It’s been yet another long, long day — I was one of many invited speakers at a conference on Networks and Neighborhoods in Cyberspace at the Twin Cities branch campus of the University of Minnesota Morris, and I got to make an early morning drive there and a late afternoon drive back. Drive, drive, drive. It gets old. Especially on those mornings when it is -15°F (around -25°C for those of you who insist on more civilized measurements.) If you’ve seen the movie Fargo you know what the scenery is like: endless snow-covered fields, endless rows of posts for barbed-wire fences, a succession of teeny-tiny farm towns. There is one thing I watch for — and this is a measure of how boring the drive is — and that’s the anti-abortion signs.
These are an institution on Midwestern country roads. Most are by MCCL (Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, but I don’t think it’s actually an acronym — it’s the Roman date to which they’d like to roll back civilization), but there are also some from Prolife Across America. These signs are everywhere. They’re also incredibly stupid, and I watch for them and laugh maniacally in my car (did I mention that I’m desperate for entertainment on these drives?)
Except for the homemade ones that farmers put up alongside their “No Trespassing” signs, they all have pictures of cute babies, around six months to a year old, bright-eyed and smiling. Then they say inane things like, “My heart began beating when I was 18 days old!” I think they should have a photo of a pale comma of a worm-like embryo with the texture of snot if they’re going to be talking about the importance of events at 18 days.
But my excitement today! Prolife Across America has a new campaign! A new sign, just west of New Munich on I94! It was so exciting I’m finding it hard to write in complete sentences … and it’s the stupidest slogan yet!
GOD knew my SOUL before I was born!
Of course it had the obligatory cute baby picture with it. I chortled.
I want to see a sign like this.
GOD knew my SOUL before I was born!
Do think about the logic of this kind of sign. It simply assumes the existence of a being called “God,” of a “soul,” and that the authors of this nonsense have knowledge of both this God’s communications and the existence of individuals prior to their instantiation as physical forms. It’s unwatered stupid. Who needs a rational argument for a position on human life when you can just make up shit.
And these things are everywhere. Really, I only laugh to keep from crying.
We have those here in Oklahoma, too. I always see them and think how embarrassing it is for our state that this is the impression that people driving through from other states will get.
I’m actually much closer to what is generally called pro-life than what is generally closer to pro-choice, but yeah those are idiotic. Does it imply for example that we shouldn’t kill anything with a heartbeat. Strictly vegetarian pro-lifers would at least make some philosophical sense.] Incidentally, the particular stupid sign appears to be a garbling of Jeremiah 1:5 which many pro-lifers are fond of taking grotesquely out of context.
Amanda over at Pandagon has a post up regarding the defeat of a bill ensuring contraceptive availability in the state to your west.
It’s not about abortion; it’s about controlling who has sex and what kind they have.
They have them in Kansas too. But then they have all sorts of weirdness in Kansas.
Sigh.
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong (don’t have my developmental bio book in front of me), but don’t the stats say something like “Of 20 hypothetical fertilized eggs in an average US woman, 6 are carried to term successfully.”
Someone needs to put that on a billboard, with the tagline “God is the biggest abortionist of ’em all.” Let them put that in their religious crack pipes and smoke it.
It’s about punishing those who had sex. A lot of it is about thinking about evil women having sex. And some of it’s just plain unthinking. For everyone who says, “I don’t approve of abortion but I wouldn’t stop someone else from having one,” that’s s pro-choice position. A girl bled to death in my old university residence one week after Canada’s parliament passed a law re-criminalizing abortion. She was trying to perform an abortion on herself. She was the first one in years. The irony is, she didn’t have to — the law wa not in effect because it hadn’t yet been passed by the Senate–and it never was. The most horrific part of it all is that when anti-abortionists want an abortion, that’s different. It’s them. They’re not evil. And they still don’t get the point.
Uh, Godwin.
Just sayin.
Uh, Godwin.
Just sayin.
If an unborn child has the same rights as a born person and an unbuilt house is a good shelter, then ss an unaged Senior Citizen, I want my pension now.
Exactly! Frick’n Duh!
LOL
70% of fetuses are aborted, by God!
If you’re Catholic and married, you don’t even get to decide whether or not you want to procreate. It’s already been decided for you.
Hopefully this means they’ve stopped trying to convince the middle on this and are just preaching to the choir.
I know, I know, don’t tell me how “the middle” in this country would at least have to roll that slogan over in their minds like “Hmmmm, you know God would know souls before they were born, hmmmmmm”…
The philosophical implications of the pro-life stance is interesting, particularly when it’s manifested in someone who shows little to no concern for the lives of the already born.
For people who believe in both original sin and the perfect judgement of a loving god, they place an overly high premium on the perception of innocence.
One thing I would like to know is that if people who are anti-abortion claim to be “pro-life”, do they condemn the death penalty and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? If not, they are not “pro-life”.
GOD knew my SOUL before I was born!
Why not just make a heaven with a bunch of happy souls floating around like little happy birdies? What’s with all the earth and the hell stuff? It don’t make any freakin sense man.
I’m sure you could get a copy of the bible on cd and listen to that for shits and giggles. I mean if nothing else it’s a really great work of fiction.
I’ve been meaning to post a picture of the specific one we have here in Morris, next to the McDonalds. The baby on it is less cherublike as they were attempting, but more “God Know My Soul Before I Was Born…and Now I’m Going to Eat Yours!” Seriously. Buy a cheeseburger and stare at it for a while. It’s frightening.
It don’t make any freakin sense man.
God works in mysterious ways, except of course when he agrees with me.
Echoing #7. Come on, now. These signs are absurd enough as it is.
I think you need to get on iTunes and start subscribing to podcasts. Abortion sign counting can’t be good for you.
As I recently read a post over at the forums of RichardDawkins.net in which the OP said his friend claimed that since a cross-section of a carrot looks like an eye, and carrots are good for your eyes, there must be a creator, I simply cannot be impressed with this pro-life logic right now. It sort of pales in comparison.
I guess I’ll read this again after I get over that one.
For it was you who created my being,
knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I thank you for the wonder of my being,
for the wonders of all your creation.
Knit one pearl two… Voila! What a cutie! Off you go, Adolph, to wreck havoc on the world! xxoo God.
I wonder what people with birth defects feel about this whole God in the womb thing?
The religious go insane over abortion…I mean even more so than the religiousness makes them insane. I know some fairly rational people who just glaze over with caring for the innocent embryos. You can’t begin to reason with them. They are totally gone on this issue. Like Krikkit robots: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krikkit#Krikkit
Knit one pearl two… Voila! What a cutie! Off you go, Adolph, to wreck havoc on the world! xxoo God.
Favorite bathroom graffiti:
“My mother made me a lesbian.”
“If I bought her the material, would she make me one too?”
What a crock of shit these morons intone about how their
god gives life and only it can take it. So all the humans
that have been slaughtered throughout history both for
religious reasons and just plain natural human butchery
have been directed by their god. And all those abortions
must also be god directed as this is also the underlying
hand in the termination of life. Why doesn’t their freaking
god stop those abortions? I put this to an anti-abortion
idiot a few years ago, and she finally got through all the
religious insane prattle and frustratingly gave up with the
free will crap. We have several churches in my area that
are being occupied in vigils by the faithful insane after
the catholic diocese closed them for meager attendance and
to sell them and the land to pay off the debts of litigation from the child molestation by god’s horny cretins, the freaking slimy priests. Not one of those
deranged occupiers has ever questioned why their god does
not come down and wield the power to keep those houses of
insanity open and solvent. It just boggles the mind!
I thought that Hector Avalos did a pretty good job on the stupidity of the anti-abortion position:
Anti-abortion Christians could save a lot of effort on proselytizing just by sending fetuses straight to heaven at the abortion clinic.
It’s a pity Ian Spedding’s mental gymnastics on this topic wouldn’t fit on a billboard.
You don’t have to be a bible thumping idiot to be pro-life.
http://bigwhiteogre.blogspot.com/2007/11/secular-case-for-life.html
http://bigwhiteogre.blogspot.com/2007/11/secular-case-against-abortion.html
http://bigwhiteogre.blogspot.com/2007/11/secular-case-for-life-equality-under.html
http://bigwhiteogre.blogspot.com/2007/11/secular-case-for-life-on-animals-and.html
I remember a time when, out of some massive generosity on my part, I went to an adult Sunday class with a lovely friend of mine. The topic du jour was, of course, abortion and abortion providers. All they could talk about was figuring ways to ban abortion, to picket clinics and try to embarrass and harrass these desperate young ladies.
The whole time I wanted to scream, “How about treating the cause and not just the problem? How about educating these people instead of threatening them during one of the most vulnerable and frightening times in their lives?!?” But that would mean actually discussing SEX with youngsters, and we can’t have that, can we? Much easier and more satisfying to impose one’s own moral code on others, I suppose.
I was never so happy to get away from such a collection of ignorance. At least my friend had the decency to be embarrassed by it all…
There is one thing I watch for…
I was expecting you to say “ice scraper.” If you see one, pull over. Dig.
Stop calling it “pro-life”. There’s nothing pro-life about denying women medical care.
Is there a similar gynecological technique to weed out abortion clinic bombers?
About an hour south of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, there’s a 200-foot-high cross on the east side of I-57. It was frightening first time I saw it; as if I had wandered into some dystopian Handmaid’s Tale future.
Now I just see it as another embarrassing advertisement of the “heartland values” that make the east- and west-coasters think of us Midwesterners as hicks.
Of course, the cross has a website: http://www.crossusa.com
Sorry, the URL for the big-ass cross is http://www.crossusa.org.
GOD knew my SOUL before I was born!
Does wanting to go around spray-painting “Existence Precedes Essence” on these things make me as huge a nerd as I think it does?
Ah makes you long for the entertainment of
Shaving brushes
You’ll soon see ’em
On a shelf
In some museum
Burma-Shave
the old Burma Shave roadside signs
(for those of you too young to remember, and that would likely be most of you here, they would be on boards tacked up on farmer’s fences, one line to a board and spaced far enough apart so that a passenger in a car traveling around 50mph (that would be ~80kmph) could easily read them.
Considering what “knowing” someone means in the Bible, isn’t that basically blasphemous?
Just sayin’…
I find that the root of a lot of anti-abortion positions stems from the fear that they might have been aborted.
Seriously.
I’ve tried to figure out the tortured logic behind this….I’ve actually had people ask “what would have happened if you had been aborted?” I’ve tried to explain that I simply wouldn’t exist to care, and then they say “just think about all your experiences…..would you deny them to someone else?”
The only answer is, of course, “Of course. There’s no consciousness there, and no net loss.”
But they’re afraid of being aborted after the fact. The illogic is beyond imagining.
Why would Omniscient God choose to put souls into the fetuses which He knows will be aborted? Do these Christians really think God’s plans for dimpled, cooing little Madison are going to be overset before they even have a chance to begin, and baby lives long enough to throw her faith behind the religion of her fancy? There’d be no point at all in creating a soul — complete with personality and potential — for someone who won’t ever be born — or even make it past the second trimester.
If they think God does this, then it seems to me their God has some explaining to do. Or, maybe, they do.
Speaking of the comment made by #26, have any of you heard of the Chx challenge? It was proposed by a poster who used to frequent the “Passion of the Christ” message boards at IMDb, and this challenge had its own Wikipedia entry, although only briefly.
Basically, kill all the children: send them to Heaven or Purgatory before they have a chance to sin their way into Hell. You’re basically finishing what Jesus started! You’re saving the world! Sure, you will probably be damned, but you will be one of the last to be. Isn’t that what self-sacrifice is really all about?
By that reasoning you can claim anything that happened, no matter how horrible and destructive, was actually a good thing, since if it didn’t we might not be here.
Matt, the argument isn’t as bad as you make it out to be since you could apply the same logic to shooting a person and say “well, there’s no more consciousness so…”- the issue that it comes down to is that they are implicitly assuming that the fetus is beyond some threshold of consciousness whereas you are assuming that it is not.
Oops, my response was to the kind of thinking Matt was talking about in #37.
Some of them try that:
And by their religious doctrines, and her crazy thinking that allowed her to act upon it, she did her kids a favor. Now they’ll go to heaven, they won’t be spoiled by decadent western culture.
SCROD knew my SOLE before ALBACORE!
If you take the natural embryo survival to term rate at 25% and the world birth rate at 120M/y, this gives a natural embryo death rate of 30,000,000 a month. How does this stack up against a few in the freezer?
Also, I would like to know how many embryos do not make it (of those 30M) because fertilization happened too late in the cycle (equivalent to using an IUD).
I trace these intrusions into procreation back to the formative years of religion, when it was tribe against tribe and size mattered. The size of the tribe, that is.
Homosexuality, contraconception, abortion, even masturbation all had to be proscribed in order to maximise the birth rate. A fertile womb must always be in use. The OT shows that young widows were not left out, it being the duty of the dead man’s brother to ‘come in unto her’. Since ignorance of sexual matters breeds better than knowledge, it’s ‘don’t tell’ as well. All of this was for the good of the tribe, and its leaders.
Or at least it was back when there weren’t 6,650 million of us on the planet, and more arriving every minute. Now these ossified echoes of ancient strategy are counter productive.
If the Pope for example, were a competent shepherd for his flocks, he would recognise when the capacity of the pastures had been exceeded and stop making things worse by pushing for more sheep.
…the old Burma Shave roadside signs…
…or exactly how far you are from Wall Drug.
So, how can I get the PZ version of that sign as a bumper sticker for my car?
Or how many I-95 miles you have to go before you reach Pedro’s South of the Border!
Take me when
I’m still a fetus,
Because Cthulhu
Will only eat us.
Burma-Shave.
My favorite sign is in Texas, just south of Ft. Worth… every time I pass it I burst out laughing. It’s basically a huge gun barrel with this little kid behind it, and in really big letters it says: If he doesn’t love God, does he love you?
Because obviously kids who don’t love God are going to shoot their parents. Gotta love it.
Yet the christotards don’t mind all the fertilized eggs that go down the sink during in vitro fertilization…
This is just abrahamic bullshizzt to punish women for having sex.
So god knows souls before they are born, Does this mean he knows the infinite number souls which will never be born.
And since he knows the souls of these people I assume he knows what kind of people these are. People he would deem worthy for hell for example.
So god is creating an infinite number of souls which he is constantly sending to hell?
What a dick.
In the old days, Christian parents never resorted to abortion. They just waited till the kid became a teenager and wised off at them, then they had him stoned to death. Ah, those Christians where there’s Gods will, there’s a way.
Or:
Kill me as
an embryo
‘cuz straight to heaven
I will go
(Burma shave)
You know, even when babies are born they’re not all that special. I think it’s very shallow for people to think babies are better people because they’re cute. I have a baby brother, and while I don’t want him to die or anything, he has no personality, and he hasn’t done anything for us but look cute. If I could pick my older sister or him, I’d pick my sister in a heartbeat. She’s been invested in, she has a personality, she has friends, she’s made contributions, she’s chosen a general path.
I read a book in middle school, My Daniel. The mother lost three children when they were babies, and she was okay. She wasn’t happy about loosing her babies, but she moved on. However, when her 17-year-old son died, she was absolutely crushed. Because he was a person, an opinion-having, work-doing, thinking, loving person. A baby’s not much more than a cute bundle of genes and flesh. When they’re in the womb they’re so much less than even that.
Absolutely right, Monado. Very few of the “pro-life” folks support ready access to birth control material and information for young people. But in cities, states, or countries where it *is readily available, the young people have less sex. When they have sex, the couples are less likely to get pregnant. When they *do get pregnant, they are less likely to have an abortion. Birth control prevents fetus death, but how many “pro-lifers” are pro-birth control? They are less interested in saving zygotes and fetuses than they are in punishing girls for having sex.
By their fruits ye shall know them.
Kermit
A Texas group is promoting gun control?!
(insert smilie if necessary)
How in life
Shall I abide?
Abort me now
For my free ride
Burma Shave
Hamburger… stops a beating heart.
[Love the pseudo-Burma Shave signs.]
es
Late last year I did a 10K drive around the country. Oregon to Florida and back. Through the heartland. Tried to stay off the interstate. I did see some of those antiabortion signs but they weren’t nearly as common as I expected.
And I did catch a string of Burma Shave signs on a short stretch of Route 66. Ah, nostalgia.
“[Love the pseudo-Burma Shave signs.]”
Yes. Brings back memories of fifty years ago. Never thought I’d be making up my own. Funny, but sad in a way.
I’d be OK with pro-lifers if they were consistent. So let’s say a fetus is a person. I can accept that; there isn’t much biological difference between a fetus 10 minutes before birth and a baby 10 minutes after birth. So let’s ignore all the logistical issues of calling a fetus a person and just do it.
The fetus (person) has the right to use my body in an invasive and direct way against my will. Its right to do so it protected by its right to life – without my body, it would die. It doesn’t matter that continuing this parasitic relationship will restrict my movement, damage my body, harm me in non-physical ways (job prospects, relationships, emotional well-being, communal approval), and may even result in my own death. All that matters is that the other person live.
Well, I am also a person. OK, so if my kidney’s fail and someone is a match to me, pro-life logic dictates that I get to take one of their kidneys. It doesn’t matter that it is invasive surgery that will result in both physical and emotional hardship. It also doesn’t matter that there is a chance that he will die from it. All that matters is that I live.
If this were pro-life policy, if I ever heard a pro-lifer advocating this sort of thing, I’d be able to muster some bit of respect for them. I wouldn’t agree, but at least I would respect their opinion. But as it stands, the whole pro-life movement is nothing but lies and a thinly-disguised excuse to hurt women. Sure, some may care for the fetii, but these are idiots who haven’t thought things through and are just going along because of an irrational gut reaction. But the leaders, the ones who should know the implications of their arguments, get absolutely no respect from me.
So take the TGV for fecks sake.
Oh.
Sorry.
Wrong continent.
Is the lack of sensible transport related to the non-use of sensible units?
I’ve talked to people who only became religious because of the abortion issue. They say they’re “single issue voters,” and my guess is there are a lot of them. I just don’t understand why they don’t think things through. Why are they moved by fetuses but not by suffering and dying adults or an environment that’s being destroyed? I just don’t get it.
Deang: Because the fetus is a person who hasn’t yet Had A Chance. An aborted embryo or fetus is a person who Never Had A Chance. Once you are born, you Have A Chance. Once you Have A Chance, it’s all about Self Reliance and if you fail or die, it’s your own damn fault.
@ 64. But you only get to use the kidney for 9 months.
I didn’t realize the ability to pump fluids solidified one’s membership into humanity.
Pork basters everywhere rejoice.
@ 37:
It gets more complicated than that. One of the things that a religious person tries to do is to “know God”. That may be even more blasphemous.
The KJV is soooo ambiguous about *to know*, ya’ know.
Grimalkin,
Refreshing to see that someone mentions the idea of another being to consider in cases of abortion: The Mother. Even in the tedious, disconnected-from-life, logical cluster-fuck that Jon linked to ignores the rights of the Mother.
Until a baby is born and separate from its mother it has no “right” to life. It’s life is dependent upon the choice of the Mother. Period. I would even go so far as to support infanticide in many countries where adoption is not a option and destitution and disease promise a short haggard life. Also (Jon), to define something as a “person” does nothing to answer a single ethical question about what should be done in specific situations, abortion being one of them.
In the end, abortion is not centered around the fetus. It is about the Mother.
Bluey has some words for those that disagree.
No offense, but the argument that passed-out drunks are equivalent to embryos, since both have the potential of becoming conscious, is not very impressive.
As long as we’re pointing out inconsistencies in anti-choicers’ behavior: US infant mortality rates are a national disgrace. If these people were really motivated–as they mendaciously claim–by a concern for the wellbeing of unborn babies, this would be at least the hot-button issue for them that abortion is.
Instead, anti-choicers were against S-CHIP, as well as any other program that might give medical help to neonates and their mothers. (Of course, when Republicans talk about their concern for the unborn, they sure as hell don’t mean the black unborn–which is who you’d be mostly helping if you tried to reverse these dismal statistics.) (Seriously, how often do you see one of those billboards with a black infant on it?)
Joshua,
Matt’s argument holds. But for a different reason that you’re assuming. An adult human being for example has “preferences.” Wants, wishes, plans, etc. A being who was never born does not. Thus, when someone says, “What if I were aborted?,” the question is irrelevant. You only care because you’ve made it to a state that allows you preferences. If you hadn’t been born you wouldn’t, in fact couldn’t, care if you weren’t in such a state.
This is of course different from shooting someone. In that case we would be interfering in their preferences. Namely, to live. A fetus cannot have preferences as you or I do, thus we regard them as less than ourselves. This is born out in the fact that if you were in a burning building and you could save a 5 year old, or 60 fetus’, you’d save the 5 year old every time hands down.
