by Doctor Science
As I hope you all know, Mississippians are going to be voting on a “Fetal Personhood Amendment” on Tuesday. The amendment states:
The term ‘person’ or ‘persons’ shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.
Now, the American Family Association (among others) says
the inclusion of the word cloning in the proposed Amendment is designed to prevent cloning embryos for fetal experimentation and does not in any way condone cloning
I suspect that this is a lie. What they are *trying* to do is to get around the problems twins pose to the idea that human life begins at fertilization.
Twins Sarah and Ann with their mother, Elizabeth Gay Bolling, by Mathew Pratt, 1773. The objects the babies are holding are teething/pacifier/rattles of coral and gold. I don’t blame Mom for looking a bit staggered about the eyes.
Let me first state my opinion as a biologist. Human life does not “begin”, it is transmitted. Human personhood is not a biological concept: it is the state of being a human being for legal and moral purposes. Laws and morality need a clear line between “person” and “not a person”, biology does not care. We may need to pick a line, but that’s something *we* are doing, it is not dictated by “biological facts”.
If you choose fertilization as the moment when a human person comes into existence, you have some problems:
- The fact that normally a large proportion, probably a majority, of human zygotes fail to implant or are miscarried. The proportion that die due to abortion is only a fraction of the total death rate you are contemplating
- Each zygote is genetically unique, but not all undoubted human beings are: identical twins are clones.
- The twinning process takes place during the two weeks after fertilization, but not at any set point; the chances of a zygote turning into identical twins seems to be random, about 4 or 5 per thousand births — but it is undoubtedly much higher as a percentage of all fertilizations. In other words, there’s no way of knowing whether a zygote will end up as a single undoubted human person, or two.
- Quite frequently, identical twin embryos will fuse back together, or one will be absorbed by the mother’s body. The twinning process in unstable: there’s not a neat, clear line between a singleton and identical twins in the early stages of pregnancy. There is no “moment of [natural] cloning”.
- And that’s not getting into the question of conjoined (so-called “Siamese”) twins, who may or may not end up as legally and morally separate persons, depending on how exactly they’re joined and which organs there are two of.
- I have no idea how doctors and judges could be sure that the death of a particular zygote or embryo is the death of one potential person, or two.
- On the other hand, a nontrivial number of people are walking around looking like a single person, but who turn out to be the results of fusion between twins in utero. That is, they started as two non-identical zygote-Americans, and neither zygote died — but there is only one what you’d actually want to call person by the time they’re born.
- These shifting-twin pregnancies are not rare: Boklage (quoted here) concluded that more than one pregnancy in eight begins as twins, and that, for every liveborn twin pair, 10–12 twin pregnancies result in single births. Which of these do Personhood supporters think should count as human deaths for legal purposes?
The anti-abortion thinkers who’ve considered the issue of twins seem to have mostly concluded that it doesn’t really matter, all human life needs to be respected. But deciding a zygote is a *legal person* is a lot stronger than “respect”, and has many practical consequences. Mississippi has already prosecuted a teenager for stillbirth, so there’s clearly the legal will in that state to treat miscarriage and other pregnancy failures as potentially criminal matters. IMHO what’s really criminal is that this is going on in the state with the highest infant death rate, something that doesn’t seem to be quite so gripping and important for Mississippi politicians and voters. The most charitable interpretation I can come up with is that Mississippians feel hopeless to save the lives of many children they actually have, so they’re distracting themselves by trying to define, and then save, invisible children. Or at least find someone they can blame for their deaths.
Meanwhile, I know a Mississippian who may become a refugee if the Amendment passes. She takes birth control pills to keep from bleeding into anemia every month, and if BCPs become illegal or unavailable in Mississippi she’ll probably have to leave. How thoughtful and life-respecting of her fellow citizens.
IMHO what’s really criminal is that this is going on in the state with the highest infant death rate, something that doesn’t seem to be quite so gripping and important for Mississippi politicians and voters.
Should be the lead. Thanks for the lesson.
I don’t quite understand why we are wrestling with this. It’s really quite simple. You start with whatever policy you want (in this case, to eliminate any and all abortions), and from that derive the definition of a person that is needed to accomplish that.
Extra credit assignment 1: list all of the people supporting this definition of “person” who routinely provide funerals (full dress ones, just like for an adult) each time someone has a miscarraige. After all, on their definition, a person has died! (Fortunately, it should be a very short list.)
Extra credit assignment 2 (but not much credit, because it’s been done centuries ago): decide what race you want discriminate against, and then write a definition of “person” which excludes them.
“On the other hand, a nontrivial number of people are walking around looking like a single person, but who turn out to be the results of fusion between twins in utero.”
To put a finer point on that entirely spooky sentence (there’s something elegantly horrifying about the words “non-trivial”) which lights up every single one of my invasionofthebodysnatchers dashboard warning signals ……
….. see here, especially the case of Sanju Bhagat, who received unwanted notoriety some years ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetus_in_fetu
I’m struck in this article by the term “parasite” in this paragraph from the article:
“Fetus in fetu may be a parasitic twin fetus growing within its host twin. Very early in a monozygotic twin pregnancy, in which both fetuses share a common placenta, one fetus wraps around and envelops the other. The enveloped twin becomes a parasite, in that its survival depends on the survival of its host twin, by drawing on the host twin’s blood supply. The parasitic twin is anencephalic (without a brain) and lacks some internal organs, and as such is almost always unable to survive on its own. As the normal twin has to “feed” the enveloped twin from the nutrients received over a single umbilical cord, it usually dies before birth.”
I’m an attorney in precisely the same way Dr. Irwin Corey is a gynecologist, but it would seem to me this new “law”, drafted by murderous, sadistic ghouls, who unfortunately turned away from the rather harmless practice of burning Beatles records to really f*ck the world, opens either or both of the twin fetuses (they were “persons” from the get-go) described above to charges of infanticide, or first degree murder, or at least manslaughter, depending on the outcome.
But what if one of the twins is gay? What’s the charge then, south of the Mason Dixon Line? Bullying in the service of a moral or religious conviction, which, I spose, judging from other murderous legislation being drafted by murderous ghouls, would be exempted from punishment?
Other legal ramifications: If corporations are persons, and therefore by the logic of this nascent framework of stupid legislation and court rulings, a newly formed blastocyst corporation is a person, if I decide as the conciever of this person/corporation (Countme-In Junior, esq. Inc) to abort and dissolve said fetal corporation, am I guilty of murder?
Other ideas to clog up Mississippi’s underfunded court system because white-trash rubes refuse to tax fetal and corporate persons:
What if I rent an apartment and the lease language specifies that I must notify the landlord and pay more if I take in a roommate? The landlord then learns that my fetal twin is not only encapsulated within me, but is still living as a sort of parasite on my dime (hey, it’ll happen, God having ignored the details of biology, being a sort of big-picture person, and then ignoring his creation), am I, and my twin brother or sister, liable for eviction?
What if I’m caught driving in a car-pooling lane by myself and I discover that my twin is still lurking within. Will I be ticketed?
What if my fetal twin decides to incorporate, thus gaining double personhood indemnity in America-the-only-civilization-in-history-that-will-expire-by-the-sound-of-a-laugh-track, and then decides as the Chairman of that corporate person to cancel my health insurance, since I hope he would have hired his/her brother, and then he gets an infection which threatens the two of us and I can’t afford medical care.
Who’s fault is that?
What if Ripley in “Alien” is inseminated orally by the alien and the fetus bursts through her chest wall, killing her. Is that murder, or given the principle of the sanctity of life in Mississippi and the legal protection of fetuses over concern for the life of the mother, is that just a life birth, and as long as the alien finds a job, doesn’t encumber the social safety net, and votes Republican is good to go, or what?
Also, “Depraved-Heart Murder”. There’s a song or the name of a band somewhere in there.
In closing, what George Carlin said: “If you’re pre-born, you’re fine; if you’re born, you’re f*cked”.
I’m pro-life and pro-choice.
Not to mention, what to make of the sentence “I’m a Koch brother from another mother!”
How would they handle that under Mississippi jurisprudence?
I mean, can the Mississippi legislature give
that level of Godhead.
I just don’t get these anti-abortion crusading fundementalists. Who are they, where do they get their beliefs and what is it they really want? Why are they so fixated on the abortion topic? How can there be so many of them?
I mean, I am a spiritually focussed person. My personal belief/opinion/understanding is that a soul enters/becomes connected with (whatever) a fetus necessarily only after the nervous system is well developed – sometime in the third trimester – or as late as when the infant takes its first breath.
Those are my beliefs. I know a number of spiritually oriented people who are more or less in agreement. But I would never consider imposing those beliefs on anyone else. Nor would I ever insist that my beliefs are “correct” and that someone else’s are wrong.
So someone believes in the bible, literally. Where does the bible discuss abortion? Where does it discuss the when’s and how’s of individualization of the sould of a fetus?
I know some fairly fundementalist christians that even see things my way. Others don’t agree with my soul/body connection timeline, yet I can’t think of a instance when any of them expressed a strong anti-abortion position. Mostly, at strongest opposition, it’s “well it’s an ugly choice, but it’s a choice all the same and it should be for the woman to make provided she has had appropriate education and therapy”.
I can’t remember ever meeting anyone who admitted to being a staunch anti abortion crusader. Has anyone here?
I guess these fundy anti-abortion christian crusaders are like cockroaches. They hide under the floorboards of society and scurry about on their nasty little missions when no one is looking? Only to emerge occassionally to wave a sign at a demonstration or support some pol that claims to support them.
I’ll send you an e-mail:
[Sociological Forum, 2002] Polarization in Abortion Attitudes in U.S. Religious Traditions, 1972-1998
Studies have shown that attitudes toward abortion are polarizing. Yet, these studies have not focused upon what is often assumed to be the cause of polarization-religion. In this paper I find that polarization has increased between mainline and evangelical Protestants, as well as between black Protestants and both Catholics and white evangelicals. Moreover, Ifind that mainline Protestants and Catholics are internally polarizing. Finally, while I cannot determine the cause of the internal polarization of Catholics, the polarization within mainline Protestantism is caused by demographic changes. For white evangelicals, demographic changes have restrained polarization that would otherwise have occurred
I think abortion has morphed into the same political dynamic that Prohibition did, that is it became a symbolic movement for Anglo-protestant conformity. So you had true believers, for others it was symbolic (so it was easy to ignore “real Americans” breaking the law), and for many it was both.
Abortion doesn’t really become a strong blip for the conservative Protestants until ERA and second wave feminism. And conservative Roman Catholics (who were always against it) found common cause with the rising religious right, in the late 1970s.
Actually, I think the excitement about abortion isn’t about abortion. Basically, it’s about sex. Specifically, what is important is that sex (certainly sex outside marriage) is BAD (aka sinful). And therefore, anyone who engages in it should be punished.
Can’t get anywhere with making it illegal. So what to do? Maximize the negative consequences, i.e. the chance of pregnancy. Therefore:
1) Get rid of sex education, so kids who do the wrong thing don’t realize the risks or how to avoid them.
2) Make contraception as difficult as possible.
3) Make abortion illegal, so if someone does get pregnant, they can’t avoid having to bear (and preferably raise) the children.
(Note that, in the places and among the population which holds these values, the rate of teen pregnancy is higher than anywhere else in the country. As I read a while back, they believe that “families make adults” — that is, the girl gets pregnant, the expectation is that the boy is required to marry her, and presto there is another family.)
All that means that arguments about abortion, or when life begins, sex education, etc. are pointless. Because those issues are not at the root of the problem, they are merely means to an end. The argument will only get resolved when the numbers of those who regard sex as sinful are no longer electorally significant.
Once divorce, and other issues, which changed the power of men in marriage, or as head of households, (all happening in the 1970s) the stakes were stacked against traditional gender relationships.
“The argument will only get resolved when the numbers of those who regard sex as sinful are no longer electorally significant.”
Yes, but the numbers of those who regard sex as sinful keep having unprotected sex outside of marriage at exponential rates, mostly in motels, church basements, with the neighbors during commercial breaks on FOX News while the wife or the hubby are out having their pompadours and B-52s shellacked, as the case may be, and in Washington D.C. rental housing for publicly uptight, moralistic Republicans (but privately a bunch of horndogs; one wonders what the real reason was for Gingrich/Delay to begin the practice of leaving the wives and kids behind in Bedford Falls) that double as combination frat houses/bordellos.
At least, and I don’t minimize the damage done, Catholic priests and other clergy aren’t engendering new voters with their hands busy working overtime like a lizard on a windowpane, and I don’t mean making the Sign of the Cross.
I’d say we’re outgunned at the voting booth, we sinful types.
Over at Redrum, scene of diarists being arrested for planning mass murder but being ignored by the Editors because they are too busy condemning DFHs for committing a little property damage (yes, stop it, you few anarchists) and calling it street theater, we have the further spectacle the last two days of Leon Wolf, anti-abortion crusader and that’s his right, raising a ruckus that Herman Cain might be unjustly accused of sexual harassment and intimidation, or, at the very least, unwanted flirtation.
Well, Leon, tell me, short of rape, what do you think is the first step on the road to abortion, if not sexual flirtation?
Hi, honey, I’m officially a staunch pro-life conservative, but how would you like to head upstairs to my room and teach my boys to swim upstream?
I mean, besides alcohol or God forbid, love, not to mention all of the other abortion starter kits.
http://www.11alive.com/news/article/211347/3/Covert-group-one-ingredient-away-from-deadly-toxin
Who is Frederick Thomas?
Yes.
Excellent post, Doctor. Alas that logic and science and facts, as in so many cases, make little or no dent for many.
I also agree with someotherdude’s comments, and think wj’s more or less correct, though that’s not the entire explanation. (I’m not going try to analyze/explicate what I think are all the motivations and thinking are: but some of it is simply tribal.)
Sounds like it’s time to start mailing those used pads/tampons to some state legislators. After all, there may be evidence of a murder there …
So zygotes can have a much shorter lifespan than normal humans, divide into identical copies, and merge together into a single functional individual. So they shouldn’t be considered legally human. That logic seems fine for zygotes, but I wonder how it’s going to work for human-level artificial intelligences.
What motivates anti-abortion crusaders? I think it’s pride. They like to think of themselves as morally superior to others.
I’m more curious about what motivates voters to keep voting for them. Muddleheadedness? Greed and selfisness(many of the anti-abortion zealots are also anti-taxes for rich people zealots)? Pride?
Politians who vote for legislation like that ought to suffer at the polls but in Mississippi I suspect the won’t.
Most people do. Regardless of political stance.
And many anti-abortion crusaders clearly have sincere views about when life begins.
Generalizations about What All Xs think always fail, since all you need is a single exception to disprove them.
Let alone tens or hundreds of thousands of people. Laura, the word “some” is Your Friend.
Many voters vote because of, weirdly, their beliefs. This isn’t difficult to understand.
“Many voters vote because of, weirdly, their beliefs. This isn’t difficult to understand.”
Yes, it is difficult to understand. This country and its fundemental law is supposed to be about freedom. You believe what you want and act according to those beliefs and I will believe what I want to and accordingly. Neither of us get to alter the law of the land such that one is forced to act according to the other’s beliefs; especially when belief really means just that.
That is basic and core.
What we get to vote on is who and what represents our collective interests the best. I think the founders imagined collective interests to be, largely, economic in nature, but also to include issues pertaining to the continuation of the Bill of Rights for all members of society.
If you don’t get that, then you really don’t deserve the right to particpate in our social system. You are, instead, an anti-American subversive and are more a threat to our way of life than any al qaeda terrorist ever dreamed of being.
DR s’ post is just another example of the irrationality of the so called pro life stance. Obviously they are believers; not thinkers. This is well known.
The real issue is why they can impose their beleifs on others in this country.
I may come back to this tomorrow — or not — but since I’ve actually known quite a few anti-abortion activists of different ilks, over many years, I’m here to say that they are not all alike.
No more than all Democrats are alike, or all Republicans, or all flat taxers, or all Tea Partiers or OWSers, or any other conglomeration of people with varying degrees of enthusiasm for varying degrees of severity of responses to various issues.
That’s one part of it.
But only one.
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,[note 1] promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
So, in order, our country, if we’re to be guided by the Constitution, seeks a more perfect union, seeks justice, seeks to insure domestic tranquility (i.e., peace at home), promote the general Welfare, and THEN we get to Liberty.
Regardless of what one makes of the ordering, it’s clear that liberty was hardly the only value the U.S. was founded on.
I’m not clear what your theory of this is. I’m not sure if you’re generalizing about all beliefs and actions, or specifically only about religious beliefs, or specific categories of action.
We do get to alter laws in our legislatures. How individuals vote is up to them. That’s a principle that eventually evolved, and it would be wonderous to see “one person, one vote” become the basis of our government again, rather than “one hundred thousand dollars, one vote.”
Otherwise I leave this for the evening with my frequent refrain that over-generalizing tends to lead to dopey arguments.
On abortion, I’m tempted to say we should rule that life doesn’t begin until you’re old enough to pass an IQ test, but SOMEONE WOULD TAKE ME SERIOUSLY, and I have to bothersomely tediously explain that I Was Just Kidding and the idea, taken seriously, would appall me and I’d utterly fight it.
Meanwhile, people impose their beliefs on others in this country all the time, in all sorts of ways, for good and evil.
If only they’d let me impose my beliefs, of course, we’d have hardly any of these problems. Just follow my rulings!
Gary, the context of my comment was a specific law which defines fertilized eggs as people and speculation about the motives of people who would support such a law. Sure politicians supported that law because of their belief that a fetilized egg should be considered human. But why would anyone believe anything that stupid? It requires an enormous amount of thought-avoidance to support such an idea. That was the discussion at the point where I joined the conversation.
And I do wonder why people vote for politicians who are thought-avoidant on a issue they claim to take serioulsy. The fact that the voter might share the stupid belief doesn’t really answer the question.
And it is a stupid belief. To define a fertilized egg as human one must avoid learning the science ivolved in conception, avoid thiking throughthe consequences of such a law to the female part of the population, avoid thinking about the colateral damage such as the woman who will not be able to use the birth control pills she needs, and avoid thinkig about the moral implicdations of respecting a fertilized egg in a state with a high infant moratlity rate
I do not think that all people who indulge themsleves in the conceit of calling themselves “pro-life” think alike except to the extent that they use a prideful label for themsleves. Supporters of this law are a subset of the “pro-lifers” and my comments were about that subset.
“So, in order, our country, if we’re to be guided by the Constitution, seeks a more perfect union, seeks justice, seeks to insure domestic tranquility (i.e., peace at home), promote the general Welfare, and THEN we get to Liberty.”
Sure. And none of that speaks to abortion or, more broadly, imposing religious beliefs on others; especially via federal law. In fact, quite the opposite is included in the document. At any rate the Supreme Court agrees with me as we all well know.
I think Dr S was not making a point concerning legality. Rather about rational thinking versus irrational stupidity from an interesting scientific standpoint. Specifically that nature itself constantly kills off a heck of a lot of what would fall under an activist’s definition of young human beings. If there is a god, then it seem that he/she/it performs abortions on a regular basis as a built in design process.
I suppose the activist answer would be that it is god’s perogative to kill nascent humans. But that sort of leads to the conclusion that god is up there in sky HQ watching every single copulation and fertilization and assessing which should go on to become a living breathing human and which should not; which seems like a hell of a lot of extra work for god given all of the other aspects of the universe there are to manage. In fact, it’s just plain imbecilic to the point of being nuts to think that.
“…but since I’ve actually known quite a few anti-abortion activists of different ilks, over many years, I’m here to say that they are not all alike.”
