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Tristyn Bloom
Matthew Cantirino
Anthony Esolen
Gene Fant
Greg Forster
Matthew J. Franck
Collin Garbarino
Robert P. George
William J. Haun
Leroy Huizenga
Katherine Infantine
Joseph Knippenberg
David T. Koyzis
Robert T. Miller
Matthew Milliner
David Mills
Mark Movsesian
William Mumma
Nathaniel Peters
R.R. Reno
James R. Rogers
Russell E. Saltzman
Matthew Schmitz
Kevin Staley-Joyce
David Talcott
Anna Williams
On 26 September 2012, at the close of Yom Kippur, the Canadian Parliament voted 203–91 against M-312. Children in the womb, for legal purposes, will remain non-persons whose lives may be ended with impunity. But who will atone for that?
September 26th, 2012 | 11:11 pm
We will all atone in one way or another, particularly the children killed by abortion in that country. I hope that the politicians who voted against personhood for the unborn are truly ignorant of their actions, and not just callous or politically calculating.
September 27th, 2012 | 2:20 am
This is very disturbing. However, it’s obviously not really different from the United States. In the latter, the unborn have very little protection. At least in Canada, they have the courage to state, (as wrong as they no doubt are) what they consider to be the rational basis for denying the unborn protection: they’re not persons. In the US, we like to concentrate less on the theoretical basis for denying the unborn a right to life.
September 27th, 2012 | 2:32 am
I would add that, we should not give up. The fight for the unborn is not lost. We need to be patient. We need to develop compelling reasons why the unborn are not just human, but also count as persons. In addition, we must show that we fully support the right of women to control their own bodies, and this right does not conflict with outlawing abortion in most cases. I state the obvious here, but it’s easy to get sidetracted with extraneous issues. If these issues (personhood of the unborn, and its corollary, that the unborn have a right to life, and that women have the moral right to control their own bodies, and outlawing abortion does not infringe on this) are dealt with successfully, only the most dogmatic “prochoicers” will be left unconvinced.
September 27th, 2012 | 8:42 am
I bet self-described “progressives” voted for barbarism.
Abortion is progress? It really isn’t a new practice, although for a brief, shining moment there seemed real enlightenment. “Progressives” are moral and intellectual retrogrades on this issue.
Students today ask how the authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights could continue to own slaves. They wonder about Germany’s “willing executioners”. People who call themselves “progressives” and yet support abortion (and all seem to do so) are tomorrow’s puzzle.
September 27th, 2012 | 9:32 am
Peg: I bet self-described “progressives” voted for barbarism.
Are people supporters of barbarism, if they do not believe that a fertilized egg is a baby or a child?
Peg: They wonder about Germany’s “willing executioners”.
Who? These two words occur in the title of a work that is no less slanderous than the idea that the pope at the time was “Hitler’s Pope”.
Peg: People who call themselves “progressives” and yet support abortion (and all seem to do so) are tomorrow’s puzzle.
Tomorrow’s puzzle is how conservatives can be so consistent in advocating secularism for the Islamic world, while strongly opposing it at home. Or how they can be so consistent in supporting free speech for “blasphemy” about Islam, while wanting to throw the book at those two Russian girls for their “blasphemy”.
Abortion is legal throughout the civilized world, with very few exceptions. Even when there was a referendum in Italy to outlaw abortion, with the support of the Vatican, only 32% supported it. The legality of abortion correlates very strongly with the rights women have in general, hence, it’s the uncivilized world where abortion is illegal.
September 27th, 2012 | 9:41 am
Peg: I agree with the substance of your comment, but nobody pays too much attention to Goldhagen anymore.
September 27th, 2012 | 9:52 am
Maximilian:
I’m trying really hard to see how to interpret your last sentences with some degree of charity. Help me out here. Are you really arguing that since “civilized” parts of world have legal abortion, then if we want to be keep being civilized we’ve got to keep it too?
Surely you jest.
September 27th, 2012 | 10:09 am
If all unborn are persons, is a pregnant woman who travels internationally guilty of human smuggling?
The question of how the law should relate to pregnancy isn’t a simple one.
September 27th, 2012 | 10:13 am
arty, agreed re Goldhagen, but I think plenty of people still ask why good people do nothing—or even become complicit—when they see evil in their midst. It’s an age-old question and is not limited to mid-century Germans by any stretch of the imagination. It gets to the fundamentals of human nature and of sin.
I believe that people who debase the status of unborn humans are morally obtuse. They are slipping from civilization and enlightenment back to savagery. I hope their prejudice is merely ignorant. Otherwise, they are using casuistry to quash their own consciences as they support the holocaust. God help them.
September 27th, 2012 | 10:44 am
Dogs, cats and hampsters are not persons yet we have found ways to legislate for their protection. The same can be said for bald eagles, property, intellectual and artistic products etc.. We are a country that has spent the last 250 yrs. or so producing laws and regulations protecting or prohibiting all manner of things, some of these are simple; murder, thievery, rape, copyrights, patents etc. Many are complex and need a degree to understand their nuances but when it comes to what is in the womb, nascent human life ,which is simple to understand, nuance goes out the window. We create an arbitrary standard to justify doing what we wanted to do all along without actually explaining how that standard marks someone for death when the plain truth is that to kill something it must first be alive and as we all know its’ prime and primal urge is to remain so. The rights that obtain to a fetus are those that are appropriate to its’ stage in life, that right which is appropriate to its’ station is life.
All of the arguments for the killing of the being in the womb are so much gloss, an after thought motivated by the primary reason which is I do not want this thing that is growing inside me.
September 27th, 2012 | 11:24 am
Legal persons have the right to sue for damages. Thus a miscarried blastocyst could sue its mother for wrongful death becuase she went horseback riding or breastfed its older sibling. (Breastfeeding thins the uterine lining, preventing the implantation of fertilized eggs.) There is no possible way to allow women any freedom at all if fetuses are legal persons.
September 27th, 2012 | 11:58 am
Arty: I’m trying really hard to see how to interpret your last sentences with some degree of charity. Help me out here. Are you really arguing that since “civilized” parts of world have legal abortion, then if we want to be keep being civilized we’ve got to keep it too?
It was to note an interesting correlation. According to Peg, allowing abortion is “barbarism”. However, this “barbarism” is only confined to the parts of the world we call civilized, while the uncivilized parts are free of this barbarism. What you make of it is up to you.
Peg: I believe that people who debase the status of unborn humans are morally obtuse.
We’ve heard a lot of your “beliefs”, but not a lot of your answers. If someone does not believe that a fertilized egg is worthy of legal protection, does that make him a supporter of barbarism?
September 27th, 2012 | 12:01 pm
Michael: [Supporters of abortion] create an arbitrary standard
Please describe your non-arbitrary standard.
Michael: All of the arguments for the killing of the being in the womb are so much gloss, an after thought motivated by the primary reason which is I do not want this thing that is growing inside me.
I have not often noted that there are beings growing inside of me. In fact, not just “not often”, but not ever. And yet I strongly support the rights of women to abort early-stage pregnancies. There, that invalidates your hypothesis.
September 27th, 2012 | 12:04 pm
Karen wrote: ” There is no possible way to allow women any freedom at all if fetuses are legal persons.”
Please, if you have a rational argument to make, make one. But in this case, reductio ad absurdum makes you look absurd, not your opponents. That you could even write such silliness and think it makes a point boggles my mind.
September 27th, 2012 | 12:22 pm
peg, If you look at much of the progressive policies, they are ripped from the late 19th century Europe. Nationalism and power centralization. Malthusian delusions and eugenics. Camping moral judgments under the guise of scientism. Nothing new.
September 27th, 2012 | 12:44 pm
“We’ve heard a lot of your “beliefs”, but not a lot of your answers. If someone does not believe that a fertilized egg is worthy of legal protection, does that make him a supporter of barbarism?”
Abortion is barbaric. It is the deliberate taking of innocent human life. It is violent and bloody. It kills.
September 27th, 2012 | 12:54 pm
In that case they may be uneducated rather than barbaric. A unique and separate human being exists from the moment of conception. That is not a matter of religious or philosophical opinion. That is a scientific fact.
From conception the child is as human as he/she is going to get. Everything that makes it human is already present. It will assimilate nutrition, hydration and oxygen, but those things do not add humanity to the child any more than they add humanity to other creatures that assimilate them. Actually the human fertilized egg is “essence of humanity.”
The child’s gender, eye color, hair color, facial features, natural talents and so on have already been determined and are present in their initial forms. The fact that these attributes have not yet matured such that they are recognizable by us does make murdering the child less barbaric, it just lessens the culpability of the offender to the extent that they are not cognizant of the true nature of their act. They may have no intention of behaving in a barbaric manner and may not be guilty of doing so, but the act of taking the life of an innocent child remains intrinsically barbaric.
The reality is that within that fertilized egg is multi-tasking, self-repairing, self-replicating nanotechnology that includes communication systems with error detection and correction, digitally encoded instructions stored in biological memory that are read by cellular processes to instantiate intricate, three dimensional cellular machinery needed for metabolism and reproduction (think CAD/CAM), along with the necessary quality control mechanisms, and much, much more. To think of that newly conceived child as merely an insignificant speck is just ignorance. The functional complexity of a modern, automated factory is nothing in comparison to the functional complexity of that new human life.
Nice plantation owners in the Old South didn’t see slavery the way we do today. Their perception of Blacks, which they thought was correct, was entirely wrong. That perception was, for the most part, created by a culture that had indoctrinated them with bigotry from the time they were small.
Today, the culture has created a false perception of an embryo which is entirely wrong and also amounts to bigotry towards a segment of the human family. The embryo is not an insignificant speck that just happens to have the potential to become a human being. It is a living, growing human being that upon close inspection is found to be an astoundingly intricate and functionally complex masterpiece of divine engineering beyond anything modern science knows how to build from scratch. More intricate, functionally complex activity than is found in modern, automated factories is taking place in that “speck.” It is a child busily living and industriously growing with an amazing intensity considering the tiny size of that brand new boy or girl.
That is the reality. Sure, nice people don’t see it that way, but most of those nice people, I believe, have good hearts and would respond to education accordingly, and frankly, would be horrified at interrupting the spectacular divine work taking place in what they thought was merely a microscopic bit of tissue if they knew better.
Taking the life of the child in the womb used to be against the law. The notion that it is wrong to do so predates Christianity and was explicitly prohibited by the ancient physician’s Oath of Hippocrates. The victim of the bigotry of our times is the child in the womb. That bigotry will eventually be dispelled. It is an aberration that violates the basic human instinct to protect the young of our own kind. The question is how long will ignorance and bigotry prevail and how many innocent human lives will be taken before the bigotry is dispelled.
September 27th, 2012 | 1:45 pm
“If all unborn are persons, is a pregnant woman who travels internationally guilty of human smuggling?”
If one considers a pregnancy to be a parasite that you’ve stolen from somewhere, then yes. If one considers pregnancy to be carrying one’s own child in the womb, then no.
“The question of how the law should relate to pregnancy isn’t a simple one.”
And no one claimed it was. Your above deep, pondering question notwithstanding, spare us the false solemnity.
Let us know where you stand with regards to the Canadian Parliment’s action. Make sure you read what the actual proposal was that was defeated.
September 27th, 2012 | 2:05 pm
“If someone does not believe that a fertilized egg is worthy of legal protection, does that make him a supporter of barbarism?”
I trust the difference between a barbaric act and a deliberately barbaric action is not lost in this question. Is your determination of whether a barbaric act has taken place based on what a person *believes* about the situation?
Interestingly enough – the nature of a fertilized egg was just the question that the motion voted down by the Canadian Parliament wanted to pursue.
In 40+ years since Roe vs. Wade, science has progressed by incredible strides – ultrasound, sonography, indeed inter-utero video – and the supporters of abortion have fought in every quarter against allowing the evidence garnered by these tools from entering into the discussion.
September 27th, 2012 | 2:35 pm
Fixing mistakes in the last two paragraphs of my previous post:
That is the reality. Sure, many nice people don’t see it that way …
… The notion that it is wrong to do so predates Christianity; abortion was explicitly prohibited by the ancient physician’s Oath of Hippocrates. …
September 27th, 2012 | 2:48 pm
No matter what you feel about abortion, it seems to me M312 was not worth the effort (assuming I understand Canadian government and law). M312 would have set up a committee in parliament to answer the following questions:
By human being the Canadians seem to mean something more akin to what we would call a human person.
Whether an unborn child at any specific state of development is a human being or a human person is not a medical question. It is a philosophical question, upon which there is no significant hope of reaching a resolution, especially in a legislature. Hundreds of years of legal precedent go against considering an unborn child a human person. To do so has all kinds of unknown ramifications for pregnant women, each of whom will be put in the unique situation of being a human person with another human person inside of her who deserves full protection of the law.
September 27th, 2012 | 2:53 pm
In 40+ years since Roe vs. Wade, science has progressed by incredible strides – ultrasound, sonography, indeed inter-utero video – and the supporters of abortion have fought in every quarter against allowing the evidence garnered by these tools from entering into the discussion.
JDD,
Evidence of what? As I said above, the important questions about abortion aren’t medical. They are philosophical (and legal).
September 27th, 2012 | 5:46 pm
Peg: Abortion is barbaric. It is the deliberate taking of innocent human life. It is violent and bloody. It kills.
Thank you for your assertions, but you don’t provide any evidence for them. And you still didn’t answer my question. Do you believe that someone who does not believe that a fertilized egg is worthy of legal protection, does that make him a supporter of barbarism? If you do not want to answer my question, that’s perfectly fine, but please tell me that this is your intent.
Harry: A unique and separate human being exists from the moment of conception. That is not a matter of religious or philosophical opinion. That is a scientific fact.
I doubt that you would be throwing around Bible verses, if you actually believed this. A fertilized egg is not a human being. Human beings can’t be frozen and stored forever, fertilized eggs can. And in fact, if fertilized eggs are human beings, then a quiet massacre is taking place, because 50% of fertilized eggs fail to implant and are ‘killed’.
Harry: For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
–Psalm 139:13
That’s the crux of your argument. It’s purely religious, dressed up in secular terms. That may explain that apart from the lone eccentric, no secularist supports the anti-abortion position.
JDD: Is your determination of whether a barbaric act has taken place based on what a person *believes* about the situation?
My question isn’t really about a barbaric act, but rather, a barbaric person. For example, if someone believed in human sacrifice, I would call that person a barbaric person, though no barbaric act has necessarily taken place.
JDD: In 40+ years since Roe vs. Wade, science has progressed by incredible strides – ultrasound, sonography, indeed inter-utero video – and the supporters of abortion have fought in every quarter against allowing the evidence garnered by these tools from entering into the discussion.
Not really, but we have fought against government forcing ultrasounds on women, especially the invasive kind. I see absolutely no reason why women should have their bodies violated without medical need, simply so that opponents of abortion can be happy that an abortion is being “punished” enough.
September 27th, 2012 | 5:48 pm
Harry: … The notion that it is wrong to do so predates Christianity; abortion was explicitly prohibited by the ancient physician’s Oath of Hippocrates. …
Very true. Greece was a patriarchy, and women in Athens were not even allowed to own property. Patriarchal men were not fond of women making decisions for themselves, then or now.
September 27th, 2012 | 8:21 pm
“Do you believe that someone who does not believe that a fertilized egg is worthy of legal protection, does that make him a supporter of barbarism? If you do not want to answer my question, that’s perfectly fine, but please tell me that this is your intent.”
Abortion supporters probably run the gamut–misled, misinformed, truly ignorant, moral cowards, intellectually dishonest or lazy, amoral, immoral, evil, barbaric. I see abortion as murder, so cannot see anything good in it. You and I will not see eye to eye on this.
Nor do I understand how a grown up woman who sees no moral objection to abortion and routinely looks at X-rays of her teeth would quail at a sonogram (the noninvasive type, which doesn’t hurt one little bit and is less intrusive, I would guess, than killing one’s offspring in the womb). Not as punishment,nope, but as accepting she has a brain and heart and might appreciate giving informed consent. Otherwise, it smacks of paternalism—let’s not scare the girls or have them worrying their pretty little heads.
September 27th, 2012 | 10:40 pm
Maximilian,
I ask you again to please stop juxtaposing “religious” and “secular” as if they are radically different forms of argumentation. You want to use them as synonyms for “irrational” and “rational”. Instead, “secular” is just as dependent upon metaphysical foundations as is “religious”.