I love listening to godbots on topics like this, it never takes long to get any godbot talking on the subject of death to talking about god’s big plan. But they never take the idea to the logical conclusions. If a child dies and it is part of god’s plan, they surely the child was born as part of god’s plan, which means the child was conceived as part of god’s plan, which means the child’s parents met as part of god’s plan, which means free will is an illusion and can’t support the righteousness of your average godbot.
As a male I don’t believe I have the right to tell a woman what to do with her body, so I’m pro-choice. More to the point so long as adequate education and access to birth control is restricted by the ignorant godbots I couldn’t endorse a pro-life position. If we had perfect protection and a well educated general population, and allowances where made for medical reasons or abortion in case of rape I’d be willing to support a pro-life position, because only with all those considerations could it be considered a rational choice.
Back in December, we went back home for the holidays in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Between St. Paul and Madison, I-94 has some lovely scenery, but it’s also got plenty of “teh signz”. My favorite one is the abortion billboard put up in front of a cement factory: when I’m looking for moral authority on homan reproduction, I ask myself “what would the owner of a cement factory in Western Wisconsin think”? Normally, there are plenty of the obligatory “Support-R-Troops” and anti-choice signs, but this year I saw a real seachange: all the President Bush signs were gone, and a whole new crop of Ron Paul signs were up. There’s no mistaking it: Ron Paul has the coveted doofus vote of Western Wisconsin all sewn up.
I’m used to seeing stuff like when when I take cross country drives too, either here in Illinois or back when I lived in Michigan. But to me it was two types of signs, the anti abortion ones and also the “get us out of the UN” signs. To me the two now go together, the paranoid xenophobia of people who think that the organization that we created, and that we largely control, is somehow an evil plot against us, and the overly exaggerated concern over the fate of a small clump of cells that could one day become a human being.
We have those billboards in Des Moines–mostly on the south side, where the big bad Abortomat is located. My favorite one says, “Embryos… are just tiny babies!” With a chubby, happy baby, to demonstrate more clearly the fundamental dishonesty of the pro-life movement. SO MUCH FUN.
How very Calvinist. And I do not mean the cartoon boy.
Venger,
Would you support a mother who first decided to get pregnant, but after any number of situations, decided to abort?
In effect I’m asking if, even with perfect protection and education, does not the woman retain the right to her body?
I think I’d be with you (and I think you may have been pointing towards this anyways, though I might be wearing rose colored glasses), if you were of the mind that if we had perfect protection and education that abortions would nearly disappear, but in no case does a woman lose the right to her body.
Am I misreading you on this?
This is natural. We are hard-wired to love little babies. That’s just the way evolution made us, so that we will put tremendous efforts in procreating and in rearing our offspring. Pro-Life people are just those people with whom biological urges are stronger than sense. What is is bad for the individual organism, might be beneficial to the species.
The unfortunate thing is that those same urges, which used to be so beneficial to out species in primitive times, are now undermining modern society.
Off-topic: Mike Dunford’s recent post reminds me that “New Atheist Noise Machine” would still be a great name for a band.
This is natural. We are hard-wired to love little babies.
But not fetuses…
I think that,
From a purely framing point of view,
That using the term eviction,
And decrying the lack of donated wombs,
Would be a better way to go,
Tis not an aborted fetus,
Merely homeless.
Janine @79:
Actually Bill Watterson did name his Calvin after that Calvin. You can see predestination in the way the cartoon Calvin thinks so highly of himself, just as if he was one of the “chosen”. see the wiki
Iamnotanoctopus,
And to further your ideal of embryos being tiny babies. Single human cells are tiny embryos, which are tiny babies.
The fundamentalist commits murder with a scratch of their nose…
I’ve never seen such signs here in Australia but then again our pro-lifers are not nearly as rabid ( I’ve never seen anyone picketeing outside the clinic here). Maybe they’re too tight to cough up the funds.. which means not only are they dickheads but they’re cheap bastards too.
mousomer @ 81: That would be nice. But if these people gave a flying f>ck about babies, they wouldn’t just address it by forcing pregnancies to continue. They’d make sure every pregnant woman had access to prenatal care, and some help when she brought her baby home. They’d support better schools, subsidized health insurance (for people besides themselves), affordable housing. And they’d do it without whining about their taxes.
But they don’t. So it’s not they babies they’re interested in.
What sort of programs do they support instead? Abstinence “education.” Bans on contraceptives. Protection for pharmacists who believe they’re the moral arbiters of their customers’ prescriptions. Name some means for them (usually with the government’s help) to micro-manage the general public’s sex lives (for “our own good,” of course) and they’re all for it.
The consistant thread with these people isn’t a love of babies. It’s their obsessive phobia with sex. They don’t oppose abortion because they’re “pro-life.” They do it because they consider children to be a punishment for having sex. That’s not “pro-life.” It’s just sick.
Because my God
I will not anger
Do it yourself
With a coat-hanger
(Burma Shave)
Well, sadly, I must be off to bed.
But I expect that by the time I’m able to get back to this thread a few pro-choice commenters will attempt to rebuttal me. So in advance I challenge any and every pro-choice advocate to these questions.
1)Why is a fetuses right to life regarded as above a woman’s right to her body?
2) Is there any situation on which you would allow a woman an abortion, such as in cases of rape, incest and the like? And if you do allow this, does it still not contradict your “right to life” arguments? A life is a life no matter how it is conceived, yes?
3) Are you male? I ask this simply to inquire as to whether or not you would be obliged to hand over the rights to what you can or cannot not do with your body based off of nothing more than your luck of being born with certain anatomy?
4) Can any other person dictate to you what you will or will not do, or can or cannot do, with your body? This is in effect the central question: Who owns you?
Michael X
Great post but I think you meant to issue your (very impressive) challenge to pro-life advocates, not pro-choice ones.
Well, sleep deprivation is a bitch isn’t it?
Yes, Lilly, you are correct. Those who favor Pro-LIFE must answer these challenges.
And I await them.
Marcus @53,
the christotards don’t mind all the fertilized eggs that go down the sink during in vitro fertilization
That’s not true in all cases. Some do mind and some don’t. I suspect it comes down to the specific brand of christotardism in question. A couple of years ago, Italy enacted a law that placed restrictions on the use of IVF; among other reasons, precisely because of those fertilised eggs going down the drain. The law — which had nothing to do with abortion — required that all fertilised eggs be implanted; discarding any became a criminal act. The law owed its success in good measure to interference in Italian politics by the absolute monarch of a neighbouring foreign state. Unfortunately, that foreign monarch has many agents of influence within Italy.
So I wonder: if the anti-choice American religious right differs internally on the question of IVF, is the split along denominational lines, RCs on one side and bible-thumpers on the other?
I’m actually much closer to what is generally called pro-life than what is generally closer to pro-choice
People who writer drivel like this generally have no idea what the pro-choice position is. Do you favor the criminalization of abortion or don’t you?
You don’t have to be a bible thumping idiot to be pro-life.
No, but you do have to be some kind of idiot, or misogynist, or fascist, to want to impose a minority moral view on the majority by means of the state’s penal system … to point out just one problem with the pro-life position.
I’m not religious at all, but I do have a problem with the pro-choice position. It’s a purely logical one.
When people talk about the reasons for aborting, they’re often stuff like this:
“I can’t afford to support this child.”
“I don’t want to raise it with *this* father.”
“It would interrupt my career.”
And so on. They all have to do with the kid’s existence being inconvenient, for whatever reason.
But when we’re talking about doing the actual abortion, we’re suddenly talking about a “parasite” or at least something not quite human. This is a shell game. The position that a fetus is human is built right into the pro-choice position, because all the reasons for aborting assume that, all else being equal, the fetus will come to term, be born, grow, and live — all the reasons assume the fetuses humanity. Indeed, if people didn’t think a fetus was a person, there would be no talk about aborting it. Of course, no one wants to try to justify killing somebody, so we’ve got the shell game where the person becomes a parasite. Logically, I can’t buy that.
I understand and accept that most pregnancies fail. However, I don’t think this can be used to justify abortion. People die of natural causes all the time, at any time of life, but most often in the earliest and latest stages. This is not generally used to argue that killing people who stand a good chance of dying anyway is okay. For example, I can’t murder a 90-year-old man and get off by telling the cops that old people are dropping like flies anyway, what’s another one? Similarly, just because many pregnancies fail does not mean we ought to go out of our way to end them.
There’s more I can say about this, including touching on sex ed (all for it), and the responsibilities a person has when they have sex, but I’m off to work.
Can any other person dictate to you what you will or will not do, or can or cannot do, with your body? This is in effect the central question: Who owns you?
If someone will die if you don’t donate to them a kidney, or blood, or something else that you could dispense with, can the state force you to do so? If not, then what consistent, principled argument is there that the state can force a woman to bring a pregnancy to term? I’ve never seen one. Invariably, pro-lifers are too stupid or too intellectually dishonest to subject their arguments to that sort of scrutiny.
Maybe you can’t; but medical staff routinely do (mostly without any hint of police involvement). It depends on the circumstances. Ditto abortion.
Sciolist:
You may as well say that we are all going to die, so we might as well just treat each other like we’re dead already.
This pre-determined foetus to human tactic just doesn’t wash. We treat something as it is NOW, not what it could become in the future.
And your argument still doesn’t answer the central question, why put the ‘rights’ of a foetus above those of the mother?
Head-exploder:
US MARINE CORPS
STOPS A BEATING HEART
I can’t stand (human) babies but I love kittens, whether they be of the lion, tiger, lynx, cheetah or plain old domestic cat variety. Did evolution go wrong? Am I a mutant? :)
I’m not religious at all, but I do have a problem with the pro-choice position. It’s a purely logical one.
I can’t imagine a “purely logical” problem with a normative position, specifically that abortion should not be criminalized. And sure enough you don’t present one.
They all have to do with the kid’s existence being inconvenient, for whatever reason.
Can you offer some logical proof of that? (Hint: I can think of reasons that aren’t of that sort.)
But when we’re talking about doing the actual abortion, we’re suddenly talking about a “parasite” or at least something not quite human. This is a shell game. The position that a fetus is human is built right into the pro-choice position, because all the reasons for aborting assume that, all else being equal, the fetus will come to term, be born, grow, and live — all the reasons assume the fetuses humanity.
No, the shell game is all yours — attaching attributes of what something might become to what it is. The fetus is not only not a fully formed person but is still within the woman’s body. No one advocates killing people outside women’s bodies, only killing fetuses inside their bodies. You can’t say that the reasons for not doing the former mean that you can’t do the latter — not without playing a silly shell game.
Indeed, if people didn’t think a fetus was a person, there would be no talk about aborting it.
Uh, what? Let’s suppose that people actually thought that a fetus was a tumor. Why would there be no talking of aborting it — other than that we would use a different word? Many abortions in fact take place because the birth would be potentially harmful to the mother. In addition to your illogic is considerable ignorance. Perhaps if you had actually ever encountered pro-choice arguments instead of just inventing a caricature of them you would take a different view.
Logically, I can’t buy that.
Logically,, you haven’t got a leg to stand on. It won’t do to take a nonsensical assertion and try to give it some authority by calling it “logical”, let alone “purely logical”.
However, I don’t think this can be used to justify abortion.
The question isn’t what can be used to justify abortion — it’s a not a “pro-abortion” position. The question is what can be used to criminalize abortion.
Similarly, just because many pregnancies fail does not mean we ought to go out of our way to end them.
This is so stupid that I have trouble even dignifying it by calling it a strawman.
the responsibilities a person has when they have sex
Any chance these responsibilities vary according to the gender of the “person”?
Sciolist said:
Sorry, absolutely not and this is actually the nub of the issue. The actual issue is the fact that, assuming nothing goes wrong with the pregnancy the embryo will grow into a human being, but it is by no means there yet (and I say embryo because the vast majority of abortions occur within the first trimester when the embryo is just this, a small developing ball of cells whose nervous system is not yet functional).
It is rather like saying that a packet of sugar, some butter, a packet of cocoa powder and a packet of flour are already a delicious chocolate cake and can be served for dessert. They might well become one, if you follow the correct recipe, but it would be a mistake to treat them as if they already are one and attempt to eat them as is.
Similarly it is a mistake to treat an early stage embryo as if it were already a concious human being. It isn’t and if you have an abortion it will never become one, it really is just a bunch of cells in the mother’s body and entirely within her right to do with as she chooses.
Later on in the pregnancy I do think that things get more complicated as the brain develops and becomes more like that of a concious human but since abortions at this stage of development are a tiny minority and generally because of direct health risks to the mother I think the pro-choice position holds as a human being should never be put in a position where they are forced to put their life on the line to save another life, especially one that has never known life outside the womb.
The question is what can be used to criminalize abortion.
Er, the question is what can be used to justify criminalizing abortion.
And your argument still doesn’t answer the central question, why put the ‘rights’ of a foetus above those of the mother?
Hsr argument doesn’t answer any question. Hsr “purely logical problem” seems to be that women who justify having abortions for convenience are justifying killing a living breathing born person — even though no such person exists to be killed and no such killing is intended or given justification. Maybe I should use that argument by walking up to random (but hot) women and telling them that, if they don’t have sex with me, they are denying life to the person that could result.
It’s weird seeing someone so logic-challenged attempting to give authority to such drivel by calling it “purely logical”.
It is rather like saying that a packet of sugar, some butter, a packet of cocoa powder and a packet of flour are already a delicious chocolate cake and can be served for dessert. They might well become one, if you follow the correct recipe, but it would be a mistake to treat them as if they already are one and attempt to eat them as is.
But don’t you see that it’s a woman’s duty to bake a cake; she can’t refuse just because it’s “inconvenient”.
Truth Machine:
ROFLMAO!
I think about that much of my conscious time and honestly I see nothing bad about it??? I guess I am not a christard anyway.
Later on in the pregnancy I do think that things get more complicated as the brain develops and becomes more like that of a concious human but since abortions at this stage of development are a tiny minority and generally because of direct health risks to the mother I think the pro-choice position holds as a human being should never be put in a position where they are forced to put their life on the line to save another life, especially one that has never known life outside the womb.
The current legal situation is
While a strong pro-choice position is that women should be given more choice than that, virtually every pro-choice proponent has accepted this ruling out of political pragmatism. Unfortunately, many women are denied this level of choice due to lack of availability of abortion facilities due to terrorism, as well as laws that have placed greater restrictions on women, and we can expect to see more drastic rulings coming from the current Supreme Court with its 5 Catholics on the bench.
Hmmmm…….I think I’m going to lose control completely and become the first atheist mass-scale suicide-bomber in the world. Over here in Italy, the most recent lunacy is the news that Silvio Berlusconi (the almost certain next prime minister-elect for the fourth time in twenty fucking years!!) will join with the Vatican and some other psychopathic fundamentalists’ call for an international moratorium on abortions.
Of course, I know it’s pure symbolic idiocy that will go nowhere. That is not the point. But the fact that this criminal /mafioso billionaire can actually endorse such a proposal publicly and, probably, gain support in the upcoming election as a result, makes the US look a secular paradise.
I noticed on the MCCL website that many of its members were waving placards that stated “Stop abortion now!”. Putting aside arguments about the ethics of aborting a fetus, sex education, availablity of pre and post natal care and access to contraception (all things ignored by the pro-life movement) one thing struck me about the absurdity of this argument. You can’t stop abortion.
Abortion has been outlawed in many countries, with heavy penalties for women undertaking the proceedure and those who help them procure one. However, aboortion has been a part of many human societies since time-immorial. Were abortion to be banned in the US, it would not go away. It would simply return to its former place in society as a back ally proceedure.
According to the WHO, ~68,000 women die every year from unsafe abortions. Unsafe abortions account for about 48% of total abortions performed worldwide according to the Lancet, and occur primarily in countries where access to abortion services is illegal.
Before abortion was “legalised”, deaths from unsafe were far more common than they are today where abortions have been “leagised”*. In my own state of Victoria (Australia) it is estimated that deaths due to unsafe abortions was the second most common form of death for young women prior to “legalisation”. Yet, despite the dual risk of serious injury/death and criminal penalities, women continued to procure abortions. Restricting access to abortion only increases the risk to often desparate women in often desparate circumstances, yet does little to reduce the number or rate of abortions being performed.
So pro-lifers are being silly when they say “stop abortion”. They can’t stop it. I echo the words of Bill Clinton when I say I think abortion should be “safe, legal and rare”. The best ways to increase the rarity of abortions is to increase access to contraceptions, improve sex ed, offer better pre and post natal suppport to women and above all, stop telling them what to do with their bodies.
* inverted commas because in many place, abortion is not 100% leagal
I noticed on the MCCL website that many of its members were waving placards that stated “Stop abortion now!”. Putting aside arguments about the ethics of aborting a fetus, sex education, availablity of pre and post natal care and access to contraception (all things ignored by the pro-life movement) one thing struck me about the absurdity of this argument. You can’t stop abortion.
Abortion has been outlawed in many countries, with heavy penalties for women undertaking the proceedure and those who help them procure one. However, aboortion has been a part of many human societies since time-immorial. Were abortion to be banned in the US, it would not go away. It would simply return to its former place in society as a back ally proceedure.
According to the WHO, ~68,000 women die every year from unsafe abortions. Unsafe abortions account for about 48% of total abortions performed worldwide according to the Lancet, and occur primarily in countries where access to abortion services is illegal.
Before abortion was “legalised”, deaths from unsafe were far more common than they are today where abortions have been “leagised”*. In my own state of Victoria (Australia) it is estimated that deaths due to unsafe abortions was the second most common form of death for young women prior to “legalisation”. Yet, despite the dual risk of serious injury/death and criminal penalities, women continued to procure abortions. Restricting access to abortion only increases the risk to often desparate women in often desparate circumstances, yet does little to reduce the number or rate of abortions being performed.
So pro-lifers are being silly when they say “stop abortion”. They can’t stop it. I echo the words of Bill Clinton when I say I think abortion should be “safe, legal and rare”. The best ways to increase the rarity of abortions is to increase access to contraceptions, improve sex ed, offer better pre and post natal suppport to women and above all, stop telling them what to do with their bodies.
* inverted commas because in many place, abortion is not 100% leagal
For me, it’s always been clear that a woman should have the right to choose, once she knows that she is pregnant, wether she wants to have this baby or not.
Having said this, I am not willing, to extend this right to choose a particular genome.
We should stop debating about abortion, which is a non issue, imprinted with ridiculous superstitions, and better start thinking about how we prevent a future century of designer babies. That’s the real issue that needs reflexion, information, and public debate.
Ooppps… apologies for double posting. My internet is not working so well at the moment!
Why not put up your own signs?
Church of God, Abortionist
Spontaneous Abortion is an Act of GOD
God Almighty, Mass Murderer of the Unborn
The abortion issue is pretty simple to me (guess what? I’m male!): I’m not pro-choice, I’m not pro-life, I’m pro-woman.
As people have already gone over the miscarriage/shitty biology of pro-life arguments/population explosion issues I won’t bother to reiterate them. The one thing I will add is that regardless of whether or not I think abortions should happen (and I think that that is entirely up to the individual woman having the abortion, I’m never going to have one, it’s not my business) abortions simply happen. Legal or illegal, people will abort unwanted/unhealthy/un-whatever babies/foetuses/embryos. Sorry, but before abortion was legalised not every healthy pregnancy went to term, sometimes it was aborted ILLEGALLY (shock horror).
I’d sleep soundly at night knowing that the poor women having to make what is a harrowing decision had adequate counselling, access to safe, clean medical facilities, and some simple respect and privacy when faced with a situation where abortion is an option. I’d rather a woman who chooses to have/needs an abortion for whatever reason (even, guess what, a reason I disagree with! Well how’s about that) is as comfortable and cared for as she can possibly be. Not in a “protect the little lady” kind of way, but in a “this is a shitty situation that in some kind of fictional utopian idyll would never even come up [Samuel L Jackson Voice] but we live in the real world motherfuckers [/Samuel L Jackson Voice]” kind of way.
This doesn’t mean I think abortion is moral, or immoral, or right, or wrong, or anything like it. My personal moral stance on abortion is a tiresome irrelevance. This is a decision for the individual woman to make. If she doesn’t want an abortion because she thinks it’s morally wrong, guess what, I’m not going to make her have one! (and barring the standard medical caveats about ability to give reasoned consent, danger to mother and embryo/foetus/baby etc, no one else will either). The only thing society has to do is provide women with the facilities to have an abortion safely.
Call the issue as it is: Pro-Choice? Nope, I’m Pro-Woman. Pro-Life? Nope, you’re Anti-Woman. If you were pro-life you’d stop killing thousands of potential humans every time you scratched your balls, had a wank, or heaven forefend, had a menstrual period. That’s right pro-life ladies, any time you aren’t pregnant and you have a period, you’re killing another potential human! Think about that when you’re waving a placard and screaming hate at someone going through possibly the hardest decision anyone has to make.
Louis
Of course you are. We are all mutants.
