dolan (01/28/83)
This article will probably result in some flaming, but I ask that you read what I have to say with an open, objective mind. Then you can decide to flame. A recent article in this newsgroup indicated that the writer felt that, given no definition of the start of human life, each person should decide for him/herself the morality of abortion. I wish to offer a purely rational, non-religious argument for the humanness of each person from the moment of conception. A person of 85 years is accepted as human; a person of 5 years is accepted as human; a person of 5 seconds of age is accepted as human. During the birth process, a child can begin to breathe even before it is entirely out of the birth canal. At what point does a person become human? What is the difference between a newly born child who is still attached by its umbilical to the placenta which is still attached to its mother's womb, and a child still within the womb? I submit that there is no difference between a child who has just been born and had its umbilical severed and a child which is just about to be born other than the life-support system providing oxygen and food to that child. A newly born child depends upon its lungs for oxygen and its own mouth and digestive tract for food. It depends upon its own bodily waste removal mechanisms, and it depends upon the older humans around it for physical security. A child which is just about to be born is depending upon the life-support system of its mother's womb for oxygen, food, and waste removal. It depends upon the physical enclosure of the womb for physical security. Other than the difference in life-support systems, there is no difference between a newly born child and a child about to be born. If the newly born child is human, and our laws and human history have declared it so, then the about-to-be-born child must be human too. But then let us move backward in time as the baby was developing in the womb. What was added during that time that suddenly made the baby a human being? The only thing that the baby received from its mother during the nine months that it lived inside her womb was oxygen, food, waste removal, and physical security. There is no magical moment along the way when "something" happens to suddenly transform the baby into a human being. The womb is only a life-support system that provides protection, oxygen, waste removal, and nourishment for the nine month period. Nothing else. If the child is human 5 seconds after it is born, it must be human 5 seconds before it traverses the birth canal. And because nothing is supplied to the child during the nine month period when it is living in its mother's womb, other than food, oxygen, waste removal, and protection, then it must have been human from the very beginning of its existence, the moment of conception. There is no magical moment when a child suddenly "becomes" human. It always was. There are many powerful emotions associated with the abortion argument. I ask that you consider what I have said objectively. Let the emotional part of you sit quietly aside while your rationality examines my arguments. If you can find an error in my reasoning, please let me know. I used to take a casual accepting view of abortion until I forced myself to sit back and examine the facts that I have referred to above. You may decide to "flame on" now. That is your privilege. But consider the tremendous urge to "flame" that is felt by those who argue against the legality of abortion. If one accepts the fact that a child is truly a human being from the moment of conception, then one must be truly, overwhelmingly horrified at the 15 million abortion deaths that have occurred in the last 10 years. Hitler's holocaust had nothing on modern day America. There are many social issues which arise when we accept the humanity of the unborn child. We must, as a nation, rise to meet those challenges. As a people, we are all trying to achieve the "rights" that we feel are ours. It seems that we have forgotten the meaning of the word "responsibility". Mike Dolan Bell Labs Room 1B-226 Naperville-Wheaton Rd. Naperville, IL 60566 P.S. Thanks for taking the time to read and think about what I have to say.
