There certainly seems to be a lot of confusion here.

It's not at all clear that any of these categories ("human being," "person," "human") will help anyone to settle the abortion debate in a non-question begging way. That includes Joe Carter.

The terms themselves seem unnecessary. Let us agree to all of the biological and psychological facts in all of their minute detail. We can also agree about certain paradigmatic cases in which killing a human being is clearly morally wrong (i.e., we can agree to many cases which clearly do constitute murder). The question is then this: how can it be shown that aborting a fertilized human egg cell is or is not also morally wrong--and wrong for the same reason that the paradigmatic cases of murder are wrong?

In attempting answer this question, I don't see how it is so very helpful to simply appeal to the categories Joe Carter has mentioned. Or, if you want to base your argument on one of the categories, then you should at least accept this challenge: what is it, precisely, about the category you have chosen that makes it the decisive consideration in settling this issue? Don't beg the question!

"Advocates for embryo and fetal destruction should therefore stop playing semantic games and admit that they believe it is acceptable to kill some human beings because human beings do not have, per se, intrinsic worth."

Edmond- Thank you Joe C, I heart fully agree sith that statement. As I said in one of my posts for which I am grateful that it was not censored out of this site, " the best argument against pro-abortionists are the proponents themselves." I posted this in one of our local dailies and I explained myself in detail by saying that Pro-abortionists who hypocritically championed abortion because it would reduce overpopulation which was the "cause" of poverty. And that if the proponents' hearts really "bled" for the impoverished so profusely, they should heroically step up to the plate and make examples of themselves by immediate "mass destruction" . That would solve half of the population problem in one go! Of course the paper didn't comment but they did print it. Abortion for the sake of reducing poverty? Such greed! Which incidentally is the real cause of poverty, and this will be the topic for discussion in the upcoming Davos meeting.

Before Locke and the "functionalist" criteria for personhood, the standard definition of "person" came from Boethius: "an individual substance of rational nature." This definition has the advantage of focusing not on what one can do, but rather on what one is. Returning to the common-sense simplicity of this definition would revolutionize both ethical theory and practical applications of that theory.

There is nothing mysterious about what we mean by a person. We use the word constantly to refer to a living, human body, as in “That person over there,” or “Offences against the Person.”

“Mind” or “Consciousness” is not a person, but an abstraction.

Does that mean that, by “person,” we mean “body”? By no means; a corpse is not a person, but the remains of a person.

It is a rather interesting paradox, the way in which many materialists, in fact, produce a sort of Mind/Body dualism that is more than a little reminiscent of Descartes – except that they tend to talk about “consciousness,” rather than “Mind.” Probe a little and you will find they identify the “real me” with consciousness and tend to take an instrumentalist view of the body – essentially, dualism.

Very different, this, to Aristotle’s “Rational Animal.”

I think angels would be considered non-human, persons. From the Catholic Catechism:

330 As purely spiritual creatures angels have intelligence and will: they are personal and immortal creatures,....

One thing that bothers me about the line of reason being argued against here is that, in the case of the two year old child, one human gets to decide when another becomes a person. Very dangerous. As Mr. Carter noted, this has been tried before (slaves, Jews, and others), with bad results.

I disagree: embryos are not humans beings. Embryos are a mass of cells, much like my arm is a mass of cells. And if I decide I would be better without my arm, I am legally capable of cutting off my arm (and morally neutral). Before independent thought (that is, brain activity), an embryo is not a human being.

Dear Michael PS: If you have not already read it, I think you would really like Patrick Lee's book on body-self dualism and its application to contemporary ethics and politics.

@C. Ehrlich ***The question is then this: how can it be shown that aborting a fertilized human egg cell is or is not also morally wrong--and wrong for the same reason that the paradigmatic cases of murder are wrong? ***

You yourself seem to be confused about the categories. There is no such thing as a "fertilized human egg cell." Once the egg is fertilized it becomes a completely different entity—an embryo.

As to your question, though, the answer depends on whether you think that human beings have a right not to be killed based on what they are (members of the human species) or whether it is dependent on some other criteria that can be decided on by the whims of other humans. If the former, then killing an embryo is clearly morally wrong.

***Don't beg the question!***

I'm not begging the question, but clarifying the point under debate. If you say that it is okay to kill a human embryo then you are saying that it is licit to kill certain groups of human beings for just about any reason a person may choose. This is a prolegomena to the debate. Once a person is willing to admit that, yes, certain human beings can be killed just because we don't consider them morally valuable, then we can move on.

@Anon ***I disagree: embryos are not humans beings. Embryos are a mass of cells, much like my arm is a mass of cells.***

No, actually, embryos are not simply masses of cells like your arm. If you cut off an arm, a human being continues to live (assuming they don't bleed to death). But if you destroy an embryo you have killed an entire human being.

***Before independent thought (that is, brain activity), an embryo is not a human being.***

Then I suppose you believe that infants up to the age of two years old are also not human beings. Would killing a baby be morally neutral?

"Embryos are a mass of cells, much like my arm is a mass of cells. And if I decide I would be better without my arm, I am legally capable of cutting off my arm (and morally neutral). Before independent thought (that is, brain activity), an embryo is not a human being."

Dear Anon: Let's take these three sentences one at a time: (1) If your arm is developing into a separate human being, you are correct; otherwise, there is an ontological difference between your arm and an embryo. (2) Regarding cutting off your arm: Deliberately mutilating yourself for no good reason except desire is not morally neutral; it is immoral. (3) In the third sentence, you are appealing to a functionalist criterion (i.e., brain activity), but provide no argument for that assertion. The discussion really needs to revolve around what an embryo is (now, as an embryo), not what it will be able to do (sometime in the future, because of what it is now).

Anon above is a shining example of a favorite pro-abortion argument - the Argument by Vehement Assertion - ie, "It's true because I say it is." He gives us plain assertions ("Embryos are a mass of cells. . ."; "Before independent thought. . . an embryo is not a human being") without any real supporting arguments, or any engagement of the arguments he purports to be criticizing. . .

@Anon: "Before independent thought (that is, brain activity), an embryo is not a human being."

Quite an assumption. By brain activity do you mean electrical activity? By independent thought do you mean only those thoughts that are truly original? By the former, the line would appear to be early in pregnancy. Is there an embryologist in the the house? By the later, perhaps none of us on this forum are human beings. But not to quibble, I'm sure you know a human being when you see one.

@Joe Carter "@Anon ***Before independent thought (that is, brain activity), an embryo is not a human being.***

Then I suppose you believe that infants up to the age of two years old are also not human beings. Would killing a baby be morally neutral?"

I don't think you understand what brain activity means. Brain activity is merely the firing of neurons in the brain, which begins about 6 weeks after fertilization; abortion after that point in time is, IMO, immoral. My window of opportunity for abortion is narrower than most pro-abortionists, but it is still there.

Killing a baby, which has exceptional brain activity, if not mental acuity, is clearly immoral.

@Craig Payne

(1) I thought we were talking about what something is right now, not what it could be in the future. Before brain activity, the only ontological difference between an embryo and my arm is that my arm's not technically a parasite.

(2) People who decide to amputate their arm, just like people who get abortions, nearly always have excellent reasons for doing so.

(3) Embryos develop brain activity around the 6th week. So, for instance, if a woman is one month into a pregnancy, then, at that moment, as an embryo, the embryo is not a human being. On the other hand, if a woman is two months into a pregnancy, then, at that moment, as a fetus, the fetus has brain activity and is, therefore, a human being.

Dear Anon: I have to run, so I can only say: Your biological info is wrong. Before brain activity, an embryo is developing as a member of the human species. Your arm will never do that. They are ontologically different things.

Embryos are humans because of their nature (the same reason as all of us), not their functional abilities.

I know that morally, a compromise is, in this particularly serious instance impossible but, what if the "on demand" part of the equation were replaced with, "in case of rape, health of the mother or economic circumstances". I know that that wouldn't addres the real evil that killing unborn children is morally and philosophically but wouldn't it at least addres the main objections of the pro-abortionists and introduce a measure of the concept of moral responsibility in sexual relations? I've heard that countries, including I think Germany and Israel require the mother to demonstrate real and profound difficulty in order to receive state approval for the termination. It's a stop gap measure and doesn't get at the root of the problem but this I think would obviously be a step in the correct direction. Something as profound as the termination of a growing human being surely requires more than safe and clean facilities and doctors and merely pamphlates on the potential psychological harms. I know, preaching to the choir but I am new to the debate and can't figure out, short of the tired and stale argument from personal autonomy and feminists theory, what the pro-abortionists are so afraid of.

@Joe Carter "If you say that it is okay to kill a human embryo then you are saying that it is licit to kill certain groups of human beings for just about any reason a person may choose."

Unless you do not consider a human embryo to be a human being or a person. When making brain activity a requirement for both, there are not many places to go afterward. The Jews have brain activity. The blacks of brain activity. Woman. Infants. Every human being has brain activity; this is easily and objectively measurable. The one other place this argument becomes important is when someone has lost their brain activity. For instance, if someone has a stroke and loses all (ALL) brain activity. At this point, that person is medically dead, and, if they are an organ donor, the doctors start harvesting.

@CKG "Anon above is a shining example of a favorite pro-abortion argument - the Argument by Vehement Assertion - ie, "It's true because I say it is.""

I'm not standing up on a podium trying to convince a crowd of silent onlookers; this is a conversation. If you have a problem with something I say, mention it and I will respond as best I can.

@CKG "He gives us plain assertions ("Embryos are a mass of cells. . ."; "Before independent thought. . . an embryo is not a human being") without any real supporting arguments, or any engagement of the arguments he purports to be criticizing. . . "

Also, you have done the exact thing of which you're complaining; you've implied my arguments are false "without any real supporting arguments, or any engagement of the arguments [you purport] to be criticizing."

That being said, I'll attempt to address your concerns, despite the fact that you haven't told me what they are.

"Embryos are a mass of cells."

Anyone with a basic knowledge of biology will tell you there's no argument to this statement. Embryos ARE a mass of cells. I'm a mass of cells. You're a mass of cells. Every living thing with enough connected cells to be considered a "mass" is a mass of cells.

"Before independent thought. . . an embryo is not a human being"

This, I will admit, is my opinion. Your opinion could very well be the opposite. Neither of us is more correct than the other unless God himself tells both of us otherwise. There is no "absolute truth" for what makes something a human being. I've chosen to require thought (brain activity) for several reasons.

1. An arm, separated from the rest of the human body but kept alive is obviously not a human being. I don't think we could find anyone to dispute this.

2. So, at what point does a human being stop being a human being even if you keep removing parts but keep them all biologically alive? If you take off someone's legs, the legs are not human beings, but the remainder is. Same if you take their arms. If you could keep just a brain alive, I argue that the brain would still be a human being, and everything else would not.

This leads me to the conclusion that the essential humanness is the brain, and an active brain at that. If there is no brain, or the brain has no activity (such as a dead body), then whatever it is, it is not, at that moment, a human being.

Essentially, my argument is simply, "I think, therefore I am." If something does not think, it's not a human being.

@Anon: Well, you've clarified my quandary. Now would you care to explain why you choose that criterion?

Then you make a non-credible assumption,
"People who decide to amputate their arm, just like people who get abortions, nearly always have excellent reasons for doing so."
How can you possibly know this?

You do not help your case by proclaiming. We'd like to hear some of that independent thought.

@anon:
When dies an embryo/fetus cease to be a parasite??

@Mike Melendez

I did not initially explain myself well, but I believe I have addressed most of this in subsequent comments. I would like to address a couple of points in your comment:

@Mike Melendez "Quite an assumption."

It's not an assumption, it's worse: an opinion. There's no objective standard for the definition of what is, or is not, a human being. This is my opinion for one aspect of what the definition should include.

@Mike Melendez "By brain activity do you mean electrical activity?"

Yes.

@Mike Melendez "By independent thought do you mean only those thoughts that are truly original?"

I mean separate from another entity. For instance, my spine thinks (sends electrical commands) to my arm to pull my hand off a hot stove. My spine will even do this without consulting my brain. My spine is not, however, an independently thinking entity from my brain or the rest of me.

@Mike Melendez "By the former, the line would appear to be early in pregnancy. Is there an embryologist in the the house?"

6 weeks (I'm not an embryologist, but I'm a psychologist who's taken a lot of biology classes).

Anyone who denies the possibility of a fertilized egg either doesn't understand the biology sufficiently, or has been forced by an ideology into a fight against ordinary language. Anyone who can't distinguish an embryo from a zygote simply doesn't understand the basic vocabulary of this issue. Compounding these problems, Mr. Carter cannot recognize how he's begging the question in the way that I flagged.

All this is indicative of our prospects of an informed and fair-minded discussion about these issues. Surely there is a better way for the editors of First Things to engage in pro-life advocacy.

Anon quotes “I think, therefore I am.” But what am I, if not an animal of a certain species; that is, a body, living with a certain sort of life.

And do brains think and act? No people think and act. If I say, "I am sitting,” "I am writing", "I am going to stay still", "I twitched," of what object can this be verified or falsified. I should point to myself, that is, to my body and so would anyone else. Certainly, not to my brain.

I" is not a name: these I-thoughts are examples of reflective consciousness of states, actions, motions, etc., not of an object I mean by "I,” but of this body.

@Mike Melendez "Now would you care to explain why you choose that criterion?"

Once again, I think my responding to multiple people has answered that question (response to CKG).

@Mike Melendez "Then you make a non-credible assumption,
"People who decide to amputate their arm, just like people who get abortions, nearly always have excellent reasons for doing so."
How can you possibly know this?"

Well, neither decision is one taken lightly. For instance, I'm sure Aron Ralston really liked his arm. When it was pinned by a boulder while out hiking, he waited five days before cutting it off. Five days, stuck in a canyon, knowing help wouldn't arrive, slowly running out of water. Are you going to argue he didn't have an excellent reason to amputate his arm?

If someone did amputate their own arm for no good reason, I believe this fits most (if not all) states' requirements for committing the insane against their will. In this case it's still not immoral, it's crazy.

For women seeking abortion, at least in the United States, this is a Serious Issue. So Serious, in fact, that most abortion clinics require women to undergo counseling before allowing the abortion and help them prevent the need for another abortion. Even if the woman does want to have an excellent reason, most clinics will make her find one or won't perform the procedure.

Finally, I'd like to point out that most of the responses to my comments offer no evidence that contradicts my points. Many of my comments have been said to, "not have supporting arguments," or, "not address the argument criticized," or, "make a non-credible assumption." These criticizing comments often: do not have supporting arguments, do not address the argument criticized, and make non-credible assumptions.

Essentially, I would appreciate a response that is more than, "You're wrong."

@C. Ehrlich ***Anyone who denies the possibility of a fertilized egg either doesn't understand the biology sufficiently, or has been forced by an ideology into a fight against ordinary language.***

And anyone who uses the term “fertilized egg” simply doesn’t know what they are talking about. Once the egg is fertilized it ceases to be an egg. It would be like saying “eggified sperm.” It’s not a matter of “ordinary language” but of accurate language. We should call things what they are.

***Anyone who can't distinguish an embryo from a zygote simply doesn't understand the basic vocabulary of this issue.***

Kudos to you for doing your research and realizing that it is called a zygote and not a fertilized egg. Indeed, a zygote is the initial one-cell human being, four days later is becomes a blastocyst, etc. In the “ordinary language” of human development, this is known as the embryonic stage.


Compounding these problems, Mr. Carter cannot recognize how he's begging the question in the way that I flagged.

Indeed I cannot. My conclusion is that an embryo is a human being. Since that is a verified scientific fact, I am not sure what question is being begged.

My article is simply asking people to be consistent in their language and admit that what they are saying is that certain human beings do not have moral worth and can be killed for any reason.


***All this is indicative of our prospects of an informed and fair-minded discussion about these issues. Surely there is a better way for the editors of First Things to engage in pro-life advocacy.***

If you believe the discussion is not informed or fair-minded, perhaps you can show where I have erred in either my logic or reasoning.

@ C. Ehrlich: You are looking at the issue with your eyes only. What we can see and know empirically is not all that we can know. Reality points to the invisible things that we can't help infer from them--as it is intentionally designed to do, we could say. The fact that human beings have an imagination illustrates that man's mind works with what it sees in particulars and draws universals which can never be seen or measured in reality but only within the invisible images of his imagination. The proof that this is true is language.

@Michael PS "“I think, therefore I am.” But what am I, if not an animal of a certain species; that is, a body, living with a certain sort of life.

And do brains think and act? No people think and act. If I say, "I am sitting,” "I am writing", "I am going to stay still", "I twitched," of what object can this be verified or falsified. I should point to myself, that is, to my body and so would anyone else. Certainly, not to my brain.

I" is not a name: these I-thoughts are examples of reflective consciousness of states, actions, motions, etc., not of an object I mean by "I,” but of this body."

But if we cut off your arm, kept it biologically alive, then applied electrical stimulation to the arm's nerves to cause it twitch, that arm would not be you anymore. You would not say, "I twitched," you'd say, "It twitched," or, more probably, "Oh my God, you cut off my arm, NOW IT'S TWITCHING! WHY IS IT TWITCHING?"

But I digress.

My point was to find the smallest part that could still be considered a "human being." It is not the body, nor any part of it, that makes a human being. Arms and legs can be replaced. Your heart, liver, stomach, and other organs can be replaced. The only part of you that cannot be replaced and have you stay a "human being" and not merely a thing is your brain (although, vast parts of it can be removed, some of it must remain).

If we had the capability to perform brain transplants, and we traded the brains of Joe and Fred, who is Joe and who is Fred? Is Joe the body that looks like Joe used to? No, clearly Joe is the one with Joe's brain. If you call him Fred, he will probably become annoyed with you.

