Best response ever to “fetus is parasite” meme
Two comments following the January 23 article in The Hill, “Proponents of DC voting rights challenge proposed late-term abortion ban”:
THIS IS SCIENCE: FETUS IS NOT A BABY (GOOGLE THE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT CHART), but a parasite because the classification of the biological relationship that is based on the behavior one organism (fetus) and how it relates to the woman’s body…. since a man can kill his tapeworm at anytime– so should a woman abort unwanted, human-parasitic fetus, too.
~ Commenter Gale Routh
Oh shut up please.
~ Commenter Mark, responding to Gale
[HT: Chicken Man; photo via berkeley.edu]
Feb.04, 2012 8:25 am |
Apologetics |
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Yep. Pretty much the only thing you can say.
I can see where Gale got this idea. She was once a fetus, right? And she sure resembles a giant tapeworm now. No wonder she sees them everywhere.
This is the same kind of rationale that people use wheb they justify killing neglecting or otherwise abusing children after birth. Another word children are not fully human because they are dependent on adults to care for them. Children should be recognized as human beings at conception and should be given their civil rights as citizens of Gods kingdom which at one time included the United States of America. Until the unborn are recognized as human beings this country and the world will continue to morally disintegrate. Why should the lack of responsible behavior on the part of parents justify killing the innocent child in the womb?
How about: your not serious are you?
Hi Gale
While you are being quiet please Google PARASITE.
Great point, Carla. A parasite is a different species than the host.
gloria stienam on abortion……a woman has a right to remove a parasite from her body. hitler about the jews ….the jews are worthless eaters. they are parasites.
lol yep tape worms and human babies – TOTALLY THE SAME.
Good on Mark haha sometimes you just gotta get a little sassy.
But what on EARTH is that picture supposed to be? Another sick attempt at plushies by the pro-aborts? Because it looks too bright and focused to be an actual picture of anything scientific – what is it? haha.
This is where we are, folks. Sometimes I want to cry for this nation.
I just find it hilarious that with this argument they are conceding a point they defended for so long–that the fetus is PART of the mother’s body.
With the parasite rhetoric, they’ve finally cast that one aside.
I’ve heard this “parasite” non-sense for over 15 years now and thought it was stupid then and it is stupid now. For one to view a human child in the womb of a women as a simple parasite is preposterous!
It’s just another way of avoiding the truth and running away from the reality so not be convicted in ones own heart and making excuses for killing.
To reduce the unborn to the level of a parasite is ridiculous and idiotic! Not only that, but it is Scientifically false, period!
Check why this is so:
http://www.l4l.org/library/notparas.html
I think we have what would constitute a human parasite in the White House. He and his parasitic family.
Seth! Excellent point. Is the fetus a parasite or part of the woman’s body? my foot is part of my body. Not a parasite.
However, my unborn son is NOT a part of my body, buthe is also not a parasite. He is actually right where he is SUPPOSED to be. And what about that new study that shows that fetal cells cross the placenta and improve the health of the mother? Sounds like a symbiotic relationship, not parasitic.
A new pro-choice low. Apparently the author has not migrated past her origin (assuming we were all parasites at one time). Isn’t there a compound for people with this kind of stupid somewhere???
I don’t always defend legal abortion. But when I do, I usually copy/paste the same arguments across every blog or news site I can find. I use lots of sockpuppets, and I never once notice the painful irony of quote mining the Bible before dismissing it as a myth in the same post:
http://disqus.com/yahoo-WLANNXG267BDEZS74YSQIQQHXU/
http://disqus.com/facebook-100002582112073/
http://disqus.com/google-4f12a6b3b3b42773f72435ed8b51e68c/
On a more serious note, I find it interesting that the CDC and NIH don’t say anything about pregnancy or fetuses in their list of human parasites.
Okay…
Putting on my lab coat…
Proaborts can use a little biology refresher. There are three symbiotic relationships that we speak of in biology:
Commensalism
Mutualism
Parasitism
The relationship between mother and child is NOT parasitic. In fact, it isn’t any of the symbiotic relationships, strictly speaking. However, it comes closest to mutualism and commensalism. In order to get that, let’s define the three relationships, starting with the proabort’s beloved parasitism.
The following definitions are from what is arguably the most comprehensive, authoritative, and widely used textbook in microbiology, and is the text we used (in an earlier edition) when I studied post-baccalaureate science at Columbia University:
Prescott, Harley, and Klein’s Microbiology, 7th Edition now under the editorial authorship of Willey, Sherwood, and Woolverton.
Parasite- An organism that lives on or within another organism (the host) and benefits from the association while harming its host. Often the parasite obtains nutrients from the host.
Parasitism- A type of symbiosis in which one organism benefits from the other and the host is usually harmed.
Commensal- Living on or in another organism without injuring the other organism.
Commensalism- A type of symbiosis in which one individual gains from the association, and the other is neither harmed nor benefited.
Mutualist- An organism associated with another in an obligatory relationship that is beneficial to both.
Mutualism- A type of symbiosis in which both partners gain from the association and are unable to survive without it. The mutualist and the host are metabolically dependent on each other.
As can be seen, parasitism is the furthest from the relationship between mother and child. Mother and child actually exchange cells that remain in one another’s bodies for decades, and seem to be implicated in things such as tumor destruction, cancer prevention, and a host of other benefits. For an excellent latman’s read on this phenomenon called maternal/fetal microchimerism, click the following link:
http://www.headlinebistro.com/en/columnists/thorn/051210.html
In the latter half of pregnancy, the baby produces the hormone, human placental lactogen (hpl), which converts the cells of the breast lobules from immature, cancer-prone cells to mature, milk-producing, cancer-resistant cells. By the end of the first pregnancy alone, 85% of the breast cells become cancer-resistant, with the remaining 15% becoming systematically more cancer resistant with subsequent breast feeding and future pregnancies followed by breast feeding.
So really, of the three, mutualism comes closest. Parasitism finishes a distant, distant last.
Mark’s response was, well, bracing!
Ellen,
Mark and I said the same thing. He just said it better ;-)
Gale Routh posts the same thing on any article related to abortion. Glad to know someone else besides me noticed it.
Dr. Nadal, surely you’re not bringing science into this.
Example of hate speech of the pro-aborts against the unborn child.
They do hate the unborn when they make remarks like that.
But, sweet Gale! Considering a fetus is on the human growth chart, isn’t he or she… human… to begin with?
Remember where you came from, Gale? (It wasn’t the stork.)
Not so fast, Mary Ann…
Perhaps Gail is onto something. Abortionists fit the criteria of parasite pretty neatly. So, perhaps at least some humans are parasites.
“THIS IS SCIENCE: FETUS IS NOT A BABY… but a parasite because the classification of the biological relationship that is based on the behavior one organism (fetus) and how it relates to the woman’s body” This is one of the more awkward, clumsy attempts at explaining somthing scientific that I’ve read. I guess Gale thinks if you throw enough terms like “classification” and “biological relationship,” and “behavior” into your explanation, it sounds scientific.
So let me get this straight – Gale, once having been a parasitic tapeworm-like fetus is now a grown-up parasitic tapeworm adult?
Okaaayyyy….Gale – shall we go with your idea of science?
@Navi: Is it bad that I read your post in the voice of The Most Interesting Man in the World? :D
ever hear anyone tell a pregnant woman ” lets throw you a parasite shower.” “were all going to have a fetus shower for you.” semantics. makes it easier to kill. and they love to throw in that good old kidney debate which only makes them look worse. i was born with my kidneys. a pregnancy is formed in the womb after 2 people have sex. i didnt obtain a kidney through having sex nor will i ever. its just another feeble attempt to remain in denial or block out guilt. no matter how you slice it abortion kills a human being every single time. and the women who remain in guilt only make it worse for women who want to heal from abortion.
I am beginning to wonder if Gale wasn’t the major backer for that quack in England who made the artificial uterus because apparently being pregnant consists of too much suffering and pain AND should be considered sexist. I don’t understand why these individuals hate being women so much.
I have seen many of Gale’s posts and, honestly, they remind me of a scene from Saving Private Ryan where the Nazis are screaming over a loud speaker how America is kapoot, the Statue of Liberty is kapoot, etc…
I thnk a change of tact on this lame parasite argument is better.
That human embryo has long-term benefits to its mother and helps heal her.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/unborn-child-just-a-parasite-cutting-edge-science-shows-fetal-cells-heal-mo/
it’s funny, you guys conveniently omitted the SCIENCE proving HOW the human fetus IS a parasite… but i guess, when you are in the pro-life-schizophrenic-fascists propaganda business of lying to young girls and women into keep their unwanted pregnancies—SCIENCE proving you wrong, must be ignored.
so, i wonder what will happen to this “movement” of yours, when biologists publicly starts agreing with me? because this blaming everything of which you disagree with on the liberals/socialists/atheists is getting old.
THIS IS SCIENCE:
FETUS IS NOT A BABY (GOOGLE THE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT CHART), but a parasite because the classification of the biological relationship that is based on the behavior one organism (fetus) and how it relates to the woman’s body.
as a zygote, it invaded the woman’s uterus using its TROPHOBLAST cells, hijacked her immune system by using NEUROKININ B and HCG— so her body doesn’t kill it, steals her nutrients to survive, and causes her harm or potential death.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophoblast
“The placenta functions as an immunological barrier between the mother and the fetus, creating an immunologically privileged site. For this purpose, it uses several mechanisms:
It secretes Neurokinin B containing phosphocholine molecules. This is the same mechanism used by parasitic nematodes to avoid detection by the immune system of their host.[2]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immune_tolerance_in_pregnancy
” Due to its highly-negative charge, hCG may repel the immune cells of the mother, protecting the fetus during the first trimester. It has also been hypothesized that hCG may be a placental link for the development of local maternal immunotolerance.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_chorionic_gonadotropin
“It is also possible for a symbiotic relationship to exist between two organisms of the same species.”
http://www.answers.com/topic/symbiosis — Gale’s Science of Everyday Things.
just like a parasitic twin — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitic_twin
“an animal or plant that lives in or on another (the host) from which it obtains nourishment. The host does not benefit from the association and is often harmed by it”
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/parasite
pregnancy CAUSES HARM: http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/004.htm
if a man can abort his tapeworm at anytime– so should a woman abort her unwanted parasitic fetus, too.
THE FETUS DOESN’T HAVE THE ABILITY TO FEEL PAIN –WHEN MOST ABORTIONS OCCUR.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/blogs/the-human-condition/2010/06/25/does-the-fetus-feel-pain-uk-report-says-no.html
Gale, did you take the time to read Dr. Nadal’s post?
Scientists are starting to figure out that intestinal parasites convey benefits for humans in the form of an anti-inflamatory substance that they secrete.
Some have even gone so far as to intentionally infect themselves to treat Asthma and autoimmune diseases.
The benefits of a child go much further. It is really quite a blasphemy to compare the two!!!
It never fails.
I am always amused when people turn to attacking(name calling)because they are unsuccessful in countering the message.
Facts are facts. It’s a tough concept I know.
Courtnay,
Do you seriously think that Gale has the intellectual capacity to understand Dr. Nadal’s post? ;)
Gale,
It’s funny, you conveniently ignore the fact that there is no SCIENCE showing that a human fetus is a parasite. Of course, you would have to read a SCIENCE textbook and have some understanding of SCIENCE to realize that. You should try it sometime.
Oh, and you might want to look up the definition of “schizophrenia” and “fascist” so you don’t use these words incorrectly again. Unless you want to continue making a fool out of yourself, that is.
Okay, who phantom linked?
Gale,
Tell your friends, the liberals/socialists/atheists that places like this is where you will find the true humanists. Because we consider those who are less able to care for themselves dependants, not parasites.
It is your fascistic attitude that is ebbing away. To be a true champion of the people, you must care about the well-being of all of them.
Also, secularprolife.org
I get tired of having to constantly remind people that exists.
Xalisae–you are right. As a Christian, I have another way to approach it, but if I were not, I could argue against abortion VERY STRONGLY from the point of being an American and a human.
Civil rights begin in the womb!
Gale,
I have two Master’s Degrees and a Ph.D. in biology. What’s your training?
It’s an important question, as it relates to the next:
What is the source of your belief that the fetus is a parasite. I want the journal article reference ad/or the textbook, complete with authors’ names and institutional affiliations. Then I want the exact quote.
You are obviously not reading the material correctly (if at all).
A parasitic relationship is one that exists between members of two different species. The relationship between a mother and her offspring is a maternal relationship, which is neither mutualism, commensalism, nor parasitism.
that settles it…gale IS a grown up parasite misogynyist!!!!!! shes got cotton in her ears going lalalalalala
GAWD, i guess little old me kicked the bees nest with my last post — but none of you guys has yet, to prove the science that i posted wrong and your little ad hominems against me doesn’t count.
i wonder, what would you guys do, if one popular biologist agreed with me and posted it on his site.
you guys would have nothing to say, but again use the old “blame-the-liberals-socialists-atheist” card.
i guess by now, that card is pretty sworn out.
this is for you, jill — I HOPE YOU LOVE IT.
http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/should-a-woman-have-the-right-to-abort-her-unwanted-fetus/question-2438225/
HEHEHEHEHEHE!
What’s a sworn out card? Is that like a game?
I think I have it…. SCIENCE is a new religious cult that has nothing to do with actual science and is different (though I wonder by how much) than scientology and Christian Scientists… Do you think they serve Koolaid at their conventions?
In all honesty her LACK of biological education is VERY scary. I mean, how does one miss the all important factor that a parasite is an entirely different species than the host?? The DNA of a zygote, fetus, whatever is distinctly the same as the parent/mother/”host”. Basic anatomy here!
