This is a reply to Fingerlakeswander's post which, in part, discussed today's Douthat column in the Times. Mostly, I'm referring to her response to my reply, so if anything here seems to reference something outside of this post, you'll need to scan the comments in her post for Finger and my own comments.
Abortion is more than a medical procedure because it involves a potential other person's life. The end result for most pregnancies is the birth of a human life. Even when there are complications, our medical technology has now advanced to the point where babies are successfully delivered months prematurely. At some point between the sperm meeting up with the egg and the baby coming out of the uterus, it becomes a full-fledged person. That we lack a common understanding of when that happens doesn't mean it doesn't happen or that the point that it does is actually arbitrary or non-consequential. Finger, you've written a number of thoughtful responses, so I by no means am accusing you of being cavalier, but I believe you're simplifying the issue when you out-right reject fetal rights.
Here are some scenarios which I think are incredibly difficult moral dilemmas:
- A girl was molested by her father and hide the pregnancy until the third term. Her pregnancy is an abomination to her. Does she have the right to abort? The child, if born, could be adopted and the fetus at the point she reveals the pregnancy would stand a reasonable chance to survive if delivered via emergency c-section.
- A couple plans on a child and she becomes pregnant. The man suffers an accident, rendering him infertile. The stress of the accident's aftermath cause them to separate. The woman no longer wants the child, but the man won't be able to have a genetic child without the fetus in her womb. Does he have any rights?
- A childless couple mortgages their home to afford IVF and a surrogate. The surrogate changes her mind. Does she have a right to take the money and abort?
- The most dreadful: a woman discovers she has a 30% chance of dying unless her 7-month fetus is aborted. Whose life if prioritized? Does the moral calculus change if the woman has an illness that limits her to another 5 years of life? Another 10? What about six months?
What happens if they discover fetal self-awareness in the first trimester?
Perhaps the 10-week point. By my notion of what makes you human, the fetus would then be an unborn child and—as a human life—it deserves the same protection as any human life. But at such an early phase of the pregnancy, it feels like a horrible demand to insist that all women carry their pregnancies to term from such an early date. But could you really say "Die!" to something that is self-aware? Could you kill a human life that knows it exists, or condone laws that allow others to do so without consequences? As much as I loathe what it would mean for women should such evidence surface, I could not.
The stakes are high: a woman's right to control her own body vs. the rights of another (potential) human. This isn't comparable to surgery for somebody who has pursued reckless behavior: the consequence is another human life. You may not agree with the definition of when that life begins, but you can't deny that it does begin at some point inside of the womb.
While some of the people who oppose abortion oppose it because they oppose sex outside of procreation, many people who oppose abortion do so because by their moral calculus, it is a human life at stake. When pro-choice people dismiss them too easily, we damage our own cause. The vocal pro-life forces are often vocalizing the concerns of people who are pro-choice, but unsure about it. That Time poll, I believe, reflects that. What many people want is certainty that babies won't be killed, while giving women as much choice as possible.
You're right that we've had a 36-year long shouting festival on abortion and it hasn't resolved anything. But perhaps we've reached a point where we can move past the shouting and absolutes and find a middle ground. I believe there is one, and I think the Democratic party thinks there is one too: safe and rare.
Safe and rare means compromise. It means looking not for how we differ from pro-life people, but where we can find acceptable similarities. For pro-choice people, it means accepting limitations and perhaps even a definition of where the last point life begins is. Rules on late abortions. For pro-life people, it means aggressively funding non-abortive family planning and sex education. For me, I'd add it means adding self-esteem education for girls, because a girl with knowledge and esteem is far less likely to get pregnant than one with just one of the two.
Why should a fairly radical* pro-choice person seek compromise when the Democrats look ascendant? Because a 70% consensus secures women's rights to abortions much better than relying on the Supreme Court. Do you really want to go all-in on Sotomayor if Roe-v-Wade comes before the Court? Would you prefer to see some curtailment of abortion rights in exchange for more and better sex education and family planning?
Let's not dismiss Douthat too easily. Let's take see the opportunity is his column and start a dialogue to move towards consensus and a permanent truce.
* I take the position that fetal rights don't enter into the equation as a fairly radical position. Most pro-choice people I know wouldn't go that far. In fact, you might be the only person I know who does.
UPDATE, JUNE 10, 1:15 PM: From the comments, I suspect some people believe I'm making an argument for laws limiting abortion. I am not. My intent was to look at the ethical issues involved—and acknowledge that there are ethical issues—something I felt wasn't being acknowledge in my original discussion with Finger. My only solid position in the debate is that at some point a collection of cells (what Verbal might call "parasites") develops into a human being, and that point occurs at some point before the end of the third trimester. When? I don't know. The only legislative restrictions on abortion I would currently support unreservedly would be part of a broad consensus package containing significant measures to reduce unwanted pregnancy (sex and esteem education; greater adoption support; much greater post-natal support for poor mothers, etc.) while giving women access to abortion in many circumstances.
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The one scenario that does, in my opinion, present a moral dilemma is the surrogate case. In that case I still do not see the dilemma with the abortion. A surrogate should have the right to back out at anytime. That is a risk the parents take. However, "take the money and run" I would agree with you that would be wrong. If the surrogate chooses not to go through with the pregnancy she should be legally obligated to fully refund the money she was paid.
