Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s infamous decision legalizing abortion, was the Pearl Harbor of America’s culture war. It is now clear that a majority of the justices were determined to legalize abortion, and their challenge was to find some constitutional argument in support.
In the end, the justices simply invented a new right to privacy that was extended to abortion, even as they admitted that this right is not even mentioned in the Constitution. The majority made fetal viability–the moment when the fetus can live outside the mother–as the mark when the state can outlaw abortion. In 1973, that mark was in the third trimester; now, it is well within the second trimester. And further medical advances like an artificial womb may mean that the fetus is viable from the moment of conception.
When that happens, the logic of Roe collapses. That’s good news–not only for the fetus, but for all of us.
Well, I am glad to hear that. But, to us, we already know there is no logic in murder. Unfortunately, other people do not see abortion as such.
An “Artificial womb” does not sound like good news to me. Perhaps if I were as emotionally charged on this issue – looking for a ‘win’ at ALL COSTS, I would agree. It does set the theme for forcing questionable women to deliver babies that are not likely to be loved by their mother, or anyone else for that matter. It is an artificial life I would wish for no-one.
“And further medical advances like an artificial womb may mean that the fetus is viable from the moment of conception.”
Actually, at the moment of conception there is a fertilized egg cell, not a fetus. If the author wants to save all fertilized eggs, that’s a pretty tall order, since around half of all fertilized eggs end up being spontaneously aborted. The anti-abortion folks have a great affection for fertilized eggs; nature does not.
But I suppose we can make an attempt to save all fertilized eggs. I’m thinking that a new federal program — No Blastocyst Left Behind — could be a great help. It would work like this: all women of childbearing age would be required to take daily pregnancy tests, just in case. In the event of a positive test, the woman would be rushed to the nearest hospital, where the progress of the fertilized egg would be laparoscopically tracked. In the event that the fertilized egg starts to get into trouble, the egg could be surgically removed and transferred to an artificial womb, and maintained there for the next nine months.
Of course, such a program would cost trillions of dollars per year, but since each fertilized egg is an invaluable and unique person, we should spare no expense. Such a program would be inconvenient to women. But, as my conservative friends like to point out, there is no truly constitutional right to privacy, so as long as the State can show a compelling interest in saving all fertilized eggs, this program would easily pass constitutional muster.
No Blastocyst Left Behind — we can only pray that some day technology makes it possible.
Note 2. Bob, you are missing the point. The point is not that an artificial womb is desirable (it is not), but that the logic of Roe v. Wade is flawed.
Note 3. Jim, if fetuses (fetus is Latin for “little one”) are unworthy of protection because some are spontaneously aborted, why should any human be protected given that we all die sooner or later anyway? Actually, isn’t this logic of the culture of death crowd?
Fr. Hans writes: ” Jim, if fetuses (fetus is Latin for “little one”) are unworthy of protection because some are spontaneously aborted, why should any human be protected given that we all die sooner or later anyway? Actually, isn’t this logic of the culture of death crowd?”
In the natural state of things, around half of all fertilized eggs are spontaneously aborted at some early stage of development. This is completely normal; it’s what happens when everything is working well. While a fertilized egg represents a unique arrangement of DNA, it is no more a person than is an unfertilized egg or a sperm cell, or any other cell. A fertilized egg is not a fetus; it has no bodily structure, no differentiated cells. A fertilized egg represents a possible human life, but there are many other things that have to happen in order for that to occur, one of which is implantation. No implantation, no person, forget about it. Likewise, unfertilized eggs represent possible human lives, but there are many other things that have to happen in order for that to occur, one of which is fertilization.
You may disagree with the logic of the pro-choice crowd, but to me the logic of the pro-life crowd is ridiculous. It strikes me as absurd that a fertilized egg is a “person,” and that we should consider it a person at all stages of development. It is a logic that recognizes no stages of development. It leads to bizarre ideas like artificial wombs housing little fertilized egg-people “from the moment of conception.” It is a kind of thinking that recognizes no difference between an acorn and an oak tree — that insists that the acorn really is an oak tree, and sees anyone of contrary opinion as being a member of the culture of death. This strange reasoning then decorates itself with the noble-sounding title of “culture of life.” This whole line of thinking does not seem to me in any way morally superior, but is simply an example of an inability or unwillingness to recognize certain obvious developmental distinctions.
It really is not difficult to grasp. When conception occurs (the zygote is created), the organism has unique DNA. All the constitutents exist for the development of the human person that continues until death, be it a natural death in old age, or coerced death by, say, a bullet, or an interuterine vacuum device.
That some zygotes are spontaneously aborted (the 50% claim sounds very high but nevertheless..) doesn’t change this biological reality.
If you want to grant legal protection at certain stages of development, well, the problem you run into is what stage? Peter Singer thinks age three is a good cutoff. Barbara Boxer would disagree. She argues that a partial birth abortion is fine, but once out of the womb, a child should live. This is a question that the pro-abortion crowd can’t even settle among themselves yet they want to impose their moral confusion on everyone else regardless.
There is no doubt that at the first 15 days after conception, the human being is still in a very primitive state of development. But given that species beget only their own kind, denying that the zygote is a human entity is specious. This is elementary biology.
Fr. Hans writes: “It really is not difficult to grasp. When conception occurs (the zygote is created), the organism has unique DNA. All the constitutents exist for the development of the human person that continues until death, be it a natural death in old age, or coerced death by, say, a bullet, or an interuterine vacuum device.”
Yes, the fertilized egg has unique DNA. But the doesn’t mean that the fertilized egg is a “person.” The acorn also has unique DNA, but that doesn’t make it a tree.
Fr. Hans: “If you want to grant legal protection at certain stages of development, well, the problem you run into is what stage? . . . This is a question that the pro-abortion crowd can’t even settle among themselves yet they want to impose their moral confusion on everyone else regardless.”
I don’t see the confusion. There are differences of opinion. But there are all sorts of other issues related to human development where we have to make such distinctions. When can someone vote? At what age can one serve in the military? Age what age can someone marry? What should be the drinking age, or the driving age? At what age can the death penalty be imposed? At what age should one be able to retire?
All of these are questions related to human development and maturation, and there can be great differences of opinion. But we don’t just throw up our hands in despair and cry “moral confusion!” We talk, we argue, eventually a concensus emerges. Sometimes the concensus changes. We don’t say “since we can’t determine the exact age that a person should be able to drive, we’ll just say that any age can drive.”
Hashing out difficult questions related to human development is not moral confusion. Rather it’s the way these decisions are made. Refusing to make the necessary distinctions is not moral reasoning, but a refusal to engage in moral reasoning. It’s very much like the strict pacifist who declares that “all war is immoral.” In my view that’s not an example of moral reasoning, but rather a refusal to engage in moral reasoning.
Fr. Hans: “There is no doubt that at the first 15 days after conception, the human being is still in a very primitive state of development. But given that species beget only their own kind, denying that the zygote is a human entity is specious. This is elementary biology.”
There is no doubt that it is an instance of human life, but the question is when that life develops to the point that is should be given the protection afforded to persons. An acorn is an instance of life within the genus Quercus, but that doesn’t make it an oak tree.
