…and this is a 
Black & White
Category: Reproduction
Posted on: March 7, 2006 10:11 AM, by PZ Myers
I was just thinking there was something especially weird about that Wilkow rant against abortion. He's asked whether life begins at conception, and he replies with an irksomely stupid question of his own: "…scientifically speaking, when a sperm and egg comes together, what happens? Is death created?" The caller who asked the question is stumped and avoids it, unfortunately, but it's an interestingly bad reply.
I was a bit baffled by it at first myself, until I realized what Wilkow is hoping for: that the person would answer "no", and then he could triumphantly declare that therefore he was right, life is created at fertilization. It's a beautiful example of the bifurcation, or false dichotomy, fallacy—and it's given an extra special dash of pretentiousness with that clause, "scientifically speaking". I thought of a few ways it could be answered.
- Yes, death is created. Before fertilization, there is a living egg and a living sperm, two live cells. After fertilization, there is one live cell, the zygote. Mathematically speaking, one cell must have been destroyed. Therefore, fertilization kills. End the slaughter! Contraception for all!
- I would add that what also happens is that before fertilization, there is a huge spherical egg that has been leeching off the products of hardworking follicle cells in the ovary, and an active, independent, motile sperm. After fertilization, the sperm is gone, and what's sitting there is a fat, bloated, spherical cell that is going to wander off and parasitize the uterus. Patriarchally speaking, we should realize that the ovum must have destroyed the sperm. We can probably work the words "welfare queen" in here and really spark some outrage.
- Cytologically speaking, two cells merge membranes and metabolisms to produce a functioning unit which is still carrying out mostly the same chemical processes. It's not magical, and people fuse cells in the lab all the time. If by living you mean metabolically active, there is no change, only continuity. The question makes no sense, sir; do you claim to have the power to create life? Are you also going to admit that a hybridoma technician therefore has created life?
- Forensically speaking, what has happened is that the egg has been imprinted with daddy's unique, identifiable DNA signature—think of it as your penis mischievously and indelibly scrawling your name on a baby. If you're going to oppose abortion, you might want to think about criminalizing paternity testing and child support payments first. Doing it afterwards is just too obvious.
- Genetically speaking, at fertilization two living haploid cells fuse to form one living diploid cell. Nothing is killed, and there is no new life created. There is a change in state that begins a long, slow process of replication and differentiation that might culminate in about a decade and a half with the maturation of a functional gonad that can produce new haploid germ cells, most of which will be thrown away.
- Developmentally speaking, fertilization is one transition state among many. It's a major bottleneck and an incredibly wasteful process—the overwhelming majority of gametes fail to fuse—but even when fertilization occurs, Nature is quite cavalier about throwing the whole thing out and requiring us to start again. Other major events in which an error can negate all prior processes are implantation, gastrulation, neurulation, birth, and learning to drive. It's awfully silly to privilege one event among many as the sole source of humanity, I would think; if it's mere priority that focuses interest on fertilization, the two meiotic divisions that produce the gametes came first, and that's also a delicate and critical process. Perhaps you should worship the gonad rather than fertilization…?
The rest of Wilkow's incoherent rant is just simple fury at being asked to answer this "dilemma": if a fire breaks out in a fertility clinic, who do you save — a Petri dish with five blastula or a two year-old child?. The interesting thing about the question is that it isn't a matter of coming up with the correct answer, but that the notion that it is any kind of dilemma at all is the distinguishing factor. There is no question in most sensible people's minds that you save the child; the dish simply isn't a factor. It's the crazies who think that in principle there is a difficult decision to make, although I suspect that in practice they wouldn't hesitate to save the kid, anyway.
As an equal opportunity rationalist, though, I have to give those crazies a perfectly reasonable answer that they can use to defuse the conflict. Pulling a dish full of embryos out of their nice warm 37°C incubator and running down a hallway, sloshing them about and contaminating the medium with who knows what, is going to kill the embryos anyway. You can't just keep these things alive for long in a dish on your kitchen table, you know. So, please, anti-abortion nutcases, if you're ever in that unlikely situation, the little toddler is the only one you can save, so get her out, OK? You can have a nice memorial service for the petri dish later.
Comments
You missed the obvious: for every sperm that successfully fertilizes an ovum, something like a billion (give or take an order of magnitude) of its brethren die -- some, apparently even sacrificing themselves to give the lucky one a better chance. Every act of love is an unparalleled holocaust! The horror! (And it goes without saying that contraception and self-pleasuring are Right Out....)
(cue the obvious Monty Python song.....)
Posted by: lt.kizhe | March 7, 2006 10:27 AM
To me, the most obvious point against 'life begins at conception' is that only 70% of all fertilisations that occur fail, and 50% of all fertilisations occur and fail without anyone knowing.
Where is the uproar?
I think this is a point that many people arent aware of.
Posted by: zac | March 7, 2006 11:06 AM
"Pulling a dish full of embryos out of their nice warm 37°C incubator...is going to kill the embryos anyway."
Shhhh...that gives them an out!
Let's not forget that simply leaving the embryos in a freezer kills them slowly. If every life is precious, Wilkow should be begging women to serve as surrogates before these "children" die a horrible death from freezer burn.
Mike Stark handled Wilkow's challenge very badly. As you alluded to above, he should have answered it with the simple question, "Aren't the sperm and egg alive already?" instead of trying to answer it.
Posted by: John | March 7, 2006 11:08 AM
I think the obvious answer to what happens at fertilization is that a new human life begins, but there is no "person" there. The same situation that we have at brain death, like Terri Schiavo.
