-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Judith Jarvis Thomson, professor emeritus at MIT, provides some interesting thought experiments in her article entitled In Defense of Abortion. Thomson acknowledges the problem of determining the particular moment during gestation when a fetus becomes a human being, so she starts by granting that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception. From there, the argument usually goes that, since every person has a right to life, a fetus has a right to life. The fetus’s right to life supersedes the mother’s right to decide what happens in and to her body.
Thomson asks you to consider that you’ve awoken to find you’re in a hospital bed with an unconscious violinist of supreme repute. The violinist is suffering from a fatal kidney disease and the Society of Music Lovers has determined that you are the only blood match that can save him. Members of the Society kidnapped you last night and have surgically integrated the violinist’s renal and circulatory systems with yours. Your kidneys are now removing the toxins from the violinist’s blood, keeping him alive. To remove the connection between you and the violinist would mean certain death for the latter. The doctors assure you that after nine months the violinist will have recovered from his disease and the two of you can be disconnected. Should you be legally obligated to save the violinist’s life? Are you morally obligated?
While you were kidnapped and didn’t volunteer for the operation, a victim of rape, legitimate, also didn’t volunteer for her pregnancy.
Thomson also notes the problematic nature of what it means to have a right to life. Thomson writes that “in some views having a right to life include having a right to be given at least the bare minimum one needs for continued life.” Under this view if one is dying from a sickness that only the cool touch of Henry Fonda’s hand can cure, your right to life can not force Fonda to touch your fevered brow. In the violinist experiment, the violinist has no right to the use on your kidneys unless you give him that right.
One might argue that the violinist is a stranger while the fetus is an offspring containing half the DNA of the mother. If the violinist were a brother or sister, would the brother or sister’s right to life impose an obligation against the rights of the mother? While it would be an act of kindness for a person to provide life-giving assistance to a brother or sister, should there be a legal obligation that compels that kindness against a person’s desires? Or is each person’s body secure against another’s intrusion.
The right to life could be viewed as the right not to be killed by anybody. Under this view, the violinist has the right not to be unplugged from you. However, the violinist does not have the right to compel you to allow him the use of your kidneys. You may allow the use of your kidneys out of kindness but it is not something you should be compelled to do.
Thomson considers the case of voluntary intercourse that leads to a pregnancy and the partial responsibility of the fetus inside the mother. It could be argued that the fetus is dependent on the mother and this responsibility gives the fetus rights against the mother, rights not possessed by an ailing violinist. However, this argument would not apply to those pregnancies that occurred as a result of rape.
Thomson uses the concept of people-seeds to make another point. People-seeds float around the air until one makes it into your home where it can take root in your carpeting or upholstery. You don’t want children so you place a fine mesh over your open windows to keep the people-seeds out. However, sometimes screens have defects and a people-seed manages to find its way into your home and takes root in your living room. Does the developing people-plant have the right to the use of your home? Thomson says no. Likewise, if a women makes an effort to prevent conception, even knowing that contraception is not foolproof, Thomson argues that her responsibility doesn’t extend to allowing the fetus to have the right to use her body.
H/T: Massimo Pigliucci.
On this day in 1920, women finally recieved the right to vote in America. Women still make 77 cents to each dollar men make for the same jobs.
Still a ways to go for true equality.
Durham Girl,
Life does not begin at conception – it began 3.8 billion years ago (600 million for animals) & has been an unbroken chain ever since. A much better question might be “when does an individual have the ability to live & grow on food/water/air it takes in itself?”.
Of course, the _real_ question is why does (mostly) the Republican party want to prevent birth control/biological education (AKA ‘sex’ education) & insist on treating women as second class citizens. The ‘pro life’, anti abortion debacle is not about abortion, but about the control/subjugation of women.
“Those who can make us believe absurdities can make us commit atrocities”
The absurdity is that a few cells – which have the _potential_ to grow into a baby – are considered already a baby. The atrocity is that women have few rights – and even less, once they become pregnant.
enjoy
bobby
and it serves a dual purpose, no pregnancies and we all get to have empathy for gay people. It is a win win proposition.
Liberals and libertarians would embrace it but conservatives would probably embrace abstinence but that works too.
no pregnancies, plenty of sex all around. Everyone is happy.
CURIOUS:
I think we should just all have same sex sex until we get married. that way no one gets pregnant. The Saudis do that and it seems to work for them.