Gerard Nadal
“Gale,
I have two Master’s Degrees and a Ph.D. in biology.
A parasitic relationship is one that exists between members of two different species. The relationship between a mother and her offspring is a maternal relationship, which is neither mutualism, commensalism, nor parasitism.”
thanks for replying, even though i’m not educated at all in biology, or in anything really– but i have to say YOU’RE WRONG AND YOU KNOW IT.
so you with all your degrees explain THIS to me: with all the science evidence, proving that the human fetus IS a parasite –why won’t you and your fellow scientists accept this fact?..i doubt jill and the rest of her crazy-ilk is going to beat you up over it– and if so, jebus will still love you, ha.
“It is also possible for a symbiotic relationship to exist between two organisms of the same species.”
http://www.answers.com/topic/symbiosis — Gale’s Science of Everyday Things.
just like a parasitic twin — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitic_twin
“an animal or plant that lives in or on another (the host) from which it obtains nourishment. The host does not benefit from the association and is often harmed by it”
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/parasite
as a zygote, it invaded the woman’s uterus using its TROPHOBLAST cells, hijacked her immune system by using NEUROKININ B and HCG— so her body doesn’t kill it, steals her nutrients to survive, and causes her harm or potential death.
HAVE AN ATHEIST DAY.
@gale, you actually think there’s anything on that stupid sodahead site that Jill and the other pro-lifers on this blog have not read? Wow, you sure sound angry. Science is on the side of pro-life. Just face reality. Use all that passion and intensity and come on over to the side that really loves and values women and believes they are capable of having a child in the midst of the most difficult circumstances.
lol – not sure why we’re arguing – aside from the completely uneducated among the pro-aborts, most admit that an unborn child is a human.
If it is a human – should it matter whether or not it is dependent on its mother? No.
The real issue is – is it a choice or not to kill this baby?
Even the leaders of the pro-abort movement admit it is murder but say it’s a choice – and one apparently to only be made by a woman…or apparently a court order, or an underage girl’s parents who want to force an abortion on her – but don’t you dare let them “force” her to HAVE the baby no no, that’d be wrong!
…ugh.
Folks, this is a time to laugh. We don’t have to do battle with this joker. She’s got nothing. Bigger battles ahead.
gale says:
February 4, 2012 at 6:11 pm
even though i’m not educated at all in biology, or in anything really–
…it really shows, and this might be a bit too much of a pearl necklace I am throwing your way, but maybe you should start thinking about an education, cause right now the Emperor is looking less embarrassing romping around in his very expensive nothingness. And another little gem… try an anger management class. And I hope you have a very wonderful day, cause an atheist day seems very depressing, especially after reading the Hitchhiker’s guide.
Hmmm…who to trust, a microbiologist or a foaming at the mouth abortion zealot. Gee, that’s a toughie (scratching chin)…
Proabort: “But water isn’t wet! Wikipedia says so!”
Screencapping the stupid for later use (rubbing hands together) please keep her talking people.
p.s. Glad Dr. Nadal is on our side :)
Let’s look at parasites you don’t need microscopes to see. Meet Liberalus Americanus-attaches itself to the bloated host known as nanny state government and sucks it dry of entitlements until it dies, thereby committing suicide. Very evolved organism, isn’t it?
“Hmmm…who to trust, a microbiologist or a foaming at the mouth abortion zealot.”
MPQ, when the topic is science, that sure is a tough decision, isn’t it?
Eric,
Yeah, it is. I mean she did cite the Daily Beast as a source, all Dr. Nadal has is a couple degrees and stuff (plus he looks good in a lab coat.) Tee hee.
It secretes Neurokinin B containing phosphocholine molecules. This is the same mechanism used by parasitic nematodes to avoid detection by the immune system of their host.
I once read somewhere that chicken have feet. But, human beings have feet, too…but…we must all ACTUALLY be chickens, since we have similar structures!!!!!OMGZ!!
Love you Dr. Nadal! I am so glad you took the time to explain the biological FACTS. Too bad Gale couldn’t be bothered to read it. Or read it and scratched his/her head in confusion.
Gale, I am HIJACKED. HIJACKED I tell you. This male parasite climbed up into my uterus unbidden and hijacked my immune system. I am near death as I type this. I don’t know how I’ll ever survive. I can feel my parasite kicking even now. I know he is planning to kill me. Goodbye world…
Nah, just kidding. I am pregnant with my second son. A son I knew could be conceived when my husband and I had sex. He was created through MY ACTIONS. He is exactly where he is SUPPOSED to be. My uterus was designed to carry and nurture and protect my children. I am not dying. My body is doing what it is DESIGNED to do. Ovulation and conception mean I am HEALTHY. I am functioning as I am supposed to. My son is not a parasite. He is my child. He is bringing health benefits to me while I grow him in my womb.
The fact that you refer to an unborn child as a parasite speaks more to your sickness of soul rather than your inability to understand biology.
“thanks for replying, even though i’m not educated at all in biology, or in anything really– but i have to say YOU’RE WRONG AND YOU KNOW IT.”
Ah Gale. Thanks for the chuckle!
Dear Gale,
Thanks for tipping your mitt:
“HAVE AN ATHEIST DAY.”
That says it all about you. It isn’t about science and reason. It’s about hatred born of rage, and rage born of bitter disappointment in life. I’ve never met an atheist who wasn’t filled with rage, and that sort of rage distorts the lens of perspective.
It isn’t that I’m wrong and that I know it. I spent 16 years of my adult life in graduate and post-graduate training as a molecular and medical microbiologist. I know that I’m correct and quoted one of the most authoritative texts in biology, lest I be accused of making it up.
The fact is that you are wrong and can’t admit it because that would call forth maternal love in you, forcing you to confront the parental love every atheist has had missing in their life. (Now you’ll swear that you had perfect parents just to try and discredit what is well known in the spiritual life)
You need to justify your hatred by appealing to some supposed outside source, such as imaginary scientific sources and principles.
Atheists are usually gripped by a murderous hatred and rage, and it usually comes out as being pro-abortion. That’s because atheism is antithetical to God, who IS Love itself. The perfect targets are the perfect humans who have never sinned and call forth perfect love, which is itself sacrificial in nature.
That’s why you call these babies parasites, because they are unworthy of the love that your hate-filled atheism has choked off within you. Unwilling and unable to love, you respond with venomous rage toward those who place such demands on you, be they the babies, or the pro-lifers who defend them.
Whatever it is, sit with a priest or minister and vent your fury at God for not having protected you wherever it is that you think He let you down. Then begin the process of forgiving others and yourself. Hatred and atheism twist and distort people, and you are well on the way.
My prayers are with you.
The unfair generalization and mischaracterization of atheists I find rather insulting. Please remember for a moment that there are plenty of atheists and agnostics on our side, Doctor.
Gale, we’re praying for you to change your mind. As for atheists and agnostics being pro-life, that’s wonderful. I think eventually, you will come to recognize how much God loves you and especially if you are involved in pro-life work, you will grow closer to Him. This is what happened to Dr. Bernard Nathanson. He said he had joined the Catholic church in 1995 because the weight of his sins bothered him so much. Gale, may you find the peace of Christ’s love in your life, as Dr. Nathanson did.
Taken from the Philosophy of Abortion –
The world is divided into biophiliacs and necrophiliacs; lovers of life and lovers of death. Necrophilia attempts to destroy life.
Gale & CC, you have been in my prayers.
Gale,
If a parasite is not the same species as the host, how is a fetus a parasite?
Gale, that kind of anger is a dam holding in a flood of tears. You were not a parasite in your mother’s womb, whatever her troubles were. The children in your womb were a gift to you, not parasites. Having a child can make a woman who has tried so hard to be strong feel helpless and out of control. Having an abortion may have restored a sense of control, seemed to correct a mistake, but only by destroying an innocent being and your own compassionate heart. We are all subject to forces beyond our control, and telling ourselves there is no human being in our womb or no God in heaven or our own hearts will not make us superwomen, just super dead inside.
You can’t undo what’s been done but you can find forgiveness. You can work to protect the weak instead of destroying them. You can seek healing for yourself and others. If you choose, you can ask God to help you understand the incomprehensible pain you have gone through and let him take you into his wounded hands.
Maria, that was beautiful <3
WHY IS IT ONLY WOMEN GET THIS PARASITE? AND WHY CAN’T THIS PARASITE BE TREATED WITH ANTIBIOTICS? WHAT OTHER PARASITES CAN BE ABORTED?
Gale credibility is zero cause she has no background in Feta-logy and Biology when Dr. Gerard Nadal credibility is high. Expert vs. Novice, Expert wins. Gale, you lose.
Remember, it’s not about coherence. That is, the requirement that a collection of individual arguments supporting a particular viewpoint must be consistent with each other, having no contradictions internal to the point of view.
That is, pro-choicers aren’t interested in truth, and hence coherence. They’re interested in power — the power for anyone to do as they damn well please. Thus, a parasite argument will do here, and a part-of-the-woman’s-body argument will do there. There’s no compulsion on the part of pro-choicers to make these at-variance arguments work in the same logical space (never mind that they don’t each work in their own space). That would be a concern for truth. No, they merely need to work by keeping the debate from finding resolution, because that resolution would fall to truth — the enemy. Keep the ball in the air. Don’t seek to clear confusion — promote it.
This is the postmodern world where the sole relational dynamic in society is power, and individuals are either exploiters or exploited. Nothing transcends that, and a narrative that strives to lay claim to “true truth” (as distinct from my ‘truth’ and your ‘truth’) is not to be dealt with directly, but with obfuscation.
In some sense, rational argument with pro-choice is a fool’s errand. It’s the burden of the rational, to be sure. But it’s not the burden of the pro-choicer to be rational. Like squid, they are free to ink their way out of a tight spot because clarity isn’t their friend anyway.
Such is the darkness of minds that hate the light.
The following may help those who do not understand the biological terms “parasite” and parasitism (including any biological scientists whose own specializations have provided them with a limited understanding), and how and why they are applied by biological and medical scientists to the mammalian embryo and fetus.
http://krohde.wordpress.com/article/parasitism-an-introduction-to-xk923bc3gp4-51/
P Lowry, “The placenta is simply an endoneurocrine parasite” (J Neuroendocrinol 20, 6 (Jun 2008): 700-4).
http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/reprod/placenta/index.html
Or to welfare fraudsters.
So their lives aren’t important.
OK, I understand. Thanks!
I’m wondering “what follows?” if there is a definition of parasite which would include the unborn. When used in that sense, what exactly is meant by “parasite” and how does it play a role in the determination of the moral worth of the embryo?
Well, there’re also the two senses in which such a thing may be asserted: predication, and attribution. We might indeed call a welfare fraudster a parasite, but I think most people would understand that as attributive. When we talk about a tapeworm, no one in their right mind would imagine that our description is limited to attribution — we’re predicating the thing’s actual nature, what it is – not merely what it’s doing.
The problem with this idiocy from the pro-choice side would be that they conflate attribution with predication (in ways they wouldn’t elsewhere) and thus by semantic prestidigitation declare an ontic status of zilch for the unborn on the merits of zealous ignorance about what they’re even saying.
Which is why the OP is so spot-on. “Oh” — connoting justified impatient exasperation, “shut up” — suggesting a course of action that’s the shortest route for the ill-advised speaker to return to some semblance of seeming non-stupid (as the paraphrased proverb has it, “a fool is considered wise when he shuts up”), and “please” — valuable in case the speaker is, after all, a small child.
1. I honestly do not understand how reference to a welfare fraudster relates to biological parasitism of any kind. On the references I provided for you:
a) A major scientist in the field of parasitology (K Rohde), one who has studied biology, ecology, and zoology as well and has hundreds of professional articles in scientific journals to his credit in various fields of biological research, defines parasitism and parasite in ways that could indeed apply to a mammalian embryo or fetus, even though that application is not common.
b) Massive efforts have been made in immunology to understand why, in pregnancy, the female immune system does not always reject the embryo/fetus successfully. This research has nothing to do with ideology and in practical terms is done to help researchers understand miscarriage and organ transplantation and how to prevent recurrent miscarriages and rejection of transplanted organs.
The fetus-as-parasite model, which is very old (you can find such terminology even in the old classic medical text Grey’s Anatomy), has recently borne fruit in Lowry’s study of the placenta as well as other research in the immunology of pregnancy over the last decade.
The capacity to predicate a thing’s actual nature ultimately depends upon the capacity for attribution. Moreover, all the amusing overuse of such expressions as “semantic prestidigitation” and “ontic status of zilch” cannot make up for lack of serious study of phenomena from various perspectives and with various models which can lead to the testing of hypotheses on which genuine science depends.
I’m obviously on the wrong site, given that the biologist commenting here does not even know that there is intraspecies parasitism and that there are examples of biological as well as brood parasitism. This seems to be just a site where even pro-lifers with professional degrees in biology are too busy congratulating themselves and playing word games to take scientific research and its implications seriously. But that was the same attitude with which Wade lost his case before the Supreme Court.
I’m conceding to the biology you have provided, if for no other reason for the sake of argument. What I would like to know is what follows morally?
“…defines parasitism and parasite in ways that could indeed apply to a mammalian embryo or fetus, even though that application is not common.”
“This seems to be just a site where even pro-lifers with professional degrees in biology are too busy congratulating themselves and playing word games…”
S L Mccoy: “The capacity to predicate a thing’s actual nature ultimately depends upon the capacity for attribution. Moreover, all the amusing overuse of such expressions as ‘semantic prestidigitation’ and ‘ontic status of zilch’ cannot make up for lack of serious study of phenomena from various perspectives and with various models which can lead to the testing of hypotheses on which genuine science depends.”
