Once again, the General Assembly is considering legislating a scientific fact. Back in the 19th century, the General Assembly attempted to legislate the value of pi. Now, they’re giving another shot at trying to define when human life begins and, perhaps worse, compelling a woman’s doctor to endorse the General Assembly’s fiat. (See my prior blog entry on the subject here.) Rich Callahan, writing for the Associated Press, has an article entitled Abortion bill sets when life begins which discusses SB 172. The bill was heard in Senator Miller’s Committee on Health and Provider Services. No votes were taken after the hearing, but it might come up for a vote next week.
The bill requires a physician inform a pregnant woman that a fetus might feel pain, and also give notice to the patient in writing at least 18 hours before an abortion concerning the availability of adoptions, concerning physical risks to the woman in having an abortion, and stating that human physical life begins when a human ovum is fertilized by a human sperm.
At the hearing, the bill drew criticism from at least two religious groups, Rev. Michael D. Mather of Broadway United Methodist Church and David Sklar and Linsdsey Mintz of the Jewish Community Relations Council:
[He] told the committee that not even fellow Methodists agree on when human life begins. As written, Mather said the legislation represents one religious viewpoint — the belief that human physical life commences when a sperm fertilizes an egg.
“I believe that what is matter of faith should not be a matter of law,” he told the panel.
David Sklar, an intern at the Jewish Community Relations Council, read a statement by the Indianapolis group that called the bill’s declaration that life begins at conception “blatantly indifferent” to diverse religious beliefs, including Jewish tradition.
“This bill establishes a particular religious opinion as legal fact, and sets a very dangerous precedent violating the separation of church and state,” said the statement by Lindsey Mintz, the group’s director of government affairs.
Technorati Tags: sb172-2007, abortion
If the test for rejecting legislation hinges on its agreement with religious views, then virtually all legislation — including taxation — should be rejected.
Smoking bans, for example, are generally supported by conservative religious groups. State lotteries and para-mutual betting are also hot religious topics. The liberal media fails to portray such issues as matters of faith rather than fact.
And how would you say the conservative media deals with these issues?
Doug,
By directly channeling the inassailable Word of God, of course. ;-)
Depends.
Couple the biblical concept “we walk by faith not by sight” (faith vs fact) and “we westle not against flesh and blood” (EVERYTHING is ultimately spiritual) and you have a religious-right press corps that is faith driven. Let’s don’t copy their error.
On the secular side the Limbaughnic Plague infects us with big-government solutions to moral issues while pandering to the religious right.
And so…
Essentially the right to life is a fundamental concept that should transend religious/secular views. If the government won’t respect the right to life, they won’t respect any other rights.
It’s not a religous issue.
Let’s don’t copy their error.
should be
Let’s not copy their error.
(Blogs need edit buttons.)
I’ve said it before, but I really don’t get how you can believe, to your core, that a newly joined sperm and egg is a fully human life, morally equivalent to a newborn baby and a full grown adult, and not be storming every abortion clinic with torches and pitchforks.
If we had a store on the corner killing hundreds or thousands of 6 year olds per year just because their parents wanted them dead, I think I would take violent action to bring an end to the store (and be justified in doing so) if the government failed to take action.
As it happens, I don’t think newly fertilized eggs are fully human with the same moral rights as newborns, children, and adults. The general lack of violent action suggests to me that those who seek to ban abortion also recognize, at some level, a distinction between the newly fertilized egg and more fully developed human life.
When a woman undergoes an abortion, she has at least a general anesthetic, if not a total anesthetic. If she feels no pain, the fetus feels to pain.
There are several arguments that might, given time and CAREFUL persuasion (leave out the scare tactics, thank you), make me shift more toward the pro-life center, but this is not one of them.
On what, Doug, do you base your assertion (gratitious, indeed) that a newly fertilized egg is not fully human? What science stands behind you? Please, anyone, explain what is SUBSTANTIVELY AND SCIENTIFICALLY different between a human embryo and a human at any other stage of life? A human embryo just like you and me meets the following criteria:
1) Has a complete set of individual human DNA that is distinct and separate from that of any other human being. It is not part of anyone else (despite, in the case of an embryo/fetus, being contained WITHIN someone else). Clearly, the life is HUMAN. I know of no case of a woman giving birth to a carrot, a monkey, or a goat.
