The Pre-Persons

11-26-01

[tallhappy]

When I read comments like:

"Not a person, just a mass of cells"

and

"I'm just saying that an embryo has no consciousness self awarenesss or brain activity"...

and the like when talking about destroying embryos, I am always reminded of the story, "The Pre-Persons" by Philip K. Dick, that I read many years ago.

In 1974 Dick wrote this story in response to Roe vs Wade.

Dick wrote about a future where human life was considered to begin with brain activity of the level where it could do algebra. If a kid couldn;t do algebra it could be aborted.

I’ve collected various comments on it from google .

The search included one post from FR here by Machman last February in a thread called How much of Blade Runner has come true?

---

http://www.philipkdick.com/pkdweb/The%20Pre%20Persons.htm

THE GOLDEN MAN story notes by PKD

"The Pre-persons"

In this, the most recent of the stories in this collection, I incurred the absolute hate of Joanna Russ who wrote me the nastiest letter I've ever received; at one point she said she usually offered to beat up people (she didn't use the word "people") who expressed opinions such as this. I admit that this story amounts to special pleading, and I'm sorry to offend those who disagree with me about abortion on demand. I also got some unsigned hate mail, some of it not from individuals but from organizations promoting abortion on demand. Well, I have always managed to offend people by what I write. Drugs, communism, and now an anti-abortion stand; I really know how to get myself in hot water. Sorry, people. But for the pre-persons' sake I am not sorry. I stand where I stand: "Hier steh' Ich; Ich kann nicht anders," as Martin Luther is supposed to have said.

---

http://www.rdrop.com/~half/Creations/Writings/Notebook/Notebook1998.html

Back in 1973, Philip K. Dick published a story called "The Pre-Persons". It was a screed against abortion. In the story, children under thirteen could be killed if no one wanted them. Before they learned algebra, they were considered "pre-persons", and without souls.

[One of the male characters actually said this to his son:

It's a certain kind of women advocating this all. They used to call them 'castrating females'. Maybe that was once the right term, except that these women, these hard cold women, didn't just want to - well, they want to do in the whole boy or man, make all of them dead, not just the part that makes him a man.

In case this doesn't clue you in, Dick had serious psychological problems concerning women.]

As Thomas Disch observes in the introduction to The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, Volume 5, the question this story raises is: if abortion, why not infanticide? By extension, why not set the limit arbitrarily at twelve years old?

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http://math.cofc.edu/faculty/kasman/MATHFICT/mf210.html

His nastiest story, a deeply felt response to Roe vs Wade. Dick imagines a future where Congress has decided that abortion is legal until the soul enters the body, which is specified as the ability to do simple algebra. The main protester--a former Stanford math major--demands to be taken to the abortion center, since he claims to have forgotten all his algebra.

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http://www.spectacle.org/396/scifi/comment.html

I think it would be fair to say, however, that much other SF has done so in a less-specific way: that is, by presenting issues in interesting perspectives, causing me to think about them in new ways, etc. An excellent example of this is Philip K. Dick's "The Pre-Persons," one of the most powerful anti-abortion stories I have ever read. It did not cause me to magically change to an anti-abortion fanatic, but it *did* participate, along with many other influences, in the internal dialogue that led me to my current position on the matter, which is unchangeable until next time I think about it 8*)

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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/vanvogt/message/1219

Philip K. Dick addressed this issue directly in "The Pre-Persons", written a year or two after Roe v. Wade. Roe v. Wade did not so much grant a legal right to abortion as it did qualify at what stage a fetus is considered human ("when it's viable", whatever that means). PKD extrapolated on that in his story to mean that one becomes a viable human when one is capable of doing higher math (around the age of ten, in his story). Thus, if parents wanted a post-partum abortion done on their kid, they'd ring up the abortion truck, and away he went. The point is, up until the present era, personhood was taken for granted, at least as far as the progeny of the ruling class went. Now, thanks to the old boy network that rules the parliaments and judiciary systems of the world, personhood is no longer a given, but a debatable subject -- and an acrimonious one, at that! What screwed it all up was not science or logic, but the use of the term "viability" by the U.S. Supreme Court in determining whether or not a person is really a person. What's good for junior is soon going to be good for granny, too, unfortunately.

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http://www.cs.latrobe.edu.au/~agapow/Postviews/past_c-d.html

They can also be savage at times, as the infamous "The Pre-Persons", where no-one is considered a full person (and thus may be "aborted") until they can do algebra. To read this solely as an anti-abortion tract (as some have accused Dick and he largely admitted) is too simplistic, but the story is truly disturbing.