Alas, my disagreers, I must away to work, and I have spent far too long commenting as it is. I leave you now, perhaps with unanswered questions to my beliefs, but hopefully with something to think about with regard to your own.

Of course parts can be removed from the body, leaving it still alive. Likewise parts can be replaced by a prothesis or a transplanted organ.

This is irrelevant to the fact that a living body is a unity, including, of course, its brain.

Let me repeat what I said before. I have thoughts like "I am standing,” "I jumped.” It is, I said, a significant question: "In happenings, events, etc., concerning what object are these verified or falsified?" -- and the answer was: "this one.” In other words, this organism, if you prefer the Greek name.

According to Mr. Carter, many of the chicken eggs I've eaten weren't actually eggs. According to Mr. Carter, the little round things you see in a bird's nests in the spring usually aren't eggs! By Mr. Carter's reasoning, anyone who mentions a "hatched egg" "simply doesn’t know what they are talking about"--for once the egg is hatched it ceases to be an egg!

Mr. Carter, you allow your ideological agenda to force you into ridiculous positions. As for your question begging, I'd advise you to re-read the very first comment in this thread.

Anon,

I'm mystified that you seem to be able to ignore the fact that the "embryo"/human has its own DNA from the moment of conception. This fact is what many are alluding to when they talk about the fundamental ontological difference between your arm and a baby.

Here is this glaring proof we are talking of a unique human individual, in whose code is all the information needed to bring about a self-sufficient human being, and you say it doesn't matter. Seems to me that if you affirm being because of brain waves and the potential they have for later thought, it is logically inconsistent of you to, in the face of the genetic potential for complete and independent human life since the moment of conception, deny being to an embryo.

Sir, the science does not support your assertion...one must make a flight of fancy from the realms of hard fact into the realms of hypotheticals and philosophy to arrive at your definition.

Anon: If, as you say, your "point was to find the smallest part that could still be considered a "human being," then you must in fact affirm the human being from the moment of conception. That moment, where DNA is unique and complete, is the smallest part. After all, aren't we about to break the threshold where only it is needed to recreate a fully functioning individual?

So then, the definition should not be "that which no more can be taken from in order to be", but "that with which one who is complete can be". Believe me, I see some slippery slopes here (we can't consider that arm a human being because a clone can be made from it), but definitions of what is "normal" and "naturally occurring" may fix those.

@C. Ehrlich ***According to Mr. Carter, many of the chicken eggs I've eaten weren't actually eggs.***

No, they were eggs. It is unlikely, though, that they were fertilized eggs. Most of the chicken eggs that we consume are unfertilized.

***According to Mr. Carter, the little round things you see in a bird's nests in the spring usually aren't eggs! By Mr. Carter's reasoning, anyone who mentions a "hatched egg" "simply doesn’t know what they are talking about"--for once the egg is hatched it ceases to be an egg!***

You do realize their is a difference between mammals (the class that includes humans) and aves (the class that includes birds), don’t you? If so then it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out that when we talk about bird eggs and human eggs we are talking about quite different biological

***Mr. Carter, you allow your ideological agenda to force you into ridiculous positions.***

Perhaps so, but at least I understand that difference between a chicken and a human.

***As for your question begging, I'd advise you to re-read the very first comment in this thread.***

Having reread your comment I know see that what you are saying is that I should not beg the question by assuming that it is immoral to kill human beings. Is this really what a point that we need to debate before we can proceed?

@Anon: Claiming you are right and challenging others to prove you wrong is the stuff of conspiracy theories.

How can you possibly know the mindset of the people involved to be able to claim that _most_ have excellent reasons for their actions? That requires mind reading. I doubt you can claim: "Serious, in fact, that most abortion clinics require women to undergo counseling before allowing the abortion and help them prevent the need for another abortion." Do you know if _any_ are turned down for other than legal reasons? You seem confused here. You even argue that as not many people are committed for cutting their arms off, they must have excellent reasons. You're arguments are circular and pile up supposition on supposition. A direct example, I can't imagine the "excellent" reasons changing after your six-week point, so what changes? Just electricity?

"My point was to find the smallest part that could still be considered a "human being." It is not the body, nor any part of it, that makes a human being."

So killing the body is reasonable at any age? Just as long as you leave the mind functioning? Or maybe just as long as we have an excellent reason? Your brain swap "thought experiment" is pure science fiction. As soon as we lose a sizable chunk of our torso we are done. Even simpler, we are done if we lose enough blood without losing any limbs. The point being the line is anything but sharp. Your choice of electrical activity is arbitrary. Put another way, we haven't the faintest idea what a human is thinking when the spark starts.

Why not just accept the long standing definition from biology? Once you have a zygote you have a new organism of the species in question. It may miscarry. It may be too deformed to live long. But it is identifiably of that species.

"Dear Anon: I have to run, so I can only say: Your biological info is wrong. Before brain activity, an embryo is developing as a member of the human species. Your arm will never do that. They are ontologically different things."

Back again briefly: noticed my argument was never addressed: re-posted.

All the obfuscation about eggs, fertilized eggs, clusters of cells, etc., is simply designed to do one thing: to hide the obvious fact that a zygote is developing, from that point onward, as a human being. An egg will never do this. An arm will never do this. Only a zygote.

Also one rhetorical comment: I will admit that it is effective to (1) ignore arguments against your position, and then state (2) that no one has made arguments against your position.

For example, saying that humans are simply "clusters of cells" (as is an arm) ignores the fact that many posts have pointed out the difference already between an arm or a cluster of cells and a unitary, developing entity.

But, as I said, it is rhetorically effective. Who has the patience anymore to wade back through an argument?

I think most reasonable people can agree that it is morally wrong to end a pregnancy arbitrarily for convenience, particularly in the later stages. But most of the time right to lifers deflect the very real situation where there is literally a medical choice to be made for the life of the mother or the life of the unborn. I am tired of seeing this issue parsed or denied like the Arizona excommunication where inevitable people chime in with "how do the doctors know?" and then blather on about cases where the mother didn't die, etc. Sooooo, defend the excommunications in Brazil??

Also, if the government does make abortion illegal in most/all cases, what do the zealots suggest should be the penalty for the poor woman that gets caught in the back alley??

Mr. Carter,

If your terminological points about egg fertilization and biology only apply in the human case, then you are probably engaged in special pleading. That's another fallacy you need to watch out for. Even with this special pleading, however, the silliness of your stand is hardly concealed. Does someone not "know what they're talking about" if they mention a "hatched egg"? Or, if you maintain your position without the special pleading, then you've got yourself a wonderfully spurious argument for why people should purchase only commercially raised chicken eggs: any others might not even be eggs!

To avoid question begging of the sort flagged in the first comment of this thread, you should first realize that your own arguments are no better than those you have criticized. To do better, you need to be able to articulate the relevant features marked off by the category "human being" (e.g., does this term mark the biological category of the species or something else?; if it's the biological species that's salient, then which of the many conception of "species" are you using, and why?). You also should be able to say why it is these features and not others that are morally decisive. It's a familiar disappointment to find another person trying to to accomplish the heavy lifting in a pro-life argument by a sort of bumper sticker style rhetoric, e.g.: "All I assume is that it is immoral to kill human beings." While such a premise may seem compelling at first glance, it simply doesn't bear any amount of critical scrutiny.

It's this critical reflection which I encourage you and the other editors here to help prompt and facilitate. First Things has great potential as a genuinely instructive forum--but only if the editors here aim for an informed and fair-minded discussion.

Sometimes I wonder if this whole debate is being argued backwards. What i mean is that all of the assertions and counter assertions as to when life begins, what defines a person, what characteristics are telling, etc. could lead one to believe that these points can somehow be added up to a conclusion. My view is that the reverse is true; all of these points are presented to justfy a conclusion that we have already reached. The old saw about "follow the money" and we will find the answers to who, what and why is an imperfect and yet apt analogy in the abortion debate. Figure out what someone wants and their position and argument will follow. This does not start with the zygote it starts with the baby. In real life if a baby is seen as a blight on ones life then abortion is offered as an answer and there are many people ready to aid you in believing this. You're too young , too old, what about college, it's your body, it's just a blob of cells and so on leading to the seemingly logical conclusion that a baby is not for you, at this time. In the rarer air of academia, pundintry and politics the arguments are more nuanced, the assumptions more settled, the biases more broad, over population,cost, etc. or finer tuned, consciousness,rights, the parasidic nature of the thing but after all the words and passion it comes down to this; do we want a baby or not. If the answer is not we will find a way to justify abortion as a good thing and throw the baby out with the trash. It is not the zygote we don't want, it is the baby.

The origin of the word "person" is "persona", the latter implying a mask worn in establishing an identity to suit the utilitarian purposes of any particular occasion a rational human being finds him-herself in or, in power plays, is imposed on him/her from the outside.

Christianity established a new Trinitarian understanding of what a person is: the Godhead consists of three persons (absolute/complete/intrinsic identity, no persona), and because we, each one of us human beings, is made in the very image and likeness of God, then each one of us is necessarily a person (why many Christians, myself included, call ourselves children of God), even in pre-infancy, what we call the fetal stage in the maturation of the person. At whatever phase the maturation of the person ends or is impaired in no way contravenes his/her status as person.

Nice essay, thanks for the reflections on personhood/humanity.

I've been hearing the "abortion as eviction" argument more recently.

In this argument, you grant that the fetus is a human being/person worthy of the right to life.
The question then is "Why does he/she have the right to live in someone else's uterus?"

In no situation other than pregnancy is someone faced with the situation of having to house someone within her body.

If a landlord wanted to evict a tenant, he would have to go to housing court and the tenant would have to make his/her case. Why does the pre-born human person get to be a squatter in another person's uterus?

Following through on this very imperfect analogy, shouldn't the woman be able to have the person evicted from her body?.

Where this analogy fails is that
1) When a squatter is evicted from an apartment, she or he is not dismembered. Nor is he or she killed.
2) How did the squatter get into this uterus? Was she or he invited in? Given that most acts of sexual intercourse do not result in pregnancy, why did this squatter's ancestors (the sperm and egg) unite and set up residence? Was it the landlord's fault that this squatter got into the apartment? Does it make a difference if the squatter's ancestor (the sperm) was invited in or not initially?
3) In real life, a squatter probably is not stealing food and nutrition from the landlord as a as the pre-born human does.

If a squatter, who left the confines of the apartment, died, neighbors would call 911 and an emergency team would come to try and recussitate him or her. In the same case, the pre-born human would be evicted by being removed, as intact as possible, and the equivalent of 911 would be called (in this case, the physician perfoming the eviction would try and recussitate the evicted person). This would probably be futile pre-viability.

This analogy also fails in that there are, in fact, many situations where people are forced to care for others. Parents can be required to care for children, at the bare minimum, financially (e.g. garnishing wages for child support). There is societal pressure for people to care for the elderly, the disabled, children, the less fortunate, etc. But in no case is someone forced to give up a part of their body (no forced organ transplants) to care for another person as a pregnant woman is forced to do so.

This is nowhere near a perfect analogy, but I find it worth thinking about. I find it much easier to sympathize with the rights of the pre-born child. I have found it harder to sympathize with the situation of a mother who does not want to carry a child.

Thanks again for the great essay.

As usual, the attempt to gain high ground through definitions has failed. Joe wants to place the pro-life position on higher ground by forcing those who support abortion rights to admit that they believe that some humans don’t have intrinsic worth. But his definitions of persons and human beings have been met with arguments by Anon and Ehrlich concerning definitions of zygotes, masses of cells, brain activity, etc.

And so I want to know this instead:

Anon, I’ve enjoyed your thoughtful posts. You’ve taken heat by people who aren’t reading you fully or with understanding, but you’ve responded with patience, and I appreciate how hard that is.

You have argued that you have no problem with abortion before six weeks. Where does that position lead you? Would you support a ban on abortion after six weeks? Did you support the ban on partial-birth abortion?

Ehrlich, I think that you’re right that knowing and correctly labeling the developmental stages that lead from fertilization to birth might be important in this debate, but I’m curious to know how this knowledge has clarified your thinking on knowing when abortion is morally wrong and when it is not.

Joe and the many commenters promoting the pro-life position, I’m curious to know what you and your congregations have specifically done to help the women and families who, as Anon puts it, have “excellent reasons” for their abortions. Have you and your congregation broadly publicized your pledge to support at least one couple who are adopting domestically? Have you and your congregation vigorously pursued excellent sex education, including the regular assessment of how well your sex education program is succeeding compared to others addressing a similar demographic? Have you and your congregation vigorously worked to improve childcare and relief for those mothers and families most at risk for abortion?

@C. Ehrlich ***If your terminological points about egg fertilization and biology only apply in the human case, then you are probably engaged in special pleading. That's another fallacy you need to watch out for.***

Oh, good grief, this is starting to give me a headache. Instead of playing semantic and logical gotcha games, why don’t you make an argument based on what you actually believe.

My terminological points about egg fertilization about biology apply in the cases of *mammals*, not just humans. Also, you need to look up the definition of special pleading. It is not special pleading to point out that there are key gestational differences between a chicken and a human.

***Does someone not "know what they're talking about" if they mention a "hatched egg”?***

Once again, this article is about the semantic games that the pro-abortion crowd plays in order to admit the facts of what they are arguing for. So it sshouldn't be all that surprising that I attempted to politely correct you for using a term—“fertilized egg”—that is not only inaccurate, but muddies the discussion.

***Or, if you maintain your position without the special pleading, then you've got yourself a wonderfully spurious argument for why people should purchase only commercially raised chicken eggs: any others might not even be eggs!***

Do you even know what you are saying anymore? Why not step back, regroup, and make an argument about a point that matters in this discussion.


***To do better, you need to be able to articulate the relevant features marked off by the category "human being" (e.g., does this term mark the biological category of the species or something else?***

Are we really unclear about what it means to be a “human being”? If you are, then allow me to define it for you: a living member of the species homo sapiens.

***if it's the biological species that's salient, then which of the many conception of "species" are you using, and why?). You also should be able to say why it is these features and not others that are morally decisive.***

In case it wasn’t obvious, let me clarify it for you:

(1) An embryo is a human being (basic definition)
(2) When you kill an embryo, you are killing a human being (follows from #1)
(3) If you think it is morally licit to kill embryos since they do not have a moral status then you think it is morally licit to kill some groups of human beings (follows from #1 and #2)
(4) If you think it is morally licit to kill some groups of human beings then you should say so (the conclusion of my article)


Now let me ask you directly: Do you think it is morally licit to kill some groups of human beings because they do not have an intrinsic worth?

C. Erhlich,

You state, "...All I assume is that it is immoral to kill human beings." While such a premise may seem compelling at first glance, it simply doesn't bear any amount of critical scrutiny."

Would you care to offer even the slightest argument for your assertion? Show us some of this "critical scrutiny".

I also note you distort the pro-life stance in a particular and glaring way. You omit the all-important and frequently used qualifier "INNOCENT human being". It's intellectually disingenuous to fabricate straw tigers, sir, especially when Carter did use the word "innocent" in his work.

Finally, is it not ultimately unhelpful of you to label arguments as "silliness" rather than substantively addressing them? "Silliness" is too much a matter of taste/opinion to be helpful to a logical discussion. You plead for rigor in terminology but sinking to ad hominem attacks is perfectly fine? Spare us...

@anon" I think, therfore I am".
It Should be: I think, therefore I am. I am because of God. Perhaps your logic on this topic is as incomlpete as your statement.

I love it when folks get on their high horse about "what have you pro-life zealots done to help" those who could be seeking abortions. Are folks like this aware of the many clinics that place themselves near (sometimes next to) the local Planned Parenthood abortion mills? The volunteers that are there to help women in crisis pregnancies at that most important moment, and for the next months and years that follow? Of the financial help so many people provide? Of the adoptions? If not, they are truly ignorant. What do those who try to blame us for not doing enough do to help? Maybe they harbor some not insignificant amount of guilt themselves....

At what point does the seed of an oak tree move from being potentialy an oak tree to being actualy an oak tree?

There is a logical gap between *person* and *human.* This gap is what makes the pro-choice side of the abortion debate not irrational, and arguably not even unreasonable. I think the pro-choicers are gravely mistaken, but they have no more taken leave of their senses than pro-lifers have.

It's wrong to kill both persons in a coma and persons who are asleep. Just like people who are temporarily unconscious while ASLEEP, people who are temporarily unconscious while in a COMA have an ongoing interest in their life--they have been, and may be again, aware of the goods of life. They aren't exactly in the same boat as embryos or fetuses, who have never had an awareness of their life, much less a life that they have an interest in continuing.

A good anti-abortion argument will avoid the personhood issue entirely.

Regarding DNA:

A piece of human skin has a complete set of human DNA: is a piece of skin a person with rights, therefore?

Michael,

You ask good questions of the pro-lifers in the last post. I've known two couples that've adopted 3 children. One extraordinary couple that has adopted 12. I've personally paid several hundred in support for an out-of-work single mother and her (now) 1 year old infant. I'm one of the teachers that provides chastity/sex education. The list goes on, and yet the efforts of the Church could be more still.

I would point out two sides to this issue rarely mentioned:

1) According to the Guttmacher Institution (Planned Parenthood), some 87% of abortions are performed by the 12th week (first trimester). Is it not difficult to provide support when one can't see it's needed? Could it be possible some/many never ask for help?

2) Several sources claim 52% of abortions are performed on women under 25 years of age. Some are pressured by parents who threaten to disown them if they carry the child to term. Some are pressured by older men who wish to eliminate proof they committed statutory rape, or adultery, and who don't wish to make child support payments. It's very sad that exploitation and domination of women is being defended by pro-abortionists.

Anon, a question for you. If brain activity, by which you define as neurons firing, is what is necessary for personhood, would you then say that *anything* that has firing neurons would be eligible for personhood? Is that that the sole basis for your criterion? And if not...what other criteria would you suggest?