2) Will, if left in its natural environment, continue naturally along its life cycle. Just like you and me, the human embryo/fetus is in need of nutrition (food, water, oxygen) and shelter. When deprived of these, he will perish. Throw you or me out in tonight’s weather and starve us for a few weeks and we too, will perish! The human embryo faces the unenviable position, however, of being voiceless and invisible–and in our society expendable and defenseless, if inconvenient.
Clearly, by any rational standard, we are dealing with what is a) human and b) life. One needs neither to be religious nor anti-scientific to recognize this. In fact, those who declare that this is not a scientific fact are those who are chosing to ignore reality and embrace an illogical stance in an attempt to reconcile a pro-choice position on abortion.
So what, then, constitutes being fully human, since Doug used that term? Ah, that decision gets to lie in the hands of those who benefit from controlling the fate of those who fall under the definition of not fully human! How convenient. We, the powerful and interested, get to determine who will get human rights, not based on any objective criteria, but based rather on some arbitrary set of attributes we the powerful establish as prerequisites. And, whatever prerequisites those might be–beyond the simple definition I gave above–will be possessed by individuals in varying degrees: sentience, intelligence, beauty, size, “viability”, etc. All individuals in any species begin life, mature, then age, then die. To accept the pro-choice logic here, you have to accept that you acquire “humanness” in degrees. I guess that one is not fully human until one reaches full physical and mental maturity and then, gradually, becomes less and less human as he or she ages. How else can you logically use a term like “fully” human. It’s like saying “fully pregnant”. You either are, or are not, scientifically pregnant. You either are, or are not scientifically human. To ascribe to yourself (i.e. government, Supreme Court, etc.) the power to set the arbitrary criteria by which human status will be conferred and denied is the height of arrogance, in my view–and quite unscientific, radical and dangerous.
Am I the only one who sees a ton of potential abuse in a situation where 1) one group of human beings gets to define what ‘human’ means based on feelings? I can see a lot of potential abuse there, not just for the 1.5 million aborted fetuses in the U.S. every year.
As for pro-lifers supposed tacit recognition of some distinction between born and unborn human beings because of a lack of violence on the clinics, I find that a bit hard to swallow. Violent tactics are not likely to advance the legal cause for human rights in this case and may hurt other innocent people. This is not to say that moral outrage is unappropriate or not felt, but violent outbursts are not legitimate vehicle for expression thereof.
Perhaps the lack of terrorist attacks by environmental groups means they really don’t have a problem with environmental degradation after all, since they’re not being forceful enough about it! In this country, we have a democratic process (and forums like this one) in which to discuss and debate–which sets us apart from other societies. As long as we live in a democracy, there is hope to win hearts and minds and to win a bloodless victory for the most defenseless.
Thanks for reading, even if you disagree.
Steve,
I don’t either — but I know of a case of a salmon giving birth to a trout.
(source)
Just FYI.
Anyway, since you’re presented a case against abortion rights, I’ll re-present a case for them.
The above is a slightly edited form of a previous post
of mine in an earlier discussion we had of abortion on this blog.
Ok Steve, here’s a hypothetical for you. You’re in a burning building where there’s a six year old and a frozen vat containing 1000 fertilized human embryos. you can save one or the other, but there’s not enough time to save both. Which do you choose? Do you save the one or the 1000?
No time to fully answer (and I doubt I could *fully* answer, even if I had all the time in the world, given the difficulty of the questions), but the distinction between what I’ve casually called “fully” human and something less than fully human, has to do, not with the biological fact of life, but more with the biographical fact of life. There is something beyond having the proper number of chromosomes and chemical reactions that makes a human life special. What that something is, precisely, is grey.
What is it about a human that makes it’s life inviolable that does not exist in, say, a cow? Cows have brain waves and heartbeats, and quite possibly, emotions. But unfortunately for them, they’re very, very tasty. So, we put them shoulder to shoulder, feed them in squalid conditions until they’re big enough to butcher, then we kill and eat them. And I, for one, am an avid lover of beef — the book Fast Food Nation, notwithstanding.
Whatever that distinction is, I would argue, exists more in the 6 year old than in the frozen Vat O’ Embryos (TM – Tom).
Consider the following:
A woman finds herself with a three-month-old child that she cannot care for. The child was the product of a rape, and for reasons out of her control, she was not able to procure an abortion. Now, faced with the prospect of having to raise this child of rape and the probable demise of her future, she decides to drown the child. Provided that she does this under her own roof, no problem. After all, police can’t make the rounds of all households with children to make sure no one does them in!! The child is a parasite, a burden, and unwanted. What’s more, he’s not very intelligent…not yet, anyway.
