Now I'm convinced that abortion must be bad

ah, the MCCL billboards. One of the joys of driving from Mankato to I-35 was running into those in Janesville and Owatonna.

Has MCCL actually contributed anything positive to life in Minnesota (or the MFC)?

Child is just another word for adult.

men never get abortions? If you aren't strong enough to have that baby, you've got no grounds to complain about male privilege.

You could have a winner! I'm having a little contest over at my blog:

Can you find a blogger that is more of an ignorant twit, more delusional, more lied to, more of pathetic excuse for a thinking human being than Tristan J. Shuddery?

Enter contest here:

Those signs on the road never fail to provide a hearty laugh.

"If you can read this, thank your mother for not aborting you."

How about this one, which I'm sure applies to millions of adopted children: "If you can read this, thank your mother for rejecting abstinence."

Norm, I'm 99% sure that the blog to which you link ("Shelley the Republican") is a parody.

The other 1% comes from the fact that some right wingers are that stupid.

Fetus's just another word for nothing left to lose.

Fetus ain't nothin' if it ain't free.

"A baby's heart starts to beat at 24 days."

An embryo's heart does start beating at around 24 days. But that doesn't really mean much, considering a chicken embryo's heart starts beating at 42 hours.

The war cry of the anti-abortionists:

"You can have my unborn fetus when you pry it from my cold, dead uterus."

Baby, fetus, embryo, zygote -- they're all the same thing to the TRUE pro-lifer.

Zebrafish hearts begin to beat around 24 hours. This is the moment when they become truly human and their life must be respected.

Zebrafish hearts begin to beat around 24 hours. This is the moment when they become truly human and their life must be respected.

I wonder when the heart of an arthropod begins beating?

Heart cells beat. If random heart cells in a beaker bump together, they'll start beating in unison. "It's little heart is already beating" is the same as "heart tissue is forming".

But I think that's irrelevant, since there's a basic principle of law that no one gets to use your body against your will, even to save their life.

Norm, I'm 99% sure that the blog to which you link ("Shelley the Republican") is a parody.

Orac, I would see why you would say that, and the name Shuddery is sort of a give away, but unless you see something I don't think 99% is a trifle overconfident. I have heard amost as stupid a nonsence from Egnor.

Or is Shuddery different from Shelly?

They are all accompanied by photos of adorable happy babies, too.

Did you know . . .

... almost as stupid a nonsence from Egnor.

Egnor? And you think that name is for real?

I don't plan ever to have an abortion. But that's because I don't plan ever to get pregnant unless I want to have a baby (and abortions don't sound all that fun). And I had decent sex education in school. Hmmm...I wonder if there's a connection?

My personal favorite (seen here in Memphis) says, and I quote: "Yah mama was pro-life, dawlin".

I'm guessing the imitation of a thick-jowled, cousin-loving yokel accent is supposed to give it an air of folksy wisdom, but it just makes me grate my teeth. Especially since I know my mother, and I know for a fact that she is pro-choice (as was my grandmother, who was a co-chairwoman of the GOP back in the day, go figure).

... almost as stupid a nonsence from Egnor.
Egnor? And you think that name is for real?

Wouldn't it be hillarious if it turned out all those righties, all those fundies and the ID institute were really rational people making fun of something that wasn't there. Hard to explain King George though.

there's another mccl billboard that goes something like 'duh, embryos are people too"

yes, complete with 'duh'

sailor asked:

Wouldn't it be hillarious if it turned out all those righties, all those fundies and the ID institute were really rational people making fun of something that wasn't there. Hard to explain King George though.

King George might be explained through rigged elections and all those fake righties are used to make us not be any more suspicious than we are. Obviously there can't be that many people buying Ann Coulter's books.

As for Tristan Shuddery -- he does have an entry on Conservapedia.

The war cry of the anti-abortionists:

"You can have my unborn fetus when you pry it from my cold, dead uterus."

It isn't their fetuses which are the problem, nor is it getting them. It's ours and getting rid of them.

"You can escape your growing, body-distorting parasite lovable, practically living-already baybeee over your own dead body, while we sit about risking nothing. Oh, and how dare you not jump to donate your body to a complete stranger your OWN CHILD when our God says you should?!"

And I should've taken a look at the preview button long enough to find out whether strikethroughs work here. Obviously they don't. "Body-distorting parasite" and "complete stranger" were supposed to be struck out.

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

It isn't their fetuses which are the problem, nor is it getting them. It's ours and getting rid of them.

Bingo.

Because, as every Good Christian™ knows, if you really need an abortion, it's okay. But everyone else doesn't need one, they're just knocked-up sluts who use abortion as a means of birth control or for the pure pleasure of snuffing out an innocent life.

As for Tristan Shuddery -- he does have an entry on Conservapedia.

Conservapedia. Isn't that the site run by the self-loathing homosexual spawn of Phylis Schlafly?

I would rather be taking a long romantic walk on the beach than be typing this comment.

I live in the area, PZ, and see the same damn ones driving from St. Cloud to Hastings.

Don't heart cells beat by themselves, though?

"A baby's heart starts to beat at 24 days."

So, it's DEFINITELY ok for abortion before 24 days, then?

Baby people don't even smile after birth for a month or two. Response to a stimulus is no reason to grant a thing a personality. Ice melts, forming water droplets, which look like tears to certain stupid folks, ergo, ice is alive and gets sad when the heat is turned up.
RIGHTS FOR ICE! (even sounds a little like "right to life")

I saw a bumper sticker today with a fetal ultrasound and the caption "Mother, behold your son." My questions for whoever designed it:
Does that person think that the supposed target audience will actually recognize it as a Bible verse? Because they usually think women who get abortions are ignorant and not religious, so I don't see why they'd use Biblical references.
Does that person also know the context of that verse? It was said by Jesus, to his mother and his best friend, while Jesus was dying. Not the best pro-life scene, really.

I'd have to say my two favorites are, "Vote Life.. God" and "You can't be Catholic and pro-choice!" Meanwhile, these people support the military (contracted killers) and the death penalty. Forgot which parts of those are A. pro-life and B. permissible by Caucasian Jesus.

There's also "I'm Pro-Life and I Pray." To which I respond "My prayer cancels yours out!"

Many years ago I saw a sticker that depicted a fully grown woman in a womb, with the caption "Equal rights for unborn women." I'd love to have run that idiot off the road - some people are just too stupid to live.

RIGHTS FOR ICE!

Now that's how to frame the global warming debate!

Bob

Obviously there can't be that many people buying Ann Coulter's books.

not so fast! I've actually read some serious stories about how many of Ann's books are purchased in bulk by few individuals and groups to jack up apparent sales.

the conspiracy lives on!

should we start calling the right-wing the vapor-wing?

How about aborting the "fetus" a month before birth?

A week?

A day?

The same morning.

All of these things happen at the Tiller clinic in Kansas.

Of course, Roe v Wade may be in trouble, as much trouble as Oliver Wendell Holmes decision in Buck v. Bell that "three generations of imbelciles is enought" or the infamous Dred Scott decision.

The 20th century will undoubtedly be looked back on in future centures as a century of mass exterminatins, gulags, death camps, and murder of innocents.

While the liberals favor aborting their children, if they even bother to have any, the conservatives are multiplying like rabbits.

I say, DARWIN AWARDS for all those who killed their kids!!!

How about aborting the "fetus" a month before birth?

"A week?

A day?

The same morning.

All of these things happen at the Tiller clinic in Kansas."

To this comment I call bullshit. I'd like to see evidence or citations.

K.N.,
Lovely anecdote really. Now tell me, is there any actual evidence of conservatives "outbreeding" everyone else? Care to actually cite something?
I'll take that and raise you an Ann Coulter.
How many kids does your cheerleader have?

Late term abortions are almost always done because birth would kill either one or both of the fetus and mother, or the fetus has a birth defect incompatible with life.

Pardon me while I fail to weep over the abortion of a fetus a week before its due date, when it has no brain and its full-term vaginal birth would threaten the life of its mother.

Fire-breathing mechanical Jesus, 99% of pro-life people are stupid.

And the 21st Century will be known for the stupidity of its internet trolls...

Why worry?

A majority of US citizens still believe abortion is justified. Of course, a majority of those same citizens also believe in the existence of mythical beings and doubt or reject any findings of science which contradict those beliefs. Still, nobody's perfect.

And you still have Roe v Wade, although the opinion has some interesting tidbits if you read it.

For example, on the Hippocratic Oath it found:

What then of the famous Oath that has stood so long as the ethical guide of the medical profession and that bears the name of the great Greek (460(?)-377(?) B. C.), who has been described [410 U.S. 113, 131] as the Father of Medicine, the "wisest and the greatest practitioner of his art," and the "most important and most complete medical personality of antiquity," who dominated the medical schools of his time, and who typified the sum of the medical knowledge of the past? The Oath varies somewhat according to the particular translation, but in any translation the content is clear: "I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion," 14 or "I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly, I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy."

