I am by nature a libertarian. It’s as much a matter of personality as philosophy. I’ve never lost a minute’s sleep over a stranger’s private morality. I think people should be able to smoke cigarettes wherever the property owner allows — the “dangers of second hand smoke” are largely a meddler’s lie. I think drugs should be legal with the same basic restrictions as alcohol. If you were a pal, I’d tell you to stay off that poison, but in the end, adults have to choose for themselves.
As for people’s sex lives, I take my approach from Ebenezer Scrooge: “It’s enough for a man to understand his own business and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly.” I listen with seriousness to the arguments of my fellow conservatives and Christians when they tell me gay marriage will be the end of the world, but I’m personally expecting something more along the lines of a flaming meteor or maybe those octopus guys from Independence Day. As I say, it’s my personality: I just don’t care.
That’s why, for me, the issue of abortion has become a problem. I have always believed that Roe v Wade was an act of judicial tyranny — a dishonest interpretation of the Constitution that pretends to recognize a right while in fact stripping us of a far more important right: the right to make our own laws in our own localities. I seriously believe Roe is the origin of the deep political divisions that currently bedevil us. Take away our right to debate and decide and we are left with no emotional recourse but hatred for the opposition.
For all that, I was for many years in sympathy with Roe’s argument: people have a right to privacy and abortion is a private decision. I now find it impossible to continue in that belief. This is painful for me not only because it seems to violate my natural libertarianism but also because a lot of the women I know and love have had abortions and it simply isn’t in my heart to condemn them — or indeed anyone — for what I know was a painful, sometimes devastating, decision.
Dear Mr. Klavan – First the obligatory (and heartfelt) valentine. “Love your stuff and keep up the good work.” Second – Thanks for brilliantly summarizing in a few short paragraphs the “heart of darkness” that lurks at the center of the abortion debate. This has always been the issue isn’t it? Is a fetus a human being or not? Anytime we even approach this question the response is a flurry of shrieks and insults about “rights to privacy”, “patriarchy” and “coat-hangar abortions.” It’s the 900-pound gorilla is the family room that can’t even be looked at much less talked about.
My private view is that the fury with which the pro-choicers defend abortion has less to do with convincing the opposition than it does with convincing themselves. The venom with which they attack pro-lifers has always struck me as a form of denial. It’s as if they have asked themselves “What if these Bible-thumping, cross-carrying, badly-dressed, middle-class lowbrows are actually RIGHT?” If that’s the case then a huge chunk of the progressive worldview goes down in flames.
Does life start at conception? I don’t know. All I know is that science can’t replicate this process and that the fertilized egg, if left to it’s own devices, will eventually become a human being. Why is something not “human” at three months but sort of human at three months-and-one-day? Why indeed shouldn’t a couple abort female fetuses until they get a boy? Indeed is there such a thing as a “female fetus” under present interpretation?
Liberal politicians nearly all adhere to the mantra that “Abortion should be safe, legal and rare.” As others have asked “Why should it be rare if what is at stake isn’t a human being?” Everyone knows that there is an abyss deep in the center of the pro-abortion argument and it must not, an any costs, be stared at.
“Anytime we even approach this question the response is a flurry of shrieks and insults about “rights to privacy”, “patriarchy” and “coat-hangar abortions.””
You should add to this “god said X”.
“My private view is that the fury with which the pro-choicers defend abortion has less to do with convincing the opposition than it does with convincing themselves.”
While its easy to play pscyhologist its best to just address facts as they are.
“If that’s the case then a huge chunk of the progressive worldview goes down in flames.”
And if wishes were horses beggars would ride.
“All I know is that science can’t replicate this process”
What does this have to do with anything? If someday science is able to, does this mean the defenition of personhood now changes?
“the fertilized egg, if left to it’s own devices, will eventually become a human being”
Left to its own devices it dies. It needs a womb or specialised equipment to survive until quite late in the pregnancy. But again how does that qualify/disqualify someone to be a person?
“Why is something not “human” at three months but sort of human at three months-and-one-day?”
And where does one draw the line? Are the eggs and sperm not potential people too? Why do things change when they come together?
“Why indeed shouldn’t a couple abort female fetuses until they get a boy?”
Do you think there is something wrong with having a girl? But no-matter, say the matter is some genetic disability or like that appears in the fetus – should a couple have the opportunity to abort if its early enough – I would say yes.
“Why should it be rare if what is at stake isn’t a human being?”
Becouse unless its something unpredictable like genetic disorders getting to this stage is already a failure. Safe sex et al.
“Everyone knows…”
Everyone knows that nobody knows anything.
Obfuscatory bilge, cassius.
“Left to its own devices it dies”
A lib left to “its” own devices wouldn’t last more than a couple days either…but, of course, there ISN’T any brain to suck out.
As to the question of whether or not an embryo, fetus, what ever you want to call it, is human. Well, of course it is human, or rather a potential human. It isn’t a cat or a bird.
I don’t care if it is human. One human does not have the right to hijack another humans body and use it as an incubator against their will. Personal autonomy is the bedrock of our nation and it comes first, as unpleasant as that may be for some.
You cannot invite someone into your house and then have that person arrested for breaking and entering. The fact is that consent to an action is consent to its consequences, and one of the consequences of sex is that pregnancy may occur, and no “precautionary” action absolves you of the fact that your actions have consequences. If you get into a car, you may have an accident, and you may be injured or killed, even if you obey all the traffic laws and wear your seat belt- those things reduce, but do not eliminate, the risk of bodily harm, and you cannot sue the manufacturer simply because the safety features did not fully protect you.
Do you understand what I am saying? I’m saying the fetus has every right to the use of its mother’s uterus, because that’s where it belongs, and consent to occupy it was given when she consented to sex. Now, if she did not consent, let’s kill the rapist, and let his blood serve as a propitiation against defiling the woman’s body, so that her child may live.
