Incoherent rage re: El Salvador and abortion

The BBQ Pit
221

“Self-aware” is a shorthand phrase, I think, for what we’re really talking about, which is: you can’t have a right to be free from that which you cannot experience.

That is, I have no right to be free from psychic attacks, since I cannot (to the best of my knowledge) experience a psychic attack. I have no right to be free from voodoo curses for the same reason.

I do have a right to be free from other folks making my medical decisions for me, since their making those decisions has a measurable impact: it keeps me from making those decisions myself. Were I in a coma and lacked a living will, then I’d no longer have that right, since denying my right to make medical decisions has no impact on me. I can’t make my own medical decisions anyway in that condition.

Killing something is bad for at least three reasons:

  1. It goes against the entity’s desires;
  2. It destroys the entity’s personality;
  3. It causes pain.

I’d say that, if none of these reasons exist in a particular killing, there’s likely to be nothing unethical about the killing (absent other conditions–if I burn down your ficus in revenge for an imagined slight, that’s unethical, but that’s also tangential to this discussion).

But in almost all cases in which we discuss killing humans, it violates at least one of the above. A neonate has desires, desires that are violated by killing it. Even if you kill the neonate in a completely painless fashion; even if the neonate has no personality, you’re still violating its desires.

A fetus about to be born? I don’t know if it’s got desires or a personality, but medically, it seems pretty likely that it has both. Its brain development is pretty far along by that point.

A blastocyte? It seems incredibly unlikely that it has desires, personality, or the capacity to feel pain. Nothing is being violated by killing it.

“Self-aware” is shorthand for these things, and more besides.

Yes, I acknowledge that this causes difficulties regarding our relations to other species. While I’m not an animal rights advocate in the common sense of the phrase (i.e., I don’t believe eating meat ought to be illegal), I acknowledge that this is a troubling, unresolved issue in my ethics. However, the fact that it’s a troubling issue doesn’t mean that the principle is flawed; it may equally mean that my rejection of animal rights is flawed.

Daniel

222

The wheels of my mind turn slow…

Out of curiosity, can we say it’s moral for the one person to kill the other person so they don’t have to suffer a slow and painful death from dehydration?

Turning it around, suppose I come home to find a crazy stalker with a knife to my wife’s throat. Do you argue that it’s less moral for me to put a bullet in his head, and more moral to knock him out, tie him up, and leave him in the middle of Death Valley in July?

Maybe I’ve spent too much time filling out death certificates, but it seems like you’re saying the distinction lies in how many steps there are in the cause of death; i.e. “fetal death due to MTX administration” is “evil”, but “fetal death due to placental ischemia due to removal of implantation site in fallopian tube segment” is “a neutral action intended for a good end”.

I guess I’m looking at it from the outcome angle. If the final result is fetal death regardless of method, shouldn’t we strive to cause the least harm to the other person involved? If you feel that you have to kill a person, say in self-defense, is it more important to set it up so you kill him “indirectly”, or more important to make sure no bystanders get caught in the crossfire?

Finally, shouldn’t this reasoning also require that a woman who suffers severe health complications during the pre-viable stage of her pregnancy get a hysterectomy rather than a D&C?

223

You will excuse me if I don’t agree that conviction is equal to fanaticism.

224

Well, that’s one of the problems with the defintion. It’s difficult to measure self awarenss, but the best test we have so far is the mirror test-- does the organism recognize itself in the mirror, or does it think its reflection is another organism. A one year old child will flunk the mirror test, but an adult chimpanzee will pass it.

Ah, now the goal posts are beginning to move. What is it-- self awareness or “the basic neurological machinery for self awareness”?

So, it’s OK to kill 1 your old babies because they aren’t persons?

Only if “most” means “those problems which support your political view”. Can you be specific about the ones he ignored?

Nice little piece of circular reasoning.

225

But John Mace this type of pregnancy isn’t as blurry as thread seems to make it. This pregnancy will never be anything more than either a serious medical condition or a death sentence for the mother. It will never be more than that. It’s gone bad and must be removed.

Intent doesn’t come into play here, it would if there was the ability to transplant the foetus and the mother decided not to, then Bricker’s definitions or mine come into play here. That isn’t the case here and I wish we would speak to the reality, of what this specific type of pregnancy means and not spread it across to abortion in general.

I understand what Bricker is saying, I understand what the Church says and I course I can’t argue him out of his religious beliefs, but I have a big disconnect here and I guess I’m trying to work through it.

The question of humanity, in this case, IMO is a red herring, a distraction. If this tumor and let’s face it, that’s what an ectopic pregnany becomes, is human, then so is this:

What’s the difference between this twin and Bricker’s definition of a unique DNA of an ectopic pregnancy, that demands a balance because it’s a ‘life’? Are we now to consider this a human being or a tumor? Is there a balance between it and the boy who’s it living off of? Is this not basically what an ectopice pregnancy would become, if didn’t rupture the mother or die?

Was it not conceived? Was it not given the spark of life? Clearly the doctor’s recongize it as being a foetus, so is it a human being? If not, when did it stop being one? If yes, then it deserved some protection…according to Bricker.

