A few more thoughts on the subject of abortion
Last night I was looking up something about Charles Krauthammer, and I chanced to come across something he’d written in 1985 that I’d never seen before. It expresses some of his thoughts on abortion, and it struck me that it raises a good point that’s seldom discussed in just this way.
So here it is:
There is not the slightest recognition on either side that abortion might be at the limits of our empirical and moral knowledge. The problem starts with an awesome mystery: the transformation of two soulless cells into a living human being. That leads to an insoluble empirical question: How and exactly when does that occur? On that, in turn, hangs the moral issue: What are the claims of the entity undergoing that transformation?
How can we expect such a question to yield answers that are not tentative and indeterminate? So difficult a moral question should command humility, or at least a little old-fashioned tolerance.
That to me is the essence of the dilemma.
I also came across a rebuttal to a later statement of Krauthammer’s that expressed something similar:
…[T]here are literally no pro-lifers—and to my knowledge there have been none in the four decades since Roe v. Wade was decided—who argue that the unborn deserve protection because some magical “ensoulment” has taken place. The Catholic Church, to take one prominent institution devoted to the defense of human life from conception until natural death, makes no “theological” argument about the nature of the life in the womb. The Church relies instead entirely on the scientific fact that every unborn human being is, from the moment of its conception, a member of our species.
That may indeed be true. But I contend that the abortion argument nevertheless rests on a disagreement about when the union of an egg and sperm is a human life, a person—and in some ways of thinking, a souled person—with a right to life that supercedes any right a pregnant woman might have to terminate that life growing within her.
There are people who think a pregnant woman’s right to end the life of the fetus lasts as long as she is pregnant, no matter how advanced in age or viable the fetus might be. I believe that continues to be a minority opinion even among the pro-abortion faction, although I don’t have a poll to offer on that. But when does her right to end that life occur? Do she have no such right at all? Does she even lack the right to use birth control and thus prevent conception, which is not an unheard-of point of view either? Does she have a right but does her right last only until implantation? Or for the first trimester?
Abortion is one of those topics that just plain makes me sad. I’ve written about my personal point of view before, here. I will add that the advent of more and more detailed and accurate photos and knowledge of the developing fetus in the womb has contributed to a growing sense among many people that this is a human life very early, and to a growing revulsion towards abortion at any point in a pregnancy.
Working out compromises like this — and adjusting over time as things shift — is what legislatures are for. If SCOTUS had stayed out of it, I (want very much to) believe that the legislatures of 50 states would have by now converged on something that resembles the original wording of RvW and because it was subject to amendment, would be fought in the various legislatures instead of turning SCOTUS as the primary political battleground.
Killing animals too. Difficult to think through. Look at the size of a cow’s brain. And plants. Look at a living cell in a plant with a dark field microscope. They are just as alive as anything….all kinds of endoscopes and mitochondria rushing about. Zippity. Life may just be an emergent phenomenon of anything that has a certain type of complexity. Or, the entire universe could be alive. We have to get used to not knowing stuff. We don’t really even know why a derivative in calculus works, say a dy, and we invented these! They are as close to zero as we can imagine and yet we can use them as divisors. Not supposed to divide by zero. Bad.
Has anyone on TV stepped into Dr. K’s shoes? Or come close?
The problem with the soul question is not a question of when but of worth. According to science, life begins when sperm meets egg. True for animals and true for us. A person who believes a women or person has the right (for whatever reason) to end a life will be more motivated by their own issues in deciding to end that life. For example, let’s say that the egg doesn’t have a soul for the entirety of the first trimester. A women is on the fence and is debating an abortion. A family emergency happens and she ends up having to schedule the abortion just after the first trimester. Now still faced with a financial crisis the woman then begins to ask; how important can a new soul be? It has no experience, no practical value so why this arbitrary date? You see, I believe that a person who would end a life will always be more compelled by their own situation rather than a philosophical/arbitrary time of “soul”. We have seen this in the current debate. At first it was abortion only in the first trimester, then the second, and now folks want abortion up to and even after birth. We are in the 21st century. As a women I can attest to the fact that there are multiple was to avoid pregnancy. It is not difficult and is possible for those of average/below average IQ. Reality is people simply don’t take pregnancy prevention seriously until it is too late. Then an inconvenient life is ended to ensure that the fully evolved life is not troubled or burdened by it’s own incompetence.
