I'll bite. Like most discussions on the topic here on Clutchfans, the sides have become polarized quite quickly. I think the key to viewing this issue is to get past all of the ad hominem attacks, they just don't do anything. I.e. pro-lifers don't care about the baby after its born, or the way to really stop abortion is to increase birth control and education. These are policy arguments that are tangentially related to the issue of abortion. The fundamental act of aborting a fetus/human/embryo (whatever terminology you wish to place on it) is what is key. And on that point, I think the pro-life argument against abortion is correct in light of reason and science. The pro-choice argument can only be maintained by imposing a legal fiction in which personhood is bestowed upon the fetus at some point along the developing timeline, i.e. 1st trimester, birth, etc. The science and dignity of life argument- When we talk about human dignity, we are talking about the essence of what it means to be human, or from the latin our worth, our being. Essentially, we have that worth that dignity, from the moment of conception as a unique and distinct human being. Nothing in the developmental process causes a new character or a new direction of growth to occur. So from the get go, we are distinct and human at the earliest stages of life. If we value what we call human dignity, to be logically coherent you would want to value that dignity at all stages of life, from conception to natural death. Once again, the pro-choice argument can only purport that something changes along the developmental timeline that suddenly embodies the fetus, or newborn, with human dignity, i.e. sentience, the development of a fully formed brain, viability, or birth, or if you are Peter Singer, who really knows. I think these value judgments of when to bestow dignity upon the human being are based more on philosophical reasoning rather than a coherent scientific analysis. Once again, all other policy judgments, i.e. should we value the dignity of human life at conception, or should we be teaching more about contraception, do we give enough help to mothers trying to raise their children are up for reasonable debate. But I really get scared when we start making the let's not value human life at the point of conception argument. It's a bit utilitarian for my taste.
i wish we lived in a perfect world and all the thousands and millions of babies could have a loving home. and have clothes, food, school (college) and that some girls/women would not do it anyways even if it were illegal. abortion is a horrible thing most normal people would agree with that. but what do you want? the only alternative is to make it illegal. its that or continue what with what we have, and i hope continue to push any and all contraceptive so someone doesnt get pregnant in the first place. or you make it illegal and try to find a home for every single child, even if those foster/adoptive parents are sub par. and for all the rest, and i assume there would be many you would put into some type of grouped housing. who knows maybe one day you will get what you want. and there will be no more legal abortions done in the country. and what will happen will happen.
Every baby starts with a home. If the mother or father doesn't want it, try adoption. How is destroying that life even considered an equal option-- given the grave consequences of the decision? We'll never live in a perfect world. There will never be enough education to eradicate the problem of unwanted pregnancies. Just because you don't want it doesn't mean you can't accept it or find a way to deal with it (adoption).
Living in Baltimore, let me tell you this: a child would rather been aborted than grow up in a foster home in West Baltimore. Hell would've been a kinder fate to those kids.
my feedback after seeing this video posted on facebook and skipping the four pages of debate & discussion: She talks about Jesus. That alienates any non-christian.
Fair enough and I will bite too. You might call it a legal fiction yet in terms of our society life, death and practically any other decisions are based upon the legal definition of personhood. To just dismiss it as a legal fiction would essentially undue the our system of laws. Leaving that aside for a moment. When you speak of the "correct light of reason and science" that may be so if by correct you are applying your own filter to that light. I don't think "reason" and particularly "science" are your as much your allies as you think. First off what do you mean by "essence"? If you mean life every cell of your body is alive yet you wouldn't consider it abortion when you give blood. If you are talking about a genetic distinctness while every cell in your body has almost completely the same genome there is a variation among them. Here again science isn't your ally because it shows that our cells are constantly subjected to a variety of things that change the genome. Following your argument of logically coherent we should value the dignity of every single cell. One more blow that science though delivers to your argument is regarding cloning. If we are talking about the act of conception creating a new life, accepting your a priori about humanity. With cloning every single cell in your body is a potential new life. So the clumps of cells that you scrape off your face when you nick yourself shaving are scientifically the same potential of humanity as an embryo. If you are appealing to science though in regard to sentience while it may not pinpoint when sentience begins it can definately tell you that an embryo or a blastocyte are not sentient. Sentience / consciousness is clearly a function of the neurons so without neurons there is no sentience. While you claim your argument is a coherent scientific analysis if anything it is an anti-scientific argument that ignores science, or at the minimum, bends it to suit your own preconceived bias. And with all due respect your position strikes me as a bit arrogant for my taste. I can understand why you call the pro-choice argument utilitarian but at its heart it is a position of humility in regard to that since we cannot determine when exactly a human life begins we then defer to the person, and in this case personhood is not in question, who is most immediately affected. Pregnancy stripped of its philosophical and spiritual implications is essentially a parasitizing of a host. In the absence of a definitive determination of when someone becomes human it is left up to the woman to decide if she does want her body coopted for the purpose of pregnancy. Your position would say that my beliefs teach this and legally we are going to force the woman to remain pregnant and in that case her body really isn't her own but one that serves another function. Don't get me wrong I believe there is significance in pregnancy and if left up to me I wouldn't want women to have abortions but I recognize that that isn't a universal belief. It is easy for us, particularly as men who will not bear children, to say that abortion should be outlawed but we can't foresee all the situations where someone might want to have an abortion and as a men we never will be in that situation.