Parasite

226

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]

Well, and more to the point, it’s very simple for her to support that stance when she has the option of choosing it. Something tells me she may feel differently if she were told she had no option but to sit and wait it out while a fetus that will never become viable endangers her health and possibly her life. I notice most people take a great deal of their rights for granted til those rights are removed.

Rick, I’ve avoided citing Blackmun, because although you insist, over and over, “What does the law say?” you don’t accept Blackmun’s ruling. Please correct me if I’ve confused you with someone else.

227

Well, it depends on your assumptions. It’s not blurry according to your assumptions, and not according to mine either. But I can recognize that other people, like Bricker, do not share those assumptions. In fact, even Bricker’s assumptions reach the same conclusion in the case of ectoptic pregnancies, but he laid out a logical argument to get there. Maureen, OTOH, has simply pulled some argument out of thin air-- an argument, I might add, that would result in some bizzar secenarios if it actually were true.

A former fetus.

228

No, you are so obtuse that can not see sarcasm even when it is biting you.

That was not an argument you numnuts, but a fair comment in light of your obtuseness, clearly the law is coming from the designs of the church, forget about condemning, the fact that others in power like the Vatican are not even complaining implies approval.

And in the USA what they do approve is on influencing government:

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/showarchive.php?date=2004-02-18

229

Ok, I admit that the division between “fetus” and “baby” is ambiguous, debatable and not necessarily “religious” in how people perceive it. But I also think that there is definitely a point early in pregnancy where it really is not ambiguous and I don’t see how it can be argued that the perception of an embryo (or in some cases, even something like an unimplanted zygote) as a “person” can be argued as anything but religious. I think that in terms of legality (especially with regards to something like the Morning After Pill) this is a valid point. Attempts to legislate that a zygotes or very young embryos are “people” are attempts to codify faith beliefs (IMO).

230

John, you’ve moved the goal posts a couple times yourself. Last night you claimed babies don’t develop self awareness til around 2 months or so, now you’re saying a year old. Are you defining self-awareness as the ability to communicate one’s desires?

231

[QUOTE=John Mace]
Well, it depends on your assumptions. It’s not blurry according to your assumptions, and not according to mine either. But I can recognize that other people, like Bricker, do not share those assumptions. In fact, even Bricker’s assumptions reach the same conclusion in the case of ectoptic pregnancies, but he laid out a logical argument to get there. Maureen, OTOH, has simply pulled some argument out of thin air-- an argument, I might add, that would result in some bizzar secenarios if it actually were true./QUOTE]
Sooo…basing one’s assumptions on a religious argument is logical, but basing one’s assumptions on when higher brain functions become viable is “out of thin air?” K. Glad we have that settled.

232

I think he’s defining it as passing the mirror test, which seems a good definition for something, but not necessarily for what we’re discussing here. “Self-aware” may not be the best term, but I’m not sure what is; at any rate, as I’ve said, I think we’re talking about the ability to appreciate rights, from one direction, and the capacity to suffer, from the other.

Daniel

233

No, I said a 2 (or 3) month old baby isn’t self aware. That doesn’t mean a 4 month old baby is. I don’t recall the agreed upon age, but it might even be as late as 2 years. It’s defidnitly not 1 year, though.

234

Why should “self-awareness” (however defined) even be a test? We kill and eat animals every day that have more self-awareness than a human fetus.

235

What standard would you suggest, and why?

Daniel

236

He’s not using a religious argment, but he is basing his assumptions on religious doctrine. We all start with some assumptions, and it’s not necessarily “science” that we use.

It’s really very simple, Maureen. You said it was OK to abort because the embryo (or the blastocyst) isn’t self aware. But since when is “self aware” the test for being human, or for having the right to life? It is characteristic of our species, but it is not a unique characteristic, nor is it something we attribute to newborn babies.

237

Exaclty. The only reason this argument is still alive is because **Maureen **(and lately, Der Trihs) insist on not killing it.

238

How about viability ourside the womb? The standard I’ve always suggested is that we take the generally accepted viability date, and then back up a few weeks just to be sure. Better to err on the conservative side. Isn’t that more or less what the SCOTUS uses now instead of the outdated trimester system?

But when the life of the mother is at risk, it’s a different story. Even **Bricker **acknowledges that it’s OK to abort in order to save the life of the mother.

239

That’s good for the first part of the question; the second part is, why?

For the record, I agree with you that it’s a pretty decent line for now–but that’s because I think it maps reasonably closely to the standard that I set out above in post 221. It seems that you reject that sort of reasoning; why, then, do you use the viability argument?

The other question I’d ask is whether “outside the womb” allows for the use of technology to keep the infant alive; if so, as technology continues to advance, do you expect the line past which abortion cannot be performed to move continually earlier in the pregnancy? If we reach a point at which artificial wombs can support a fertilized egg from the moment of fertilization, will you be okay with not allowing RU486?

Daniel

240

No, I said no such thing. If you go back wayyyy too many pages, you’ll see my original, two sentence post that started this whole ugly hijack was that a fetus which implants itself to the inside wall of a fallopian tube will never develop personhood, because it will never develop higher brain functions or self awareness. Which is still true.