A secular debate about abortion

[surreptitious57]

I agree with every single word of the above. Very eloquently put as well. Should be compulsory reading for all pro-lifers.

[Feck]

As I said before some people use the 'specialness' of human life celebrated by humanists almost indistinguishably from the 'sanctity' of human life celebrated by the religious .
to take it one step further and try to preserve a potential human life proves my point .At least theists think we are special because the universes creator made us to be special Humanists are arrogant enough to think we are special because, well we are just so damn super !

[lordpasternack]

I'm a humanist of some description and I don't hold to some mystical value of all "human life" by simple virtue of it having a specific genome, or being merely a potential human being.

There is something special about humans though - and there's no point perversely denying that. It's all wrapped up beautifully in the very fact that we are actually holding this conversation - through written language, typed onto and read off of screens, via the internet, and in my case via my wireless connection that this dinky little gadget in my hands is hooked up to, while I'm sat on my bed… No other animal on this planet can hope to know or comprehend even a proportion of what humanity now does. Saying that developed human beings are just any old organism just pales into contrarian absurdity. I'm sure the other animals would point this out too, if only they could…

The bottom line, though, is that that specialness is something that EMERGES from phases of real insignificant differences from other organisms, and there's nothing special about being POTENTIALLY human being.

[Feck]

I know we think we are special ,we define the term to apply to us . Biologically it's meaningless it's us patting ourselves on the back for being, us .Like a sprinter telling a weight lifter they are special and better because they run faster .If life's only purpose is the replication of a DNA molecule then our DNA is failing the race .

[lordpasternack]

Life has no "purpose" except inasmuch as we choose to make it or see it so. Even seeing the purpose as the replication of DNA is just one perspective of it all...

[Hermit]

Biologically it's meaningless

Well, duh.

Read Lordpasternack's post above yours again, would you please?

Meanwhile, I'll listen to music composed by a biologically ordinary organism:

[Coito ergo sum]

Thea, your whole, long-winded, flowery arguments are built on fallacious premises that could have been answered long before modern science. A human embryo has great potential, but it is, at the time of going to press, not any more special than other embryos. It has no intrinsic qualities observable at that time that mark it out - other than this "potential". And even the potential is due to nothing actually unusual or out of the ordinary, when you break it down. It's just a particular sequence of DNA, replicating, following quite precise instructions for how to form a complex organism, cell by cell, layer by layer, which genes to express for different cells, where to place particular cells - the same as the embryos of practically every other multicellular eukaryote on the planet.

The only thing that sets it apart is that it happens to carry the particular sets of guidelines for forming a human being. It doesn't make it more worthy of respect than the other embryos it is practically indistinguishable from. It doesn't make it a human being. What it could be doesn't change what it is.

Begging to infer otherwise really does come down to claiming that there's something just mystical about the chromosomes, and the particular rules of biochemistry that may form humans from zygotes. There's no other way to interpret it: you're looking to find something somehow mystical and sacred about the potential to become human (as opposed to another, similar, organism) - and on close examination, it just isn't present. No amount of wanting to believe it so will change the fact that the emperor isn't actually wearing any clothing. And there's nothing all that special about his potential to be wearing clothes in future, for that matter…

And read this blog-post on Pharyngula: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011 ... fies_w.php

I would like to add that considering the unborn a life from the moment of fertilization is a fairly new concept by and large. For much of western history, the concept of "the quickening" of the unborn was used to set the cutoff point. It became a life when there was "quickening" which was when movement was first noticed by the mother.

Traditional "common law" applicable to England and English colonies and commonwealth countries and derived from Anglo-Saxon common law, was that abortion was not a crime if it occurred prior to the quickening. For those concerned with the US law, the common law applied in the US unless deviated by statute. Prior to and around 1800, there were no U.S. statutes criminalizing abortion, so the uniform law in the US at the time of the "founders" was that abortion was no big deal prior to the quickening. After quickening, it was a crime, but still not "murder."

