VJ Torley has linked to a National Review article criticising a You-tube video by Bill Nye. I don’t think Nye is right but he raises a good point which the article evades. Nye argues that “many, many more hundreds of eggs are fertilized than become humans” – the biggest failure rate is right at the beginning, a high percentage fail to be embedded in the uterine wall – so if you accord fertilized eggs the same rights as humans, then who should be sued/sent to jail for this failure?
The NR review article is quite right to point out that there is a moral difference between an intentional intervention like abortion and natural unavoidable wastage. But it is nevertheless relevant that many more fertilised eggs fail to embed than succeed.If you really think that a fertilised egg is morally equivalent to a human being then this process represents a loss of life far larger than abortion, malaria, war or pretty much anything else you can mention. It means many more “individuals” die from this process than are ever born. A truly staggering disaster. Sure It is no one’s fault, but why does no one seem to care very much? Where are the appeals for research into avoiding this tragedy? Where is the mourning for all these dead individuals? Surely we should be diverting research from relatively minor natural killers like malaria to this worst of all natural tragedies?
This doesn’t happen because only crackpots really believe that a fertilised egg has the moral rights of a new born baby. But it only becomes obvious when the consequences are made clear. The abortion debate turns on whether a fertilised egg is morally equivalent to a new born baby. If someone believes they are morally equivalent then I can’t prove them wrong (I am a subjectivist after all) but they have to face up to the consequences of their belief and the science tells them they should be appalled by the tragedy of failure to embed in the uterus.
There is another twist to this. Like many articles, the NR article argues that the fertilised egg is morally equivalent to a baby on the grounds that is a genetically distinct individual. This is a materialist argument. There is no mention of the soul. Surely most Christians think that the individual is not a bunch of chemicals, however special the bunch, but something spiritual? There are many theories about when the soul gets attached to the body but there doesn’t seem to be any reason to suppose it is attached when the process of creating the body gets started, especially as that process can lead to more than one body at that stage – each of which would presumably have its own soul.
That’s because they don’t really believe that fertilized eggs are morally equivalent to normal mature human beings. If they really believed that, they’d have the same emotional reaction to failed implantation that they have to other natural disasters. They don’t believe it, but only believe that they believe it.
What they really do believe is that women should be forced to give birth against their will.
I think it’s more that they believe that a conceptus becomes a human being quite early on, but they aren’t sure when, and better to be safe than sorry.
At least as I once understood it, that was the catholic position.
I would be more inclined to listen to arguments on either side coming from women. I have no interest in what men have to say.
Men really have no standing in the right to life debate as long as (mostly) men go to war and bomb civilians.
Is this an appeal to emotionalism? I really don’t care.
Yes, I think that’s the tradition Catholic position. In my opinion, KN was right about the evangelical position.
Pope Francis made a statement while in the USA that appears to take the question to an even greater extreme. He said that every stage in the development of human life is sacred. But surely the time from the initial formation of the ovum within the ovary until the release of that ovum is an essential stage in human development. Furthermore the unfertilized ovum is a living human cell, and humanly unique, having DNA which differs from even the DNA of the ovary itself (being a subset of that DNA). Must we then conclude that every time any woman has a period, signaling the failure to fertilize an ovum it represents a failure to preserve human life? To what ridiculous extreme can we take this idea?
Well, you did ask.
Why stop with sperm and eggs? With a bit of technology, every cell can be cloned.
Failure to do so is murder.
Aren’t you both male and opining on this issue?!?
Tsk. Tsk.
I am a snark, and my borogoves are mimsy.
That seems right to me.
I think truths should transcend gender…..but being male, WTHDIK?
Truth, yes — but when it comes to policy, it seems highly plausible to me that those who are most likely to be affected by some policy should be accorded a greater role in crafting it.
Now, to completely screw up the discussion, how about this hypothetical?
A woman is in the early stage of a wanted pregnancy and she is murdered. Should the perpetrator be charged with one or two counts of murder? And why?
That’s not really the same thing as having no interest at all in what men have to say about the issue, is it?
I think Elisabeth pretty much nailed it. At least that is more or less where I am and I am attempting to be a follower of Jesus. I don’t think a reasonable person would quite see full equivalency of an embryo and a one month old baby, as Bill Nye’s example shows, but we aren’t sure quite where to draw the line. We are sure that when a baby moves around in the womb and has its limbs, heart, etc…he/she obtains a right to life.
Jackson Knepp,
When the Supreme Court addressed this issue in Roe vs Wade, they acknowledged the ambiguity, which is why they made the division based on trimesters and the viability of the fetus.
It was, I think, a reasonable distinction, and remains so.
FWlittleIW, this male doesn’t believe there is any such thing as a “right to life” at all. That doesn’t make abortions necessarily OK, however (or killing babies or adults fine either). But the way the abortion debate is usually framed–by both sides–as being largely a matter of whose rights should trump whose–seems off-kilter to me.