Human life evolves (i.e. chaotic process) from conception (“source”). We develop a presumptive consciousness (“origin” argument) from around the fifth week. Viability is effectively a belief in spontaneous human conception that gives technical and emotional comfort in order to aid and abet progressive policy.
The choices are one: abstention, two: prevention, three: adoption, and four: compassion. Elective abortion is the fifth choice, the wicked solution, to an albeit hard problem: pursuit of wealth, pleasure, leisure, narcissistic indulgence, and social progress.
That said, I wonder if a medical professional would dare refer to a mother and father’s Posterity as “fetus,” a technical term of art used by abortionists, activists, and medical professionals to emotionally dissociate from a human life, in their presence.
Abortion rites were legalized with passage of the Twilight (penumbras and emanations) Amendment, and normalized through Planned Parenthood et al, and indoctrination in schools and liberal culture.
So, four choices, we are all pro-choice, and a wicked solution, a Pro-Choice quasi-religion (“ethics”).
Plants, too. What are the attributes (i.e. structural, mental/behavioral) or features that distinguish between humans, animals, plants, and lower forms of life?
That said, when and by whose choice does a human life acquire and retain her right to keep and bear arms, legs, a head, and life? Aside from the viability argument, Pro-Choice or wicked solution, amounts to little more than age discrimination for light and elective causes.
Ironic that as we progress, are–more and more fully—able to visualize and investigate the state of fetuses in the womb, finding that very early on they feel pain, are apparently aware on some level, and react to stimuli–that instead of pushing the limit for when you can have an abortion further and further back towards conception, those on the Left are pushing for no limits to abortions–up until the moment of birth and beyond it, to infanticide–killing a successfully delivered, alive, and breathing infant.
I’ve argued for decades that, though unknown and unprovable… it is when the soul enters the fetus that determines when a fetus becomes a human being.
For if we have no soul, then we are just another animal and can’t justify the eating of other animals… or for that matter, plants either. As, experiments with playing music to growing young plants conclusively demonstrates them to react to the emotions that music evokes.
To posit that human beings have no soul is, to in principle, declare that our species’ suicide is the only moral choice.
Whereas, if evolution if the means God uses to evolve life to the point of full self-awareness, then the soul becomes the necessary component to achieving full self-awareness. This speculation is demonstrated by sociopaths, who are the evidentiary proof that too damaged a soul is unable to be fully human.
“The problem with the soul question is not a question of when but of worth.” Thank you Lightning…spot on!
This specific point was raised in a medical/legal ethics class in Australia this week according to a med student I know. The medical/legal ethicist (Christian Dr/Lawyer mother of 5 or 6 children…I can’t recall atm) was noting the problematic nature of a hotly contested piece of legislation currently before the NSW State Parliament that ostensibly “de-criminalizes” abortion, but really opens the door for late-term abortion and strangely does not prevent sex-selection abortions.
She was encouraging the class, most of whom would voice a more pro-woman’s-choice mindset, to really examine the rationale of their decision making framework. At its core it is the lower perceived value/worth of the child in utero that drives the decision to abort. This is Australia…you really can’t talk about “souls” in public without being disregarded as a “God botherer,” especially in a university classroom.
In essence, If no one loves you, places high value or inestimable worth on your existence, then you become an easy target. It’s also an end-of-life question…but I’m sure that’ll be her lecture another day.
Cornhead, Krauthammer is irreplaceable.
Abortion supporters like to use the “ensoulment” argument to make abortion opponents today into religious fanatics. In fact, as Krauthammer pointed out, “ensoulment” is a medieval concept which modern abortion opponents, whether religious or not, don’t use.
Probably the conflict won’t be resolved in my lifetime, although I do think political compromises would have been made, state by state, if the Supreme Court had not overstepped its place with Roe v. Wade. If left to public debate, I think we’d end up with on-demand abortion very early, say, up to twelve weeks, and thereafter only for imminent threat to the mother’s life.
Half of the aborted babies are female, so much for empowering women. Abortion is supposedly about a woman’s right to control her body. But obviously she chose not to control her body. She recklessly chose to have sex without the numerous methods of contraception that are available everywhere. Buy and carry condoms for your sexual partners if you don’t want your egg fertilized.