Oh bu11sh1t. You’re moving from is to ought.
Best of luck with that.
BTW, what the hell? “Amusing overuse?” Just how many times have you observed me employing the locution “semantic prestidigitation” or “ontic status of zilch”, such that the occasion you cite constitutes an “overuse”?
LMAO
rasqual,
stop interrupting someone criticizing others for supposedly playing word games while they’re in the middle of playing word games themselves.
I detect an imminent fist of death.
I shall withdraw to a safe distance.
;-)
rasqual –
I did not refer to the overuse of the exact expressions cited, but rather used the expression “such as,” to indicate that the cited expressions were examples of a type of expression. I stand by what I said. If one has scientific theory and objective empirical evidence on one’s side, one does not have to play word games. All one has to do is refer to the theory and the objective empirical evidence. That is, after all, a “fist of death” to ignorance and illusion.
Bobby Bambino –
You say you have conceded the biology I have presented for the sake of argument and want to know what follows morally. Nothing follows morally. Biology is biology and morality is morality. Does anything follow legally? Only that a woman who sought an abortion would have ample objective empirical evidence to show that an embryo or fetus is not medically harmless to her health.
But can biology not be used to overturn Roe v Wade? The US Constitution does not recognize a right to life for embryos and fetuses. It recognizes rights to life, liberty, freedom of religion, security of person and, by implication, privacy, etc., of a person, not a human zygote, embryo, or fetus. Its text, including that of its amendments, uses “person” in ways that cannot reasonably be interpreted as applying to the unborn. For that reason, in Roe v Wade, much effort was made to examine federal court cases on issues of rights of the unborn. The cases of relevance concerned issues of, e.g., inheritance, and in them, the rights asserted were always contingent on live birth.
In the Roe v Wade decision, there is an expression at which pro-life people have often taken offense because they have not interpreted it in light of those cases. It is stated that the state has a “compelling interest” in protecting “the potential life of the fetus” at viability. It is not that a fetus has no actual biological life, but rather that the US Constitution never extended status as a person to any unborn. Hence, the potential life that the state has a compelling interest in protecting is, precisely, the future life of person that the fetus has the potential to become – as in the rights of the unborn in earlier federal case law, personhood and life as a person are contingent on live birth.
So is abortion immoral? That is up to each individual to decide in accord with his/her own religion, conscience, and God. Would it be immoral to make it illegal? I think, yes, it would be. There is a beautiful section in Planned Parenthood v Casey that suggests it would be both immoral and illegal.
Meanwhile, unless a pregnant woman tells others that she is pregnant, how do you propose to know? Aside from the fact that even a doctor cannot tell early in pregnancy without doing a test, a woman has the right in our society, if she has the financial means, to stay in her home and not let anyone in, for the duration of pregnancy. No one has the right to force a woman to go to a doctor, etc. The only legal requirements come if she gives birth or has a post-viability miscarriage, which is considered a stillbirth If she does go to a doctor, her records are confidential unless the police have ample reason to suspect a crime or a contagious epidemic. Pregnancy is designed to be private. Only birth is designed to be someone else’s business.
S L Mccoy, you’ve actually done a far better job of refuting the argument presented (a fetus is a parasite like a tapeworm and it’s acceptable to kill tapeworms, so it must be acceptable to kill a fetus) than anyone else on this thread. The article you cited states the following:
1. Parasitism can be broadly defined “as a close association between two organisms, in which a parasite depends on a host that provides some benefit (usually food) to it; the parasite does not always damage the host.”
2. The parasite and host can be part of the same species.
Under this broad definition, parasitism not only applies to mammalian fetuses but also to born children, siblings, and even (as rasqual pointed out) welfare fraudsters “even though that application is not common”. Indeed, cuckoo birds are considered parasites in this sense. Since normal babies or siblings act in the same way, they’re parasites too (even though they’re part of the same species). So while considering a fetus a parasite might be useful in some research, it has no relevance to the abortion debate (as this argument would prove too much: parents can kill their born children, and it’s permissible to kill your siblings).
Only that a woman who sought an abortion would have ample objective empirical evidence to show that an embryo or fetus is not medically harmless to her health.
Of course, the same could be said about an infant or toddler if “health” is defined as in Doe v. Bolton.
But can biology not be used to overturn Roe v Wade? The US Constitution does not recognize a right to life for embryos and fetuses. It recognizes rights to life, liberty, freedom of religion, security of person and, by implication, privacy, etc., of a person, not a human zygote, embryo, or fetus.
The constitutional “right to privacy” cited in Roe v. Wade supposedly follows from the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (though the very idea of substantive due process is extremely controversial to begin with). This means that, if the woman’s (unwritten) constitutional right to privacy is indeed broad enough to trump the state’s interest in protecting prenatal life prior to viability, the right to an abortion must be at least as old as the Fourteenth Amendment (which was fully ratified in the 1860s). If this is true, then it seems unlikely that bans on abortion (which, contrary to Blackmun/NARAL’s questionable reading of history, were in fact meant to protect the unborn rather than protect the woman from a procedure that was very dangerous in the 19th Century but is considerably safer now) would have been allowed to stand for a century without any legal challenges. But this is exactly what happened.
Its text, including that of its amendments, uses “person” in ways that cannot reasonably be interpreted as applying to the unborn.
The text actually does not define “person”. Nor does it imply anywhere that birth is a necessary condition. The Fourteenth Amendment, for example, states that being born or naturalized in the United States qualifies a person for citizenship. It does not rule out the personhood of someone who has not yet been born. This is much like Section 2 of Article I, which affirms that no person under the age of twenty-five can be a member of the House of Representatives. It doesn’t mean that a 22-year-old isn’t a person.
For that reason, in Roe v Wade, much effort was made to examine federal court cases on issues of rights of the unborn. The cases of relevance concerned issues of, e.g., inheritance, and in them, the rights asserted were always contingent on live birth.
Not always, actually. There was a 1970 case that went before a federal court. The majority opinion included the following:
http://www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?page=5&xmldoc=19701062321FSupp741_1918.xml&docbase=CSLWAR1-1950-1985&SizeDisp=7
In the Roe v Wade decision, there is an expression at which pro-life people have often taken offense because they have not interpreted it in light of those cases. It is stated that the state has a “compelling interest” in protecting “the potential life of the fetus” at viability.
I think it’s far more problematic that the seven unelected justices, while claiming to be neutral on the scientific and philosophic question of when a full-fledged human life comes to be, effectively took a position (that is, meaningful life worthy of legal protection doesn’t begin until at least viability). This standard is not only untenable (as even Sandra Day O’Connor admitted) but was chosen based on circular reasoning (the state interest in protecting prenatal life becomes legitimate when the fetus reaches viability, because the fetus is capable of surviving outside the uterus at this point).
So is abortion immoral? That is up to each individual to decide in accord with his/her own religion, conscience, and God.
Is rape immoral? That is up to each individual to decide in accord with his/her own religion, conscience, and God. Is infanticide immoral? That is up to each individual to decide in accord with his/her own religion, conscience, and God. Is female circumcision immoral? That is up to each individual to decide in accord with his/her own religion, conscience, and God. Is slavery immoral? That is up to each individual to decide in accord with his/her own religion, conscience, and God.
These are all easy assertions to make, but they’re not going to cut it if you’re trying to defend killing or harming innocent human beings.
Would it be immoral to make it illegal? I think, yes, it would be. There is a beautiful section in Planned Parenthood v Casey that suggests it would be both immoral and illegal.
“Beautiful” is quite a stretch. Self-refuting sounds more like it.
Meanwhile, unless a pregnant woman tells others that she is pregnant, how do you propose to know? Aside from the fact that even a doctor cannot tell early in pregnancy without doing a test, a woman has the right in our society, if she has the financial means, to stay in her home and not let anyone in, for the duration of pregnancy. No one has the right to force a woman to go to a doctor, etc. The only legal requirements come if she gives birth or has a post-viability miscarriage, which is considered a stillbirth If she does go to a doctor, her records are confidential unless the police have ample reason to suspect a crime or a contagious epidemic.
How would you propose to know if she gives birth? A search warrant is usually only granted if the police have ample reason to suspect a crime. But it doesn’t logically follow that a woman should be able to kill her child after birth. So this is a complete non sequitur.
Pregnancy is designed to be private. Only birth is designed to be someone else’s business.
Only one counterexample is needed to undermine the claim that pregnancy should be completely private. Interestingly enough, even the Supreme Court rejected it in Roe v. Wade when they ruled that the state could restrict abortion after viability but before birth (Doe’s broad health exception, of course, guaranteed abortion on demand even after viability but that is beside the point). Another example is the use of thalidomide, a drug that causes horrible birth defects. If pregnancy were none of anyone’s business, then it would seem that it should be legal for a pregnant woman to take it. But the drug was quickly banned after its harmful effects were discovered. Why should a woman’s healthcare choices be restricted if pregnancy really is nobody’s business but her own?
I don’t agree that I’ve effectively refuted the argument” that a fetus is a parasite like a tapeworm and it’s acceptable to kill tapeworms, so it must be acceptable to kill a fetus.” Here are some reasons:
1. Even though a parasite does not always injure the host, it is easily argued that pregnancy/childbirth almost always has adverse effects on a woman’s health – even though, with a wanted pregnancy, this is counterbalanced by the positive of having a wanted child. The rates of mortality and serious health complications in childbirth are higher than for early abortion. The blastocyst-generated placenta effectively shuts down local immune attack T-cells, lowering immune protection against invasive viruses and infections. It is the fact that pregnancy is more dangerous than non-pregnancy that makes the production of children an accomplishment worthy of honor, which of course it isn’t if the woman is simply required to do it as a duty.
2. Parasite and host can be in the same species, yes: there are intraspecific and interspecific forms of parasitism. But you are confusing intraspecific social parasitism with intraspecific biological parasitism. There are various forms of social parasitism. One kind is brood parasitism (one’s laying eggs in another’s nest to get the benefit of the other as brood hen). Your classifying babies as parasites in this sense is not wrong in a purely value-neutral sense. However, in society, we help babies avoid being perceived as such by making social, i.e., post-birth, parenthood completely voluntary: any woman who gives birth is free to give up her born child to adoptive parents, so social parenthood is a purely voluntary status. This has nothing to do with biological parasitism or with pregnancy.
3. I stressed the fact that the Constitution did not recognize a right to life for embryos or fetuses because they have not been established as persons. You suggest that the right to an abortion would then be older than the 14th Amendment on which the “right to privacy” argument was based. You nonetheless present as a contradiction the 19th century anti-abortion laws.
Let’s be clear. At the start of the US, all women did have a right to opt for abortion under state common law in the original thirteen states: after quickening (roughly 4 1/2 months), abortion was a serious misdemeanor, but not a felony. Only in 1821 did a state (CT) first pass written anti-abortion legislation. Most such legislation was produced in the mid-late 19th century as part of a power play by newly organized medical profession against midwifery, as childbirth was a fairly lucrative part of health care. Doctors gave as reasons both the danger of abortion for women and their new view of embryos, which was essentially that a zygote was a tiny whole person with already formed limbs, organs, etc., that just had to enlarge. The notion that a pregnant woman did more than feed it would have been absurd to them: they believed men procreated life and women just nourished it, a fallacy that many pro-life people appear to believe even today.
You seem to think that, if the Constitution does not overtly define “person,” it does not constrain the term’s extension, but its uses of the term meaningfully apply only born persons. Hence, the Supreme Court during Roe v Wade had to go back and look at federal court cases on claims of rights related to the unborn to see what case law decisions provided as precedent (in the US, legal interpretation depends heavily on precedent). In those cases, such rights, e.g., of inheritance, were contingent on live birth, after which there would be a live infant classed, of course, as a person.
You bring up a 1970 federal case where the decision included: claimed that
There was a 1970 case that went before a federal court. The majority opinion included the following:
You are right that the Supreme Court in Roe v Wade did not address the issue of “once human life has commenced” and did not consider unborn human life worthy of protection in the sense of persons. This is frankly for three obvious reasons.
The government has never recognized the unborn to be persons. We have had a requirement of a Census since the start of the nation. The only persons excluded from the Census were foreign nationals and Native Americans considered as part of tribal nations. All infants and children were included. Even slaves were counted, though as 3/5ths persons rather than 5/5ths persons. But the unborn have never been counted, for over 200 years, and this clarifies that they were not considered even .000005 persons right from the start.
Second, not even all biologists agree on claiming that the commencement of human life is the formation of the zygote. Though many people like that point, the fact is that every ovum that gets successfully fertilized is already alive and genetically human. Hence, it is a valid scientific view to argue that human life is existent in the ovum prior to fertilization, even though most biologists consider an unfertilized ovum incapable of developing into a zygote (which might be only usually true if the multibillion population across human history were considered).
Third, most zygotes/morulae/blastocysts never implant and thus soon die, and many early embryos have so much trouble staying implanted that they die. Most women who have regularly frequent sexual intercourse (typically married women) have had zygotes/morulae/blastocysts that never implanted and early embryos that did not stay implanted. The women never knew they were pregnant, but did they kill them? Yes, they did. The physiological immune response to implantation is to attempt to reject it.
So if a zygote, morula, blastocyst, or early embryo is “human life worthy of legal protection,” if they are “persons,” then most married women commit involuntary manslaughter or negligent homicide multiple times. Some women who actively seek pregnancy have multiple involuntary miscarriages. We can hypothesize a nine- year-old rape victim who has such a miscarriage. Every single girl or woman in this situation would be guilty of such a crime. If you’re female and married and a zygote is a person, you yourself have probably committed multiple homicides.