Darel
September 28th, 2012 | 12:02 am
[David Nickol] “No matter what you feel about abortion, it seems to me M312 was not worth the effort (assuming I understand Canadian government and law). …Whether an unborn child at any specific state of development is a human being or a human person is not a medical question. It is a philosophical question, upon which there is no significant hope of reaching a resolution, especially in a legislature. ..”
David Nickol, sometimes you just blow my mind. I think you quite well understand the worth of applying legislative efforts to address competing philosophies within a society – and I think you well understand that abortion is an argument engaged on both the philosophical and medical level. Absolutely unbelievable that here, on this blog of all pages, you’ve ventured the above statement.
[David Nickol] “Hundreds of years of legal precedent go against considering an unborn child a human person. To do so has all kinds of unknown ramifications for pregnant women, each of whom will be put in the unique situation of being a human person with another human person inside of her who deserves full protection of the law.”
Hundreds of years of legal precedent go against considering [a black man] an [equal of a white man.] To do so has all kinds of unknown ramifications for [slave owners], each of whom will be put in the unique situation of being a human person with another human person [as their their neighbor and equal in human dignity] who deserves full protection of the law.
September 28th, 2012 | 12:14 am
[David Nickol] “Evidence of what? As I said above, the important questions about abortion aren’t medical. They are philosophical (and legal).”
Doubled down! What indeed *does* it mean that important questions about a medical procedure aren’t medical? Please explain.
In you previous post, the legislature was the wrong venue – though now you state the ‘important questions’ are legal.
September 28th, 2012 | 1:01 am
[Maximilian] “That’s the crux of your argument. It’s purely religious, dressed up in secular terms. That may explain that apart from the lone eccentric, no secularist supports the anti-abortion position.”
The reader can determine:
a) If Harry provided any discussion topics in his post related to medical / scientific discovery regarding the topic at hand.
b) If Maximilian has entered “secular pro-life” or even “atheist pro-life” into his preferred search engine.
c) At what threshold the phrase ‘lone eccentric’ must be discarded.
JDD: Is your determination of whether a barbaric act has taken place based on what a person *believes* about the situation?
[Maximilian] “My question isn’t really about a barbaric act, but rather, a barbaric person. For example, if someone believed in human sacrifice, I would call that person a barbaric person, though no barbaric act has necessarily taken place.”
An answer to my question would go a long way towards clarifying. If no ‘barbaric act’ actually takes place – they just *believe* in it – then what would be the aspect about that person that you would label ‘barbaric’? I hope you can clarify – and soon.
September 28th, 2012 | 8:11 am
Peg: Abortion supporters probably run the gamut–misled, misinformed, truly ignorant, moral cowards, intellectually dishonest or lazy, amoral, immoral, evil, barbaric.
Arguments, Peg, arguments. You are very good at making assertions, not very good at supporting them with arguments.
Peg: I see abortion as murder,
We got that, but not the arguments that are supposed to support your view that a fertilized egg is a human being, and that a veritable massacre of humans is taking place, because 50% of fertilized eggs fail to implant.
Peg: Otherwise, it smacks of paternalism—let’s not scare the girls or have them worrying their pretty little heads.
You’ve got to be kidding me. Your side wants to use government coercion to force intrusive ultrasounds on women, as if they haven’t well considered their choice, and others are the ones who are paternalistic? What an upside down view of the world, same for all the adjectives you apply to the good guys.
September 28th, 2012 | 8:23 am
Darel: I ask you again to please stop juxtaposing “religious” and “secular” as if they are radically different forms of argumentation.
But aren’t they? Just because they both may rest on a metaphysical foundation, does not make the two equivalent, unless you believe that any metaphysical foundation is as good as any other, in which case you are a relativist. I really do believe that a sophisticated secular view is superior to a view that in general boils down to “God says it, I believe it, that settles it”.
JDD: a) If Harry provided any discussion topics in his post related to medical / scientific discovery regarding the topic at hand.
JDD, kindly go back to my comment, because I addressed these pseudo-scientific claims. It is mere window-dressing. Just because you label something as science, does not make it science. And the fact that he started throwing around Bible-verses is just the ultimate death knell of any illusion that the secular grounds he cited are the real reason he opposes abortion. Also, I am familiar with Harry. Earlier, he told me that I was going to hell for opposing abortion – there’s no word on whether scientific discovery supports this, but until then, I will presume that this is religious.
JDD: b) If Maximilian has entered “secular pro-life” or even “atheist pro-life” into his preferred search engine.
I know of religious people who attempt to justify their anti-abortion position on secular grounds. And I am someone who will always put the child’s interests above those of the parents, so I would be fertile ground for good arguments. Yet their arguments are utterly unconvincing, and I cannot escape the conclusion that they are mere rationalizations of something that is taken on faith. I probably should have mentioned one other factor. The lone eccentric is the one who sincerely arrives at the anti-abortion position. Apart from that, there are certain atheists who become anti-abortion, because their party believes it.
JDD: If no ‘barbaric act’ actually takes place – they just *believe* in it – then what would be the aspect about that person that you would label ‘barbaric’?
Intent is enough for me. If I try to kill someone, and my gun fails to go off, and so no one is hurt, that does not make me a better person than if the gun, by chance, had gone off. In that same way, someone who supports evil, in my view, is as bad as a person who commits the evil.
September 28th, 2012 | 8:39 am
Except that if a woman’s carrying her child outside the womb across a border, she has to to provide documentation for that. (Try crossing just the Canadian border with your kids these days.) It’s a legally distinct situation.
I went back in time to April 2011 and responded to both you and harry:
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/04/07/fifteen-states-considering-banning-abortion-after-20-weeks-of-pregnancy/
September 28th, 2012 | 9:39 am
Maximilian: In a nutshell, the reason that abortion is wrong, is that the unborn, at the moment of conception, possess all of the genetic information that makes it as human being, it just needs to develop fully. This is not a matter of opinion. It’s a matter of scientific fact. Consult any introductory book on embryology to help you out, here.
September 28th, 2012 | 10:55 am
Hello Moderator,
I humbly respect and accept your decision not to allow my post due to the link to the abortion pictures. When, where, how often and in what context the photographic evidence is used is a matter in which ardent Pro-Lifers with the best of intentions can (and do) disagree.
Having been involved in the Pro-Life movement since before Roe, I have seen many, many times the power of the photographic evidence. It is amazing what happens when good people include reality among their considerations in the formation of their opinions.
Many good people have considered only the pro-abortion rhetoric consistently delivered to them by the mainstream media – rhetoric which is parroted by some of those who post on the First Things forum. That rhetoric is given even more credibility and its “reasonableness” is only affirmed in the minds of these uninformed, good people when it is conveyed to them again on an exceptionally reasonable and respectable web site such as First Things. I posted the link for the sake of that segment of First Things forum readers which consists of such good people – people who have yet to include reality in the formation of their opinion of “legal” abortion.
God bless,
harry
September 28th, 2012 | 11:18 am
“What an upside down view of the world, same for all the adjectives you apply to the good guys.”
I can agree with this in a sense—we approach life in different ways and cannot understand each other. Your view of life and humanity makes no sense to me at all. I think that if there is an enlightened future, abortion will be seen as the evil it is, as we see slavery and genocide.
I probably have the advantage of real life experience as a woman who has experienced several pregnancies, none of which lasted full term. I have spent months in neonatal intensive care nurseries. I know what premature babies—including nonviable babies— are, and that their dignity as human beings do not, in reality, depend on the prevailing attitude of their mothers. Thinking so is the way to the mad house.
I know that abortion has been bureaucratized, so that a bored, low-level clerk can say in a normal voice in a crowded room, “your pregnancy test came back positive, do you plan to terminate it?” so she can know whether to hand you the pink slip or the yellow slip. talk about the banality of evil.
I know that I had to make life and death decisions regarding my unborn children, and that sonograms (daily at one point) were crucial to my decision making. If my doctors had refused to use sonograms, and I found out later that I had thus ignorantly killed or injured another, then yes, I would resent their negligence and paternalism.
September 28th, 2012 | 11:32 am
I am trying to recover from the sheer spectacle at the recent Democratic National Convention of an entire arena of people cheering for unrestricted abortion. Not at all troubled, questioning, seeking narrow justifications, or rationalizing – these people were cheering and totally certain of their moral rectitude. I am sorry to note that the loudest and most strident in the mob were women. OK, this is perhaps not new, but in my life, I don’t often witness this kind of mass support of destroying these small humans, and getting their own mothers to do it. Comments like those of Maximilian that link this type of regime to the “civilized world” are just too chilling. I am glad to see some posts here pointing out that past such mistakes in classifying large segments of humanity to a less-than-human status have not worked out well (slavery, etc.). And, I appreciate the very erudite comments made by some about substantiating arguments, basing them in science, etc., but overall, these miss the very big picture of what is going very wrong in this society. What will this mob do next?
September 28th, 2012 | 11:50 am
In a nutshell, the reason that abortion is wrong, is that the unborn, at the moment of conception, possess all of the genetic information that makes it as human being, it just needs to develop fully.
Bret Lythgoe,
Aren’t you undermining your argument by saying, “It just needs to develop fully”? Apologies for the overused example, but we have the acorn and the oak tree. An acorn has all the genetic information to become an oak tree; it just needs to develop fully. But an acorn is not an oak tree. It is a potential oak tree.
September 28th, 2012 | 12:03 pm
[...] Says Unborn Are Not Persons Friday, September 28, 2012 Douglas Farrow Pursuant to my brief post on the defeat of M-312, one commenter (David Nickol) observes that the motion was, if I may so [...]
September 28th, 2012 | 12:22 pm
Maximilian,
You frame the abortion issue in terms of newly conceived human life, asking, “Are people supporters of barbarism, if they do not believe that a fertilized egg is a baby or a child?” I have answered that.
Now I ask you if people are supporters of barbarism if after becoming aware of the gruesome reality of legal abortion they still support it? (There have been well over 750,000 late abortions, that is, late second and third trimester abortions, since Roe.)
Consider the photograph of a living unborn child at 18 weeks at the link at the bottom of this post. (A physician once told me he thought the age of this beautiful child was more like 16 weeks.) To abort this child at 18 weeks would be aborting it in the first half the second trimester. To quickly visualize how weeks and trimesters relate to each other see the chart at:
http://www.baby2see.com/pregnancylength.html
The lives of millions of children have been taken that were as developed or more developed than the beautiful child depicted at the link below. That is barbaric.
http://www.growingyourbaby.com/2007/04/30/a-revolution-in-fetal-monitoring/
September 28th, 2012 | 12:37 pm
Maximilian, This would be my version of a non arbitrary standard/statement. What is in the womb is life. The life is human. Its’ natural progression, mostly, would lead it to become a child etc.. Abortion kills this life.Possessing life is an absolute pre-cursor to possessing any . In the order of rights it is first. Killing , in general, is considered a crime not because it denies its’ victim the right to vote or own property or marry or dig worms. It is a crime because it is a violation of the first, foundational right, the right to life.
All rights vanish in death, present and future vanish in death. The natural place for a fertilized egg is in its’ mothers womb not in a toilet.
As to my invalidated hypothesis, I was not speaking of you, men can’t have babies silly. Your advocacy is for woman who do have beings growing inside them. You advocate because they advocate. Your advocacy is derivative of woman not wanting this thing that is growing inside me. The driving force in this debate is their advocacy not yours, although I have noticed a certain self-serving element in many mens support for abortion, not yours of course, but many mens.
September 28th, 2012 | 12:44 pm
Maximilian, the 6th sentence should have read,”possessing life is an absolute pre-cursor to possessing any rights”.
September 28th, 2012 | 1:50 pm
Hi David Nickol: The unborn are human from the point of conception. When we talk of human beings, we classify them in various ways. One of the ways we do this is to refer to their stages of development. We talk about the unborn, infants, toddlers, teenagers, adults. We then can further classify each of these stages. All of these stages have their distinct properties, as well as continuity. What they all have in common is their humanity. It simply makes no sense to argue that just because some humans have not developed to a certain point, they therefore lack moral rights.
September 28th, 2012 | 2:35 pm
[Maximilian] “JDD, kindly go back to my comment, because I addressed these pseudo-scientific claims.”
In response to Harry’s points, you ‘addressed’ them thus:
“I doubt that you would be throwing around Bible verses, if you actually believed this. A fertilized egg is not a human being. Human beings can’t be frozen and stored forever, fertilized eggs can.”
I looked around for the rest of your rebuttal, but that was it. One dogmatic statement, expounded upon. A fertilized egg is not a human being – that’s your starting point. And apparently your ending point. You’ve got a little circular logic going on there. I have another question for you: If technology develops, such that human beings, (we’ll take you definition for the sake of argument,) CAN be frozen and stored forever, then would your above statement no longer hold?
“And in fact, if fertilized eggs are human beings, then a quiet massacre is taking place, because 50% of fertilized eggs fail to implant and are ‘killed’.”
You’ve twice now brought up the fact of many pregnancies not implanting, seemingly as if it throws an inconsistency into the pro-life argument. Can you explain what that inconsistency would be? What is supposed to trouble me about this?
September 28th, 2012 | 2:44 pm
JDD: b) If Maximilian has entered “secular pro-life” or even “atheist pro-life” into his preferred search engine.
[Maximilian] “I know of religious people who attempt to justify their anti-abortion position on secular grounds. And I am someone who will always put the child’s interests above those of the parents, so I would be fertile ground for good arguments. Yet their arguments are utterly unconvincing, and I cannot escape the conclusion that they are mere rationalizations of something that is taken on faith.”
Maximilian, I sincerely hope you try that search engine criteria sometime. It didn’t take me long last night to come across multiple groups that met none of your above criticisms.
September 28th, 2012 | 2:47 pm
Bret: In a nutshell, the reason that abortion is wrong, is that the unborn, at the moment of conception, possess all of the genetic information that makes it as human being, it just needs to develop fully. This is not a matter of opinion. It’s a matter of scientific fact. Consult any introductory book on embryology to help you out, here.
Thank you for your condescension, Bret. As if there is anyone who would not know. But you sneak in a nice assumption there, that there is any relation between having genetic information and destroying it being immoral. I can copy “all he genetic information” of a human being to a CD, that does not mean that destroying the CD is committing murder.
And if you want to claim that life begins at conception, then I presume nature (or God, as you probably believe) is the greatest killer of all. Fifty percent of all fertilized eggs fail to implant and die a sad death. A truly lamentable tragedy.
Peg: I think that if there is an enlightened future, abortion will be seen as the evil it is, as we see slavery and genocide.
I believe that in an enlightened future, denying women their rights will be seen for the evil that it is, as we see racism.
Peg: I know what premature babies—including nonviable babies— are, and that their dignity as human beings do not, in reality, depend on the prevailing attitude of their mothers.
Probably because you thought of them as they would be in the future. You wanted children, and thought of them as bringing you happiness. A starving, unemployed mother would probably be terrified at the growth inside her body. Yet answer this, if you were shown several frozen embryos, would you think of them as children? Do you believe that they have dignity? Would you think of disposing of them as ‘murder’? What about fertilized eggs?
Thank you for granting us a window into your thinking. This made me better understand why you have arrived at your position. I was rather confused by the vehemence of your attacks on my side, and now it is more understandable.
Peg: If my doctors had refused to use sonograms
That is not the issue. The question before the state legislatures is whether mothers should be forced to go a (possible invasive) ultrasound, even if they don’t want it. Nanny state Republicans say yes, they believe that bureaucrats know what’s best for women.
September 28th, 2012 | 2:56 pm
Harry: You frame the abortion issue in terms of newly conceived human life, asking
That is a very reasonable position. After all, does your side not tell me that life begins at conception? If life begins at conception, then you should be able to defend granting a fertilized egg as much protection as an actual child.
Harry: Now I ask you if people are supporters of barbarism if after becoming aware of the gruesome reality of legal abortion they still support it?
You’re begging the question, sneaking in “gruesome reality” in there, which you have not at all established. I must also note that it is an irony that ofen times, people who want to grant legal protection to fertilzed eggs strongly support the gruesome practice of genital mutilation of actual children.
