William Saletan appears to be a bit dismayed to find that some abortion rights advocates follow the “pro-choice” position to its logical conclusion:
Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, goes further. “Is there anything qualitatively different about a fetus at, say, 28 weeks that gives it a morally different status to a fetus at 18 weeks or even eight weeks?” she asks. “Why should we assume later abortions are ‘bad’—or, at least, ‘more wrong’ than early ones?” Furedi rejects this assumption and concludes that “in later pregnancy, too, I believe that the decision, and the responsibility that comes with it, should rest with the pregnant woman. … We either support women’s moral agency or we do not. … There is no middle ground to straddle.”
Among other things, this means no time limits. Furedi argues that “women should have access to abortion as early as possible and as late as necessary.” In her current essay, she writes: “To argue that a woman should no longer be able to make a moral decision about the future of her pregnancy, because 20 or 18 or 16 weeks have passed, assaults [moral autonomy] and, in doing so, assaults the tradition of freedom of conscience…” In fact, “the delivery of an abortion procedure in the second (and even third) trimester is preferable to its denial.”
Furedi has a point. If like most abortion advocates, you base the moral status of a fetus on functional criteria such as consciousness or rationality, then it makes no sense to change that status based solely on the calendar.
These essays vary, but together, they capture the absolutist worldview. There’s no moral difference between eight, 18, and 28 weeks. No one has the right to judge another person’s abortion decision, regardless of her stage of pregnancy. Each woman is entitled to decide not only whether to have an abortion, but how long she can wait to make that choice.
It’s one thing to preach these ideas in the lefty blogosphere. It’s quite another to see them in practice. That’s where Kermit Gosnell, the doctor at the center of the Philadelphia scandal, comes in. According to the newly released grand jury report, Gosnell accepted abortion patients without regard to gestational age. “Gosnell catered to the women who couldn’t get abortions elsewhere—because they were too pregnant,” the report explains. “More and more of his patients came from out of state and were late second-trimester patients. Many of them were well beyond 24 weeks. Gosnell was known as a doctor who would perform abortions at any stage, without regard for legal limits.”
This meant killing viable babies. “We were able to document seven specific incidents in which Gosnell or one of his employees severed the spine of a viable baby born alive,” the grand jury concludes. One victim was killed at 26 weeks. Another was killed at 28. A third was killed at 32. Some of the dead were 12 to 18 inches long. One had been moving and breathing outside the womb for 20 minutes. The report alleges hundreds of such atrocities. One employee admitted to severing the spinal cords of 100 babies, each one beyond 24 weeks.
Having read his column for years, I find it hard not to feel sympathy for Saletan. Although he describes himself as a “pro-choice moderate,” he often shows signs of conscience that are almost wholly lacking in the abortion absolutists. Still, he makes an error that is common among pro-choice advocates: he assumes that the abortion limits he is comfortable with are logically and morally defensible. They are not, as Ann Furedi rightly points out. Kermit Gosnell and the other abortion absolutists may engaging in evil, but at least they can’t be accused of being inconsistent with the logic of the pro-abortion position.
(HT: Rod Dreher)
January 21st, 2011 | 2:12 pm
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January 21st, 2011 | 2:18 pm
Absolutists on both sides seem to be misled by the same error. Each side would do well to study the sorites paradox.
January 21st, 2011 | 2:20 pm
Rod Dreher is blogging again?? Where? Or did he email you the link?
January 21st, 2011 | 2:29 pm
It will be interesting in the weeks and months ahead to see how many pro abortion advocates will be willing to jump on Furedis bandwagon in light of the slaughterhouse in Phila. A slaughterhouse I might add that if it had been about dogs, cats, horses or rats would have been shut down by the city, the state and the federal governments years ago. The U.N. would stick its nose in.Peta would be apoplectic, there would be marches in the streets and tears in the gutters. There would be heartfelt and heart breaking speeches, one by Michael Vick, and chants decrying the torture and death of these innocent creatures. Congress would probably pass a law, that’s what they do, donations to animal shelters would skyrocket. “what kind of country are we that this would happen here” would echo across the land. This though, this thing in Phila.is just a klitch in the system, hey these things happen in the best run pograms, er, programs. A little better oversight and we’ll have it up and running in no time. Pay no attention to the little bodies behind the curtain.
