Pro-Life - Is it about compassion or punishment.

Great Debates
81

If the government determined in its studies that ova fertilized in vitro were de jure human beings, how can they allow in vitro fertilization techniques to be practiced at all? The overwhelming majority of such “humans” will die. That is an obvious, inevitable, and frequently observed fact of the process. Eggs are even “discarded” in some cases. Discarded human beings? The scientific determination of the beginning of life, and the minimum qualification for humanity are of little importance. Legal definitions are.

The government is not concerned with human beings. The government is concerned with legal persons, with rights as recognized by law. Court cases have been litigated to establish the ownership of frozen embryos of humans. Under our laws, humans cannot be owned. The courts did not so rule in the matter of ova, fertilized or not. The fact is that such arguments are not the issue at all.

Again, if the government were interested in the entire life of a person, rather than the few moments it wishes to control, my opinions on the fitness of the state to make such decisions would need to be reviewed. The law of the land is that a human fetus is not a person in the eyes of the law unless it has reached the point in development where it can survive outside of its mother’s body. We have a major industry in the field of medicine dedicated to driving that age down. The product of that industry is a great many lives lived in a way that most readers of this board simply cannot appreciate. The State has little interest in those lives, after it finishes enforcing the decisions it desires to enforce to make sure those humans do survive.

In my opinion abortion is an issue that the State has not demonstrated any competence at all to decide. I find it so very odd that those same political groups that so often decry the intervention of the state into private affairs of human life stand so firmly in support of state control over the reproductive process of people. Perhaps they find the state’s interference objectionable only when it interferes with guns, or money.

Tris

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The response will be inside yourself and only there, both sides as I can see will always be trying to understand the misteries of life - as if we could - and trying to make a legal issue out of something that is not even in their hands, doctors understand that, that is why an hypocratic commitment has to be made you know that, I supose, most of religious people will know that life comes from God, regardless of the name that each religion uses, the unbelievers will state that life is for us to take as we please, what is a fact is that in each country they will have a different way of looking at an abortion. For me specifically, some people think that they can justify taking away a life. Some use semanthics calling (humans in formation) different names. Products;as if you were alloud to produce humans in serials at your own will. You don´t even know when they are comming, that is why we are having this debate. Some people can´t have them, some people can´t avoid them. Embrion; from latin germination (beginning of life) fetus; stage of formation that follows each one according to it´s own species.(life) not an apendix.
Others think that is a matter of colors, black, white, yellow, green, blue, red, by the way I´ve never seen someone this colors. Only different pigmentation according to their different enviroments. Religions; Mahometans, Christians, Budists, etc… each religion teaches the highest morals, ethics, to love and respect each other and people take lifes in God´s name. And we could go on and on and there will always the willing of people to play God. We talk about and talk about and who will help a pregnant single mother, not even the single father, sometimes if not all times abortion is an escape to responsability, most of the times when you have sex you are not even thinking if you are going to have a baby or not, that is why it is so pleasent, for the people that still don´t know it, sexual relations were made to procreate, of course the ideal, will be to have the most handsome, respectfull, intelligent, rich, and awsome, not drinker, not smoker, no… no… no… but will there be a human race. We can all be more resposible for human race, instead of thinking how we can justify to kill each other. Mothers know there is someone alife inside, they talk to them, and when they do they don´t think of them as products or fetus, or embrions, or colors, when someone takes the decission of having an abortion is because it´s scared of people, of life, and not being able of bearing the judgement of the society they live at. We all make them rather take their sons out of their wounds, by telling them how hard it will be, to have their kids without a father. (We society)

84

Woo, first post. Anyways, I had a million thoughts in reading this thread, enough to warrant me to jump in and stop the lurking, but naturally, most of them fled. But, going back to the OP, I must reiterate the observation that someone made earlier (sorry, forgot who). What’s the point of this question? To elicit Hi-5’s from all like-minded pro-choicers? I, personally,

(1) Oppose abortion in general,
(2) Oppose abortion in cases of rape,
(3) Oppose the death penalty, and
(4) Oppose abortion in cases of incest [I mean, look at the British Royal Family–they’re all inbred, and while dysfunctional, they still persist].