Posted by: Brian S. | March 7, 2006 11:11 AM
None of this answers the central question. At what point do you begin to view the developing human as person worthy of some legal protection? Never before birth? Somewhere before birth but late in pregnancy? What sort of moral reasoning do you use to arrive the "right" answer?
Posted by: JFK | March 7, 2006 11:13 AM
Testing...there was some tinkering behind the scenes that screwed up commenting. I hope it's all better now.
Posted by: PZ Myers | March 7, 2006 11:18 AM
Once they've moved out of home and have a paying job?
Posted by: Darkling | March 7, 2006 11:23 AM
The answer to jfk's question is -- you stop focusing on 'when does life begin' (as far as I know, it began once, millions of years ago). Instead, you focus on individuation -- when do you have a new individual person, rather than a part (technically) of a pre-existing person.
Yes, this is still difficult to decide, but it at least makes it possible to reason about the issue.
For me, individuation occurs when the fetus is capable of indpendant survival.
What about cases of assisted survival? Fine by me, but how does that impact the decision making process?
If a woman wishes to terminate a pregnancy, she may do so up to the point where the fetus is viable. If a medical practitioner chooses to assist the viability 'prematurely', fine -- but the expense is theirs as is all responsibility. The woman is out of the picture -- she's removed the fetus, the non-human being, and is done with it.
What happens next is somebody else's problem.
hugs,
Shirley Knott
Abortion -- not just a right, a responsibility.
Posted by: Shirley Knott | March 7, 2006 11:25 AM
On the Evangelical Outpost -- the home of willfully ignorant morons of the lowest stripe -- the fertility clinic conundrum question was raised and it was fascinating to watch the fundies dodge.
Instead of a petri dish, put the embryos in a thermos and simply specify that a freezer is waiting outside the clinic.
They simply refused to answer, coming up will sorts of "objections" to the hypothetical.
It's a really great way to expose the loonies.
You can even sharper it up -- make it ten five year olds and a thermos filled with a 1000 frozen embryos.
Or 500 frozen embryos and 50 black teenagers.
Or 1 frozen embryos and 2 babies with incurable spina bifida.
Or 3 frozen embryos that were set aside because they comprised horrible genetic diseases and 3 comatose Jews.
Loads of fun with the fundies!!!!!!!
Posted by: Great White Wonder | March 7, 2006 11:26 AM
You're trying to apply that black&white logic to a levels of gray problem.
There is no "point". Humanity is an emergent condition that arises gradually over the course of development.
I think setting the bar at fertilization is stupid and demeaning. I think bundling 5 year olds in a burlap bag with some rocks and throwing them in the river is criminal and evil. The line should be drawn somewhere in between, and I think reasonable people can disagree on where that line should be, to some degree.
Personally, I don't think babies become people until some time after birth. I'm content with the idea that they aren't persons requiring legal protection before they are capable of some level of autonomy outside the womb (and that's another gray area!)
Posted by: PZ Myers | March 7, 2006 11:27 AM
There is no question in most sensible people's minds that you save the child; the dish simply isn't a factor.
The point of this riddle is to expose the fact that nobody believes that taking a morning after pill is the same thing as offing a six year old. The pro-life people don't really believe that a blastocyst is a person, and this question highlights that fact. Nobody is firebombing fertility clinics or demanding that fertility drugs be made illegal, even though the use of lab techniques or drugs leads to "excess" embryos.
This is not, and never has been, about abortion. If it were about abortion, these people would leading the charge in providing contraception education and access to young people. There would be condoms in every evangelical pew. They would be working to prevent unwanted pregnancies, which would in turn reduce the number of abortions. That's not what this is about. It's about controlling women's sexual behavior.
(Thanks for explanation of bacterial mutation. I slept soundly that night because of it.)
Posted by: jayackroyd | March 7, 2006 11:36 AM
There may not be a "point" that is defensible as a scientific conclusion, but from a legal or political perspective - yes there is and must be a clearly defined point at which individual rights begin to exist under the law. If I understand your last paragraph, you are saying that a newborn baby ought to have no greater legal protection from harm than a fertilized egg?
Posted by: JFK | March 7, 2006 11:36 AM
Life began for me last January when I turned 40. And I have a coffee mug to prove it!
Posted by: CousinoMacul | March 7, 2006 11:37 AM
What sort of moral reasoning do you use to arrive the "right" answer?
Roe's was pretty good, actually. The state has no interest in the developing human until viability. Another thing that everybody agrees on, but nobody who they put on television will say is that the longer the period of development, the more uncomfortable we are with terminating a pregnancy.
You certainly can't declare an unborn child a citizen (although they do get Medicaid benefits before birth). That raises all kinds of problems involving, among other things, involuntary servitude.
Posted by: JayAckroyd | March 7, 2006 11:42 AM
As long as we're arbitrarily imposing sharp boundaries on a continuum, sure, I think birth is a better marker than fertilization.
Posted by: PZ Myers | March 7, 2006 11:42 AM
"...Scientifically speaking, when a sperm and egg comes together, what happens? Is death created?"
Well, yes. If "life" is created, then death is created too, since the moment that life exists it starts to die. (Insert zen pause here.) One could argue that the death is only a "potential," but as anti-abortionists love to claim, a "potential" life is a "life" to them, so therefore...
Posted by: Kristine | March 7, 2006 11:44 AM
PZ Myers:
a levels of gray problem
apologize for my ignorance, but does't an embryo go through various rather well defined stages ?
I mean, where if it is a gastrula , it is 100% not zygote, so there is nothing like smooth borderless
overblend betweeen a zygote and a foetus, as between black and white.
.
