Defining Person (Part 1)

I have dealt before with the concept of personhood and how it relates to abortion (if fetus=person, abortion=murder), but after reading more materials I wanted to get a little deeper and a little more organized in discussing personhood.

Before you can decide if a fetus is a person or not, you have define "person".

Everybody (except perhaps weirdly twisted philosophy students) would call this a person.
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Smart, Pretty, Successful
Businesswoman

This is also a person.
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Homeless Drunk

Even this is a person.
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Hitler

How does Dictionary.com define "person"? (So sophisticated, I know.)

1. a human being, whether man, woman, or child: The table seats four persons.

2. a human being as distinguished from an animal or a thing.

3. Sociology: an individual human being, especially with reference to his or her social relationships and behavioral patterns as conditioned by the culture.

4. Philosophy: a self-conscious or rational being.

If we relied on the first three definitions, there would be no argument. Human being = person. But we've become too smart to be satisfied with such a simplistic definition, and thus we must get into the abstract (and often arbitrary). I say "abstract", because there are multiple definitions of "person", both current and past definitions, that don't just stop at "human being". In other words, person = human being, but human being =/= person.

There are many, many different definitions of "person" other than "human being", which, frankly, gets into the realm of the ridiculous. But I will be covering many of them, starting with the simplistic, then going into the more convincing, and then into the ridiculous.

What's the difference between this human being
<><><><> <><><><> <><><><>

Smart, Pretty, Successful
Businesswoman

and this human being?
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3-Day Old Embryo

The first obvious difference is the physical appearence. However, while physical appearence may indicate a difference in personhood status (as the physical appearence of a daisy and a rose indicate different species), physical appearence or physical facts does nothing to prove the personhood of one or the other, because personhood does not have to do with the physical world. Personhood is an abstract concept. A rose is a symbol of love, but love is an abstract concept. In our minds, a rose = love, but in the real world a rose is nothing but a rose.


This
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Lady Cassandra (Doctor Who)

and this
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Horta (Star Trek)

look vastly different from this
<><><><> <><><><> <><><><>

Pretty, Smart, Successful
Businesswoman

but that means nothing to the abstract concept of personhood.

Another difference is their environment. A fetus is in her mother's womb. A businesswoman moves all around, going into many different environments and doing many different things. Our current laws, illogically, follow this mindset. A 23-week-old premature, but otherwise healthy, baby can be born and immediately taken into intensive care and everything done to save her life. A 23-week-old "unwanted", but perfectly healthy, fetus (notice the difference in the terminology) that poses no danger to the mother, can be aborted.

23-Week-Old Preemie

It gets even more confusing. Sometimes, if a 23-week-old fetus survives the abortion, attempts are made to save her life...and succeed. Why? All that changed was the fetus's location. At least be consistent, abortion advocates. If there's nothing morally wrong with aborting a 23-week-old "unwanted" fetus, logically, there's nothing morally wrong with killing a 23-week-old "unwanted" fetus. The fetus did not change. The mother did not change. The staff did not change. The only thing that changed was that the fetus is now one foot away from where she was five minutes ago.

In my next post I will get into deeper definitions of personhood that branch off of the two addressed here: namely, level of development and dependency.

(I have also decided to, for now, go to one written post per week, on Fridays. Tuesdays may feature videos, suggested articles, or short news updates. This will allow me to organize my time better and have higher-quality posts.)

All images found via Google Images. No copyright infringement intended.

Refuting Judith Jarvis Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion" (Part 2)

Judith Jarvis Thomson

Click here to see part 1.

This is the continuation of my dissection of the "ultimate pro-abortion argument". If we can prove this argument wrong, we can prove any pro-abortion argument wrong. This series will probably have roughly nine parts to it, because it is naturally divided up into sections. If you don't wish to read the whole thing, I have put in italics the parts I believe to be the most important/relevant, though I would reccommend reading it as a whole. My comments are (in parentheses and underlined).

This particular section is, for the most part, correct. Things get stickier in the later sections, but this one is pretty much a logical argument--it's the way Mrs. Thomson says these things that is unsettling. Her conclusion isn't incorrect--it's the manner in which she gets there that is wrong. Be aware as you read it that she is setting the stage to convince you later that the woman has a right to do whatever she wants with her unborn children.

