Plan B

[LadyJeanne]

I use slavery as my example not in order to tar anyone with its negative connotations, but because it is the closest comparable circumstance I can give. It's the only other time I can think of when a group of people's humanity appeared to be in doubt other than the Holocaust, which is an even worse connotation to bring in. Essentially, I'm in the complete abolitionist position; I believe that the people being held as slaves are real people and deserve the rights of real people. In that metaphor - and again, only a metaphor, not intended to convey anything about the morality of your position - your stance would be anomalous with the Missouri Compromise; let some people treat this group as human, and let others treat them as less than human and not deserving the same rights. I do not see this as a reasonable compromise for the same reason that many abolitionists did not see the Missouri Compromise as a reasonable agreement; each of the opposing groups of "recognized humans" is leaving the other in peace, but there is a vast third group of actual people, the slaves, suffering for it, and they were given no voice in the decision. Yes, there were rights of individual states involved, and rights of individual slave-owners who would suffer if slavery were abolished, but in the opinion of those who felt that slaves were humans and endued with the same inalienable rights as other humans, their right not to be slaves was a fundamental right of humanity that could not be set aside by other people.

My view is that women are that other metaphor you are seeking. It is women who have been considered property throughout world history and US history, women who could not own property or vote, women who were at the mercy of fathers and husbands, religious and political leaders...it was women's humanity and rights that have been in doubt in the US, and still are.

The woman must be taken into account in this debate! She exists! We know she's human! She is the actual person who would suffer without being given a voice in the decision!

Shang, you are the model of fairness and I wish I could be as rational about this issue as you can. Fact is, I cannot give the benefit of the doubt to the embryo as women's rights - my rights - are the rights that would be abridged by such a benefit of the doubt.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

(Apologies - this got ridiculously long while I was writing it.)



Yes, my belief that it is a human being is not empirically provable. However, and again I think this the key point, your position that it's not is also not empirically provable. Without meaning offense by this, you end in reiterating your position, but I do not see that you have proven in. I accept the divergence, but do not believe that your position is the default one in the absence of better evidence.

I think that's important because it does seem in this paragraph as if you wish to suggest that a fetus is not human by default and must be proven human in order for any action to be taken. While I recognize that this would be useful to your side of this debate, I think it equally reasonable to work the other way around. There is, I think, just as much logic in saying "if you're not sure whether an action kills a person or not, it's best not to take that action."



Yes. We agree here. This is why I think it perfectly right in a civil society for you to support your position and for me to support mine. I don't wish either of us to be prevented from doing so. I only wished to argue that the position I hold is neither one of oppression nor of a desire to legislate the morals of others; it is only a position that attempts to defend the freedoms and rights of other humans.



I agree that the laws I would support would constrain your choices. However, the laws you support would restrain, not my choices, but the choices of an innocent third party. They would also carry the weight of law - in this case a death sentence - despite also being unprovable.

I use slavery as my example not in order to tar anyone with its negative connotations, but because it is the closest comparable circumstance I can give. It's the only other time I can think of when a group of people's humanity appeared to be in doubt other than the Holocaust, which is an even worse connotation to bring in. Essentially, I'm in the complete abolitionist position; I believe that the people being held as slaves are real people and deserve the rights of real people. In that metaphor - and again, only a metaphor, not intended to convey anything about the morality of your position - your stance would be anomalous with the Missouri Compromise; let some people treat this group as human, and let others treat them as less than human and not deserving the same rights. I do not see this as a reasonable compromise for the same reason that many abolitionists did not see the Missouri Compromise as a reasonable agreement; each of the opposing groups of "recognized humans" is leaving the other in peace, but there is a vast third group of actual people, the slaves, suffering for it, and they were given no voice in the decision. Yes, there were rights of individual states involved, and rights of individual slave-owners who would suffer if slavery were abolished, but in the opinion of those who felt that slaves were humans and endued with the same inalienable rights as other humans, their right not to be slaves was a fundamental right of humanity that could not be set aside by other people.

Essentially, this is the situation on abortion as well, and it's just as intractable because it comes down to the same issue, one that is ultimately incapable of compromise. If a fetus is a human being, one cannot simply make abortion a matter of individual choice any more than one could make slavery or murder matters of individual choice - not because one hates the idea of choice or freedom, but because it involves sacrificing the rights of another human being. It would be wonderful if there was a simple compromise available in letting each person do as he or she saw fit, but there is no real middle position. If it's human a life, it has rights that must be defended.



Ah, thank you for the clarification. However, that also places your argument's grounds in morality, if I am reading your comments correctly. That is, you too have an internally applied system of value judgements that can't be expressed in empirical terms; you believe that it is more important that the woman's freedom be upheld than that the possibility of the fetus being a human life be upheld. I think that goes back to the first paragraph; it seems to me (and forgive me if I am wrong, for I don't wish to put words in your mouth) that you believe that the "default" position should be in favor of the woman's rights and freedoms, and any potential challenge to them bears the burden of evidence. Thus, when neither side is capable of producing inarguable evidence of whether a fetus is human or not, you wish us to err on the side of the woman's liberties. No?



Yes. I can do the same. A human who is aborted will not be able to exercise the same rights and freedoms as a human who was not. That person will be permanently deprived of all rights and liberties, as all of them are irrelevent once life has been taken. Each individual human life - clearly distinguished from its mothers from the moment of conception by the presence of its own DNA - would now be subject to the most absolute control, the control of life itself, from its mother. That person's ability to exercise any view on anything would be permanently destroyed at the moment of his or her death.

And yes, I know. That brings us back to whether that's a person or not. This is my point. Neither of us can prove this. If that's a moral choice, it is one on both sides.



This is an ad ignorantium argument. "Prove me wrong." Of course I can't - but you can't prove me wrong either. If either of us was able to prove what is a human being, this issue would be very simple to resolve. The question of what to do when no one can prove whether that is a human or not is the thorny bit, and it's one that has no simple solution.

That's why I call it an argument of definition. You define the fetus as "not human"; I define it as "human." I do you the justice of believing that you did not simply assume this, but derived your opinion from facts and reasoning; I have derived my opinion through similar means. I've never said that I can prove to you that a fetus is human; I have only said that a person who believes it to be human has no ethical or moral choice other than to support its rights - just as you feel that someone who believes it is not human has no ethical or moral choice but to support the mother's right to terminate it.

If we go back to the Missouri Compromise/slavery example, there were many arguments about whether people of African descent were inherently equal to persons of Caucasian descent. No one was ever able to prove conclusively that they were or were not, because the nature of the question - "define what you mean by 'equal'" - was so slippery that there were always arguments to be made on each side. Either side could just as easily have said "You say slaves are equal/unequal. I say prove it. And you can't." It would not have changed the correctness of either view, and it would not have made it any more reasonable to ask those who felt slaves were humans with the same rights as other humans to just let whites decide to keep slaves or not on an individual basis.



Precisely the same is true of your own position, and again, that's my point - that it's this definition that has not been resolved that is at the root of this, and not hatred of freedom or desire to subjugate or even privilege of moral over empirical thinking. Obviously, of what evidence does exist, you see more in support of your point of view and I see more in support of mine, but if either view had clear and absolute proof, we wouldn't be having this debate.



I think I addressed this above. In a nutshell, I can offer precisely as empirical and objective terms and arguments as you can. I hold that a fetus did not abrogate any of its rights in being conceived through circumstances over which it had no control, and in lieu of convincing evidence that it is not a person, I am not willing to curtail its rights. You position also boils down to a moral assertion: killing still seems to me to be wrong in your opinion, but in your judgement, the possibility that an embryo or fetus is a person is not significant enough to curtail the rights of another.

We're both making non-empirical judgement calls there; you just happen to favor individual rights of the woman in case of doubt, and I happen to favor individual rights of the person being killed in case of doubt. I make that distinction because to me the question is really not "whose rights are more important, the mother's or the child's?" but rather "which right is more important to uphold, the right to liberty of choice and movement or the right to life?" Because life is the root of all other rights, and because it is impossible to take it away temporarily and restore it later, I come down on the side of life. At its core, it's really mostly about what seems to me likely to deprive the fewest people of the fewest liberties.

I don't mind acknowledging that we're not likely to agree on this topic, but I strongly dispute the theory that my own position is any less empirical, or yours any less moral. We're both doing the same thing: making the best call we can on the definition issue, then following the logical chain of reasoning from there in accordance with the laws of our society.



I see what you mean here, but I don't think you at all dissembling or refusing to address my comments. Rather, I think that we are in many ways saying the same thing; my point is only that the thing that makes me see this as a muder/not murder issue and you see it as a rights/no rights issue is that definition of what is human. It's what decides which of those things we are talking about, and because we don't agree on the definition, we don't agree on which of those concerns should take precedence. The real root of it is not either of the obvious arguments - muder/not murder or choice/no choice - but a different pair of questions: "is it human?" and, perhaps more to the point in this last exchange, "what is the proper legal status of something that may or may not be human?"

I think that those are the central questions that really must be addressed, but I also think that they are the questions least capable of a straightforward answer. I'm not so much suggesting that we should debate them as observing that this is the real ground of difference, and that when such debates are held, it would be well to recognize that in order to avoid the position of your last example - you arguing for the Yankees, and me for Wilde. It may be a painful realization to recognize that the real ground of debate is whether baseball or poetry is the better pursuit, and that there will never be an answer to that question on which we can agree, as it is by its nature not answerable in any absolute way. However, I think that better than assuming that all baseball fans are philistines, or that all poets hate sport and wish to destroy the joy of the pastime.

To put it back into the terms of the original debate, I think it better to recognize that each side has applied both empirical and moral judgements, and that each wishes to defend human liberties it holds dear. I don't believe that the majority of people on either side hold their opinions out of a wish to spite others or to dicatate their lives to them; I think that they are each doing their best with a very difficult question to which there is no forthright answer. Yes, they are passionate - because both sides see a terrible loss of life and liberty if they do not prevail. It's a wretched position to be in, where no matter what happens a very large number of people will feel that a terrible injustice has been done. I think that that is why it is so important to me to argue for an understanding of the grounds of difference - because whatever the results, the decision will be extremely painful to many people and deeply divisive for society as a whole. That would only be made worse if people assumed the worst of each other rather than seeing the situation for what it is: a wretched, thorny, and at heart almost impossible to resolve question, and one on which no real middle ground is possible.

Shanglan

I really have a difficult time here, putting this into words, but, I'm not trying to prove a fetus is or is not a person. It's irrelevant to me. It's irrelevant to me, because science dosen't even ask the question of when personhood occurs. There are no quantifiable terms, that you could even apply to experimentation, were we to all be in agreement that excperimentation on human embryos/fetuses was even ethically permissible. And any standard you set, will be unacceptable to at least a significant portion of the populace.

My position, takes as an accepted fact, that you can't prove it is and no one can prove it isn't.

While I find that to mean we should consider the question without making a moral judgement on that particular aspect, you already have made one. So my assertion, you can't deprive a fully grown woman of her rights based on the fact she is pregnant, becomes to you, I am willing to deprive her child of life to preserve her rights.

In all fairness, my position leaves the question of moral implications to the person who is pregnant. It allows them to follow whatever course their own, individual decision on the moral/ehtical/religious implications leads them to. Your position, is that they need to accept your moral compass, as you know it is a life.

You are asking then, that legislation be passed, based on your moral value judgement, that precludes any other interpretation of the situation. At present, if your moral values say it's a life, no one holds a gun to your head and forces you to get an abortion. No one holds a gun to your head and makes you carry it to term, if your moral decision is at varriance. You want the state, via legislation, to hold a gun to a woman's head and make her carry the pregnancy to term.

In that light, it seems to me, it would be incumbant upon you to prove beyond reasonable doubt, that your moral decision is in fact, correct.

You have, in the past, voiced the opinion that people presenting extraordinary claims have the burden of proof up on them. Your position, rests upon the claim that you know an embryo of fetus is a life. My claim is independent of the moral value, I can readily admit I don't know, and still hold the position I do.

I obviously, am missing something. I'm not even sure where to begin addressing that though.

 

[cloudy]

You are asking then, that legislation be passed, based on your moral value judgement, that precludes any other interpretation of the situation. At present, if your moral values say it's a life, no one holds a gun to your head and forces you to get an abortion. No one holds a gun to your head and makes you carry it to term, if your moral decision is at varriance. You want the state, via legislation, to hold a gun to a woman's head and make her carry the pregnancy to term.

In that light, it seems to me, it would be incumbant upon you to prove beyond reasonable doubt, that your moral decision is in fact, correct.

This is how I see things, as well.

Pro-choice does not mean pro-abortion, it means exactly what it says. Each woman can choose her avenue according to her own private moral compass. It does not mean that an abortion is going to be forced on anyone.