If we did find out that the child was aware in the first trimester that would make the issue a bit more complicated. However, in what is again only my opinion, that still would not trump the mother's right to chose to eliminate the pregnancy. Sure it may be murder, but we legally kill people all the time: see war and capital punishment.
I guarantee you that Finger is far from the only person who does not think "fetal rights" play into the equation. However, I will say that I do believe that while a woman's right to abortion should never be taken away, we should work to do what we can to make sure that any pregnancy is, in fact, a wanted pregnancy. I don't know how we do that, but it would be nice.
All that other stuff is interesting...but simply does not impact on "the woman in who's body the pregnancy is occurring has the right to terminate the pregnancy whenever she chooses!"
That is the only way it can ever be.
No laws can change that.
All laws can do is to influence how the termination will (or can) occur!
Frank, I'm actually a bit shocked at your position. If we know the baby is a human—by my standard, it has self-awareness; by the standard Finger suggested, it's viable outside the womb—than the pregnant woman's body is inconvenienced, while the baby's body would be dead. Inconvenience vs. death: I take inconvenience every time. I don't want to trivialize what an unwanted pregnancy can mean, but if we're talking about cases where the baby is developed enough that it can no longer reasonably be thought of as a "potential human," but is instead a regular human, it is murder by pretty much any moral system to kill the child. Taken to it's extreme, you're position would mean that a woman in a prolonged labor could opt to inject the unborn baby with poison to speed along the delivery. There has to be some limits on where the rights to owns own body ends and the rights of the unborn child begins. I assume you would set it at some point before child birth. Where?
J.A.K., it's true that the definition of murder is fairly fluid and decidedly culturally dependent. That's one of the things that makes court-based abortion laws problematic: they're ahead of consensus morality. When you look at other areas where the courts have taken the lead, over time, public opinion came around to the court's position. While there is debate over the remedy to racism and segregation, overt racism is taboo in America now. Despite the Prop 8 set-back, all the data suggests gay marriage will soon be a reality in most states and that old biases are fading. But the abortion debate continues to be as divisive as it was when Roe-v-Wade was decided. The courts haven't lead, they've dictated and we have no common understanding of the morality of abortion.
As far as the dilemmas, I'd be sad if you didn't think they were dilemmas, rather than you feel confident in how you would resolve them. Each of the scenarios I suggested involve conflicts between two people who have reasonable rights towards opposite things. The dilemma comes from the impossibility of a solution that respects both parties rights.
When it comes down to the rights of a baby that's never breathed air vs. a woman, I'll generally come down on the side of the woman, but at some point, it seems that a woman forfeits her rights by not deciding to deal with the pregnancy. Outside of serious health-of-the-mother issues, I find it hard to work out an ethical solution that prioritizes a mother over an unborn child when the woman has chosen to wait until the fetus developed to the point of out-of-womb viability or self-cognition.
Politically, an absolute right to terminate at will is a non-starter. If pro-choice forces chose to make a stand on an absolute right, they will lose and abortion will be much more curtailed. Don made a good point in the Finger thread about the much less permissive standards in continental Europe, a place which generally pushes personal freedoms farther than the U.S. An absolute standard fails the sniff test for too many people, here and abroad, to last indefinitely.
A 70% compromise pushes the debate to the margins and secures abortion rights within what a majority of people think is a reasonable, moral and ethical timeframe.
The fact is late term abortion is only ever used because of a medical issue with the mother or something is very wrong with the fetus. Even if this procedure were available widely it would still be rarely used for economic reasons alone. Many women have a hard enough time cobbling together the $400 for a first trimester abortion, the 5k or more that a late term abortion runs ensures that this procedure will never be undertaken on a casual basis.
What does self awareness really mean? It's a very vague term. If the fetus is viewed masturbating in utero? Sucking it's thumb? I mean so what?
The surrogacy issue is an interesting one, but from what I understand the legal framework for this has become much more comprehensive, thus we do not hear of cases like Mary Beth Whitehead any longer. In the case where the surrogate is merely providing the vessel to grow the fetus (egg and sperm from the intended parents) I don't see how she would have a legal leg to stand on if the surrogate attempted to keep the baby.
It's obvious to me that the antis are emphasizing late term abortions for their shock value and as a way to get their foot in the door. First is later term abortions, then it's mid term. Soon, if you don't take care of it by the 8th week you'll be stuck with the knitting needles girls.
Most of the antis are also against proper sexual education. Why would that be? Lets look at other aspects of their beliefs, namely many of the fundamentalist types are not so big on equality of women in the home or anywhere else. Control over a woman's reproductive abilities is as fundamental as you can get. There is another aspect too. Pssst. Sex is kind of dirty. It shouldn't really be done for pleasure, if a woman likes it she must be a whore, or the devil. Forcing a woman to bear a fetus that came about during recreational sex is seen as a form of punishment. See, that's what you get, you slut. These same people think being gay is a disease that can be cured too.
If we were to follow the Swedish model of sexual education we would have better adjusted young adults with healthy, knowledgeable sexual attitudes, far less STDs, and see a huge drop in abortions as well. Yes our young people would likely be having
more sex, but darn, you can't have everything! wink
The problem with saying it's the "antis" who use third-trimester as a wedge issue is that science is advancing to the point that viability is calling into question later second-term abortions. IRC, 18 and 19 week premies are now surviving—right in the middle of the second trimester. It's not the people on the edges of the debate that are uncomfortable with aborting viable fetuses: it's the majority. You can't sway them if you insist on lumping them in with pro-choice extremists.