Billy,

Unlike the piece of human skin in your hypothetical, Billy, the embryo has unique cells (embryonic stem cells)--the human nature, if you will--to develop into an adult human being. Clearly, as he/she has abilities exponentially beyond the piece of skin (including a sex/gender), the embryo should have rights beyond the skin.

While we're at it, that "piece of skin" does enjoy certain protections/rights under the law. You go around damaging it on other people, you'll be thrown in jail for assault, at the least.

Care to try again?

@Billy
Reductio ad absurdum doesn't work here. The argument is not just about a complete set of human DNA. I know of no one -- pro-life, pro-choice, or biologist -- who argues that a skin cell is a human being. I have heard of those who would like to use that skin cell to clone a human being, but it's believed you need to replace the nucleus to do that, i.e. create a zygote.

@Michael
I notice you are also into claims. Those who agree with you are helpful. Those who do not are not helpful. Your last paragraph gives away your prejudices. You essentially ask "Are you doing things the way I would?" with the implicit assumption that you have the right answers without needing to collect the evidence. Not to worry too much. It's a trait all of us humans share.

Dear Ken Z: You wrote, "There is a logical gap between *person* and *human.*"

I will agree with you that opposition to abortion does not depend on "personhood" arguments. However, I wouldn't give up on them just yet.

The "logical gap" only enters in if one accepts "functionalist" criteria for personhood. However, given the older definition of "person" as "an individual substance of rational nature," we see that the crucial aspect of personhood is not functionality, but nature.

Given that, I would agree with Aquinas that every human is also a person.

The reason the line is being drawn between "persons" and mere "humans" is so that the self-defined "persons" may have lethal power over those who are defined as "humans but not persons." There really isn't any other good reason.

Spencer was driving along one day and saw a man beating a small child with a baseball bat, evidently with the intent of killing the boy. Spencer stopped his car and forced the man to stop beating the boy. Spencer, according to his own principles, then adopted the boy to prove his heart was in the right place.

Oops, Spencer, SORRY! My sarcasm wasn't directed at you, but at the person to whom you were responding. Sorry again!

Spencer,

You’re reading into my questions something that is not there. I’m well aware of the various activities you mentioned. I asked about how well publicized your congregation’s activities are and how deep they run. I also asked whether they are congregation centered. In short, I was giving you and others an opportunity to trumpet and examine your activities. I find discussions of such practicalities far more interesting and enlightening than the same old debates about definitions of life.

---

Artaban,

Thanks for responding in the spirit I intended. I appreciate it. The efforts you describe sound individual and personal rather than congregational, which is not to diminish those efforts but to ask whether our congregations can do more as congregations. I’m grateful for your personal contributions; that’s really wonderful. I’m curious about whether you’ve assessed the success of your sex education programs against others that address similar demographics.

Both numbers you mention are important, and you raise good questions. They both make me think that publicity is absolutely crucial. We need to somehow make certain that a woman’s first thought is adoption or community support and not abortion. A little marketing genius would help.

The second number hits close. I was all set to adopt the baby of a 24-year-old girl. Her wealthy, Catholic parents urged her to abort, she refused, the mother prayed for a miscarriage, and she got her wish.

The number that always strikes me is that some 60% of abortions are had by women who already have a child. These women know all about the miracle of life but find despair or something else more powerful still.

---

Mike,

I’m not arguing against claims per se. I’m just saying that attempts to gain a higher ground by defining your opponent into a box don’t often work. I agree with Joe’s pro-life stance, but I don’t think definitions are going to help. As far as my prejudices go, I asked an open question, “what are you and your congregations doing,” and then I offered some of the efforts I’m most curious about.

---

Craig,

Perhaps after reading Spencer’s post more carefully, you can read mine more carefully and explain how the sarcasm is justified.

What is happening here, in the Abortion debate, is that the general population is at last considering, something philosophy has long considered: what is a human being, or human person. Apparently though, we will have to wait some time before the general population is as sophisticated on this subject, as Philosophy already was, thousands of years ago.

But consider some of the allegations here: 1) that there are not "degrees of being human"; either something is human, or it is not. But in fact, there ARE degrees of being human. There is human DNA in a piece of skin; but that does make it a "human" being, or person in any significant way.

So first of all: human DNA first all, is not enough to make a human being.

Next: 2) does being a "unique" individual ,make a human? In that case, many twins are not human; and no cloned person would be.

Then 3) is being "destined to become" a baby or human adult, make it human? What if I intend to use a piece of skin, to clone a human? Is the skin now a human?

And is an acorn - destined to become an oak tree - really the same as an oak tree? If you paid someone three thousand dollars for enough oak wood to build a house - and they handed you five acorns and a saw? ould you REALLY be satisfied that something that is "destined to become" something, is the same as the form it is destined to become?

Do 4) people always "hoose not to define something as human, just to pesecute their equals" Then when your daughter insists her Barbie doll is human, you must honor that? So as not to discriminate against a human?

Keep thinking. In about twenty or thirty more years of debate, anti-aboritionists will no doubt finally come to the conclusions that philosophers came to, thousands of years ago: that the essence of a human being, is a recognizably human mind or consciousness. Which an embryo does not have.

Try again, Arty?

Michael, sorry. I don't think your comments were on point here, but they didn't deserve my sarcasm.

Dear Billy: You are getting closer; keep thinking about it.

You say, "Human DNA alone is not enough to make a human being" and offer the example of skin. Of course, everyone here already agrees with that, so I am not sure with whom you are arguing.

You say "uniqueness" is not enough, and offer the example of twins and clones. However, even twins and clones are unique--every genotype, even in identical twins, is uniquely expressed in its phenotype. For example, identical twins have different fingerprints.

You ask if an acorn, "destined to be an oak tree," really is an oak tree. Well, acorns aren't destined to be oak trees until they sprout (see the earlier discussion about eggs vs. fertilized eggs, and apply the same principle to acorns). At that point (sprouting), they are the oak tree's earliest stage of development.

Just as a zygote is the human person's earliest stage of development.

I do not honor my daughter's Barbie doll as a human person. If the doll, however, were an individuated, growing entity with uniquely expressed human DNA guiding the development and destined to become a mature example of a human being--then I would recognize that this is not a doll, but a baby. Or, not a thing but a person.

The idea that corporations are persons is an absurdity, as the simple argument below shows.

Corporations, like human persons, possess will, moral responsibility, decision-making abilities, goals, and purposes. These are traits that we identify with persons and personhood. In the case of corporations, we can identify the core personhood trait as that of being a self-interested actor. Corporations are certaqinly self-interested actors. They do not just passively have interests but rather actively pursue their self-interest, partly through deliberate goal-orientedness.

Counterexamples show, however, that corporate personhood is an illusion. Corporations are indeed self-interested actors, but that does not mean they are persons. It turns out that being a self-interested actor is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of personhood.

Consider a crow. Crows use twigs of varying length for poking into tiny holes in trees in order to spear insects for food. Even if this behavior is motivated by “instinct,” it is deliberately goal-oriented. The crow is acting with deliberate goal-orientedness in its self-interest. Perhaps a dog that flees from a man that is kicking it is also a self-interested actor. But the crow clearly is. And yet no one thinks a crow or a dog is a person.

The implication of this is that being a self-interested actor is not a *sufficient* condition of personhood. Still, the corporations-as-persons thesis might be justified if being a self-interested actor is a *necessary* condition of personhood. A different counterexample shows, however, that this won't work either. Consider an infant. An infant lacks the ability to act in its self-interest. Even if an infant can be said to exhibit deliberate goal-orientedness--which is doubtful--it does not do so for the sake of self-interest. Infants are too passive and unreflective to act in their self-interest.

While in some quarters infants are not regarded as true or “full-fledged” persons at all, these are the quarters inhabited by a moral minority. Most people rightly conclude that infants are indeed persons. Yet if infants are persons despite not being self-interested actors, then it follows that being a self-interested actor is not a necessary condition of personhood, just as it is not a sufficient condition.

The inescapable conclusion is that corporations cannot be persons. Corporations should accept a more humble self-description. And society will be better off if powerful multinational corporations are not given too much leeway as autonomous actors. We can argue about the proper extent of corporate autonomy, but no one should think that corporate personhood is a good idea.

This argument does not show that corporations cannot logically be persons. A professor of business ethics pointed this out to me with a Venn diagram in which one circle consists of persons (qua infants) and another partially overlapping circle consists of self-interested actors (qua crows), and the intersection between them is where corporations live, move, and have their being—in other words, where they can be persons.

So logically--as a formal possibility--corporations can be persons. But analytically, given what we know about the world around us, it's impossible for corpoprations to be persons. Analytic reasoning identifies a *must be* with respect to corporate (non-)personhood, whereas logic only identifies a *can be*. It's clear which side wins.

Craig:

These things and more were known to me ages ago; I'm not just discovering them, but am merely rehersing them of course, for those not familiar with all this.

Traditionally, anti-abortionists have used these three or four arguments, often, to assert that an embryo is a human being, and/or even a human person: that 1) it has human DNA; and/or 2) it has the DNA of a "unique individual"; that is 3) destined to become a human being. Adding that 4) to say anything else would be to be discriminating against another kind of human being.

But none of these really work; as I note above. And furthermore, not all of these alleged criteria put together, even with dozens of others. For example: a cloned human being would presumably be substantially the same, genenetically, as his original DNA donor. While in any case: if we could make an identical copy to you, say, identifical in every respect ... would that mean that copy is not a human being?

Whatsamatter? Are you going to discriminate against that class of humans?

More importantly: do we really regard the young form of something to be, as the same as what is to come? So you accept the acorn sprout, as the same as an oak tree, and then as the same as oak lumber? So you are still paying $3,000 for a few oak sprouts?

Keep thinking. Anti-abortionists just haven't thought it through enough yet. A few more dozen years of this kind of discussion, and Catholics will no doubt finally end up where philosophy ended up - rightly for once - thousands of years ago: that what makes us human, what makes us more than dead "flesh" or an animal, is our uniquely, developed human mind, spirit, reason. Or as Aquinas said, our rational soul. Or as Philosophy and Psychology said, the "I"; our consciousness. Which an embryo, manifestly, does not have.

Keep thinking.

Regarding the argument that presentes abortion as an eviction you say:


Where this analogy fails is that
1) When a squatter is evicted from an apartment, she or he is not dismembered. Nor is he or she killed.
2) How did the squatter get into this uterus? Was she or he invited in? Given that most acts of sexual intercourse do not result in pregnancy, why did this squatter's ancestors (the sperm and egg) unite and set up residence? Was it the landlord's fault that this squatter got into the apartment? Does it make a difference if the squatter's ancestor (the sperm) was invited in or not initially?
3) In real life, a squatter probably is not stealing food and nutrition from the landlord as a as the pre-born human does.

But then:

1) Yes. But unfortunatelly the procedure for "evicting" a fetus outside women´s body without killing it is either imposible (in early stages of development) or to dangerous for the women (in more advanced moments of the pregnancy). That doesn´t mean a woman should not have a right to self defense, the same way you have the right to defend your life or property against unintentional agresions or trespases. Yet, if such a method gets invented to extract the fetus from the women body alive without actually threatening the woman, I think it could turn into an acceptable middle ground between pro choice-pro life camps, don´t you think?

2)First, I assume that by your comment, you should favor abortions in case of violation cases (since it is clearly an unvited guest). Anyways, the point is that the women has no moral obligation to share her body with the fetus or anybody EVEN if she consented in the first instance. To see what I am refering, see the defense of abortion made by analitical philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson, which is a far more sophisticated form of the "eviction" argument you discuss here.

3) That actually makes the case for abortion stronger, I will say.

Can I ask a rather simple question? Is there a difference between being human and being a human being? Are the two interchangeable, or are there real differences between the two terms?

Please remember the most basic premise of banning any practice:

Banning the practice never stops everyone from doing it; it merely allows the state to fine or imprison those who continue with the practice.

So, would you please describe for me in detail what the punishment for abortion should be? Who goes to jail and for how long? You can argue about what's moral until you pass out from lack of oxygen, but the issue is what should be legal. So, who goes to jail for how many years?

"You can argue about what's moral until you pass out from lack of oxygen, but the issue is what should be legal."

Nope, it's not.

However, putting that aside, let's start with something everyone might agree with. Suppose a doctor aborts a fetus--let's say, at six months--that the mother actually wants. That is, the mother actually does not want the abortion. She goes in for something else, and the baby gets aborted.

Obviously a crime has been committed against the mother. Was any sort of crime committed against the fetus? If so, what crime?

" Sin is a demon crouching at your door and its urge is toward you " - there is the age old battle between two difft. persona , brought forth in The Garden , by the agent of hatred against human life and its author !

It confuses minds with vain arguments .

Does one choose to trust that God who is the author of life needs to be trusted ...or does one choose to trust the agent lurking at the door , who is eager to take domain and dominion , with the tactics of fear and lies about the worthlessness of human life !

And that Godly trust is to produce fruit in many areas - in the capacity to love and trust in God , oneself and those around and thus to bring forth His domain into our midst or one can choose for the fearful urge to negate all such deeper truths , giving more and more domain to the lurker !

Eating disorders , obesity , heart attacks , cancers , depression - the lurker shares its life with those who have invited it in and may be willing to force its claims for generations down !

May many choose to entrust their own lives and those of the coming generations , of all of the unborn , to The Woman , asking for the Holy Spirit of loving trust to drive out the agent of fear and despair against life , to bring forth hope to help the guardians of life to 'do well' and to be the master over the enemy and agent of lies !

Sergio:

I essentially like your discussion of what the presence of a human being in the body of another, would imply.

But perhaps there is a slightly better analogy, regarding the status of the embryo in the body of the mother?

How about say ... the status of an army, that has just invaded and occupied your country. And is now living off your country, and its resources?

Biomedical research has shown that the natural chance of conception resulting in a live birth is somewhere between 25% and 50%. The chances go up if implantation happens and keep getting better the longer the pregnancy keeps on the nominal path to birth. The world live birth rate is about 10 million a month, so working backwards that means that somewhere between 10 and 30 million natural abortions occur every single month; many in which no pregnancy was ever noticed because implantation failed.

Many recognize that finding an exact point in development where we could draw a line to say that full human rights take over is like finding the individual grain of sand that added to a pile makes it into a sand dune (in philosophy this is known as the Sorites Paradox). We know it happens, but can't say when. For legal reasons, we have to draw some lines, but exact justifications have not been found.

Some societies avoid the questions by simply outlawing all artificial abortions; this is more common where women have no political power. It is an easy position, but not practical in the modern world. It gets especially complicated when we try to think through the ethics of embryos that are not growing in utero, but sitting frozen in fertility labs. Those could potentially become human beings (at some small probability), but by all medical standards are now dead. Is it ethically acceptable to kill the dead?

Research has also shown that is it possible to remove a cell from an embryo and let it develop into another separate embryo (close to what happens naturally in identical twins). If that one cell was destroyed, is that ethically acceptable? If a stem cell is removed from me and then destroyed is that ethically acceptable? You might say so because that stem cell would not develop on its own into another human being, but neither will the frozen embryos.

the fetus has human dna. most living things also have their own types of dna. human dna is used to identify human persons who create crimes. dna is also used by our legal systems to convict or release those involved in court cases. if there is human dna present at a crime scene the investagators search for a human person.why does not our political governments reconize that to posess human dna you are legally a person?

Let's start with something everyone might agree with. Suppose a doctor aborts a fetus--let's say, at six months--that the mother actually wants. That is, the mother actually does not want the abortion. She goes in for something else, and the baby gets aborted.

Obviously a crime has been committed against the mother. Was any sort of crime committed against the fetus? If so, what crime?

Billy,

If you use the army analogy, you might find constitutional backing against forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term: the rarely cited 3rd amendment (No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.) A expansive interpretation might include "No fetus shall be quartered in any uterus, without the consent of the Owner."

Does sexual activity = 'consent of the Owner'?
Does this genetically distinct human being have the right to live in someone else's uterus? She/he may have a right to life, but a right to live in someone else's body? I think this is the only real solid pro-choice argument (and even then, it has its flaws, some of which I outlined above.)

The heart of the problem can be illustrated by the fact that often we rush one prematurely born child to the NICU where the staff works intently to save the child's life, and somewhere else an older, more viable child is born alive after artificially induced labor but is left to die. In the former case, is the value of the child rooted in the fact that it was wanted by his/her mother? In the latter, did the child really have no value simply because others didn't think so? A human being's worth is intrinsic. It is not dependent upon the opinions of others. Civilized society, to remain so, has to protect all human beings from the lethal opinions, philosophies, bigotries and theories of personhood promoted by others. Any who would object to that, I invite you to consider the following notion:

Obviously, those who lose the basic human instinct to protect and nurture the young of their own kind have become something less than fully human, as is demonstrated by their callous, “so what?” reaction to photographic evidence that innocent children are routinely being brutally dismembered in abortion clinics. Being something less than fully human, society has no obligation to guarantee the basic human rights of such people. The children being dismembered in the abortion clinics are fully human according to their current stage of development. This is not true of these callous, less than fully human folks. So it would be quite generous of us to allow these hard-hearted ones to be treated just as well as they allowed the fully human child in the womb to be treated.

That line of thinking is ludicrous, as are all of the contemporary attempts to rationalize killing innocent human beings.

Dear Mr. Carter,

You are heroic for analyzing the false arguments of abortionists. That your analysis is necessary indicates the massive expansion of the culture of death. Learned error gains acceptance by its eloquence and appeal to expedient disposal of inconvenient life such as a mass of cells, an impaired child, or the sick or demented aged.