Human life begins at conception. That is undeniable. We never referred to the human life developing in her womb as a fetus, we called our children babies. When my wife would get together with pregnant friends none asked the others how is your fetus coming along?
Abortion should be resticted to those rare cases when the mother’s life is in serious danger. Otherwise our collective humanity is degraded. IMO
These are entangled questions of justice I think we can say, or rather, we must say. Perhaps this, as much as or more than some question concerning ensoulment or addressing the meaning of soul.
Dr. K does not use that term, justice — nor neo’s term right(s), which is our own way of speaking — but opts for the milder, somewhat obscuring term “claims”.
But . . .
Who has what claims, one might say, in any instance of human pregnancy and hence of nascent human life? What is a “who”?: here where soul comes into the matter?
This too is a hard question, this justice thing.
Perhaps that mere difficulty is why Dr. K chose to press it to the background of his search, by means of “claims”? I can’t say (for want of seeing the rest of his essay?). Still, I don’t think the problem can be dodged. It will hit head-on, sooner or later.
This is one issue I have never had a problem with. As a believer in God (in the Bible) and having read from this Bible since youth, I have read that God has said I knew you since before you were born. I also have read other parts of the Bible and know what God is able to do. Now who in their right mind would want to mess with this God? Only a fool. Leave the fetus alone.
First if the Supreme Court had left well enough alone, we would probably have laws much like most of Europe with abortion allowed early in pregnancy and forbidden late in pregnancy. Things were headed in that direction.
As humans we seem naturally repulsed by certain behaviors, cannibalism, abortion, incest. I suggest that is a more fertile field to explore and science fiction is the place to do it. See Ted Sturgeon’s story, “If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?”
Right now many view abortion through the view of competing rights, but have we really explored what happens when conception to birth is possible with no living female? Not as far-fetched as you might think. We can even replace the DNA from the “donor” cells with someone else’s. Can the research lab or human factory dispose of such homunculi at a whim? When would such a human become emancipated? Those are the cases to refine your moral precepts with.
See Ted Sturgeon’s story, “If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?”
Frank: You made my day! That was from Harlan Ellison’s landmark anthology, “Dangerous Visions,” which blew my tiny teen-age brain apart back then.
Sadly, Harlan left us a year ago. His work fell off by the nineties. I’m not sure why. He did win a big settlement about then against James Cameron for plagiarizing an Ellison “Outer Limits” script in “The Terminator.” Maybe Ellison got comfortable.
___________________
Hello Edit! It’s been so long. I’ve missed you.
The Jewish faith, and, in following, the Christian faith, is that the spirit is immortal and separate from the body. When the spirit enters its mortal shell, the whole becomes the soul. That said, science cannot discern origin and expression. Life begins its evolution (i.e. chaotic process) from conception. While this is well known, we lack skill to establish it through observation, so we estimate it. The presumptive origin of consciousness is correlated with the development of the nervous system, which is known to begin around the fifth week. The doctrine of viability is akin to the “big bang” concept or spontaneous conception, where both are backfilled with dark and born matter, respectively. That said, elective abortion a.k.a. planned parenthood a.k.a. reproductive rites is a wicked solution, to an albeit hard problem: pursuit of wealth, pleasure, leisure, narcissistic indulgence, and social progress. Pro-Choice is a quasi-religion (“ethics”) that denies life deemed unworthy of life and women’s faculty and moral character, men’s, too.
I understand why pro-life people are so uncompromising about abortion — murder is wrong and murder of a fetus/infant would be doubly so.
But I still don’t get why pro-choice people are equally uncompromising, particularly their insistence way past the first trimester.
If one allows compromise, Roe v. Wade isn’t a bad compromise. Safe, rare and legal is still worthy of lip service even by pro-choicers, though the pro-choice position today is clearly anytime, anywhere.
huxley on August 24, 2019 at 8:47 pm said:
…
But I still don’t get why pro-choice people are equally uncompromising,
* * *
Because the agenda is never about the agenda?
Power to decide when to kill infants has morphed into power to decide when to kill elderly will morph into power to decide when to kill you.
