Voting for Reproductive Freedom, no less...
Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 3:25 pm
When does life begin? Who are you and when do you 'become'?
Some argue that conception is the moment. They presumably see the egg and sperm contact as the moment some immaterial spookiness allows a 'soul' to inhabit the burgeoning collection of cells.
As an atheist, I find this idea odd, with nothing whatsoever, beyond cultural-historical habit and untutored folk 'wisdom', to underpin it. I have to ask why a bronze age vision of the universe, immured in ignorance of everything ever discovered since, is deemed valuable at all, far less to the point where they would kill over it and deny all science.
For myself, I see science and scientific discovery as a tool/method for unearthing reasonable explanations, that over time become more sophisticated and, as a corollary, throw up more answers to other questions, some not even asked before. This ripple-effect of increasing knowledge is what justifies our preference of science to received wisdom: we can tell that progress is involved, and if we understand and follow the rules, we can also tell when the tool/method of scientific discovery is not an aid to understanding (usually due to the state of current knowledge, but some will argue due to 'other ways of knowing'), and also when the tool/method is being applied incorrectly (as I think it often is in contemporary big-bang, quantum and string theories, all of which unscientifically patch holes in their assumptions with yet more assumptions and wilfully ignore sins against the very logic of scientific discovery itself).
Currently, this is how I see us applying what we learn from the sciences to the pro-life debate (recalling that both anti- and pro- abortion camps have their own heartfelt interpretations of what 'life' is at the centre of their arguments, and that 'pro-life' anti-abortionists respect their version of when life meaningfully begins for a human [few are vegetarians, no doubt], and that pro-abortionists rarely [if ever] approve of abortion as a late morning-after pill, seeing their justification in being pro the life of the mother and /or the quality of life for the putative child):
Mammals, on average, begin to develop, in embryo, a nervous system from around a third of the way through term. For a human this is around three months. Before this you have a human-form vegetable. After this you begin to connect up synapses and neurons, but even so, have no full CNS or brain. Until electrical activity allows a threshold to be reached, does a person inhabit the foetus? I say, no it does not. So, the argument begins around the fourth month, and continues until, some will argue, almost toddlerhood or beyond, when a sense of self is said to develop (some say 6 years old or more). I say, OK, once brain activity is there we can begin to argue, whatever we believe (and I saw my daughter as a person the second she popped out, and am fairly sure that she was meaningfully a proto-person before that), about when abortion is or is not morally acceptable.
Thus, I am saying, abortion up to three months should be uncontroversial. Where it becomes morally difficult is after this, and it shifts quickly from uncertain, to dubious, to not unless abortion is a critical medical necessity over the weeks that follow. Debate here needs to take account of advances in neuro-science, as it is from this source that a more sophisticated view of how and when the electrical activity, that allows an 'I' to emerge in the morass of tissue, will come. We have to ask, if a few neurons connect does this create a person, when those few are below the level of a whelks nervous system? At what point of development does the active potential for human life manifest (the non-active potential is there earlier on, but that cannot, surely, define 'life', or we would be more conflicted than we are over 'spontaneous abortion', late periods, etc, and if we worry about this we will all go insane and embrace quietist inaction of an extreme type)?
Let's argue that between those who want to be very pro-foetus and those who are more pro-mother, etc, but let's not sweat those first three months, at the least.
And I think that if we start to develop a nervous system and synapses from around then, that, as it is a process over time, even at three months no person 'magically' inhabits the body at any given identifiable moment. Perhaps one day we will be able to define that, but I suspect that, even with more knowledge of neuroscience, a subjective element will exist. I'd say, let us be cautious and allow abortion up to three and half to four months with no qualms, but expect far more serious discussion of the pros and cons after that. And ask doctors to decide an upper limit based on their science, after which you can just forget it, except in extremis.
Hard choices are to be made after four months, they get harder from there, but, please remember that all concerned are 'Pro-Life' - it is a shame that religious fundamentalists have liars for PR-men that load the dice by hijacking the moral high-ground with their choice of terminology, implying those they argue against are 'anti-life': frankly, both sides should not be allowed to use emotive/manipulative bullshit phrases such as 'pro-life' at all, just as it is also unreasonable to chuck photos of bloody masses that include a human-like blob at ill-educated, already emotionally upset, young women as an 'argument' when most of us are very clear that form does not imply content (and most of the propagandists playing this game are not vegetarians, or bothered about non-humans in the same way - as I do not believe in souls, and if I did, I venture to say I would find it hard to deny the family dog the dignity of having one, I have no doubt that looking humanoid is not any argument for accepting personhood). Those whose argument stands or falls on proving fairy tales or using extreme propaganda to win the debate are on the defensive already, which no doubt explains their habit of resorting to violence to readily ('pro-life' indeed, tsk). Argue about real things and the debate is, frankly, more interesting and more fruitful.