Note 7.
How is the comparison supposed to work? Is the relationship seed to plant, or early development to later development? If seed to plant, then the relationship in human terms would be a sperm or egg cell to zygote and beyond. If stages of development, then what constitutes an oak in human terms? A toddler? An adult? A three month old fetus? IOW, I don’t see how the example resolves any moral questions at all.
Again, this seems totally beside the point. If you want to draw a clear distinction, draw it about when a person is granted a right to life. Once that is established, we can talk about voting, driving, retirement, etc.
When should the human being be granted a right to life? This is the question that pro-abortionists can never answer. Or, more precisely, they argue incessantly among themselves where the line prohibiting killing (some proabortionists also advocate infanticide) should be drawn. They are confused, and they insist on fostering their confusion on the entire culture.
And an unborn child is not an adult. So? At least your example dispenses with the fiction that the zygote, fetus, etc. is non-human.
Fr. Hans writes: “How is the comparison supposed to work? Is the relationship seed to plant, or early development to later development? If seed to plant, then the relationship in human terms would be a sperm or egg cell to zygote and beyond. If stages of development, then what constitutes an oak in human terms? A toddler? An adult? A three month old fetus? IOW, I don’t see how the example resolves any moral questions at all.”
The point of the example is only that in determining what a thing is, we can make legitimate distinctions based on development. As I understand it, the argument is that fertilized eggs are supposed to be persons. But they have virtually none of the characteristics that we associate with persons. I would say that they have the potential of developing into persons, but that they are not yet persons in that stage of development.
But the anti-abortion argument goes even further. It states that not only are fertilized eggs persons, but that they have a right to the use of the mother’s body. The flip side is that the mother has an obligation to allow her body to be used.
And the anti-abortion argument goes yet further. It states that not only does the mother have such an obligation, but also that the State should use its power to force the woman to allow her body to be used, regardless of her wishes.
I find each of these claims to be extraordinary in and of themselves, and even more extraordinary when taken together.
The founder of Stanford’s Center for Biomedical Ethics offers a compelling argument that fertilized eggs are not persons:
http://mednews.stanford.edu/stanmed/2004fall/young.html
Fr. Hans: “When should the human being be granted a right to life? This is the question that pro-abortionists can never answer. Or, more precisely, they argue incessantly among themselves where the line prohibiting killing (some proabortionists also advocate infanticide) should be drawn. They are confused, and they insist on fostering their confusion on the entire culture.”
Well, the anti-abortionists avoid that argument by holding a false belief. Having false beliefs makes everything very simple. If you believe in biblical inerrancy, then you don’t have to figure out which parts of the Bible are literally true and which aren’t. If you deny that the Holocaust occurred, then you don’t have to argue about how many people were killed during the Holocaust. If you believe that the earth is 6,000 years old and all creatures were created at the same time, then you don’t have to argue about how life evolved. If you believe that a fertilized egg is a person then you don’t have to argue about when it becomes a person. Yes, having false beliefs does indeed simplify things. But just because something is simple doesn’t mean it’s true. And just because people argue about difficult moral and metaphysical issues doesn’t mean that they are morally or metaphysically confused.
Note 9.
Do I hear John Rawls in the background?
Look, for the first fifteen days, most women don’t even know they are pregnant. Conception and development are very complex processes. But the complexity, and even the natural failings, do nothing to negate the brute biological fact that at conception, a human life starts. Left unmolested (we will ignore nature for the moment), the fertilized egg grows into someone resembling you and me.
Further, this complexity and even the failings, don’t address the moral confusion among pro-abortionists about when human life should be granted value. Not willing to acknowledge biological reality, their standards become arbitrary even to the point of infanticide. Yet they persist in the fiction that their views are the most reasonable.
So where do you fall Jim? With Barbara Boxer? Peter Singer? The field is wide open.
Also, two corrections:
Death is not a “potential”. Death is cessation, not development. What the author should say is that death is an inevitability. Second, the fact that the fetus has human potential affirms, rather than denies, it’s humanity. Potential, in other words, presupposes being. (Dogs give birth to dogs, cats to cats, humans to humans.) (What should we call this fallacy; this divorce of potential from being?)
Jim, you’re are correct in one particular, abortion and the other moral and ethical issues center of belief. You hold substantially different metaphysical and spiritual beliefs than do I therefore you and I arrive at vastly different conclusions when we consider solutions to moral and ethical dilemmas. Even what you and I do not even have the same understanding of evidence different because of the different beliefs we hold. I find your methodology and conclusions often incorrect because I find you anthropology at odds with what I have been shown in the Church. The existential reality of man is far deeper than what you allow. In my view man is radically dependent on God for both our being and our personhood. Modern man tends to either reverse the dependency or postulates that we are autonomous individuals without need for God.
My objection to what is euphemistically called medical science these days is precisely that it is based on a false view of man. The allopathic model of medicine that predominates in our culture essentially rejects the idea of personhood and, in some cases, humanity altogether. There are certain situations in which such a view is effecdtive in developing treatments and modalities for acute medical occurrences such as trauma. However, it is not up to the task of either prevention or care of chronic, systemic disease. It also leads to a vast distortion of how human beings should be treated at the beginning of life and at the end of life.
You reject the idea that a newly fertilized egg is a person because it doesn’t make sense to you. To use Phil’s phrase, “the fertilized egg is not a person because it is not a person.” You say further:
You reject the idea that man is dependent upon God for his being. We do not have personhood because of our observable behavior; it is simply an attribute of our being. However, if we are to accept your criteria for determining a person, we are all in danger of being re-defined as non-persons.
All of the figures you cite that show how difficult it is to be born even without our active interference are, to me, evidence of our falleness, not evidence of non-personhood.
Your belief system is no less impenetrable to me than mine is to yours. In order to agree with your conclusions and approach, I’d have to abandon all that I believe. That is what you are asking. Of course, the corollary is true too, the Church and Jesus Christ are asking you to abandon what you believe. The difference is that you are asking that I abandon a higher for a lower while Jesus Christ calls us all to Himself and into his Kingdom so that we might be renewed, transformed and transfigured.
Those who respond to that call, however imperfectly, have a responsibility to witness to the truth of who God has made us to be. Not all who attempt to witness do so well or even appropriately, but the message is still there.
Note 11. Michael writes:
This hits the nail on the head. If “personhood” (that is, the value we attribute to human beings) is a social construct similiar to determining at what age a person should drive, what age he should retire, etc., then human value is relative. In the past, this relativizing justified slavery, eugenics, the holocaust, to name some examples — blacks are of lesser value than whites, the poor are of lesser value than the successful, the Jews are of lesser value than Aryans.
Jim, Thank you for bringing reality back into this emotionally charged issue. While I personally cannot agree with a hardline “Pro-Choice” cause, The “Anti-Choice” folks are often too ridiculous. Man terminates a pregnancy in the case of a mother, who admits one way or another that she is unfit to be a mother and they call it murder. God terminates a “fetus” as miscarriage or stillborn and these same people remain silent. Do they dare apply the same murderous label to God?