You know what would absolutely change any discussion regarding abortion…..if there was a 50-50 chance that the man may get pregnant and there was no traditional view that women are the ones that must raise those babies. A woman would be just as free to walk away from her pregnant partner as he is from her.
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
A St. Louis Post-Dispatch article details how an assistant University of Missouri medical professor appears to be the source for GOP Senate Candidate Todd Akin’s grotesque statements about rape victims stopping impregnation due to trauma:
In supporting his claim about trauma and ovulation, Mecklenburg cited experiments conducted in Nazi death camps.
The Nazis tested this hypothesis “by selecting women who were about to ovulate and sending them to the gas chambers, only to bring them back after their realistic mock-killing, to see what the effect this had on their ovulatory patterns. An extremely high percentage of these women did not ovulate.”
Finally, Mecklenburg said it was likely that the rapists — because of “frequent masturbation” — were unlikely to be fertile themselves.
It’s easy to dismiss, as Romney is trying to do, Akin’s macabre biological theory, but as Maureen Dowd opines in The New York Times,
Other Republicans are trying to cover up their true identity to get elected. Even as party leaders attempted to lock the crazy uncle in the attic in Missouri, they were doing their own crazy thing down in Tampa, Fla., by reiterating language in their platform calling for a no-exceptions Constitutional amendment outlawing abortion, even in cases of rape, incest and threat to the life of the mother.
Paul Ryan, who teamed up with Akin in the House to sponsor harsh anti-abortion bills, may look young and hip and new generation, with his iPod full of heavy metal jams and his cute kids. But he’s just a fresh face on a Taliban creed — the evermore antediluvian, anti-women, anti-immigrant, anti-gay conservative core. Amiable in khakis and polo shirts, Ryan is the perfect modern leader to rally medieval Republicans who believe that Adam and Eve cavorted with dinosaurs.
In short, Akin may have a Dr. Mengele experiment in his brain, but he speaks for the Republican Party
Platform as the Boston Globe pointed out yesterday:
Even as the Republican establishment continued to call for Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri to drop out of his Senate race because of his comments on rape and abortion, Republicans approved platform language Tuesday calling for a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion with no explicit exceptions for cases of rape or incest.
It would help if one side was not fighting to make all the ways to avoid abortion harder and harder to get. When a pharmacist can deny a woman the morning after pill in rural Utah, that creates a higher probability that women who need this birth control method will end up resorting to surgical abortion.
We need to make it easier to obtain birth control (on this Obama has been very good) and remove all the barriers to obtaining the morning after pill. We should make it possible for women to use RU-486 as an alternative to surgical abortion.
Medical (non-surgical) abortion offers an alternative to surgery for women in the early weeks of pregnancy. The most well known method of medical abortion uses mifepristone in combination with another drug, misoprostol, to end a pregnancy up to nine weeks. Mifepristone is also known as RU486 or the ‘abortion pill’.
Medical abortion with RU-480 is a low-risk, non-invasive way to terminate a pregnancy. The success rate is up to 98 per cent, which is only slightly lower than that of surgical abortion. this method can be used up to 9 weeks to end an unintended pregnancy.
Having sex education based on reproductive science in our high schools is another way to reduce the number of abortions each year. The whole ‘abstinence only’ sex education program needs to go in the trash.
Malisha & BigFatMike:
Thank you for the comments. I think threre also needs to come a time where the politics of the issue step aside for a while until there is another advancement in scientific understanding/techniques that changes the dynamics of the issue.
We have a 16 trillion dollar deficit that if left to grow will wreck our country eventually. We have medicare costs that could eventually take 60+% of our non -interest payments on the federal level. These and other issues are more important in my view and this focus on the abortion issue is too much a distraction, especially in that it is used as a litmus test for many people to judge political candidates or ideals before any other issue is tried. The news media certainly fans the flames of the issue.
We would be better served not allowing this occupy our the majority of our attention when other issues are more pressing.
Ross Douthat highlights Thomson’s article:
The Democrats’ Abortion Moment
There is, however, one case where Thomson’s famous thought experiment has a real and gripping power: pregnancies that result from rape. Then the woman’s body has in a sense been kidnapped by her assailant, and the life inside her is the consequence of a violation rather than a choice.
Douthat goes on to chide Democrats for being on the far-left of the abortion issue while his own Republican Party’s platform outlaws abortion without a rape or incest exception.
@Darren Smith
Thanks you for your comments. It is going to take me a minute to work through your remarks.