Of course they are not. Some are short and some tall. Some like pina coladas and taking walks in the rain and others do not. They do, however, have something in common that makes them all alike in a very salient way. They strongly hold a rather irrational and arbitrary belief and they desire to force that belief on others in violation of the Constitution.
I am merely curious as to how these people came to hold these beliefs and how they can continue to do so. Someone up thread suggested it is really more a moralistic attempt to control sex by increasing the potential penalty involved. This sounds reasonable and probably does account for some of the political phenomenon.
That’s crazy talk, Gary. How are we supposed to dismiss people we disagree with if we have to address their individual and widely varying points of view?
Easier to just throw them all in the trash compactor so we can dispose of one handy cube of people.
Speaking for myself, I prefer to use the blender. Or the melting pot.
avedis wrote:
“god is up there in sky HQ watching every single copulation and fertilization”
Jeez, I hope He has a fast-forward button on the cosmic clicker. How dreary for Him.
and
“Some like pina coladas …..”
I suspect, if I may overgeneralize, that God takes a special voyeuristic interest in these types of set ups. He probably reads the one sentence description of the show in his cosmic TV Guide —- “anti-abortion absolutist goes to New Year’s Eve party, has too many pina coladas, and does more than look across a crowded room.” —– and immediately switches the channel away from the incredibly boring and dispiriting 24-hour War and Genocide Network, thinking to himself, “now we’ll see who is auditioning for the over-generalization reality show”
Gary, you are correct that over- generalization tends to lead to dopey arguments. In other words, yes, it is true that, upon consideration, the Romans DID give us the aqueducts.
But, all I think Laura (and avedis) is doing is arguing that the Mississippi Romans have over-generalized in their law-making and, further, why is it that they are all wearing identical uniforms and expect everyone else to wear them as well?
She’s merely pointing at dopes and calling them dopey. Probably she should include the phrase “present company excluded”.
But the loudest of the dopes point back at her and call her a baby-killer and murderer.
She hasn’t gone there, that I can tell. Besides, that sort of trash talk is my bailiwick.
This: “No more than Democrats are alike, or Republicans …
Well, these things waggle back and forth throughout history, sure, but I think I can over-generalize and conclude that Republicans in recent decades, present company excluded, are better at enforcing alikeness among themselves and overgeneralizing about the rest of us, otherwise known as the Other.
It hasn’t escaped my attention, either, that a good chunky bolus of the Republican Party considers the “present company excluded” as RINOs.
I mean, THEY get their very own acronym.
Welcome to over-generalization.
In closing, I’m sure Laura could engage Sebastian, who holds a sensitive pro-life position to my mind, in a substantive discussion about the abortion issue.
Though I realize Sebastian probably has been subject to over-generalization around here in the past and has become shy.
As much as I’d like to buy the twin problem as a refutation of the idea that fertilization begins personhood, I can’t.
If you believe that a fertilized egg, because it has the potential to become a fully formed human, constitutes human life, it really doesn’t matter whether that fertilized egg later becomes two humans or whether two fertilized eggs later become one. Maybe the fertilized egg has two souls. Maybe only one soul of two eggs that combine goes on to inhabit the resultant fully formed human.
Using a scientific formulation to refute one of faith is as useless as using faith to refute science. You may be able to argue with some people in this way and get them to resort to tortured pretzel logic, thereby winning a single rhetorical battle. But that would be a matter of demonstrating that your opponent isn’t very clear on what he or she thinks, rather than a matter of demonstrating a flawed concept.
Argue against yourself while taking both sides, using your best logic, and see where it gets you. It gets me nowhere.
I simply disagree with people who believe with great certainty things they cannot prove, or even present any concrete evidence for, and expect me to act according to those beliefs.
I would tend to argue that, whether you believe that human life begins at ferilization or not, there are practical limits to what the law can do and that a failure to accept those limitations results in worse problems than dealing with those limitations realistically. It’s an imperfect world, and leaving decisions on pregnancy to the one who is pregnant (and supposedly has a soul, too) is the least bad way to deal with abortion, abortion being something I assume very few people if any celebrate.
It’s funny to me that people, usually of the conservative persuasion, being so practically minded, will decry anti-bullying and hate crimes as mamby-pamby measures of political correctness that can’t possibly do anything about people’s actions, and that will result in all sorts of bad outcomes and injustice. But those same people will advocate harsh and intrusive legal restrictions on abortion, because that will work out so swimmingly, based on their faith in an idea that can’t even be demonstrated by biblical literalism.
Ok. Maybe I am guilty of some over generalization, but hey, three comments submitted and I haven’t said anything that could be construed as mysoginistic – not even by Phil 🙂
Since the language of the Constitution has been invoked, the central conundrum faced by the Framers, who were all white males (jeez, sorry) was to what extent could they agree on specific, rather than general terms in the document to describe the republic they were trying to create.
Turns out they couldn’t agree on too many specifics, so they settled for language like “promote the general welfare”.
Thus, to this day, we over-generalize about the folks on either side of the argument regarding the specific meaning of the term “general welfare”.
Also, armies appoint Generals to over-generalize (I’m a five-star Overgeneral) about the Enemy and train their troops to become an over-generalized unit, free of individuality, the better to fight the overgeneralized Enemy.
With exceptions, of course. If I raise my hand just before battle and try to explain to the OverGeneral that maybe, just maybe, his order to send my unit, including me, to take that hill is an over-generalization in many ways, not the least of which is because, you know, I don’t want to, he’s going to put his face up against mine, call me a maggot or something (O.K., that’s an over-generalization, but I’ll let it go, under the circumstances) and say specifically to me:
“Son, may I address you as Private Countme-In (“me” being my mother’s maiden name). I am acutely aware that you, despite your scurvy, pathetic performance to date, are a single individual instance of God’s miraculous creation, but if you don’t hump your butt up that Hill with the rest of these over-generalized cannon fodder whose mothers love them just as much as your mother loves you, I’m going to put your very special individual a*s up against that wall and shoot you myself. Do you have any further opinions you would like to express?”
“Well, Sir”, I might stammer as my sphincters clamp shut like the bulkheads on a submarine, “I’d just like to point out that now you are being way to specific. I liked it better when you were over-generalizing. You should see someone about these sharp mood swings.”
Anyway, I think Laura is over-generalizing about a group of people, present company excluded, who are likely to over-generalize themselves as the Armies of God, or some such, and is merely following their lead.
That one of the OverGenerals in this Army is named Dick Armey might cause some stifled laughing among the ranks, if the ranks had any sense of humor, which they don’t.
… being way “too” specific”.
There are lots of “pro-life” “anti-abortion” people who don’t want the law involved. They want to persuade people to their POV.
Which is a POV I completely disagree with.
But it’s not the case that everyone who identifies with those labels also want their views put into law.
I feel rather odd that I’m in an argument where I might be perceived as defending the POV of anti-abortion people, because I entirely disagree with them. But I’m not supporting those views. I’m attacking, as I tend to, generalizations that are absolutes.
In no way am I disagreeing with anything Doctor Science wrote.
Laura:
Thank you for clarifying that.
Dr S, “On the other hand, a nontrivial number of people are walking around looking like a single person, but who turn out to be the results of fusion between twins in utero. That is, they started as two non-identical zygote-Americans, and neither zygote died — but there is only one what you’d actually want to call person by the time they’re born.”
This presents possible interesting legal ramifications.
As we know, the “pro-life” crowd often becomes decidely pro-death when adult humans convicted of crimes are the subject.
And this got me thinking….what if a convict on death row was one of these people who contained a fused zygote? Wouldn’t the execution be of two (by “pro life” definition) humans and not one? Wouldn’t the inocent fused zygote entity be sufffering something akin to murder? Would it not need someone to look out for its rights? Could the convict use this biological fact to obtain a stay of execution?
Ok. Maybe I am guilty of some over generalization, but hey, three comments submitted and I haven’t said anything that could be construed as mysoginistic – not even by Phil 🙂
How’s about if I’m not commenting on the thread you leave me out of it?
“Specifically that nature itself constantly kills off a heck of a lot of what would fall under an activist’s definition of young human beings.”
Kills off a heck of a lot of what would fall under pretty much anybody’s definition of a human being, period. 100% of them, sooner or later, last I checked.
I shall not weigh in on this until the italics are gone.
Something against Italians, bobbyp?
May we please not generalize about Italians?
Anyway, while I consider personhood for single cells rather absurd, spontaneous miscarriage is a silly argument against it. “Mother nature” has no compunctions about killing people.
Or is the argument here, “If Cholera can do it, why can’t we?”
And, besides, let’s not pretend there isn’t similar idiocy coming from the other direction, with viable infants being referred to as “masses of tissue”. Activists in neither camp are particularly comfortable with the non-binary nature of human development.
Activists in neither camp are particularly comfortable with the non-binary nature of human development.
Then perhaps you could lead us all through the weeds of appropriate social policy with respect to this issue Generalist Bellmore, eh what?
“non-binary nature of human development”….why, if I didn’t know better, I’d say that was some pretty shallow New Age twaddle there.
“And, besides, let’s not pretend there isn’t similar idiocy coming from the other direction, with viable infants being referred to as “masses of tissue”.”
I will take one (1) example of this, please. One single human being referring to an undeniably viable infant as a mass of tissue. One.
I will bet you $100 you cannot produce a single such quote within 14 days of today. Put up or shut up, just for once.
(That said, absent evidence of something that I am absolutely sure you don’t have, you and I are, in fact, both masses of tissue. Unless you’ve got a nebula in your pocket or something.)
“If Cholera can do it, why can’t we?”
That is catchy.
Bumber stickers? Tee-shirts? Foriegn policy sound bite for candidates this year?
Yes we, can.
“How’s about if I’m not commenting on the thread you leave me out of it?”
Now that you have made your official appearance, aren’t you proud of me? being my sensitivity mentor and all I could use a little positive reinforcement.
‘”Specifically that nature itself constantly kills off a heck of a lot of what would fall under an activist’s definition of young human beings.”‘
“Kills off a heck of a lot of what would fall under pretty much anybody’s definition of a human being, period. 100% of them, sooner or later, last I checked.”
Yes, it is the fast lane to nihilism via existential, but so what? It’s still a valid point.
Brett, are you anti-abortion? If I recall, you are also against socialized medicine because, for one reason, you want to keep the government out of the patient/physician relationship? Now you want to put the gov’t sqwuarely in the middle of that relationship? Just saying…..maybe I am confusing you with someone else. maybe I am over generalizing your free market views concerning healthcare. Apologies in advance if I am on either count.
No, the argument here is against laws proclaiming that a fertilized egg is a human being.
If you could explain, Brett, how Mississippi’s law enforcement agencies will decide who to prosecute and who not to, and how their courts will rule, on this Amendment to their State Constitution, if it passes, I’m sure we’d all find it educational.
I haven’t read any explanations by the proponents elaborating on this, but I haven’t gone looking, either.
Your analogy would work well if, say, Mississippi were voting on an amendment that said something like “The term ‘person’ or ‘persons’ shall include every bacteria,” or “it shall be considered murder to breathe near another person and transmit any infection that causes their death,” or something similarly carrying with it, oh, THE FRICKING DEATH PENALTY.
If you’d like, instead, to find a law or State Constitution that declares that some act of “Mother Nature” is grounds for prosecuting individuals for murder for, perhaps you could construct a workable analogy.
Please do let us know which states have been proposing laws or referenda or constitutional amendments declaring that “viable infants” are “masses of tissue.”
Or is this your translation of Roe v. Wade? Or Webster v. Reproductive Health Services?
Where, as you know, the Supreme Court held that it was constitutional for States to pass laws making it illegal to have an abortion if a fetus is “viable,” so long as there is a provision allowing for abortion if there’s a threat to the life of the mother?
So: what are you talking about?
We’re talking about a State Constitution, not “activists.” Or, at least, that’s what the post is about.
avedis:
We have a rule about “Do not consistently abuse or vilify other posters for its own sake.”
Let’s everyone please follow it. Everyone.
We’re not into rules-lawyering about it. Don’t drag in non-complimentary personal comments about other commenters, period, let alone when they haven’t said anything.
I know it’s tempting. I know how easy it is to get sick and tired of someone’s rhetorical habits and tropes.
Nonetheless, them’s the rules here. However inconsistently or barely enforced.
And yes, Phil, you need to remember this as well.
avedis, you don’t address/discuss me, and I don’t address/discuss you. Is that crystal clear? I am not your pal, and have no wish to interact with you, regardless of how many emoticons you use in your posts.
“If I recall, you are also against socialized medicine because, for one reason, you want to keep the government out of the patient/physician relationship?”
Depends on the nature of the “relationship”, I suppose. “Relationship” is such a vague term, covers treating me for illness with my informed consent, AND dismembering me without anesthesia.
At any rate, I thought I was clear: I wasn’t defending regulation of abortion at the single cell stage. I was just criticizing a specific argument against it. Is it too much to ask that even reasonably positions be argued reasonably?
My actual views on abortion, like the topic, are involved. Suffice to say that I think that, at all points, it should be regulated to the extent any normal medical procedure is. (Which is rather less than most normal medical procedures get regulated.) And that, as the fetus proceeds towards human levels of complexity, it should receive proportionately increasing levels of protection, culminating in somewhat more protection than it gets in practice, once viability is attained.
You may now ignore all that complexity, and resume attacking me for my supposed opposition to first term abortions…
And that, as the fetus proceeds towards human levels of complexity, it should receive proportionately increasing levels of protection, culminating in somewhat more protection than it gets in practice, once viability is attained.
Sounds reasonable enough, as a sketch of a decent policy.
At some point, a developing fetus surely acquires some rights. The question is at what point does its right to life trump the mother’s right to not continue with the pregnancy.
I’m inclined to favor the woman completely until ~24 weeks (yeah, that’s squishy as hell, I know). After that, you’re into medical necessity land (life of the mother still trumps).
I’m still uncomfortable, however, making that the law.
Look, generalizing about Italians is one thing, but let’s not permit this thread to deteriorate into piling on CHOLERA. Next thing we know we’ll be tarring dysentery with the same brush and I won’t have it, and neither will my piles.
It’s not as if cholera and dysentery haven’t already received enough harassment and vilification from those elitist scientists and their intrusive bureaucrat buddies in government who have accumulated some pretty pensions, let me tell you, sneaking busybody chlorine into our vital bodily fluids.
And don’t get me started on water treatment filtering regulations imposed from on high. I’ll nip that sort of intrusion in the bud or my name isn’t President James Polk.
Pork, I say, pork. Not that I’m against trichinosis.
I’ll have you know that dysentery is a very popular weight-loss fad adopted by free individuals in the third world to this day, which you WOULD know if you’ve ever consumed street food in Somalia and then stayed in luxury accommodations with fully actuated bathrooms during a week-long power outage accompanied by gunfire throughout the night.
But seriously, question for Brett. How do you feel about dismemberment WITH anesthesia?
No, that’s not the question.
I largely agree with your actual views on regulating abortion expressed in your 7:05 am comment. The question is: you state your views in passive voice. What “agency” should accomplish the regulation of abortion and other medical procedures? Dare we speak its name?
Regarding Mississippi, one is led to wonder, given that state’s trophy position in infant mortality and its presumably low level of spending on public health, whether the cholera bacterium might rate just as highly in legislators’ moral universe as the one-celled citizen, should there ever be a face off again between the two.
Also this, Brett: “Is it too much to ask that even reasonably positions be argued reasonably?”
No, but whither heuristics?
In closing, perhaps I’m been too easy on the Italians, who, after all, can generalize with the best of them. From Wikipedia:
“In this time period (1910-11, the last cholera epidemic in the U.S.) cholera greatly started to be associated with outsiders and this could be seen time and time again. The Italians blamed the Jews and gypsies, the British who were in India accused the “dirty natives”, and the Americans saw the problem coming from the Philippines.”
Excuse my diarrhea by word of mouth.
By the way, if anyone finds themselves in a wager wherein you must run out and find a single instance of someone saying or writing something — anything — I’m your man.
I’ve said EVERYTHING at least once in my life, not that my life is a mass of tissue of lies.
I just like to see what happens.
I am merely curious as to how these people came to hold these beliefs and how they can continue to do so. Someone up thread suggested it is really more a moralistic attempt to control sex by increasing the potential penalty involved. This sounds reasonable and probably does account for some of the political phenomenon.
Ok, I’ll try to answer this: because, absent a naturally occurring miscarriage, the process of fertilization produces only one thing, a human being.
But for Roe v Wade, there would be no need to try to define, legally, when life begins. Roe changed all of that.
There are those of us who believe that abortion as a matter of convenience, birth control, picking a child of the right sex, etc. is wrong, and that if two people conceive a child, that child should be allowed to be born.
Abortion may be a right, but it’s a right that derives from a 7-2 decision of judges, not the considered vote of the people of a given state or the country has a whole. Most here are fine with that. Of course, had a hypothetical court gone the other way, taking away from the states the right to decide for themselves, I suspect the feeling here would be different.
As Slarti noted, the easy thing to do is generalize and marginalize opposing views. I would say this is not in keeping with the supposedly thoughtful and analytical process ObWi of which has historically prided itself.
Also this, Brett: “Is it too much to ask that even reasonably positions be argued reasonably?”
No, but whither heuristics?
Indeed. We should all take a good, hard look at the heuristics of the so-called pro-life movement. After all, if they take their own arguments seriously, then they should be behaving in certain ways, right?
And that, as the fetus proceeds towards human levels of complexity, it should receive proportionately increasing levels of protection, culminating in somewhat more protection than it gets in practice, once viability is attained.
And the problem here is that the goal posts move as medical science advances. Leave a fetus alone and see what happens. That way, we don’t make life, or the chance at life, contingent on the state of medical science, assuming you can find a consensus in this tendentious area.
Brett,
Yes. Nature kills indiscriminately. Who coulda’ known? Alas, we are discussing a matter of LAW, and laws are messy. The point that many “lives” are taken as a matter of biology is therefore quite valid against an arbitrary holding that life (and the legal concept of ‘personhood’ that is silently slipped in right at that point) “begins at conception”(conception being, surprise, a biological concept). We do not pass laws against tornadoes, for example. I hear they kill sometimes.
But the whole discussion of “the beginning of life” (I always thought it was about a billion or so years ago) elides the central point. The crux of the matter is this: Who gets to decide? You? Rob in CT? Me?
I say let the woman decide. To say otherwise is to deny moral agency to 1/2 of humanity.
I don’t see the point you’re trying to make, here. As far as I’m aware, no one is making an attempt at making natural death illegal.
That could be just me not paying attention, again.
To say otherwise is to deny moral agency to 1/2 of humanity.
Which, by definition, denies moral agency to the other half. And when you couch it in terms of “moral” agency, you concede a moral component: the mother decides whether the fetus-to-be-child lives or dies. Under what other set of circumstances, do we let one person, unfettered by any limitations whatsoever, decide if another lives or dies?
If the pro-life side of the equation is mystified as to why others think differently, permit me to suggest that some of those others find the notion that a child in vitrio is less of a human being than a child brought into this world to be equally unusual.
To address another point made above, the idea that a sizable percentage of pro-lifers really just want to control sex is laughable. It’s a subset of the kind of dismissive, unthoughtful logic that causes both sides to talk past each other on a whole range of topics. The counter point, equally mindless in my view, is that the pro-abortion quarter embraces a culture of death. Both points are devoid of intellectual heft.
Abortion may be a right, but it’s a right that derives from a 7-2 decision of judges, not the considered vote of the people of a given state or the country has a whole.
It’s a right that derives from a) being alive and b) possessing a functioning uterus. Or don’t conservatives believe in unenumerated, God-given rights any more? Do I get to vote on what rights you have? I don’t think you’re going to like the results.
Under what other set of circumstances, do we let one person, unfettered by any limitations whatsoever, decide if another lives or dies?