A pro-life stance, on the other hand, requires everyone to conform to the beliefs that one segment of the population holds.

No offense, dear horsie, but I feel that being forced to conform to someone else's beliefs is oppression.

 

[Pure]

some hair splitting is in order, guys,

abortion is termination of a pregnancy.

biologists define pregnancy as starting when the egg implants, since a number of maternal hormones kick in.

ergo, the Plan B, even in the less common contingency, does not terminate a pregnancy or cause an abortion. it is not 'abortifacient'.

now what is "life," or "person," or "individual," can be debated, and the theologically inclined can, for their theory, pick any point they please, from the proverbial 'gleam in the mother's eye.' it's not a scientific issue, nor perhaps even a legal one.** ##

BUT, were we to say, FTSOA, the conceptus is a person [or two], it's arguably not accurate to say that Plan B KILLS it, though the pill *sometimes* causes it to be deprived of the matrix necessary for its continued existence. "Sometimes" because the suitable matrix is often not there, by nature.

This non continuance of the process--non-implantation--is a common fact in nature, said to apply to as many as 1/3 of all fertilized eggs. It's, perhaps, an unsuccessful 'launching' of a life [according to the theological theory], but it does not count as miscarriage or 'spontaneous abortion' at this point.

If there are 4,000,000 births per year in the US, there are likely about that number, 4 mill., of conceptuses who perish per year. This destruction of life far exceeds that said to occur in the 'abortion holocaust.' It's unclear to me whether declaring 'personhood' for these 4 million is going to significantly improve their life chances. It's unclear how great the contribution of Plan B is or would be, to this vast natural destruction.
---

**NOTE: we are not at all talking of fetuses --3 months up the road-- or embryos, about a week up the road. Both presuppose a pregnancy.

## Hence the vast difference between this issue and the slavery one.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Been lying awake considering this and I think i have the words I was reaching for so badly earlier.

I take it as a given that I don't know when life begins. Quid pro quo, I will take it as a given that no one who is pro-life knows either.

In the abscence of knowing, I'm not willing to curtail a person's rights, any more than I would be willing to imprison someone on suspicion they had commited a crime.

With the working assumption that no one knows, I'm more than willing to leave the moral/ethical/religous decision to the person who actually has to make it and live with it. I'm not trying to use my moral compass to guide them. I'll neither demand they get an abortion or that they have the child.



That may be just as screwed up as my earlier attempts, but it sounded good in bed and it sounds good now.

 

[Pure]

colly, i think you made your point well.

so called "pro life" claims are outside of science--for any scientific criterion is rejected such as capacity to feel pain. that's TRYING to accomodate, to get to the pre birth area. The most obvious criterion of independent existence, marked by breathing air and eating/suckling is what humans went by for 1000s of years, and *absolutetly* unacceptable to so-called 'pro life' persons.

that's one difference with the anti slavery and pro women's movements. they could say 'the oppressed group has the same intelligence, 'character', whatever. there's nothing demonstrably wrong with women's brain, if that's the test; or with their ability to do math problems. similarly there is no objective test that can disqualify all Black people. had literacy been used in 1850, many whites would have lost out too!

pro-life claims are outside the legal system as it's known for the last few millennia, for *real persons* are the objects, persons who can choose, be punished, etc. all other individual things have less and (somewhat) derivative value: i.e. the law may protect a tree, but that's because its beauty is appreciated by us humans. it's clear from early legislation, and early theological debate that awareness of blacks' or indians' or womens' personhood was 'there before one's eyes.'

the proposal to call some barely visible speck, 1/100 in. in diameter, floating down mama's tube, a person, and discuss their 'rights' has got to either be forward looking and futuristic by about a 1000 years, or is impossible within any known legal framwork. we have no way of communicating or telling what their interests and concerns might be, these tiny ones. and some last only 10 days. they are like mayflies, almost, in their transience, some of them.

the speck may become two or three persons, (e.g. twins) and the task of judging competing interests gets rather difficult. we know some fetuses grow seemingly at the expense of others (smaller ones). what about the two portions of a fertilized egg, now become two persons, each with his own claims, including not to be infringed on by his twin, not to be elbowed aside at the placenta. looking at another issue around division into twins: one person existed, now there are two: what happened to that first person's rights? did he want to, in effect, disappear, to be replaced by two? could he get a court injunction not to be effaced?

one can imagine 'children's rights' and even 'baboon rights'--fertilized egg rights are an entirely different kettle of fish.

I can't even imagine an analogy for such 'humanitarian' concern. Maybe the people who want to clothe animals, so they, the animals, won't be embarrassed. Perhaps those wondering about the feelings of their pet rocks, or virtual pets, or their Pentium 4's. In the human realm, the parents that believe they can 'channel' the intelligent communication of a severely brain damaged child.

It's said that Jain's have such a respect for life that they wear a veil/screen to cover their mouth, so as not to kill gnats that fly in. Even this has some wild degree of sense, though walking through ant infested areas might be a problem. At least each gnat is an individual, who flies around on his or her own, and stays that way. The fertilized egg speck, not even seen till 150 years ago, hidden in mom's recesses, unattached to anything is one helluva a fellow to try to look out for.

Returning to the real world, I hate to get ad hominem, but all the pro life authorities are not, in my view, primarily concerned with specks, but with the moms and whether they're fucking around too much, and if they are, whether they're 'getting away with it.' One of the earliest Roman Catholic objections to abortion focussed on its employment by adultresses--who, if pregnant, don't deserve to get off so easy.

Protecting egg specks would necessitate a variety of invasive and fascistic methods deployed against real women. Control of them [you, my dear] is the agenda.

 

[BlackShanglan]

My view is that women are that other metaphor you are seeking. It is women who have been considered property throughout world history and US history, women who could not own property or vote, women who were at the mercy of fathers and husbands, religious and political leaders...it was women's humanity and rights that have been in doubt in the US, and still are.

The woman must be taken into account in this debate! She exists! We know she's human! She is the actual person who would suffer without being given a voice in the decision!

Shang, you are the model of fairness and I wish I could be as rational about this issue as you can. Fact is, I cannot give the benefit of the doubt to the embryo as women's rights - my rights - are the rights that would be abridged by such a benefit of the doubt.

I understand your position. It's perfectly reasonable if there's doubt in your mind that the embryo is a human, or if you're sure it's not one.

There is no such doubt in my mind. I am not failing to take the woman into account; I am only recognizing that one can recover from a loss of liberty, but not from a loss of life. I would much rather no one be in a position to lose either, and I very much support contraceptive rights that work before conception. I just can't bring myself to support a course of action that could kill another person. I'm not at all unsympathetic to the terrible position of the mother, but I'm also sympathetic to the position of the person about to be killed. I can only say that if I was in that position myself, my decision would be the same. I say this only to observe that I do wholly recognize the rights and humanity of women, and that my position has nothing to do with their gender or with any wish to deny them rights. After all, half of the people I wish to defend - or rather more when we recognize that when gender is known, females are more likely to be aborted - are female.

Shanglan

 

[BlackShanglan]

I really have a difficult time here, putting this into words, but, I'm not trying to prove a fetus is or is not a person. It's irrelevant to me. It's irrelevant to me, because science dosen't even ask the question of when personhood occurs. There are no quantifiable terms, that you could even apply to experimentation, were we to all be in agreement that excperimentation on human embryos/fetuses was even ethically permissible. And any standard you set, will be unacceptable to at least a significant portion of the populace.

My position, takes as an accepted fact, that you can't prove it is and no one can prove it isn't.

With you.

While I find that to mean we should consider the question without making a moral judgement on that particular aspect, you already have made one. So my assertion, you can't deprive a fully grown woman of her rights based on the fact she is pregnant, becomes to you, I am willing to deprive her child of life to preserve her rights.

In all fairness, my position leaves the question of moral implications to the person who is pregnant. It allows them to follow whatever course their own, individual decision on the moral/ehtical/religious implications leads them to. Your position, is that they need to accept your moral compass, as you know it is a life.

Yes. Very much as your own position wishes me to accept your moral compass, as you think there is not a life. You too have already made the moral judgement, if you like. You've just gone in the other direction.

Why do I say this, when your choice appears to leave the decision to the individual and not to involve me? It's back to that slavery example. Asking for the situation to be left to each individual to decide is, essentially, asking me to accept that the fetus is not human. Otherwise, it would not be a matter of individual choice. Individual choice ends when another person is involved. The only way this can be a matter of individual choice is if I have already accepted your premise that there is no third party. That's not a matter of morality, really; it's a point of constitutional law. If that's a person, we have no right under our own laws to kill it. Whether we personally feel comfortable with the moral implications or not would be irrelevent; it would be an abrogation of that individual's rights. That's why I feel that it's impossible to escape that issue of definition; to view the matter as a single person's individual choice requires us first to accept that there is only one person involved.

There's really no getting around it; it's only an individual choice issue if we've already accepted that there is only one individual involved. Your choice asks me to accept your moral compass no less than mine asks you to accept mine - or rather, no less than it would if I was trying to get you to accept it. I'm not; I realize that it's antithetical to your view. However, what you suggest as a compromise is really only viable to people who already hold your view. It is equally rooted in your own moral judgement, and it can only work for people who have already made the same assumptions.

You are asking then, that legislation be passed, based on your moral value judgement, that precludes any other interpretation of the situation. At present, if your moral values say it's a life, no one holds a gun to your head and forces you to get an abortion. No one holds a gun to your head and makes you carry it to term, if your moral decision is at varriance. You want the state, via legislation, to hold a gun to a woman's head and make her carry the pregnancy to term.

No one holds a gun to my head. To use the rather graphic example you provide, they shoot the fetus, not me.

In that light, it seems to me, it would be incumbant upon you to prove beyond reasonable doubt, that your moral decision is in fact, correct.

And it seems equally clear, from my perspective, that if someone wishes to take an action that could directly and deliberately kill another human being, it is incumbant upon that person to prove that it will not. In every other area of law, this is certainly true. It's really not about my moral decisions; it's written into the fabric of our legal system. Unfortunately, a definition of what counts as human is not.

The problem we're both up against is that we've got very good reasons to want proof from each other, and no one has any. Your feeling on which way to go in the absence of proof is to assume that it's not a person. That makes sense; you don't think it is a person. My feeling on how to go in the absence of proof is to assume that it is a person. That makes sense; I think it is a person. The problem is that neither of us can act on our assumptions without doing something the other regards as unsupportable; we regard those actions as unsupportable wholly and purely because we cannot agree on who they are affecting. In terms of whether we're working with morals or empirical evidence here, we're quite equal.

You have, in the past, voiced the opinion that people presenting extraordinary claims have the burden of proof up on them. Your position, rests upon the claim that you know an embryo of fetus is a life. My claim is independent of the moral value, I can readily admit I don't know, and still hold the position I do.

I suppose I ought to answer both of those. First, I've been trying above to demonstrate that leaving morals aside and speaking wholly and solely of personal rights, there is no clear default position for the status of an embryo and that it is quite as possible to argue that the doubt that it's not human should prevail as it is to argue that the doubt that it is human should be taken as the foundation of the approach. Both have good reasons in their favour; both, ultimately, rely on making a call in the absence of a consensus on the issue of personhood. Your position, while perhaps to you seeming a compromise or fair middle ground, at heart relies on your own assumptions, as mine relies on mine. It's impossible for them not to. It's not possible for the matter to be viewed as an individual choice unless one has already accepted that only one individual is involved - just as it is not possible for it to be viewed as a matter of third-party rights unless one accepts that a third party is involved.

I'm not saying that my position should be the default; I'm only saying that it's not reasonable to claim that yours is either. There is no default position, and there is no approach to this that is not inherently based on one assumption or the other. You say that you can readily admit that you don't know and still hold the position that you do, but in that case you are still making a judgement that is rooted in personal morality rather than in empirical evidence or law; you've decided that when there's doubt, personal liberties of recognized humans should prevail until those that may or may not be human have been clearly proven to be one or the other. I take the opposite approach. I feel that when life may be directly and immediately at risk, liberties directly affecting that life must be suspended until it's clear that life is not at risk. Neither of us can prove that our approach is correct, because it's not a matter of proof. Both of our decisions are rooted in our own personal gut instinct for which is more important, and I suspect strongly tinged, at the bottom, by what we think it more probable. If I really was certain that a fetus is not a person, I don't doubt that it would be much easier for me to dismiss the fears of those who felt it was; I would not feel them. Unfortunately, I think I have the less enviable of the positions; I feel very keenly the loss of liberty threatened and the many injustices that have been done to women in the name of morality, and it pains me deeply to have to resist what would undoubtedly bring many of them happiness - particularly as it inevitably makes many think that I oppose the happiness and freedom itself. I don't. I only feel that before deliberately killing something, one must be quite certain that it is not a human being.