Harry: (There have been well over 750,000 late abortions, that is, late second and third trimester abortions, since Roe.)
Then do you only oppose only late second and third trimester abortion? If not, why are you making the easiest possible case for your postition? You’re making a naked appeal to abortion. Post a microscopic picture of a fertilzed egg and see whether people respond in teh same manner.
Harry: The lives of millions of children have been taken that were as developed or more developed than the beautiful child depicted at the link below.
The fetus is very ugly, but that is not relevant to the question at hand. If we granted rights on the basis of cuteness, kittens would be granted more legal protection than actual babies.
–
Michael: What is in the womb is life.
Begging the question. Unless you define any organic material as “life”, I do not think that you can make the case that a fertilized egg is actual life. And if you do, then you would have to oppose liposuction, because that kills organic material.
Michael: As to my invalidated hypothesis, I was not speaking of you, men can’t have babies silly.
I was not aware of that. Now you have shattered my dreams. Still, your explanation for why people support abortion has been shown to be wrong. There are many men who support abortion, and many women who oppose it, even though the leaders of anti-abortion movements, until lately, have tended to be old, white, fundamentalist men.
September 28th, 2012 | 4:16 pm
Consider the photograph of a living unborn child at 18 weeks at the link at the bottom of this post. (A physician once told me he thought the age of this beautiful child was more like 16 weeks.) To abort this child at 18 weeks would be aborting it in the first half the second trimester.
harry,
The image you link to is that of an aborted fetus. It is clearly labelled as a Lennart Nilsson photo.
September 28th, 2012 | 4:31 pm
[Maximilian] “But you sneak in a nice assumption there, that there is any relation between having genetic information and destroying it being immoral. I can copy “all he genetic information” of a human being to a CD, that does not mean that destroying the CD is committing murder.”
And you, Maximilian, ‘sneak’ in a nice change of definitions. We are not, of course, talking about the destruction of a *transcript*, but of the actual thing being transcribed.
September 28th, 2012 | 5:02 pm
[Maximilian] “There are many men who support abortion, and many women who oppose it, even though the leaders of anti-abortion movements, until lately, have tended to be old, white, fundamentalist men.”
The words “until lately” apparently meaning some timeframe between the past 20-30 years or so. But there’s the argument – It’s a little like saying that, if you’re an man, you can’t really have women’s well-being in mind. Is that your position, Maximilian?
So, to recap, Maximilian, furiously typing away this afternoon, has:
Asserted that all the medical stuff in anyone’s post can be discarded if you also mention a Bible verse. Throws out words like ‘pseudo -science’ and pretends that *everyone else* is just making claims without argument.
Stated that the prolife position is mostly held by religious people only. There are very few secularists, but they’re eccentric, drink alone and don’t count. No word yet on what he thinks of all the secular and atheists-for-life groups.
Hinted that the pro-life movement is mostly men who disparage women. Then derided Peg in his comments, sarcastic and instructing her about why she probably *really* felt the way she did.
September 28th, 2012 | 7:07 pm
JDD: A fertilized egg is not a human being – that’s your starting point. And apparently your ending point.
The argument proceeded no further. If this is something you believe, you should defend it, not try to divert attention to late second trimester abortions, which can be debated.
JDD: If technology develops, such that human beings, (we’ll take you definition for the sake of argument,) CAN be frozen and stored forever, then would your above statement no longer hold?
It’s not as much the fact itself, but what this fact signifies about the organic material in question. At the present, embryos can survive being frozen, while humans can’t. Now why would that be? Because fertilized eggs and embryos do not have the complicated organic material that would be destroyed by low temperatures. Technology won’t change this particular fact, and hence will not undermine my argument.
JDD: You’ve twice now brought up the fact of many pregnancies not implanting, seemingly as if it throws an inconsistency into the pro-life argument. Can you explain what that inconsistency would be?
By all means. If I believed that sexual activity led to one death per pregnancy, I would take the Cathar position to ensure that no human beings would be slaughtered as a result of my activities. Sure, the human race would peacefully die out, but that is better than one innocent person dying per person born – in perpetuity. If I had four children, and believed that four of their brothers and sisters had been slaughtered as a result, I would be rather miserable. So it is odd that I see not the slightest concern about this mass slaughter among advocates of this particular idea, which speaks volumes.
JDD: And you, Maximilian, ‘sneak’ in a nice change of definitions. We are not, of course, talking about the destruction of a *transcript*, but of the actual thing being transcribed.
It talked only of undeveloped genetic information. No exception was made for copies. Information can be copied, hence a copy is another human being, apparently. Now, you will say that a CD-ROM cannot develop further. That is true. But since you like hypotheticals, let me pose one to you. Suppose the DNA of one fertilized eggs were removed from the cell, and transferred to the CD-ROM. Is that murder? If not, would it be murder for me to destroy the CD-ROM, when it can be used to transfer the DNA to a blank cell?
JDD: But there’s the argument – It’s a little like saying that, if you’re an man, you can’t really have women’s well-being in mind. Is that your position, Maximilian?
It’s something I and many others have noticed. It was a simple observation, and you can make of it what you want, as I made no argument about it. I also did not mention men in general, I mentioned old, white fundamentalist men. The position of women in fundamentalist religion is well known.
JDD: Asserted that all the medical stuff in anyone’s post can be discarded if you also mention a Bible verse.
You really need to go back and look at what I actually said. The Bible verse as well as the poster’s earlier insistence that I would go to hell for supporting abortion rights, demonstrated only what this is really about. Evolution denier Huckabee for example says that “science” has proven that abortion is wrong (or something like that) – how rich is that?
JDD: Stated that the prolife position is mostly held by religious people only.
It seems odd to me that you would deny that the anti-abortion position is mostly held by religious people. You cite unnamed “websites”, as if not everyone can just put up a website. It is not at all clear that these folks don’t represent anything but the margins of atheist culture.
JDD: Then derided Peg in his comments, sarcastic and instructing her about why she probably *really* felt the way she did.
I seem not to remember deriding anyone, or being sarcastic to Peg.
September 28th, 2012 | 9:26 pm
Max,
It is true that many embryos fail to achieve implantation and are thus lost forever. But what of it? Surely you are not suggesting that because of this natural occurrence it follows that abortion is therefore acceptable. That is an obvious logical fallacy. Elderly folks die of natural causes all the time. That doesn’t make it okay to burn down nursing homes. Roughly three hundred thousand people died from that disastrous earthquake in Port-au-Prince a couple of years ago. That doesn’t make it okay to kill Haitians. And so on.
September 28th, 2012 | 9:30 pm
David,
Regarding the famous acorn and oak tree analogy, Professors George and Lee take that on here:
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/acorns-and-embryos
September 29th, 2012 | 6:22 am
Maximillian: When we discuss an embryo, we’re not just talking about “genetic information”, we’re talking about a newly formed organism, with the genetic information (structurally realized in the newly formed DNA unity), contained within a membranous structure, seperating it from the outside. It’s the very beginning of a new human being. Give it nutrition, safety, and time, and it will grow to full maturity, which would entail it being like you or me. Since you obviously don’t accept that the embryo is a human being deserving of rights, when do you believe that this “organism” becomes a human being deserving of rights? Based on your comments on a post related to this one, it would seem that you may believe that it’s “just before birth.” Hmm. There are obvious logical problems with this view. But I’ll let you speak for yourself.
Why, you might ask, should we conclude that embryos (or “fertilized eggs” as you call them) are human, and not sperm or ova? If one took a sperm cell or an ovum, and provided it with nutrition, safety and time, one would be left with, a well, geriatric spermatozoa or ovum. Do the same with an embryo, and one has, well, Maximillian, and Bret. There’s an obvious ontological distinction between an embryo and its sperm and ovum precursors.
September 29th, 2012 | 2:23 pm
Tim: It is true that many embryos fail to achieve implantation and are thus lost forever. But what of it? Surely you are not suggesting that because of this natural occurrence it follows that abortion is therefore acceptable.
True, it does not follow necessarily. But that was not my point. My point was that, if people actually believed that life begins at conception, they would strive mightily to prevent these human beings from dying. I would not want children, if it meant that for every one of my surviving children, one would have to die a horrible death. Yet people who believe that fertilized eggs are human beings and persons are very unconcerned about this fact, and take no steps to prevent this. Do you have an explanation for this?
Bret: When we discuss an embryo, we’re not just talking about “genetic information”,
Well, you didn’t, only now are you introducing these additional articles.
Bret: Since you obviously don’t accept that the embryo is a human being deserving of rights, when do you believe that this “organism” becomes a human being deserving of rights?
You want me to point out a specific and precise point? I will do that, as soon as you tell me at what exact point one grain of sand becomes a heap. But if you sincerely want an answer – sometime during the second trimester, and it is better to err on the safe side. After viability (and there is a gap here), barring a valid excuse, abortion should be treated as murder. Curiously enough, pro-lifers proclaim that abortion is murder, but they do not propose treating abortion as murder – at least, not openly.
Bret: If one took a sperm cell or an ovum, and provided it with nutrition, safety and time, one would be left with, a well, geriatric spermatozoa or ovum.
Unless you count its opposite as part of its necessary ‘nutrition’.
Bret: There’s an obvious ontological distinction between an embryo and its sperm and ovum precursors [because one will naturally develop].
They are both organic material, and I do not see what justifies the discrimination. Just because one has the potential to become an actual person, does not mean that it has to be regarded as an actual person. That would be like treating humans as dirt, as all humans will necessarily turn to dirt.
September 29th, 2012 | 6:29 pm
Hi Maximilian: the newly formed embryo, is an actual human person, not a potential person. It’s like saying that a sleeping adult is a “potential person”. Are you prepared to say that a sleeping, or otherwise reversibly unconscious adult human is a “potential person”? After all, the embryo/fetus, and the reversibly unconscious adult are both equally “unconscious” and both will be conscious if given enough time. It’s just that it takes longer for the embryo/fetus to become conscious. Are you prepared to argue that the length of time a being takes to be conscious is morally relevant? That is, the being that takes longer to become conscious has less rights?
September 29th, 2012 | 10:15 pm
Tim,
Thanks for the link to Robert George’s paper. I do not accept his argument, but it is the first significant treatment I have seen from the pro-life side. I thought this, about early embryo loss, was particularly interesting:
This raises in my mind a question of whether George and his co-author would consider an anencephalic baby would be considered a person. I am pretty sure they would, and yet I can’t imagine describing an anencephalic child as a person with a “functioning brain.” Wikipedia says, “[I]t is accepted that children with this disorder are born without a forebrain, the largest part of the brain consisting mainly of the cerebral hemispheres, including the neocortex, which is responsible for higher-level cognition.”
It seems to me, in order to be consistent, George and Lee ought to hold that whenever a sperm and egg cell combine and begin to develop and divide, no matter how faultily, a human being is present. Otherwise, they leave themselves open to arguments that the severely disabled are not persons, since they are, in effect, saying severely disabled embryos are not human beings or human persons.
September 30th, 2012 | 10:35 am
Bret: the newly formed embryo, is an actual human person, not a potential person.
That’s not what you argued. Your whole argument was that a fertilized egg is different from an unfertilized egg, because it will become a human being. Potential person. Otherwise, your argument that it is all that different from an unfertilized egg makes no sense.
Bret: It’s like saying that a sleeping adult is a “potential person”.
A sleeping adult is a potentially awake person. But you do not relinquish your personhood when you go to sleep, so this is a strange argument. A person who sleeps is better compared to a late-stage fetus, not to a fertilized egg, who at any moment can be taken out and survive, just like a person who is sleeping can awaken at any moment. A viable fetus should have all the rights an actual child has.
Bret: Are you prepared to argue that the length of time a being takes to be conscious is morally relevant?
I did not refer to consciousness at all. But see the above.
September 30th, 2012 | 2:31 pm
David Nickol,
The image appeared on the cover of Life Magazine in 1965, in connection with an article containing other photographs of unborn children taken by Nilsson. The article was entitled, The Drama of Life before Birth, leading everyone to believe that the spectacular photograph on the cover depicted a beautiful, living child. (The link to the copy of it I provided doesn’t come close to doing it justice.) The child certainly looks alive, and even if it really wasn’t, as you claim, the photograph still makes clear that nothing less than children, in all their sweetness and beauty, are routinely murdered by the millions due to media-manufactured bigotry, and due to the sophistry propagated by the likes of you and Maximilian. I can see why photographs such as that are a nightmare for advocates of “legal” abortion.
September 30th, 2012 | 3:40 pm
Please provide a link to post where I told you that you were going to Hell. The Catholic Church doesn’t even teach that we can be certain Judas Iscariot went to Hell, so I really doubt that I ever said you were going to Hell. It is possible for any of us to go to Hell — or not. So, if my remarks in some way reminded you that Hell is a real possibility, that is true and applies to everyone. Even so, I don’t remember discussing that with you. Please provide the link to the remarks of mine to which you are referring.
I hate to break the news to you, but ultimately there can be no genuine conflict between true science and true religion, as the natural and the supernatural have the same Author. Faith and reason are not opposed to each other. Enlightened people have been aware of that for a very long time.
Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Gregor Mendel, Kelvin, Max Planck and other scientists believed in God. They saw that science is possible because the Universe is intelligible, and that the Universe is intelligible because its origin is in an intelligent being. Unlike you, they didn’t toss an entire line of reasoning because it included a religious reference.
The problem is not my religious beliefs, but yours. Your arguments, for the most part, consist in assertions of your religious beliefs and are light on scientific facts. You can’t prove God isn’t there. You must take that belief on faith. Beliefs about God one takes on faith are religious beliefs, even if what one believes about God is that He isn’t there.
Theists don’t have to panic if the discoveries of true, relentlessly objective science seem for a while to be inconsistent with belief in God. They know that eventually theism will be fully and clearly vindicated, as ultimately there can be no genuine conflict between true science and true religion.
Atheists, on the other hand, have conniption fits when the discoveries of modern science aren’t going their way; they get busy filing lawsuits against school boards and intimidating scientists who don’t wholeheartedly embrace their “scientific” (religious) beliefs. They want to create the illusion that their religious beliefs have the certainty of science, or rather, that their religious beliefs are science. They panic when that illusion is being threatened.
Again, I hate to break the news to you, but theists are on to your scam, and your claiming any reference to religion negates one’s argument is only an indication of how desperate (and unfamiliar with the history of science) you guys really are.
September 30th, 2012 | 6:35 pm
Harry: The child certainly looks alive, and even if it really wasn’t, as you claim, the photograph still makes clear that nothing less than children, in all their sweetness and beauty
What an outrageous appeal to emotion. Kindly defend your point of view on the merits. I am curious how you will defend this same point with respect to fertilized eggs, as one can’t wax lyrically about “sweetness and beauty” that they have.
Harry: are routinely murdered by the millions due to media-manufactured bigotry,
What?
Harry: and due to the sophistry propagated by the likes of you and Maximilian.
Earlier, you told me that I am going to hell, because I support abortion rights. That may be why your non-religious arguments are not very convincing, because they are not your true reasons for being against abortion.
Harry: I can see why photographs such as that are a nightmare for advocates of “legal” abortion.
Not really, they are clearly not children in any way. They make it rather obvious why previous generation had the erroneous idea that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
September 30th, 2012 | 6:41 pm
Maximilian, what I’ve argued is not that the embryo is a “potential person” but an actual person. You seem to misunderstand the points I’m making. Please refer back to my point about sperm and ova. The newly formed embryo has a new, and unique genetic code, distinct from its gamete precursors. (It’s a combination of the male sperm and female ovum). This new being, which can only be a human being (if it’sd not a human being, what is it? Perhaps you can provide us with some insight here), now only has to become more of itself and develop different types of cells (e.g., neurons, myocytes). It’s fundamentally the same being that it is when it becomes an infant, or an adult, it just needs to get more of itself and differentiate.
You seem to be misunderstanding my argument concerning why the sleeping adult and the embryo are analogous in the abortion debate. I’ll explain it to you. But first I need to know something, to ensure that I understand what your basis is for human rights, ok? What do you base your belief that humans have rights? You obviously believe that those humans after birth have rights like you and I, and based on your previous comments, you seem to believe that humans have rights from the second trimester onward. Why? Thanks.