Unfettered by any limitations? Are you serious? Between 24 to 72 hour waiting periods, state-mandated ultrasounds (which, btw, up to a certain point in the pregnancy are done by *inserting the ultrasound monitor into the vagina*), state-mandated lecture from doctor on whether or not the fetus has a heartbeat and fingers and whatnot, state-mandated lecture from the doctor on alternatives to abortion, and on and on and on, you have to be either incredibly mendacious or incredibly uninformed to say that.
But hey, your courageous stance which — for example –forces women to give birth to malformed children that will absolutely die within 24 hours, consigning those women and their families to otherwise avoidable or attenuatable grief, is simply heroic.
But for Roe v Wade, there would be no need to try to define, legally, when life begins. Roe changed all of that.
McT, I’m not entirely clear on how Roe changed the need. IIRC, pre-Roe there were different laws on abortion, depending on which state you were in. (And abortion was, overall, being legalized in more and more places. At the rate things were changing, another 10-15 years on the places where abortion was illegal would have resembled the number of places where it is still illegal to sell alcohol.) So there were, effectively, lots of different definitions of where life begins.
All Roe did, as far as I can see, was force a single rule nationwide. (Well that and galvanize a backlash, which could have been minimized by simply letting states continue to set their own policies.)
I mean, your OWN STATE requires:
– That women visit the facility performing the abortion at least twice, once 24 hours prior for a state-mandated ultrasound and again when the abortion is performed. (BTW, 92% of counties in Texas, in which 33% of the state’s female population reside, have no abortion providers, so two visits in 2-3 days is an awfully big inconvenience for a lot of women.)
– That doctors, during the first visit, inform the woman about the developmental stage of the fetus, and provide them with information about adoption. Neither of these pieces of information serves any medical purpose. (Like they’re going to change their minds when they hear it’s at five weeks instead of three.)
“Unfettered by any limitations” my rear end.
the idea that a sizable percentage of pro-lifers really just want to control sex is laughable.
OK, I’m willing to be educated.
So if life begins at conception, then a miscarriage is a death. And therefore one would expect a funeral for every miscarriage (at least among those where funerals are held when a member of the congregation dies). How could there not be?
But are there actually any significant number of funerals after miscarriages, especially in the first trimester? If not (and I believe that to be the case, but by all means correct me if your experience indicates otherwise), why not?
It’s a right that derives from a) being alive and b) possessing a functioning uterus.
By this, anyone has virtually any right they wish to claim.
Between 24 to 72 hour waiting periods, state-mandated ultrasounds (which, btw, up to a certain point in the pregnancy are done by *inserting the ultrasound monitor into the vagina*), state-mandated lecture from doctor on whether or not the fetus has a heartbeat and fingers and whatnot, state-mandated lecture from the doctor on alternatives to abortion, and on and on and on, you have to be either incredibly mendacious or incredibly uninformed to say that.
Ok, marginally unfettered. Are you sure an ultra sound is inserted in the vagina? And how is this any less intrusive than the abortion process itself?
But hey, your courageous stance which — for example –forces women to give birth to malformed children that will absolutely die within 24 hours, consigning those women and their families to otherwise avoidable or attenuatable grief, is simply heroic.
Life is not perfect and it is occasionally tragic. Your logic, such as it is, would have millions of healthy fetuses terminated so as to avoid the birth of a relatively rare malformed child (your words, not mine).
I am well aware that there are circumstances that call for termination of a pregnancy. Those circumstances are rare.
So, McK, what do you propose be done with all the extra fertilized embryos created during the in vitro fertilization process? They’re people with rights, right? What gets done with them?
McT, I’m not entirely clear on how Roe changed the need.
Roe federalized abortion and made it a matter of constitutional law, taking away the right of the various states to make that determination. Apparently, not willing to accede to this ruling, some states are using counter-tactics to test Roe’s holding. But for Roe, states simply made the call.
So there were, effectively, lots of different definitions of where life begins.
Yes, decided locally by elected officials and subject to change if the elected officials went beyond what the citizens were willing to tolerate.
At the rate things were changing, another 10-15 years on the places where abortion was illegal would have resembled the number of places where it is still illegal to sell alcohol.
Perhaps, but it was by the democratic process, not judicial fiat.
Are you sure an ultra sound is inserted in the vagina?
Yes.
And how is this any less intrusive than the abortion process itself?
Red herring. There are lots of things that are “less intrusive” than an abortion. What business does the state have mandating that any of them be performed pursuant to terminating a pregnancy?
Life is not perfect and it is occasionally tragic.
And no decision is too hard to make for the person that doesn’t have to make it or live with its consequences.
Are we done with aphorisms yet?
Ok, marginally unfettered.
Ha! I can predict with absolute, 100% confidence that, if the State of Texas passed a law requiring that men had to make two 100-mile round trips in three days and listen to a lecture before getting a hernia repaired or a wart removed or a prostate exam or whatever else, you would go completely berserk about big government intrusion in your life. Tell me I’m wrong.
By this, anyone has virtually any right they wish to claim.
So I *do* get to vote on your rights? Cool! This is going to be amazing.
I am well aware that there are circumstances that call for termination of a pregnancy.
But isn’t it up to the woman who’s pregnant, and her doctor, to determine whether those circumstances exist? How does the state go about examining the circumstances of a given pregnancy without violating the pregnant woman’s rights? How does the state go about determining for the woman what circumstances necessitate an abortion, before examining a given woman’s circumstances?
This idea that somehow Roe took something from the states and gave it to the federal government rather than taking it from the states and granting it to the individual is a curious one. What could be more “local” than people deciding for themselves whether or not to have an abortion?
McTx: Are you sure an ultra sound is inserted in the vagina?
Uh, yes, my wife had this done for each of her pregnancies. It depends on how far along the fetus is, but if the purpose of the TX law is to “show” the woman what’s going on, if it’s to be effective at certain stage then up the hoo-ha it is. Pleasant, no?
And how is this any less intrusive than the abortion process itself?
You can’t be serious in asking this question, can you? Consent? Hello?
Jesus.
To expand upon my discomfort with restricting abortion via the law:
I have a friend who was having twins. Fairly late in the pregnancy (I want to say around 24-26 weeks), she found out that one of the twins had a chromosonal defect. To be brief: everything that could be wrong with that fetus was wrong and death shortly after birth was guaranteed. The other was healthy. And that’s the way it went.
Imagining a scenario where she was only pregnant with one fetus, and that fetus had the defect… do I really want our law to force her to carry to term. No, no I don’t.
And that’s where I go all squishy. I can make moral judgments about this or that scenario. But when it comes to supporting laws on the matter, I get really tentative.
I find the anti-Roe but not necessarily anti-abortion argument to be an odd one.
The argument on Roe is that it should be decided on a state-by-state basis, yeah?
If, however, abortion is murder… why is it ok then if Connecticut (for example) allows it?
If abortion is not murder, what’s the problem?
As far as I’m aware, no one is making an attempt at making natural death illegal.
Well, yes, they are. Here’s just one example: Woman gets pregnant. Woman continues to drink alchohol during pregnancy. Miscarrage takes place during week 6. Was this death “natural”? If somehow “unnatural” can criminal penalties (ST due procedure) be enforced? Inquiring minds want to know.
Which, by definition, denies moral agency to the other half.
No. WRT this issue, it reduces them to the status akin to those poor souls who are found to be “incompetent” to stand trial because they do not know the difference between right and wrong.
More generally, even granting that a fetus is a human being entitled to a full panoply of rights, the question then becomes what range of actions can a state engage in to protect one citizen from another?
Somehow, I don’t think requiring someone to carry a child to term and undergo delivery would pass constitutional muster as a punishment for any crime, much less whatever crime a pregnant woman who wishes to end the pregnancy has committed (“attempted abortion”?).
Further, if we want to talk current SCOTUS jurisprudence on abortion, the “undue burden” imposed on a woman when it comes to abortion restrictions is the continuation of an unwanted pregnancy. End of story. That SCOTUS doesn’t get this is a tribute to their narrow worldview/jurisprudence and/or to the relative ineffectiveness of pro-choice advocates.
That’s the burden, alright. The question of whether it’s an undue burden is exactly where we differ.
“if it’s to be effective at certain stage then up the hoo-ha it is. Pleasant, no?”
Probably marginally more pleasant than a prostate biopsy, I’m guessing…
That was an answer? It read like another question. Ditto your follow-on.
If your point is that this amendment, if passed, practically guarantees undesirable consequences, you’ll get no argument from me. But that didn’t seem to be your point, in the comment that I responded to.
Brett, the prostate biopsy is necessary to determine if you have cancer. The ultrasound serves no medical purpose except to intimidate and coerce the woman into not terminating her pregnancy on the basis of religious and moral background which she may not share.
“Pork, I say, pork. Not that I’m against trichinosis.”
I object to this stereotyping – or generalizing – of pigs as carriers of trichinosis.
The majority of pigs are disease free, well adjusted, intelligent and possessing exemplary family values. They are important contributing members of our livestock base. There is no evidence that they are prone to disease any more than say cattle or chickens.
It is humans that fail to sufficiently cook their meat that are the real source of the problem.
Brett: That’s the burden, alright. The question of whether it’s an undue burden is exactly where we differ.
And the burden of continued pregnancy is “due” because…?
Actually, I think I know what the answer will be.
Pigs are decent people, I’ll give you that.
The argument on Roe is that it should be decided on a state-by-state basis, yeah?
If, however, abortion is murder… why is it ok then if Connecticut (for example) allows it?
If abortion is not murder, what’s the problem?
Aside from the fact that the only argument against abortion on demand is not “abortion = murder”, murder is defined by the various states, so my logic holds. My point about Roe vs letting states, through the democratic process, decide this issue is that the question of balancing an unborn person’s rights against the host mother is one of law–a point Dr. S seems to make above.
Saying that the only acceptable law is a SCt decision that you happen to agree leaves this and many other questions up for grabs outside the democratic process.
As I tried to say earlier, Roe could have been decided much differently. I suspect the deference to SCt wisdom would be much different had that been the case.
“But that didn’t seem to be your point, in the comment that I responded to.”
OK. I disagree with the assertion that “spontaneous miscarriages” are not a good counterpoint to “personhood at conception” assertions. If human “life” is sancrosanct at conception, this leads down some strange roads of illogic (miscarraige inquests, manslaughter convictions for drinking while preggers, etc.) Further, if such an assertion is true, it would seem we would be obligated to invest much more in the way of social resources to save these unborn “persons” from a 67% probability of premature death. If we got it down to 25%, wouldn’t that be a lot better? Isn’t that what we do with respect to highway safety, meat inspections, hurricane shelters, vaccines, tsunami warning systems?…you know, other things that might cause death?
Similarly, I do not see many anti-choice advocates answering Phil’s question above regarding extra zyotes as a result of in-vitreo fertilization. Should they be implanted and adopted? Should we make this somehow mandatory?
This leads to the moral agency question: I mean, if you assert abortion is murder, then take that claim to it implied legal conclusion: Women who have an (necessarily premeditated) abortion should serve life in prison without parole or be executed. If not, then the procedure is something different than murder (minor voluntary manslaughter? Like really serious shoplifting?)or women are just creatures that can’t tell right from wrong and “need to be protected from themselves”.
Pigs are decent people, I’ll give you that.
Yeah. But they’re hell on the furniture.
murder is defined by the various states
Really? Is assassinating the President a state crime or a federal one? And if it is a federal one, then it’s ipso facto, not murder if committed in Washington D.C.
Just curious.
Darn. No ‘comment deleted by author button’. Previous post was a real mangle. That’s mangle, not Mengele.
murder is defined by the various states
Really? Is assassinating the President a state crime or a federal one? And if it is a federal one, then it’s ipso facto, not murder if committed in Washington D.C.
Just curious.
Yes, really. Of the 300,000,000 Americans, only one is the president. He/she has his/her own special set of laws and they are federal. There is no federal murder statute applicable to the citizens of any particular state. The Feds do make the laws for the District of Columbia, and I am pretty sure the Feds have jurisdiction over crimes on military installations and–guessing here–Native American reservations. So, murder is defined by the states, with a few exceptions.
It’s also a federal crime to kill certain enumerated federal employees, depending on circumstance. My guess is killing a federal judge in a drunken brawl in a bar is a state law crime, but killing one–or perhaps anyone–on federal property is different. McVeigh was tried and executed under Federal law. But, generally, murder is a state defined and enforced crime.
As I tried to say earlier, Roe could have been decided much differently. I suspect the deference to SCt wisdom would be much different had that been the case.
I wonder how many of us there are who believe both that
a) Roe was wrongly decided, and
b) abortion should not be illegal
I’d like to think tha there are actually a fair number, but we get drowned out by the partisans on both sides who take support/opposition to Roe as a defining characteristic of their side of the argument.
“Saying that the only acceptable law is a SCt decision that you happen to agree leaves this and many other questions up for grabs outside the democratic process.”
You’re an attorney, yet profess to be puzzled by the idea that there are certain fundamental rights that are outside the reach of your neighbors’ interference no matter what petty laws they want to pass?
I ask you again: Which of your rights do I get to vote on? I’d actually like an answer this time. Its a real question.
So, murder is defined by the states, with a few exceptions.
I’ll take that as a modified hangout retraction of a previously issued sweeping Italican Generalization.
You might also look here:
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/federal-laws-providing-death-penalty
Pretty much covers the gamut from A to R, I’d say.
this may lead
sdown some strange roads of illogic (miscarraige inquests, manslaughter convictions for drinking while preggers, etc.)Fixed. You’re defining, in advance, a whole bunch of legal interpretations that may or may not become attached to this amendment. IMO, which may be (probably is) less informed than yours.
Eh? I don’t know what 67% you’re referring to. And I don’t think there’s many Christian abortion opponents that have any such commandment as (e.g.) “thou shalt not die, nor permit anyone else to die”. I’m not sure that’s what you’re getting at, though.
Sure, that’s a sticky question. I heard a guy from one of the groups sponsoring this amendment talking on NPR, and he had no answer for that. None. Nor do I, but I’m not an advocate for this amendment.
Eh? I don’t know what 67% you’re referring to.
Eh? What? You’re dividing by zero or not paying attention. From Dr. Science’s post:
1. The fact that normally a LARGE PROPORTION, probably a majority, of human zygotes fail to implant or are miscarried. The proportion that die due to abortion is only a fraction of the total death rate you are contemplating. (caps mine)
Somebody mentioned 67% somewhere….but even if that number is slightly exaggerated, the principal holds.
Further: If you believe that zygotes are persons, then you would, it seems, have a moral obligation to see to it that society invests an appropriate level of resources to make that gruesome ‘death rate’ go down. We did the same thing for death from small pox, did we not? What’s stopping us?
Anything less is simple cruelty, eh? Anti-abortion types are thus aiming all their fire at the wrong problem….stopping a small percentage of the carnage as it were.
So what is it they REALLY want? (OK…guilty of being disingenuous here).
The cost curve due to zygote death spiral could be bent significantly by mandated birth control and in-vitreo fertilization for those desiring children. Death due to zygote ineptitude and statistical chance would be cut dramatically. Of course there would be some collateral damage. Sh*t happens.
And of course, there are always those sluts who insist on having unprotected sex. We could devise ways of dealing with that, too.
If we all just pitched in and made some shared sacrifices, we could make this happen.
Slart, you’re a subtle, good man, if you don’t mind me saying so.
And, to some questions, there is no answer, to which both of us would admit.
But this: “And I don’t think there’s many Christian abortion opponents that have any such commandment as (e.g.) “thou shalt not die, nor permit anyone else to die”.
How come?
Look, if there was a couple, in love, but not married, or perhaps not in love, but come down from the hangover and thrown together the morning after and searching for shelter for their very own zycotes in a petrie dish searching for a tornado shelter the morning after Rep. Joe Walsh was awarded the Father of the Millennium Trophy by the Get Your Own Family I’ve Neglected Mine Research Council for not paying child support to his post-birth one-celled teenagers while simultaneously voting down NOAA and National Weather Service funding for early-warning systems for tornadoes and community root cellars …
.. well, neither of us can explain that.
But that’s where we are.
How come?
A couple of medical points to add to Dr. Science’s excellent post.
As the Doc points out, the majority of fertilization events don’t make it past early development. Many (probably most) of these blastocysts or embryos are not lost randomly; they are shed because they have lethal genetic issues. Conferring personhood on them is clearly biologically absurd. I think it is morally absurd as well. Nature uses a sort of hunt-and-peck way of producing humans. She keeps at it until She (randomly)produces a viable winner.
The abortion debate past a certain point in fetal development is reasonable; for myself, I think the moral calculus favors the rights of the woman to do what she wishes before 21 weeks or so. After that it gets complicated. The threshold of viability is now about 24 weeks gestation, although the great majority of infants born at that point will have serious health problems, many of them quite devastating.
Federal murder jurisdiction.
Federal murder statute: 18 U.S.C. § 1111 : US Code – Section 1111: Murder:
More categories of Federal murder.
The federal government has jurisdiction over a lot of murders.
Notable that, for the most part, an abortion thread consists primarily of a bunch of men discussing the exact number of weeks over which they’re willing to allow women autonomy over their own bodies before they step in and force them to give birth. Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose.
this may leads down some strange roads of illogic (miscarraige inquests, manslaughter convictions for drinking while preggers, etc.)
Fixed. You’re defining, in advance, a whole bunch of legal interpretations that may or may not become attached to this amendment. IMO, which may be (probably is) less informed than yours.
I think this is a clear case where applying heuristics is legitimate.
Exhibit A: prominent proponents of this type of law have clearly stated on numerous occasions that it is their intent to go exactly that way, although some have blatantly lied when confronted with their own words in public.
Exhibit B: Countries outside the US that have adopted similar laws went all the way, i.e. starting murder investigations against women suspected of having had an abortion, treating any miscarriage as a potential crime, refusing life.saving medical treatment to pregnant women etc.
Exhibit C: Members of groups belonging to A have declared (even in official written mission statements) that these laws are to be considered just one step and that, once they are established, the next one(s) would follow, starting with making any forms of contraception (including condoms) illegal. I assume Comstock laws will be further down on the agenda, although I have no literal proof of that at hand (apart from the usual demands to make porn illegal but this even has some support from nonreligious, non-right groups*).
*parts of the feminist movement consider any form of porn (even by women for women and with no male involvement) as degrading and anti-woman. The most prominent feminist in Germany rose to fame through her PorNO campaign.
That is a fringe position but its existence cannot be denied.
“As the Doc points out, the majority of fertilization events don’t make it past early development. Many (probably most) of these blastocysts or embryos are not lost randomly; they are shed because they have lethal genetic issues. Conferring personhood on them is clearly biologically absurd. I think it is morally absurd as well. Nature uses a sort of hunt-and-peck way of producing humans. She keeps at it until She (randomly)produces a viable winner.”
See, this is the sort of “reasoning”, (Yes, those are sneer quotes.) I object to.
Nature kills people nobody would argue aren’t people. Nature doesn’t care if it’s killing a mindless cell or a sublime composer. Miscarriage has precisely zero to do with whether an organism is a “person”, it’s totally irrelevant. If a plague swept this country tomorrow, and killed 90% of 20 year olds, would that imply that 20 year olds weren’t really people?
Or coming at it from the other direction, suppose the SENS project was ultimately successful, and human biology were altered to so improve DNA error checking that 99% of fertilized eggs were essentially perfect, and proceeded to develop, would that imply that a single fertilized human cell really was a person?
The biological basis for denying that a single cell is a “person” is that a single cell lacks a brain. And hence lacks a personality. In principle, personhood doesn’t even require biology, let alone humanity. An alien or a computer could be a person, given the right information processing.