To be fair, the opinion also points out that the Oath may not have reflected the majority of Greek opinion at the time:

Why did not the authority of Hippocrates dissuade abortion practice in his time and that of Rome? The late Dr. Edelstein provides us with a theory: The Oath was not uncontested even in Hippocrates' day; only the Pythagorean school of philosophers frowned upon the related act of suicide. Most Greek thinkers, on the other hand, commended abortion, at least prior to viability. See Plato, Republic, V, 461; Aristotle, Politics, VII, 1335b 25. For the Pythagoreans, however, it was a matter of dogma. For them the embryo was animate from the moment of conception, and abortion meant destruction of a living being. The abortion clause of the Oath, therefore, "echoes Pythagorean doctrines," [410 U.S. 113, 132] and "[i]n no other stratum of Greek opinion were such views held or proposed in the same spirit of uncompromising austerity."

So it is possible to oppose abortion and find classical support for that view without being a slavering Christian fanatic. Just call me a Monty Pythagorean.

Roe v Wade also has this to say about that old faithful, the woman's right to privacy:

The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy. In a line of decisions, however, going back perhaps as far as Union Pacific R. Co. v. Botsford, 141 U.S. 250, 251 (1891), the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution.

[...]

This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent. Specific and direct harm medically diagnosable even in early pregnancy may be involved. Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it. In other cases, as in this one, the additional difficulties and continuing stigma of unwed motherhood may be involved. All these are factors the woman and her responsible physician necessarily will consider in consultation.

On the basis of elements such as these, appellant and some amici argue that the woman's right is absolute and that she is entitled to terminate her pregnancy at whatever time, in whatever way, and for whatever reason she alone chooses. With this we do not agree.(My emphasis)

[...]

We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.

Of course, the purpose of this thread was to highlight the absurdity of some anti-abortion arguments.

My argument has always been that abortion involves the killing of a human being, albeit one at a very early stage of delevelopment and that killing a human being without sufficient cause is wrong. Is that absurd on its face?

For me, this whole issue turns on the questions of, first, whether individual human beings have a right to life, second, if they do, does that right extend to their entire lifespan and, third, can that lifespan be said to start at the point of conception?.

Roe v Wade touches on the issue the issue:

The third reason is the State's interest - some phrase it in terms of duty - in protecting prenatal life. Some of the argument for this justification rests on the theory that a new human life is present from the moment of conception. 45 The State's interest and general obligation to protect life then extends, it is argued, to prenatal life. Only when the life of the pregnant mother herself is at stake, balanced against the life she carries within her, should the interest of the embryo or fetus not prevail. Logically, of course, a legitimate state interest in this area need not stand or fall on acceptance of the belief that life begins at conception or at some other point prior to live birth. In assessing the State's interest, recognition may be given to the less rigid claim that as long as at least potential life is involved, the State may assert interests beyond the protection of the pregnant woman alone.

...but then, in my view, does a Pontius Pilate impersonation and washes its hands of the issue:

Texas urges that, apart from the Fourteenth Amendment, life begins at conception and is present throughout pregnancy, and that, therefore, the State has a compelling interest in protecting that life from and after conception. We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.

Is dating the start of an individual human life to the point of conception the least arbitrary and absurd choice?

Some more undisputable facts:

* If Mary had had an abortion, there'd be no Jesus, and we'd all be damned to hell.

* The bible says killing is wrong. Unless god orders you to commit genocide.

* Babies are nice.

* Motherhood is all women are good for, so abortion devalues women's lives.

* The only good reason to kill an unborn person is if it grows up to be homersexual.

* "Every Sperm is Sacred".

* Even Hillary Clinton was an unborn baby once. So why is it liberals like her but want to kill babies too?

A baby's heart starts to beat at 24 days.

Obviously these people have never looked at cultured heart cells; there is nothing freakier than opening up a cupboard door to see plates full of tissue beating, with nothing attached......

K.N. Singh and Kyra - Here's the thing: Do you see any evidence that conservative women of child-bearing age--even the ones who, like you, make a big to-do about being anti-abortion--are significantly less likely to have abortions than their pro-choice counterparts?

It's one thing to speculate and generalize about abstracts like you do. It's another thing to have to make a hard, adult decision about real things in your own life. When push comes to shove, plenty of women who scream about "the rights of the unborn" use the option they complain about with the same grateful relief as any other women--and for the exact same reasons.

The "Babies are a well-deserved punishment for having sex" crowd ("pro-life" sounds nicer, but let's not kid ourselves about their motives) likes to pretend that every woman who gets an abortion is either an idiot or a near-prostitute, but that's just a reflection of their usual beliefs about every woman who has sex, period. Sexophobes are less likely to have sex, but when they get pregnant, they have the same pressures as everyone else, and they make the same choices.

(Ex: Y'all remember that "appendectomy" one of the Bush twins--then underaged-- had during the 2000 ballot count? Remember how bizarrely unsympathetic and testy her dad was about it? Does anyone seriously believe that the Bush twins would ever be forced to have babies they didn't want?)

Moreover, Singh, pro-choice women don't have fewer kids. They do have about the same number of kids later, when they can take better care of them. It's called taking responsibility, a concept the Right has a lot of trouble with. (Hint: Invariably using the word "responsibility" to refer to what you claim are other people's duties is not taking responsibility. Neither is finding someone else to blame when things go wrong. Nor is taking the same dunderheaded position as everyone else on the Right, simply because everyone else on the Right is taking it.) So your "Darwin" crack is based on crap.

(BTW, regarding my post @14: My baby is now 20 and looks like an ad for expensive menswear. But at birth, not so much. And no matter how healthy, well loved and happily anticipated, the same goes for other people's fresh-squeezed babies--they're fine, just not much to look at.)

To abort something we've been "programmed" to accept, nurture, risk our life for, etc. is PROBABLY something that is NOT casually done. At least listening to women who had abortions, reading and hearing 2nd hand stories about woman who have struggled with that decision, and knowing something about our "instincts" suggest that it is for us as humans a considered and heart-wrenching decision. I could be wrong... but that is NOT the point.

It really boils down to this: women have a RIGHT to control their bodies and their lives! I know that one can point to a million cases where that is not so (that one is restricted with what they can do with their body or with their life)... but to me that is a weak retort to the main principle involved. My restriction on you here justifies my restriction on you elsewhere?!? Analogy is ALWAYS the weakest form of argument. But again not the point I want to make here. Rather...

Abortionists and women that get abortions if sane do NOT want to "kill" anything. That is not their objective. They want relief in some fashion. So why don't the pro-lifers (ANTI-CHOICERS) invest their time, energy, and money into:

1. Proper, safe, affordable and realistic birth control methods with accompanying good and proper education.

2. Methods of taking out whatever in whatever stage from a woman's body without destroying or harming either.

3. commitments and social instruments to TOTALLY absolve the woman of any responsibility, that also guarantee proper, adequate and good lifetime support to whatever in whatever stage is removed naturally or artificially (you can start with UNconditional adoption for all, with care for all in all conditions)

Want to reduce abortions? Improve what you UNconditionally do for BORN babies that are "unwanted" by mothers and parents, and support research and actions as implied above. In other words - PROVIDE REAL RELIEF!!

An abortion does not have as its end goal "killing"... it has a goal of relief for the mother and people involved with the mother. Concentrate on the RELIEF and you ANTI-CHOICERS will reduce what you claim you are against.

PS... you ANTI-CHOICERS (institutionally) REALLY are not hell bent on stopping the "killing" you rant about I think. It is more about maintaining CONTROL over people and their most private thoughts and actions, to give you all the ruse of moral superiority, and to maintain the concept of the sky-daddy and the ghost in us that you need to own. You people are DANGEROUS!!! And I bet you people fail to advance in any significant way root cause solutions or really effective remedies after the fact. It is not in your blood. All religions need poverty and hardship and ignorance and fear and the CONTROL OF SEXUAL LIVES to exist !! They do!! That's why you need to fight anything that advocates pro-choice or that takes your sky-daddy out of the equation. You are becoming less and less relavant and you know it. You need causes to justify your existence. But you are dying as a worthy concept.

Even in good old Fundie USA that while it is the only advanced country that seemingly clings to its superstitions "officially", even in USA religious ferver is an allusion. Under the cover SCIENTIFIC looks show the USA is mostly less religious (and getting less so) than it claims to be.

But you are still DANGEROUS, because RELIGIOUS FANATICS always are, even if there are only a relatively few of them.

Ian H Spedding - At the end of the day, deciding to have an abortion is a practical decision--you realize that you do, or you do not, have the resources (physical, emotional, financial, temporal) to bear and rear a child.

It's a decision that requires (and frequently imposes) a certain degree of maturity.

However (as with Kyra and Singh, and pretty much everyone else in the anti-abortion camp), you have nothing to offer but abstracts, generalities and speculation, like a child playing with toys.

That's fine, knock yourself out. But the abortion argument has a lot of facets, and one of them is that it's a tussle between the anti-abortionist crowd and the grown-ups. A woman making a tough adult decision doesn't need or want kibitzing from a lot of moral infants whom she's never met and whose advice she didn't ask for.

Ian asks: "Is dating the start of an individual human life to the point of conception the least arbitrary and absurd choice? "

Probably is the most absurd and arbitrary to the max - at least to me!!!