There was a chap (why is it nearly always men ? – or is that a false impression ?) from some anti-abortion organisation being interviewed on the rdaio the other night (BBC radio 4 I think), and was trying to justify why a woman who had been raped should be compelled to carry a child to full term ! – What I didn’t hear him saying was that he would personally volunteer to look after the unfortunate offspring for the next 18 years !
I have always prefered the term “Pro Forced Maternity” to “Pro Life”. Or “Pro Innocent Caucasian Fetal Life”. Pretty much sums the idiots up.
They have them in Kansas too. But then they have all sorts of weirdness in Kansas.
Most notably, Kansans.
That’d be wrong. They call them “snowflakes.” And they were cited as one of the reasons to ban embryonic stem-cell research by Bush. Never mind that fewer than 100, at least at that time, had ever been adopted and carried to term.
Of course, that leaves about 460,000 to go.
Right to life my ass. It’s all about control.
Well, I was once told that my menstrual periods were my body weeping blood that it hadn’t conceived a child, does that count?
Whereas, ofcourse, everyone knows that “Every Sperm is Sacred” is just stupid :-)
Really? Really?!
Man, that is so fucked up.
As far as “Every Sperm is Sacred” goes, surely two people having sex without contraception are dooming millions of potential humans to death anyway?
We just go one sperm further ;)
For me, it’s always been clear that a woman should have the right to choose, once she knows that she is pregnant, wether she wants to have this baby or not.
Having said this, I am not willing, to extend this right to choose a particular genome.
it’s not up to you to grant these rights or to “extend” them. People already have the right to their bodies. The best you can do is to educate people and create a social environment where desirable behavior is encouraged and undesirable behavior is discouraged.
jim, that is brilliant.
If fundamentalists don’t like abortions,
they shouldn’t have them.
After years of complaining, harassing, lobbying, and legislating,
the highly religious have failed to produce *within their own ranks*
an even slightly lower rate of abortions per 1000.
Jesus didn’t say anything about abortion, but he sure said a lot about hypocrites.
Let’s be ‘pro-life’ for the unaborted fetuses currently serving in Iraq/Afghanistan. Where’s the outrage over these fully formed adult unaborted fetuses!?
What they really mean is ‘Pro-Birth’. After that, you’re on your own. And they’d gladly kill ya for blasphemy (if they could)!
TM #123,
not sure if this is going to be sufficient. In most countries where the average scientific litteracy is barely higher than that of 1st century nomadic tribes, the education deficit is so high that I wonder how you can arrive at creating such an environment. And who will decide what is desirable behavior and not ?
Jason, dead on. cheeses also railed against D I V O R C E, a lot. Funny how that doesn’t seem to be a threat to the sanctity of marriage.
Erm. . . how about the woman who’s actually having the child?
Considering that you are talking about designer babies this is a straw man since the procedures necessary for creating one are very high-tech and require a high level of scientific literacy to perform. Therefore the woman will at all stages be surrounded by people who are educated and can provide her with the information she needs to make an informed decision or, better yet, can show her how and where to find the information out for herself to make a decision. Either way though, it’s still her choice.
If you’re bored on car drives, I found audio books to be a good diversion.
Jason #125,
actually, my aunt became a fervent anti-abortionist, after having had an abortion. She claims that her priest encouraged her to do so, in order to compensate for her “crime”. She’s now so convinced of it, that she completely fails to see the hypocrisy…
When people talk about the reasons for aborting, they’re often stuff like this:
“I can’t afford to support this child.”
“I don’t want to raise it with *this* father.”
“It would interrupt my career.”
And so on. They all have to do with the kid’s existence being inconvenient, for whatever reason.
Then what would be a good reason?
The arguments for and against abortion rest upon one vital question: Is the foetus a conscious being? If yes, then abortion (at the given stage of foetal development) is wrong, regardless of circustance. If, however, the foetus is a nonsentient object, then abortion is completely justifiable.
The “women are having abortions for trivial reasons” brigade absolutely disgust me. I have a grudging respect for the “abortion is murder” pro-lifers, but when the debate leaves the issue of foetal suffering, the only thing that remains is flat-out misogyny. A foetus will suffer or not suffer regardless of what the mother’s reasons are, and regardless of whether sneering moralists judge those reasons to be valid. Therefore WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU to tell the mother that her reasons are trivial? Argue for abortion, or against abortion, but please don’t take the “uppity women getting out of control” line.
Carlie: Brilliant? Brilliantly witty, yes, but it doesn’t address anything real. Male zygotes have no potential viability on their own and, unlike ova, are virtually unlimited in number. Of course, you already know this, so maybe… uhh… Am I being too literal? :-)
Tulse/Lilly: “Man, that is so fucked up.” Yeah, it is, totally, unless offered as a joke between peers who know the truth. If one of my atheist girlfriends said it to me in the right context, I’d LMAO. In fact… [makes a note].
Kseniya:
Well my context was a religious studies lesson and I was hard put not the do exactly what you suggest even at that point in my life. Although to be fair it was put a stop to when someone told the Biology teacher about it and she kicked up a fuss (whistles innocently away).
One question, does God recycle souls that don’t get born?
On the other hand, your drives at least have some entertainment value. Drive out here in the Southwest, lets say Tucson to El Paso, and all you have to look forward to are the “Indian artifacts (made in Pakistan” “Native American Art (of Guatemala)” and “Snow Cones (yellow)” signs announcing the next rest stop 20 miles from now. And you’re glad for them, since there aren’t even the tiny farming towns to break the scenery (you drive 300 miles and pass communities with less then 20,000 people combined, and those are the population centers along the interstate).
Seriously, now. This is a hard topic for me, because though I am pro-choice (I don’t want to live in a world where legal abortion options don’t exist) I do think some of the standard pro-choice arguments are crap.
I’m talking those which completely ignore the existence of the adoption option. (That’s sorta like the funkshun junkshun.) Any argument that rests on, or includes, or even alludes to, forced child-rearing is complete crap because it ignores the excruciatingly obvious solution: giving the child up for adoption. There are people who are aching to “personally volunteer to look after the unfortunate offspring for the next 18 years.” And I do mean aching. We should throw those arguments away.
I also scoff at the argument that equates a developing embryo or fetus with someone who drugs you and steals your kidney and leaves you in a tub of ice. (I’d despise that argument, but it gets hilarity points for using one of the great urban legends.)
The legislated-forced-kidney-donation-to-save-a-life argument is a little more compelling, but it fails (IMO) because donating/losing an internal organ is not the same as sharing resources with the unborn for nine months. I realize that a woman’s body is never quite the same after a pregnancy, but the parallel between organ donation and pregnancy isn’t strong enough to justify using it as an argument for Choice. As someone else implied above, if you got your kidney back after nine months, then the analogy holds up.
An embryo is not a human, but it is a human embryo. It may start life as a clump of cells, but it is not a clump of cells scratched off a nose. It may be parasitic for the first nine months (or eighteen years, heh) but will not always be a parasite.
I really dislike the “parasite” arguments. Just as the forced child-rearing arguments ignore the adoption options, the parasite argument ignore the full implications of the word “choice”. A parasite willfully invades against the will of the host. This is a poor analogy to conception. A woman does have a responsibility to the life developing inside her, though IMO it’s critical to the issue to recognize that the degree of responsibility is highly dependent on the circumstances under which the child was conceived.
This is where I make an apparent about-face, and side with “synthesist” against the pro-lifer he heard on the radio. But the argument can’t rest on the child-rearing aspect, it has to rest on the rape aspect. Don’t as why a woman should be forced to raise a child she doesn’t want – she isn’t! Ask why a woman should be forced to carry, and bring to term, a baby that was conceived most profoundly against her will.
(Aside: No, it’s not always men. There are plenty of women in the Bible Belt and beyond who think abortion is pure evil, who think that Planned Parenthood is “the arm of Satan” and that the UN, for its complicity in advocating abortion as a form of birth control world-wide, is “the head.” The head of Satan, that is. I put those phrases in quotes because I am not making them up, I’m quoting a woman from – where else? – Texas.)
What I’m suggesting is that there’s a continuum of responsibility that a prospective mother has to the, ah, the thing growing inside her. I’m not going to pretend that I know how to quantify that responsibility, nor am I comfortable with the notion of legislating it, but I think an acknowledgement of that continuum has a place in this debate. I think it has more of a place than specious arguments about tapeworms and stolen kidneys.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but I think it’s leading towards a personal-responsibility argument. I’m 23 years old, I don’t know very much, I have no authority, but I think if I get drunk tonight and have sex with a total stranger and get pregnant, I have more responsibility towards the care and feeding of that embryo than, say, the responsibility a 15-year-old girl who was raped by her uncle has for the product of that violation. I’m pleased that I have the freedom to determine for myself what my responsbility is. Maybe that’s what it’s all about: balancing my responsibility to myself with my responsibility for the embryo. IMO the 15-year-old has a responsibility only to herself under those circumstances, but I cannot say the same for myself under the lets-get-drunk-and-screw scenario. It’s important for me to have the freedom to determine that, but I’m not sure how to argue it. I just think I know how NOT to argue it. :-)
I dunno. Help me out, here.
Speaking of “helping me out” – crap. Gonna be late for class. *poof*
Preventing cancer is considered desirable behavior by most people.
First, let me go on the record as saying I am pro-choice. Terminating of a pregnancy is a medical procedure that should be between a woman and her doctor, period–everybody else should be working soley to ensure that abortion remains legal, safe, and rare (to use a coined phrase).
That said, let me take a stab at this one:
And your argument still doesn’t answer the central question, why put the ‘rights’ of a foetus above those of the mother?
Perhaps because, except in cases of rape or incest, the mother is responsible for the fetus’ existing at all. Eggs don’t fertilize themselves (Biblical faerie tales notwithstanding).
The issue is really – you shouldn’t get pregnant if you don’t want to be pregnant(except in the case of rape). THere are many contraceptive options out there.
THe trouble is, the same pro-lifers are also ‘abstinence only sex ed’. Don’t allow abortions and don’t allow contraception to be taught.
They want to control your body and your sex life…
Speaking of unwatered stupid. . .just making shit up. . .
Congratulations, PZ. You’ve finally done it. You’ve actually PROVEN that God does not exist, by confirming the Problem of Evil.
Your little picture of Herr Hitler suggests it. I mean, that IS your point.
With that question settled, since we can safely assume then that we as humans can also determine who is inherently evil and who is not, it may also be safe to assume that Herr Myers is also inherently evil. Like Herr Hitler, he advocates for Science Uber Alles; never mind those inconvenient sub-humans who hinder DER MARTCH OOF PROKRESS!!!!!!!
Shirer then goes on to catalog in grisly detail the horrors these Nazi idiots, in the name of scientific pursuit, perpetrated in high altitude and hypothermic “research.”
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Age of Science freed of moral shackles. A bright day for us all.
I’m not so sure adoption is such a viable option. You still have the “you must carry to term and birth this baby” requirement. On top of that, you need to hope for a quick adoption, because older orphans do not get adopted, they just get to be homeless.
monyNH, since eggs don’t fertilize themselves in humans, how can you claim the mother is responsible for the fetus’ existence? It takes two to tango, eh?
And for record purposes, I am pro-choice, choice being up to the person who’s preggers. I find any anti-choice folks who don’t revile the death penalty to be Class A Hypocrits.
First they want to take away abortion, then contraception, then women’s political participation. (They’re already floating that one, thanks to bought-off useful idiots like Ann Coulter.)
The only way the pro-forced-birth position (e.g. anti-abortion, anti-contraception, pro-war, pro-executions, pro-conscription [if not for themselves]) makes sense is if you remember that in their world, you do not own your own body. I’ve seen people on this thread acting like the ownership of oneself is some kind of universal given, and, to these people, no, it isn’t. I really can’t stress this enough. In their cosmology, men specifically belong to God and the state (which is why the state can enforce its laws on you, kill you, or send you to war), women belong to men, the state, and God (in order of proximal importance), and children belong to women, men, the state, and God. These are people who not only still believe in the Great Chain of Being (and maybe some form of the Divine Right of Kings), but want the rest of us to live in their hierarchy too.
Giving women autonomous control over their own bodies, not subject to the whims of men or God, amounts to rank blasphemy. It is never about babies, or “life,” or biology, or even, really, about sex. It’s primarily about control, specifically control over women (and, by extension, women’s sexuality).
Actually, I hear this type of statement a lot, but it always confuses me. Isn’t it fairly widely known that contraceptives DO fail from time to time, whether through human failure or otherwise? This applies even more to those who are unable to use certain types of contraceptives, limiting the options for double protection. I am actually curious about a response, because I hear this type of statement rather often.
See, that’s why limbo was not completely abolished in Catholicism. There is only, quoth the Pope, “prayerful hope” that it doesn’t exist. Extra ecclesia nulla salus.
WTF.
Do they want ten-year-old girls to desperately crave sex?
That’s baffling.
See, that’s why limbo was not completely abolished in Catholicism. There is only, quoth the Pope, “prayerful hope” that it doesn’t exist. Extra ecclesia nulla salus.
WTF.
Do they want ten-year-old girls to desperately crave sex?
That’s baffling.
Lilly,
so you say, a Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis for Sex selection, Obesity, or even Intelligence, which will most probably be technically possible within the next 10-20 years, is perfectly acceptable if the mother chooses to do so ?
Kseniya,
In your ‘let’s get drunk and screw’ argument you’re using abortion as a contraceptive, something which I think we can all agree with as being far from ideal. But in that situation one would be able to take the morning after pill, is that also considered abortion?
It may be a human embryo, but it is still an embryo; and as with Lilly de Lure’s example @102, just because we know flour, sugar, etc may become a cake, we can’t eat them as is on the assumption that they will become a cake!
And I believe there are thousands of parentless children all over the world that need adopting. Why, when we have the means to stop a pregnancy, should we force another one of these poor children into the world?
And monyNH…
Nothing at all to do with the father then, hmmm?
Indeed and another point would be that the mother’s life doesn’t stop at conception, all kinds of events, the death of a spouse, financial disaster, previously loving partner running away once the reality of the pregnancy sinks in, can totally alter your circumstances during pregnancy and render a previously responsible decision to conceive into a disaster in the making.
Also, this still doesn’t take into account the basic fact that early embryos, human or not, do not have a functional nervous system or a brain developed enough for them to experience consciousness. As a result, whilst technically alive in the sense that the cells within them divide and grow they are not remotely equivalent to the conscious human being that they currently inhabit whose needs must come first. Thus it is said human being’s choice whether or not to continue with the pregnancy.
Interrobang, you have said everything I want to say, ony with much more force and clarity than I could ever have achieved!
It’s not just in the boonies, PZ. I spied one of those billboards about a mile from my house. Just go southbound on 169 from Rockford Rd., and there you are.
Inside the Minneapolis beltway… Canya ‘magine!?!?!
negentropyeater:
If an informed decision is made by the person actually having the child I would argue that it is the decision of the mother, not you or me unless there are cast iron medical reasons why it would be a bad idea for the resultant child (and your distate for the manner of their conception does not fall into this category).
No, neither of you has any inherent responsibility towards an embryo. You are simply more likely to decide to take on the responsibility for it and fully capable to do so, unlike a minor.
(BTW: would you say that a 15-year-old who gets drunk and has sex with strangers has some responsibility to care for a resulting embryo?)
“These are an institution on Midwestern country roads. Most are by MCCL (Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, but I don’t think it’s actually an acronym — it’s the Roman date to which they’d like to roll back civilization)”
Is that 1250? My Roman Numerals aren’t what they used to be MCCCLXV years ago. Anyway, abortion in the early stages of pregnancy was allowed up until recently. However, those evil Assyrians had draconian anti-abortion laws (I believe they involved crucifiction and/or disembowelment for women who performed them). Assyrian law was explicitly anti-abortion, the Bible is not.
The thing about anti-abortionists is, they will call abortion murder, but they will balk at advocating the appropriate penalty for women who have abortions. They target only the doctors paid to perform them. Isn’t a woman who aborts just as guilty as one who kills her already-born child? If not, then why not?
Isn’t a woman who aborts just as guilty as one who kills her already-born child? If not, then why not?
Because too many of them have had abortions or caused abortions to be needed (and probably paid for them.) Of course, those abortions are DIFFERENT, but they may have some vague concern that the law might not acknowledge that and that there might be one law for rich and poor alike.
kmarissa,
True, there aren’t 100% effective.
But I’m sure unwanted pregnancies caused by failed contraception are a small percent of unwanted pregnancies.
Anyway, I’m Pro-Choice so I wasn’t saying that since there’s contraceptive options, we can get rid of abortion.
If everyone who didn’t want to get pregnant used contraception, the number of abortions would go way down, not disappear….
There are some women out there, like me, who do not wish to have children. I’m certainly gonna making sure he wears a condom, but I won’t take any pills. Therefore, if I fall pregnant by some fluke, I’m gonna get an abortion and I won’t feel a pinch of regret.
Is that because I lack morals? No. It’s because it’s my body. YES, adoption would be an option, but it’s an option that forces me to carry something unwanted in my body for 9 months and then suffer for a day (and probably a week afterwards at least) to shoot it out. Also, if I carry the thing for so long, I’m PRETTY SURE I’ll be depressed at the end. I’ll feel sad, I’ll carry a weight, a hook to my heart for 9 months and beyond. Having the unwanted baby brought to life would hurt me MUCH MORE than if I had a simple abortion and called it a bad luck.
Is that what they want? Well screw you and call me a murderer.
Thanks Jeff. Unfortunately, I think actual percentages are very difficult to determine for a number of reasons, and obviously it depends on what one meant by “small percentage.” The below article was the best info I could find through a quick google search, aside from various anti-abortion websites (which unsurprisingly put the percentage at more than half of abortions).
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3429402.html
#16:
Um, there are some good epic myths in there that have been used well by better writers and directors, but by itself it is by no means a great work of fiction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4krycEGgug8
[I feel the same way about The Illiad: the overall plot is timeless and some scenes are fun to read, but 75% of the dialogue would bore the shit out of anyone who wasn’t a Mycenean Greek. Let it not be said Homer didn’t know his audience! :-) ]
hyperdeath:
Not at all, since our society allows the killing of various conscious beings. We have war, we have capital punishment, we have a well-established right to kill in self-defense, and that’s just dealing with adult humans (disregarding, for example, all the non-human conscious beings that we kill on a regular basis, e.g., for food). Even if we grant a fetus full personhood (which I think it is ludicrous to do), there are still cases where killing individuals with full personhood is acceptable. For example, if the fetus endangers the mother, abortion would essentially be killing in self-defense.
Kseniya:
The issue is precisely what responsibility you have to a fetus. If a fetus is not a person, and thus does not have the same rights as a person, you may not have any responsibility to it. You would have responsibilities to a baby, but perhaps not to a fetus. I don’t think the situation you provide actually clarifies things, since it presumes the very issue under debate.
Mark Borok:
I too find this one of the more bizarre aspects of the anti-choice movement. They hate abortion doctors, but seem to feel that the women are somehow sad victims. I just don’t get it.
St. Augustine didn’t think embryos went to heaven:
“For in thy sight there is none free from sin, not even the infant who has lived but a day upon this earth…Thus, the infant’s innocence lies in the weakness of his body and not in the infant mind. I have myself observed a baby to be jealous, though it could not speak; it was livid as it watched another infant at the breast…But if ‘I was conceived in iniquity, and in sin my mother nourished me in her womb,’ where, I pray thee, O my God, where, O Lord, or when was I, thy servant, ever innocent?”
–Confessions, Chapter VII
Nobody, I just read your last post for the third time in the vain hope of finding anything logical in it, or anything that even makes sense, but I was sorely disappointed.
Kseniya: No, I wasn’t really trying to “address anything real”, just riffing off Lilly’s mention of “Every Sperm …” Perhaps I should keep my mouth shut when I have nothing substantial to contribute, but then I shouldn’t have been called “brilliantly witty”, which trust me doesn’t happen very often!
The sheer abomination of the “crying blood” comment I leave to those more articulate than I.
Kseniya,
Your criticisms don’t really hold and I’ve already pointed out why such criticisms fail earlier. But lets go through some specific ones for the benefit of others who may not wish to read up the entire thread.
Adoption is irrelevant to the situation of a woman’s right to control her own body. No one can force you to carry a pregnancy to term so that it may be adopted. Even if there wasn’t a single baby, instead of millions worldwide, available for adoption that wouldn’t serve as relevant cause for the state to revoke your right to your body.
Getting a kidney back after nine months is also not the issue. The state dictating that you must give it up at all, is. So let me make this perfectly clear for everyone, in no situation whatsoever is a woman’s right to her body compromised even if the “net loss” will somehow end up as zero. It isn’t about loss, it’s about choice.
