The comparitive value of a Fetus, a Puppy Dog, and an Amoeba.

Great Debates
1

Yes there is an abortion debate here and no, it isn’t simply here to stir up trouble or aggravate either the pro-life or pro-choice Dopers.

Judith Jarvis Thompson wrote a rather intelligent article in 1971 where she attacked the importance of the “fetus is a human” arguement. She went on to say that she believes abortion is moral even if the fetus is fully human right from the moment of conception(she had some minor stipulations, but that is her argument for the most part).

Now, to my topic and the reason for my subject heading. I was trying to think if you could argue the issue from the exact opposite angle. Maybe abortion is wrong even if the fetus isn’t human.

This brought me to the value of the fetus. Imagine I had a puppy dog in front of me and I shot him in the head and killed him. I think most of us would consider that wrong. Poor little puppy! :frowning:

Ok, let’s say I had a bacterium or amoeba. I killed it(or them). I bet no one would care and neither would they consider it an immoral deed. Who cares about amoeba? Not me.

So where does a fetus lie? I mean, no one believs a fetus isn’t alive. Granted, it might not be human, but it is alive before the abortion. Where does it fall? Is it closer to the puppy dog or the amoeba?

Let me add two more things. I do believe the method of killing plays a key role. Some abortions are done because of rape, incest, or the life of the mother is on the line. The killing of the fetus tends to be more understandable because it is not random and it is for a purpose(just like if I killed a puppy dog or bacterium to save my own life).

I’m more interested in abortions that occur because of accidental or unwanted pregnancies. Is it acceptable to take the life of a fetus in that situation? I mean, it is a living being and I would put it at least on the level of a puppy dog.

Also, this is a moral debate and not a legal one. Very relative difference.

Have fun and be respectful!

2

At the very beginning of pregnancy (when an abortion might be accomplished by taking a “morning-after pill”), I’d personally put the zygote (technically it isn’t a fetus until around eight weeks) at about the level of an amoeba. As it moves along into the fetal stage, at some point it would become the moral equivalent of a puppy. We routinely kill unwanted puppies in this country. Later in the pregnancy, the unborn baby to me is clearly morally equivalent to a baby after birth; I would consider abortion moral in the eighth month of pregnancy only for a very serious reasons (i.e., the baby is so deformed it will die within hours of not minutes of being born, and giving birth to it threatens the health of the mother).

3

I’ve thought about this before too and like MEBuckner, the stage in fetal deveolpment makes a big difference.

Also maybe we could have an additional level above a puppy dog, say a fully trained kick-ass seeing eye dog that was extremely valuable to some very important good person’s life. To me a fetus up to around 5-6 mo. of development may be in between the puppy and highly trained seeing eye dog in value. IMHO I don’t think that all human life necessarily above and beyond all animal life. The human animal just isn’t that special.

4

Personally, I rate the value of any individual creature based on the likelihood of that species going extinct if that individual dies. That said, a fetus, puppy dog, and amoeba are all equals and I rank all three at about the same place that the average person would rank the amoeba. Of the three however, I would probably miss the puppy dog most (though I would consider its death completely acceptable based on the fact that dogs are plentiful).

5

Well, once upon a time, about ten years ago, we were going to have our female cat spayed. Then we found she was already pregnant. The doctor would have spayed her anyway, thus destroying the kittens had we wanted him to, but that was such a horrifying prospect that we didn’t spay her until after the kittens were born. It wasn’t the kittens’ fault they interupted our plans, was it? We gave two of them away to good homes, and the third is sleeping on the couch right now. Bet you can guess my postion on abortion from this…

Anyway, I’d rank the beings in question in this order- human fetus, puppy, then amoeba. Why? Because of the value I assign them personally, nothing more.

6

:rolleyes: What a fascinating perspective on morality. So the killing of an adult human is morally equivalent to killing an amoeba or bacteria. This implies that the punishment for killing both should be the same, no? I took some antibiotics last month, so either I have to worry that I have commited a heinously immoral act, or I now should have carte blanche to kill a similar population of humans. Which is it Proc?

As to the OP, you could make the argument from the opposite side, but as your body is going to kill bacteria whether you want it to or not, it is a lot harder to support.

7

Mahaloth wrote:

A fetus is also a living being if it was conceived through rape or incest. (Although fetuses conceived through incest do have a greater chance of carrying serious genetic defects.)

If a fetus conceived through consensual sex is a living being on par with a puppy dog, why is a fetus conceived through rape any less of a living being? The fetus didn’t do the raping, fer cryin’ out loud.

Whenever someone claims that a fetus conceived through rape is considered perfectly moral to abort, but one conceived through consensual sex is considered a living being whose abortion would be tantamount to infanticide, it makes me seriously question the motivation of the speaker. It sounds like the speaker is less concerned with the welfare of the fetus than he is with punishing the mother by forcing her to remain pregnant. “That’ll teach you not to go around having consensual sex, you slut!” seems to be the hidden message here.