Couldn’t have said it better myself!
“You cannot invite someone into your house and then have them arrested for breaking and entering.”
While this statement is true, you can have that person arrested for trespassing if they don’t leave when asked.
“you cannot sue the manufacturer simply because the safety features did not fully protect you.”
This statement is just false, people do it all the time.
My reason for highlighting these statements is to show you that there should be a backup plan for everything.
You invite someone in your house but then realize they shouldn’t be there, you still protected.
You buy a fancy new car and the seat belt nearly cuts you it two, your protected.
You have sex and your protection fails, there is still abortion and you are still protected!
I also love that we all read this article yet none of us (myself included) are doing what it says. We should all mind our own business.
If you invite someone into your home, and he falls unconscious–or even, remains conscious, but is trapped under a beam–you cannot have him arrested for trespass, even if you ask him to leave. If you shot him for not leaving, you would be guilty of murder.
In a similar way, it is meaningless to ask a fetus to “leave” and then to force that fetus from the only way it could live. (Arguably, you could have the fetus born early, and put in an incubator, but you will still be putting the fetus’s life in unnecessary danger.)
But then where do you jump to conclude when history has revealed that the case was based on a fraudulent lie claiming rape solely for the purpose of justifying aborting a consensually conceived fetus illegally in Texas ? Millions of potential American citizens have been murdered and replaced with immigrants while their cell cultures are used to grow contaminated vaccines providing great wealth for medical and pharmaceutical carnivores.
“One human does not have the right to hijack another humans body and use it as an incubator against their will.” This is a rather callous way of describing the relationship between a mother and her unborn child. After all, the mother was involved in creating the child — hence it is unfair to describe the fetus as a “hijacker” And as you are keen to talk about “rights” — so it is o.k. with you then that the bigger human gets to kill the smaller one?
Let’s be honest — this is not about women’s “bodies” so much as it is about women being the ones stuck raising the children after they are born. Nearly all the reasons women give for aborting fetus have to do with wanting to avoid some circumstance following the birth of the child. Carrying the unborn “hijacker” is a minor inconvenience by comparison.
“One human does not have the right to hijack another humans body and use it as an incubator against their will.”
What cosmos did you beam in from? This isn’t “hijacking another humans[sic] body”; this is absolutely intrinsic to the kind of creatures we are. This is how we are made.
“Personal autonomy is the bedrock of our nation and it comes first, as unpleasant as that may be for some.”
No, “all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is the bedrock of our nation. Personal autonomy is second (or fourth) to that. Your view is un-American.
“One human does not have the right to hijack another humans body and use it as an incubator against their will.”
I can’t believe that anyone who has even the smallest drop of human feeling could write such a sentence. That is one of the most coldly horrible statements that I have ever read. Why not take go all the way? Why not say that the mother has the right to euthanize an infant child (outside of the womb) if she finds that the care and feeding of said child is “too much trouble?” Why shouldn’t a parent have the right to put one between the eyes of their sick five-year old if they find that the kid’s condition is interfering with their upcoming vacation plans?
There have been some cogent responses on both sides concerning Mr. Klavan’s article but you sir are a monster.
“Left to its own devices it dies. It needs a womb or specialised equipment to survive until quite late in the pregnancy. But again how does that qualify/disqualify someone to be a person?”
No, left to it’s own devices, as in letting things go naturally, it develops and is born.
How does that qualify to be a person because it could “survive” outside the womb? Seriously? How about that it’s the product of two humans breeding? How about the presence of 46 chromosomes and brain waves? What qualifies you to be a person?
“And where does one draw the line?”
At the very least around 6 months when brain waves appear. We could argue 2 months when the beginnings of the nervous system is in place. But this leads to a terrible can of worms, does it mean someone with brain damage is no longer human?
So why not say someone is human when they have a complete set of human DNA? Pretty clear line. Not at all easy to accept for a lot of people, but a very clear line
“Are the eggs and sperm not potential people too? Why do things change when they come together?”
No. Seriously? Do you not know the difference between 1 sperm cell, 1 ovum, and an embryo? Here’s a hint, 23 is less than 46. This is like asking what’s the difference between planting a seed in dirt and watering it versus planting it in soda. You could have a gallon of sperm cells and nothing will ever happen.
“should a couple have the opportunity to abort if its early enough – I would say yes.”
Why “early enough”? What line is line is there that needs to be crossed? Do you really want to argue that being viable outside the womb equals humanity? Doesn’t that mean invalids aren’t human either?
“No, left to it’s own devices, as in letting things go naturally, it develops and is born.”
Well that is the problem – its not its own devices because at this point it needs the womb. For something to be an individual it needs to have some kind of autonomy. This autonomy develops slowly over time, along with its nervous system, ability to feel, think – all things that we all know and love. The problem is that there isn’t a neat line where we can say X is now a full human being.
“How does that qualify to be a person because it could “survive” outside the womb? Seriously?”
Why are you asking me that? That is the question I raised with the person I was responding to.
“At the very least around 6 months when brain waves appear. We could argue 2 months when the beginnings of the nervous system is in place. But this leads to a terrible can of worms, does it mean someone with brain damage is no longer human?”
And that is the rub – what does it mean to be a human? The fetishisation of DNA as the hallmark of humanity is misplaced, there is something about the whole coming together of a variety of aspects such as the ability to feel and think that define us apart from other things. I would say that a person with severe brain damage (aka the “vegetable”) who has lost the ability to think and feel is no longer human – rather they have already died. That the shell has gone on living is besides the point.
“No. Seriously? Do you not know the difference between 1 sperm cell, 1 ovum, and an embryo? Here’s a hint, 23 is less than 46.”
I’m not questioning your mastery of mathematics – rather I’m questioning the significance of the two coming together.
“You could have a gallon of sperm cells and nothing will ever happen.”
You can have a gallon of embryos and nothing will ever happen too. Like sperm and egg cells they are just another landmark on the road to humanity.