So how do you respond to me? I don’t see any inconsistiencies in my philosophy–killing is pretty much wrong. What do you have to say about a person such as me? Before you ask, no, I’m not Christian, or religious in any meaning of the word. I just feel that to rob the world of something unique, such as a human being, or even the potential for a human being, merely because childbirth and childrearing is INCONVENIENT, is a travesty. I personally hope that in 150 years, people will look at abortion with the same distaste that they view slavery today. Oh yeah, I would try to clean up the spilled sperm/egg concoction the original poster mentioned later, if I, with my hypothetical knowledge as a fertility doctor, thought there was any chance a person could come of it.

Just a few random observations… I really don’t think the heart of this matter is, “Is a fetus a person with rights?” I think it’s intrinsic in Western culture at the very least that it IS. We have the expression “I’m with child” as synonymous with “I’m pregnant,” not “I have an undifferentiated mass of cells inside of me.” When a woman miscarries, even early in the pregnancy, this is NOT a small thing. It carries trauma, at least from my limited experience. People grimace when they hear on the news that an especially cold-blooded killer murdered a pregnant woman. It’s perceived as horrific, and rightly so. Someone already mentioned the fact that people who use abortion as (albeit expensive) birth control should be abhorred for this behavior.

No, the true issue, IMO, is do the rights of the mother outweigh the rights of the embryo/fetus? It’s a situation entirely unique, and I don’t know how valid comparisons are to slavery, pet ownership, severed thumbs, conjoined twins, or anything else farfetched are. Just one observation, I’ll never understand when a pro-choice advocate says, “I don’t want crusty old white guys telling me what I can do with my body!” What do the age, race, and gender have to do with being a gubernatorial authority? I mean, if somehow, the President, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court were all women and all made abortion illegal, suddenly women would go, “Oh, ok, that settles it, my bad.” I think not. Then, the issue would shift away from gender, race, and age to “I should be the only one with the power over my body.” It does seem like a pretty innate right, the right to be the final authority over your own body. I have difficulty offering any rationale other than abortion feels wrong, based on the observations I made in my second paragraph.

Woo, nice and rambling for my first post.

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I believe this is exactly what the OP was referring to - evidently, for this pro-lifer, it’s about punishment.

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Which part do you think is punishment, sex, having children or responsibility, in no case I will see any problem, would you? Don´t you think a single mother will be able to handle supporting its own child?

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You seem to be opposed to abortion because you feel that pregnancy is a logical consequence of having sex, and the mother should have to deal with the responsibility of raising a child. This is what the OP meant by punishment - saying to the woman, “You should have been more careful, now you have to be a mother” whether she wants to be a mother or not, and denying her the chance to avoid it by having an abortion.

A single mother may very well be able to raise the child herself… but should she be forced to, just because pregnancy is one consequence of sex and she wasn’t prepared? You seem to think so.

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Tris, I’m having trouble following you and hope you can help me understand. There are those who simultaneously hold inconsistent opinions (e.g., unborn human life is precious, the lives of poor single women do not deserve that same respect). That they do (whether “they” is the state or an individual) speaks to the type of moral entity they are (which, as a point of discussion, is at least in synch with the OP). But that doesn’t render either opinion right or wrong, I don’t think.

It may be semantics. I am concerned with the ethical question. The fact that the current law may not be supported by the proper ethical value (and all laws are supported by ethical values) can be tragic, but it doesn’t make the ethical debate moot except from a very immediate and practical perspective.

And if I’m understanding your comments, this would lead us to forbid the “state” to regulate almost any aspect of the behavior of this class of people. Steal, kill, whatever–who is the state to judge when they do nothing to interefere for good either, when they help create the conditions that lead to this behavior?

I hope this doesn’t seem confrontational (I’m trying hard to maintain the tone you established!). And, BTW, I wholeheartedly agree with you that the very circumstances that make abortion such a compelling choice (poverty, for example) demand our scrutiny and influence as well. I just accept the fact that there will always be people that don’t “get” this, and I can’t let that fact tell me that no further discussion or action is possible.

Thanks in advance (how presumptuous of me). :slight_smile:

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Gaudere, I have a hypothetical for you, unlikely perhaps, but a question that I think will help me understand your moral reasoning (or you can tell me why it’s silly).

I have read that there have been rare cases of “brain death” recovery–flat liners that inexplicably have regained consciousness. (I bring this up because this condition was part of your definition of the boundaries of human life.)