[Coito ergo sum]

I know we think we are special ,we define the term to apply to us . Biologically it's meaningless it's us patting ourselves on the back for being, us .Like a sprinter telling a weight lifter they are special and better because they run faster .If life's only purpose is the replication of a DNA molecule then our DNA is failing the race .

The bottom line is the law whatever the legislators say it is. Even killing born humans is just fine, under circumstances designated by the law givers. Why is killing in self-defense legal? It's certainly not objective morality. It's just that whoever makes the laws says so. There's nothing inherently right about killing in self defense. Similarly, capital punishment, killing in defense of others, killing in defense of property, or other justifications for killing are not anything that are inherently lawful.

If it has human DNA, a blastocyst is human - an embryo is human - sperm and eggs are human - etc. etc. etc. - killing them is only wrong if someone thinks it's wrong. It's only illegal if the law says it's illegal.

All these machinations and gyrations of logic, trying to "prove" or "disprove" that something is or is not a "person" or a "human" is just so much argument over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

[Hermit]

All these machinations and gyrations of logic, trying to "prove" or "disprove" that something is or is not a "person" or a "human" is just so much argument over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Spot on.

[hadespussercats]

There´s a lot I could say in response to JCEmmanuel and others, but I don´t have the time or the inclination at the moment. I will point out, though, the old ax that every egg and every sperm has the potential for becoming human life. Should we outlaw women having periods? Menses is murder? What about men´s nighttime emissions, etc. ? Reckless abandonment?

[Coito ergo sum]

There´s a lot I could say in response to JCEmmanuel and others, but I don´t have the time or the inclination at the moment. I will point out, though, the old ax that every egg and every sperm has the potential for becoming human life. Should we outlaw women having periods? Menses is murder? What about men´s nighttime emissions, etc. ? Reckless abandonment?

You'd have to outlaw not getting pregnant when pregnancy is possible. Heck if a man did not ejaculate into a woman each and every time he possibly could, he would inevitably be, through inaction, condemning thousands of spermatozoa to die. It would have to be a crime for a woman to say no to sex, because we never know when an egg is leaving the ovum, precisely.

[jcmmanuel]

Jcmmanuel - briefly, if this is possible - please outline your reason for holding the premise of the imperative to sanctify "human life" by simple virtue of it possessing a human genome, and even before it is qualitatively different from other living organisms broadly, and other animals…

But how meaningful is this? I just saw Thea's post that does much of what you're asking. Your reply to it, and probably to anything that diminish the validity of your argument / position, is calling it long-winded and "fallacious premises" etc.

The order of events is as follows: a) You came up with the idea that anything that cannot develop a human being could be comparable to an embryo.

b) Thea's reply - clear enough in my opinion - simply points out that if something has potential to develop into a human being, this potential (dreaded word so it seems) is at the very least prohibiting comparison with placenta or with the fact that every human cell has a potential to carry on life, or support it. Fact is that humans are not born of just any cells. We simply have to look at how it works, this is how nature does it, this is how it's designed (developed) by evolution, and science explains the mechanism (and by the way, a discussion about how science might find ways to avoid the natural way and make life in a different way, would not be relevant to the abortion discussion). There is nothing illogical about looking at the abortion issue from our actual, natural position today, considering that abortion is exactly the discussion about 'prematurely' stopping the natural process from happening. At this point there's no defense of metaphysical forms of sacredness or whatever - we are trying to weigh the argument of what nature has offered to us, mankind.

c) Your reaction is to call all of this a fallacy - and you re-formulate your views with no essential improvement, just some variation in formulation. E.g. "It doesn't make it more worthy of respect than the other embryos it is practically indistinguishable from". "Indistinguishable"? From what point of view? A rather simplistic scholarly microscope, or the eye of the expert? This is a fuzzy language. You also link to an article with the words "single-celled brainless organism" in the title (PZ Myers' article) - as if anyone who even dares to CARE about embryonic or foetal life is a potential idiot who might as well confuse a beetle for an embryo. What the heck...? Whatever the 'Religious Right' is saying, don't think they will make your argument here. We were not talking about sperm here. Let the Religious Right take care of their sperm, meanwhile let's get a little serious here. Yes I know we may technically already call it an "embryo" at that point, but an embryo at beginning of cell division is not exactly the embryo of 7 weeks that most of us have in mind here.

