The article was logical and well-researched and I liked it for the most part but there were two important things missing. :smack:
Because Cecil went on to say that abortion “…doesn’t seem to me it can be justified (as some would have it) merely because the child is a product of rape or incest or is defective”, he was not only attempting to answer the question of life but also the question of the justification of abortion.
Since the question of abortion was brought into it, the article was not complete because it lacked:
a) A complete understanding of the potential mother’s perspective and rights (all he mentioned was the understatement that it “may impose some hardship on her”)
b) We know that many pending parents will not care for a child. Bringing another uncared for child into existence will continue the strain on already lacking food and resources when there are millions of existing children who are uncared for and unfed. I don’t know if it is right or wrong to sacrifice one child’s pending existence to make food available for another and I apologize for bringing up such a harsh aspect of the issue but it can’t be ignored.
a) A complete understanding of the potential mother’s perspective and rights (all he mentioned was the understatement that it “may impose some hardship on her”)
she made a choice to take the reproductive aspect of sex lightly, he’s just saying her regret of that does not allow her to take another persons life
b) We know that many pending parents will not care for a child. Bringing another uncared for child into existence will continue the strain on already lacking food and resources when there are millions of existing children who are uncared for and unfed. I don’t know if it is right or wrong to sacrifice one child’s pending existence to make food available for another and I apologize for bringing up such a harsh aspect of the issue but it can’t be ignored.
if one is abortable then all unwanted shildren should be abortable, right?
linley, realize that Cecil was not trying to address the full complexity of the abortion topic. His column is space limited, being originally printed in an actual physical newspaper. He was addressing the question of the beginning of personhood vs the beginning of the individual life.
True, he glossed over a lot. His particular comment was:
I think his phrasing was chosen to acknowledge that the existence of the individual was terminated, but the issue of the relative meaning of that termination was not resolved. In other words, is the termination of a fetus equal to killing a baby? Does the fetus have the same rights as a baby?
If one does want to more fully evaluate the situation, you are correct, one needs to enumerate the full rights and situation and perspective of the woman. But one also needs to reach agreement on when a fetus becomes embued with rights, such as the right to not be killed (i.e. murder).
Equivalent situation, a woman does not have the right to kill a newborn baby because it inconveniences her. Killing a newborn is murder. A woman does have the right to use contraceptives to prevent pregnancy. Preventing pregnancy is not murder. Somewhere between fertilization, implantation, and birth, the situation changes. The fuss is over where that line is.
This is either an unrelated point or moral point of such magnitude as to make the question of abortion moot. One meaning is interpreting the question as a personal decision over the value of having children or not. That can be evaluated before abortion comes into the equation - talk about birth control options. The second meaning is to discuss the moral value of killing unwanted newborns because they will take resources unnecessarily. Either way, abortion is secondary if not irrelevant to those discussions.
Life begins when the first breathe happens. We are not part of this world until then. The spirit lives on, because, there is no death. The physical body dies, but, not the spirit. That is who we are. So, when does life begin? When we take the first breathe.
Great. That doesn’t open up a whole new can of worms. Let’s keep the concept of an immortal soul out of this, please, and stick with known, relevant facts.
Having said that, i’m inclined to agree that life begins when the fetus starts to function on its own… but how do we define that point?
On a personal note, i don’t think a man has a right to an actionable opinion on this matter. We don’t have the same experience as women and don’t have to go through any of this with our own bodies. We can say what we want and feel how we like, but it shouldn’t count at last.
Cecil could have picked any number of points, but chooses brainwaves. He could have picked viability, breathing, birth, conception, 35 years of age, etc. It’s all a matter of personal choice. Brainwaves are nothing more than electrical activity in the brain, not consciousness, which we know very little about. Mice have brainwaves. Does that make experimenting on them unethical and immoral. Using Cecil’s logic, yes, PETA seizes control. Using Cecil’s logic, all early spontaneous abortions (the technical term for miscarriages) should be investigated by the coroner, and certainly late ones. The government should regularly check women to find out if they are pregnant and on the government’s own volition make sure that nutrition, etc. is adequate and they don’t miscarry. After all, a fetus, under this logic, has a right to have the government give it benefits. Under this logic, I am roughly 7 months older than the government has previously calculated.
Justice Blackmun did a much better and thoughtful job of this question in Roe v. Wade, which is public domain. Cecil should have just plagiarized it rather than tried to reinvent the wheel, which wound up looking like the effort of a rank amateur.
Well, we know that consciousness can’t happen without brain activity, so if you want to be sure not to kill a fetus with consciousness, brain waves starting is a decent safe-side approximation. The rest of your stuff, I don’t see how it follows.
Huh?
No, your age is traditionally measured from the moment of birth. But you knew that - so what was your point?
I’m glad to went back to the original article rather than just reacting to his criticism of the criticism. I thought for a minute that Cecil was losing it. But his answer to the question was, as always, humane. I’m very unsure that detectable brainwaves are the best marker of the start of personhood - choosing any stage of development is going to be arbitrary because it really is a philosophical issue - but it is a reasonable position.