Let’s suppose you’re in a situation where, for whatever reason, you can predict when these extremely rare recoveries will occur. There’s a brain dead patient before you–no brain activity, no consciousness–but we know that this guy’s gonna regain consciousness. Is he now a “potential” human being or not? Are you ethically OK in pulling the plug during the vegetative state? (Again, I’m not asking how likely this situation is, only what the moral implications are.)

If the answer is, “no,” then that seems contradictory to me, since the patient (like the fetus in your explanation) is currently in a state where consciousness does not exist. The fact that he will, in time, leave that state is not relevant if it’s not relevant under the same circumstances for an unborn person. The fact that the “brain dead” guy once had consciousness does not seem relevant to me in this situation; he doesn’t have it now.

If the answer is, “yes,” then I’d react as I did to Joe previously: Isn’t the aspect of time in this equation somewhat arbitrary? The guy will recover; the fetus will develop consciousness as you have defined it. Are you so certain where this line is crossed? Are you so sure that the absence of this condition (when we know that the entity will naturally progress toward that condition) automatically renders someone less valuable and only a “potentiality”? (Or does my anology here collapse for some reason I haven’t discerned?)

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Depends on who you talk to. The ones who believe that sex outside of marriage is a sin would probably be the ones to help inflict the punishment (name-calling, spreading gossip, snubbing the pregnant woman).

There are some in this area who run some kind of a hotline for pregnant women to help them through their pregnancies and try to make the choice to have the child rather than abort it an easier choice.

The punishment in the Bible verse that was quoted earlier in the thread was a fine, which (to me) seems to be the punishment levied in cases of property damage. In Biblical times, women were considered to be the property of their fathers until they married, and then they were the husband’s property. I believe if the act of causing a miscarriage had actually been considered wrong because the life of the fetus was given great importance, the penalty would have been more severe than a fine.

I would personally feel punished if the state were allowed to legislate my choices about my body. The state does legislate that I not harm anyone’s body outside of myself, (that is, outside of my own body). It prosecutes and punishes people who murder and/or assault. But I have not heard of a recent case where the survivor of an attempted suicide is prosecuted for the attempt. The person has made a choice about her/his own body. A fetus is not separate from the mother’s body and cannot live (until it is viable) outside of the mother’s body.

Has anyone thought yet about an answer to the problem posed with someone spilling the eggs and sperm? It is an interesting question.

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Bob Cos says

The patient, unlike the fetus, has a previously established consciousness and is a separate entity; his/her sentience has been proven.

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Spider Woman, all replies are welcome. Can you clarify why previously having had consciousness is relevant here from a moral perspective? All kinds of things may have occurred in the past, but in this situation it seems to me that the only relevant facts are the current condition and the likely future condition.

What do you mean by a “proven” sentient being? Most unborn people are ultimately born and conscious. The fact that some may meet a tragic end before that point (another way of saying we can’t prove that the unborn entity will obtain consciousness as it has been defined here) can’t be justification, by itself, to make absolutely certain they won’t by conducting an abortion, right? Am I misunderstanding?

Also, since we’re using consciousness as the principal criteria for defining life in this particular argument, that’s why the separateness of the fetus is not part of the question I posed (which is not to say it isn’t a valid element of the overall debate; you may feel that the “separateness” issue overrides all other concerns).

Thanks for your feedback.

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although hypotheticals make me itch sometimes ;} I’m not sure I agree with you. The patient is NOT currently conscious…that is his condition…his likilhodd of becoming conscious is no greater (for the most part, since this IS a hypothetical) than the unborn child. Is it fair to say that it is previously established that a fetus WILL achieve consciousness just as certainly as the patient?

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what I mean by a proven sentient being. In the hypothetical scenario you invented, you say

so I took the word regain to mean his sentience was previously established.

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fetuses cannot vote, however women can. Therefore women have rights and fetuses dont.

96

You’ve got to be kidding…do children up to the age of 18 have any rights?

