It’s really not that hard to understand, but what’s blocking acceptance are the amazing lies people say about Plan B emergency contraception. Ema found a ghastly op-ed that got everything wrong; try reading my summary of Plan B, then the op-ed by Abby Wisse Schachter, and see if you can spot all the errors. You won’t be as thorough as Ema, though, who has posted a wonderfully detailed, complete annihilation of Schachter’s article.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Today’s (8/13) Philly Inquirer included a letter to the editor by a pointy-head who claimed Plan B killed fertilized eggs. Rebuttal has already been sent.
The inference that there can be any tangible risk at two-fold normal contraceptive dose is preposterous. Normal contraceptive doses are well below levels that constitute risk in normal healthy women, even with prolonged usage; otherwise, they would not be approved for usage. Even prolonged hormone replacement therapy past menopause has not been shown to pose inordinate risk compared with benefits. Pregnancy, on the other hand, can have life threatening consequences, not to mention the socio-economic and psychological consequences of unwanted children. I believe that in Holy Blood, Holy Grail, it was stated that the first thing any effective religion does is control its women. This is Holy Blood, Holy Bull — The doctor was either quoted out of context or is pretty dumb.
My wife had a dream two nights ago that George Bush had forbidden the teaching of science.
You’re right on the money, Marlene, about religion controlling women. Experts on the Bible such as Bart Ehrman (chair at UNC) say that the especially anti-women sections of Paul’s epistles (Titus and Timothy) are late forgeries.
This makes me wonder if Dr. Roston warns her middle age patients about those stinky little pills derived from pregnant horse pee, that in addition to proliferating breast cells contains metabolites that make oodles of DNA adducts in the very same cells.
Semi-related question: I’ve seen it written a number of places that Plan B was studied and found safe for women 16 years of age or older (and one that claimed it was safe for “all ages”, which I find a little suspicious), but none of those places have ever included a reference. Could someone please point me at a study, or even a summary of a study?
This cheered me up, tho’:
See http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/projo_20060813_13miner.1d1160a.html
… there are non-clueless voices out there, for what it’s worth.
And the rest of them? The entire thing is pretty much, if not anti woman, than woman stay in your place.
Zed,
Not a primary source (I’ll try to look for it), but a good review from the Government Accountability Office’s report (.pdf), Decision Process to Deny Initial Application for Over-the-Counter Marketing of the Emergency Contraceptive Drug Plan B Was Unusual:
Fourth, the rationale for the Acting Director of CDERÂ’s decision was novel and did not follow FDAÂ’s traditional practices. Specifically, the Acting Director was concerned about the potential impact that the OTC marketing of Plan B would have on the propensity for younger adolescents to engage in unsafe sexual behaviors because of their lack of cognitive maturity compared to older adolescents. He also stated that it was invalid to extrapolate data from older to younger adolescents in this case. FDA review officials noted that the agency has not considered behavioral implications due to differences in cognitive development in prior OTC switch decisions and that the agency has considered it scientifically appropriate to extrapolate data from older to younger adolescents.
…
There are no age-related marketing restrictions for safety reasons for any of the prescription or OTC contraceptives that FDA has approved, and FDA has not required pediatric studies for them. All FDA-approved OTC contraceptives are available to anyone, and all FDA-approved prescription contraceptives are available to anyone with a prescription. For hormonal contraceptives, FDA assumes that suppression of ovulation would be the same for any female after menarche,13 regardless of age. FDA did not identify any issues that would require age-related restrictions in its review of the original application for prescription Plan B, and prescription Plan B is available to women of any age.
Prof. Myers,
Thank you for the link.
Good story on why emergency contraception should be more readily available to women:
The GOP Forced Me to Have an Abortion
By Dana L., The Washington Post. Posted June 8, 2006.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/37219/
As a female friend of mine says: “No one with a penis has the right to make reproductive decisions for women.”
Oh my goodness. The infamous Dana L story? A thesis on self-forgiving rationalization.
http://demolition65.wordpress.com/2006/06/04/virginia-woman-blames-bush-for-her-getting-an-abortion/
So people with vaginas have that right? I rather thought the position favored would be that no one has the right to make reproductive decisions for other adults. I guess genitalia is somehow relevant.
Plan B is a progesterone only contraceptive. The risks of “cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, blood clots, heart attack and strokes.” as claimed in the editorial are actually risks associated with combination estrogen/progesterone oral contraceptives or hormone replacement therapy. Plan B would even be unlikely to cause nausea. It works by interupting the luteinizing hormone surge that triggers release of an egg and will have no effect on a fertilized egg. In fact, reproductive endocrinologists give higher doses of progesterone to IVF patients in an attempt to improve the chance of implantation and to support early pregnancy.
However, the pro-life claims about Plan B are a marvelous example of truthiness.
sorry to invade the thread.
this is so cool. taxonomy-defying sea spiders!
George wrote;
Yes, a woman should have the right to make “reproductive decisions”. But reproduction is not the same as termination. Starting a life is not the same as ending it.
Why should being a mother give a woman the right to kill her unborn child if she chooses?
Having said that, Plan B seems to me to be an entirely unobjectionable form of contraception.
What is it with the USA and breeding control?
In Britain, and almost all of Europe (some catholic countries are stalling) contraception is available over-the-counter, without question to ANYONE over 16.
In Britain, it is also FREE – paid for out of taxes.
there have been a couple of cases of xtians trying to impede this (as pharmacists’ assistants, for instance) and the outcry has soon shut them up.
G Tingey, I hate to say it, but a lot of it’s the rich suburban (closet) racists who want to ‘outpopulate’ the people they’re scared of.
Plan B is more like 4-fold than twofold. Yes, it is two pills, but back in the day before Plan B existed, the regiman was to take multiple BCP’s of the appropriate brand. I can’t remember if each dose was 4 pills or if both doses combined were 4 pills. It may have depended on which brand was used.
And yes, it can cause nausea. bad nausea. beats pregnancy, though.
Ian,
Why should being a mother give a woman the right to kill her unborn child if she chooses?
Um, infanticide (killing a child), already a crime, has nothing to do with abortion (terminating a pregnancy).
Love how she throws in “women over 18 (or girls with fake IDs)” just to get in the obligatory “the children! who will think of the children” angle in there.
Ema’s right of course but we can’t expect those with the Forced Breeding Agenda to not trot out dishonesty.
ema wrote:
Kill a child one minute after birth and it’s the heinous crime of infanticide.
Kill a child one minute before birth and it’s a benign medical procedure called abortion.
Arbitrary or what?
Ian, you don’t get to define the termination of a pregnancy as “killing a child” just because you’d like that to be the only way to regard it.
You’d also need to ignore quite a bit of legal precedent to make such a glib claim.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-term_abortion
OK, let’s see the logic here.
– Teenage pregnancy = bad.
– Teens more likely to do something stupid.
– Safe, effective emergency contraception will not be available to under 18s.
Houston, we have a problem.
Didn’t you know that they don’t have sex. Abstinence only teaching works!
I love when Republican’s get cornered as asked if they follow that.
Kill a child one minute before birth and it’s a benign medical procedure called abortion.
I love it when people make irrelevant philosophical arguments about abortion, using examples that have nothing to do with what happens in real life. It’s not like it’s an issue that actually affects anyone.
Ian,
Kill a child one minute after birth and it’s the heinous crime of infanticide.
Kill a child one minute before birth and it’s a benign medical procedure called abortion.
Arbitrary or what?
Once again, “Um”. There is no such thing as “a child” in utero. There’s a pregnancy–uterus (or whatever maternal organ), a placenta, cord/membranes, and a fetus–and an abortion terminates that pregnancy.
It’s not a question of semantics; it’s anatomy/physiology. You can have a pregnancy without an embryo/fetus, but you cannot have a pregnancy without the maternal/placental component [no free-floating kids in utero].
Ian seems to be under the impression that women give birth mere minutes after coitus.
Clearly, the science education in this country is sorely lacking.
“Today’s (8/13) Philly Inquirer included a letter to the editor by a pointy-head who claimed Plan B killed fertilized eggs. Rebuttal has already been sent.”
Oh, good. One less thing for me to do! Although I probably should send one just in case . . .
ema wrote:
Ummm, from Merriam-Webster:
Calling the unborn offspring a ‘fetus’ or ’embryo’ does not make it any the less the child of its parents.
Using euphemisms like ‘abortion’ or ‘termination’ does not alter the fact that the unborn child is being killed.
The fact that the mother’s body is intimately connected to the fetus and acts as a ‘life support system’ for it does not mean that the fetus is equivalent to an internal organ or a tumour.