On the other topic - extraordinary claims and burden of proof - that's the real problem with the definition issue. To each side, the other side appears to make an extraordinary claim. It is quite extraordinary to claim that something barely visible to the naked eye is a living human being; it looks nothing like a human being, it can't exist independently, and for at least nine months it can enjoy very few of the liberties and rights other humans enjoy. On the other hand, it's equally extraordinary to claim that something that is demonstrably alive (processes nutrients and grows by reproducing its own cells), that is the product of two humans mating, that has its own individual human DNA distinct from that of its parents could be anything other than a living human and (ETA) that its normal development and growth will, barring accidental death, lead to existence as an independent human being. If you found its blood at a crime scene, it would be considered the simplest and most obvious evidence that a distinct, individual human being had been there. How could it not be?

That's the problem with the extraordinary claims issue. Each side believes that the other makes an unreasonable claim; each feels quite justified in demanding absolute proof before believing it. Unfortunately, both sides are right in their own way, and there is no absolute proof. Worse, there's not even a simple way to deal with the absence of absolute proof. Default to saving lives? Default to saving liberties? Each is ultimately rooted in its own assumptions. You're only saving individual liberties if it's a matter of a single individual; you're only saving lives if there is a life. Neither is acceptable to the other side; neither can be, because each side has its foundation in those two fundamental issues of whether a fetus is a person and what to do you're not sure.

Personally, I really think it's more the former than the latter. It's late and I am probably not at my most sparkling level of recall, but I can't think of any other situations in which people, when faced with the statement "this action might immediately and directly kill another human being," would typically be encouraged to proceed without being absolutely certain that it won't. We don't let them drive drunk, for instance, despite not knowing whether they will have any real problems; we don't let them sell ephedra, despite continuing claims by sellers that there is no incontrovertably proven health risk; we don't let them build houses out of cut-rate materials on the off chance that they might collapse and injure someone. All of those are much less immediate and direct threats to life, and yet few people complain of the strictures placed on those activities, despite some of them having substantial affects on people's lives and liberties and despite there being no proof that any specific instance will harm anyone.

I think what differentiates abortion is that it will either always kill someone or never kill someone; it's not a matter of fate or luck or percentages, and as an added complication the person who dies will not (barring horrible accidents) be the person making the choice. I don't think it's possible for people to wholly set aside which they think it is when it comes to the question of what to do when not certain. If in their hearts they think that abortion has never killed anyone and never will, of course it seems obvious that liberties should prevail in case of doubt. Why sacrifice real liberties to something you don't think exists? But if in their hearts they think that it always kills someone and always will, it's equally natural that they think that life should prevail in case of doubt. How can one permanently destroy a life in order to grant liberty of temporary duration? Both of these are ultimately rooted in what people believe, both empirically and morally; unfortunately neither can work with the other on this matter. To default to your position is no more reasonable than to default to mine, and that's the damned tangle of it: we're stuck with one or the other.

I obviously, am missing something. I'm not even sure where to begin addressing that though.

I don't think you missed anything. I don't think I had said what was missing. I'm hoping that I've said it now, but always willing to accept that my prose is tedious and tangled. It generally is.

Shanglan

 

[Huckleman2000]

Yeesh! I continued reading this thread mostly because I wanted to make the silly observation that Colly's characterization of her proposal that all women become lesbians until Plan B is approved as "tongue in cheek" was sorta redundant. At least based on a limited knowledge of lesbian sexual behavior.

That seems so completely ridiculous now. I mean, it obviously was ridiculous to start with, but sometimes I just can't stop the wiseass within. I'm weak.

Having said that, Colly and Shang, with additiional strong posts by Pure, Lauren, and great observations by others... This is honestly the most interesting and articulate abortion thread I've ever read. It has caused me to challenge my own position, and realize arguments for and against it that I hadn't really understood before.

After reading it all, and not being involved in it so far, Please let me try to summarize and comment on some of the arguments put forth:

(I'm committing the awful sin of using Colly and Shang to represent the two sides of the issue since they have been the principal advocates. I'm sure I will do both of them a disservice, as well as others who have made excellent points; but I'm not claiming this is a doctoral dissertation, so please allow me some latitude.)

Shang (& Lauren, others): The human created at conception is due certain rights; at the very least, the right to life.

Colly (& others): The conceptus exists within an already fully-realized person, or citizen, and granting it certain rights at the expense of its host female (?) infringes upon that woman's already-legally-acknowledged rights.

Huck: Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, also held to be self-evident and endowed by the Creator, clearly aren't applicable to an embryo. One may argue that the three Implicit Rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence are listed in order of importance, but they appear to be mentioned as a unity. A person is implicitly due all three.

I don't mean to use this as an attempt to put this into legalese - I just want to point out that the rights granted by governments to citizens presuppose that the citizen is able to live on its own as an independent person. The person may require medical care, nurturing, provision of food and shelter, and so forth. But absent that independent viability, it is only a potential citizen, while the woman in whose body it exists is a full citizen.

So a woman accepts the legal status of a fertilized egg. She says to the state, "I'm not a fit mother. I drink, I have high blood pressure, and I depend on some medications to maintain my health that may adversely affect the embryo's development. Take it. Put it in a petri dish, then an incubation chamber, develop it into a citizen. then give it back to me to raise until it's 18." That's clearly beyond the capability of science now, and judging from the limitations of Medicaid, clearly beyond what the government would commit to in funding. Waaaayyyy beyond what the current so-called Pro-Life coalition would commit to in terms of government support.

Shang: A good illustration of the argument is the question of slavery, in which certain persons were defined as lesser humans from the government's standpoint.
Colly (& Pure, others): Valuing the conceptus' rights as equivalent places women in a de facto role as a citizen with limited rights.
Huck: Like Pure, I don't understand how slavery is analogous to this issue, except insofar as slaves were persons that were granted lesser rights by the government. Equating a slave with an embryo, even FTSOA, makes little sense. Saying that the embryo is a person puts the host-female in the slavery-equivalent position. We don't say to anyone else, "You have to be a slave, but it's just for a limited time."

I think Colly & Pure have the stronger argument in terms of what government's responsibility or society's interest is in this case.

Whether one accepts that 'life begins at conception' or not, it's clear that a conceptus is unable to exercise any of the rights or responsibilities granted by a government, while a woman is. There are very good practical reasons that government and society have not recognized embryos as persons, and probably won't. If the "person" is unable to live independently of another whose personhood is undeniable, there isn't a clear responsibility for the government to protect the potential person at the expense of the citizen already established.

Even if one believes empirically that 'life begins at conception', as Shang posits in the DNA argument, that doesn't necessitate that government take action to protect it. Government is a societal construct to mediate interactions between persons and provide for the common good. The issue isn't really 'life', it's 'personhood' and 'citizenship'. Life happens and doesn't in nature with remarkably little regard for particular individual expressions of it.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Been lying awake considering this and I think i have the words I was reaching for so badly earlier.

I take it as a given that I don't know when life begins. Quid pro quo, I will take it as a given that no one who is pro-life knows either.

In the abscence of knowing, I'm not willing to curtail a person's rights, any more than I would be willing to imprison someone on suspicion they had commited a crime.

With the working assumption that no one knows, I'm more than willing to leave the moral/ethical/religous decision to the person who actually has to make it and live with it. I'm not trying to use my moral compass to guide them. I'll neither demand they get an abortion or that they have the child.



That may be just as screwed up as my earlier attempts, but it sounded good in bed and it sounds good now.

Well, far be it from me to argue that you're not good in bed.

I don't think it's screwed up, and I don't think that the earlier was either. I don't agree, but I think it's for the same reasons in the earlier post. In short -

In the abscence of knowing, I'm not willing to curtail a person's rights, any more than I would be willing to imprison someone on suspicion they had commited a crime.

If you do not know if a fetus is a human or not, you cannot know whether rights are curtailed in the process of an abortion - the rights of the person who may be being aborted. Your position is inherently rooted in the assumption that a single person is present, and that her rights are curtailed if the abortion is not carried out. I recognize that as wholly valid, but only if one has already assumed that there is only one person involved. If there are two, then the fetus is the one whose rights are more severely being destroyed. If one really has no idea whatever whether a fetus is a human or not - if it's a flip of a coin, 50/50 possibility - then both positions entail equal risk of curtailing someone's rights, and one of them may do it permanently.

With the working assumption that no one knows, I'm more than willing to leave the moral/ethical/religous decision to the person who actually has to make it and live with it. I'm not trying to use my moral compass to guide them. I'll neither demand they get an abortion or that they have the child.

But this is a false dilemma. The choices are not "force everyone to have an abortion" (particularly tricky for males) or "allow no one to have an abortion," but rather "allow a fetus to be destroyed by those who wish to" or "don't allow a fetus to be destroyed by those who wish to." You're presenting one of those two options as if it was a compromise of sorts, but it's really only your position restated: that the fetus is not a seperate person who should be protected under law. I can think of no other circumstances in which our laws allow individual people to decide to kill a non-consenting innocent third party as a matter of individual choice and moral/ethical/religious decision - not because they don't respect diversity of opinion, but because they regard a human's right to life as superior to the individual morals or ethics of other humans. If you're arguing that it should be a matter of individual choice, you are essentially arguing that it's not a person and shouldn't be treated as one; you've already taken a position.

I don't have a problem with that; I accept the divergence of opinion. But this is a matter of personal moral choice on your own part as much as it is on mine, and it is - if viewed from the position that a fetus is equally likely to be a human or not - just as likely to enforce that moral code on another person, the fetus who dies as a result of the abortion.

Shanglan

 

[BlackShanglan]

Huck: Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, also held to be self-evident and endowed by the Creator, clearly aren't applicable to an embryo. One may argue that the three Implicit Rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence are listed in order of importance, but they appear to be mentioned as a unity. A person is implicitly due all three.

Persons capable of them are due all three. This does not mean that those incapable of one are automatically in forfeit of the others. The chronically depressed, while unable to be happy, do not forfeit life; quadriplegics, while unable to enjoy liberty as most of us know it, do not forfeit life. That a person is generally due all three is not reasonable grounds to conclude that anyone who can't exercise all three is not a person. It's especially dubious when the inability to exercise those liberties is - as in the case of a developing baby - clearly temporary.

So a woman accepts the legal status of a fertilized egg. She says to the state, "I'm not a fit mother. I drink, I have high blood pressure, and I depend on some medications to maintain my health that may adversely affect the embryo's development. Take it. Put it in a petri dish, then an incubation chamber, develop it into a citizen. then give it back to me to raise until it's 18." That's clearly beyond the capability of science now, and judging from the limitations of Medicaid, clearly beyond what the government would commit to in funding. Waaaayyyy beyond what the current so-called Pro-Life coalition would commit to in terms of government support.

I agree that it can't exist independently until it is further developed. I don't, however, see that this makes it not a human. It only makes it a human unable to exist on its own. That's why the problem exists in the first place, of course, but that's a description of the problem itself, not a resolution to it.

Shang: A good illustration of the argument is the question of slavery, in which certain persons were defined as lesser humans from the government's standpoint.

Huck: Like Pure, I don't understand how slavery is analogous to this issue, except insofar as slaves were persons that were granted lesser rights by the government. Equating a slave with an embryo, even FTSOA, makes little sense.

The example of slavery was used not to describe the mother-child relationship or to suggest that embryos exist in a slave-like condition. It was included to explain why "let each person make up his or her own mind" was not a middle ground solution. As with slavery, the problem from the opposing point of view is that a third person is involved. Allowing people to make up their own individual minds only works if one assumes that no other person is involved. If there is another person, then individual conscience cannot be the only guide because that individual's choices directly affect another person. Just as "let individuals decide whether to keep slaves" is not a middle ground solution because it ignores the issue of whether the slaves are humans with rights, "let individuals decide whether to abort" is not a middle ground solution because it does not address the issue of whether fetuses are humans with rights.

"Saying that the embryo is a person puts the host-female in the slavery-equivalent position. We don't say to anyone else, "You have to be a slave, but it's just for a limited time."

I dispute that pregancy is the direct equivalent of slavery, although I don't wish to downplay the severity of the problems. I would still much prefer the former. As for the second part, we certainly do "say" such things as a society, and we do it all of the time. Wages garnished for spousal or child support? What are you, then, but a slave for their upkeep? Taxes? Slave to the government. Parent with custody of children? Slave to the government again, for they will insist that you supply them with supervision, generally in the form of your presence as well as financial and material support. Our laws are filled with instances of slavery if that is how you wish to define - personally I wouldn't care to - because they are filled with instances in which individual liberties are curtailed for the good of others.

Even if one believes empirically that 'life begins at conception', as Shang posits in the DNA argument, that doesn't necessitate that government take action to protect it. Government is a societal construct to mediate interactions between persons and provide for the common good. The issue isn't really 'life', it's 'personhood' and 'citizenship'. Life happens and doesn't in nature with remarkably little regard for particular individual expressions of it.