On one hand, if the unborn are persons or at least human life worthy of legal protection, all such women and girls should of course be prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter and negligent homicide. It would be difficult to do so, given that the government will never know about all these killings, since the women/girls did not even know they were pregnant. Women like myself, who had only irregular sex for a brief time in life and never without the man using significant protection, could probably get a pass, but perhaps all women married for longer than, say, two years, who are quite likely to have killed their zygotes/morulae/blasocysts/embryos? Should they not, after all, be branded as baby-killers?
Of course, it could be argued that the immune response of rejecting pregnancy is a perfectly natural self-defense response, given the placenta’s shutting down of normal immune system activity, making it difficult to protect the body from invasive viruses and infections, and the mortality and health complication rates of normal childbirth. If so, the zygote could even be defined as a person and the women and girls would still be not guilty because their rejections of implantation and miscarriages would be justifiable homicide based on self-defense. So if you’re female and married, perhaps we can give you a pass and say you’re not guilty of killing some of your innocent babies.
How could the government even hope to protect all the “persons” involved if zygotes/morulae/blasocysts/early embryos were “persons”? Perhaps they could monitor menstrual periods of girls from the onset of menstruation and give them monthly pregnancy tests. Then, when anyone got pregnant, the government could force that girl or woman to stay flat on her back in bed for nine months and have her diet and toilet use monitored just to be sure that nothing could go wrong.
You have suggested,”How would you propose to know if she gives birth? A search warrant is usually only granted if the police have ample reason to suspect a crime. But it doesn’t logically follow that a woman should be able to kill her child after birth.” I do not disagree, which is why a woman who gave birth and did not take her child to a hospital to get an official birth certificate – the neonate’s health would be checked at the same time – would be guilty of a crime. But you can’t force a woman to give birth in a hospital because no one can predict at what time childbirth will occur, and once it starts, whether a hospital is near enough to get there before the birth.
You will no doubt object that you just want to stop induced abortion. Well, if a zygote or just-implanted embryo were really legally a person, there would be no difference between protecting a zygote from nonimplantation, protecting an embryo at any stage from involuntary miscarriage or induced abortion, and protecting an eight-month fetus from either involuntary miscarriage or induced abortion. That is because the only argument that makes the woman whose immune system has undoubtedly rejected zygotes and even early embryos innocent of killing her own babies is the same one that makes the woman who has an induced abortion innocent. The self-defense argument works for both women or neither. But this argument cannot work when the neonate is out of the woman. An embryo or fetus can be claimed to harm her immune system and health; a baby cannot.
The Supreme Court was careful in its choice to say that a state can (but does not have to) assert a “compelling interest” in protecting the future life of the fetus (after birth) from the point of viability.The whole point of using viability as the standard is that, if a fetus is viable, it can be removed immediately from the woman and have a chance of being able to live outside the woman. Prior to that point, one can argue that it is not a separate body with a separate life because, if a pregnant woman dies, her previable fetus always dies, but she dies after viability, if it is immediately removed, it has a chance of being able to live without her. The exceptions to the state’s right to ban post-viable abortion are, of course, related to self-defense – the woman’s life and health.
What the state can do to restrict abortion after viability is to restrict the practice of medicine and to designate a post-viable dead fetus as a stillbirth. In that case, if one has either a post-viable miscarriage or abortion, the dead fetus is given the status of a born-dead person deserving of a death certificate, not the status of a pre-viable miscarriage which does not have a separate life.
You have argued that a ban on the use of thalidomide proves that pregnancy is not private. You have asked, why should a woman’s healthcare choices be restricted if pregnancy really is nobody’s business but her own?The answer here is again that the state has the right to regulate medicine. Medical practice related to pregnancy is being regulated so as not to impose birth defects on the born neonate, who is a person. But the fetus does not have the right to be protected from thalidomide on the basis of its existence in the woman: the state has the right to protect the future life as a person of the as yet unborn from the harmful effect. If the woman chose to have an abortion in order to take some medical drug for her own benefit afterward, the state would not interfere, but if she intends to give birth, this restriction is about that future life as a person.
We can disagree about morality. I don’t really care whether you think abortion is immoral. I only care whether abortion is a legal choice. After all, in my heart, I know that if you’re a married woman, you have very likely had several spontaneous abortions you didn’t even know about, and I choice to give you a pass even if your own morality makes you an involuntary baby killer.
Thanks for clarifying your reasoning. I’d like to respond to some of your points.
1. Firstly, as noted by Gerard Nadal above, pregnancy also has positive effects on a woman’s health. Here are a few examples:
http://io9.com/5861990/fetuses-can-donate-their-stem-cells-to-help-heal-their-mothers-hearts
http://health.howstuffworks.com/pregnancy-and-parenting/pregnancy/issues/six-surprising-benefits-of-pregnancy.htm
http://www.nctimes.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/pregnancy-seems-to-protect-against-multiple-sclerosis/article_17fd3ced-7750-5132-9448-0bdbc23f6b17.html#ixzz1p6e9LMmX
Deaths related to childbirth are very rare in the developed world. The relative risk is lower than for driving a car. The number for the U.S. is likely inflated because women are opting for unnecessary Cesarean sections (which doctors in other countries are less willing to do):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20427256/ns/health-pregnancy/t/more-us-women-dying-childbirth/#.UG8ZUxjlFCY
Lethal force is only justified if there’s a substantial risk of death or serious physical injury (and only then as a last resort or an emergency measure). Since pregnancy is safer than something that most people do every day, it is not at all clear that it constitutes a risk substantial enough to justify state-sanctioned abortion in the vast majority of cases. There are also tangible scenarios where one is legally and morally obligated to perform an action that’s more dangerous than not. A father has to pay child support, even if it means working for longer in a dangerous job. If a swimmer has custody of a minor child, she would be morally obligated to rescue the child in the case of drowning (even if that meant putting herself at a marginally greater risk of dying herself). Finally, an “accomplishment worthy of honour” is not mutually exclusive with a duty that you’re required to perform. In the U.S, World War I veterans are honoured and given free meals on Veterans Day (despite being mostly conscripts rather than volunteers). Living to 100 is a significant accomplishment worthy of honour, even in countries where some or all forms of suicide are illegal. Even finishing grade school can be considered an accomplishment, despite the fact that the child really has no say in the matter.
2. What exactly is the difference between “biological” parasitism and [non-biological?] social parasitism (the former term does not appear in any of the articles cited on this thread)? Is social parasitism not also biological? And why would the type of parasitism have any relevance? Finally, are parental obligations (which aren’t always completely voluntary – see child support laws) really dependent on volunteerism? Are you saying that you would be willing to accept infanticide in a society without couples willing to adopt, a foster system, or safe haven laws?
3. I’ll come back to the question of whether or not embryos and fetuses have a constitutional right to life. For now, we’ll focus on the intent of the state laws prohibiting abortions. To start, women did not have a “right to opt for abortion” under state common law. As you implied, it was prohibited after quickening (which, at the time, was thought to signify that the fetus was alive – “quick” is literally derived from the Old English term for “alive”). This means that the purpose of the common law was to protect prenatal life. How you could reasonably get “common law liberty” out of this is beyond me. The science was wrong, but the intent is clear. As for the problem that abortion (after quickening) was only a “great misprision” (that is, a serious misdemeanor) rather than a felony, the nuance likely has to do with the standard of proof. It must be proven that:
a) The woman was pregnant when the abortion was attempted (guaranteed by quickening).
b) The fetus was alive when the abortion was attempted (made possible and likely by quickening, but not guaranteed because the child could have died in-utero after quickening but before the battery).
c) The attempted abortion was the cause of death (made possible and likely by battery markings and quickening, but again not guaranteed).
Since b and c could only be proven with certainty if the child was born alive but succumbed to injuries, murder charges were applied only in this case. Other abortions were classified as misdemeanors.
As scientific knowledge of embryology gradually increased throughout the 19th Century, the demand for more restrictive abortion laws increased and the quickening standard was phased out. The claim that these new laws were nothing more than a move by doctors to get monopoly power was actually not made in the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling. Rather, it was asserted in an amicus brief submitted to the Court in 1989 by pro-Roe historians (derived from the influential book Abortion in America, by James Mohr). One obvious problem is that the new laws completely banned abortion (rather than introducing licensing requirements so that only medical professionals could do it legally). Medical associations also worked to crack down on abortionists in their ranks (suggesting that they were concerned with the act of abortion itself, not the question of who happened to be doing it). The legislators also had no ulterior motives when they enacted them. In fact, they were far more responsive to the call for restrictions on abortion than they were to the medical associations’ other demands (such as control over medical education, which didn’t occur until near the end of the 19th Century), which happened to be far more controversial (there was significant opposition to everything except the anti-abortion provisions). Although professionalization of the medical field was an important priority of the various medical associations, and hindering irregular practice was a convenient side effect of the abortion bans, it clearly was not the only (or even the main) intention. The predominant purpose was protecting unborn human beings.
Doctors gave as reasons both the danger of abortion for women and their new view of embryos, which was essentially that a zygote was a tiny whole person with already formed limbs, organs, etc., that just had to enlarge. The notion that a pregnant woman did more than feed it would have been absurd to them: they believed men procreated life and women just nourished it, a fallacy that many pro-life people appear to believe even today.
Come again?
Back to the question of whether constitutional personhood applied before birth. You have claimed that it did not because the court found that the right to an inheritance is contingent on live birth. Estate law is very complex, but it should be noted that certain inheritance rights are contingent on reaching age of majority. Yet it does not follow that infants, children, and adolescents are not persons (or have less of a right to life than adults). So even if Blackmun was correct, it does not make his case that preborn human beings are not actually persons. However, his claim is in fact refuted by an earlier case before the Supreme Court (McArthur v. Scott), which held that, in context of the Rule Against Perpetuities, any child (born or in the womb) is a “life in being”. Birth had no bearing on legal status. Oddly enough, all three of the articles that Blackmun cited to support his “contingent on live birth” contention actually confuted it. See footnote 66. Personhood for the unborn is a legal tradition as old as English law itself.
You’ve brought up the issue of the Census, a favourite of NARAL and Justice Blackmun. The argument basically goes that all persons (except those explicitly exempted) were counted. Since fetuses were never counted but also weren’t exempted, it must follow that they aren’t persons. This reasoning is clearly suspect. Firstly, there are obvious practical difficulties regarding their inclusion (they are difficult to count reliably, and the mortality rate is high – even more so in earlier centuries). Secondly, it’s long been considered settled law that corporations are persons under the Fourteenth Amendment. However, they too have never been included in any Census (nor are they exempted by any written part of the Constitution). Certainly, corporate personhood and its various aspects are controversial. The debate has escalated in recent years due to the Citizens United ruling. But I doubt any serious legal scholar would find the census objection persuasive.
You argue that an ovum (prior to fertilization) is already alive and genetically human. Firstly, there is no ovum prior to fertilization in humans. Before the sperm cell makes contact, you still only have an oocyte. It does not undergo its final division until after the fertilization process has actually started. Secondly, while it’s true that an oocyte is alive and human, it is not a whole human organism. An outside agent must transform the oocyte before it becomes an embryo (that is, a complete organism capable of directing its own development if placed in the right environment). It makes about as much sense to say that a female gamete is a human organism as it does to say that a piece of blank, unexposed film is a photograph. An undeveloped Polaroid, on the other hand, is a photograph even at the brown smudge stage (just as an embryo is a human organism even when it’s only physically a single cell). When placed in the appropriate environment, each entity will seamlessly develop into its mature form.
Near the end, you hinted at parthenogenesis. As interesting as this may sound, it is not a phenomenon that has been observed in any mammal. It can be artificially induced in the laboratory with calcium ions or electricity, but this again requires an external agent. Before it’s induced or fertilized, the female gamete is not a whole developing organism. There may be alternate hypotheses to the concept of a human beginning at fertilization, but they would require evidence before they can be seriously considered. As it is now, the most widely used textbooks in the field of embryology overwhelmingly accept that human development (and a human being) begins at zygote formation.
Your argument from failed implantation (or rejected embryos) was not actually part of the Roe v. Wade ruling. I understand that you have your reasons for supporting legalized abortion, but you would do well to at least accurately represent the case being reviewed. You also seem to be presenting a false dichotomy. From the premise that all humans should have legal protection, you list two possible conclusions:
1. A woman who has an abortion has committed murder, and a woman whose immune system rejects an embryo is guilty of negligent homicide.
2. The latter woman can plead non-guilty based on the principle of self-defense, but so can the former (meaning that abortion must effectively remain legal).
I don’t think that either is successful. It seems that you’ve overlooked one of the defining features of any type of criminal negligence: the reasonable person standard. If the woman is to be convicted of negligent homicide, the prosecutor must successfully prove (beyond reasonable doubt) that she has engaged in conduct that a reasonable person would have foregone (or that she failed to do something that a reasonable person would have done). A dead human being resulting from an involuntary, automatic bodily action is not sufficient. You can only be held liable if you could have done things differently. Since a woman has little or no control over how her immune system will react to an embryo trying to implant (and there’s still research being done on whether/how implantation failure and early pregnancy loss can be prevented), it’s unfathomable that she is guilty of negligent homicide if pregnancy is not successful. Recall that it’s the cause of death (implantation failure), not the procreative sexual act, that’s under discussion here. Every human that has ever been conceived dies of something within twelve decades, but their parents are not charged with negligent homicide just for bringing them into a dangerous world. Additionally, we would never say that an organ recipient that died from transplant rejection committed suicide. Finally, the example of a nine-year old is specious not only for the preceding reasons, but also because someone so young wouldn’t be tried as an adult in a negligence case.