Aman wrote:
I don’t know where you got that idea.
The women I’ve discussed this with have left me in absolutely no doubt that pregnancy is a long, extremely distasteful and very painful process which no one should ever have to endure.
Under the circumstances, it’s amazing the human race has got as far as it has.
Ken Cope wrote:
Of course I do, and I have dictionary definitions to back it up. Just like you get to cast your arguments in any form that you choose. It’s called freedom of expression.
What neither of us have any right to expect is that our views should have legal force simply because we hold them. For that to happen, we would have to persuade society that it would be beneficial for our views to be enacted as law.
My view seems to be in the minority at the moment so I have to accept that.
It doesn’t mean that I can’t argue for change, though.
Anybody who has to rely upon a prescriptivist dictionary definition to make a point hasn’t got much of one in the first place.
In almost every response you’ve gotten to any of your posts, Ian, you’ve been reminded repeatedly that the only person with the right to decide whether they have a pregnancy they need to terminate, or a child to whom they desire to give birth, is the one with the uterus. You appear to have a problem with that, for no particularly consistent or well-articulated reason.
Taking issue with a woman’s right to choose tends to narrow a guy’s reproductive options. I don’t think I’ve ever met a female anti-choice atheist, although I suppose there may be more than a few. I doubt that telling a woman that, once she’s carrying a blastocyst she should have no option other than to carry it to term or you’re going to regard her as a murderer, is a very good way to get a second date.
It doesn’t mean that I can’t argue for change, though.
Not according to the evidence.
Ian, before you can argue for change, you’ll have to learn how to argue at all, instead of incessantly repeating your position, especially when it’s incoherent even to you:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/06/bye_bye_ra.php
“Using euphemisms like ‘abortion’ or ‘termination’ does not alter the fact that the unborn child is being killed.”
Ah, but deliberately using the incorrect terms to amp up the emotionalistic and manipulative propaganda is a-ok. Talk about arbitarary.
Incorrect? Perhaps not, but I think it involves an equivocation on child. One meaning simply means “the offspring of”. For example, I am the child of my parents. Another meaning is that of a stage of biological development, which is not true in my case. Yet another meaning might be the legal meaning.
Fair enough. However, my point is that on this topic using anything other than the proper medical terms is merely one’s agenda showing through. Calling it “killing a child” conjures a decidedly different mental image than “terminating a pregnancy”. That is their goal – to make abortion seem to be something that it’s not, in order to lay blame and shame on those seeking or in support of the procedure.
Yep.
Should we call appendectomies “abdominal mutilation,” “desecration of precious human tissue,” or “gut gouging by quacks”? With the proper ideological frame, one could make an argument that any of those descriptions is perfectly accurate, after all.
Ken Cope wrote:
My understanding is that dictionary definitions are descriptive rather than prescriptive. They list usages but they don’t tell you which one you should use.
I simply quoted from Merriam-Webster to show that my usage of “child” is a currently accepted one.
In most if not all countries unlawful killing is prohibited. This is evidence that the human right to life is as near to being a universal right as anything can be.
The same cannot be said of abortion.
A woman’s access to abortion varies widely from country to country and jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In some places it’s available more or less on demand, in others it’s completely banned. So it is far from universally agreed that the woman has an absolute right to decide what happens to the fetus.
Nor, in my view, should a woman have such a right if the fetus is regarded as an individual human being entitled to the right to life rather than just being equivalent to an appendage or tumour.
Lya Kahlo wrote:
Pro-choicers use “abortion” and “termination” to avoid the emotional connotations of a description of what is actually involved in the procedure.
Are you denying that an unborn child is killed when an abortion is performed?
Are sperm unborn children? Are ovum?
Depends on what constitutes a “child”.
“Pro-choicers use “abortion” and “termination” to avoid the emotional connotations of a description of what is actually involved in the procedure.”
Are you seriously trying to condemn someone for using the correct medical terms? Since you’ve apparently missed it:
Me:”However, my point is that on this topic using anything other than the proper medical terms is merely one’s agenda showing through. Calling it “killing a child” conjures a decidedly different mental image than “terminating a pregnancy”. That is their goal – to make abortion seem to be something that it’s not, in order to lay blame and shame on those seeking or in support of the procedure. ”
PZ: “Should we call appendectomies “abdominal mutilation,” “desecration of precious human tissue,” or “gut gouging by quacks”? With the proper ideological frame, one could make an argument that any of those descriptions is perfectly accurate, after all.”
You can hide behind this goofy emotionalism all you like, it only serves to make you sound like a quack.
“Are you denying that an unborn child is killed when an abortion is performed?”
Case in point. Thank you for proving me right.
Lya Kahlo wrote:
Yes, I have an agenda. So do you.
Terms like “abortion” and “termination of pregnancy” might be medically correct but they are also used to camouflage the unpleasantness – to put it mildly – of what is actually involved.
Why try to hide it unless you’re afraid that most people, if confronted with the reality of abortion, would find it offensive?
PZ Myers wrote:
I thought you were all in favour of calling a spade a spade. Abortion is the killing of an unborn child, isn’t it? What’s wrong with saying so?
Steve_C wrote:
True.
I’m using it in the broadest sense of “offspring” or “child of parents”.
In that sense, neither sperm or ova are children but a fertilized egg is the starting-point of the child.
Ian,
Some dictionaries are prescriptivist (more) some are descriptivist (more). Your choice of that definition of child is accepted by some people and not by others.
What you seem to be missing here is that abortion is lawful in this and many other countries.
If universal agreement is necessary for women’s rights, then women are screwed enternally. Some places do not protect a women’s right to vote, or be educated, or safe from rape.
What is agreed in the US is that citizens have the right to make decisions about their own bodies, and that no one else may make those decisions against the body-inhabitors will. I cannot remove your kidney, I cannot withdraw your blood, even if it is neccessary to save someone else’s life. And yet, some people seem to think that there is one case where bodily integrity should not be honored: that women should not have the final decision about what happens within their bodies. Why is that?
Yes, well, get back to me on that if/when it ever happens. When fetuses start holding rights seperate from their mothers I’ll be interested in hearing about it.
You should study this more closely. Mothers who do commit infanticide by abandoning their child after birth are not usually tried or convicted for 1st degree murder. Society doesn’t approve, but is fairly understanding that there is a compelling reason for such crimes.
Besides the fact that this statement requires birth to be an absolutely determined and determinably point, which, clearly, it never is, it is also wrong in the subjective “benign.” Actual patients and medical personel who are involved in the extremely rare decision to terminate a pregnancy at any time after assumed viability, would cetainly not characterize the procedure as benign. For the patient it is every bit as painful and difficult as a live birth, with the specific horror of having had to make that decision, as the result of some agonizing life/death scenario.
No more arbitrary than it being permissable to remove someone’s organs (with permission) once the body is “brain dead” but not before. No more arbitrary than deciding that the third time someone’s heart cannot be restarted she is dead, which, legally, she wasn’t just a second ago when her heart couldn’t be started for the second time.
Actually, the fetus is attached to the mother, not the mother to the fetus. Weird, huh? Why isn’t the fetus equivilent to an internal organ or a tumor? You said it’s not, but you didn’t say why.
Distasteful? How so? The most crucial point you seem to be overlooking is that while a pregnancy is time-limited, its effects are not.
Lya Kahlo wrote:
Ad hominem apart, I note that you are still tap-dancing around actually answering my question.
Ian is still playing his word games huh?
I’ll play a little too.
No, an unborn child is not necessarily killed when an abortion is performed. But I’m using a rather loose definition of abortion… or strict definition of killed, take your pick.
As I have noticed that you’re tap danced around every rebuttal to your opinion on this thread. How many times does your statement need to be debunked before you stop repeating it?
And, I called your reliance on emotional blackmail to make your point “goofy” but that isn’t an ad hom.
~~~
“Terms like “abortion” and “termination of pregnancy” might be medically correct but they are also used to camouflage the unpleasantness – to put it mildly – of what is actually involved.
Why try to hide it unless you’re afraid that most people, if confronted with the reality of abortion, would find it offensive?”
First, your opinion of ‘what is actually involved’ has already been repeatedly debunk so I don’t know why you thought I’d fall for that. Second, no one is so stupid as to not know “what is actually involved”, and I can only hope they are too smart to fall for your propaganda. Third, as PZ pointed out, your overblown language can be used to make anything sound like evil incarate.