A woman has no such responsibility whatsoever if she decides as such. To argue that she contributed to the situation, is to again ignore the fact that her body rights overrule any conceivable “rights” or “responsibilities towards” anyone (or thing) dependent upon her body. If a woman decides to get pregnant and then later decides to abort, that is her choice. Intention may be important as to how you feel about the the woman in question, but it does not dictate what that woman can or cannot do with her body.
Objecting to the term “parasite” fails for the same reasons. While you may rightly point out where the analogy becomes frayed at the edges, it remains useful in that it points out the fact that the fetus is dependent upon you, and is using your body to grow. In any such cases the woman has final say as to whether or not such growth, be it human or otherwise, is to remain.
Though you may not like abortions or the reasons women give for having them, it remains irrelevant as to whether or not women are in control of their bodies.
Did someone say something @140? I thought I heard some noise there for a moment… eh, no, my mistake. Must have been the wind.
“Did someone say something @140? I thought I heard some noise there for a moment… eh, no, my mistake. Must have been the wind.”
Wind as in weather or wind as in someone farting ?
I can match the body-weeping-for-not-having-a-baby tale.
My aunt is a nun, and about 30 years ago was bossing a convent – an elderly nun in the community was very deeply depressed. My aunt, being a good woman, tried to find out why and get help.
The reason? As a young novice she was told that you had a baby only if God planted a seed of love in your heart. She prayed, went to mass every day, stuck to her vows, went through life knowing nothing about reproduction. When she was old she was facing death torn apart by her sense of failure that she hadn’t been good enough for God to plant a seed of love in her heart and give her a baby.
That’s a true one.
@ #136
from OED
Parasite Parasite Parasite
” 2. a. Biol. An organism that lives on, in, or with an organism of another species, obtaining food, shelter, or other benefit; (now) spec. one that obtains nutrients at the expense of the host organism, which it may directly or indirectly harm.”
dont worry PZ, lenny flank assures us that these people are a tiny minority and have no power whatsoever.
Nobody’s voice is as effective as a fart released in a wind storm.
Those Prolife Across America signs would be a lot more effective, I think, if they didn’t put the fugliest possible babies on them. A picture of a giant wonk-eyed chubster in a SAILOR SUIT makes a poor case against choice (or for design, really).
The “God blessed me with Down Syndrome, yay!” billboard keeps going up right behind my house (in St. Paul), and it freaks me out. That baby looks exactly like Ned Beatty.
Seriously, though, everyone who doesn’t live in Bibleville needs to see the billboards and marvel at the impeccable logic of the arguments and at the kick-ass graphic design.
@clarence : wait… Down Syndrome is a blessing?
I just went to see the ads on their website linked by Clarence…
Hey uh, is it normal I suddenly feel like getting an abortion NOW even though I’m not pregnant?
Michelle, maybe this belief stems from the similarity between the words “trisomy” and “Trinity.” QED!
So if I understand correctly, DS is caused by Jesus’ love and autism is caused by vaccines. Thanks, Dr. Internet.
Stupid fool, that Nobody.
The Problem of Evil doesn’t prove god doesn’t exist, it just proves a benevolent god doesn’t exist.
Simply admit that the ‘God’ of the Abrahamic cults is a petty, unethical tyrant who deserves no worship and the ‘problem’ disappears.
I also scoff at the argument that equates a developing embryo or fetus with someone who drugs you and steals your kidney and leaves you in a tub of ice. (I’d despise that argument, but it gets hilarity points for using one of the great urban legends.)
My developing son used my kidney as a football for three months, and then I woke up in the hospital kinda confused. Does that count? Also, somebody scrawled “Welcome to the world of Parenthood!!” on my mirror with lipstick. Oh, wait, different urban legend.
I remember those billboards from when I was growing up. I grew up in Connecticut. Really, religious idiocy is everywhere in the USA: even supposedly liberal New England has to deal with it.
Meanwhile, here is my (and my father’s) comeback to the “my mom wanted to have an abortion but didn’t and had me instead and I’m so grateful for that” argument. My father’s mother’s first husband demanded that she get an abortion when she was pregnant. This was long before World War II, and the abortion that she got was primitive by modern standards. She almost died. She survived, divorced her husband, and years later had my father. The point is that she came very close to not surviving the abortion that she had. Were they as sanitary and routine as they are now, there would never have been an issue. Keeping abortion safe and legal will prevent those sorts of things from happening in the future.
Unfortunately, I have never had the opportunity to try that on a pro-lifer.
This is my reasoning on the abortion issue, mine only. A fetus is human (as opposed to canine, piscine, etc.) and it is alive. As such a fetus merits every respect and protection no matter the costs or sacrifices demanded by however-unfortunate circumstances. I demand neither God nor soul, only that every “human” life should be validated as human, sans scare-quotes.
Dr. Drang @#34:
Thanks for reminding me what Randall Munroe does with [word]-ass descriptions.
Wow. This is by far the most extreme position I’ve come across. EVERY protection? NO MATTER the costs?
It would be interesting to see this put into action.
I live across the river from PZ (near LaCrosse, WI) and those Pro Life Across America signs are everywhere around here, too. Funny how they only show cute little blue-eyed WHITE babies…
We have a lot of those “pregnancy crisis” billboards as well. I’m betting those are the last phone numbers a pregnant teen ought to be calling, if their billboards are any indication.
A fetus is human (as opposed to canine, piscine, etc.) and it is alive.
So’s a sperm cell. So’s an intestinal endothelial cell (which you shed and digest on a regular basis.) So’s a Jurkat cell. So what?
No matter the cost? Well, a woman is a human being too. The woman that has that fetus in her is alive too. Are you willing to destroy her rights for the thing feeding off her against her will? I can’t talk for every woman, but myself, if I was forced to keep a child against my will till its birth, I would be seriously scarred mentally and feel violated. I might even consider suicide. Seriously. What good is there to live if you don’t own yourself?
kmarissa @#178: Might I ask what kinds of respect and protection you do not demand for yourself?…
I confess that for the sake of brevity my argument at #177 is hyperbolic. I do not, for example, believe that the mother’s life should be sacrificed for the fetus’s.
Hyperbole, by the way, is easily recognizable to a careful reader, which leads me to ask: You are being facetious, aren’t you?
Finally, extremity does not in itself invalidate a position.
This is my reasoning on the abortion issue, mine only. A fetus is human (as opposed to canine, piscine, etc.) and it is alive. As such a fetus merits every respect and protection no matter the costs or sacrifices demanded by however-unfortunate circumstances. I demand neither God nor soul, only that every “human” life should be validated as human, sans scare-quotes.
So, if carrying it to term kills the mother, so be it. Then again, what do women matter? They’re only incubators after all. And yes, that’s exactly what you’re saying.
I don’t demand the kind of respect or protection that consists of violating another person’s bodily autonomy. That’s kinda a line I draw.
I do not, for example, believe that the mother’s life should be sacrificed for the fetus’s
How nice of you. At least she’s partially human and not fully an incubator.
Dianne @#180: A fetus is an entire human — taking the word “human” here with a very strict definition — at a very early stage of development. You are free to understand the word “human” differently than I, but I too am free. The individual cells you mention do not constitute an entire human by any definition at all.
Well, if it is already there in its entirety, no need for it to be in a women. Cut that sucker out and let it be complete on its own.
I see, I see. So by “a fetus merits every respect and protection no matter the costs or sacrifices demanded by however-unfortunate circumstances,” you ACTUALLY meant “a fetus merits SOME respects and protections EXCEPT for CERTAIN costs and sacrifices demanded by PARTICULARLY unfortunate circumstances.” Of course. How silly of me to be reading for accuracy. Next time I’ll be more careful.
“A fetus is human (as opposed to canine, piscine, etc.) and it is alive. As such a fetus merits every respect and protection no matter the costs or sacrifices demanded by however-unfortunate circumstances. ”
Perhaps I’m just a heartless bastard, but merely being human merits every respect and protection? I don’t buy that. But maybe it’s because I tend to take the wide view and assume that laws are in place for the good of society. And I fail to see the damage that aborting a fetus does to society. The only people truly affected by it are the fetus itself and the woman carrying it (and possibly the male who sired it, but since the fetus isn’t commandeering his body, then his say in the matter should be given considerably less weight – hey, did I just stumble upon the basis of the anti-choice position?). As a cursory glance at the world population shows, babies are not exactly an endangered species. So I don’t think fetuses deserve protection, or at least protection beyond that which curtails the rights of actual, living human beings.
The odds against bearing a fertilized ovum to birth are poor – what is it, something less than half, perhaps merely 30% of all conceptions result in birth?
But these odds can be influenced by the mother. Nutrition, hormones and stress all reduce the chances of bringing an embryo to term.
So what if we, by law, declare a fertilized ovum a legal person? What if we extend all the rights that entails?
Can we then arrest the mom for causing a spontaneous miscarriage due to lifestyle? What if she’s taking hormone supplements? What if she’s in a high stress job?
Could a woman be charged with manslaughter for drinking coffee?
I guess we could also forget about In Vitro Fertilization too – it is hazardous to the embryos because too many of them fail to implant in the womb.
And how could the State ensure that a woman hasn’t recently conceived and is putting an embryo in danger due to her lifestyle? Would there be mandatory periodic pregnancy testing for women in high-stress jobs, or would the state just make high-stress jobs off-limits for women of child-bearing years unless they had proof of sterility?
I think that extending the “right to life” to an embryo is a dangerous precedent, and is the tip of a slippery slope that would seriously erode women’s rights.
I don’t demand the kind of respect or protection that consists of violating another person’s bodily autonomy. That’s kinda a line I draw.
Am I to understand then that you would refuse a kidney to some hypothetical sibling of yours who would die without it? Doesn’t their sickness and it’s implicit demand violate your bodily autonomy?
And why stop, arbitrarily, at just bodily autonomy? I’ll therefore say that no one may violate the autonomy of my will and desire and I’ll enforce my position by means of murder, if necessary, or heck, if even desired.
Any absolute autonomy is equal to any other. All are arbitrary, all lead to violence. In fact, none of us is absolutely autonomous in any way at all. No man, or woman, is an island.
d.l.
If I understand your position correctly then all that can be said is: “And?”
Your personal definition of what a fetus is is irrelevant as to whether or not a woman has control over her own body. Thus, she is the sole arbiter of the fate of whatever you’d like to define a fetus as. Unless of course you wish to counter that point. But you have yet to do so with anything that hasn’t been answered repeatedly in this thread by myself and others.
Nah–we have crazy people, too. San Diego has its very own Gigantic Cross–and it’s on public land, its upkeep being paid for by you and me.
That’s a nice point there, pointed by D…
If it’s a full fledged human, why does depend off us?
As long as it’s in my womb, it’s my property. And if I decide that it needs to come out NOW, well, heck, its survival rate’s its problem… not mine!
It’s no different than say… An organ or blood transplant. If you have someone that is dying, and that you are by some weird and possibly impossible turn of events the only human being that can donate to him, you have the right to deny it because it is your body. And he’ll die. Now that’s a bit heartless and simpsonish but it’s just an example.
Point is, I have a full right to deny my blood and KFC to that developing blob in my tummy. If it can’t live on its own… Well too bad.
Um, huh? You really don’t understand why voluntarily choosing to give a kidney is different from someone legally being able to take one? Or is that more hyperbole? So hard to tell.
I see, I see. So by “a fetus merits every respect and protection no matter the costs or sacrifices demanded by however-unfortunate circumstances,” you ACTUALLY meant “a fetus merits SOME respects and protections EXCEPT for CERTAIN costs and sacrifices demanded by PARTICULARLY unfortunate circumstances.” Of course. How silly of me to be reading for accuracy. Next time I’ll be more careful.
Ah, so you have no notion of hyperbole and no knowledge of rhetoric. I should adjust my style accordingly, i.e., downwards, in this forum.
Furthermore I see that because I chose an unfamiliar style of writing and have a very different opinion from the majority here I deserve your sarcasm and disrespect. I’ll leave you, kmarissa, alone to discuss things only with people who already agree with you.
A fetus is an entire human — taking the word “human” here with a very strict definition — at a very early stage of development.
By WHAT definition? Can you make a definition of “human” that:
1. includes all blastulocytes/embryos/etc.
2. includes all living people
3. excludes brain dead people being kept alive on respirators
4. excludes somatic cells, non-fertilized gametes, and cancer cells
5. includes or excludes, but some way deals with, clones
6. includes twins as two people
7. counts chimeras as a single person
8 deals with the problem of “parasitic twins” in some way, i.e. children born with an extra head, arm, body, etc, either as two children or one
9. isn’t based on simple prejudice (i.e. has a biological basis for determining which is a “living human” and which is not)?
If so, I’ll admit that you might have a case. Until you can do so–and I’ve never met anyone who could–I won’t take you very seriously.
You are free to understand the word “human” differently than I, but I too am free.
Sure. Feel free to call only whites or men or people who believe in abrahamic religions “human” if you like. But don’t expect others to take your definition without qualifications or objections.
The individual cells you mention do not constitute an entire human by any definition at all.
Nonsense. All the cells I mentioned, except for the unfertilized gametes, are 46XX/XY and made up of completely human DNA (not canine, feline, bovine, etc…maybe a little unintegrated retroviral here and there, but who can claim they don’t have that?) Given proper conditions, you can make a “complete” person with any of the above. The unfertilized gametes require the simple addition of another unfertilized gamete–a process so simple we can do it in vitro and by no means the most complicated or dangerous step in reproduction. The others can be, at least in principle, cloned and gestated to produce a baby. By what definition can these be considered “not an entire human” but a fertilized egg is considered an “entire human”?
By what definition can these be considered “not an entire human” but a fertilized egg is considered an “entire human”?
It comes from the principle of “sperm magic” which lies at the heart of patriarchy. Women are merely vessels to be filled by men and their offspring.
Am I to understand then that you would refuse a kidney to some hypothetical sibling of yours who would die without it?
So am I to understand that you would support a law that forced every healthy person to donate a kidney, bone marrow, blood, or part of a liver if it were needed? Because otherwise what’s your point. Most people would donate a kidney to a sick sib, but if they refuse, is it moral and should it be legal to force them to donate anyway?
monyNH, since eggs don’t fertilize themselves in humans, how can you claim the mother is responsible for the fetus’ existence? It takes two to tango, eh?
It does take two to tango, but at the end of the day we women are well aware that the “burdens” of pregnancy and childbirth are on us alone. In a perfect world, all men live up to their responsibilities (financial and otherwise), but some don’t, some can’t, and even the best of men can’t offer up their bodies for nine months’ incubation.
For many women, terminating a pregnancy is the most responsible and, yes, motherly thing to do for that child, fetus, whatever. Like some of the other posters, I would liek to see more language of personal responsibility from the pro-choice camp. And the bus is coming with my own kids, so I have to leave it at that!
Wow. My first post to you was 178. Your response was 182, in which you insult my reading ability for daring to read your post accurately. And now you complain of sarcasm and disrespect?
Hilarious.
P.S., that’s an astonishingly poor use of “hyperbole.”
We can speak in high tones and think we are of an higher IQ as well, d.l. But we prefer taking the shortcut and say you’re being an narrowminded jerk.
You cannot kill someone that is autonomous because that is murder. You can kill a fetus because it’s a subhuman and would not live without the woman’s life. Simple as that. If your mom were to die, you would not die because you are currently out of her womb and you are therefore a full fledged living organism.
Now, as I see this coming… What would you do of someone with a disability? Or that requires a transplant? Simple. You can’t kill them, but you certainly don’t have to help them live. Yes, that would make you an asshole. But you are within your rights. But you cannot take a knife and terminate them outside of when their bodies will decide the end is now.
Odds are, by the way, that the disabled will be helped by someone else and the transplant needy may have a chance of finding a new donor. A fetus though, will have no chance, no option. It’s the mom or nothing. Therefore, it is subhuman.
I don’t mean to desert the field of battle, I simply have other and more important things to do. So I’ll say, “So long, and thanks for all the fish.”
But first I’d like to observe that Rey Fox is the only fellow commenter to even take me seriously. Thank you, Rey. I just happen not to give a damn about society, only the individual. I so respect the individual that I define the word as broadly as possible so as not to miss a single one no matter how questionable their case. Oh, well. As Eeyore says, “Thanks for noticin'”
As a strategy, “pro-choice” arguments would be most pertinent and most effective if they focused on the point of what makes someone a “person” (morally speaking) rather than pointing out again and again that people should have a choice of what to do with their bodies.
Most “pro-lifers” start from a premise that a fetus is entitled to the same moral treatment as you or me.
Starting from this premise, someone’s rights to their own body are a little less relevant compared to another’s right to life.
(Thought experiment: There’s a head sewn on your shoulder ala Futurama. Can you kill it morally?)
What people who support abortion rights need to do is attack that premise, not things that follow from it trivially. So often, the lifers will talk about how abortion is killing children, and choicers will talk about how outlawing it is limiting our rights to our own bodies.
These strategies both amount to question-begging. They are repeating what ought to be a non-controversial conclusion given a premise that is quite controversial and should be the subject of discussion.
If you ask me, there are a few reasonable places to demarcate moral personhood, and I think there are some good pragmatic reasons to use birth as that time, but there is a range of positions thereabouts that I’d consider defensible.
Fertilization is far too cautious a point. I’m not going into why at the moment, but I think it ought to be patently obvious to most.
Michelle #155,
“Therefore, if I fall pregnant by some fluke, I’m gonna get an abortion and I won’t feel a pinch of regret.
Is that because I lack morals? No. It’s because it’s my body.”
Michelle, I’ve always been pro-choice, but somehow I wish to react to your “it’s my body” argument, because it misses two other important sides of the full argument :
it’s also, because the foetus (under a certain age) will not suffer from being killed (same as I don’t regret killing an ant when walking on one), and also because for the time being, your abortion will not harm society as a whole (if for some reason, in the future, humanity would be in serious danger because of a lack of births, I’m not sure if it would be acceptable to leave it only up to you to decide to abort).
“Thought experiment: There’s a head sewn on your shoulder ala Futurama. Can you kill it morally?”
I know I would <_< Most likely in a panic attack though. But it would still fit with what I said in my previous post! Yay!
@negentropyeater: Yea, I was just being simple there. But for the future, I hope that by then they will have created artificial wombs and they will just have some abortion-like technique to take that thing out of me and transplant it there. :) You know, so I can still have my rights.
Even then, if in the future we DON’T have the super techno wombs I freakishly imagine… I hope it will never come to the point where we literally force women to be carriers. Seriously. It will be so spooky sci-fi ish. I’d only imagine that we would also lack MANY other rights then.
Hm. I’ve always wondered exactly how this argument could be used, by itself, without also justifying rape (or some other forced conception) in that same situation. Either case would arguably result in emotional and physical harm to the mother, although obviously it’s impossible to know to what degree in each case. But in theory, I’m not sure how you could justify a line between the two based on that argument alone, if you wanted to. I’d be interested in hearing others’ thoughts.
You wake up with a world-famous violinist hooked up to your kidney — do you simply tolerate that for nine months? Do you owe a duty of care in a situation you did not choose?
It’s interesting that conservatives get all worked up about property rights and the right of self-defense and the right to forcibly remove immigrants when talking about countries…and then abandon those principles when talking about the individual. (“Sure, you may have tried to use barrier-method protection against getting Mexicans, but once you’ve gotten immigrants you’re responsible to take care of them.”)
Jeez, you say that like it’s got so much other work to do.
Why would anyone to even care about any other being?
Well, sure, it disappears because you’ve also rejected any religious being of any interest or importance. But wasn’t that the original point? (Even the OT God is supposed to be “just,” whatever that means.)
With “theists” like that, who needs atheists?
I’ve always wondered exactly how this argument could be used, by itself, without also justifying rape (or some other forced conception) in that same situation.
In a situation in which, for example, all but a small percentage of women became infertile, I’m willing to bet that forced conception would become legal and accepted. What it would not be is moral. Even if you’re the only person capable of producing the next generation of humanity, it’s still your choice. The stakes are just higher. (After all, who’s to say that you don’t carry a mutation that will some day be critical to the survival of humanity?) If you want humanity to die out by attrition, why not? Maybe it’d give the people currently alive a motive to not kill each other quite so often. But perhaps I’m overly cynical.
Windy:
Good question. Perhaps. I don’t know. Obviously, you disagree, because you have contended that there is no inherent responsibility, ever. Maybe you’re right, but I question that contention. Either way, the question is part of the bigger puzzle that I’m trying to piece together.
Michael X:
Exactly, which is why “A woman should not be forced to raise a child, therefore CHOICE” is also irrelevant, and should be abandoned as a pro-choice argument.
I’m sorry, Michael, I must disgree. The objection does not fail – the analogy fails. I do not find it a particularly useful argument for Choice. Why? Well, simply substitute “nursing newborn” for “fetus”. The statement remains true. Does it now function as an argument for infanticide?
Anyway, from a *cough* framing standpoint, the parasite argument sucks. ;-)
Maxi:
Good point, but…
… but keep in mind I’m not arguing against Choice, I’m arguing against using the child-rearing argument in support of Choice. The argument should always be “I don’t want to carry this baby to term,” not “I don’t want to raise this child.”