The bottom line is that the self-defense argument doesn’t work for either woman. However, the woman that involuntarily miscarries an embryo is not guilty of homicide for other reasons (such as the reasonable person standard).
Why do you think that abortion opponents have to support mandatory confinement and strict surveillance of pregnant women if they want to be consistent? We don’t take similar extreme measures to ensure that parents take proper care of their born children. It might make it easier to enforce various laws, but we don’t live in a police state. Likewise, pro-lifers don’t have to support mandatory monthly pregnancy tests for all women or “forc[ing] [each pregnant woman] to stay flat on her back in bed for nine months and have her diet and toilet use monitored just to be sure that nothing could go wrong” unless they’re also looking to create a police state. Since virtually no pro-lifers are pushing for one, this is not a policy that we need to consider.
You have suggested,”How would you propose to know if she gives birth? A search warrant is usually only granted if the police have ample reason to suspect a crime. But it doesn’t logically follow that a woman should be able to kill her child after birth.” I do not disagree, which is why a woman who gave birth and did not take her child to a hospital to get an official birth certificate – the neonate’s health would be checked at the same time – would be guilty of a crime. But you can’t force a woman to give birth in a hospital because no one can predict at what time childbirth will occur, and once it starts, whether a hospital is near enough to get there before the birth.
My purpose here was to respond to your claim that, because it’s impossible for the state to know whether or not a woman is pregnant without illegally invading her privacy, that she should have the right to do whatever she wants with her pregnancy. I pointed out that the same premise can hold true for a woman who gives birth, but there are still certain things that she can and can’t do with her newborn (even though this can’t always be fully enforced without illegally invading her privacy). So the initial justification is still a non sequitur.
Your encapsulation of the Court’s reasoning, in introducing the viability standard, is correct. And as I mentioned in my previous post, it can be shown that this is a circular argument. The relevant text is in Section X:
The argument form is a stated conclusion that’s supposed to be implied by the subsequent premises (some of which might be unstated) as marked by the inference indicator “because”. It can be rewritten as a sequence of premises (some of which might be unstated) followed by a stated conclusion that can be inferred from the premises, using the inference indicator “therefore” instead of “because”:
Or, we can reconstruct it in the standard argument form (an ordered list of premises followed by a conclusion) reworded for clarity:
P: The fetus is capable of living outside the mother’s womb only after the point of viability.
C: The State’s interest in protecting prenatal life is sufficiently compelling only after the point of viability.
Clearly, the argument is not valid as written. C does not automatically follow from P. Therefore, it must rely on a suppressed premise. Inserting the purely formal one (if P, then C) would be uncharitable, and building a more elaborate case for the viability standard would be reading too much into the Opinion of the Court (which would lack intellectual integrity). Instead, the (now valid) argument with the unstated premise divulged reads as follows:
P1 (suppressed): The State’s interest in protecting prenatal life is sufficiently compelling if and only if the fetus is capable of living outside the mother’s womb.
P2: The fetus is capable of living outside the mother’s womb only after the point of viability.
C: The State’s interest in protecting prenatal life is sufficiently compelling only after the point of viability.
But P1 is identical to C (and is therefore just as disputable). Consider another argument of the same form but differing in content:
P1: Magical horses with horns growing out of their foreheads exist.
P2: Unicorns are magical horses with horns growing out of their foreheads.
C: Unicorns exist.
Leaving out the universally held linguistic assumption that every magical horse with a horn growing out of its forehead is also a unicorn, this argument is circular. P1 is, again, identical to C. Justice Blackmun’s argument is fallacious for the same reason. As esteemed legal scholar John Hart Ely wrote, “the Court’s defense seems to mistake a definition for a syllogism.”
The “life or health of the mother” doctrine that governs a state’s ability to ban abortion after viability does seem, at first glance, consistent with the legal principle of self-defence. However, the Doe v. Bolton decision defined health very broadly. In 1981, the Senate Judiciary Committee noted the following after a thorough review:
(see Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 1986).
When I brought up the issues of thalidomide and post-viability abortions, I was not trying to establish or support the idea that fetuses are (or should be) considered persons from a legal standpoint. Rather, my point was to evaluate the truth of the statements, “Pregnancy is designed to be private. Only birth is designed to be someone else’s business.” These assertions are false if we recognize that there are certain things that a woman should not be allowed to do with respect to her pregnancy. The Supreme Court and yourself have both implied that there are, with the former explicitly stating that a pregnant woman’s right to privacy is not absolute. You argue that these two examples are really just cases of the state exercising its right to regulate the medical practice, but the same would hold true for banning earlier abortions. Yet I doubt any supporter of legal abortion would deny that such a ban is in fact a restriction on a pregnant woman’s choices (and rightly so). So are bans on thalidomide and post-viability abortions.
Does it immediately follow that, because there are some things that a woman is not and should not be allowed to do regarding pregnancy, that abortion should be illegal as well? Of course not. I have other reasons for thinking this is so (some of which I’ve already stated). You (and the Roe Court) take a different approach, appealing to the state’s right to prevent harm to a future person. But either way, the claim that a pregnant woman has an absolute right to privacy is demonstrably false.
I can’t force you to become interested in a moral issue that you’re indifferent to. As I see it, however, abortion should be illegal because it’s the unjustifiable killing of an innocent human being (which is inevitably an ethical problem). You might not personally agree or even care whether or not that is the case, but you’re unlikely to have much success in resolving any given issue unless you engage your critics on terms they can and do already accept. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to make your case, but I must confess that I remain unconvinced that any of the following statements are true:
– A fetus is a parasite in a sense that’s relevant to the abortion debate.
– There is no reasonable case that the U.S. Constitution could be interpreted to apply personhood to prenatal humans.
– Based on legal precedent up to 1973, there exists an implied constitutional right to privacy broad enough to eclipse a State’s interest in protecting prenatal life (even if fetuses are not to be considered legal persons).
– The viability standard has merit.
– Abortion should be legal in a just society (irrespective of the constitutional merit of the Roe v. Wade decision).
Thanks for clarifying your reasoning. I’d like to respond to some of your points.
1. Firstly, as noted by Gerard Nadal above, pregnancy also has positive effects on a woman’s health. Here are a few examples:
http://io9.com/5861990/fetuses-can-donate-their-stem-cells-to-help-heal-their-mothers-hearts
http://health.howstuffworks.com/pregnancy-and-parenting/pregnancy/issues/six-surprising-benefits-of-pregnancy.htm
http://www.nctimes.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/pregnancy-seems-to-protect-against-multiple-sclerosis/article_17fd3ced-7750-5132-9448-0bdbc23f6b17.html#ixzz1p6e9LMmX
Deaths related to childbirth are very rare in the developed world. The relative risk is lower than for driving a car. The number for the U.S. is likely inflated because women are opting for unnecessary Cesarean sections (which doctors in other countries are less willing to do):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20427256/ns/health-pregnancy/t/more-us-women-dying-childbirth/#.UG8ZUxjlFCY
Lethal force is only justified if there’s a substantial risk of death or serious physical injury (and only then as a last resort or an emergency measure). Since pregnancy is safer than something that most people do every day, it is not at all clear that it constitutes a risk substantial enough to justify state-sanctioned abortion in the vast majority of cases. There are also tangible scenarios where one is legally and morally obligated to perform an action that’s more dangerous than not. A father has to pay child support, even if it means working for longer in a dangerous job. If a swimmer has custody of a minor child, she would be morally obligated to rescue the child in the case of drowning (even if that meant putting herself at a marginally greater risk of dying herself). Finally, an “accomplishment worthy of honour” is not mutually exclusive with a duty that you’re required to perform. In the U.S, World War I veterans are honoured and given free meals on Veterans Day (despite being mostly conscripts rather than volunteers). Living to 100 is a significant accomplishment worthy of honour, even in countries where some or all forms of suicide are illegal. Even finishing grade school can be considered an accomplishment, despite the fact that the child really has no say in the matter.
2. What exactly is the difference between “biological” parasitism and [non-biological?] social parasitism (the former term does not appear in any of the articles cited on this thread)? Is social parasitism not also biological? And why would the type of parasitism have any relevance? Finally, are parental obligations (which aren’t always completely voluntary – see child support laws) really dependent on volunteerism? Are you saying that you would be willing to accept infanticide in a society without couples willing to adopt, a foster system, or safe haven laws?
3. I’ll come back to the question of whether or not embryos and fetuses have a constitutional right to life. For now, we’ll focus on the intent of the state laws prohibiting abortions. To start, women did not have a “right to opt for abortion” under state common law. As you implied, it was prohibited after quickening (which, at the time, was thought to signify that the fetus was alive – “quick” is literally derived from the Old English term for “alive”). This means that the purpose of the common law was to protect prenatal life. How you could reasonably get “common law liberty” out of this is beyond me. The science was wrong, but the intent is clear. As for the problem that abortion (after quickening) was only a “great misprision” (that is, a serious misdemeanor) rather than a felony, the nuance likely has to do with the standard of proof. It must be proven that:
a) The woman was pregnant when the abortion was attempted (guaranteed by quickening).
b) The fetus was alive when the abortion was attempted (made possible and likely by quickening, but not guaranteed because the child could have died in-utero after quickening but before the battery).
c) The attempted abortion was the cause of death (made possible and likely by battery markings and quickening, but again not guaranteed).
Since b and c could only be proven with certainty if the child was born alive but succumbed to injuries, murder charges were applied only in this case. Other abortions were classified as misdemeanors.
As scientific knowledge of embryology gradually increased throughout the 19th Century, the demand for more restrictive abortion laws increased and the quickening standard was phased out. The claim that these new laws were nothing more than a move by doctors to get monopoly power was actually not made in the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling. Rather, it was asserted in an amicus brief submitted to the Court in 1989 by pro-Roe historians (derived from the influential book Abortion in America, by James Mohr). One obvious problem is that the new laws completely banned abortion (rather than introducing licensing requirements so that only medical professionals could do it legally). Medical associations also worked to crack down on abortionists in their ranks (suggesting that they were concerned with the act of abortion itself, not the question of who happened to be doing it). The legislators also had no ulterior motives when they enacted them. In fact, they were far more responsive to the call for restrictions on abortion than they were to the medical associations’ other demands (such as control over medical education, which didn’t occur until near the end of the 19th Century), which happened to be far more controversial (there was significant opposition to everything except the anti-abortion provisions). Although professionalization of the medical field was an important priority of the various medical associations, and hindering irregular practice was a convenient side effect of the abortion bans, it clearly was not the only (or even the main) intention. The predominant purpose was protecting unborn human beings.
Doctors gave as reasons both the danger of abortion for women and their new view of embryos, which was essentially that a zygote was a tiny whole person with already formed limbs, organs, etc., that just had to enlarge. The notion that a pregnant woman did more than feed it would have been absurd to them: they believed men procreated life and women just nourished it, a fallacy that many pro-life people appear to believe even today.
Come again?
Back to the question of whether constitutional personhood applied before birth. You have claimed that it did not because the court found that the right to an inheritance is contingent on live birth. Estate law is very complex, but it should be noted that certain inheritance rights are contingent on reaching age of majority. Yet it does not follow that infants, children, and adolescents are not persons (or have less of a right to life than adults). So even if Blackmun was correct, it does not make his case that preborn human beings are not actually persons. However, his claim is in fact refuted by an earlier case before the Supreme Court (McArthur v. Scott), which held that, in context of the Rule Against Perpetuities, any child (born or in the womb) is a “life in being”. Birth had no bearing on legal status. Oddly enough, all three of the articles that Blackmun cited to support his “contingent on live birth” contention actually confuted it. See footnote 66. Personhood for the unborn is a legal tradition as old as English law itself.
You’ve brought up the issue of the Census, a favourite of NARAL and Justice Blackmun. The argument basically goes that all persons (except those explicitly exempted) were counted. Since fetuses were never counted but also weren’t exempted, it must follow that they aren’t persons. This reasoning is clearly suspect. Firstly, there are obvious practical difficulties regarding their inclusion (they are difficult to count reliably, and the mortality rate is high – even more so in earlier centuries). Secondly, it’s long been considered settled law that corporations are persons under the Fourteenth Amendment. However, they too have never been included in any Census (nor are they exempted by any written part of the Constitution). Certainly, corporate personhood and its various aspects are controversial. The debate has escalated in recent years due to the Citizens United ruling. But I doubt any serious legal scholar would find the census objection persuasive.
You argue that an ovum (prior to fertilization) is already alive and genetically human. Firstly, there is no ovum prior to fertilization in humans. Before the sperm cell makes contact, you still only have an oocyte. It does not undergo its final division until after the fertilization process has actually started. Secondly, while it’s true that an oocyte is alive and human, it is not a whole human organism. An outside agent must transform the oocyte before it becomes an embryo (that is, a complete organism capable of directing its own development if placed in the right environment). It makes about as much sense to say that a female gamete is a human organism as it does to say that a piece of blank, unexposed film is a photograph. An undeveloped Polaroid, on the other hand, is a photograph even at the brown smudge stage (just as an embryo is a human organism even when it’s only physically a single cell). When placed in the appropriate environment, each entity will seamlessly develop into its mature form.
Near the end, you hinted at parthenogenesis. As interesting as this may sound, it is not a phenomenon that has been observed in any mammal. It can be artificially induced in the laboratory with calcium ions or electricity, but this again requires an external agent. Before it’s induced or fertilized, the female gamete is not a whole developing organism. There may be alternate hypotheses to the concept of a human beginning at fertilization, but they would require evidence before they can be seriously considered. As it is now, the most widely used textbooks in the field of embryology overwhelmingly accept that human development (and a human being) begins at zygote formation.