The whole issue is about feelings. It is the same thing that motivates a tree-hugging, hippy to save a whale. At the end of the day, they feel better about themselves – That’s about it. If wants to meddle with the privacy of a woman and her doctor to save a “child” then they should be prepared and equipped to support that child in place of a mother that does not want or love it. We don’t have the capacity to love the unwanted children already in the adoption system, not to forget those who die painful deaths each day from starvation around the world.
Save a fetus from destruction and raise it, feed it and send it to college. Anything else is just meddling in someone else’s personal business.
Bob, your reality seems to be that since many children die in starvation that gives us the right to kill others. This is a strange, twisted, black reality. And of course your post is so ultimately logical and reasonable, rejecting those nasty things emotions.
Lot’s of finger-wagging there Bob, but woefully short of clear thinking.
For example:
Overlooking the fact that pro-arbortionists do nothing but “terminate” fetuses while pro-choicers provide concrete help to women (check your yellow pages), what’s your point here, that we should kill kids in foster care and starving babies too?
Don’t just react to my question. Instead think (not feel) about where your logic leads.
Note 13: To give credit where credit is due, there are some evangelical groups who do more than condemn women who find themselves considering an abortion: they actually provide services for those who decide to continue their pregnancy and even non-judgmental counseling services for those who had obtained an abortion at some earlier point in their lives.
While I understand the reluctance to classify a lump of cells as a “person”, I also am concerned about what seems to be the narrowing definition of what it means to be human. While I would probably vote to keep abortion legal within the first trimester simply out of practicality, I do not get why some feel the need to continue to permit PBA (which, if we are honest, is infanticide in everything but name.)
This isn’t to say that the Right is always consistent in its valuing of human life, of course.
Michael writes: “I find your methodology and conclusions often incorrect because I find you anthropology at odds with what I have been shown in the Church.”
Yes, I think that for most Orthodox and Catholics, opposition to abortion comes not from any philosophical argument, but simply because the church teaches that it is wrong.
Michael: “The existential reality of man is far deeper than what you allow.”
I have thought very frequently and seriously about the position of the Orthodox church with respect to abortion. But I really just don’t see it. It fundamentally doesn’t make sense to me.
Michael: “In my view man is radically dependent on God for both our being and our personhood. Modern man tends to either reverse the dependency or postulates that we are autonomous individuals without need for God.”
I think this is a fair question: if fertilized eggs are persons, then why does God create a situation in which, in the natural course of reproduction, most of them are spontaneously aborted? Were it a rare event, then perhaps the argument would be compelling. But that is not the reality of the situation.
Michael: “You reject the idea that man is dependent upon God for his being.”
I don’t think so. Many things have to happen in order for that “being” to occur. Fertilization is only one of those things. In philosophical terms, fertilization is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition. Many other things have to happen.
Michael: “We do not have personhood because of our observable behavior; it is simply an attribute of our being.”
Well, that’s the issue under discussion, isn’t it? I don’t think we can just assert that without making the case for it. To do so is to beg the question.
Michael: “However, if we are to accept your criteria for determining a person, we are all in danger of being re-defined as non-persons.”
Yes, but facing the facts of a situation is always a dangerous endeavor. We can always make mistakes, even when life and death is at stake. I am willing to accept the risk.
Michael: “Your belief system is no less impenetrable to me than mine is to yours. In order to agree with your conclusions and approach, I’d have to abandon all that I believe. That is what you are asking.”
This may come as a surprise, but I have great respect for your beliefs. I don’t agree with them, but I respect them. But this is why I think we need to leave the issue of abortion up to the individual woman, especially when there is serious moral and metaphysical disagreement.
On a personal note, I want to tell you that I always value your posts, and take them very seriously. Your faith is obvious and inspiring. Trying to communicate through the internet is never very satisfying, and I often wish that you and I could spend a few hours face to face. Best wishes, and I appreciate the time that you take in explaining your position.
Jim, you state
God did not create the situation you describe. Our sin which resulted in the Fall created the situtation. All death, even in the womb is the result of sin.
You ask me to make a case for my statement: “We do not have personhood because of our observable behavior; it is simply an attribute of our being.”
The case lies in the Incarnation. I don’t know if you have ever read St. Athanasius little treatise On the Incarnation, but you might give that a try.
Jim, if I did not understand your respect, I would not take the time I do in response.
Thank you for the kind words, I often wish my life better reflected my words, but that too is part of the ongong work of grace, a work that I believe is at work in your heart as well.
Well, as before, I am johnny-come-lately to this discussion. My defense is that I am actually DOING what you all are chatting about (giving life to children, that is — and on a daily basis, by the way… Until we became adults we were all dependent on someone for our lives, and my 14 and 15 year old are no exceptions to this… 🙂) It’s a little hard for me to take a break from real life to surf over here and get in on the conversation. I apologize for barging in on this one, but I’m going to do it, anyway.
To Mr. Bob: Excuse me, but it is simply fallacious to assume that babies born from artificial wombs would be impossible for anyone to love. What planet do you live on? Are you aware that at any given moment in time there are at least 1 million people waiting in line to adopt children? Just because some people are incapable of love shouldn’t be extrapolated to mean that no one is. Pardon me for saying so, but perhaps you are the one living the artificial life.
Also… I’m curious about your God; I’d be interested to hear more about a God who terminates the life of human beings in the womb. Are you committed to that God? I’d find a new one if I were you.
And then to Mr. Holman: I think we need to clarify something about what all of you, actually, are calling “human life”.
Life never begins. It began once and how that occurred is open for debate and discussion. What is not open for debate is the fact that since then, life is continually passed on.
Human life is passed on by human sperm and eggs; when a human sperm is joined to a human egg, the being that is formed is not canine, or feline, nor is it a lagomorph. It is HUMAN. The word “human” is an adjective, and it describes the being whether it is in the Fallopian tube, the uterus, the birth canal, or its mother’s arms.
The question you want to niggle at is whether or not this being is a PERSON. A person is defined in the English language as… (sorry to break it to you, but… ) a human being. You want to re-define this being in order to fit the philosophical assumptions you have, and from your own ability to understand the mystery of human life.
You claim that “they” have virtually none of the characteristics that we associate with persons.
But what are those characteristics, by the way?
While I wait for your answer, I will posit that all you can really know for sure is what you SEE, and even then you cannot see a fertilized egg. You don’t know what it is. You make assumptions about it based on your own choice to define that being the way that you see fit. You know absolutely nothing about that being. You do not know if it has self-awareness or not, you do not know if it has feelings or thoughts. You only know yourself, and you judge what you see by your own perception of yourself. You refer to that being as a fertilized egg so that you can keep it at a comfortable distance from yourself, which is what has always been done to classes of human beings that others wanted to dehumanize, discount and ultimately destroy.
A “fertilized egg” is not a real thing. It is just two words put next to each other to describe something a certain way and your use of that phrase is simply a reflection of the philosophical assumption you begin with, which is that the being created at conception is not a person; not a human being…
Contrariwise, I call it a “human being” because that reflects my own philosophical assumption. God will be the final arbiter of our argument.
You say in regard to the Orthodox Church’s position on abortion… “…I really just don’t see it. It fundamentally doesn’t make sense to me.”