But to start I think you saying, and I agree, that the right to life and right to choose positions are essentially irreconcilable. To me that does not imply that these to groups should be hostile – indeed I hope they will have mutual respect. But, I just don’t see how to compromise these two positions. Perhaps the closest to a compromise that I can see is, as has been mentioned here, for each to make his or her own decisions and leave it to others to make their decision. I doubt that will satisfy the right to lifers.
I too find the issue of fetal pain troubling. I do not have any medical or scientific evidence, but I have to question whether there is any meaningful awareness or consciousness prior to birth. If it were possible to demonstrate awareness prior to birth, perhaps by brainwave analysis, I think that fact might change the debate considerably – at least in my mind.
But that still leaves what I consider the central issue of the debate: privacy and a woman’s right to choose. I think I will try to give that a little more thought.
BFM
There are electiconic waves similar to brain waves that are measurable within two weeks of fertilization.
@Joseph
Right, and that is intriguing. But I doubt that anyone is claiming that an embryo, or perhaps blastocyst, has awareness at two weeks.
To me it seems there are a bunch of scientific questions – and I will admit there are probably scientific answers that I am not aware of.
But at a minimum one would have to ask:
what do the waves, variation in electro chemical activity tell us about the development of basic brain structures.
what do waves and brain development indicate about awareness.
My guess is that those with a background in biology, chemistry, biochemistry and other fields can think of many more relevant questions. This is serious stuff and I don’t pretend to know the relevant questions, let alone the answers.
But having admitted near ignorance in this field, I have to admit that real evidence in this area might be decisive for people like me.
Mister Quack To U 1, August 26, 2012 at 10:03 am
… The dialogue here today does not address the fact that humans are nothing but a herd and think they are something special.
==============================================
That is because it is political dialogue, not scientific dialogue.
Scientifically, a virus is every bit as important as the egg and the sperm, as I pointed out in my scientific comment up-thread.
Secondly, scientifically if the zygote is a person, then every animal that has eggs and sperm are the same … a “life” begins at fertilization of the egg.
But that is not a universal event, because some species are entirely female, not having any males.
Thus, even the scientific premises are incomplete to serve as a solid foundation for the debate or discussion (On The New Meaning of “Human” – 2).
If we don’t know about 98% of our makeup (microbes) how are we going to aptly describe when we begin, especially when the 98% does not begin to “join us” until we enter the birth canal and then exit it?
There is a 17 year old kid up the block with a 16 year old girlfriend and they have a one year old baby and there aint no rubber machine in the entire county and neigther one of these idjits would know what a rubber was if you put one on the big toe and informed them of the stoppage of squirting.
Humans are no more intelligent than a herd of camels in N. Africa. The dialogue here today does not address the fact that humans are nothing but a herd and think they are something special.
Darren, obviously the “you” in my post did not mean YOU. I really appreciate both your comments and you and the last comment you put up, which I used for my riff, was spectacular.
Darren, the “an external gestation source under the in loco parentis care of the state” is exactly my point. Stop all wars, stop spending money on all unnecessary things, tax all the rich up to 75% immediately, and get to work creating an external gestation source under the loco parentis care of the state. Also, remember, anybody who gets malgestated will have the ability to sue the state for malgestation, and that means FOREVER and even their estate can sue, because of the tort liability.
Failing that, just admit that women are essential to your culture, give them the freedom they need to live comfortable enough lives so that they don’t prefer DEATH to continuing to undergo the slow, tortuous slavery you’re designing day after day after day in your air-conditioned offices (in which many of them are well dressed harem queens) and GET REAL.
… and the issue is as intractable to the person striving for privacy rights of the mother, as it is intractable for the Pro-life person.
Unless we can find a way to transfer the fetus to an external gestation source under the in loco parentis care of the state, neither side will be more or less equally pleased with the status quo of the issue.
BigFatMike:
I’ll take that challenge.
I will put forth some facts. Some are disputed but I will try to be as objective as I can. Anyone reading this is free to make up their own mind. Your mileage may vary, don’t try this at home.
1) Both the sperm and the egg are living tissue. They have functions but not what we regard as intelligence.
2) Generally, upon fertilization, the chromosomes from the father and those of the mother merge. After several rounds of cellular division, the individual DNA sequence of the resulting fetus is formed. At this point, except in the case of monozygotic twins, the fetus will have a DNA sequence unique to that person. No form of intelligence is available to the zygot.
3) At this early stage of development, occasionally the womb may spontaneously abort the zygote with little effect to the mother.