Wouldn't be making legal status dependent, say, of brain development, better than blurring everything into vague 'shades of gray' limbo ?
Especially, if the same approach works rather well for the other end of individual's existence - death ?
I mean, crackpots claiming someone is alive till the last cell are much less common than ones saying someone is alive form the first cell on...
Posted by: T_U_T | March 7, 2006 11:48 AM
For me this has always been pretty easy: no personality = no person. Since the brain structures that support personality don't even develop until the third trimester, I don't see any issue until then. Viability is a side issue.
[Awkward Transition]
Could it be that the fundies have some unrecognized assumption that genetic uniqueness is entanled with ensoulment? Would it be a lesser crime or sin of murder to kill an identical twin? Maybe this is related to how disturbed they get about human cloning. If they just looked at it differently, this could be a morally free source of slaves and cannon fodder.
Posted by: wswilso | March 7, 2006 11:48 AM
On Topic: Rich Little had a routine where Reagan was asked at what point a fetus should be considered a human being: "When it votes Republican."
Off Topic: How many errors can we find in this story...
Human Quadripeds Found in Turkey
related to the concept of evolution. It is interesting how the "missing link" meme still pervades human evolutionary discussions. Personally, I think these poor people are unlikely to tell us any more about our ancestors than JoJo the Dog Faced Boy. It does make good news copy though.
I think it more likely to be someting like when the genetic defect that cause progeria was finally mapped it turned out to be mostly unrelated to changes seen in typical aging. Interesting but ultimately not that significant.
Posted by: justawriter | March 7, 2006 11:52 AM
I find this debate rather difficult for numerous reasons, but the ultimate point of the matter is that the pro-life group want control. They want control over how women make decisions and having women make a decision without a man being required bothers them no end. As a man myself, I'll never have to make a decision regarding abortion (thankfully) and I'll certainly never oppose someone else wanting that choice.
As for when 'life' occurs I don't see the particular point of the 'life begins at fertilisation nonsense'. It's still just as much of a 'potential' life as it was when it was just egg and sperm (all potential lives themselves). A blastocyst is not a 'certain person' until its firmly embedded and accepted in the uterine wall.
It's much later on in a pregnancy, when the fertilised egg of a while ago is now more like a human being with fully formed features, that I think an abortion should not be allowed. That's getting pretty late into a pregnancy and the baby could probably even survive if it was delivered at that time too.
But before independant survival from the woman I think it's very much a part of her. As long as it is a part of her body it is her decision as to what to do with it. Nobody has the right to take that decision from someone.
Posted by: Joseph O'Donnell | March 7, 2006 11:52 AM
I think this misses the obvious point -- who cares if life is created? We happily kill living things all the time (humburger anyone)? His trick is not speaking "human" before life and leaving it implicit to confuse things. When you add it in explicitly, the real arguments on both sides are revealed.
Pro-life: sperm are not human, eggs are not human, when they fuse they are human.
Pro-choice: bollocks.
Posted by: BMurray | March 7, 2006 11:53 AM
Soylent green eh B. Murray?
Posted by: Joseph O'Donnell | March 7, 2006 11:55 AM
Doesn't the Bible say that not only are you allowed to kill your children, you are OBLIGATED to BY GOD if they are disobedient?
Therefore, the fundies should be decriminalizing murder, as long as it's your own children that you kill, and that they were talking back at the time.
Posted by: dAVE | March 7, 2006 11:58 AM
"scientifically speaking, when a sperm and egg comes together, what happens? Is death created?"
Scientifically speaking, when two slices of bread, a slice of cheese, and a slice of tomato come together, what happens? Is death created?
No?
Well then I guess life must be created.
Oh, wait, nevermind. A sandwich is created...
Posted by: Jake | March 7, 2006 11:59 AM
I would just like to ask that Joseph O'Donnell use Pro-Choice and Anti-Choice.
In this debate as in most debates, it is a matter of framing.
I don't believe anyone is "pro-death".... You either believe in a woman's right to choose (Pro-choice) or you don't (Anti-choice)
I believe it is unfortunate when the term "pro-life" is ceded.
Posted by: Lorlee Bartos | March 7, 2006 12:20 PM
Actually that is fair enough Lorlee and I was just following accepted 'definitions' of what groups like to call themselves. In reality, I don't really think the 'pro-life' group are really all they are cracked up to be morally. A true 'pro-life' group would be just as opposed to the destruction of embryos from artificial fertilisation methods as they would to abortion.
Posted by: Joseph O'Donnell | March 7, 2006 12:27 PM
Fetuses don't become people, legally-speaking, until they're born alive. I don't think we need to have special laws to protect fetuses -- though perhaps there should be special criminal charges and punishments for assaulting or harming that part of a pregnant woman's body (i.e., the fetus that is part of her), which would reinforce the idea that fetuses do have special value (especially to the person carrying the fetus), but are neither legally nor morally persons in their own right.
The question "when does life begin" is just a ploy used by anti-abortionists and those opposed to stem cell research to obfuscate the real questions: when it is okay to kill a living thing, and do adults have the right to consent to the creation and destruction of their own body tissues?
I'll happily concede that human totipotent, pluripotent, and multipotent stem cells are all forms of human life, as are embryos and fetuses, and children and grown-folk. But most of us have intuitions about the varying values of various forms of human life, and an alarming proportion of us think it's okay to kill (or allow to be killed) children and adults in wars, and to execute people who've committed certain crimes. And some of us believe that it's not okay to kill children or adults, but that human life that has not developed into a live-birth baby can be killed or destroyed, when the sexually-mature person who is gestating that life choses to abort her pregnancy. Some of us also think it's morally acceptable and would like to make it legal for adults to donate their tissues for the intentional creation of stem cell lines, which requires the destruction of a fetilized ova (this is currently illegal in Canada).