I do agree with the criticizer though on the basic point that this is a decision only women can make. Cecil called it radical, but I think a woman should have the ultimate say over what happens inside her, no matter how well developed the fetus is.
I am pretty sure there are few women in the world who would decide, in the ninth month of pregnancy, that they would sooner kill the fetus than give birth. But some might, and I think ultimately it is her right.
I also think the vast majority of women would consider that too radical and theoretical. I am after all just a man influenced by feminist thought, I will never have to make this decision, and I will never know what it’s like to face it.
I really wish it were / hope it is possible that there could be a vote among women about this issue. A one-gender vote might seen bizarre in modern democracy, but I think the particular nature of the issue demands it.
I’m not trying to be contrary or disrespecting of female rights, I honestly want to know…
Why is it a decision only a woman can make? Or why is it that only women are allowed an opinion on this topic? Because they can think about what it might feel like to go through a pregnancy and give birth, should they become pregnant someday?
How about saying it’s a decision only a mother can make? When it comes down to it, a girl or woman who has never been pregnant or given birth probably doesn’t know a lot more about being pregnant or giving birth than a man does.
How about: only a mother who has successfully raised a child to a certain age.
Obviously, having a child grow inside you and giving birth are experiences only women can go through (although medical science is soon going to bridge this gap), but everything after that point is something the father does as well (with the possible exception of breast feeding).
There’s many types of circumstances that we can consider here of course, but just looking at the aspect of caring for the child after birth … If the father and mother are still together, then the father assumes some responsibility of caring for the child after birth. Their participation may take part in raising money, or raising the child, or some combination, but it’s not 100% the mother.
If they separate, and the mother knows who the father is, and if he’s able (and/or the law makes him) he will end up providing some of the finances for raising the child.
We’re not talking about rights and laws in particular circumstances here, but a catch-all, right?
If man and woman stay together, and the father will have to do 50% (give or take) of the raising of the child, why should he not have any say in it? Why shouldn’t he be able to vote on the topic?
What about when medicine allows men to have babies, do we re-vote at that time because now men can get pregnant, and might want the rights to abortion?
Many people are discussing things like the soul of the child, or the rights a woman has to her body - those sound like deeper or more important issues than providing for and raising the child after birth. But that doesn’t mean that those aren’t things to be considered, and the father is as … liable … for many of those aspects as the mother is.
I think for men to say it’s a decision only women can make is a cop out.
Hey, “world’s smartest human”…I was wondering when you were going to mention anything about fetal neocortical development…in Carl Sagan’s book, (you know, that other smart human) ‘Dragons of Eden’, he addresses this issue far better than you. If anything distinguishes humans from other species, it is that wrinkly part of our brain called a neocortex which starts to form in a human fetus about at the end of the second trimester or the beginning of the third. Therefore, any woman on the ball enough to terminate a pregnancy in the first trimester is pulling the plug on a life form about as sophisticated as a sea monkey. Or were you simply not aware of this? I thought for sure you might mention it, but no…
Consciousness requires brain activity? That is quite an assumption, one that flies in the face of religions that hold for an afterlife and those that hold for resurrection. This debate is about religion.
If, on the other hand, it isn’t religion that sets your criteria, and you’d rather appeal to science, you need to find that all critters with brain waves have consciousness under your new standard. And because you are protecting consciousness, you can’t eat, them, hunt them or experiment on them. After all, those brain waves are a sign of consciousness, and just to be on the safe side, you need to treat them as though they were fully conscious. As for not following the rest of my “stuff”, I regret that you do not follow it.
The fact is that nobody has a good handle on what consciousness is, when it begins and when it ends. The only good case that can be made for it not existing in other animals is a lack of ability that they have to communicate with us. However, it is clear that animals do communicate with their own species in many instances. Animal language - Wikipedia
This is probably a good time to note that human babies are not even fully formed at the time of birth, as they are helpless, when most mammals are able to fend for themselves at the time of birth. http://secweb.infidels.org/?kiosk=articles&id=772
This would seem to point to other mammals being more alive at birth than humans and more worthy of protection than humans.
My point is that you are attaching legal protections and obligations prior to birth. Is it your argument that the burdens of the change you advocate fall only on women during the period prior to birth. Perhaps the burdens and costs should fall on the people who are imposing them? Anti-abortion activists only care about the pre-born, but deny all duty to living people, except that duty that they can impose on women. You have argued for extending rights before birth to the arbitrary point of electrical activity in the brain, as though a human being existed at the time of such electrical activity, but not before.
All of these duties and burdens that the anti-abortion crowd is so excited about visiting on women make no sense from either a religious point of view or a scientific point of view if the measure is consciousness judged by electrical activity in the brain. Perhaps it is a mix of both disciplines, but to be able to come to a moral conclusion with certainty at the intersection of science and religion ultimately begs all of the questions of both fields. Certainly people would be justified in coming to a moral conclusion for their own personal purposes: if you oppose abortion, don’t have one. However, most anti-abortion activists and moralizers are men who by dint of nature cannot have an abortion, nor carry a fetus to term. Men do not own women and for thousands of years, women made decisions about whether to carry a fetus to term. Only as the power of the state and religion has grown has it been outlawed, and only in this country during the last century.