The idea that "fertilized eggs" should have the same rights as a newborn is an absurd extreme that makes every miscarriage open to litigation as possible homicide. Let's be very thankful indeed that this is being countered. Allowing such a move would be an extreme victory for the forces of unreason, who no doubt will next try to ban fire and the wheel, just as they already think it sane to juxtapose velocoraptors and liitle cave man children in play scenes in their nutso 4004BC creationist museums, calling the fossil record and the results of carbon dating lies that are there to test our faith, ffs...
Tim
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/opinion/09sun3.html
Voting for Reproductive Freedom
Voters in three states did the right thing last week by defeating dangerous anti-abortion measures on their ballots.
In Colorado, an overwhelming vote of 73 percent to 27 percent rejected a wild initiative that would have amended the state’s Constitution to bestow on fertilized eggs, prior to implantation in the womb, the same legal rights and protections that apply to people once they are born. In addition to ending abortion rights, this doozy threatened to ban widely used forms of contraception, curtail medical research involving embryos, shutter fertility clinics, and criminalize necessary medical care.
In South Dakota, 55 percent of voters said no to a sweeping abortion ban that its backers had hoped to use as vehicle for challenging Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that recognized a woman’s right to make her own childbearing decisions. The defeated measure was a near-twin of the abortion ban handily rejected by voters just two years ago.
In California, meanwhile, voters turned back an attempt by abortion-rights opponents to mandate parental notification, the issue’s third ballot defeat in the state in four years.
It would be wishful thinking to think these outcomes mean supporters of reproductive rights can now breathe easy. Proponents of the losing initiatives have already said they plan to try again, and no doubt the future of Roe v. Wade will continue to be slugged out in the courts, state legislatures, and in Congress.
Yet, along with the election of a new president and at least five new senators supportive of reproductive rights, the fate of the three ballot initiatives is a powerful affirmation that this remains a nation that values women’s privacy and health.
Some argue that conception is the moment. They presumably see the egg and sperm contact as the moment some immaterial spookiness allows a 'soul' to inhabit the burgeoning collection of cells.
As an atheist, I find this idea odd, with nothing whatsoever, beyond cultural-historical habit and untutored folk 'wisdom', to underpin it. I have to ask why a bronze age vision of the universe, immured in ignorance of everything ever discovered since, is deemed valuable at all, far less to the point where they would kill over it and deny all science.
For myself, I see science and scientific discovery as a tool/method for unearthing reasonable explanations, that over time become more sophisticated and, as a corollary, throw up more answers to other questions, some not even asked before. This ripple-effect of increasing knowledge is what justifies our preference of science to received wisdom: we can tell that progress is involved, and if we understand and follow the rules, we can also tell when the tool/method of scientific discovery is not an aid to understanding (usually due to the state of current knowledge, but some will argue due to 'other ways of knowing'), and also when the tool/method is being applied incorrectly (as I think it often is in contemporary big-bang, quantum and string theories, all of which unscientifically patch holes in their assumptions with yet more assumptions and wilfully ignore sins against the very logic of scientific discovery itself).
Currently, this is how I see us applying what we learn from the sciences to the pro-life debate (recalling that both anti- and pro- abortion camps have their own heartfelt interpretations of what 'life' is at the centre of their arguments, and that 'pro-life' anti-abortionists respect their version of when life meaningfully begins for a human [few are vegetarians, no doubt], and that pro-abortionists rarely [if ever] approve of abortion as a late morning-after pill, seeing their justification in being pro the life of the mother and /or the quality of life for the putative child):
Mammals, on average, begin to develop, in embryo, a nervous system from around a third of the way through term. For a human this is around three months. Before this you have a human-form vegetable. After this you begin to connect up synapses and neurons, but even so, have no full CNS or brain. Until electrical activity allows a threshold to be reached, does a person inhabit the foetus? I say, no it does not. So, the argument begins around the fourth month, and continues until, some will argue, almost toddlerhood or beyond, when a sense of self is said to develop (some say 6 years old or more). I say, OK, once brain activity is there we can begin to argue, whatever we believe (and I saw my daughter as a person the second she popped out, and am fairly sure that she was meaningfully a proto-person before that), about when abortion is or is not morally acceptable.