This is an intriguing concept, but at heart it takes for granted the central argument. You've just shifted it a bit from "life begins at birth" to "life begins at governmental recognition." I think your thoughts on personhood and citizenship interesting, but the government regularly protects the lives of those unable either to live independently or to exercise the rights of citizenship, from newborns to the very aged and everywhere in between. While I take your general point that a government as a whole need not protect all lives under it, that is the general approach of the government of this country, and has been from its founding. On those occasions when it chooses to risk or take its citizens' lives - drafting for a war, for instance, or executing a criminal - it is nearly always with the argument that more lives will otherwise be lost.

Nature, of course, takes lives as it wishes - but the legal system generally sticks to a code, and ours is that humans have the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our government does work to secure those for all under its jurisdiction, whether they are productive and independent citizens or not, and it has thus far not only failed to claim that those unable to enjoy liberty or happiness must not deserve life either, but has even gone so far as to outlaw in all but one state the removal of life even from those who have hopelessly lost the other two freedoms and beg to have the last taken from them. That doesn't seem to me a very likely basis from which to argue that inability to enjoy liberty or pursue happiness means that someone is not a person.

Shanglan

 

[Huckleman2000]

...Why do I say this, when your choice appears to leave the decision to the individual and not to involve me? It's back to that slavery example. Asking for the situation to be left to each individual to decide is, essentially, asking me to accept that the fetus is not human. Otherwise, it would not be a matter of individual choice. Individual choice ends when another person is involved. The only way this can be a matter of individual choice is if I have already accepted your premise that there is no third party. That's not a matter of morality, really; it's a point of constitutional law. If that's a person, we have no right under our own laws to kill it. Whether we personally feel comfortable with the moral implications or not would be irrelevent; it would be an abrogation of that individual's rights. That's why I feel that it's impossible to escape that issue of definition; to view the matter as a single person's individual choice requires us first to accept that there is only one person involved.

...It's really not about my moral decisions; it's written into the fabric of our legal system. Unfortunately, a definition of what counts as human is not.

That's not really true, Shang. The issue is precisely that 'your side' (for lack of a shorter term) wishes to redefine what counts as legal personhood. It seeks to limit the rights of already established persons (women) while creating a whole new class of person, 'the unborn (and non-viable)'. Government limits rights and responsibilities of persons based on age, paternity, mental capacity... There may not be an exact definition of "life begins at day x of fetal development", but there are many examples of "legal right x is contingent upon reaching birthday y". Pre-mies and Caesarean section births are issued birth certificates based on separation from the mother.

... First, I've been trying above to demonstrate that leaving morals aside and speaking wholly and solely of personal rights, there is no clear default position for the status of an embryo and that it is quite as possible to argue that the doubt that it's not human should prevail as it is to argue that the doubt that it is human should be taken as the foundation of the approach. Both have good reasons in their favour; both, ultimately, rely on making a call in the absence of a consensus on the issue of personhood.

But there is a consensus. It's not unanimity, but it's been adjucticated several times in the US and other countries, and it's been practiced in societies for millenia, legal or not.

[/QUOTE]
On the other topic - extraordinary claims and burden of proof - that's the real problem with the definition issue. To each side, the other side appears to make an extraordinary claim. It is quite extraordinary to claim that something barely visible to the naked eye is a living human being; it looks nothing like a human being, it can't exist independently, and for at least nine months it can enjoy very few of the liberties and rights other humans enjoy. On the other hand, it's equally extraordinary to claim that something that is demonstrably alive (processes nutrients and grows by reproducing its own cells), that is the product of two humans mating, and that has its own individual human DNA distinct from that of its parents could be anything other than a living human. If you found its blood at a crime scene, it would be considered the simplest and most obvious evidence that a distinct, individual human being had been there. How could it not be?...[/QUOTE]

For such a passionate and humanistic defense of life, Shang, you rely on a curiously dispassionate and clinical definition of it. You acknowledge that it can't live independently, yet you wish the government to grant it status equivalent to its host body. Would you say the same thing about a transplanted kidney? It too has its own DNA, processes nutrients, and grows by reproducing its own cells. It can't exist independently, but it's the product of two humans mating, and has DNA independent of its parents. But I doubt if you're arguing for kidney rights in this.

 

[BlackShanglan]

That's not really true, Shang. The issue is precisely that 'your side' (for lack of a shorter term) wishes to redefine what counts as legal personhood. It seeks to limit the rights of already established persons (women) while creating a whole new class of person, 'the unborn (and non-viable)'. Government limits rights and responsibilities of persons based on age, paternity, mental capacity... There may not be an exact definition of "life begins at day x of fetal development", but there are many examples of "legal right x is contingent upon reaching birthday y". Pre-mies and Caesarean section births are issued birth certificates based on separation from the mother.



But there is a consensus. It's not unanimity, but it's been adjucticated several times in the US and other countries, and it's been practiced in societies for millenia, legal or not.

Relying on historical consensus has two chief flaws. First, the question of precisely when life begins has historically not been an issue of hot debate, largely because technology has not allowed people to know much or do much about the development of an embryo. Secondly, if you're going with the history of America and England, the bulk of historical law goes with conception, and only very recent rulings work in the other direction. Similarly, your argument that viewing the unborn as people "create a whole new class of people" is disingenuous; if you're using historical precedent, it's largely on that side.

That said, I don't think historical precedent much of a guide for human rights anyway. The track record for most civilizations is miserable even when they're dealing with grown adults who happen to have a little more melatonin.

For such a passionate and humanistic defense of life, Shang, you rely on a curiously dispassionate and clinical definition of it. You acknowledge that it can't live independently, yet you wish the government to grant it status equivalent to its host body. Would you say the same thing about a transplanted kidney? It too has its own DNA, processes nutrients, and grows by reproducing its own cells. It can't exist independently, but it's the product of two humans mating, and has DNA independent of its parents. But I doubt if you're arguing for kidney rights in this.

You're carefully constructing a no-win rhetorical position for me; I wish only to observe that it is you and not I constructing it. That is, the choices you appear to present me are either that I am clinically chilly or, should I protest, that I am emotionally, spiritually, or religiously motivated and thus biased or without basis in reason. I decline to view those as the only two options, and do not feel that in actuality I am either.

I presented a precise definition because I felt it germane to the debate. My point was that my position is not rooted solely in moral or religious concerns; I presented the empirical concerns that motivate me. I am obliged to you for pointing out that a transplanted organ fulfills those criteria in the broadest sense, although of course wholly ignoring the substance and intent of the point, and gladly append the obvious addition: an embryo's normal development and growth will, barring accidental death, lead to existence as an independent human being.

Shanglan

 

[Huckleman2000]

The example of slavery was used not to describe the mother-child relationship or to suggest that embryos exist in a slave-like condition. It was included to explain why "let each person make up his or her own mind" was not a middle ground solution. As with slavery, the problem from the opposing point of view is that a third person is involved. Allowing people to make up their own individual minds only works if one assumes that no other person is involved. If there is another person, then individual conscience cannot be the only guide because that individual's choices directly affect another person. Just as "let individuals decide whether to keep slaves" is not a middle ground solution because it ignores the issue of whether the slaves are humans with rights, "let individuals decide whether to abort" is not a middle ground solution because it does not address the issue of whether fetuses are humans with rights....

...I dispute that pregancy is the direct equivalent of slavery, although I don't wish to downplay the severity of the problems. I would still much prefer the former. As for the second part, we certainly do "say" such things as a society, and we do it all of the time. Wages garnished for spousal or child support? What are you, then, but a slave for their upkeep? Taxes? Slave to the government. Parent with custody of children? Slave to the government again, for they will insist that you supply them with supervision, generally in the form of your presence as well as financial and material support. Our laws are filled with instances of slavery if that is how you wish to define - personally I wouldn't care to - because they are filled with instances in which individual liberties are curtailed for the good of others.

You're mixing slavery with mediated rights between individuals who have the same basic rights. Not an uncommon argument, but placing limitations on individual rights with regards to others' rights is not analogous to subsuming another's rights into another class. I wholly agree that the difference with slavery is that there is a non-acknowledgement of the slave's 'personhood'. Settling legal disputes is done on the basis that one party is of a lesser legal status than the other.
Acknowledging the rights of a non-viable fetus, let alone an embryo, puts women into a separate, and lesser, legal class, by definition. There is no way to legally mediate rights between a host body and something that cannot live independently without it. Does a person's heart retain the rights of the person after it's transplanted into someone else's body, when the first body ceases to function on its own?

 

[Huckleman2000]

Relying on historical consensus has two chief flaws. First, the question of precisely when life begins has historically not been an issue of hot debate, largely because technology has not allowed people to know much or do much about the development of an embryo. Secondly, if you're going with the history of America and England, the bulk of historical law goes with conception, and only very recent rulings work in the other direction. Similarly, your argument that viewing the unborn as people "create a whole new class of people" is disingenuous; if you're using historical precedent, it's largely on that side.

That said, I don't think historical precedent much of a guide for human rights anyway. The track record for most civilizations is miserable even when they're dealing with grown adults who happen to have a little more melatonin.

I'm not sure I understand your point. That, historically, law sided with with conception, but as technology has come to understand embryonic development, the law has worked in the opposite direction? That hardly bodes well in terms of a developing consensus to maintain conception as the legal definition via empirical means.

You're carefully constructing a no-win rhetorical position for me; I wish only to observe that it is you and not I constructing it. That is, the choices you appear to present me are either that I am clinically chilly or, should I protest, that I am emotionally, spiritually, or religiously motivated and thus biased or without basis in reason. I decline to view those as the only two options, and do not feel that in actuality I am either.

I presented a precise definition because I felt it germane to the debate. My point was that my position is not rooted solely in moral or religious concerns; I presented the empirical concerns that motivate me. I am obliged to you for pointing out that a transplanted organ fulfills those criteria in the broadest sense, although of course wholly ignoring the substance and intent of the point, and gladly append the obvious addition: an embryo's normal development and growth will, barring accidental death, lead to existence as an independent human being.
Shanglan

My point, Shang, is that "normal" growth and development of an embryo does not lead to existence as an independent human being. As Pure stated, about a third of fertilized eggs never even implant. Of those that do, many are lost to miscairiage. Have you ever followed a woman trying to become pregnant through in vitro? They shoot in several fertilized eggs in the most opportune time of the hormonally enhanced cycle, in the hopes that one might implant. And if one does, one spill or a couple jumping jacks is all it takes to jar it loose. How many couples have fertility problems? 15%, according to the first page of Google results. So, allowing for even just 1/3 of those being related to the woman (ie, 5%), we're probably somewhere less than 60% of conceptions ever reaching the earliest stages of development.

I wasn't being totally flippant talking about transplanted organs. Those are far more highly developed parts of a human body than a fertilized egg. Who knows, maybe one day we will be able to clone people from those cells, and the cells will achieve a sort of immortality. That's probably more likely than producing a fully developed human from fertilized eggs outside the womb.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Well, far be it from me to argue that you're not good in bed.

I don't think it's screwed up, and I don't think that the earlier was either. I don't agree, but I think it's for the same reasons in the earlier post. In short -


If you do not know if a fetus is a human or not, you cannot know whether rights are curtailed in the process of an abortion - the rights of the person who may be being aborted. Your position is inherently rooted in the assumption that a single person is present, and that her rights are curtailed if the abortion is not carried out. I recognize that as wholly valid, but only if one has already assumed that there is only one person involved. If there are two, then the fetus is the one whose rights are more severely being destroyed. If one really has no idea whatever whether a fetus is a human or not - if it's a flip of a coin, 50/50 possibility - then both positions entail equal risk of curtailing someone's rights, and one of them may do it permanently.



But this is a false dilemma. The choices are not "force everyone to have an abortion" (particularly tricky for males) or "allow no one to have an abortion," but rather "allow a fetus to be destroyed by those who wish to" or "don't allow a fetus to be destroyed by those who wish to." You're presenting one of those two options as if it was a compromise of sorts, but it's really only your position restated: that the fetus is not a seperate person who should be protected under law. I can think of no other circumstances in which our laws allow individual people to decide to kill a non-consenting innocent third party as a matter of individual choice and moral/ethical/religious decision - not because they don't respect diversity of opinion, but because they regard a human's right to life as superior to the individual morals or ethics of other humans. If you're arguing that it should be a matter of individual choice, you are essentially arguing that it's not a person and shouldn't be treated as one; you've already taken a position.

I don't have a problem with that; I accept the divergence of opinion. But this is a matter of personal moral choice on your own part as much as it is on mine, and it is - if viewed from the position that a fetus is equally likely to be a human or not - just as likely to enforce that moral code on another person, the fetus who dies as a result of the abortion.