And then there is the actual, Margaret Sanger promoted, agenda to boot.
huxley on August 24, 2019 at 7:56 pm said:
See Ted Sturgeon’s story, “If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?”
Frank: You made my day! That was from Harlan Ellison’s landmark anthology, “Dangerous Visions,” which blew my tiny teen-age brain apart back then.
* * *
I read my SF Book Club copy of DV in college, and — paradoxically — stopped reading science fiction at that point, despite my fandom since grade school (Heinlein, Asimov, etc.).
Some of the stories were engaging, but so much in DV was a recycled (re)discovery of forbidden sex and heresy, which were already old news to me from historical reading.
It was published in 1967, BTW, and I read it circa 1970-1971.
To John Guilfoyle in re “worth” — you have to start early teaching that concept.
One major problem with the abortion supporters is that they are adamant about decoupling choice and accountability.
AesopFan: I can imagine that with some deep-think leftists, but I’m mostly remembering ordinary liberal women who were focused on their lives and sexuality with no thought towards euthanizing grandpa if he becomes a problem.
One possibility occurs to me is that with women sex is not just intimacy and pleasure, it’s a big part of their mission in life, as careers are with men, to find the best male partner they can and make a marriage and maybe a family. To hamstring that quest with restrictions on sex or an accidental child could well be intolerable for such women.
Maybe that’s too cynical or sexist but it does occur to me.
a growing revulsion towards abortion
Politically it’s a game changer – culture was moving towards support for abortion, now culture seems to be increasingly moving against abortion.
Politics is downstream of culture.
In Slovakia, there is an issue about the Christian Democrats, long time pro-life mostly Catholic folk, discussing any alliance with the Progressives. They are a new, secular, PC / LGBT/ anti-pollution anti-climate change very popular party. Plus old corrupt socialists who are now in power (in a multi-party parliament). There might be a “deal” where the pro-life folk accept gay marriage in return for accepting a more restrictive abortion law that changes from a current 12 week down to only 6 weeks.
I’m against gay marriage far less than I’m against abortion, yet gay marriage is a big anti-Christian step. So I’d oppose any such tradeoff.
Plus, the long-suffering pro-lifers, now getting closer to a cultural win, risk losing somewhere else in order to get a less important partial win, sooner. Poland has very restrictive laws, no disaster for women. Ireland just voted in favor of abortion, ending it’s policies against abortion (which also showed no disaster for women). Current culture is choppy now.
I suspect that the PC push to extend abortion now, is so as to have more “chips” to negotiate some away as the public pushes for more heartbeat laws and more against the current status.
Huxley – weren’t most liberal women thinking that male-female equality meant that women should be as free as men with promiscuity? Which also meant that, since no man “suffers” with unwanted pregnancy as punishment for having sex, no woman should be forced to suffer for sex.
Let’s talk about sex, baby. Let’s talk about you and me…
We should be making love.
How many people make love?
More women are realizing that promiscuous sex is not “equal” in the breaking hearts feelings, and that on feelings after sex, men and women are not equal. Most men can enjoy sex without emotional attachment; most (or nearly?) women don’t enjoy sex without attachment.
Love is Lust (feeling) AND Commitment (decision).
The abortion debate is influenced by the equality of promiscuity debate that is still mostly not talked about.
sdfe5rr,
Tangled questions of justice.. we must say? This is the problem i have with those who consider themselves ‘intellectuals’. Life is at the base level is what we, not muderous totalitarins, recognize applies to the unborn. Otherwise one is on the slippery slope where murder is justified if you do not like or approve of the victim.
Murder is murder. This is not a twisted pretzel logic. It is uncommon sense.
The debate assumes that a religious truth exists and can be found and all will agree, or if all don’t so many will that the force of government can be used to force compliance.
Agreement on religious beliefs has never happened and never will. IMHO the most important concept underlying our system of government is the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. After years of Puritans hanging Quakers, and centuries of religious European wars, the founders agreed to just keep government out of it. It has worked amazingly well.
The practical argument is the only one that should guide pubic policy. It is obvious that if abortion is outlawed it will cause an explosion of criminal providers. Any nurse or EMT could do them. Attempts to stop them will make the drug war look mild. Tell me how women who miscarry will be able to prove it was an unintended event. Ambitious prosecutors will destroy millions of women attempting to force them to reveal their (non-existent) abortionists.