Left to his own devices, my 14-month-old son will have a very short life indeed. Left to his own devices, my dad, after he suffered from his stroke, would have had a short life as well. Heck, if we were to strip you naked and stuck you out in the middle of nature, hundreds of miles from civilization, you will have a bit of a challenge surviving! Thus, “Left to its own devices” is a very poor metric for determining the value of a given human life.
AP, thanks for your thoughts. Brainwaves actually begin after about 7 weeks, not 6 months.
Coincidentally, the Buddhists have said for almost 2000 years that the soul enters the baby’s body on the 49th day after conception. Buddhists judge an abortion before the 49th day a small sin – along the lines of killing an animal. But abortion after the 49th day is considered as big a sin as homicide.
No, I don’t want my religion codified in the law, and I don’t want women jailed for doing something they’ve been indoctinated to think of as their right.
But why not define life by brainwaves – don’t we already with “vegetables” in plug-pulling cases? If we don’t, we should.
“Nonetheless, I’ve come to see that every single argument in favor of unlimited abortion simply skips over the decisive question: is an unborn child a human being or not?”
If you need someone to answer this question for you, you are truly and totally lost. OF COURSE IT’S A BLOODY HUMAN BEING! Male and female dogs make…dogs. Male and female cats make…cats. Male and female elephants make… elephants. Male and female humans make…P E O P L E.
By the way, that’s male and FEMALE humans. Male and male humans make…a disgusting mess. You foo-foo types might like that analogy, but that’s the way it is. It’s true. You can’t change it no matter how much you try or how much you lie. Truth wins out. God IS truth.
You exemplify your final contention and ignore the fact that we are talking about life; human life and any biologist will tell you that life begins at conception.
“Everyone knows that no one knows anything”. How stupid! If you don’t know anything, your blog has no meaning and you can’t find your way to the latrine without help. If you enjoy killing babies, go for it! See what your ultimate payoff is. But don’t push your male cow manure “philosophy” where intelligent folks can catch the stink!
Great Article!
Wow. Andrew, an excellent distillation of the moral issue inherent with abortion. I too lean toward libertarian ideas. But I am a conservative because there are an essential set of moral principles upon which there is no center ground, there is no compromise. The value of life is a foundational moral principle.
Bravo!
Mr. Klavan,
Of course, great blog, great point, nothing to disagree with. I just thought I would take the opportunity to opine out that gay marriage has little to do with anyone’s sex life and much to do with the extension of government benefits to another class of not particularly appropriate or needy recipients. Not the end of the world, just more wealth redistribution to an interest group.
@chambers says ” This has always been the issue isn’t it? Is a fetus a human being or not?”
Hmmm, chambers, let’s think this through. “Is it a human being?” Well it kind of has to be human, no? Not many fetuses, if not aborted, grow up become, say, shrimp or goats or giant squid, do they? So presumably we can settle this one pretty easily: it’s human. Is it a “being”? Uh, I think so, or there would be no need for the abortion, would there? So isn’t it pretty obvious that it is a human being? What are you asking such a question for, Chambers?
Surely the more relevant question is: is it a person? When you put it that way, it isn’t so obvious, is it?
And how would you decide that? If you’re someone who believes in whatever ancient superstitions your clan happened to end up passing along in your lineage (aka religion), I guess the question may be resolved for you by the scribblings of primitive desert folk millenia ago. Of course, these authorities who had no idea about the nature of the solar system or living things, where living things come from, or anything else much. But if you don’t have ancient scripts telling you what to do, doesn’t the question come down to a bunch of empirical issues like: Does the fetus have a sense of itself? Does it have goals? Does it have memories? Does it have fears?
My hunch is that these are all researchable questions, and the answer is: it has a lot less of all of these things than the apes used in virology research. And probably less than the dogs used in cardiology research.
Well Jimbo sound to me like you hold to Utilitarianism; what a sad way to go through life. Do you know who else held to this view: Nazis and Stalin. Boy, you have great company.
On the contrary; the pro-life crowd holds to the value of life; both born and unborn. The value is not based on life experiences, but is intrinsic to the being (as the human being is made in the image of God). Those that do not hold this position are open to viewing life as easily dispensible (if refer you back to Hitler and Stalin).
Good day.
Does the fetus have a sense of itself? Yes
Does it have goals? Unknown
Does it have memories? Yes
Does it have fears? Yes
Now ask yourself the same exact questions about a one day old, a one week old and a one month old and the answers will be the same.
When does a fetus develop these things you wish to build your premise of when a person begins on? It is not as simple as when the child is born. I am sure it is fairly variable between each.
If we want a logical guideline to determine if the fetus is a person why not use the presence of brain waves?
For those who say a fetus does not represent human life the question becomes, if it is not human life what is it? The argument that a fetus would not survive without connection to a mother, while true , is also true for an infant that needs human care to survive. Also one must ask is only human life worth respecting? Is not all life worth respecting?
For myself I find the theological guidelines ( rape, incest and to save the life of the mother ) both intellectually and spiritually appropriate. Only in cases of criminal behavior do I think public funds should be used for the procedure.
Before one accepts the ” Sainthood ” of an Aquinas and his aptitude for moral judgement one would do well to remember the man also believed that, ” …as the laws say, the Jews by reason of their fault are sentenced to perpetual servitude and thus the lords of the lands in which they dwell may take things from them as though they were their own…”.
One may study Aquinas for historical reference however moral judgement has far better role models.
Son of Jacob, why do you suppose the Jews were exiled? What does the Torah say about the reason exile will come about, and why it will end? Hint: it’s in the last few chapters of Deuteronomy.
The exile has ended. We are home.
You should tell that to your brethren who remain in exile- it won’t be safe for them to remain in exile much longer. Already Antisemitism is reaching levels not seen since the runup to WWII.