So the question shouldn't be "when does life begin", but rather, "when does consent to destroy life begin"? Perhaps if fetuses were standing in the way of American control of oil-producing nations, then Republicans would say it's okay to kill them.
Posted by: Judy L | March 7, 2006 12:35 PM
"A true 'pro-life' group would be just as opposed to the destruction of embryos from artificial fertilisation methods as they would to abortion."
And against the dealth penalty. Im curious if anyone who has the stats on the % of pro-life that are pro-dealth-penalty. I'd guess thats there would be a high correlation.
Posted by: zac | March 7, 2006 12:36 PM
Posted by: Lorlee Bartos:
I believe it is unfortunate when the term "pro-life" is ceded.
Thanks for this observation Lorlee. The Right has knowledgeably framed the discourse by setting the vocabulary without opposition for so long:
"Qupotas" for Affirmative action, "Pro Life" for people who are mostly pro death penalty etc.
I wish I could popularize some anti-Right formulations: "Anti-Choice" is good. How about "Judicial Murder" for Capital Punishment? Police State Implementation" for Homeland Security?
Does anyone have other suggestions?
Posted by: wswilso | March 7, 2006 12:36 PM
> "Is death created?"
Yes, that's exactly what he was hoping for - to create a false dichotomy.
My thought at the time was, "the sperm and the egg are both alive before conception and they are both alive afterwards. There is no life or death created."
The rest of his rant was merely his way of dodging the question. For example, he asks the caller if he had two children and could only save one of them, what would he do? Of course, the caller would likely regard each child as equally valuable, and therefore, a hard question to answer. On the other hand, the caller setup the situation of *5* blastula versus one toddler. If the wingnut really wants a comparible situation he should say, "You can save five children or one child". Most people would quickly decide to save the five, so why can't he choose to save the five blastula? Of course, he doesn't want to create a comparible situation. In light of the fact that he gets enough ratings to stay on the air, the whole thing is rather depressing. I would hope that people would laugh this wingnut off the air for his childish abuse of logic. I can't help but wonder how many idiots were behind this wingnut going, "yeah, you sure did prove that caller wrong!"
I think the best thing the wingnut could've said was, "save the toddler". Then he could say that although the blastula aren't given equal value to a living human being, they are significant enough to be protected by pro-life laws. The problem is that most pro-lifers don't want to admit that no one in their right mind would consider blastula to be of equal value to a living human being. There is a deep flaw in their thinking that they don't want to acknowledge.
Posted by: BC | March 7, 2006 12:37 PM
I think trying to apply nebulous terms like soul and personality do not help in assessing the science behind the issue. The scientific role is to establish when the fetus is viable; and viability in this case is the ability to live independently. If we push, this would imply the period immediately following birth. (Note that this does not speak to couples that seek to enable a fetus to be viable prior to birth; nor does it allow the perfidy that the state establishes other criteria)
The problem is with the supreme court decisions that allow a woman's choice only to the second trimester probably failed to address either the biological or theological positions adequately, and pulled a King Solomon when may be they should not have. What they did was to trespass into an area of science where science should have the last word.
Although I am 80% certain that the current SCOTUS will deny woman a constitutional right to abortion, I however imagine a shit storm if they deny that there is a right to privacy in the constitution. The South Dakota legislature must be full of congenital idiots not to see the implication. And if they affirm the right, expect Bush, if still in office, to be impeached.
Mike
Posted by: mgr | March 7, 2006 12:39 PM
What's cute is, if you read the history of the pro-life movement, they readily and happily accepted the findings of modern embryology to butress their claims that the fertilized egg is uniquely human. Prior to that, the embryo was thought to go through the vegetable and animal stages (ala Aristotle) before becoming human, at the quickening (first detection of fetal movement).
What's ironic is that although these scientific advances were accepted and used to rationalize religious and secular policies against abortion in the US, the same acceptance was never available to Darwin and later evolutionary ideas.
Evangelicals are very haphazard in what scientific findings they accept and integrate into their world views. Perhaps if the evo/devo wars had occured in 1860 rather than 1990, their outlook on the human sould would be completely different.
Posted by: No Nym | March 7, 2006 12:43 PM
I think trying to apply nebulous terms like soul and personality do not help in assessing the science behind the issue. The scientific role is to establish when the fetus is viable; and viability in this case is the ability to live independently. If we push, this would imply the period immediately following birth. (Note that this does not speak to couples that seek to enable a fetus to be viable prior to birth; nor does it allow the perfidy that the state establishes other criteria)
The problem is with the supreme court decisions that allow a woman's choice only to the second trimester probably failed to address either the biological or theological positions adequately, and pulled a King Solomon when may be they should not have. What they did was to trespass into an area of science where science should have the last word.
Although I am 80% certain that the current SCOTUS will deny woman a constitutional right to abortion, I however imagine a shit storm if they deny that there is a right to privacy in the constitution. The South Dakota legislature must be full of congenital idiots not to see the implication. And if they affirm the right, expect Bush, if still in office, to be impeached.
Mike
Posted by: mgr | March 7, 2006 12:43 PM
What I find fascinating about the life-begins-at conception debate is, as it has been pointed out, the great number of fertilized eggs that never make it. In fact, I have read that some single-embryo in vitro procedures have a better record than natural fertilization. I have used this fact to argue that if pro-lifers have serious convictions that life begins at conception, then they have to take birth control until they want to have kids, and then conceive by a more reliable in vitro method. That way they would minimize the number of fertilized eggs lost.