Judith Jarvis Thomson: A Defense of Abortion

From Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall 1971).

(Reprinted in "Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Medical Ethics," 5^th ed., ed. Ronald Munson (Belmont; Wadsworth 1996). pp 69-80.)

...

1.

Let us call the view that abortion is impermissible even to save the mother's life "the extreme view." I want to suggest first that it does not issue from the argument I mentioned earlier without the addition of some fairly powerful premises. Suppose a woman has become pregnant, and now learns that she has a cardiac condition such that she will die if she carries the baby to term. What may be done for her? The fetus, being to life, but as the mother is a person too, so has she a right to life. Presumably they have an equal right to life. How is it supposed to come out that an abortion may not be performed? If mother and child have an equal right to life, shouldn't we perhaps flip a coin? Or should we add to the mother's right to life her right to decide what happens in and to her body, which everybody seems to be ready to grant--the sum of her rights now outweighing the fetus's right to life?

The most familiar argument here is the following. We are told that performing the abortion would he directly killings the child, whereas doing nothing would not be killing the mother, but only letting her die. Moreover, in killing the child, one would be killing an innocent person, for the child has committed no crime, and is not aiming at his mother's death. And then there are a variety of ways in which this might be continued. (1) But as directly killing an innocent person is always and absolutely impermissible, an abortion may not be performed. Or, (2) as directly killing an innocent person is murder, and murder is always and absolutely impermissible, an abortion may not be performed. Or, (3) as one's duty to refrain from directly killing an innocent person is more stringent than one's duty to keep a person from dying, an abortion may not be performed. Or, (4) if one's only options are directly killing an innocent person or letting a person die, one must prefer letting the person die, and thus an abortion may not be performed.

Some people seem to have thought that these are not further premises which must be added if the conclusion is to be reached, but that they follow from the very fact that an innocent person has a right to life. But this seems to me to be a mistake, and perhaps the simplest way to show this is to bring out that while we must certainly grant that innocent persons have a right to life, the theses in (1) through (4) are all false. Take (2), for example. If directly killing an innocent person is murder, and thus is impermissible, then the mother's directly killing the innocent person inside her is murder, and thus is impermissible. But it cannot seriously be thought to be murder if the mother performs an abortion on herself to save her life. It cannot seriously be said that she must refrain, that she must sit passively by and wait for her death. (No, it cannot. This is a tragic situation. Somebody has to make the choice--who will live?--and who better to make that choice but the mother herself? Some people would say that nobody should be allowed to make that choice--it's up to God--but frankly, if the mother makes the choice to not do anything, she's also making the choice to give up her life for her child (even if, by some miracle, she ends up not dying). And several mothers do make the choice to die for their child.) Let us look again at the case of you and the violinist[.] There you are, in bed with the violinist, and the director of the hospital says to you, "It's all most distressing, and I deeply sympathize, but you see this is putting an additional strain on your kidneys, and you'll be dead within the month. But you have to stay where you are all the same. because unplugging you would be directly killing an innocent violinist, and that's murder, and that's impermissible." If anything in the world is true, it is that you do not commit murder, you do not do what is impermissible, if you reach around to your back and unplug yourself from that violinist to save your life. (Again, be aware this is making the extreme assumption that the pregnant woman was both raped and is now in a life-threatening situation, both of which are rare, especially both of them together.)