But again NOT the point. I believe born people's rights trump the unborn. And especially when a matter involving the DIRECT control of a person's body is involved.. the individual trumps the unborn parasite (of course I as a human want to protect the unborn as a general concept -- don't go there -- I am talking "parasite" as related to the carrier woman).

If you want to work to provide REAL relief to woman and others involved to reduce abortions .. I can see and support that. I can even see "you" advocating alternatives to women - even if they are not perfect. But if you want to restrict personal freedoms because you philosophically give MORE weight to an unborn entity that is essentially a parasite.. well I kind of resent that. But if I misread you I sincerely apologize.

I was an adorable baby. A c section will do that for you.

And seconding the outbreeding thing- being antiabortion isn't like eye colour, it doesn't come coded at birth. If you have a cruel and ethically inconsistent belief system, a great deal of your offspring are going to rebel. Just as some of the more authouritarian leaning offspring of prochoicers will switch camps. Which is why the more extreme breeding cultures try to isolate themselves from outside influences.

IHS: The original Hippocratic oath also prohibits physicians from doing any surgery, with surgery to remove kidney stones being specficially mentioned. Does that mean that surgeons are evil and surgery should be prohibited in the modern world?

Is dating the start of an individual human life to the point of conception the least arbitrary and absurd choice?

In a word, no. But if one does choose this definition then abortion is the least of our public health concerns. I can think of at least three much larger ones.

1. The spontaneous abortion rate is as high as 80%. If human life begins at conception, then we have a huge epidemic of very early death and the average life expectancy in this country is something like 15 years. But someone no one in the pro-life movement is interested in this problem. When I bring it up they offer some extremely weak excuses for not wanting to end the epidemic of dead "babies" (aka zygotes).

2. If life begins with the first living cell then it must end with the death of the last cell in the body. If that is so, we're burying an awful lot of live people on the flimsy excuse that they're brain dead. Clearly, we should keep all bodies on life support until it is absolutely clear that every last cell is dead. Organ transplant is, of course, immoral and so is bone marrow transplant and even transfusion: quite a number of cells will die in the process of transfering the tissue from one person to another and that will never do.

3. Surgery is, of course, also murder. (So maybe the Hippocratic oath is consistent?) After all, most surgeries remove live tissue. For example, an appendectomy frequently removes a live appendix just because the poor thing is sick. Shocking! One MIGHT make exceptions for cases where the appendix or other tissue died before the surgery and the surgeon simply removed dead tissue, but they'd best not remove any nearby live tissue in the process. (Actually, cutting through skin and muscle will inevitably kill cells so never mind: the exception's no good.)

Ian, you happen to be in luck! Nobody will ever force you to carry an unwanted fetus to term. Wow, having testicles instead of ovaries really affords you the luxury of wanting to make decisions for others based on your version of morality without having to suffer the consequences personally, doesn't it?

I have always found Pro-Forced-Maternity men to be the most odious of creatures.

K.N. Singh -

And if you're pure at heart, when you die you'll go to a beautiful place called Heaven...

I'm just yankin' ya! You'll just rot in the ground.

(Thanks, Peter Griffin)

Concerned Joe (#47): This is why some feminist commenters and bloggers have begun to refer to the "pro life" crowd as "pro birth" which is a much more accurate description of them.

Their concern for these babies' lives ends the minute the emerge from the womb.

Is dating the start of an individual human life to the point of conception the least arbitrary and absurd choice?

The Sorites paradox is fun, huh?

As another commenter pointed out, you don't need to pinpoint the end of an individual human life to bury someone. You just need to pick a point where they're definitely dead.

Likewise, you don't need to pinpoint the start of an individual human life. You just need to choose a point where it definitely hasn't started yet, and any abortion performed before that is morally neutral.

I have always found Pro-Forced-Maternity men to be the most odious of creatures.

Wolfhound - There's odiouser: Anti-abortion guys who hit on pro-choice women, whom they believe to be, as the expression goes, accessible--the idea being that they'll eventually marry anti-choice women, but they're entitled to a little fun first. (1)

Suppose such a creep does up in bed with a pro-choice woman. What does he think she's going to do if he knocks her up?

That's right. So in hitting on a woman he disagrees with, he's potentially suborning something he claims to believe is wrong and how creepy is that?

Wait, it gets better: These guys see such a situation as no problemo: He owes her nothing--not moral support, not help with the termination, not even a goodbye note, because she's pro-choice; since it's her choice, it's entirely her problem. And if she actually has the baby, like he claims is the right thing to do? Still owes her zip: She wanted choice, right? Let her deal with it.

If asked, our anti-abortion 4-Fer will whine about how Roe v Wade victimized him by letting women have more say about these things than he gets. (2)

Anti-choice types sometimes complain that liberalized abortion laws allow men to act like pigs. What they mean is, those changes allow their men to act like pigs.

_______
(1) Because even men who are willing to marry them think that, w/r/t this particular form of fun, anti-abortion women are a waste of time.
(2) "Mommmyyyy!! She got a present and I didn't!! It's not fair"

Molly, NYC wrote:

Ian H Spedding - At the end of the day, deciding to have an abortion is a practical decision--you realize that you do, or you do not, have the resources (physical, emotional, financial, temporal) to bear and rear a child.

It's a decision that requires (and frequently imposes) a certain degree of maturity.

However (as with Kyra and Singh, and pretty much everyone else in the anti-abortion camp), you have nothing to offer but abstracts, generalities and speculation, like a child playing with toys.

The right to life is not some vague abstraction. It's the concept behind the laws which stop other people from killing you or I because they don't like what we say or do. Framing (sorry) the debate in terms of the woman's rights and the practical difficulties of pregnancy and childcare is simply dodging the issue. Does the unborn child - should the unborn child - have that same protection from being killed unlawfully as you or I?

ConcernedJoe wrote:

If you want to work to provide REAL relief to woman and others involved to reduce abortions .. I can see and support that. I can even see "you" advocating alternatives to women - even if they are not perfect. But if you want to restrict personal freedoms because you philosophically give MORE weight to an unborn entity that is essentially a parasite.. well I kind of resent that. But if I misread you I sincerely apologize.

My belief is that any society that limits abortion should be prepared to make adequate provision for care of the mother and her child, both before and after birth.

If the mother is unwilling or unable to care for the child after it is born, then it should be taken into care immediately and put up for adoption.

If the pregnancy itself is distressing the mother then the unborn should be removed as soon as medical science allows and placed either with a woman who has volunteered to be a surrogate mother or in some form of artificial incubator. Once that becomes possible at any stage during pregnancy, there will no no need for abortion and I will have no further objections.

Dianne wrote:

IHS: The original Hippocratic oath also prohibits physicians from doing any surgery, with surgery to remove kidney stones being specficially mentioned. Does that mean that surgeons are evil and surgery should be prohibited in the modern world?

According to Wikipedia, the relevant passage reads, depending on which translation you take, either:

I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art.

or

I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work

In other words, it was recommending that they defer to the surgeons.

Dianne wrote:

1. The spontaneous abortion rate is as high as 80%. If human life begins at conception, then we have a huge epidemic of very early death and the average life expectancy in this country is something like 15 years. But someone no one in the pro-life movement is interested in this problem. When I bring it up they offer some extremely weak excuses for not wanting to end the epidemic of dead "babies" (aka zygotes).

Human rights are, in effect, constraints on human behaviour, nothing else. The right to life simply prohibits people from killing each other unlawfully. It says nothing about accidents like being killed by a lightning-bolt - or spontaneous abortion.

2. If life begins with the first living cell then it must end with the death of the last cell in the body. If that is so, we're burying an awful lot of live people on the flimsy excuse that they're brain dead.

The process of death is not necessarily a mirror image of the the process of conception. The criteria we use to decide when individuals are dead are not necessarily the same as those we use to decide when their life began. The single fertilized egg formed at conception is where the development path if an individual human being begins. If all goes well, that will lead eventually to an independent adult human being. That life can be ended, however, without reducing it to a single cell again.

3. Surgery is, of course, also murder.

Murder is the wilful and unlawful killing of individual human beings. The cells killed accidentally during surgery or other forms of treatment are not usually fertilized eggs so there is no crime nor any violation of rights.

Wolfhound wrote:

Ian, you happen to be in luck! Nobody will ever force you to carry an unwanted fetus to term. Wow, having testicles instead of ovaries really affords you the luxury of wanting to make decisions for others based on your version of morality without having to suffer the consequences personally, doesn't it?

I agree that the Universe is an unfair place but, as the character Marcus Cole said in Babylon 5:

I used to think it was a terrible thing that life was so unfair. Then I thought, 'what if life *were* fair, and all of the terrible things that happen to us came because we really deserved them?' Now I take great comfort in the general unfairness and hostility of the universe.

The question is, though, even if I were a woman, would it make any difference to whether or not the unborn have a right to life?

Steevl wrote:

The Sorites paradox is fun, huh?

One of the classics!

Likewise, you don't need to pinpoint the start of an individual human life. You just need to choose a point where it definitely hasn't started yet, and any abortion performed before that is morally neutral.

Certainly no individual life before conception - not in the natural order of things, anyway - so nothing to abort and no moral dilemma.

Framing (sorry) the debate in terms of the woman's rights and the practical difficulties of pregnancy and childcare is simply dodging the issue.