Your argument from failed implantation (or rejected embryos) was not actually part of the Roe v. Wade ruling. I understand that you have your reasons for supporting legalized abortion, but you would do well to at least accurately represent the case being reviewed. You also seem to be presenting a false dichotomy. From the premise that all humans should have legal protection, you list two possible conclusions:
1. A woman who has an abortion has committed murder, and a woman whose immune system rejects an embryo is guilty of negligent homicide.
2. The latter woman can plead non-guilty based on the principle of self-defense, but so can the former (meaning that abortion must effectively remain legal).
I don’t think that either is successful. It seems that you’ve overlooked one of the defining features of any type of criminal negligence: the reasonable person standard. If the woman is to be convicted of negligent homicide, the prosecutor must successfully prove (beyond reasonable doubt) that she has engaged in conduct that a reasonable person would have foregone (or that she failed to do something that a reasonable person would have done). A dead human being resulting from an involuntary, automatic bodily action is not sufficient. You can only be held liable if you could have done things differently. Since a woman has little or no control over how her immune system will react to an embryo trying to implant (and there’s still research being done on whether/how implantation failure and early pregnancy loss can be prevented), it’s unfathomable that she is guilty of negligent homicide if pregnancy is not successful. Recall that it’s the cause of death (implantation failure), not the procreative sexual act, that’s under discussion here. Every human that has ever been conceived dies of something within twelve decades, but their parents are not charged with negligent homicide just for bringing them into a dangerous world. Additionally, we would never say that an organ recipient that died from transplant rejection committed suicide. Finally, the example of a nine-year old is specious not only for the preceding reasons, but also because someone so young wouldn’t be tried as an adult in a negligence case.
The bottom line is that the self-defense argument doesn’t work for either woman. However, the woman that involuntarily miscarries an embryo is not guilty of homicide for other reasons (such as the reasonable person standard).
Why do you think that abortion opponents have to support mandatory confinement and strict surveillance of pregnant women if they want to be consistent? We don’t take similar extreme measures to ensure that parents take proper care of their born children. It might make it easier to enforce various laws, but we don’t live in a police state. Likewise, pro-lifers don’t have to support mandatory monthly pregnancy tests for all women or “forc[ing] [each pregnant woman] to stay flat on her back in bed for nine months and have her diet and toilet use monitored just to be sure that nothing could go wrong” unless they’re also looking to create a police state. Since virtually no pro-lifers are pushing for one, this is not a policy that we need to consider.
You have suggested,”How would you propose to know if she gives birth? A search warrant is usually only granted if the police have ample reason to suspect a crime. But it doesn’t logically follow that a woman should be able to kill her child after birth.” I do not disagree, which is why a woman who gave birth and did not take her child to a hospital to get an official birth certificate – the neonate’s health would be checked at the same time – would be guilty of a crime. But you can’t force a woman to give birth in a hospital because no one can predict at what time childbirth will occur, and once it starts, whether a hospital is near enough to get there before the birth.
My purpose here was to respond to your claim that, because it’s impossible for the state to know whether or not a woman is pregnant without illegally invading her privacy, that she should have the right to do whatever she wants with her pregnancy. I pointed out that the same premise can hold true for a woman who gives birth, but there are still certain things that she can and can’t do with her newborn (even though this can’t always be fully enforced without illegally invading her privacy). So the initial justification is still a non sequitur.
Your encapsulation of the Court’s reasoning, in introducing the viability standard, is correct. And as I mentioned in my previous post, it can be shown that this is a circular argument. The relevant text is in Section X:
The argument form is a stated conclusion that’s supposed to be implied by the subsequent premises (some of which might be unstated) as marked by the inference indicator “because”. It can be rewritten as a sequence of premises (some of which might be unstated) followed by a stated conclusion that can be inferred from the premises, using the inference indicator “therefore” instead of “because”:
Or, we can reconstruct it in the standard argument form (an ordered list of premises followed by a conclusion) reworded for clarity:
P: The fetus is capable of living outside the mother’s womb only after the point of viability.
C: The State’s interest in protecting prenatal life is sufficiently compelling only after the point of viability.
Clearly, the argument is not valid as written. C does not automatically follow from P. Therefore, it must rely on a suppressed premise. Inserting the purely formal one (if P, then C) would be uncharitable, and building a more elaborate case for the viability standard would be reading too much into the Opinion of the Court (which would lack intellectual integrity). Instead, the (now valid) argument with the unstated premise divulged reads as follows:
P1 (suppressed): The State’s interest in protecting prenatal life is sufficiently compelling if and only if the fetus is capable of living outside the mother’s womb.
P2: The fetus is capable of living outside the mother’s womb only after the point of viability.
C: The State’s interest in protecting prenatal life is sufficiently compelling only after the point of viability.
But P1 is identical to C (and is therefore just as disputable). Consider another argument of the same form but differing in content:
P1: Magical horses with horns growing out of their foreheads exist.
P2: Unicorns are magical horses with horns growing out of their foreheads.
C: Unicorns exist.
Leaving out the universally held linguistic assumption that every magical horse with a horn growing out of its forehead is also a unicorn, this argument is circular. P1 is, again, identical to C. Justice Blackmun’s argument is fallacious for the same reason. As esteemed legal scholar John Hart Ely wrote, “the Court’s defense seems to mistake a definition for a syllogism.”
The “life or health of the mother” doctrine that governs a state’s ability to ban abortion after viability does seem, at first glance, consistent with the legal principle of self-defence. However, the Doe v. Bolton decision defined health very broadly. In 1981, the Senate Judiciary Committee noted the following after a thorough review:
Chief Justice Warren Burger, although a supporter of Roe and Doe in 1973, eventually came to the same conclusion. He called the Court’s concern for the state’s interest in protecting viable fetuses “shallow rhetoric”:
(see Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 1986).
When I brought up the issues of thalidomide and post-viability abortions, I was not trying to establish or support the idea that fetuses are (or should be) considered persons from a legal standpoint. Rather, my point was to evaluate the truth of the statements, “Pregnancy is designed to be private. Only birth is designed to be someone else’s business.” These assertions are false if we recognize that there are certain things that a woman should not be allowed to do with respect to her pregnancy. The Supreme Court and yourself have both implied that there are, with the former explicitly stating that a pregnant woman’s right to privacy is not absolute. You argue that these two examples are really just cases of the state exercising its right to regulate the medical practice, but the same would hold true for banning earlier abortions. Yet I doubt any supporter of legal abortion would deny that such a ban is in fact a restriction on a pregnant woman’s choices (and rightly so). So are bans on thalidomide and post-viability abortions.
Does it immediately follow that, because there are some things that a woman is not and should not be allowed to do regarding pregnancy, that abortion should be illegal as well? Of course not. I have other reasons for thinking this is so (some of which I’ve already stated). You (and the Roe Court) take a different approach, appealing to the state’s right to prevent harm to a future person. But either way, the claim that a pregnant woman has an absolute right to privacy is demonstrably false.
I can’t force you to become interested in a moral issue that you’re indifferent to. As I see it, however, abortion should be illegal because it’s the unjustifiable killing of an innocent human being (which is inevitably an ethical problem). You might not personally agree or even care whether or not that is the case, but you’re unlikely to have much success in resolving any given issue unless you engage your critics on terms they can and do already accept. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to make your case, but I must confess that I remain unconvinced that any of the following statements are true:
– A fetus is a parasite in a sense that’s relevant to the abortion debate.
– There is no reasonable case that the U.S. Constitution could be interpreted to apply personhood to prenatal humans.
– Based on legal precedent up to 1973, there exists an implied constitutional right to privacy broad enough to eclipse a State’s interest in protecting prenatal life (even if fetuses are not to be considered legal persons).
– The viability standard has merit.
– Abortion should be legal in a just society (irrespective of the constitutional merit of the Roe v. Wade decision).
Thanks for your reply to many of my points. I am responding in kind.
I will never suggest that pregnancy cannot have positive effects on a woman’s health or that deaths related to childbirth are common in the developed world. However, FYI, the maternal mortality rate for women in the US places the US below 39 other countries today – hardly evidence that the US is a developed country. Moreover, a huge percentage of pregnancies/childbirths in the US involve significant complications seriously detrimental to health. See, e.g., references for this in http://www.amnestyusa.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/deadlydelivery.pdf
While “The number for the U.S. is likely inflated because women are opting for unnecessary Cesarean sections,” in numerous cases of poor women, doctors are the ones making the choice because they don’t want to waste their time waiting for a natural delivery. At the same time, the number is also likely lower than is actually the case, because few states require that women’s childbirth deaths be reported as such: if a woman has a heart attack or stroke during childbirth, the death can be and often is reported without any mention of the fact that childbirth caused the problem.
In the state where I live, lethal force is justified to prevent or stop a rape because rape itself is considered a serious physical injury. And as a woman who was forcibly raped at 21 before Roe v Wade, I assure you that it was so serious an injury that I would have preferred being killed. I did not fight the rapist to my death only because I knew my death would have been more terrible for my mom and dad. However, when I thought I might be unable to access a legal abortion in my state or enough money to go to a country where it was legal or an illegal abortion, I was not only prepared to commit suicide, but planned one carefully for the worst case scenario, so that I would not fail or, if I did, my comatose body could not be used to incubate a rape pregnancy. To me, it was simply not true that I was one flesh with the rapist, but I knew that an embryo, fetus, or child originating in rape combines the DNA of the woman with the rapist and is, therefore, an objective statement of that unity. I was unwilling to use my own life to grow such an entity. I considered such a possibility to be a violation not only of my person, but of truth, and, in consequence, of my conscience and my God.
My objection to anti-abortion laws is not, in fact, based on the danger to the woman. It is based on the fact that women are supposed to be persons equal under the law. No man is compelled to have his immune system compromised or his sex organs violated by anyone or anything, yet pregnancy is such a violation unless undertaken willingly, unless she consents to pregnancy.
Even though a zygote, morula, or blastocyst has sufficient resources to live in a woman’s uterus without attaching biologically to her bodily tissue, it cannot continue living that way very long. We can grow blastocysts in petri dishes, though it is illegal to grow human ones beyond 14 days. Research with nonhuman ones shows that their natural lifespan can be doubled with supernutrients. That means human blastocysts/embryos could last in a petri dish at most 20 days, as their natural lifespans are at most 10 days. Thus, fertilization does not result in “a human being,” but a live human entity with a natural lifespan of 10 days which can be doubled to 20. The reason that the entity is able to grow into a human being is that: it implants into the bodily tissue of a woman’s uterine wall; it uses some of her endometrial tissue to make a placenta; it chemically directs the placenta to cause the death of some of the crucial attack cells of her immune system and the starvation of others so that they go into latency and cannot protect her from invasive viruses and infections; it causes the placenta to re-channel her blood so that nutrients, oxygen, and antibodies can be drawn from it for the embryo’s use, etc. From the time from implantation, the embryo/fetus cannot be claimed to have an individual life of its own because it is no longer individual: biological attachment has made it part of the woman’s body. If the woman dies before its viability, it always dies, just as her limbs and internal organs die. It continues to live only as part of her body, receiving life from her body.
2. What I have described just above is biological parasitism. The embryo/fetus cannot live without being biologically attached to a living organism from which it derives nutrients and everything else it needs to continue living, usually to the detriment of that organism. That is how embryos/fetuses live even though we do not call them parasites. Some would prefer to call the placenta a parasite (e.g., P Lowry, The placenta is simply a neuroendocrine parasite, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18601692). An example of intraspecific parasitism would be the sexual parasitism of the deep-sea ceratiod anglerfish (http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/collections/ichthyology/documents/pietsch/Dimorphism.pdf). Most forms of social parasitism studied in the biological sciences are brood parasitism (laying one’s eggs in another’s nest, etc.). However, from a broader perspective, the born child that cannot live without the care of other born individuals is an example. There is here no particularistic biologically attachment. The mother is biologically unnecessary to the infant’s life (even though breastfeeding for at least two months provides important immunities for later in life): anyone can care for it.
Any woman who gives birth can give her infant up for adoption. If she does, she has no parental obligation to it. Child support, which is merely monetary and not biological, is only required of those who do not give up the infant for adoption. It is, in my opinion, unjust that men are required to provide child support if the women choose to keep their own infants, because, if those women choose to give them up for adoption, they are not so required.
I’m not worried about society having no people interested in adoption or fostering, as that has never happened in this society. I am of course unwilling to accept infanticide. In childbirth, the fetus is transformed from an entity which draws continuous life from a woman as part of her body, receiving oxygen in the same way her limbs do, into an individuated person biologically separate from the woman, receiving oxygen by breathing as all individual persons do.
3. You say “women did not have a ‘right to opt for abortion’ under state common law, but they did. Yes, it was prohibited after quickening. You seem to think that, at the time, people believed that embryos/fetuses were not alive before quickening but were alive afterward, but there is no clear evidence of this. To begin with, abortion after quickening was a misdemeanor, not a felony, yet all forms of unjustifiable homicide are and were felonies. How then could abortion have been interpreted as taking the life of a person? I cannot agree, therefore, that the purpose of the common law prohibition of abortion after quickening was clearly to protect prenatal life. That is simply your interpretive reading. “The standard of proof” is not a reason for refusing to classify abortion as a felony at that time.
I stand by what I said about 19th century doctors: you idealize them, and that makes your portrait far from realistic. Though some of them sought bans on abortion by doctors, many doctors performed illegal abortions through the whole period of anti-abortion laws. See: Reagan, Leslie J. When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1997 1997.