Shanglan

It seems to me Shang, that you're trying to force a position on me, that makes mine classically opposed to yours, and there by facilitates argument.

When I see a pregnant woman, I see one person, with the admitted possibility there is another person there. While, you, upon seeing the same woman, see two people. Because I don't see two, you are trying to extrapolate I have decided the embryo or fetus is not a person. I have not said a fetus is not a preson or an embryo is not a person, I have said it can't be proven to be one.

Objectively then, there is one person before me, with the possibility that there is another. I refuse to curtail the rights of the quantifiable person, in deferrence to the possibility that another person might be there to be affected.

That position is wholly cogent. It doesn't require further examination of the possibility, nor does it demand refinement of my position into making an unfounded assumption.

To use a way out analogy, in astronomy, we can often see one member of a bianry star system. We can know what it's mass is and what spectal class it fits into, so we can say with great confidence, the visible star in the Horsey system is a blue giant. By other evidence, such as the wobble of the visible companion's luminosity or by calculation of it's disturbed orbit, we can infer a companion, even though we cannot see it. You're assuming a black hole, Shang X-1. Where I am simply admitting a companion.

That companion could be a white dwarf, it could be a neutron star, it could be a red dwarf, it could be a jupiter type proto star. It could even be something we have never seen before. Or it could be black hole Shang X-1.

In effect, you are accusing me of denying the existance of Shang X-1, when I am simply saying we don' t know it's a black hole. In Astronomy, we could refine our observations, If the companion is a bright X-ray emittor, has a mass of 15 sols, exhibits jetting from the accretion disk, and cannot be observed with more refined instruments, I'll agree the preponderance is that Shang X-1 is a black hole, congratulations for discovering it.

On the question of am I observing one person or two when I meet a pregnant woman, you cannot refine your position beyond naming it fetus X-1 and demanding I accept it's a human with attendant human rights. My position that fetus X-1 exists, without making a leap and defining it as human or not, is perfectly valid. I'm not denying it's existance, I'm denying we know what it is.

In trying to stay consistant, I have to accept Mama X-1 is a person, because the evidence of my senses demands that I do just as I have to accept the existance of the luminescent star in the Horsey binary system. Further, I have to accept the evidence that Mama X-1 is carrying fetus X-1, again by the solid evidence of my eyes, just as I have to accept that the visible star in the Horsey system has a companion, Shang X-1. Without further refinement I do not have to accept that Shang X-1 is a black hole, any more than I am obligated to accept Fetus X-1 is a human.

No one can provide further refinement that leads to the inescapable conclusion Fetus X-1 is a human. The fact that I cannot provide further refinement that it is not, does not change the status of unkown anomoly fetus X-1, any more than my inability to prove ShangX-1 doesn't have the accretion disk to be a black hole precludes it being one. I am perfectly within the realm of rational thought to conclude Shang X-1 is an anomoly that might be a black hole. I am also, perfectly within the realm of reason to conclude fetus X-1 is an anomoly, that may be a human. I am not constrained to pass a judgement on Shang X-1 any more than I am constrained to pass a judgement on fetus X-1 to define my position.

My position is wholly rational and cogent, if a bit anti-climactic, I just don't know what it is. To further refine this analogy, if you demand I list a companion to Shang's star in the registry, I'm with you. But you're demanding I list shang X-1 as a black hole. That I am not willing to do, because I don't know it's a black hole. You are then accusing me of having passed the judgement that ShangX-1 isn't a black hole and are further demanding I prove that asertion, when I never made that assertion.

I can discuss the Horsey system with my peers without pasing a judgement on what Shang X-1 really is. I can even do research on the system, listing Shang X-1 as an unknown quantity with an attendant list of it's known properties.

I don't know what fetus X-1 is. And I'm not willing to let you list fetus X-1 in the registry of human beings. That does not require me to pass a judgement on FetusX-1's status either.

Long winded psot, but I think it may make my point. I'm not passing any judgement on the moral question of is a fetus a human. I am rationally accepting I don't know. I do know what the mother is. I cannot concience curtailing the rights of the mother (a known quantity) on the supposition that the fetus (an unkown quanity) has the same status.

My position does not require me to make an apriori definitive appraisal of the embryo of fetus. I can acept it as an unknown quantity and still hold my position rationally. The mother, is a known quantity and by virtue of being a known quantity, holds certain rights. Much as the companion star in the horsey system is a known quantity and holds certain properties by virtue of being known as a blue giant star. Shang X-1 is an unkown uantity and holds no particular properties beyond being known to exist, much as the fetus is an unkown quantity and holds no inherent rights beyond those asscoicated with being known to exist.

You can't make me accept ShangX-1is a black hole without providing the evidence. You can't make me accept fetus X-1 is a person without providing the evidence.

You also can't make me render a judgement on ShangX-1 if there isn't enough evidence to support one, just as you cannot make me render a judgement on fetusX1 if there is insufficent evidence to render one. But just because I refuse to accept Shang X-1 is a black hole, does not mean I have to formulate an idea of what it is. And just because I refuse to acept fetus X-1 is a known human it dosen't force me to pass judgement on what it is.

What I have been trying to say here is that I don't have to dney fetus X-1 is a human to form a position, any more than I have to deny Shang X-1 is a black hole to form a position on the system. I can operate effectively by listing shang X-1 as an unkown, just as I can operate effectively listing an embryo or fetus as an unkown.

Basically, I am not constrained to pass a judgement when accepting it is an unkown is valid. You can't shoehorn me into a position of saying it isn't a human because I haven't said that. Your position requires you to pass that judgement, but it does not follow that mine requires me to make an antitical judgement to disagree with you.

 

[BlackShanglan]

You're mixing slavery with mediated rights between individuals who have the same basic rights.

No. My point was that you were. It was you, not I, who argued that the mother's position was analagous to slavery. I only observed that "if that is how you wish to define [it] - personally I wouldn't care to," all of those other things would also be slavery. I don't think that any of them are.

I wholly agree that the difference with slavery is that there is a non-acknowledgement of the slave's 'personhood'. Settling legal disputes is done on the basis that one party is of a lesser legal status than the other.
Acknowledging the rights of a non-viable fetus, let alone an embryo, puts women into a separate, and lesser, legal class, by definition.

No, it doesn't, for precisely the reasons you cited yourself just before. Mediating rights between two individuals with conflicting rights does not deny the personhood of either. It only acknowledges that there are two rights that can't be exercised at the same time. Your position only works, once more, if you've already assumed that the embryo is not a person. That leaves the paragraph above in a tautological loop: it's not a person because it's not a person.

There is no way to legally mediate rights between a host body and something that cannot live independently without it. Does a person's heart retain the rights of the person after it's transplanted into someone else's body, when the first body ceases to function on its own?

Yes, but again, a heart will never reach a point of living an independent existence. A fetus either will, or will die of natural causes within a finite time frame. I agree that the temporary inability of the fetus to live without the mother is a very serious problem and that it is what makes this debate so difficult to resolve, but I disagree with your assertion that there is no way to mediate rights, and with the suggestion that a transplanted organ is an accurate comparison.

(On history)

I'm not sure I understand your point. That, historically, law sided with with conception, but as technology has come to understand embryonic development, the law has worked in the opposite direction? That hardly bodes well in terms of a developing consensus to maintain conception as the legal definition via empirical means.

Neither side has conclusive evidence, and since the Roe v. Wade ruling other developments, such as DNA testing, have also taken place, and some of them support the other side. More broadly, my point was that you personally appealed to historical precedent; I was simply observing that (1) historical precedent does not support you and (2) historical precedent is not a good guide anyway.

My point, Shang, is that "normal" growth and development of an embryo does not lead to existence as an independent human being. As Pure stated, about a third of fertilized eggs never even implant. Of those that do, many are lost to miscairiage. Have you ever followed a woman trying to become pregnant through in vitro? They shoot in several fertilized eggs in the most opportune time of the hormonally enhanced cycle, in the hopes that one might implant. And if one does, one spill or a couple jumping jacks is all it takes to jar it loose. How many couples have fertility problems? 15%, according to the first page of Google results. So, allowing for even just 1/3 of those being related to the woman (ie, 5%), we're probably somewhere less than 60% of conceptions ever reaching the earliest stages of development.

I wasn't being totally flippant talking about transplanted organs. Those are far more highly developed parts of a human body than a fertilized egg. Who knows, maybe one day we will be able to clone people from those cells, and the cells will achieve a sort of immortality. That's probably more likely than producing a fully developed human from fertilized eggs outside the womb.

Again, the issue is independence. Transplanted organs will never live an independent life; an embryo that grows to maturity will. That it may not grow to maturity strikes me as wholly irrelevent for the same reason that any other person's chances of imminent death are wholly irrelevent when weighing the question of whether that individual is a person or can be killed. Our laws do not recognize a difference in killing people who seem more or less likely to die in the natural course of things. They recognize that all humans are born to die, and that it is this very fact that makes it wrong for other humans to kill them before nature, fate, or their own stupidity accomplish that task. Whatever I think of someone else's chances of survival, I am not legally justified in destroying that person.

Shanglan

 

[Pure]

an human ovum

, given a bit of special treatment, can become a parthenote and the start of a person.

in some animals, 'special treatment' is not even necessary.

for the human, the parthenote has already be cultivated to the multicell stage, which according to BS, is a person.

---
there is no analogy to slavery, as regards 'third parties' for the case of ovum and zygote (fertilized egg, conceptus)

concerning admission to personhood, speaking of the black slave:

1) there were obvious visible, scientific criteria (it walks and talks like one of us).

2) Its number was known --one.

3) they were ready and able to assume legal status as committer of crimes, etc.

4) their wishes could be ascertained.

---
to extend personhood to any entity --e.g an ovum-- which merely bears the 46 gene (human) DNA, i.e., a submicroscopic strand-molecule

1)is FAR beyond any previous extention.

2)it relies on a submiscropic 'charcteristic' (molecule of such and such shape and constituents); and ignores the absence of other visible characteristics i(capacity to act, breathing).

3)its number is not known for sure (it could turn into two embryos).

4) the entity cannot assume legal duties, i,e. be responsible for crimes.

5) its 'wishes'--if there be such, in the absence of a brain--cannot be ascertained.

----
This is an argument based on obvious, present, characteristics/criteria.

Clearly it would NOT apply to an 8 month fetus.

That is a virtue of the approach, for it truly does provide an alternative to the extreme, so called, 'pro life' position. It protects the late fetus.
The stark dilemma, allegedly irreconcilable, is bogus, if the approach is taken.

Arguably public debate and thinking has already moved in this direction, and many of us, including the R v. Wade judges, and many feminists have accepted restrictions on the woman's choice(liberty) in the last trimester--with the caveat that, when/if it comes to life vs. life, the mother's life --or at least the mother's choice--shall prevail.

 

[BlackShanglan]

It seems to me Shang, that you're trying to force a position on me, that makes mine classically opposed to yours, and there by facilitates argument.

Sorry, really wasn't trying to do that. Let me pick at this a little and see if I can get to what I was trying to convey. But let me start by saying how much I enjoyed the Horsey system analogy.

When I see a pregnant woman, I see one person, with the admitted possibility there is another person there. While, you, upon seeing the same woman, see two people. Because I don't see two, you are trying to extrapolate I have decided the embryo or fetus is not a person. I have not said a fetus is not a preson or an embryo is not a person, I have said it can't be proven to be one.

Yes. Wholly with you on this point.

Objectively then, there is one person before me, with the possibility that there is another. I refuse to curtail the rights of the quantifiable person, in deferrence to the possibility that another person might be there to be affected.

I believe that this position does inherently make an assumption. In assuming that it is better to support the rights of the mother (liberty) over the rights of the fetus (life), it inherently assumes that the fetus's status must be lesser than the mother's. I say this because in other legal contexts, it's liberty that gives way before life when rights conflict. If the chances of the fetus being human are 50/50, then either choice - allow abortion or don't allow it - has equal chances of curtailing someone's rights, and the former choice curtails life rather than liberty. In that case, it seems logical to me to curtail liberty. I'm neither more nor less likely to be right about whether someone's rights are being curtailed, but at least I am curtailing rights that can be restored.

That position is wholly cogent. It doesn't require further examination of the possibility, nor does it demand refinement of my position into making an unfounded assumption.

Hmmm. I'm not sure, but I'm willing to be convinced. My question is, if you've made no judgement about personhood and you feel that abortion has got an absolutely equal chance of curtailing the fetus's rights, why would one choose to sacrifice life when temporary sacrifice of liberty was the other option? If my options were to either render one human unable for nine months to enact all of her individual liberties or to deliberately kill an innocent human, and if it was perfectly clear that only the abrogation of those liberties would prevent that death, why would I opt to kill someone? I'd certainly wish that neither was necessary, but if some poor innocent person has to suffer, I'd much rather it be through temporary loss of liberty than instant death.