You’ve got a reasonable position here, that the early embryo isn’t a person. Don’t defend it will nonsense arguments.
The biological basis for denying that a single cell is a “person” is that
a single cell lacks a brain. And hence lacks a personality.there is no biological concept of “personhood” as commonly understood.Heuristics, man. Heuristics. The size of Al Gore’s house trumps all science.
That someone would be you. I was wondering if I had somehow missed something, or if you were making up a number. The latter, it turned out. I’ll take “majority”, though, as being the general flavor.
Mindreading is hard, sometimes.
The lack of a vaccine for failure to implant, I imagine. Also: I think, from a Christian point of view, that failure tends to get disposed of as being God’s will*, much like natural deaths. As Brett pointed out, death gets us all in the end, and natural deaths are both commonplace and unavoidable. How come we haven’t come up with a vaccine against natural death? Why can’t we live forever?
Questions for which we have no answers, that I’m aware of.
No, not necessarily. Christian logic is nothing if not selectively flexible. NB: I say that as a Christian, and with some firsthand experience of said flexibility. God takes people in His good time, not theirs. He doesn’t proscribe against saving people from death by sickness, but He does proscribe against murder.
*Which is not to say that I have any notion of what God’s will is, just that I think I have some notion of what at least SOME Christians think, as regards natural deaths.
I don’t mind you saying so, but I think you give me far too much credit. I’m just trying to feel my way through this stuff before I start telling people how wrong they are for disagreeing with me.
This might be the first time I’ve been accused of being subtle.
Brett wrote:
“The biological basis for denying that a single cell is a “person” is that a single cell lacks a brain. And hence lacks a personality. In principle, personhood doesn’t even require biology, let alone humanity. An alien or a computer could be a person, given the right information processing.”
I thought for a moment there you were going to show us the way out of the sticky wicket encompassing personhood, but now I can’t decide which one is closer to personhood in principle: my cat or my IPad (if I had either).
Theoretically, a credenza could be a person.
Cats have brains and personalities (perhaps we require a new term: pussynality), but an IPad, I believe, has more information processing capability. (processanality?)
Is there any sense in which we can confer some ranking of personhood on either? Value, yes, but personhood, under what I understand of your principle here?
I would say, no, because neither possess the capability for language.
I’m an agnostic, I guess, regarding whether a cat’s brain can play the metaphor trick on itself (though they do spend a lot of time lolling about in the sun, like poets .. or aliens) as a human’s brain can, and I doubt that any degree of information processing power will match the human mind’s (a better word than brain) language-making capabilities.
Simulate Keats, yes.
But Nature, the bastard (see, there I go again anthropomorphizing nature) did in the one and only Keats in a long time ago.
As far as aliens go, thus far they exist only as metaphors in the language/symbol-making minds of human beings. We either confer superhuman capabilities of mind on them, or we relegate them to a super-concentrated form of Nature (sometimes with ridiculous amounts of information processing power) to which we are incidental.
Apropos of I don’t know what exactly, only the metaphor-making human mind can come up with “the brain IS an information processor”, much like it came up with “the heart IS a pump”.
All very useful, of course, but also a strange singularity in the universe.
Also, Walker Percy’s your uncle.
Sneer away. God knows, I would.
Were I Alvey Singer, I’d pull Hilzoy by the sleeve out from behind a potted plant right now and have her clear this up once and for all.
as the fetus proceeds towards human levels of complexity, it should receive proportionately increasing levels of protection
AKA, Roe v Wade.
there is no biological concept of “personhood” as commonly understood.
The penny drops.
There is no good resolution to the question of abortion. Because nobody can identify the point at which a cell becomes something that seems like a person.
One solution is to just go long and affirm the personhood of the single cell. But that leads to lots of other unwanted complications, including all of the ones Doctor Science enumerates.
People’s position(s) on abortion are wedded to what they think, or believe, about a thousand other issues, most of which fall well outside of anything that can be addressed by law or as a matter of public policy.
It’s intractable.
I get McK’s point about the political downside of having the SCOTUS play Solomon, but that’s one of the ways in which we sort out our public business.
In particular, in cases like this, where somebody thinks their state government has overstepped its lawful boundaries and scope. In Roe, the state government *had* made law, the will of the people *had* been heard. It was just found wanting, in ways that (it was claimed) touched on Constitutionally guaranteed personal liberties.
It’s tricky business to balance personal liberty and the public interest, but somebody’s got to do it, so we make the courts do it. Ultimate court of appeals, it’s right there in the Constitution.
Not everything gets left in the hands of the demos. We’re not actually a democracy, as it turns out, we’re a constitutional republic.
As best as I can make out, Roe is about as good a result as we could expect to get out of the legal system on this topic. It’s not primarily a legal question, but the law is the venue in which we sort out our public differences. So, we used the tool at hand. Not the best tool for the job, but the only available one.
Zycotes, despite their ineptitude, are very tiny start-up corporations with a mail drop, an attorney, and a lobbyist.
I’m curious, will zycotes in Mississippi enable their parents to take a dependent child tax deduction?
In my remake of “The Wizard of Oz” I’m going to fire Ray Bolger and have either a zycote or a credenza play the scarecrow.
Typecasting.
“If I only had a brain” will be changed to “If I only had an attorney.”
Somehow this seems germane:
A friend and I are fond of discussing baseball player nicknames and the stories behind them. Mike Hargrove (The Human Rain Delay), Ted Williams (The Kid), Don Stanhouse (Stan The Man Unusual) are some of my favorites.
Then there is the peculiar case of Paul Waner and Lloyd Waner, brothers and Hall of Famers, the two of them, I think, who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates way back when.
Big Poison and Little Poison were their nicknames, conferred on them by Brooklyn Dodger fans at Ebbets (sp?) Field who talked funny.
I thought for years, what cool nicknames, why those Waner boys must have been really talented, but poisonous foils to the hopes and dreams of the Dodgers and their fans.
Nah, it toins out dat de fans, dey was callin Lloyd and Paul “Big Person” and “Little Person”, but it sounded funny.
“Poison” was wrong, but very right.
I defy any cat, or IPad, or for that matter, alien (when is the last time you saw an alien movie wherein the aliens landed on Long Island and immediately started conferring nicknames on everyone?) mind to come up with that.
The Waners possessed “Poisonhood”.
Put that in the hat the man mistook his wife for and smoke it.
So, any comment from McTx or Brett on whether forcing a woman to continue pregnancy through childbirth would be constitutionally permissible as punishment for a crime?
If “potential life” is now the foundation to defining human beings, then why wouldn’t male masturbation be seen as a crime? Killing life is not the problem, I think, but when that “life” becomes a human being, is a problem. Because if potentiality is the new definition of human beings, then spilt sperm, during masturbation is genocide.
I agree that abortion is killing, however it’s not murder.
The women who has to carry the life (however we define life) get’s to decide whether it becomes a human being. It’s a huge responsibility, but one the individual should make, and not the State (Federal or otherwise).
“See, this is the sort of “reasoning”, (Yes, those are sneer quotes.) I object to.”
I suppose getting sneered at by Mr. Bellmore is a sort of ObWi milestone – do I get a badge?
“The biological basis for denying that a single cell is a “person” is that a single cell lacks a brain. And hence lacks a personality.”
It’s not that simple. Like many life and death issues, it’s quite complicated – and morally slippery. For one thing, the outward form matters. Most anyone looking at an anencephalic infant, born without a brain, would say the infant qualifies as a living person, although that person will soon die. (This perception has practical consequences; many believe such infants can be organ donors.) Now consider a hydatidiform mole, a so-called molar pregnancy. This is an unrecognizable mass of tissue that began with a conception, but then degenerated into a chaotic mess. It doesn’t have a brain, either, but no one would call it a person. Both of these conceptions have made it past the first trimester; one we regard as a person, the other a dangerous disease.
My “reasoning” that you find so sneer-worthy and irrelevant, is that many zygotes are shed because they have, as one example, bizarre multiples of the normal DNA content. In that sense they are in the same category as hydatidiform moles. Nature does not “kill” them in the same sense as your hypothetical epidemic that killed all those 20-year-olds. It is this high intrinsic wastage rate that fogs any ethical discussion of how to regard the early conceptus.
“You’ve got a reasonable position here, that the early embryo isn’t a person.”
I feel so validated from this little pat on the head from such seasoned blog debater as you.
“Don’t defend it will nonsense arguments.”
Funny. I consider your comments about humanizing computers and aliens to be nonsense arguments.
As Russell pointed out, we are trying to find our way toward some sort of resolution of the abortion issue using legal tools that are poorly suited for the task. We know life and human development is a continuum, yet circumstances require that we draw a line. Refusing to do that, insisting either that humanity, personhood worthy of legal protection, begins at fertilization, or that it’s okay to abort term infants because they’re not born yet, may be consistent and philosophically satisfying. But we’re stuck in the messy realities of the details.
So, any comment from McTx or Brett on whether forcing a woman to continue pregnancy through childbirth would be constitutionally permissible as punishment for a crime?
I missed this the first time through, but caught it in Ugh’s comment. This is an ideologically driven insult and foolish on its face.
You’re an attorney, yet profess to be puzzled by the idea that there are certain fundamental rights that are outside the reach of your neighbors’ interference no matter what petty laws they want to pass
I ask you again: Which of your rights do I get to vote on? I’d actually like an answer this time. Its a real question.
Let’s take the last part first. Your question is a “real question” if, and only if, there is a consensus that the right to abort a pregnancy is a fundamental right. I reject that, in the context of abortion for convenience/economic need/birth control/sex selection.
Fundamental rights, generally, derive from two sources: the Constitution or implicit, widely held, consensus that either pre-exist the constitution or develop over time independent of the constitution. For example, marriage, child rearing, providing food and shelter for oneself and one’s family and other incidents of the right to privacy. These, facially, are fundamental rights, yet all three are regulated by the states or by the feds in differing contexts.
Unlike marriage, child rearing and providing for oneself and one’s family—which speak to society’s fundamental fabric—there was no pre-existing, widely held consensus prior to Roe that women have the right to terminate a pregnancy. Abortion ends what, if left undisturbed, would be a human being unless, through natural processes, trauma or disease, there is a miscarriage.
It is irrelevant that X percent of sperm/egg unions fail to advance. The aborted child is a sperm/egg union that, until the abortion, was advancing just fine in almost all instances.
The SCt can declare virtually anything to be a fundamental right. Saying it doesn’t make it so. Judicial review is not an express constitutional doctrine. It was inferred in Marbury v Madison and has, over time, acquired its legitimacy. But, the same constitution that implies judicial review also allows for push back. Opinions that run counter to popular conviction undermine the court’s legitimacy. Questioning Roe and working to set it aside are legitimate democratic endeavors.
If you believe that zygotes are persons
I believe, because it is an immutable fact, that a zygote left alone is subject only to natural processes, trauma and disease, and that if left alone will result in a human being. This is a classic example of reframing the debate by imputing a false premise to one’s opponent.
There is no good resolution to the question of abortion. Because nobody can identify the point at which a cell becomes something that seems like a person.
Exactly, which is why line drawing, labels and technical arguments begetting technical arguments are beside the point. The zygote/embryo/fetus (all labels) produce/become/are human beings.
It’s not primarily a legal question, but the law is the venue in which we sort out our public differences. So, we used the tool at hand. Not the best tool for the job, but the only available one.
I disagree. The legislatures and supreme courts of the 50 states and the US Congress and Senate are also venues for the law. The SCt is the only venue for determining what rights are secured, and to what extent, under the laws and constitution of the United States.
GF and BobbyP, please note from GF’s comment this:
b) Within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of
the United States,
Whoever is guilty of murder in the first degree shall be punished
by death or by imprisonment for life;
Whoever is guilty of murder in the second degree, shall be
imprisoned for any term of years or for life.
Previously, I had written:
The Feds do make the laws for the District of Columbia, and I am pretty sure the Feds have jurisdiction over crimes on military installations and–guessing here–Native American reservations. So, murder is defined by the states, with a few exceptions.
“Territorial jurisdiction of the United States” does not mean everywhere in the US, it means on federal installations, property, districts and territories. Murder outside these limited locations is a state law function. I could have been more specific the first time through, but I believe I caught the sense of it.
”
So, any comment from McTx or Brett on whether forcing a woman to continue pregnancy through childbirth would be constitutionally permissible as punishment for a crime?
I missed this the first time through, but caught it in Ugh’s comment. This is an ideologically driven insult and foolish on its face.”
Sure is; Both execution and slavery are constitutionally permissible as punishment for a crime, is finishing up a pregnancy supposed to be even worse?
This is a problem:
It is irrelevant that X percent of sperm/egg unions fail to advance. The aborted child is a sperm/egg union that, until the abortion, was advancing just fine in almost all instances.
Why do you call it a child? Is it also an infant? Or how about a man? A woman? An elderly female?
Why are you refusing to use the proper phrasing?
Why are you refusing to use the proper phrasing?
Because I reject labels that do nothing but sanitize the discussion. What else is a fetus but an unborn child and why is “unborn” a necessary modifier in this context?
Why are you refusing to use the proper phrasing?
And further because, by the time an abortion is performed, the egg/cell union is complete. We are now looking at a very small, but undeniably, human being. Self-aware? Beats me. If that were the criteria, I know adults who qualify as fetuses.
We are now looking at a very small, but undeniably, human being.
Which one of these is the human being? No fair looking at the HTML or right-clicking!
What else is a fetus but an unborn child and why is “unborn” a necessary modifier in this context?
For one thing, because an unborn child can breathe liquid and a born one can’t. Among a number of other nontrivial differences.
For one thing, because an unborn child can breathe liquid and a born one can’t. Among a number of other nontrivial differences.
Well, I guess you have me. I turn over my king.
There are subjects Usenet veterans learned decades ago cause little more than flame wars, such as abortion, what we used to call “gnu control” to avoid drawing trolls, and, of course, whether Kirk or Picard would win in a fight.
But since we have nothing better to do:
I have a peach pit, but it doesn’t seem to be a peach. I have an acorn, but it doesn’t seem to be a tree.
Everything is subject to later circumstnaces, including natural process, trauma, and if it’s life, to disease. Excluding these things from consideration is excluding the rest of the universe. That’s a frame as much as any other chosen conceptualization. This frame is no more “immutable” than any other frame.
“Immutable” means “not capable of or susceptible to change”; it doesn’t mean “There are subjects Usenet veterans learned decades ago cause little more than flame wars, such as abortion, what we used to call “gnu control” to avoid drawing trolls, and, of course, whether Kirk or Picard would win in a fight.
But since we have nothing better to do:
I have a peach pit, but it doesn’t seem to be a peach. I have an acorn, but it doesn’t seem to be a tree.
Everything is subject to later circumstnaces, including natural process, trauma, and if it’s life, to disease. Excluding these things from consideration is excluding the rest of the universe. That’s a frame as much as any other chosen conceptualization. This frame is no more “immutable” than any other frame.
“Immutable” means “not capable of or susceptible to change.”
It doesn’t mean “not capable of or susceptible to change except when it continuously is, which it is.”
Me: any comment from McTx or Brett on whether forcing a woman to continue pregnancy through childbirth would be constitutionally permissible as punishment for a crime?
McTx: I missed this the first time through, but caught it in Ugh’s comment. This is an ideologically driven insult and foolish on its face.
Well, I don’t mean it as an ideologically driven insult, but as you note if it’s “foolish on its face” perhaps you could explain what you mean by that? That the suggestion is absurd as the situation would never arise? That it would clearly be unconstitutional and therefore not worth discussing?
Or perhaps I’m not being clear. It seems to me that the state could not force a woman to become pregnant, continue a pregnancy, or abort a pregnancy, as punishment for any crime, as that punishment would be inconsistent with the current understanding of the U.S. constitution (IMHO). Why would we allow a state to accomplish one of those things through the back door via abortion prohibitions?
Brett: Both execution and slavery are constitutionally permissible as punishment for a crime, is finishing up a pregnancy supposed to be even worse?
This reminds me of an argument I recall John Yoo making (in a debate, if not on paper), “if we’re allowed to kill people in war, why can’t we torture them? Isn’t the former even worse?”
But at least I think you grasp my point, and are arguing that forcing pregnancy on someone is not cruel & unusual punishment under the 8th Amendment, if I understand you correctly.
Assertion isn’t argument. Neither is repetition.
Neither is tautology. You can’t make a legitimate argument by assuming its conclusion.
You’re entitled to your beliefs. But they’re not undeniable when what you’re asserting isn’t a matter of biology, but philosophical/religious/semantic belief/opinion/preference.
Incidentally, I’m undead. Why do you not call me that when it’s undeniable?
I bet you’re undead, too. We’re all “un” lots of things.
We’re also all sacks of meat. And mostly water. And mostly hydrogen. Categorizations are choices, and ways of thinking, not immutable Facts Of The Universe.
Apologies for accidentally repeating much of my previous but one comment through unintentional repasting.
Your question is a “real question” if, and only if, there is a consensus that the right to abort a pregnancy is a fundamental right.
Not so fast. Didn’t you write the below? (emphasis mine)
Fundamental rights, generally, derive from two sources: the Constitution or implicit, widely held, consensus that either pre-exist the constitution or develop over time independent of the constitution. For example, marriage, child rearing, providing food and shelter for oneself and one’s family and other incidents of the right to privacy.
How does the state determine whether a woman can or cannot get an abortion without undue intrusion into her personal matters? (And how does one not have a right to sovereignty over her own uterus?)
My theory: In other words, leaving aside uterine sovereignty for the moment, even if a woman doesn’t have a fundamental and unconditional right to abortion, she has other rights which cannot be violated, such that the state has no recourse in restricting her access to an abortion, in certain ways, once you accept that there are legitimate circumstances under which a woman does have a right to an abortion. The state has no choice but to trust the woman to make the determination for herself, along with her licensed physician, that an abortion is necessary, lest it violate her other fundamental and well-established rights.
On Roe v Wade being judicial fiat, wasn’t there a case brought to the court via the usual process? Or did the justices just get together and decide to hand out a ruling just because?
My own purely personal opinion is that it’s minimally necessary to have a brain capable of cognition. But that’s just my own subjective choice.
And to get ahead of inevitable questions: a dead person is a former person. A brain-dead person is, to me, a dead person, a former person.
Note than animals are perfectly alive, and have brains, but we don’t consider them humans, so having a brain isn’t sufficient to judge a living creature a human, either.
So, in short: would an Imperial Star Destroyer beat the Enterprise? If so, which models of the latter?
So, in short: would an Imperial Star Destroyer beat the Enterprise? If so, which models of the latter?
Yes. All. So simple! 🙂
The SCt can declare virtually anything to be a fundamental right. Saying it doesn’t make it so.
The fundamental right asserted in Roe v Wade is the right of privacy.
And to speak plainly, it would be hard for me to think of a set of issues that more clearly fall in the sphere of private conscience and understanding than those that attend on the question of abortion.
While not explicitly asserted in the Constitution or any of the Amendments, a right to privacy is, IMO, accurately characterized by you above:
implicit, widely held, consensus that either pre-exist the constitution or develop over time independent of the constitution
In this, the right to privacy is very much analogous to, frex, a right to own and use property.
To be dead honest, I think Roe is as good as it’s gonna get. It doesn’t make anyone do, or not do, anything, it allows for a considerable range of local law and interpretation, and it recognizes that the issues change as the pregnancy approaches viability.
I’m not sure that you could ask for much more from a legal opinion.
My own purely personal opinion is that it’s minimally necessary to have a brain capable of cognition.
RIP Michele Bachmann. ;_;
BTW, my picture comparison was a trick question. The top one is a dog, and the bottom one is an elephant. Both nearly indistinguishable from human embryos at the same developmental stage. So I think we need to be very careful about just what is and isn’t “undeniable.” As Gary more eloquently pointed out.
