Posted on 05/12/2003 8:23:00 PM PDT by MHGinTN
Don’t you just love it when someone with whom you're arguing says, “Well, we will just have to agree to disagree”, as a spin of the phrase ‘Reasonable people can agree to disagree’, or as the shortened version, ‘Reasonable people can disagree’? Can reasonable people disagree over cannibalism in order to permit cannibalism, without doing violence to civilization?
As a pro-life advocate who gets into lots of discussions, I hear this ‘agree to disagree’ more and more. It tells me my points are getting to the irrational heart of defense for the abortion slaughter. When an advocate for abortion of alive little ones trapped in a womb tries to discuss the topic from a reasoned position, irrational underpinnings are eventually exposed and the ‘reasoning’ stops, in favor of either ending the discussion or deflecting the ‘reasoning’ into areas better defined as emotional landmines.
A whole new field of argument is arising in defense of exploiting individual human lives. There is a common foundation for these arguments, a theme running through the lines of reasoning from the ‘pro-choice’ camp, but the origins of that commonality are not to be found in choice to abort; it has a more subtle beginning than that.
Prior to ‘choice to abort’, dehumanization of individual life had already laid a foundation for exploiting and choosing, a basis for viewing individual human life as a phenomenon that grows in value, as opposed to being endowed with unalienable right to be. And it came into our collective psyche as a supposed benefit to humankind, a means to have science aid in conceiving babies with ‘artificial insemination’. Subtracting from our humanity, artificial insemination moved to more detached dehumanization, with in vitro fertilization, the scientific ‘miracle’ of conceiving ‘something’ outside of the woman’s body, then that thing being implanted into a woman’s body, to have a ‘growing (increasing) right to live’. [Devout Catholics would say contraception was the beginning of dehumanization, but that’s an historical discussion and not the focus of this essay. The Roe abortion decision came in 1973, but ‘artificial insemination’ had been a reality for years prior to Roe. The first in vitro fertilization baby in the world was born in July of 1978 in England, after many years of research. Today, many thousands of children are born annually as a result of the IVF technique.]
I cannot recall what I thought when first I learned that something could be conceived in a petri dish that would later be implanted in a woman’s body, to even later be born as a human baby. I have a vague recollection from my youth that some people warned against artificial insemination, warned that such manipulation of human conception would lead to a dehumanization process, a ‘slippery slope’. I don’t quite remember what was warned of down that slippery slope, but I don’t have to remember, because we are living in the age of arrival!
Now, at this descended-to plateau, engulfed in a degree of darkness not anticipated so long ago, we are again facing a slippery slope. How will we come to recognize it as a hazardous slope? … This time the hazard has a name. Will America reject cannibalism, despite the campaign to focus only upon the utilitarian value of cannibalism, diverting attention from the truth that we face cannibalism? If prepared properly, we will accept cannibalism, just as we accepted in vitro fertilization. [Note: I purposely repeat the word rather than allude to the reality. Cannibalism should have a revulsion value. Modern examples of cannibalism, such as the incident with plane crash victims who survived by eating the flesh of already dead crash victims, tend to blur our historic revulsion to cannibalism. Let’s focus upon the Jeffrey Dhamer version of cannibalism, the kill and consume version, as opposed to the ‘harvest from accidentally dead’ version of cannibalism.]
What could make cannibalism more palatable, more consumable? … Allow me to illustrate by sharing a recent discussion I had with a close cousin, a father of four.
My cousin asked me to explain a recent news story in which a research scientist was profiled for an heroic desire to cure his daughter’s spinal injury by developing protein matched tissues for transplantation. Nowhere in the story was the viewer (it was a TV presentation) given the underlying facts of how this tissue would be generated, only that stem cells closely matched to the daughter’s tissues would be harvested to treat her injury. As I explained the process of ‘therapeutic cloning’ (methodology the scientist intends to rely upon for the tissues he desires), my cousin displayed no revulsion to the process. No matter how graphic my description of the cloning and killing process, my cousin could see only the utilitarian value of the harvesting, never the cannibalistic reality of killing an individual human being conceived for the sole purpose of harvesting spare parts to treat the older individual human being. I was shocked that a well-educated man would not be repulsed by this cannibalism. Upon later reflection, I understood why. It’s that damn slippery slope!
Once the descending plateau is reached, an acceptance quotient has been established. In the case of therapeutic cloning, the acceptance quotient involves a speciously arranged ‘degree of humanness’ … a conceptus, or zygote, or embryo, or second (or even third) trimester fetus is not deemed a full human being. Nay Sayers will not be allowed to interfere with utilitarian value of the ‘conceive, support, kill, and harvest methodology’. Individual human life, prior to being born, is deemed ‘not yet a complete human being’ on our familiar darkened pro-choice plateau, thus to conceive individual human life, support that life, kill that life, and harvest from these ‘not yet complete human things’ is not defined as cannibalism. If these conceived individuals were admitted to be full human beings, would we still embrace the cannibalistic exploitation due to the utilitarian value of their individual designer body parts? The scientist of my cousin’s query most certainly would and my cousin would, because darkness this far down the slippery slope, this far down inside the funnel of dehumanization, is so great.
The pre-born are less human than the born? … Yes, when you strip away the rhetorical gamesmanship, the obfuscatory verbiage, that is what the arguments descend to, that is the dimness of our modern world. That is the plateau to which we’ve descended, from the seemingly innocent stage of artificial insemination then in vitro fertilization as merely medical assistance to natural conception. Touted as a boon to infertile couples, the in vitro fertilization process manipulated sex cells in a lab environment, conceived multiple embryos to be implanted in a woman’s uterus, stored excess embryos … and the process redefined the earliest age of an individual’s lifetime as but one stage ‘in a process that eventually becomes a human being’. So, where was the error in reasoning first made?