My only “agenda” is to ensure that every woman who walks through the door gets EXACTLY the care she needs, despite you and your ilk. I am not afraid of people finding out anything because I trust that they know, and are adults fully capable of making their own decision independent of any outside opinions – when given the choice (you know, the choice you would deny them, because apparently only you are smart enough to know “what is actually involved’). I am not worried if they find it offensive because they are completely free not to have one.
The question is so poorly formed and presumes far too much. My answer is that there is NO SHARP LINE. It isn’t fertilization, it isn’t quickening, it isn’t brain activity, it isn’t birth. Development is a long, slow process, and the whole problem is pig-ignorant people who insist that there must be one specific instant where ‘humanity’ is made manifest in the zygote/fetus/embryo/child.
Complaining that people haven’t answered a question that is built on a faulty premise is an attempt to cajole validation of your question out of them. It is right to refuse to do so.
hoody: “Oh my goodness. The infamous Dana L story? A thesis on self-forgiving rationalization.”
Well, we can agree that the 42-year old married mother of two made some poor choices: neglecting to insert her diaphragm in a sudden rush of passion, and then – when she was unable, after several attempts, to get a prescription for Plan B – basically hoping that the problem would just go away. Certainly we never make poor choices!
(I’d also note that Dana is well-educated (a lawyer), presumably at least relatively financially/ occupationally stable (although she does feel that she can’t take two days off because of work and children), and in what, as described, sounds like a supportive relationship (she makes the decision to abort with her husband). It’s worth considering what the story would be like without these advantages.)
Let us note, though, that on your blog you engage in a bit of selective quoting. You have, as her reaction upon ending up pregnant:
implying, for the casual reader, that this is the sole reason for her decision. You somehow neglect to include quite a bit of the rest of that passage:
I guess space was at a premium. The idea that you cherry-picked what you might conceivably see as the weakest, most petty reason is clearly unfounded suspicion. Shame on me!
Now of course, I could go on like this (you think doctors should be able to refuse to give prescriptions on what is almost certainly religious grounds? Have you ever been in this situation? What happens if you are trying to get treatment for depression and your doctor’s a Scientologist? Or treatment for anything, and they’re a Christian Science adherent? Given that Dana refers to her (non)healthcare providers as only “partially responsible,” (emphasis added) isn’t it at least possible that she places some of the responsibility on herself, and is engaged not in a “profoundly pathological need to place the blame elsewhere?” but a relatively detailed analysis of the wider system and how it affected her options, as opposed to one that singlemindedly limited itself to individual choices? Since you repeatedly refer to her decision to have an abortion in what was almost certainly the first trimester as “kill[ing] the baby” and suchlike, what would be your reaction if somebody handed you a first-trimester fetus, or you peered into a stroller and found one there?)
But that’s boring. The bottom line is that Dana L. made some stupid choices. As a result at least in part of Bush administration policies, and of the prolife movement more generally, she was unable to get emergency contraception – Plan B – which if you follow the links in PZ’s post, almost certainly – indeed, from what I’ve seen, by most practical standards of certainty -works by preventing fertilization, and appears carry little to no risk of “post-fertilization events.” So instead she ended up having an abortion. Again, bottom line: It is clear that she did not desire and was not planning to give birth. That wasn’t going to happen. As a result of not being able to get Plan B largely as result of Bush Administration policies and appointees, she ended up aborting a fetus – as you conceive it, killing a baby. Bottom line again: there were in reality two practical choices:
1) she gets a prescription for Plan B and (as long as it works) by suppressing ovulation, prevents her husband’s sperm from reaching her egg – hence no fertilization.
2) she gets an abortion.
Which would have you preferred?
Now, it’s clear from your post that you’re annoyed, to the point of diagnosing an “all time high” of “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” that Dana L. is (indirectly) blaming the Bush administration for her abortion. That annoyance is understandable, perhaps – again, she certainly made some dumb decisions. But again, having made those two dumb decisions – skipping contraception, and not spending the next 72 hours calling every doctor in the phone book (after her health providers wouldn’t/couldn’t help) to find one (presumably not covered)) that would give her a prescription (ER visit?) – which she is quite upfront about – well, that having happened, then what?
You say “Um, nope. That came about because your husband and you engaged in intercourse during your fertile period. Which you could have either avoided [Dana notes that as both her and husband work, they don’t end up with a lot of time together – won’t get into the issue of rhythm-method style contraception], or taken the time to use those contraceptive methods that you already partake of. Blaming the doctor is a classic case of shifting the responsibility.”
Fair enough: you know how she ended up with her husband’s sperm and her egg about to get together, because she goes right ahead and tells you. Again, given that she was kinda dumb – and I’m sure that sometime today, some two people are going to be kinda dumb, because even with our best efforts we don’t get through life without screwing up at least a little – why couldn’t she just head over to the pharmacy, get some Plan B, and ensure that this little meeting never happened? Because of the Bush administration. Blame her for being human, sure – but that’s not the only blame there is here. Sounds a bit like you want to make sure she has to face the ‘consequences’ of her mistakes.
“So to sum up: We have a married woman (and she is to be applauded for being married) engaging in intercourse with her husband, but wanting to have that without the attendant responsibility of future pregnancy. She normally takes steps to avoid same, but bails on them this time, scrambles to address the situation, is halted by a combination of poor timing and those pesky morals of her doctor, gets pregnant, kills the baby, and then blames Bush . . … I am truly sorry for the position the woman is in, but she placed herself there, all on her lonesome. What I am MORE sorry about is the fact that the woman had a tremendous opportunity to bring a new life into her world.”
Except both her (the major bit) and her husband decided that having another kid was a bad decision, not what was best for their family. They already brought two new lives into the world; she states quite specifically that they didn’t feel they had the resources, life-wise, to care for three as they would have wanted – besides the other concerns. If she had been able to get Plan B, she would have (if it worked) prevented two zygotes from joining together. (Are these two zygotes more important than her and her husband’s decision about family planning?) Instead, and again, she ended up having to have an abortion.
Presumably the least bad realistic outcome, for prolifers, would have been that fertilization never happened, rather than what is being thought of as a baby was destroyed. But I dunno:
“We have a married woman . . . engaging in intercourse with her husband, but wanting to have that without the attendant responsibility of future pregnancy.”
Especially given the whole tone of your post – irritation at this “idiocy;” that she’s trying to fob off her blame and responsibility – it sounds as if you also criticize her for having sex all selfish-like, obstinately shirking “the attendant responsibility of future pregnancy.” Is this the case, hoody?
Kaethe wrote:
Evidence, nonetheless, that my usage is current and not something I made up to suit my argument.
Not so. I am well aware that elective abortion is lawful here and in other countries.
I just think it is wrong.
I think that the notion of “women’s rights” is as suspect as that of ‘positive discrimination’. However well-intentioned, both are forms of unjustifiable discrimination in that they privilege one group over another.
That said, there is no doubt that women in various parts of the world are suffering outrageous oppression.
What is being violated, though, are their human rights.
1) I believe that people should be entitled to have their personal privacy and physical integrity respected.
2) I believe that no one should be compelled to suffer personal injury or death to save the life of another.
3) I believe that no one has the right to take the life of another, other than in certain exceptional circumstances. Personal convenience is not an exceptional circumstance.
How to resolve the conflict between 1) and 2)?
3) trumps all others.
Women who abandon their children do not necessarily do so with the intention of killing them.
But suppose Andrea Yates had been found legally sane and responsible for drowning her children. Would that not have been a heinous crime?
I characterized abortion as “benign” because, by intent, it is. That is in contrast to the intent of someone who deliberately kills an infant which might fairly be described as ‘malign’.
“You say pot-ay-to and I say pot-ah-to…”
If you let a tumour grow you get a bigger tumour.
If you let a fetus grow you get an adult human being, eventually.
Don’t blame me. I was just conveying the impression I got from the comments of a number of women with whom I discussed this before.
Still not a good enough reason to kill an unborn child.
Ian is still playing his word games huh?
D wrote:
Okay, I’ll bite. So what does happen when an abortion is performed?
A human zygote or embryo is removed. A pregnancy is terminated.
A planned miscarriage?
Take your pick.
Lya Kahlo wrote:
I haven’t seen anyone debunk the claim that an unborn child is killed in an abortion.
You think the average layperson knows all about MVA, EVA, D&E or D&C, for example? You have a higher opinion of them than I do.
In what way is the claim that an unborn child is killed in an abortion hyperbolic?
I have no idea where you work or what you do.
If it is some sort of general-purpose clinic or hospital I would expect that everyone – whether male or female – get the best possible treatment.