Because you screwed up, your argument is invalid. Anyone else who attempts that argument from now on will be summarily laughed at.
😉
It is true that it is problematic to make sweeping generalizations about groups of people. But like most sweeping generalizations, there are exceptions to that one too. Some sweeping statements have the benefit of being accurate.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to assert that if you:
1. want to outlaw abortion, but;
2. fight against the most straightforward and provably effective ways of reducing abortions, such as birth control and sex education;
Then you are not sincerely interested in reducing abortions, you are trying to control women’s sexuality and punish people for having sex of which you disapprove.
Either that, or you’re an uninformed idiot. I don’t think there’s a whole lot of gray area there.
I should add that I’m sure many such people have buried their motivations under layers of rationalization, tribalism and denial that they might think they really want to stop the “abortion holocaust”. If you ask them, they’ll say that abortion is murder and they think it should be stopped, and they might even think they’re telling the truth. Self-delusion is both powerful and all-too-common in humans.
But the fact is that there are indisputably, empirically proven ways to reduce unplanned pregnancies and the need for abortions that don’t involve prayer, pledges or gimmicks like promise rings. And whether you support or oppose those methods says everything anyone needs to know about whether your priority is stopping what you think is the murder of millions of the unborn, or controlling women’s sexuality and punishing them for having unapproved sex.
Or perhaps I’m not being clear. It seems to me that the state could not force a woman to become pregnant, continue a pregnancy, or abort a pregnancy, as punishment for any crime, as that punishment would be inconsistent with the current understanding of the U.S. constitution (IMHO). Why would we allow a state to accomplish one of those things through the back door via abortion prohibitions?
I think I get where you are coming from, if your initial premise is that the state first forces the woman to become pregnant and then either forces her to abort or to carry the child.
The premise that the state could compel procreation by forcing either unwanted intercourse or in vitrio fertilization, is both beyond comprehension as a practical matter, and leaving that detail aside, sounds like punishment that is both cruel and unusual.
So what we are really left with, given my qualifications in earlier comments, is a woman who consents to sex and becomes pregnant: can the state compel her to carry her child full term, consistent with the constitution? Yes. It isn’t punishment for a crime, it’s a weighing of the fetus/child’s interest in a full life against the burden of 9 months of pregnancy. If I were writing the laws, I would not hold women obtaining abortions criminally responsible, I would hold the person performing the procedure responsible.
But, explicit as well as implicit in my position is that a woman who consents to sex and gets pregnant, and assuming a normal, non-health threatening pregnancy, would be required to carry the child to term.
I have a peach pit, but it doesn’t seem to be a peach.
False analogy. The peach pit was previously part of a peach. A human zygote is an embryonic human being, that over time, becomes a fully developed human being. The stage of development doesn’t determining whether it is human–as opposed to a cat or a fish–it is human because its DNA says it is. I understand that there are stages of fetal development and that, in the beginning, the cells are pretty much undifferentiated. In that early stage, spontaneous abortion or miscarriage is common. However, once the fetus forms and is seated in the uterus, it is no longer undifferentiated, the rate of spontaneous abortion falls off dramatically and the only thing standing between the fetus and citizenship is an abortion, absent disease or trauma or the more rare miscarriage.
HSH–yes, this is where the line is drawn. Is the woman’s right to decide whether to carry a child to term subject to state oversight? Or, is her right to her own body paramount? I say ‘yes’ to the first and ‘no’ to the second in the context stated in earlier comments. As a sexually active teenager, as much as I wanted to agree with the pro-choice argument, I could never get away from the fact that if I got a girl pregnant, the two of us had made a baby. It wasn’t something someone told me or that I learned in church (my church attendance being spotty at best for many of those years). Not too many years later, as an undergraduate, when my girlfriend got pregnant, she told me that she planned to have the baby but that I didn’t need to be involved any further. Thirty five years later, we’re still happily married. From the very beginning, though, there was never a thought of terminating our child and it never occurred to me or my wife that she was carrying anything other than a baby.
On Roe v Wade being judicial fiat, wasn’t there a case brought to the court via the usual process? Or did the justices just get together and decide to hand out a ruling just because?
It was a case brought by a woman, or on her behalf, contesting IIRC the Connecticut limitations on abortion. She’d already had her child, IIRC, but was granted standing anyway. Among the many problems with Roe is that it decided a hugely complex issue, and bound the entire country with its ruling, with virtually no opportunity for debate, competing amicus briefs, informed taking of evidence. IOW, this momentous issue was simply decided on a few briefs and nothing more. It’s a knife that cuts in every direction and one that should scare anyone.
And so that I am clear here: I don’t support national legislation banning abortion, or a constitutional amendment banning abortion. I support returning the matter to the states, where as a citizen, I would support limits as outlined above.
We seem to have all these varied opinions about whether, or more precisely at what point, a fetus is a human being. Let me suggest that we look seriously, not at what people give as their opinions, but at what they actually do.
If a fetus is a human being (in your opinion) do you hold funeral services for every miscarriage? If not, why not? Your actions seem to suggest that either you don’t really believe that, or you believe that there are different categories of human beings which deserve different treatment in case of death. (Everybody feel free to pile on with alternative explanations.)
Or is there some obvious explanation that I’m simple too simple to understand why such a funeral service is appropriate for everybody from adults to infants, but not for a miscarriage?
The fundamental right asserted in Roe v Wade is the right of privacy.
Yes, but from that fundamental right there came a balancing of the mother’s control over her body for 9 months against what would be another human’s full life and the other human being lost. I think they got the balance wrong and so do a lot of other people. And, there are a wide range of other privacy rights about which there is a consensus. The reason there isn’t on abortion is that this issues isn’t seen as purely the private act of one or more adult persons.
My own purely personal opinion is that it’s minimally necessary to have a brain capable of cognition.
RIP Michele Bachmann. ;_;
Giving the devil his due, Phil has scored the rimshot of the day.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to assert that if you:
1. want to outlaw abortion, but;
2. fight against the most straightforward and provably effective ways of reducing abortions, such as birth control and sex education;
Then you are not sincerely interested in reducing abortions, you are trying to control women’s sexuality and punish people for having sex of which you disapprove.
I agree with this. If I said anything that even hinted otherwise, I withdraw it categorically.
Then you are not sincerely interested in reducing abortions, you are trying to control women’s sexuality and punish people for having sex of which you disapprove.
Catsy, there is a little gray area there. It is possible to be sincerely intersted (even extremely interested) in reducing abortion, but considering that punishing disapproved sex is more important. Now you may think that is a daft set of priorities, but given the right set of underlying beliefs, it might not be.
Is the woman’s right to decide whether to carry a child to term subject to state oversight? Or, is her right to her own body paramount? I say ‘yes’ to the first and ‘no’ to the second in the context stated in earlier comments.
Isn’t it nice to be male?
I think they got the balance wrong and so do a lot of other people.
Fair enough.
Or is there some obvious explanation that I’m simple too simple to understand why such a funeral service is appropriate for everybody from adults to infants, but not for a miscarriage?
First of all, not everyone is buried, some people are cremated. Second, I think you are making an assumption that is not correct. A funeral in and of itself isn’t significant. I don’t have a study to point to, but having known any number of women who have miscarried, there is a very real grieving process, inclusive of prayer and contemplation, that is as spiritually valid as a funeral. I think you may be conflating the ceremonial with the spiritual.
I have a peach pit, but it doesn’t seem to be a peach.
False analogy. The peach pit was previously part of a peach.
So, a quibble.
Literally you are correct, the analogy from peach pit to peach is not to the point.
From peach pit to peach *tree*, 100% on point.
As a sexually active teenager, as much as I wanted to agree with the pro-choice argument, I could never get away from the fact that if I got a girl pregnant, the two of us had made a baby. It wasn’t something someone told me or that I learned in church (my church attendance being spotty at best for many of those years). Not too many years later, as an undergraduate, when my girlfriend got pregnant, she told me that she planned to have the baby but that I didn’t need to be involved any further. Thirty five years later, we’re still happily married. From the very beginning, though, there was never a thought of terminating our child and it never occurred to me or my wife that she was carrying anything other than a baby.
That’s great. Seriously – no snark. But you can act according to your beliefs on this, while others act according to theirs, without government interference, and with society continuting to function quite well (marginal tax rates not withstanding – that’a joke, son).
You can quibble about process, but, at the end of the day, Roe works pretty well AFAICT. Some people think there are too many “unnecessary” medical abortions as a result, but there’s not much in the way of demonstrable human misery, anguish or pain that I’ve seen anyone able to point out because of it. I think there would be plenty to be pointed out without Roe. Things would be a lot worse for a lot of unquestionably fully human lives.
From peach pit to peach *tree*, 100% on point.
I wish I could agree. A peach pit is inert and unchanging absent a series of external forces acting on it. And, DNA-wise, a peach pit is not human. An embryo, if left alone, becomes a full fledged human being. Not comparable at all.
Some people think there are too many “unnecessary” medical abortions as a result, but there’s not much in the way of demonstrable human misery, anguish or pain that I’ve seen anyone able to point out because of it. I think there would be plenty to be pointed out without Roe. Things would be a lot worse for a lot of unquestionably fully human lives.
Undeniably, in some states, absent Roe, a nontrivial number of women would have different and more difficult lives. What cannot be known is how many women, bringing a child to term, would be happier for having done so. That observation is, granted, conjecture. What isn’t conjecture is that your point does not speak to the trauma a developed fetus experiences in an abortion as the term advances and, not to put too fine a point on it, the millions of children who are aborted and not born, by definition, don’t get a say in the subject. Imagining that they somehow could have a say, I doubt that many would chose that fate.
An embryo, if left alone, becomes a full fledged human being.
Well, if you define left alone as being in another person’s uterus, yes.
I can’t agree with that. Consider the two competing priorities we’re talking about here.
On the one hand: stopping the daily, ongoing murder of millions of unborn children.
On the other hand: controlling women and punishing people for having sex.
I refuse to accept that any person can both sincerely believe that abortion is murder yet also sincerely believe that punishing unapproved sex is more important than stopping that. Not without being an outright sociopath.
We’re talking about a belief that–if you think about it for even a moment–boils down to an assertion that abortion is equivalent to the Nazi holocaust.
Who really thinks anything like this? “I’m sorry, I’d love to stop the Holocaust but making sure people can’t use birth control or learn about sex in school is more important.”
That’s not “daft”, it’s unhinged lunacy. It’s impossible to square those two beliefs.
I mean, is the blood flow from the uterus external to the embryo, or are we aborting self-sufficient but developing humans who float in the ether, absent external forces?
McKinney Texas,
But then argue that a zygote or fetus is a human being! Calling it an unborn child, seems to me, a sneaky way to avoid making the argument. A zygote is not a child. A child is a child. We have words, baby, infant, young adult, adolescence, middle-age…I get the sense that arguing that a zygote is a human being is too difficult, but calling it “unborn child” is misleading. My mother still calls me her “child” but my mother’s sentiment does not dictate law.
Well, if you define left alone as being in another person’s uterus, yes.
That wasn’t implicit? I thought it was.
McK:
No, my post was entirely unconnected to yours. But that’s good to know.
I should add that it is possible to square wanting to outlaw abortion but not thinking it’s actually murder with opposition to birth control and sex ed. It’s a sick and contemptible mix of priorities and it goes back to what I said in my first post, but it’s merely illogical, not insane.
With apologies for the double posting, I realized I should clarify something. In wj’s replies they’re not necessarily referring to the abortion-is-murder crowd, instead referring to simply wanting to reduce abortions. So it might seem like we’re talking past each other when I come back with something that relates to the abortion-is-murder nonsense.
The thing is, I don’t think merely “wanting to reduce abortions” describes the vast, overwhelming majority of anti-choicers. I don’t know anyone who takes the “abortions, yay!” position except to explicitly tweak right-wingers. I have never met or read a single person who doesn’t want to reduce abortions.
We’re not talking about people who think abortions are an unfortunate necessity that should be minimized. That’s a very moderate position and there are quite a number of people who describe themselves as pro-life but who are actually pro-choice if you get them to examine what they actually believe should be done. They don’t want women charged with murder for getting an abortion, they just think abortions suck and want there to be less of them. That’s a respectable position.
The ones who truly want to outlaw abortions are the ones who think it’s the murder of a child. Hence the scope of my replies.
McTx: can the state compel her to carry her child full term, consistent with the constitution? Yes. It isn’t punishment for a crime, it’s a weighing of the fetus/child’s interest in a full life against the burden of 9 months of pregnancy….But, explicit as well as implicit in my position is that a woman who consents to sex and gets pregnant, and assuming a normal, non-health threatening pregnancy, would be required to carry the child to term.
First, thanks for responding. Second, in what other circumstance is the state allowed to, effectively, seize control of someone’s body for 9 months and subject it to what can only be described as extreme discomfort of a good portion of that time, and excruciating pain for part of it (or a serious surgical procedure), based on weighing one life vs. another? I mean, I get that prison is no joke, but there’s presumably been a trial and conviction with due process in that case, along with a lack of intentionally inflicting physical (as opposed to mental) pain, but in “weighing” the state’s allowed to do without any of those judicial safeguards that which it could not with those safeguards present?
What isn’t conjecture is that your point does not speak to the trauma a developed fetus experiences in an abortion as the term advances and, not to put too fine a point on it, the millions of children who are aborted and not born, by definition, don’t get a say in the subject. Imagining that they somehow could have a say, I doubt that many would chose that fate.
as someone said above: The premise that the state could compel procreation by forcing either unwanted intercourse or in vitrio fertilization, is … beyond comprehension as a practical matter
That wasn’t implicit? I thought it was.
Yes, it was. My point wasn’t that I didn’t know what you meant, but that it was nonsensical.
A peach pit is alive and only becomes inert if not in the proper environment where it can grow (even if not human, which wasn’t relevant to the point, I don’t think). But I’d say peach pits require far fewer external forces acting on them to become peach trees than embryos do to become humans, being able to withstand far greater exposure than embryos before becoming no-longer-alive.
What are we talking about again?
But then argue that a zygote or fetus is a human being! Calling it an unborn child, seems to me, a sneaky way to avoid making the argument. A zygote is not a child. A child is a child.
I think the overall thrust of my writing is sufficiently clear. Regardless of labeling, a zygote becomes a human being nine months later. How many abortions are performed on zygotes, as opposed to fetuses? Damned few, I suspect. The real quarrel is with calling a fetus a baby.
When a couple gets pregnant, they don’t say they are hosting a zygote or a fetus, they say they are having a baby. No one is mystified by this. There isn’t some off chance the mother will produce a puppy or a toaster. It will be a baby. Do you know anyone who corrects such a couple and cautions them that it isn’t a baby until it’s come full term, or has reached 21 weeks or whatever? Insisting on labeling the interim stage as a fetus seems to me to be primarily designed sanitize a procedure that, even in cases of medical necessity, is pretty gruesome.
I refuse to accept that any person can both sincerely believe that abortion is murder yet also sincerely believe that punishing unapproved sex is more important than stopping that. Not without being an outright sociopath.
I suspect there are few who would acknowledge falling in this class. Most would say that sex is for the procreation of children and for no other reason and anything beyond that is wrong and sinful and shouldn’t be tolerated. This puts me squarely in the corner of World Class Sinners, Unrepentant Division.
The view I find most problematic on the pro-life side is the “all or nothing” crowd. They will not accept any exceptions to a blanket ban on abortion, period, full stop. The end result is no progress whatsoever, but at least they get to maintain ideological purity.
First, thanks for responding. Second, in what other circumstance is the state allowed to, effectively, seize control of someone’s body for 9 months and subject it to what can only be described as extreme discomfort of a good portion of that time, and excruciating pain for part of it (or a serious surgical procedure), based on weighing one life vs. another?
First, sure, happy to respond to any and all reasonable questions and comments. Second, none that I know of, including pregnancy. It’s a bit of an overstatement to say that the state seizes control over a woman’s body. But, leaving that aside, pregnancy is unique. “Unique” is over-used for the most part, but not in this instance. If a second life wasn’t involved, this would be a non-issue. More generally, though, the state can and surely will throw a delinquent child support defendant in jail until he/she gets current on their payments. It’s a somewhat comparable situation: the father bears equal responsibility for the child’s welfare and can (and absolutely should, IMO) be held to account up to and including prison–which is seizing control of one’s body quite literally, on account of a child.
When a couple gets pregnant, they don’t say they are hosting a zygote or a fetus, they say they are having a baby. No one is mystified by this.
But I view that sentiment, the same way my mother still views me as her baby. The couple can call it a baby all they want, its a beautiful sentiment, but that doesn’t change the fetus into a baby. I know couples who did not want a baby, so they sought to kill the fetus before it turned into a baby. Many pro-choice people hate the word “killing”, terminate is preferable, while anti-choice people want to call it a baby.
I think masturbation kills life all the time, but that killing does not rise to the act of murder. Neither does the act of killing zygotes, or fetuses.
Insisting on labeling the interim stage as a fetus seems to me to be primarily designed sanitize a procedure that, even in cases of medical necessity, is pretty gruesome.
Oh, balderdash. These are terms with real meaning to biologists and doctors, and involve stages of development with significant differences. Science didn’t just make them up to sanitize abortions.
More generally, though, the state can and surely will throw a delinquent child support defendant in jail until he/she gets current on their payments
Well, unless he is a Republican congressman who just received a “pro-life” award from the Family Research Council despite being $117,000 in arrears in his own child support.
“I think the overall thrust of my writing is sufficiently clear. Regardless of labeling, a zygote becomes a human being nine months later.”
No. This was Dr S was speaking to. The zygote faces ample opportuinity,via normal natural processes, to die off and not become a human being.
“How many abortions are performed on zygotes” in addition to the aforementioned natural processes, the “morning after pill” is, essentially, an abortion on a zygote. Right? So, i would guess the answer to your question here is, “A large number”.
“When a couple gets pregnant, they don’t say they are hosting a zygote or a fetus, they say they are having a baby.”
Only if the zygote doesn’t die off naturally and lives long enough to be detected – or have its systemic effects on the woman detected. At the point, “having a baby” remains largely in the realm of wishful thinking; less so than a hundred years ago due to modern medicine, but still an expression of hope as opposed to absolute 100% fact.
Also, your attempted point boils down to semantics which, actually, work against you. The fact that pregnant women (and partners) don’t say they are hosting a zygote or a fetus demonstrates that they don’t see a zygote or fetus as equivalent of the desired end product; which is a human baby. They are looking to the end product. They speak in terms of how far along, or how close, they are to that point when they have a baby. This is an implicit recognition that a zygoye or embroy is not the same as a baby. Otherwise they would speak of being the proud parents of a zygote. there would be zygote showers and so on and so forth.
It’s like money in the bank being saved toward some goal. If you have a 20 year plan to retire in a condo in Florida and you lose your money in the second investment year, you might say, “there goes the condo”, but, you are able to discern the dif. between your lost $20k and the Million $ you were aiming for down the road. Semantics. In the same way people are able to discern between the loss’gain of a zygote and the loss/gain of a living breathing baby.
zygoye = new word alert. A non jewish lump of fertilized cells. To be included in Webster’s in 2012.
These are terms with real meaning to biologists and doctors, and involve stages of development with significant differences. Science didn’t just make them up to sanitize abortions.
Of course they describe stages of development. But development of what? Human life, it seems to me. In the abortion debate, many pro-choicer’s insist that certain terms be used and deny that the terms are interchangeable with human life or describe human life. See SOD’s comment above. Zygotes and fetuses are fair game, humans, by implication, are not. For people like SOD, fetus-hood is a bright line. It’s simply not one I recognize.