The main focus of attention in writings on abortion has been on what a third party may or may not do in answer to a request from a woman for an abortion. This is in a way understandable. Things being as they are, there isn't much a woman can safely do to abort herself. So the question asked is what a third party may do, and what the mother may do, if it is mentioned at all, if deduced, almost as an afterthought, from what it is concluded that third parties may do. But it seems to me that to treat the matter in this way is to refuse to grant to the mother that very status of person which is so firmly insisted on for the fetus. For we cannot simply read off what a person may do from what a third party may do. Suppose you filed yourself trapped in a tiny house with a growing child. I mean a very tiny house, and a rapidly growing child--you are already up against the wall of the house and in a few minutes you'll be crushed to death. The child on the other hand won't be crushed to death; if nothing is done to stop him from growing he'll be hurt, but in the end he'll simply burst open the house and walk out a free man. Now I could well understand it if a bystander were to say. "There's nothing we can do for you. We cannot choose between your life and his, we cannot be the ones to decide who is to live, we cannot intervene." But it cannot be concluded that you too can do nothing, that you cannot attack it to save your life.(Notice how throughout this section she repeatedly calls "the child" an "it".) However innocent the child may be, you do not have to wait passively while it crushes you to death[.] Perhaps a pregnant woman is vaguely felt to have the status of house, to which we don't allow the right of self-defense. But if the woman houses the child, it should be remembered that she is a person who houses it. (She is setting the stage here, implying that because the child is inside of her, the woman has the right to do whatever she wants with it, though she doesn't make that argumen here.)

I should perhaps stop to say explicitly that I am not claiming that people have a right to do anything whatever to save their lives. I think, rather, that there are drastic limits to the right of self-defense. If someone threatens you with death unless you torture someone else to death, I think you have not the right, even to save your life, to do so. But the case under consideration here is very different. In our case there are only two people involved, one whose life is threatened, and one who threatens it. Both are innocent: the one who is threatened is not threatened because of any fault, the one who threatens does not threaten because of any fault. (This is extraordinarily interesting. Take her violinist example: somebody kidnapped her, and the woman will only live if she kills the innocent violinist. She is innocent. The violinist is innocent. The people who kidnapped her can stand-in as the people threatening the woman with death unless she kills the violinist (of course, it's flipped around, and they want her to die instead of the violinist, but it's the same type of situation, with a malicious third party involved). So how is this different? The problem with Mrs. Thompson's argument here is that she's looking at it all wrong--the mother doesn't have a right to decide to kill the child because the child is threatening her life as Mrs. Thompson implies, but rather because somebody has to decide, and the mother is best equipped for that job. What's more, here's another discrepancy with the violinist example: Mrs. Thompson is assuming that the mother has no connection with her unborn baby by comparing the baby with the unconcious violinist. Anybody who has known a pregnant woman (or has been pregnant herself) knows that this is not the case.) For this reason we may feel that we bystanders cannot interfere. But the person threatened can.

In sum, a woman surely can defend her life against the threat to it posed by the unborn child, even if doing so involves its death. And this shows not merely that the theses in (1) through (4) are false; it shows also that the extreme view of abortion is false, and so we need not canvass any other possible ways of arriving at it from the argument I mentioned at the outset.

Refuting Judith Jarvis Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion" (Part 1)

Judith Jarvis Thomson

Click here to read part 2.
This is the beginning of my dissection of the "ultimate pro-abortion argument". If we can prove this argument wrong, we can prove any pro-abortion argument wrong. This series will probably have roughly nine parts to it, because it is naturally divided up into sections. If you don't wish to read the whole thing, I have put in italics the parts I believe to be the most important/relevant, though I would reccommend reading it as a whole. My comments are (in parentheses and underlined).

(By the way, my presidential candidate breakdown is in process!)

Judith Jarvis Thomson: A Defense of Abortion

From Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall 1971).

(Reprinted in "Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Medical Ethics," 5^th ed., ed. Ronald Munson (Belmont; Wadsworth 1996). pp 69-80.)

Most opposition to abortion relies on the premise that the fetus is a human being, a person, from the moment of conception. The premise is argued for, but, as I think, not well. Take, for example, the most common argument. We are asked to notice that the development of a human being from conception through birth into childhood is continuous; then it is said that to draw a line, to choose a point in this development and say "before this point the thing is not a person, after this point it is a person" is to make an arbitrary choice, a choice for which in the nature of things no good reason can be given. It is concluded that the fetus is[,] or anyway that we had better say it is, a person from the moment of conception. But this conclusion does not follow. Similar things might be said about the development of an acorn into an oak trees, and it does not follow that acorns are oak trees, or that we had better say they are.(This comparison in this context is unfair. Acorns are not oak trees in the same way that babies (or fetuses) are not adults. An acorn is still an individual oak, just merely at the earliest stages of development, like an embryo is an individual human being at the earliest stages of development. Also, compare a “dormant” acorn (or any seed) to an unfertilized human egg.  The dormant acorn is merely waiting for the right conditions (warmth, water, soil, etc), while the egg is also waiting—first to be let out of the ovaries, second to be fertilized by sperm. Once the acorn actually starts growing, I actually would in fact call it an oak tree—just an extremely small one. Or, even if you don't call it a tree--let's say you crush a developing acorn. Now, did you kill an oak, or didn't you? The same goes for the embryo. If you crush an embryo, did you kill an adult, or didn't you?)  Arguments of this form are sometimes called "slippery slope arguments"--the phrase is perhaps self-explanatory--and it is dismaying that opponents of abortion rely on them so heavily and uncritically.