I think perhaps you are like a blind man who says the sky must not exist because he cannot see it.
You also made the comment that it is fair to ask “if fertilized eggs are persons, then why does God create a situation in which, in the natural course of reproduction, most of them are spontaneously aborted? Were it a rare event, then perhaps the argument would be compelling. But that is not the reality of the situation.”
But actually, Mr. Holman, it is. You would agree with me that you and I and anyone reading this are all persons. But God has created a situation in which, in the natural course of things, every one of us will die. That is not a rare or unusual occurrence…
The question about why God would create this situation this is the pivotal question of the universe and of all of human existence and experience. I would suggest you not use yourself as the standard for answering it — that is too much like the blind men all describing an elephant using their own ability to perceive reality.
The only way to know the truth is to ask Someone who is not blind.
I have to ask, how specific is that belief? Are you saying that a person’s sins cause their death, or just that the Fall “opened the door” for physical death to occur?
It’s one thing to say “We would not die had we not Fallen,” but quite another to suggest that one embryo is more of a sinner than another.
Jim’s argument that over half of fertilized eggs are expelled naturally may be true, but in reality most of those zygotes (I’m not sure at what point the term “embryo” becomes appropriate) would be gone before the mother knows she is pregnant.
Perhaps I’m not as horrified as I ought to be at the notion of an artificial womb. As I see it, the debate over abortion centers around opposing sides with incompatible arguments, and an artificial womb (which, if it’s possible, will be developed whether we think it’s a good idea or not) seems like it would render the bulk of pro-choice arguments moot.
If a surgical procedure could remove the embryo, and if the mother then had the option of waiving her rights and responsibilities to the child, then the state wouldn’t be forcing a woman to allow her body to be used. The argument that a woman has a right to choose which type of surgical procedure she undertakes (cessation of the embryo/fetus versus removal of the embryo/fetus) would be a much harder argument to make.
This is futuristic sci-fi sounding stuff, and we may not see it within our lifetimes. But contemplating the politics of this future, and guessing where people would fall, sheds some light on the current debate.
Note 20. Phil writes:
Not “horrified” but “informed”. It’s not surprising though given you are confused about proper parenting roles as well. Children gestated in an artificial womb have no mother in any meaningful sense. Children need years to bond with their parents (it begins in the womb) in order to become stable adults and raise stable children of their own. The data of the effects of divorce show how critical an intact, two parent family, is. Once the nuclear family is deconstructed as the primary social unit within society, which same-sex marriages attempt to do (that’s what the fight is really about), artificial wombs can be justified as a pragmatic necessity.
You are already moving in that direction:
Note how you couch the idea in terms freedom from state coercion. It is very apparent you have no children of your own. If you understood even minimally what it takes to raise a child, you would see that your notion of artificial baby factories evokes a cold horror — a world where love has grown cold.
If it is true that 50% of fertilized eggs fail to implant*, and this failure justifies the abortion of those that do implant, why stop at abortion? After all, children die from natural causes after being born as well (we all do but put that aside for the moment). Some die of cancer, some from heart trouble, some from immunity deficiencies, whatever. Why not kill healthy children as well?
Even further, since all people die anyway, what is wrong with killing those whose time to die has not yet come. We do it with abortion. What difference does it make if we do it for a few years afterward? Utilitarian philospher Peter Singer thinks we can kill children up to three years old, and, if the value of human life is arbitrary, then there is no assailing his logic. Others think we can kill people near the end of their natural life.
What argument can a pro-abortion advocate offer that rebuts Singer’s logic?
*I’ve only seen this statistic on pro-abortion websites. Don’t know yet if it is accurate.
“For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God:” Romans, Ch 3, 23.
As St. Paul also says, “I am the chief of sinners” which is a part of the prayer all Orthodox make prior to receiving the Eucharist. Babies are aborted everyday because of my sin, my unwillingness to repent and stand for the truth.
If even 1% of the people in the US who believe that abortion is wrong acted on that belief, most abortions would stop. Our culture is not some abstract amorphous gas, it is built on the hearts and minds of the people in it. Even most of us adamantly opposed to abortion have tacitly accepted it because we feel powerless to stop it or are not willing to take the personal risk that active opposition entails. But why should stopping a baby from being aborted involve such tremendous personal risk? The fact that it does says just as much about our culture and what we really value as does the abortions themselves. We value power and self-gratification. Even our religion is often experienced and expressed in those terms. Genuine Christianity is about humility and kenotic self-sacrifice. Traits that I sadly lack to any significant degree.
The worship of power and the quest for self-gratification is what places most women in the situation that they feel abortion is the only way out. We continue to justify such behavior by arrogantly thinking we can define “person” any way we see fit so that we may continue on the path of power and self-gratification. So even though life continues uninterrupted by the mercy of God, we continue to dishonor that gift at every turn creating the suffering which we say we abhor.
Fr. Hans writes: “If it is true that 50% of fertilized eggs fail to implant (’ve only seen this statistic on pro-abortion websites. Don’t know yet if it is accurate) . . .
The figures I’ve seen go anywhere from 30 to 60 percent. 50 percent seems to be typical. The web sites that I have looked at were neither pro- nor anti-abortion. Suffice it to say that spontaneous abortions are very common, and they may be the most common outcome.
Fr. Hans: ” . . . and this failure justifies the abortion of those that do implant . . . ”
It doesn’t in itself justify abortion, but it is one of the facts that many people believe is significant in determining the metaphysical status of fertilized eggs. It certainly is not the only factor, but it is one datum.
Fr. Hans: ” . . . why stop at abortion?”
Certainly in our culture the moral concensus is that a baby is a person. That said, I’m sure that you can find examples — Peter Singer comes to mind — where that is not the case. But Singer is the exception that proves the rule.
Fr. Hans: “Even further, since all people die anyway, what is wrong with killing those whose time to die has not yet come.”
Because they are actual person. Again, the moral concensus is clear about this.
Fr. Hans: “Utilitarian philospher Peter Singer thinks we can kill children up to three years old, and, if the value of human life is arbitrary, then there is no assailing his logic.”
You mention Singer all the time, but his opinions are marginal, not mainstream. In my years as a philosophy major, his views did not come up; they were not taken seriously. Treating Singer as if he is the embodiment of the pro-choice position is like saying that people who murder abortion clinic staff represent the pro-life position.
Fr. Hans: “What argument can a pro-abortion advocate offer that rebuts Singer’s logic?”
Well, birth is the definitive event that marks the arrival of a new person. In my mind there is no doubt about that, except in the most extreme and tragic cases, such as anencephalic infants.
It doesn’t in itself justify abortion, but it is one of the facts that many people believe is significant in determining the metaphysical status of fertilized eggs. It certainly is not the only factor, but it is one datum.
But why? The death rate for human beings has always held pretty steady at one hundred percent. Biologically speaking, life is at its most vulnerable at its early stages. That’s why the mortality rate in third world countries is higher for children under five then it is for children aged five to ten. But the fact that millions of children are born into this world, live for a few months, then die doesn’t mean those children weren’t human. The fact that infants have a higher mortality rate than adults doesn’t mean infants are less human than adults. And the fact that embryos and zygotes have even higher mortality rate than infants doesn’t mean they are any less human.