Just because "science" is able to nurse along ultra preemies doesn't mean we should. The fact is, the vast majority of these acutely pretermers survive with extreme disabilities and incur astronomical costs.
As long as the age at which preemies remain viable continues to decline, more pressure will build to lower the length of time allowed for abortions.
Don't get me wrong, in the small picture each death wounds and we have created some very beautiful things, but in the big picture? Not so much. Is one human life more worthy than that of a humpback whale? Or a grand dog? An elephant? Or a Galapagos tortoise? Who decides the worth of a life? Our health care efforts should be directed to keeping the healthy healthy, not 18 week old preemies alive so that they may be a burden on an overburdened system, likely disabled mentally and physically with no hope of ever being able to fend for themselves in any meaningful way.
I wish the antis would redirect their efforts to providing better support to working mothers and the expansion of head start style programs. That would make a positive difference. They would have to keep their bibles at home though, so it wouldn't appeal to them much.
Politically, though... SHHHH... you don't want the average person to think there are radical pro-choicers who would take a baby whale over a baby human. That kind of PR is hard to live down :D
YOU WROTE: “There has to be some limits on where the rights to owns own body ends and the rights of the unborn child begins.”
RESPONSE: Really! Why is that? Respectfully as possible (because I feel you are an intelligent person discussing a very contentious issue)…where do you come off telling anyone else that their right to their own body ends when someone else decides it ends????
YOU WROTE: “ I assume you would set it at some point before child birth.”
RESPONSE: Until the fetus is outside the body of the woman carrying it…in my opinion, it has absolutely no rights whatsoever.
I would love for it to be otherwise…but so long as there are people who want to limit what a woman can do with her own body, I have to be that extreme.
You added an extreme about a woman using poison to speed a delivery or such! I take the position that so long as the fetus has not been delivered…a unique situation in the human predicament…the woman hosting the pregnancy HAS UNLIMITED OPTIONS WITH REGARD TO TERMINATING THE PREGNANCY!
I am truly sorry you are "shocked" by my stridency on this issue...but I will not be a party to limiting a woman's right to have complete control over her own body just because folks like you think it is proper to do the limiting.
I would like to ask you this question, if you will entertain it:
Are you motivated by religious considerations in this?
Law, ethics and morality are mostly about how to balance opposing liberties. You've taken a position that absolutely privileges one human over another in all situations. That privileging might ethically hold water when a fetus is sufficiently undeveloped that it is less human than the possibility of human. But as the fetus comes closer and closer to term, your position becomes one where you allow one category of person the right to murder another.
You didn't really explain why you felt that women have absolute self-sovereignty over their bodies, Frank, but I can think of four reasons one might believe that, and three, IMO, are flawed.
1) It's a matter of religious faith. I can't disprove god and I can't disprove that god communicated to you that a woman can kill her own children until they leave her house. Doesn't work politically, but if your ethics are based on a religious assumption, not much point in debating.
2) Women have absolute self-sovereignty over their own bodies and there fore can have done to it anything they want. This is unsupportable unless you hold that laws, morality and ethics all fall beneath the single ultimate right of self-sovereignty (aka, absolute anarchy).
Societally, this position is contradicted most obviously by our many laws against murder and violence against others. We have in-numerous other restrictions against absolute self-sovereignty—indeed, one could argue that the foundation of society is limiting self-sovereignty for a greater good. Any time two individuals are together in a common space, some degree of loss of self-sovereignty happens. It is often very difficult to find the point where to balance the competing rights of individuals, but that difficulty shouldn't preclude us from trying to find the best possible solution.
3) Women represent a super-class of human in relation to babies, who are an under-class. This is the equivalent of saying babies are slaves to women because they have no rights and only the woman's rights/interests need to be considered. Historically, the idea of a super-class whose privileges trump those of the under-class is common, if not normative. But it hasn't been common in the U.S. since the civil rights era. Why are women the super class and not babies? Or men? Or teenagers? Or wizened elders? It's very hard to make an argument to support a super-class, particularly when the membership in either the super- or under-class is based on birth status.
4) Fetuses aren't human. While to a certain extent, this is definitional (humans are what we say they are), by any serious attempt to define what it means to be human, viable fetuses (at least naturally viable fetuses) have to be considered to be human. Just being in the womb isn't sufficient disqualification. By a developmental standard, by a cognitive standard, by any standard I can think of, late term fetuses are equivalent to born babies in every way except where they dwell.
My suspicion is that you have not actually thought deeply about abortion as an ethical issue. I didn't for a long time and took a blanket "it's a woman's body; it's a woman's choice" position with no disclaimers. But when I confronted the ethics, I realized I had been too cavalier and I couldn't easily dismiss pro-life people as nutters.
This is a complicated issue and people on both sides have good points. But we'll remain stuck in the same incredibly dysfunctional societal dynamic we've been in since Roe unless both sides start to push themselves and think more broadly.
YOU WROTE: “My suspicion is that you have not actually thought deeply about abortion as an ethical issue.”
