Yesterday was Blog for Choice day. I didn’t get to participate, as I spent the whole day in meetings and airplanes. I had no choice! But at the end of the day, checking up on Bloglines from a hotel in Tucson, I found moving posts from Bitch Ph.D., Shakespeare’s Sister, Litbrit, and Lizardbreath from Unfogged, among numerous others.
Conventional wisdom among liberals and feminists is that being anti-abortion has little to do with a desire to protect helpless little blastocysts, and is really about denying women control over their bodies and lives. I always had trouble believing this, as I went to a nice Catholic school in which joining the “For Life” group was just as respectable a public-service move as joining Amnesty International. My friends at Villanova (including a large number of women) really, honestly, and in good faith did believe that fetuses were people with souls, and they needed to be protected. This didn’t quite amount to a well-thought-out and consistent philosophical position, admittedly; you’ll find very few such people who really want to punish abortionists just like we punish murderers, or who would save a petri dish of fertilized eggs from a burning building before saving a breathing baby, or who believe that heaven is filled with the souls of embyos that failed to implant in the uterus. But they really were just trying to do the right thing, according to social justice as they understood it. And they weren’t necessarily overly dogmatic about it; I helped organize a panel discussion on abortion that featured priests, biologists, and philosophers, which ended up being quite interesting (although it somehow failed to solve the world’s problems).
Ultimately, free of my protective collegiate cocoon, I realized that the conventional wisdom among liberals and feminists is completely correct! Although some people have anti-abortion feelings for straightforwardly moral reasons, for many more people (especially the most vocal), it really is about denying women their own agency. Curse those liberals and feminists, right again!
But I still remember my friends who were not like that, and I recognize that for many people abortion really is a clash of absolutes. You can say all you want that it’s the pregnant woman’s body, hands off, etc.; but if it were actually true that a fetus was a person with a soul who was entitled to all of the protections that any post-birth person was entitled to, none of that would matter. The heart of the matter is: people who believe that are wrong.
Which is why my favorite blog-for-choice post was Lindsay’s. She puts it pretty straightforwardly:
To me, it’s just obvious that fetuses aren’t people and that real-live people who have become hosts to unwanted pre-people should be able to take the necessary steps not to become the parents of actual people. Who the hell gave anyone the idea that this choice is a view that needs defending, as opposed to common sense? I don’t write posts explaining that you shouldn’t torture your dog, or steal from your employer. Shouldn’t it be obvious that you shouldn’t consign an innocent person to incubate a hunk of protoplasm until it becomes a baby?
It does seem pretty obvious, unless you really think that hunk of protoplasm is a person with all of the rights of any of the other people you meet on the street every day. Which, when you think about it, isn’t obvious at all. The only reason anyone thinks it’s true is because their definition of a “person” is completely divorced from common sense, and is instead informed by a supernatural notion of personhood in which a soul enters that single cell at the moment of conception. A notion that would seem completely absurd if it weren’t for religion.
Steven Weinberg famously said, “Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things — that takes religion.” This is a little bit harsh, of course, and I’d rather not get into the tiresome argument over whether the net effect of religious belief is to make people do more good things than bad things. But when squishy-liberal religious people ask why atheists bother making noisy public proclamations against their supernatural beliefs, it’s worth pointing out that such beliefs often do have consequences in the real world.
The idea that religion is the sole source of morality is silly — morality is invented by human beings, who are trying to negotiate their conflicting and incompatible desires in a world that doesn’t always play fair. The reason why it’s important to make the case that religious beliefs are false, even if adherents can point to examples where those false beliefs led people to be nice to each other and do other good things, is that false beliefs can just as easily lead people to treat each other badly. Given untrue hypotheses, it’s trivial to reach all sorts of untrue conclusions. Abortion is the perfect example. My friends back in college, with all of the good intentions in the world, would happily condemn a young and unprepared woman to an unwanted eighteen-year commitment, all because of their own misguided beliefs about nature and the supernatural. If we really want to make the world a better place, telling the truth about how it works is a good place to start.
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:01 pm
As a weakly pro-lifer who is quite agnostic (with strong atheistic tendencies), I’ve got to say that one can be pro-life without being religious or anti-woman. For me, it’s the reasonable doubt argument. Just as our legal system is based on the idea that you shouldn’t be able to execute (or even incarcerate) someone unless you’ve demonstrated their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, I don’t believe someone should have an abortion unless we can show, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the fetus should have no more rights than an infant.
From this philosophy, I have no problem with sub 4-week abortions. At 8 weeks, however, I know that testes have developed in a male fetus to the point that they can already produce testosterone (I just read about this in an article on autism) and I presume that a female fetus has similar levels of development. Not that testes/ovaries are what define us as “persons” (in a legal sense), but it does begin to raise the level of doubt in my mind.