Maybe I should try to make your life a little easier with following suggestion (and in fact I already offered the suggestion several times). Let's take, for the sake of clarity, an 8-weeks old foetus as a starting point (this is reasonable, if you compare how the laws are set up in most modern countries). We can always discuss, later on, whether there's reason to move the pointer forward or backward in time - but let's start at a point where our minds are a little closer, so we can avoid silly links to articles about sperm and single-celled organisms that are hardly in most people's minds when they hear the word 'abortion'.

It may simplify it also for you, as it is absolutely clear and obvious where you come from and where it may hurt in a discussion - honestly: all my respect for people's private life and issues; no one here has been asking that people get hurt. We try to reason, and it is not unreasonable to start from an 8 weeks or maybe even 12 weeks old foetus, setting the pointer in a place were it's easier to breathe while we talk.

One more word about the article in your link. I quote: "Yes, Mr Barnard began as a zygote. That does not mean the zygote was Mr Barnard". This is true. But it's also easy to see how this becomes a fallacy if the argument is taken a little further. Mr. Barnard at 10 years old was not the Mr. Barnard when he was just 6 months old (after birth I mean). He learned an awful lot in the meantime. His brains became conscient in a far more impressive and measurable way then when he was just 6 months old etc. He can now survive on his own - this he could not do if he was left behind on the streets at the age of 6 months (unless someone would have taken care). And so on. - I mean, obviously there is a point where the word 'human life' starts to make sense to us. But if the debate would just be to go after the justification of the atheist or (more correctly) materialist / physicalist position, then the debate would be neither rational (rationalia) nor secular but just a means to settle with ontological materialism.

[jcmmanuel]

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[charlou]

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[lordpasternack]

Jccmanuel, I don't have the inclination to translate and dissect each part of your post. We may have to agree to disagree about this generally.

I hold that what makes life worth respecting - worth wincing before we terminate it - is its consciousness, sentience, capacity to suffer - and the suffering it will bring to other sentient beings if it is terminated. I hold this standard for humans as well as many other animals. I hold that human beings are special as earthly life goes -but that that specialness emerges from stages of development that are on a par with "lesser" animals. I don't find anything special about the simple potential to give rise to an actual person (given the time, and unflagging commitment from a woman's uterus). I think life should be valued on its merits as they stand at that particular time.

As to your 8-week-old foetus - are you referring to a foetus when a woman is "8 weeks' pregnant", or 8 weeks after conception. Long story short - pregnancy has traditionally been measured from the last menstrual period (due to difficulties in pinpointing ovulation/conception) - meaning that someone "8 weeks' pregnant" is often only around 6 weeks post-conception.

That possibly pedantic point aside, I'll look at your foetus either way and judge it on its merits - its sentience, putative capacity to think, feel, suffer - and how this compares with other animals. It needs more than simply a human genome and developing human morphology for me to be convinced that it has a very positive case for having its life defended in some way. (And even wanting to defend its life doesn't imply that a woman must then have her body used to sustain that life.) If I find no reasonable indication for defending that life (far less obligating another person to remain physically attached to it), or for defending it more vociferously than other qualitatively similar life, then I'm not going to then give it more respect than it deserves by virtue of it being "human life" or a potential human being. It's as straightforward as that.

And if I do find reason to defend that life, then it will be for what it is at the time of going to press, and my defence would be proportional to that.

I respect human beings by virtue of the actual qualities that make them human beings worthy of my respect - not for some quantum vibrational human energy that sets in at conception and grows in strength even before the nervous system is properly established. Or is it more just the quantum energetic human potentiality at the foetal stage? I get so confused between terms sometimes…

And by extension, I value other animal lives for what they are, too - which might well be more worthy of defending than a human foetus.