But I digress, the point is that the Diaspora is giving way to a second Exodus not because Israel repented (she hasn’t), but because God is merciful and His reputation is riding on bringing about the Great Regathering. The Lord would have destroyed Israel for her insolence, but for the fact that if He did, He would have been going back on His Promise to your ancestors, and provoked ignorant gentiles into committing blaspheme. Israel has profaned the Name of the Lord throughout the nations (Ezekiel 37:23), and it is by the grace of God, for His Name’s sake, that He has delivered your people from exile.
Therefore, repent of your transgression, that you may live, lest you perish in the time of trouble soon coming upon the whole earth. Do not do as your ancestors did, who returned from Babylon but never returned their hearts to God. Why should you perish? Have you not seen the mighty works of the Lord, who brought the children of Israel out of the North country and all the nations to which they had been scattered? Why then, do you refuse to listen to Him- to the words He spoke through the prophets?
Mr. Klavan – I agree that we as a society should have a rational discussion on the matter. Unfortunately, when we have people on one side arguing that an embryo that has yet to undergo somitogenesis is a human being and other people arguing just as vehemently that a nine month fetus is a parasite, intelligent discourse is impossible. Furthermore, people willing to be honest enough to admit that even if we come to a consensus, the cost of doing business will be high are rare.
I finally looked up “fetus” and “embryo” in the dictionary. They are medical or scientific terms used to refer to mammals in utero: embryo is less than 2 months gestation and fetus is more than 2 months. Neither term has anything to do with whether or not a fetus or embryo is a living human.
Here’s what does: Embryos and fetuses and babies take in nutrition, excrete waste, respire, and most obviously, they can die, therefore they are alive. The only DNA in a human fetus or embryo is human DNA and therefore the baby is human. Ergo, babies are living humans from conception. And you’re right: until the pro-abortion types are willing and ready to have this conversation, there’s not much point in trying to resolve the issue. I myself would have a hard time telling a woman that she has to give up her life so that her child might live. Other than that, I believe that abortion is punishing an innocent for something he didn’t do.
Finally, and most intuitively, any woman who wants her child calls it a “baby.” It’s only persons who are not emotionally involved who actually use terms like “fetus” or “embryo.” Women know the truth, even, I suspect, the ones who don’t want to admit it.
Tonestaple, it isn’t just the people who are “invested” in the nascent human being, it is anyone around them; even friends, co-workers, customers, and acquaintances will ask about “the baby”. It is only once it has been deemed a non-human piece of tissue (generally by the mother, but that is a separate issue) that it is referred to as a “fetus”.
In that sense, “fetus” is hate speech.
EXACTLY. This is where a lot of libertarians go off the rails, unfortunately. What’s the point of a “limited government” if it can’t even step in to stop mass killing of human life? If not THAT, what’s the point at all?
And, in my experience, most liberal women have NOT given the issue critical thought. Seriously, just haven’t sat down and considered it using logic. The vast amount of women who have abortions are young, and the vast amount of young women just don’t do much logical thinking. That’s just reality.
Every liberal pro-abortion woman I’ve ever talked to is (rightly) appalled at news stories of newborns being killed and put in the trash, etc. My question is then: So five minutes after being born, it’s a person? What about five seconds before being born? What if only the head has emerged? Ten days before being born? If you can’t ABSOLUTELY and SCIENTIFICALLY define when a child is not child — which you can’t — then assume it is a human 100% of the time.
Limited government does not permit the use of taxpayer’s money to finance someone’s abortion by limiting itself to the Constitution’s rules.
Big government takes your money to finance someone’s abortion.
When does Life begin is the wrong question. The important issue is at what point can we confidently assert that Life has not yet begun. Which is to say, the line can be drawn only at conception.
Before that point a distinct and separate Life certainly does NOT exist. Once sperm and egg combine a process is initiated that, unless interrupted, will produce a living human life.
Gutsy and clear. Thanks.
I’m on the same page with all of this and as usual you are such a clear thinker and your talent is an inspiration. I’ve always thought abortion should remain legal because those who believe in it so strongly will eventually unbreed themselves into extinction and nobody will be left to want to do it.
It’s a sad thing for a woman to do and I think any woman who resorts to abortion is deeply hurt by it and regrets it forever. Rather than make it illegal, perhaps we should just be honest about what it is; killing a baby, and I dont think it will be very popular.
Your point about the Roe decision being the origin of the deep political divisions is original and makes a lot of sense to me. I guess you could say the same thing about the abolition of slavery in the U.S. Pissed everyone off, divided our country. The decisions are reversed though. In one case, the right to life was given and in the other it was taken.
“…I think any woman who resorts to abortion is deeply hurt by it and regrets it forever.”
If that were the case, nobody would have abortions #2, #3 & #4. For many, especially young GIRLS, abortion is birth control that’s slightly more annoying than taking the pill…& just as “free.”
If the government is payin’ for it, it ain’t free.
I will not do this with complete precision; it has been many years since I studied medieval philosophy and theology. But, here goes.
I admire Thomas Aquinas, but he lacked our knowledge of biology and genetics. He based his discussion on Aristotelian biology with its distinction between matter and form; sperm “informed” the matter provided by the woman. (I recall medieveal manuscripts that picture a miniature person being injected into the womb.) Thomas’s notion of “quickening” assumed this physical process; quickening might correlate to empirical evidence like the kicking of the baby in the womb. He had no access to sonograms or other testing we take for granted
It is, to say the least, unlikely that Aquinas would have developed his arguments in the same way if he had had the benefit of an understanding of genetics.
Welcome, Andrew to the realization that Libertarianism may make a nifty ideology (as its cousin, Anarchism, AKA Left Libertarianism), but misses the mark in much of reality. Another factor to consider: please don’t forget that archaic document, in which was stated,
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Hopefully Libertarian dogma doesn’t dismiss such – ahem – criteria.