September 30th, 2012 | 10:31 pm
Max,
First of all, I suspect that most people are unaware that that so many human embryos are lost within the womb. Secondly, at present time, there is little that can be done about this, just as there is precious little that can be done about people who die of natural causes or of natural disasters. That there are limits on what we can do to prevent natural death does not mean that people are indifferent, hypocritical, etc if they continue to support laws proscribing murder.
October 1st, 2012 | 9:34 am
Bret: Maximilian, what I’ve argued is not that the embryo is a “potential person” but an actual person. You seem to misunderstand the points I’m making.
Maybe not. The points you have made only support that it is a potential person.
Bret: The newly formed embryo has a new, and unique genetic code, distinct from its gamete precursors.
This is not a good argument, as there are many human beings whose genetic code is not unique – monozygotic twins, or potential clones. And if you take a look at bacteria (who are also one-celled organisms, same as fertilized eggs) – they replicate themselves. But we would not say that this is not a different bacterium (as opposed to species of bacterium), simply because it shares the genes of its ‘father’.
There are also things that have human and unique DNA, that are clearly not human.
Bret: This new being, which can only be a human being (if it’sd not a human being, what is it?
A potential human, just like an acorn is a potential oak tree (to steal David’s argument).
Bret: It’s fundamentally the same being that it is when it becomes an infant, or an adult, it just needs to get more of itself and differentiate.
Humans are more than just a piece of DNA. If I injected a bacterium with the DNA of a fertilized egg, would killing the bacterium be murder? No, because despite its DNA, it’s still a one-celled organism of zero significance – that is, unless you believe that it has been endowed with a soul.
Bret: But first I need to know something, to ensure that I understand what your basis is for human rights, ok? What do you base your belief that humans have rights?
Hopefully, this is not a trick (and having seen your previous posts, it probably isn’t) to argue that if one is not religious, one cannot believe in human rights. Since morality is immaterial, I cannot point you to a rock and say, that’s where human rights come from. It’s based on argument, and given the nature of argument, it’s impossible to provide proof positive for it, though one can make a very good case for it. However, I think that a case based on secular grounds is vastly superior to one based on the idea that “God gave us” these rights, because presumably, what he gave, he could at any point withdraw, if wanted to – making it OK to kill.
Human beings have the right not to be murdered, for example, because they are members of an intelligent species. Even a murderer who is otherwise sound of mind recognizes that murder is wrong. A murderer does not want to be murdered, nor a thief stolen from. So he cannot posit that it is right to kill, or it would mean that killing him is also legitimate.
October 1st, 2012 | 9:43 am
Tim: First of all, I suspect that most people are unaware that that so many human embryos are lost within the womb. Secondly, at present time, there is little that can be done about this,
Not true at all. In fact, there is something that works perfectly. If someone truly believes that a fertilized egg is a child, then he should stop having children. Because chances are, for every child, one of his brothers or sisters will die. It can be brought to zero, and it’s very easy. But as I understand it, as soon as something inconveniences people, their “convictions” go out of the window. For example, last year, Mississippi had a referendum on defining a fertilized egg as a child, which would outlaw IVF. Several people who described themselves as pro-life Christians opposed this, for this exact reason. “A thirteen year old rape victim being traumatized further, wonderful, but me, not able to have any children, horrible!”
October 1st, 2012 | 2:44 pm
Max,
What you are saying here is truly incredible. Even if every state in the country banned IVF, then countless human beings at the embryonic stage of development would continue to die. Human beings at the embyronic stage of development fail to implant in the uterus and die even outside of the process of IVF. It happens all the time, and there is nothing we can do about it, short of trying to stop everyone in the world from conceiving. Is that what you would have pro-lifers do, so they can plead innocent to your charge of a holding some sort of double-standard?
But even the people who do manage to get born will die one day Max. That’s how it goes. That countless people die natural deaths every day does not mean that people who oppose murder are somehow inconsistent, insincere, or hypocritical.
I presume that you support laws against murder, and yet people die naturally all the time. Does this concern you? What are you doing about that? How are you trying to stop people from dying of natural causes? How are you attempting to stop natural disasters from killing anyone? If I find your answers lacking, then can I question your commitment to opposition to murder? Your sincerity? Can I accuse you of holding some sort of double-standard? Do you really not see how bizarre this argument is?
October 1st, 2012 | 3:45 pm
Tim: Even if every state in the country banned IVF, then countless human beings at the embryonic stage of development would continue to die.
You didn’t get the point. The point was that some people throw out their principles the moment these cause any sort of inconvenience for them.
Tim: It happens all the time, and there is nothing we can do about it, short of trying to stop everyone in the world from conceiving. Is that what you would have pro-lifers do, so they can plead innocent to your charge of a holding some sort of double-standard?
At the very least, I would expect them to stop conceiving themselves. But I can only guess on the basis of what I myself would do. If I had to take one child’s death for every live child, I wouldn’t want any children. How could children ever bring me happiness, if I had bought them at such a terrible price – the cruel deaths of their brothers and sisters? Perhaps pro-lifers believe that continuing their genetic line is worth the deaths of innocent children. If so, they need to say so.
Tim: That countless people die natural deaths every day does not mean that people who oppose murder are somehow inconsistent, insincere, or hypocritical. (…) If I find your answers lacking, then can I question your commitment to opposition to murder?
I oppose murder, so I do not do anything that leads directly to murder. If my doing X would lead directly (i.e., not due to human action, I do not want to reward murderers) to someone being murdered, I would stop doing X. If I did continue X, you would be absolutely right to question my commitment to opposition to murder.
October 1st, 2012 | 8:27 pm
Max,
“At the very least, I would expect them to stop conceiving themselves. But I can only guess on the basis of what I myself would do. If I had to take one child’s death for every live child, I wouldn’t want any children. How could children ever bring me happiness, if I had bought them at such a terrible price – the cruel deaths of their brothers and sisters? Perhaps pro-lifers believe that continuing their genetic line is worth the deaths of innocent children. If so, they need to say so.”
I love your “at the very least” followed by a standard that is straight out of some dystopian novel. Max, what part of the fact that everyone–and I mean everyone–dies do you not understand? Even if a couple engaging in sexual activity conceives without any embryos failing to implant as a side effect, they would still be running afoul of your absurd inability to distinguish between deliberately killing an innocent human being and natural death. Because the life they bring into the world will die! Even if that person goes on to live a long, healthy life before peacefully dying of natural causes, that is apparently something that is too terrible to contemplate in your view and thus should be avoided at all costs.
And I’m glad you oppose murder. But is that just a mere personal preference, or are you making a normative claim? Do you support laws prohibiting murder, or no? If the answer to that question is “yes”, and if we are going to operate under your bizarre standard, then how do you sit back and let anyone die? It’s not enough not to murder anyone, you have to stop anyone and everyone from dying from anything. You have to prevent people from dying from natural causes. You have to work to stop hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, etc. from ever killing anyone. I mean, at the very least. I’m just holding you to your own standard Max.
October 2nd, 2012 | 10:50 am
Hi Maximillian, yes, I do believe that human rights are immaterial. They’re immaterial in the sense that mathematics are immaterial. And, even though I believe in God, I don’t believe that one must believe in God to believe in human rights. (I also believe in animal rights, but that’s for another day’s discussion!) Similarly, one can believe in the logical basis for mathematics and be justified in doing so, without accepting God’s existence. But what I was getting at is, there’s some empirical fact about humans that requires us to deduce the existence of rights. You seem to accept something like this, because you say that the reason (or at least one of the reasons) for believing that humans have rights is that we’re an “intelligent species”, but certainly babies aren’t intelligent, but you accept that they have rights. I think that a better criterion, for accepting rights, is consciousness. At first, this seems to go against my view that the embryo and fetus have rights. But the embryo and fetus are potentially conscious. In the new embryo, we have the morphological structure (DNA) that has all of the information for producing every part of the body, including the brain, and the neurons reponsible for consciousness. It will just take several months for these neurons and hence consciousness to emerge.
Similarly, someone whose asleep, is as unconscious as an embryo. True, this sleeping adult has the brain that causes consciousness in place. But this brain would not exist, if it didn’t have the genetic material that controls its emergence, in place. We don’t have anything of the sort in a sperm or ovum. These two must combine, producing a new human, that now does have the genetic material that controls the production and daily activity of all parts of the body. In the new embryo, we just have to wait, (assuming proper safety, nutrition, and time) for consciousness to arise. Similarly, with a sleeping adult, we just have to wait, (assuming proper safety, nutrition, and time), for consciousness to emerge. If one is willing, as one should, to allow for the potentially conscious sleeping adult to have rights, as many rights as a nonsleeping adult, one is logically bound to accept that the embryo does as well.
One might retort that, well, there’s no brain in the embryo, and there is one in the sleeping adult, and since the brain produces consciousness, and consciousness is the basis for rights, the embryo has no rights.
The answer is, one cannot seperate, (except conceptually) the DNA structure that controls the production of consciousness producing neurons, and these neurons. The DNA, present at conception, is the same DNA contained in these neurons (or, rather, to be more precise, the coded information is the same), and this DNA is incorporated, and inextricably bound to the neurons. The neurons would not fuction without the DNA. If one is prepared to allow for those not conscious to have rights, (the sleeping adult), because he has the morphological structure in place for consciousness (the brain), one is not going far enough: the brain itself requires the genetic information for its production, and since this is in place, one must accept that the embryo has rights.
October 2nd, 2012 | 12:25 pm
Tim: I love your “at the very least” followed by a standard that is straight out of some dystopian novel.
I avoid actions that lead to the deaths of innocent children, and I expect others to do the same. Cathars did it, so could pro-lifers. But as I stated, you want to hold to the belief that a fertilized egg is a baby, only insofar as it affects the rights of other people.
Tim: You have to work to stop hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, etc. from ever killing anyone.
Show me which actions of mine lead to hurricanes, and I will stop doing those things.
October 2nd, 2012 | 12:44 pm
Bret: And, even though I believe in God, I don’t believe that one must believe in God to believe in human rights.
There are two different strands of religious people. One group say: you can’t be moral while being an atheist. The other group aims its fire more squarely at moral relativists (whom I also dislike), and believes as you do.
Bret: for believing that humans have rights is that we’re an “intelligent species”, but certainly babies aren’t intelligent, but you accept that they have rights.
Babies are more intelligent than you might think. But yes, that’s why I didn’t say “because we are intelligent” – I did and then corrected myself.
Bret: I think that a better criterion, for accepting rights, is consciousness. At first, this seems to go against my view that the embryo and fetus have rights.
A good case can be made for this criterion. Computers can be made more intelligent, but they will never be conscious. The downside is that it would not allow us to distinguish between most animals – a sheep is as conscious as a dolphin. So in those cases, I do prefer the intelligence criterion.
Bret: But the embryo and fetus are potentially conscious. In the new embryo, we have the morphological structure (DNA) that has all of the information for producing every part of the body, including the brain, and the neurons reponsible for consciousness. It will just take several months for these neurons and hence consciousness to emerge.
Freeze an embryo and it will never be conscious. Being potentially conscious, to me, means that they should potentially be granted the rights of humans. But perhaps late-term fetuses aren’t conscious either – I certainly hope that they aren’t, they would be rather miserable. Still, they are fully formed and viable humans, and being thus a member of an intelligent species, they should be granted the same rights as others – which, I am given to understand, pro-lifers oppose, as they say that women should not be prosecuted for having abortions (at least, now they do).
Bret: Similarly, with a sleeping adult, we just have to wait, (assuming proper safety, nutrition, and time), for consciousness to emerge.
The waiting criterion is artificial. You can just shake a sleeping adult and awaken him. Let’s compare: let’s take a fertilized egg out of the womb, and shake it. No human. Let’s take out an embryo, and do the same. Still, no human. Let’s take out a third-trimester fetus. Now we get a human.
Bret: one is not going far enough: the brain itself requires the genetic information for its production, and since this is in place, one must accept that the embryo has rights.
Having the genetic information is necessary but not sufficient, for the production of the brain. Therefore, it’s an unacceptable leap of logic to say that having the genetic information allowing for the potential production of a brain is as significant as having a brain. My hair contains the genetic information for the production as my brain, that does not mean that I value it as much – but it’s close.
October 2nd, 2012 | 2:17 pm
Max: ” I avoid actions that lead to the deaths of innocent children, and I expect others to do the same. Cathars did it, so could pro-lifers. But as I stated, you want to hold to the belief that a fertilized egg is a baby, only insofar as it affects the rights of other people.”
Nice little dodge there. You want others to uphold an absurd standard that makes no distinction between deliberately killing innocent human beings and natural death. So if you come across a couple who loses a four year old child due to some illness, will you heap scorn on them and consider them hypocrites if that same couple supports laws against child-murder? If you really are going to hold that ridiculous standard, then you should be willing to do that “at least.” I mean, how can you sit back and let couples smugly support laws against child murder while also playing a crucial role in the “cruel deaths” of their own children? Or would you let them off the hook if you discovered that they actually did support child murder?
And you didn’t answer my question from the previous post. Do you support laws against murder or not? If yes, then since you do not think there is any distinction at all to be made between murder and natural death, what are you doing to make sure that no one dies of anything? I better be impressed by your response, otherwise you will off-the-charts hypocritical by your own professed standards.
October 2nd, 2012 | 2:40 pm
Hi Maximilian: I think that you’re right that there are two basic groups of religious people: those who believe that one must believe in God to be moral, and those who don’t. I certainly disagree with the latter. And I agree with you that moral relativism is something to be opposed. (one atheist, among many, who I respect greatly, is the philosopher Thomas Nagel, who’s argued for moral and logical truth).
I just don’t see how freezing the embryo is relavant to its humanity, or personhood. We could, when the technology is sufficiently advanced, freeze an adult, and bring him back, there’s no apriori reason to reject this possibility. Of course, for moral reasons we may reject doing this in practice.
With respect to “shaking the adult awake” but not the embryo, this just gets back to time. It takes longer for the embryo to be “shaken awake”, so to speak, but why should this be relavant, when both will be awake in time? If someone who’s comatose cannot be awaken for several years, (longer than the embry/fetal gestation period), which has happened, does this imply that he has less rights than the person who can be awakened immediately?
With respect to your statement that the genetic information is necessary but not sufficient for the brain to develop, that’s true, but having a brain is not necessarily going to result in consciousness arising. one would need the necessary stimulus to wake up, which is distinct from the existence of the cerebral cortex that gives us conscious states. Also, one could imagine someone sleeping, then becoming comatose, and having, as mentioned above, a type of coma where she/he cannot awaken for several years. Would he/she be a human person like an embryo, or not? Both groups, (the comatose and embryo) are equally unconscious, (as well as equally unintelligent), but both groups will be conscious, if given enough time.
October 2nd, 2012 | 3:40 pm
Maximilian, if you see opposition to abortion as purely a religious issue, then I can see why as an atheist you’d be loathe to take that position. You’ve responded earlier that, “…I am someone who will always put the child’s interests above those of the parents, so I would be fertile ground for good arguments. Yet their [religious people who attempt to justify their anti-abortion position on secular grounds] arguments are utterly unconvincing,”
But that wasn’t my earlier question. I wasn’t talking about ‘religious people’. I wondered if you had ever done a websearch for “secular pro-life” or “atheist pro-life”.
I find it difficult to believe you’re really made an exhaustive study of secular and atheist pro-life arguments, if we continue to have exchanges such as this one:
[Maximilian] “You cite unnamed “websites”, as if not everyone can just put up a website. It is not at all clear that these folks don’t represent anything but the margins of atheist culture.”
Yes, ‘anybody can have a website’ – even you. Who are ‘these folks’ you’re referring to?
I thought for a while about whether to link to a few obvious sources. But in the end, I think that it’s obvious that you can do the research yourself if you really want to. As can anyone else, so cries of ‘you’ve got nothing’ are a little unconvincing. No amount of me or anyone else handing you an essay or a group to investigate is going to make a difference as long as you proceed on the premise that anything that supports a pro-life position must, in fact, be closeted religious and thus may be dismissed. That’s circular reasoning. It’s a sure way to win an argument with yourself but not a sure way to remain open to counterarguments.
October 2nd, 2012 | 3:59 pm
JDD: A fertilized egg is not a human being – that’s your starting point. And apparently your ending point.
[Maximilian] The argument proceeded no further.
The point is that this was arbitrarily where your argument began.