RESPONSE: My suspicion is that you consider people who do not agree with you on issues to be people who have not actually thought deeply enough about them. That is your ego speaking…and I hope we can eliminate ego massage from the discussion, because it tends to be disruptive.
YOU WROTE: “Law, ethics and morality are mostly about how to balance opposing liberties. You've taken a position that absolutely privileges one human over another in all situations. That privileging might ethically hold water when a fetus is sufficiently undeveloped that it is less human than the possibility of human. But as the fetus comes closer and closer to term, your position becomes one where you allow one category of person the right to murder another.”
RESPONSE: One of the essentials of “murder” is that it be illegal. Abortion is legal…and abortion is not murder. Calling it murder is one of the reasons we are “…stuck in the same incredibly dysfunctional societal dynamic we've been in since Roe unless both sides start to push themselves and think more broadly.”
YOU WROTE: “You didn't really explain why you felt that women have absolute self-sovereignty over their bodies, Frank…”
RESPONSE: At no point in anything I’ve written here have I addressed ANY question about women having absolute self-sovereignty over their bodies, Specular. What I did write was: “I take the position that so long as the fetus has not been delivered…a unique situation in the human predicament…the woman hosting the pregnancy HAS UNLIMITED OPTIONS WITH REGARD TO TERMINATING THE PREGNANCY!”
If you are responding to my comments, why not stick to what I actually said rather than any characterizations of what I said that you might want to offer.
YOU WROTE: “I didn't for a long time and took a blanket "it's a woman's body; it's a woman's choice" position with no disclaimers. But when I confronted the ethics, I realized I had been too cavalier and I couldn't easily dismiss pro-life people as nutters.”
RESPONSE: I do not dismiss pro-life or anti-choice people as “nutters”…I simply think they are wrong. As for what you use to think about this issue versus what you now think…I think you have taken a step backwards. But it is a free country…and you have a choice to make that move.
I’ll leave this for now…but I will definitely respond to whatever else you offer.
Um. No.
If a woman wishes to remove the parasite, she has that right. The vast majority of women who exercise that right do so early in the infestation cycle. All the screeching about late-term abortions and moral dilemmas is misdirection.
The "pro-life" forces are welcome to throw however much money they want into R&D on an artificial womb, so they can "rescue" undesired products of conception and let them finish baking somewhere other than the uterus of a woman who has no desire to be an oven.
I have not called all abortion murder (and would not do so). But once it is established that a fetus has reached a point where we define it as human, killing it without medical necessity is murder by almost any social definition of murder. Would you like to define murder in way that excludes the killing of an individual who has committed no crimes and is involved in no wars?
FRANK APISA: "I take the position that so long as the fetus has not been delivered…a unique situation in the human predicament…the woman hosting the pregnancy HAS UNLIMITED OPTIONS WITH REGARD TO TERMINATING THE PREGNANCY!"
What is that other than absolute self-sovereignty? Unlimited options at any point during her pregnancy means that the woman's interests (or perceived interests) trump the interests of the unborn child at all points. That's absolute self-sovereignty. You can use a different term, if you prefer, but the basic problem remains: you're granting the woman an absolute right that takes precedent over the rights of the child in all cases at all times.
I don't oppose abortion. I'm even pro-abortion in some cases. But I cannot see any reasonable definition of human that excludes fetuses in later phases of the pregnancy. And once the fetus reaches human status, I cannot exclude it from having rights. I don't see any logically consistent argument for doing so that keeps with contemporary American moral standards, particularly with what would be called "liberal morality" of equal rights for all people. I encourage you to make that argument, but you haven't done so yet.
I'm less troubled by the conclusions you and Frank have come to than by the complete lack of acknowledgment that there is a conflict. Neither of you are addressing the possibility that a fetus is different in some way from any other collection of cells in the body or that it at some point becomes a person is relevant. It seems intellectually dishonest to do so, like talking global warming without addressing rising carbon dioxide levels.
"The most dreadful: a woman discovers she has a 30% chance of dying unless her 7-month fetus is aborted. Whose life if prioritized? Does the moral calculus change if the woman has an illness that limits her to another 5 years of life? Another 10? What about six months?"
How can a being that hasn't yet drawn breath, how can that life take precedence over the life of an adult woman who has family, friends, obligations, history?
Would we tell a man whose life was confronted by another, who believed that his life was in danger, would you tell him that he did not have the right to defend himself? Would we call it murder, or self defense if he took the life of the other person to protect his own? Would we ask him to desist from defending himself if he thought he had a 70% chance for survival without doing so?
In the last case that you present, a woman who chooses abortion is choosing to defend her own life. There are women who, under those circumstances, will opt to continue the pregnancy. But shouldn't it be their choice to take this risk? What right does any other person have to demand that a woman risk her own life in such an incidence, regardless of whether the risk of death for continuing her pregnancy is 30% or 90%? For the 3 out of 10 women who would die in this scenario, dead is dead. To even assume such a circumstance could be up for debate shows how little women's lives truly matter in this equation.
I see no conflict.
I see a fully-formed human being who has (as previously mentioned) a life, a history, a family, friends.
I also see a parasite that cannot survive outside a host. It doesn't matter whether that parasite is a tapeworm or a fetus; the parasite's "right to life" does not in any way entitle it to be hosted against the will of the first person. '
Until the parasite is self-sustaining outside the host, it has no rights. None.