The response has been less than positive. Besides one Catholic saying that in vitro fertilization is an evil unto itself (wow), they usually conclude that my proposition is absurd. Yes. It is. That's the point! Their belief leads to absurd conclusions. A local pro-life student group has ignored my requests for one of them to come on my show and debate me. :)
They are all about preserving a certain 'natural' reproduction where the decision-making is kept out of human hands. Belief systems that remove human reason, in my book, are an evil unto themselves. If someone 'rescued' the petri dish, and left the 2-year old to die, they should be prosecuted. That's like putting off treatment for a baptism that results in a child's death.
Posted by: Inoculated Mind | March 7, 2006 12:47 PM
Scientifically speaking, life begins at 40!
(Meaning I'm still -8 years old!)
Posted by: Jeff Fecke | March 7, 2006 12:49 PM
georgia10 over at DailyKos illustrates the fact that even the wingnuts in SD don't believe that an embryo is a child, and that aborttion is murder.
The penalty for an abortion is five years, a class 5 felony. Murder is a class A or B felony, involving much longer terms.
Now, just to make things clear, South Dakota classifies the unlawful killing an unborn child as "fetal homicide", a Class B felony (S.D. Codified Laws Ann. � 22-16-1.1 22-16-1.1). So if a husband, knowing his wife is a few weeks pregnant, beats her up and causes her to miscarry, he's guilty of fetal homicide, a Class B felony punishable with a very, very long time in jail. Yet if a doctor performs an abortion, he gets a maximum of five years in prison.
The woman involved is not charged with any crime. This is clear, unmistakeable evidence that this whole "abortion is murder" has been a lie all along. They don't believe a two year old is the same as a 16 cell blastocyst. As I said above, they never did believe this. It has been a lie all along.
Posted by: jayackroyd | March 7, 2006 12:54 PM
"Would it be a lesser crime or sin of murder to kill an identical twin?"
There's another one to hang them on. If ensoulment occurs at fertilization, and since twinning occurs long after fertilization, why do fundy churches baptize twins separately? Why do they have funerals for each individual twin?
Posted by: John | March 7, 2006 12:59 PM
Here's what I've been wondering -- if the fundies really feel a non-viable fetus has the same rights as an independent, already-born human, and in fact is considered a whole, separate child from the mother, could you then claim the fetus as a dependent and take the deduction on your 1040? And if so, what if the woman miscarries at some point? I would assume (not having children of my own yet) that the parents have already spent time and money on doctor's visits, baby clothes and furniture, maybe even home improvement materials to remodel the baby's room. After all, the deduction is on the books as some small measure of compensation for expenses in raising a child, so if the fetus is considered one, why couldn't a couple claim said deduction, even if they do miscarry?
Posted by: ericnh | March 7, 2006 1:19 PM
"you stop focusing on 'when does life begin' (as far as I know, it began once, millions of years ago)"
Exactly. And I think it's illustrative to think further of the difficulties to both define 'life' and 'when life began'. Some evolutionary processes (at least natural selection and environmental variation) was certainly present in the prebiotic soup long before 'first life' could be found. It seems much easier to look at a welldefined property of a process ('viable foetus', 'first reproducing system') than on an illdefined property of a system ('life', 'first life').
Posted by: Torbjorn Larsson | March 7, 2006 1:19 PM
I thought I remember reading somewhere, and hopefully someone can confirm, that in the old testament, (which is the law being applied by the fundies, right?), a baby was not considered a "person" and named until a week went by. The opinion I read said this was because of infant mortality in those times.
IF that is correct, why does it not apply for them now?
Posted by: Rocky | March 7, 2006 1:32 PM
I have long found the "life begins at conception" line perplexing, precisely because both the egg and sperm are most certainly alive prior to fertilization. This is sometimes countered with the assertion that the fertilized egg is unique and different from the parents, yet the sperm and egg are also unique and different from the parents. The best argument claims that there is some sort of continuity between the fertilized egg and the (eventual/potential) child that may result. As a result, I base my moral support for abortion rights on a claim that the rights of the (pregnant) woman are being weighed against the rights of the (potential) human being that is the result of fertilization. In my mind, the autonomy and rights of an adult female far outweigh any rights we might assign to a barely multicellular entity.
My personal comfort level (as opposed to recommended legal regime) goes a little something like this: first trimester -- no moral qualms at all; second trimester -- no moral qualms until viability has been reached...then slightly less comfortable, but really it's the woman's decision, and who am I to question it; third trimester -- icky, but sometimes it's clearly necessary to protect the health and welfare of the woman...and do you want the morality police second-guessing a woman and her doctor making these kinds of decisions, and if you've made it all the way to the third trimester, the circumstances surrounding the decision to terminate are probably highly tragic and do we really need to make her feel any worse? FWIW, my OB didn't recommend the "Jewish" genetic screening panel (because only my husband is Jewish); when I saw a speciality to get the fancy 20 week ultrasound done, he recommended that we do it anyway, since genes don't always announce "Hey! I'm Jewish! You're a Tay-Sachs carrier!" But I couldn't bear to contemplate what I would do with the results, since I could already feel fetal movement. So I never went through with it.
The notion that there is a sliding scale where the relative rights of the woman and the (potential) child must be weighed also provide a reasonable answer to the arguments about infanticide.
Posted by: Mrs. Coulter | March 7, 2006 1:40 PM
"...Wouldn't be making legal status dependent, say, of brain development, better than blurring everything into vague 'shades of gray' limbo ?...
Posted by: T_U_T | March 7, 2006 11:48 AM"
But isn't that also a "gray matter?" :-D
Sorry, I promise to eventually post something serious.