No. The practical difficulties are the issue. Why do you think women get abortions? For theological reasons?

Trying to frame it in terms of these bullshït abstractions, and then claiming that you aren't (as you did) isn't merely dodging the issue. It's an admission that you don't have the foggiest clue what the issue is.

That's the luxury of someone who will never, ever have to deal with this problem for real. Every word you've typed here--and you've typed quite a few, I see--is the intellectual equivalent of jerking off. You have no idea what you're talking about.

On the contrary, it is nor more unreasonable to frame the debate in terms of the difficulties of pregnancy than if you where arguing whether or not, on similar grounds, you had the right to shoot someone who threatened your life, or you should just stand their and let them maim or kill you. The argument for birth defects would, in that framing, say, "But, he only intended to shoot you in the leg, not kill you, so you had no right to kill him instead!", the more extreme view being, "You have no more right than him to kill someone, so you should have just stood there and hoped that your opinion or everyone else's was wrong, and that he only had a) one bullet, and b) missed." Abortion in the same thing, when talking about pregnancy difficulties, If its going to kill one or both, why should the choice be, "Wait and see if the doctor is wrong and both survive (instead of being very wrong and both dying), or, alternatively, "Well, they are only a little malformed, brain damaged, etc, so you *must* carry to term and accept the care for them after!" The choice issue.. Is a bit sketchier, but it could, in some cases, still be looked at in terms of the consequence to everyone involved, if the outcome is suboptimal care, feeding, housing, education, or treatment, from one or both parents, if they *can't* handle a child at that point. Some of the more extreme cases of which *could* be the equivalent of insisting that someone, in this case the child, stand still, while someone shot them in the leg.

Trying to claim that its unreasonable to frame the debate in terms of **real** practical issues and concerns that you never personally have to deal with, and when forced on someone because they are not considered, you will likely never know about, is just bullshit. Morality requires considering all consequences, not just the ones we can imagine effecting **us** personally. And it demands that we do not reject, out of hand, what we consider too minor, insignificant or rare to mean anything. Especially given that genetic problems, mistreatment of kids in environments where the parents are not ready, and many other issues are as common, in some cases, like with minor heart defects and such, as 1 in 100, or worse. How common does a problem need to be exactly, before its acceptable to "frame" the abortion debate around it, given that the other side would love to exclude, by law, **any any all** such contingencies from being valid grounds to do something?

What is it, exactly, that we are respecting when we say that 'murder is bad'?

It's not 'life,' because billions of other organisms are alive; we kill them without thought all the time.

It's not 'human life,' because (as someone already pointed out) we destroy living human tissue all the time in the course of surgery.

It's not 'genetically unique human life,' because every sperm and ovum has a genetically unique compliment of human DNA. (Should we work to find a medical way to save all of those ova that are calously discarded into the toilet by women on a monthly basis? To save the millions of sperm that perish even when a pregnancy *does* occur?)

It's not 'a human heart beat,' because we routinely remove the living hearts from brain-dead people and transplant them into someone else.

So what are we respecting? What makes human life different from other forms, and worthy of special consideration? It's our minds. Until a fetus shows a recognisably human EEG (around 25 weeks), it does not deserve the respect due to a human being.

Fundie Forced-Maternity F***head thus spake: "The question is, though, even if I were a woman, would it make any difference to whether or not the unborn have a right to life?"

Obviously it doesn't to you. But, it would give your opinion a bit more value as far as most Pro-Choice women are concerned. Not that you care. I have absolutely no respect for Pro-Forced Maternity men such as yourself because you will never be faced with a pregnancy of your own.

In answer to your (non) question of whether or not a fetus has the "right to life", the answer is "NO!" Any part of your body can be chopped out, via your personal consent, as part of a surgical procedure. Them's the facts. Tough shit if you don't like it. I'll bet you don't think that's "fair", do you?

Done feeding the stupid troll.

ah, you're not the only one getting adverts for the anti-choice argument, then. they're fairly prevalent on the DC metro system for something called "Second Look." at least they use half a woman in their ads. http://www.secondlookproject.org/tslp_posters.html

You have no idea what you're talking about.

Now, now, Molly, with only facts and reality on your side, how do you expect to go up against not only a time-traveling Dr. Who but now also Babylon 5?

Seriously, Ian, someday you might want to consider examining whether there is any correlation between the crappy, illogical, and misogynistic quality of your arguments, and the fact that you seem to get a lot of your information about life from imaginary science-fiction characters.

There are people out there who need your organs to live!

If you're arguing that women should be legally required to risk their lives and future health for something as unformed as a fetus then surely you can do no less to yourselves in the service of people who have lives and families and great works.

If you're not advocating that people be forced to give up their excess kidneys to the dying then it might be a good idea to shut the hell up about forcing women to donate their future health to fetii.

Human rights are, in effect, constraints on human behaviour, nothing else. The right to life simply prohibits people from killing each other unlawfully. It says nothing about accidents like being killed by a lightning-bolt - or spontaneous abortion.

Have you ever heard of "lightning rods"? They're these nifty little devices that people invented so that lightning bolts would kill fewer people. In other words, normal people are NOT indifferent to death due to accident, whether it be lightning bolts, sudden infant death syndrome, or other "acts of god." Does the FAA only worry about accidents caused by acts of terrorism and shrug off all other accidents as simply unavoidable? Does the CDC only track and attempt to reduce deaths by murder and suicide (ie acts of will)? Of course not! Normally, people are interested in reducing deaths from any cause, whether natural or unnatural, due to malice or not. Yet pro-lifers are completely indifferent to the fate of the 80% of zygotes that abort spontaneously. The only possible explanations are 1. They don't know about them--not true in your case. 2. They don't really believe that single celled organisms are people. 3. They are very immoral and indifferent to suffering when it is not caused by something "sexy" like murder. So, which is it in your case?

The criteria we use to decide when individuals are dead are not necessarily the same as those we use to decide when their life began. The single fertilized egg formed at conception is where the development path if an individual human being begins. If all goes well, that will lead eventually to an independent adult human being. That life can be ended, however, without reducing it to a single cell again.

Almost as weak as the above. All the cells in a human body (except the gametes and red blood cells) have the same genes in their nuclei as the original zygote had. If killing a single living cell with that pattern is killing a person, then it is killing a person whether it is floating alone through the fallopian tube or the last living cell in a dying body. And, in theory, one could take that last living cell and clone it, producing a similar, but not identical, person to the one who has died. In short, any cell can be the start of a new life, it is just slightly harder than when using a fertilized egg. Are you saying people with challanges in their lives have no right to live? And what possible justification for our current definition of "death" (ie brain death) can we have if we consider entities with no brain and indeed no neurons to be people? It simply makes no logical sense.

Murder is the wilful and unlawful killing of individual human beings. The cells killed accidentally during surgery or other forms of treatment are not usually fertilized eggs so there is no crime nor any violation of rights.

Once again, any nucelated, diploid cell has the potential to form a unique human being. So how is killing so many potential humans in surgery then anything other than murder if abortion is murder?

#38 K. N. Singh:

Blah blah liberals blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah conservatives blah blah blah blah.

Blah blah, BLAH BLAH blah blah blah blah killed their kids!!!

Do you even know what a liberal is?

I haven't read through all the comments, so forgive me if I'm being redundant, but I'm wondering why, if "fetus" is just another word for "baby," why don't some of those billboards have pictures of fetuses instead of cute smiling babies?

Hi Ian. Know what? There is no "moment of conception." Syngamy/fertilization/"conception" is, like pretty much everything else in biology, a process. There is a period of about 30 minutes between the entrance of the sperm nucleus into the ovum and the fusion of nuclei, during which time the ovum has already begun to crank up the machinery of development. Where are you drawing your mystical line? Do you deny that sperm and egg cells are living human cells? Is there something magical and meaningful about diploidy? Do you really think there is some externally imposed "right to human life"? Maybe ask some Iraqis about that one.

While the liberals favor aborting their children, if they even bother to have any, the conservatives are multiplying like rabbits.

Is this what they mean when they say breeding ignorance?

Coming to this 'party' a little late!

However I agree whole-heartedly with Molly, RavenT & Dianne regarding Ian's complete lack of sense in his posts....

What an ass!

Molly, et al, have been extremely clear in defining why they hold a 'Pro-Choice' viewpoint. Ian has simply stated that 'at the moment of conception' a diploid cell becomes magically 'human' (whatever that is).

He has not stated why this particular cell should be differentiated from all of the other diploid cells that get flushed within the first few months of pregnancy.

AFAICS there is no functional difference between these cells, and any other 'human' cell... (See... many posts above)

Defining the 'moment of conception' as unique, is using the religious argument (god installs the soul) but without explicitly saying so!

Either say you have a religious motivation for your bullshit, or admit the fallacy of your argument.

"Babies are nice."

Babies are delicious.

Fixed it for ya Kapitano...

Tony: We've gone over this with Ian before...many times. His basic premise is: An embryo IS what it MAY BECOME. In killing an embryo/fetus, you are to some degree actually killing the thinking, feeling human it would have become if you hadn't acted.