4) Other cells in the human body have a form of reproduction that is different from this but still divide or create other cellular organisms. The death and life of these cells is necessary for the person but the death of one of these individual cells is of no relevance in itself.
5) If allowed to continue through normal gestation, unless an error is made during development the zygote will become a baby eventually
6) A woman who miscarries is not legally responsible for the death of the fetus.
7) The Supreme Court ruled the state does not have a compelling interest in achieving jurisdiction over non-viable fetuses, citing privacy and due process benefits of the 14th Amendment are applicable to the mother. Effectively this means the mother may choose to terminate the pregnancy and has a legal right do so without interference from the state.
8) Individuals who believe no abortions should occur are entitled to their views, but they have no legal standing to prevent a mother from aborting a non-viable fetus nor can they cause the gov’t to made such objection.
9) The 9th Amendment to the US Constitution reads “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” One could interpret this to believe any attempt to make all abortions illegal by means of another constitutional amendment could run into a challenge as the right to the privacy afforded by Roe v. Wade’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment which is available to the people. An anti-abortion amendment might be interpreted as denying a right afforded to the people by this amendment.
10) Attempts to fully restrict all abortions would be interpreted by the SCOTUS as unconstitutional.
11) Due to the first 10 sections above, the law and constitution are such that a woman has a right in the US to have an abortion of a non-viable fetus. While some disagree with this right, again being offended or disagreeing with a law or judicial precedent is not sufficient to ignore it or prevent others from having its benefit.
12) When it comes to the issue of fetal viability, that is, once the fetus is removed from the womb it may survive, including surviving with the aid of artificial means such as life support. Many states have laws that if the fetus is removed from womb, either by very late term abortion, spontaneous abortion, injury or death of the mother, medical facilities are required to attempt to preserve the life to some degree. Parents do have the right to remove life support of a child that might not survive without it. This is generally a separate issue that addresses neo-nates in general.
13) The fetal viability issue generally is regarded as becoming increasingly subject to debate on the abortion issue. Personhood in this stage becomes more debatable as well.
14) In this state of personhood one can qualify this degree by whether or not the fetus has independent thought, feels pain, or has standing legally to be born. One rather strong argument (this is my opinion) can be made for the ethics/legality of aborting a fetus is whether the fetus suffers pain from the procedure. From my reading on the subject there is debate in the medical community on whether the brain and neuro system of the fetus is ready to perceive cognitively, emotionally or by other means the sensation of pain is between 20 weeks and 30 weeks depending on the study. Some speculate the brain is anesthetized chemically during this stage and does not feel pain and that there is the possibility that the chemicals causing these to oxidize at birth when the baby begins breathing.
Now, this belief of the inability to experience pain being cause to engage in what otherwise would be a horrible procedure is certainly not without issues that history has shown us to be a factor, as many know of Descartes’ use of Vivisection on live animals where he and his contemporaries mistakenly believed animals do not feel pain.
We may never truly know if a fetus is incapable of experiencing pain at every particular day of gestation.
15) Most states define laws criminalizing malicious acts causing death or injury to an unborn viable fetus, and/or the mother. Generally this is activated by assaulting the mother. Some have argued a double standard. On the surface this might be true but upon deeper reflection It is essentially different.
The state can argue a jurisdiction in preventing wanton assaults on pregnant women because it can be readily assumed that assaulting any woman infringes on her right to carry the baby by default. It is analogous to the police catching a burglar breaking into a residence of someone outside the country. The police may arrest the individual because it is inferred at the time that no homeowner would have consented to an unknown person breaking into their home.
16) If the viable fetus is deemed to have a right to be born, can it be articulated the mother is Required to carry the fetus to birth? I believe (my opinion) the state cannot force a mother to carry a fetus to birth. Here are my arguments:
When talking about children, that is ones already born and under 18 years of age who are not emancipated by the courts or by marriage, parents have a statutory duty to provide the obvious basic necessities of life and education. While this conveys the requirement to care for the child, it is only applicable to children who are wards of the parent. In every state, the parent(s) have the ability to place a child up for adoption or foster care and in most in the case of a new born, deliver the child to a facility and relinquish this responsibility. Thus it can be established there is a historical and legal precedent in our culture for this, importantly for this discussion, it establishes there is NO requirement of a parent to be forced to care for a minor child up to the age of majority. I believe this applies to a viable fetus as well since there is no age standard for which a child might be relinquished by the parent.