[tallhappy]

The story was published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1974, Edward L. Ferman, 1974, and in the anthology, The Golden Man, Philip K. Dick, 1980, Berkley, as per this web site

Currently it is in print in The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick : The Eye of the Sibyl (Vol 5)

[nunya bidness]

Great author, great story.

[tallhappy]

Yeah.

The link to Machman's comment of last winter should be www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a9119291e48.htm#18.

The link above returns "bad request".

[tallhappy]

ping

[VeritatisSplendor]

I haven't read PKD for close to 20 years, and don't remember him all that well. I do remember being very put off by his misogynist writing, and one story in particular where a woman kept an aborted fetus on a shelf as a souvenir (I would have called that a hideous slander on women, except that a few years earlier I had read a non-fiction book called, I think, The Girl I Left Behind Me, by Jane Reilly???, in which one her feminist acquaintances did exactly that.)

These latest events, the cloning of embryos and harvesting of cells, the declaring such entities to be "cellular life" and not "human life" have nothing much to do with feminism and a everything to do with utilitarianism and a spirit of hatred for all traditional moral and religious beliefs. I hope we can head it off and not let scientists remake our society simply because they are the scientists.

Question: has a technological "advance" ever been put back in the bottle, except by another advance?

Mrs VS

[backhoe]

It- along with Fred Saberhagen's "Love Conquers All"- was what helped change my thinking on "it's just a woman's choice..."

FWIW, and it proves that words- and ideas- have influence, and consequences.

[tallhappy]

I haven't read PKD for close to 20 years

Me neither, actually.

You still think it was "misognist" writing or that maybe your perspective was different then?

[borntodiefree]

I'll just say that on one hand, it should not be a federal issue, it is a states right issue.

However, I do believe that we at least to some degree must have dignity of human life and have at least some fall back to our Christian roots. God says he knows us (before) we were in our mothers womb.

God has given us the gift that when a sperm and egg join, life is created. I believe that abortion at any stage should be considered murder in each state and prosecuted in such a way.

My little rant on woman's choice is that 99.9% of the time, a woman had the choice to spread her legs or not. The rest of the time (rape), it is up to God whether she is impregnated or not. If it is life threatening, she shouldn't be a mother anyway if she isn't willing to give her life for her child. /rant off.

[RANGERAIRBORNE]

Probably the most prescient book ever written was Aldous Huxley's "BRAVE NEW WORLD". If you can slog through the "story", you will be amazed at how much Huxley was able to see coming- well before WW II!

He was a very perceptive man, and a genius.

[jocon307]

I consider myself to be very strongly pro-life, but I cannot understand how people think they are going to get a live baby out of a dead mother.

I mean, I know it does happen sometimes with pregnant women who are killed in accidents or crimes; but those are presumably not women who intended to have abortions, they also haven't "given their life for their child".

Look I love my child, and I'd RISK my life for her, but if she needed a heart transplant I wouldn't say, kill me and give her mine. And I've never heard of anyone who did such a thing either.

I sincerely think you should re-think your position; and I do understand the b.s. of the "health" exception.

Jessica

[DainBramage]

I keep feeling they regard them as seedlings being grown for harvest.

[iconoclast]

declaring such entities to be "cellular life" and not "human life" have nothing much to do with feminism

Maybe

Personally I don't think we would ever have gotten to where we are except via the yellow brick road of feminism.

[ikanakattara]

Another interesting pro-life sci-fi story is Orson Scott Card's "Speaker for the Dead" (book 2 in the Ender's Game saga.) Actually, the whole series raises tons of questions about the relationship between sentience and protected life.

[borntodiefree]

Thats not what I am talking about, but she has a duty to the child she has been given to have a seasection or a terribly painful natural birth if neccessary even if it could cost her her life.

Killing yourself by transplant like what you are referencing, may not make sense. However, if you MIGHT die if you have the baby, or the baby MIGHT die, or you both MIGHT die is not a reason to kill that innocent life that you have been entrusted to. God will determine if it is yours or the babys time, the child should not be murdered.

[jocon307]

We probably do not disagree as much as I first thought. I have read many excellent articles about women who did just as you suggest, postponed Chemo-therapy, etc. Even in main stream Women's Mags! I'd love to say something like: and everything came out fine in the end, but in all honesty I can't remember. Jessica

[machman]

Hey, just saw this thread, thanks for the heads up. This story has always haunted me.

When man determines when life starts, "man" can always change his mind. Those that are "human" today, may not be considered "human" one day, we may all be pre-persons, or perhaps "post-persons".