If it is some sort of women-only facility then I’m glad to hear that your patients get the care they need, as well as all they information they need to make an informed choice.
I would hope that also includes the alternatives to abortion as well.
Since you’re “not afraid of people finding out anything”.
So, abortion should be allowed if the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother? What if it threatens her sanity? What it it may lead to long-term disability?
What *exactly* should count as an exceptional circumstance?
PZ Myers wrote:
Sperm and ovum are brought into proximity.
Sperm fail to make contact with ovum – no individual human being.
Sperm enters ovum and ‘fuzes’with it and the long, slow and enormously complex process of development can begin which, with luck, will lead to an adult human being.
Human rights are the entitlements of individual human beings.
For the purpose of entitlement to the right to life only, when does an individual begin?
If you’re going to draw a line anywhere then fertilization seems as a good a place as any and better than most.
Yes, you’re entirely within your rights to refuse to answer. And I’m within my rights to think it sounds like the equivalent of “taking the Fifth”.
Steve_C wrote:
The effect on the zygote or embryo being…?
And a “human zygote or embryo” is not a child – in the sense of ‘offspring of human parents’ – how exactly?
Miscarriages are not usually the result of human intervention so rights are not violated.
wintermute wrote:
This is the awkward grey area and can only really be decided by the doctors.
My view has always been that if there’s a clear threat to the mother’s survival then the pregnancy should be terminated. I also think we should allow abortion where there is a risk of permanent injury to the mother’s physical or mental health.
I accept that this places a heavy burden on the doctors and that it is often difficult for them to assess the severity of the risks to the mother of continuing with the pregnancy.
All I can say is that they should be guided by the principle that both the mother and the unborn child each have a right to life but that, where the two rights come into conflict, the presumption should always be in favour of the mother’s survival.
My purpose is to establish that the unborn have a right to life which should be respected where possible but that there are legitimate exceptions to that right based on the mother’s health and well-being.
Are you saying that you agree with 99% of all ninth-month abortions? If that’s the case, why do you keep railing against abourtion “one minute before birth”?
I don’t consider a group of cells the size of a bean or smaller a human child.
If you do, why stop there? Why isn’t sperm or an ovum human life?
Dan S wrote:
it sounds as if you also criticize her for having sex all selfish-like, obstinately shirking “the attendant responsibility of future pregnancy.” Is this the case, hoody?
No.
A pregnancy is ended. That is in fact what is being aborted. Whether the unborn “child” is dead, killed, dies or lives is a separate matter, and all possible. And I don’t even have to play word games in saying that. Playing the word game you are, I can truthfully posit that an unborn child is never killed by an abortion.
Perhaps to save some time for everyone, I’ll attempt to summarize Ian’s thoughts as reveled from a previous post. Ian believes an individual begins existence at the start of the diploid stage of the life cycle, ie fertilization. His justification for such a belief seems to rest fully upon it striking him as the best place and he is either incapable of or refuses to understand the validity of any other demarcation. This is despite the fact that multiple people can arise from a single fertilization and the only difference between a zygote developing into a person vs a sperm and egg is probability. He wishes to equate the potential of the former as being equal to the end product while dismissing the potential of the latter. His conflation of potential with actual I think stems from the inability to see that the value of potential rests fully upon the desirability of the realization of potential.
In terms of when an abortion is acceptable, he seems to think there is some threshold at which pain and suffering to the woman would justify such an act, but that he is the only one that can make such a judgment and he judges that no woman has ever or will ever meet such a threshold, or perhaps some doctor, as long as said doctor agrees with Ian.
And Ian, if you feel I’m being disenginsous with my interpretation, feel free to correct me, but only after you correct your own dishonesty with what you have been told regarding pregnancy.
Messed up the link it seems.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/06/bye_bye_ra.php
If you’re going to draw a line anywhere then fertilization seems as a good a place as any and better than most.
See, Ian, this is where you differ from most of the other posters here. Fertilization only seems as good a place as any to you, and seems much worse than others to a lot of other people. I’d say, for instance, that birth seems like a pretty good place to define an individual, since that’s when a being detaches and becomes, well, individual. D did a very good job of explaining why fertilization does not an individual make.
A lot of it might have to do with knowledge about reproduction. Many posters here have a biological background, and are well aware of all of the things that can and often do go wrong between fertilization and the emergence of anything that can be considered even vaguely humanoid. In light of that, claiming human rights at such an early stage is just as ridiculous as claiming human rights on the lunch a couple has on their first date, because if things go to completion, they’ll eventually have sex and create a zygote that will become a human.
wintermute asked:
and Ian responded:
So despite your insistence on the supremacy of the genotypic uniqueness of the fertilized egg, and your time-traveling scenarios and all, you actually are ok with choice in some cases, just as long as it isn’t made by the woman herself. Understood.
“And I’m within my rights to think it sounds like the equivalent of “taking the Fifth”.”
Yes, you are within your rights to be dishonest.
wintermute wrote:
I am saying, although obviously not clearly enough, that I think abortion is permissible where there is a risk of permanent injury to the mother if the pregnancy is allowed to proceed to term.
The “one minute before birth” thing was simply trying to illustrate that there is little difference between a fetus one minute before birth and a baby one minute after.
And, yes, I realise that there are differences but it’s not as if we’re talking about a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly. The two are pretty much the same.
hmm, I can think of one important difference (especially to parents who never get enough sleep for the first two years):
one minute after, it’s breathing air (and usually lets you know about it right away).
Steve_C wrote:
Offspring?
Progeny?
That little ball of cells didn’t pop out of nowhere. It developed from an egg from the mother fertilized by a sperm from the father.
Just like the child it will grow into.
Because a sperm on its own or an egg on its own will not develop into an individual human being.
bah, that’s some pretty pathetic logic.
by that logic i can claim that an unimplanted, fertilized egg won’t develop into a human being either.
or an implanted blastula that doesn’t recieve proper blood supply.
etc., etc.
your line is just as arbitrary as the “one minute” line you mentioned above.
the wonder of Roe V. Wade is that is was an eminently PRAGMATIC decision, based on weighing more than when somebody arbitrarily decides “it’s human” or not.
In fact, the very durability of that decision speaks to the pragmatic nature of it.
D wrote:
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion
That says it rather well, I think. It doesn’t skirt the fact that the contents of the uterus are killed during abortion.
If the unborn child is already dead then this argument is moot.
On the other hand, if it’s alive at the beginning of the procedure it’s usually dead after.
And I can truthfully posit that they are.
Okay. This should be good.
By the way, that link only takes me back to another thread. Which post did you have in mind?
So far, so good.
Umm, not quite.
Fertilization is the event which initiates the long process of development which leads ultimately to an adult human individual. Sperm and egg can swim around quite happily near each other for as long as they like but unless they come into contact no individual will be started.
Other points of demarcation divide different stages in the process of development of the individual. Fertilization is when that development starts.
Of course I recognize that there are arguments in favour of other points of demarcation. I also recognize that the current consensus is against me.
I just think you’re all wrong. I don’t expect anyone to take much notice of that, though.
In my view, the arguments for other points of demarcation are weaker and more arbitrary than for fertilization
And I don’t see that extending the right to life of an individual to fertilization is going to cause any serious problems as long as proper provision is made for the health and welfare of the mother.
Not a problem. The development of each of them traces back to that one fertilization.
Potential and the value we might place on some potential are not the same thing.
Besides, the right to life we all enjoy is not just for the present moment. It is presumed to apply to the whole of our life. It is protecting whatever potential we have left from now on.
So what is the problem with protecting the potential of the fertilized egg onwards?
No, I’m afraid you’re drifting way off beam here.
I thought I made it clear that it should be for the doctors to decide – in consultation with the patient, of course – whether the risk of permanent injury or death for the mother was such as to justify abortion.
Carlie wrote:
I had noticed.
And you have the satisfaction of knowing that your views are both more popular than mine and the basis of curent law.
Fertilization does not an individual make, it’s where the development of one starts.
The right to life isn’t granted to us according to our chances of completing our “four score years and ten”. Everyone gets it and if they’re unlucky enough to pop off early that’s just too bad.
The fact that a lot can go wrong in utero should have no bearing on any right to life of the unborn.
[quote]The right to life isn’t granted to us according to our chances of completing our “four score years and ten”. [/quote]
your arguments are quite simplistic. the answer to this question entirely depends on the where and when.
yes, there have been times and are places where your very right to life depends on your answers to political questions, let alone how long you’ve lived.
There is no absolute morality that decides this issue.