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The brain is not “momentarily quiescent” in an already-established person in a pre-cerebreal cortex infant; the cortex simply does not exist. There is no “person” there (IMHO, of course) and there never was. A better analogy would perhaps be a person whose cerebral cortex has been completely removed. As far as I’m concerned, this person is utterly dead, and I think many would agree with me; there is no personality, no memories, no consciousness and no sentience left at all. Now, perhaps we can clone a brain and stick it in the body, but that would be creating an entirely new life, not restoring the one before, and as long as that body had no complex cerebral cortex in it, I would feel no compunction about pulling the plug, aside from a grief over the loss of the person who once was, who died when the cortex was removed. Until a living creature establishes the bare minumum I consider necessary for personhood, I would not give it the rights of an established person; once it has established personhood, it has it until it is determined to our best efforts that the person-ness is irrevocably gone. So, with an already established person suffering from flat-line, you can make a decent effort to revive him/her, since the cerebral cortex still exists and could be coaxed back to functionality, thereby “restoring” the person; but if your efforts fail, you are not obligated to keep the brain-dead human alive, since once the cerbral cortex is dead beyond recovery that person has ceased to exist. Before the cerebral cortex exists, there is no person there; after it exists and is functional, I would assume the being is quite possibly a person (I would assume the being is definitely a person once s/he establishes consciousness and sentience, not just the “potential” sentience and conciousness that a working cortex gives) until the cerebral cortex utterly ceases to function.

For that matter, the person-ness of those whose brain may still be active yet do not display the customary attributes of consicousness is often rather iffy, too. Take a child in a coma, that the doctors think is unlikely to recover. Now, people sometimes do come out of comas, even after ten years or more. But should the state allow this potential revivification of the person as cause to force the parents to keep the child alive for a dozen years? I would not stand in the way of a parent who wished to take on the expense and emotional strain of maintaining a coma patient or that long, but neither would I consider it “murder” if they let him/her die. I think with “possible” or “potential” persons, the people most involved with the “potential person” should be the ones to make the decision, not total strangers.

[Edited by Gaudere on 09-16-2000 at 10:17 AM]

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OK, I understand. Again, though, why do you feel this previously established consciousness affords a different status/value to our “brain dead” guy? He’s not conscious now (which was the key to a number of posters’ definition of human life). We’re just reasonably certain–given the hypothetical–he will be in the future (just as we would with a healthy fetus).

Many of us (myself included, I think) would agree that irreversible brain death is real death. The fact that the body had previously been sentient–an established fact–would not be reason to keep the other vital organs “alive” by artificial means. The only relevant fact is whether or not it is reasonable that consciousness will be there in the future.

In my hypothetical we somehow know that this is the reasonable outcome–an admittedly remote (if at all possible) scenario. However, as I said, my purpose was not to discuss the likelihood of the hypothetical but its moral implications. I would still suggest that concluding it would be wrong to “pull the plug” is inconsistent with the notion that “pre-sentience” in a fetus is justification for abortion.

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Bob Cos, you ask

Within the context of the original hypothetical scenario, his previously established consciousness would be the only reason not to pull the plug, and if the person would be unable to move or communicate after regaining consciousness (this was not specified in the original posited hypothetical) this consciousness would no longer be a reason not to pull the plug.

You then say

So, now we’re back to real life. I have to keep my arenas straight here. I would not be one who would keep a brain-dead body functioning for reasons other than organ donation.

My ethic does not include in it the axiom that all life is equal. I would not hold the value of the potential sentience of the fetus equal to the previously established sentience of an injured human, nor would I hold that value of potential sentience to be greater than a woman’s right not to serve as a receptacle to it against her will. This is why, within the constructs of my moral ethic, I see no inconsistency. I can see, from your definition of the values of your morality, that it would be inconsistent for you.

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I´m sorry not to remember who made the question, it´s only me writting, the only reason why I use the "we statemente is because I feel I am part of a society and that we are all responsible for what goes on, for rules and regulations, of course they are a must there always have to be people orienting people to respect others as we can see in this debate and others, no, is not a confrontation, is only a way to espress an opinion, that is wat this forum is for, the rights of all people are to be respect I do believe that if a “woman” doesn´t want to be a mother there are many ways of avoiding it, she can even take everything that is inside of her (organs, liver, what ever it takes to prevent pregnancy, that is her own decission) in that way she will be able to have as much sex as she wants and that will be on her own religion beliefs. That is her own right. What I may think a little bit our of order is to consider a baby (ups a product) responsible for what someone else did, in case of rape, the rapist, in case of unwanted maternity, the lack of prevention, in these times most of our children alredy know that sex takes you to maternity or paternity, I am talking both sexes, boys (men) should be more responsible for their acts, but I observe that they main concerne for parents is that their kids don´t get sick (aids, venereal diseasses, but the responsible paternity or maternity is not
tought anymore, the family, the respect for old people, the values. Yes I am for them. And I use my real name to give my opinionI take responsibility for it.