In effect, you are accusing me of denying the existance of Shang X-1, when I am simply saying we don' t know it's a black hole. In Astronomy, we could refine our observations, If the companion is a bright X-ray emittor, has a mass of 15 sols, exhibits jetting from the accretion disk, and cannot be observed with more refined instruments, I'll agree the preponderance is that Shang X-1 is a black hole, congratulations for discovering it.

I realize that this will seem like a fine distinction, but I'm not so much accusing you of claiming that it's not a black hole as observing that you're taking actions as if it wasn't. If, for example, you launched a manned probe toward that body to take measurements and observations, knowing that if it was a star the astronaut would be fine but that if it was a black hole she'd be sucked in and destroyed - and if you neither informed the astronaut of the possibility that it could be a black hole nor allowed her any say in whether she was sent - then your actions to me would suggest that you either don't care about the life of the astronaut (which from your nature I think very unlikely) or that, at heart, you don't think it's a black hole. Otherwise, why would you risk an innocent life?

Push that metaphor a little further. Let's say your astronaut is already out in space and is trying to get home. Her engines aren't working well and she's moving very slowly. She's got enough supplies to see her home, but it's going to take nine months longer than expected, and she's going to have to spend it cooped up in that tiny little capsule. That's a nasty position to be in - but if you really had no idea whether that object was a sun or a black hole, and the odds of either were just as good, I doubt you'd suggest diverting another ship through its path to go help her. She's going to get home, although she might be delayed; the other ship might be all right if the object is a sun, but if it's a black hole, that ship and its pilot will die. The only circumstances under which I can imagine diverting a ship through that object's path would be if I was very certain no one would die - i.e., I'm actually sure it's not a black hole. To choose the first astronaut's liberty in this example is, to me, to make the assumption that the object must not be a black hole; otherwise, I'm risking the second pilot's life for someone else's temporary liberty.

Bascially, I am saying to this -

I am perfectly within the realm of rational thought to conclude Shang X-1 is an anomoly that might be a black hole. I am also, perfectly within the realm of reason to conclude fetus X-1 is an anomoly, that may be a human. I am not constrained to pass a judgement on Shang X-1 any more than I am constrained to pass a judgement on fetus X-1 to define my position.

[...]

I can discuss the Horsey system with my peers without pasing a judgement on what Shang X-1 really is. I can even do research on the system, listing Shang X-1 as an unknown quantity with an attendant list of it's known properties.

I don't know what fetus X-1 is. And I'm not willing to let you list fetus X-1 in the registry of human beings. That does not require me to pass a judgement on FetusX-1's status either.

-

that one is constrained to pass judgement on the object when one interacts with it in such a way as to potentially risk a human life (or, if you like the wording better, to risk a potential human life). So long as we're both just looking at the binary system through telescopes or registering it in star maps, no one has to make any judgements and we can simply hold our divergent opinions. But once there's a possibility that our interaction with the thing might kill someone, we have to make a judgement call, either about what it is or about how we interact with it.

(Out of order from original post)

On the question of am I observing one person or two when I meet a pregnant woman, you cannot refine your position beyond naming it fetus X-1 and demanding I accept it's a human with attendant human rights. My position that fetus X-1 exists, without making a leap and defining it as human or not, is perfectly valid. I'm not denying it's existance, I'm denying we know what it is.

I understand, but feel that both your position and mine inherently incorporate judgements once they recommend actions. That is, going back to the astronauts, I have to make a choice: divert the second ship or don't. If I don't divert, I will certainly condemn my first astronaut to nine months of misery. But if I do divert, I might kill the other pilot. Which way do I go? If I divert the ship, I've got to have a basis for that decision, and I can see only two potential motivations for the choice to divert. Either I really don't think that there's a black hole and therefore I think that no one will die, or I think that it's worth risking killing one pilot to give the other a chance at getting her liberty sooner. I can't see why I would risk someone's life, which can't be returned or replaced, for someone's liberty, which would only be temporarily held in abeyance - unless I was really at heart fairly sure that the live would not be lost.

Does that make any sense? I hope I haven't wandered too far afield in metaphor and analogy, but to me that's the crux of the issue. I can't see - and I mean that as just that, I cannot personally discover - a motivation for risking a life instead of a temporary liberty. If, however, there is another motivation I'm missing - if the two possible reasons I see are not the only ones - I'd like to hear more. At the moment, I say that I think your position suggests an assumption about the personhood of the fetus for the same reason that I would say your decision to divert the ship would have to be based on an assumption about the existence of the black hole: I only see two possibilities, either the assumption about existence or an indifference to the results of the existence. I can't possibly think the latter of you, so I cannot discern a motive other than the former. It's the only reason I can think of for risking someone's life to free another from temporary lack of liberty: one thinks that the life will not be lost.

What I have been trying to say here is that I don't have to dney fetus X-1 is a human to form a position, any more than I have to deny Shang X-1 is a black hole to form a position on the system. I can operate effectively by listing shang X-1 as an unkown, just as I can operate effectively listing an embryo or fetus as an unkown.

Basically, I am not constrained to pass a judgement when accepting it is an unkown is valid. You can't shoehorn me into a position of saying it isn't a human because I haven't said that. Your position requires you to pass that judgement, but it does not follow that mine requires me to make an antitical judgement to disagree with you.

I'm not trying to shoehorn you into a position, and I am sorry if it appears that way. However, I think that the fundamental thing missing in your analogy is action and the potential to affect human life. We can disagree on the star/black hole theory without needing to make an absolute judgement so long as we don't interact with the object in any substantial way. Once, however, we begin to interact with it in such ways that guessing wrong about its status could kill someone, then we must either make a judgement call about the object's status or refrain from interacting with it in that fashion. To allow people to interact with it in ways that would result in death if it is a black hole - to say, for instance, that any corporation on its fringes may legally divert pilots into its path without telling them that it might be a black hole, knowing that if it is they will certainly die - is an action; that I don't personally order the pilots into its path makes it no less an action to make it legally permissable for others to do so. I can't see how in good conscience I could make that decision if the only gain was to cut nine months off of the normal trading run. I'd certainly try to investigate the phenomena and get a better idea of what it is, but I can't see that anyone in substantial doubt of its status would prefer risking his or her life to spending longer on the supply run.

That's what I meant in commenting on assumptions - that I see the action you suggest (making/keeping it legal to abort fetuses) as an action that risks (as in, has the potential to destroy and cannot be proven not to) lives for the sake of temporary liberties. I can't see that that balance works unless one really at heart thinks no lives will be lost - but am willing to be shown otherwise.

Shanglan

 

[Pure]

Fairly long winded sophistry:

BS: Assume a zygote is a person.

As a matter of ethics, you can't--without exceptional circumsctances, sacrifice person A's life for person B's liberty.

So you can't sacrifice the zygote for the mother (unless...).

Critic: But I am not dealing with any "person A", here, merely a zygote.

BS: But the zygote is person.

Critic: That's what at issue. you can't assume it.

Not assuming it, I can't apply your principle in the present case.

-----
BS OK, OK, Let me try this principle "You cant sacrifice where there's a possibily of a person, A's life, for the liberty of person B.

For instance if you know a large box A, MAY contain a child, you would not, for the sake of another's "liberty" or convenience, be willing to drive your car over box A, simply is order to get to work a little earlier (and not have to stop an check the box, and clear it from the road).

Critic, I agree with your example. Where there IS possibly a person, I won't endanger it except in pretty rare, perhaps life threatenng cases.

Critic. Howeever, I don't know there's a possibly a person in Box A, if there's simply a speck inside (zygote). Hence, for my liberty, i'd be happy to incinerate box A.

BS: But the zygote is possbily a person.

Critic: I deny that. That's the point at issue. The moral: None of your protection or trade-off-of-life rules apply, unless you assume the point at issus. And I dont.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Sorry, really wasn't trying to do that. Let me pick at this a little and see if I can get to what I was trying to convey. But let me start by saying how much I enjoyed the Horsey system analogy.

You and any interested party may feel free to beat me. I'm stuck on astrophysics this morning. new discovery of intermediate range black holes, with masses in the 100 to 10,000 sol range. Really fascinating because up to knoow, we only knew of two kinds, spectral(no more than a few sols) and supermassive(like a billion sols). The intermnediate sized ones are toatally new and their genisis is now the subject of the hot debate


[/QUOTE]
Yes. Wholly with you on this point.
[/QUOTE]



[/QUOTE]
I believe that this position does inherently make an assumption. In assuming that it is better to support the rights of the mother (liberty) over the rights of the fetus (life), it inherently assumes that the fetus's status must be lesser than the mother's. I say this because in other legal contexts, it's liberty that gives way before life when rights conflict. If the chances of the fetus being human are 50/50, then either choice - allow abortion or don't allow it - has equal chances of curtailing someone's rights, and the former choice curtails life rather than liberty. In that case, it seems logical to me to curtail liberty. I'm neither more nor less likely to be right about whether someone's rights are being curtailed, but at least I am curtailing rights that can be restored.[/QUOTE]

The only assumption I am making is that I don't know if the fetus is human. In the abscence of any concrete indication it is, I'm not willing to curtail the woman's rights. Just as I would not be willing to see her sent to prison for murder if her husband disappeared. If there is no physical evidence her husband is dead, much less evidence that she killed him or is holding him captive somewhere, I can't see denying her liberty. There are only a few things that warrant an arbitrary infringement of someone's rights. Commiting a crime is one, showing their rights are infringeing upon anothers is one as well. But if I have to asume the other, then it's really no better in my mind than assuming a body and physical evidence would be in a criminal case.

I don't think you would favor imprisoning anyone on suspicion they had commited a crime. Not even if, as you noted, it's a liberty you could returned at a later date if the assumption of wrong doing proved to be invalid. By using your own example, would you be willing to improison someone if the evidence that could be garnered provided no more than a 50/50 chance that a crime had been commited?

It seems to me the assumptive leap in this case is yours. You're making a leap where your odds are only 50/50 of being right, and then taking concrete action to deny a person thier rights based on that leap as if it's a given.

My position seems to me more rational. In light of the fact I don't have enough evidence to do more than make an educated guess, I would prefer to see no curtailment a functional and obvious person's rights.[/QUOTE]


[/QUOTE]
Hmmm. I'm not sure, but I'm willing to be convinced. My question is, if you've made no judgement about personhood and you feel that abortion has got an absolutely equal chance of curtailing the fetus's rights, why would one choose to sacrifice life when temporary sacrifice of liberty was the other option? If my options were to either render one human unable for nine months to enact all of her individual liberties or to deliberately kill an innocent human, and if it was perfectly clear that only the abrogation of those liberties would prevent that death, why would I opt to kill someone? I'd certainly wish that neither was necessary, but if some poor innocent person has to suffer, I'd much rather it be through temporary loss of liberty than instant death.[/QUOTE]

Again, because I'm not willing to make an unfounded assumption of life.

With all due respect, and much is due, I think your assumption of life is coloring your thought process much more than my asumption of ignorance is coloring mine. If the question were not life and death, but let us say something less drastic, would you rationaly demand I adopt a position of working on apriori assumptions?
Or would you allow me to work only with the definitive and proven factors, while minimizing the impact of the variables? I don't have to ask that, I know you appreciate the way I can work with the rational values in debate and discussion.

My approach to this, is my approach to most questions. I am trying to use reason and apply the methods of reason to arive at a position I can both defend and live with.

I hate math, but maybe this will help. It's basically, a question where outcome A=curtailing known quantity M's rights and outcome B=not curtailing known quantity M's rights. I think we all agree that value B is greater than value A. Value X= the life or non life of the fetus and is an unkown. If I cannot solve for value X, then I have to isolate it to work the problem based on the quantities I do know.

Medical science has made early termination of pregnancy a reality. Because it's a medical proceedure, overnment has the right and generally agreed upon responsibility to regulate it. My equation says value Ax is less than value bx because value B is greater than value A. Your equation says value C (A + X) is greater than value B. If you apply value X to both sides as a variable, you may isolate it and it can be canceled, leaving you making a judgement on the known quatitites of A and B.

My position, is not I think, terribly hard to understand, until you apply the emotional value you feel towards X.

Without trying to put words in your mouth, I have the feeling it's easier for you to deal with me making a value call you don't agree with, than it is dealing with me taking such a cold blooded approach when your judgement has made the stakes life or death.


[/QUOTE]
I realize that this will seem like a fine distinction, but I'm not so much accusing you of claiming that it's not a black hole as observing that you're taking actions as if it wasn't. If, for example, you launched a manned probe toward that body to take measurements and observations, knowing that if it was a star the astronaut would be fine but that if it was a black hole she'd be sucked in and destroyed - and if you neither informed the astronaut of the possibility that it could be a black hole nor allowed her any say in whether she was sent - then your actions to me would suggest that you either don't care about the life of the astronaut (which from your nature I think very unlikely) or that, at heart, you don't think it's a black hole. Otherwise, why would you risk an innocent life?