What is not clear about the fifth commandment--"Thou shall not kill."? Ah! But there is the rub! Generally, one must believe in God to respect the fifth commandment; though, there are Christians and other believers who make an exception for abortion. In Genesis, God says "Let us make man in our image." God became Man by The Incarnation; he became the second Adam. Is there any stage in Christ's life from "a mass of cells" to his death that was not human? Can philosophers and bioethicists in favor of the killing of human life stand in front of a crucifix and say to themselves the following claim? "Jesus, when you were a mass of cells in Mary's womb, if you were born incapacitated or became incapacitated, if you became demented, or if you became helpless at any age, in any one of those conditions you were not then a human being." And how can that be when Christ is made in the image of God? And how can that be for us who are made in the image of God?

Christ said "Love God with all your strength and your neighbor as yourself." How deeply sad that some of us raised in Judeo-Christian Western Civilization are barbarians and pagans adorned in modern dress and education . I suppose their ultimate justification is that provided by Dostoevsky. "If there is no God, everything is permitted."

I haven't heard much about God in this discussion.

If there is no God, then people are just a bunch of cells, each of which is just a bunch of atoms, and morality is a figment of our imagination or merely a general consensus among a group of people. In which case, there is little point in debating semantics or the ethics of abortion, because no one has the authority to say what is right or wrong. If there is no God, there is nothing wrong with killing fetuses, or newborns, or children, or adults, because 'wrong' is just someone's perspective.

But there is a God, and He will demand an account from every person on Judgement Day. "For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done in the body, whether good or bad." - 2 Corinthians 5:10

Abortion and any other moral infringement (lying, stealing, adultery, sexual immorality etc.) is wrong and can only be wrong if God hates it. Morality is intrinsically linked to God. If God hates it, it is wrong. If God is ok with it, it is ok.

No doubt there are many abortions performed today which are morally legitimate in God's sight (aborting a terminal fetus which is endangering the life of the mother), thus it would be foolish to outlaw abortions. But God knows what your motives are when you are having an abortion, whether pure or wicked. "Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account." - Hebrews 4:13

And from what God has revealed in His Word, God detests many instances of abortion committed today, for:

"From each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man." - Genesis 9:6

What I am trying to say in all this is that you won't be able to come to a logical consensus with others regarding the ethics of abortion unless God is your starting point and foundation. The best you'll manage is a compromise.

@ Ken Zaretzke raises a very interesting question on corporate personality, but is, I think, too dismissive of the notion..

As the 19th century English jurist A V Dicey says, “When, a body of twenty, or two thousand, or two hundred thousand men bind themselves together to act in a particular way for some common purpose, they create a body, which by no fiction of law, but by the very nature of things, differs from the individuals of whom it is constituted.”

This idea is borrowed from a long line of German Pandectists, like Savigny, Ihring, Mommson and Gierke. Of course, the sort of corporations of which they are thinking are not only, or chiefly, commercial corporations, but universities, religious orders, municipal corporations, guilds and so on. Do not these have at least a quasi-personality? Are we not compelled, in practice to treat them as bearers of rights and duties?

Try this question: I own some Treasury Bonds; who owes me the money? The United States? Granted, but can you convert the proposition that the United States owes me money into a series of propositions, imposing duties on certain human beings that are now in existence? The government? No, they have a duty to see me paid, but do not owe me the money as individuals. Does every citizen owe me an aliquot share? – That is ridiculous. But to say they owe me the money “collectively,” is to use a very slippery term.

@ Jayesh - many good points ,except for the one about the 'many abortions to save the life of the mother ' .

Very unlikley that such a scenario exists in today's technological world or ever existed - in olden days when such a possibiity was more likely , the abortion itself and attendant infections would have possibly been more dangerous to the woman !

There are good studies that demonstrate that almost all possibilties - even situations of when the baby was without any brain , the mother would have preferred that that baby was born naturally and then died !

In the case of the woman with the pulmonary hypertension who was given abortion for the 11 week old baby , it was more likely that if the mother's illness deteriorated , the baby would have been born premature or worse - or there would have been Godly intervention to take the mother through the illness !

One good thing is, since abortion, like all other sins , arise from excessive 'self love' devoid of trust in God , the awareness of the many ill effects for the parents and even the families related to such choices would help many to recognise its seriousness !

Studying countries where abortion has been legitimised years ago may be another good tool - Russia comes to mind ; addictions , crime , unraveling of social structure from loss of sense of dignity of life !

Our best tool against terrorism and many other ills in our world has to be our trusting relationship with God .

' In God we trust ' - let us write it out on our hearts ; the womb tissue shares the same nature like that of the heart !

@ Ken Zaretzke raises a very interesting question on corporate personality, but is, I think, too dismissive of the notion..

As the 19th century English jurist A V Dicey says, “When, a body of twenty, or two thousand, or two hundred thousand men bind themselves together to act in a particular way for some common purpose, they create a body, which by no fiction of law, but by the very nature of things, differs from the individuals of whom it is constituted.”

This idea is borrowed from a long line of German Pandectists, like Savigny, Ihring, Mommson and Gierke. Of course, the sort of corporations of which they are thinking are not only, or chiefly, commercial corporations, but universities, religious orders, municipal corporations, guilds and so on. Do not these have at least a quasi-personality? Are we not compelled, in practice to treat them as bearers of rights and duties?

Try this question: I own some Treasury Bonds; who owes me the money? The United States? Granted, but can you convert the proposition that the United States owes me money into a series of propositions, imposing duties on certain human beings that are now in existence? The government? No, they have a duty to see me paid, but do not owe me the money as individuals. Does every citizen owe me an aliquot share? – That is ridiculous. But to say they owe me the money “collectively,” is to use a very slippery term.

All this has been replaced,on the First Things first page, by an article on a preacher ... whose mother is dying with Dementia. That article in fact, gets closer to the real point: is a person with no mind, really a person any more?

I would not presume to make this decision for anyone else. But for me: I am convinced that my essence is my mind. And when my mind is gone, I am gone. And I am sincere on this: indeed, I have signed a Living Will, that if I am ever in this situation, no one should take "Extraordinary Measures," etc., to keep me alive.

I would not make this decision for anyone else; I make it only for my self. But I regard it as the only moral thing to do. Especially, why drain away medical resources, from some younger person who would benefit far more from them?

The example of the embryo is complicated in some ways; but the example of dementia, begins to get it all into focus, a little better: the essence, the "soul" of a person, is the mind. And if we don't have that, and have lost all chance of regaining it? Then we are simply, gone. "We" don't exist any more, at least on this earth. What is left is a mere body, a "flesh"ly "husk," as the Bible called it; the soul, the spirit, has moved on.

Dear Billy: According to the Bible, if the soul or spirit has moved on, then the body is dead.

A person with dementia is simply an incapacitated person. I don't think you meant it this way, but doesn't your post suggest that the moral thing to do would be to withhold medical treatment from the incapacitated?

It could be said that the human zygote is a fertilized egg (ovum) but this is not to say that it is not a also a zygote or a human being (or a human being plus what will become the placenta and umbilical cord). Even if it dies, it is still, in part, a human being, just as any human organism in one piece is still a human being, whether dead or alive.

A mass of cells identifiable as a human being is distinguished from, say, a mass of cells identifiable as a human arm in that it is an organism, which an arm is not. A human zygote is also an organism.

The question is, is it morally defensible to kill a living human organism--a human being-- at any stage of development, or in any state of being alive, whether or not that organism is also identifiable as a person?

A zygote will, if not impeded and not defective, develop into an organism with brain activity. Killing an embryo is a preventative (or negligent) measure, done with the purpose of preventing further development of a human being, whether to the point of developing brain activity, or further. Might this be permissible in some cases? Perhaps. However, the criterion are not whether or not the embryo is a person *or* a human being, but whether or not it is permissible to end that being's life.

Bonnie, your comment is refreshingly reasonable, prompting me to want re-engage with the issue.

You write: "The question is, is it morally defensible to kill a living human organism--a human being-- at any stage of development, or in any state of being alive, whether or not that organism is also identifiable as a person?"

While this question is quite right, I still don't see what's so helpful about framing the issue or the argument in terms of the categories "human being," "person," or "human organism." As I've said before, we can agree to all the biological and psychological facts, in all of their minute detail. Why exactly are coarser categories supposed to be helpful in addressing the fundamental issue in a non-question begging way?

Let me try to explain more clearly what I am getting at. If the one of these coarser categories ("human being", "person", or "human organism") is supposed to be do the moral work, then it will only provoke the following two entirely reasonable questions: (1) what precise features of a given entity qualify it for membership into the given category, and (2) why are these features, and not others, the morally decisive ones? If, however, we can answer these questions, then it is unclear why we can't go to them directly--bypassing all the debate about "human being," "person" or "human organism." We're ultimately going to have to look under the hood of these concepts anyways.

Billy,

Interesting you've chosen to keep posting without addressing the hole in your DNA argument I (and others) have pointed out.

As for the clone--of course he/she would have rights. It is a different, autonomous being that will, in short order, be genetically and experientially different from the person who provided the original DNA. Just like a baby from the moment of conception.

You state, "More importantly: do we really regard the young form of something to be, as the same as what is to come? So you accept the acorn sprout, as the same as an oak tree, and then as the same as oak lumber? So you are still paying $3,000 for a few oak sprouts?"

Are you suggesting we start assigning different monetary values to human life in different stages?! Way to bring back slavery, or mangle tort compensation..."Oh, the 8 year old killed in the brake-failure induced car crash wasn't a productive wage-earner, so we'll give you less than for your CEO wife."

Your argument that the embryo shouldn't be protected like older life holds no water, for we do indeed "regard the young form of something to be as the same as what is to come" quite frequently. I buy a TV with the understanding it will come to perform as advertised. If it doesn't, I can complain, and get a refund. Heck, if I buy seeds from the catalogue I was perusing last night and they fail to sprout, the company gives me my money back. We're in far more trouble (say goodbye to society) if we start thinking your way than if we don't.

You claim the "essence"/soul is what makes a person and should be the determinant for legal protections. Under that logic, those who deny the existence of a soul might abolish all legal protections. We have no means for determining, measuring, or quantifying this thing you call "essence" or "soul".

We have easy means of determining what quantifies human life. We know what will kill an infant in the womb. We recognize what "life" is on a basic, biological level. We can know when an amoeba is alive or dead. We can know when a human cell is alive or dead.

You want to use "mind" as the basis for personhood and we run into all sorts of problems. When you go to sleep or are in coma, we really have to rely on other biological measures (respiration--which happens at the cellular level in even embryos) other than those of "mind" to know you're still alive. So can I kill a person when they're sleeping? Comatose? Under anesthesia?

Why not, if we must see evidence of mind? What proof do you have that mind is active ONLY after 6 weeks of fetal development? It is NOT, as you claim "manifestly obvious the embryo does not have [consciousness]". It may not have the consciousness of an adult human, but neither does a drug user under the influence, a person sleeping, or even a toddler (which is why Peter Singer says parents should be able to abort children almost into their teens--it's not an adult "mind" after all). Absence of immediately observable evidence certainly does not prove non-existence of that thing.

Which is why pro-life people very logically, reasonably state that in the presence of doubt, we need to err on the side of caution. We have proof that from the moment of conception there is human life. BIOLOGICAL, cellullar, developing toward full potentiality that will be achieved in the absence of artificially induced human destruction or environmental killing factors (toxins, etc.).

One day you'll see you're wrong in stating, "A few more dozen years of this kind of discussion, and Catholics will no doubt finally end up where philosophy ended up". Christianity maintained the personhood of the child in the womb since its earliest days, and has not given that up (as it is Biblically based). The first Christians argued over whether a pregnant woman's child needed to be baptized if she was baptized while pregnant. They decided baptism required observed assent, and since this couldn't be perceived in the infant, later baptism was to be preferred.

I wish you a long life. Such would teach you a little more humility and respect toward the mysterious, and teach you to reverence rather than dismiss what can't be known with certainty.

"Killing an embryo is a preventative (or negligent) measure, done with the purpose of preventing further development of a human being, whether to the point of developing brain activity, or further."

Bonnie, that's a brilliant observation! The very purpose of an abortion is to end the development of a human life that is already in process. The mere fact an abortion is being performed is itself an admission of the identity/being of the presence of human life.

Magda Denes, writing in defense of abortion rights years ago, addressed the issue of viability by saying, I'll para phrase, "the argument from viability is akin to saying that because a man would drown if left in the middle of the ocean it is ok to drown him in his bathtub." Her point was that viability is a function of our being in a place that supports our life. Zygotes and embryos and so on are viable in the womb but not if left in the middle of I 95 or sucked out of the womb in pieces. Relating to this is the question of mental activity or the lack thereof. It would seem that whatever faculties they may possess is appropriate to their station.
Throughout this comment section there have been many references to various stages or types of mental activity, with many of them used interchangebly, and most are used as a kind of flag to indicate which lack the necessary test scores to earn the elite status as a keeper. Sadly there seems to be no general agreement as to which criteria to use so, effectively, we don't use any. In the "partial birth abortion" debate there is an implicit recognition of mental status but only to the degree that it is assumed within the primary argument of viability. As an aside, the representative of the AMA asserted, during congressional testamony, that there was no medical condition where PBA would be indicated as a solution. I would add, unless one considers pregnancy, with its little parasitic bundle, to be a medical condition. Then of course ending the pregnancy in the most barbaric manner imaginable would be seen as a solution irrespective of questions related to mental acuity.
I have heard it said that until one acquires language, no matter how rudimentary in construction or expression, one cannot think, at least in any quantifiable manner. As to consciousness one would be hard pressed to arrive at a consensus as to what it is. Too broad of a definition would include plant life and to narrow would exclude realms of which we know nothing. I'm speaking here of the poorly understood connection between mind, matter and self. Attempts to neatly cleave some imaginery distinction between the body and the mind serve only to justify what one already intends to do. For those who welcome this new life there is no distinction, for those that don't the distinction is purely utilitarian.

@ Anonymous 3
You're right, I should not have said that there are 'MANY abortions performed today which are morally legitimate in God's sight', but 'some' or just not included the word 'many' at all.

I admit that it was foolish of me to use a quantifying adjective when I have no idea what the numbers are.

Michael PS--

I saw something along those lines when I was reading about corporate personhood. The author was skeptical but I forget the gist of the criticism. One thought I have about it is this: if you are right, then corporate charters, which existed for corporations at the beginning of American history, were forms of indentured servitude. That doesn't sound right. But why not? Maybe we need to start with the idea that universities, religious orders, etc. are collectivities rather than legal persons. Or possibly neo-scholastic natural law justified a sense in which they were persons, but that sense is nowadays lost and distorted.

I'd also emphasize that, by employing the informal logic of necessary and sufficient conditions, I show (if my argument is successful) that it's impossible, not merely implausible, for corporations to be coherently regarded as persons. That would seem to be decisive as against the kind of historical (feudal) conceptions of corporate personhood that you cite.

If persons are "individual substances," as Boethius and Aquinas hold, then a corporation cannot be a person. A corporation is made up of individual substances which hold their own existence as a hypostasis, or substance with a nature; therefore, the corporation can't be a substance. In the same way, because a human being is a substance/person, the human's hand, considered in itself, cannot be a person; nor can any other part of the person.

Because we CAN so regard the members of a corporation (as individual substances or persons), the corporation itself cannot really be a person, even though we may think of it as such purely for legal purposes.

Artaban:

You say:

"You want to use ´mind´ as the basis for personhood and we run into all sorts of problems. When you go to sleep or are in coma, we really have to rely on other biological measures (respiration--which happens at the cellular level in even embryos) other than those of "mind" to know you're still alive. So can I kill a person when they're sleeping? Comatose? Under anesthesia? "

I don´t see the problems. The question isIf the person has the capacity to have a "mind", or more exactly, consciousness (which is a fundamental aspect for having rationality, which in most moral traditions including natural law, are the basis of rights). A sleeping person has that capacity, it is only resting (a comatose person, say with cerebral death, has no such capacity...and that strikes me as the very same reason to support euthanasia, which I guess it scandals you).

"Why not, if we must see evidence of mind? What proof do you have that mind is active ONLY after 6 weeks of fetal development? It is NOT, as you claim "manifestly obvious the embryo does not have [consciousness]". It may not have the consciousness of an adult human, but neither does a drug user under the influence, a person sleeping".

Well, I do not know exactly if a "6 week of fetal development" is enought to have consciousness. But it is clear that newly formed zygote that lacks of external organs to percieve the world or a nervous system to process that info, clearly lacks the basic aspects that allow consciousness. If you want to compare some basic reflexes cells or small multicelular organisms have to external stimulus with "a concsiouness", then you should be granting those organisms the same rights that a basically devloped human (or being) have. And we both know that is absurd.

This whole distinction, between being human, and being a person, is bogus. All human beings are persons. Of course, not all persons are human beings:God, for example, and at least all mammalian species, are persons, in my view.

If the "Singerian'' view of personhood, where newborns, for example, are not considered persons, we can only shudder at the moral colapse, of our future society.

Craig Payne

The Pandectists address your point by saying that the corporation is immanent in its members; it pervades their natures and expresses itself in the actions, so that they are members of it, in the same way that my limbs and organs are parts of my body. It is aso transcedant; it has ends and purposes of its own, which are not simply those of its members.

Much of this was direted to refuting the idea of Man in a "state of nature," as a mere abstraction. His nature can only find its fulfilment in cooperation with his fellows.

Needless to say, they hold the state to be a "corporation of corporations."

Thanks, Michael PS and Craig Payne.

A contemporary philosopher, in a chapter called "Corporate Persons," says: "I conclude that it is implausibe to treat a corporation as a member of the human community, a member with a personality (but not a face), intentions (but no feelings), relationships (but no family or friends), responsibility (but no conscience), and susceptibility to punishment (but no capacity for pain)." [Quote from Elizabeth Wolgast]

That's very nicely put. But while she says corporate personhood is "implausible," my claim is that it is an impossibility--not with respect to formal logic (Venn diagrams) but with respect to informal logic (necessary and sufficient conditions).