1.) I think a simple “watch an abortion being performed” should be added into the equation. How many people would be like that woman who made news by quitting Planned Parenthood after seeing an obvious life being ended right in front of her on a sonogram screen?
A national policy this important should not be the product of “out of sight, out of mind.”
2.) My other argument: The Time Machine argument. How many people have you met who had difficult lives (not enough money, rough home life, medical problems) that, if you had a time machine you would tell them, “Hey, I’ll go backward in time and abort you!”? I’ve never met anyone that would prompt me to offer that solution. And I think anyone would rather have their economic, domestic or medical problems fixed than have their life undone. People tend to answer the question with “How ’bout a serial keller? Wouldn’t you abort a serial killer?” And there you go: they’ve put “bad home life” on the same level of hideousness as “serial killer.”
And why? It’s all to protect the sanctity of promiscuous sex. That’s really what the fight is over. THAT’S the gorilla in the room. Everything else is a smoke screen.
3.) When it comes to females getting aborted: How can anyone praise “choice” then condemn someone’s choice? Choice is choice. If they think it’s evil or frivilous to abort a woman or a homosexual, then they’ve become the judgmental conservatives that they complain about.
I’ve never seen the “would you abort a serial killer?” argument presented…but if I ever come across it, the answer is simple: I will not abort a so-called serial killer until he is convicted of killing someone, because that is the ONLY way we’ll know that someone is a serial killer. At that point, however, we call the abortion “capital punishment” or “execution”.
I suppose it’s possible that we’ll find a gene that, if present, will guarantee that the person will be a serial killer, even if that person has never killed someone–but if that’s the case, then it would be just as appropriate to shoot the child at the age of 30, or at 15, or 10, or at 5, or even at the age of 1 month, as it would be to abort him–even if that person has never killed anyone. If it’s appropriate to abort such a person, why would it be inappropriate to kill him after he’s born?
Andrew, you’ve made an excellent summary of this issue.
The reason pro-abortionists insist on calling it pro-choice is because they all know, as does anyone who has given it a moments honest thought, that a fertilized egg is dividing and growing and thus a living organism. A human organism.
The issues of choice and when life begins are distractions; the real issue is personal responsibility and an individual’s willingness to accept the consequences for his/her actions or in the case of gender driven abortions extreme selfishness.
At this point in history I think virtually everyone knows that when two people of childbearing age have sexual relations they are taking the chance that a pregnancy will result. However, even when precautions are taken unplanned pregnancies happen.
An unplanned pregnancy can, no doubt, be an inconvenience or an embarrassment,but is it worth a human life to avoid inconvenience or embarrassment?
The so called pro-choice people say yes.
Andrew, you say there’s only one argument that matters: whether a fetus is a human being. Keep thinking. There are other arguments. There are other things we value more. We kill human beings all the time.
But only in the case of criminals, guilty of terrible acts against some or all of humanity, do we judge that to be acceptable. A baby, born or not-yet, is not guilty of anything such that people would judge that death to be appropriate.
Years ago my girl friend told me a story that may help you all decide whether an embryo is a human being. Having already had two children, she knew to a certainty she was pregnant again – about two months. She began experiencing terrible cramps and felt she had to go to the bathroom, which she did. She expelled a bloody mass from her vagina – the embryo. Question: should she have retrieved the mass from the toilet bowl, named it, and given it a proper burial? Or was it all right that she flushed the toliet and sent it into the sewer system? What would you do? What should be done with all the spontaneously aborted embryos and fetuses? What about a “morning after” pill?
If Roe V Wade did not exist it would make sense to discuss your questions.
And in return you could address question raising from things such as that comment made by the poster who described how her 12-week old son kicked in her womb.
I suspect that most Americans will say when in doubt err on the side of life.
Burying the dead is a corporal work of mercy, but we are under no obligation to retrieve corpses. It would have been a merciful thing to retrieve the body and give it a proper burial, but I cannot object to her flushing it down, especially if she couldn’t discern human flesh from among the blood.
A few months ago I attended the funeral of the son of my best friend. My friend’s son died two weeks before he was to be born, because of a knot in the umbilical cord. Yet, he was also of an “age” in which he was could be legally aborted.
For that matter, my wife an I lost a pregnancy to a miscarriage as well, and had to have the dead embryo removed. We didn’t have a funeral, but it was still painful to lose the child.
Is this all that different from the embryo that was lost in the toilet? The only difference I can see in the latter two is that the remains of the person who died are too small to really have a meaningful service held for them.
Mr. Klavan,
Good essay! I cannot agree more with your opinion. In our society, I find it particularly troublesome when a fetus is a person ONLY when the mother wants the baby. This is best illustrated when a pregnant mother is a victim of a traffic accident and the other driver is charged with a double homicide. Would the other driver have been charged with only one homicide if the mother was on the way to an abortion clinic? That is the conundrum. The left can’t have it both ways.
As I walk the streets of New York, I’m occaisonally accosted by the young people (mostly girls) collecting money for Planned Parenthood. I tell them that had I gotten pregnant at 15 or 16, I would have had an abortion without thinking about it even once – like blowing my nose. I simply knew nothing different. However a few years later, in my early twenties – when I was married and pregnant – I felt my baby kick me at 12 1/2 weeks gestation. Admittedly that is unusual – he’s a bit of a hyper boy – but feel it I did. I tell them that it is a miracle that I didn’t become pregnant in my mid-teens (when I was very responsible about contraception – I used it over half of the time – which is the definition of responsibility for a young teen). When I got married and got pregnant right away I realized what a fate I had been spared (not getting pregnant when I was a kid) by whoever runs the world. I was relieved and grateful. Had I become pregnant as a kid, I would have gotten an abortion and regretted it for the rest of my life. I tell them that the best way to learn is not from our own mistakes (which can be devastating), but from the experiences of others. I tell them to keep in mind the baby that kicked me at 12 1/2 weeks if they are ever faced with that decision. Because I speak to them respectfully they are – without exception – respectful and open to hearing me in return. I don’t know if my words will ever make a difference for someone, but all I can do is share from the heart and hope that it might some day – even for one person.