8

Why do you rate the value of any individual creature based on the likelihood of that species going extinct if that individual dies? That means we can kill anything that exists in large numbers(including humans, I assume). Clarify, please, and if that is not possible, rephrase your position.

tracer wrote, "A fetus is also a living being if it was conceived through rape or incest. (Although fetuses conceived through incest do have a greater chance of carrying serious genetic defects.)

If a fetus conceived through consensual sex is a living being on par with a puppy dog, why is a fetus conceived through rape any less of a living being? The fetus didn’t do the raping, fer cryin’ out loud."

I never said that a fetus was less alive if it was conceived through rape, but only that the killing of it becomes more understandable(not necesarrily right, but more understandable). Again, an attacking dog is as much a dog as a cute, little, puppy dog, but the killing of it is more understandable. That was my point.

But, now that I’ve clarrified that, you will probably stick to your guns more wildly.

9

I have no moral problem with killing anything and do not understand why other people do. Mammals and large trees are about the only things that most people have moral problems with killing. I do not see what makes mammals and large trees so special. I can understand those that have a moral problem with killing anything at all on purpose or having no moral problem with killing anything, but that giant gray area in between is what I don’t understand. Protecting species from extinction is one part of the gray area I understand, but most of the rest confuses me. Having a large brain (or a brain at all for that matter) does not make a life form special in my eyes. I don’t even understand why people care so much about each other. There are lots of people in this world. If a billion of them were killed, the world would hardly change (the global economy would change and there would be a body storage problem, but these are minor troubles). I can understand it when someone is upset that someone they knew died, but when a total stranger dies, why do people care? People are animals too. The death of a person is no greater a tragedy than the death of a cow, a dog, or even a fly. All are plentiful so the individual is not rare enough to be missed.

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Mahaloth wrote:

You bet your bippy I will.

How is a fetus conceived through rape like an attacking dog? It’s no more a threat to the mother than is a fetus conceived through consensual sex. And it’s just as unwanted as a fetus conceived through consensual sex when the mother used contraceptives and the contraceptives failed.

11

You’re a psycho, dude. Do you not want to die yourself?Would you not be sad if one of your family died, or anyone you care about? Do you not want people who the people you care about care about to die? It would not take long, maybe 10-20 extensions to encompas the entire human race. How do you not find humans more special than amoebas. i find conciousness a pretty special thing there, Procacious

12

Proc, you do realize that “people” may be plentiful, but each person is different right? And that’s it’s unfair and ignorant to lump every Human Being together and say “Well, 1/2 the population can die cuz they are all the same.” No, they are not.
Do you see a therapist? Coming to terms with death and being comfortable with it is one thing, but being unable to recgonize that every Human is an individual and not just part of “the whole” makes you a sick person.

13

tracer, I hope you diddn’t get the idea that I am for abortion. I’m against it in every situation, but am merely trying to express that when a women has an abortion because of rape, I understand it a bit more than when she has one because of carelessness.

Do you at least see that point? By the way, you were right. The attack dog was a bad comparison.

14

My comment does not address the OP’s questions on abortion but is offered as a clarification of some of the distinctions between humans, puppies and amoebas. As such, I am going to try to summarize Procacious’ thoughts in a less offensive way.

Question: Do different critters possess varying degrees of moral worth?

Answer 1: Yes, humans are the only being that has moral value. Thus, I can kill a puppy because I want to test my gun’s sight. We readily accept the death of other animals before we would accept the death of a human. A more realistic example might be, it is acceptable to kill a mountain lion that has killed a human even though the mountain lion was following its natural instincts for food or territory.

Answer 2: Yes, humans have the highest value of moral worth, however, other species have moral worth too and non-vital human interests must be checked if they conflict with vital non-human interests. Thus, it is immoral to kill a puppy dog that pees on you roses because that dog has some degree of moral value. (For the purposes of this argument, the puppy dog is not owned by anyone and its death would not be witnessed by others). This answer, like the first, assumes some interpretation of moral realism–that each human, each puppy and each cedar waxwing has intrinsic value (worthy in and of itself).

Answer 3: No, there are no morally relavent criteria that separate humans from other critters. This seems to be the position of Procacious. Humans have bigger brains than dogs–this is not a morally relavent criterion. Cedar waxwings possess natural abilities to fly, humans do not–this, too, is not a morally relavent criterion. Now some would argue that moral differences emerge with the ability to distinguish pleasure and pain as a function of the central nervous system. Thus, all critters with central nervous systems are morally equal and those without are not morally considerable. Therefore, amoeba, oysters, and insectavores lose out and they can be killed with impunity. Procacious’ comment about relative abundance is a way of arguing for systemic value (ecosystems or species) as more important than the value of any individuals–this has been called eco-facsism by some where the individual essentially carries no moral weight–only groups and collections of things are morally considerable.