So the difference between the embryo and other cells is its future, which somehow magically extends into and is indivisible from its past.

Oh yes, the MCCL billboards. They were big when I was going to Morris in the early 90's, and I see they're still around. I ran into more of them on the Minneapolis/Duluth drive last month.The billboards have evolved over time too. Back in the day, they DID have fetus pics on 'em. Now? Cute babies. Because babies are cute, and fetus pics aren't. It's a lot easier to smile at something recognizably human, than a floating fetus captioned, "I had a finger-prints at 62 days," or whatever.

Also, they're no longer the MCCL billboards, or Pro-Life Minnesota. Its some other agency with the 'paid-for-by' biline now. Though the format hasn't changed much in the last 15-odd years.

Do you really think there is some externally imposed "right to human life"? Maybe ask some Iraqis about that one.

Don't bother. Ian has already explained that the right to life doesn't apply in war, or executions of murderers-who-took-a-perverted-pleasure-in-murder. (It may, however, apply to murderers who don't take pleasure in their crime, hence Ian doesn't think people who perform abortions should be executed. If they're solemn and regretful about it, anyway.) Also, the right to life doesn't apply in the burning-fertility-clinic scenario because it can never be used to make a decision where people might die either way, even if one option leads to the certain deaths of millions and the other leads to the possible death of one. (No word yet from Ian on how the clinic scenario should be resolved if the little girl merely risks disability and disfigurement, rather than death.)

Basically, it's about as meaningful as the Bible saying, "Thou shalt not kill. For exceptions to this rule, see entire remainder of book."

Also, Ian bases the right to life on the suffering of the victim and their loved ones. How this applies to an embryo which is incapable of suffering and whose closest relative would rather get rid of it than keep it, I'm not exactly sure. The answer probably has something to do with timescapes, though.

Does the unborn child - should the unborn child - have that same protection from being killed unlawfully as you or I?

This may sounds heartless, but: no. A fetus is not the same as a baby. It's true that fetuses become increasingly babylike as they develop, and it's also true that you're looking at a situation with few good answers, and not many good dividing lines. You can say put the dividing line at conception--that's a clear dividing line--but it's not a good one. For days after conception, it's nothing more than a collection of cells.

So if you don't use conception, what do you use? Anything else would be to some extent necessarily arbitrary--but it's the only way that really makes sense. Dividing it by trimester is the most reasonable way to handle it. I grant that it's not a perfect solution, but I don't know of a better one.

Because of our age, we had genetic testing when my wife was pregnant. If there was a serious problem, we needed to know in advance--and we were very grateful to have the option to abort if necessary. If the baby had Tay-Sachs, for instance: no way would we bring to term a baby who would be dead in five years.

We didn't take the decision lightly, at all--and luckily we never had to make such a choice. Our children were very much wanted, but if there was something really wrong we needed to have the option to do something about it.

The other thing I have to say on the subject is this: God aborted our first three children. Anyone on the anti-abortion side care to picket Him?

He has, after all, performed more abortions than all the world's doctors combined.

Does the unborn child-should the unborn child-have that same protection from being killed unlawfully as you or I?

Ian, are you aware that all unlawful acts are prohibited by law and therefore every individual, organism, or thing is protected from unlawful acts, by definition?

Or are you using 'unlawfully' to mean 'immoral' so you can get around having to define or justify your moral stance?

Didn't we conclude the last time it came up that Ian treats the "right to life" of a fetus as an Article of Faith first principle and consequently is incapable of being reasoned with on this point?

I'm not likely to ever be pregnant without having planned it for months (or years) beforehand, so you may not like my opinion on the issue... but I tend to agree with my father: it takes a brain to suffer, so if you abort before a brain is developed, there is no "person" there to suffer, and thus it becomes morally neutral. Dad picks 12 weeks as a good cutoff date - there's no brain activity before that time, and it still gives the mother time to notice that she is pregnant, and make her decision before it is ethically taken away from her.

With regards to Ian's (apparent) position on potential as a reason for protections... I have to disagree. That is the argument against using contraception, as well - every sperm has the potential to fertilize an egg, so if you prevent them from fulfilling that potential by either contraception or masturbation, you're "murdering" the unborn... Of course, if they don't suceed in becoming a baby *anyway*, that's alright - as long as you're not interfering with it and stopping them.

I know why there's a difference, though... it's a well known area of psychology that people will always prefer to have a thousand die because of where events are already going than to intervene, save the thousand, and have a *different* single person die because of their actions. Wish I could find the reference for that article - but I read it from a comment either on Pharyngula or Respectful Insolence, so maybe someone else can help me... It was about what decisions people made in hypothetical situations regarding train wrecks and what was required to prevent the accident...

Basically, what I'm saying is that some people regard aborting the embryo as ending potential by their actions. Whereas the tray of a thousand IVF embryos [from the fire scenario alluded to above] doesn't add up to a human child when your choice is to save one of them - in that case, if you did nothing, *both* would die, so you can save the one that's already fully human without guilt; the others had no worse a fate than if you did nothing. Whereas in the abortion case, if you did nothing the embryo would (presumably) turn into a human at some point in the future, to aborting it is ending potential.

I hate having to see both sides of things. Makes me doubt my own position quite a lot... I can *understand* the "potential" argument - I just don't agree with it. I think it comes from a very poorly understood area of human psychology - though maybe only poorly understood by me.

To attempt to summarise:

If a woman is pregnant, then the "natural" path (i.e., no interference) is for her to give birth to a human baby with a mind and rights.

Preventing this from happening can be seen as evil; if you do nothing a child will (probably) eventually live, but if you do this operation that child will not.

This viewpoint neglects to notice the very real issues in the life of the carrier of these cells. It also takes no consideration for quality of life; only quantity.

Cells that might one day become human are not human yet. Stopping them from becoming human is not killing a human - it is stopping cells becoming human.

The quality of the mother's life, and the quality of the life of the eventual child, are both considerations that every pregnant woman takes into account before deciding whether to keep or to abort. Practical issues are far more important than ideals.

And yes, in an ideal world, Ian's solutions would be practicable [removing the unwanted cells from one mother and giving them to a surrogate mother, among other proposed solutions]. But we don't live there yet, and I'd rather live in a world where a woman can choose her fate than one where a cluster of cells in her womb decides it for her.

p.s. Sorry for an overly long post.

p.p.s. Thank you, PZ, for providing a forum for so many interesting people to share their thoughts on contravertial topics.

Molly, NYC wrote:

No. The practical difficulties are the issue. Why do you think women get abortions? For theological reasons?

They get abortions for many reasons. How many of them are sufficient to justify killing?

Trying to frame it in terms of these bullshït abstractions...

You think sucking a fetus's brain out of its skull is an abstraction? Just what the hell do you think is reality?

Kagehi wrote:

Trying to claim that its unreasonable to frame the debate in terms of **real** practical issues and concerns that you never personally have to deal with, and when forced on someone because they are not considered, you will likely never know about, is just bullshit.

Allowing all that to be true, are you arguing that the only practical and moral solution to the problems is to kill? Because, whatever the problems faced by the mother, that is exactly what is being done.

lkl wrote:

What is it, exactly, that we are respecting when we say that 'murder is bad'?

Murder is the wilful and unlawful killing of individual human beings by other human beings. It is the right to life given statutory form and force. What is difficult about that?

Wolfhound wrote:

Fundie Forced-Maternity F***head thus spake:

Thus spake the real voice of pro-abortion...

Dianne wrote:

Human rights are, in effect, constraints on human behaviour, nothing else. The right to life simply prohibits people from killing each other unlawfully. It says nothing about accidents like being killed by a lightning-bolt - or spontaneous abortion.
Have you ever heard of "lightning rods"? They're these nifty little devices that people invented so that lightning bolts would kill fewer people. In other words, normal people are NOT indifferent to death due to accident, whether it be lightning bolts, sudden infant death syndrome, or other "acts of god."

Did you actually read what I wrote?

I will say it again.

Human rights apply to human beings. The purpose of the right to life is to prevent people from killing each other without sufficient cause. It does not prevent people being killed by lightning or trucks or heart attacks. It can't.

I believe that the unborn child is a human being and thus entitled to the same protection against being killed by other human beings as you or I are. That's all.

Dianne wrote:

The criteria we use to decide when individuals are dead are not necessarily the same as those we use to decide when their life began. The single fertilized egg formed at conception is where the development path if an individual human being begins. If all goes well, that will lead eventually to an independent adult human being. That life can be ended, however, without reducing it to a single cell again.

Almost as weak as the above. All the cells in a human body (except the gametes and red blood cells) have the same genes in their nuclei as the original zygote had. If killing a single living cell with that pattern is killing a person, then it is killing a person whether it is floating alone through the fallopian tube or the last living cell in a dying body. And, in theory, one could take that last living cell and clone it, producing a similar, but not identical, person to the one who has died.

So there is absolutely no difference between a fertilized egg and a skin cell, for example? If we took one of those skin cells and placed it in the womb it would develop and grow into an adult human being eventually? Are all those skin cells desperately trying to bud little cloned copies of the parent individual? So what's stopping them?

Or could it be that there is something a little different about the zygote, something which sets it apart from the other cells of the body, something which entitles us to view it as the earliest stage in the development of a human individual?