Push that metaphor a little further. Let's say your astronaut is already out in space and is trying to get home. Her engines aren't working well and she's moving very slowly. She's got enough supplies to see her home, but it's going to take nine months longer than expected, and she's going to have to spend it cooped up in that tiny little capsule. That's a nasty position to be in - but if you really had no idea whether that object was a sun or a black hole, and the odds of either were just as good, I doubt you'd suggest diverting another ship through its path to go help her. She's going to get home, although she might be delayed; the other ship might be all right if the object is a sun, but if it's a black hole, that ship and its pilot will die. The only circumstances under which I can imagine diverting a ship through that object's path would be if I was very certain no one would die - i.e., I'm actually sure it's not a black hole. To choose the first astronaut's liberty in this example is, to me, to make the assumption that the object must not be a black hole; otherwise, I'm risking the second pilot's life for someone else's temporary liberty.[/QUOTE]

Fair enough, but with the data we have, there is no preponderance of evidence it is a black hole. And I don't have to take an either or course here, just as I don't have to take an either or course with abortion. I have another option. To deal with your problem, I have only to inform the pilot of her posible destination and allow her to take the measures SHE finds to be prudent in her own behalf. I don't have to make a definitive decision, since I'm resting my spreading butt in a padded chair safely back at mission control. I'm willing to defer to her decision. If she sees an accretion disk around nothing, I'll trust her sense to plot an approach that would avoid the gravity well of a black hole. If she sees an accretion disk around an earth sized object, I'll trust her to plot her course to avoid the gracity well of a neutron star.

I'm not going to make her decision for her, based on incomplete information. I'll allow her to make her decision, based on her appreciation of it. And if the accretion disk is so thick that she cannot observe the object at it's center, I'll accept her decision to either plot for a black hole's gravity well or a neutron star's gravity well. Because in the end, she's the one with her behind on the line.

What I won't do, is assume it is a black hole or assume it isn't one. I'll assume I don't know. I'll place the decision on it in the hands of the person who is affected by it, instead of issuing orbital controls from earth based on an unproveable assumption.


Similarly, I can choose more than one path to divert the other ship on, or I can divert them to the Shang system and let them plot their own intercept course from there, based on what they decide the object is. It's not an either or, there is a third path that is neither.

[/QUOTE]
Bascially, I am saying to this -



-

that one is constrained to pass judgement on the object when one interacts with it in such a way as to potentially risk a human life (or, if you like the wording better, to risk a potential human life). So long as we're both just looking at the binary system through telescopes or registering it in star maps, no one has to make any judgements and we can simply hold our divergent opinions. But once there's a possibility that our interaction with the thing might kill someone, we have to make a judgement call, either about what it is or about how we interact with it. [/QUOTE]

And here is where I think we keep falling down. Your assumption is that it is a life and therefore the stakes are life and death. It would be easier, if my assumption was, that it was not a life, and therefore it was not a question of life and death. But I can't make that assumption. The best I can do, is say I don't know.

There is a philosophical argument that can be made, that since I don't know, and it could be life or death, then prudence would constrain me to act as if it were life or death. And if there was no consequence beyond protection of the potential life, I would adopt this position.

But there is an equally strong philosophical argument, that in the abscence of life, I'm going to be supporting the abridgement of a woman's rights. A woman who has done nothing to warrant that abridgement, beyond having sex and ending up pregnant. I balk at that, as it seems to me to be apporaching the position of all women having their rights only conditionally. In effect making every woman a political prisoner for nine months the moment sperm meets ovum.

So my choices come down to:

1.) Adopting an assumption, either of life or not life and bulding up that asumption in my head, until it has reached the point of being an unchallengeable reality and from there advocation a position with the zeal of knowing I am right.

2.) Accepting I don't know and choosing a course that does the most to be prudent.

I can't make myself believe one way or the other. I just don't know. I've looked at reams of medical evidence, i've read opeions from both camps, I've read opinions by theologicans, philosphers, doctors, and testimony from women who decided to carry the fetus to term as well as those who decided to terminate the pregnancy. And I still am no cloer to knowing.

Since I don't know, I have adopted a course that isolates the variable. Whether it is a life or it is not a life is a subjective decision. So who makes that subjective decision? As far as I can see, it has to be left in the hands of the person who has to live with the consequences day in and day out for the balance of their life. Since I will not assume there is another person involved, that seems to put the decision in the hands of the person closest to it.

And we end up clashing, because your decision is that there is a life and thus, it become san either or decision. But for me, this isn't a yes or no question, there is a none of the above option. I won't decide as if there is a life involved, but I won't decide as if there is no life involved. I'll decide based on the knowledge that I don't know if there is or is not a life involved.

[/QUOTE]
I understand, but feel that both your position and mine inherently incorporate judgements once they recommend actions. That is, going back to the astronauts, I have to make a choice: divert the second ship or don't. If I don't divert, I will certainly condemn my first astronaut to nine months of misery. But if I do divert, I might kill the other pilot. Which way do I go? If I divert the ship, I've got to have a basis for that decision, and I can see only two potential motivations for the choice to divert. Either I really don't think that there's a black hole and therefore I think that no one will die, or I think that it's worth risking killing one pilot to give the other a chance at getting her liberty sooner. I can't see why I would risk someone's life, which can't be returned or replaced, for someone's liberty, which would only be temporarily held in abeyance - unless I was really at heart fairly sure that the live would not be lost.

Does that make any sense? I hope I haven't wandered too far afield in metaphor and analogy, but to me that's the crux of the issue. I can't see - and I mean that as just that, I cannot personally discover - a motivation for risking a life instead of a temporary liberty. If, however, there is another motivation I'm missing - if the two possible reasons I see are not the only ones - I'd like to hear more. At the moment, I say that I think your position suggests an assumption about the personhood of the fetus for the same reason that I would say your decision to divert the ship would have to be based on an assumption about the existence of the black hole: I only see two possibilities, either the assumption about existence or an indifference to the results of the existence. I can't possibly think the latter of you, so I cannot discern a motive other than the former. It's the only reason I can think of for risking someone's life to free another from temporary lack of liberty: one thinks that the life will not be lost.[/QUOTE]

Or I can divert the second ship to the system and let the pilot make a judgement on what Shang X1 is. And he/she may then plot an intercept that takes them through the gravity well if they believe it's a nuetron star or one that avoids the ergosphere, if they think it's a black hole.

Unless you carefully manipulate the parameters, it's not an either or.


[/QUOTE]
I'm not trying to shoehorn you into a position, and I am sorry if it appears that way. However, I think that the fundamental thing missing in your analogy is action and the potential to affect human life. We can disagree on the star/black hole theory without needing to make an absolute judgement so long as we don't interact with the object in any substantial way. Once, however, we begin to interact with it in such ways that guessing wrong about its status could kill someone, then we must either make a judgement call about the object's status or refrain from interacting with it in that fashion. To allow people to interact with it in ways that would result in death if it is a black hole - to say, for instance, that any corporation on its fringes may legally divert pilots into its path without telling them that it might be a black hole, knowing that if it is they will certainly die - is an action; that I don't personally order the pilots into its path makes it no less an action to make it legally permissable for others to do so. I can't see how in good conscience I could make that decision if the only gain was to cut nine months off of the normal trading run. I'd certainly try to investigate the phenomena and get a better idea of what it is, but I can't see that anyone in substantial doubt of its status would prefer risking his or her life to spending longer on the supply run.

That's what I meant in commenting on assumptions - that I see the action you suggest (making/keeping it legal to abort fetuses) as an action that risks (as in, has the potential to destroy and cannot be proven not to) lives for the sake of temporary liberties. I can't see that that balance works unless one really at heart thinks no lives will be lost - but am willing to be shown otherwise.

Shanglan[/QUOTE]

What I can not seem to articulate, is that itis not a life or death situation, unless you have made the assumption there is a life involved besides the obvious life of the pregnant woman.

For the many people who have opted to decide the question in a manner diametrically opposed to yours, life or death isn't even a consideration, they know just as surely it isn't a life as you know it is.

I haven't decided that way, because frankly, I don't think the evidence supports that conclusion any more than is supports the conclusion life begins at conception.

My position then is not that life does not exist. My position is that life is not known to exist.

The point would seem to be tiny, but to me it is not. You can argue fairly effectively my position, in terms of practical application moves me much closer to the extreme of abortion on demand than it does to the extreme of no abortion. I can raedily accpet that. It's just ditsressing to me that you can't give me the middle ground of not knowing. I don't have to be moved into the camp of believing life is not present, to adopt a position that endorses choice, any more than you have to be moved into the camp of fundamentalist religious conservatives to endorse the position of there being life.

 

[Huckleman2000]

Nothing to add, except my new AV is an homage to Colly's Shang X1 star system analogy.

 

[Pure]

to simplify, colly,

and address the crucial question of 'burden of proof':

What would you say to someone who said to you, "It was revealed to me that each of your eggs is a preperson. While it's too much of a task to deal with the million eggs or egg precursors you were born with, we are quite concerned with the fate of the 500 or so which you ovulate in your lifetime.

It was further revealed to me--though it's obvious to all-- is that the destiny of an egg-preperson is to be fertilized and thus instantly cross to full personhood.

The church elders and myself have conferred with law enforcement and the first item of business is that you are NOT to interfere with these preperson's proper destiny; their role according to natural law. We are confiscating all 'artificial devices' though you are certainly entitled to abstain as part of God's plan. There are now law on the books against what is known as 'protected intercourse,' and you should be aware that
denying prepersons a chance at life as full ones is against God's laws.

We are most concerned if there should be a blessed fertilization, and you are to report, a day or two before each period, for testing. If the test is positive, the new blessed person will be assigned a SS number, and a social service person will call each week.

We understand that not all persons implant, and that some persons lives are cut short in miscarriage, but should we find any other disappearance of persons not medically documented, the onus is on you to prove you did not dispose of them, which subjects you to, at best, a charge of negligent homicide.

NOW: You may disagree about the 'preperson' in you and the timing of their full personhood. You have a right to your faith. But surely you will agree that if my revelation is correcct--and you can't prove it's not-- that things should be done as described. Further, since lives are at stake, *even if* my views are correct with any significant degree of liklihood, that justifies the interventions described.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Nothing to add, except my new AV is an homage to Colly's Shang X1 star system analogy.

LOL,

thanks Huck. I'm glad that anaolgy went over so well

 

[BlackShanglan]

You and any interested party may feel free to beat me. I'm stuck on astrophysics this morning. new discovery of intermediate range black holes, with masses in the 100 to 10,000 sol range. Really fascinating because up to knoow, we only knew of two kinds, spectral(no more than a few sols) and supermassive(like a billion sols). The intermnediate sized ones are toatally new and their genisis is now the subject of the hot debate

Oooh! Oooh! Can we talk about those next?

(Actually, I think that's "can you talk about those?" as my knowledge of black holes could fit into a thimble and leave room for a thumb. But I'd love to hear yours.)

The only assumption I am making is that I don't know if the fetus is human. In the abscence of any concrete indication it is, I'm not willing to curtail the woman's rights. Just as I would not be willing to see her sent to prison for murder if her husband disappeared. If there is no physical evidence her husband is dead, much less evidence that she killed him or is holding him captive somewhere, I can't see denying her liberty. There are only a few things that warrant an arbitrary infringement of someone's rights. Commiting a crime is one, showing their rights are infringeing upon anothers is one as well. But if I have to asume the other, then it's really no better in my mind than assuming a body and physical evidence would be in a criminal case.

I don't think this is a good analogy (if you'll pardon me for saying that) because it doesn't deal with the same issues. First, imprisoning the woman has no potential to directly prevent a death; it's already occurred. Secondly, it's not clear that she caused or would ever attempt to cause the death in question; the question is "did she or did she not take kill?" rather than "was what she killed human?" Third, her incarceration for murder would be likely to continue for years whereas a pregnancy has a finite limit of roughly nine months.

In the case of abortion, curtailing the woman's rights does address the issues of prevention and immediacy. That is, while still granting that the action may or may not kill a human being, by preventing the action one removes any chance that that actor will kill someone (prevention) by an action that itself is directly intended to destroy this indeterminately-human fetus (immediacy). That's why I went with the astronaut analogy; in that case, the direct result of the decision to aid the liberties of the first pilot is the 50/50 chance that one is killing the other.