Why, in any of the above logic, is that killing wrong? According to Doug’s, it would be less wrong than to do it to a six month old and possibly a little more wrong than to do it to a three-month-old fetus. How can the *law* function like that? Roe v. Wade attempted to draw on objective distinction where none exists, to suit the authors’ preconceived (excuse the pun) conclusion that abortion ought to be legal. The quicksand subjective assessments are all that remain. This is what is so scary.
The distinctions that you all propose to draw between the “citizen blastocyst”, the embryo, the three month old fetus and the six year old are all based on your subjective judgements about what constitues the *value* in human life, not what that life *objectively* is. After accusing pro-lifers of “imposing morality”, you proceed to do exactly that, ignoring any and all science and pointing to intangile “biographical” information that has nothing to do whatever with what the law can objectively deal with.
I do not contend that defending human life may be an imposition on some. I do not suggest any of the draconian measures that are cynically raised as some inexorable consequence of legal restrictions on abortion. There is no doubt that hard cases exist. However, good law is not made on the “hard” cases. For example, the law does not give blanket saction to all homicide because there exist a few cases of legitimate self-defense. Furthermore, certain rights supercede others. Your right to pursuit of happiness does not supercede my right to life if I happen to get in your way on the highway, for example.
Furthermore, your logic leaves open the possibility that some future maniacal dictatorial regime could, using de-humanizing terms to distinguish themselves from you and me and criteria that leave us all wanting to be as “human” as they are, exterminate us under the justification that we just don’t measure up. All of us are, to one extent or another “parasites” on society. I don’t think many on this blog accept the premise that “that just won’t happen.” If the philosophical door is left open, what in human history suggests that someone won’t try to walk through it?
When dealing with something as sacrosanct as human life, it’s not good enough to claim agnosticism until some magical, indefinable moment simply to save face politically.
As for the “Vat-o-Embryos” argument, it is a complete non-sequitar. In emergencies, you save what life you can save. Part of the problem is the quagmire created when we the powerful start treating human life as a commodity, generating it in a testtube and freezing it, all to serve our own ends. That that scenario could possibly happen is a sad testimony to the lack of respect that our society has for human life. The lives of those embryos have as much value as the lives of anyone else in the building, when the situation is viewed objectively. The rest is subjective judgement. I’m not comfortable killing 1.5 million human beings on those grounds.
Branden Robinson said:
Are you talking about abortion, like we have today, or the idea of moving a child from one mother to another? Both fit the above description.
Jason,
Well, no, both don’t fit the description, because of the phrase “mandated by the State”.
It describes the latter, as should be perfectly clear from context:
(emphasis added)
So, if I am a pregnant woman, and I no longer wish to have that child, I can take a coathanger to myself or OD on alcohol? Maybe I am mistaken, but I think that if it is not an abortion procdure under the control of the state (licensed professional), then it can be called murder.
My point is that the state controls the medical procedure of abortion already, and this procedure is the same. Both are sugery, both are under the review of the state. I don’t understand what is so scary about what you described versus what we have today.
Today, the state says* that if you don’t want to have the baby you already are pregant with, then you need to have a surgical procedure (abortion).
*If the state does not say this, wouldn’t even pro-choice people be upset that women could being doing this without medical supervision?
Jason:
You wrote:
Well, obviously the hypothetical you can do those things. I gather your question is one of the following, each of which in the effort of candor I’ll try to answer:
* Should such conduct be legal? As legal as any other form of invasive amateur surgery one performs on oneself. Strict libertarians would offer an unconditional “yes” answer. I would say that if the society permits me (I have no medical training) to perform a splenectomy on myself, then a pregnant woman should be permitted to apply the coathanger method. I ask you, however, in a society where prophylactic contraception as well as pharmecological abortion are affordable and widely available, how likely are the coat-hanger or alcohol-OD scenarios? I grant you, they may persist in Christian fundamentalist households.
* Should such conduct be lauded? I would say no; if a person is jeopardizing their own life under circumstances of desperation, then they are being failed by their family and/or community, and we need to understand why.
“Mandate” and “regulate” are not synonyms. An activity that is regulated is not necessarily mandated. The State regulates the operation of motor vehicles on public roads, but does not compel people to own cars or obtain driver’s licenses. The State regulates firearm ownership, but does not compel people to buy guns.
Similarly, a society that has legal, regulated abortions does not necessarily demand that women have them. I find the Netherlands and the People’s Republic of China to be distinguishable in the area of abortion policy. I’m willing to concede that you may not.