No, I actually showed why your analogy fails on grounds independent of how one values the "opportunity of life" (a problematic phrase in itself, but I'll leave that issue aside for now). Your argument was--correct me if I'm wrong--that abortion, like rape, should be a crime because in both cases the victims suffer in an analogous way, and therefore we should respond to both events in the same way. But there is no equivalent in abortion victims to the mode(s) of suffering a rape victim experiences beyond the immediate bodily damage. Some of that suffering is experienced by rape victims via a cultural medium that simply isn't available to fetuses. You also failed to consider the case where a woman becomes pregnant due to a rape, which speaks directly (and without analogy) to the issue of whether abortion should be a crime. Your position, and your moralist ideology, forces you to invalidate the suffering of rape victims. Either (a)you allow an exception in the anti-abortion law for victims of rape, which leads to revictimization (for reasons stated in my last post); or (b)you don't allow such an exception, and...a woman impregnated by rape is forced to carry on her body a constant reminder of her trauma. Is that not even a little ****ed up to you?
I think it should be considered capital murder if you onanistically spill your seed without nurturing the genetic material to a fully formed adult.
What will happen if someone else spills your seed but it doesn't grow up to be a responsible member of society and, instead, ends up on your partner or on the floor or something?
Off track from the start. You say that the primary issue is not one of policy, but then invoke categories within a policy-making framework (i.e. pro-life and pro-choice). You also do not show how the pro-life side imposes any less of a legal fiction by bestowing personhood at conception. Is it possible that personhood itself is the legal fiction, rather than merely one narrow sense of personhood? (1) You assert your conclusion as a premise by saying the essence of human dignity exists at the moment of conception. Nowhere do you establish a standard by which one group of cells is human and another isn't. (2) Even if we grant your assertion that upholding human dignity implies valuing life from conception to death, you aren't giving any ethical consequences for such a value because you explicitly (and bizarrely) avoid the question of policy. For example, how do we value the life of a fetus in comparison to the suffering of a rape victim? I don't see how you can make any ground against the pro-choice side without adequately answering that question. Actually, the pro-choice position does not require any sort of value judgement on the question of human dignity. We simply allow that question to be deferred to the party most qualified to answer it--the mother. On the other hand, the pro-life position is forced into several paradoxes with regard to human dignity, one of which, as I describe in my responses to giddyup, is that you invalidate the suffering of rape victims. Aww...don't be scared...nobody's actually making that argument.
There's no reason that calling it a legal fiction has to be a bad thing. Legal fiction simply means that it doesn't necessarily correspond with reality. I'm saying this is a situation where legal fiction does not correspond in a just manner. Essence simply means distinct and unique. I'm not trying to use it in the philosophical sense. This is not to say that external influences do not affect the development of the fetus/embryo/child. It simply means that external influences are not going to turn the fetus from nonhuman to human. You can't create a clone just from your own skin cells, you'd have to fuse with either an egg or bone marrow cell, therefore creating a distinct entity other than yourself. I guess I'm not following you here. I was simply trying to posit that sentience as an indicator of the beginning of personhood is a philosophical notion. I'm not trying to say the notion of sentience is unscientific. I would argue that the science of having a distinct unique human being is more ironclad of a starting point then sentience. But, as the argument goes, you can scientifically determine when the human being begins. If you choose not to give that human being personhood status in the law, that's a problem that strikes at the heart of the human dignity argument. This is just not true. Pregnancy is not the parasitizing of a host. There's not a scientific leg to stand on there. You are straying away from my argument here. I haven't gotten into the justness or unjustness of whether we are ok with the current abortion regime or if it constitutes forcing one's beliefs on another. I'm talking about the distinctiveness of the human being as embryo, and how the act of abortion is the ending of the life of a human being. Most pro-choice advocates will concede this point. They simply argue that it is justified. You seem to be arguing that it is not the termination of a separate and unique human being. I'm saying you don't have any science to say that. Once again, not even getting into those arguments. That's a separate discussion. One I might get into over fall break next week if I get tired of doing outlines and papers. I'd just ask you this, why is it ok for the government to enact civil rights laws, which essentially preach a morality that all people are created equal and that discrimination in many private action situations will not be tolerated; yet it suddenly becomes a forcing of morality to want to give all human beings a right to life? You seem conflicted in that you think abortion is terrible, yet you have a duty to a right to privacy, mind you not a right to abortion, that simply ignores the argument that a embryo is a separate and distinct human being. Where's the sense in that?
On the original post (in case anybody would love my feedback on it)....her situation would have been a very very late abortion. As LScala's chart on p1 illustrated , these are rare. Abortions, this far along the pregnancy, are quite a different discussion then one of abortion overall. Wiki even questions the accuracy of her story , but, regardless, she is an amazing survivor. Overcoming Cerebral Palsy too. So good for her. A great story. But it doesn't impact my views on abortions one bit. So there's a chance that a child born despite an intended late term abortion may be OK and turn out to be a wonderful person. I can see that. We know nothing about what risks there were to the mothers health (if any), or whether there was a diagnosis of severe disability. We know nothing about the abortion decision except for what she says (in very loaded language). So....not so sure her story's necessarily a cue for the Every Sperm is Sacred anthem, or that I can't celebrate her story and still fully support abortion on demand in the early stages of a pregnancy.
on a technicality: wouldn't the supreme court be legal non-fiction. and John Grisham be legal fiction? I do get those terms mixed up.
The attribution of pro-life or pro-choice does not necessitate a policy framework. These arguments exist within the structure of the meta pro-life/pro-choice arguments. See response to judo on your second point of legal fictionality. Separate, distinct group of cells. Even Judith Jarvis Thompson will concede that point. For the logic to be coherent, you have to answer the baseline question first of what exactly is happening, science-wise. If you say the fetus is separate and distinct, why would it matter if it was conceived in rape or regular sex? As a policy matter, that strikes at people's heart strings. But if you are being coherent in your argument, there should be no difference. That's inherently a value judgment, a libertarian one mind you, but a value judgment nonetheless. Essentially you are arguing that a fetus in a mother who wants it is something than a fetus in a mother that doesn't. That violates the principle of non-contradiction. It doesn't invalidate the suffering of rape victims.