Also, your attempted point boils down to semantics which, actually, work against you. The fact that pregnant women (and partners) don’t say they are hosting a zygote or a fetus demonstrates that they don’t see a zygote or fetus as equivalent of the desired end product; which is a human baby. They are looking to the end product. They speak in terms of how far along, or how close, they are to that point when they have a baby. This is an implicit recognition that a zygoye or embroy is not the same as a baby. Otherwise they would speak of being the proud parents of a zygote. there would be zygote showers and so on and so forth.
We must run in different circles. No one I know thinks or speaks like this.
And, DNA-wise, a peach pit is not human.
Actually, an apt point.
My only point wrt the peach pit was that the entity analogous to the peach pit was the tree, and not the fruit.
It’s package of potential peach tree, just waiting for dirt, water, and sunlight. But not actually a tree, quite yet.
But the issues involved in denying a peach tree the opportunity to realize its potential are less fraught than for a human zygote. To us, anyway, being humans.
“..But development of what? Human life….”
Why not ,”potential Human life”?
But why is “human life” even at the heart of the debate? That is an unexplained qualifier. The Sanctity of Human Life argument is a red herring.
Human life is cheap and expendible. We, as a society, even (especially?) pro lifers, actively seek to terminate many human lives.
So, what does “human life” have to do with the legailty or morality of abortion?
Unless this can be explained, there is little alternative than to see pro life as a mask for sexuality expression punishment and domination/control of women.
Human life is cheap and expendible. We, as a society, even (especially?) pro lifers, actively seek to terminate many human lives.
A most compelling argument that, somehow, I haven’t come across before. Thanks for the enlightenment. I am fairly sure that if you can get this one fully in the public domain, all but the die hard women haters will fall in line.
McK:
As many conservatives are comfortable suggesting many poor people’s interest in taxing other people’s wealth, it’s very easy to hold a position that requires state intervention to create an incredible, life-changing, burden that one will never be forced to undergo.
This is a male privilege. (Yes, you can describe endless scenarios in which the father or other males are affected, but none compare to being forced to go through pregnancy and childbirth, and then either caring for the child, or knowing it’s out there, adopted.)
And sperm and eggs were previously part of a man and a woman. The peach pit, left alone in dirt and water and the right temperature, is subject only to natural processes, trauma and disease; if left alone it will result in a peach tree.
But:
Actually, you have no way of knowing if your wife, or any other fertile woman ever had sex, ever created any additional fertilized eggs. What you do know is that you did create one, and it eventually matured, thanks to good health and your wife’s decision. Whether you created a “baby” simply by fertilizing an egg is the essence of the abortion debate.
And it’s wonderful that you had that child. Of course, no one favors terminating children, or babies. Again, this goes to the essence of the issue.
But.
If it’s a matter of killing “babies,” then how can one support a State allowing baby-murder? How do you reconcile these two positions? Either a fertilized egg is a “person,” a “human being,” or it isn’t until a later stage of development, yes?
You’re asserting the right of States to allow wanton, rampant, mass murder, and of innocent “unborn children”?
Mind, this isn’t my position. Do I misunderstand that it’s yours?
Human life is cheap and expendible. We, as a society, even (especially?) pro lifers, actively seek to terminate many human lives.
Bingo! It seems, for many “pro-lifers” who are at the same time “conservative” (ie, right-wing nationalists) seem to think that the lives of “citizens” are much more valuable than the “illegal” or foreign threat. The speed with which they embrace military action and re-calibrate human value to conform to the latest political fears, or the indifference to how our economic system cheapens life, make their concerns about “protecting human life in all stages” sound hollow.
“A most compelling argument that, somehow, I haven’t come across before. Thanks for the enlightenment. I am fairly sure that if you can get this one fully in the public domain, all but the die hard women haters will fall in line.”
Funny. What is a war, McK Texas? What is capital punishment? What are the results of various economic and other policies?
So, what does “human life” have to do with the legailty or morality of abortion?
My head hurts.
If I were writing the laws, I would not hold women obtaining abortions criminally responsible, I would hold the person performing the procedure responsible.
Oof. I hate to go there, but you do realize what the absolutely, positively 100% result of such a law would be, right?
In the abortion debate, many pro-choicer’s insist that certain terms be used and deny that the terms are interchangeable with human life or describe human life.
Who, specifically, does this? I will stipulate that a developing child is 100% composed of human DNA and is alive. So is a sperm. So is an ovum. Where does that get us?
Human life is cheap and expendible. We, as a society, even (especially?) pro lifers, actively seek to terminate many human lives.
Well, to hear some here say it, that would imply that this is “natural” and therefore there is absolutely no moral compunction to do anything about it. And to point out that yes, we could reduce this carnage is simply dismissed and/or Christianity somehow deals with these complexities so go to your room and be heard from no more.
But I would ask McKinney to address this: You claim abortion is murder. Yet above, you say the punishment should be confined to the provider and the person who willfully commissioned the crime should get off without any legal punishment. You are either a.) denying moral agency to the woman; or b.) you don’t really believe it to be murder in the first place, and the act becomes some kind of “special case”. Well, what kind of special case is it?
And what DO we do with all those leftover persons after in-vitreo fertilization?
I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised by the report (via Salon) that Brad Prewett, the director of the campaign to pass this “personhood” amendment is a father . . . by in vitro fertilization. The amendment would essentially ban that procedure.
Link here: http://www.salon.com/2011/11/08/personhoods_mississippi_moment_of_truth/
^^^ That’s an excellent question from bobbyp. In every jurisdiction I know of, hiring another person to kill a third party is a major, major felony. Here in Ohio it makes one eligible for the death penalty. Yet McK says that, in the case of abortion, it would not be punishable at all, which leads me to believe that even he doesn’t quite believe his position. Heuristics and all that.
McK:
First of all, what’s the relevancy of this?
Anecodotes are great, but you have no idea how many women you know who have miscarried, and neither do some of the women ever know if they’ve discharged a fertilized egg.
A fertilized egg doesn’t even become a fetus until the tenth week of gestation. How many women are aware of a pregnancy in, say, their second week of pregnancy?
Meanwhile, figures:
But you note:
Once it’s implanted in fertile soil, the same forces act on it to, sometimes, cause it to become a peach tree as causes, sometimes, a fertilized human or mammalian egg to become an offspring that comes to term.
Do you believe anyone disagrees with this? I’m entirely sure you are familiar with the concept of “analogy.”
Yes, we’ve established that trees and people are actually diffent from each other in significant ways. We certainly haven’t established that they don’t have relevant commonalities, and can’t be compared.
You wrote that a “zygote” is a “person” because:
Yet infinite numbers of biological processes in infinite numbers of creatures result in changes from one entirely different state to another different state, including while maintaining the same DNA, if they’re sufficiently complex. Is a Caterpillar a butterfly? Is a vegetable seed a plant? If not, why not?
No, I know an awful lot of people who won’t, haven’t, or wouldn’t, tell anyone that the woman is pregnant until at least the second trimester, or later, precisely because they know there are reasonable odds of a miscarriage, and they don’t believe this is the same as losing a born infant. This is, I’m sure, a cultural difference.
It also goes to the pointlessness of argument by anecdote.
Oddly, perhaps, I at least understand that position as consistent. What’s the third choice between “this is a human baby and willfully killing it is murder” and “this is not yet a human baby, so terminating it is in no way murder”?
Possibly it would be helpful if you would stop being tautological; it’s not persuasive. You can’t argue that the reason a fetus is a baby is because it’s a a child. You can’t argue that your assertion is correct because we all have to accept that your assertion is correct, so that proves it.
I’m reasonably sure you’re familiar with what a tautology is:
Perhaps you might stop attempting this? Please? It gets no one anywhere.
someotherdude:
Indeed, male human masturbation kills millions of potential human lives!
Though I’m pretty sure it’s rare for human female masturbation to have such results.
Phil:
Phil is, of course, correct.
avedis:
Aside from the fact that I prefer to see “Jewish” capitalized, I like this.
McK:
Yes, it’s because of such cultural differences that many political differences are generated. We’re a big country, with many different subcultures.
Anyway, this is been a nice time-killer, but while I certainly may respond further, I hope people will understand if I feel I’ve done my quota of abortion-debating for the month. Or year. And possibly bow out now.
Wait, if I’ve killed ten minutes, does it mean I’ve killed an hour? If I’ve killed an hour, does it means I’ve killed a year?
After all, an hour, left to itself, will turn into more hours, and eventually a day, then a month, and then a year.
So that makes them the same thing, right?
(No, that wasn’t a serious argument.)
“And what DO we do with all those leftover persons after in-vitreo fertilization?”
I buy them on Ebay, by the gallon, when available and toss them into my morning eye opener Bloody Mix. Lots of good protien and enzymes. Adds a subtle softening to the tomato juice’s acidity.
I’m not in trouble am I?
Weird. I thought only us Jews did that to Christian babies.
I don’t discriminate. All zygotes make for equal mixer. Put ’em in a blender and they all taste the same. There you have it.
However, come next year, you will be able to purchase zygoyes and carry on your long cultural tradition.
What isn’t conjecture is that your point does not speak to the trauma a developed fetus experiences in an abortion as the term advances and, not to put too fine a point on it, the millions of children who are aborted and not born, by definition, don’t get a say in the subject. Imagining that they somehow could have a say, I doubt that many would chose that fate.
I personally would suggest that the justifications for having an abortion would have to be more compelling the longer the pregnancy was allowed to progress, assuming there was any choice in allowing that progression. I say this as a matter of my own personal moral calculus and wouldn’t suggest that it be made law or that anyone be forced to act according to my thinking. I wouldn’t even offer advice on the matter if it weren’t solicited.
As far as the potential wishes of the unborn, the same could be said of the potential lives not conceived because of condom use (or abstinence for that matter – why aren’t we all having as many children as we can possibly produce to minimize the number of potential people who hypothetically will wish they were born?). I’m not sure that such considerations should inform public policy. It might get a little weird.
I think the scariest thing, about abortion, is a woman would have the final say, as to what types of life gets to grow in her. And that is scary, for many people. It’s more comfortable if the nation-state (which seems to be God for some people), steps in and makes that choice for her.
I think if zygotes and fetuses begin to demand socialized pre-natal care, their right to life will be questioned.
I personally would suggest that the justifications for having an abortion would have to be more compelling the longer the pregnancy was allowed to progress, assuming there was any choice in allowing that progression. I say this as a matter of my own personal moral calculus and wouldn’t suggest that it be made law or that anyone be forced to act according to my thinking. I wouldn’t even offer advice on the matter if it weren’t solicited.
Can we say “Roe v. Wade”? I do – it’s a wonderful decision, and really does a great job balancing the privacy rights of a woman with society’s (less) legitimate interest.
It’s more comfortable if the nation-state (which seems to be God for some people), steps in and makes that choice for her.
In McKinney’s case, it’s uncomfortable (for some reason) for the federal government to decide, but wonderful (for some reason) for states to decide, presumably because states are smaller, and maybe “closer” to the values of the “people”. (Just guessing here, because to me the federal versus state issue is totally incomprehensible.)
But, for some reason, the very smallest government – the government of the person’s conscience over herself, is not to be trusted.
I’m not a libertarian about most things, but about a person and his or her body: I do really believe in small government. Very, very small.
“I think if zygotes and fetuses begin to demand socialized pre-natal care, their right to life will be questioned.”
Already done. If a zygote needs Medicaid, as many do, then it is already at odds with the very conservatives that seek to otherwise protect it.
I shudder to think what becomes of a zygote that need Medicare coverage. Maybe that falls under the holy miracle category and is thus OK again.
One other thing to consider: more than 1/3 of women will have had an abortion by the age of 45. That doesn’t mean that 1/3 approve of abortion: it means that 1/3 will actually have had one. That’s a lot of people for whom certain members of “society” want to substitute their judgment.
I could make an entire post out of this, but I don’t like prolonging abortion arguments.
So I simply recommend this news piece.
Some excerpts:
Does anyone here wish to defend this proposed law?
Cripes, even Haley Barbour has backed away:
But meanwhile:
Stay tuned.
Your last was a very good summation, Gary, of the political issue.
To shorten it up a bit, we are looking at an attack on sexual freedom. Period.
Zygotes and their personhood are a red herring.
I recommend the article that Chris Johnson gave a link to (here it is with the hotlink)
That actually has Barbour as earlier having misgivings but now supporting it, to the point of asking that his quote being used by a robocall be taken off. (enjoy the name of that paper, it’s from my hometown)
Even when I lived there, I didn’t understand what people in Mississippi were thinking, but Barbour’s pirouette around the issue seems very typical of the forces that seek to harness this. Donald Wildmon, a name from the past, is working on this, and that desire to whip up the troops seems to be at the heart of a lot of this.
By coincidence, Erik Loomis at LGM has a review of a biography of John Brown and this paragraph makes me think of the politicians like Barbour
A point I frequently make to my students is how Southern politicians violently overreacted to every northern move to oppose slavery. Horwitz reinforces my feelings about this with his discussion of Henry Wise. Virginia’s governor in 1859 and an opportunist to the core, Wise sought to take advantage of the raid to improve his own political stock. A die-hard slaveholder and soon to be one of Virginia’s leading secessionists, Wise responded to Brown’s raid not with moderation, but by militiarizing his state, sending notices to the governors of Ohio, Maryland, and Pennsylvania that his troops would invade their states in pursuit of future raiders. This outraged even the pliant and worthless James Buchanan, not that our worst president did much about it.
That inability to respond with any kind of moderation rings a bell and as it occurs in the face of the logical dismantling of the position that life somehow starts at fertilization, seems to be something at the heart of this. Loomis has some interesting comments about how it is difficult to argue that Brown was doing something correctly while arguing that abortion foes are wrong, but I’m more interested in the forces that seem to try and utilize this for their own gain.
I support returning the matter to the states…
Assume you get your way. Would a federal Fugitive Abortionist Act not follow shortly thereafter? Would the interstate transportation of zygotes in order to commit a felony become a crime?
In all seriousness, what you would most likely get is some states would allow it (to varying degrees) and some (to varying degrees) wouldn’t. You would also most likely see universally lax enforcement(just like before 1973), unless of course, you were a poor woman driven to commit this heinous crime. The rich? Not so much.
And this, this, is what is so disturbing about the whole thing. The “pro-life” position would, with a high degree of probability, solve absolutely nothing except revive a widely loathed status quo ante.
And you’d be happy with that? As J. McEnroe would say, “You can’t be serious!”
I can’t emphasize enough this point I quoted, which should be known to anyone who feels qualified to hold an opinion on abortion:
LJ, as an aside, I’d like to agree with the idea that James Buchanan is an immensely credible candidate for Worst President Ever.
Yes, worse than George W. Bush. Bush at least didn’t bring us civil war.
Moi, try to divert the conversation? 🙂
I support returning it to the counties, or perhaps the water districts, or maybe the churches, or maybe the Girl Scouts, or you know, maybe the girls themselves, with some input from the fundamentalist boyfriends, when the latter can get away from their wives.
Seriously though, why not outlaw abortions altogether, bring every fetus to term, and subsidize them via various levels of government, like we do with sports franchises, with lifetime health benefits, long-term care insurance, free college tuition (send them to Penn State to play the defensive line), free parking, and tax benefits.
Observe the sanctity of life. I want to.
Infrastructure. Roads for babies. Bridges for babies.
I’m game. Eric Cantor is not.
In fact, welfare reform in reverse wherein poor women are encouraged to bring babies to term to qualify for more, unlike now, when single poor women abort because the incentives have disappeared.
Oh, yeah, some thought the dis-incentive of welfare reform led to less f*cking.
Then raise the babies’ marginal tax rates, the lucky duckies, at which point, according to current dogma, they’d give up of their own volition, fire their fellow fetal file clerks, and slit their own throats, the burden being what it is.
Kidding.
Whoops, the States lose again:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/11/mississippi-personhood-zygote-federal-law
This question will now wait until the next election/legislature to bring it further: Mississippi Voters Reject Anti-Abortion Measure.
Defending rights is a lifelong battle — of education — and then we pass the baton on the next generations.
What’s the third choice between “this is a human baby and willfully killing it is murder” and “this is not yet a human baby, so terminating it is in no way murder”?
As far as the potential wishes of the unborn, the same could be said of the potential lives not conceived because of condom use (or abstinence for that matter – why aren’t we all having as many children as we can possibly produce to minimize the number of potential people who hypothetically will wish they were born?). I’m not sure that such considerations should inform public policy. It might get a little weird.
Both topics have been discussed in Jewish theology. A famous Rabbinic statement is that ‘he who does not procreate is like someone spilling blood’, which would make celibacy and abstinence murder/manslaughter if taken literally.
The common Jewish theological position on abortion is that in case of a pregnancy threatening the life (maybe health too) of the pregnant woman, the unborn can be classified as a hostile pursuer (rodef) and killed in self-defense up to the point of delivery (to be precise: the head being outside the woman’s body). This construction treats the unborn as a person* that can under certain circumstances be killed without the killing being a crime or even immoral.
*even more strongly than the typical ‘pro-lifer’ because in order to work the unborn has to be assumed to have hostile intent but not just in the way a hungry lion may have towards you. In case of a wild animal there would not be a discussion in the first place that killing in self-defense is justified. To bring that into the debate requires a hostile human agent.
Assume you get your way. Would a federal Fugitive Abortionist Act not follow shortly thereafter? Would the interstate transportation of zygotes in order to commit a felony become a crime?
Not a hypothetical in other countries. Ireland infamously tried to prevent by force an underage girl (pregnant from rape by either her father or enabled by him) from going to Britain to have an abortion. Originally it was planned to keep her under lock and key until after she would have delivered the child but the courts intervened in the end. Germany persecuted women that travelled to the Netherlands for abortion when it was still effectively illegal in Germany.
[Barbour] also criticized the strategy of sending it to voters rather than to the Legislature.
Wow, hey don’t usually let the mask slip off to reveal the lizard skin underneath.
If it’s a matter of killing “babies,” then how can one support a State allowing baby-murder? How do you reconcile these two positions? Either a fertilized egg is a “person,” a “human being,” or it isn’t until a later stage of development, yes?
You’re asserting the right of States to allow wanton, rampant, mass murder, and of innocent “unborn children”?
I don’t think you’ll find any comment of mine where I’ve referred to abortion as “killing a baby”. If I did make that statement, I withdraw it. A careful reading of what I’ve said is that, balancing the woman’s right to be free of a pregnancy for 9 months against the life of the child/fetus/whatever you want to call it, the child/fetus’ right to a full life outweighs the burden on the woman. I don’t deny it’s a burden. The reason why I don’t use the “kill a baby” language is that the vast majority of pro-choice people I know would not be pro-choice if they thought they were killing children. They see it differently. If it was an easy question, we’d have an easy answer. All of this got started with someone expressing wonder at what could pro-life people possibly be thinking. I’ve tried to provide some insight. It’s also my view that it is a matter to be decided by voters in the individual states. Some states would be pro-choice, some pro-life. By taking the issue out of the realm of SCt jurisdiction, the polity will be free to revise and adjust their respective laws as time, circumstance and values change.
You claim abortion is murder. Yet above, you say the punishment should be confined to the provider and the person who willfully commissioned the crime should get off without any legal punishment. You are either a.) denying moral agency to the woman; or b.) you don’t really believe it to be murder in the first place, and the act becomes some kind of “special case”. Well, what kind of special case is it?
Two problems here. First, you impute to me something I’ve never said and which I address in response to GF’s similar error. Second, you reasoning is flawed. That’s what happens when you try to defeat someone else’s position by mis-stating it.