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:11 pm
You are taking the easy example to make your point.
So let’s step away from the blastocyst position and consider the other end of the continuum.
Does it make sense for the law to treat one eight month old fetus essentially as property and another as a human being when the only difference between the two is that one has passed through the birth canal and another has not? I do not find that a reasonable basis for such a distinction.
Agreed that such late-term abortions are rare, but that is fundamentally beside the point. If the one should be treated as a human being in the eyes of the law, I have yet to hear a reasonable explanation as to why the other should not (that it is inside the womb of the mother is an unpersuasive reason under these facts).
The problem with the abortion debate is that the folks who argue it most vocally take the position you just did — namely, that it’s all or nothing because it’s between people who favor women’s rights, on the one hand, and those who want to “enslave a woman’s uterus,” on the other. That’s perfect nonsense.
It’s my view that a fetus ought to be treated under the law as a human being as some point in the pregnancy. The only question is “when,” and after that critical point is past, a woman’s right to choose gives way to the human being’s right to live. Given the stakes, I’d be inclined to err on the side of caution in developing the “when.”
Accordingly, a reasonable policy might be as follows: a woman would have the right to an abortion for any reason or no reason during the first trimester. After that, abortion would be available only if the woman’s life were endangered by continuing the preganancy (rr if “serious medical consequences” were likely, with the statute defining what that term meant).
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:57 pm
I’m afraid this can not be done. The “life function” is continuous and differentiable during entire 9 months and the differential — the soul — can be derived at any given moment.
January 23rd, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Roman: I understand your dilemma, but is there a discontinuity in the “life function” caused by passing through the birth canal or the loss of the umbilical cord? I’m not pretending to have any good answers; just pointing out that it isn’t as simple a problem as people on both sides of the debate often like to pretend it is.
January 23rd, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Ashlie said: “Not that testes/ovaries are what define us as “persons” (in a legal sense), but it does begin to raise the level of doubt in my mind.”
Well, for me, what raises the level of doubt in my mind is when the clump of cells start organizing themselves according to a “purpose”, ie., to form a human. The cells move around and reproduce and start forming things like limbs and organs. This tendency to organize according to the purpose of forming a functioning human being leads me to suspect that a growing human is formed at conception. Whether or not it is justifiable to terminate that process during the nine-month gestation period is another story.
That’s my take, anyhow.
January 23rd, 2007 at 1:38 pm
The following is a little snarky and pissy, but has metaphoric merits. So it has being suggested that rather than calling a fetus a “fetus”, it needs to be identified as a in vitro “human being.” mmmm? Well then, who said it could invade another human being and act as a parasite preying upon the host? Indeed, these types of human beings have been known to assault their hosts, kicking and pounding against them. If i were to jump on your back and demand you to take complete care of me, i would be arrested and jailed. Yet so many have no problem accepting that human hosts must obey the tyranny of the parasitic human???? Pretty scary when we live in a culture that tells the human host it must subserviate itself to the dominating hand-sized dictatorial parasite. Protect the parasite at all costs!!!
Wait, how exactly is a fetus different than larvae in other species? Are we simply to assume that the woman is just a coccoon containing a pupa???? Protect the pupa and let the coccoon be destroyed later???
January 23rd, 2007 at 2:01 pm
spyder: First of all, the metaphorical individual in question is inarguably not an adult, and could not be prosecuted as such. Secondly, the actions in question are also not deliberate. Therefore, I think we can sentence the individual to house arrest for nine months!
As for your second paragraph, who mentioned anything about the “cocoon” being destroyed? As Paul mentioned (and I agree), if the life (or health) of the woman is actually in jeopardy, then the reasonable doubt burden is undoubtedly shifted. As for your exact a question, a (human) fetus is different from larvae in other species to the same extent that a human is different from other animals (at least in a legal sense). One is legally allowed to kill an adult insect, but not an adult human.
If you want to think in terms of human “parasites”, consider the case of conjoined twins. What if one of the two twin’s life depended on the other, but not vice-versa? Imagine in this hypothetical situation that neither’s life is in danger. Could the second twin legally demand that the first twin be separated? Could the second twin ethically/morally make this demand?
Finally, I think your “snarkiness” detracts from your arguments rather than bolsters them.
January 23rd, 2007 at 2:06 pm
[...] Posted in Medical, Daily life, Government at 11:06 am by LeisureGuy I think this post is very well stated, and it comes from an interesting point of view (as described in the post). [...]
January 23rd, 2007 at 2:12 pm
That’s disingenuous, unless your friends also happened to be against putting children up for adoption. If not, we’re talking nine months rather than eighteen years. Now, the amount of time involved does not really matter in regards to the principle of the thing, but you’ve no need to resort to straw men like that.