Dianne wrote:

Once again, any nucelated, diploid cell has the potential to form a unique human being. So how is killing so many potential humans in surgery then anything other than murder if abortion is murder?

Once again, the right to life exists to prevent actual people from killing one another. Murder is the crime of unlawfully killing an actual human being not a potential one. All egg cells have the potential to become individual human beings. Only in the fertilized egg is that potential actualized which entitles us to regard it as the earliest stage in the development of an individual human being.

The troll sure is on a tear--must not be anything worth watching on the Sci-Fi Channel tonight.

Sven DiMilo wrote:

Hi Ian. Know what? There is no "moment of conception." Syngamy/fertilization/"conception" is, like pretty much everything else in biology, a process. There is a period of about 30 minutes between the entrance of the sperm nucleus into the ovum and the fusion of nuclei, during which time the ovum has already begun to crank up the machinery of development. Where are you drawing your mystical line?

If you look at a satellite or aerial photograph of the surface of the Earth you will see areas of land and sea clearly delineated. Go to a coast anywhere in the world and examine it at the molecular level. Will you find a clear line between sand and water? Of course not. Does that mean there is no boundary between land and sea? Of course not.

Leon wrote:

Does the unborn child - should the unborn child - have that same protection from being killed unlawfully as you or I?

This may sounds heartless, but: no. A fetus is not the same as a baby.

I have never said that it is.

My case is that both are different stages in what is a continuous process of development which culminates in an adult human individual.

The 'you' that exists now is very different from 'you' when you were a baby. Are those two 'you's entirely different individuals or are they the same 'you' at different stages of development and at different points in time.

Whichever it is, society regards each as fully entitled to the protection of the right to life. If stages as different as the baby and the mature adult can be equally entitled to the right to life, what is the problem with extending it back a few months from the baby to the fetus or embryo or blastocyst or zygote?

Leon wrote:

The other thing I have to say on the subject is this: God aborted our first three children. Anyone on the anti-abortion side care to picket Him?

I am sorry to hear that, Leon, and if we ever found that He actually exists and where to find Him, then, yes. That's one of a number of bones we would have to pick with Him.

I know why there's a difference, though... it's a well known area of psychology that people will always prefer to have a thousand die because of where events are already going than to intervene, save the thousand, and have a *different* single person die because of their actions. Wish I could find the reference for that article - but I read it from a comment either on Pharyngula or Respectful Insolence, so maybe someone else can help me... It was about what decisions people made in hypothetical situations regarding train wrecks and what was required to prevent the accident...

Here's an article on that research, being pursued by several different teams. It doesn't quite seem to be a matter of intervention vs. no intervention; rather, people are more comfortable saving a bunch of lives in a way which ends another life as a side effect, than directly ending a life in order to save others. It's okay to throw a switch diverting a train from a track with five trapped people to a track with one, but it's not okay to throw somebody in front of the train to stop it.

I don't think that really impacts the burning clinic scenario, though. If the little girl was, say, trapped behind a refrigerator filled with embryos, I don't think most people would have a problem tipping it over to rescue her--even if the refrigerator would probably have sheltered the embryos from the flames. Ian?

Once again, the right to life exists to prevent actual people from killing one another. Murder is the crime of unlawfully killing an actual human being not a potential one. All fetuses have the potential to become individual human beings. Only in the newborn is that potential actualized which entitles us to regard it as the earliest stage in the development of an individual human being.

Anton Mates, you make a good point, and it's one that I would really like to hear Ian answer... because I can't.

By the way, the people calling him a troll - not fair. He is sharing his opinion, and I haven't seen him dissent for the sake of stirring others in other threads, so I think it's safe to say he isn't doing it here.

Oh, and, Llewelly, I disagree about the moment of birth being the dividing line. I think it should bhe the same sort of thing that stops us killing the more intelligent animals - brain function. That starts some months before birth.

(I personally think brain function is a better reason not to eat pork than any biblical injunctions... Pigs are quite smart critters...)

[ending post before it becomes as long as the last one]

Oh, and, Llewelly, I disagree about the moment of birth being the dividing line. I think it should bhe the same sort of thing that stops us killing the more intelligent animals - brain function. That starts some months before birth.

I like the general idea there, but I have two quibbles:

First, some sort of organized brain function starts a couple of months before birth. You get recognizable patterns of brain waves. However, these probably don't reflect the kind of conscious activity found in the brains of the smarter animals. In fact, some neurologists argue that the fetal brain can't sustain that kind of activity no matter how well-developed it is, because there simply isn't enough oxygen to power it. And all of the studies I've seen showing human-like neural responses to visual and acoustic stimuli were conducted on considerably older fetuses--30 weeks and up. It would make some ethical difference to me whether a fetus' brain activity is most analogous to, say, that of a conscious monkey, or to that of a monkey which has been in a coma its entire life.

(Which doesn't necessarily mean the appearance of EEG patterns isn't a good practical indicator of brain function at the present time. But it's only a necessary condition for humanlike brain activity, not a sufficient one, and I would expect us to move to more specific indicators as we learn more about fetal neurology.)

Second, even if brain function is sufficient to put a given fetus in the "more intelligent animals" category, we don't generally have a blanket ban on killing those animals--we simply have a more restricted set of acceptable reasons for doing so. In particular, if a chimpanzee or bottlenose dolphin was physically hooked up to an adult human and would have to remain so for months before it could survive on its own, I think even most animal rights/welfare advocates would permit the human to disconnect hirself. Our only obligation would be to try to help the animal survive on its own as best we could, if it didn't mean unnecessary suffering.

(I personally think brain function is a better reason not to eat pork than any biblical injunctions... Pigs are quite smart critters...)

I agree, and I'm rather ashamed that I've never been able to break the pork habit. (In my defense, it's much easier to get compassionately-raised pork in this city than beef, and if I swore off red meat entirely I think I'd probably go on a violent rampage after a couple of months. I'll probably scale back my consumption a lot once I move.) If there was a law on the ballot to prohibit pig farming, I'd have to support it.

Anton Mates wrote:

I don't think that really impacts the burning clinic scenario, though. If the little girl was, say, trapped behind a refrigerator filled with embryos, I don't think most people would have a problem tipping it over to rescue her--even if the refrigerator would probably have sheltered the embryos from the flames. Ian?

zweiblumen wrote:

Anton Mates, you make a good point, and it's one that I would really like to hear Ian answer... because I can't.

I agree with Anton. I believe that instinctively - and I stress "instinctively" - most people would try to save the little girl first, myself included. I doubt that, in the circumstances described, anyone would pause to consider the finer points of the morality of so doing. But what would that prove, other than that we are conditioned by our culture and possibly our genes to protect the young of our species in preference to the contents of a refrigerator?

If you are asking whether there is any moral case for choosing the little girl over the embryos - or vice versa - I would say that, on the face of it, no. We would have to import other information.

For example, do we believe, as I do, that all human individuals are entitled to the right to life from conception onwards? If we don't, if we believe that the right to life is only assigned after birth, then the only choice is whether or not to meet our moral obligation to save the little girl.

If we believe that entitlement to the right to life begins at the point of conception, however, it is of no help since the little girl and the embryos will all have the same right to life and we will have to bring in yet further considerations in order to choose between them.

The problem is that none of this assists us in deciding whether or not unborn children should have the right to life, still less why any of us should have a right to life at all.

My argument is that the right to life is an a priori assumption or axiom. It exists only because we say it should. Why do we believe it should? We believe it should essentially because we all - or most of us, at least - want to survive for as long as we can. Why should any of us survive? No reason at all. All we have is our instinctive drive for survival.

We could make the same challenge to the pro-abortionist's belief that the woman has a right to privacy or physical autonomy which overrides all other moral considerations. Roe v Wade concluded that the woman has such a right but it is not unqualified. But, again, we can ask on what grounds such a right can be said to exist at all - other than that society has agreed that it should. And why has society so decided? Again, most probably on the same grounds of "do unto others..." that underpins the presumptive right to life.

The fact is that women have a right to physical autonomy for the same reason that they - and the rest of us - have the right to life, which is because we have decided that is how it should be - nothing more, nothing less. And if we can decide that we can decide that the unborn should have the same rights as well if we choose.

The arguments in favour of abortion are based on relieving the mother of the psychological and physical discomforts of pregnancy, relieving her of the psychological, financial and social burden of caring for and raising the child after it is born and relieving society of the same burden of care if the child is unwanted by the parents.

The question is, do we accept that the best solution to these problems is killing the child that is the unwitting cause of them. After all, the mother might also have parents suffering from some form of senile dementia like Alzheimer's disease. Should we then kill those parents to relieve the mother and/or society of the burden of caring for them?

And how do we know that a woman who, initially, does not want the child might not come to want and love it given enough time? And if the mother persists in rejecting the child, how do we know it will be a burden and that there are not people out there who will be only too happy to give it the love and care that the mother is unable to provide give half a chance? As for those cases like that described in the original article where a woman is forced for some reason into having more children than she wants or can afford, does abortion solve the underlying problem or is just a quick fix? Isn't it likely that she will be back for further abortions in due course? So how will killing all those fetuses have really helped matters?

