Indeed. And shockingly enough, while it isn’t codified, I think it’s hard to argue that we as a society don’t sometimes value a brand new life less than a life that is 6 months old. I’m thinking of the cases where children are born alive and immediately killed by their mother. Often the perpetrators in these killings are given a far lighter punishment than they would receive if the child they killed were even 2 weeks old, much less 6 months. Again…the law doesn’t * say * that, but it is often the way it plays out.
Well the point is, that a blastocyst is no more a human than plankton. They don’t get rights because they are not thinking feeling beings. Just a mass of cells with no self awareness, only potential. It is not even a case of Blastocyst-napping them from inpregnated chicks, they are lab grown.
I think you are confusing yourself chasing after a red herring. A child is developed, self-aware, and fully human. He/she is just young, but still human, and awarded equal rights as any other human. We aren’t talking about using children to advance stem cell research. Im not sure if you are suggesting a slippery slope situation or what, but I think it is safe to say that children will never be used in this kind of research. So on that, be assured. If a blastocyst calls you mamma or papa, or shows signs of humaness, I am sure all research will be halted.
Stoid: I’m talking about ‘Partial Birth Abortion’. For those who aren’t really clear on the procedure, this is what is done:
“Partial-birth” abortion is performed in the second and third trimesters and entails (1) inducing a breech delivery with forceps, (2) delivering the legs, arms and torso only, (3) puncturing the back of the skull with scissors or a trochar, (4) inserting a suction curette into the skull, (4) suctioning the contents of the skull so as to collapse it, (5) completing the delivery. A partial breech delivery is not considered a “birth” at common law, where it is the passage of the head that is essential.
By most accounts, there are about 5,000 of these performed in the U.S. every year. The majority are done in the second trimester, but quite a few are done in the third. And the procedure generally starts by inserting a device which starts the dilation of the cervix. From what I understand, this takes a couple of days. There have been instances where labor started when this was done late in the third trimester, and the woman was given drugs to slow down or halt labor so the doctor could kill the baby before it was born. There has also been at least one instance where the baby was born by accident and survived, and other instances where the baby was accidentally delivered before the doctor could kill it, but died either due to the trauma of the procedure or because it was too premature.
This is really strange. In the one case, the doctor was frantically trying to kill the child, but the second its head emerged intact, all of a sudden it was a ‘human’, and everyone started frantically trying to save it. I think it’s a real stretch to try and define a human by whether its head has been ejected from the woman.
I’m pro-choice, but these third trimester partial-birth abortions are troubling. In the third trimester, these children would almost certainly survive if they were allowed to be born. And they are almost completely out of the mother, with just the head left inside. They are wriggling, kicking, alive human beings that have the back of their heads pierced and their brains sucked out.
I don’t know what the percentages are. But does it matter? Even if 99% of such abortions are for medical emergencies, does that justify the 1% that aren’t?
I’m pro-choice, but I have a real problem with any third trimester abortion, whether it’s ‘partial birth’ or some other method, unless the life of the mother is at stake or the fetus is not viable. By the third trimester the fetus is showing considerable brain activity, there is evidence that personalities are forming, and it would be viable if it were born at any time. So for me, terminating that fetus is crossing a line.
Many countries have adopted the first-trimester rule, and I think that’s a reasonable line.
I agree, but since it’s such a slippery slope these days, and so many are looking for ways to just outright ban abortion…
Seriously though, I think it’s EXTREMELY rare that some moron wakes up in her 8th month and thinks, “gee, I don’t feel like being pregnant anymore!” At least, I HOPE not.
Just thought I’d slip something in here. Sam Stone and I very often disagree in our political views, and I’ve even accused him of using straw men before. But in this thread, he’s been dead on with everything he’s said, and has done a more thorough job than I would have.
Guinistasia: I see it differently. I think partial-birth abortions give ammunition to those who want to ban abortions completely. It’s such a horrific procedure that it really doesn’t reflect well on the pro-choice movement when they defend it.