Moreover, when coupled with the earlier argument that many states require a fetus that has been aborted for whatever means and survives, the facility is required to provide life preserving means if possible. Since the state has already granted women or parents both to be able relinquish a newly born child by delivering the baby to a facility designated to receive the child, which hospitals are by definition, a woman can assign the child to the state after such a late term abortion of a viable fetus.
I believe that when these elements are brought together, that is the ability to assign custody of a child to the state and its complement the state having no authority to force a parent to keep a child, the prohibition of a late term abortion is not legally valid.
I will state for the record that while I am not what is commonly referred to as Pro-Life in my views, I believe that a fetus is a living organism that will at some point evolve into what we call a natural person. However, my opinions do not matter to others as I also believe the constitution and legal framework of our country has afforded women certain rights to cause the death of this fetus/zygote/person and that is what it is. I agree with this interpretation on privacy issues.
The SCOTUS is not infallible, the most obvious example is the Dredd Scott and Plessy v. Fergusson cases, it could be that Roe is overturned maybe in the future commensurate with a different moral makeup of the country. Nevertheless it is the law.
But there are pragmatic issues that influence the abortion issue’s de facto tolerance or non-acceptance: Women have occasionally unplanned pregnancies; parents are at times better off waiting for later to have children; women are sometimes raped; fetuses are fetus regardless of who or why they were conceived; causing death is relative as to whether it is murder, survival, honorable, justifiable, or evil; less developed organisms are viewed as less important by higher organisms; and the voiceless are often brushed aside by those having power or control; cells are cells.
This issue is one of those ambiguous moral dilemmas. If a person believes it is more ethical to allow the mother her privacy and to let her decide, those are the persons who can walk away from the issue. But, if a person morally believes a pregnancy from conception is a true natural person at all stages, this moral conviction is such that persons of this belief logically would be morally bound to defend this “person’s” right to life with the same as any other born and living person, less they not be true to their convictions. So would it be fair to this person, that is the latter, to make them reject their belief that their unborn child is a person with rights? Would it be fair to demand everyone else to believe that it is morally permissible to kill their fellow neighbor? That is what is essentially asked of a pro-life person who is expected to change their true beliefs.
I believe it is clear that this issue will be in the foreseeable future remain at an impasse for both sides of the argument. The “Pro-Choice” person can declare the issue settled by the courts and walk away. But can the Pro-Life person morally have such luxury? No more than the official from Amnesty International can abandon persecuted peoples. That is, if they truly believe what they proffer.
While the Pro-Life supporters might not have the legal standing to contest pro-choice issues, it cannot be assumed they will give up trying.
Darren,
While I may not come to the same conclusions at several junctures in your explanation, I respect the way in which you entered into the dialogue, the thoughtfulness reflected in your thorough yet concise explanation, and the skill with which you presented your understanding of the issue. Thank you
In Louisiana, the eligibility cutoff for a working parent is 25 percent of federal poverty, or $4,633 for a family of three. In Nevada, it’s 87 percent of the federal poverty level, or $16,121 for a family of three.
@David Blauw
Thanks for the clarification and information.
I was really worried they might be getting too comfortable in the hammock of welfare.
It is a relief to know that they won’t be quitting their jobs to live in the luxury of TANF and food stamps – assuming they have jobs.
Now that we have solved the problem of government handouts, all we have left to do is deal with confiscatory tax rates.
We know that lowering tax rates on the job producing class increases economic activity which increases tax revenues thereby paying for the reduced tax rates.
So why don’t we reduce tax rates to zero which would drive tax revenues toward infinity and pay off the deficit in a few short years?
This is compelling stuff. Does it get any better? I think I am getting overheated.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/14/medicaid-expansion-gop-governors_n_1775973.html
This is a huff post article, much better than my hazedness.
BFM and LJ Caroll
I believe it is 25% of the poverty level, for a family of 3, which is about 4700 dollars. Close enough for horseshoes, and significant enough to know we are a failing backward going society. Yahoo …American exceptionalism.
Ayn Rand would be proud.
@ Bonnie
The silence of the responsible male is perhaps one of the highest
hippocricys of males. Males silence on the responsibilities of males is an embarrassment to all males. Common to cowards and DIPSHITS.
Which on the abortion issue, men are cowards, and COWARDS.
100% of the blame is placed on women, as if no “man” had anything to do with it. Somethings TOTALLY SUCK,….this is one of them.
hipocrites all. PS. would someone please spell hipocrits correctly for me. I’ve looked it up 5 times and I have given up. I may have to start using dirt bag instead. ps and hippocracy,… thank you.