January 23rd, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Ashlie, when you say it’s a matter of “reasonable doubt”, what is the factual question that you have reasonable doubt about? For me, the morality of killing a fetus depends on whether the fetus has any kind of experience or consciousness, and in this regard, as long as you believe in a purely neural basis for consciousness (which most religious people don’t, of course), there’s no reason to object to first or second trimester abortions, since the synapses connecting neurons in the brain don’t form until around the end of the second trimester. Without synapses there can be no passing of signals between neurons, and so no organized brain activity whatsoever. In the very rare case of third-trimester abortions which aren’t done for health reasons, I do find them morally troubling, although legally I think the mother’s right to control her body should overrule moral concerns (think of it this way–if I woke up to find my body hooked into a machine which was helping provide life support for a fully-sentient adult, should I be legally obligated to stay hooked up to it if I didn’t want to, assuming that disconnecting myself would kill the person the machine was helping?)
January 23rd, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Jesse M.: I think that if it were clear that no brain synapses form until X, then that’s good enough for me. I’m a little suspicious of your claim that they don’t form until the end of the second trimester, however. Do you have any journal articles that back this up? (As I’m at a university – in a neurosurgery department – it’s easy for me to access most journals.)
As for your “life support machine” argument, let’s assume that rather than a machine, there were some biological “accident” (such as my conjoined twins argument). I think that in this case, yes, you would be morally (and legally) obligated to continue providing life support, rather than actively severing the biological connection that was keeping this other individual alive. (I avoid the “machine” argument because of the illogical, but human, negative feelings towards machines.)
January 23rd, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Jesse M.,
I would answer no, you shouldn’t be obligated. You also shouldn’t be obligated to provide someone one of your kidneys even if yours is the only one that will work. But I think these two cases are somewhat analogous to the case of a woman who is pregnant, but they are different enough that a ‘no’ for one does not necessarily imply a ‘no’ for the other. Pregnancy is completely different but has something in common with the case you mentioned in #10. I’ll leave it as an exercise to think of ways in which these two cases are different enough.
January 23rd, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Ashlie, I first read about the timing of synapse development in the article Abortion and Brain Waves which was reprinted in The Best American Science & Nature Writing of 2001, so I assume it was fact-checked (the editor was the evolutionary biologist Edward O. Wilson). This article also mentions that “The process of synapse formation probably starts in the mid or late second trimester” (so I guess I was wrong about all second-trimester abortions being morally unproblematic, since late in the second trimester they might have formed already). There are also a number of papers from medical journals in the “References” section at the end of the wikipedia article on fetal pain which would probably discuss the subject, particularly the one titled Fetal Pain: A Systematic Multidisciplinary Review of the Evidence, whose summary mentions that: Fetal awareness of noxious stimuli requires functional thalamocortical connections. Thalamocortical fibers begin appearing between 23 to 30 weeks’ gestational age, while electroencephalography suggests the capacity for functional pain perception in preterm neonates probably does not exist before 29 or 30 weeks.
I don’t have journal access so I can’t read the papers themselves, but if you do and you find anything particularly useful or interesting in them, please post it here if you get a chance.
January 23rd, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Jesse M.: OK, so I did a little research and found an article by White and Wolf in Best Practice & Research Clinical Anaesthesiology Volume 18, Issue 2 that suggests that “hemodynamic and neurohumoral stress responses” are present by 18 weeks. I’m not sure if I’d call that “late” 2nd trimester, but it is 2nd trimester. The same article mentions that “spontaneous movement” begins as early as 6 weeks (Fig. 1), although this is no evidence of any brain development (and no, I don’t believe that movement=consciousness). A second study I found mentioned that they were using tissue from 17 week-old fetal brains (Kerkovich et al., 1999, International Journal of Developmental Neuroscience). So, I’d probably be more comfortable with limiting any abortions to first trimester only – with obvious exceptions for the health of the mother.
January 23rd, 2007 at 3:19 pm
On the subject of “spontaneous movement”, a google search shows that the same paper “Fetal Pain: A Systematic Multidisciplinary Review of the Evidence” I linked to above contains the text “Sensory receptors and spinal cord synapses required for nociception develop earlier than the thalamocortical pathways required for conscious perception of pain”, although I can’t see any of the text surrounding it. But from this I’d guess the spinal cord is causing simple reactions before the brain is able to recieve any meaningful signals from it, like how your spinal cord can cause you to pull your hand away from a burning stove before the pain signal reaches your brain.
As for “hemodynamic and neurohumoral stress responses”, don’t those refer more to changes in hormone levels, which would be possible before the synaptic connections are in place? Assuming consciousness originates in the brain, it really doesn’t seem plausible that there could be any significant level of consciousness without the electrochemical impulses that are associated with brain function and learning in all animals. And of course a human’s personality and individuality and memories are thought to all be based on each brain’s unique pattern of synaptic strengths.