Posted by: CousinoMacul | March 7, 2006 1:47 PM
wswilso said:
Here's another I've seen on other sites/blogs - "Forced Pregnancy Advocates". I think that says it all.
Posted by: Radi | March 7, 2006 2:05 PM
Personally, I don't understand why anybody believes that the "personhood" of the zygote/embryo/fetus is the least bit relevant to the subject of abortion. Even if we assume (for the sake of argument) that a fetus should have full individual human status, I still would support a woman's right to end her participation in a pregnancy at any time and for any reason.
As a human being, I have the right (at least in my country), to refuse to donate my blood, organs, tissues, or life to any other human being. I have the right to refuse this even if I not longer need them (am dead). I have the right to refuse them if the being in question is my wife, parent, best friend, and even my own child. I have the right to refuse them even if the need was caused by my own negligence (a car accident for example). I have the right to refuse even when that negligence is criminal (drunk driving). And most importantly, I have that right even when I intentionally cause the damage that creates the necessity in a purposeful criminal act (I.E. If I shot you).
I see no compelling reason why having sex should cost a woman these rights. I see no compelling reason why a fetus should be granted rights that no born human being possesses.
Posted by: zombiedeathkoala | March 7, 2006 2:20 PM
There was an interesting article in the New Yorker a few months ago suggesting that Blackmun's analysis of the development of a fetus used to determine when it becomes a potentially viable infant has held up remarkable well from a medical point of view.
I'm not fully conversant with the medical details, but the gist of the article was that even with the medical advances over the past thirty years, the trimester guidelines for abortion established under Roe vs. Wade are still appropriate.
Food for thought I suppose.
I personally take the view (with tongue firmly in cheek), that a Homo Sapien is only potentially human until s/he recognizes that other intelligences, with other motivations, exist. In other words, if you can't imagine anyone thinking differently than you, you are not yet human. I know some mature members of the species Homo Sapien who aren't human by that definition.
I'm willing to abide by Roe vs. Wade and give them the benifit of the doubt. After all, the potential is still there to think, even if they choose not to use it.
Cheers,
-Flex
Posted by: Flex | March 7, 2006 2:32 PM
It's offensive that people think that without legislation women would be aborting third trimester pregnancies all over the place. As though there are not two adults involved, a doctor and a woman, who can make a moral decision. The women I know who have had abortions (most of the women know) had them done in first trimester because we aren't monsters. The women I know who have had them later had serious complications with the pregnancies, including fetuses with no brains, etc.
To put the focus on trimesters, as though we are willy nilly running out there to have an 8 month old baby cut out us is just more anit-women.
Pro-choice or Anti-women. Those are the differences.
The analogy that is most accurate is one of bone marrow donor and reciever. All the marrow must be killed before transplant. A donor may change their mind all the way to the point of the procedure. IF they decide they can not do it after reciever's marrow is gone they have effectively terminate this other person. But this other person still has no right to the donor's marrow and the donor is not a murderer.
And yes, if Roe v Wade goes down it's time to do paternity testing on EVERY CHILD BORN! and make sure the papa pay the money.
Posted by: marsha | March 7, 2006 2:35 PM
zombiedeathkoala:
If you live in Canada, then you may very well soon find yourself in a situation where unless you expressly opt-out beforehand, you will automatically become an organ donor should you die in hospital and your organs are still viable and harvestable.
p.s. a fetus can be regarded as a moral person and valued rather highly without suggesting that it has "full individual human status", i.e., legal or moral personhood (consent, agency, legal standing as a person before the law). i happen to regard my cat as a person, and frankly i value him much more than i do some human persons i know.
Posted by: Judy L | March 7, 2006 2:39 PM
"Personally, I don't think babies become people until some time after birth."
The average Homo sapiens can pass the rouge test at around 18 months. So they're definitely people then. Like dolphins and some chimpanzees, both of which can also pass the rouge test. On the other hand, while passing the rouge test appears to be proof of sentience, does failing it prove non-sentience? Maybe animals and infants who don't pass simply don't want to remove the rouge from their forehead or can't figure out what the mirror is all about, but do have an internal "I".
Only peripherally related, but there is some evidence to suggest that a newborn baby is concious whereas a nine month old fetus is not: oxygen levels in the uterus may be too low to support cerebral cortex activity to the extent that concious thought is possible. So it may be that concious thought can only start after birth, regardless of whether or not the neural equipment is ready earlier.
Posted by: Dianne | March 7, 2006 2:59 PM
"...Scientifically speaking, when a sperm and egg comes together, what happens? Is death created?"
Jake above beat me to this, but this question is beyond stupid.
Scientifically speaking, when you drive a nail into a board, what happens? Is death created? No? Then it must be alive. It's Frankenboard!
Scientifically speaking, when you coat a wall with green paint, what happens? Do you have a black wall? No? Then you must have the opposite of a black wall, namely a white wall!
I mean, this is just the stupidest sort of "reasoning" I've ever heard.
Posted by: Michael Cohen | March 7, 2006 3:02 PM
If you live in Canada, then you may very well soon find yourself in a situation where unless you expressly opt-out beforehand, you will automatically become an organ donor should you die in hospital and your organs are still viable and harvestable.
No matter where you live, after you have donated tissue or blood you're not allowed to take it back.