There is only pragmatism, which just happens to be how this issue fell out within our legal system.
the rest is subjective morality, which you have no more or less evidence for than any other arbitrary legal definition we choose to apply to “personhood”.
you say you prefer the idea of “personhood” starting at fertilization, but really you have made no evidentiary argumentation supporting such a position.
so essentially you have not made a case for why things should be any different than they are now.
I’ve seen women make cogent arguments for why they should have rights in how far the government can intrude on their personal decisions, and provide hard evidence to support that.
you may not like it, but that’s what really counts in the end.
So, for the record, you agree with the following statement:
Kill a baby one minute after birth, and it’s murder. Kill a baby one minute before birth and it’s a dangerous medical procedure that’s only ever carried out in the direst of situations, in order to save the life of the mother, and should be supported by anyone who thinks pregnant women have a right to life, too.
If you are in favour of abortion where continuing the pregnancy would be dangerous to the mother, isn’t it something of a straw man to continually talk about how 9th month fœtuses are identical to new-born babies, and therefore should be protected, when such fœtuses are only *ever* aborted when they seriously endanger the life of the mother. Well, or when the fœtus is already dead, but I don’t think that counts.
You seemed to have missed something with my posit Ian, namely I was playing the same dishonest word game you are. You know, using non-standard definitions for words so that the statement can be said to be truthful, even though using such non-standard definitions make the statement meaningless. You know, like how you keep using child, individual, life, person and whatever else.
The summary of your position was not gleaned from a single commit of yours, but rather all of your comments.
Fertilization does initiate the diploid stage which can develop into an adult person. But just as a sperm and egg can swim around “happily” without firtilzation, so can a zygote float around “happily” without attachment, or a fetus can sit around “happily” without further development. It’s all simply degrees of potential. Also, here your argument relies upon one of your non-standard definitions. In this case it is “individual”. You use individual to mean genetic uniqueness, which is only temporal. However, you seem to want your definition to retain the significance of defining individual to mean a separate human entity that can only exist after birth. You use this latter definition in the first sentence, but then use the former in the second, making the statement, as well as following ones, meaningless.
We enjoy the right to life for all the moments we are “we”. Prior or after to being “we”, we do not exist to have a right to life. Once again your argument relies upon a non-standard definition. If you wish to think your sum existence at any point was a non-sentient group of cells, you are free to do so. You’ve not provided any sort of evidence as to why anyone else should think likewise however. Nor do you seem to accept the implication that if that can be considered the sum of your identity to deserve a right to life, why other entities that have equivalent existences do not deserve a right to life. I know you like to claim potential at such a point, yet you offer no explanation why potential has any significance beyond your own desire to think it does.
As I said, as long as the doctor agrees with you. Otherwise that situation is already the reality, so you’d have no reason to protest.
Ichthyic wrote:
People have behaved badly. We know. It doesn’t mean we have to do the same. It doesn’t mean we can’t work out better way. It doesn’t mean we can’t do better.
I agree. We decide it for ourselves.
Like you said, there’s no absolute morality. The nice thing about a pragmatic morality is that it can be modified.
If enough people can be persuaded to agree.
It’s hard to provide ‘evidence’ for something that only exists as a concept in people’s minds. Other than to show that they hold it.
As I see it, it’s quite simple. We are alive and we have a legitimate interest in staying alive because, for the most part, it’s better than the alternative. If you’re atheist that is.
The right to life is a guarantee of that interest.
Most of us think of the right to life applying to us as we are now. But to get to ‘now’ we had to go through a lot of ‘then’ – ‘then’ being all the stages of development that preceded the stage we have now reached.
It just seems like a good idea that all those preceding stages in our life should be be guaranteed like the current and future stages.
You mean I haven’t persuaded you. Or anyone else here as far as I can tell.
Obviously, I’m not a very effective advocate.
I’m sure you have. Cogent arguments based on the human right that protects citizens from unwarranted intrusions by the state into their privacy.
That right isn’t absolute, though. It certainly doesn’t mean that a pregnant woman necessarily has a special right to kill.
And, unless the fetus is already dead, it does get killed during an abortion.
A fetus that otherwise might grow into an adult human being just like the rest of us here.
wintermute wrote:
That’s right. As long as it can be justified as a medical exception then we should have no objection.
As I said before, the reference to a one-minute-before-birth abortion was intended to show that setting the boundary between human individual and non-human individual at birth is less defensible than setting it at conception. I see it more as an illustration than a strawman.
D wrote:
The dictionary definitions are evidence that my usage is a standard one.
The use of ‘child’ as a synonym for ‘offspring’ is common enough to be considered standard.
Either way this quibble about usage is a red herring. I can define a word any way I choose provided I make clear the meaning I intend.
None of this alters the fact that a living entity which is the offspring of two human parents – in other words, a child – is killed during an abortion.
It is those who hide the reality of something like “intrauterine cranial decompression” behind terms
like ‘sbortion’ or ‘termination’ who are being dishonest.
Yes, things can go wrong during development. So what? Rights exist to regulate human behaviour not accidents.
“Only temporal”? The one distinctive quality that lasts throughout our lives is “only temporal”?
In the first sentence “individual” is qualified by “adult human”. There is no equivocation.
I did exist as a small cluster of cells at one point. So did you.
The fact that a small cluster of cells is not in all respects the same as the adult human being that it eventually becomes does not alter the fact that there is a seamless process of development connecting the two states, or that the later state could not exist without the former.
Those who think like you persist in seeing the blastocyst and the adult human being as discrete objects. But that is an artefact of our limited temporal perspective. In four-dimensional spacetime, from zygote to corpse, we are a single continuous entity
At the moment, we are talking about the human right to life. We might consider extending the right to “other entities” – I would certainly consider it in the case of cats, PZ in the case of cephalopods – but that would be another argument.
I guess we can add “offspring” to your dishonest use of words. Also as pointed out before, the appearance of a specific definition in a dictionary does not necessarily indicate said definition is standard or correct in every context. Even being able to point to a definition to claim it valid at all is still false if you are relying upon an altered meaning of one of terms in the definition, such as offspring.
Understanding what someone else is saying is necessary for communication. If no one else but you know what you mean when you use certain words, or you don’t know what everyone else means with certain words, then communication is impossible. Your statements loose all meaning. So if trying to understand what you mean with the words you use is a red herring, it is one of your own creation.
Your claim that using the term abortion is dishonest is false because people know what such process entails, namely the possible death of a fetus. In fact, it is most commonly assumed that it does result in death. Your claim that abortion kills a child is dishonest because an embryo is not commonly thought of as a child. It may be in certain circles, in which case your language would be acceptable there, but that certainly is not the case here or in general.
Are you saying the right to life means every time a woman is close to ovulation she must have intercourse to not interfere with life? Seriously though, you once again miss the point. Namely, you place significance on one necessary step, but dismiss others. You are at best being arbitrary (another word you might want to learn the proper usage of), even if it is out of ignorance.
Though I am genetically unique, I am not genetically identical to the embryo that gave rise to me, nor are you to the embryo that gave rise to you, nor anyone else to the embryos that gave rise to them. I can understand why you might be ignorant of this, but that doesn’t change the invalidity of your argument.
I see. Well, at least your dishonesty is consistent then.
Speak for yourself. No sentience, no me however. Also, do you also not consider being irrevocably brain dead to be the end of a person? It would seem inconsistent if you do.
And once again, “seamless process” is applicable beyond the diploid state, yet you choose to consider it irrelevant in other instances, so it would seem inconsistent that here you think it to be of any significance.
Actually I don’t see them as discrete objects as such, but rather I see an adult human as a person, not just as an object. I am well aware of the contiguous nature of life, though I thought you gave up on your “dimensional spacetime” given that it nullifies your argument with its deterministic nature. Or is this a new version?
Nice attempt at evasion. If a human right to life can be so easily separated from a non-human right to life, then humans must have some intrinsic quality that separates us from non-humans that we get a special right to life. As such it should be quite simple to determine if a fetus does or does not deserve a human right to life. Simply answer two questions: what is this quality that humans possess to make them deserving a right to life? And then, does a fetus have this quality? So Ian, what is this quality?
D wrote:
Merriam-Webster again:
As with “child”, there is nothing to suggest that the word is necessarily restricted to the postnatal organism. In fact, if you showed an ultrasound image of a late-stage fetus to people I think you would find that most of them would agree that it could be described as either “child” or “offspring”.
The problem faced by so-called pro-choicers is that, in order to be able to terminate a pregnancy with a clear conscience, they must deny the undeniable. They are bound to argue that the fetus is neither human nor an individual.
