, mistakes, and are not perfect little angels. Since they haven't done anything yet, they are at best something akin to as valuable as the average person. It makes sense that we think of them as greater than they are for the sake of biological genetic evolutionary purposes, as well as the fact that children are loved by parents and children are not powerful enough to be feared the way adults are, but moralistically speaking, our social values of them way outstrip their true value.
Thirdly and finally, children have a huge statistical chance of becoming valuable. Way way way more so than a sperm, a zygote, a fetus, a skin cell etc. All of those are possibilities, but so very unlikely, that it is not really a reasonable response to consider them already equal morally to a human.

Therefore, as a baby in a womb matures, it gains value as its potentials become more assured and its independence (thought-wise, not literal-wise. Being the same person genetically or physically does not mean that your mind has less value) becomes more likely. This is morally why, a child at 17-24 weeks, though intrinsically no more valuable than an animal, is valuable enough to deny the right to kill it. A child only realizes it's value intrinsically once it has matured enough to be deeply sentient. This may happen not too much longer after 17 weeks, or it may only happen at 18 months or later.

If somehow a person existed that had not been allowed to think a single thought at all, and had aged until 18 or so, was hanging suspended and could be "given life" or killed... I think this would be the edge of the definition for my morality. It has all the potential with the flick of a switch, but does not yet. I think this person could be killed without breaking any moral rules. I think it would be better to permit him/her life, but not morally required to seek under all circumstances etc. I may change my mind on this, but I think what I have said is what my morality guides me to. They are, at that point, merely an empty doll made of human DNA. If they could immediately think and comprehend (had memories stored) that would be interesting, but morally speaking, the about the same as the state of a baby learning to use its mind, but in an adult body. Their potentials are the same, although the first one gains value faster... it is awkward to talk about this hypothetical, and there are more points to work on and think about, but I am relatively certain about what I have said.

I admit that consequences and situations blur the line even further. The life of a mother versus that of the child, the child having no potential to live (starving to death), the benefit to society, the balance between the child's intrinsic value increasing and the prospects for the future child being less and less optimal --- all have roles to play in such a decision. Furthermore the practical versus the ideal may change some factors as well, I'm not sure. All I can say is this is what I currently am leaning towards and why I am leaning towards it.

There are a few problems with this. It begs the question if people are then more or less valuable if they are more or less intelligent. I have a couple of responses to that - I'm just thinking of what makes someone meet the bare minimum morally speaking of valuable as a human. Past that, I think everyone is pretty much equal, morally speaking.
Secondly, intelligence is such a wide and vast thing that value is really really hard to compute. (If meaningful at all) Even if someone is not good at something, they also may have unique thoughts or combinations of thinking that is in proportions that is super different. I find value in understanding, which comes from difference more than perfection or speed or talent. Talent and speed and perfection permit insight, of course, but that is only because they allow further understanding through different or enhanced perspective. Therefore, everyone ends up basically equal morally because everyone has different thoughts and perspectives as a whole. This is by definition true. Its impossible to live the same life as anyone else, even if you have similar experiences and opinions, the combination is as unique as... is nearly as unique as it is possible to be.

Having more-different thoughts as well as having more different thoughts, I do find more valuable. Having a longer life is more valuable by extent. And an alien species that could have more unique and more insightful thoughts on just as wide a consciousness as us, would be more valuable. But these are interesting results of ideals and things that are basically impossible to measure. (Different-ness of thoughts? Creativity has been measured by how unusual or unique something a thought is, but what of value from usefulness or resonance and how about comparing once you arrive at the group of thoughts that have never been considered before... ) Practically speaking, most everyone ends up existing as equally, inherently, and very valuable this way. Including those with different brains and those called "mentally challenged" who compensate or merely exist differently. Not including those who are provably brain-dead or provably do not think for one reason or another. I don't value human biology or DNA. If someone exists without a mind, they don't have value. Even if they look and move like a human. Even if they could imitate a human. A TV containing human DNA is not valuable. I personally don't think that pain or joy is the source of value either. They can lead to or stem from values and understanding, but they are not intrinsically valuable alone.