JDD: If technology develops, such that human beings, (we’ll take you definition for the sake of argument,) CAN be frozen and stored forever, then would your above statement no longer hold?
[Maximilian] “It’s not as much the fact itself, but what this fact signifies about the organic material in question. At the present, embryos can survive being frozen, while humans can’t. Now why would that be? Because fertilized eggs and embryos do not have the complicated organic material that would be destroyed by low temperatures. Technology won’t change this particular fact, and hence will not undermine my argument.”
Here’s another statement from you, taken as fiat. And delivered as an article of faith, I might add. How do you *know* that technology won’t change this?
October 2nd, 2012 | 6:09 pm
Tim: You want others to uphold an absurd standard that makes no distinction between deliberately killing innocent human beings and natural death.
By no means would I say that there is no distinction. I do want them to avoid actions that, they say, lead to the deaths of innocents. The entire point is that the fact that they take no steps whatsoever to avoid the destruction of fertilized eggs, even while proclaiming that fertilized eggs are babies.
Tim: So if you come across a couple who loses a four year old child due to some illness, will you heap scorn on them and consider them hypocrites if that same couple supports laws against child-murder?
If they did something that had a 50% chance of killing their child, absolutely. I expect people to avoid such things, as I avoid such things.
Tim: Do you support laws against murder or not?
No, I lead a SuperPAC attempting to repeal these unjust laws, which take away my freedom.
Tim: If yes, then since you do not think there is any distinction at all to be made between murder and natural death, what are you doing to make sure that no one dies of anything?
No one will die due to any of my actions. If I believed that having children would lead to the (natural, or otherwise) deaths of children, I would not have children. It’s as simple as that. You earlier mentioned tornadoes. If me having children would lead to tornadoes, I would not have children. What about you?
You’re asking a whole lot of questions. So let me ask one. Suppose 100% of fertilized eggs failed to implant, and that humans reproduced through other means. This would still be ‘natural’. Would you then not blame people who acted in such a way that led to the deaths of fertilized eggs? If so, why, if not, why not?
October 2nd, 2012 | 6:23 pm
Bret: I think that you’re right that there are two basic groups of religious people: those who believe that one must believe in God to be moral, and those who don’t.
You earlier had the impression that I was condescending toward religious people in general, but my point was aimed against the second category. While I am not pro-religion, I definitely favor religious people of the first category to atheist moral relativists.
Bret: I just don’t see how freezing the embryo is relavant to its humanity, or personhood. We could, when the technology is sufficiently advanced, freeze an adult, and bring him back, there’s no apriori reason to reject this possibility.
But we would need the technology. Why? An adult and a late-stage fetus have complicated organic tissue, which freezing would destroy. Embryos and fetuses are rather uncomplicated, so freezing them will not harm them.
Bret: If someone who’s comatose cannot be awaken for several years, (longer than the embry/fetal gestation period), which has happened, does this imply that he has less rights than the person who can be awakened immediately?
Very good refutation. However, I would say that a comatose person has already been demonstrated to be human. Before falling into a coma, the person was indisputably human, and falling into a coma did not affect that. The question at hand would be, is this person living or dead? And a comatose person certainly does not qualify for the latter category.
Bret: Both groups, (the comatose and embryo) are equally unconscious, (as well as equally unintelligent), but both groups will be conscious, if given enough time.
The comatose person would be intelligent, only lacking the ability to use his intelligence. The brain is still there, it just can’t be used. An embryo does not have a brain to speak of. Imagine a computer with a CPU installed, but without a power supply – that’s the comatose person. The embryo would be a computer without the CPU. A comatose person is ‘whole’ already, an embryo is not.
October 2nd, 2012 | 6:31 pm
JDD: I find it difficult to believe you’re really made an exhaustive study of secular and atheist pro-life arguments, if we continue to have exchanges such as this one:
With due respect, there are better ways to spend my time. If you have something that demonstrates that most opposition to abortion is not because of religion, by all means show it, but I will not spend hours of my time in exhaustive study of arguments I’ve known for a long time.
JDD: you proceed on the premise that anything that supports a pro-life position must, in fact, be closeted religious and thus may be dismissed.
That’s not reason to dismiss arguments out of hand. My statement was meant more as an observation – as to why anti-abortion arguments are so utterly unconvincing. It seems to me that this is the case because opponents of abortion generally oppose abortion for religious reasons, while giving secular arguments (which do not reflect why they are actually anti-abortion).
JDD: The point is that this was arbitrarily where your argument began.
It’s the basis of opposition to abortion. Where else should my argument begin?
JDD: Here’s another statement from you, taken as fiat. And delivered as an article of faith, I might add. How do you *know* that technology won’t change this?
You misunderstand my point. I did not say that technology would never allow for humans to be frozen. I said that it would not change the fact that human beings have “complicated organic material that would be destroyed by low temperatures”. The destruction can potentially be avoided, but the fact that human persons have complicated organic matter and fertilized eggs and embryos don’t – that’s the point.
October 3rd, 2012 | 12:08 pm
[Maximilian] With due respect, there are better ways to spend my time. If you have something that demonstrates that most opposition to abortion is not because of religion,…”
Hm…seems like my position is evloving… Please tell me where I’ve argued that!
[Maximilian] “…by all means show it, but I will not spend hours of my time in exhaustive study of arguments I’ve known for a long time.”
Wow – “exhaustive study of arguments I’ve known for a long time”! I think you’d tear your own argument to shreds, were it made against you by another poster :)
No-one’s asking you to do ‘exhaustive study’ – and indeed there may be better ways to spend your time, but then you don’t really have a basis upon which to argue that, “…apart from the lone eccentric, no secularist supports the anti-abortion position.”
[JDD] you proceed on the premise that anything that supports a pro-life position must, in fact, be closeted religious and thus may be dismissed.
[Maximilian] That’s not reason to dismiss arguments out of hand. My statement was meant more as an observation – as to why anti-abortion arguments are so utterly unconvincing. It seems to me that this is the case because opponents of abortion generally oppose abortion for religious reasons, while giving secular arguments (which do not reflect why they are actually anti-abortion).
But that’s a really odd reason to say that an argument is unconvincing: ‘because they also have religious reasons.’ And you *have* dismissed arguments out of hand, early on in this very thread: “And the fact that he started throwing around Bible-verses is just the ultimate death knell of any illusion that the secular grounds he cited are the real reason he opposes abortion,” and, “I doubt that you would be throwing around Bible verses, if you actually believed this.”
JDD: The point is that this was arbitrarily where your argument began.
[Maximilian] It’s the basis of opposition to abortion. Where else should my argument begin?
That’s a very critical question between persons like you and me, isn’t it? Where indeed is the reasonable starting place. To be quite direct, I think this is one of the weakest points of the argument in favor of abortion – and with which I hope abortion supporters continue to wrestle. It seems to me like, taking it from the top, the most reasonable foundational position to take is that something is what it will naturally become, and no amount of parsing words like tissue complexity, consciousness, viability, etc, can change that. Of course the structure of an embryo is less complex than the structure of an adult, but the acorn to tree analogy is quite sound. Imagine you’re an alien who flies over our planet and begins to classify everything you see. Human embryos will be put in the jar marked ‘human being.’ There won’t be jars for two different ‘species’ if your alien geneticist is worth his salt…
It’s always seemed to me that the one who opposes the humanity of the embryo has the much more difficult task. Why has he started where he has? What have him confidence to arbitrarily set that platform? Now he has to define the line of demarcation, at which things change. In order to find that line of demarcation, he has to come up with all sorts of decision trees and explanations for why this is a human being but this isn’t one. And we’re not just talking about a problem of coming up with an answer and having it settled at one point in time – we’re dealing with changing life-sustaining technologies as well. The question of viability is a moving target, which means nothing less than one’s humanity being based upon in what technological era they exist.
Rules such as ‘it’s only a human if it can’t be frozen and rejuvenated,” sidestep the question of why that arbitrary rule is valid in the first place – and how one can know for sure that emerging technology won’t invalidate the rule and call into question the morality of prior decisions. More complications arise when discussing consciousness as the boundary. The supporter of abortion says, “These are the difficult questions, yes, reality is difficult.” But sometimes a tidal wave of difficult questions is evidence that one is on the wrong track. A scientist, when faced with mounting difficulties stemming from his premise, must allow that perhaps this is evidence that his premise is in error. In contrast, the prolife position, in answer to the challenge to prove that an embryo is a human being – that this is a reasonable foundational principle – responds: Test the DNA and tell me what species we have here. You want empirical evidence? Come back in nine months.
October 3rd, 2012 | 12:11 pm
Tim,
Finally got around to reading that New Atlantis article – found it to be excellent, thank you.
JDD
October 3rd, 2012 | 1:08 pm
Max,
“By no means would I say that there is no distinction. I do want them to avoid actions that, they say, lead to the deaths of innocents. The entire point is that the fact that they take no steps whatsoever to avoid the destruction of fertilized eggs, even while proclaiming that fertilized eggs are babies.”
So you do allow for a distinction between the deliberate destruction of innocents and natural death, but you won’t allow people who oppose the former to draw that same distinction. Do your family members oppose murder? Do any of them have kids? Since the children they bring into the world will someday die (hopefully after a long life and from natural causes), do you consider them hypocrites if they continue to support laws against murder? If the answer is yes, then have you told them so? It seems to me you should be willing to do that, at least.
“No one will die due to any of my actions. If I believed that having children would lead to the (natural, or otherwise) deaths of children, I would not have children. It’s as simple as that. You earlier mentioned tornadoes. If me having children would lead to tornadoes, I would not have children. What about you?”
But you support laws against murder! You are constraining other people from doing what they might want to do while demanding that others uphold a standard that makes no distinction between murder and natural death. If you are going to make normative claims that murder should be outlawed, then by your own standards you need to do everything possible to make sure that no one dies of anything. Ever. At any stage of life. I mean, that’s what your standard requires of you at the very least. And I would hate to see you demand that others uphold an absurd standard that you are not willing to uphold yourself. Because that would be some serious hypocrisy there.
“You’re asking a whole lot of questions. So let me ask one. Suppose 100% of fertilized eggs failed to implant, and that humans reproduced through other means. This would still be ‘natural’. Would you then not blame people who acted in such a way that led to the deaths of fertilized eggs? If so, why, if not, why not?”
If reproduction really occurred some other way, then under natural law, sex would be pointless.
What this boils down to, is that you apparently think that the only way to be consistent in your opposition to murder, is to never bring any children into the world. Ever. Because someday they will die, and even if they live long lives and die natural deaths, the mere fact that they die is enough to make them hypocrites if they happen to think that murder is wrong. Because there is no difference between murder and natural death. Which means that for society to pass laws against murder, they should all cease having children lest they fail to live up to the bold standards of Max.
October 3rd, 2012 | 1:15 pm
Max,
One further thought. Given that your standard seems to indicate that people should either stop reproducing or stop outlawing murder, which dystopian way of upholding your preferred standards of consistency would you want to see society move towards? What will you do to make sure they move in that direction?
October 3rd, 2012 | 2:43 pm
JDD,
You’re very welcome. I have benefitted from your comments here as well. If you found that article interesting, you would really like the book Embryo: A Defense of Human Life by Professors George and Tollefson.
October 3rd, 2012 | 5:23 pm
Tim: So you do allow for a distinction between the deliberate destruction of innocents and natural death, but you won’t allow people who oppose the former to draw that same distinction.
Again, I never said that, that’s your imagination, Tim. I said that people who would regard a fertilized egg as a human, would not do something that would lead to the death of a fertilized egg. But it appears that the only way you can make your position seem reasonable is by arguing against a straw man.
It seems like you have abandoned your ‘hurricane’ example. Apparently, you could name no actions of mine that lead to hurricanes.
Tim: Since the children they bring into the world will someday die (hopefully after a long life and from natural causes),
Should people die after a long life, from natural causes? Yes. Should they die as children? No. I don’t regard fertilized eggs as children, so this is not a problem for me.
Tim: And I would hate to see you demand that others uphold an absurd standard that you are not willing to uphold yourself.
My standard is that I don’t do anything that leads to the untimely death of another human being – and I have no idea how to make this clear in a way that you will not twist.
Tim: If reproduction really occurred some other way, then under natural law, sex would be pointless.
You didn’t answer the question. Despite it being a “natural” process, which exculpates people in your view, would you hold people accountable if they acted in a way that in 100% of cases would lead to the destruction of a fertilized egg – though by a natural process? Tell me.
October 3rd, 2012 | 5:56 pm
JDD: “If you have something that demonstrates that most opposition to abortion is not because of religion” Hm…seems like my position is evloving… Please tell me where I’ve argued that!
By all means. You disapprovingly summarized one of my actions as: “Stated that the prolife position is mostly held by religious people only.”
JDD: No-one’s asking you to do ‘exhaustive study’
You did disapprovingly state that since I hadn’t engaged in ‘exhaustive study’ of websites any person can put on the internet, I was unqualified to say whether most opposition to abortion is due to religion. Of course, you can’t find out anything about the number and percentage of seculars/atheists against abortion by googling them. That’s where my suggestion comes in that anyone can put up a website. Suppose you take a look at five websites. Exactly what constituency do they represent? We don’t know. So that’s why this was a rather useless suggestion.
JDD: but then you don’t really have a basis upon which to argue that, “…apart from the lone eccentric, no secularist supports the anti-abortion position.”
You didn’t ask for any evidence that I may have. You simply told me to look for websites.
JDD: But that’s a really odd reason to say that an argument is unconvincing: ‘because they also have religious reasons.’
Suppose I dislike my neighbor, because he is smarter than I am. But I don’t want to use this as my argument. Instead, I try to use other arguments – his car makes too much noise. People may wonder why I dislike him so much, when my reasons for disliking him are so flimsy and unconvincing. My arguments are not unconvincing, because I also happen to dislike my neighbor, but because they’re not the actual reasons I dislike him.
JDD: the most reasonable foundational position to take is that something is what it will naturally become
Then I am dust, because that’s what I will naturally turn into.
JDD: In order to find that line of demarcation, he has to come up with all sorts of decision trees and explanations for why this is a human being but this isn’t one.
I have to correct you there, the issue is when a fertilized egg becomes a person worthy of protection. And I have argued, quite reasonably in my view, that at the point it is identical in function to an actual baby, it should be treated like an actual baby. I see no reason why a fertilized egg should be treated like an actual baby. Now, exactly because viability may be enhanced by technology (though I would not allow for the use of technology that would simulate the womb), we allow for a margin of error before viability.
JDD: But sometimes a tidal wave of difficult questions is evidence that one is on the wrong track.
They’re not terribly difficult to me, because I do not hold the view that a fertilized egg is endowed with a soul. The correct position on abortion is rather common sensical to me. I disagree with views on the ends of both sides: that a fertilized egg is a human person, or that a fetus right before birth should not be given protection.
October 4th, 2012 | 8:01 am
Hi Maximilian, it looks like we may have reached the end of this particular discussion. (I look forward to talking with you on other threads). I think that we’ve perhaps hit an impasse, on this issue; we’ll have to agree to disagree. Thanks for a good, and respectful discussion.
October 4th, 2012 | 11:27 am
[Maximilian] “If you have something that demonstrates that most opposition to abortion is not because of religion”
[JDD] Hm…seems like my position is evloving… Please tell me where I’ve argued that!
[Maximilian] By all means. You disapprovingly summarized one of my actions as: “Stated that the prolife position is mostly held by religious people only.”
Okay… I’m not going to try to unravel this backwards. You’ve got your logic all turned around. Hint – you’re reversing the word ‘mostly’ when you jump from my statement to yours. And you erroneously categorize people exclusively in one ‘camp’ or the other because your think that religion and reason cannot function together. My criticism was in response to your ‘lone eccentrics’ claim – the basis for which you still haven’t actually shared.
I will grant you one concession, however: There are not big huge 80,000-member atheist-for-life groups out there, (at least I haven’t come across any.) Judging from some personal stories I’ve read, that tends to be because when one becomes convinced of the humanity of the embryo, they don’t remain purely atheist for long – though they don’t automatically become a Christian or other religion either. But it’s worth noting that here reason has *informed* and *led to* the addition of a ‘religious’ belief – not the other way around; the former atheist’s reason has not been ‘replaced.’