Posted by: Roy S | March 7, 2006 3:05 PM
Slightly off topic, but a good question to ask those who believe souls are added as soon as fertilization takes place is "What about chimeras?" In this case, two seperately fertilized embryos merge and a single person is eventuall born (instead of fraternal twins). If each embryo has a soul, does the single person now have two? If not, where does the other one go? This could be great fun, try it out on your fundie friends. If they don't believe you, refer em to this: http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=412
...darth
Posted by: darthWilliam | March 7, 2006 3:16 PM
"If you live in Canada, then you may very well soon find yourself in a situation where unless you expressly opt-out beforehand, you will automatically become an organ donor should you die in hospital and your organs are still viable and harvestable."
That doesn't bother me especially, since I'm already an organ donor. However, the real point is that the legislation you mention still allows the individual to "opt out." It would still be illegal for anybody to use your organs or tissues against your wishes. Contrary to what many would have you believe, human women are more than capable of expressing their desire to "opt-out" of donating their uteruses.
"No matter where you live, after you have donated tissue or blood you're not allowed to take it back."
Of course not, and I don't think any woman would want to "get back" the tissues that had already been used by the pregnancy she is aborting. I've yet to hear about a woman who asked to have her fetus ground up and shot back into her after the abortion.
However, you are permitted to refuse to continue donating. It's not like after you give blood one time the Red Cross gains the right to come harvest your blood whenever they please. Donating a kidney once does not mean that you are suddenly obligated to continue donating organs for as long as there is somebody who needs one.
Posted by: zombiedeathkoala | March 7, 2006 3:22 PM
How about instead of trying to play the "when does life begin" game we acknowledge that if we consider ourselves capable of making the decisions for our family then we need to accord others the same respect.
Keeping abortion safe and legal doesn't mean you have to have one. It just makes it possible for me, a married 41yo mother of 4 to make the very hard and frankly heartbreaking decision to have an abortion because having a 5th child would have been one of the worst things I can imagine happening to my family. Would I make the same choice today, two years later? Absolutely.
As I gear up, again, to oppose parental notification laws and to make my pro-choice stance absolutely clear to my state and federal representatives I find myself increasingly weary of the disrespect. You know - it's that I'm assertive he's agressive she's a bitch crap. The "I'm capable of making well thought out and reasonable decisions for my family but my neighbors are a bit suspect and goodness knows those anonymous women? Obviously they don't have a brain in their heads."
As a commenter said on an earlier blog I don't know why we aren't rioting.
No abortion for me? No sex for you.
Brook
Posted by: brook | March 7, 2006 3:23 PM
it's clear to me the declaration of life at conception is an unsubstantiated edict, and the fight to deprive women control of their bodies using emotional appeals about abortion is a crude and manipulative ploy. both have powerful counterarguments, many of them presented above.
as others may have mentioned, to me, if abortion is murder as a consequence of the edict, then chemical and other contraceptive measures ought to be greatly encouraged. they are not, and that posture shows up the ploy.
but, like so many other issues in this public, noone listens to arguments or cares about fact. political positions become religious beliefs, and we're ill with the idea that people having unassailable beliefs are strong. they who do not change, who cannot be convinced, are dead.
Posted by: ekzept | March 7, 2006 3:49 PM
"Of course not, and I don't think any woman would want to "get back" the tissues that had already been used by the pregnancy she is aborting. I've yet to hear about a woman who asked to have her fetus ground up and shot back into her after the abortion. "
I think a woman should be allowed to use the pre-term products of conception (the fetus, umbilical chord) that have been removed from her body for say, stem-cell treatment for a disease she herself or any of her living children is suffering from. Why not? To suggest that ova and sperm are a kind of "tissue donation" to the zygote that is conceived is a very problematic statement. I'd prefer to stick to the idea that a fetus, while a "product" of sperm, is itself wholly in and of the woman's body, and she can really do as she pleases with it, so long as she doesn't harm a fetus that she intends to carry to term (there is a feeling that if a woman intends for a baby to live, that she has some duty not to harm it during its pre-natal development).
Opting-out for organ and tissue donation sounds well and good, but how would you like it if transactions in the business world were structured like that -- would you be happy to pay whatever the cable company was charging you for a service you didn't sign up for but is being provided by default unless you expressly opt-out? What about those who typically fall outside the health care system -- are you going to send street outreach vans to ensure that homeless people have a chance to have their say in the opt-out campaign?
Posted by: Judy L | March 7, 2006 3:58 PM
Well, that's the whole point. They're incandescent with rage that private citizens dare to make a moral decision--what if you make the wrong one, after all? Far better to let the "community" be your OB/GYN.
Posted by: darukaru | March 7, 2006 4:16 PM
Chimeras forming from embryonic fusion have two souls.
Identical twins are the hard case. Its not clear whether each gets half a soul, or or one gets a soul and the other doesn't.
And of course, it gets really weird over multiple generations of such splitting and fusing. I'm guessing there are some people walking around with 3/16 of a soul, and others with 2 1/4.
Naturally there's a racial component to this. On average, black people seem to have at least 1.8x more soul.
Posted by: Paul W. | March 7, 2006 4:20 PM
There're also many problems associated with claiming that a collection of cells has a 'soul'. If I understand correctly, the Catholic Church (which is one of the biggest groups to oppose abortion and contraception) favors organ donation.
Organs need to be taken from mostly-functional bodies, as they'll be ruined if general physiological failure lasts too long. It stands to reason that donating the organs of a brain-dead but otherwise healthy person would be "killing" them -- and since the body surely isn't associated with the brain, the entity being killed has a soul. Why, then, does the Catholic Church not condemn organ donation as murder? Surely it doesn't matter if it saves a hundred people or not -- isn't still supposed to be murder?