January 23rd, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Jesse M.I’m taking the “neuro” in “neurohumoral” to imply that neurons are at least involved in the stress reactions being discussed. Also note that the 18 (and 17) week figures I gave are not inconsistent with the mid to late-term 2nd trimester figure you gave. I’m no obstetrician, but I assumed that 2nd trimester was approximately weeks 13-24. So, first trimester and early second trimester might be “beyond a reasonable doubt”.
January 23rd, 2007 at 3:53 pm
But even if the neurons are involved, without those neurochemical impulses passing through synapses I don’t see how there could be any complex information-processing going on, at least no more so than what goes on in other parts of the body besides the nervous system, where cells are also capable of producing and reacting to hormones (I presume you’d agree we can be confident beyond a reasonable doubt that hormone-producing glands such as the thyroid don’t have any significant consciousness of their own, for example). I don’t believe there’s some mysterious property of individual nerve cells which causes them to be uniquely associated with consciousness while other body cells are not, I think it’s just the unique type of information-processing they are able to do thanks to their ability to pass along impulses to each other and adjust their synaptic strengths in response to which neurons they receive impulses from (using some kind of roughly Hebbian rule along the lines of ‘neurons that fire together, wire together’). This basic idea is held by virtually all scientists trying to understand the fundamental neural basis of learning and awareness, as far as I know.
January 23rd, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Jesse M.: I’m assuming that these neurons have synaptic events associated with them, which is not at odds with your other statement about the mid 2nd trimester. I agree with your hypothesis that, beyond a reasonable doubt (to me, anyway), consciousness cannot exist without (active) synapses. FWIW, I run simulations of models of the mammalian CA3 region of the hippocampus, so I am quite familiar with Hebbian learning.
Unfortunately for this discussion, my models have never investigated fetal development.
January 23rd, 2007 at 4:47 pm
I’d prefer to use behavioral criteria like a Turing Test than neural development. After all, we can find neural development in animals besides ourselves, and most of us would find little problem with removing one of them from inside ourselves if such an event occurred. The difference between persons and other animals is conscious intelligence, so we should use a measure of that. The Turing Test may not sufficiently strict to eliminate all non-persons, but I think that’s acceptable as it’s best to be conservative in these matters.
January 23rd, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Ah, I misunderstood. OK, I think we’re in agreement about the point at which there begins to be a possibility of consciousness in the fetus. The question of whether the likely existence of some form of consciousness after that point is grounds for opposing later abortions is more of a moral question then a factual one, so it’d probably be harder for either of us to change the other’s mind. I have some weird perspectives on this anyway–I don’t think the morality of killing/hurting a being is based on its biological species, but on the complexity of its consciousness (as well as the suffering caused to others who care about it), so the issue of late-term abortions is closely connected to animal rights for me (but I recognize there are good reasons for having legal rights be somewhat separate from moral issues, so that you draw a line in the sand and say everyone past that deserves the same rights).
January 23rd, 2007 at 6:49 pm
One problem with this issue is that it is (now) extraordinarily difficult to draw a line in the sand and say “Guaranteed viability starts here.” Not when the neonatologists are pushing the boundaries all the time. Extracorporeal oxygenation techniques make the immature foetus relatively independent of lungs which are still pretty useless for gas exchange. When I was born, twenty six weeks would have been considered a breakthrough if not actually impossible (1971); now we are keeping babes like that alive with some regularity.
If the pro-lifers are right, the abortionists will have to defend their actions before God on the Last Day. Let them. Ultimately I believe that abortion is not a nice thing to do, but sometimes not performing it is worse. If the Churches and the prolife crusaders want to do something about it, they should take steps to ensure that it is never necessary, not go to incredible lengths to ensure that it can never be performed. Sex education and contraception are the way to go, but blind stupidity and an automatic linking of sex with evil in their minds will ensure this never happens.
January 23rd, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Relevant to this discussion is that a few million years of human evolution is involved during those 9 months of gestation. The formation of a baby not a step function.
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Justin Moretti: One does not have to be Christian/Jewish/Muslim to be pro-life, any more than one has to be Adventist/Buddhist to be a vegetarian.
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:24 pm
“conventional wisdom among liberals and feminists is completely correct! ”
Natch. Who ever heard of a feminist being incorrect?
January 23rd, 2007 at 9:33 pm
I only have one thing to add to the above insightful comments. Some of the posters imply that you can wake up one day and all of a sudden have a fetus developing in your uterus unbeknownst to you. Depending on who you ask, this has happened at most one time in all of recorded history. The fact that most pregnancies and consqueent abortions are a result of two consenting adults decision to have sex makes the situation much different than ‘waking up one day and finding yourself forced to support another grown human-being’. Except for the rare case of rape resulting in pregnancy, most all fetuses were created as a result of deliberate choices.