[JDD] No-one’s asking you to do ‘exhaustive study’
[Maximilian] You did disapprovingly state that since I hadn’t engaged in ‘exhaustive study’ of websites any person can put on the internet, I was unqualified to say whether most opposition to abortion is due to religion. Of course, you can’t find out anything about the number and percentage of seculars/atheists against abortion by googling them. That’s where my suggestion comes in that anyone can put up a website. Suppose you take a look at five websites. Exactly what constituency do they represent? We don’t know. So that’s why this was a rather useless suggestion.
No, the point is that no-one’s forcing you to actual research anything. But then my point above certainly does hold – your assertion was unqualified. Where did *your* assertion come from? Some people you’ve personally talked to? By your own statement there are only a few and you’re lucky to have found them. But I’ll remember your admonishment about the uselessness of an internet search and our inability to evaluate any website the next time you propose a link to…anything.
[JDD] but then you don’t really have a basis upon which to argue that, “…apart from the lone eccentric, no secularist supports the anti-abortion position.”
[Maximilian] You didn’t ask for any evidence that I may have. You simply told me to look for websites.
Okay, look, *my bad*. Please send me your evidence for your position.
[JDD] But that’s a really odd reason to say that an argument is unconvincing: ‘because they also have religious reasons.’
[Maximilian] Suppose I dislike my neighbor, because he is smarter than I am. But I don’t want to use this as my argument. Instead, I try to use other arguments – his car makes too much noise. People may wonder why I dislike him so much, when my reasons for disliking him are so flimsy and unconvincing. My arguments are not unconvincing, because I also happen to dislike my neighbor, but because they’re not the actual reasons I dislike him.
Maximilian…I didn’t follow your above argument at all. Maybe what you’ve described is something that makes your opposition internally consistent to you.
[JDD] the most reasonable foundational position to take is that something is what it will naturally become
[Maximilian] Then I am dust, because that’s what I will naturally turn into.
Toche! Okay – and that dust will nourish plants, which will become food for a young mother many years from now, and eventually form another human being. On and on in a vicious cycle! And what iteration will the spinner finally come to rest on: dust, or human? Do we have to travel to the end of time in order to determine how to treat anybody?
[JDD] In order to find that line of demarcation, he has to come up with all sorts of decision trees and explanations for why this is a human being but this isn’t one.
[Maximilian] I have to correct you there, the issue is when a fertilized egg becomes a person worthy of protection. And I have argued, quite reasonably in my view, that at the point it is identical in function to an actual baby, it should be treated like an actual baby. I see no reason why a fertilized egg should be treated like an actual baby. Now, exactly because viability may be enhanced by technology (though I would not allow for the use of technology that would simulate the womb), we allow for a margin of error before viability.
I think your position is becoming clearer – you don’t believe that the virtue of having the nature of the human species makes an entity automatically worthy of protection as a human being. Hence the trading of terms above to ‘person worthy of protection.’ Therefore the DNA test will be irrelavant and unpersuasive to you. So much for advocating science. It’s this terminology of ‘person worthy of protection’ that is what I refered to earlier when I spoke about parsing terms.
Tell me about your margin of error – how long is it, and how did you arrive at it? I have to admit, I haven’t often heard an abortion advocate so directly admit to one. If your margin of error is two weeks before viability, and a technological advance soon emerges that pushes the point of viability back three weeks, then how will you then describe what was terminated inside the previous margin of error?
[JDD] But sometimes a tidal wave of difficult questions is evidence that one is on the wrong track.
[Maximilian] They’re not terribly difficult to me, because I do not hold the view that a fertilized egg is endowed with a soul. The correct position on abortion is rather common sensical to me. I disagree with views on the ends of both sides: that a fertilized egg is a human person, or that a fetus right before birth should not be given protection.
I’m not particularly talking about just you. It’s a flaw in the entire movement.
But you yourself have indeed had to do exactly what I pointed out – carry out extensive thought-exercises and come up with explanations of why this is a ‘human worthy of protection’ and this is not one. I appreciate that it seems common-sense to you – and I’m not knocking that. What I am highlighting is that, for a common-sense explanation, it sure seems to require a lot of work to get there, and seems to have quite a lot of internal contradiction and loose ends. ‘Margins of error’, for example.
I meant “difficult” in terms of coming to any consensus even within the pro-abortion movement, and the Pandora’s Box of definitions to be created, ‘arrived at’ by medical committees and ethical boards, sorted out and regulated by legislatures and governments. You must be aware that many points of your own explanation are disagreed with by persons with which, under the umbrella of ‘supporters of abortion’, you would claim to share the same convictions. The explanations of where that point of demarcation should be are wildly divergent and span the entire 9-month spectrum – and, unfortunately, beyond it. The prolife advocate points to that line of demarcation, cites the inherent inconsistencies, resistance to scientific tools and evidence, and logical dead-ends associated with it, and says, “There’s your problem.”
October 4th, 2012 | 1:24 pm
Same to you, Bret. I especially liked how you refuted my argument regarding the sleeping man with your coma example.
October 4th, 2012 | 1:41 pm
Max,
“Again, I never said that, that’s your imagination, Tim. I said that people who would regard a fertilized egg as a human, would not do something that would lead to the death of a fertilized egg. But it appears that the only way you can make your position seem reasonable is by arguing against a straw man.”
Not quite. What is going on here is that having been shown that your argument against pro-lifers for their alleged inconsistency is simply a reductio ad absurdum, you are now beginning to back away from the logical implications of your own argument. You are criticizing pro-lifers for their alleged inconsistency in calling for the end of deliberately destroying human embryos while engaging in a practice (sexual activity) that would lead in some cases to the natural deaths of human embyros as well. I have repeatedly pointed out that under your “logic”, anyone who has children cannot support laws against murder, since those children brought into the world will die one day, most of them in a natural manner. Thus in your attempt to be clever, you have painted yourself into a corner where you are left arguing that either no one should have children ever, or that societies should simply stop opposing murder. Given that you almost certainly don’t act in a way that bears these views out, your attempt to paint pro-lifers as hypocritical for failing to live up to a standard that no serious person embraces amounts to a stunning bit of hypocrisy on your part. You ask pro-lifers to adopt a standard that not only do you not live up to, you never could do it without coming across as absolutely crazy. Have you ever actually criticized a couple who lost a child due to some disease for being hypocritical in their opposition to murder? Do you lay into your family members who have kids and who oppose murder, knowing that one day the kids they brought into the world will die? Of course you don’t. So why don’t you stop playing games with your too-clever-by-half consistency arguments?
“Should people die after a long life, from natural causes? Yes. Should they die as children? No. I don’t regard fertilized eggs as children, so this is not a problem for me.”
But children do die from “natural causes” like diseases and so forth. Are their parents hypocritical if they continue to oppose murder? What if people die in their twenties from natural causes? Would it be okay for their parents to continue to oppose murder? You have stated before that you support laws against late-term abortion and presumably against infanticide as well. But children die at those stages too from natural causes. And yet you continue to support laws against the deliberate destruction of human beings at those stages of life! Are you a hypocrite? (Psssst. the answer is no)
“You didn’t answer the question. Despite it being a “natural” process, which exculpates people in your view, would you hold people accountable if they acted in a way that in 100% of cases would lead to the destruction of a fertilized egg – though by a natural process? Tell me.”
I prefer thought experiments that reflect the world in which we live. What if sexual activity was the way human beings reproduced, and what if one hundred percent of the human embryos that were formed went on to die. What if most of those deaths occurred naturally (i.e. there was no intentional destruction involved). What if some of those deaths occurred at the embryonic stage, some of those deaths occurred at the fetal stage, some occurred at the infant stage, some at the toddler stage, some at the child stage, some at the teenager stage, some at the adult stage, and some at the elderly stage. Would someone who opposed the deliberate destruction of human beings at any stage of life be hypocritical for bringing children in the world given that said children will die naturally at some stage in life? No. It’s pretty simple Max.
October 4th, 2012 | 6:53 pm
JDD: You’ve got your logic all turned around. Hint – you’re reversing the word ‘mostly’ when you jump from my statement to yours.
It makes no difference. If the pro-life position is mostly held by religious people only (your wording), then most opposition to abortion is because of religion (mine).
JDD: And you erroneously categorize people exclusively in one ‘camp’ or the other because your think that religion and reason cannot function together.
Not at all, I know that it is possible. But the arguments are religious in nature, not rational. It is “faith seeking understanding” – not the other way around. It is taken on faith that abortion is wrong, after which reasons for said article of faith are sought.
JDD: Judging from some personal stories I’ve read, that tends to be because when one becomes convinced of the humanity of the embryo, they don’t remain purely atheist for long
I am convinced of the humanity of the late fetus, yet I’ve been a comfortable non-believer for a rather long period of time. Why would this make a difference for the embryo? Could it be that the idea that there is something religious about the idea that the embryo is a human person worthy of protection (and my apologies for pouncing on your concession)?
JDD: But it’s worth noting that here reason has *informed* and *led to* the addition of a ‘religious’ belief – not the other way around; the former atheist’s reason has not been ‘replaced.’
In such cases, I’ll grant you, reason precedes religious dogma.
JDD: But then my point above certainly does hold – your assertion was unqualified. Where did *your* assertion come from?
This is a better question than your demand that I go look at websites run by such individuals – though you make the unwarranted assumption that I have no evidence for my assertion. Look at this: http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report2religious-landscape-study-key-findings.pdf – Page 18. 13-14% of atheists and agnostics are anti-abortion – as low as Jews and Buddhists. They’re about as common as evangelicals who are for same-sex marriage.
JDD: Maximilian…I didn’t follow your above argument at all. Maybe what you’ve described is something that makes your opposition internally consistent to you.
No doubt, but how will it appear to other people? I’m not going to tell them that I dislike my neighbor because he is smarter than I am. Instead, I use flimsy arguments, trying to avoid the real reason.
JDD: Do we have to travel to the end of time in order to determine how to treat anybody?
Apparently, yes. I did not propose that “something is what it will naturally become”, you did.
JDD: Therefore the DNA test will be irrelavant and unpersuasive to you. So much for advocating science.
Simply because you view a “DNA-test” as “science” does not mean that someone opposes science, if he does not agree with you using a DNA-test for that for which it is not suited. You might as well compare the DNA of bananas to that of humans, and say that since they are 60% similar, bananas must be 60% human. Come on.
JDD: If your margin of error is two weeks before viability, and a technological advance soon emerges that pushes the point of viability back three weeks, then how will you then describe what was terminated inside the previous margin of error?
6 weeks is reasonable. Current viability is about 24 weeks. Subtract from that six weeks, and you arrive at an age that only a faith-based opinion can hold is an actual human being. It would be unseemly to advocate for abortion, without dispelling any reasonable illusion that this is an actual human person. Now, if technology can advance viability beyond the six weeks – great. However, unless this changes our understanding of the nature of a fetus before week 18 – and it won’t – it should not affect what legal protection is granted. This may sound inconsistent with what I’ve argued earlier, but what I wanted to convey is that we should avoid borderline cases where we’re not exactly sure. 18 weeks is plenty of time for women, while avoiding possible deaths of actual human beings.
But I get it, you attempt to steer the discussion toward something that is difficult for me, as I try to steer it toward discussion of fertilized eggs, because then you’d have to defend that a fertilized egg is an actual human person.
JDD: But you yourself have indeed had to do exactly what I pointed out – carry out extensive thought-exercises and come up with explanations of why this is a ‘human worthy of protection’ and this is not one.
Now that’s interesting, because I view the anti-abortion position in exactly the same light you view the position of pro-choicers: strained and contradictory.
JDD: The prolife advocate points to that line of demarcation, cites the inherent inconsistencies, resistance to scientific tools and evidence, and logical dead-ends associated with it, and says, “There’s your problem.”
And I point to the fact that pro-lifers don’t actually treat fertilized eggs as human beings, that they usually allow for rape and incest exceptions, that they do not avoid conceiving as to not cause the death of a fertilized egg, that they do not protest against IVF-clinics – and say: “There’s your problem.”
October 4th, 2012 | 7:07 pm
Tim: I have repeatedly pointed out that under your “logic”, anyone who has children cannot support laws against murder, since those children brought into the world will die one day, most of them in a natural manner.
Already answered multiple times, so let me quote myself: “Should people die after a long life, from natural causes? Yes, [it's unavoidable]. Should they die as children? No. I don’t regard fertilized eggs as children, so this is not a problem for me.”
Tim: Have you ever actually criticized a couple who lost a child due to some disease for being hypocritical in their opposition to murder?
If I had a serious hereditary disease, which meant that there was a 50% chance of my children dying an untimely death, I would not have children. What about you?
Tim: But children do die from “natural causes” like diseases and so forth.
How likely is it, that they will die from “natural causes”? 50%?
Tim: You have stated before that you support laws against late-term abortion and presumably against infanticide as well. But children die at those stages too from natural causes. And yet you continue to support laws against the deliberate destruction of human beings at those stages of life!
I am concerned about deaths due to natural causes in children, even though they in no way approach 50% of the subject population. Yet here we have a group of people, who proclaim that fertilized eggs are human persons, while not being concerned at all about the fact that 50% of fertilized eggs die, and not taking any steps to prevent such deaths. One death for every person alive, it dwarfs the number of supposed deaths due to abortion. And yet, no concern, no calls for scientific funding. It seems that fertilized eggs are only human, when they can be used to take away the rights of women.
Tim: I prefer thought experiments that reflect the world in which we live.
But if your principles are sound, they should be equally valid when applied to hypotheticals. And let me remind you, you say that people cannot be expected to try to prevent their child’s death, if the death is “natural”, then you could easily apply them to this case. If 100% of the cases of conception would lead to the natural destruction of the fertilized egg, would you hold people accountable for conceiving?
October 5th, 2012 | 12:48 pm
Maximilian,
Thanks for the conversation. Maybe one or two more checks, and then the weekend is upon us.
[JDD] And you erroneously categorize people exclusively in one ‘camp’ or the other because your think that religion and reason cannot function together.
[Maximilian] Not at all, I know that it is possible. But the arguments are religious in nature, not rational. It is “faith seeking understanding” – not the other way around. It is taken on faith that abortion is wrong, after which reasons for said article of faith are sought.
But that’s not really what you’ve argued before – you’ve argued that the arguments might be secular in nature, but that they just hide the *real* reasons for a religious person’s position against abortion. “Window dressing” and so forth. Well, that’s purely your subjective opinion, and it’s just not going to get much traction here. It amounts to a kind of ad hominem. Better to engage the arguments on their merits if you want to be taken seriously.
[Maximilian] This is a better question than your demand that I go look at websites run by such individuals – though you make the unwarranted assumption that I have no evidence for my assertion. Look at this: http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report2religious-landscape-study-key-findings.pdf – Page 18. 13-14% of atheists and agnostics are anti-abortion…
Unwarranted? Well, it’s only taken a week to get here; I challenged your statement back on Sep 27th. Thank you for the link, and I read it through with some interest. Not sure why you left “Secular Unaffiliated” out of your group. Even so, how does your above statement of 13-14% square with your first statement of, “That may explain that apart from the lone eccentric, no secularist supports the anti-abortion position.” ?
[JDD] Do we have to travel to the end of time in order to determine how to treat anybody?
[Maximilian] Apparently, yes. I did not propose that “something is what it will naturally become”, you did.
My question was to point out how ridiculous your equivalency was. I doubt it actually failed. We will immediately begin to decay to dust when we stop living. The embryo is immediately alive as a newly created entity, and we’re discussing that lifespan. And into that continuous lifespan the pro-abortion position inserts a completely arbitrary, internally disagreed about, continually adjusting and indeed requiring a ‘margin of error’ line of demarcation to determine a switchover of that entity’s rights.
[JDD] Therefore the DNA test will be irrelevant and unpersuasive to you. So much for advocating science.
[Maximilian] Simply because you view a “DNA-test” as “science” does not mean that someone opposes science, if he does not agree with you using a DNA-test for that for which it is not suited.
…What? All conversation in the room just came to a halt, and there’s an awkward silence. Could you please give us your definition of what a DNA test is suited for?
[JDD] If your margin of error is two weeks before viability, and a technological advance soon emerges that pushes the point of viability back three weeks, then how will you then describe what was terminated inside the previous margin of error?