Answer 4: Distinctions between humans (us) and other critters (them) are illusions. We are all parts of one big system in the same way that your pinky finger, your left ear lobe and your big toe are all parts of your body. Our skin is not the membrane that separates us from everything else, it is simply the organ we use to ** encouter ** other parts of ourself. (Wee ooo wee ooo wee ooo) :slight_smile:

The question above is one of the central questions in environmental ethics and I doubt we’ll have any widespread agreement on answers any time soon. That said, I think dialogues such as this are encouraging because we find ourselves having to think about why it is wrong to kill a crow, a spotted owl, a mosquito, the small pox virus, etc.

15

The main argument I’ve never heard the pro-life people point out is that a fetus has the potential to grow into a human being. They’re all arguing that a fetus IS a human being, and by law, they’re wrong and, barring major developments in caring for preemies, I doubt they’ll ever be proven right. To me, the difference between killing an unborn puppy and an unborn human fetus is that, in the vast majority of cases, if left undisturbed, the human fetus would develop into a completely healthy, normal human being.

This is ignoring the whole question of whether not killing anything, at any age, is right, or whether or not killing the unborn of any species is right. I choose not to rank the humanity of an unborn fetus on a scale of amoeba-to-human because failing to judge accurately the potential of humans is a bad thing. If it’s been conceived, it could develop into a human who finds the cure for cancer. It could also develop into a serial killer.

16

Judith Jarvis Thompson’s argument did not address the worth of the fetus (embryo, fertilized ovum, etc); her logic was to argue why one ought to be able to abort based on the right of a person to choose not to be a biological life support system for another individual.

She did not argue that this right was absolute, but provided a series of hypothetical parallel situations ("…you wake up and find that someone has hooked up a brilliant scientist with kidney failure to your bloodstream, and your kidneys are filtering the dude’s blood. Detach the tubes and he dies. Do you have the right to do so? How about if you left the window unlocked, therefore enabling his doctors to get in and hook you up?") and ended up arguing that, given (as a starting point) that abortion is killing and that the products of conception constitute “a person”, it is nevertheless not by any means necessarily true that abortion is murder. It might be murder some of the time.

17

For one thing, I do not see why people love life so much. I understand the extinctive desire to live, but people have the ability to rationalize away instinctive desires (at least to the point of being able to control them) and through this method I have overcome my unfitting desire to live. From what I have observed, life is not pleasant. Most everyone I see spends their lives in misery. You work, sleep, and try to spend the remaining hours as entertained as possible. This is not a desirable way to live in my opinion. There is no joy. No happiness. People get defensive when you ask them if they are happy. They say, “Of course I am happy” as if there was no other way they could possibly be. But from what I have observed, they are not happy, just to busy to notice their misery. Most people do not even stop to consider their state of happiness and they are wise to do so. This is one area where ignorance truly is bliss. Some questions are best left unasked. I just wish I knew that before I asked it.

Death, on the other hand, seems to lack misery. Those that are religious tend to believe that they are destined for heaven or its equivalent. Those that are not religious (such as myself) can look forward to an endless, dreamless sleep. A state of nothingness. No worries, no troubles, no nothing. There is no happiness in death either, but the bad seems to greatly outweigh the good in life, while in death, the two forces are completely equal (they are both absent). Of the two choices, death seems the better.

However, you only live once. And what is 80 years of misery in the grasp of eternity? So we choose to live. Not the best choice, but at least it is not a permanent decision.

I do not feel bad when anyone dies, including someone I know, even when I am the cause of death. Death is a neutral state. Dead people never complain, because they cannot think. They are neither happy nor sad, simply content. Since most people live in a negative state (in my opinion) they are better off dead. The reason I don’t go around killing people is because it is not my decision to make. I regulate my own life only. Even those that are living in a positive state will not miss their life once it is gone because they are not capable of thought. They cannot regret their actions. They cannot wish that they did things while they were alive, because they cannot think. Even if they had the greatest life imaginable, they will never care that it is gone. Thus, there is no reason to feel bad when someone dies.

I know that each person is unique, but my above statements point out why I do not worry about them on the “individual” level. Dead individuals are perfectly content.

18

The value of an organism can be roughly approximated as

(square root of ADULT SIZE)/(POPULATION)(FERTILITY)

[stats from Out-of-My-Hat.org]

Discuss.

19

Hehe, I like it.

I remember reading that the average human has enough iron in his/her body to make 4 nails. I don’t know how much a nail cost these days, but I suppose a human being is worth something on that basis alone.

20

So is that your point.Procacious?
You want to harvest all those wasted nails?
Peace,
mangeorge