Thus, I am saying, abortion up to three months should be uncontroversial. Where it becomes morally difficult is after this, and it shifts quickly from uncertain, to dubious, to not unless abortion is a critical medical necessity over the weeks that follow. Debate here needs to take account of advances in neuro-science, as it is from this source that a more sophisticated view of how and when the electrical activity, that allows an 'I' to emerge in the morass of tissue, will come. We have to ask, if a few neurons connect does this create a person, when those few are below the level of a whelks nervous system? At what point of development does the active potential for human life manifest (the non-active potential is there earlier on, but that cannot, surely, define 'life', or we would be more conflicted than we are over 'spontaneous abortion', late periods, etc, and if we worry about this we will all go insane and embrace quietist inaction of an extreme type)?
Let's argue that between those who want to be very pro-foetus and those who are more pro-mother, etc, but let's not sweat those first three months, at the least.
And I think that if we start to develop a nervous system and synapses from around then, that, as it is a process over time, even at three months no person 'magically' inhabits the body at any given identifiable moment. Perhaps one day we will be able to define that, but I suspect that, even with more knowledge of neuroscience, a subjective element will exist. I'd say, let us be cautious and allow abortion up to three and half to four months with no qualms, but expect far more serious discussion of the pros and cons after that. And ask doctors to decide an upper limit based on their science, after which you can just forget it, except in extremis.
Hard choices are to be made after four months, they get harder from there, but, please remember that all concerned are 'Pro-Life' - it is a shame that religious fundamentalists have liars for PR-men that load the dice by hijacking the moral high-ground with their choice of terminology, implying those they argue against are 'anti-life': frankly, both sides should not be allowed to use emotive/manipulative bullshit phrases such as 'pro-life' at all, just as it is also unreasonable to chuck photos of bloody masses that include a human-like blob at ill-educated, already emotionally upset, young women as an 'argument' when most of us are very clear that form does not imply content (and most of the propagandists playing this game are not vegetarians, or bothered about non-humans in the same way - as I do not believe in souls, and if I did, I venture to say I would find it hard to deny the family dog the dignity of having one, I have no doubt that looking humanoid is not any argument for accepting personhood). Those whose argument stands or falls on proving fairy tales or using extreme propaganda to win the debate are on the defensive already, which no doubt explains their habit of resorting to violence to readily ('pro-life' indeed, tsk). Argue about real things and the debate is, frankly, more interesting and more fruitful.
The idea that "fertilized eggs" should have the same rights as a newborn is an absurd extreme that makes every miscarriage open to litigation as possible homicide. Let's be very thankful indeed that this is being countered. Allowing such a move would be an extreme victory for the forces of unreason, who no doubt will next try to ban fire and the wheel, just as they already think it sane to juxtapose velocoraptors and liitle cave man children in play scenes in their nutso 4004BC creationist museums, calling the fossil record and the results of carbon dating lies that are there to test our faith, ffs...
Tim
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/opinion/09sun3.html
Voting for Reproductive Freedom
Voters in three states did the right thing last week by defeating dangerous anti-abortion measures on their ballots.
In Colorado, an overwhelming vote of 73 percent to 27 percent rejected a wild initiative that would have amended the state’s Constitution to bestow on fertilized eggs, prior to implantation in the womb, the same legal rights and protections that apply to people once they are born. In addition to ending abortion rights, this doozy threatened to ban widely used forms of contraception, curtail medical research involving embryos, shutter fertility clinics, and criminalize necessary medical care.
In South Dakota, 55 percent of voters said no to a sweeping abortion ban that its backers had hoped to use as vehicle for challenging Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that recognized a woman’s right to make her own childbearing decisions. The defeated measure was a near-twin of the abortion ban handily rejected by voters just two years ago.
In California, meanwhile, voters turned back an attempt by abortion-rights opponents to mandate parental notification, the issue’s third ballot defeat in the state in four years.
It would be wishful thinking to think these outcomes mean supporters of reproductive rights can now breathe easy. Proponents of the losing initiatives have already said they plan to try again, and no doubt the future of Roe v. Wade will continue to be slugged out in the courts, state legislatures, and in Congress.
Yet, along with the election of a new president and at least five new senators supportive of reproductive rights, the fate of the three ballot initiatives is a powerful affirmation that this remains a nation that values women’s privacy and health.