The only reason I mentioned the example of inheritance laws as they were found to apply to the unborn is this. In Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court had to consider whether any rights had ever been recognized in federal law. The Constitution did not use the word person anywhere in such a way as to imply that it applied to persons, so the SC turned to federal case law. It examined every federal case related to the issue of rights of the unborn. It found that, in all cases where such rights were recognized, not just inheritance cases, the rights were always contingent on live birth. Blackmun did not make the decision that this was so – seven of nine justices agreed and Blackmun just wrote the majority decision.
I have not read the exact text of the decision in McArthur v Scott. If you are a lawyer of the quality and credentials to be an SC justice, you might be right, but a definitive legal interpretation of the wording in the decision would require comparison to the wording in other similar cases. You are correct that Blackmun did not say the unborn were not persons, only that it had never been established in federal law that they were. But it was agreed by both parties and the SC justices that it had not been established.
It would be very difficult to establish that the unborn were persons in English law prior to Lord Ellenborough’s Act of 1803.
The “obvious practical difficulties regarding [fetuses’] inclusion” in the Census is not a reasonable excuse for not including them or at least mentioning them in the Census law if they were really believed to be persons. The “personhood” of corporations is not, in fact, equivalent personhood – they do not have all the same rights as those who are persons in the implied meaning of the Constitution’s references to persons, but rather constitute a special category based on a special, limited definition.
You prefer the term oocyte to ovum, and you are free to use that term. But the notion that the term ovum is never used for an oocyte prior to fertilization is belied by many specialized biological articles and books. It does not matter to me that an oocyte (since you prefer this term) is not a whole human organism because, frankly, a zygote is not a whole human organism, either. A zygote is a biological blueprint for the growth of a whole human organism. From this blueprint, it is possible to grow more than one embryo, an embryo with sex characteristics opposite to those of the blueprint, or an embryo so hopelessly deformed that it bears no resemblance to a normal human organism in anything but DNA. You suggest that, “When placed in the appropriate environment, each entity will seamlessly develop into its mature form,” and that is not the objective truth about pregnancy. And if it were, a woman’s inner body is not “an environment.” It is the body of a person with rights.
My only reason for hinting at parthenogenesis is that some biologists believe that it may well be possible though extremely rare. It has nothing to do with the argument that a woman, as a person, has the right not to be raped or physically assaulted by anyone or anything, not even a blastocyst or embryo. Since the blastocyst/embryo/ fetus is doing this in the sex organs of a woman, I call that rape, and it is on that basis that, for me, the lethal force in self-defense argument does work.
Abortion opponents would not have to support mandatory confinement and strict surveillance of pregnant women, but that would mean they did not really care about saving the life of embryos. If there were evidence that a pregnant woman did not want to be pregnant, it would be cause to suspect that she was planning to abort the pregnancy – or commit suicide, which, prior to viability, would certainly cause the death of an embryo or fetus.
We do take extreme measures to protect born children when there is evidence as cause to suspect that a parent might physically harm her/his children. We take those children away, saying the parent is unfit. The problem in the case of embryos/fetuses is that they cannot be taken away without killing them. You say, “We don’t live in a police state,” but I would consider any state in which a woman did not have the right to choose to end or continue a pregnancy to be a police state, and so would many millions of other US women.
Regardless of your objections. it is impossible for the state to know whether or not a woman is pregnant. Without cause, it is illegal for the police to enter one’s home against one’s objections, and we all have the right to stay at home and not show our bodies to the people who seek to enter. This is a very different situation from that of a woman who gives birth. A wealthy woman with sufficient resources to have all her needs delivered to her door and to hire a doctor to make house calls could, conceivably, have a medical abortion in the first 8 weeks in the privacy of her own home. If you had no reason to suspect she was pregnant (and at, e.g., 8 weeks it would not even show), how could you prevent or prosecute this? The result of a medical abortion goes right down the toilet, the mifepristone and misopristol packages could be burned, and the doctor could record the purpose of the house call as something completely different. The only accessible evidence against the doctor or woman would be mifepristone and misopristol carried on the doctor’s person, but again, the police would need cause to search him/her. Moreover, what would prevent specialists in chemistry from making their own mifepristone and misopristol?
Having a baby and not taking it to the hospital to get a birth certificate is quite a different case. Babies have objective bodies, make considerable noise, require diapers, and otherwise involve all sorts of things that might be detected from just coming to one’s door or looking through one’s trash. An embryo/fetus is just not objectively detectable in that way
Re your logical analysis of the Court’s reasoning on the viability standard -
I find your claim of circular argument strange. Viability is defined as that point in development when a fetus has some capacity to live in biological detachment and removal from a woman’s body before viability. It is a known fact that an embryo/ fetus does not have this capacity before it has sufficient lung development to breathe oxygen. The point of saying the compelling interest of the state begins at viability is obvious. Before that point, one cannot with assurance say whether the embryo/fetus is or is not a part of a woman’s body except for its DNA. Because an embryo/fetus always dies if the woman carrying it dies prior to its viability, one cannot with assurance say that its apparent life belongs to it as an individual or belongs to the woman as the life of her leg belongs to her. But at viability, the fetus has a chance of continuing to live even without biological attachment to a living woman, i.e., as an individual person which clearly has its own life.
I do not think that a pregnant woman has an absolute right to privacy. In my view, if a woman decides to continue a pregnancy, she forfeits the right to act in a way that is known to increase significantly the probability of serious defects in the post-birth infant that will reduce its quality of life. However, I do not think that abortion is unjustifiable killing of an innocent, because: 1) I do not think that its apparent life is its own, but rather that of the woman carrying it; and 2) I do not think any embryo/fetus can be claimed to be harmless given its objective behavior in relation to the woman’s body.
In (2), I am not claiming that the embryo/fetus is not legally or formally innocent. I am, instead, making an implicit comparison with a legally insane rapist. In my state, a rape victim and a police officer have the legal right to use lethal force to stop a legally insane person from continuing an act of raping the victim even though the rapist could never be prosecuted for the crime because of his/her legal insanity.
I honestly see no difference between the legally insane rapist and the unwanted embryo/fetus in a case where the woman did not consent to pregnancy beforehand. I am aware that, in law, rape is defined in such a way that the uterus is not listed among the orifices that cannot be violated. However, they do both violate the internal sexual organs of the woman against her will and neither is capable of understanding that this is a crime.
Earlier, I listed many things that the blastocyst/embryo/fetus does to the body of the woman. No born person has the right in the US to do any of those things to a born person against his/her will – penetrate and use the person’s bodily tissue, disable part of the person’s immune system, re-channel the person’s blood and withdraw nutrients and oxygen from blood, etc. If you did such things to anyone, you would be considered to be engaging in injurious physical assault at the least. No one has the right to attach biologically to another person without that person’s consent or to access that person’s blood. Even in a case where only one person has a blood type that can save another’s life, it is illegal to take that person’s blood and use it for that purpose against that person’s will. If even born person’s do not have such rights, so giving a zygote/blastocyst/embryo/fetus a right to do so is giving more rights to it than to a born person. That is, in fact, alienating the rights of a real person and transferring them to the unborn.
I don’t really care about resolving this issue by convincing anyone. I merely want women in the US to have the legal right to choose whether to continue or abort a pregnancy and speak on behalf of that. If this legal right is taken away, I will help women use their right to liberty to go to Canada, whether to have abortions or to migrate permanently to a country where, by law, you have to be born to be “a human being.”
I personally believe that any person, male or female, who seeks to deny that right to any woman has, essentially, the mentality of a rapist. With all your intellect, it’s clear that that is what your mentality is. The embryo is more of a person to you: the woman is a breeding pig. She is not to have a conscience, is to be forced to bear false witness before her God, is not to have freedom of religion in relation to her own body. She is, in short, an animal and not a person at all. Thank God for Canada.
Sorry for the late reply. I hadn’t the time to give your post the level of thoroughness that one should. I think I have a much better understanding of where you’re coming from regarding parasites and self-defence. I’m still not convinced that the risk of death or serious physical injury is sufficient to justify abortion as self-defence for the vast majority of pregnancies (which are medically normal). Although the recorded data on complications related to childbirth may be incomplete, the same argument likely holds true for abortion complications:
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-06-16/news/ct-met-abortion-reporting-20110615_1_abortion-providers-fewer-abortions-national-abortion-federation
However, you have clearly stated that your self-defence case is not grounded in the prospect of childbirth being life-threatening but is instead based on the bodily autonomy line of arguments (more on that later). You use the example of a non-lethal, criminally innocent rapist to illustrate this (and the law does indeed allow you to use deadly force if it’s necessary to repel such an aggressor). Even if the probability of a woman dying in childbirth were exactly zero, you would still support legalized abortion. So I don’t think there’s much more I need to say on maternal mortality.
I am very sorry to hear that you’re a victim of rape. Rape is an unspeakable, horrific crime. I sincerely hope that the attacker was punished to the fullest extent of the law, though I know that all too often this is not the case. However, I am glad that you’re still with us. It’s also admirable that you’re brave enough to share your story.
When you discuss the biological status of the unborn, I can’t help but notice a glaring contradiction. You’ve argued that a fetus is a parasite, but then you claim that it’s part of the mother’s body. The two are mutually exclusive. A parasite is, by definition, a whole organism (that is, a living individual) distinct from the host. It can never be considered part of the host. And its species must be human, because it has human parents and human DNA. So if you want to argue that a fetus is a parasite, you have to concede that it’s biologically a member of our species (a human being). There’s no way around it. A tapeworm can’t survive without a host, but it’s still a separate individual life (though obviously a different species).
It is also extremely counterintuitive to view the fetus as part of the mother’s body if you choose to take this route (and therefore abandon the parasite argument). Even after implantation and placenta formation, fetal development is self-directed. The cells of the fetus are coordinated as part of a whole organism, separate from the mother. It has its own heartbeat at 18-22 days (which is not synchronized with the mother’s), its own organ systems (most of which are fully formed and begin functioning at 12 weeks), its own circulating blood supply (which only receives oxygen from the mother, the actual blood never transfuses – it might even be a different type), and 50% of the time starts growing male genitalia at around 9 weeks. But women don’t have male genitalia, and can’t have more than one blood type. So regardless of viability, fetuses are not part of their mothers. It’s far more plausible that they’re separate human beings that happen to depend on others for nourishment. Basic knowledge of human biology allows us to clearly differentiate between a woman’s limb and a separate life growing inside her womb. Viability is not necessary to make this distinction.
Pregnancy is the most common phenomenon in which one person is dependent on another through direct biological attachment. However, it is not the only one. Conjoined twins often rely on each other’s organs. This is either mutual, or one is dependent on the other. But the state has a compelling interest in protecting each life (in fact, it has an obligation to), even though at least one of the twins would not be able to survive if they were separated. Just like with pregnancy, both twins will die if one of them dies. So it would seem that viability is not an adequate standard for determining who can and should receive legal protection.
You have said that you are personally opposed to child support laws. I appreciate your consistency here. The overwhelming response from pro-choice feminists is “hell yeah!” when they’re asked about them. I don’t, however, agree with your implications. Sabotaging the entire system of family law just doesn’t seem right to me. Suppose a woman gives birth unexpectedly in a deserted area (perhaps she never knew she was pregnant). Adoption is out of the picture; the only options available are parenting and abandonment. Intuitively, it would seem that she has a duty to take care of the infant (at least until she can place it in the care of someone else). I think it’s most reasonable to conclude that parents have prima facie obligations toward their minor children (as opposed to voluntarily assuming them), which are only severed if these responsibilities can be transferred to someone else (or the child reaches a certain age).
I did not say that, in the 18th Century, “people believed that embryos/fetuses were not alive before quickening but were alive afterward”. I said that quickening “was thought to signify that the fetus was alive” (a sufficient condition, but maybe not a necessary one, for life). Much like movement signifies that a born person is alive. If you’re moving around, you certainly aren’t dead. If someone might be dead, the first thing we notice is the cessation of movement (we then examine the other indicators, such as heartbeat, to determine whether or not the individual is still alive). At the time, quickening was the only reliable medical evidence for the presence of fetal life.
The standard of proof was in fact a reason for refusing to classify abortion as a felony under the common law. William Stanford, in The Pleas of the Crown, noted this in the 16th Century:
This is why the “born-alive rule” became precedent, as famously stated by Sir Edward Coke (and later reiterated in American common law). Even today, it is not unheard of for a murder suspect to be given a misdemeanor sentence when there is not enough evidence to convict them of a felony. It doesn’t follow that the victims aren’t persons, or that one has a “right” to kill them.
I did not “idealize” 19th Century doctors in my previous post. I described the bills that were actually signed into law, by legislators that didn’t have the ulterior motives that you accuse the doctors of having. To say “some [19th Century doctors] sought bans on abortion by doctors” is a severe understatement. Each of the 19th Century abortion statutes made it illegal for anyone to perform an abortion, whether they happen to be a physician or a hairdresser. And while some doctors did illegal abortions (around 90% were done by doctors in the years leading up to Roe), it was not a normal or widely accepted part of the medical practice. Many pro-choicers today lament the “stigma” surrounding abortionists, decades after Roe v. Wade. It’s hard to fathom that the medical establishment 100 years ago was somehow more abortion-friendly. And it was not: performing abortions was grounds for license revocation (in addition to applicable criminal penalties). Experts have also called Leslie J. Reagan’s analysis of the 20th Century abortion environment into question. See: Dellapenna, Joseph W. Dispelling the Myths of Abortion History. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 2006.