January 21st, 2011 | 2:47 pm
Mr. Ehrlich:
It would seem that the sorites paradox is relevant only for those who assert that the nature of a fertilized egg changes due to the gradual accretion of discrete changes, and even then only marginally so, as the primary question is not one of quantity or aggregation. Perhaps if one were to make the “pro-choice” argument that a zygote is not human primarily because it has too few cells, one’s argument would be susceptible to the sorites paradox. This is not a widespread position, however.
The most common “pro-life” argument holds that the product of the union of a human sperm cell and a human egg cell is a human being.
January 21st, 2011 | 2:49 pm
Rod Dreher is blogging again?? Where? Or did he email you the link?
I wish he were. Rod is one of my favorite bloggers. He emailed me the link, though I’d have preferred to read his thoughts on the matter rather than write about it myself.
January 21st, 2011 | 3:50 pm
Mr. Ehrlich seems to be unaware of the distinction between a heap and an integral organization. Or can he possibly think life itself is a heap? In that case, he needs to specify what the pieces are. He can’t possibly think passing seconds are the bits that make up a life, can he? If so, he must lead a very boring life. Or is he thinking that living cells make up a life? Then I have no idea what he makes of birth and whether post-birth humans matter. I think he’s just making a category mistake.
January 21st, 2011 | 6:09 pm
One can believe that consciousness is a necessary component of humanity, and that consciousness requires at least a brain above a certain level of development. For example, all the connections to actually register pain, one of the most basic forms of awareness, don’t form until after 20 weeks. Based on what I’ve read, it seems like awareness develops at least after twenty weeks, but before the forty weeks of the typical gestation period.
One can further believe that just like night turning to day, there probably doesn’t exist a sharp, unambiguous dividing line between ‘not conscious’ and ‘conscious’. But still, the “calendar” does have some relevance.
Given that, one can believe that the vast majority of abortions (which take place much earlier) don’t actually end a human life… and still be greatly troubled by the alleged actions here.
There’s a separate problem with totally banning abortions after 24 weeks, though. In the vast majority of late abortions, there are serious medical issues involved – very few women go though six months of pregnancy and then decide on a whim to terminate.
January 21st, 2011 | 7:16 pm
In which case, “murdered in his sleep” is a contradiction in terms. Sleeping people are by definition not conscious and therefore not human.
January 21st, 2011 | 10:03 pm
Paul, the argument that persuaded me is that, whatever categories we choose, it has to apply to all identical biological organisms.
Until I thought about that, I was okay with pro choice.
But the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me: if you have two identical creatures and one is classed as a valuable human being – while the other is classed as trash – then what you have is not a biological classification scheme, but a political one.
Biology, not politics, should determine such categorizations.
Whether or not a person is a human being cannot be a choice. Your status as a human or non-human cannot be based on someone else having aspirations or wanting convenience.
Whatever we decide about when a person becomes human, it must apply to all babies – there can be no double standard where whether you are classed as a human is based on whether your mother wants you.
We know – we KNOW – that when a murderer kills a pregnant woman, and that woman wanted the baby, that the thing that was killed was a baby.
We are willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars to save a baby born prematurely, if the baby is born to parents who want him.
How can there be equality under the law if an identical creature – or a creature MORE human than the one we are willing to spend tends of thousands of dollars on – is classed as other than human, for no better reason than because the mother wants to pretend she isn’t pregnant?
January 21st, 2011 | 10:21 pm
Are you sure no self-awareness exists while sleeping? It can be at a low level, like a pilot light, without being extinguished. Dreams are an altered state of consciousness, not the absence thereof. And some processing happens even outside of REM sleep.
