Posted on 06/06/2003 9:46:51 AM PDT by Luke Skyfreeper
Years go by, and the abortion struggle rages on.
I would like to suggest that the following doctrine is a basis for an uneasy resolution to the political conflict; one that may eventually come to be accepted by all.
Abortion should be legal, but only up to a certain date. We need to define, as best as we can, when we are dealing with a human being.
The current definition of the law afford NO recognition that a developing child is a human being until the moment that child leaves his or her mother's womb. Anyone who pays the faintest attention to what we know through medical science can readily recognize that, at full term, this is far, far too late.
If a developing child is old enough to survive outside of the womb, even with medical assistance, then it's a human being. Obviously.
If the developing child is old enough to feel pain, regardless of whether or not an anesthetic is administered, then it is developed enough to be a human being, and destroying the said developing child must be illegal.
Practically, this means that for humane reasons, all abortions after a certain date (somewhere between 8 and 24 weeks) should be made illegal. This is only humane, and even 8 weeks would allow more than a month for decision making and getting an abortion appointment (although I suspect that a medical consensus would put the development of pain later than that).
The vast majority of abortions already take place before 24 weeks now. However, it is currently legal to destroy developing children at any stage of development, as long as at least part of the child is still inside the mother's body.
I believe this is the basis of the solution to the abortion problem. Part B is that accurate information must be provided to women considering an abortion. Potential adverse effects must be covered, and other options, including adoption, must be adequately presented. A waiting period may also be appropriate.
None of these takes away choice. The choice is still there whether to have a baby or have an abortion.
One can therefore be pro-choice and pro-life at the same time.
I also argue for use of the term "developing child" (which is intuitive, completely accurate and fully descriptive) rather than use of the term "fetus."
Political wars are won and lost on the choice of words.
As a woman, I have the exact same problem in how men are mistreated by the "law" in issues of life, birth, etc.
From a recent essay:
The already alive organism builds the organs that will accomplish viability in the next environment in which the organism will exist. Every alive individual human being began their individual human existence at the embryo age as evidenced by their first act of cell division, with the cells tasked to build the survival mechanism for the already alive individual, to survive while in the womb and when exiting that realm.
At the age of embryo, the individual has stem cells that are less differentiated, and as the being builds organs, the newest cells are more differentiated, more specialized, but the organism is not ‘more alive’ just because cells it is making are more specialized. The argument can be made that the first cell of conception is the most alive cell of an entire lifetime, and that the organism spreads this ‘aliveness’ out over more and more forms, to accomplish more complex functioning as the organism ages.
During pro-life/pro-choice discussions, the notion seems to always arise that the early individual human being (at embryo age, for instance) is not yet fully an individual human being, that somehow there is a moment or time period when ‘a pre-human awakens’ to become a full human being. When pressed to defend this, the pro-choice advocate cannot name a specific moment as the time slot in which this magical ‘awakening’ occurs."
There is much more in the essay, but this part addresses the specious notion of 'not a fully functioning human being'. Now if L. Skyfreeper would like to pin humanness on particular organ development or on an arbitrarily arranged valuation based on functional capacity that depends on the higher brain function, we can debate that, but it is a specious assertion to say the newly conceived human being, with even the first cell division, is not a fully functioning human being. The first reality is, the conceived is a human being. The functioning of the human being is fully appropriate and therefore fully functioning, at every age from embryo to after birth.
No neurons, no pain. There are definite points in human life before which we have no neurons.
My "pro-abort" position does not match your assumptions:
If abortion clinics dumped their victims in the street instead of destroying the evidence, there's no doubt everyone with the least bit of empathy who didn't intentionally close their eyes would be horrified. But if the fetuses were all microscopic in size, I doubt you would see the same reaction.
The reaction in the first case is people identifying with the death of their fellow human: human in form, human in suffering, human in their death. In the latter case they are still human in their death, still have had all their potential extinguished and very much fit the definition of innocent victim.
But those latter constructs are moral abstractions in that there is nothing to look at, even through a microscope, that would trigger the emotion of empathy. I am the type of person who values my senses particularly vision in these cases. Although I understand and respect your moral abstractions, I cannot believe them without having the same religious faith that you do.
Thank you for helping me make my case. Emotion is a valid and important part of this debate.
On this very thread we've read assertions that the individual human lifetime doesn't begin until some arbitrary point well after the actual scientifically proven beginning. We've read assertions that the individual human being isn't 'human enough' to suit the arbitrary assignment of value.
Dehumanization is a phenomenon that can be effectively countered with truth and facts, even more so than religious assertions. Either the sanctity of human life (using the term in a non-religious, cultural and societal valuation sense) is worth protecting with the truth regarding that life, or the value of human life will be commoditized to utilitarian designs, and the period of the lifetime that can be dehumanized will be open for experimentation and exploitation, open for cannibalizing not just discarded for convenience sake.
If society is lead to believe the earliest age of the individual is 'not human enough', the expedience of cannibalizing that age along the human lifetime is palatable.
Even with a dimmer switch you can tell whether the light is on or off.
I've addressed the issue of genetic identity somewhere in this thread. You'll have to look for it.
Right. However:
1) He is capable of surviving without being physically attached to another human being at all times.
2) He has physically developed sufficiently to exhibit brain waves.
3) He has developed sufficiently to be capable of acting at will.
4) He has an identity, even if it may have become distorted by disease.
5) Ditto for a memory.
6) He is sufficiently mature to have developed the ability to breathe air.
7) He is capable of feeling pain.
Uh, not exactly correct, nor even scientifically defensible!
I think you mean something quite different by "fully functioning human being" than I do (see post 475). Since we are dealing with entirely different definitions, we're kind of talking about apples and oranges here.
I would certainly agree that from conception we have a fully functioning human organism. However, the single cell uniting egg and sperm, as miraculous as it is, does not remotely approach what most people mean when they use the term "human being."
At this stage, the 'genetic identity' arguer usually tries to hoist the 'that's nothing but a chemical exchange, with no will behind it' assertion. Fact is, as the organism grows larger, the more the molecular actions give way to organ actions and responses, but the chemical/molecular exchanges still are the basic life support activities of even an aged individual human organism. The embryonic individual human being builds its own organs (including the first one, the placenta) to allow for the spreading out of life function, as the cells differentiate into more and more specific organs and more and more venues (organ systems) in which to operate the chemical exchanges.
Check.
Actually the issue of perception of pain, and when it is possible for pain to be perceived, is pretty complicated, and I'm no expert on it at this point. There's a whole chain of things that must be in place before pain can be perceived. If any link in the chain is still missing, no pain.
Exactly when all the links are in place is still a matter of scientific debate.
Take a read of the #465 post above, the second bold-italicized paragraph. The very scientists doing the new 'miracles of embryology' have as their fundamental axiom that the individual lifetime begins at conception and the individual is present throughout the various ages, else they wouldn't bother testing for genetic abnormalities or diseases such as sicle cell or for Downs Syndrome. It is the alive organism that is being tested and the fluids surrounding the new individual in his own constructed space capsule.
The problem is that while the sacredness-of-all-human-life viewpoint (including embryonic life) may once have held almost absolute sway in our society, it doesn't now. There are so many people in our society that it doesn't "resonate" with sufficiently to convince them that this point of view must be the yardstick by which all persons behave in our society that early-term abortion, at least, is no longer permanently bannable. In my opinion.
You're dealing with a post-christian society.
If you want to eliminate all abortion, then return the society to a Christian philosophical base, where Christian thought holds absolute sway. That's it.
If you do that one thing, then abortion from conception will be banned with relative ease.
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