Justice Blackmun was not the only judge to sign the opinion that he wrote, but it’s universally accepted that he did most of the research himself. He is the author, and as such it is not wrong to attribute the written opinion to him. And as it would seem, he overlooked or excluded cases that did recognize rights prior to live birth. The fact that the appellee couldn’t cite one does not mean that they don’t exist.
I am not a legal expert by any means, though I’m flattered by your suggestion! However, plenty of lawyers “of the quality and credentials to be SCOTUS justices” have sharply criticized the Roe decision. Some of them are supporters of legalized abortion:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/139828
The Rule Against Perpetuities originated from the 17th Century common law. To the best of my knowledge it has always been interpreted to include the unborn as a “life in being”. This is how it was construed in the McArthur v. Scott decision, but that understanding of the law goes back much further. With regards to corporate personhood, it is only necessary that the unborn are persons “within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment”. Corporations are considered to be persons in its scope, but they are not exempted by the Apportionment Clause or included in the census. It does not matter that they don’t have “equivalent personhood” to a full-fledged human, for it is only the Fourteenth Amendment rights that need to be considered. So it would seem that they could in fact apply to an entity that is neither included in the census nor specifically exempted by the written law.
I was under the impression that oocyte is the more precise term, one that implies the number of chromatids in the cell. I do see that ovum is also used in literature however, and I don’t want to split hairs. There are more important things to discuss than the semantics of what to call a female gamete.
A zygote can reproduce asexually. It can also undergo a functional sex change. These are things that mature humans cannot do. It doesn’t follow that the zygote is not a whole human organism. Blueprints, unlike organisms, do not develop themselves into their mature form. Again, the Polaroid photograph is a closer analogy than a construction process. Both the human organism and the photograph start off as an undifferentiated structure, and then gradually show more specialized features. It is not a perfect parallel to the complex process of embryonic development or “the objective truth about pregnancy”, but no analogy is. The fact that the embryo grows inside the body of a person with rights is irrelevant to the biology of when a new organism begins. Recall that some tapeworms also grow inside the bodies of persons with rights, but they are still rightly considered distinct, self-developing organisms. The same concept applies for embryos (though again, we’re obviously dealing with entities that have human DNA rather than a separate species). It should be noted that the embryology textbooks, Peter Singer, and the pope all agree on the biological beginning of a human organism (fertilization, under ordinary circumstances).
We take extreme measures to protect born children only when there is good reason to believe that they are at risk of harm. Pregnancy alone isn’t adequate reason to believe that the unborn child is in danger. The government does not constantly monitor all parents to make sure they are not abusing or neglecting their children, even though doing so might prevent or detect more child abuse cases. I do not think this means that opponents of child abuse don’t actually care about saving the lives of children. We wouldn’t automatically investigate a homeless person if we saw him playing with an iPad (even though it might have been stolen). We don’t inspect every private citizen’s computer to make sure it isn’t full of child pornography (even though it very well could be and most child pornographers never actually get caught). Likewise, abortion opponents do not have to support mandatory surveillance of pregnant women if they care about saving the lives of embryonic humans.
You evidently mean something different than I do when you say “police state”. As far as I’m concerned, a police state is one where the government excessively monitors the activities of private citizens. This is not currently the case in the U.S. and if abortion became illegal, it would not automatically change. A restrictive policy, no matter how unjust I think it is, is not a sufficient condition to meet this definition. I doubt that I or anyone else will be able to create a perfect model of law enforcement, one that balances liberty and security. Almost certainly, anything I come up will be either too lenient or too draconian. But this is not unique to the problem of abortion. It hardly follows that abortion is not a violent act that a just society has a moral obligation to outlaw.
I never objected to the claim “It is impossible for the state to know whether a woman is pregnant”. But the problem is, that a pregnant woman could choose to stay at home for the whole nine months and not show her body to the people who seek to enter. If wealthy enough she could have all her needs delivered to her door and conceivably give birth, strangle the newborn infant, and bury the body in her yard. Many women manage childbirth without any supervision, and some never show visible signs of pregnancy at all. One could also live somewhere isolated in the country, so there would be no reason to suspect any of this. It would not be possible to prevent or prosecute, but that does not mean it should be legal to do. Non sequitur.
Your main argument is a variation of the classic bodily autonomy thesis. In 1971, the moral philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson popularized this species in her now (in)famous essay. It was unique at the time because she began her paper by conceding that a fetus has the same right to life as a mature human (though only for the sake of the argument). This is, of course, the premise that pro-lifers spend much of their time trying to affirm (and pro-choicers spend much of their time trying to deny). Thomson, however, defends abortion by arguing that the right to life does not include a just claim on the use of the mother’s body for nine months (thus elective abortion isn’t unjust killing and should be legal in at least some circumstances). This reasoning seems very powerful, as it can be used to “resolve some puzzles” that many abortion proponents find troubling. Thomson, for example, claims that making it illegal for a 14-year old rape victim to get an abortion would be “insane”. However, she would object to a late-term abortion done for frivolous reasons. We can draw similar conclusions about other aspects of the issue (abortion should be legal but rare, sex-selective abortion is at least morally criticizable, killing a pregnant woman should lead to greater criminal penalties, etc). Her essay soon became one of the most commonly reprinted works in contemporary philosophy (which, of course, means that most normal people have never heard of it).
Philosophers on both sides of the abortion debate (Michael Tooley, Mary Anne Warren, Philippa Foot, Francis Beckwith, Bonnie Steinbock, Patrick Lee – to name a few) have criticized bodily autonomy arguments in their own published articles. The Supreme Court also did not use this reasoning in the Roe v. Wade opinion (though it’s usually understood that the justices were aware of Thomson’s paper):
(Hence, according to Blackmun et al, establishing the personhood of the fetus would be a sufficient condition for banning abortion – there is no “even if” statement). However, Thomson’s argument still receives academic defence and refinement (notably in David Boonin’s 2003 book A Defense of Abortion, widely considered one of the best on the subject, as well as earlier in Frances Kamm’s Creation and Abortion). It also influenced the jurisprudence of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who then appeals to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to justify support for a constitutional right to abortion.
Thomson and other supporters of her argument use a variety of colourful thought experiments to defend it, some being stronger than others. The version you carefully summarize is virtually identical to the one political science professor Eileen McDonagh presents in her book Breaking the Abortion Deadlock. Interestingly, she states that a woman actually has a stronger right to (tax-funded) abortion if a fetus has full personhood! She then vividly describes the effects of pregnancy (which is caused by the fetus) and infers that a fetus that “invades” a woman’s body without her consent is indistinguishable from a rapist. Just as a woman has a right to kill a rapist in self-defence, she has a right to kill a fetus as self-defence.
I would like to challenge McDonagh’s main premise (there’s “no difference between the legally insane rapist and the unwanted embryo/fetus in a case where the woman did not consent to pregnancy beforehand”). I think that, on closer inspection, we can find critical flaws that cause the entire argument to fall apart. The key word in all of this is “consent”. Consent means that the woman must be mentally capable of understanding and must agree to either sexual intercourse or pregnancy. To quote a popular rape awareness campaign, “Just because she isn’t saying no doesn’t mean she’s saying yes”. With that in mind, we should analyze the following two scenarios and see how they compare:
1. A woman is injured in a car accident and is in a temporary coma (say she’ll wake up in about two weeks). From doing tests on her, the emergency room doctor discovers that she is about two months pregnant. There is no evidence that the patient ever knew of this pregnancy (i.e. no recent doctor’s appointments, her friends and family don’t know anything about it, her diary is silent, and so forth).
2. A woman is injured in a car accident and is in a temporary coma. After she is left alone for a few minutes, the emergency room doctor checks back in to discover that a man is having sexual relations with the unconscious patient.
If your model is correct, then the doctor’s duty to his patient in 1 is to immediately perform an abortion and end the pregnancy. After all, surely nobody would let a man continue having sex with the unconscious woman in 2 and wait until she wakes up to determine whether or not it’s consensual. We would assume that it’s rape and end it by whatever means necessary (assuming, of course, that intervening would not result in physical danger for oneself). The same principle applies to pregnancy if the fetus is to be considered an aggressor in the absence of consent. I realize that you, having been horribly violated by a rapist, might not have a problem with undergoing a non-voluntary abortion while comatose. However, I think that millions of U.S. women (including supporters of legalized abortion) would be horrified by this suggestion. And it seems to conflict with the standard pro-choice orthodoxy. Ostensibly for the sake of her own best interest, the woman is removed from the decision-making process.
So it would seem that if we take it at face value and follow it to its logical conclusions, we have good reason for rejecting McDonagh’s contention on abortion proponents’ own terms. Of course, our intuition in 1 would change quite drastically if the mother’s life were in danger. We would see the fetus as a (non-culpable) threat, thus lethal force would be justified in this scenario. In all other cases, however, the self-defence argument is unsound. We cannot reasonably view a fetus as an aggressor, or at least not one dangerous enough to justify the use of lethal force.
As David Boonin writes at the start of his book, much of the controversy surrounding abortion is attributable to the uniqueness of the relationship between the mother and fetus. There is nothing else quite like it, as we rarely have such ambiguous bodily boundaries. Thus in order to assess this issue, it is necessary to use analogies. I think there is a real-world case that we can turn to for a very close parallel to pregnancy in all relevant aspects, one that I briefly hinted at when discussing viability above. Consider the case of Jodie and Mary, conjoined twins born in Manchester in 2000. Jodie’s heart and lungs kept both of them alive. Jodie could survive without Mary, but Mary could not survive without Jodie.
The similarities to pregnancy are obvious. Only one twin would be viable if separation took place – the relationship benefited one and was harmful to the other. Both twins were considered persons in the full legal and moral sense, a premise that abortion proponents must grant about the mother and fetus if they’re making an argument from bodily autonomy, as you do above (you can’t keep going back and forth). Mary’s use of Jodie’s body was a natural, involuntary process (as opposed to active extraction via tubes and such, or carving out someone’s kidney), much like pregnancy is. Separating the twins would be direct killing (as is abortion), not a case of withholding support, because one of Mary’s major arteries had to be severed. Jodie did not consent to the physical relationship with her sister, and lethal force was the only way to terminate it.
The case was brought before the Court of Appeal, which ultimately ruled in favour of allowing the doctors to separate the twins. Just like you did above, Lord Justice Ward (the senior judge handling the case) described the relationship as “parasitic” and invoked the concept of self-defence to justify his decision. However, there is a key element that was present in this case and is missing in most pregnancies: it was known from very early on that separation was necessary to save Jodie’s life. Both twins would have died within six months if they had been left intact. An important passage from Ward’s decision reads as follows:
It seems clear to me that separation would not have been allowed if the stronger twin’s life weren’t threatened. Applying the same reasoning to pregnancy, we can infer that abortion should be legal only if continuing the pregnancy poses a serious risk to the mother’s life. This case was somewhat more complicated because it also involved a conflict of interest between the twins’ parents and their doctors. Being devout Roman Catholics, the parents objected to letting the operation take place. The Catholic Church considers direct and deliberate killing of an innocent person an intrinsic evil, an action that is not allowed under any circumstances. This is consistent with their position on direct abortion, which is also proscribed even to save the life of the mother (as such, the bishops and some Catholic-leaning pro-life groups also opposed the separation). Some bioethicists disagree with the court’s decision, seeing it as an undue usurpation of parental authority. Other than that, I really don’t see how the ethics would change if we were dealing with adult twins (where the stronger twin wants to separate), or a viable adult woman and a nonviable minor unborn child (a typical pregnancy that the mother wants to have terminated).
Conjoined twinning, of course, is not identical to pregnancy and gestation. Pregnancy lasts only nine months, while having a conjoined twin is a permanent condition. Pregnancy is also far less debilitating, and has some health benefits. Conjoined twins usually have a reduced lifespan, and face constant daily challenges. If you want to become a lawyer but your sister wants to be a journalist, you’re going to have to do some serious talking. Gestation is something everyone does once, but conjoined twinning is very abnormal in the human species. Neither twin is responsible for the resulting dependency (unlike the pregnant woman, who is partly responsible for the fetus’s neediness except in the rare case where she is a victim of rape). Finally, there is no special mother-child relationship between conjoined twins (most embryologists now believe that the condition is caused by an unfortunate biological accident that partially fuses the siblings together very early in prenatal development). However, all of these differences would only strengthen the case against abortion. If fatal separation of conjoined twins is wrong, then it’s a fortiori wrong to abort a pregnancy.
Once again, I can’t force you to care about resolving any given issue. I do, however, find it odd that you would bother to write long, well thought out posts if you’re uninterested in either that or convincing people that your position is true (which is necessary if abortion is to remain legal in a democratic system – it will not unless enough people think that it should). I do appreciate your honesty. With all your intellect, however, I am disappointed that your most charitable interpretation of the pro-life position is that we see women as breeding pigs. That is simply false. Pro-lifers do consider the pregnant woman a person, but they have a different understanding of what being a person entails. Rather than a disembodied brain in a jar with only minimalistic responsibilities (that are attached to explicit or tacit consent), a person is essentially a member of a community with natural obligations that arise according to one’s role as mother, father, caregiver, citizen, etc. While different people will be required to make different sacrifices depending on their abilities and circumstances, these differences don’t negate the legitimacy of any of these obligations. And while I do value freedom of religion for all people including pregnant women, freedom of religion is not absolute (otherwise we would have to allow honour killings). You might disagree with this theory of personhood, but it is not implausible nor does it require having “the mentality of a rapist” (or even “alienating the rights of [the mother] and transferring them to the unborn”). But even if you reject it, I believe the analogies I offered above are sufficient to show that abortion is unjust killing if the unborn is one of us.