Besides, if human life is indeed a process, then one can look at ‘murder’ as “precluding that process from ever continuing again”. Someone asleep can wake up; a brain blown to fragments can’t boot up again…
January 22nd, 2011 | 7:11 am
Paul wrote
“The most common “pro-life” argument holds that the product of the union of a human sperm cell and a human egg cell is a human being.”
Perhaps, it would be better to say that what one has is the beginning of a human life, that is “a living individual whole whose life is—all going well—to be the life of one or lives of more than one human being,” to quote Miss Anscombe
Otherwise, our opponents will raise all sorts of questions about mono-zygotic twins, transivity of identity and the like, which are bound to be distracting, even though they are actually morally irrelevant.
January 22nd, 2011 | 8:06 am
In the garden of life and human society , who is the master of knowledge and authority to plant a seed or pull-out a weed?
We do have control on our back-yard garden….?or we think we do ? How much we care/ or how much we can do to please ourselves/ persue our social and mental peace…? I have no answer! Money satisfies the enablers…that is naother individually answered question.
January 22nd, 2011 | 10:32 am
I’d be happy to concede that pro-lifers have nothing to learn from the sorites paradox if they were to stop using arguments that appeal to a sort of line-drawing problem. Since, however, their arguments (or at least their rhetoric) so often seem to heavily rely on this sort of maneuver, I don’t see them doing this soon.
Most people probably do not initially find it plausible that killing a human zygote is, morally speaking, like killing a 10-year old child. People sometimes, however, come to feel forced to this strange conclusion because of a difficulty in drawing a sharp line between permissible and impermissible killings of the human life form as it develops, second-by-second, from a zygote into a 10-year old child. While they see very obvious and significant differences when they compare the two ends of this spectrum, the smooth continuum from zygote to child makes it seem very odd to draw a line at any one point that marks so great a contrast (the contrast, that is, between mere killing and murder). And that, of course, should remind us of the sorites paradox.
I’m open to discover otherwise. I’d love to hear a pro-life argument which doesn’t appeal to the line-drawing problem, but which compellingly explains why it is that aborting a human zygote should be regarded as murder. As it stands, people who aren’t already convinced probably won’t find Anscombe’s observation sufficient.
January 22nd, 2011 | 11:53 am
Ray , what difference does it make how you parse this thing, it’s all meat right. I mean consciousness is just a function of of a slightly more talented chunk of meat. By what a priori criteria is awareness given a pass or for that matter a 40 yr. old woman. I have enough respect for your intelligence to know that you will have a considered reply. I reject it before you give it. You see much of these kinds of discussions revolve around meat processes which compel nothing. It’s all about what you are willing to accept. You accept abortion, I don’t. You think we are explained entirely by a materialist world view, I don’t. I happen to believe that abortion, except in the rarest of cases, has two parts, the act itself and the preemptive nature of the act. That is the killing of what the child in the womb will become.Abortion is the taking of an innocent life in the womb and the mental murder of the child you know it will become. So all of your dancing about awareness etc. finds its truest expression in what one actually does. Murder always has a inexorable logic, it finds a way.
January 22nd, 2011 | 1:41 pm
Michael Currie
You are right. Tertullian says, in the Apologetics, “”He is a man, who is to be a man; the fruit is always present in the seed.”
Likewise, Augustine, two centuries later, in Marriage & Concupiscence says that abortion destroys, not an individual only, but his or her lineage
January 22nd, 2011 | 7:17 pm
I guess that says it all.
January 22nd, 2011 | 11:25 pm
In respect to your reasoned defense of abortion you are correct. I have been engaged in this argument for 40 years and I find the various defenses of the indefensible tiring. You have made your choice and I have made mine. Yours is about meat pretending that it matters. I believe that God has put before us a “blessing and a curse, life and death” and I am not confused about which is which nor am I conflicted about whether it matters.
January 23rd, 2011 | 5:53 am
Sorites is dumb, it’s just a language game. A crowd is a lot of people. How many constitute a crowd? It’s left to the person because the whole point of a crowd as a term is to be indeterminate in number. That’s why we call it a crowd, and not “1000 people.”