Certainly in our culture the moral concensus is that a baby is a person. That said, I’m sure that you can find examples — Peter Singer comes to mind — where that is not the case. But Singer is the exception that proves the rule.
As someone else pointed out, a person is defined as a HUMAN BEING, i.e., an individual member of the human species. Look up the word since you continually misuse it. “Fertilized eggs” as you call them are human beings. They are living, individual homo sapiens with all the characteristics appropriate to their developmental stage. Your inability to see them as such is an understandable chauvinism, but it is chauvinism nonetheless. And laws should not be based on chauvinism, they should be based on reason–which firmly fixes conception as the moment of beginning for each individual human being.
As for Peter Singer, he does nothing but take a common pro-choice argument–one which you yourself have made in this very discussion–to its logical conclusion. The argument that fetuses, embryos and zygotes are not people because they don’t display the characteristics we associate with personhood also applies to infants. Are infants self-aware? No, they are not. Are they moral agents, conscious of right and wrong? No. Do they appreciate art? Do they philosophize? No, and no. Ergo they are not persons and do not have rights.
Well, birth is the definitive event that marks the arrival of a new person. In my mind there is no doubt about that, except in the most extreme and tragic cases, such as anencephalic infants.
Birth is the definitive event that marks the arrival of a new person into OUR social world. But it is not the event that marks the creation of that individual human being. That event is conception. A human being in the womb is still a human being, with rights guaranteed her under the Constitution. The fact that we don’t physically see or have not physically held that human being doesn’t mean that she doesn’t exist.
Note 24.
Today’s marginal can become tomorrow’s mainstream when the value we grant human life becomes arbitrary. Peter Singer is no different than, say, Barbara Boxer in his thinking about human life except in terms of degree. Singer advocates infanticide up to the age of three while Boxer allows it only before the child emerges from the birth canal, but the principle that allows both is the same. Boxer would no doubt object to Singer’s brutality, but her objection won’t be morally coherent. It can’t be since she shares the same devalued view of human life that Singer does. (Remember that Boxer had an adult who survived an abortion removed by armed guards from the Senate chamber when that survivor was called to testify.)
You run into the same problem. I wrote:
You responded:
The “moral consensus” is clear only because it recalls a time when children were more valued than they are today. That consensus will shift if the confusion about the value of human life increases. The erosion of the moral tradition is already evident in the increasing child abuse rates and other crimes committed against children.
Remember, this is not the first time that American culture has faced these problems. For the longest time the consensus held that Blacks were less human than Whites (the Supreme Court affirmed the devaluation — see: When the Court Lost Its Conscience), that poor people were less valued than the successful (Oliver Wendell Holmes and Carrie Buck — see: War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, to name two. I suspect you would find the same dynamic underlying American treatment of Native Americans as well.
There is an undercurrent in the pro-abortion value system that is merely a re-working of the old canard: “Women are only good for having babies” With the legalization of abortion; the associated effective prostitution of almost every female, and the glamorization of female/female sex, women are more and more devalued. The attitude of the feminists from the very beginning has been that women as women are worthless, in order to become worthwhile, women must become as masculine as possible. Even here the noble masculine traits are not emphazied, only the sinful ones, such as licentiousness and other gross physicality, unfaithfulness, substance abuse particularly tobacco and alcohol. The whole trend from the 60’s on has been that women are meat and that which comes from their bodies is also meat. It is beyond my comprehension how any woman can so willingly participate and support philosophies and actions that so demean and dehumanize themselves and their own gender. Of course there is the parallel trend, the feminization of men. Here is the connection to the rise of the homosexual marriage movement and groups like NAMBLA.
Christianity calls on us to recognize and celebrate the differences between men and women without there being any inequality because we are created in the image and likeness of God, male and female. Jesus ministry was full of recorded events that emphasize the importance, value and equality of women.
You’re just being snide here, Jacobse, and it’s unbecoming. I’m not “confused” about proper parenting roles, I just have different views from you. And that’s neither here nor there in this discussion.
We developed incubators to help babies born prematurely to survive; do those babies have “less of a mother” for every day they spend in an incubator?
Even for you, this is excessivley disputatious. The element of state coercion that I introduced into my post was not my argument. It is one half of the “opposing sides with incompatible arguments.”
My claim was that this impending development would shed some light on the current debate, and in that sense, I agree with the original post:
I hope that clears it up.
Note 28. Phil writes:
Well, yes, you do have different views, but those views are not without consequences. Further, given you confusion about male and female relationships concerning the family, it is not surprising that your equating of an artificial womb as a legitimate mother substitute is one such consequence.
Yes, very much so. That is why nurses provide the baby physical stimulation to replicate as much as possible the natural cuddling a baby would otherwise experience when being held by its mother.
I’m not sure what the second sentence means, but the first is clear. And yes, it was not your argument, but it does reveal your reasoning. My point (made in note 21) was that if the nuclear family is deconstructed (you advocated as much in your numerous posts defending same-sex marriage), then artificial wombs can be justified as a pragmatic necessity. Your reasoning shows how this works.
Surely you wouldn’t suggest that we should do away with incubators, then, because they are less than ideal?
I articulated a pro-life position, and for some reason you are trying to engage in metadebate. What’s your goal? To play Devil’s Advocate and convince me that we shouldn’t do everything we can to protect a child?
If medical advancement provides a safe way for a baby to survive outside the womb, excuse me if I’m not horrified.
As the original article stated, such technology would force pro-choicers to seriously re-evaluate their stances, and I’d guess it would split them: either they’ll contend that a woman has a “right to terminate” her child, or they’ll contend that a woman has only the “right to remove” the child from her body.
Artificial gestation is likely not an ideal, but it seems patently obvious that it’s the lesser of two evils.
Here’s the sentence upon which all this rides:
Here’s my response (partial):
Artificial wombs then, are a way to save children who might otherwise be aborted? Well, I guess the logic works — sort of.
But, my focus is the clause: “the state wouldn’t be forcing a woman to allow her body to be used”.
Allow her body to be used? It ties into your logic advocating homosexual “marriage.” that couches the argument in terms of state coercion as well, ie: the state prevents men from having the same rights that women have to marry men. Again, the logic works — sort of.
But, real life has a way of intruding on bad ideas, even when they sound reasonable, although often after considerable damage has been done. Hence my reply that your confusion about marriage roles and your inexperience with raising children work hand in hand in how you think about these things — in the former concluding that a man can mother a child, in the latter concluding that an artificial womb is a suitable mother substitute.
Fr. Hans writes: “Today’s marginal can become tomorrow’s mainstream when the value we grant human life becomes arbitrary. . . . The ‘moral consensus’ is clear only because it recalls a time when children were more valued than they are today.”
The moral concensus is more complicated than that. When I use the term “moral concensus,” I mean not just morality but also the role of government, the issue of personal liberty, medical issues, political reality, and many other factors. In other words, we need to look at the totality of factors of how the moral concensus is formed.
A good example of that is the death penalty. Support for the death penalty waxes and wanes as new crimes are committed, new facts about the legal system are revealed, new crime studies are published, and so on. We don’t say that the issue is simply controlled by “an eye for an eye.”