I am inclined to agree, however, that the prospects for "drawing a line" in the development of the fetus look dim. I am inclined to think also that we shall probably have to agree that the fetus has already become a human person well before birth. Indeed, it comes as a surprise when one first learns how early in its life it begins to acquire human characteristics. By the tenth week, for example, it already has a face, arms and less, fingers and toes; it has internal organs, and brain activity is detectable.(I commend this woman for, at least, unlike other pro-abortioners, admitting that this is true, though it can be true two weeks earlier, not just at ten weeks, depending on how you count it.) On the other hand, I think that the premise is false, that the fetus is not a person from the moment of conception. A newly fertilized ovum, a newly implanted clump of cells, is no more a person than an acorn (As previously stated, a growing acorn, as opposed to a dormant one) is an oak tree. But I shall not discuss any of this. For it seems to me to be of great interest to ask what happens if, for the sake of argument, we allow the premise. How, precisely, are we supposed to get from there to the conclusion that abortion is morally impermissible? Opponents of abortion commonly spend most of their time establishing that the fetus is a person, and hardly anytime explaining the step from there to the impermissibility of abortion.  Perhaps they think the step too simple and obvious to require much comment. (Yes, I would think that intentionally killing another person would be self-explanatory. Notice how she's setting up her argument to convince us that it isn't always wrong to kill a person by suggesting that it isn't always that simple.) Or perhaps instead they are simply being economical in argument. Many of those who defend abortion rely on the premise that the fetus is not a person, but only a bit of tissue that will become a person at birth; and why pay out more arguments than you have to? Whatever the explanation, I suggest that the step they take is neither easy nor obvious, that it calls for closer examination than it is commonly given, and that when we do give it this closer examination we shall feel inclined to reject it.

I propose, then, that we grant that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception. (This is what makes her argument so convincing: she accepts the pro-life premise.) How does the argument go from here? Something like this, I take it. Every person has a right to life. So the fetus has a right to life. No doubt the mother has a right to decide what shall happen in and to her body; everyone would grant that. But surely a person's right to life is stronger and more stringent than the mother's right to decide what happens in and to her body, and so outweighs it. (Actually, the fetus is not a part of her body, so that’s why she can’t have an abortion. As for “what happens in” her body…99% of the time, the mother has already made her choice about what happens in her body. Now that somebody else has been brought in, she has no right to reverse that choice.) So the fetus may not be killed; an abortion may not be performed.

It sounds plausible. But now let me ask you to imagine this. You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, (Again, 99% of the time the woman made the choice to risk being plugged into the “famous unconscious violinist”. Very rarely is she “kidnapped” to be “plugged in”) and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you (In this analogy the woman is subjected to this treatment because of someone else’s somewhat malicious intent. Eg, they know exactly what will happen to her body - people rarely impregnate women just to impregnate women)--we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you." Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says. "Tough luck. I agree. but now you've got to stay in bed (Rarely is a woman confined to bed for nine months, and of course nine years is absurd, because of a pregnancy. And assuming the woman truly had nothing to do with the risk of getting pregnant, this is still greatly exaggerating the “problem”) , with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him." I imagine you would regard this as outrageous, which suggests that something really is wrong with that plausible-sounding argument I mentioned a moment ago.(No it doesn’t. There isn’t anything wrong with the “plausible-sounding argument”. Exaggerating the consequences of a “kidnapping” (or rape) distorts the argument and changes the circumstances that the original argument pertained to.)