Electrical activity in the brain is an arbitrary point of imposing a legal duty. I for one oppose it. It is not when “life” begins. Much life does not have brains or electrical activity.
Life begins in all animals at the moment of conception. . .a no-brainer.
Human beings are a species of animal.
Therefore, life begins in a human being at the moment of conception.
AND
Murdering an innocent human being is wrong.
An unborn baby is an innocent human being.
Therefore, murdering an unborn baby is wrong.
Why is this a foregone conclusion? Why is it any more true than “life begins with the first breath”? You can’t just make a statement and declare it to be the obvious truth without any support. A blastocyst comprised of a mere 100 cells is no more a human life than the mole I had removed from my arm.
Well it does have the consistency of outright assertion followed by circular reasoning and its at least intellectually honest in that it doesn’t claim anything other than its premises. The problem with it, of course, is that it extends its arguments for life only to DNA chains that happen to originate from humans, and when logic applies, you shouldn’t try to remove cancerous growths, because they are just as human.
No. It is not an assumption, it is a fact. In this world, there is no consciousness without brain activity. If there is an afterlife, it is not part of this world, and as such your argument does not make much sense.
Do you have citations to either scientific sources or religious sources for your assertions of “fact”, or is it just your opinion that it is a fact. Just because you imagine it to be a fact does not make it so. Also, you assert that an afterlife is not part of “this world”. How do you know that it is part of another world, and not on this world so that we cannot see it? I can’t see anyone’s consciousness, yet both of us have assumed that such a thing exists. That is an assumption that might need to be questioned. What is meant by consciousness? Special pleading that all human beings have it and it extends to the time when a fetus starts to have electrical activity in what will one day be its brain ignores that perhaps the spinal cord has consciousness because it has electrical activity, or all creatures have consciousness. Perhaps my electric toothbrush has consciousness: after all, it recharges by induction, which is a form of reasoning.
You say that “there is no consciousness without brain activity”, but you don’t define either. Are you saying they are the same thing but with different words attached? Or perhaps that some with brain activity have consciousness and some do not? Or vice versa?
I get that you can not make any sense of what I am saying. Are you an attempt at a Turing machine?
Since you know so much about consciousness, could you please enlighten us more. Do only living things with brains have them? Does that mean that no computer will ever have consciousness? Does it mean that a radio transmitter that can mimic brain waves is conscious? You clearly know so many, many “facts” that perhaps you would educate us wussies who wonder. I have spent so much of my life fascinated by the subject of consciousness and I am still so ignorant of its true nature. You, on the other hand, know facts about consciousness. Please help me fight my ignorance: what is the root cause of consciousness? You know so many facts, I just ask for this one. Please be exact and show all your work.
Nonsense. Men have just as much right and ability to make moral judgments as women. And since all men were once fetuses, I would think we all have met the burden of being affected by the decision.
sergeirichard said:
And I disagree for the reasons I just stated.
Well, that is the thing. It is a moral and philosophical topic. You are entitled to your opinion, but not everyone shares it. You need to make a better case to convince others. If terminating the pregnancy is terminating a personhood, then it is murder, and every bit the equivalent of drowning a newborn.
All discussions about the intersection of the rights of two separate individuals or groups involve one’s set of rights being limited by another’s set of rights. The heart of the issue is whose rights are dominant. The only way to decide is to understand both sides and make the moral determination.
I think there are legitimate issues concerning risks to the mother’s health vs the viability of the fetus. At late stage of pregnancy, such as 1 month of expected due date, a strong case can be made that delivery should be tried. I would not support legislation to prevent medical and moral decisions be made on a case-by-case basis.
However, given that some women (and men, for that matter, but they aren’t under discussion at the moment) have terminated their babies after birth, I don’t think it is unlikely. I also think their are more rights involved than just the mother’s. That’s my opinion.
Yes, because men are never involved or affected by decisions about pregnancy and abortion. :rolleyes:
Brother Woody said:
There is a difference between “human life” and “personhood”.
Fear Itself, a blastocyst and a mole are both living cells. Thus, they are life. The semantic difference is the difference between being life and being a person.
The Second Stone said:
Brain activity is the standard definition of death. You know the term, “brain-dead”? That is exactly what it is talking about. Consciousness cannot exist in the human body without brain activity.
That is not to say that all brain activity is the same, that animals have the same type of brain activity and thus consciousness.
As for the nature of a soul or whether existence transcends body death, that is irrelevant. Besides the fact that it is not measurable or detectable, that identity or “self” is separated from the body at death, so even if there is some afterlife, the human body that hosted it during life is no longer conscious.
Now you’re just being deliberately absurd. And demonstrating a logical fallacy in the process.
You are begging the question on the issue of consciousness. Well, actually several of them. That consciousness exists, that humans have it, that animals or other things don’t. I can actually name the fallacy you are committing: question begging.
The Irishman said:
“There is a difference between “human life” and “personhood”.”
Quite so but it’s a non sequitur. . .you murder the one, you murder the other.
Life is always in a state “actuality” whereas personhood is always in a state “potentiality.”