Is it only the mother's intent that decides if a baby is human or not? Societies don't work if the individuals can decide who is human and who isn't, who can be killed with impunity and who can't.
YOU WROTE: “I'm approaching this as an ethicist. While legal definitions aren't irrelevant, they do not define "murder," any more than the law defines marriage. Do you believe that a gay couple cannot be married if they live in Utah, where gay marriage isn't legally allowed?
I have not called all abortion murder (and would not do so). But once it is established that a fetus has reached a point where we define it as human, killing it without medical necessity is murder by almost any social definition of murder. Would you like to define murder in way that excludes the killing of an individual who has committed no crimes and is involved in no wars? “
RESPONSE: I define “murder” as murder…and calling abortion murder is not only definitionally incorrect…it is incorrect insofar as it adds to the schism between the sides. It is not murder!
YOU WROTE: “FRANK APISA: "I take the position that so long as the fetus has not been delivered…a unique situation in the human predicament…the woman hosting the pregnancy HAS UNLIMITED OPTIONS WITH REGARD TO TERMINATING THE PREGNANCY!"
What is that other than absolute self-sovereignty?”
RESPONSE: Why are you arguing this????????? DO NOT CHARACTERIZE WHAT I SAY…and then comment on your characterization. Comment on what I actually said.
I am saying that if a woman wants to terminate a pregnancy occurring in her own body…she should be able to do so without asking your permission or the states permission.
The pregnancy gets terminated. If you…or any of the other anti-choice people want to consider that murder…or “trumping the interests of the unborn child” whatever the hell that means…do so. But the bottom line is that if a woman wants to terminate a pregnancy occurring in her own body…MY OPINION is that she should be able to do so with absolutely NO RESTRICTIONS WHATSOEVER.
You are gratuitously calling the embryo or fetus “an unborn child”…and then vesting it with “rights.” It is not a child…it is a zygote, embryo, or fetus until it exits the birth canal. And insofar as it has any rights (it may…I’m not all that sure)…it most assuredly does not have any rights that “trump” a living woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy occurring in her own body. Or at least, that is the way I see it.
YOU WROTE: “But I cannot see any reasonable definition of human that excludes fetuses in later phases of the pregnancy.”
RESPONSE: Well, respectfully as possible…I think that is a problem with you…not with the definitions. And, once again as respectfully as possible, I think it is a problem with you that you are gratuitously creating for yourself…not one arrived at inexorably through logic.
YOU WROTE: “And once the fetus reaches human status, I cannot exclude it from having rights.”
RESPONSE: Neither do I. Once it is born…it has rights. When it is still inside the woman’s body…it may have rights…but none that trump her right to end the pregnancy whenever she chooses. And while it is in the body of the pregnant woman…IT IS A FETUS!
In any case, I think you are simply adding another layer of combat on this issue…namely, even if you want to argue that a fetus is no longer a fetus (!) when it “reaches human status”…when does the fetus reach human status? As I see it…when it stops being a fetus…which, as I also see it, is when it is born.
If you are going to suggest it reaches human status at some point while still a fetus (which goes against the words you wrote)…then what about the day before reaching that point. And how about the day before that? And of course, how about the day before that?
YOU WROTE: “I don't see any logically consistent argument for doing so that keeps with contemporary American moral standards, particularly with what would be called "liberal morality" of equal rights for all people. I encourage you to make that argument, but you haven't done so yet.”
RESPONSE: I think you are being selectively blind…and couching it in arguments that look logical. Not sure what you are up to here…but this looks like the anti-choice counterpart of Intelligent Design!
This is called "moving the goalposts." I won't be playing.
"Is it only the mother's intent that decides if a baby is human or not?"
I find it interesting that you choose pre-emptively to refer to a woman afflicted with an unwanted pregnancy as a "mother." That's a curious rhetorical choice, to say the least.
Perhaps my cake analogy in the response I'm about to make to Frank will make it clearer why I think you can't just dismiss the conflict between the "afflicted woman's" rights and the "parasites" rights across the entire length of pregnancy.
The use of the term "mother" for a pregnant woman is culturally neutral. Afflicted woman is not.
FRANK WROTE: "Well, respectfully as possible…I think that is a problem with you…not with the definitions. And, once again as respectfully as possible, I think it is a problem with you that you are gratuitously creating for yourself…not one arrived at inexorably through logic."
Frank, you are not arguing your positions, you stating them as facts: "I define 'murder' as murder." Sounds good, but what does that mean? What things are murder? Why are some acts included in the category of murder and some in the category of "killing" or "justified killing"? Ethics often hinges on working very hard at understanding how and why words are defined.
FRANK WROTE: "while it is in the body of the pregnant woman…IT IS A FETUS!"
To me, this is like saying that as long as a pan that one poured batter into remains in the oven, it remains batter. Only the moment it is removed is it cake. If you happen to leave the pan in the over for longer than the recipe calls for and it begins to burn, it's still batter, because you haven't taken it out. The transition from batter to cake occurs instantaneously at the moment the pan moves from oven to countertop.