As a pro-lifer, I would whole-heartedly suport forcing any father to provide as much support as possible to the child and mother. Otherwise, women take on an unfair burden in accidental pregnancies.
January 23rd, 2007 at 9:49 pm
The fact that most pregnancies and consqueent abortions are a result of two consenting adults decision to have sex makes the situation much different than ‘waking up one day and finding yourself forced to support another grown human-being’.
It doesn’t really change anything IMO–you’d have a legal right to take yourself off the life-support machine even if you somehow got hooked up to it through your own carelessness (maybe you signed a document in a hospital without reading the fine print) or even if you had originally agreed to it but changed your mind. The decision to take yourself off the machine would certainly be even more immoral in these cases (and I agreed that abortion is morally questionable after the brain starts working, although before that I think it’s no worse than killing a plant), but I don’t think the law can ever obligate you to use your body to support someone else.
January 23rd, 2007 at 10:09 pm
This has alway been a hard topic for me.
Is there some “clear presence of thinking” when you have not held a child in your arms that allows intellectualism to speak from what is, “about life?” “A professionalism” detached from the emotion of not having done child rearing?
I am a grandfather again this morning, and she’s beautiful. I cut the umbilical cords of my own children. I watched this grand child move in her mother’s stomach.
I know what science can do because of the ability a disease can cause and not allow, to what can now begin in the petri dish thirty years ago, became a common place, and has become my grandchild today. “The death” of a grandchild “being born.”
Something “human” had to be added here, that may seem to have been lacking? Aspects of consciousness, that are defined by some “intellectual measure?” This may have been “my fault?” WE are all still very happy.
January 23rd, 2007 at 10:18 pm
jw:
Would you apply a Turing test to a newborn?
If he/she fails it, can you just kill it…?
I am a pro-choice myself (rather, I believe that it is none of my business to tell a woman what to do with an undesired pregnancy) but I find it troublesome whenever someone attempts to find ’scientific’ criteria with which to justify abortion.
Pro-life people that use religious arguments to make their point are at the same level as pro-choice people that use science to justify what is essentially a personal decision with very complex moral, economic, emotional, and legal consequences….
I am sure that many—most?—women that do have abortions do not go over religious, philosophical or scientific arguments to justify their decisions, so why bother?
Perhaps the strongest argument is that, unless you are the unwilling pregnant woman, it is none of your business to decide what is best—this is even stronger for us men…
January 23rd, 2007 at 11:06 pm
Raymundo, I don’t think anyone is saying science alone can lead to a moral conclusion. Rather, the idea is that if you start with a non-scientific moral premise, like “the immorality of killing something has to do with its capacity for consciousness”, then scientific facts about brain development become relevant.
As an analogy, when making the decision whether to pull the plug on someone in a long-term unconscious state, don’t you think medical questions about whether the brain has been too damaged to make recovery a possibility would play a role in many people’s decision-making?
January 24th, 2007 at 12:59 am
It is not the case that in developing countries, birth control methods are universally available and affordable. Nor is it the case that birth control methods are 100% pregnancy-proof, even when used correctly. I would guess that when men have birth control available to them and can share an equal 50% of the responsibility for a woman’s pregnancy, many of these arguments will change. I’m with spyder. I don’t tell people what they should do with their body, so please don’t tell me what I should do with mine.
January 24th, 2007 at 4:14 am
Does anyone know what percentage of unwanted/unintended babies are actually adopted? At what age on the average?
Abortion is a complex issue, not just religeous or scientific. Economic reasons and inmaturities of mothers-to-be plays a major role. If biological fathers are irresponsible, will the government help them raise those children? Not as dirt poor but with decent housing and education? Unless the babies are adopted right after birth, there are a host of dangers and adversities to the well being of the unwanted ones. Particularly if they are institutionalized or go through an unmerry-go-round of host families, some emotional scars may be permanent.
It seems one sided to discuss the morality of aborting or bringing a new life into the world without discussing what kind of environment we can possibly provide for them.
January 24th, 2007 at 6:02 am
As an analogy, when making the decision whether to pull the plug on someone in a long-term unconscious state, don’t you think medical questions about whether the brain has been too damaged to make recovery a possibility would play a role in many people’s decision-making?
Not a very good analogy I think. I do remember reading something about the brain being able to “rewire” itself around damaged area.
January 24th, 2007 at 7:00 am
No, the analogy is quite good. The human brain is able to use some parts for new functions, ie. to do functions which can’t be performed by the damaged part anymore, but this is essentially quite limited. So, for example if someones frontal lobe is destroyed (I wonder if somebody could survive that anyway?) it would be absolutely impossible to restore its function anywhere.