Jimbo: whaat? While I thought you were going in the good direction, I can tell you that the question does not come down to the empirical ones you listed. It comes down to us being disobedient, which aren’t we all most of the time? Disobeying God’s Law is what I mean. It’s real simple: “Thou shall not kill” doesn’t mean anything else, and it doesn’t mean we get to be tricky about the definition of a person vs a human life, or when we become human. It might be simple but as we can see from the history of this subject, it sure isn’t easy. I think we need to live like we will be held accountable on judgement day (now there’s a concept). Maybe we’re in agreement, maybe not, but food for thought.
General comment:
The irrefutable Bible tells us that we are made in God’s image. Some folks don’t like the Bible? Their issue isn’t with me, but with He who made them. In pregnancy, who decides whether we get boys or girls? Whose providence is it if children live or not? I’m talking about children who don’t have enough DNA to sustain life (and those who have some other issue), in or out of the womb, like SouixLady’s friend example. Who decides who lives and who doesn’t? The Great Physician decides, the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings is who, not us. We make many choices, some of which are not ours to make, that we must later find a way to live with (or not). It comes down to our own disobedience (and our denial of such). I’ll stick with “repent and believe” on this one.
Klavan, thanks for bringing this topic up for many who think they are conservative to rethink it. Just how conservative or libertarian are we? Changing topic, are we ready to vote for the less popular candidate even if he doesn’t “have a chance” of winning? He has more of a chance if I vote for him. All the campaigning in the world won’t change my vote. I’ll vote for life no even if I’m the only one. May Grace and Peace be with you.
Mr. Klaven,
A big fan here. I too lean toward libertarianism and have never been interested in imposing my beliefs on others. And I too have struggled with the abortion issue.
My conclusion is that killing a baby in the first two months (lets not quibble about the exact time) is no worse than killing cows to eat. Some people, especially athiests, do not believe that humans are sacred. Others do. They should each have the right to decide for themselves and act accordingly.
After about two months, the issue becomes much more gray, since the baby is changing from a bunch of cells into an actual human being. Religion says it is a human being from conception. Science says otherwise. Reasonable people can agree to disagree on this point.
I hope that if people do not with to impose their religion on others, could agree that the legality of early abortions should be decided by each state or county. Since it is such a controversial and personal issue, I think the only hope is to reach such a compromise. But, I doubt it will ever happen.
“Religion says it is a human being from conception. Science says otherwise.”
Show me the science that says otherwise. The opposite is true; science shows that “it” is a human being from conception. The DNA of the fertilized egg is precisely the same DNA that that person has a birth and death. The cells that derive from that DNA forms the being. If science “says otherwise”, then additional DNA would have to be incorporated sometime after the 2nd month based on your concept of when to call the being a human being.
“Show me the science that says otherwise”
I guess you can either believe the science in this area or you can make up your own explanations.
“Human development begins after the union of male and female gametes or germ cells during a process known as fertilization (conception).” (Essentials of Human Embryology. Toronto: B.C. Decker Inc, 1988, p.2)
“The development of a human being begins with fertilization…” (Langman, Jan. Medical Embryology. 3rd edition. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1975, p. 3)
“The time of fertilization represents the starting point in the life history, or ontogeny, of the individual.” (Carlson, Bruce M. Patten’s Foundations of Embryology. 6th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996, p. 3)
Apparently the concept that life begins at conception is a fact so basic to the study of embryology that it is presented almost on the first page of these textbooks
“Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed…. The combination of 23 chromosomes present in each pronucleus results in 46 chromosomes in the zygote. Thus the diploid number is restored and the embryonic genome is formed. The embryo now exists as a genetic unity.” (Human Embryology and Teratology, 1996, p
This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being.” (Essentials of Human Embryology. Toronto: B.C. Decker Inc, 1988, p.2)
Some people, especially athiests, do not believe that humans are sacred. Others do. They should each have the right to decide for themselves and act accordingly.
Thank you, Lisa, for the clarity as to what the fight is all about. If human beings are not sacred why should we think we have any rights?
Lisa, are you saying that you eat less-than-two-month-old fetuses? That’s kindof disgusting!
More seriously: There’s a major difference between harvesting a cow to eat, and killing a human for convenience. And, just as a cow fetus is still a cow from conception, so is a human fetus a human from conception. When we try to use “stages of development” to determine when it is permissible to terminate human life, it opens the door to ending the life of newborns and elderly as well.
It is something I would rather not do, thank you very much!
DNA answers it for me.
When a medical examiner or a scientist wants to determine the nature of a bit of tissue, what do they go to? They try to determine what kind of DNA it contains. And the kind of DNA tells them what kind of living creature this bit of tissue came from — dog DNA is different from cat DNA, which is different from monkey DNA, which is different from rabbit DNA, which is different from human DNA, which is different from . . . every other creature’s DNA.
There’s no such thing as “pre-human” DNA and ordinary human DNA. Or perhaps I should say it this way: there’s no such thing as “inconvenient human DNA” and ordinary human DNA. Human DNA is human DNA. It becomes human DNA at conception, and whenever/wherever encountered, it says that a human being is the subject of our investigation.
All human life, unless guilty of a terrible crime, deserves nurturing, protection, and love/attention/care. Being inconvenient to its parent’s lifestyle is not a terrible crime, thus certainly does not deserve the death penalty.
Any attempt to establish a point in development at which a human transforms from a lump of flesh into a person worth protecting instantly puts one on the slippery slope of determining who deserves to live and who deserves to die. After as many attempts as humanity has made, throughout history, to decide this question, you’d think that we, as a species would learn that there’s only one logically supportable answer: the criminally guilty may die, but all the rest deserve life and protection and care.