A further upshot of my argument is that PRO-LIFERS, of all people, ought to firmly reject the idea of corporate personhood. The argument won't be as effective for infanticidists, who may not be persuaded by the counter-example involving infants (although there might well be another counter-example that will persuade them).

Brett:

If being "human" and being a "person" are the same? Then 1) a piece of human skin, since it is "human," is therefore a person. And 2) a dead human body is a person too. And 3) a brain-dead body as well.

This is the problem with the current, extremely serious, conservative Catholic misunderstanding, of the nature of humanity. This is what it does not understand. The human body is really important, only insofar as it is the vehicle for a human mind.

And as conservatism Catholicism thus miscontrues the core nature of humanity itself? How can it guide us to anything but disaster?

Probably John Paul II's "Theology of the Body" is partially responsible. No doubt his instant canonization - his McSainthood - should be put on hold. In the past, the Church rightly considered new doctrines and sainthoods, for many years and even centuries; now, with infinite rashness, the merest pop political vanity or ad hoc fantasy is presented as "holy" to us, all but instantly. With no historical/theological vetting process at all.

The doctrine that human life or even being begins "at conception" is just another rash, deadly, pop formulation, of "conservatives." Who are not conservative at all. But who have always misconceived of their most ad hoc and heretical fashions, as being traditional and holy.

The origin of the word "person" is "persona", the latter implying a mask worn in dramatic performances or in establishing an identity to suit the utilitarian purposes of any particular occasion a rational human being finds him-herself in, or in power plays, identities imposed from hostile external forces.

Christianity established a new Trinitarian understanding of what a person is: the Godhead consists of three persons (absolute/complete/intrinsic identity, no persona), and because we, each one of us human beings, is made in the very image and likeness of God, then each one of us is necessarily a person (why many Christians, myself included, call ourselves children of God), even in pre-infancy, what we call the fetal stage in the maturation of the person. At whatever phase the maturation of the person ends or is impaired in no way contravenes his/her status as person.

To elaborate: If infants are persons despite not being self-interested actors (which they are incapable of being at so young an age), then being a self-interested actor (which is what corporations unquestionably are) is not a necessary condition of personhood. To avoid this unpalatable consequence, the defenders of corporate personhood will have to insist that infants are not, in fact, persons.

One wonders if this will mean anything to conservative elites who are as solicitious of corporate power and prestige as they professedly are of the unborn and the newborn.

No one has addressed the fundamental question here: why should the abortion debate be framed in terms of ANY of these categories ("person," "human being," "human organism," etc.)--rather than the more fine-grained biological/psychological/relational features that presumably distinguish such categories? If one of the categories is morally decisive, then it is presumably only in virtue of the the finer-grained details which it delineates. Since, however, we can agree on the fine-grained biological/psychological/relational details, why not frame the debate directly in terms of them? Appeals to the vague and controversial categories seem to be at best a distraction, and at worst a strategy of question-begging sophistry.

I suspect that the answer to my question is this: pro-lifers depend extensively upon question-begging sophistry to provoke a sort of gut reactions and moral indignation that brings further critical reflection to an end. They want to inflame passions. As such, they are somewhat suspicious of any cool-minded analysis of their passionate outrage, one which calls into question the reasoning behind their gut-reactions and indignant pronouncements. To a lesser extent, the same can be said of some pro-choice "arguments."

Yes, in the end it is a question of identity: personhood in my view is an irreplaceable identity, something intrinsic that cannot be displaced by any transitory identity founded solely in function, a utilitarian source of identity.

Jesus' identity can only be discovered in his mission, but this is not a case of functionality founded in a utilitarian purpose, for it is a functionality that is preceded by his identity as Son, his eternal identification in a Trinitarian relationship. So it follows that if each one of us, Christian or non-Christian, is made in the image of God, then our identities precede any utilitarian function. And if we move in the likeness of God, a mental and physical activity in harmony with whom we really are in the image of God, then our function resonates with the truth of who we are prior to any function, and what often mistakenly gives the impression that our functional transitory identity is who we are as persons. In other words, in being sent, mission, we become who we are to the degree that we are true to that mission, for we cannot be the persons we are except in the image and likeness of God who wants us to take on a transitory functional identity in participatory salvific work.

A person in his/her mission might be called to be an integral part of a corporate enterprise as a CEO or other functionary, or to be a doctor or nurse in a medical enterprise, or a janitor in a cleaning enterprise, and it would be a journeying away from one’s person not to purse that calling, for it is where God wants us to be in being all things to all people.

Gil:

You claim that Jesus is not defined in functional terms. But this, like nearly all your usual speculations, is exactly wrong.

If Jesus is the Son of God, then after all, being a "son" is a functionary role in part; one is produced functionally out of the Father; and one is heir to the throne; and one is given authority, to functionally represent God on earth. and to do good "works," or functional charity.

Then too? If we are the "image" of God, then our very appearance is a result of - a function of - our relation to God. While then too, being made in this image, confers an obligation - and a function: an obligation to act in a Godly way to others. And again, to have a useful function: do good works of charity and so forth.

While indeed, the Church has always taught that in part, unless we do good "works," then we are not entirely Christian. And again, doing good works of course, is a social "function."

As usual Gil, you are being a typical conservativ: you are just making it all up as you go along; and then presenting your ad hoc ideas, to everyopne, as if they are the timeless word of God. The fact is, the BIble itself defines us in functional terms. we are expected to function as Christians in this world.

And those who are not functional? They are condemned to Hell.

Indeed by the way, for this very reason among many others - that the embryo did not seem to function fully as a person - that the soul of the embryo was said (in the Catholic tradition that conservatives claim to follow, but do not), to be in at best an indeterminate place; in "Limbo."

No doubt the doctrine of Limbo was partiallyt suspended recently, at the urging of conservatives. Though the Church never should have given into political pressure from Republicanism here. Instead, it should have held to a better tradition; that better accords to the Bible itself.

To God's own Functionalism: by their fruits you shall know them."

The fact is, "personhood," or being a Christian with an immortal soul, has always been partially related to ... doing good works. And being a functional member of society.

Some professor in Baylor, attacked the "functional" definition of humanity in an infamous book ,a few years ago. Possibly that book started this whole current, semi-intellectual fashion to attack the "functional" definition of man. But that very professor had to admit in his owhn book, that his argument was after all, not based on the Bible. Check it out.

The attack on " functionality, "is just another silly conservative fad, that does not really fit the Bible itself, at all. And that grossly misdirects the church, as well.

Arteban never really answers the major objections. For example: is something with the DNA of a human being, necessarily a human person? For example 1) a piece of human skin has a complete set of DNA in it; it is a human person?

Arteban seems to admit that it is not. But to fix it, then he tries to add a second qualification: 2) the DNA must be of a "unique indivdiual." But what about clones? Arbeban? You yourself admit at the beginning, they might have non-unique DNA. So: even if they individuate later, that means for a moment, in your definition, they are not really perrsons. Please address this.

As one apparent definition of the human after another fails, Arteban and others just try still more: next they suggest 3) the idea that perhaps after all, the emtryo is not quite like an adult, in all its functions: particularly, it lacks the critical ability that many think defines human beings: the ability to think, consciously, with reason. But here many say this next: the emtryo must be human, even if it does not have a rational mind or soul (as some said), because still, is "intended to become" a human." And surely something that is "intended" to be something like a human being, must be teh same as that. But there are many cases where that is not true - that you, Arteban, ignore, and so not address. For example: an acorn has the same DNA as oak lumber; is an acorn therefore teh same as oak lumber?

Acorns have a complete set of unique DNA of their species; and they are intended to become oak wood. But ... If you asked someone for enough oak wood, to build a house - and they gave you five acorns? Or even five oak sprouts? Would you be satisfied they had made good on their promise? Is the embryo form of oak trees, really the same thing as the later form?

You assert that it is? That is silly. Please address yourself to this example. Do you really think that an embryo, must be accorded the same status as a huma person with a mind ... because it is going to become one?

Is an acorn, the same thing as the oak tree lumber, it is going to become? Arteban? Arteban?!

Arteban: you either don't understand this, or you are deliberately misconstruing it. Think about these things carefully; then give a real answer.

C. Erlich: many of us support you. Are you aware that some responses are censored? In any case, note I support you; and my own posts and those of others like me, are attemping to indeed, define the functions that make us human persons, and not just dead bodies, or animals.

Billy,

"If Jesus is the Son of God, then after all, being a 'son' is a functionary role in part; one is produced functionally out of the Father; and one is heir to the throne; and one is given authority, to functionally represent God on earth. and to do good 'works,' or functional charity."

I agree with you here. I was attempting to distinguish between a false identity and an identity founded in the irreducibility of one's personhood. Jesus' functionary role derives from his mission, his being sent by the Father, which derives from his person, no separation. We agree. And from this it is clear that our true identities reside in mission, in how we are sent, and all other identities are either subsumed in our real identities, functioning as worldly expressions of our real identities, or they are false identities, serving some utilitarian ideal, usually involving self-idolatry. We agree here, too.

Re: Limbo. Baptism is a sacrament where we die in Christ and are born into his life. And to be in his life means we are in his mission, particularly in how he sends us inside his mission. In other words, in how we are sent is integral to Christ’s completed mission, how our lives are made whole in being whole in Christ by participating in his completed mission: in becoming Christlike we become who we are, made in the image and likeness of God. It's all about being incorporated into the Body of Christ. Knowing this, many thoughtful theologians asked themselves, "What about those not baptized but innocent, having no mortal sin on their souls?" They placed such absolute importance on being baptized in Christ and his mission that their intellects tried to wrestle with this great mystery, especially when we are talking about infants who were not baptized. They concluded there must be a place for them where they experience eternal bliss, every tear wiped away, but are not fully incorporated into the baptized life. They speculated in this way only because they saw no separation between personhood and mission, that our very identities are actualized in mission. In other words, they were wrestling with a mystery through concepts, and the concept of Limbo was the best they could come up with. But most theologians no longer embrace this concept. They have moved on to a deeper understanding in the development of doctrine, especially in how God’s mercy is his ultimate expression of justice, evidence on the Cross: “Forgive them—they know not what they do.” Which certainly would include, “Welcome home, you who knew not the value of baptism through no fault of your own.”
Billy, before I become a typical conservative, I would first have to become a conservative. And in my parish I am equally ostracized by conservatives and liberals for a very good reason: I am neither conservative nor liberal. The persons who do engage me are comfortable in their real identities, knowing their political functionary roles are part and parcel of their mission in their real identies.

And I am certain that Christian unity will make a great leap when it is thoroughly understood that faith and works cannot be separated the same as Jesus and us as his body cannot be separate from mission.

Billy

“The human body is really important, only insofar as it is the vehicle for a human mind.”

The human mind is a mere abstraction, drawn from observation of living, human bodies. We infer them from our observation of conscious, intelligent action, including, but not limited to speech.

In expressions like “I sat down,” “I jumped up,” “I answered the door,” "I" is not a name: these I-thoughts are examples of reflective consciousness of states, actions, motions, etc., not of an object I mean by "I,” but of this living, human body, this “rational animal,” as Aristotle calls it.

At all events, there are sounds coming out of human heads, and people behaving in response to those sounds in ways that are patterned and regular, and so on. Wittgenstein pointedly observes that “"Thinking is not an incorporeal process which lends life and sense to speaking."

We do not need some sort of “Ghost in a machine” to explain any of this.

As for the idea that human life begins at conception being a modern one, we have Tertullian, writing in the Apologia (9:8) “That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed” Which remains both good science and good sense.

“Animation” or “Ensoulment” is a complete red herring - If the principle of human rational life in me is a soul (which perhaps can survive my death, perhaps again animate me) that is not the reference of "I.”

Ken Zaretzke

Why should we choose to define persons as “self-interested actors”? What is wrong with the traditional definition of “bearers of rights and duties” that goes back to the Classical Roman Jurists, who first employed it in a juridical sense?

C. Ehrlich,

The "biological/psychological/relational features" are empirical; moral questions often go beyond any empirical consideration. Actually, only psychology helps get a liberal result on abortion. Relational concerns are too flimsy to seriously support a pro-abortion view (although they are a favorite of pro-choicers trying to show that their view does not support infanticide). Biology broadly supports a conservative position and is widely used by pro-lifers (the self-organizing, genetically independent zygote/embryo is not just a part of the pregnant woman's body). Also, what do you mean by "fine-textured"?

Michael PS,

I needed a criterion of personhood that uncontroversially applies to corporations, and also is clearly an attribute of personhood. Thus the idea of being a self-interested actor. On its face, "bearer of rights and duties" sounds like something that applies to living, breathing human beings. It would certainly be controversial to apply it to impersonal corporations. Whatever was believed at one time, nowadays we know that if a person has a right, then other persons have a duty to not interfere with that right. It's hard to believe that everyone has a duty, for example, to religious "corporations" qua persons, and hard to even understand what it would mean for people in general to have such a duty. What duty would ordinary church members have? Tithing, for sure. Acceptance of the church's teaching, absolutely. But beyond that? And what about non-church members?

The approach I took has an interesting implication, which was slow to dawn on me (it occurred to me this morning while drinking a large cup of hot chocolate in a small coffee shop). The implication is that, if corporations are not denied legal personhood, the logic of their being persons might conceivably pave the way for legalized infanticide. Imagine Peter Singer saying, "However paradoxical it may sound, infants can't be persons even if corporations are persons--for the simple reason that a necessary conditon of personhood is being a self-interested rational actor, which corporations are and infants are not." What can pro-lifers say to that except, "Who says corporations are persons?"

Immunology and taxonomy support the position that a zygote with human DNA is a unique member of the species Homo sapiens and is therefore a human being. The human body can distinguish "self" from "non-self" with a properly functioning immune system. Every individual person has antigens on his or her cell surface which mark individuality. In nature, the properly functioning womb has an immunosuppressive function which prevents it from expelling the embryo before the embryo reaches term as a neonate. In medicine, transplants are only successful if the immune system of the recipient is destroyed and rebuilt, if the antigenic similarities are such that the immune response is not stimulated, or the recipient is given "anti-rejection" medicine for the rest of his or her life.

Taxonomists recognize that members of the species Homo sapiens, as well as most other species, pass through a series of life stages, beginning as zygotes and ending as mature adults, during which identifying characteristics are displayed. The entire spectrum of characteristics displayed during the lifetime of the individual human or any other organism is called the holomorphology of the organism. Taxonomists (and phylogeneticists) also recognize that there are two characteristics which are present at conception of an organism: its unique geneological descent and its unique genetic and cytogenetic characteristics which guide development. The geneological descent is necessary and sufficient to classify the organism. The unique genetic and cytogenetic characteristics may not be inherited in toto, resulting potentially in an inviable individual, but an individual nonetheless which is still a member of its species, genus, family and so on.

Ken Zaretzke,

The question is why, or why not, aborting a human zygote is morally wrong for the same reason(s) as the paradigmatic cases of murder are wrong (as in the case of intentionally killing one's 16-year old daughter for being too mouthy). Some insist that aborting a human zygote is just like the paradigmatic murder case insofar as both involve the killing of a human being/organism. Some deny this, saying that the relevant question is whether or not the zygote is a person.

All these categories (human being, human organism, person) can presumably be analyzed into the more specific features that determine membership into those categories (just as "bachelor" can be analyzed in terms of of its more fine-grained constituent concepts: "unmarried, human, adult, male"). If by "human being" we simply mean to designate the biological concept "member of Homo sapiens", then we can list all the details that biologist would use to distinguish the human species from any another. Here we would then have to specify which of the many definitions of "species" we are appealing to. By looking at the particular definition of "species" we are then in a position to more fully understand what the pro-lifer is insisting upon, since we can now make explicit what precisely what she is saying when she insists that the term "human being" is the relevant category for settling the moral debate about abortion. If, for example, she selects the species conception of "human being," and also the genetic characterization of "species," we then understand the pro-lifer to be insisting that its all about DNA similarity. That is, such a pro-lifer would be insisting that aborting a zygote is wrong because it is wrong to kill something with such and such DNA. We can even press her to make explicit the particular variations of DNA structures which, when instantiated in a living organism, are morally impermissible to terminate. That is what it would be to give a "fine-textured" characterization of her apparently fundamental principle underlying her pro-life position (as opposed to the course-grained characterization of her principle given in terms of the unanalyzed category "human being").

It might be obvious why a pro-lifer would want to resist such a detailed explication of her view : when she makes it explicit what she means by the category "human being," her position suddenly looks a lot more questionable. Why should everything depend on DNA structure (or, for that matter, any other biological/relation feature by which species are distinguished)?

Here is the main point: the real questions begin only once people make it explicit what they mean by "human being," "human organism" or "person"--or whatever other vague or deceptive category they are appealing to in trying to defend their position on abortion. Since this is where the real discussion begins, I simply suggest that we cut to the chase: we should argue directly in terms of the fine-grained details, bypassing all the discussion about persons, human beings and human organisms.

(Note: I say that sometimes these categories are deceptive because sometimes people use them in ways that are already morally loaded while pretending otherwise. That is, sometimes people include something like "rights bearing entity" in their very conception of "person" or "human being"--while at the same time suggesting that such concepts can be analyzed purely in terms of psychological, biological, or otherwise non-moral features. Obviously it sort of begs the question to insist that killing a human zygote is wrong because it is a rights bearing entity. So, if by "human being" we simply mean (perhaps among other things) "rights bearing entity," then we've bypassed the question we were supposed to be answering: by virtue of what is a human zygote a rights bearing entity?)