January 24th, 2007 at 8:45 am
To me, it’s just obvious that fetuses aren’t people…
…It does seem pretty obvious, unless you really think that hunk of protoplasm is a person with all of the rights of any of the other people you meet on the street every day. Which, when you think about it, isn’t obvious at all.
More proof that a person having technical smarts is no guarantee of philosophical smarts.
Now, if I was an atheist, I think I would still be able to differentiate between a technical fact, like what defines a person biologically, and a philosophical notion, like what rights a person deserves.
Like I say, if I was an atheist, I think I would acknowledge that a fetus is person, and then decide apart from that what rights a fetus deserves.
If there’s no Big Guy telling us what to do, why do we have to give a fetus any rights when it inconveniences us? But if I was an atheist, I would at least want to be biologically consistent. I guess it’s just easier for an atheist to push the atheist philosophy by twisting the basic facts.
You get to make the rules if there’s no Big Guy. It’s just a atheist free for all. No reason to endure any pain.
January 24th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Here is thoughtful, reality-based essay on abortion by the late Carl Sagan, along with Ann Druyan. The manner in which it addresses the issues of the slippery slope, the spectrum of viability, and the essence of the soul feels as close to right as anything I’ve read.
January 24th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
You don’t have to be religious to be against abortion. It seems to me that people who believe that nature is sacred would be against abortion in that it is such an unnatural act. Of course you could argue that we have no compunction about terminating other forms of life using insecticides and what not else to control our environment. But isn’t that what we are trying to change about the way we deal with our environment? Aren’t we trying to live in a more earth-friendly way? So we are trying to be more earth-friendly but we also want to give a woman the right to do something as unnatural as terminating a pregnancy. Seems contradictory to me.
January 24th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Since almost all of the pro-life voices in the comments are coming from men, wonder if those could still think the same if tomorrow morning someone turned on a switch and gave them a female gender and a couple decades of female experiences.
January 24th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Amara: Although that’s a favorite argument to go to (since it can never be conclusively proven or disproven – a reason that scientists should eschew such an argument), statistics from an LA Times poll in 2000 are suggestive: 44% of women support Roe v. Wade vs. 42% of men. Similarly 44% of women were against Roe v. Wade vs 39% of men. Evidently, more men were undecided, possibly because they didn’t feel they had a right to have an opinion. So, if those numbers are any indication, the answer to your supposition is that, no, changing someone’s gender and male/female experiences is unlikely to have a profound impact on their pro-life/pro-choice viewpoint.
January 24th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Observations on the genders of the comments, Ashlie. Please take care: US statistics are not useful in a world view.
January 24th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Amara: Actually, if I were to find fault with the statistics I provide, it would be that they are most likely not reflective of the type of people contributing opinions here. To wit: no one has made a religious argument about the pro-life position. That said, I see no reason to believe (other than “faith”) that changing someone’s gender or male/female experiences would change their position on this.
You comment makes me wonder: are you aware of a larger male/female discrepancy in the “world view”? (I’m not.) I suspect that your (unstated) opinion on this is based off your gut instinct and not off actual data. Stephen Colbert would approve.
January 24th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Amara: As for the genders of the commenters, I’m not aware of any females who have posted pro-life or pro-choice. I’m assuming you’re female (and pro-choice), but otherwise I see no other data. Jesse (who also seems to identify as pro-choice) is clearly male. I don’t think one can make much of a statistical gender inference from the presence of a single identified female. (Granted, some of the other user names might be female as well, but I see no indication one way or the other.)
January 24th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
When we are talking about early-term abortions; the issue is clearly one of women’s rights vs domineering fanatics. However, as a pregnancy continues, the fetus eventually becomes clearly human, and no discreet event marks this change. Birth is not a good event to mark this transition considering that a child is developed equally immediately before and immediately after being born. The best way to deal with this is to make morning-after pills and EARLY term abortions easily accessible, and gradually increase the obstacles to abortion with increasing fetus developement, until a point where only severe medical complications can be used to justify an abortion (third trimester). I certainly agree that religious arguments add nothing but confusion to the issue. It is also worth noting a strong correlation between strong, vocal anti-choice (”pro-life” if you prefer) and anti-contraceptive views.
January 24th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
“If we really want to make the world a better place, telling the truth about how it works is a good place to start.”
These words should be engraved on stone plinths 100 feet tall and placed outside every center of government in the world.
January 25th, 2007 at 3:00 am
I am pro choice as it is not for me to tell a woman how to live her life or what to do with her body even though I do have difficulty with the idea of late term abortion for all but absolutely necessary medical reasons.