I don't deny that there is doubt as to whether another party's rights are or are not being infringed, but they are also rights of a much greater magnitude - life rather than temporary liberty. Because magnitudes of rights are at stake in the question, the duration of the curtailment liberties is significant. If I've got a 50/50 chance of killing another human being by an action that will save me an hour of my time, I think most people would agree that the choice is fairly straightforward. If I had to condemn myself to slavery for the rest of my life in order to prevent a 50/50 chance of killing someone, that would be a very difficult decision; the magnitudes of loss are much more similar. There's no easy answer there, but I think that the most straghtforward route is to ask what one would choose if both potentials were to be enacted to onself. Would I rather definitely suffer nine months or take a 50/50 gamble that I would die? I'd certainly take the nine months.

That's my point on the curtailment of rights issue. By taking a 50/50 gamble that one might be killing someone in order to definitely avoid the nine months of lost liberty, one is enacting a bargain that I doubt anyone would take if s/he was the person with the potential to be killed. No one wants to lose either, but I think most people, if faced with that choice and absolutely convinced that if the coin flip went the wrong way, death would be immediate, would take the nine months.

Again, that's only applicable to those to whom the status of the fetus is in doubt. Those who feel it's not a human will quite logically support liberties; if there's no chance of a human life to protect, the liberties obviously win. But if there is a chance that it's a human life, and a good chance - an even odds chance - then by aborting it, we're saying that it's better to take a 50/50 chance of killing someone than to require someone else to accept curtailed liberties for nine months. Of course the person whose liberties are curtailed would be more likely to prefer that choice; it's human nature to prefer that bad things find someone else to happen to. But if we look at the totality of the question - is definitely curtailing one person's liberties for nine months a worse abridgement of freedoms than taking a 50/50 chance of killing someone else? - I can't see that most people would, if given the choice, want to play the odds on the second option.

[/QUOTE]
With all due respect, and much is due, I think your assumption of life is coloring your thought process much more than my asumption of ignorance is coloring mine. If the question were not life and death, but let us say something less drastic, would you rationaly demand I adopt a position of working on apriori assumptions?[/quote]

I don't think so, but I do think that the chunk you quoted from me just before this wasn't worded as well as it could have been, and I apologize for that. I hope the piece above puts it better. It was a bit late on that earlier post and my brain didn't kick in to address the issue of odds vs/ certainty as clearly as it should have.

Basically, I'm not asking you to work on a priori assumptions about life (although that 3 AM chunk does rather look it); I agree that that would be unreasonable. What I am trying to say is that I can't see that definitely saving nine moths would, for most people, be worth a 50/50 chance of dying. I put it that way because I think that the only reasonable method by which anyone can weigh up potential conflicts of rights or consequences - by their nature not a mathematically quantifiable issue - is to try to decide what someone would be likely to choose if the same person had to choose between the two results. I say this because I think it helps weed out the natural tendency to prefer those consequences that least affect us personally. My goal is not to ask you to assume that there is an actual person facing a chance of death, but rather to say that if one is uncertain whether a fetus is or is not a person, abortion is effectively a 50/50 chance of killing someone, and that that is a threat few people would see as lesser than a certainty of nine months of curtailed liberty.

I hate math, but maybe this will help. It's basically, a question where outcome A=curtailing known quantity M's rights and outcome B=not curtailing known quantity M's rights. I think we all agree that value B is greater than value A. Value X= the life or non life of the fetus and is an unkown. If I cannot solve for value X, then I have to isolate it to work the problem based on the quantities I do know.

Medical science has made early termination of pregnancy a reality. Because it's a medical proceedure, overnment has the right and generally agreed upon responsibility to regulate it. My equation says value Ax is less than value bx because value B is greater than value A. Your equation says value C (A + X) is greater than value B. If you apply value X to both sides as a variable, you may isolate it and it can be canceled, leaving you making a judgement on the known quatitites of A and B.

My position, is not I think, terribly hard to understand, until you apply the emotional value you feel towards X.

Without trying to put words in your mouth, I have the feeling it's easier for you to deal with me making a value call you don't agree with, than it is dealing with me taking such a cold blooded approach when your judgement has made the stakes life or death.

No, I promise, it's really not. Actually I like sticking to logic on this sort of thing because I think it helps people to recognize that each side is at least attempting to work with logic and that differences are not of a hateful nature. I also enjoy logic. My objection is to your definition of terms and not the choice of math as a means of expressing the situation.

Here's what I see as missing in your equation. I'm with you on A and B, with the value of B (not curtailing a known quantitity of the mother's rights) being greater than A. In fact, I think that saying that A = -B works well. I see a problem, however, with your use of X. I don't think that X would be "life or nonlife of fetus with unknown value," but rather, "X = known quantity of curtailed rights (entire life); unknown if X is present." It's not that we can't set a general value on an entire life as opposed to nine months of it; it's that we don't know if that life is there or not.

If we take the average human lifespan to be about seventy years, then X would have a value of roughly 93B - 93 nine-month spans in which to exercise all of the rights one grants in B. That's the problem, from my point of view. Even if we ignore any gains made by a baby - i.e., we don't automatically add +93B to the decision not to abort - then our equations still show a big skew in the risks associated with aborting. The no-human-life scenario - there is no X - means that the equation for aborting - [B - (X?)] - comes up with an outcome of B (no X so no subtraction), while the scenario for not aborting - [-B] - does come out to -B - a bad result. But if X is present, then the first equation - [B - (X?)] comes out to -92B, and the decision not to abort to -B. The consequences of X being present make the losses ninety-two times more severe. If X is equally likely to be present or not present, and if this is my retirement money I'm plugging into the equation, I would never risk losing ninety-two times as much on the flip of a coin.

Fair enough, but with the data we have, there is no preponderance of evidence it is a black hole. And I don't have to take an either or course here, just as I don't have to take an either or course with abortion. I have another option. To deal with your problem, I have only to inform the pilot of her posible destination and allow her to take the measures SHE finds to be prudent in her own behalf. I don't have to make a definitive decision, since I'm resting my spreading butt in a padded chair safely back at mission control. I'm willing to defer to her decision. If she sees an accretion disk around nothing, I'll trust her sense to plot an approach that would avoid the gravity well of a black hole. If she sees an accretion disk around an earth sized object, I'll trust her to plot her course to avoid the gracity well of a neutron star.

The problem with this is that the pilot, in this example, is not the mother but the child. It's not the mother who is the potentially lost life. You choosing to send or not send the pilot is, essentially, the mother choosing to abort or not abort what might be a human. Whether it's human or not human, it takes the consequences of the actions but has no role in the decision.

This demonstrates, of course, the problem with analogies. They inevitably break down because they are not exact matches to what they attempt to describe. For example, a pilot could, as you observe, discover and reveal new information in time to avoid imminent death; a fetus cannot. If this analogy is to correctly represent the thing it attempts to represent, then we must accept the limitations present in the thing it represents. If death is to occur, it must occur to someone who had no control over the decision. It must also be unavoidable, as abortion generally is unavoidable death for the fetus, whether human or not.

In that case, to go back to the analogy, let's try reshaping it in a (probably doomed) attempt to make it better fit the thing it represents. Imagine that our ship's crewmember is in cryogenic suspension during the flight. Central command is directing her ship. Imagine, too, that her ship has had problems, there's no direct communication, and her life support has a 50/50 chance of having already failed. Now she's a closer approximation to what she represents - possibly a life, possibly not, wholly under the control of someone else. Should we, in this example, send her ship through a radiation cloud that will absolutely, positively kill anyone aboard the ship in order to send it to help the other pilot who is still safe but facing an extra nine months added to her journey home? If we know that the pilot is dead, it's a simple answer. If we know that she is alive, it's a simple answer. But if we're not sure which she is, why would we risk killing her in order to trim her comrade's journey by nine months? The potential loss is catastrophic compared to the potential gain, even if the loss is only potential and the gain is definite.

And here is where I think we keep falling down. Your assumption is that it is a life and therefore the stakes are life and death. It would be easier, if my assumption was, that it was not a life, and therefore it was not a question of life and death. But I can't make that assumption. The best I can do, is say I don't know.

I'm not saying that you must assume that it's a human life; what I am saying is that if you don't know whether it is or not and you consider either equally possible, then logically any action that kills it has, from that perspective, about a 50/50 chance of having killed a human being. The only way that a human life is not potentially at stake at all is if one is sure that an embryo is not a human life. That works, but that involves an assumption about the embryo. The only way that a human definitely dies is if one is sure that it is a human being; then it's a 100% probability of killing it, but that also involves an assumption about the embryo. If one can make not assumption about the embryo, neither that it is or is not a human being, then it could be either, and therefore killing it could be killing a human being.

And yes, that means that the stakes are life and death. It's more complex, of course, than a simple 50/50 coin toss, because the answer will always be the same; that is, in reality it's either 100% or 0% of abortions that kill humans, but so long as we have no way of knowing whether the embryo is a human, either possibility seems equally likely. For that reason, the question "did that action kill a human?" would have to be answered with the acknowledgement that it might have and that it might not have. Yes, there is a difference between a 50% chance of killing something you know is human and a definite kill of something that has a 50% chance of being human, but in terms of whether you've killed a human as the end result, the odds are the same - 50/50.

Since I don't know, I have adopted a course that isolates the variable. Whether it is a life or it is not a life is a subjective decision. So who makes that subjective decision? As far as I can see, it has to be left in the hands of the person who has to live with the consequences day in and day out for the balance of their life. Since I will not assume there is another person involved, that seems to put the decision in the hands of the person closest to it.

Yes, but again, this seems to default to the assumption that there is a person - one person - who will deal with the results. As a math problem, it acknowledges B and -B, but not the fact that a potential for X, or 93B, exists, a loss which - while potential and not actual - is also enormously greater. It's one thing to say that M stands to gain or lose B, so let M make the decision; it's another to say that M will gain or lose B, but if M gains it, there's a 50/50 chance that a person F, who had no role in the decision, will lose 93B. M's maximum potential loss is much smaller, and if the loss occurs, it's not M who has to bear the burden. It's true that F's loss is only potential, but the differential between results is vastly larger than the differential between the odds - which are equal for either outcome.

I won't decide as if there is a life involved, but I won't decide as if there is no life involved. I'll decide based on the knowledge that I don't know if there is or is not a life involved.

All right, but how does that square with the math? Why risk a 50/50 chance that the results will be 92 times worse? I might offer someone double-or-nothing on a 50/50 chance, but who would offer multiply-by-ninety-two-or-nothing?

What I can not seem to articulate, is that itis not a life or death situation, unless you have made the assumption there is a life involved besides the obvious life of the pregnant woman.

I'm hoping I've addressed this above. Statistically, it has to be unless one has decided that an embryo is not a human life. So long as there is a chance that it's a human life, than there is a chance that each abortion is killing a human being. That is a life or death situation.

It's just ditsressing to me that you can't give me the middle ground of not knowing. I don't have to be moved into the camp of believing life is not present, to adopt a position that endorses choice, any more than you have to be moved into the camp of fundamentalist religious conservatives to endorse the position of there being life.

I'm sorry. I'm not trying to move you there, and I do wholly respect the stance that one does not know what a fetus is and wishes to withold judgement on that topic until better information is available. I think it's a perfectly good choice, and I accept that you have made it.

I do, however, question some of your claims because they don't appear to acknowledge potential - which is, of course, different from acknowledging actuality or definitive presence, but which is part of the middle position of acknowledging that a fetus may or may not be a human life. I think much of this is probably down to both of us grasping about for examples; it's very difficult to discuss abstractions without analogies, but of course the analogies themselves can become problems when the inevitable disconnects cause confusion. However, I do struggle to see that middle position in your claims, for instance, that this is only a life and death situation if one believes a life to be definitely present. If one acknowledges any potential that a life exists, then one acknowledges that this may be a life and death situation, and that one cannot know which actions might take a life. It's not clear to me how one can describe a 50/50 chance of killing someone as not being a life or death situation.

But it's your syllogisms I'm picking at. I'm tugging at what look to me like weak links in your chain of reasoning, trying to figure out if they are actually stronger than I think or if the chain of reasoning isn't actually what I thought it was. I know you to be a deeply honest, honorable, generous, and noble person; on the topic of how you feel or what you believe about anything, your word is all the proof I will ever need. What I'm tugging at are what appear to me on first glance like disconnects between belief and practice; how does belief X relate to practice Y? Are these two consistent? If they are, what's the connection? I'm hoping that you'll show me the connections; I would never dream of doubting the beliefs.

I'll work on expressing that better. Looking back, I am ashamed, for it is not what I have said, whatever I was thinking. I am very sorry for that. I have a very bad habit of saying "you're claiming X" or "your position entails belief in Y" when what I ought to be saying is "if I look at this as a chain of logic, it seems to me that it has to include claiming X or believing Y; is that how you got there, or is there some other way?" I'm sorry I haven't said that more often. It is honestly what I mean.

Shanglan