knight (01/28/83)
The crux of Mike Dolan's argument: There is no magical moment when a child suddenly "becomes" human. It always was. Sorry to fan flames, but this is a logical fallacy often known as "slippery slope." If you agree that a fetus is always a human being *for this reason* (I'm not judging any other reasons), you also need to agree that white is black--after all, I can take, say, white paint, and add black in small amounts. To paraphrase, since there is no moment when the paint suddenly "becomes" black, it always was. It's this kind of slope between two distinctive end points that created the term "grey area." The point of this article is that by isolating the blur in the middle, a slippery slope argument tries to obscure the fact that there is definitely *some* difference between the two ends. The abortion question has to decide whether or not these differences between a born human and an unborn fetus make any legal/moral difference--something which I don't feel fit to make any proclamations on. Steve Knight ihnp4!stolaf!knight harpo!stolaf!knight
ss (01/28/83)
*********** There are many social issues which arise when we accept the humanity of the unborn child. We must, as a nation, rise to meet those challenges. As a people, we are all trying to achieve the "rights" that we feel are ours. It seems that we have forgotten the meaning of the word "responsibility". Mike Dolan ********* You hit it on the head in the last sentence in your argument. You talk about rights and responsibilities. My view: We are taken to talking about too many "rights," and very few "responsibilities." Leaving moral questions aside, I have NO right to tell anyone whether they can have an abortion. I DO have the "responsibility" of informing them of the consequences of their choice. The person wanting an abortion does NOT have the "right" to kill the fetus. She (no sexism intended, you can read the parents) does have the "responsibility" of making sure that the future child will be taken care of, will have a reasonable chance to become a useful member of society. If she does not want the child, indeed feels repulsion towards it (as in the case of rape victims), then it becomes her "responsibility" to have an abortion. THE ONLY WAY I CAN RIGHTFULLY PREVENT HER IS IF I TAKE THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CHILD. In my experience very few of us are willing to take this responsibility and try to hide from OUR responsibility by talking about the RIGHT if the fetus, instead of the RESPONSIBILITY of the mother. By the way, the decision to have an abortion is not easily made by a mother. She goes through a lot of "soul searching" before deciding. If abortion is illegal, then she is quite likely to have it illegaly, if the answer to her soul searching is "yes". Again, the ONLY way I can talk about the RIGHT of the fetus, the unborn human child if you will, over the RESPONSIBILITY of the mother is if I am willing to take that RESPONSIBILITY from her. I feel that it may be our duty or responsibility to inform the would be mother of the moral, physical or religious issues in having an abortion, but if we want HER to take care of the child, then the decision about the abortion has to be HERS. Sharad Singhal.
arens@UCBKIM (01/29/83)
From: arens@UCBKIM (Yigal Arens) Received: from UCBKIM.BERKELEY.ARPA by UCBVAX.BERKELEY.ARPA (3.300 [1/17/83]) id AA07136; 28 Jan 83 18:29:27 PST (Fri) To: net-women@ucbvax The fact that Mike Dolan raises -- that one can point to no precise moment when a fetus becomes fully human -- doesn't necessarily imply that the fetus was ALWAYS human. This is simply another case of a continuous process leading to a not very clearly defined state. It could be likened to a child growing up and turning into an adult. Clearly a 40 year old woman is and adult. Nothing of substance changed from the age of 10 to 40, and it is impossible to point to a single moment when the transition took place. But nobody claims that a 10 year old girl is an adult! What took place was a gradual transition from childhood to adulthood, and adulthood itself is a "fuzzy" concept that of its nature doesn't allow one to pinpoint its inception. The transition from a fertilized ovum to a newborn baby is another case of this. Clearly, the newly fertilized egg is NOT human, and just as clearly a baby 5 minutes before birth IS human. And there is no single moment along the way where the transition takes place. It's a matter of degree. Abortion on a newly fertilized egg is a medical procedure performed on the body of a woman, and aborting a soon to be born child is killing it. But there is no simple point along the way where one turns into the other. It is basically a personal moral decision which the state should get involved in only in the extreme case. We have to face it -- not everything is simple and clear. In the case of adulthood the state can, more or less arbitrarily, decide that it is legally reached at the age of 16, or 18, or 21, because the consequences of such a decision are not too severe. But the consequences of deciding, necessarily in an arbitrary fashion, that humanness begins at conception, are VERY serious. Yigal Arens UC Berkeley
meyer (01/29/83)
If the child is human 5 seconds after it is born, it must be human 5
seconds before it traverses the birth canal. And because nothing is
supplied to the child during the nine month period when it is living
in its mother's womb, other than food, oxygen, waste removal, and
protection, then it must have been human from the very beginning of
its existence, the moment of conception. There is no magical moment
when a child suddenly "becomes" human. It always was.