Ken Zaretzky

Corporations are certainly bearers of rights and duties; they can own property and have occupier’s liability for its condition. They can, usually, lease their land, creating mutual rights and duties, as landlord and tenant. Suppose a corporation has the duty, arising from tenure, to maintain a footpath over its land; it is difficult, to say the least, to convert this into the proposition that some one or more individuals have that duty. Any decree will be against the corporation and it will be enforced by diligence against its assets.

Moreover, its rights and duties are unaffected by changes in the individuals who compose it. Old members leave, or die and new members are admitted, but this has no effect on the position of a debtor or creditor of the corporation.

Of course, a corporation can only act through its human agents; but that is true of natural persons, too, in some cases. An imbecile can only act through his curator bonis, but is a person, for all that.

C Ehrlich

We all recognize the human zygote as capable of having some rights. A postumous child can inherit and it is certainly not an hereditas jacens in the intervening period, for it can claim reparations for an injury done to the inheritance, between its father's death and its birth, or interest on a debt for the same period.

@ C. Ehrlich. Assume you are correct about what is a human person. Why should I not be able to kill any human person I so choose?

Michael PS,

Your observations, as always, are interesting. They also bring to mind the way we sometimes talk of the rights of future generations, where the likelihood of any particular member of that generation even coming into existence is still quite remote (astronomically remote, we might even say).

But what do you think about the point I'm pressing: that all this discussion about "human beings," "human organisms," and "persons" is largely unnecessary, and that we can bypass this distraction by arguing instead in terms of the more fine-grained details which are supposed to underly such distinctions, details about which we can largely agree? My recommendation would at least force people to articulate the precise content we intend by such terms--terms which are all too often vague or ambiguous, providing opportunities for sophistry and equivocation.

Elastico, as far as I can recall, I've made no claims about human personhood. Perhaps you meant to address someone else?

C Ehrlich

I would suggest that the term"organism" denotes a substance, untimately unanalysable, in the sense that it is an individual, living whole and more than the sum of its parts, for it has the capacity to assimilate and organze extraneous matter in order to complete its growth and development. In determining its nature (the kind of thing it is), we should follow the adviice of Aristotle, by examining perfect, or complete, specemens and not immature or damaged ones.

Accordingly, I should start with teasing out the meaning of "That person, over there," or some such everyday expression. I would suggest "person" here means "living human body."

I do not believe that tracing its development through its various stages, examining the zygote, blastomeres, zona pellucida, morula or blastocyst gets us much further forward.

Mike PS:

Of course, to define "person" as "living human body,"is clearly prejudicial, and begs the main question here: is the mind important?

A body might be living, but be brain-dead, and not have a mind in it. In that case, many would say that is it not a person.

Clearly you are being disingenuous here, in even your initial definitions. Which would absolutely prejudice the result, right from the start.

Michael P.S.

Since "organism" and "person" have a variety of senses, both technical and ordinary, I am suggesting that we avoid such terms, or--if we insist on using such them (perhaps for the sake of brevity), we must make explicit precisely what we mean by them--just as you have done. (Note that you might want to give the same explication for "human," since it's hardly a guarantee of an inviolable right to life that a living individual have the capacity to assimilate and organize extraneous matter....)

Ultimately, you will want to try to say why these particular features you list--and not any others (think of all the logical space here)--are the relevant ones for settling the moral question. It's great progress, however, to start with these particular features already on the table--for only then can we get to the heart of the matter, asking why these features in particular--and not any others--are supposed to be morally decisive.

Michael PS,

Corporations do have some person-like attributes, as I mentioned in my first comment. The law has historically recognized this. But at the end of the day, are these resemblances really strong enough to entitle corporations to be regarded as persons in the law? The argument I made, based on necessary and sufficient conditions of personhood, and using self-interested actors as the criterion of personhood (partly because it can either include or not include advanced cognition, or self-awareness, and is therfore a neutral criterion), has the result that corporations can't *coherently* be regarded as persons. If I'm right, then we have very good reasons for opposing the whole idea of corporate personhood.

As for history, it is possible that it does not speak unequivocally about corporate personhood, or corporations have evolved in a way that undermines the historical views of corporate personhood, or those views were never meant to apply to modern business corporations. But whatever history says, it can't trump (informal) logic--assuming I have, in fact, identified the illogic of corporate personhood.

James,

You claim, "Arteban never really answers the major objections. For example: is something with the DNA of a human being, necessarily a human person? For example 1) a piece of human skin has a complete set of DNA in it; it is a human person?"

Try actually reading my posts, James. I addressed your above question with a post at 1.26.2011 | 1:25pm. I'll restate it for you in terms someone else used (functionality). The whole function of sperm and egg is to develop into a human being. The joining of the two (conception) marks the successful completion of their functional purpose, therefore, the embryo is a human being. Unlike the embryo/baby, the lump of skin will NEVER, of itself, develop into an adult human being, while the embryo, if not artificially destroyed will.

As for the clones, they would be human beings with their own rights, even for the moments their DNA matched that of the donor. One would never have the right to kill their clone, no more than you have a right to destroy my car, just because you own an identical model and make. It's not difficult, people, some of you make it abstruse to avoid what is really quite simple and glaringly obvious.

As for your acorn comments...It is only with human beings that we take the life at its earliest stage of development and try to say it is not alive, or of the type it is (human). Horticulturalists will take that acorn seed and say it is alive, and that it is an acorn. It's not suddenly going to change type, become a dog for instance. But (some) abortionists (quite a number openly admit they're destroying a human life) want to act as though that baby would somehow be something other than a person.

You want to see what something really is? Wait for it to fully develop! I'll make a bet with any abortionist here--let the pregnancy run its natural course to birth. At the end of the nine months, a person will pop out! Who would have thought it!?

Onto something Billy said: "If we are the "image" of God, then our very appearance is a result of - a function of - our relation to God. While then too, being made in this image, confers an obligation - and a function: an obligation to act in a Godly way to others. And again, to have a useful function: do good works of charity and so forth."

Actually quite wrong, Billy. Genesis says we're made in the image and likeness of God before charity is even necessary or possible (before the Fall and Original Sin). We possess that dignity before God places any condition/function upon mankind.

You also say, "The fact is, "personhood," or being a Christian with an immortal soul, has always been partially related to ... doing good works. And being a functional member of society," proving you are certainly not a theologian.

Do a little bit of a better reading of the Bible. Psalm 39: 13 and 2 Maccabees 7: 22-23 (not to mention the Gospel's Infancy Narrative) show that God is behind the creation of the human person in the womb, that the "inmost being" referred to in the Psalm has nothing to do with our action/function, but everything to do with our nature.

Furthermore, had you any recollection of the Pauline letters, you would have known that he says, "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. 10For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life." (Romans 5: 8-10)

It is because God loved us and Christ died for us that we have salvation and extreme dignity. It's not based on anything we do (if it was, then Christ could not have died for us while we were "sinners" and God's "enemies"). While it's true that if we're truly to call ourselves Christians we must show our love through actions, none of us can earn heaven. We can accept or reject the gift of salvation, but we did nothing to earn it in the first place. It remains a GIFT. Which is another reason we ought to reverence that gift in the unborn.

Billy, you quote the "By their fruits you shall know them" verses from Matthew 7, yet ironically won't defend the baby until it can be born and the "fruit" of it known. BTW, you're distorting the Bible, too. That verse in context is present as a warning against false teachers--those trying to deceive others. It was never meant by the author as a statement on functionality versus being. But okay, let's use it the way you want--let's live by it, let the babies be born, and observe their goodness/human being.

C. Ehrlich,

Michael PS's 9:41AM comment is a good brief summary of the essentialist view that underlies most pro-lifers' biology-based arguments. You might also want to consider the "future like ours" argument. (Don Marquis, "Why Abortion is Immoral.") It doesn't rely on personhood or species categories ("human being") at all. It says that a zygote (after individuation) has a right to life because it has a future like ours. Just as it would be wrong to deprive you or me of a future of value, so it is wrong to deprive a human zygote of its future of value, or its future like ours.

I agree with your desire to avoid controversial ways of approaching this debate. But that is a whole other issue.

Ataban,


Clearly this is the debate that's been going on for centuries, and will not end anytime soon. What follows is speculation on my part based on reading the Bible and saintly theologians:

A mere image of God is static, but a likeness implies an activity. It's like if I listed for you a lengthy description of my best friend, laying out every characteristic I could think of, you would come up with an impression of who he is, an image, that might have no actual likeness to who he really is. But if I told you a story about him, which would involve an activity of his life, there would be an excellent chance that you would at least get a glimpse of who he really is.

Why didn't the Bible just say we were made in the image of God? Why add "and likeness"?

The iconic art of Orthodox Christians has one absolute rule in painting images: you can't put any white paint in the pupils. If you did it would create the impression of a reflection, and a reflection is too close to an idolatrous image, an interiorly created self-image that is not the image of God projected onto the external image that comes back and affirms the idolatrous image involved in self worship. If there is no reflection, one is drawn INTO the image through the eyes on a direct course to the transcendent.

A Trinitarian God exists in eternal activity by the mere fact that God is a relational being: if the Trinity was not involved in an activity, it would not be relational. So, too, with us: a static image is never who we are. It is the activity that defines us (just had a flash of Batman declaring, “It is what I do that defines me”). Remember that God himself in creating Adam knew something was missing: Eve. That is so because the Trinitarian completeness of who each one of us is occurs in complementary relationship, including our relationship to God, which is always an activity.

The story of The Good Samaritan is so important because being a static image of being a good Christian would be a false image: it's the activity that makes the image real, including interior activity: a person in a coma is still active, as is a fetus in a womb.

Aquinas explained that evil is a negation, an absence of something. When we turn away from God and move in our own willful ways (sin), that movement/activity is what constitutes evil. Our identities remain in the image of God, although we would be living a spiritual death, just as Adam and Eve experienced spiritual death when they chose to move in an activity of body and mind away from God, although the image of God still identifies their personhood, and is an eternal reminder of who they really are, yet their personhood is not manifested except in the likeness of God, being spiritually alive, not dead, and why hell would be so torturous for us: the image of God at the center of who we are would remain as the reminder of our spiritual death.

The Commandments served to reveal to us how we move in opposition to what God's desires of us. Now, since Christ's resurrection and sending to us the Holy Spirit as our guide, the law is written in our hearts and minds, for we are now the temple of God. In refusing to listen to our hearts and minds (obedience is the opposite of rebellion), and instead in our willfulness (Nietzsche identified will as the highest human reality) rebel against our minds and hearts, we move into the rebellion which is an activity that moves away from who we are in the likeness of God, although the image of God remains. Conversion, a turning back and moving towards God is a moving inside an activity that is the likeness of God, how God moves: always in love and in relationship.

I would say the image of God, who we actually are, is the constant reminder that He is Good, Beautiful and True, and why the sense of goodness always remains in the heart and mind of who we are in essence, why we so easily identify it in others even when we are committed to rebellion, and if we are true to who we are in goodness, beauty and truth, then we also reside in the likeness of God in how we move and relate to one another, a not moving away from who we are. In other words, nothing about us is ever static: there is always an activity: a moving away from or towards the Godhead, and why what we do defines where we are at in our journey in becoming who we already are absolutely in potential, how close we really are in movement in being the likeness of God or in depriving ourselves of that likeness in moving away from God in our willfulness, how we are living a life more abundantly or a spiritual death without end unless we convert once more in a movement towards God. In every given second we are either moving towards or away from God, and when moving towards Him we are in his likeness.

In conversion, is there a restoration of sorts, a reconciliation? If so, what is being restored? The image of God that is each one of us remains us for all eternity. It is not the image of God that is being restored, but a participation in the very life of God, and this is how von Balthasar defines Charity: a participation in the life of God, and to live in Christ is that guaranteed participation, which is always an activity, a mission, an embracing of how we are called and sent. For this is precisely how we know Christ: by his mission which is inseparable from who he is as a person, in his human and divine natures. To will in our gift of freedom to refuse a participation in the life of God, to refuse the mission that manifest us, to that degree we become less of who we really are. The more we refuse to participate, the less we are, a deprivation, an absence, a negation, a not becoming. God Is, but for us humans, to be is to become, and as you rightly point out, Jesus made it possible for us to become wholly who we are.

Jesus did not say that non-Christians would know us by how well we mirror the image of who we are, but by our unity, and why Jesus would send disciples out in twos. In other words, the likeness of God requires relational living, a Trinitarian life, and relational living is always an activity, and Christians call that activity “mission”. This is why I often say that the first task of Satan is to convince us he doesn’t exist, and the second task is to destroy our unity (how many denominations have we shattered into?), because Satan knows that the activity of relational living is what truly defines us, what truly restores the image and likeness of God that we are, something Jesus made possible, for in imitating Christ, in becoming his body and blood, we become fully who we really are, persons made in the image and likeness of God.

Ken Zaretzke,

The summary of the biology-based arguments you refer to lacks any argument as to why the specified biological features are the morally decisive ones. That's no small thing, since it's the main task for anyone wanting to argue for a straightforward pro-life view. That is, while Michael PS does well in partially specifying what it is which some people evidently take to be the morally decisive features, he doesn't even attempt to provide an argument for this view (at least in that comment).

Marquis is in agreement with me that the arguments which appeal to "person," "human being," and "human organism" aren't successful, and sometimes just beg the question. In an updated version of the paper you cite, Marquis further qualifies his argument, now not even trying to argue that abortion is wrong in the first two weeks. For what he does conclude, even a sympathetic reader will have to concede that there's plenty of room for reasonable disagreement with Marquis' argument (see, e.g., the various objections raised by Jeff McMahon in The Ethics of Killing). That, I think, is the repeated lesson of all the attempts at articulating a careful argument for the pro-life position.

That is, from what I observe, there is invariably plenty of room for reasonable disagreement when we press pro-lifers for a careful articulation of their views and arguments. It'd be a valuable lesson for some of the people around here to take to heart (I have in mind especially certain of the editors and contributors).

Paul Bergeron made an excellent point earlier, that in classifying an organism, taxonomixts look at the holomorphology (and genealogy) of the organism. In this, they are simply following Aristotle, when he says we learn the nature of an organism by studing mature specimines, not immature or damaged ones.

C Ehrlich says that "it's hardly a guarantee of an inviolable right to life that a living individual have the capacity to assimilate and organize extraneous matter....)" NoW, the loss of the capacity for assimilation, self-organization and excretion is precisely what we call death: death is incipient decay or dissolution. There is very little difference, at the cellular or molecular level, immediately before and immediately after death, but they are no longer integrated in the same way.

Does a zygote have reflexive consciousness? How would we verify that? It certainly has the capacity to develop, indeed, is developing, the neurological structure on which consciousness appears to depend.

The real problem is not with the zygote's intellect, but ours. As Bergson says "What it [the intellect]does is to take the ceaseless, living flow of which the universe is composed and to make cuts across it, inserting artificial stops or gaps in what is really a continuous and indivisible process. The effect of these stops or gaps is to produce the impression of a world of apparently solid objects. These have no existence as separate objects in reality; they are, as it were, the design or pattern which our intellects have impressed on reality to serve our purposes." A sries of freeze-frames, if you will.

Using this approach, we can certainly say that here is an organism of the kind that exhibits all the functions of growth, nutrition, generation, sensation, appetite, locomotion, memory, intellect and will - just not all at the same time, at every stage of its development.

We do not need to pour over the details of embryology (pretty well outlined by Aulus Gellius in the first century (Noctes Atticae 3,10,7-8) to learn what a zygote is. We can learn that by looking at the people around us.

Michael PS,

If the debate were all about defining "organism," then I'd say that you and Bergeron have a very good case. I might even agree. The real question, however, is why this very good characterization of "organism" is supposed to delineate the morally decisive factors in settling the abortion debate. The most articulate definition of "organism" at best only specifies those features for which one then must give the moral argument.

Please note that I also have no disagreement about your definition of "death." That's again not at issue. The reason why a living individual's "capacity to assimilate and organize extraneous matter...." does not guarantee an inviolable right to life is for the very simple reason that there are many living individuals who have this capacity and yet obviously lack any inviolable right to life. Think of puppies, palm trees and single-celled bacteria.

C Ehrlich

For me, the morally decisive factors are those I listed, not only growth, nutrition and generation, which the human organism shares with all living things (and without which, no "right to life" could arise), not only sensation, appetite, locomotion, shared wiith puppies &c, but memory, understanding and will. These are all defining characteristics of the human organism, which is one and the same throughout its life, although it does not exhibit all of them at any one time. They all belong to its holomorphology. This is what Aristotle meant, when he defined Man as a rational animal, rather than a symbiosis of Mind (whatever that means) and Body.

Chopping its existence into temporal chunks tends to obscure this, which was the sense in which I quoted Bergson

Michael PS,

Yes, but it is one thing to express the view that such factors are the morally decisive ones; it's quite another thing to give an argument for this view. You've done well to articulate what you regard to be the morally decisive features. Now you need to give the argument for why you select these features and not any others.

In answering this question, it is of course important to appreciate all the logical space for alternatives features that might be the morally decisive ones, in place of the one's you favor. So, far from obscuring anything, the "chopping" you refer to can actually help us begin to consider the alternative places where one might draw the moral line.

C. Ehrlich,

I agree with you about there being room for reasonable disagreement on the abortion issue. Neither side has compelling arguments that a reasonable person *must* believe. That tells us that reason is limited. But given that abortion is killing, the burden of proof rests on pro-choicers. In particular, unless they can show that the logic of abortion is clearly distinguishable from the logic of infanticide, a task at which they have failed miserably, pro-choicers have a lot to answer for.