That a human zygote/blastocyst/embryo/fetus is human is easily demonstrated by observation. If left to follow the normal course of development unmolested, we never see them grow into dogs or cows or even cephalopods. They always become human beings.
They are also genetically distinct and, even while in the womb, qualify as a unique event in space and time. The fact that they do not become physically separated from the mother until birth makes no difference. After all, we regard Siamese twins as two separate individuals even while they are physically conjoined, why not mother and unborn child?
I’m sure most people are aware that abortion entails the death of a fetus.
What they prefer not know, however, are the details of some methods used to bring about this end. What they also prefer to avoid confronting are the moral issues raised if we allow that the fetus is still a human individual even though unborn.
Not suprisingly, we disagree. I believe that, if pressed on the issue, most people would acknowledge that “child” or “offspring”, in their broadest but nonetheless legitimate senses, are appropriate terms for the unborn.
I realise you’re not being serious but let me make my position clear. I recognize no moral imperative that demands parents produce children. What I am saying, however, is that once development of an individual has begun it should be protected by the right to life
…and again:
I think you’ll find that my usage has been standard.
Neither of us are the people that we were five, ten, twenty or fifty years ago, either physically or mentally, it’s true. But, however much we change over the years, most of us believe that there is something that is uniquely ‘me’ which is carried forward through the years and which must extend back through time as well.
A common view, but we still regard people in a coma or persistent vegetative state as individuals even though they lack much of what we might call ‘sentience’.
I regard complete brain death as more or less coinciding with physical death since the body cannot function without minimal CNS control.
I do not regard ‘personality’ as being synonymous with ‘individual’, however. For me, ‘individual’ is the broader term, encompassing both physical and mental distinctiveness. “Personality’ refers only to the unique compound of psychological traits manifested by each individual while conscious.
The process of development is so seamless as to make arbitrary the choice of any point after fertilization as a boundary between individuality and non-individuality. Fertilization is the transition from the general potential to form individual human beings contained in the separate sperm and ova to the actualisation of that potential in a specific case.
And now we can add “product”. I’m sure we could do this forever, so let me illustrate my point in another manner. You say a fetus is a child. Fine. However, with such a prescription, I can no longer agree it is wrong to kill a child. Just as if you said a 2 year old was a woman, I could no longer agree that it would be wrong to not allow a woman to own property. Your definitions strip the words of any common significance. So end the end, when you proclaim a fetus is a human individual, we can only respond by, “So what?”
You should ponder that. Why are Siamese twins, which by your terms can be described as a single genetic individual, considered in fact two people?
I realize. The problems arise when you go beyond a simple statement of your druthers.
Indeed. You seem to place this “me” entirely into a physical existence however. I place it into the mental, which requires a physical. Regardless, it is a fallacy to equate our continuity of existence from some past state with a different instance of said state necessarily having a continuity of existence into the future equivalent to our own.
We also regard the dead as individuals for similar reasons. Someone who has had an existence establishing his or her self never looses that. The same can not be said for someone who does not exist and did not exist.
I would agree. Though as before, my requisite is the presence of both physical and mental, where as yours seems to only require the former.
If true, then this entire discussion is completely meaningless. If it all comes down to personal whim or judgment, then every boundary is equally valid and your attempts to argue for yours being correct are absolutely hollow and disingenuous.
Meaningless. Every other event can be likewise described as the realization of a specific potential in a specific case.
Then reconcile them. It is absurd to offer it simply because you want it to fit with your argument when it doesn’t.
It seems you realize how troublesome this is for you. If human beings lack any specific qualities that would lend themselves to a right to life, then it becomes very important to look beyond human abortion to see if we are consistent in our application to a right to life. If we are not, then our application is dishonest. Early in your post, you felt it important to make the distinction that a human fetus does not become a cow, dog etc. Unless there are qualities that these creatures lack, which humans possess, that are important for a right to life, the distinction is irrelevant. So I ask again, what are these qualities?
Many pro-choice advocates do considering a fetus a human individual, of the equivalency of a newborn. I doubt any would have difficulty by your definitions. I certainly don’t. The “problem” they face is seeing women as full parts of the equation. Something you have demonstrated to be capable of overcoming.
What do the details of the methods matter? If killing a fetus is wrong, it’s just as wrong to do it by inducing its intact expulsion as it is to puncture its skull, aspirate its brain, chop it up and then suck it out. Likewise, if it’s not wrong, then either method is equally not wrong. Something being grosser doesn’t make it morally wrong.
I doubt many people would have difficulty addressing hypotheticals, or realities, if your definitions were adequately explained to them.
D wrote:
You, like me, are entitled to assume that a standard definition of any word is being used, unless otherwise stated. My usage of the word “child” is a standard one and I quoted an entry from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary as evidence for it. It might not have been the usage that sprang into your mind when reading what I wrote but that is what I intended and, I believe, it is one that most people would accept if it was put to them.
Although there is nothing to prevent you from defining “woman” so as to include 2 year-olds if you choose, it is not a standard usage. You will not find it in any dictionary and I doubt very much that anyone would accept it.
Object all you like, but a fetus is a child in the sense of being the offspring of parents.
You tell me.
The notion of “me” is problematic, I agree, but seems to exist only in the mind as an abstraction. However, as we have agreed, it is not all that we are as individuals. That, to me, is the totality of both the physical and mental considered as having both spatial and temporal extension. The boundary of the individual, in my view, should not be set close around where has reached full development but at the furthest limit of its existence as a discrete entity.
Like you, I regard “personality” as requiring both the physical and the mental. “Individual”, on the other hand, in the sense of a unique and discrete entity, can be just the physical.
Yes, in the broadest sense, every boundary is equally valid. Which one is chosen for the purposes of deciding who should be accorded a particular human right is a matter of consensus. In reaching that consensus, or in trying to change one, we are all entitled to present our cases as persuasively as possible.
The difference between us is that I am trying to prevent the unnecessary killing of something that is undeniably human and undeniably alive. You seem to be quite happy to countenance such killing, apparently based on some misguided notion that being pregnant entitles women to some sort of right not available to us lesser mortals.
Not so. Not every “realization of a specific potential” is likely to lead to a fully-developed human adult.
If I could, I would. All we can say is that, from our limited perspective, we have no clear knowledge of the future so all we can do is act as if our choices will make a difference.
Again, rights are entitlements, privileges and permissions which we agree to grant to each other based, I believe, on our common interests. Nothing more, nothing less. We agree that we should all have a right to life because we all – or most of us, at least – have an interest in staying alive. Anything else is hot air. There is nothing to prevent us from extending that right to other living creatures if we choose – and I might even have some sympathy with such a view – but we haven’t got that far yet and, in any case, as I wrote before, it has no bearing on the question of human abortion.
I have always held that women are entitled to the same human rights as the rest of us, that their health and welfare should be considered in the case of abortion and that where those are threatened then abortion should be allowed.
What women should not be entitled to is some special dispensation allowing them to kill in circumstances which would not be allowed to the rest of us.
Logically, yes, but I’m pretty sure that at least some of the current support for abortion would melt away if people were shown the grosser methods of abortion in their full gory detail.
Ian said:
People have behaved badly. We know. It doesn’t mean we have to do the same. It doesn’t mean we can’t work out better way. It doesn’t mean we can’t do better.
and then promptly responded to my comment here:
There is no absolute morality that decides this issue.
with this:
I agree. We decide it for ourselves.
that was my point, Ian. How can you determine what is “better” objectively?
Your attempts are entirely subjective, hence the reason that they don’t fly on this blog, especially.
It’s hard to provide ‘evidence’ for something that only exists as a concept in people’s minds. Other than to show that they hold it.
oh? I think perhaps you should spend more time checking out relevant court cases and the literature. I’ve seen plenty of evidence presented for both sides of this issue, not just opinion. though indeed a lot of that ‘evidence’ is often selective intepretation of observation, much along the lines of an artifical demarcation as to the start of ‘life’.
In fact, I think you would gain a lot of perspective if you actually went and read the trasncripts from Roe vs. Wade, and especially the notes the judges made on their decisions.
As I see it, it’s quite simple. We are alive
as has been pointed out by innumerable philosophers for ages, that is not a simple statement on the face of it.
The right to life is a guarantee of that interest.
and it’s already written into the constitution. you are quibbling over what constitutes “life”, not whether there is a right to it or not.
It just seems like a good idea that all those preceding stages in our life should be be guaranteed like the current and future stages.
and defining it as the moment of fertilization is just as arbitrary as defining it as the moment of birth.
you still haven’t provided any kind of objective evidence to indicate otherwise.