Women who seek abortions, I assume, do so with a range of motivations, misgivings (or lack thereof) and external concerns. For purposes of imposing criminal liability, the presumption I would build into the law would be that women seek abortions under, at a minimum, moderate-to-severe levels of duress and distress, i.e. if their circumstances were different, they would carry the child to term. This is a not uncommon feature of the law, presuming good faith on the part of others. So, I would presume good faith. In fact, I am confident that some number of abortion seekers are indifferent to what they are doing, but that would not be the presumption I would indulge if writing the law. The provider, however, is typically a for-profit person and knows full well what he/she is doing. So, you do not grasp both my attitude toward abortion or how laws can be, and often are, drafted.
The view I find most problematic on the pro-life side is the “all or nothing” crowd. They will not accept any exceptions to a blanket ban on abortion, period, full stop. The end result is no progress whatsoever, but at least they get to maintain ideological purity.
Oddly, perhaps, I at least understand that position as consistent. What’s the third choice between “this is a human baby and willfully killing it is murder” and “this is not yet a human baby, so terminating it is in no way murder”?
Again, you impute to me the ‘abortion is murder’ tautology. You misread me. I view it as a balancing test, and the ‘full life’ wins over 9 months. In cases of rape, incest and a threat to the mother’s health, the balance shifts. I am not telling anyone they have to change their minds. I am simply explaining, in response to a very early comment, what the underlying thinking of some pro-life people is.
Possibly it would be helpful if you would stop being tautological; it’s not persuasive. You can’t argue that the reason a fetus is a baby is because it’s a a child. You can’t argue that your assertion is correct because we all have to accept that your assertion is correct, so that proves it.
Well, why not? You insist that a fetus is not a child because it’s a fetus. I can’t see a difference other than location: in the womb or out. You have your vocabulary which, to me, seems as arbitrary as mine does to you. This is, in part, why we have a disagreement on this issue.
In McKinney’s case, it’s uncomfortable (for some reason) for the federal government to decide, but wonderful (for some reason) for states to decide, presumably because states are smaller, and maybe “closer” to the values of the “people”. (Just guessing here, because to me the federal versus state issue is totally incomprehensible.)
Correction: the federal gov’t did not decide this issue. A seven justice SCt majority did. I prefer states over the feds because I’m a Federalist in the sense that I think smaller political bodies are more representative of what local citizens want than larger. I am also a Federalist because that’s what the constitution stands for.
But, McKinney, to the extent that the SCOTUS took discretion away from the states, it gave it to the individual, right? What smaller political body is there than the individual?
I’ve tried to provide some insight. It’s also my view that it is a matter to be decided by voters in the individual states. Some states would be pro-choice, some pro-life.
Interestingly, when these measures go to the voters rather than to state legislatures, they nearly always fail, for reasons which are probably patently obvious.
James Buchanan may have been our worst President, but for all the blame he so richly deserves, we were headed for Civil War regardless of anything he did. He might, perhaps, have shortened the war by actually sticking up for the Union, but no way he prevents it (IMnsHO, obviously).
McTx: I can’t see a difference other than location: in the womb or out.
As they say, location, location, location.
Would you be on board with the state being able to force you to donate a kidney to your child?
I’d like to agree with the idea that James Buchanan is an immensely credible candidate for Worst President Ever.
Gary, I hope Harding is at least on your short list. To my mind, he’s the run-away leader for the title.
Not that location is the least bit unimportant, but it’s not merely that.
I have a hard time believing that someone who otherwise appears quite intelligent and educated could write this and think it meaningful. We are not talking about the difference between “pop” and “soda”, we’re talking about long-established scientific terms with very discrete meanings. We didn’t just make them up to sidestep anti-abortion arguments.
My understanding is that you are an attorney. This is a profession that lives and dies by the splitting of extremely fine hairs over the precise meaning of terms of art, the distinctions between many of which appear arbitrary and even silly to the untrained. You didn’t make up those terms, you learned them because they have real meaning in your profession. What would your reaction be if someone attempted to argue the validity of “your” terms because they think the terms are arbitrary and they don’t see the difference?
McT:
“I prefer states over the feds because I’m a Federalist in the sense that I think smaller political bodies are more representative of what local citizens want than larger. I am also a Federalist because that’s what the constitution stands for.”
No that’s not what the constitution stands for, at least according to one of its principal authors, who thought that often *what local citizens want* will include the dimunition or extirpation of certain of their co-citizens’ rights:
“The other point of difference is, the greater number of citizens and extent of territory which may be brought within the compass of republican than of democratic government; and it is this circumstance principally which renders factious combinations less to be dreaded in the former than in the latter. The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other. Besides other impediments, it may be remarked that, where there is a consciousness of unjust or dishonorable purposes, communication is always checked by distrust in proportion to the number whose concurrence is necessary.”
— James Madison, Federalist No. 10
I guess one other question/hypothetical I would pose to McKinney, and then maybe I’ll be done, is to what extent can the state act in a preventative manner to keep a woman from having an abortion?
For example, suppose Woman X has been arrested and convicted in an attempt to have an abortion. She has declared that should be set free, she’ll seek to have an abortion at the first available opportunity, again in violation of the law. Can the state imprison her for the duration of her pregnancy? What does the state do when it comes time to “push”? Can the woman refuse a C-section, or is that required as part of the punishment/weighing?
And this:
Women who seek abortions, I assume, do so with a range of motivations, misgivings (or lack thereof) and external concerns. For purposes of imposing criminal liability, the presumption I would build into the law would be that women seek abortions under, at a minimum, moderate-to-severe levels of duress and distress, i.e. if their circumstances were different, they would carry the child to term.
Would Build a presumption into the law that a woman who seeks an abortion is in some way incapacitated, such that criminal culpability and/or the level thereof could not attach because, well, she’s crazy and/or has some sort of “diminished capacity” defense, like that available to a 10 year old.
Guess what the topic was on Fresh Air, tonight.
How Birth Control And Abortion Became Politicized
The first birth control clinic in the United States opened in 1916. It was operated by Margaret Sanger, who started the clinic after becoming outraged that she couldn’t give her patients — poor women in the tenements on New York City’s Lower East Side — information about contraceptive options.
“Sanger [went] to these squalid, crowded homes of these young women bearing many children who are begging her — while giving birth — for information about contraception,” says historian Jill Lepore. “And it [was] illegal for her to give them any information.”
Lepore’s latest New Yorker piece chronicles the history and politicization of birth control in America. “From the start,” she writes, “the birth-control movement has been as much about fighting legal and political battles as it has been about staffing clinics, because in a country without national health care, making contraception available to women has required legal reform.”
Sanger was well aware of the legal battles. Before she opened her birth control clinic, she wrote a letter to New York’s district attorney, informing him that she planned to provide printed pamphlets about contraceptive options. Passing out such information was illegal under the 1873 Comstock Law, which prohibited the distribution of any printed information deemed obscene.
“[The Comstock Act] classified all sorts of printed material as obscenity and specified contraception as obscene so that it [was] illegal to send through the U.S. mail … information, even in a philosophical sense, about reducing a woman’s fertility,” says Lepore.
Nine days after Sanger opened her clinic in Brooklyn, an undercover police officer came in, posing as a mother who couldn’t afford to raise more children. Sanger sold the officer a copy of “What Every Girl Should Know,” a pamphlet about contraception and STDs. Shortly after, Sanger was arrested and sentenced to 30 days in prison.
“The courts … ruled against her and said ‘A woman’s right to life gives her the right to not have intercourse with a man,’ ” says Lepore. “Sanger’s argument is that a woman has a right to have sex without fear of death [during childbirth]. And the court rules against her.”
Interesting person, that Margaret Sanger.
McKTX:
I view it as a balancing test, and the ‘full life’ wins over 9 months. In cases of rape, incest and a threat to the mother’s health, the balance shifts.
I’m deeply curious: how can you claim your position to be internally consistent in any way, shape or form given your assertion of the above? Of the three “shifting” factors listed, one of these things is not like the other. How can the innocent child/fetus’ right to a ‘full life’ suddenly become forfeit merely because it was conceived without the consent of the mother? I ask that in all seriousness. Allowing exceptions on this basis draws into question your overall opposition. If you argue it’s because the would-be mother did not want or intend to become pregnant, or that she would not want the child, or that she might grossly dislike being obliged to bring it to term, how is that different than many or most of the other women whose interests, rights, and wants you’d deem to be subordinate to those of their child/fetus?
I’m surprised that took you less than 15 minutes, Slarti.
I suppose that’s a polite way of saying it, Slart…
Was Slarti trying to make a point?
Other than that Margaret Sanger was an interesting and complicated person? No.
I might have gone with that she was stroking the egos of white supremacists, but homey don’t play dat.
As Jackie Gleason used to say: “Annnd aaa-way we go!”
You should listen to the interview. The writer addresses those issues. By the way, can you guys point to conservatives who spoke against eugenics? And when eugenics started to fall out of favor with progressives and Sanger, why did American conservatives still embrace it?
Guys, the arguments for contraception and family planning do not stand or fall on Margaret Sanger’s century-old and bog-standard-for-her-time views on race and genetics. Do Not Feed The Trolls.
I have tried to post a comment about six times and every time I do so, I get an indication that my comment has been posted, but then I hit “reload” and nothing is there. Very frustrating. What am I doing wrong?
Still two more failures. Is lifting a quote from an online dictionary preventing my comment from sticking?
But these dudes are too thoughtful to be trolls.
McTx – it could be. Try cutting and then “paste special” into Word as “unformatted text” then cutting and pasting that into the comment box.
Ugh, I just tried that and failed. Any other thoughts? Thanks.
True, Phil.
But depending on how this thread further develops, I expect males here who have had vasectomies and females who have their tubes tied to run out at the first opportunity and have the procedures reversed because of associations with Margaret Sanger.
As for me, I’m not going to roast that goose in the oven for Thanksgiving after all because associations might arise in people’s minds with goosestepping and ovens in Nazi Germany.
I assume you’re not trying a bunch of html to include links/emphasis/blockquotes/etc? That seems to be the other reason why it wouldn’t post. You could try posting it in a comment at TiO and see if that works.
Alternatively, is it really really long? Or maybe you could post a link to the quote?
Per Websters On Line
fe•tus
noun \ˈfē-təs\
Definition of FETUS
: an unborn or unhatched vertebrate especially after attaining the basic structural plan of its kind; specifically : a developing human from usually two months after conception to birth
em•bryo
noun \ˈem-brē-ˌō\
plural em•bry•os
Definition of EMBRYO
1
a archaic : a vertebrate at any stage of development prior to birth or hatching b : an animal in the early stages of growth and differentiation that are characterized by cleavage, the laying down of fundamental tissues, and the formation of primitive organs and organ systems; especially : the developing human individual from the time of implantation to the end of the eighth week after conception
My understanding is that you are an attorney. This is a profession that lives and dies by the splitting of extremely fine hairs over the precise meaning of terms of art, the distinctions between many of which appear arbitrary and even silly to the untrained. You didn’t make up those terms, you learned them because they have real meaning in your profession. What would your reaction be if someone attempted to argue the validity of “your” terms because they think the terms are arbitrary and they don’t see the difference?
It’s a pretty rare case where one side gets to define the debate by freighting terms with meanings to achieve a given result, or, conversely, to use terms to limit the functional or actual state of affairs. “Hair splitting” matters in contracts where parties are intended to have meant to use the words chosen, e.g. the difference between “goods” and “materials”, a case I happen to have on appeal with serious money riding on the outcome. Still, though, many contracts are silent on some terms or are ambiguous. The remedy usually boils down to common sense and what is, functionally and actually, reasonable.
I went to Websters and pulled the definitions of fetus and embryo you see above. To me, they plainly indicate that a human embryo and a fetus are “human”. This comports with what seems to me to be common sense. So, to insist that a fetus or an embryo or a zygote is something other than a human in the earliest stages of development and is therefore subject to a different consideration as to life and death as would be a human born live is simply a proposition I am not willing to accept.
This isn’t the first time, in contested legal matters or in disagreements over policy, where people disagree on the meaning, importance or effect of words or actions.
Thanks Ugh! Part II:
No that’s not what the constitution stands for, at least according to one of its principal authors, who thought that often *what local citizens want* will include the dimunition or extirpation of certain of their co-citizens’ rights:
LC, your position would be stronger if abortion rights were decided by the US Congress and Senate. The problem that Madison describes—a small, local majority oppressing a minority—is more analogous to the SCt deciding who has what rights over others, if you consider, as I do, that an unborn human, constitutes an “other.”
Madison was pitching for a national congress that would more representative than the various state legislatures on matters of national interest. He was not pitching for matters such as abortion rights to be decided by the Supreme Court. Further, the Federalist Papers preceded adoption of the Constitution and thus preceded the Bill of Rights which include the 9th and 10th Amendments.
Further still, the Federalist Papers were written prior to Marbury v Madison (1803) which was the initial precedent for judicial review. Even further still, the FP preceded the doctrine of selective incorporation, which was a 20th century phenomena.
We could argue endlessly if Madison, Hamilton et al would have written the Federalist Papers as they if they could have foreseen all that would follow, most especially the degree to which state actions and laws would be subject to federal court judicial review.
to what extent can the state act in a preventative manner to keep a woman from having an abortion?
A very good question. I would say none. The most any state could do would be to disallow the procedure within its borders. The provider could be restrained from performing the procedure. The woman could not be prevented from traveling to another state to secure the procedure.
Would Build a presumption into the law that a woman who seeks an abortion is in some way incapacitated, such that criminal culpability and/or the level thereof could not attach because, well, she’s crazy and/or has some sort of “diminished capacity” defense, like that available to a 10 year old.
You completely misread me.
how can you claim your position to be internally consistent in any way, shape or form given your assertion of the above? Of the three “shifting” factors listed, one of these things is not like the other. How can the innocent child/fetus’ right to a ‘full life’ suddenly become forfeit merely because it was conceived without the consent of the mother?
Neither side of the argument is free of inconsistency. Why should the state have an interest in the third trimester and not the first? That is arbitrary line drawing, but the practical impact of not giving the state an interest is that if any portion of the child remains in the birth canal, that child’s life is subject to termination.
There are actually four circumstances that may shift the scale. I am on the fence when the child’s deformity/condition/illness makes life a short, problematic and agonizing affair. I wish I had an answer for this situation. Perhaps, in time, I will find an answer, but that answer is irrelevant to my views on when abortion should not be allowed.
As for rape, incest and a threat to the mothers life or health, the level of trauma the woman has sustained, and would continue to sustain, is sufficient to shift the scale. If you see these as inconsistent, my response is that if I were to call for a blanket ban on abortion under any circumstances, you (or someone else) would immediately and rightly assail that position as not allowing for these exceptions. To me, no offense, your criticism of my position seems to be more rhetorical than substantive.
There is nothing easy about this issue. I am pretty sure I have so indicated several times in this thread.
Ok, have at it.
I just would like to note for the record that I am not attempting to use Margaret Sanger’s peculiar views on eugenics as arguments against either contraception or abortion.
Why would I have to, when I can just have Phil make it up for me?
It was probably bad form of me to waste comments space in pointing to her oddities, though, as the readership here is doubtless better acquainted with them than I am.
Other than that Margaret Sanger was an interesting and complicated person? No.
OK. Now, if you will excuse me, I’m off to Safeway to see if they carry any Belgian beer.
Why should the state have an interest in the third trimester and not the first? That is arbitrary line drawing
Rather than pretend that we’re starting from scratch in trying to determine why the state has a greater interest late in the pregnancy than early in the pregnancy, maybe we should actually read why the court in Roe v. Wade determined that. The decision was far from arbitrary. For example (and it’s just a small example, because almost the entire lengthy opinion discusses the evolution of the law concerning abortion, and the longstanding belief that life began at “quickening”):
So, no, the opinion wasn’t “arbitrary”. As a lawyer, McKinney, it’s unusual for you to approach the issue as if the entire history of the law of abortion never happened. It’s only “arbitrary” if you think that nothing but party line of the Christian right – that human life deserves protection from the moment of conception – deserves judicial consideration.
The extent to which people have a right to make decisions about their own health is certainly a Constitutional question. Do you really disagree with that, McKinney? And if a person can’t make a decision without affecting another “person,” don’t you think that balancing the interests between the two parties is a proper role for the judiciary?
McTx: You completely misread me.
Okay. What did you mean then by a pregnant woman entering procuring an abortion under “distress/duress”? Just that there is a basis in law in distinguishing between actors in a particular situation? I can see that generally, but when it comes to abortion, the case for punishing the supplier but not the seeker seems particularly weak, given the underlying transaction.
So, no, the opinion wasn’t “arbitrary”. As a lawyer, McKinney, it’s unusual for you to approach the issue as if the entire history of the law of abortion never happened.
The entire history of the law of abortion as a matter of being a fundamental constitutional right begins with Roe. Prior to Roe, the law of abortion was handled by the legislature. The three trimester construct is purely judicial line drawing. Once you accept the premise that the Court can do something like that, be prepared to have other lines drawn in a way you don’t much care for.
The extent to which people have a right to make decisions about their own health is certainly a Constitutional question. Do you really disagree with that, McKinney?
No, of course not, with several exceptions: I don’t think any adult can consent to sell their organs. I don’t think an adult should be allowed to clone him or herself. And, to limit the answer to the question you raise, if it’s a matter of the mother’s health being threatened, then I would make an exception. Birth control isn’t a health issue. However, I understand you meant the ‘health’ issue broadly enough to encompass birth control, and because ending a third life is involved, I say that the generally unfettered right to make one’s own health decisions is limited in this one instance.
And if a person can’t make a decision without affecting another “person,” don’t you think that balancing the interests between the two parties is a proper role for the judiciary?
No, and I doubt that you do either, since if a later SCt were to reverse Roe and decide that, from zygote to fetus to birth, the unborn life is a life within the 5th and 14th Amendments’ due process guarantees and thus cannot be taken with due process, you would be outraged. I would too, FWIW.
What did you mean then by a pregnant woman entering procuring an abortion under “distress/duress”?
There are two parties to an abortion: the provider and the patient. The patient, I would have the law presume, seeks an abortion for reasons she believes to be compelling (whether this is, in fact, the case or not–it’s called a legal presumption and it is common feature of US law), which would erode, but not eliminate, the concept of mens rea (the criminal mind). Further, imposing criminal sanctions on someone with the desperation I would impute to the mother goes farther than the law should, in this and in any similar context. The intent of the law is not to punish in this circumstance, but to simply to allow the child to come to term. The provider, OTOH, knows what he/she is doing and is providing a service for a fee, not grappling with the presumed burdens attendant to carrying a child. Also, as a practical matter, it is easier to police providers than it is mothers seeking the procedure.
The entire history of the law of abortion as a matter of being a fundamental constitutional right begins with Roe. Prior to Roe, the law of abortion was handled by the legislature.
To my knowledge, the constitutionality of the legislation banning abortion wasn’t challenged until Roe. There are many statutes whose constitutionality isn’t questioned until the matter is brought to court. Then the court has to make a decision about the constitutionality. Until then, it is often presumed that statutes are constitutional. It doesn’t mean they are.
There were Jim Crow laws in place for many, many years. It wasn’t until their constitutionally was challenged that they were declared unconstitutional. That wasn’t judicial line drawing.
The Court in Roe merely acknowledged pre-existing common law and evaluated the effects of the statutes on the law, determining that the legislature had no business banning abortion in the early stages of pregnancy. Then it did have some business, when the procedure became more dangerous, regulating the manner in which the procedure was performed. That makes perfect sense. The third trimester, after “quickening,” the court recognized historical belief that the government had an interest in the potential life of the child. It didn’t “arbitrarily” draw that line. It looked at common law, canon law, and a number of other sources that pre-dated legislation, for indications of how society itself traditionally thought about the notion of when a separate life begins, and when it requires consideration by the law. There was nothing “arbitrary” about the decision. What’s arbitrary is having a legislature decide for all women medial matters that vary dramatically for particular women.