[Maximilian] 6 weeks is reasonable. Current viability is about 24 weeks. Subtract from that six weeks, and you arrive at an age that only a faith-based opinion can hold is an actual human being. It would be unseemly to advocate for abortion, without dispelling any reasonable illusion that this is an actual human person. Now, if technology can advance viability beyond the six weeks – great. However, unless this changes our understanding of the nature of a fetus before week 18 – and it won’t – it should not affect what legal protection is granted. …”
You’ve twice in the above paragraph made a subjective dogmatic statement, “only a faith-based opinion can hold…” and “it [technological advances in viability] won’t [change our understanding of the nature of the fetus...]” Well, you’ve just offered a faith-based opinion yourself. But both of these statements have already been disproved. 13-14% of atheists and agnostics, by your own source, hold the opinion you call faith-based. And to your second statement, there’s ample precedent to demonstrate that technological advances *already have*, on numerous occasions, changed our understanding of the fetus.
Near as I can tell, you’ve also just hinted that viability *isn’t* actually your line of demarcation. And it’s not at all clear whether you’re using the term ‘viability’ in the same way as the phrase “identical in function to an actual baby” as you’ve argued before. Are you saying that if viability is advanced before the age that you would consider a fetus “identical in function…” then you would allow abortion to that viable fetus?
It’s becoming clearer now why, in an earlier post, you included a parenthetical phrase that you, “would not allow for the use of technology that would simulate the womb.” It’s an odd condition to just throw in there. Can you explain why not? This is one of those complications of your position I mentioned.
[JDD] The prolife advocate points to that line of demarcation, cites the inherent inconsistencies, resistance to scientific tools and evidence, and logical dead-ends associated with it, and says, “There’s your problem.”
[Maximilian] And I point to the fact that pro-lifers don’t actually treat fertilized eggs as human beings, that they usually allow for rape and incest exceptions, that they do not avoid conceiving as to not cause the death of a fertilized egg, that they do not protest against IVF-clinics – and say: “There’s your problem.”
Believe it or not, I sympathize to some extent with your second criticism. There is much inconsistency among the prolife community on this issue of rape or incest and I’m afraid that it is largely due to emotional and societal pressure. Sadly, a young girl or woman is often told that the abortion will reset things and remove the stigma of incest or rape – when in reality that doesn’t happen. What happens instead is the woman becomes even more isolated than before; because to everyone outside her experience, all evidence indicates that everything’s been reversed. Organizations such as Rachel’s Vineyard reflect this experience. I am Roman Catholic and do not support these exclusion clauses for the very reason you cited – it would be completely inconsistent, per your first criticism.
Your third criticism – about not conceiving at all, lest I miscarriage? Sorry – I’ve been following that conversation alongside this one. You’ve already slain your own straw man multiple times. Prolife people simply don’t have a problem with natural death. The position you advocate is genocidal paralysis. And you can’t carry through your own position to its logical conclusion – namely, that a species attempting to survive more than one generation is intrinsically and helplessly immoral.
To your fourth criticism, I think it has a little more to do with the technology, the time it’s taken our culture to even begin to think through the moral questions, and allocation of resources. Much of the public presence at abortion clinics is in order to offer an immediate alternate option to a woman at the very time of her decision. We protest IVF primarily on the legislative front, on the stages of science and ethics and the forum of public opinion.
But your redirection rebuttal is noted.
October 5th, 2012 | 1:44 pm
Max,
“Already answered multiple times, so let me quote myself: “Should people die after a long life, from natural causes? Yes, [it's unavoidable]. Should they die as children? No. I don’t regard fertilized eggs as children, so this is not a problem for me.”
Repeating a non-answer is not an answer. It is unavoidable that some children die from natural causes. What percentage of children that die at this stage is irrelevant. They do die. Does that make opposition to child-murder hypocritical? Of course not.
“If I had a serious hereditary disease, which meant that there was a 50% chance of my children dying an untimely death, I would not have children. What about you?”
Since you don’t bother responding to my question, I’ll go ahead and assume that you have never actually criticized a couple for losing a child to natural causes while continuing to oppose murder. You might want to practice the sort of bold action that you require of others.
As for your actual reply, it is both inaccurate and irrelevant. Roughly 45% of human embryos fail to implant, but it is estimated that at least half of these involve defective fertilizations, and thus do not involve complete human organisms. One hundred and fifty years ago, infant mortality rates were at least this high in several parts of the world, and yet people managed to continue to oppose infanticide without someone leveling ridiculous charges of inconsistency at them. One hundred percent of elderly people die, most of them from natural causes. Normal people understand this sort of thing, and yet a) continue to think procreation is a worthy thing to engage in, and b) continue to oppose the murder of elderly people.
By the way, in your scenario, I would probably try to have kids and hope for the best, although if I did have a child who died, I would continue to oppose child murder and not feel the least bit hypocritical. I suspect that most people, being able to distinguish between natural death and murder, would agree with me on that.
“I am concerned about deaths due to natural causes in children, even though they in no way approach 50% of the subject population.”
Concerned enough to criticize people who lose children to diseases or other natural causes? What percentage of children have to die of natural causes for you to become worried about your own consistency in opposing murder?
“Yet here we have a group of people, who proclaim that fertilized eggs are human persons, while not being concerned at all about the fact that 50% of fertilized eggs die, and not taking any steps to prevent such deaths.”
What if they are concerned, but conclude that natural death is a part of life, and that reproducing is still a worthy undertaking? People continued to reproduce years ago when infant mortality rates were higher than the actual rate of failed embryonic implantation today. Do you consider these people of yesteryear heartless and cruel? Hypocritical? My grandparents’ generation lost kids in infancy all the time, and yet they continued to reproduce and continued to support laws against infanticide. And they would have had little patience for the sort of argument that they were somehow hypocrites.
Maybe a time will when come when we can understand how to reduce, or even avoid altogether roughly a quarter of all human embryos failing to implant in the womb, but until that time it is perfectly legitimate and consistent to support the legal protection of all human beings at every stage of life.
“One death for every person alive, it dwarfs the number of supposed deaths due to abortion. And yet, no concern, no calls for scientific funding. It seems that fertilized eggs are only human, when they can be used to take away the rights of women.”
First of all, there is no right to abortion in the Constitution, and plenty of women (roughly half) oppose abortion. All of the original feminists did (think Susan B. Anthony). Heck even Margaret Sanger opposed abortion. So you’re just recycling tired arguments right now.
And the number of children who die in infancy even today is higher than the number of actual infanticides carried out in this country. And yet people continue to oppose infanticide. One hundred percent of elderly people die, and yet people continue to oppose murder. I’m not sure why you look at a natural event, that people rightly conclude that they can do little about at present time, and fault them if they oppose murder, as if the two were even remotely similar.
And it is really difficult to take your thought experiment seriously. You want me to envision a world in which people (somehow) manage to reproduce outside of sexual activity. And yet for some reason, sexual activity still leads to reproduction where the human being lives for only a few minutes or so in every situation. I think reproduction is a good thing. If it really occurred outside of sexual activity, then sexual activity would indeed be pointless. I find it illuminating that in order to bolster your odd views, you have to invent thought experiments that are totally bizarre and otherworldly. In the meantime, the thought experiment I proposed is what actually happens in the real world, and you ignored it completely.
October 6th, 2012 | 7:42 pm
JDD: Well, that’s purely your subjective opinion, and it’s just not going to get much traction here. It amounts to a kind of ad hominem. Better to engage the arguments on their merits if you want to be taken seriously.
I do, insofar as there are arguments. But it’s rather hard to engage “you’re going to hell” on the merits, or to take it seriously as a secular argument. You are free to disagree, and to provide evidence for your position, if you have it.
JDD: Well, it’s only taken a week to get here
You didn’t ask for evidence, you demanded that I google “atheist pro-life” – I responded to what you said, not to what you may have desired.
JDD: Not sure why you left “Secular Unaffiliated” out of your group. Even so, how does your above statement of 13-14% square with your first statement of [lone eccentric],
Perhaps you thought I meant that in the whole of the US, there were two or three atheists who were anti-abortion. In actuality, I meant a very small number, and I suspect (though can’t prove beyond anecdote) that a lot of the 13-14% are anti-abortion because of their affiliation with conservative political ideology. There certainly are more than 13-14% of atheists/agnostics who will vote for the likes of Mitt Romney.
JDD: My question was to point out how ridiculous your equivalency was. I doubt it actually failed. (…) The embryo is immediately alive as a newly created entity, and we’re discussing that lifespan.
You stand by your statement that “something is what it will naturally become”? Then I do not see how you could disagree with my statement that you and I are then dust. Your statement did not limit the application of this principle only to the lifespan of the organism – indeed, I can’t see how it could, seeing as this something will naturally die and turn to dust.
JDD: Could you please give us your definition of what a DNA test is suited for?
A paternity test, for example.
JDD: and “it [technological advances in viability] won’t [change our understanding of the nature of the fetus...]” Well, you’ve just offered a faith-based opinion yourself.
A reasoned argument is not ‘faith-based’ or ‘dogma’.
JDD: And to your second statement, there’s ample precedent to demonstrate that technological advances *already have*, on numerous occasions, changed our understanding of the fetus.
Didn’t you ask the freezing question? The point is the same. Technology may advance to enable freezing of actual human beings, but that doesn’t change the fact that human beings are so developed and complicated that technologically unaided freezing will destroy the complicated organic tissue that they possess – which is not true for embryoes and fetuses. And while technology may allow us to create a brooding machine in which a fertilized egg can come to term, that would not change the nature of a fertilized egg.
JDD: Are you saying that if viability is advanced before the age that you would consider a fetus “identical in function…” then you would allow abortion to that viable fetus?
I am hampered somewhat by my lack of knowledge of what machines are used to help a viable fetus survive, and in what way. But here is what I can say. In my understanding, a 24-week fetus is identical in function to an actual baby, but just weaker – so it needs the aid of machines to survive. This would not be true for a 16-week fetus.
JDD: It’s becoming clearer now why, in an earlier post, you included a parenthetical phrase that you, “would not allow for the use of technology that would simulate the womb.” It’s an odd condition to just throw in there. Can you explain why not?
I didn’t mean that I would outlaw it, only that it should not be used in consideration of what is and what is not a human person that should be protected. If it is used as a substitute womb, it does not change our understanding of the fetus – it only means that we are able to simulate the conditions of a womb.
JDD: Sadly, a young girl or woman is often told that the abortion will reset things and remove the stigma of incest or rape – when in reality that doesn’t happen. What happens instead is the woman becomes even more isolated than before; because to everyone outside her experience, all evidence indicates that everything’s been reversed.
A utilitarian argument, based on no evidence? I’ll let that pass – if you made an argument like “yeah, it’s bad for the victim, but she just needs to suck it up” , it may make you sound heartless, and you probably do not want to think of yourself in that manner.
JDD: Your third criticism – about not conceiving at all, lest I miscarriage?
A miscarriage tends to be something people are aware of. It’s unpleasant to put it mildly. The 50% of fertilized eggs that fail to implant pass without the individual noticing or caring much. Which just shows to me that pro-lifers do not believe that these are human beings, or they would be upset.
JDD: Prolife people simply don’t have a problem with natural death.
You do, just like everyone else. If a child dies “naturally”, you do have a problem with it.
JDD: But your redirection rebuttal is noted.
Just showing you that you appear in the same way to me as I do to you.
October 6th, 2012 | 8:01 pm
Tim: It is unavoidable that some children die from natural causes.
Parents grieve over children who die from natural causes. Despite believing that fertilized eggs are children, pro-lifers do not grieve over, or even acknowledge, the fertilized eggs that failed to implant. Can you explain this?
Tim: Since you don’t bother responding to my question, I’ll go ahead and assume that you have never actually criticized a couple for losing a child to natural causes while continuing to oppose murder.
I did answer your question. I just changed your question to make it analogous to the case we were discussing.
Tim: One hundred and fifty years ago, infant mortality rates were at least this high in several parts of the world, and yet people managed to continue to oppose infanticide without someone leveling ridiculous charges of inconsistency at them.
I was wondering why it took you so long to come with this argument. And I have also wondered why people in the Middle Ages would have children, when so many of them would die. I wouldn’t.
Tim: By the way, in your scenario, I would probably try to have kids and hope for the best
You are consistent in that regard, though this answer does slightly horrify me, and I mean no offense. Even though you keep pretending that I say there is no difference between ‘natural death’ and murder, that is not my argument (go back and read my first comments), my argument is that pro-lifers don’t act as if fertilized eggs are actual human beings.
Tim: What if they are concerned, but conclude that natural death is a part of life, and that reproducing is still a worthy undertaking?
That’s a decent argument, one that I don’t see pro-lifers making.
Tim: People continued to reproduce years ago when infant mortality rates were higher than the actual rate of failed embryonic implantation today. Do you consider these people of yesteryear heartless and cruel?
People of yesteryear were pretty heartless and cruel. Even though I’m not impressed with what we are today, we are ever so slightly better than the people of 1000 years ago.
Tim: Maybe a time will when come when we can understand how to reduce, or even avoid altogether roughly a quarter of all human embryos failing to implant in the womb
If I believed that half/one quarter (I don’t have the qualifications to either affirm or dispute your claim) of all human beings died, I would be pushing for scientific research, to prevent this great atrocity.
Tim: And the number of children who die in infancy even today is higher than the number of actual infanticides carried out in this country. And yet people continue to oppose infanticide.
People also do their best to avoid children dying in infancy due to natural causes.
Tim: In the meantime, the thought experiment I proposed is what actually happens in the real world, and you ignored it completely.
I am not sure what you mean. Is it your assertion that “everyone will die, so any child being born is one death, so according to your reasoning, that’s murder”? Of course, you would have to take the relativist course and insist that there is no difference between a child and a senior dying of natural causes.
And again, I am not saying that fertilized eggs being naturally destroyed and abortion are ‘the same thing’. I never have. You can look at earlier posts, and you will never see me saying that they are equivalent. Perhaps you think this is a straw man that is easier to knock down. But my argument has always been that pro-lifers don’t act like they believe that fertilized eggs are human beings, or we would se more concern about this fact. You may say that it does not matter, because it’s a ‘natural’ death, but I can assure you that if half of my children died of ‘natural’ causes, I would be very upset. Yet I can perceive no such thing. It all boils down to “fertilized eggs are humans, but only if it inconveniences others, and not us”. That’s also why pro-life Christians using IVF fought against Mississippi’s Personhood Amendment.
October 8th, 2012 | 7:04 am
Max,
“Parents grieve over children who die from natural causes. Despite believing that fertilized eggs are children, pro-lifers do not grieve over, or even acknowledge, the fertilized eggs that failed to implant. Can you explain this?”
Sure. Most people, and that includes most pro-lifers, are unaware that roughly 25% of human embryos die as a result of a failed implantation. When a mother grieves over the loss of her child, she obviously has known about the existence of her child and has been able to form an emotional attachment to it. That’s why you see women (and men too) mourning after miscarriages, even if they obviously have never held the child that was within them. Max, you strike me as intelligent enough to figure this out.
Even those people who do know this fact rightly conclude that there is little that can be done about it at present time. And that since reproduction is still a worthwhile endeavor, the risk of natural death is worth it, given that at the end of the day, everyone must die. And yet it is perfectly consistent for these people to oppose the deliberate destruction of human beings at any stage.
“I was wondering why it took you so long to come with this argument. And I have also wondered why people in the Middle Ages would have children, when so many of them would die. I wouldn’t.”
You really do wonder that? I wonder at your wonder.
“People of yesteryear were pretty heartless and cruel. Even though I’m not impressed with what we are today, we are ever so slightly better than the people of 1000 years ago.”
Okay, but that’s a bit of a dodge. Do you consider your grandparents’ generation heartless and cruel specifically for continuing to reproduce in a world where so many infants (and mothers) did not survive? Do you consider their continued opposition to infanticide and other forms of murder as hypocritical?
October 8th, 2012 | 1:43 pm
Max,
“You are consistent in that regard, though this answer does slightly horrify me, and I mean no offense. Even though you keep pretending that I say there is no difference between ‘natural death’ and murder, that is not my argument (go back and read my first comments), my argument is that pro-lifers don’t act as if fertilized eggs are actual human beings.”
But why does this slightly horrify you? There was a real chance during your grandparents’ generation that their children (i.e. your parents) would die in infancy. Are you slightly horrified that your grandparents went ahead and had your parents?