“Human DNA is human DNA. It becomes human DNA at conception, and whenever/wherever encountered, it says that a human being is the subject of our investigation.”
Sperm cells and egg cells have a complete DNA set. It dosen’t become human DNA at conception – that would be silly it obviously already was or it never will be. There is no magic involved.
Secondly this argument suggests dandruff and cancer are on equal footing with people as they too have human DNA.
No they don’t- they only have half a DNA sequence.
Sperm and eggs do not have a “full set of human DNA” – they have a half set of human DNA. Perhaps this is the problem; abortion proponents never got beyond 6th grade biology.
“Sperm and eggs do not have a “full set of human DNA” – they have a half set of human DNA. Perhaps this is the problem; abortion proponents never got beyond 6th grade biology.”
They do have a full set of human DNA because human cells normally have two sets. Every human DNA instruction is contained in a single set, and two are used for other reasons. Don’t know what grade they taught that in, but perhaps you have missed it.
They do not have a full set of DNA, which requires 46 chromosones. Which codes are active and which are passive are immaterial to the argument. The sex cells do not behave in the manner of other human cells because they are not, and they won’t be until they are paired.
A sperm cell or egg cell is the cell of the host with identical DNA, not unique to that cell which is not a free standing organism. Its life expectancy inside the body is limited and outside the body only a few hours or less. If left alone it will achieve its full life expectancy.
A fertilized egg has combined DNA of two parents and is unique and separate from either parent. His or her life expectancy if left alone is now approaching 90 years. Comparison to a sperm cell is preposterous. You can murder a unique human being with a life expectancy of 90 years. You cannot murder a sperm cell with a life expectancy of one year. I will end it there but if you are a scientist you should understand the difference between a cell in a multicell organism and an organism. The two aren’t comparable.
So close, but not quite there.
The real question is:
** What is it about human beings that causes them to have rights – the right to life being the fundamental right – and do unborn humans posess that characteristic? **
The answer to the first part of the question is “a rational volitional consciousness”, the answer to the second part is “definitely not before they develop a central nervous system”. After that point in fetal development the question gets harder to answer, but up to that point it is as simple as can be.
Then you, by natural extension of ideas, believe in Eugenics, using abortion and/or euthanasia to remove those who are “defective” or not “as cognizant” as you think they should be.
It is when we disregard the inherent value of each human life and start to rank them based on “quality of life” that you get things like killing “mental defectives” that was proposed in earlier eras.
I still believe it’s possible for a person of good will to make the argument that a fetus is not fully human for some small period of its development. Thomas Aquinas did
Up until a few hundred years ago, the general consensus was that babies more or less coalesced out of the amniotic fluid at around a month or so into gestation; after all, unless you’re looking very carefully, it’s really hard to find a millimeter long fetus in the mess resulting from a miscarriage or abortion. Thomas Aquinas and the early church fathers generally assumed that before the point that they could actually see the fetus that it wasn’t there, only a potential. We know better now.
“…but put our full efforts into supporting humane and broadly available methods of welcoming the unwanted.”
I was a social worker once upon a time. I worked with abused and neglected children(those “unwanted” children)in state supported foster care and adoption programs. The abuse and neglect in foster care and some adoptive homes, while a bit more humane than the abuse and neglect in the natural family home, was often as terrifying to the child, as destructive to the child, and as inhumane to the child, and as deadly to the child as an abortion. I never saw any pro-lifers stampeding in droves to the agency to adopt these unwanted (but born) children. How many unwanted children have you adopted recently? Ever? Would you consider it? Are you (and not just YOU Andrew Klavan) fit to be a parent to a child/preteen/teenager? Or would you prefer adopting a newborn? Most people do, but there aren’t many newborns to go around. Would you be willing to be a social worker in this field? Would you be a guardian ad liem? How much daily cruelty to living children are you ready to deal with? And stay sane….
Or do you just want to talk about/define/parse the problem? Do you have any personal experience in a situations like this?
The is the opposite continuum of the “when does life begin?” question. How will that saved life be lived in the beginning, middle and at the end? Check in with your local state or private adoption agencies. Talk to some social workers who aren’t afraid to tell the truth about the inadequacies of foster care or adoption. How many failed adoptions are there? How much physical/sexual/emotional abuse goes on in adoptive homes and foster homes? Some adoptive homes and foster home parents are heroes. Most are inadequate at best, destructive at most; literally as destructive as a very late abortion.
Consider also that state governments are fully invested in protecting unwanted children, yet do not have the resources to even begin to address the problem. Private agencies have private (usually religious-affiliated funding) but also get state grants and subsidies. They don’t do much better in keeping the born children safe.
Most parent(s) don’t kill off the unborn “until they get the one they want.” They kill off the unborn so that they don’t kill off the living one they didn’t want. Is that a better solution? Any recent stories in the news about a dead child ring any bells?
It’s funny that libertarians, conservatives, etc., (of which I am one) are honest about so many other things regarding freedom from government, but get tricked into this straw man argument every time. You still want to pontificate (read legislate) about issues in which you have NO STANDING!, no knowledge, no investment, and rely only on a personal sense of queasy-ness when confronted with real, living problems of real, living people who do have STANDING in this issue. If you know of one dissolute, reprehensible woman who deliberately aborted time after time after time to get “the one she wanted”, well, get law enforcement involved in that ONE person.
I read that up to 60% or 70% of minority pregnancies in the inner city of NYC end in abortion. In the fifties and sixties, the Blacks in the country were on the precipice of middle class upward mobility. Then liberalism supplanted the Black father and decades of progress were supplanted with what we have now — third generational government dependence, on governments that effectively are terminally broke as their debts approach $15 trillion, and interest payments are soon to exceed revenues. Something in your narrative does not make sense and what it is is that conservative principals, once promoted by the majority, will fix most of what you complain of, based on united effort of all those in the majority that see and promote the truth. So do not look a gift horse in the mouth. And killing the alleged beneficiaries of these eternal truths is not the answer.