Also as a male, could you expand on what is on kilter ?
Well, that’s kind of a long story, IMO. But, in a nutshell, I think all the probability-weighted interests of “the village” involved in raising a possible child are relevant to a greater or smaller extent. That is, abortions may be ok in some societies/circumstances and not ok in others.
It’s not a function of “natural law” or “natural rights” or any of that kind of voodoo.
THIS fertilized egg has a soul and a DNA that will be asked to pay all of our medical bills one day.
Its a human egg surely. not just a egg.
Wait a minute. its the pro choice side who says babies don’t come out of female humans. They just appear in truth and rights in hospitals. THEN BANG they got them rights!!! Not a moment before because they were not a human a moment before.
First things first. DOES sCIENCE agree with ROE/pro choicers that humans don’t exist in the pregnant female human???
Assuming you consider Roe v. Wade to be the pro-choice side, the decision finds a continuum of concerns, the balance tilting towards a woman’s right to choose before viability, and tilting towards the fetus after viability.
Thats not accurate.
The decision was that the fetus was not and could not be said by the legislature/the people to be a human being. THerefore all that remained was the privacy by liberty from whence came right to abort.
viability is only another way of saying the fetus can not be said to be a human being BUT viability will cover any sensitiveness about the almost born “fetus”.
yet my claim stands true.
The Roe/pro choicers do say no baby human ever is within a human female. Only after “birth” is there a human being with rights of man.
This is unscientific if ever there was something unscientific.
Unless the first breath galvanizes the childs brain or something.
first things first.
Is science saying there is no kid 3-30 minutes before there is a kid crying in a doctors hands??? then deal with eggs.
Robert Byers,
I agree with you that the rights story is far-fetched. Theirs as well as yours.
Roe v Wade: With respect to the State’s important and legitimate interest in potential life, the “compelling” point is at viability. This is so because the fetus then presumably has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother’s womb. State regulation protective of fetal life after viability thus has both logical and biological justifications. If the State is interested in protecting fetal life after viability, it may go so far as to proscribe abortion [410 U.S. 113, 164] during that period, except when it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother.
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/410/113.html#sthash.lll0U1Kq.dpuf
I do think that the Court there makes likely viability outside the womb a test of when “rights inhere” in a fetus. That, I think, is the basis of Robert’s claim that that’s when the fetus “becomes human.”
Of course, viability is very fluid and technology dependent, while you’d expect “natural rights” to either “be there or not be there” (being all rightsy and Lockean and mystical and Jeffersonian and Christian).
How warped is this author? The fact that so many embryos fail to attach is just more evidence in support of the claim of the miracle of life. This is what random mutations has wrought.
That is why when an embryo does become attached it shouldn’t be messed with.
Do you mean life is a miracle given the design of the reproductive system?
What is the science behind POTENTIAL LIFE? Is that pre -life/ almost ready for prime time life?How is potential life a biological scientific conclusion/ are there papers on this?
What is viability in bio sci? Is viability a scientific term? Was this science on the minds of thoise who made the constitution?
Roe was a stupid ignorant decision in American judicial history. I don’t use the word stupi/ignorant much in questioning my fellow man.
anyways I say bring in the science to the abortion and Roe decision.
Pro0life will win. pro choice will be seen as a chaos of reasoning and science and law and Judge selection. Then and now.
Same as in canada and worse. Canada is a literal judicial dictatorship. america is only threatened.
Yes. natural rights or Gods rights for mankind is the great law of America and even canada. Yes Locke is right behind all this as usual.
The constitution must OBEY the natural laws of man and obey the contract of the people with thier government to enforce these natural laws and laws made by the process of government.
The roe decision must obey all people have the inaleinable right to life.
The only way to give a right to abort the pregnant females human fetus is to FIND in the constitution the fetus is nOT a human and can’t be said to be a human by the people . The founders made it that way the, Roe decision said.
Roe is not about a right to abortion but about whats being aborted.
The right to abortion can only exist if the aborted has no right to not be aborted.
Thats the equation here.
thats why roe is wrong. the founders never put in the constitution that the fetus was not and could not, as a option, be said to be a human being.
Roe exists as a denial of rights and not a assertion of them. The denial must come first and exist of the assertion of abortion rights is impossible.
The supreme court of ROE majority were incompetent and oppresive on the peoples right to rule themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_viability
You expressed ignorance of its findings.
Fourteenth Amendment: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
The fourteenth never imagined the issue of the fetus in the womb and its attempted destruction and and so never was a conclusion on the fetus.
Also again the constitution did not say the fetus was not a human being nor the people/legislature could not say its a human being.
Where did it say so if it did?
What is true is that all people have a inalienable right to life.
The constitution was truly silent on the fetus and gave no opinion much less a dictation no future American people could give an opinion.
its impossible to say the constitution expressly or implicitly or in any way said a fetis was not a human being. Whatever the people thought about it at the time.