Tulse:
Another good point. I was aware of that when I posted, but because my primary objective was to try to separate the weak pro-choice arguments from the strong, and because I ran out of time, I let it go. :-)
Escuerd,
I perfectly disagree with you. To argue with a pro-life advocate on their own terms is to miss the very point of the argument. Regardless of the “personhood” of the fetus (and Jon’s links attempt a very long winding path towards defining a fetus as a person) the abortion debate hinges on the right of the mother to her own body. All else is perfectly irrelevant. And no poorly defined thought experiment skewing murder and body rights will change that.
You know, if there was just one chick left that was fertile, I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be the #1 scorer. In fact, I think that all the infertile gals would be far more popular, because the guys will be sure she won’t drop by 9 months later with a surprise accident baby. :)
…everyone who doesn’t live in Bibleville needs to see the billboards and marvel at the impeccable logic of the arguments…
Fingerprints at 9 weeks? “We found the fingerprints of that fetus all over his dead twin!!”
“Exactly, which is why “A woman should not be forced to raise a child, therefore CHOICE” is also irrelevant, and should be abandoned as a pro-choice argument.”
I gotta agree there, it cannot be used for an argument since there is adoption as an option. They need to lay off that one.
The real point is that a woman should not be forced to let a baby grow in her…
Kseniya,
You can have the parasite analogy if you please, it is only used as a tool for representing the few idea I pointed out earlier. If I understand you correctly though, you are not still arguing that the possibility of adoption is enough to restrict a woman’s right to her body are you?
And I, by the way, have not argued against infanticide.
I’d simply say that in your scenario the person who is older, more mature, and/or wasn’t forced, has more responsibility for her actions, period. But taking responsibility can consist of taking a morning-after pill, or having an abortion, as well as caring for an embryo.
But taking responsibility can consist of taking a morning-after pill, or having an abortion, as well as caring for an embryo.
EXACTLY!
As far as billboards go I would not mind if they all went away, I think they are ugly.
On the issue of abortion, in a perfect world there would be no need of it as every unborn child would be healthy and wanted and would have a loving family. I thought Kseniya had a thoughtful post at #136 bringing up the issue of personal responsibility. Michelle’s post at #155 shows that for a woman such a decision involves not only a thought process but her emotions as well.
“Also, if I carry the thing for so long, I’m PRETTY SURE I’ll be depressed at the end. I’ll feel sad, I’ll carry a weight, a hook to my heart for 9 months and beyond. Having the unwanted baby brought to life would hurt me MUCH MORE than if I had a simple abortion and called it a bad luck.”
I am not sure men can entirely grasp that (the emotions) as in Michael’s post at #162( I am assuming Michael is a guy) it just seems like a civics exercise to him.
The issue is sadly complicated in our imperfect world.
Kseniya, I understand your point, but there is a very good reason most women would put forth the later. That would because the former is a given. With some admitted exceptions, no woman wants to carry a pregnancy to term as and end to itself. The question of a pregnancy without the child rearing is a forgone concluded no. Thus the justification for aborting the pregnancy is framed around the child rearing.
Windy and JeffMA:
Yeah…
Michael X:
Understood, but please be advised that you are not the first, the only, nor the last person ever to use the parasite analogy.
Uh….
“Still?” No, and I never was. Whose comments are you responding to? You seem to be reponding to mine, though it also seems you aren’t understanding them terribly well. The fault may be mine. You’re not up past your bedtime again, are you? ;-)
I never suggested that you had, but I see now that you have argued FOR it, so I’ll take that as a “Yes.”
No, I cannot agree. This is frustrating, because we’re on the same side of the issue, and disagree not on the What but on the Why. Whether you intend to or not, by drawing lines like that, you’re presenting an argument that includes the possibility of a woman aborting a baby a week before its likely delivery date. It’s not so black and white. The personhood of a fetus is very much a part of the issue. Am I missing something? Have you already conceded that point, and are focusing on the body-rights issue only in the context of early pregnancy? If so, I missed it, sorry.
Louise:
Double Yeah…
I find abortion rather barbaric, frankly, but I remain pro-choice. Life is imperfect, as Louise says.
(nodding) My own personal belief is that there is a difference between “Human” and “Person”. “Human” is a biological condition that applies to all fertilized ovum, regardless of viability. “Person” is a legal condition that may be granted under law.
I don’t think the State has the moral right to grant the status of “Person” to the unborn – not until that unborn human has reached the point where it can survive without being a parasite.
However…
I DO think that the MOTHER, being a legal “person” should have the right to declare her own unborn a “person” on a provisional status. I think that under this status the mother (or her legal representative) could press charges for murder or manslaughter under the law, (if, for instance, her fetus was attacked.)
Part of the legal paperwork of abortion would include the mother’s refusal to grant provisional “Person” status to the fetus.
At some point, the legal status of baby in question should progress from “provisional person” to “permanent person” – after which the right of personhood could not be revoked by mother or by law. I would be content to let the Roe V. Wade benchmark represent that point.
Again – exactly my point. This should be avoided, because the real reason is “I don’t want to raise this child AND I don’t want to put it up for adoption.”
Well, why not?
The answer to THAT question provides the frame for the justification.
How about also “I don’t want to undergo the well-substantiated risks associated with pregnancy and birth”? A woman is approximately 25-30 times more likely to die from complications associated with pregnancy and birth than she is from an abortion.
I really despise the “if you get pregnant, just give the baby up for adoption” bit. That website linked above had it on one of the billboards, “2 million are waiting to adopt.”
Okey, fine, let’s outlaw abortion tomorrow, and let’s pretend this change in law actually shuts down all abortions, legal and illegal (just play along). And this year, there are, what, 2 million abortions? Woo hoo, babies for everyone!
Except, what happens next year, when there are another 2 million unwanted babies? And the next year? And the next year? Oops, somethings wrong here.
What’s even more disingenuous about this argument is that we have about 250,000 children up for adoption in our country, today, who can’t find a permanent home. Why? Because those 2 million people aren’t just looking to adopt a baby, they just want to adopt a perfectly healthy, often White, baby. Older children, Black children, drug-exposed, physically, emotionally or mentally disabled children need not apply. Outlaw abortion and it’s back to the Children’s Home.
Now, you want to really screw with the anti-sex crowd? Tell them god only puts evil souls destined to go to hell in the bodies of fetuses he foresees will be aborted. Abortion is just his way of protecting the earth from these evil souls.
It’s always interesting how the people who scream loudest about the ‘sanctity of life’ and who rail against abortion also vote down every social-service measure that would help those zygotes once they exited the womb. Funny how life isn’t sacred once it’s born. Then it’s just a burden on society and to hell with it if it can’t fend for itself.
Michelle #216,
“The real point is that a woman should not be forced to let a baby grow in her…”
Fully agree, but this also means that as soon as she knows she is pregnant, she should decide. When talking of on request pregnancies (I’m excluding medical reasons and other more complicated situations), I beleive a woman should have the right to abort within a specified timeframe. The question I think, is which one, and how do you justify it from a scientific and ethical perspective.
I believe that’s the real issue under debate ; in most developped countries (incl. the US) a large majority of the population (ca. 2/3) put the limit at approx. 10 weeks. At 20 weeks, it drops to only a minority (1/4) of approval.
Of course, one of the problems with putting a time limit, is what about women who only realise very late that they are pregnant ? I heard recently that a women learned she was pregnant on the day she gave birth (it’s a very exceptional case, but does anybody know of statistics concerning late pregnancy awareness ?).
Bob, I’m not sure if I understand your comments in post #210.
Despite that Nobody’s post (#140) misunderstood PZ’s use of the Hitler image, I thought I’d play with his undoubtedly excellent understanding of theodicy, and specifically point to the general leap that most of the religious go from when they “see” evidence of a grand designer in the universe and easily and without difficulty go from “there must be a God” to “the God that there must be is also coincidentally the God I was raised to believe in based on the writings of a religious text that I completely and whole-heartedly believe in except for the parts with which I disagree”, no matter how inconsistent the two Gods may be.
With “theists” like that, who needs atheists?
Exactly. (I hope.)
My point, that I was failing to make, was that common discourse already places the frame on the raising, thus it would be somewhat odd for a woman choosing to abort a pregnancy to not address it, especially as it is taken for granted that the only reason to be pregnant is to raise a kid. And that is different than giving reasons for being pro-choice. These women are just giving their personal reason for making their choice against a specific context.
Tulse:
There ya go. :-)
A woman owns her body; it ends at the placenta. That cluster of dividing cells has its own DNA and is a distinct person, despite being hooked into the woman’s system. Many have correctly pointed out that the fetus couldn’t live without the support of the mother. However, I think it’s worth discussing how the baby got there in the first place.
Pregnancy is a consequence of sex. Despite use of contraceptives (access to which can and should be better), sometimes sex produces a kid. While there’s a spectrum of opinion here, some are arguing that people should not be responsible for their actions, specifically, sex should be free from consequences and responsibilities. I don’t think that’s defensible. Yes, a woman can do as she chooses with her body, but she is responsible for those choices. If she and a partner have sex and a child results, they are both responsible for it.
Did the partners have the education to *know* that they were risking a pregnancy when they had sex? Was the woman raped? These are legitimate and important questions, and they partly determine the responsibilities of both people. In my view, if you understand that sex can result in pregnancy, and you understand what that pregnancy will mean for both parents, and you decide to have sex, you are responsible for the consequences. When I say “what it will mean for both parents” I mean that the father’s responsibilities to support the child and mother kick in right away.
With notable exceptions, the “parasite” is plugged in and growing because of choices made by its parents. Allow me to echo another poster: for all the talk of choice, I’ve heard very little talk about responsibility for choices.
I think abortion can be justified to save a woman’s life or in cases of rape. Further, sex education should start early and empower people to make informed choices about their sex lives. Contraceptives should be as accessible as possible. I admit that the practical benefits of making safe abortions available is compelling, but unfortunately I must insist that people are responsible for their own actions, and that in most cases abortion is an abdication of responsibility.
I’ve tried to hit all the key points without turning my post into a labyrinthine quote-a-thon, but there is a point I’d like to address directly:
This pre-determined foetus to human tactic just doesn’t wash. We treat something as it is NOW, not what it could become in the future.
This is simply not true. My point was that people choose abortions *specifically* because of what a fetus might become in the future – in other words, they treat it like a person. This is a tacit admission that the fetus is not considered just a parasite; while I will clarify that there are other reasons to abort, many seek out abortions because the pregnancy could result in a child. Further, the toll taken on a woman’s body during pregnancy is largely due to the fetus growing into a fully-developed person. So, there it is: parasite on the one hand, a person on the other. Choice proponents insist on having it both ways. No one in this lengthy thread has attempted to tackle this or its implications for the pro-choice position. And no one who finds this shell game stupid or silly realizes that it’s not a conversation they need to have with me, but with other advocates of pro-choice who equivocate exactly as I described. I’ll stress that this doesn’t itself determine the rights of a fetus – it’s just deeply inconsistent.
No, they treat it like it will become a person if they don’t get an abortion. Reacting to the potential future consequences doesn’t make those consequences a reality at present. Your argument would seem to make condom use just as indefensable, since you would be “treating [the potential fetus] like a person.”
This was dealt with sufficiently in post 218. Having an abortion IS dealing with the consequences. You’re working off an assumption that this method of dealing with the consequences is less valid than carrying the fetus to term. I don’t share that assumption.
@ Michael X 213:
I’m not talking about arguing on “their” terms. I’m talking about arguing with the faulty premise, not pointing out things that follow trivially from the premise’s negation.
People don’t have a right to do anything they choose with their body. If their action affects another person, then there can be a legitimate basis for regulating that action.
If you had a parasitic person attached to you that were accorded the same moral status as anyone else, do you really think it would be your rights to kill it?
This is what most pro-lifers assert, and unless you think such murder would be justified (or on the pro-lifer side, that people shouldn’t be permitted as much freedom over their bodies as possible), then this is what one’s conclusion ought to hinge on.
@ #7
Man fuck Godwin’s Law. You can’t apply a rule so general as “if you mention Hitler, you lose the argument.” Yeah, it’s a nice way for an imbecile to declare someone else’s argument invalid without actually having to use any higher brain functions.
Apply that thought to any other instance where a person is making a decision about their own body; organ donation, drug trials, psychological experiments, tumor removal, etc, etc… and hopefully you’ll see how unethical it is. Your appeal to popularity is also unconvincing.
The parasite argument may be specious, but I can’t resist pointing out that tapeworms don’t exactly force themselves on people. Some people unknowingly eat poorly cooked meat or fish, but some people are aware of the risks and do it anyway. If they get infected, are they then responsible for the well-being of the parasite? ;)
d l parker # 203:
But first I’d like to observe that Rey Fox, A MALE, is the only fellow commenter to even take me seriously. Thank you, Rey. I just happen not to give a damn about society, only the MALE individual. I so respect the MALE individual that I FIND IT UNBEARABLY HUMILIATING TO HAVE MY ASS SPANKED BY MICHELLE, DIANNE, KMARISSA, BITCHING WIMMIN. Oh, well. As Eeyore says, “Thanks for noticin'”
Fixed it for you.
I don’t see where the parasite argument is specious. The injection of the teleological “willfully” into the definition of “parasite” is what’s muddying the waters, but “will” doesn’t have anything to do with it. Is a mushroom on a tree any less of a parasite because plants don’t have the concept we recognize as “will”? Injecting the concept of “will” is superfluous, and leads to confusion.
A parasite is an entity which depends, wholly or in part, for its existence on another entity. Period full stop. A fetus depends wholly on its mother for existence. The biological reality is therefore that the fetus is a parasite, even if we don’t like the emotional connotations of the word, and the argument–while it may be distasteful–is not in the least bit specious.
That’s exactly the conclusion that the pro-forced-pregnancy “logic” leads to :).
Can’t we all just agree to let the politicians fuck us and get along?
(dodges brick)
D,
sorry, I fail to understand your comparison.
So what, you think it’s ethical that a woman may abort a viable child ?
As I said this “it’s my body” argument, USED ALONE, leads nowhere, and will harm the pro-choice cause.
A parasite is an entity which depends, wholly or in part, for its existence on another entity. Period full stop. The biological reality is therefore that the fetus is a parasite
Only proximately, ultimately it’s a kin-selected mutualist, or something…
WRT adoption:
There are hundreds of thousands (I’ve seen 500,000 as a figure somewhere) of children languishing in foster care in the US.
Someone please reconcile these two statements, kthx.
Upfront, me = Pro-choice. But, there is always a but, some pro-choicers around here make it sound like pregnancy is cancer and no embryo should be brought to term ever. Well, maybe not ever but to the point of birth and possibly a little later, say up until the embryo enters college. I find that a little icky.
Have an abortion in the first trimester if you’re having a bad hair day. Whatever. But isn’t there some point at which it becomes objectionable to kill what is essentially a viable baby? I don’t know what time that happens. When it feels pain or when it can survive outside of the womb by itself or something?
Of course later abortions should always allowed if the mothers life or health is in danger. I often wonder why anyone would wait until the 3rd trimester for an abortion for anything other than danger to the mother’s life anyway?
Otherwise the reasons allowed for early term abortions have got to be all or nothing. Same with the morning after pill. Just another form of contraception and I really can’t see why anyone can have a problem with it except for the diehard catholics who have a problem with contraception anyway.
Catastrophic changes in life circumstances or having been prevented by fraud, threat, or abduction from obtaining an abortion earlier are the only ones that occur to me.
As for Sciolist, [sarcasm style=”dripping”]thank you for that eloquent refutation of the argument that a desire to punish people in general and women in particular for having sex is the root of all anti-choice sentiment[/sarcasm].
Me and THE LORD, we be peeps and we be on the speakin’ terms. And my homie JHVH said to me, when we was mainlineing some of that manna shyte:
1. Again, the LORD spoke to Moses, saying,
2. “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When a man makes a difficult vow, he shall be valued according to your valuation of persons belonging to the LORD.
3. ‘If your valuation is of the male from twenty years even to sixty years old, then your valuation shall be fifty shekels of silver, after the shekel of the sanctuary.on of persons belonging to the LORD.
4. ‘Or if it is a female, then your valuation shall be thirty shekels.
5. ‘If it be from five years even to twenty years old then your valuation for the male shall be twenty shekels and for the female ten shekels.
6. But if they are from a month even up to five years old, then your valuation shall be five shekels of silver for the male, and for the female your valuation shall be three shekels of silver.
7. If they are from sixty years old and upward, if it is a male, then your valuation shall be fifteen shekels, and for the female ten shekels.
8. ‘But if he is poorer than your valuation, then he shall be placed before the priest and the priest shall value him; according to the means of the one who vowed, the priest shall value him.
9. ‘Now if it is an animal of the kind which men can present as an offering to the LORD, any such that one gives to the LORD shall be holy.
See, babies don’t make the list.
A civics exercise? That’s rich. I was under the impression we were talking about a woman’s right to control her own fucking being. I don’t need to touch on the fact that this is an unthinkably difficult choice for some women, nor should I need to point to the enormity of the right on question. My goal is simply to ensure that the right to make that decision is protected. And in arguing for a woman’s right to choose, the emotions involved are (this is becoming the word of the day) irrelevant to the matter being argued, no matter how intense they may be.
Okay, the Ali G knock off in #246 was lame. But I hope you saw the point, a baby, until one month old, was considered worthless (at least in for some duration) in the religious doctrine of the ancient Hebrews. There is also tremendous support in the Pentateuch that a baby is not a person until it is born and draws its first breath; but I’m not going to get into that argument, though I think it’s rock solid.
Other “pro-life” biblical arguments are also weak because they derive from the Old Testament and people don’t know how to interpret the passages correctly. Not because they are stupid, but because they generally unaware of the context in which they were written and project their modern, but completely wrong, understanding of their faith’s origins.
Simply put, most Christians and Jews are fundamentally ignorant that the religion from which Judaism, then Christianity sprung was a polytheistic religion practiced, in one modification or another, by many of the Canaanite tribes in region, of which Israel was one. There were other issues, including God’s wife being written out and otherwise demonized (literally) as well as God’s original son and daughter suffering the same fate.
HOWEVER, one of the features of that predecessor religion was sacrificing the FIRST BORN CHILD (if a son). If the first child was miscarried or a daughter, an animal could be sacrificed instead. Knowing this, we can make make sense of some of the scriptures in the Pentateuch that otherwise don’t make a lot of sense. In this one, we see the relic of that child sacrificing:
Exodus 13:1-2 “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Consecrate to me every firstborn male. The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether [hu]man or animal.'”
And again in Exodus 22:29 “Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits, and of thy liquors: the firstborn of thy sons shalt thou give unto me.”
These aren’t children give to the priesthood for a quick grope, some buggery and then a career in mumbling vague platitudes. These are children to be put to death. Obviously, the Israelites stopped the practice of killing their firstborn son and substituted pure animal sacrifice. You can see that in the story of Abram (who becomes Abraham) and Isaac. But it was a slow process and continued for a very long time as Judaism reformed itself from it’s roots.
Anyway, I could go on for pages and pages and pages. But if anyone wants to pull the “Pro-Life is God’s Word” argument out… Don’t bother. You don’t know your religion. It’s just a moldy old tale cobbled up from old stories that preceded them by thousands of years. It’s got no more authority or morality than my cat’s left foot.
Kseniya,
I think we may have talking past eachother here. I agree that we are on the same side, but while you have been arguing for what makes a better argument in comparison to others, I have simply been arguing that any circumstance that holds internally with the fact of body rights is justified. Which is where “still” came from in my reply to you. You stated that it was a bad argument (in an ethical sense I assume), I said it was consistant with body rights and justified as a choice (without regards to how it may stack up morally against other options). While many of the situations I’ve presented may be repugnant to many people, such feelings do not over ride the right in question.
So, if you agree that a woman has control over body at all times as I believe is your position, then we can move onto a conversation about what the more ethical choices are in handling situations that could involve abortion and perhaps then we will be on the same page.
Catastrophic like getting pregnant? :-)
Hey Brownian:
Bob, I’m not sure if I understand your comments in post #210.
That’s because I completely missed the context of your post.
New Rule: Never let a four-year old pester you, grab your pant leg, and try to drag you to see something stupid from Dora the Explorer when trying to read 200+ postings on a blog…
Should have aborted his whiny ass. Is it too late now?
I have no problem with that. It’s a red herring, anyway. I dare you to find me an instance of any woman suddenly deciding to get an abortion a week before her delivery date for non-medical reasons.
Other than the responsibility to treat you partner as an equal, yes, sex should be without consequences or responsibilities. What’s so horrible about that? As others have pointed out, taking the morning after pillor getting an abortion is taking responsibility.
If I eat dinner and get food poisoning, should I be barred from medical treatment because I knew that was a possible outcome of eating?