The process of batter becoming cake is a gradual one, with no clearly defined moment at which it transitions between states. Likewise, a fetus is in a state of continual transformation. On one end of the process, you have a collection of fertilized cells with no structure—little packets of DNA instructions. At the other end, you have a human baby. It doesn't go from one to the other instantly. It's a process.
Intellectually, I believe you're playing a word game, defining "baby" and "fetus" in such a way to ensure that the ethical difficulties inherent in abortion are wiped away. But you're only playing a semantic game, not addressing the real issues. Defining baby as post-birth and fetus as pre-birth doesn't change the incremental development issue. It doesn't resolve the conflict between the rights of something that becomes human before being born and the rights of the woman carrying it.
If you want to make a religious analogy, your argument is not akin to intelligent design, but to creationism. It's position defined carefully to ensure that facts and logic cannot assail it. None of the unpinning assumptions appear to be examined—nor do you show a willingness to examine them. I invite you to further explain why a fetus transforms instantly from cells to baby the moment of child birth. And elaborate on what murder means. But barring that, I think we've reached an impasse.
First, miscarriage happens occurs in between 15%-20% of all known pregnancies and an estimated 50% of all pregnancies. This makes God the busiest abortion provider in the universe. Already, this means most pregnancies do not end in live birth and you're not even including the women who have chosen to terminate their pregnancies since the dawn of time.
http://www.medicinenet.com/miscarriage/article.htm
You keep insisting in your arguments, including with Frank, that , "There has to be some limits on where the rights to owns own body ends and the rights of the unborn child begins." Then you go on to insist that the baby is human and has self awareness. Um.... by whose definition? Until it's born, it's part of a woman's body and is dependent upon that body in order to stay "alive." That makes it a potential human and potentially once it is born it will have the same rights as everyone else. In addition, is a zygote, embryo or fetus truly "self aware"? How on earth do you define that? It is certainly not as "I think, therefore I am" so how does something in a dark womb with all of its needs being taken care of with no willpower of its own become "self aware"? What is it aware of? This seems more like you reaching to make justifications than anything based on fact.
You go into this discussion seeming to think that all pro-choice people need to do is find some "compromise" where they will decide at what point a potential life should have the same rights as the woman who carries it. The assumption here is that we all view potential life as actual life. We do not. It is impossible to value women if you feel at some point their lives have less value than something which cannot care for itself and cannot survive without using that woman along with her physical and mental resources. If you believe that there is some question of ethics regarding whose life should be prioritized between a woman who has a 30% chance of dying during pregnancy and the fetus she carries, it shows how little regard you have for women and why there can be no compromise.
I can assure you, if someone had a 30% chance of killing me, I'd fight as if it was a 100% chance and I would consider that person's life null and void. For that matter, is someone had a 30% chance of raping and beating me, I would also fight just as hard, as if that person's life is null and void. I have the right to defend myself against the possibility of being killed or hurt. That right doesn't diminish simply because what might kill or cripple me has not yet been born.
If you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of pro-lifers stampeding to save the millions of starving, abused and neglected children who are dying even in this country because they do not have access to medical care....... Or, perhaps you can't here the sound of that stampede because there is none. Therein lies the reason your point is, well, pointless. Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of history knows that every society which has banned or persecuted abortion and/or birth control tends to have the worst abuses towards actual living children. From 20th century Romania, to the foundling hospitals and killing nurses of yesteryear, to Cathedrals which had so many unwanted babies deposited with them that they put rotating deposit areas within their doorways, unwanted and surplus children have never had value. It turns out that these societies which value the pre-born so much have nothing better to do than kill them at astonishing numbers after they are born. That's the ultimate hypocrisy in "pro-life". Do a little homework.
YOU WROTE: “I invite you to further explain why a fetus transforms instantly from cells to baby the moment of child birth. And elaborate on what murder means. But barring that, I think we've reached an impasse.”
RESPONSE: I suspect we HAVE reached an impasse…but that has never stopped me from continuing to discuss and attempt to persuade before…and I will not allow it to do so now.
Once again you are characterizing my comments rather than dealing with what I actually wrote.
Here is what I wrote: “You are gratuitously calling the embryo or fetus “an unborn child”…and then vesting it with “rights.” It is not a child…it is a zygote, embryo, or fetus until it exits the birth canal. And insofar as it has any rights (it may…I’m not all that sure)…it most assuredly does not have any rights that “trump” a living woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy occurring in her own body. Or at least, that is the way I see it. “
To characterize this as me saying “a fetus transforms instantly from cells to baby the moment of child birth”…is nonsense…and it is the kind of nonsense that adds to the problem you purport to be battling with this blog.
Until the fetus exits the womb…it is a fetus. That is why we call it a fetus. It is a child after it is born…except to people devoted to anti-choice on the issue being discussed here. Try declaring a fetus as a child on your tax return…and you will end up in lots of trouble.
In any case…all that kind of discussion is really beside the point…and incremental in the “we are not going to have a meeting of the minds” mentality pervading this problem.
In a discussion of “middle ground on the abortion issue”, someone in another blog mentioned: Pro-choice is the middle ground.
And indeed it is.
At one end of the continuum, we have “no abortions allowed under any circumstances”…at the other, “all pregnancies have to be aborted.” (If that bothers you, make it, as it is in some places, “all pregnancies after a single birth per couple have to be aborted.)