If the legislature passed a law that stated that parents were required to donate kidneys to children who needed kidney transplants, you can imagine that the constitutionality of such a law would be called into question. Of course, legislatures (mostly comprised of men), would never pass such a law. It’s obvious to anyone that such a law would violate a person’s decisions about his or her own body. But for some reason, some people think it’s fine for legislatures to tell women that they have to put their bodies at risk? How are the two situations different?
Prior to Roe, the law of abortion was handled by the legislature.
From Roe: “It perhaps is not generally appreciated that the restrictive criminal abortion laws in effect in a majority of States today [1973] are of relatively recent vintage. Those laws, generally proscribing abortion or its attempt at any time during pregnancy except when necessary to preserve the pregnant woman’s life, are not of ancient or even of common law origin. Instead, they derive from statutory changes effected, for the most part, in the latter half of the 19th century.”
So the idea that the issue of abortion was always a legislative matter is incorrect. It was a legislative matter for about 100 years. The Court went on to describe exactly what kind of matter it was prior to that. That’s why the decision in Roe is such a wonderful one. Everyone should read it. It’s one of the most thoughtful, sensitive opinons that the Supreme Court has ever delivered.
McTex,
In case I wasn’t clear, I was actually just responding to your general contention that the Constitution stands for local government. So while the point might not be as cogent specifically in the abortion debate, it goes to your contention that the Constitution was designed to give deference to local democracy.
Further, Madison’s contention that Republican government rather than direct democracy is more protective of minorities’ rights is compatible with the SCt being the ultimate arbiter of constitutionality. In other words, just because Republican government can help protect rights, doesn’t mean that judicial review can’t ALSO protect rights. In fact, at least one other founder (Hamilton) thought it was the DUTY of the SCt to help protect those rights.
Our rights don’t depend on the source of protection for their existence. As a commenter above said (sorry can’t remember who), our rights don’t get to be voted in our out of existence by the majority, whether the majority of a state or the nation.
Looking from a consequentialist point of view, it doesn’t really matter if a right is infringed by federal or state legislation. In fact, Madison originally wanted at least some of the Bill of Rights to apply to the States as well.
What’s more, just because there had never been a relevant court case until Marbury v. Madison, doesn’t mean that that judicial review was not assumed a valid part of the law. It existed under state laws, was referred to at the CC, and was even expressed in The Federalist Papers, which as you say, pre-date the Constitution:
“[T]he courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority. The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges as, a fundamental law. It, therefore, belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents.”
— Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 78
There were Jim Crow laws in place for many, many years. It wasn’t until their constitutionally was challenged that they were declared unconstitutional. That wasn’t judicial line drawing.
Not so. Plessy v Ferguson (1896), separate but equal does not violate 14th amendment. Jim Crow was challenged early on and found to be constitutional.
But for some reason, some people think it’s fine for legislatures to tell women that they have to put their bodies at risk? How are the two situations different?
There are plenty of differences. If the risk you are talking about is the inherent risk of pregnancy, that is a fairly minimal risk in current times, especially when compared to the absolute risk posed to the unborn human of abortion.
If find the sex angle interesting. By that logic, only actual taxpayers should be allowed to vote.
If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents.”
Interesting quote, insofar as it foresaw Marbury. Less so as it stands for the proposition that the SCt can find rights such as the right to abortion when the constitution is completely silent on the subject.
More generally, the constitution creates a federal system with limited federal powers (enumerated powers). Abortion, murder, assault with a state’s jurisdiction were matters of state law. It’s a system I prefer.
Birth control isn’t a health issue.
If the risk you are talking about is the inherent risk of pregnancy, that is a fairly minimal risk in current times
Oy vey. The number of unspoken assumptions on which these two statements rest is, like, over the moon.
The Constitution being silent on abortion specifically is not relevant, as it is silent on most of the specific cases it applies to. As you alluded to, there was no way that the authors of the Constitution could imagine every possible scenario.
But there are certain rights that it is clear from the Constitution and B of R that we do have, such as the right to personal autonomy.
And the big difference between the others you mention (assault, murder) and abortion, is that the objects of assault and murder are parties who unquestionably have rights e.g. persons. Most of the properties that normally lead us to regard a being as having rights, such as sentience, autonomy, an emotional life, the capacity to feel pleasure or pain, are absent in a fetus until a certain point. I personally would be much more receptive to the presumption of rights for the fetus when it reaches that stage of development.
So the crucial question is one of fetal personhood, which it seems to me should not necessarily favor a state forum over a federal one. This makes it more of an epistemic question which you and several others here have been arguing over. Why is a state’s judgment superior to that of a nation? I don’t see any more validity or justice attaching to a determination of fetal personhood by a state’s citizens than by a nation’s citizens. I also don’t understand how it is more just that voters decide it than judges.
What is not in doubt, however, is that the woman in question is a person and has rights.
“More generally, the constitution creates a federal system with limited federal powers (enumerated powers). Abortion, murder, assault with a state’s jurisdiction were matters of state law. It’s a system I prefer.”
You know better than this. The states’ definition of these things is subordinate to the Federal Constitution. That is what prevents, say Alabama, from decriminalizing the homocide of a black person; perhaps by defining a black person as not a person.
Which is something they might do down there if given a chance. Oh yeah, they did do that a while back, didn’t they. Sort of points to the problem with your perspective.
What is not in doubt, however, is that the woman in question is a person and has rights.
Right, not in doubt. As you say, the question is one of when the fetus acquires the same or similar status. Why that is a question for our highest court and not a legislature is beyond me.
You know better than this. The states’ definition of these things is subordinate to the Federal Constitution. That is what prevents, say Alabama, from decriminalizing the homocide of a black person; perhaps by defining a black person as not a person.
In my comment “with a state’s jurisdiction” should be “within a state’s . . .”.
That said, yes, you are correct, murder cannot be defined in such a way as to deny a state’s residents equal protection under the law. That, however, has nothing to do with my statement.
Jim Crow was challenged early on and found to be constitutional.
No difference. Laws are presumed to be constitutional until they’re successfully challenged.
There are plenty of differences. If the risk you are talking about is the inherent risk of pregnancy, that is a fairly minimal risk in current times, especially when compared to the absolute risk posed to the unborn human of abortion.
No difference between forcing a parent to donate an organ to a child if the procedure would save the life of the child. Same moral question. But, of course, such an ordeal would never be forced on anyone, even if it were to “save a life” and even if the parent were “responsible” for bringing the child into being. (As to health risks of pregnancy: Thank you, Phil.)
Why that is a question for our highest court and not a legislature is beyond me.
Isn’t the answer that the issue was brought in a case before the court? (Isn’t that always the reason a question is for the court?)
When you write “a legislature,” does that include the US congress? Couldn’t congress pass an amendment defining the rights of the unborn that would render Roe moot, if that was something lots of people in this country really wanted?
No difference between forcing a parent to donate an organ to a child if the procedure would save the life of the child.
Well, once the baby is born, the woman is pretty much intact, if I understand the process. Compelled organ transfer? Not so much.
Isn’t the answer that the issue was brought in a case before the court? (Isn’t that always the reason a question is for the court?)
When you write “a legislature,” does that include the US congress? Couldn’t congress pass an amendment defining the rights of the unborn that would render Roe moot, if that was something lots of people in this country really wanted?
The context is “when does a fetus acquire rights?” A court is the last place that question can be answered, since it can only act on the evidence in the record. And, courts often refuse cases because the issue presented is a “political question” and not referable to the judiciary.
Sure, Roe could be overturned by amendment. That’s an extraordinary load to have to carry. Which is why our supreme court nominating process is such a circus. The only practical way to fix Roe is to stack the Court. Both sides do it. It’s appalling.
Well, once the baby is born, the woman is pretty much intact..
Except she is now a mother. I hear that condition can often place a great deal of stress and/or duress on these poor hapless creatures, arguing forcefully for the extension of the pneumumbra of moral idiocy to this condition also.
The only practical way to fix Roe is to stack the Court. Both sides do it. It’s appalling.
Given political deadlock and the institutional proclivity of Congress to do as little as possible most of the time, one can only be shocked at your dismay. Better we should just all grab our guns I guess. Oh, wait. A small portion of one side in this “circus” has already decided to do so.
Well, once the baby is born, the woman is pretty much intact, if I understand the process.
Well, sure, if things go just right. They usually don’t go “just” right. There is almost always something. Sometimes that something is little. Sometimes it’s pretty severe, like a stroke. But it’s okay if it’s not you.
@McTex:
The context is “when does a fetus acquire rights?”
I ask again: if this is the question that you find to be the pertinent one in this case, then why were you suggesting that whether or not the fetus was conceived with the mother’s consent has any bearing on whether she should be allowed to have an abortion? If the concern is that the fetus’ rights could be abrogated based on how we answer that question, and we must view the mother’s right to not carry a child to term against her will as being subordinate to an fetus’ right to a “full life”, then whether or not the mother was raped is immaterial. Rights are rights. If a fetus has rights, having a criminal for a father does not dissipate them.
The three trimester construct is purely judicial line drawing.
Every decision made by the SCOTUS or any other court is ‘judicial line drawing’.
Drawing lines is what they do. It’s their reason for being.
Once you accept the premise that the Court can do something like that, be prepared to have other lines drawn in a way you don’t much care for.
Welcome to my world.
To go all word person on you, the term “Webster’s” is meaningless; there’s no trademark on it, and not only can anyone publish a “Webster’s Dictionary,” but zillions of people have.
This isn’t in the least to take issue with the substance of what you’re specifically quoting, which is an entirely separate point. I’m simply responding the way many publishing people do when folks refer to “Webster’s” as if it held some meaning. If referring to a dictionary, it’s helpful to be specific.
People seriously into words and usage will recognize precisely which edition of which dictionary you’re citing, and be able to discuss the pros and cons of, say, the 2nd edition of Merriam-Webster’s over the 3rd.
Really, this is crucial stuff to anyone who has ever been a copyeditor or line editor. People have fits over which editions they consider more legitimate or less legitimate.
As I said, this has nothing to do with your point, so please don’t take this as an argument with it, which would be a separate argument. This is simply a knee-jerk-response issue for many of us folks who have worked in publishing.
Kids, don’t ever use “Webster’s” as a cite and expect anyone to know what you’re actually referring to unless you mention an actual specific dictionary. “Webster’s” by itself is literally a generic term for “dictionary,” and simply means “some dictionary somewhere that someone published somewhere.”
It’s best avoided in favor of specificity, or saying “I consulted a dictionary.”
(True word lovers have passionate affairs with their OED.)
Brain development.
This is not to agree that the state, or _Roe_ has no “interest” in the first trimester, since _Roe_ quite specifically discusses all three, and this is at the heart of the decision, which, of course, subsequent decisions have substantially modified, and largely made conceptually irrelevant, but it’s a simple answer to a simple question, albeit my own answer.
Slart:
Some of us, perhaps. It’s an ad hominem that’s irrelevant to the virtues or non-virtues of birth control; eugenics was a popular notion of the time, subsequently discredited.
Robert Boyle believed in phlogiston because it was a popular and accepted theory in his day, but that doesn’t invalidate Boyle’s Law.
Eugenics and racism were common beliefs, as you know. Citing them as if they discredited Sanger and Planned Parenthood is a classic trope for many, but it’s an… interesting heuristic.
McK:
I’d go to Griswold v. Connecticut establishing the right to privacy, myself, but amn’t actually disagreeing with your sentence.
(Trivially, from 1978-82, a girlfriend-I-lived-with who was a Yalie had dated one of Erwin Griswold’s sons, which is not otherwise relevant. :-))
I’ll bite. I agree that at the current level of cloning technology and understanding it would be immoral to legally allow human cloning, due to the high rate of failure. But inevitably technology within the next few decades should allow for as low, or far lower, a rate of failure as old-fashioned natural insemination, and since cloning is simply artificially creating a twin, which is in no way illegal, nor has anyone I’m aware of ever suggested should be, what, exactly, is the basis for your objection to human cloning? The same reason I’m citing as temporarily relevant, or something else?
While we’re haring off, what do you think of in vitro fertilization, and embryo transfer?
This is, at best, poor phrasing.
So if the doctor/medical personnel provide the service for free, that makes a difference to you?
Indeed, but my understanding was that the reasons for wishing to involve the state in pregnancy and medical decisions was purely moral in intent.
If we’re discussing practicality, we’re back at one of the roots of the abortion debate, which is that women have always had them, and a fundamental point of legalizing them was to make them as safe as possible for the mother.
Thus it’s a primary reason why people who support a decision whether to have an abortion or not being a matter for the mother, not the state, to decide.
If practicality of punishing mothers who have abortions is a primary concern, we could partially “solve” that by, say, passing laws making it illegal for mothers and all medical practitioner to not report all pregnancies to the state, and then make it illegal for mothers to not wear fetal monitors until they give birth.
If it’s a matter of Saving Lives Of Babies being What’s Most Important, that’s not terribly more impractical than driving abortion back to where it once was: underground, and letting women die from unsafe abortions.
Why is free speech, or any constitutional right an issue for our federal court system, and not the legislatures?
I appreciate that your position, Mck, is somewhat nuanced, but I find it ironic that I agree with some of the premises of the more extreme anti-abortion folks, and have problems with those who make an argument that’s based purely upon the basis that a fertilized human egg is identical to a post-partum human, but then fail to be remotely consistent to that assertion. It strikes me, in the end, as more of an attempt to find a political way out of a question presented as purely moral simply because if one were logically consistent about the issue, one could never persuade the majority of American citizens to go along.
(At least, I hope not.)
In this it — and this is again where I find some consistency, at least, with the extremist anti-abortionists — resembles the slavery issue, and those who sought to “solve” it by leaving it to the states.
These “solutions” strike me as more akin to the classic Solomon “solution” than genuine reasoning about morality. Some things can’t be morally solved by splitting the difference.
And once you’re on grounds of primarily arguing practicality, both legally and politically, there’s not much of a moral argument left.
HST:
Not to contradict your point, but constitutional amendments have to also pass 3/4s of the 50 state legislatures, as well. Otherwise we’d have an ERA and a whole bunch of other Amendments.
Yeah, I should give McK his props here: For an abortion opponent, his thoughts veer surprisingly close to, “I wouldn’t want my daughter or wife to get one, but . . .”
He wouldn’t recommend legal punishments against women, he wouldn’t restrain them from traveling out of state, he wouldn’t compel them via force/restraint to bear the children, etc. As pro-lifers go, that’s practically pro-choice! 😀
Thanks Phil. The cocktail hour has arrived. Everyone have a nice weekend.
back atcha mck.
U too McTex. Have one for me.
Interesting person, that Margaret Sanger.
Aren’t we all.
Not looking to throw a fresh gallon of gasoline on the abortion flameup, just an observation about the complexity and contradictory nature of actual human beings, when observed in the wild.
“If a fetus is a human being (in your opinion) do you hold funeral services for every miscarriage? If not, why not? Your actions seem to suggest that either you don’t really believe that, or you believe that there are different categories of human beings which deserve different treatment in case of death.”
It hasn’t been very long, in many cultures, including the US, since people wouldn’t name their children right away because the death rate was so high that if they died it was emotionally easier to pretend that they weren’t anything special.
Were they persons?
Would it have been ok to kill them?
To the ancient Greeks (and Romans) it was considered legitimate to leave unwanted children exposed in the wild to be eaten by wild animals (in some cities there was even a designated location for that). In Sparta the state decided on that. In Rome the father had to decide whether NOT to kill a newborn*. So, the question is not as rhetorical as it may seem. So much for our ‘civilized’ ancestors.
*a non-recognized child would have been exposed/killed with the mother’s opinion not counting.
Were they persons?
yes
Would it have been ok to kill them?
no
(That was easy.)
“Were they persons?”
Yes.
“Would it have been O.K. to kill them?”
No.
I wonder, to no one in particular, if some in the state of Mississippi would countenance naming blastocysts and then once brought to term as Shawanda or Julian Bond or Bubba or William Faulkner, permitting 10.9% (I think that’s the figure?) of the infants to very quickly become a mortality statistic?
Some say it takes a village.
It would actually take a well-funded bureaucracy on the ground, public and private, which is why we can’t have nice things.
I’m all for taxpayer subsidized comprehensive prenatal care for blastocysts and postnatal care for infants and post-postnatal care for conservative Mississippians.
Some in Mississippi would arrest Abraham for slaying Issac instead of sacrificing the lamb, but if God stage-coughed and demanded of Abraham that he institute womb to grave subsidized health insurance AND the inspection of freshly slain lamb meat by the agencies of government they would call God a socialist and filibuster (commit legislative abortion) both suggestions to an early death.
Hey, hairshirtthedonist, we should start a one-word answer tag team.
McTx: Well, once the baby is born, the woman is pretty much intact, if I understand the process.
In addition what sapient said, this is just plain incorrect in a great many cases. The minimization of the physical, mental and emotional trauma of pregnancy and childbirth, even for a woman who wants to continue her pregnancy, is part and parcel of the “pro-life” movement. As if it’s some kind of blissful walk in the park at the end of which one discovers a child.
I mean, it rises to the level of willful blindness and reckless disregard for the facts.
A zygotes becomes a baby, “absent a series of external forces acting on it,” if simply “left alone” – not like those peach pits, which require lots of attention from dirt and water to become peach trees and produce peaches.
(Sorry, McKinney, but that comes directly from what you wrote….)
Which one is better of in Georgia?
A peach and its pit, or a human blastocyst inside a female illegal immigrant who picks peaches as a day laborer for low wages and no medical benefits?
better “off”
A Georgia peach can be exported in exchange for cash.
An illegal immigrant in Georgia can be deported in exchange for nothing.
Which one has more intrinsic worth?
Follow-up analysis on how Mississippi’s vote went.
So if they were persons and shouldn’t have been killable, can we safely put away the thing about “If a fetus is a human being (in your opinion) do you hold funeral services for every miscarriage? If not, why not? Your actions seem to suggest that either you don’t really believe that, or you believe that there are different categories of human beings which deserve different treatment in case of death.”?
It seems like a completely silly argument to me, but it comes up alot.
Hey, looky here! Now Michigan is simply going to force the issue!
(PS: If you guessed that this one is being brought to you by The Party Of Small Government, in conjunction with Michigan Right to Life, buy yourself a cookie — you earned it!)
The solution to all of this is to not only fire unionized janitor persons who swab the decks of vomit in our Nation’s schools, but also fire the nine-year-old post-fetal children persons with which Newt wants to replace them, and go one step farther and hire one-celled persons for the jobs immediately after conception during that marvelous time of personhood when minimum wage rules won’t apply.
If we have a case of fetal twinhood, then the taxpayer person gets the labor of two one-celled persons wielding floor polishers for nothing.
No health insurance either.
Plus, since one-celled persons lack the facility for speech and will be prevented by law from having a union represent them via speech, we can make moot and mute the entire speech=money charade.
There would be a small commission paid to corporate persons for providing this free labor while nipping any one-celled union activity in the bud.
By “small”, I mean slightly more than school districts now pay adult commie unionized janitors because, after all, shareholder persons are fetuses, too.
I would be in favor of free car-pooling lanes for one-celled persons to drive to and from work but only if they pick up litter along our nation’s private highways during their off-hours. We need to eliminate any chance of parasitism and a sense of entitlement which, as you know, the Constitution says nothing about, unless you read it in its intended way as an acrostic or anagram, in which case it’s plain for all to see that parasites have all the rights of a black slave in 1805.