I don't think Jeff McMahan's book, impressive though it is, comes close to refuting Don Marquis. McMahan is another of those pro-choicers who can't say what's wrong with infanticide, even if they would like to. See my 2007 webzine article "An Open Letter to Rudolph Giuliani," which discusses (and disses) McMahan on infanticide. McMahan does not persuade me that a reasonable person must think as he does about abortion. When you consider that no more sophisticated book could be written on behalf of legalized abortion, that says a lot.

Don Marquis has not fundamentally changed his position. From the beginning he has maintained that a future-like-ours applies to humans once they become individuals. At first he assumed this occurred at conception, and more recently he decided that individuation occurs after twinning is no longer possible. Influenced by Jeff McMahan (and before I knew of Marquis's own slight change of mind) I myself came to that conclusion. More recently, I'm having doubts about it as I learn about essentialism. But surely it doesn't really matter in practice--it's a difference of only two weeks in the very earliest stage of pregnancy.

You're right to say I didn't give any "fine-textured" reasons. That's largely because the real solution to your doubts, it seems to me, lies in a thoroughgoing understanding of essentialism, in which the micro and macro levels are tied together. I would recommend David Oderberg's excellent book *Real Essentialism*. The chapter on species will whet your appetite for more of this "exotic" subject.


Michael PS,

Bearing rights and duties is something we have intrinsically, by virtue of what we are (so says the essentialist). But corporations do not *intrinsically* have rights--we confer rights upon them. And those rights are very different from the rights that people have. Goldman Sachs doesn't have a right to life, or so I hope.

"Bearer of rights and duties" is an august title. Even if the proprietary business firms of Adam Smith's day deserved this august title (and I think clarity of reasoning would have to say they don't), I reject the assumption that non-proprietary corporate behemoths also deserve this penultimate title of human dignity (the ultimate title being "Imago Dei").

C Ehrlich

But there are no “factors” that are morally decisive. It is human life, in the concrete sense (“Run for your lives”) that is morally decisive and this cannot be analyzed into parts, but merely described ostensively.

The nature or quality of that life, I have attempted to delineate, all its capacities or functions rooted in its self-organizing capacity, from which the other capacities or functions I have enumerated flow. But, once again, these are aspects of an indivisible life.

Ken Zaretzke

I believe the issue of monozygotic twins is a red herring. We are dealing with a living individual whole whose life is—all going well—to be the life of one or lives of more than one human being – a living human organism.

“Bearing rights and duties is something we have intrinsically, by virtue of what we are...”

No, rights and duties refer to relationships between persons and are, like language, the creation of humanity. They arise from our essentially social nature; the same social nature that gives rise to corporations, beginning with the clan, the tribe and the village community. Try asking yourself, who owns the town square, or the common grazings of a village.

Ken Zaretzke and Michael PS,

I really appreciate the thoughtful and informed responses. They are helping me to organize my own thoughts on this difficult and weighty issue.

Michael PS articulates what he means by "organism." With that definition, we can understand why one might think that aborting a human zygote is wrong--IF it is generally wrong to kill a human organism, as Michael PS evidently assumes. But that's a huge "IF." It looks a lot like begging the question. That is, while I am happy to concede that I've been given a perfectly correct definition of "organism," I have not been given reason to think that "organism" is the decisive category by which to settle the moral question about abortion. In fact, far from adding plausibility of the pro-life position, this definition of "organism" only makes it more mysterious why anyone should leave convinced that human organisms per se have an inviolable right to life. That is, there appears to be nothing in that articulation of what it is to be a human organism that justifies the assumption that "human organism" tracks the moral values/reasons.

Sp, if Ken Zaretzke is right in saying that Michael PS has given "a good brief summary of the essentialist view that underlies most pro-lifers' biology-based arguments," then I am at a complete loss to understand what it is about essentialism that Mr. Zaretzke thinks might hold the real solution to my doubts.

I'm happy to hear that Mr. Zaretzke also acknowledges that there is room for reasonable disagreement on the abortion issue. He seems to wants to minimize the importance of this fact, however. But, if there is this room for reasonable disagreement, then there will likely be very positive repercussions wherever this fact is fully acknowledged. That it isn't sufficiently acknowledged is easy to see: imagine how striking it would be for Joe Carter, or one of the other editors here, to acknowledge that there can be reasonable disagreement about whether abortion is morally wrong!

(Note, btw, that one doesn't have to think that McMahon's arguments provide a decisive "refutation" of Marquis' views to think that the considerations he raises show some of the room for reasonable disagreement with Marquis.)

Finally, I don't really see the supposed slippery slope from the permissibility of abortion to the permissibility of infanticide. Moral conclusion about a given action should in general be sensitive to the available alternatives to performance of the action in question. Once an infant is born, the mother has plenty of alternatives to killing it. That range of new available alternatives may alone make birth a morally significant threshold.

C Ehrlich

But, on your showing, why should there be any reason not to kill a new-born infant, or, for that matter, the householder who is trying to prevent me stealing his goods, or the witness whose testimony can land me in gaol?

Why look for alternatives?

Unless, that is, they possess some intrinsic quality I ought to respect. But what is this that they do not share with every other human organism?

I suppose a utilitarian argument could be made that general respect for the prohibition on murder makes life more commodious. If people really respect the prohibition against murder life is pleasanter for all of us. This overlooks the fact that the life of the person killed is not just inconvenienced, it just is not there any more. He is not there to complain; so the utilitarian argument has to be on behalf of the rest of us.

Surely, such a position is beyond satire.

Michael PS,

I'm not sure I agree with you about the nature of rights. Are you saying that rights are wholly conventional? If they are not, why do humans have rights at all? The usual answer is that it's because humans are special--we are the rational animal. This is what I meant by saying rights are inherent. But on this specific issue (what rights are and where they come from) I'm really not sure of my footing.


C. Ehrlich,

I don't think the fact of reasonable disagreement is something that necessarily minimizes the force of debate. One reason is that pro-lifers have revelation as well as reason to reckon with--in their worldview, humans are created in the image of God, and pro-lifers assume that from the very beginning of each life the individual is morally significant. What reasonable disagreement does (or should do) is structure the debate. Especially, there should be no top-down decision-making (Supreme Court justices, call your office--and get the heck out of the way). Reasonable disagreement about whether something (abortion, same-sex marriage, etc.) is a right at all should be resolved democratically--meaning legislatively.

Pro-choicers say this is not quite right. For example, Judith Jarvis Thomsen argues that lack of access to legalized abortion "severely constrains" a woman's liberty. JJT says this breaks the impasse--we can't have controversial beliefs enshrined in the law in a way that severely constrains anyone's rightful liberty--and the right to control your own body, including who or what will make use of your body (such as a fetus), is presumed to be a rightful liberty.

But JJT is correct only if there is a liberty to kill. JJT is saying there is a liberty to kill when (1) the human individual to be killed is not unarguably or clearly a person, (2) the individual who is severely constrained (by an unwanted pregnancy) *is* unarguably a person, and (3) the pregnant woman chooses to kill in order to remove a severe constraint upon her liberty.

JJT does say the woman's liberty is time-constrained--the pregnant woman has to decide whether to abort by an relatively early period in pregnancy, but that she must be give a reasonable amount of time after the pregnancy can be discovered. No reason is given for this--it's an arbitrary add-on in the name of "moderation." What motivates it, of course, is the thought that the late-term fetus (or infant) might arguably be a person, or sort of a person.

JJT's attempt to arrive at a minimally contentious position, which just happens to be a pro-choice position, is unsuccessful. This is because she assumes there is a liberty to kill other humans in certain circumstances. There is no such liberty. There is a *right* to kill in certain circumstances--self-defense or a just war--but this is a right grounded in justice, not in liberty or equality. (There's no equality-based right to kill, either.) JJT's problem is that she doesn't want to resort to a justice-based right of abortion (even though the whole idea of a severe constraint on liberty presupposes that an injustice is done to the woman who must continue being severely constrained) because basing the right to abortion on a supposed requirement of justice would be very, very, very controversial. JJT therefore relies on liberty, the supposedly uncontroversial liberty of a person to kill a human non-person (or presumed non-person)--but there is no such liberty. So much for this attempt to resolve reasonable disagreement by default.

Michael PS,

You ask why there is any reason not to kill in the paradigmatic cases of murder. There are, of course, many ways to answer this question (and, in my thinking, utilitarianism is not the best way). Rather than discussing our various options here, I think it might be best to address your apparent concerns with more general observations that have relevant methodological implications.

In many domains of inquiry, we are more confident about our judgments about particular cases than we are about our attempts to give deeper accounts of the truth of these judgments. In mathematics, we are generally more confident that 2+2=4 than we are about any of the accounts of what it is by virtue of which the statement “2+2=4” is true. In logic, we are generally more confident that modus ponens is a valid rule of inference than we are about accounts of why it is valid rule of inference. In language, we may be more confident that a given construction of English is ungrammatical than we are of any syntactician’s analysis of why it is ungrammatical. Likewise, in morality, we are often more confident that a particular action is wrong than we are of any theorist’s account of why it is wrong. So it is with the cases you mention. Most of us are much more confident about the wrongness of killing the innocent witness to evade punishment than we are of any of the many theories about morality that seek to account for the truth of that judgment. We will often in fact use our provisionally fixed judgments about particular case (such as the cases you mentioned) to evaluate proposals of general moral principles and moral theories. The same, of course, is true in the math, logic, linguistics, etc.

So here is the lesson of these observations: just as it would be inappropriate to doubt that 2+2=4 because of difficulties at the level of theories about the foundations of mathematical truths, so also it would be inappropriate to doubt the wrongness of killing the witness simply because of the difficulties at the level of theories about the foundations of moral truths. Neither of us doubts that killing the witness is wrong, just as neither of us doubt that 2+2=4. Our respective confidence in the theories that account for these judgments is beside the point. Moreover, just as offering a dubious theory about mathematics isn’t a good way to convince anyone of some particularly controversial theorem of mathematics, so likewise, offering a dubious theory about morality isn’t a good way to convince anyone of the wrongness of aborting a human zygote.

Ken Zaretzke,

I would very much like to hear Joe Carter or one of the other editors publicly acknowledge that there is room for reasonable disagreement about whether abortion is wrong (at least when performed prior to the second trimester). I suspect that such an admission might jeopardize their jobs/positions. I also suspect that it would scandalize many devotees who have grown accustomed to a steady diet of overblown and vitriolic anti-abortion rhetoric. Nevertheless, such an admission would facilitate more substantive and respectful dialogue. Even if the editors don’t actually value such a dialogue, they should at least value the sorts of honesty and fair-mindedness that might favor such an admission.

Your particular interest seems to be in denying the public policy ramifications of the fact of reasonable disagreement. You suggest that the fact that there is reasonable disagreement about the moral permissibility of abortion makes it illegitimate to settle the public policy question through the courts, rather than through the legislature. To defend this suggestion, you rightly try to answer the argument Thomson advances in her 1995 Boston Review essay.
While it has been awhile since I’ve read that essay, I believe you are mischaracterizing the position slightly but significantly.

To begin with, you may be making too much of the distinction between claims grounded in justice as opposed to claims grounded in liberty or equality. Thomson, taking the Rawlsian line, might want to defend a conception of justice that prioritizes an equal distribution of the basic liberties. Following closely behind that principle is a principle of justice that establishes fair equality of opportunity. From these two principles Thomson might argue that women have a prima facie right to have an abortion. This is because of the implications pregnancy and child-rearing have on the “liberty and integrity of the person,” upon a woman’s ability to pursue her own conception of the good (whatever it might be), and upon her general ability to access those positions in society for which justice guarantees her equality of opportunity.

Of course, such a prima facie right would be overturned if the only way to secure these matters of justice were to deprive someone else of a basic liberty. So here is where the pro-lifer might insist that, in having an abortion, the women deprives the fetus of a basic liberty, namely its right to life.

So here is where Thomson appeals to the Rawlsian principle of legitimacy: if a proposed law would deprive a person of liberty (regarding a “matter of basic justice”), then it must be justifiable to that person on terms which it is reasonable to expect that person to accept. Since, however, a person can be entirely reasonably in rejecting the view that abortion constitutes murder, we cannot reasonably expect her to accept an anti-abortion law if it can only be justified on those terms. The intuitive idea is this: regarding basic matters of justice, and within a pluralistic society in which we respect our fellow citizens as co-equals, we can only legitimately use the coercive powers of the state to legislatively deprive our fellow citizens of liberty if we can reasonably expect them to accept the justification for that legislation. So, just as the Jainist could not legitimately use his political power to support legislation to restrict your freedom of movement (lest you crush an ant to death on the sidewalk), so also the pro-lifer cannot pass legitimate legislation depriving a woman of her prima facie rights on account of ideological views about the moral status of an early stage fetus. Just as you are entirely reasonable in rejecting the views of the Jainist (and so it would be unjust to deprive you of basic liberties on account of such views), so also this women is entirely reasonable in rejecting your view about the moral status of the fetus.

Ken Zaretzke

No, I am not saying rights - I should prefer to focus on duties - are purely conventional, any more than I am saying language is purely conventional. Both are the product of our human nature as political or social animals. To be good, qua Man, is to exhibit the "virtues," or habitual dispositions, of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. In fact, they are closely inter-connected in practice. Without them, we cannot attain "happiness" or well-being, which is simply the realisation of our nature as rational, social animals. Now, killing the innocent is contrary to justice, for justice is "a firm and constant will, to give to each his due."

All rights are the reciprocals of duties, but the converse is not so. This is a large topic, but consider self-regarding duties, or duties owed to the public, as such, (unless "the public has a "corporate personality") which is the subject-matter of much of our criminal law (e.g. Breach of the Peace, Mobbing and Rioting, Inciting Soldiers to Mutiny, Possessing a Live Colorado Beetle - All nominate crimes, where I live).

The legacy of idealism means that philosophers are forever trying to "ground" the Good, the True and the Beautiful. For a Realist, this question simply does not arise: the Good, the True and the Beatiful are simply reality itself, as desired, know and admired. The way we should act is written in the very nature of man, the manner of knowing in the structure of our intellect, and the arts in the practical activity of the artist himself.

C. Ehrlich,

Thanks for mentioning that--and for discussing it so intelligently. I don't even want to think about how much time I've spent reading Rawls and about Rawls! Still, to the extent that Judith Jarvis Thomson relies on Rawls's basic liberties, she is vulnerable to H.L.A. Hart's famous and devastating critique of Rawlsian basic liberty. (More generally, on the surprising nowhereness or vacuity of liberal claims about justice and liberty, see John Gray's *Two Faces of Liberalism*.) It's debatable, as you seem to agree, whether a woman has a basic liberty to have an abortion. My point is, given that the (supposed) basic liberty in question involves killing humans, the burden of proof rests on the Rawlsians to show that this basic liberty is a true and justifiable basic liberty. I don't think they can meet that burden of proof, and it seems to me that anyone who acknowledges the fact of reasonable disagreement in abortion ought to agree with me about that--or convincingly explain why they don't.

In response to your earlier comment, empirical facts ("fine-grained" phenomena) are ordered by metaphysics (not a "coarse-grained" thing). Essentialism is not Platonic, as is commonly but mistakenly believed, and as you might be assuming.

Reasonable disagreement does not mean uncertainty. People can be sure they are right about a controversial issue--as most pro-lifers and pro-choicers are--while a bird's-eye view of the matter will show that their best arguments are not conclusive, much less compelling. My belief that Roe v. Wade should be overruled is consistent with my awareness of reasonable disagreement--why wouldn't it be?

The point I made about abortion and infanticide is not a slippery-slope argument. What I meant was that the logic of abortion is indistinguishable from the logic of infanticide. After all, where can the line in abortion be objectively drawn other than either conception or two weeks later (post-twinning)? Not at birth, because birth merely marks a different geographical location, and doesn't identify a worth-conferring property that the infant, but not the fetus, possesses.

Nor is viability a good criterion. Technology may push the point of viability way back--what happens to the "right" to abortion then? Even better is this argument: "The possession of this property [viability] does not seem to be either a necessary or a sufficient condition of its being seriously wrong to destroy something. Thus, on the one hand, if a normal adult human being comes to require, through injury or disease, a complex life-support system in order to survive, it does not follow that that person no longer has a right to life. And on the other hand, it is not thought to be seriously wrong to kill most living things, for trivial reasons, although they are certainly capable of independent existence. It is apparently a mistake, then, to assign the capacity for independent existence the sort of moral significance that moderates on abortion often do" (quote by Michael Tooley).

So, what's the difference between the permissibility of abortion and the permissibility of infanticide? Pro-lifers say there is, logically, no objective difference.

C. Ehrlich,

Your last argument deserves a fuller response—my previous comment was too cryptic. Perhaps it even had a whiff of dogmatism.

To begin with, you imply that a woman has a prima facie right to have an abortion. But if there is reasonable disagreement about abortion, it can’t be a *prima facie* right, can it? Nor does Rawlsian justice show that there is a right to abortion. Justice-claims are caught in the coils of reasonable disagreement as much as liberty-claims, so merging liberty with justice won’t help. The “intuition” you speak of is liberal intuition, not universally shared.

The standard of what anyone can “reasonably be expected to accept” is problematic, too--see Christopher Eberle’s book on religion and public reason. I don’t recall Eberle’s ultimate reason for finding the “reasonableness” standard wanting, but my own view is that, in light of the existence of reasonable disagreement, the reasonableness standard begs the question of what is reasonable. Admittedly, no argument against abortion is rationally compelling, in the sense of being something that all reasonable people are bound to accept, but the conclusion to draw from this is not that there should be no laws restricting abortion, but that we must do the best we can to figure out (morally and legislatively) what’s right. Religious beliefs can figure into this determination because reasonableness doesn’t require bracketing out religion. Liberal neutralism says otherwise, but liberal neutralism is wrong—and, notably, it’s now questioned by a growing number of liberal theorists. So, permitting religious beliefs to influence public reason is far from merging church and state. Theocracy may be a benighted belief, but theocracy has nothing to do with legislative restrictions on abortion, even unto the beginning of pregnancy.