Sex cells are sub-units of organs; organs are sub-units of organisms; embryos are whole organisms. That was so quick, allow me to reiterate: cells are sub-units of organs, organs are sub-units of organisms; an individual human being is an organism; a kidney, for instance, is an organ of an organism.
In vitro fertilization manipulates, first, sex cells … sub-units of sex organs, organs of the parents. But if successful, in vitro fertilization conceives a whole, new organism … not just an organ, the whole organism! As the embryo grows, with the cell total climbing from one, to two, to three, to five, etc., the early cells are totipotent or pluripotent--less differentiated into the individual organs of the organism--thus the early cells are the organs of the individual begun with ‘petri dish’ conception, the assertions of Senator Orrin Hatch notwithstanding. [Senator Hatch claimed that conception doesn’t happen in a petri dish, possibly because Senator Hatch is pushing a bill that would allow therapeutic cloning, but not ‘reproductive cloning’. Senator Hatch has already decided that what is conceived in a petri dish and not allowed to live long enough to be born is not an individual human being, thus these ‘less than human’ beings will be fair game for killing and harvesting … fair game for his ‘to be protected’ form of cannibalism! Orrin Hatch’s reasoning has faltered at the difference between organs and whole organisms, thus he deems an embryo as no more than a non-differentiated organ that will ‘someday’ become an organism. And he’s patently and completely wrong!]
Whether in a dish or a human host, the embryo is an individual human being alive at the earliest age along the continuum we call a human lifetime. That fact is what was passed over so quickly when the debate over in vitro fertilization was squelched. That is the tiny error so grossly exploited to toss America down the slippery slope.
Now, after gradual descent (artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, amniocentesis, etc.) and later steep descent (abortion on demand, fetal tissue harvesting, partial birth abortion), we have arrived at a descended-to plateau beyond which is cannibalism, conceiving then killing individual human beings because their designer body parts at an embryonic age are of utilitarian value, of more utilitarian value than their unalienable right to life. Can ‘reasonable people’ agree to disagree on cannibalism, to allow the cannibalism to continue? May God have mercy upon America if such is reasonable at this stage in our nation’s life.
Once an ovum (egg) is fertilized, it is no longer an egg (egg = a sub-unit of the ovary organ), it is an organism. An egg is a sub-unit of an organ. Once a sub-unit of an organism (the human ovum) is fertilized (fecundation), a completely new reality comes into existence, an ORGANISM. A human embryo is an organism, an individual human being at its earliest age along the continuum of its individual lifetime. Once a human ovum (egg) is fertilized, it is no longer an egg (ovum), it is an individual organism (that particular age is call 'zygote', much the way prior to sex organs producing sex cells the individual is called pre-pubescent).
You said: A human embryo is an organism, an individual human being at its earliest age along the continuum of its individual lifetime.
But, in fact, human life, qua human, begins at birth, and many embryo's never get that far. There is no certainty any embryo will actually be born, and until it is born, it is only potentially a human being, which sometimes neither God or nature sees fit to bring to fruition.
(Actually, a developing chick in a chicken egg is more independent than a human embryo, which is still dependent on its mother's bilogical system.)
Hank
Maybe you can bring me up to speed on avain reproduction here, but at least in the case of human beings, a "fertilized egg", after fusion of male and female pronuclei, and mitosis, is properly referred to as a zygote , the cell resulting from the union of an ovum and a spermatozoon. That single cell, or zygote, is a new human being, scientifically and ontologically speaking, and so it seems incorrect, misleading and nonsensical to use the expressions, "the 'fertilized chicken eggs', or, "a fertilized and developing chicken fetus", much as if you were to use like terms to describe human development.
If the "developing chicken "fetus" is a not a chicken', what species is it?.
Cordially,
Why thank you. By the way, could you give me the reference for that, I couln't find it in my Bible. Maybe you and your house use a different one.
Hank
You didn't hear it from me either. Human life, qua human, begins at birth and ends at death. I have repeatedly said the fetus is alive. Alive does not a human make. A snake is alive. A tumor is alive.
The issue is whether a fetus or a zygote is human. Scientifically, the definition of a living human is 1. alive 2. human DNA. Both the zygote and fetus qualify.
...and so would all human tumors, (or a sperm or an egg, for that matter).
Hank
1. How do you know this?
2. Again, what is your justification for your distinction between a human being, and a person?
Cordially,
It's based on personal experience. If the libertarians I know didn't hold positions that I found disagreeable, I'd have no reason to dislike them in the fist place (politically speaking).
Most libertarians I know are conservative-libertarian, which is also how I would describe myself. I know of no conservative-libertarian that is pro-abortion. One of the basic rights of all humans, codified in the Constitution, is the right to life, even for an unborn baby.
I don't know where you live, but I'm guessing it's not Southern California (where I am). The libertarians you describe would be considered extreme right-wing fanatics in this part of the world. I don't know of a single libertarian who considers himself Pro Life. Not a one.
I have no problem with the conservative libertarians you describe. I wish I knew a couple of them, actually.
Yes they do. Which is what makes your definition of the word "baby" (one who breast feeds) so off the wall.
Already answered in Post #167 It is wrong because it applies to an infinite number of things which no one would mistake for a human being.
My definition is Aristotle's.
Besides DNA, (which until this generation could not have been used as a definition anyway, so unless you believe abortion was not formerly wrong, it is irrelevant), what distinguishes human beings from all other creatures? When you know what that distinction is, it applies also to the difference between a human being and an embryo.
Hank
It only sounds harsh to Mr. Reeves and his politically motivated cheering section. To anyone with a conscience, it sounds perfectly reasonable.
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