You mean I haven’t persuaded you. Or anyone else here as far as I can tell.
Obviously, I’m not a very effective advocate.
well, at least you’re an honest one. I respect that.
I took a course in biomedical ethics when I was an undergrad (long long ago in a galaxy far far away), and found reading the transcripts of roe v wade instrumental in thinking about this issue. I again highly recommend you take some time and read the whole thing.
Once again Ian, I have to suspect your fundamental delusions make you beyond reasoning with. If you can not consider that when no one else here agrees with your usage of certain words that your usage might be incorrect, then I doubt I can disillusion you, though I’ll not give up quite yet.
Given your bolding, I assume the sense in questions was:
Since a fetus is by definition unborn, it does follow that a fetus can be a child. It does not follow that a fetus is a child however. Square = rectangle, rectangle != square. You seem to have fallen for that fallacy. Also, there are 6 senses in this definition. It is not true that because one is technically accurate in a specific context, that it would be understood that that particular sense was the one intended.
You gave M-W definition for offspring, so I can only trust you feel it is descriptive of what you mean.
Definition 1 seems to be the relevant one here. 1a would require the completion of the reproductive process to be applicable. So we move on to 1b. It simply gives “child”. This would seem to fit your bill. Unfortunately, you are left with a circular argument. A fetus is a child because a child is an offspring because and offspring is a child because a child is an offspring… ad infinitum. Also, both “child” and “product of the reproductive process..” are sub-senses of the same sense. In other words, they should not contradict each other. This would mean that a fetus is in fact not a child, as it is not the product of the reproductive process.
Still, even when I agree to go by your usage, you seem unable to answer a simply question regarding application of a right to life. The question still remains: What qualities convey a right to life that can be consistent criteria in all consideration of such conveyance? Thus far every quality you have offered is inconsistent; individual, human, alive.
If you really are unable to figure it out for yourself: their minds, or what you might label personality.
There is simply a contradiction in every boundary being equally valid and the claim any given viewpoint should be chosen and enforced as correct. You’re making an argument that essentially boils down to might makes right.
And I’m calling you out on your inconsistencies and dishonesties. You seem to have no concern for the life of other things that are “undeniably human and undeniably alive” when their deaths are not necessary. Criminals being the most recent example you have provided in the death penalty thread. To say nothing of the subjectivity of necessity.
What revolting misogynistic tripe. Men have an equal right to control what happens to their own bodies as women. If you or I ever found ourselves with a fetus growing inside us without our wish, we both have the same right as everyone to remove it. Those who never find an opportunity to exercise certain rights are not bereft of those rights.
You really seem to have trouble with the “every square is a rectangle, not every rectangle is a square” concept. It does not follow from “Every other event can be likewise described as the realization of a specific potential in a specific case” to “realization of a specific potential” is likely to lead to a fully-developed human adult.” The latter is the former, but the former is not the latter. You are trying to refute something I didn’t say and likely totally missed the point, which was you were making a broadly applicable non-argument.
If you want to make that claim, great. But that makes your timespace theory irrelevant. So I simply question why you tried to use it again.
More evasion, though you have trapped yourself. A fetus can not enter into such agreements. So by your own words, it is hot air to argue for their right to life. Also, it is false that we must settle the question of a right to life for a human embryo or fetus before a non-human entity. Both are fully open to consideration in the absence of the other and both would benefit by mutual consideration to avoid inconsistencies.
Entitlement to a right means you get to decide whether to exercise it, not someone else.
More tripe of the nature I’ve addressed above.
Yes, when you have no valid argument, play upon people’s emotions.
Ichthyic wrote:
I am as aware of the naturalistic fallacy as you are. I have never claimed that moral standards can be derived from observations of nature.
What I have argued is that the concept of human rights has its roots in a recognition of common interests. We are all alive, we all have an interest in staying alive as long as we can – most of us anyway – so it makes sense if we agree to a rule of behaviour which requires us to respect each other’s life, in other words, the right to life.
Ultimately, though, it is a subjective view, I agree.
So is yours.
So each of our positions are equally unairworthy.
None of the above, however, prevents either of us from trying to persuade others to accept our arguments, does it?
I read Roe v Wade, but it was some years back so I had to read it again more recently, in particular the dissenting opinion of Justice Byron R White:
D wrote:
The usages of words are only correct or incorrect by convention. My usage of “child” was a standard one. It was the one I intended. The fact that you read it differently doen’t make it wrong. At the most, it shows I should have specified more clearly which meaning I was using.
Sure it does. What else would it be?
If you’re talking about equivocation, it only applies if you can show that I clearly used two different meanings of a word in the same argument. The fact that I intended one meaning and you read another doesn’t make it equivocation, it makes it a misunderstanding.
You sound a little confused here. Definitions are usually descriptions not arguments. There is nothing fallacious or tautological about “child” and “offspring” having the same meaning in the sense of “product of the reproductive process” because there is no argument involved.
It isn’t? Then what is it the product of?
I don’t see any inconsistency. Fetus, newborn, infant, pre-teen, adolescent, adult are all individual, human and alive.
I am arguing that might makes right only in the sense that, in a democracy, the majority view should normally prevail.
Where the starting-point of an individual life is set for the purposes of the right to life is a moral or ethical question rather than a scientific one. It’s a question of ‘ought’ rather than ‘is’, which turns on how we define ‘individual’.
There is no inconsistency, as I see it.
My views on both the death penalty and abortion are predicated on the assumption of the supreme value of human life.
In the case of abortion, only where we are forced to make a choice between two lives can the overriding necessity of preserving the life of the mother justify the taking of the life of the unborn child.
On the case of the death penalty, the unlawful and premeditated taking of a life is the worst injury one person can do to another. Where the concept of justice includes the principle of proportionate retribution – “Let the punishment fit the crime” as Gilbert and Sullivan put it – then capital punishment is the only just response to murder.
Except that this whole discussion is about whether we should have the right to remove it.
If you read my previous reply to Icthyic, you will see that Roe v Wade established such a right even though it is not in the Constitution. The dissenting opinion by Justice White is my position as well.
Newborns or infants are not capable of understanding or agreeing to their interest in the right to life but we still grant them such a right.
I was not arguing that we should necessarily decide the question of a fetus’s right to life before that of non-human entities, only that it is the topic of discussion on this thread.
You or I do not have the right to kill another human individual simply because they are a nuisance. Neither should a pregnant woman.
Trying to get you to understand basic language concepts seems to be an exercise in futility. And once again you give an incomplete answer to my question.
If individual, human and alive are the criteria then the right to life must extend to every living human cell, tissue culture, organ, brain dead body, etc. You do not argue for such an extension, thus you are inconsistent. Even if these criteria were consistent, we’d then have to go on to ask why we should use these criteria. But we haven’t got to that point yet.
Mob rule. Does this mean that given the majority view of religiosity means you should be forced to adhere to a faith as well? Your attempts to justify your belief that your views should be forced upon others are pathetic.
Not a scientific question? Good thing we have sky fairies to tell us what to do then. At least you’re willing to admit you have no reality based arguments.
Yet the majority view said it was in the Constitution. But of course to you and Justice White, women, particularly pregnant women shouldn’t be allowed freedom.
That is counter to your statement: “Again, rights are entitlements, privileges and permissions which we agree to grant to each other based, I believe, on our common interests.” As I said, you trapped yourself. Now you’ve contradicted yourself.
Perhaps you do not, but I do, as long as they are being a nuisance in a manner that violates certain other rights of mine. For instance, if someone violates my right to private property, I am allowed to kill them. Likewise, if someone violates my right to freedom or bodily integrity, I am allowed to kill them. I would not necessarily do so, but such freedoms have been granted to me to exercise. I’m sorry you do not have a right to defend yourself or your rights where you live, though I doubt that is actually the case.
D wrote:
A human cell, tissue culture, or organ are not individuals nor will they grow into such on their own.
A brain-dead body, by which I assume you mean one that is beyond hope of resuscitation, is at the end of life which is where the right also ends.
You think democracy is mob rule? What would you prefer – dictatorship?
And I don’t want to “force” my belief on anyone. But, like you, I have the right to try and persuade others by argument.
I’ve already explained that I set the beginning of an individual life at conception and why without appealing to “sky fairies” or gods or anything else.
The majority view declared abortion to be a “fundamental right” even though it is to be found nowhere in the Constitution.
And I have said repeatedly that men and women should have exactly the same rights – human rights.
Where is the contradiction?