Indeterminate terms are indeterminate for a reason: it’s because human beings may encounter situations where numeracy is not possible. A crowd does not stop being a crowd at various points: don’t we say out thoughts often crowd in on us?
January 23rd, 2011 | 8:21 am
The 5th Dogma, to proclaim Bl.Mother as Mother of all living may be the antidote for the abortion epidemic as well as the many crimes against dignity of life !
It would hopefully bring to most hearts the truth that our lives – lives of the unborn as well as of our seemingly weak and erring brethren , it all belongs to a glorious Mother ; that we are called only to coperate with her , in he role as The Mother !
Even our President demonstrates how the mother wound – the seeming hidden hatred against life and motherhood that the enemy brought in , can be so pervasive and powerful !
In his situation , the reasons can seem blatantly leading to him still being in the grip of that mother hatred !
‘You shall bring forth children in pain’ – Eve was told , possibly to help to ameliorate this mutual alienation that the enemy had brought forth – the pain helping the woman to recognise better the preciousness of her child !
The parents who get temped by all the negatives that life can offer for their children and themselves with the resultant despairing decision that it is best to not even try – thus the truth of all the joys of good relationships with the children and trust in God’s help – all these get blocked off !
Our President giving open support for that scheme of despair does not make things any better !
May be the flood of Chinese products ( many carrying the dragon emblems and such ! ) make things worse !
Let us hope that the 5th Dogma would bring
forth the joyful miracle – the recognition of to whom our lives really belong !
‘My soul magnifies The Lord ‘ – words of our Mother !
And that magnification is possibly no where as needed as in our present situation when we clearly need to know , in the depth of our hearts whom we belong to – thus to accept the dignity and help that The Lord wants to give !
The other dogmas that proclaim who our Mother is have helped us to come to this fulfilling role of our Mother and await the miracles !
May be Mongolia pleading with China ,to do away with their present monstrous policy and that they want to have more people in their lands ; same for Russia ; the good weather from such Godly decisions prevailing over lands helping many to more confidence in being ready to accept larger families !
And then one day , heaven having been filled with the number intended for same – the universe gets folded up , to usher in the New Heavens !
January 23rd, 2011 | 8:31 am
Well, actually, I’m no more pretending than you are: http://badidea.wordpress.com/2007/09/27/the-meaning-of-meaning-why-theism-cant-make-life-matter/
January 23rd, 2011 | 8:49 pm
“In the vast majority of late abortions, there are serious medical issues involved ”
You mean like at Gosnell’s clinic? Or do you have some reason for saying this?
January 24th, 2011 | 9:34 am
This picture is important:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:US_abortion_by_gestational_age_2004_histogram.svg
Hardly any abortions happen after week 20. There is some data (from 1987) about reasons for abortion ( http://www.holysmoke.org/fem/fem0543.htm ), but of insufficient statistical power to talk about abortions after week twenty, since it bunched together “week 16 and beyond” in one bin.
I’m unaware of solid data about reasons for abortions after twenty weeks, but the anecdotal reports I’ve heard put them as almost entirely due to medical reasons. If you have more concrete data, I’d be very interested in seeing it.
January 24th, 2011 | 11:22 am
Dblade apparently assumes that similar issues of indeterminacy or vagueness don’t arise within moral questions. But why assume this?
January 24th, 2011 | 2:04 pm
Ray Ingles, if “hardly any abortions happen after week 20″, then why do people get so upset by laws restricting abortion only to that period before the fetus develops a nervous system?
I would like to know if Gosnell’s abortions were included in the statistics recorded on that histogram.
If your goal is credibility, you might also skip Wikipedia and go straight to wherever the original information came from. I am fine with using Wikipedia to look up the latest pop reference, but let’s be real – Wikipedia is only “always right” in the sense that science is “always right”: not in the sense that you can actually trust anything it says – since it claims being frequently wrong is a feature, not a bug – but only in the “not really” sense that you can trust that the minute they learn they are wrong, they will update their text and, of course, destroy/bury/do away with or minimize all the evidence of their own history of distributing false information (because the whole point of Wikipedia appears to be authority without responsibility).