As the moral concensus forms and changes, a slippery slope is always possible. One could argue that if we allow the death penalty at all, eventually we might end up executing shoplifters. In fact, with “three strikes” laws and such, this is not necessarily as farfetched as it might sound. Moreover, the Christian Reconstructionists favor the death penalty for disobedient children and “heretics.” Those are very much in the minority, but probably number in the hundreds of thousands in the U.S. So in any of these life and death issue, the slippery slope is always a possibility.
The fact is that we no longer live in a situation in which the authority of the church trumps everything. The Epistle of Barnabas and the writings of Tertullian no longer are the be-all and end-all. We live in a society in which the moral concensus is also shaped by the many factors that come from modernity. We highly value personal liberty. We want to have control over our own bodies. We exercise and go on diets in order to shape the body. We get plastic surgery, body jewelry, and tattoos. We decorate the body with cosmetics and fashionable clothing, something once reserved for royalty. The body is no longer perceived as something fixed and unalterable, but is something that can be crafted and formed and repaired, even to the point of getting mechanical joints and heart valves, and transplanted organs.
Part of the modern understanding of the body is also that people want to have control over their reproductive destinies. We take Viagra. We use birth control. We go to fertility clinics. We have abortions. In all things, we want to shape our own destinies. For most of history your life was determined by your social status, gender, and who your father was. Today you decide if you’re going to be a pastor, plumber, or professor.
Likewise, we no longer have a worldview that understands life and the world in terms of abstract essences and substances. The idea of an inherent “personhood” that attaches to fertilized eggs is foreign to most people.
I’m sure that many Orthodox believers, Michael and others, would say that all of this comes from a defective view of anthropology, from the loss of the Christian view of anthropology. And that may be the case. But that is the reality on the ground. Any view of abortion that does not take this into account — that pretends that somehow we’re going to go back to a 4th century worldview — will simply not be accepted by a majority fo the people.
Even Christians are creatures of modernity, whether or not they want to be. Eighteen centuries ago there were riots in the streets of Alexandria over the Trinity. Today, most Christians couldn’t explain the subtleties of hypostasis and ousia to save their lives. Centuries ago, religion was something that was given to you. Today, people pick their religion as if from a menu, and even then decide for themselves what parts of the religion they will accept or reject. (For example, there may be Catholic couples who don’t use birth control, but if so, I haven’t met them.) Catholics are doing Zen meditation, and evangelicals go to “Christian” martial arts schools. Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians have a highly personalized version of religion that often has little to do with traditional Christianity. Evangelical Christians are now largely engaged in the development of an alternative pop culture, complete with theme parks, rock groups and other entertainment, “Christian” pro wrestling, and so on. Young evangelicals have nose rings, spiked hair, and tattoos. This is all the stuff of modernity. (Last year I went to a video store, and noticed that the clerk had a tattoo in Hebrew on his arm. When I asked him why he had the word “elohim” on his arm, he was surprised that a geezer like me could read it. I guess he thought that his tattoo was too cool and inscrutable to be understood by anyone except him.)
In the midst of this vast sea of modernity, folks in this venue want to construct a little island of traditionalism when it comes to abortion. I wish you well, but I don’t think it’s going to happen any time soon.
This debate you’re enaging in here is about language, not policy or medicine. I think you’re unintentionally misreading me because you are accustomed to disagreeing with me. To wit, when I say “If X happens, the state wouldn’t be forcing a woman to allow her body to be used,” it does not follow that I also believe “If X does not happen, the state is forcing a woman to allow her body to be used.”
The phrase “allow her body to be used” comes from Note 9, and I suggested, as Albert Mohler does, that a new medical development raises serious questions for the pro-choice movement.
I certainly wouldn’t recommend it for all children, but goodness, an artificial womb will mean a lot to fetuses that are aborted. Do you suppose that you will one day tell a teenager that she spent the second half of her gestation in medical device and she’ll respond, “Oh, *&%$, I wish they’d just flushed me down the toilet! I feel like less of a human.”
Of course not. That’s what I meant when I said “Excuse me if I’m not horrified.”
The only way it “ties into my logic” is that I consider what other people think when I articulate ideas, and respect the rights of adults to have different opinions.
You repeat this ad hominem many times. Do you even believe that people without children should be allowed to vote?
The silliness of “If you don’t have children, you cannot possibly have a valid opinion about important social issues” works both ways– one could contend that having children naturally shifts your priorities from the best interests of society to the best interests of your offspring, and that your opinions become tainted as a result. Certainly a man who would kill his neighbors and feed them to his children must be stopped, no matter how hungry the kids are. Someone without children would see the wisdom with this statement, but a parent might nod and say, “If you had kids, you’d understand.”
I’m not actually putting forth that argument, but it’s the same logic as your repeated ad hominem attacks.
Note 33. Phil writes:
Yes, it is about language, but even more than that, it is about ideas. And no, I don’t intentionally misread you although I disagree strongly with some of your ideas — homosexual marriage for the most part which I contend you reduce to a legal argument to avoid engagement with the larger cultural ramifications homosexual marriage would entail.
So, when you write:
. . . I can only conclude you are either being disingenuous, or you don’t understand how ideas work together, that is, how language and reason work. For example, you wrote:
I pointed out that you notion of state coercion (by which you mean legal prohibitions) parallels your argument about homosexual marriage (laws against a man marrying a male are defacto discriminatory because they don’t give men the same “rights” that women have [to marry a male]). In other words, you tend to view human relationships as little more than legal contracts — at least you persisted in defining them that way whenever you advocated for homosexual marriage.
Next the argument moves to mother and child, and still you persist with the reductionist definitions. I pointed it out when I responded that you advocate artificial wombs because “…the state wouldn’t be forcing a woman to allow her body to be used”.
Now you argue that the logical corollary — that a prohibition against abortion (which does not exist, BTW), is coercion visited upon a pregnant woman by the state — is not what you mean.
Well, if it is coercion in one case and not another, then what do you really mean?
One other point:
No, not really accurate. It is not the artificial womb that raises a challenge to the pro-choice movement as much as the disintegration of the logic of Roe v. Wade. In other words, any technological development that moves the line of “viability” closer to conception threatens to expose the concept of “viability” as the fraud that it is. An artificial womb merely provides the exclamation point at the end of the sentence that exposes it.
Call it an ad hominem if you want. From my direction your reduction of marriage and family life to legal categories reveals: a truncated understanding of the interpersonal dynamics that constitute family life; a shallow awareness of the longterm cultural ramifications of your ideas; and an impoverished historical sense of the moral and cultural tradition that unequivocally sees marriage only in terms of heterosexual monogamy and abortion as a grave sin.
My point in asking you if you had children was to find out for certain if your views were an idealization or based on concrete exprience. It did not surprise me that you are not married or don’t have children because if you did, I think you would grasp that your ideas are insufficient to the reality — something like viewing a sunset in black and yet thinking it’s technicolor.