I don’t know what jurisdiction you live in, but in mine you are only allowed to kill in self-defence or, possibly, to defend someone else who is in danger of their life. Trespass, theft and even assault are not, in themselves, sufficient justification for killing another and nor should they be. You have to be able to convince the court that you felt your life was in immediate danger and had no reasonable alternative to killing.
And thus we once again run into the problem of your circular argument definitions. But never mind that, since you are incapable or unwilling to see beyond that. If we just allow your “just is” terms for consistency, why are these important? What makes a living human “individual” especially deserving a right to life? I’ll make it easy. We can discard living and human, since they seem to be included in your definition of individual. What value does an individual have? Where does it come from? Is it simply narcissism?
Unless you are suggesting that a person that is about to die should loose his or her right to life before actually dying, your statement is meaningless. If you are making such a suggestion then there can be no right to life.
As with so many other subjects, you seem to have a deal of ignorance with civics as well. Democracy is mob rule. In the US at least, some care was taken to insure such was not the governance structure. Such is why the religious majority, racist majority, homophobic majority or, as in this case, misogynist majority do not get to exert their prejudices upon everyone, at least in theory.
A fascinating paradox. You don’t want to force your beliefs onto others, yet if you actually succeeded in your persuasion that would be the end result. That is a truly pathetic attempt to shirk responsibility. Own up to the reality you’re trying to create.
Indeed, you have made your arguments without appealing to reality. Your explanations have been a collection of ignorance, logical fallacies, broadly applicable non-arguments and appeal to authority, the authority being yourself as opposed to a more common deity.
If you mean in the literal sense, then yes. Abortion is not specifically mentioned. The majority view did however consider it to be covered specifically by the 14th amendment. That’s the great thing about general rights; without specifically mentioning every single circumstance in which it would be applicable, they are still applicable. Like the right to life covering the right not to be poisoned with an enterotoxin, even though it’s not implicitly stated.
Contrary to the Rove’s success with the strategy, repeating something doesn’t make it true. I’ll believe you when you are no longer arguing for different rights for men and women.
You must really enjoy playing the idiot.
Really? Anytime someone kills or somehow affects the death of another, they are put on trial for murder? That would be a somewhat telling societal practice. I still think it unfortunate that you would be convicted of murder unless someone was trying to kill you. I’m curious though, what are you allowed to do if someone isn’t going to kill you, just kidnap and torture you? Do you have to just go along with it if you can’t escape without harming the kidnapper?
D wrote:
I will try to make this as simple as possible.
If there is no deity to bestow “God-given” rights on us, if there are no such things as “natural rights” – in other words, rights that are somehow inherent in the natural order of things – then rights are nothing more or less than entitlements, privileges or we agree to grant to ourselves.
We decide for ourselves what rights we should have.
And we are deciding that human beings should have certain rights because we are human beings and we have just as much right to decide what rights we should have as anyone else.
If we wanted to – or, rather, if we all agreed – we could extend some of those rights to other animals.
If you want to call it “narcissistic”, you can, but it’s that simple.
I am saying that the right to life obviously ends at the point of death. How we identify that point is the problem.
Democracy is not mob rule. It’s a system of government where the citizenry elect representatives to a legislature where they are supposed to advocate the interests of their constituents. The system is also supposed to incorporate checks and balances which protect the legitimate rights and interests of minorities from being violated by the brute power of the majority.
There is a difference between persuading others to agree with you by force of argument and compelling others to submit to your views by brute force.
I’m not trying to ‘force’ my views on anyone. If the majority wants to retain elective abortion as a legal right then that is what will happen.
As you say, there is no specific right to abortion stated anywhere in the US Constitution. The right to privacy has been derived by interpretation of various amendments but is not specifically stated either.
If unborn forms of the human being have no right to life then the woman’s right to privacy has priority. If the unborn human does have a right to life then that should take precedence of the mother’s right to privacy but not the mother’s right to life.
I am the one arguing for equal rights for men and women. You are the one arguing that pregnant women should have an additional right to kill a living being because it is an inconvenience.
It’s quite simple. If you kill someone, you must be prepared to satisfy a court that under the circumstances you had no reasonable alternative.
In the case of an attempted kidnapping, you would be entitled to use whatever force was reasonable to resist the attempt. If the kidnapper was killed during a struggle for his gun then that would probably not be considered murder. If the kidnapper was found to have been shot in the back while fleeing from a failed kidnapping attempt, that might be a different matter.
Ian, you are a pathetic fraud. It was a pretty good illusion as far as they go, and you may have even fooled yourself, but you’ve let you misogyny slip through your charade. Your attempts to rebuild that illusion aren’t going to work.
Your explanation of the kidnapping scenario establishes that we all have a right to kill another to protect our freedom. You want to exempt pregnant women from this, strip them of their freedom while whining about how unfair it is you can’t get pregnant and have an abortion. Next you’ll probably be calling for pap smears to be made illegal because you can’t have one. And of course you want others to agree with you, so you can pretend like it’s not you forcing them to do give up their freedom, but everyone else. And despite your insistence that the constitution doesn’t convey any implicit rights, it is fairly explicit about liberty. Also, a specific right does not absolutely trump another. A right to life does not always outweigh a right to freedom, or privacy. As in the kidnapping, the right to freedom takes priority, because it is what is initially being violated.
Now we turn again to look at why you think a zygote even should have a right to life. You’re again espousing a social contract of rights. Yet such an arrangement still automatically does not apply to those who can’t agree to that contract. And that puts a cat, a squid, a fetus, an embryo and a 2 year old all in the same boat of being excluded. So the question I have been posing and you have been evading remains. Why should any of those be granted a right to life?
It is indeed problematic for you view of an individual. If you consider brain death to the death of an individual, then that means that a body is considered to be dead when it has the same characteristics as a fetus that is considered alive. Yet one you would consider to be a living individual and the other not.
It seems that misconception has been so over used that it has been incorporated into the truth. Such is the way with languages however. What you describe was once not considered an actual democracy. Now democracy has lost most of its meaning. So we are both right and wrong.
D wrote:
No, I was arguing that it would depend on circumstances.
If you were able to convince the court that you had a reasonable fear that you life was in danger then you would probably get away with it. But that is the test: a reasonable perception of a threat to your life.
The same should apply to pregnancy. If the woman’s life or long-term health are threatened then abortion should be allowed.
You must be thinking of Monty Python’s Life of Brian not me.
If everybody else agreed with me then it wouldn’t be just me. I’m not talking about coercion or brainwashing, just persuasion.
As I wrote before, it depends on circumstances, but there are very few exceptions to the right to life.
Many kidnappings end with the death of the victim, so killing someone attempting kidnap could be justified on the grounds that the victim had a reasonable expectation that they might eventually be killed if they didn’t resist. But the court would have to be convinced that such was the case.
We grant the right to life to newborn babies even though they cannot consciously agree to any sort of social contract.
In any event, rights are whatever a human society agrees they should be and apply to whoever society decides are entitled to such protection. There is nothing to prevent society deciding that cats, for example, should have the right to life if that is what the majority wants.
There is a clear difference between a healthy fetus which is capable of growing into an adult human being and an adult who has suffered such irreparable brain damage that the body can only survive if artificial life support is provided.
The difficulty in the later case is deciding if and when all hope of any kind of recovery has finally been lost.
I think it was Winston Churchill who said something to the effect that democracy is a very bad form of government, it’s just that all the others are so much worse.
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Perhaps sometime in the distant future pregnancy will not be a threat to a woman’s life or long-term health. We’re not there yet, nor is it in sight. This all comes down to two points; subjectivity of what constitutes a reasonable risk to a person’s life and whether one universally places life above freedom. In the former you have established your position of dismissing pregnancy as a reasonable risk. Given the very large amount of data about the risk pregnancy carries with it and your assertion that kidnapping carries with it a reasonable risk of death to the victim, I’m left wondering what you would actually consider a health risk. The latter is admittedly a philosophical debate. However, the US at least was pretty much founded upon the idea that freedom is at least equally important to life. If you wish to contend that life is the end all be all, you are free to do so, but you are in the minority and I’d be very skeptical whether you would live up to such notion.
This is another non-argument and it would fit pregnancy just as well. Again though, it’s very interesting that you, follow a “guilty until proven innocent” philosophy. I wonder, do you apply that universally?
Oh, I didn’t realize you were channeling a movie when you wrote:
and
Does that mean you actually understand the difference between having a right to do something and being physically capable of doing something now? You are going to stop whining about women having different biologies?
Another patented non-answer. Why do we/should we grant the right to life to something? It’s the same question I’ve been posing for most of this exchange.