January 25th, 2007 at 3:04 am
No, Ashlie, just take care where you apply statistics. The US is 6% of the world’s population. In the larger view, women all over the world (including the US) daily live with the issues of managing (or trying to manage) their reproductive health, and so my comment about the nonuniversal access to, and the affordability of birth control etc. is relevant. Worldwide.
Please be aware that abortion is an issue that people in the European countries do not get worked up about, perhaps because 1) the laws are set in Parliaments rather than the U.S. Supreme Court (where issues of individual rights get involved), 2) Europeans are much more secular, and 3) abortion is considered a private matter that is not anyone’s business but the woman’s. If you would like data about this, go to The Economist web site and use the search word: ‘abortion’ and you’ll see that the issue of abortion (and “when life begins”) is a peculiar feature of the American political landscape compared to the political issues in other countries.
And yes, my other comments about genders is based on anecdotes; in the circles I move in (academic, research, technical in several countries including the U.S.), I’ve never met a woman who was ‘pro-life’, while, on the hand, I occassionally meet men who are. If you want to state that therefore my circles are not broad enough, then so be it, but I do find this facet very odd. So therefore, yes, I do wonder if, after those men who had a few decades experience of managing their baby-machine bodies, they would still think the same.
January 25th, 2007 at 7:48 am
@Amara
If you have never met a woman that is pro-life I suggest you get out more. Theres plenty of them. In fact I have met far fewer woman who are pro-choice than the other way round. I know a few woman who after having had a abortion are now pro-life.
Oh by the way I am not either/or officaly. But I am a christain. (lots of woman are too).
January 25th, 2007 at 10:02 am
greg: I think I get out a little bit too much (I really should not travel so much), but I’ll keep your suggestion in mind.
January 25th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Amara: Based on your web-site, and my knowledge of the Astronomy field (I have an MS in Astrophysics), I would guess that you don’t know many pro-choice people in “your circle”, period. I.e., I’d guess that your circle isn’t very different from my circle. The only person I know well who is more pro-life than me is a woman (not including my relatives). Obviously, that’s not a very large sample to be drawing conclusions from, and I would never try to claim that my experience is typical. (Also, there are obviously a lot of people of both genders who are “more” pro-life than me.)
I would therefore humbly suggest that you reconsider your belief that changing someone’s gender (or male/female experiences) would change their pro-life/pro-choice view-point, as it appears to be based on a lot smaller sample size than the admittedly flawed poll statistics that I provided. At the very least, I think you should remain agnostic with respect to said belief. (Perhaps you are, but it certainly doesn’t come off that way.)
Daniel: I’ll agree that you’ll find a lot of pro-life people who feel the way you describe. However, you’ll also find a lot of people like me who are very pro-contraception. This includes responsible uses of the morning-after pill – where the only thing that concerns me is a throw-back to the thalidomide disaster. For the record, I’m also pro-enviroment (and a vegetarian). In fact, my pro-environment views are a much stronger motivator for me with respect to candidate selection than my views on abortion.
January 25th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
People, you’re all missing a very important point: even if the foetus is “human,” even if it has a “soul” – so what? so does the woman who is pregnant, and her life takes precedence. No one should ever be forced to provide life support for another human being unless they fervently so desire.
January 25th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
I do not consider myself either pro-life or pro-choice. Both are dogmatic. There are other considerations.
Let’s say a woman is pregnant, and considers abortion for whatever reason. Having met people who’ve done this, consider that the woman who has the abortion (assuming it was done properly) then goes through emotional hell. If there is a partner still involved, he’ll go through hell too. So, let’s say she decides to bring it to term, and put it up for adoption. More hell, though some adoptive parents may be happier (whatever that means).
Another issue. Do we need more people? By some estimates the 6,000,000,000+ we have is too much, endangering life on the planet. We’re certainly not desperate for more.
Let’s say that at six months pregnancy, it’s discovered that the child has some horrific genetic deformity, and this person will never be whole. Then what?
Let’s say that the child reaches 40 years old, but has turned out to be Hitler. Is retroactive abortion justifiable?
In all these cases, society needs to set guidelines. But bringing heated absolutes to the debate is not very helpful.
Humans have no natural preditors, and have reduced evolutionary pressure. Should breeding programs be set to advance human evolution? If so, should those not in the breeding program be sterilized?
January 25th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Is this post perhaps an elaborate joke? Lindsay’s position is absurd. I am amazed that someone with a sharp scientific mind can admiringly cite someone who offers as her argument “It’s just obvious”. Just because she sincerely believes something doesn’t mean that a reasonable person cannot hold a diametrically opposed point of view.
And I say all this as someone who supports abortion. Maintaining that people opposed to abortion are “simply wrong“, though, is rather too much for me to take.