Note 38. Jim, I can’t see any other point in your post except that the forging of a cultural consensus is a complex process. Well, yes, of course it is. It is often fractious, unclear, and even confusing at times. The abolition of slavery did not come easy. Eugenics was advanced by the elite of society and thus confusing to regular folk. Civil Rights was a huge struggle. These issues had people lined up on both sides.
Fr. Hans writes: “im, I can’t see any other point in your post except that the forging of a cultural consensus is a complex process.”
My point, which perhaps I did not make clearly enough, is that the debate over abortion is not primarily about abortion. Rather it is about competing worldviews. My point also is that we all, for better or worse, Christians and non-Christians are creatures of modernity, and this must not be ignored.
Ok. Yes, I agree completely.
Right, that’s the non-issue. I didn’t say it is coercion in one case. But if you believe it’s coercion, then the fact that the possibility of that coercion may some day be removed is going to force a serious re-evaluation of pro-choice arguments. Both of us see that.
If we’re debating whether strewing flowers on the lawn is littering, and someone says, “Picking flowers up off the lawn is not littering,” it does not follow that they also believe “Putting flowers on the lawn is littering;” no assumption can yet be made there. But I can see where you’d get confused, and I apologize for the nonspecific communication.
You extrapolate, from your experience and your individual family, laws and rules that should apply to all other families, whether you’ve “walked in their shoes” or not.
“A shallow awareness of the longterm cultural ramifications of your ideas.”
The crux of your ideas is authoritarian control. Your political beliefs do not allow for views that differ in any meaningful way from your own. It’s disingenuous to suggest that “cultural ramifications” are a criteria for you, because you pledge fealty to a belief system that cannot change its views based on new evidence. There isn’t, within your worldview, a mechanism for determining if a particular belief is true, because it is verboten to consider the possibility that a particular belief is false.
I’m not trying to persuade you to change your beliefs. But how on earth can you claim greater qualifications to enter into a cultural debate when you deliberately rob yourself of the tools necessary to evaluate said debate? Orthodox beliefs are thought to be True with a capital T; the tradition does not permit weighing them against new arguments or evidence.
It’s clear that you’re accustomed to asserting your authority. Perhaps it’s a pitfall for anyone in a leadership position; you begin to believe that your ideas are better not because of their value, but because of your value: your character and experience are superior to those with whom you argue.
Sure, I’ll buy that. The “artificial womb” is a MacGuffin; since it’s hypothetical, it represents the same thing as any number of technological advances that change the date of viability.
Hi, Hans. Fascinating discussion.
Could you clarify something for me?
Suppose a person agrees with this statement:
“Gay and lesbian couples can be as good parents as heterosexual couples.”
Do you believe that person should not be allowed to vote?
Thanks,
Scott S.
Sure, that person can vote. Why wouldn’t he?
Note 38. Phil writes:
This is getting old but…sure you did. You wrote:
The negation “wouldn’t” implies the “forcing” (coercion) actually exists in practice. If the coercion did not exist, the negation would be meaningless. Thus, despite your insistence to the contrary, the implication that a prohibition against abortion is tantamount to state coercion over a woman’s body is clear. Your sentence doesn’t make any sense otherwise.
I don’t see the problem here. Are you trying to say that this argument negates a pro-choice argument (women’s control over their own bodies, etc. etc.) that you don’t personally hold to? If so, just say so.
Well, nice try but calling people who disagree with you authoritarian, closed minded, unwilling to consider new evidence, and a host of other perjoratives still does not address the fact that you have no practical experience in the matters you write about. Now it is true that real experience does not an expert make, but I am not arguing that point. I am arguing that your lack of experience is evident in how you approach marriage and family — quite a different thing. Not all ideas carry the same weight or value and sometimes practical experience is needed to discern between them.
Look, I’ve already explained why I think your approach is lacking. With homosexual marriage it’s your exclusive reliance on a legal definition of marriage framed in a social context of fairness (men are discriminated against because they cannot marry men like women can). This constitutes the sum and substance of your defense of homosexual marriage. No engagement with the historical, cultural, or moral tradition is made. No attempt is made to discern what the ramifications of this seismic cultural shift might be. Sorry, I just don’t buy it. Too much is at risk here to change the insitution based on the reasons you supplied.
Phil, you’ve got to be bit less cagey. You offer what amounts to logical proofs, but in real life these issues aren’t contained within the proofs alone. Human affairs are more complex. They explode beyond the boundaries you seem intent on giving them.
This Book Changed my mind about the Death Penalty. I feel the more people know about these issues maybe some things will change. At one time I wrote this about the book I read: Where Is Dennis Fritz, You may say after reading John Grisham’s Wonderful Book “The Innocent man”, Grisham’s First non-fiction book. The Other Innocent Man hardly mentioned in “The Innocent Man” has his own compelling and fascinating story to tell in “Journey Toward Justice”. John Grisham endorsed Dennis Fritz’s Book on the Front Cover. Dennis Fritz wrote his Book Published by Seven Locks Press, to bring awareness about False Convictions, and The Death Penalty. “Journey Toward Justice” is a testimony to the Triumph of the Human Spirit and is a Stunning and Shocking Memoir. Dennis Fritz was wrongfully convicted of murder after a swift trail. The only thing that saved him from the Death Penalty was a lone vote from a juror. “The Innocent Man” by John Grisham is all about Ronnie Williamson, Dennis Fritz’s was his co-defendant. Ronnie Williamson was sentenced to the Death Penalty. Both were exonerated after spending 12 years in prison. Both Freed by a simple DNA test, The real killer was one of the Prosecution’s Key Witness. John Grisham’s “The Innocent Man” tells half the story. Dennis Fritz’s Story needs to be heard. Read about how he wrote hundreds of letters and appellate briefs in his own defense and immersed himself in an intense study of law. He was a school teacher and a ordinary man from Ada Oklahoma, whose wife was brutally murdered in 1975. On May 8, 1987 while raising his young daughter alone, he was put under arrest and on his way to jail on charges of rape and murder. Since then, it has been a long hard road filled with twist and turns. Dennis Fritz is now on his “Journey Toward Justice”. He never blamed the Lord and solely relied on his faith in God to make it through. He waited for God’s time and never gave up.
Note 41-
It could be said that, when discussing law, legalistic arguments are the way to go.
But beyond that, I do think it’s important to limit debate to only to the areas where disagreement matters. In the case of the rights of gays and lesbians to marry, the issue of rights is primary; it renders the other arguments moot.
If you proposed that we immediately lock up all male members of a particular minority race, it wouldn’t matter how great you think the social ramifications would be. The issue of rights is primary; it would be wrong to do that. To argue that your social ramifications are _not_ great would be to miss the point: it would tacitly acknowledge your “the ends justifies the means” approach.
In the instance you bring up, a proponent need not prove that same-sex marriage is moral in order to establish that it should be legal. One could merely acknowledge that some people want them, and some people don’t, and propose that same-sex marriage be optional. It’s a moderate, centrist approach, and it allows champions of “moral tradition” to continue exactly as they have for centuries.
If an argument of mine is wrong, then it is wrong on its own merits, not because I haven’t raised children. Your introduction of “personal experience” serves only to illustrate prejudice against a class of persons (non-parents), it sheds no real light on the specifics of arguments or ideas they may put forth.