In the middle, we have “some may be aborted, some not.”
Who should decide which are to be aborted and which not???
The pregnant woman is the only logical choice that I can see.
Or do you think legislators should decide? Church officials? A committee?
In any case, to assert that a fetus has rights that MAY trump a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy occurring in her own body is, in my opinion, a gratuitous assertion…made just to defend the position you are defending.
YOU WROTE: “Frank, I am not anti-choice. At no point have I argued for legal restrictions on abortion. I am for examining important ethical issues with an open mind and digging deeply into the assumptions that underpin our arguments. That way, IMO, lies truth, rather than emotion.”
I gotta be honest with you, Specular…loathe as I am to do this, I am questioning YOUR honesty here. Your arguments have all the flavor of a “life is sacred” quality to them…and I cannot help but be concerned that you are not the “atheist” you claim to be…nor that you are actually arguing an ethicists argument.
You do come across to me as an Intelligent Design advocate in the evolution debate…who mostly all seem to be pretending independence from religious motivations.
Let us say I punch a woman at 8 months, and she miscarries; that is crime in most states, because something has been lost beyond the assault on the female.
Then, you "refuted" specular's intelligent reasoning behind the necessity to recognize fetal rights with this snarky childish nugget: "so how does something in a dark womb with all of its needs being taken care of with no willpower of its own become "self aware"?" Take out the word "dark" and you are describing an infant. Surely you can see that. A kicking fetus has just as much willpower as a crying infant. Willpower does not define a right to life.
Your next bogus argument was what I would call the "Minority Report" hypothetical: "I can assure you, if someone had a 30% chance of killing me, I'd fight as if it was a 100% chance and I would consider that person's life null and void." Have you ever seen the Tom Cruise film? Perhaps you should. It shouldn't take too much reflection to see how morally bankrupt your hypothetical is.
Then you blasted pro-life forces for neglecting children worldwide--another bogus strawman claim. A little "homework" would have informed you that the pro-life Catholic Charities USA is the second largest social service provider in the United States and it is only surpassed by the US Federal Government. It was founded to provide orphanages, homeless shelters, combat poverty and feed the hungry. Pointing out some hypocrisies among some pro-lifers is a weak argument... so is that absurd Romanian churches reference.
Come back to the discussion when you actually have something to contribute.
And Specular, I enjoyed this post. I agree with most of the points you are making. I think most Americans, including the president want to reduce the number of abortions in this country. Safe and fair is the best strategy for a middle ground that will actually make society better.
My statement, "the end result for most pregnancies is the birth of a human life," is not incorrect. An estimated 50% of miscarriages is at best half, and most likely less, which makes the end result for most pregnancies the the birth of a human life.
Self-awareness is my test for humanness. I have not made the argument that it is the only valid test or that it is the definitive test of humanness. It is one that makes the most sense for me. And the test IS "I think therefore I am," even if the thoughts aren't verbal. My cat knows it exists. Cockroaches don't. They don't have sufficient neural matter to have that level of cognitive activity. Early on, fetuses don't have that cognitive ability. At some point, they gain it.
My hypothesis was "what if there was a test?" not "there is a test." There isn't and I wasn't making a claim that there was. One of the things that I'm interested in is how our ethics evolve in the face of new information.
Do I have little regard for women? I don't believe so. My hypothetical example was intended to raise questions. Note that in my example with the woman whose pregnancy threatened her life, the fetus was advanced enough to be viable outside of the womb. It isn't a choice between a woman's life and something that cannot survive without the woman. Nor did I say that I believed the woman should risk death and bring the baby to term (I said I didn't).
"That right doesn't diminish simply because what might kill or cripple me has not yet been born." The fetus/baby doesn't gain rights by virtue of not being born. It gains right by being a human. Unless you want to create different classes of rights for different groups of humans, it has the same rights as any other human once it's reached the point of development we can call human. That's the dilemma.
The core ethical issue for me is the problem I outlined with my cake analogy, which you aren't addressing. Human development is a process, not a stage of sudden jumps. We're not twelve on day and a teenager the next. We're not a non-human fetus on moment and a human the next.
If you want to argue that an inability to survive without external resources makes a living entity less than human, what does that make people on dialysis or other life support? The severely retarded or otherwise developmentally impaired? If a fetus is viable outside of the womb and is a baby the moment it leaves, how can we say it is less than human when it's inside of the womb?
I don't think you can make an honest argument until you address that.
"Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of history knows that every society which has banned or persecuted abortion and/or birth control tends to have the worst abuses towards actual living children. "
First, I have not advocated banning or persecuting abortion anywhere in this post, in my comments or elsewhere. In fact, I have been clear to state I do not do so. Second, because some people use a moral or ethical argument to create abuses doesn't mean the moral or ethical consideration is wrong. The Soviet Union was, IMO, the most horrific, abusive nation of the 20th century, but most of the abuse was carried out in the name of economic justice. It doesn't make economic justice wrong, it makes the way the Soviets carried it out wrong.
"You go into this discussion seeming to think that all pro-choice people need to do is find some 'compromise' where they will decide at what point a potential life should have the same rights as the woman who carries it."