Speaking as an atheist who doesn’t believe in any universal morality, it seems to me a first-principles argument about whether or not abortion is acceptable is not simple.
I think most people accept that contraception is OK, while murdering a new-born is criminal (Catholic church aside). There must be some continuous function linking those two points – But who knows what shape it should be? A step-function at birth seems unlikely to me. In the absence of any obvious “bright line”, it seems a linear interpolation is reasonable.
By that argument, abortion at any stage is reprehensible – though perhaps less reprehensible than the other alternatives.
January 27th, 2007 at 10:58 am
The best argument I’ve heard on this topic is from punkassblog
basically body rights trump all. Also, it should not be forgotten that women have died giving birth, and still do on occasion, if they do not want to undergo the risks of giving birth, they should not have to, no matter what the reason.
January 27th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
I find the whole ‘its my body, my right’ argument highly specious and rather irratating and childlike:
*As well as Seans usual conspiracy theories about how everyone is out to get the feminists and don’t really care about the actual argument perse. No offense, but thats just absurd. No one in their right mind would spend so much time/effort and tears on such a pointless endeavour. *
The fact is, its not ‘your’ body anymore, you have something else that may or may not be a life. You are simply a host, and as such have a responsibility that you cannot simply exorcise at will. In fact the law can and will punish you for say killing a child minutes before birth, so whatever there goes that argument other than in extreme circumstances (risk of life etc).
Now, having said that, I find the notion that a 1 month old arrangement of chemicals is hardly what I would call sentient, in fact its not even close. Science comes to the rescue here and should provide the legal definition of life as well as the cutoff date for abortions +- an error zone. Simply take the 1 or 2 sigma margin of error, and there you have it, as close to humanly possible.
January 31st, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Not sure whether anyone is still checking this post, but I was a little late in reading it. I just wanted to say I’m a woman and an atheist and I couldn’t agree more with Ashlie.
As far as the statement that it’s obvious that a fetus isn’t a person, I must admit I was relieved to read that I’m not the only (rational) person who finds this statement ridiculous. I’ve long wondered whether I was the only (sort of) pro-life atheist.
For me, it’s got nothing to do with the fetus having a soul. Instead, I have a reverence for human life.
So, there you have it, Amara: a pro-life woman who doesn’t believe in god. I only hope one day you will meet another one, so our existence can be confirmed.
March 23rd, 2007 at 8:00 am
I didn’t seem to notice anyone mentioning that a woman who had a unwanted pregnancy ususally chose to have sex. That was her choice (rape etc. excepted of course). Thus, she must accept (along with the man involved — he helped a lot too) the consequences of her actions. Just as accidental murder is called manslaughter, and comes with legal consequenses, the accidental creation of life comes with cosequenses. If she really doesn’t want to raise the child, there are many people who want children, but can’t have them (infertile, gays, etc). Let them raise them after birth, but good grief, grow up and accept the consequenses of your actions.
March 23rd, 2007 at 11:38 am
Don’t you think that your attitude towards ‘religions’ is pretty much formed and limited by those ‘western’ religions (from judaism to muslim)? There are other religions like Buddhism, who are very rational and don’t expect you to believe in a god-head, although theologists like to press them into such forms.
Abortion is killing – no question! Of course one can say killing a cell is not that grave, but where is that line when the cluster of cells turns into something that you would admit to be a being with a right to live?
The embryo developes pretty fast, you know!
But, be it killing, I think that society has no right to rule the belly of a woman! There is a being growing in the body of someone – does this being have the right to feed on this body? Can we *order* someone to share one’s body with someone else? I think *that* is the real question! Because then, we would have the duty to share our kidneys and livers and other organs with those in need, who would die otherwise! There is no final ethical solution on this issue. That is the problem with ethics compared to logic – sometimes there is no solution.
March 24th, 2007 at 11:14 am
#55: and how would you make the man suffer the consequences of “creation of unwanted life by the choice to have sex”? Would he have to pay damages to the woman for the physical damage to her body and psychological trauma of carrying to term an unwanted pregnancy? Can money even equate to the following consequences to a woman’s body and health, forced upon her unwillingly – maybe we should physically maim the man somehow too so that it is fair. Or is it just female sexuality you want to suppress with the threat of pregnancy?
March 25th, 2007 at 8:13 am
Although we should be used to this by now, it is still amazes me every time I read about grown up intelligent people saying that a fertilized egg is a human being.
If you look at what ethical issues they are debating in Korea, what the British government has been looking into recently, and compare that with ethical discussions in the US, then it seems like the US is not just one century but one millenium behind.
March 25th, 2007 at 10:53 am
(adding to Count Iblis’ comment): and my favorite idea to help women combine career and family to bring about the next societal revolution.