In this case, of course, you were kidnapped, you didn't volunteer for the operation that plugged the violinist into your kidneys. Can those who oppose abortion on the ground I mentioned make an exception for a pregnancy due to rape? Certainly. They can say that persons have a right to life only if they didn't come into existence because of rape; or they can say that all persons have a right to life, but that some have less of a right to life than others, in particular, that those who came into existence because of rape have less. But these statements have a rather unpleasant sound. Surely the question of whether you have a right to life at all, or how much of it you have, shouldn't turn on the question of whether or not you are a product of a rape. And in fact the people who oppose abortion on the ground I mentioned do not make this distinction, and hence do not make an exception in case of rape. (I agree.) 

Nor do they make an exception for a case in which the mother has to spend the nine months of her pregnancy in bed. They would agree that would be a great pity, and hard on the mother; but all the same, all persons have a right to life, the fetus is a person, and so on. I suspect, in fact, that they would not make an exception for a case in which, miraculously enough, the pregnancy went on for nine years, or even the rest of the mother's life. (Notice the generalizations? Anyway, no, I probably would not make an exception, but it does depend on the circumstances: on whether the mother would be able to support herself, or be supported by others during the pregnancy, and how severe the health problems would be; if they would significantly decrease her quality of life for the rest of her life . The reason an exception would not be made—despite it being, indeed, “a great pity”—is that an entire life (of the fetus) doesn’t fairly compare to less than a year of the life of the mother.) 

Some won't even make an exception for a case in which continuation of the pregnancy is likely to shorten the mother's life, they regard abortion as impermissible even to save the mother's life. (Again, it depends on the individual circumstances. If the mother and fetus would die as a result of the pregnancy, then naturally an abortion would be, sorrowfully, necessary. The point is to save lives. If one must die, as opposed to two dying, that would be more than, though very sad, acceptable.) Such cases are nowadays very rare, and many opponents of abortion do not accept this extreme view. All the same, it is a good place to begin: a number of points of interest come out in respect to it.

Life Begins Now (Part 3)

In two previous posts, I’ve been going through a list. It’s a list of different opinions about when life (and/or personhood) begins. Today, I’ll finish explaining the last few things on that list, and, finally, give my own reasons for when life begins.

·        When the heart begins to beat

A baby’s heart begins to beat at eighteen days after conception. Though this, like most of the other opinions, doesn’t signify personhood in itself, it’s hard to ignore. Something that has a heartbeat is very obviously alive. And, other than insects and algae and the like, very few animals don’t have a heart. Also, not many animals have two hearts. See what this implies?

Not only is the baby alive, it also is its own person. The baby has its own blood and own heart, completely separate from the woman’s blood and heart. (As I’ve mentioned before, pro-abortioners say that a woman has a right to control her own body. So she does. The baby isn’t part of her body.)

·        When the first brain waves are recorded, or when the baby is conceived.

I “squished” these two last opinions together because they ran together while I was writing this.

A popular opinion among pro-lifers is that brain waves can be detected at six weeks, two days. A popular opinion among pro-abortioners is that this is bogus.

To be honest, since there is such an immense amount of controversy (even more so than with fetal pain) and such convincing arguments on both sides, and since I haven’t tried measuring fetal brain waves myself, I’m not comfortable with saying for sure which opinion is right. However, in The Biology of Prenatal Development, distributed by National Geographic, as well as many other sources that aren’t necessarily pro-life, it is stated as true. (Here is the segment where this is stated. I encourage you to watch some of the other videos as well—this is incredible footage of live embryos and fetuses.) (To be fair, it is also rebuffed as not true by multiple sources as well. However, I have yet to see something rebuff this claim that isn’t pro-abortion.)

There’s something else to this though. Wilder Penfield, a neural cartographer, electrically stimulated the brains of his patients (for necessary surgical reasons. You can read about it here.), often resulting in a body part (such as a hand) moving involuntarily. The patients would often hold down their own hand to keep it from moving. The brain can be stimulated to make physical aspects of people move, but you can’t stimulate the brain to, for example, make a person pro-life or pro-abortion. You can affect a person’s environment to influence their thinking, you can plant an idea like in “Inception”, but it is the person who makes the choice. You can’t stimulate their choice. It doesn’t work like that. My point? There is something non-physical about human beings. That's what makes human beings special. Despite all the scientific facts and evidence you can gather, there’s still something elusive that can’t be tracked down with a microscope. Who are we to ignore that? It's impossible to tell when this "starts".