I don't have a particular idea what a 70% compromise—by which I mean a compromise that satisfies 70% of the electorate—would look like. I suspect it's a constantly shifting point and depends a lot on the quality of argument brought to the debate (hint: if the debate happens, tie Verbal up until it's over—"parasite" will kill you with the moderates). I have an intellectual standard for humanness that to me is where the line lays, but I have no means of applying that standard, as there is no (current) technology that can answer when a fetus becomes self-aware. I don't think a 70% compromise would or should involve only restrictions on abortion. I would hope that it primarily involves efforts to reduce unwanted pregnancies. I would, however, also hope that it involves us, as a nation, coming to an understanding of when a fetus becomes a human. Not a denial of that process as you, Frank and Verbal want to do. Not a "conception = human" reduction. But a real, open-minded investigation of what defines being human and what that means in the pregnancy cycle.
Frank, I'm an atheist. I inadvertently offend people with children because I like to make jokes about putting infants in sacks full of salt and letting them cure until they can talk. I don't even like small children (or dogs). I believe in evolution. While I want to have my own harem of nubile teen girls to service my every whim, I'm willing to grant everybody else equal rights in the law and allow women (outside of my harem) to make their own decisions about abortion.
Alas, I think I had better check out of this debate before I start getting snarky. I'll gleefully discuss and debate the ethical issues with people who disagree with me—particularly around the question of when and how we become human. I'd also be really happy to talk about what a 70% compromise might look like and ideas about how to get there. Is anybody willing to compromise? Ferris? Anybody?
Look…this is not an easy issue by any means…nor do I, despite what some of my comments might lead you to think, consider it to be open and shut.
My stridency and refusal to yield even a bit…has more to do with the fact that many of the people against whom I am fighting, want to move that nebulous point you referred to several times…back to the instant a sperm penetrates an ovum. And they want to outlaw abortion after that instant!
Let’s see where this discussion heads. I’ll stay tuned. I doubt any of us will ever see the compromise necessary for real headway on the issue…but I also doubt any of us will ever see abortion outlawed again.
Could not call up that link you provided. Kept getting a “this file no longer exists” message.
See, I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, because it seemed perhaps you were sincere in simply wanting to neutrally and objectively discuss this difficult issue, but Frank is right that there was a tone to what you were saying that made me suspicious of your true motives and your true ideology. And one of the reasons I am suspicious is because I have endured too many attempts to mislead, deceive and manipulate by people who called themselves christians.
Like the time when I went to a clinic which pretended to be a place for family planning and abortions, because I needed to discuss the various options with a medical professional, and they said they'd show me an educational video first, but what they showed me was blatant propaganda to convince me that I shouldn't have an abortion. They should not have LIED about their true purpose and their true goals. Just one example.
I agree with you that most of us are in reality moderates on this issue - but the problem (one of them) is NO ONE thinks there should be unrestricted late-term abortions. So it is FALSE to say that this is the opposing view and that feminists are unwilling to compromise. Yet it is exactly this type of deliberately disingenuous tactic which has poisoned the debate and annihilated any hope of trust in anything the right/conservative/christian/whatever has to say on this topic. And that is just one example of their poisonous machinations. They need to get honest about their real agenda, and act with integrity, and then maybe people like me won't have to be suspicious of people like you!
Lorelei, those deceptive places make me seethe. They should be closed based on false advertising (actually, I think many of them have been closed for manipulation... not sure, though).
I started this post as a response to a conversation I was having with Finger, which is why I started with my hypotheticals. When I started, I was trying to steer things towards a talk on compromise. I probably should have worked to force the discussion towards that. But I do have grave misgiving that the vocal pro-choice forces are ignoring something important by not examining when "humanness" begins.
I was vigorously defending the pro-choice position on Beliefnet with an Evangelical and she kicked my ass all the way to Sunday because she had better facts than me. Principle was the viability of preemies. I had to start thinking more broadly. And the best place to start in thinking about where humanness begins, IMO, is with the point where we know it exists. Then work backwards. Viable preemies force me to go back well into the third trimester and consider that it might be in the second. For me, it's absolutely vital to be as vigorous in my thinking as possible because it is a human life in question (at some point) and it is a human body in question (at all points).
I don't think I need to make the argument here that the right needs to compromise enormously on sex education to have an ethically-consistent position. OS is full of people who can go right, but is deficient in people who can go left. Not much point in arguing for the righties to move here.
Ethically, though, it raises two questions for me: since preemie care entails significant costs, who pays for it? Universal healthcare would negate the question, but until then, it would be an issue.
As well, at 7 months, there is a good chance the baby would suffer some degree of disability from lack of fetal development time. Can we satisfy the woman's obvious need for relief from her situation with the babies rights to the best possible pre-natal development? (And, no, I don't think this reasonably extends to forcing particular "baby-safe" behavior on pregnant women.)
You know, I suspect that any woman facing this decision is going to wrestle with this question. I would still suggest that she is the one who should make it. What right do I have to tell her what to do? I need to trust that she will make the best choice for herself and her family, and will make it in line with her own conscience.
On another note, I thank you for being brave and bringing up these issues. What struck me after coming back to this discussion at the end of the day is that women forced to make what is always a difficult choice regarding abortion in the third trimester, struggle on a very personal level with all of the issues that have been brought up in this discussion. Which brings us back to the question - who has ultimate say so. Which brings it all back to the button that Dr. Tiller wore, "Trust women."