Finally, I should offer some support for what I said concerning Roe v. Wade (the overturning thereof), given my belief in the fact of reasonable disagreement. First, the fact of reasonable disagreement strongly reinforces the traditional, but nowadays often ignored, distinction between ordinary law and constitutional law with respect to precedent, or stare decisis. Traditionally, stare decisis was for ordinary law, in which it is crucial to keep things as settled as possible. Constitutional law—partly because of its former association with natural law (constitutional law and natural law being forms of fundamental law)—is for obvious reasons not so prone to precedent. Precedent in the law is a convention-heavy practice, but convention cannot determine the outcome of the fundamental law. Reasonable disagreement generally involves fundamental things—the province of constitutional law, not ordinary law, and the province of law where precedent has little inherent impact.

Moreover (my second point), the existence of reasonable disagreement about abortion will have put a reasonable person on notice that the law of abortion is still not completely settled—it will have told that person that any social expectations regarding the availability of abortion are like the Cheshire cat’s grin. Even Planned Parenthood v. Casey didn’t necessarily settle anything. That decision, and even its very wording, has been so strongly criticized that it in a sense undermines settled expectations about the continuing availability of abortion—it makes those expectations less than perfectly reasonable. The partial-birth abortion cases, in which the Casey decision figures prominently, would appear to support this view.

Ken Zaretzke,

I appreciate your writing this follow up entry. In fact, I’m currently feeling that I’ve come upon quite a treasure—someone committed to discussing arguments about this issue conscientiously. Thank you.

You make a good point about my phrase “prima facie right”. Abortion is just as likely to be a prima facie crime, all depending on one’s point of view. And, just as you suggest, one needs to be suspicious of one’s “first glance” judgments about these matters—particularly when they turn out to be so deeply controversial.

What I should have said is that people (particularly women) have weighty, yet defeasible, reasons for wanting abortion not to be legally prohibited. The idea is that such reasons can be accurately characterized in terms that everyone can appreciate—whether or not you happen to believe that abortion involves murder. Here we may think of the costs of carrying a baby to full term, and then the further costs of either raising the child, or giving it up for up for adoption. These costs are physical, emotional, and financial; they are costs to one’s time and opportunities. While these costs may of course vary in severity (depending upon the mother’s circumstances, commitments , values, etc.) they are costs that we can reasonably expect everyone to recognize and to feel the weight of—whether or not you believe that a pregnant woman is morally obligated to bear such costs (given that it might be your view that the alternative involves murder).

So this gives us a common-ground starting point: whether or not you believe that abortion constitutes murder, we can all agree that many women have weighty, yet defeasible, reasons for wanting abortion not to be legally prohibited.

Now, given that many women have such weighty reasons for wanting abortion not to be legally prohibited, we owe them an adequate justification if we do decide to legally prohibit abortion. Why? Well, it’s because the burden of proof is upon the one who is attempting to employ the coercive powers of the state against one’s fellow citizens. (Laws tend to limit individual freedom. Since individual freedom is something we all have reason to value, we should all be able to appreciate the justice of placing the burden of proof upon the side that wants to limit individual freedom through law.)

But what constitutes an adequate justification for so limiting the freedom of women? For Thomson, an adequate justification is one that satisfies Rawls’s liberal principle of legitimacy: it has to be a justification that we can reasonably expect women to accept—or, alternatively, the law shouldn’t be such that those constrained by it are not the least unreasonable in rejecting the grounds for it outright. To try to so constrain women without such a justification would be a failure to respect them as “free and equal” persons, or as “self-authenticating sources of valid claims.” As Thomson says, to impose such a constraint on them without such a justification would be “nothing but an exercise of force.”

And, as we agree, it would not be unreasonable for a person to reject the usual justifications that are offered for any legislation prohibiting abortion.

But, instead of starting with the interests of women, why not start with the interests of the unborn? By starting with the former, haven’t we already taken sides in a way that presupposes something for which there is reasonable disagreement? The answer to this last question is “no,” so long as no one can reasonably reject the observation that some women would have to those bear great costs in carrying a pregnancy through to birth. Moreover, if we start instead with the interests of the unborn, then we are in great danger of starting where we find no common ground—and hence we be starting at a point which is already liable to reasonable rejection.

In short, no one is stacking the deck against the pro-life position. It’s just that (a) it happens to be the pro-lifer who is seeking to use the coercive powers of the state to enact laws, and who therefore owes a justification to those who would be constrained by these laws; and (b) it is the pro-lifer who is depending upon reasonably rejectable views to justify such laws. The principles Thomson appeals to are general principles that apply to everyone: in a pluralistic democracy such as ours, one cannot legitimately use the powers of the state to coerce one’s fellow citizens in such fundamental ways unless doing so can be justified on grounds that those fellow citizens wouldn’t be entirely reasonable in rejecting. The atheistic liberal and the fundamentalist Christian must each respect this principle of legitimacy. It’s for the very reason that the views and values of citizens are so widely divergent (and inevitably so, if we stay free) that we should acknowledge such a principle.

(I’m not familiar with Eberle’s criticisms of “reasonableness.” “Reasonableness” is an inexact standard for sure; for the purposes of our interchange, however, I assume that it suffices that each of us agrees that there is room for reasonable disagreement about whether (early stage) abortion is morally wrong. There will obviously be some who disagree. That is, there will always be some who deny that someone can reasonably believe that aborting a zygote is morally permissible. But I don’t see why that fact is relevant though. Also, you are perfectly correct in noting that the standard of reasonableness does not specifically target religious belief as unreasonable. I take it that Rawls himself granted the reasonableness of many religious “comprehensive doctrines,” including some comprehensive doctrines which entailed the wrongness of abortion. No one needs to deny that someone can be entirely reasonable in believing that abortion is morally wrong. What gets denied is rather that such would preclude anyone else from being entirely reasonable in failing to have that belief--even if that belief (i.e., the believe that abortion is wrong) is true, and that some even know its truth with certainty.)

C. Ehrlich,

"'I endeavor to give satisfaction, sir,’ said Jeeves.”

There are two 800-pound gorillas in the abortion debate. One is the agony of an unwanted pregnancy. The other is the inherent radicalism of the pro-choice position with respect to where the line is to be drawn in abortion. Consider these in turn.

You emphasize the blow to a woman’s future choices that an unwanted pregnancy may represent. I disagree that legislatively restricting access to abortion is unreasonable (as you imply). If the fetus has a right to life, it’s hard to see what claim can be brought against it, except when the woman’s life is at stake. People disagree about whether the fetus has a right to life, but they also disagree about whether the woman has a right to kill her kid. (If the abortion occurred by extraction, this, too, would be a killing—not just letting die—in the same way that when you take a fish out of water you are killing it.)

You argue that legislation can’t be based on what’s “reasonably rejectable”—in other words, if someone can reasonably reject a significant limitation on their liberty, legislation restricting that liberty should not be passed. I don’t think reasonable disagreement has this liberal-neutralist implication. Suppose I want legislation banning pornography. A lot of people, by no means all of them crackpot libertarians, will regard that as a serious infringement of their liberty, and they will, I believe, be reasonable in thinking so. Despite this, it seems to me that pornography can properly be banned, in the same way that abortion can be seriously restricted.

The other 800-pound gorilla is the inherent radicalism of the pro-choice position. I’ll take Jeff McMahan as an example—he’s the author of the best book defending abortion. McMahan says that before 20 weeks gestation there is no one there who can be killed. There is an organism, but no self with a capacity for consciousness. Abortion at this point simply keeps anyone from existing, and does not kill anyone. Abortion, before 20 weeks, is morally no different than contraception. It’s completely inconsequential morally. So says McMahan.

I think that’s radical. Actually, 20 weeks is the wrong time line. Consciousness can’t get started before 26-28 weeks, and so McMahan should say, still conservatively, that any time before 24 weeks is okay for getting an abortion—and that there’s no difference morally between getting an abortion at ten weeks and getting one at 24 weeks. Isn’t that shocking? Look at any woman who is 20-24 weeks pregnant, and try to convince yourself that her decision to abort at that stage is as consequential, morally, as swatting a fly.

What’s interesting is that all pro-choice views draw the line at 20 to 24 weeks *at the earliest*. There is no other feasible pro-choice line, with the exception of birth. And birth, by the way, is the de facto dividing line in Judith Jarvis Thomson’s extremely influential famous-violinist argument. Thomson’s famous analogy—of a woman involuntarily hooked up to a world-famous violinist who, because of kidney problems, will die if he is unhooked from her (and no other person has what is needed to save his life)--is meant to show that even if the fetus is a person, the woman has a right to remove that person from her body, even though this will lead to the death of the person. Isn’t it clear that the birth criterion is the implicit (and unacknowledged) dividing line in Thomson’s argument? I think so. And that’s pretty radical, not just morally and culturally but epistemically. How do we know--how could we ever know--that a baby is a person one minute after birth but not a person one minute before birth?

In the end, we have to choose between 800-pound gorillas. I’ll take the one that causes significant sociological qualms (the substantial and potentially life-altering burdens of a woman’s unwanted pregnancy), instead of the one with disturbing moral implications. This, I suggest, removes the burden of proof from pro-lifers. What then places the burden of proof on the opposite side—the pro-choice side—is the fact that what pro-choicers want to do involves killing presumptively innocent humans, which, unlike the liberty-based right to kill animals for food, is not, in my opinion, a liberty that anyone can ordinarily be said to have.

Viewed this way, the fact that pro-lifers want “coercive” legislation is neither here nor there. And when their opponents say their policy goals are based on controversial moral beliefs, a sufficient response is *tu quogue*—you too, pro-choicers, are seeking controversial policies based on controversial beliefs.

I don’t think I explained what I meant by the “inherent radicalism” of Judith Jarvis Thomson’s famous-violinist argument in defense of abortion. I’ll take another stab at it.

Thomson uses the analogy to show that the famous violinist (who is supposed to remain hooked up to the woman for nine months, at which time he will recover from his life-threatening kidney ailment) has no right to the use of the woman’s body. He is dependent on her body for his life, but his dependency is morally ineffective against her claim not to have her body used to support him—she did not, for one thing, volunteer to remain stuck to him for nine long months (she was kidnapped by the Society of Music Lovers and hooked up before anyone could stop it). Because he is dependent on her in this way, his right to life can be, in effect, canceled. In the large philosophical literature on the Thomson analogy, it has rarely if ever been emphasized that the importance of physical dependency (on another’s body) has certain radical implications for abortion. For the only thing that guarantees, in a given case, that the right to life will not be canceled is a state of non-dependency on the woman’s body. Thomson’s analogy tacitly tells us that the all-important date in the individual’s life is birth, when the individual no longer is dependent on the woman’s body. Birth is the magic dividing line that Thomson’s analogy points to.

Thomson’s famous analogy was meant by her to be a moderate view. That was her intention—she did not support “abortion on demand,” and she favored something like the viability dividing line. But her actual argument contains the seeds of destruction for a moderate view of abortion. What her argument by analogy actually validates, in making physical dependency and non-dependency the key to deciphering the morality of abortion, is the birth criterion. At birth the fetus becomes a *bodily* non-dependent infant. Birth is the ultimate guide to the permissibility of abortion. The inherent radicalism of this supposedly “moderate” view, and of all pro-choice “moderate” views, is a sad but inspiring, commentary on our times—sad for the obvious reasons, and inspiring in that it potentially could bring a lot of fence-sitters to the pro-life side.

Ken Z:

Your "dependency" criterion, depends on the dependent, being a human being or person. But the heart of the pro-choice argument, is that a young embryo does not have a human mind - and that the embryo therefore not a human being or person, at all.

By the way, it was in part the chief theologian of the Church - St. Thomas Aquinas - that was a major proponent of this idea: that a very young embryo is not quite a human person yet, because its body (or today Science would say, its brain) not being "formed" or developed enough, to sustain Reason, or a soul.

Dependency therefore, is only one minor criterion among dozens of others. While the main criterion to be a human being or person remains: the presence of a human mind or intelligence.

As the very heart of Catholic tradition itself once said. Until "Catholic" conservative activists, began to try to change that.

Jimmy A.,

You are right that Aquinas believed in delayed, rather than immediate, hominization. But that was before the empirical facts about genetics and DNA were known. (See Patrick Lee, *Abortion and Unborn Human Life*, for a good account.)

I was dealing with the influential 1971 argument of Judith Jarvis Thomson. The physical dependency of the unborn individual is the key to this argument, and it has disturbing implications for the pro-choice view. All pro-choice criteria for the chronological permissibility of abortion are vulnerable to being pushed up to the point of birth. I used the Thomson argument to illustrate this. Even though pro-choicers may say that a fetus should not be aborted after it has a “mind”--at the point of consciousness (24-28 weeks) or a functioning cerebral cortex (25-32 weeks), in the “moderate” view--the position falls apart once you see that what’s wrong with the fetal presence (as pro-choicers see it) is that the fetus is dependent physically on the mother’s body and she doesn’t want it to be.

Dependency on the woman’s body, according to pro-choicers such as Thomson, is *the* thing that’s wrong with the fetus being there in the womb (insofar as it is not wanted there). The solution is to stop the dependency. Once a woman is pregnant, the only way to do that is by terminating the pregnancy by removing or killing the fetus. Because no single point of pregnancy is more dependency-laden than any other point, the pregnancy can be terminated at any time. To borrow Thomson’s terminology, it might be *indecent* to terminate a pregnancy at 36 weeks, but it is not *unjust*. No right is violated. The fetus cannot be protected from a lethal medical assault until after it is born and is transformed into a protection-worthy human being.

It seems to me that this undermines the whole “moderate” pro-choice position. The appearance of pro-choice moderation is deceiving. What pro-choicers should say is that a woman should be able to get an abortion at any stage of pregnancy, and that an abortion at the later stages of pregnancy raises no particular moral problems. At this point, of course, we have a dispute about infanticide (the youngest infants may be bodily independent, but do they have "minds"?). But that's another story, and one that is even *less* conducive to pro-choice moderation.

Pro-choicers have succeeded to the extent that they have been able to portray pro-lifers as extremists. But in my opinion, nothing is more extreme than the belief that abortion is, morally speaking, completely unproblematic up to birth. The moral of this story is: Beware of pro-choicers masquerading as moderates.

I regret to say that I didn't make that very clear in the previous comment. To mmake amends, I would like to suggest that the "inherent radicalism" of the pro-choice position comes into better focus when we distinguish between a *chronologically* extreme position (Judith Jarvis Thomson's view) and a *morally* extreme position (the main pro-choice view, the one that looks to consciousness or self-awareness as determining the fetus's moral worth). The latter is morally extreme in implying that abortion before 24 to 32 weeks gestation (depending on the exact criterion adopted) has no more moral significance than swatting a fly. The former is chronologically extreme in tacitly recommending (requiring?) a birth demarcation. (And if you don't think it's extreme to say that abortion is perfectly fine all the way up to birth, try to find a politician willing to support that view.)

Also with respect to the former, we should just forget about viability. Viability only indicates a theoretical *capacity* for independent existence ("theoretical" because of the limitations of access to artificial incubators).

This distinction between "morally extreme" and "chronologically extreme" is important, I think. As a description of different types of pro-choice thinking, such a distinction helps make things much clearer as to the underlying nature of the pro-choice worldview. There's no moderation in that worldview.

As the 19th century English jurist A V Dicey says, When, a body of twenty, or two thousand, or two hundred thousand men bind themselves together to act in a particular way for some common purpose, they create a body, which by no fiction of law, but by the very nature of things, differs from the individuals of whom it is constituted. To begin with, you imply that a woman has a prima facie right to have an abortion. But if there is reasonable disagreement about abortion, it cant be a *prima facie* right, can it? Nor does Rawlsian justice show that there is a right to abortion. Justice-claims are caught in the coils of reasonable disagreement as much as liberty-claims, so merging liberty with justice wont help. The intuition you speak of is liberal intuition, not universally shared.

You do realize their is a difference between mammals (the class that includes humans) and aves (the class that includes birds), dont you? If so then it shouldnt be too hard to figure out that when we talk about bird eggs and human eggs we are talking about quite different biological Do a little bit of a better reading of the Bible. Psalm 39: 13 and 2 Maccabees 7: 22-23 (not to mention the Gospel's Infancy Narrative) show that God is behind the creation of the human person in the womb, that the "inmost being" referred to in the Psalm has nothing to do with our action/function, but everything to do with our nature.

This question of personhood has critical legal implications. A "person" has legal rights, while a "human being" simply is a biological phylum. The Supreme Court undertook one of its most profound powers in defining a human fetus as a non-person, that is, merely a tissue extension of its mother.

There is of course a spiritual dimension to this ethical question that thinkers like Peter Singer simply ignore. I believe it is something more than simply that we are created in the image of God. I think question is: who are we in relation to one another within this phylum called "human"? How we relate to one another brings a spiritual dimension to our humanness. More specifically, how we treat the senile, the infirm, the disabled, even the comatose, all has a relational impact on us who may be conscious and functional. In caring for the injured or disabled, especially when these are persons are members of our own family, we are transformed into persons of deeper capacities for love. Our hearts enlarge and we become more tender and compassionate.

The most troubling aspect of the "right to kill" thinking of Peter Singer is that it ignores two levels of potential: a) the potential of embryonic or unconscious life to develop or recover to higher levels of consciousness and capability and b) the potential of caregivers, family, and acquaintances to grow emotionally and spiritually into more open, tender, giving people who draw closer in relationship, even when the one loved will not advance to a higher level of consciousness or functioning.

Bottom line: God has lessons to teach us about love that we will not learn by ending the lives of the human beings who may not be conscious of pain and pleasure.