Life begins now. When does the life gain personhood? The baby is a person when it is born. She is a person a few  hours before she is born. A few days. A few weeks? Where is the line? Where does this clump of tissue suddenly become a person? Preemies can be born at twenty-three weeks, and they are people then. They'll still be people a few hours before. A few days. A few weeks? Let's say babies become people at twenty weeks. Okay. Fine. So it's okay to kill them at nineteen weeks, six days? WHERE DO YOU DRAW THE LINE? Does this really happen: not a person...not a person...BOOM! PERSON! What happens in a twenty-four hour time line? How is the baby less of a person at nineteen weeks, five days? Four days? Three days? What's the difference between eighteen weeks and seventeen weeks? 

From now until death, this human is alive.  Human beings are special. This human is her own unique person, non identical to any other living thing for all of creation. She is completely separate from her mother, and also completely dependent on her mother. Does it really matter what physical things are functioning or not? Before, she wasn't anybody. She was an it, devided into two halves. Egg, sperm. Nothing. Not growing, just sitting. Alive just as a finger or kidney is alive. And then...they join together. Conceived, and she now has eye color and height and personality and gender. From the instant she is conceived, she is growing. Conscious, aware, feeling, or not, this human is a person. Humans are people, not mere tissue.

People.

Image found via Google Images. No copyright infringement intended.

Life Begins Now (Part 2)

I intended to finish explaining my list of opinions about when life begins today, but the next subject is so sticky and deep that I decided to devote this entire blog post to it.

Some believe life begins:

·        When the baby can feel pain.

At the very least, by this time it seems cruel to dismember the fetus. Few people would want to hurt helpless beings, whether they are people or not. When something can feel pain, that something is conscious in some way shape or form. And when something is conscious human being, it’s hard to argue that the something isn’t a person.

However, those with this opinion usually aren't aware just how early babies begin to feel pain. There is a lot of debate, naturally, over when this happens. Currently, a new Kansas law prohibits most abortions past twenty weeks. Other states (I’m unsure about the exact number, as many have been debating and/or passing them recently) now have similar laws.

“At 20 weeks, the fetal brain has the full complement of brain cells present in adulthood, ready and waiting to receive pain signals from the body, and their electrical activity can be recorded by standard electroencephalography (EEG).”
— Dr. Paul Ranalli, neurologist, University of Toronto

An unborn baby at 20 weeks gestation “is fully capable of experiencing pain. … Without question, [abortion] is a dreadfully painful experience for any infant subjected to such a surgical procedure.”
— Robert J. White, M.D., PhD., professor of neurosurgery, Case Western University

Both quotes from here.

Approximately twenty-eight years ago, Kanwaljeet Anand, a doctor who dealt with pre-term babies (preemies) was surprised to find that the infants suffered less trauma in the operation room when given anesthetic before the operation. Studying this, he found that “even the most premature [about 22 weeks] babies grimaced when pricked by a needle.”

Story found in the New York Times (Online).



Twenty weeks old



Overall, people generally agree that, perhaps we should assume that babies can feel pain up to twenty weeks. I did a Google search on fetal pain and all the articles I looked at, whether pro-abortion or pro-life, at least mentioned that it was possible (though maybe not likely) that babies could feel pain around twenty weeks.

Abby Johnson, former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic, left Planned Parenthood and joined the pro-life movement after helping with an ultrasound abortion—an abortion where the doctor watches a live ultrasound so he can see what he’s doing. The baby was thirteen weeks old. Abby watched as the baby struggled for her life, clawing, trying to get away from the vacuum probe. Obviously, that little “fetus” could feel the probe. If babies can feel touch, why would they not be able to feel pain?

Thirteen weeks old

Thirteen weeks. Not twenty. Wow, that’s early.

Wait, I’m not finished yet.