That’s not the claim you’re making, though–“not all ideas carry the same weight or value.” What you have said, in so many words, is that “the people who form ideas do not carry the same weight or value.”
See note 38 regarding putting flowers on the lawn. More than one thing can fit into the category of “non-coercion.”
Yes.
It’s not state coercion because a state has the legitimate right to protect the interests of humans conceived within its jurisdiction. Pro-choice arguments contend that the mother’s rights supercede the embryo’s, and to do this, they must assert that the embryo is less than human.
My thinking is pretty consistent here. The state has no business treating some humans differently than others (absent criminal penalties or other such instances where a citizen abdicates some rights.) The state has no more right to discriminate against an embryo because it lacks certain biological structures than it does to discriminate against a lesbian because she has ovaries.
Phil writes: “Pro-choice arguments contend that the mother’s rights supercede the embryo’s, and to do this, they must assert that the embryo is less than human.”
The argument is that the embryo is not a person, whereas the mother is. Let me give you an example that I’ve used here before.
You are a fireman, called to the scene of a fertility clinic on fire. You go into the lab. On the floor is a lab tech, unconscious. Next to the lab tech is a small freezer containing several hundred frozen embryos. The fire is spreading quickly, and you can either rescue the lab tech or the embryos in the freezer, but not both. Whom do you rescue?
Any time I have posed that problem, the answer is always that the lab tech should be rescued. No one, pro-life or not, ever says that the lab tech should be left to burn to death. But following the pro-life reasoning, the embryos should be rescued. But no one ever recommends that. The interesting thing to me is that even though the pro-life people would rescue the lab tech, they typically are unable to say why.
I think I know the reason why. We instinctively know that the life of an adult is of greater inherent worth than that of a blastocyst. Call it personhood, call it whatever you like, we know that we’d rescue the lab tech.
There is also the issue of having control over one’s own body. Here’s another example. You wake up one morning and find yourself in a hospital bed. Next to you there is another bed with a patient, a famous concert violinist. Tubes run from you to the violinist. You are informed that the violinist has a liver disease that will take nine months to cure. He has been attached to you so that he can have the use of your liver until his recovery. After that he will be detached and both of you can go on with your lives.
Question: do you have a moral obligation to remain connected to the violinist? Most would answer that no such obligation exists. Now it would be very nice of you to allow him the use of your body for nine months. But we wouldn’t say that you have a moral obligation to do that. This is the case even though both the individuals in question are persons.
Note 41. Phil writes:
That’s the nub of your argument and why I argue that your view of marriage and family is reductionistic. ie: only a matter of legality.
The problem is, where does the claim stop? What about a man who claims the right to marry two men (or women)? What about the man who claims the right to marry his sister? Current law discriminates against them too.
Try to answer these questions and it becomes necessary to address morality, sociology, history — all the constituents that shape culture.
You might argue that homosexual marriage is not a departure from the norm, ie: a natural replication of two parent heterosexual marriage. But then you have to prove why heterosexual monogamy should be considered the norm, and why homosexual couplings replicate this normative standard.
And again, such arguments necessitate movement outside of your self-imposed legal boundaries.
Jim writes:
You rescue the lab technician.
But this scenario is not limited just to a lab fire. Say you are an EMT. You are called to a car accident with multiple injuries with some injured more severely than others. You only have so many resources. Someone will probably die. Who do you treat first? (This is real life, BTW.)
I remember this scenario from college. It was John Rawls’ “A Theory of Justice” if I recall correctly. It wrestled with how to comprehend abortion in moral terms The critique, as I recall, was that the examples he used were too removed from real existence, as in the example above where the unborn child seems to spontaneously generate in the mother, etc. Rawls also tended to view justice in zero sum terms.
Fr. Hans writes: “You rescue the lab technician.”
Yes, everyone always rescues the lab tech. The question I would like answered is why pro-life people would rescue the lab tech. If fertilized eggs are persons, truly and fully persons, then I don’t see how rescuing the lab tech could be justified. I know why I would rescue the lab tech. Why would you?
Before I respond to those claims again, please explain how current law discriminates against those people.
A working definition of discrimination comes from dictionary.com:
“…to make a distinction in favor of or against a person or thing on the basis of the group, class, or category to which the person or thing belongs.”
It isn’t discrimination to fail to provide someone what they want; it’s only discrimination if you fail to provide it because of a category to which they belong. If the state fails to provide three-person marriage to any citizen, anywhere, at any time, that’s not discrimination, that’s consistency.
One reason I focus on gender instead of sexual orientation is because extreme conservatives often argue that “a homosexual” is not a legitimate category of person. No one reasonably disputes that “male” and “female” are categories that we fit into.
What you are arguing is that the law should not be a matter of legality.
A just law must be consistent. Your position is to base legal distinctions on things that are unprovable. You contend that maleness and femaleness (gender) are of paramount importance in determining the right to marry a partner, but you have not presented, and cannot present, present a single characteristic that is specific to males or females, beyond “maleness” and “femaleness,” (which remain undefined.)
I suspect that your failure to meet the minimum requirements of debate is because you’re trying to have it both ways: on the one hand, you’re contending that maleness and femaleness are distinct and important, concepts that could be discussed or measured. But since these concepts can’t be discussed or measured in a way that supports your argument, you rely on spiritual arguments, which need not stand up to legal scrutiny.
That’s an interesting scenario. I want to say that you rescue the lab tech because he is the most likely to survive, and that’s the way emergency medical decisions are based
(much to the chagrin of Will Smith in the I, Robot movie.)
Still, I’ll admit that my reaction to the story (and probably to the scenario) is more instinctive than that. But is that ethics talking, or just evolution? If it was a lab tech and a baby, I’d probably want to save the baby, because millions of years of evolution have bred nurturing instincts into all of us. But if I choose the visible human over the frozen embryos, is it possible that’s just because of the way they look? I’d guess that most people in a similar situation would choose an attractive, symmetrical child over a really hideous deformed child, and there’s no sound ethical basis for that (assuming the deformed child isn’t likely to die sooner based on her deformities or something like that.)
Phil writes: “Still, I’ll admit that my reaction to the story (and probably to the scenario) is more instinctive than that.”
Yes, it is an instinctive reaction, and everyone has the same reaction regardless of pro-choice or pro-life orientation. Here’s my theory:
People know instinctively that an adult has more moral worth than does a fertilized egg. In other words, we owe more to an adult than to a blastocyst. But if instead of frozen embryos there were an infant, we would save the infant.
This is something that the “personhood” discussion tends to obscure. Personhood is a kind of on-off concept. You’re either a person or you’re not. So personhood doesn’t allow us to think in terms of degrees of moral obligation, and how the moral obligation could change depending on the situation.
The example cleary shows that our obligation to preserve the life of an adult far outweighs our obligation to preserve the life of even many blastocysts. But that is typically not the situation with abortion. With most abortions we’re choosing between the wishes of the woman vs. the life of the fertilized egg or embryo. I personally believe that in the early stages of pregnancy the wishes of the woman should trump any moral obligation to the embryo, but that the obligation shifts as the embryo develops.