Apert from certain exceptions on medical grounds, are we really saying that the best and only solution to these problems is killing the unborn? We are the most advanced and intelligent creatures on this planet, is that really the best we can do?

"Go to a coast anywhere in the world and examine it at the molecular level. Will you find a clear line between sand and water? Of course not. Does that mean there is no boundary between land and sea? Of course not.

Without granting that your apples are in any way comparable to my oranges, I have to disagree. And I don't have to go to the molecular level: the intertidal zone is neither land nor sea.

And how do we know that a woman who, initially, does not want the child might not come to want and love it given enough time? And if the mother persists in rejecting the child, how do we know it will be a burden and that there are not people out there who will be only too happy to give it the love and care that the mother is unable to provide give half a chance?

Yes, because that's exactly what happened in the Romanian AIDS orphanages under the forced-pregnancy policies of Ceauşescu.

Oh, wait--no, it didn't. But surely things will be different this time, so it's worth taking away every single woman's medical decision-making autonomy, just for that chance.

Sign me up, Ian; you've convinced me at last.

I agree with Anton. I believe that instinctively - and I stress "instinctively" - most people would try to save the little girl first, myself included. I doubt that, in the circumstances described, anyone would pause to consider the finer points of the morality of so doing. But what would that prove, other than that we are conditioned by our culture and possibly our genes to protect the young of our species in preference to the contents of a refrigerator?

Yet again, you ignore that the scenario is precisely about the moral question. We're not dropping people into actual burning clinics and watching their reaction, we're asking them what they think they should do in that scenario. If they think the young of the species should be protected over the contents of the refrigerator, the question's been resolved.

And of course it doesn't demonstrate anything other than their innate inclinations plus their conditioning. What else do you think morality's made of?

The problem is that none of this assists us in deciding whether or not unborn children should have the right to life, still less why any of us should have a right to life at all.

My argument is that the right to life is an a priori assumption or axiom. It exists only because we say it should.

Okay, this is very strange.

Ian, you have claimed not to believe in objective morality--you think morality's just a bunch of essentially arbitrary value judgments. Great, so do I. Then what can it possibly mean to say that a moral statement, like "All fertilized eggs and their developmental successors have the right to life," is an axiom? How can a subjective value judgment be axiomatic?

The only possible sense in which a value judgment can be true or false, it seems to me, is in whether it accurately describes the feelings/opinions of a given person or group of people. We have already established that your right-to-life-assumption does not accurately reflect our morality; the only remaining question is whether it accurately reflects your own. Hence the clinic scenario; hence the various questions about your moral judgments concerning other life-or-death situations. Based on your responses to those, I conclude that you don't actually believe the right-to-life principle you've articulated. Or, more charitably, you may hold some sort of belief which is labeled by that principle, but it is not a useful guide to your actual moral judgments.

It's always amusing when someone claims that a question is irrelevant, but then goes to so much effort to evade actually answering it. I'm still waiting for Ian to give a number to how many embryos would have to be in the freezer before he thinks they should be saved over the child. It is a very straight forward question. Pick a number Ian, 0 through infinity.

@ Anton, D:

Based on your responses to those, I conclude that you don't actually believe the right-to-life principle you've articulated. Or, more charitably, you may hold some sort of belief which is labeled by that principle, but it is not a useful guide to your actual moral judgments.

It's always amusing when someone claims that a question is irrelevant, but then goes to so much effort to evade actually answering it.

In other words, even Ian can't live with the entailments of Ian's position, so he's got to wiggle out of that somehow.

Oh, and zweiblumen--he's been doing the same leaps of illogic, unsupported assertions, surreal misogyny, and monomanical screeds since at least 2005 over at the old Pharyngula. Every time he's called on it, he shifts the goalposts and contradicts himself, then subsides until another opportunity to begin de novo with his first principle, like it's never been debunked over and over again.

Then, he invokes "human rights" and ZOMG teh BAYBEEZ, as if those of us on what he frames as the "pro-abortion" side were advocating genocide or something. He tops it off by slinging around the names of random fallacies (like "strawman"), in the hope one of them will stick to his opponents someday, somewhere. But he never actually examines his arguments to see where the self-contradiction and misogyny lie; he just subsides until the next outburst.

So please explain to me how calling out his trolling on the subject of abortion is "not fair", 'kthx?

So please explain to me how calling out his trolling on the subject of abortion is "not fair", 'kthx?

Doesn't it have to be intentional conversation-derailing to be trolling? I don't think Ian's just throwing out stuff at random to annoy us; he honestly believes his arguments are valid. He just doesn't examine them very much, as you say.

He just doesn't examine them very much, as you say.

Well, you do raise an interesting point--can you be too clueless to troll?

Ok, I'll take back "troll" in favor of "monomaniac". How's that?

Sven DiMilo wrote:

"Go to a coast anywhere in the world and examine it at the molecular level. Will you find a clear line between sand and water? Of course not. Does that mean there is no boundary between land and sea? Of course not.

Without granting that your apples are in any way comparable to my oranges, I have to disagree. And I don't have to go to the molecular level: the intertidal zone is neither land nor sea.

What difference does that make? I can simply ask where are the boundaries between the intertidal zone and land on the landward side or sea on the seaward side. Either way, the fact that the boundaries become increasingly blurred the closer you look does not mean that a transition does not exist. The same applies to the process of fertilization. The fact that it is a process which stakes a measurable period of time does mean that a transition from unfertilized to fertilized does not occur.

RavenT, Adjutant Minion wrote:

And how do we know that a woman who, initially, does not want the child might not come to want and love it given enough time? And if the mother persists in rejecting the child, how do we know it will be a burden and that there are not people out there who will be only too happy to give it the love and care that the mother is unable to provide give half a chance?

Yes, because that's exactly what happened in the Romanian AIDS orphanages under the forced-pregnancy policies of Ceauşescu.

Oh, wait--no, it didn't. But surely things will be different this time, so it's worth taking away every single woman's medical decision-making autonomy, just for that chance.

You seem to be so fond of the Ceausescu example that it almost qualifies as a species of Godwinism. Not that it makes any difference since it is really just an example of the fallacy of guilt by association.

The ban on abortions in Rumania under the Ceausescus was part of a crude attempt to increase the size of the nation's population and had little if anything to do with any right to life of unborn children. The policies of such a repulsive regime say no more about the morality of abortion than do the racial policies of the Nazis about the theory of evolution. At most, they provide evidence for my contention that any general ban on abortion would have to go hand in hand with an increased provision of support for both the mother and child.

As for women's autonomy, no one is suggesting that they be forced to have children as happened in Rumania. They should be as free as men to have sex whenever and with whoever they choose and contraception - whether plan A or Plan B - should be readily available. All that is being suggested is that killing an unborn child because the mother feels she cannot cope with it for various reasons is not a sufficient cause if the child has the right to life.

You seem to be so fond of the Ceausescu example that it almost qualifies as a species of Godwinism. Not that it makes any difference since it is really just an example of the fallacy of guilt by association.

Hmm, so the made-up word "feminazi" is not Godwinism, yet showing a real-world case study of the outcomes your proposed policy leads to somehow is Godwinism? Another of your unsupported first principles, I suppose, although this is one of your personal best: "Looking at the evidence is Godwinism."

Would PubMed case studies of Burmese refugee women on the Thai border who give themselves abortions with sharpened sticks also meet your "criteria" of Godwinism, whatever that is? Because that's all I'm pointing out, not guilt by association, but simply that your proposal to take away women's choice about whether or not to be pregnant has already been tried, with disastrous results. It is a human-rights violation of the first order.

The way you talk about women in the abstract, though, I kind of doubt you would understand. When you say "human rights", it's pretty clear that you include blastocysts and exclude adult women.

The ban on abortions in Rumania under the Ceausescus was part of a crude attempt to increase the size of the nation's population and had little if anything to do with any right to life of unborn children.

The point is, when abortion is taken away, whether in the name of your principle or Nikolae's, it is a public health disaster. The principle behind it may or may not be an interesting abstraction, but the reality is that this implementation leads to this outcome. We've seen this movie time and time again, and you keep on proposing a replay. It is not Godwin nor guilt by association (although I confess I would have qualms to be in that crowd), but a flat-out examination of the evidence.

Your proposal has been demonstrated incoherent time and again. If it were just a plot of one of your Doctor Who episodes, nobody would care, but since this affects real human beings in real life, as the case studies bear out again and again, you have to expect to get called on how wrong your first principle is.

As for women's autonomy, no one is suggesting that they be forced to have children as happened in Rumania. They should be as free as men to have sex whenever and with whoever they choose and contraception - whether plan A or Plan B - should be readily available. All that is being suggested is that killing an unborn child because the mother feels she cannot cope with it for various reasons is not a sufficient cause if the child has the right to life.

"if the fetus has the right to life" is your first principle. There is no proving it, as you try to do with your analogies to show that it is the "most logical". But implementing that first principle requires taking away the medical decision-making autonomy of slightly more than half the human race, and has demonstrably resulted in multiple public-health disasters.

How much more evidence do you need to accept that your idea is neither a little detail ("all that's being suggested..."), a coherent or logical proposition, or workable in the real world?