I don’t think your conundrum is as clever as you think it is. It can be both.
As others have pointed out, taking the morning after pillor getting an abortion is taking responsibility.
You see, though, that’s not good enough because it’s not the action preferred. Abortion is, by definition, a refusal to deal with consequences than an action that deals with them.
Remember, it keeps coming back to this: women are incubators, mere recepticles.
That’s true, but policy is generally set around the proximate, rather than the ultimate. Else, rather than prosecuting a mother who shoplifted to feed her family, the courts would reward her initiative and kin-oriented mutualism.
Only if you don’t consider bodily integrity to be of value, which seems to never actually be the case. Perhaps you’re the exception though, which might explain the failure to understand the comparisons. Do you perhaps think it is ethical to not allow a person who has to agreed to give blood to back out before they have given the full allotment?
Parasite
2. a. Biol. An organism that lives on, in, or with an organism of another species, obtaining food, shelter, or other benefit; (now) spec. one that obtains nutrients at the expense of the host organism, which it may directly or indirectly harm.
[Do I automatically lose because I quoted the dictionary? LOL]
No, catastrophic like the husband whose income was necessary to be able to support the child dying in a car crash or industrial accident. (I can’t believe you think this is funny, incidentally).
As an addendum to Michael’s reply, please tell me that this isn’t another instantiation of the “men don’t understand emotions” canard, but is instead an instantiation of the marginally less boneheaded “no one can possibly know anything about anything they haven’t directly experienced” canard.
(I mean, seriously, WTF are you trying to say here by – correct me if I’m wrong – complaining about the non-focus on emotional issues in a debate that centers around the legality of abortion? Is this a deliberate attempt to lend credence to insulting and destructive stereotypes about what sort of concepts women can process and how, or are you just very, very confused on the issue at hand?)
(Goddamnit, now I’m sounding like Truth Machine… ;( )
Which dictionary did you use?
MichaelX:
Well… There is that, yes, but I’m coming more from the perspective of framing, and of trying to exclude or refine arguments that are easily refuted by proponents of anti-choice or that carry a whiff of inhumanity.
I’m think with ya now, mister.
moth:
Ehh. Your dare misses the point, if only slightly. The point was that Michael’s view, which completely dismissed the personhood issue (along with all other possible considerations) as “perfectly irrelevant” in favor of the self-determination issue, left the door wide open for that sort of extreme scenario. However, I believe Michael has since clarified that (for my benefit, thank you.)
Obviously I have some more re-thinking to do. There are other points I’d like to address, but it’s late, I’m tired, and I still have work to do before I can call it a night. :-|
No, but I’m not sure why you need a different term to refer to intra-species interactions than inter-species ones for the corresponding action.
Parasitized Ducks:
So if a cowbird lays its eggs in a jay’s nest, that would be parasitism to you, but if a duck does the same thing to another duck, it isn’t?
Ok, if you see the need for a different word, what would you use, then, and why is it better than “intraspecific parasitism”?
Funny topic? Not so much. Smart arsed comment funny? Yeah a little. As far as attempts at humour goes I throw myself on mercy of the court subjectivity. It’s not as if we’re discussing life and death issues here… what?.. oh…
Seriously wanted an idea of what was considered catastrophic though. I can’t imagine (I know, argument from personal incredulity) a woman coping with the loss of a spouse seeking a late term abortion on purely financial grounds. However I can imagine a woman suffering some serious grief issues, due to the loss of a spouse, that may lead to a late term abortion. I reckon the loss of a spouse may incline a woman to keep the child in a majority of cases though.
I heard recently that a women learned she was pregnant on the day she gave birth (it’s a very exceptional case…
It happened to me, OK? I was just past my 20th birthday, poor and without any support structure except for an abusive live-in boyfriend who hurt me if I left the house alone. I was still a child in many ways and didn’t understand what was going on with my body. It was weird anyway. I had monthly bleeding for what we estimated was the first three months. When I skipped two more periods, I went to the free clinic for an examination. A physical exam and a pregnancy test later, I was told I was NOT PREGNANT. Seriously. “Go home, you aren’t pregnant; something else must be wrong.”
Since I was too poor to go to the doctor (minimum wage job and all that taken from me by the wretched scum of a boyfriend), I just waited out the next three months. Then after feeling “funny back pain” and asking a neighbor to drive me to the emergency room, I was (surprise!!) delivered of a small, four-weeks-premature baby, otherwise in good health despite the total lack of prenatal care.
This is not the end of the story. Would I have aborted the baby if I had known? Oh, no. I was religious then and I thought God would help me for virtuously deciding to shoulder my duty as a mother. When I attempted to save my life and my son’s by running to a battered women;s shelter after my drunk boyfriend held a gun to my head for a half hour, my boyfriend’s mom called Child Protective Services on me and hired a lawyer to terminate my parental rights on the grounds that I was not able to take care of the baby (major depression, no money or job, living in a shelter…) So much for God’s mercy and providence, eh.
Typical ghetto story, eh? No. I was a decent, gifted white girl from a Christian middle-class two-parent family. It didn’t stop me from being preyed upon by a psychopath. This, or worse, could happen to any girl.
It doesn’t make it shameful.
Sad indictment of a country. What’s with the US (assuming speedwell is American) when it comes to basic medical care?
Sad story overall speedwell. Best wishes for the future.
If you take nothing else away from that pile of steaming crap I just posted, I hope you take this: A government free clinic doctor did both a urine test and a physical exam on me when I was no less than FOUR months pregnant, and told me I was NOT pregnant. I gave him the benefit of the doubt for many years, but I’m starting to think it wasn’t simple incompetence and couldn’t have been an accident. He knew I was in no position to raise the baby, and even though I had no intention aborting the baby, he didn’t know that. I begin really to think he lied to keep me from having an abortion.
Whether or not it becomes official government policy to deny funded abortions to women in need, how many other religious fanatics posing as gynecologists will lie to their patients?
Sad story overall speedwell. Best wishes for the future.
No worries now, Shane. It was 20 years ago. Long enough for me to feel OK about sharing the story, on the off chance it might help some other poor girl in trouble.
But I’m sure unwanted pregnancies caused by failed contraception are a small percent of unwanted pregnancies.
Why should we have anything but contempt for people who are “sure” that the facts back their position without actually bothering to investigate or establish the facts?
If everyone who didn’t want to get pregnant used contraception, the number of abortions would go way down, not disappear….
Which gender is most likely resistant to the easiest and most common form of contraception? Which gender is most likely to be responsible for sex that leads to unwanted pregnancy? Which gender is most likely to be indifferent to whether pregnancy results from sex? Yeah, if only every man who didn’t want to get pregnant used contraception …
The anti-choice arguments here are, as usual, filled with misogyny, moralism, and ignorance (the claims about contraception and adoption, specifically). Try to keep in mind that the pro-choice position is against the criminalization of abortion — and not even that, since people who are pro-choice almost universally accept Roe v. Wade, which does allow for the criminalization of abortion past the first trimester. All this talk about “responsibility” doesn’t touch the pro-choice position because moral judgments and legal sanctions aren’t the same thing. We might say that one ought (with differing degrees of obligation) to donate blood or bone marrow or a kidney or a piece of liver to someone who would perish without it, but we certainly don’t want to say that they should be legally obligated to do so. And we might, depending on our personal views of the nature of a fetus and the responsibilities that a woman bears to it, want to say that the woman ought to bring the fetus to term, but we should not say that a woman should be legally obligated to do so. To say that is wrong; people who say that deserve our moral condemnation. They shouldn’t be criminally persecuted — after all, they have the legal right to voice their fascistic misogynistic views, but we should be clear that they are bad people for wanting to use state power to enforce their minority moral preferences on the entire population.
criminally persecuted ,
Er, make that “prosecuted”. (I’m all for persecution of those who are anti-choice.)
Hell if I know. I lost a job in September, and couldn’t afford to keep up the COBRA [insurance continuation] payments, so I don’t have any insurance at the moment (all the premiums I’ve paid from all the jobs I’ve held in the past don’t count, and the spousal insurance available through Mr. thalarctos’ contract job was even higher than COBRA). I’ve got a solid lump growing next to my right eye, and a month ago, the student health care doctor gave me an urgent referral to the only dermatology clinic in Seattle that serves the uninsured.
I just now got my *urgent* appointment scheduled–May 8th! Let’s just hope it’s not a melanoma! (seriously, we don’t think it is, but neither my doctor nor I is a dermatologist)
But by the time it grows as much as it’s going to between now and May, and Ophthalmology and Plastics get brought in as well for the procedure because it’s so close to my eye, that uninsured care’s going to cost both me and the taxpayers tons more than it would have if I could just go to the doctor now in a timely fashion. Sorry about that, fellow taxpayers, but it’s certainly not *my* idea to delay seeing a doctor that long.
That’s American policy in a nutshell: adequately funding preventive and basic care for the poor and uninsured is simply not a priority; ending up spending much more to fix problems way after the fact is what we seem to end up doing. /rant
TM, bingo.
Do I automatically lose because I quoted the dictionary?
You do when you highlight a phrase that excepts the case at hand, when the phrase is clearly not essential to the meaning of the term but rather reflects a sort of arbitrary narrowness not uncommon in dictionary definitions. It’s a really low form of intellectual dishonesty that is much like attacking someone’s spelling, when meaning is what is at issue. This sort of dishonest move is, sadly, so common that academics have developed a standard response — substitute the term “parasite*”, which differs from the dictionary definition precisely by omitting the highlighted phrase from the definition — that, after all, is what was meant by the term.
A fetus is of course not a parasite from the evolutionary biological point of view, but the relevant point of view is that of the individual woman whose body is geographically occupied and whose organs and processes are coopted; in the end, the decision as to how to treat her own body should be hers, not ours, regardless of our moral judgments, which we are entitled to express in an attempt to sway the woman, but to deny the woman of autonomy of choice is deeply arrogant and anti-humanistic.
tm, you’re 100% correct of course on the section I’ve labeled [B] above.
I’d just differ with [A] above, though–from an evolutionary immunological point of view, the fetus is a most interesting parasite–how it embeds itself in a genetically different individual without triggering the immune response is an intriguing question:
And of course, untreated Rh-factor mismatch (Rh+ fetus, Rh- mother) causes just those sort of immunological problems, though typically not for the first fetus, but for subsequent ones. Immunologically, the mother-fetus interactions are most interesting from an evolutionary biology point of view, and a lot of those overlap with the biology of rejection.
[1] Markert UR, Fitzgerald JS, Seyfarth L, Heinzelmann J, Varosi F, Voigt S, Schleussner E, Seewald HJ. Lessons from reproductive immunology for other fields of immunology and clinical approaches. Chem Immunol Allergy. 2005;89:169-79.
[2] Damber MG, von Schoultz B, Stigbrand T. The immunological paradox of pregnancy. Acta Obstet Gynecol Scand Suppl. 1977;66:39-47.
What I’m suggesting is that there’s a continuum of responsibility that a prospective mother has to the, ah, the thing growing inside her. I’m not going to pretend that I know how to quantify that responsibility, nor am I comfortable with the notion of legislating it, but I think an acknowledgement of that continuum has a place in this debate. I think it has more of a place than specious arguments about tapeworms and stolen kidneys.
The arguments aren’t made specious just by declaring them as such. The arguments in fact show that various “principled” arguments aren’t. They are inconsistent and thus fallacious; rather than dismissing the counterarguments as “specious”, you have a responsibility to refute them.
In the Bluey link that Michael X gave, Craig recounted his own experience of being hit by a truck, resulting in liver damage that could eventually lead to liver failure, and asked whether the driver who hit him could be forced to donate part of his liver. We can agree that he has a responsibility to, but coercing such actions goes into another realm. And it should be clear that the moral obligation that the truck driver owes to Craig is considerably greater, due to his having done harm to Craig, than the moral obligation of the woman who has done no harm (yet) to the fetus — on the contrary, she was instrumental in its very existence. And the truck driver’s moral obligation is much greater because Craig is a fully formed sapient being who is conscious of his own fate and suffers in that knowledge and whose loss will have major effects on other fully formed sapient beings. But I suggest that it would be horrible to force the truck driver to give up part of his liver, and that would be much less of a sacrifice/risk than forcing a woman to let a fetus come to term. In both cases, these autonomous persons should be subjected to moral suasion, not legal coercion.
Another thought experiment about responsibility and coercion: suppose that we had a machine that allowed a fetus to be attached to a man and thereby survive the full term of gestation. If a woman dies or is otherwise unable to bring the fetus to term or is physically threatened by the fetus, or if she bears less responsibility for conception — say she was raped, or drugged or plied with booze, or thought the man was sterile but he lied, etc. … does the man have the same responsibility to be attached to the machine and bring the fetus to term as you think the woman has to bring it to term? Should he be legally forced to be attached to the machine? Be sure to answer honestly. You can take into account his reduced mobility/greater sacrifice than is normally the case for women, or not. (I happen to know a woman who had two miscarriages due to weak pelvic muscles; she successfully brought her third to term by having her cervix tied and laying flat on her back for months prior to delivery. Should she have suffered criminal penalties if she had stood up? Would she have been irresponsible? Considering what women actually go through to bear children and the actual agony that many if not most go through when deciding to have an abortion, I find the moralizing directed at them to be quite disgusting.)
from an evolutionary immunological point of view, the fetus is a most interesting parasite
A parasite from the POV of the woman, as I said. But my point in using the word “evolutionary” was that the fitness of the woman is measured by her ability to produce viable offspring; from an evolutionary POV, that’s her raison d’etre. Thus from that POV it would be perverse to call the offspring a parasite. It would be at least as apt to call her genotype parasitical — she’s just a vehicle for its propagation, and the mechanisms mentioned in your article are employed to that end.
Well it is bed time for me. So before I go, lets see where we’ve ended up.
#71. Bluey has not been refuted
#90. In my post there I issued a challenge to anyone who contested the argument that a woman’s right to her body trumps all. None of which have been met.
#96. Truth Machine states even more clearly the issue at hand. To which no consistent, principled counter argument has been given.
#209. Tulse linked to an essay where you find yourself connected to a famous violinist. I doubt anyone arguing about heads sewn to bodies even bothered to read it. Though, it concludes to state that certain acts that follow from body rights may end up being morally horrid. A statement I agree with.
#123. Truth Machine states “The best you can do is to educate people and create a social environment where desirable behavior is encouraged and undesirable behavior is discouraged.” Thus, while a woman’s right to her body can lead to extremes, it is still not within anyones right to criminalize her right to chose to do so. As is stated in the Bluey link, your body rights are inalienable. A word that should be looked up in a dictionary more often.
#269 TM, then does me the great favor of encapsulating the entire argument, in its abstract, and in practical terms.
There are many more viable arguments given in this tread as well that I haven’t mentioned, and to do so would be beyond tedious. But, they know who they are, and their rationality is more than appreciated.
So, the score stands settled. Pro-choice: 1. Everything else: 0.
And yeah, Azkyroth? #259
What the fuck was that persons argument? My head damn near exploded when I read it. I argue for your rights tenaciously and rationally, focusing only on that which is essential so as not to be side tracked away from the central issue, and somehow I’ve missed the boat?
Sometimes man, sometimes….
But my point in using the word “evolutionary” was that the fitness of the woman is measured by her ability to produce viable offspring; from an evolutionary POV, that’s her raison d’etre. Thus from that POV it would be perverse to call the offspring a parasite.
Well, not quite. The woman’s fitness is measured by her ability to produce as many viable offspring as possible. Therefore a particular fetus can certainly act as a parasite if, for instance, it places the mother’s life and health at risk, severely lowering her chance of bearing and raising future offspring. It’s been suggested that the high rate of preeclampsia in humans is the result of such a conflict: fetal genes can produce harmful effects on a mother which are nonetheless beneficial to her fetus.
Likewise, in animals with large litters, it may be to the mother’s advantage to bear several well-nourished young. But it may be to each fetus’ advantage to monopolize as much nutriment as possible, at the expense of its siblings. And in animals with multiple paternity, the father often benefits from such behavior, so it attempts to imprint its offspring’s genome accordingly.
Considering the offspring as a parasite may be quite apt in such cases, even in an evolutionary sense.
the father often benefits from such behavior, so it attempts to imprint its offspring’s genome accordingly.
Considering the offspring as a parasite may be quite apt in such cases, even in an evolutionary sense./i>
Ok, so the father’s genes parasitize the mother … women never get a break. (Only partially a joke.)
How about a sign where the cute baby says ” I am mommies paycheck.”
Too long maybe? 18 years too long….
Brownian @173,
The Problem of Evil doesn’t prove god doesn’t exist, it just proves a benevolent god doesn’t exist
See, I know everybody is all, like, “Ooh, courtier’s defence!” and all that when it’s pointed out that an atheist doesn’t understand theology. But, sorry B., you are Just.So.Wrong. (Back to the seminary with you!) The P. of E. does not prove that a benevolent god doesn’t exist… because it can as easily be used to argue that an omnipotent god does not exist!
Thalarctos, truth machine, kseniya et al., in the “foetus as parasite” discussion: this kind of thing is what I love about Pharyngula.
My own view: though I agree with Thalarctos that we shouldn’t let a word’s emotional connotations distract us, I don’t think we can fairly call a foetus a parasite. We might (if we assume that these terms have any meaning at all within a single species) call it a symbiote, but surely the relationship is one of mutualism, not parasitism — in evolutionary terms, in fact, the foetus is the most beneficial symbiote known to nature.
(Which is not to ignore the very real, and fascinating, conflicts between mother and foetus, or perhaps more accurately, between the mother’s genome and the part of the foetal genome contributed by the father. Rather than saying the foetus is a parasite of the mother, it might be closer to the mark to say that the father’s genome is parasitic on the mother’s. But even that stretches the meaning of “parasite” too far, I think.)
There is one instance, though, in which we can without question fairly speak of intraspecific parasitism, and we don’t need ducks as an example. We don’t even have to leave our own species. An adopted child, surely, is a brood parasite; at least, it is if the adoptive parents are fertile. (How’s that, BTW, for a statement whose emotional connotations are distasteful? But in the end I think only the greedily reductionist could be be upset by it. One ought to be able to say that the adoption of a human child is, in biological terms, functionally the same thing as a duck sneaking her egg into another duck’s nest; and at the same time, in human terms, a wonderful thing.)
Thank you Truth Machine, this is definitely a point that was in danger of being missed, especially by the people wittering on about the responsibility we have to a small group of cells based on the circumstances of conception.
Incidentally I am still confused by the argument that this responsibility is greater if conception occured through consensual and (horrors) enjoyable sex.
I’m sorry but once you know you are pregnant surely the point is to deal with the situation as it is, not to ponder about whether the sex you have had entitles you to behave in this or that way. You make the decision that is best for you, by your own lights according to the situation you are in now, not according to someone else’s view of the morality of the ins and outs of a sexual encounter that happened several weeks in the past.
I don’t think we can fairly call a foetus a parasite
I think that’s ridiculous, stupid, and offensive when it follows a discussion in which people have been careful to lay out the various senses in which the term does and does not apply. Here is the dictionary definition that Kseniya provided, minus the “of another species” phrase that of course does not apply:
It can hardly be “unfair” to call something that which it clearly is.
the people wittering on about the responsibility we have to a small group of cells based on the circumstances of conception.
Suppose that we could clone people from turds. Would we then have a responsibility to every turd we produce, to nurture it and bring it in time into full maturity? What if this only applied to big honking turds — would overeaters bear particular responsibility due to their causal contribution? What about cancer? How about if we developed technology that could produce a person from a melanoma, but only if the melanoma is of a sufficient size? Would one have a responsibility to let their melanoma grow — especially if one had foolishly spent too much time in the sun, thus causally contributing to the existence of the melanoma? One can try to avoid the responsibility of making rational, consistent arguments by calling these examples “specious”, but in fact it’s “if you caused it, it is your responsibility to let it grow within you” that is specious hogwash.
Incidentally I am still confused by the argument that this responsibility is greater if conception occured through consensual and (horrors) enjoyable sex.
It’s all about Eve’s sin.
You mean that those of us descended from Lillith instead get a free pass?
Excellent! ;-)
“Adam and Lilith never found peace together; for when he wished to lie with her, she took offence at the recumbent posture he demanded. ‘Why must I lie beneath you?’ she asked. ‘I also was made from dust, and am therefore your equal.'”
Hey Lilly, I’m available. :-)
truth machine @284,
I think that’s ridiculous, stupid, and offensive when it follows a discussion in which people have been careful to lay out the various senses in which the term does and does not apply
Sorry, I hadn’t realised that, in a discussion in which several people have expressed their views, it is ridiculous, stupid and offensive to express one’s own. Your measured and proportionate reaction speaks well of you, though.