Twelve weeks old

The Silent Scream is a video of a week twelve ultrasound abortion. (I have yet to see this video, mostly because my internet security program blocks it, understandably. I am also afraid to see it. I’ve seen the aftermath of abortion but watching it happen, watching murder happen—that’s different.) Though I haven't yet seen it myself, from the reports I've read the baby struggles for its life...and then screams.

But I’m suggesting earlier still. This quote taken from abortionfacts.com (The entire article is excellent and easy to read, if you want more facts than I am presenting here.).

“By this age [eight weeks] the neuro-anatomic structures are present. What is needed is (1) a sensory nerve to feel the pain and send a message to (2) the thalamus, a part of the base of the brain, and (3) motor nerves that send a message to that area. These are present at 8 weeks. The pain impulse goes to the thalamus. It sends a signal down the motor nerves to pull away from the hurt.”

Eight weeks old

Eight weeks. Weeks six to eight are when a majority of abortions are done.

Seven weeks old

 As if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s still another fact that makes it even more painful:

"Far from being less able to feel pain, such premature newborns may be more sensitive to pain"...that babies under 30 weeks have a "newly established pain system that is raw and unmodified at this tender age." P. Ranalli, Neuro. Dept., Univ. of Toronto

Last two quotes from here.

What’s more, something that can feel pain is at least partially conscious.

Unconscious people don’t shy away from vacuum probes.

Six weeks old

Images "Thirteen" "Twelve" "Seven" and "Six" were found here. All other images found via Google Images. No copyright infringement intended.

Life Begins Now (Part 1)

I posted When Does Life Begin? about a month ago, covering the basics of the “core issue” of the abortion debate. Now I’ll get down to the details of this critical question. In the aforementioned post I compiled a short list of the different opinions of when personhood begins, and I’ll go through that list now.

·        When the umbilical cord is cut

The idea behind this opinion is that the baby is just a part of the mother’s body. Therefore, until the baby is separated from the mother and no longer dependant on her, the baby isn’t a person. This idea is also the fundamental rallying cry behind the pro-abortion movement: a woman has the right to have control over her own body. Yes, of course she does.

The baby isn’t a part of her body.

The baby is connected to her mother’s body and dependant on her  mother’s body. That isn’t the same thing. Basic genetics shows this. Everybody knows the equation: man + woman = baby. Woman =/= baby. The baby has her own unique set of genes. If woman = baby, everybody would be clones of everybody else. Being connected to the woman’s body has absolutely no connection to whether the baby is a person or not.

·        When the baby breathes for the first time

Honestly, I don’t know what this is supposed to mean. What does breathing have to do with being a person? Dogs breathe, and that doesn’t mean they’re people. They’re alive and conscious, certainly, but they still aren’t people. Likewise, none-breathing, thinking, conscious, hearing human beings aren’t disqualified from being people because they don’t breathe. Drowning people aren’t disqualified from being human either.

·        When the baby develops bones

The time I heard this opinion voiced, the woman explained her reasoning like this (paraphrasing): “I think that once you’re breaking bones to abort the baby, it’s just too far along to abort it.” I can understand her feelings behind this, but developed bones by themselves don’t really have any logical connections to personhood. (It isn’t clear exactly when this woman meant. The baby has fully developed bones at about week 29 gestation, which is probably when she meant, or perhaps a bit earlier, but the bone development begins at about week 4 gestation.) However, connected with other things that are already developed, it does make a strong case for personhood.

·        When the baby is viable

This argument is irrelevant. When the baby is viable, she is able to survive outside the womb. The reasoning behind this also has to do with the argument that the baby is just a part of the woman’s body. However, when she’s able to live outside of the womb, then she must be her own person, right?

Let’s look at the most glaringly obvious obstacle to this reasoning. Science progresses. Would a twenty-three-week-old baby had survived back in the 1800s? Probably not. They can now. Were twenty-three-week-old babies less than people a few hundred years ago while they are people now? Or you could look at this argument disregarding science: if the baby can survive outside of the womb, without the help of science, then she is a person.

Lots of people are dependent on science for survival. Diseases, car crashes, disabilities. Does needing help from modern science degrade them as people? Of course not. Why then do we pin that “qualification” on unborn children?