I contend that that remark doesn’t actually mean anything. It’s tantamount to “It’s true that all oak trees over 50 feet tall are essentially majestic.”
No, life is a miracle given what it takes to produce it.
Abortion is an ancient practice, and was very prevalent in 19th century America.
The Constitution defines the protections of citizenship as beginning at birth.
It is everything in meaning. Its from god and all men recognize it for themselves and others, if not all,.
Having this right means taking it is murder.
Any consent with mirder is murder.
so the right trumps consent and so if the government does murder the gobernment can’t be consented with to be a legitimate government.
Its null and void. This because the people only consented to a government to rule them if it fulfilled their natural rights and others and other contracts.
The constitution AGREES with the natural rights of man. These rights do not come from the constitution. It only recognizes them and only is legitimate if it does so.
The constitution is under obediance to God/natural laws. The people only owe obedience to the constitution if it obeys the natural laws.
Citizenship is irrelevant. uniquely american insisted on natural rights and from this flowed citizen rights etc.
abortion was obscure in old america. it was not on the peoples mind about the status of the fetus. if it was then they would not have denied it had a soul. They would not , anyways, have denied future generations the right to decide if the fetus had a soul. they did not have such conviction in the non humanness of the fetus surely.
If so prove it with writings of the delegates and general authors of the constitution.
19th-Century Classified Ads for Abortifacients and Contraceptives
If I want to know about “natural rights” (if there are such things), then I look to anthropological studies of primitive peoples.
It sure looks to me as if both abortion and infanticide are natural. So maybe there’s a natural right to abortion and a natural right to infanticide. The constitution probably does not agree that there is a natural right to infanticide, though I don’t know if that has been argued in court.
As indicated, I take natural rights–and your “defense” of them here–to be largely gibberish.
I happily concede that a bunch of countries (and the U.N. too) talk about them as if they were real. But they’re no more real than phlogiston.
It is self evident to mankind and is popular.
If abortion defence is on the rejection of God/natural rights of man then fine with me.
Even if you deny god/Natural rights you still must live under a contract between mankind to assume they exist and obedience is mandatory..
It matters what people agre on in big things and rights are the biggest.
I don’t give an “abortion defense.” Those who do so, often base it on the supposed natural rights of the mother. Those who disagree often talk about the supposed natural rights of the fetus.
I think both groups are making stuff up.
walto,
I also think that “natural rights” are nonsense, but I also don’t have a really good account of what rights are. Do you have an account of rights?
Rights are a legal fiction. Rights are won or lost in the political arena.
Definitions of personhood are legal definitions. Religions may have definitions of personhood, but religion has no standing in law.
I have little interest in laws imposed by those who are exempt from the consequences of enforcement. (That includes a lot of laws made by lawmakers.)
Anti-abortion laws have a long history of being made and imposed by men and imposed on women. I would be glad to listen to a debate among women.
And like anti-divorce laws, they are not applied against the rich and politically connected. More reason for repeal or nullification.
I have observes several instances of people known to me who had abortions. It’s not exactly like robbing a bank. There’s nothing addictive about having an abortion, and no social benefit to a law that is unevenly applied between rich and poor.
If religions want to excommunicate people who have abortions, I have no objections.
Indeed. The example of Eire is illustrative. I remember thinking how unfair it was that men (among them – and especially unfairly – Catholic priests) were allowed to vote in the 1983 referendum.
I guess I agree with petrushka here. There are “civil rights” that are provided by governments to those who can get them. That’s about it. There are no such things as “natural rights” (or the now very popular and hipper “human rights”) if they aren’t just civil rights dressed up to look special and/or politically correct.
BTW, KN, I was thinking of submitting a manuscript for your book on Lewis, but I re-looked at the two discussions of Lewis I could find in Hall (one in What is Value? on the reference of propositions, and one in Philosophical Systems on “the given” and decided agin it.
Thank you for considering it! Just so I know, did you see it on the philos-l listserv, the hopos listserv, or my Academia page?
Batural rights are by definition not from men. They are from God or natural as opposed to given by humans.
If you say they don’t exist then most say they do and its self evident and done.
Human rights is not natural rights but is decided by humans. Thats why its always used to overthrow the peoples right to decide on matters.
Human rights must go as they corrupt the natural rights concept and impose dictatorship from elites.
The right to life is based on a human beings right to live after having come into existence. No way around it.
Thus if a fetus is a people then abortion can’t be a right. Obviously.
So is the fetus a human or not a human?
Does science have anything to contribute?
Does science agrere with the roe decision that a human does not exist until outside thier”former fetus location”.??
i insist science says the fetus ten minutes before birth was the same creature completely.
so Roe’s science is false. they were grossly incompetent and oppressive and arrogant in denying the people the right to decide as if they knew better then the people.
I got it from Peter O’s uploaded “paper” on academia.edu.
What is it like to be a batural right?