January 25th, 2011 | 7:19 am
Blake –
Well, the nervous system – or at least nerves – start forming within ~30 days, but it’s awfully hard to argue it’s aware of anything then. Again, 20 weeks is only the earliest point where it can be sensibly a fetus could be aware of something as basic as pain.
I’m all for laws restricting abortion after that, so long as they have exemptions for the life and health of the mother. You cannot force someone to risk their life and health for another. (Not in our legal system, anyway.)
How about looking just a tiny bit further down the page and finding out? Or looking at the title for what year the data’s from?
January 25th, 2011 | 3:56 pm
Ray Ingles -
The problem is you’re changing the standards. Shifting the goal posts.
We are supposed to pretend abortion is “just a bunch of cells”, but we’re supposed to oppose any restrictions on abortion that would limit the procedure to only killing things that are “just a bunch of cells”.
If and when abortion is restricted to the first few days of pregnancy, then you can say abortion is “just a bunch of cells”.
Until then, you can’t say that.
And as for whether Gosnell’s abortions were included, the point (are you evading it on purpose, or out of ignorance?) is that obviously things are going on that are not being recorded in the official record.
As far as the life and health of the mother, why not go all the way? I’ve got a relative who just had a heart attack: the presence of an obnoxious teenage son might kill him. So why stop at merely killing dangerous fetuses? Why not kill ANY kid who might endanger the life – or for that matter the aspirations, hopes, dreams, and goals – of the parent?
January 25th, 2011 | 9:15 pm
One errant cell in the body can cause cancers !
In the case of the embryo/baby , research shows that cells live in the mother for many years afterwards !
Thus , our judging human life even in its earliest phase as just ‘ a bunch of cells ‘ is mislabeling !
Even at that early stage , if the mother/parent has to live with cells that carry the memory of murder , its effects on all involved, even for generations down may not be measurable !
January 26th, 2011 | 9:18 am
Blake –
Whoa there, Tex. If you could find an example of me being inconsistent, that’d be one thing. But saying that, if someone else who shares some elements of my position says something different from me, then I am ‘shifting goalposts’… that’s just wrong.
Let’s say I catch you eating a ham sandwich, and say, “You’re religious, and some religious people say eating pork is a sin, therefore you’re being inconsistent!” How much sense does that make?
First off, I’ll note that you are the one who introduced the phrase “just a bunch of cells” in this discussion – that’s not a quote of my words. But fine, if that’s the terminology you want to use, let’s go with it.
The question under discussion is where the boundary lies between ‘a collection of cells’ and ‘an aware human being’. I don’t think this has a sharp, definite answer. (What’s the exact nanosecond ‘night’ becomes ‘day’?) But even if we can’t be certain what the sufficient conditions are, I’m arguing that we can identify some necessary ones. For example, an integrated and cross-connected nervous system.
I can only work with the data I have. The question is, how far off is that data? If you think it’s significant, you should start, or contribute to, research to demonstrate it.
Because we’re pretty sure the obnoxious teenage son is an aware human being. And if his behavior is actually threatening someone’s life, we have legal proceedings that can deal with the situation short of killing him.
If we get to the point where we can implant a fetus in another womb, or in an artificial environment to keep it alive, I will be all for that.
January 26th, 2011 | 2:35 pm
Ray Ingles, I don’t understand.
For one thing, I already did point out how you are inconsistent: you say abortion is “just a bundle of cells”, but you are not in favor of restricting abortion only to the first few days, so why is that not inconsistent? If it is true that a fetus is only a “bundle of cells”, it is only true for the first few days. It is certainly clear that many babies are aborted after the point at which preemies have been successfully born.
I don’t understand how you seem to be suggesting that people come in two categories – “bundle of cells” vs. “aware human being”. How is it that a baby is only a bundle of cells until the moment it is born? What is it about the act of being born that magically makes it an “aware human being”?