"Beginning of its existence"?, "Always was"? - Do you believe a fertilized
egg is created from *nothing*? Modern science suggests that just before
conecption the scene consists of an egg with a little sperm just outside
of it. Why does whether the sperm is inside or outside change the moral
rights of the egg &/or egg/sperm system? (You just said that in the case
of babies being inside/outside the womb made no difference.)
I used to take a casual accepting
view of abortion until I forced myself to sit back and examine the
facts that I have referred to above. ...
If one accepts the fact
that a child is truly a human being from the moment of conception,
then one must be truly, overwhelmingly horrified at the 15 million
abortion deaths that have occurred in the last 10 years. Hitler's
holocaust had nothing on modern day America.
It's kind of weird that you have to sit back and do intellectual
examinations to decide what is morally MURDER and what isn't. Doesn't
seem like that is necessary in the holocaust case.wm (01/29/83)
Well, there is always more room for rational arguments on the net. I want to present some (rational) arguments against your contention that the fetus is human at conception and should never be aborted. THEN, I want to present some further arguments against my own arguments. I will try not to be very confusing. AGAINST the idea that the fetus is human at conception. You have placed another boundary to "where life begins", namely at conception rather than birth. Most people will agree with you that the fetus is human some time (5 minutes at least!) before birth. But most people will not believe that it takes place at conception. You could carry your argument further. There is nothing special about conception (no more than birth, at least) and so the unfertilized egg is human, and every woman has the moral (soon legal) responsibility to get pregnant every time she is able to. People have this very mystical view of conception. Most eggs, even fertilized ones, never go to term. They never implant, or they mess up for one reason or another. So even nature doesn't think much of a fertilized egg. You also say there is no clear boundary when the fetus becomes human. A while back when there was a great debate on the net about abortion (in net.misc, I think) someone presented the idea that there WAS a clear boundary. Doctors have a fairly precise definition of life, based on brain wave activity. They use it every day to determine death. So the same criterion could be used to determine when the fetus changes into a human. This usually occurs at around six weeks. So there is a clear boundary. AGAINST the "clear" boundary. I have quite a few friends who are doctors, and asked some of them why the "brain wave activity criterion" is not used to determine human-ness. The response I got really made me think. The doctors I talked to think all these discussions on conception, birth, human-ness of fetuses, etc. is all silly. It is the uninformed discussions of people who are trying to take scientific arguments into a moral area. That's why doctors stay out of this whole discussion, when you might think they would have quite a bit to say. Consider: Many fetuses are hydroencephaletic (spelling?) at birth. They have brain waves. They could probably live a few weeks if they could be born. Those weeks would be spent in pain, and for no reason. What that long word above means is that their head is full of water. (To be gross, their brains are mush). Since their head is enlarged, the only way to deliver them alive would be to cut open the mother, severly endangering her. The normal, routine, every-day way to handle this is to deflate the baby's head, effectively killing it. Is this murder? Do doctors have a responsibility to try and save this child? Under a law that declared a fetus a human at conception, they would! I may have been graphic in the above discussion, but I was much less so than the doctors who explained it to me. The whole point is this: Pregnancy and birth are conplicated processes. Many, many babies do not go to term, and die for one reason or another. Some are killed on purpose because of their horrible condition. This is no area for law to step into. Fetuses are not human. If they are born, and are alive and healthy, or even if they are not quite born but could be, and would be ok, then they are human. This is the criterion used everyday by doctors. There is good reason for it. Trying to inject religious arguments into this is just plain ignorant. If you are unconvinced, go talk to a doctor. Ask her/him how many fetuses die for one reason or another. Ask how they die, and what would have to be done to "save" them if they were legally human. Then I will listen to your rational arguments about abortion. One last thing. If you still think fetuses are human at birth, and should be afforded the full protection of the law, I want to know how you are going to inforce such a law without a full police state to back it up. ^- spelling! Wm Leler - UNC Chapel Hill
wm (01/29/83)
Ooooops! Change the second sentence in the last paragraph from "human at birth" to "human at conception". Thanks, sorry for the long flame. Wm Leler - UNC Chapel Hill
brf (01/31/83)
I'm not sure when Human Life began, but I think it is a question
best left to the geologists and archiologists, 'cause it surely
happened millions of years ago! I'm getting sick of people who
know all the answers but haven't figured out yet what the questions are.