Posted by: Caledonian | March 7, 2006 4:29 PM
One way of looking at the fetus versus child problem is a problem I used to present to my Drug Education classes (in south Dakota). After presenting information about the developmental problems associated with "recreational drug" use, I then asked a question about whether it is OK to give a 3 year old alcohol, crack, tobacco etc. Unanimous answer was NO. What should the consequences be for a parent be? Unanimous answer was prosecuction under child abuse statutes.
Is it OK for a pregnant mother to use drugs with known teratological effects? Unanimous answer is NO. What is to be done with the mother? Lock her up for child abuse? Quite a few said yes while the majority were inclined to heavily promote treatment programs (this was about 3-6 years post crack-baby hysteria since this was the focus of most people's thoughts).
Then I tried to focus on alcohol and tobacco use and the issues of personal freedom/responsibility for the mother. Lock up pregnant women who smoke and drink? It's child abuse isn't it? In the end, this certainly applies to the issue of the "value" of a fetus compared to the value of a child and the way that society views each.
... and now for the utterly crude and gross, but applicable question for anti-abortion advocates: Should there be funerals for sexually active women's menstrual products since there might be an unimplanted blastula somewhere in there?
Posted by: natural cynic | March 7, 2006 4:42 PM
Caledonian,
I'm no Catholic, but I think the argument is that "souls" are immortal, and actually exisit prior to being deposited into zygotes...imagine all those souls, waiting around in God's parlour, bored to tears (which of course they can't shed, since they have no eyes). Of course, if you believe this, when you kill a person you're just killing their body, you're not killing the soul, which is immortal -- the issue that Catholics have is that with the exception of the Virgin Mary (who I have been told was baptized in-utero, which is why she was able to carry the Christ-fetus in a state of grace), babies don't get baptized before they're born, which means that un-baptized aborted fetuses don't get to go to heaven.
Paul W.,
You're a hoot. Keep 'em comin'.
Posted by: Judy L | March 7, 2006 4:50 PM
Judy L: Fetuses don't become people, legally-speaking, until they're born alive
Unless it's last name is Peterson. Or the mother is a casualty of the War on some Drugs.
Posted by: NatureSelectedMe | March 7, 2006 5:35 PM
Should there be funerals for sexually active women's menstrual products since there might be an unimplanted blastula somewhere in there?
Someone's being silly.
Posted by: NatureSelectedMe | March 7, 2006 5:42 PM
Remember how the fundies went nuts over Hillary Rodham Clinton's book "It Takes a Village" ? But watch them now insisting that a pregnant woman needs the guidance and oversight of the (political) society to make a moral decision.
These peoploe are utterly without principals: Anti abortion because life is sacred, and pro Judicial Murder (capital punishment) because life is sacred ?!?! Where is the principal here?
Some old Teacher said "Blessed are the poor." His boastful followers support every policy to starve and oppress the poor today. There was just passed the third cut in subsidies for the elderly poor to pay their heating bills. Situational ethics of a particularly cynical sort.
I have asked rightwing xians to explain the principal to me of the state legislation passed in Colorado in response to the Columbine massacre that parents should be held harmless from prosecution for child abuse when they beat their children. Apparently society shouln't interfere in intra family moral decisions -- except abortion.
I'm confused just watching and listening. What must it be like to be inside the fun house.
Posted by: wswilso | March 7, 2006 6:28 PM
While kicking around ideas about "soul" amongst intelligent, intellectually curious, rational people like those found here is fun, I think it is important to keep in mind that these are not good choices for arguments with true fundies/anti-choice advocates. First, unless you grew up fundi it is unlikely that you know the bible as well as they do, or at least as well as they think they do, so you lose. Second, even if you present one of the above dilemmas to them unless they are pretty much vacuous followers they can just make up a new answer because god says so (i.e. MAGIC HAPPENS). Even if you get one of the really dumb ones they'll go ask Pastor what the right answer is and get the new Magical Revelation, so you lose.
But third, and most importantly, using these arguments cedes the ground of argument to them, putting you at a distinct disadvantage. By promoting this ground for argument you accept, a priori, that mysticism or magic should inform the debate. Using magic as the basis for laws is silly [heavy understatement here]. Discussion of a soul is irrelevant because it is unverifiable. This is, incidentally, the basis for my identification as none-of-the-above (I've got to come up with a catchier name) when people find out I'm not religious and ask if I'm an atheist or agnostic: none-of-the-above, an atheist believes that there is no god without ability to verify, and an agnostic wastes time wondering. There either is or isn't, but you can't know so why worry. Like worrying if you are going to die in a car accident today. Waste of time.
Posted by: EW | March 7, 2006 6:58 PM
I love these silly ethical 'what if...' situations; they really do make us think about difficult situations. Clearly almost everyone at that burning fertility clinic would grab the toddler and leave the petri dish. Even those who honestly believe life begins at conception, and the reason why is interesting. They can be truly convinced of their doctrine, yet leave five to die and save just one, simply because we sympathise/empathise with the creature that looks like us, has eyes to stare at us, can talk and scream for help. It's instinctive to grab the endangered child and we would do it automatically. Even if we believed what the pro-lifers believe. Such instincts are strong enough that I couldn't even find it in my black and withered heart to accuse a pro-lifer of being untrue to his principles when he did this. Instead, I would say how we have evolved to help those of our fellows in distress, and real help for a real person, given when it is needed often overrules intellectual considerations - the same mechanism, in fact, that makes me assist my patients to get abortions, whatever my scruples about when life begins or doesn't. I guess it would just mean that he and I are both equally imperfect!
Posted by: Lancelot Gobbo | March 7, 2006 7:02 PM
Speaking of freezing blastula:
http://plif.andkon.com/archive/wc206.gif
Posted by: Nathan Williams | March 7, 2006 7:19 PM