Because going over and over these points with you is just like arguing with creationists about the meaning of "theory". It never gets any more interesting, and you never bring anything new to the table*, yet rational people can't afford anymore not to confront irrationality, so I guess we just have to keep engaging with it.

(Actually, I may be mistaken on that--suggesting that examining the public-health history of Romania, Burmese refugee women, pre-Roe America, etc. is Godwinism--you may actually have managed to argue something new there.)

RavenT, you missed something even more amusing about Ian's accusation. Like with many of his challenges, he commits what he falsely accuses others of. Just earlier today he claimed the practice of abortion is a Holocaust. As for Ian's position, I'm fairly convinced at this point that he knows it is untenable, he's admitted as much, but it simply is the best he can do to rationalize a position he holds for reasons he is either unwilling to confront or unwilling to reveals openly.

Hee-hee, you're right, D -- I totally missed that post, and that's exactly what he did. There goes another irony meter!

Anton Mates wrote:

I agree with Anton. I believe that instinctively - and I stress "instinctively" - most people would try to save the little girl first, myself included. I doubt that, in the circumstances described, anyone would pause to consider the finer points of the morality of so doing. But what would that prove, other than that we are conditioned by our culture and possibly our genes to protect the young of our species in preference to the contents of a refrigerator?

Yet again, you ignore that the scenario is precisely about the moral question. We're not dropping people into actual burning clinics and watching their reaction, we're asking them what they think they should do in that scenario. If they think the young of the species should be protected over the contents of the refrigerator, the question's been resolved.

Yes, the scenario is about a moral question but which one? Does it test the claim that the embryos should have the right to life or does it test whether subjects are prepared to argue and act in accordance with whatever their views on the issue might be?

I will say yet again that, in that scenario, I believe both the child and the embryos have the same right to life and that it is impossible to choose between them on those grounds alone. If I chose to save the child, as I have said, it would be for other reasons that would say nothing about whether or not the embryos should have the right to life in the first place. The scenario fails as a test of that claim.

The problem is that none of this assists us in deciding whether or not unborn children should have the right to life, still less why any of us should have a right to life at all. My argument is that the right to life is an a priori assumption or axiom. It exists only because we say it should.

Okay, this is very strange.

Strangeness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Ian, you have claimed not to believe in objective morality--you think morality's just a bunch of essentially arbitrary value judgments. Great, so do I. Then what can it possibly mean to say that a moral statement, like "All fertilized eggs and their developmental successors have the right to life," is an axiom? How can a subjective value judgment be axiomatic?

How can it be anything other than axiomatic?

There is nothing in what we have observed about the Universe to suggest that the right to life, for example, is an intrinsic property of human beings like height or mass or girth nor does there appear to be any way that it can be derived from those observations. It is a right because we say it is a right and nothing more.

Of course, we can and do argue that moral codes exist, for example, to promote the greater good, to increase happiness or to improve the welfare of one and all but that is simply trying to justify one axiom by appealing to others. What is there in our observations of the Universe to suggest that we are any more entitled to improved welfare or happiness than we are to the right to life?

The only possible sense in which a value judgment can be true or false, it seems to me, is in whether it accurately describes the feelings/opinions of a given person or group of people. We have already established that your right-to-life-assumption does not accurately reflect our morality; the only remaining question is whether it accurately reflects your own. Hence the clinic scenario; hence the various questions about your moral judgments concerning other life-or-death situations. Based on your responses to those, I conclude that you don't actually believe the right-to-life principle you've articulated. Or, more charitably, you may hold some sort of belief which is labeled by that principle, but it is not a useful guide to your actual moral judgments.

In my view, it is both inappropriate and misleading to describe moral judgements as true or false. They are not claims about the natural world which we can test to see how accurate they are. They are guidelines or rules which are intended to regulate the way we behave towards one another and we have developed them ourselves for our own benefit.

As for being inconsistent with proclaimed beliefs, I think we would all agree that moral codes are to some extent contingent rather than being absolutes. We regard stealing from others as wrong but would we bring the full weight of the law down on a destitute mother who stole to feed her starving baby? We say that, in general, killing people is wrong but we allow it in self-defence or to save the life of another if there is no reasonable alternative. It depends on circumstances.

In the case of the burning clinic scenario, I have described what I think I would do if it were a real emergency. As a moral question, given that I believe both the child and the embryos have the same right to life, being forced to choose between them presents a dilemma which cannot be resolved on those grounds alone. The only way a choice one way or the other would become possible is if the conditions of the scenario are modified. If we assume that the child has family and friends who would suffer greatly as a result of her loss while the parents of the embryos are unknown then that knowledge provides some justification for choosing the child. On the other hand, we could assume that the child is dying from a hitherto incurable illness to which the embryos are immune and, therefore, the source of a potential cure that could benefit millions. On those grounds we could justify saving the embryos over the little girl. The question is, do either of those scenarios have any bearing on whether the embryos should have the right to life?

How can it be anything other than axiomatic?

There is nothing in what we have observed about the Universe to suggest that the right to life, for example, is an intrinsic property of human beings like height or mass or girth nor does there appear to be any way that it can be derived from those observations. It is a right because we say it is a right and nothing more.

Yes, that much is true. But you keep using "axiomatic" and "most logical" as though they were interchangeable.

When you say that the fusion of the egg and the sperm is "the most logical" point at which to assign human rights, you are taking your axiom, and representing it as the end result of running it through a logical process of some sort, and ranking the possibilities from most to least logical.

What you mean is it's axiomatic to you, and you use the term correctly above. But that's a far cry from saying it follows that your criterion is the "most logical".

In fact, it's highly illogical, because it contains its own contradiction--to optimize your concept of human rights, you have to take bodily autonomy away from more than half of the human race.

So while you interchange "axiomatic" and "most logical", your inherently self-contradictory position's actually a good contender for "least logical", though you still haven't done the work to establish that--it's still just axiomatic. And my position may be just as axiomatic as yours, but it has the advantage of not requiring subjugation of millions of the already-born.

As for Ian's position, I'm fairly convinced at this point that he knows it is untenable, he's admitted as much, but it simply is the best he can do to rationalize a position he holds for reasons he is either unwilling to confront or unwilling to reveals openly.

You know, every in a while, I do feel bad about taking Ian's poor arguments, his irrationality, and his misogyny to task so thoroughly--while I certainly don't know anything about his own situation, his attachment to his arguments has a desperation that is reminiscent of someone who was told over and over again at a formative age what a burden he was, and how someone wished he'd never been born. While reality doesn't change to accommodate those of us who've had rotten childhoods, I do feel bad about the pain that people face when they have to confront their realization of reality. And whether or not that has any connection to Ian, his arguments do have that same quality to them.

Then he calls us Nazis once again, and I get over any qualms.

Yes, the scenario is about a moral question but which one? Does it test the claim that the embryos should have the right to life or does it test whether subjects are prepared to argue and act in accordance with whatever their views on the issue might be?

If you believe morality is subjective, how can you distinguish between the moral claim and subjects' views on that claim?

I will say yet again that, in that scenario, I believe both the child and the embryos have the same right to life and that it is impossible to choose between them on those grounds alone. If I chose to save the child, as I have said, it would be for other reasons that would say nothing about whether or not the embryos should have the right to life in the first place. The scenario fails as a test of that claim.

I already modified the scenario so that the child need not die, but is merely horribly burned, resulting in lifelong disability, discomfort and disfigurement. I notice that you have yet to say how the choice should be made in that case.

How can it be anything other than axiomatic?

You have said that moral statements "are value judgements we make about the world." Are your other value judgments axiomatic? Is "salmon tastes good" or "salmon tastes bad" an axiom?

In my view, it is both inappropriate and misleading to describe moral judgements as true or false. They are not claims about the natural world which we can test to see how accurate they are.

If they are, as you have said, value judgments, then certainly they are. In particular, they are claims about us. If I assert that "sugar tastes good", that's true if I like sugar and false if I don't. One can readily check if I'm lying by offering me sugar. If I make a face and spit it out, that's good evidence that the statement was false.

They are guidelines or rules which are intended to regulate the way we behave towards one another and we have developed them ourselves for our own benefit.

As for being inconsistent with proclaimed beliefs, I think we would all agree that moral codes are to some extent contingent rather than being absolutes.

Ah, so you don't think moral statements are value judgments. You think they're arbitrary rules one lays out in the hope of regulating the behavior of others, and which need not be consistently followed if one decides another rule would momentarily be better.

Fair enough; in that case, there's no point in further discussion. You wish us to follow a particular rule of behavior with regard to embryos, but don't give us any reason why we would want to; therefore we refuse.

We regard stealing from others as wrong but would we bring the full weight of the law down on a destitute mother who stole to feed her starving baby? We say that, in general, killing people is wrong but we allow it in self-defence or to save the life of another if there is no reasonable alternative. It depends on circumstances.

In that case, it is not correct to say that we regard stealing from others as wrong. We regard stealing under certain circumstances as wrong. Explaining your moral decision in a given scenario (say, to punish or spare a thief) by "stealing is wrong" is therefore inaccurate unless you can explain why the relevant circumstances obtain.