It gets even more absurd than this. There was recently a vote in the house on a proposal to allow doctors to kill a baby AFTER it is delivered, if the delivery is accidental and the intention was to abort the baby. FIFTEEN Democrats voted to approve this. Fortunately, everyone else including the majority of Democrats and all Republicans voted against it.
If the pro-choice movement accepted first trimester abortions only and agreed that later abortions were morally wrong, I think a lot of pressure would be taken off of them.
The most interesting part of this decision is how the country was sucked into treating this as a huge issue when it isn’t. Bush needed an issue to make him look like a serious thinker so he pretended to agonize over this decision and treat it as more profound than say tossing out international treaties.
The research will continue on wider basis in other countries and the decision will be revisited in the united states in no time. The truth is that he side stepped the ethical issues and took the easiest political option available.
Ned: That analysis is off-base. You’re right that this issue shouldn’t be nearly as important as its made out to be, but that’s not W’s fault. It’s the fault a country full of pro-life conservatives and a media looking for a big ‘issue’ in a very slow news month. Before the President’s speech, most pundits thought that by waiting he boxed himself into a corner from which he could not possibly win.
Frankly, I think what’s driving a lot of the hysteria over this is plain, old-fashioned luddite thinking. The great hypocrisy of the pro-life camp is that they have not said a word about the destruction of embryos as a byproduct of in-vitro fertilization, but as soon as scientists want to actually experiment with those embryos in a new field, suddenly it’s wrong and immoral, and the embryos are people. Well, if it’s wrong to use already-created and discarded embryos for science, it MUST be wrong to create and discard them in the first place. So why aren’t these groups up in arms about that? In my opinion, it’s because they are afraid of science, and that’s one of the real drivers here.
december I think you need to get your facts straight. The Clinton administration already had a policy set forth with the NIH that was very similar to the Bush policy, without the restrictions on the cell line numbers. Here is a site that outlines the policy. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56170-2001Aug9.html
Here are the highlights
Bush put a moratorium on this policy when he was elected, and the Clinton policy never went into effect.
I don’t buy it Sam. They have been setting this up for months now as W’s big decision. Politically this is the safest decision he could possibly have made but it was built up in a way to make it look like a tough ethical choice. They milked it for all the political points they could.
Thanks for the info and the cite, BB. However, a question left dangling by the Washington Post article is why the NIH standards never went into effect. They were issued a year ago, but W took office only 6 months ago.
It sounds like Clinton, or someone in his administration, may have chosen to delay their new standards. Does anyone have more facts on this?
The rules went into effect in August of 2000. They were suspended by Bush along with other notables like the arsenic regulations shortly after he got into office. I believe suspension allows for a maximum period of time before a final decision is made or the rule comes back into force. I think he intended to kill them altogether until it was realized this was politically untenable.
Politically, I think the decision was pretty much the only one that could be made. It didn’t matter who the president was, a solid decision for full research or a full ban would have drawn too much heat from either side of the political spectrum. The ensuing “half-and-half” decision was the closest thing to a “safe” compromise to the whole issue.
However, I’m with Chas.E on this one – why do people assume that Bush was the one who made the decision? I wouldn’t be surprised in the least of Dubya’s handlers mulled over the issue, reached a decision, then called him in from playing in the yard and gave him something to read on the teevee. They probably had to go over some of the bigger words a few times, though.
The first successful isolation of human stem cells was at University of Wisconsin and was privately funded. This was in December of 1988. By the time the NIH was became aware of the research and was petitioned for funds it was 1999. The NIH has regulation under which it must work for the granting of federal funds. Believe it or not, it takes FOREVER to write a grant proposal, and even longer for it to be approved.
After the proposals for funding were made to NIH, it had to investigate that it didn’t break any existing regulations:
(from the above site)
So by April of 1999 the NIH set up a commission to look into federal funding of the research.
(alos from the above site)
By the end of 2000 the NIH was about to allow the funding to go forward. However, with the span between applying for a grant, and the approval, there was a little election.
George W. Bush put an immediate moratorium on the research…and there you have it.