BTW, if the harshness of your reaction is in any way because you think my dissatisfaction with the foetus-as-parasite concept is in service of an anti-choice argument: it is not. The views on abortion that you have expressed in this thread pretty much perfectly mirror my own.
But let’s have a closer look at that definition you cite:
OK, you’re right: by this definition, we can call a foetus a parasite. Of course, by this definition all children are parasites, whether they are still in utero or not. My own children are organisms, after all, who live with another organism (me) and obtain food, shelter and other benefits at my expense. They may directly or indirectly harm me. They haven’t yet and I hope they won’t, but the definition you’re pinning your hopes on doesn’t absolutely require harm.
And it’s not just my children but yours as well, if you have any. Indeed, by this definition, every single offspring of huge numbers of different organisms is a parasite. You are free to use any definition you like. But if the definition you are trying to hit me over the head with draws no meaningful distinction between (say) a cat’s kittens and its fleas, then… well, I won’t say you are being ridiculous, stupid, and offensive. I will say that your definition isn’t particularly useful.
At this point you might be protesting that it’s ludicrous to claim the author of the definition thinks that offspring=parasite. He or she probably doesn’t think that. (Most likely, s/he simply didn’t think through the full implications of the words.) But that is what the words s/he wrote mean, and as you correctly stated @273, meaning is what matters. So I’m afraid your dictionary definition is not the show-stopping wonder weapon you think it is.
BTW, why are you and I are having this pissing contest, anyway? Judging by your comments @273 and 276, we think pretty much the same thing.
I hadn’t realised that, in a discussion in which several people have expressed their views, it is ridiculous, stupid and offensive to express one’s own
I didn’t say that it is ridiculous, stupid, or offensive to express your view; my claim was about a specific expression. Are you really so stupid that you can’t grasp the difference, or are you just too intellectually dishonest to bother?
why are you and I are having this pissing contest, anyway?
Because you unfairly tossed an accusation of being “unfair”, and ignored or failed to credit the discussion that immediately preceded; duh. And you continue to do so in your post above, as you ignore the context and purpose of referring to a fetus as a parasite. “Of course, by this definition all children are parasites, whether they are still in utero or not.” Yes, of course, but this hardly makes the observation “not particularly useful” — your failure to consider the use to which it was employed notwithstanding.
BTW, why are you and I are having this pissing contest, anyway? Judging by your comments @273 and 276, we think pretty much the same thing.
I must say that I find this sentiment disgusting. Intellectual exploration is not a team sport, where one gives special dispensation to those who are on their side on some matter. Intellectual honesty demands the same standard for everyone.
Which is why I said that, even if it did happen, I would still be OK with it. Self-determination trumps personhood.
To be specific about the use of the term “parasite”, here are the actual contexts:
Objecting to the term “parasite” fails for the same reasons. While you may rightly point out where the analogy becomes frayed at the edges, it remains useful in that it points out the fact that the fetus is dependent upon you, and is using your body to grow. In any such cases the woman has final say as to whether or not such growth, be it human or otherwise, is to remain.
and
I don’t think the State has the moral right to grant the status of “Person” to the unborn – not until that unborn human has reached the point where it can survive without being a parasite.
and
A parasite is an entity which depends, wholly or in part, for its existence on another entity. Period full stop. A fetus depends wholly on its mother for existence. The biological reality is therefore that the fetus is a parasite, even if we don’t like the emotional connotations of the word, and the argument–while it may be distasteful–is not in the least bit specious.
Whether you agree with these claims or not, the applicability of the term to both kittens and fleas and all the talk about evolutionary considerations are an irrelevant sidebar; the meaning of the word was made clear in context, and it’s that meaning that counts. To complain, as Kseniya did, that the dictionary definition says “an organism of another species” is a silly and dishonest game, since the dictionary cannot dictate what the person who uses a word means by it. As I already said, if you don’t like the term “parasite”, substitute the word “parasite*” — or “frumbledorf”, or any other symbol; the meaning remains the same and the point (valid or not) remains the same.
Ah, I take your point–the problem was that I was reading “point of view” too narrowly.
Depends what you need a definition for. For the pro-forced-pregnancy crowd, it’s an extremely useful reminder that in terms of deleterious effect and biological reality, there is no essentialist difference between the fetus and other parasites–it’s a statistical distribution, rather than discrete/non-overlapping “kinds”.
From an immunological point of view, the interesting question is not why an untreated Rh- mother’s body treats an Rh+ fetus as an invader, but why most other pregnant women’s bodies don’t–what suppresses the immune reaction, in other words, and what other health implications does it have for both participants? So the kitten/flea comparison is apt in that case, because while they are both immunologically invaders (similarity), one normally triggers the defenses, and the other doesn’t–so what causes that difference?
Of course, no one definition is useful for everyone in every case, but I would not venture so far as to declare absolutely that this one is useless without specifying where and why it’s useless.
It does suggest that the status of “parasite” is not really the moral issue in this case, and thus doesn’t tell us much about how to morally reason on this issue — in other words, it therefore is “not particularly useful”. The definition of “parasites” given so far, which is fairly broad, does seem to encompass infants and children, not to mention frail seniors and disabled adults, all cases where we agree that the entities have personhood, and that killing them would be morally wrong (all things being equal). So it is not the case that parasites cannot be persons, or that killing them is always justified. Because of this, I just don’t think that “parasitism” as defined above is going to get one very far in this issue — it doesn’t pick out a useful category of entities.
Right–there is no parasite “kind”.
I disagree–the pro-forced-pregnancy advocates are arguing that women should be forced, against their will (although that’s redundant, given “forced”, I guess) to undergo a process that has medical risks and consequences. It is a positive claim they are making, and it is up to them to justify it, which they mainly gesture at with romantic references to what the fetus will become in some perfect, resource-adequate hypothetical future.
Insisting that they stick to the biological reality of what actually is during pregnancy, instead of moving the goalpost to a more developed stage post-pregnancy in order to justify their positive assertion about what women should be forced to undergo, is a most useful reminder, I think.
I’m a frumbledorf on Pharyngula.
truth machine @289 & 290,
part of the problem seems to be that I used the word “unfair”. You clearly think I meant something by it that I do not. Certainly I do not mean that people advancing the foetus=parasite argument are being unjust or dishonest. I very often say, and hear other people saying, things like “that is [or: is not] a fair characterisation”, and what it means is “that characterisation is correct/I agree with it” and “not correct/I don’t agree with it”, respectively. So substitute “I don’t agree with” for “unfair”, if you find that less offensive. But offense was not my intention.
Now as to the rest of your objection. I try to write clearly and I think I usually succeed. This must be one of those times when I haven’t, though, because it’s hard to see how you could have read my words to mean what you think they mean:
ignored or failed to credit the discussion that immediately preceded; duh
Specifically referencing that discussion, as I did @282 before stating my own view, seems an odd way of ignoring or failing to credit it. Or is there some minimum number of column-inches of other people’s comments I am required to block-quote first?
you ignore the context and purpose of referring to a fetus as a parasite. “Of course, by this definition all children are parasites, whether they are still in utero or not.” Yes, of course, but this hardly makes the observation “not particularly useful” — your failure to consider the use to which it was employed notwithstanding.
I concede that I am simple, but it seems to me that the purpose of referring to a foetus (or anything else) as a “parasite” is to identify it as occupying the particular ecological niche called “parasitism”. (Yes, there are also metaphorical uses of “parasite”: “the capitalists are parasites on the working classes”, etc.; but then the definition you cited is clearly trying to convey the biological sense of the term.) And, sorry, “parasite”, when defined in a way that does not distinguish between an organism’s parasites and its offspring, doesn’t strike me as a very useful term at all for thinking about biological matters.
But maybe you are trying to use “parasite” as a non-biological metaphor. (Indeed, your insistence above that the definition is in fact useful, and the way you keep going on about context and purpose and use, only make sense if this is what you are doing.) That’s not how I’m using it, but you go knock yourself out. I don’t find the metaphor useful myself, and I don’t think you’ll find it an effective tool for advocating women’s reproductive freedom. But you’re free to think otherwise.
Intellectual exploration is not a team sport, where one gives special dispensation to those who are on their side on some matter
Indeed it isn’t. But that’s not my point here. I’d tried to make that point politely, but I see I’ll have to make it plainly instead. From what you have written upthread, my view as to whether a foetus is a parasite is the same as yours. (So is my view on abortion, though that’s not what I was specifically referring to here.) And apparently you concur (“on their side on some matter”). And yet at the same time you find my view ridiculous, stupid, and offensive. You’re clever enough, I’m sure, to draw the inference that your comments suggest.
So I’m still a bit confused as to why you are objecting to what I wrote, and with such vigour. If it was the use of “unfair”, well fair enough; I could have chosen a word less open to misinterpretation. But other than that, as I say, we seem to be in agreement on both the main points you have been discussing. Your argument that my own comments are in some way objectionable is not, I’m sorry, very coherent; in fact, given the lack of serious substantive disagreement between us, it’s pretty bizarre. That I think so is, however, no doubt due to my stupidity and intellectual dishonesty.
Before getting into the definitions of such, I see one sticking point with the parasite comparison. It would seem to cede that the embryo/fetus is indeed a separate entity, which is something I think many taking a pro-choice position would contest.
As to the definitions, I think it is important to fully consider the differences between parasitism, mutualism and commensalism. Normally these three are separated by seeing where the benefits or costs are within the relation. With pregnancy there are certainly costs to the woman and benefits to the potential child, however, as Mrs. Tilton pointed out, there can also be benefits to the woman. So it seems that a judgment must be made as to whether the cost or the benefit to the woman is greater. And that would land us right back to self-determination. Is the woman capable of deciding whether the cost or the benefits are greater in her circumstance?
I’m not going to go into the evolutionary benefits discussion because human reproductive strategy is much more complex than just quantity of spawn and I don’t want to flirt with the naturalistic fallacy.
t.m. @292,
To complain, as Kseniya did, that the dictionary definition says “an organism of another species” is a silly and dishonest game
I don’t know that I’d want to call Kseniya silly or dishonest, but for clarity, that was not my complaint at all. I agree with thalarctos about the ducks and have mentioned one situation in which human children can unmistakably be parasites in the biological sense.
Tulse @294 (and thalarctos responding @295):
It does suggest that the status of “parasite” is not really the moral issue in this case, and thus doesn’t tell us much about how to morally reason on this issue — in other words, it therefore is “not particularly useful”.
But a parasite has no moral implications at all. It might be a bad thing to have one, just as it would be a bad thing to be eaten by a tiger. Unfortunate as those events might be, though (especially, perhaps, in the second case), morality doesn’t enter into the picture.
It’s plainly true that a pregnancy puts strains on a woman’s body and exposes her to risks she would not otherwise face. (And that is to say nothing of what comes after birth.) But I don’t think that’s the same thing as parasitism, and I’m not sure “parasitism” is a useful metaphor for it, either.
More to the point, I’m not sure the metaphor is even necessary. Let’s imagine that a pregnancy meant nothing more than a foetus taking up space in a woman’s body for nine months — it carried no risk, effected only transient and trivial changes to her body and was, really, nothing more than a minor inconvenience, if even that. But why would that change the equation? It’s her body. The decision whether to carry a foetus to term should be hers and hers alone, even if pregnancy were no big deal at all.
It’s her body. The decision whether to carry a foetus to term should be hers and hers alone, even if pregnancy were no big deal at all.
Couldn’t agree more.
The biological reality is that it is indeed a separate entity–if pro-choice people want to argue that it isn’t, that’s a mistake.
There are three separate actors here (assuming a singleton pregnancy), with three sets of competing rights. And you know where Arrow’s paradox gets us with that…
My favorite anti-abortion sign is the one along the highway just north of Milwaukee, talking about how many babies will never pay Social Security. I mean, what the hell?
Yes, absolutely. But if you’re pro-forced-pregnancy, not only do you deny that basic human right, you also have to overlook the very real cost to the woman in order to justify your position.
My point is that in seeking to deny the woman her right to bodily autonomy, the forced-pregnancy advocates are not only anti-human-rights, but anti-biology *in addition*. If you’re going to make the case that you should be permitted to override another human’s right to bodily integrity, I’d say you have to present extraordinarily compelling evidence in support of that position.
By ignoring the biological facts of what pregnancy entails, not only are they failing to provide the extraordinary support their position requires, they are actually moving in the opposite direction–trivializing *not only* the human rights aspect, but the biological and medical realities as well.
Trust me Bob, spending a little time with the kids is worth way more than reading anything I have to say.
Sorry Mrs. T, but nuh-uh. God himself told me that this is how it works. Prove that wrong.
thalarctos,
Yes, absolutely. But if you’re pro-forced-pregnancy, not only do you deny that basic human right, you also have to overlook the very real cost to the woman in order to justify your position.
Sure. To my mind, the primary factor is personal autonomy, and that would be sufficient to decide the issue even if pregnancy were zero-risk and if (after birth) food, clothing, shelter, education, childcare etc. grew on trees free for the plucking. You’re right, though, that there are other factors involved and, even if they are secondary to the question of autonomy, they are very important in their own right nonetheless.
And you’re also right about the importance of highlighting those other factors. Even if we leave autonomy to one side, pregnancy brings risk, and the only person who should decide whether to face that risk or, instead, choose the (smaller) risk associated with abortion is, well, the person who has to face the risk.
It’s simply that I’m not persuaded that classifying a foetus as a parasite is biologically meaningful (or, if it is, whether “parasite” remains useful as a classification). And, though “framing” is not a popular concept round here, I’m also pretty sure “foetus=parasite” would not be helpful rhetorically. If that argument is made, how many seconds do you think it would take before the antichoice noisemakers were broadcasting that the wicked pro-abortionists think the Lord’s precious uterine gifts are mere parasites? That argument is as stupid, and as irrelevant to the basic point, as is the putative cuteness of the babies on their idiotic billboards. Yet they would make that argument loudly, and I fear it would find fertile ground. Your average citizen isn’t going to hear “There are certain ways in which the mother/foetus relationship is, in biological terms, similar to the parasite/host relationship”. They’re going to hear, “Those horrible pro-choice people think your baby is a tapeworm”.
Brownian @304,
God himself told me that this is how it works
I know. I was having a few beers with her the other night and she told me all about how, as a joke, she’d given you a line of BS about problem-of-evil this, lack-of-benevolence that. We had a good laugh about it. Then she smote some unbelievers.
Thanks for the shout-out there, Mrs. T., but I’m satisfied that Mashina Pravdy was addressing the nature of my complaint, not my person. (This time – LOL.)
There have been many excellent points made, and I’d like to respond to a few, but my time and mental resources (such as they are) are required elsewhere, so out of respect for the comments and their authors I’m not even going to try, but I will say this:
While I do agree with most of what’s been posted, I insist, however, that the perception and creeping insinuation that I have at any time or in any way advocated for coersion in any form is simply incorrect.
I was just thinking this morning as I drove by one of these signs that if I had the money, I’d like to get a billboard and put a picture of my smiling kid on it with a big “My Parents are Pro-Choice!”
Seems just as stupid.
Kseniya @307,
I’m satisfied that Mashina Pravdy was addressing the nature of my complaint, not my person.
OK; but surely моторное орудие is better thаn машина правды as a translation for “power tool”?
Sorry if I’m reiterating this, but has anyone else noted the irony of the constant moral advertising in “Red” states?
thalarctos:
That assumes one of the issues under contention, namely, whether a fetus does indeed have rights.
You’re quite right. “Interests” would have been a better word choice on my part.
That’s a better term, but even there I think it is arguable as to whether a fertilized egg has “interests”. We can talk about the prospective interests of the potential person, but once these kind of hypothetical considerations enter into moral reasoning, all sorts of hell breaks loose.
Mrs. Tilton:
Tsk.
I don’t know; it may be that Станок is the better choice. I chose Машина as more comprehensible to the Russki-impaired, though its common colloquial meaning does muddy the waters a bit. (Truth Car? Heh.)
Механизм правды? :-)
Mrs. Tilton:
Tsk.
I don’t know; it may be that Станок is the better choice. I chose Машина as more comprehensible to the Russki-impaired, though its common colloquial meaning does muddy the waters a bit. (Truth Car? Heh.)
Механизм правды? :-)
I insist, however, that the perception and creeping insinuation that I have at any time or in any way advocated for coersion in any form is simply incorrect.
If you haven’t, then you’re in the wrong conversation. The pro-choice position is against coercion. When you write “I do think some of the standard pro-choice arguments are crap”, you are either countering arguments against coercion or are misrepresenting what sort of arguments they are. Are your arguments for responsibility anti-choice? If not, then why do you think that arguments countering your responsibility arguments are pro-choice? What do you mean when you claim that someone has a responsibility? What if society accepts your argument, but someone refuses to accept that responsibility? If there’s no coercion implied, then what does your argument amount to?
It’s simply that I’m not persuaded that classifying a foetus as a parasite is biologically meaningful
Then you are “simply” addressing a strawman — and I will say again that this is STUPID when it was made clear, before and after your previous STUPID comments, that the use of the term was not meant to be “biologically” meaningful, but merely to point out the relationship between two entities, a provider and a dependent.
And, though “framing” is not a popular concept round here, I’m also pretty sure “foetus=parasite” would not be helpful rhetorically.
So it isn’t “simple” after all.
f that argument is made, how many seconds do you think it would take before the antichoice noisemakers were broadcasting that the wicked pro-abortionists think the Lord’s precious uterine gifts are mere parasites?
Can you say “concern trolling”?
Certainly I do not mean that people advancing the foetus=parasite argument are being unjust or dishonest.
Then you’re an idiot.
very often say, and hear other people saying, things like “that is [or: is not] a fair characterisation”, and what it means is “that characterisation is correct/I agree with it” and “not correct/I don’t agree with it”, respectively
And intellectually dishonest.
[…] That I think so is, however, no doubt due to my stupidity and intellectual dishonesty.
Indeed. You are not nearly as intelligent as you seem to think you are, which in itself makes it difficult to get across to you the nature of your errors, and I’m not going to bother expending more effort to do so.
Ok, just a little:
And apparently you concur (“on their side on some matter”). And yet at the same time you find my view ridiculous, stupid, and offensive. You’re clever enough, I’m sure, to draw the inference that your comments suggest.
No, moron, it’s not your view that is ridiculous, stupid, and offensive. It is, as I said, “a specific expression”. Are you really so fucking stupid that you can’t understand the difference between a view, the right to express a view (which is what you previously whined about), an argument made in support of a view, and a specific expression that is part of that argument? Apparently you are.
More to the point, I’m not sure the metaphor is even necessary.
It’s not “to the point” at all, it’s a stupid strawman, because no one ever said that characterizing a fetus as a parasite is necessary in order to defend the pro-choice position. The notion of “parasite” was introduced by Sciolist and Kseniya, arguing (very stupidly) against supposed “parasite arguments” that hadn’t been previously articulated.
It does suggest that the status of “parasite” is not really the moral issue in this case, and thus doesn’t tell us much about how to morally reason on this issue — in other words, it therefore is “not particularly useful”.
I see that you continue to have trouble with pronouns. “it” is a specific definition of the word “parasite”, which is in fact “particularly useful” because it actually applies to the uses of the word in this thread — it tells us what that word meant in those contexts. Whether the notion of parasitism — a quite different “it” — is particularly useful is a different matter, but that notion was introduced as a strawman by people supposedly shooting down pro-choice arguments.
If there were no conflict of interests between the woman and the fetus, there would be no abortion issue. I consider it obvious that the much more complex interests of the woman, including bodily autonomy, outweigh the interests of the fertilized egg–which at that point is pretty much just nutrition/obtaining a blood supply through implantation. But if not for the pro-forced-pregnancy types arguing that the interest of the fetus in continuing to receive nutrition outweighs all the interests of the woman, abortion would not be a contentious issue at all.
@#235
No no, Godwin’s law is fine.
“The rule does not make any statement whether any particular reference or comparison to Hitler or the Nazis might be appropriate, but only asserts that one arising is increasingly probable.” < - from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
These are people who want to take away by force women’s rights to bodily autonomy. Lying is certainly not beneath such people, and voluntarily self-censoring about biological reality isn’t going to stop them from finding something to lie about.
truth machine:
So why not just say that the fetus is “dependent” on the pregnant female, and avoid all the issues around the specific meaning of “parasite” (and if one is going to use a technical term on a biology blog, I would think it important to be precise with such terms). I completely agree that a fetus is “dependent” in important and morally relevant ways, but not that it is a “parasite”, unless that term is construed well beyond its usual interpretation. I think it is far clearer, and avoids connotational baggage, if we simply say “dependent” rather than “parasite”.
thalarctos:
I don’t find this argument at all convincing, since by that logic, PETA is also correct about animal rights, and fundamentalists are also right about the pictorial representation of Mohammed. Just because there is an “issue” according to some people doesn’t make it so, and just because there is conflict does not mean that both sides have legitimate concerns. (For what it is worth, there is currently no abortion law in Canada, and the anti-abortion movement is pretty quiet — does that mean that there is less of a conflict of interest between the woman and the fetus in Canada?).