Disregarding science entirely, people are dependent on other people. We all are. That’s part of being alive. We are dependent on others in some way shape or form as some time in our life. Like right after we are born. The twenty-three-week-old preemie is just as dependent on other people as the forty-week-old newborn. Sure, the preemie may need more intense care, but if you just left the forty-week newborn on the ground by himself he would die, just as the preemie would if left by herself.

I will continue breaking down these ideas in a few days. If you are interested, here is a detailed article about fetal development.

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The Core Issue: When Does Life Begin?

It doesn’t matter what argument pro-abortioners have, it doesn’t matter what answer pro-lifers have. Whatever the specific debate, whatever the good reasons for either side, it all comes down to one, central question.

When does life begin?

Or, perhaps to be more specific, when does life begin to matter? I have heard people say “from conception”, and I have also heard people say “when the fetus breaths air for the first time”.

But to start with the basics, we do need to address when human life begins, period. So, here follows a crash course on human reproduction.

"The development of a human begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote." -- [Sadler, T.W. Langman's Medical Embryology. 7th edition]

Every person has their own, unique chromosomes. Forty-six of them, to be exact. The zygote is the earliest form of a new human there is – created in the sperm fertilizes the egg. The sperm has twenty-three chromosomes. The egg has twenty-three. Put them together, twenty-three plus twenty-three equals forty-six. Brand new genes, brand new person. These chromosomes, from the instant they are joined, specifies everything from gender to hair color to height. Everything is “decided” about the new human that isn’t affected by environment he is born into. This person’s genes are now completely different from that of his or her mother and father. (Notice that this renders the pro-abortion “a woman can do whatever she wants with her body” argument irrelevant.)

That’s the technical, scientific explanation for when a new human life begins. There is no debate over this.

Things get stickier when you actually need to decide when life begins to matter. When does killing a growing human change to murder? Or is it always murder? Does the morality change at all?

When does the zygote/embryo/fetus actually become a person? Opinions I have heard follow:

    1.   When the first brain waves are recorded. (There is debate over this. There’s debate over virtually every aspect about the timing of development of the fetus.)

    2.   When the heart begins to beat. (Obviously a functioning body now.)

    3.   When the fetus can feel pain. (Again, a lot of debate, and, if I may say so, a lot of lies.)

    4.   When the fetus develops bones.

 5.   When the baby is viable (can survive on its own outside the mother’s body). (Totally irrelevant for a number of reasons, the most obvious being that this relies on science, suggesting that the baby will achieve personhood earlier and earlier as science progresses.)

 6.   When the baby breathes. (I do not get this one. How does this mean personhood?)

 7.   When the umbilical cord is cut. (I don’t get this one either.)

8.   From conception.

Okay, are you ready for this? I could go into detailed analysis of each of these, and perhaps I will someday, but right now I won’t. Instead I dare suggest something else: it doesn’t matter. Yes, you read that right. It doesn’t matter when the baby becomes a person. Why? Though  evidence points overwhelmingly in favor of the baby, let's assume that, scientifically, we can't know when the baby becomes a person. Science proves nothing. Nobody can remmber being in the uterus.

Let’s say you’re out hunting behind your house. You had to be sneaky and clever and quick to make sure you got out without your little brother tagging along – you want to actually catch something this time. You hear rustling behind you and you turn around, aiming the gun. Now, it could be a rabbit in the underbrush. Or it could be your little brother. Do you not shoot, and risk the inconvenience of needing to hunt longer, or do you shoot and risk killing your brother?

Not a perfect analogy, but I hope you get my point. If there’s a possibility of a real, precious, human growing inside of a woman, hadn’t we better play it safe? Isn’t it better to risk nine months of inconvenience and then sorrow over adoption or money troubles because of another child, as opposed to the alternative: that you were responsible for the murder of an innocent child?

I don’t want to downplay the difficulties, hardships, and heartbreak that men and women and families go through because of unplanned pregnancies. But I don’t want to downplay the significance of thousands upon thousands of people unwittingly playing a hand in infanticide either.

Question for you: when do you believe life begins to matter? Why?

Note: Pictures taken from WebMD. No copyright infringement intended.