“If I believed that half/one quarter (I don’t have the qualifications to either affirm or dispute your claim) of all human beings died, I would be pushing for scientific research, to prevent this great atrocity.”
Atrocity? I think you used the word “massacre” earlier on. You keep reassuring me that you know there is a clear difference between natural death and murder, and then you use the word “atrocity” in describing a natural occurrence. Most people associate “atrocity” with some type of agency/action. I suppose it’s possible to label a natural occurrence an atrocity, but not many people do that. Do you consider the deaths that came about as a result of that earthquake in Port-au-Prince part of an atrocity? A massacre?
“People also do their best to avoid children dying in infancy due to natural causes.”
Again, people know their children are alive and have formed an emotional bond with them, whereas most people have no idea that roughly one quarter of all human embryos fail to implant. And again, even if they did know this, they may conclude that there is little that can be done about it, and that reproduction is still worthwhile. In short, they are acting the way people did one hundred years ago when infant mortality rates were so high.
“I am not sure what you mean. Is it your assertion that “everyone will die, so any child being born is one death, so according to your reasoning, that’s murder”? Of course, you would have to take the relativist course and insist that there is no difference between a child and a senior dying of natural causes.”
I had a hard time following this paragraph. And I don’t think “relativist” means what you think it does.
“And again, I am not saying that fertilized eggs being naturally destroyed and abortion are ‘the same thing’. I never have. You can look at earlier posts, and you will never see me saying that they are equivalent. Perhaps you think this is a straw man that is easier to knock down. But my argument has always been that pro-lifers don’t act like they believe that fertilized eggs are human beings, or we would se more concern about this fact. You may say that it does not matter, because it’s a ‘natural’ death, but I can assure you that if half of my children died of ‘natural’ causes, I would be very upset. Yet I can perceive no such thing.”
When you add together the parts that a) most people, and that includes pro-lifers, are unaware of how many human embryos fail to implant b) mothers who lose children at the embryonic stage are often unaware of it c) it is more difficult to form emotional attachments to human beings when you are unaware of their existence d) even if you are aware that sexual activity can and does lead to the natural death of human embryos, that the good of reproduction is still worthwhile, then when taken together, the opposition of pro-lifers to the deliberate destruction of human embryos is still perfectly consistent.
“It all boils down to “fertilized eggs are humans, but only if it inconveniences others, and not us”.
Inconveniences? First of all, why do you assume that everyone who opposes abortion knows the facts of embryo loss? I would be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of Americans have no idea how many human embryos fail to implant.
Secondly, would you consider people who supported laws against infanticide a century ago to be meddling in the affairs of others given that there was a not-insignificant chance their own children might die in infancy?
It’s comments like this that really make me wonder whether you do understand the difference between natural death and murder despite your protestations to the contrary.
“That’s also why pro-life Christians using IVF fought against Mississippi’s Personhood Amendment.”
Who are these pro-life Christians using IVF who fought against the Personhood Amendment? How many of them are there? How many of them know the facts about human embryo loss?
Do these people really serve as a sort of stand-in for all pro-lifers?
October 9th, 2012 | 1:59 pm
What to respond to, what to respond to…
[Maximilian] …it’s rather hard to engage “you’re going to hell” on the merits, or to take it seriously as a secular argument.
You seem to be confusing me with another poster.
[JDD] Well, it’s only taken a week to get here.
[Maximilian] You didn’t ask for evidence, you demanded that I google “atheist pro-life”
Your original ‘eccentric lone wolf’ statement was the problem. As a matter of fact, I suggested that a simple web search might reveal that the evidence was against it. You responded with, “… I will not spend hours of my time in exhaustive study of arguments I’ve known for a long time.” I then asked you to show me your source for this knowledge. It took about three tries to get it. A week later, you’ve provided me with a document that backed up my point.
[JDD] Not sure why you left “Secular Unaffiliated” out of your group. Even so, how does your above statement of 13-14% square with your first statement of [lone eccentric],
[Maximilian] Perhaps you thought I meant that in the whole of the US, there were two or three atheists who were anti-abortion. In actuality, I meant a very small number, and I suspect (though can’t prove beyond anecdote) that a lot of the 13-14% are anti-abortion because of their affiliation with conservative political ideology. There certainly are more than 13-14% of atheists/agnostics who will vote for the likes of Mitt Romney.
Oh, you actually meant a very small number. Come on, Maximilian. Just admit that, hm, 13-14% – from your own source! – is a significant percent of persons who oppose abortion outside of religious reasons, and stop trying to argue it’s a mere aberration. You omitted ‘secular unaffiliated’ (19%) because… ? But anything to avoid having to admit that there are a significant amount of persons who hold a pro-life position apart from religious convictions. It must be *secretly religious*, or because of party affiliation, or *something*…
[JDD] My question was to point out how ridiculous your equivalency was. I doubt it actually failed. (…) The embryo is immediately alive as a newly created entity, and we’re discussing that lifespan.
[Maximilian] You stand by your statement that “something is what it will naturally become”? Then I do not see how you could disagree with my statement that you and I are then dust. Your statement did not limit the application of this principle only to the lifespan of the organism – indeed, I can’t see how it could, seeing as this something will naturally die and turn to dust.
As a quick perusal of the conversation thread will show, I didn’t disagree with your statement that ‘we are then dust’. I disagreed with your next leap of logic. We’re discussing the lifespan of a living entity – though our point of disagreement is with what that bookend represents, we still agree that there are bookends. When that entity begins living, we begin evaluating. When it stops living, we conclude. Within those bookends, I argue that something is what it will naturally become. If indeed you ‘can’t see how’ my statement could ‘limit the application of this principle,’ then you’d also have to argue that, for example, I can punch a stranger on the street in the nose with no moral culpability because they’re eventually going to be dust, and there’s nothing wrong with punching dust. That’s where your additional principle of application takes us. That’s why I don’t hold it.
Along these lines, I’d be interested in hearing your response to the acorn-to-tree defense presented in the previously linked paper.
[JDD] Could you please give us your definition of what a DNA test is suited for?
[Maximilian] A paternity test, for example.
Another use: to determine what species something is. Do you agree that this is another use?
[JDD] and “it [technological advances in viability] won’t [change our understanding of the nature of the fetus...]” Well, you’ve just offered a faith-based opinion yourself.
[Maximilian] A reasoned argument is not ‘faith-based’ or ‘dogma’.
“It won’t,” as a prediction of a cultural response to emerging technology is not a particularly reasoned response – it’s a guess. You’ll argue an educated guess, sure. In light of, as I mentioned before, your statement already being disproven based on previous technological advances, it seems to be without empirical support. It appears to be more of a argument based on what you already hold to be true – namely, ‘the embryo isn’t a human being’.
[Maximilian] …while technology may allow us to create a brooding machine in which a fertilized egg can come to term, that would not change the nature of a fertilized egg.
I agree, a ‘brooding machine’ would not change the nature of a fertilized egg; it might however change our culture’s understanding of that nature. It would be a disaster for the viability argument.
[JDD] Are you saying that if viability is advanced before the age that you would consider a fetus “identical in function…” then you would allow abortion to that viable fetus?
[Maximilian] I am hampered somewhat by my lack of knowledge of what machines are used to help a viable fetus survive, and in what way. But here is what I can say. In my understanding, a 24-week fetus is identical in function to an actual baby, but just weaker – so it needs the aid of machines to survive. This would not be true for a 16-week fetus.
So would you allow the abortion of a fetus that was viable, but not ‘identical in function to an actual baby, just weaker’? Is a baby who is 28 weeks, but unable to breathe because of an undeveloped lung, ‘identical in function to an actual baby’, or not?
This baby was born at 22 weeks:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1021034/The-tiniest-survivor-How-miracle-baby-born-weeks-legal-abortion-limit-clung-life-odds.html
[JDD] Sadly, a young girl or woman is often told that the abortion will reset things and remove the stigma of incest or rape – when in reality that doesn’t happen. What happens instead is the woman becomes even more isolated than before; because to everyone outside her experience, all evidence indicates that everything’s been reversed.
[Maximilian] A utilitarian argument, based on no evidence? I’ll let that pass – if you made an argument like “yeah, it’s bad for the victim, but she just needs to suck it up” , it may make you sound heartless, and you probably do not want to think of yourself in that manner.
Again, you make up some thoughts that *must* be in your opponent’s head. I provided you with evidence by citing the organization Rachel’s Vineyard. http://www.rachelsvineyard.org/
Here’s another one: http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/testimonies/
[JDD] Prolife people simply don’t have a problem with natural death.
[Maximilian] You do, just like everyone else. If a child dies “naturally”, you do have a problem with it.
We’re not talking about sorrow, here. By ‘don’t have a problem’ we mean that we don’t have a big moral conundrum.
October 9th, 2012 | 7:03 pm
Tim: Most people, and that includes most pro-lifers, are unaware that roughly 25% of human embryos die as a result of a failed implantation.
I would argue that this is evidence that the particular individuals who are unaware of this do not really care that much about fertilized eggs. For example, most pro-lifers “know” that Plan B causes failure of implantation (murder in some cases and not in others), even though a recent rather solid study concluded that this is not true. Yet this is unknown to them? Has the pro-life movement not informed them of this, or exhorted its political supporters to sponsor science that will stop this? If not, is the pro-life movement unaware of this, or is it simply not important enough when it can’t be used to take away the rights of women?
Tim: And that since reproduction is still a worthwhile endeavor
Why is that? Even though I am not a Christian, I can see the empirical evidence for original sin, if you will. In the abstract it is probably better to have fewer humans.\
Tim: Do you consider your grandparents’ generation heartless and cruel specifically for continuing to reproduce in a world where so many infants (and mothers) did not survive?
That is probably not true for my grandparents’ generation (they’re in their 80s, and none of their children died), maybe for my great-grandparents. But mindlessness often leads to heartlessness and cruelty. People unthinkingly commit rather severe evils.
Tim: Are you slightly horrified that your grandparents went ahead and had your parents?
I would be, if there were a 50/50 chance that they’d die as a child. I would be horrified that someone “had” me, if there were a 50/50 chance that I would die as a child.
Tim: First of all, why do you assume that everyone who opposes abortion knows the facts of embryo loss? I would be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of Americans have no idea how many human embryos fail to implant.
Probably. But some of these folks want to outlaw Plan B for this reason, that it leads to the “natural” death of eggs, even though recent research shows that it does not.
Tim: Secondly, would you consider people who supported laws against infanticide a century ago to be meddling in the affairs of others given that there was a not-insignificant chance their own children might die in infancy?
Whether or not someone is meddling in the affairs of others is completely unrelated to the question of whether they are being hypocritical. Infanticide is killing a separate and independent human being, so opposing it is not meddling in the affairs of anyone. The same is not true for abortion (I know you disagree), so that’s automatically interfering in the affairs of others, regardless of whether someone is being hypocritical.
Tim: Who are these pro-life Christians using IVF who fought against the Personhood Amendment? How many of them are there? How many of them know the facts about human embryo loss?
The IVF argument is separate from the fertilized egg argument, though they share one thing in common. My argument is that a lot of pro-lifers like to apply their beliefs when it takes away from the rights of others (women mostly), but don’t want to consistently apply these beliefs to their own rights. A Christian pro-lifer who is using IVF is one example. Why did the Persoonhood Amendment lose in Mississippi – a state where most would be all too happy to take away the rights of women? A state where the current governor said that a loss for the Personhood Amendment would be a victory for Satan? It’s because of people like the Carpenters, who think that their ability to have children is more important than the fact that the (they think) brothers and sisters of those children will die: http://articles.cnn.com/2011-11-07/us/us_mississippi-personhood-amendment_1_fertilization-carpenters-anti-abortion-amendment?_s=PM:US
October 10th, 2012 | 2:52 pm
Max,
“I would argue that this is evidence that the particular individuals who are unaware of this do not really care that much about fertilized eggs. For example, most pro-lifers “know” that Plan B causes failure of implantation (murder in some cases and not in others), even though a recent rather solid study concluded that this is not true. Yet this is unknown to them? Has the pro-life movement not informed them of this, or exhorted its political supporters to sponsor science that will stop this? If not, is the pro-life movement unaware of this, or is it simply not important enough when it can’t be used to take away the rights of women?”
Most pro-lifers, like most pro-choicers, have not put in the sort of time and energy to get fully informed about the issue that you and I have. Their support or opposition to the issue is largely driven by intuition, etc. I would wager that most people in the pro-life camp probably could not tell you much about Plan B at all. Or if they could, then they would still be unaware of the sheer number of human embryos lost naturally. Pro-lifers do have lots of educational resources, but obviously they tend to be consumed by the most committed, which represents a small percentage of those who call themselves pro-life. This cuts both ways too. I have met plenty of pro-choicers who were surprised to hear that embryology textbooks state that fertilization marks the beginning of a human being’s life.
Furthermore, we live in a country where late-term abortion is legal. Given that pro-lifers actually have a reasonable chance in today’s political climate to address that injustice, they tend to spend the bulk of their time and energy on stopping something that is within the realm of the possibility. Focusing on stopping natural loss of human embryos is just not as high on their priority list for obvious reasons. Something that happens naturally is just not considered as tragic as something that happens deliberately. Again, you strike me as someone who is smart to figure this out on your own.
And enough with the “rights of women” nonsense too. One of the things you would learn about the pro-life movement if you studied it at all, is that the most committed are disproportionately women. I could just as easily call the pro-choice movement the “adolescent male’s right to have sex without having to take any sort of responsibility movement.”
“Why is that? Even though I am not a Christian, I can see the empirical evidence for original sin, if you will. In the abstract it is probably better to have fewer humans.”
Umm, let’s move on.
“That is probably not true for my grandparents’ generation (they’re in their 80s, and none of their children died), maybe for my great-grandparents. But mindlessness often leads to heartlessness and cruelty. People unthinkingly commit rather severe evils.”
Is having children a severe evil? Are you sure you understand the difference between natural death and murder? Because you continually state that you do, and then continually write sentences like the above that indicate that you don’t.
“I would be, if there were a 50/50 chance that they’d die as a child. I would be horrified that someone “had” me, if there were a 50/50 chance that I would die as a child.”
Fine.
“Probably. But some of these folks want to outlaw Plan B for this reason, that it leads to the “natural” death of eggs, even though recent research shows that it does not.”
Come on. Plan B makes it more difficult for human embryos to implant. That’s the point. It doesn’t follow at all that pro-lifers are aware that so many don’t implant naturally.
“Whether or not someone is meddling in the affairs of others is completely unrelated to the question of whether they are being hypocritical. Infanticide is killing a separate and independent human being, so opposing it is not meddling in the affairs of anyone. The same is not true for abortion (I know you disagree), so that’s automatically interfering in the affairs of others, regardless of whether someone is being hypocritical.”
You’re right. I disagree. :)
“The IVF argument is separate from the fertilized egg argument, though they share one thing in common. My argument is that a lot of pro-lifers like to apply their beliefs when it takes away from the rights of others (women mostly), but don’t want to consistently apply these beliefs to their own rights. A Christian pro-lifer who is using IVF is one example. Why did the Persoonhood Amendment lose in Mississippi – a state where most would be all too happy to take away the rights of women? A state where the current governor said that a loss for the Personhood Amendment would be a victory for Satan? It’s because of people like the Carpenters, who think that their ability to have children is more important than the fact that the (they think) brothers and sisters of those children will die: http://articles.cnn.com/2011-11-07/us/us_mississippi-personhood-amendment_1_fertilization-carpenters-anti-abortion-amendment?_s=PM:US”
You really do care about this Mississippi personhood amendment. I didn’t really follow it that much. One interesting thing about that CNN article, is that it stated that the family was Christian, but on my quick reading, it did not state that the family was pro-life. The first does not always lead to the second. I have no idea why the amendment failed. My guess is that people thought it went too far. I do recall reading somewhere that the Catholic Bishops opposed it, but cannot remember why. Anyway, I think you are putting way too much stock into this one failed amendment. Most people don’t use IVF, most people are not aware of the facts of natural loss of human embryos, and most people think that reproducing is worthwhile even if it leads to natural death at the earliest stages. I think you are greatly exaggerating both the numbers of people who are holding the sort of “hypocritical” views you ascribe to them, and the motivations for their alleged hypocrises.
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