It’s also not clear to me why being “aware” makes a difference in one’s status as a human. Why does awareness matter? What is it about awareness that is more important than the founding principle of this nation that we are all endowed with certain rights, including a right to life? Especially given that the lack of awareness is, first of all, not measurable – it is merely an assumption on your part (and I know enough about science to know that they DO NOT KNOW and CANNOT MEASURE when someone or something is or is not conscious or self-aware, because they don’t even really understand what consciousness is*).
You have changed it so that “we all have the right to life” has become “we all have the right to life if we are self-aware”. What gives you the right to do that?
And if you have the right to just arbitrarily add conditions to who has rights, then why doesn’t everyone else? Seems to me a bit hypocritical to be dehumanizing a population on the one hand, and pretending to care when the kids in our school routinely dehumanizing each other (to the point where bullying causes suicides). Either dehumanizing is okay or it’s wrong.
So are you suggesting that you have a unique ethical insight that grants you a unique power to determine when dehumanization is okay, or are you suggesting there is a logical argument that makes this instance of dehumanization somehow different from every other form of dehumanization?
*Ockham’s razor might be appropriate in exercises where the “point” or goal is to gather knowledge, but in ruling human societies, it is inappropriate; it lacks ethical safeguards and has a documented history of leading to human rights abuses. The appropriate standard has to start with erring on the side of caution or “doing no harm”, not on the side of simplicity or ‘elegance’.
My second question is why you
January 26th, 2011 | 2:43 pm
Ray Ingles, we don’t need to get to the point where we can implant a fetus before we do it.
Right now, if we tried and failed (and we would not fail, because we do have the technology to do that), it would still be better for the fetus than what we are doing to that fetus currently.
January 27th, 2011 | 9:52 am
Blake –
Um, again, you introduced that terminology, not me.
And this is what we’re arguing. I believe that, while a fetus shows increasing organization as time goes on, it cannot be aware of anything until the nervous system is present and interconnected. In that sense, until then it is no more a human being than a liver is a human being.
And I said – direct quote here, please pay attention – “Again, 20 weeks is only the earliest point where it can be sensibly [argued that] a fetus could be aware of something as basic as pain. I’m all for laws restricting abortion after that, so long as they have exemptions for the life and health of the mother.” (Emphasis added, in the hopes you’ll read it this time.)
It’s possible my position doesn’t fit within the mental framework you’re using to understand the abortion debate. You certainly seem to be confusing what other people have said with what I am saying.
January 27th, 2011 | 11:41 am
Because it’s the difference between a rock and a person. Because it’s the difference between property – which may be disposed of as the owner deems fit, so long as they don’t harm anyone else – and agents that deserve respect and over whom the rights of others are limited.
No one objects when you mow overgrown grass on your lawn, because grass isn’t aware of anything. You’re not causing it to suffer. If you chopped off the top six inches of your children or your wife – or even your dog – though, you can expect people to register some concern.
Awareness is the difference between ‘things’ and ‘agents’ – people. Even animals, which aren’t human beings, still get accorded respect due to their awareness, even if it’s not full self-awareness.
A liver is human tissue. But it’s not a human being, it has no awareness. The nervous system, in particular the brain – in particular, the cortex – is where awareness happens. Swap out every organ in someone’s abdomen, it’s still the same person. Swap out someone’s brain, it’s not the same person anymore. Chop off their head and keep the rest alive, you don’t have the person anymore.
I’m following the logic everyone already follows in the cases I detailed above.
Actually, the positive presence of awareness is usually quite detectable, as is its impairment or elimination when the brain is damaged (again, read some Oliver Sacks; he’s a neurologist who writes with empathy, poetry, and keen insight).
There are definitely difficult cases where it’s hard to tell if awareness is present or not. But just because twilight exists doesn’t mean we can’t say that some times are definitely ‘night’ and others are definitely ‘day’. And if the sun isn’t present, we can be confident there won’t be ‘day’ anymore.
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