As for references to the Holocaust, please keep in mind that in Hitler's
Germany, abortion was a capital crime.
B. Fowlerbj (02/01/83)
That was an excellent article, giving me something to think about. One question: What makes the moment of conception a "special moment"? I consider the moments when the baby has a "functional" brain and when the baby can survive outside the womb to be special moments, even though you can not time them exactly. What about the moment the fertilized egg attaches itself to the womb? It is possible for an egg to be fertilized but never become attach and develop. This is can be caused artificially by IUD devices. Is that the same as an abortion? Just trying to clarify the issue, B.J. decvax!yale-comix!herbison-bj Herbison-BJ@Yale (Not currently)
jj (02/01/83)
I noticed while reading the article that this article follows up, that the author asked about the use of IUD's for birth control. While I certainly don't feel this way, mostly because I have known and helped several individuals who were unwanted children, I have been told time and again that the Roman Catholic Church regards ANY form of birth control as murder because it causes the "death" of a potential individual. It seems to me that this also places birth control devices under the heading of abortion, at least to people who are of the RC faith. Since I am not RC, and my knowlege is based on information about 10 years old, this may have changed. If it has changed, however, I certainly question the "infalliability doctrine" since a change would certainly presume something??? Anyone who thinks that bringing an unwanted child into the world is doing that child a favor must convince me of several things: 1) Is not that (aborted/murdered/whatever you like) child dying in a state of grace, never having committed an act of sin? <I know that the human presumtion arguement could argue otherwise, but I still argue that that individual has not had the opportunity to sin, therefore, if humans, by defination, are sinners...> 2) How can you force this individual to be born, unless YOU, PERSONALLY are willing to take the individual's salvation into your own hands. Here I'm on strong ground, hiding lights under bushels, and the like. 3) Given that you are not willing to take this individual's salvation into your own hands, how do you justify the bringing into the world of a condemned soul? Certainly an unwanted child brought into the world only to suicide or turn to a life of crime, for the lack of a caring elder <not necessarily parent, there are many instances where unwanted children have had successful lives due to the intervention of a non-related person> is NOT going to have salvation unless you (collectively)_ do something. Some people have responded to this by stating that putting them into prison is the answer, that it forces reassesment of the "soul". Anyone who belives that also believes that fining a poor family and making them eat out of garbage cans will save their souls. I'm not interested in examples of people from broken families who have succeeded, I know at least one VERY well, and I can show you that such people are the exception, and that they, almost uniformly, would be even better individuals if they would NOT have had to rise above their background. If you have something to add to my arguement, please post it, or mail it, depending on your own desire. If you wish to save my soul, proclaim me condemned, or whatever, keep it, you will only anger me and turn me farther from the path to which you wish to sway me. ******************************** The only people who can possible know if they can, or will, care for a child, are the parents. Leave the decision to those who know best, unless you are willing to PERSONALLY take all responsibility. ************************* rabbit!<with hesitation>jj (Who wishes that he didn't have such strong opinions that he actually felt he had to post them.)
dkw (02/02/83)
In Mike Dolan's argument that there is no particular moment when life begins,
because nothing fundamental changes, he also leaves no particular moment
when life ends (I'm not eating write now, but I think I'm alive).
The obvious (and perhaps soon legally accepted) definition of death is
the moment when brain activity ceases. As far as I'm concerned that is what
defines humanity, so that definition seems correct. Then we can define the
begining of life symetrically as the time when brain activity starts. This
is at about the 28th to 30th week of pregnancy. I might be convinced that
abortions after that are immoral (but ok to save the mother's life), but
abortions before the start of brain activity must be allowed.
David Wittenberg
{decvax|vax135|yale-comix}!brunix!dkw