This issue has the same elements as the move to alcohol prohibition and will have the same outcome. Enormous criminal industries will come into being. Everybody associated with it will become corrupted. Millions of women will have their lives ruined. A huge number of high paying government jobs will be created making it almost impossible to ever end it.
If there was ever a more appropriate issue to subject to Paul’s admonition in First Thessalonians I can’t think of one: “See that none render evil for evil”.
OTOH, if is not subjected to government control it will come to be seen as immoral by a large majority. It will naturally become much less prevalent. More here: http://dickillyes.com/blog/february-12th-2018
A physician from Columbia that I once knew was married to an ethicist and she told me that his theory was that the time a soul enters the body would have to be after it was no longer possible for a zygote to split into twins. This is approximately eight weeks. Admittedly his opinion may have been affected by his Orthodox Judaism however, that was to me the best opinion I have ever heard for when his soul enters the body
That is Columbia Presbyterian Hospital
Many years ago I knew a resident in obstetrics who is personally opposed to abortion and would not perform the procedure however, his attitude was very nuanced. He believed that everybody is entitled to one mistake and that he would not oppose a woman having an abortion once but not a second time.
Neo,
I just read your previous post on abortion you’re good you’re really good.
Yeshar koach
Dick Illyes:
?????
Very well said.
These religious arguments turned to statutes are petty close to uninforcable. In a given year in the US, there are about 4 million conceptions. About 500,000 of these conceptions terminate in miscarriages. 26,000 in still births. Now then there are about 5 homocides per 100,000 population or about 3800 per year. So, are we going to increase the workload of our homicide detectives by 130 times to try and figure out which was a miscarriage and which was an abortion?
To those who can’t understand the difference between a miscarriage and an abortion, or to conflate a miscarriage with a homicide I have nothing but pity.
Women don’t “celebrate” or “shout” their miscarriage. Or haven’t you noticed their grief and sorrow (those who have miscarried)?
Avi:
Thank you.
The question of abortion is a lot less mysterious than Krauthammer thought. To be sure the moment when two gametes unite to become a human zygote (already a human being) is a mysterious, indeed miraculous, event. There is even a brief flash of light at the moment of conception. The event is so astounding and utterly unlike anything else that happens in the life of the human being that there can be no alternative: the point at which we become human is at conception. We all remain that human being until death. This is now fully established as scientific fact. It is not “an insoluble empirical question”. Those who would turn the question on when a human being becomes a person have already divided the human race into two groups; one that may be killed and the other that may not. There is no way, ever, to limit the former to the unborn. Every time a bioethicist comes up with a list of properties one must have to be a person, it is a unique and arbitrary list. More importantly no such list is ever containable. It will will always expand. Just ask pro-abortion Professor Peter Singer who has been advocating for infanticide for decades.
Or take a read here.
Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva: “After-Birth Abortion: Why should the baby live?” Journal of Medical Ethics 23 February 2012.
Remember. “Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.”
Opinions like Neo’s and Avi’s are why I think, given the freedom to make law state by state, we’d end up with early abortion on demand and after the first weeks only for imminent danger to the mother’s life. Politics is compromise. Abortion opponents would still be free to counsel against the procedure at all. The current leftist-supported policy, allowing abortion up until the moment of delivery, is an abomination in the eyes of a large majority of the population.
I think souls are a distraction. The laws of virtually every society ever acknowledge that is is perfectly ok, perhaps even required at times, to kill people, and most societies acknowledge that those people have souls.
Murderers capitally punished: have they souls? I’ve never heard anyone in America (who believes in souls) argue that they don’t.
People killed in self-defense, or in defense of others: have they souls? I’ve never heard anyone in America (who believes in souls) argue that they don’t.
The questions is, and always is, is it sometimes ok to kill people; if so which and when? In the time of the Roman Empire unwanted babies were left out for anyone to pick up if inclined, or let to die if not. The practice of exposing infants persisted well after the Empire; hardly any civilized people has not had a way to get rid of unwanted babies that other at least turned a blind eye to, if it wasn’t 100% legal.
It sucks to be weak and defenseless, or even just inconvenient. Are you innocent, too? No matter. What is a soul? What is truth?
Bring out the ghouls.