There are plenty of people who believe that a fetus does not have any interests up to a certain point of development (although they may vary as to what that point is). To say that others disagree is not to say that such disagreement invalidates the argument.
We agree.
Who said that just because there are two sides of an issue, that means both sides are correct? I certainly never said that, so don’t misrepresent my position.
In fact, I said above that I consider it obvious that a clump of cell’s interest in nutrition is *not* equivalent to the complex and multiple interests of a fully-developed human being. Perhaps you need to go back and re-read what I actually said.
thalarctos, perhaps I misunderstood what you meant. I took your subjunctive statement:
as saying that because there obviously is an abortion issue in the political sense, you thought that was evidence that there was in fact a conflict of interests between the woman and the fetus. I apologize if I misunderstood your intention in that phrasing.
t.m.:
That hadn’t been previously articulated here on this thread. The parasite argument/analogy has been batted around for years. What – you think I made it up off the top of my head just to annoy you?
As if I need to go out of my way to do that! ;-)
No worries, Tulse; it’s quite possible that I was too telegraphic in the way I phrased it–it certainly wouldn’t be the first time *that* was true.
Here is what I was trying to say:
1) All living organisms have interests; even viruses can be said to have an interest in reproducing. There is no bright and shining line between organisms that have interests and those that don’t.
2) It does *not*, however, follow, that all organism’s interests are equal. When I am gardening, I don’t deny that the worms and bugs have an interest in going on living, but neither do I let their interest stop me from pulling up plants, turning soil, etc. All other things being equal, I’d rather not interfere with their interests, but if I’m going to garden, that’s not an option. The best anyone can do, pragmatically, is to try to balance competing interests in a rational and sensible way. But all interests are *not* equal right out of the starting gate.
3) In a singleton pregnancy, there are three entities with competing interests. In the best case scenario, everyone gets their way, *whatever that means*: it may be two parents raising a child together, or it may be a different configuration. I’m not in the business of prescribing what other people’s families should look like, so I’m not going to even try to enumerate the possible configurations that it could take. I’ll just specify that if everyone’s interests are met, to the degree that they are able to perceive that they are or are not met, that is the best-case scenario. In the interests of simplicity, I’m just going to limit the interests to “fetus: continue developing”, “woman: satisfaction with parental status [whether yes or no]”, “man: satisfaction with parental status [whether yes or no]”. Clearly, these are much more granular than I am depicting them, but that only makes the options multiply, becoming even harder to deal with, not easier.
4) The minute a conflict between interests enters the scene, you no longer have a best-case scenario, so you have to have a way of resolving the conflicts. Arrow’s impossibility theorem (see the Wiki article; I’d link, but then I’ll be in moderation) states that:
(you can find all this in the Wikipedia article on Arrow’s impossibility theorem; I’ve moved it around a little to condense it, but it’s their text.) What this means is that if there is a conflict of interests, you have to explicitly choose a societal preference order in which to rank the outcomes by acceptability. You cannot refuse to choose a preference order, and still count on the outcome to fairly reflect the societal preference.
5) Since you *must* choose a preference order, it’s only right to specify your criteria openly and transparently. My criteria are that on a human-rights level, the woman’s right to bodily autonomy is absolute. That trumps the man’s interest in whether he wants to become a father or not, because while he has an investment, it does not bring in his bodily autonomy. So my preference criteria privileges the woman’s interest over the man’s in the case of conflict of interest. It also privileges the woman’s bodily autonomy over the fetus’, simply because the fetus does not have bodily autonomy until it’s born. Once the fetus is born, of course, then it has its own right to bodily autonomy.
6) People who claim to privilege the fetus over the woman on the basis of human rights grounds are being disingenuous, because anything they can say about the fetus as a human is even more true of the mother, whose interests they’re willing to throw overboard. Any privileging of the fetus’ interests over the woman’s involves discarding, even if only temporarily, the concept of bodily autonomy, so it contains a fatal self-contradiction. If they want to admit they privilege the fetus over the woman “just because”, I’d respect that position (marginally) more than the destroying-human-rights-in-order-to-save-them incoherency.
7) I’m sympathetic to men who don’t want to become fathers against their will, but I have to go with the woman’s larger medical and human rights investment in the process, in case of irreconcilable conflict. Patriarchalists, of course, will disagree with this stance.
8) Not all pro-forced-pregnancy advocates have thought out every entailment of their position; some are more dishonest than others, whom they manage to dupe. If more people understood mathematics (Arrow’s theorem) and biology, then they would understand that you can’t simultaneously be pro-human-rights and pro-forced-pregnancy, and theywouldn’t be so easily duped by patriarchial and pseudo-human-rights arguments.
9) Special pleading, even by people whose views I share, weaken the public’s already abysmal understanding of mathematics and biology. To tack on “of another species” to the definition of parasite in order to water down the immunological and physical effect of a fetus on the mother, or to deny that, as a living organism, a fetus has an interest in continuing to develop–these may play better in rhetoric, but they promote the continuing non-understanding of the continuum of life, which I regard as a net negative.
To encourage people to think that there are essentialist- and exceptionalist-style categories into which fetuses fall, instead of the fuzzy, ill-defined, statistical distributions among which people have to make decisions and declare what principles are important to them is–in my opinion–a grave strategic error.
I should have added: “or who *do* want to be a father when the woman wants an abortion, “. Otherwise, it stands.
Thalarctos, you may not be addressing me directly, but as the person who bolded the phrase here, I feel the need to respond.
First of all, I didn’t “tack it on” – it’s right there in the dictionary, first definition. Second, my motive for pointing it out had nothing to do with “watering down” the perception of the impact of the physiological effects you describe. It’s first and foremost a framing issue. I hope you understand that.
Anyway, good post. I certainly agree with your point of view.
thalarctos, I think we’re generally on the same page on this issue, and your posting clarifies things a lot. That said, I have to take exception with the first statement:
That claim seems to equivocate on the notion of “interest”, making it so broad that it is useless for moral reasoning. If we are going to determine what is the moral course of action in the case of abortion, surely only those interests that are worthy of moral concern should matter. I don’t see how talk of interests gets us anywhere if it is decoupled from the notion of moral concern, as it surely is in this usage. I for one don’t think that viruses, or plants, or any organism without a brain has “interests” in a morally-relevant sense. Many people would argue the same is true for a fetus (at least a some stages of development). Thus we seem to get back to the basic issue, which is what sort of moral consideration is owed to a fetus.
Hi, Kseniya–
I think there are 3 issues here:
1) First, and most easily to deal with, dictionary definitions can be (and often are) wrong. This one is. I know you didn’t tack that exceptionalist phrase on to that specific definition, but somebody did. And you cited it uncritically, so I have to assume that you agreed with the definition, until it was easily refuted with the example of the ducks and other conspecific (intraspecific) parasitism.
A wrong dictionary definition that does not map to biological reality does not strengthen an argument: if the terms don’t match the actual facts on the ground, it’s only the anti-scientists who deny the facts in order to avoid jettisoning the wrong terminology. I’ve read your comments here long enough to know that anti-science is not your usual modus operandi, so I am fairly confident in assuming that–once the definition was refuted–you dropped your commitment to that definition.
2) So if the dictionary definition is to be dropped for the facts, then what are the facts? Simply put, there is no way to accurately and rigorously describe the functional category of “parasite” which both: A) includes everything that we normally don’t mind thinking of as parasites, and B) excludes fetuses. If one wants to draw a category like that, one has to resort to special pleading (writing ad-hoc exceptions into the definition) in order to adjust the category boundary to keep fetuses out.
There is no bright line delineating fetuses from parasites, and your continued use of the term “analogy” makes me think that you are unclear on this point. Fetuses are certainly not *modal* parasites, and they are not “nothing more than” parasites–they can be welcomed in ways that one would never greet news of a tapeworm, they grow into self-sufficiency eventually (one hopes), and as windy pointed out, evolutionarily it’s ultimately a kin-selected mutualism strategy. But proximately and functionally in ways that can affect the mother’s health, they are not analogous to parasites, they are parasites–one more example of how thinking in discrete “kinds”, as creationists do, is a poor map to reality.
So if you want to say that the fact that the fetus functions as a parasite is a distasteful reality that you prefer to downplay in favor of other facts about the fetus, that’s a perfectly legitimate position to take. Personally, I think the human rights aspect of bodily autonomy is a much more important aspect. You touched on preferences with this paragraph:
I think we agree wholeheartedly that a commitment to biological reality doesn’t mean that we like every detail about that reality. I don’t like killing bugs, worms, and plants every time I garden, but commitment to reality means it doesn’t matter whether I like it or not. So if, like me, you prefer the human rights argument to the parasite argument, there’s no reason not to emphasize it–you just can’t say the anti-preferred argument is specious, is all.
Third and finally, you introduced teleology into the definition of parasite by saying that it “willfully” invaded the host. I trust that the example of the mushrooms refuted that sufficiently.
Thanks :) . Like I said, commitment to biological reality doesn’t mean having to like every bit of it. There’s a lot of reality that I don’t like (cf. survival rate of panda twins in the wild), and reality doesn’t care about my opinion one whit.
This is not true, because the fetus’ interests are irrelevant to the root of nearly every anti-choice argument I have ever encountered, which is a conflict of the interests of women against the desires of people who want to control their bodies and their sex lives. The “innocent unborn” that the anti-choicers are waxing mushy about have, in almost all cases, no value to them except as ammunition and as a now and future chain around the throats of women in general and “immoral” women in particular, as evidenced by their attitude towards providing services for born children in need and various points of their rhetoric that have already been covered.
While being “polite” is generally a good thing, there is absolutely no justification, founded in politeness or anything else, for assuming that people are arguing honestly and in good faith when all evidence screams to the contrary.
Tulse, I agree that we’re pretty much on the same page in terms of outcomes. I also think you correctly identify that my depiction of a continuum of life, of which we’re a part, is so broad that it does make making explicit the principles of moral reasoning a lot of work.
I don’t think, though, your approach solves it. You’ve named two categories, interests that are worthy of moral concern, and interests that are not.
You still have to do the work of assigning interests to those categories. And as we have seen, some people are perfectly willing to assign a fertilized egg to the same category as a woman. So you still have to specify your principles among categories in the same way that I do in distinguishing among organism’s interests.
It’s a question of whether to emphasize similarities or differences. If emphasizing similarities is a priority, then the continuum model works in the service of that goal. To emphasize differences, superimposing categories with inclusion and exclusion criteria (your two categories of interests) is a good approach; you still, however, have to specify the criteria, so it’s just as much work, ultimately. I think it tends to reify exceptionalist thinking, so I tend not to use it with people, but that’s just my opinion. I *have* to use that classification approach with knowledge representation of anatomy in computers, so maybe that’s why I stay away from it more in meatspace.
Yup, we all still have to do that work, whichever classification approach we take.
I do think that category approach gives people arguing in bad faith–by which I emphatically am *not* talking about you, Tulse–an out, that the continuum approach doesn’t, by referring only to the name of a category, rather than clarifying what they mean by those names. It was so much easier for Jerry Falwell’s organization to skate by on the terms “moral” and “majority”, than it would have been to rigorously define them, and reveal that they didn’t fit the criteria.
Point noted, Azkyroth. I’ll modify my unnuanced statement to:
Not as catchy a sound bite, I’m afraid, but I agree with you that it’s a better description of reality than the beta version was.
thalarctos, I don’t necessarily disagree that some sort of “continuum” may be appropriate in this issue. And we can certainly recast the notion of moral concern-worthiness into some sort of continuous weighting, rather than dichotomous categories. Indeed, presumably that is what we do in most instances where human interests clash (e.g., it is more important in moral terms that I have complete freedom, or that everyone stops at stoplights?)
My only point, which is more of a quibble, is that talk of interests doesn’t really solve anything, because you still have to assign a value to those interests, and it is in such assignment that all the heavy lifting in ethical terms is done, and not in identifying interests themselves.
Again, which dictionary?
Actually, never mind that. Just go to the entry for “theory” and see how it describes the scientific sense of the term. Then tell me with a straight face that you think the dictionary is a reliable source of information on the meaning of scientific terminology.
What it was The Unabridged Stupid Kseniya’s Intellectually Dishonest Desktop Dictionary.
I mean, like, “Duh?”
So why not just say that the fetus is “dependent” on the pregnant female, and avoid all the issues around the specific meaning of “parasite”
Why not fucking read what I wrote:
The word “parasite” was introduced here by those who were shooting down the argument, so complain to them. On top of that, Kseniya, who used the term in the first place, then offered a dictionary definition with a highlighted phrase that ruled out the very usage she herself made of it. She was engaged in a very dishonest enterprise.
Really, all of you are being very foolish. It doesn’t matter whether that phrase in the dictionary definition is “right” or “wrong”, it is irrelevant because it doesn’t apply to the word as it is actually being used here. Appealing to the dictionary puts the cart before the horse. For writers dictionaries are prescriptive but for readers they are descriptive, and the point of using them is to find out what some word means; you don’t need them when you already know what the word means. In this discussion, it’s a given that the fetus is of the same species as the mother, so Kseniya highlighting the “of another species” phrase was, quite literally, ridiculous.
Second, my motive for pointing it out had nothing to do with “watering down” the perception of the impact of the physiological effects you describe. It’s first and foremost a framing issue. I hope you understand that.
Oh, I do understand … that you are prevaricating. Your motive was to counter thalactos’s post #239 (through an application of linguistic fascism). Sorry, but you can’t counter an argument by changing the meaning of terms midstream.
In a singleton pregnancy, there are three entities with competing interests. In the best case scenario, everyone gets their way, *whatever that means*: it may be two parents raising a child together, or it may be a different configuration.
You’re missing a lot here. Roe v. Wade, which I quoted in #107, refers to “the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother” and “the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life”. From a legal standpoint, the parents and the state have interests; no one and nothing else (including the fetus) does. Beyond that, as a matter actual interest, there are the interests of the church in aligning public policy with doctrine (and, in its view, with God’s wishes), the interests of women (and their families) who aren’t pregnant but may be some day, the interests of people concerned about friends who are pregnant and their futures (including their psychological state if they have an abortion), the interests of people who are morally disturbed by abortion, etc. etc. As for the fetus, it’s not at all clear to me that it is the sort of thing to have interests — that requires a level of sapience that I don’t think fetuses possess. But perhaps one can argue that anything that might develop such sapience should be treated as if it had the interests of its future self (e.g., someone in a coma or cryogenically frozen should be granted the same interests we expect them to have when awakened), but that’s rather tricky stuff. In the case of abortion, I think it’s a lot simpler to avoid the issue of interests by granting that no one has the right to commandeer another’s bodily organs and processes against their wishes, regardless of the need.
it is more important in moral terms that I have complete freedom, or that everyone stops at stoplights?
That’s quite some mixing of apples and oranges. The requirement that everyone stop at stoplights is a legal one, not a moral one. The moral judgment is against endangering others, not running stoplights (unless you’re the sort of authoritarian who considers disobeying the law in and of itself to be immoral), which is why it isn’t generally considered immoral to proceed through a red light if you sincerely think it’s safe or necessary. E.g., we don’t need separate moral rules for police and ambulance drivers, nor for dealing with broken stoplights or deserted roads at 4 am.
As for “complete freedom”, there is no right to such a thing, and it makes no sense to talk about weighing such thing against one’s obligations; one simply has obligations, which must be weighed when they compete. What freedom you are entitled to is whatever freedom you have once everyone has discharged their obligations; never is that freedom “complete”.
That’s quite possible; I’m still thinking these things through, and there may well be gaps I need to address.
Clearly, I have a terminology problem–“interests” has a legal meaning which obfuscates the meaning I’m trying to express. I’m not sure what would be a better word–I need to give this some more thought, but not tonight: it’s bedtime.
But it’s not just a matter of legal meaning. The “state”, representing society, really does have an interest. It’s the same when one person insults another and the latter smacks the former with a baseball bat; it isn’t just those two parties who have an interest in the exchange and what sort of response ensues. Or, if not, you need to explain why it is only the parties immediately physically affected who have an interest, and no one who is more indirectly affected. And you went beyond direct physical effect by including the man — the biological parent, I presume. Why does he have an interest? If it’s a matter of biological relationship — which seems an arbitrary basis for interest — then why not the grandparents as well? I think the word “interest” is the right word, but you have to take it seriously.
P.S. I don’t see how Arrow’s paradox enters in here; that applies to four criteria that can’t all be satisfied by any voting system for selecting from 3 or more choices, but we aren’t voting and we aren’t committed to satisfying Arrow’s criteria.
But it is unclear where such interest, at least as delineated in Roe v. Wade, comes from, and it seems to rely in an implicit sense on the interests of the fetus, or at least in its “potentiality”. Compare this to the Canadian law, or more accurately the lack of Canadian law, regarding abortion — here the state has decided that it has no interest in this matter, that is it purely a medical decision between a woman and her doctor.
Without granting interests to the fetus, it is hard to see how the state could have interests in a woman’s pregnancy (except perhaps in the extremely exceptional and science-fictiony example of the literal survival of the human race). Short of such contrived examples, I’m not clear how the state could have an interest unless it considers the fetus to have them. By limiting the state interest to the period after “viability”, it seems that Roe v. Wade is indeed suggestion that its interests arise because of the interests of the fetus.
Still thinking about your other questions, and I may have time to get to them tonight, or it may be the weekend before I get a chance, but I can answer this one pretty quickly.
Consider “voting” as a proxy for “resolving a conflict”–a “vote” is a selection between two conflicting preferences. The term “interests”, as we’re discussing, is problematic, so for the moment, let’s go with the placeholder “preference”. That, too, is problematic, because it implies intentionality that the fetus is incapable of, and it trivializes the biological, medical, financial, and social impact of committing to pregnancy, but I need a variable for the moment to lay out my thinking, so I’ll say “preference” and stipulate that it is quite unsatisfactory.
By “preference”, for the fetus I mean uninterrupted continuation of the biological program of development that it is in the process of. For the woman, I mean whether or not she wants to continue the pregnancy. For the man, I mean the same thing as for the woman. So if the woman wants to continue the pregnancy, and then give it to the man to raise, and the man wants the same thing, there is no preference conflict. If the woman wants to keep the child, and the man wants her to abort so he doesn’t have to pay child support, there is a preference conflict. If the woman wants to abort, and the man wants her to keep it to raise it, or so he can raise it, or to give it up for adoption, again, there is a preference conflict.
So resolution of the various permutations those conflicts can take is what I’m using “vote” as a proxy for. And maybe comparing the fetus’ ontogenic program to complex decisions by fully-fledged human beings is comparing apples and oranges–that is a possibility. If we don’t have at least two members and at least three options, not an issue. On the other hand, you’ve identified other players with other interests, which on the one hand makes the question more complex, but on the other hand, none of which is as compelling as the mother’s preference. So I will have to give some more thought as to whether Arrow applies or not.
Let’s provisionally assume Arrow’s theorem is not ruled out for the reason above. Then we still have your objection that “we aren’t committed to satisfying Arrow’s criteria”. I would argue that we are committed to the following principles (copied verbatim from Wikipedia’s entry on Arrow’s impossibility theorem; link omitted to escape moderation purgatory):
The fact that we cannot systematically create a way in which all actors can have their preferences prioritized means that we have to explicitly select and elucidate the criteria upon which we base the preference. So maybe all this effort ultimately gets us no further than the statement that it’s between the woman and her doctor, period. It certainly ends up at the same place, but stepping through it in this much detail helps me to organize how I think about it. From the terminology issue and others, though, you can see it remains a work in progress.
t.m.:
I used it analogically as part of my objection to the literal use of the term. Thalarctos (and others, yourself included) have since disabused me of the notion that making such a distinction is useful. On that basis, however, I object to your accusation of dishonesty. I admit that I may not have been sufficiently clear on that in the first place.
(I see that you’re ignoring #327. Why?)
Oh? But it’s not – or perhaps I should say was not – a given that an embryo of the same species as the mother can be rightly considered to be a parasite. That, not the ridiculously obvious “given” that you cite, was the subject of the question of the moment.
t.m.,
I really must apologise to you. See, I had mistakenly thought you were somebody to be taken seriously. Your responses here have shown me how foolish I was. It was my own fault altogether. I assure you, it won’t happen again.
Two final points, though:
@316:
Can you say “concern trolling”?
In this case, no, asswipe. My sole concern in this matter is a woman’s unfettered and unabridged freedom to choose. I might be concerned that people like you could imperil that freedom, but realistically, I think you will have little enough effect on the world from your damp basement.
@340:
Your motive was to counter thalactos’s post #239 (through an application of linguistic fascism).
“Linguistic fascism”? That is pretty good. I’m only sorry that the image of you curled up with Jonah Goldberg, your tongues comforting each other’s sores, is going to stay with me for ever.
Good luck, now!