So your argument is that because ‘unwanted’ children suffer, they’re better off dead? I reckon not. Plenty of adults had to suffer terribly in childhood yet rose above such evils. Taking your argument to its logical conclusion, anything that falls short of perfection isn’t worth doing, including human life. What’s the solution? Mass suicide? Sounds like an argument an enviro-fascist would make, not a conservative. The central tenets of all Romanticist thought revolve around making perfection the enemy of the good. All those who adopt or foster children aren’t monsters or failures. I personally know many who have done very well in both categories. Because there are abusers and other wicked people who are not easily detected in a system doesn’t mean the system is all abuse and wickedness. Every human endeavor includes at a minimum a small percentage of vileness. I think a kid ought to have a chance, even if he or she has to suffer terribly. Suffering is the key to growth.
A bit of Adam Smith for you: “He has the disposition which fits him for acquiring the most perfect self-command, but he has never had the opportunity to acquire it. Exercise and practice have been wanting; and without these no habit can ever be tolerably established. Hardships, dangers, injuries, misfortunes, are the only masters under whom we can learn the exercise of this virtue. But these are all masters to whom nobody willingly puts himself to school.”
I know someone who attempted the foster child route. Before she started, she heard quite a few horror stories of parents who were burned by the system. She said that she pretty much had every one of them happen to her.
I know a couple trying to go the adoption route. They are holding bake sales, in an attempt to raise enough money, to begin the process. A process that can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Do you want to know why adoption and foster care is so rare? It’s because it’s so difficult to do, and the system is ready to stomp on you if you make a single misstep.
Fix the system, and we’ll be willing to talk. As for myself, I *do* want to adopt, but I am not in a financial state to do so…and I won’t be for a *long time*, unless the system is *greatly simplified*.
5. Jimbo: “is it a person”.
That is the crux of the matter. If I shoot a deer in my back yard, I only get in trouble if it’s out of season. If I shoot a man, it’s murder. We condemn the killing of other humans (except in certain, specifically defined circumstances) not because it is somehow arbitrarily bad, but because the results of allowing the same are highly destructive to a society. Remember, those “ancient superstitions” are not arbitrary fantasies but rather contain the distilled wisdom of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years of experience (laying aside the question actual existence of God, of course).
The question is quite simply, then: do we allow abortion as one of those specific instances – primarily having to do with defense of self, family, or society – in which killing another human being is allowed? The pro-choice crowd says “yes”, that their right to be free of the obligations associated with a child trumps that child’s right to life.
The anti-abortion crowd says “no”, that young children have always been held up as off-limits to any sanctioned killing, except under the most extreme circumstances, and that to allow abortion is to, ultimately, sanction the killing of any inconvenient person, including born children, the disabled, and the elderly.
26. ST Maio
“…but put our full efforts into supporting humane and broadly available methods of welcoming the unwanted.”
… I never saw any pro-lifers stampeding in droves to the agency to adopt these unwanted (but born) children.
But they do regardless; just not sufficiently. This is a shame on our society, but do we sanction murder as an alternative?
to Paul of Alexandria
Do you have standing in this issue? Have you adopted, been a foster parent? Have had a child out of wedlock? You say they do adopt, but “just not sufficiently.” I agree it is a shame on our society. Do we sanction murder as an alternative? My question to you is whether you sanction murder before or after birth? Why are you asking this question? What is your standing? What personal interest do you have? How do you know they adopt but just not sufficiently?
How obscenely arrogant of you to imply that only “right-thinker” such as yourself have any “standing” on this issue.
Roe v. Wade has created a complete mess regarding the handling of abortion, and if it did not exist a whole of people and institutions with quite a bit of “standing” on this issue — i.e. adoptive parents and those involved in adoption services — would weigh in on the side that you presumably in your holier-than-thou, self-righteous cocoon would be against.
Here is a question: do white families willing to adopt black children face discrimination from bigoted, holier-than-thou social workers?
By definition, an organism is a human being at any stage after the union of a human sperm and a human ovum.
But what does that solve?
The question is whether all human beings–at whatever stage of life, or in whatever condition–merit an overriding right to life.
(Note: let’s assume that these human being are in otherwise good moral standing, or that the issue does not arise.)
Now I think everyone, liberal and conservative, who is not a psychopath or fanatic, agrees that adult human beings–who are fully-fledged persons–do merit an overriding right to life.
Where differences arise is in the case of humans who are not fully-fledged persons–such as immature fetuses, mental defectives, and dementia sufferers.
It is difficult to make a watertight case against abortion on the grounds that human beings possess intrinsic merits simply by virtue of species membership. Where personhood is minimal, what would these intrinsic merits be?
So, Klavan’s defense is insufficient. Or at least, he does not articulate what his underying reasons are for awarding an overriding right to life on the basis of being a human being. But I think several good reasons can be articulated.
Here’s one. Giving all human beings an overriding right to life is simply a good rule of thumb.
Without a blanket ban on killing humans, a line must be drawn between legitimate human killing and illegimate human killing (again, where the moral standing of the human being is not at issue). Now I think this can be done: the existence of twilight does not mean there is no such thing as night and day. So, interfering with the successful implantation of an early embryo is not the same as performing a late-term abortion by removing near-babies piecemeal from the womb. But still, drawing that weighty line is an unnerving business. Having a general rule of thumb–don’t kill humans, ever–mean you don’t have to draw that line, or negotiate where to draw it, and so prevents potentially evil abuses by venal boundary-pushing parties. It’s prudent moral heuristic–given that human beings have been known to kill one another for bad reasons. It signals a generalized respect for human life and esteem for one’s species that is a bulwark against moral shallowness or self-indugent casualness. True, applying this heuristic causes some suffering for unwilling or involuntary bearers of children. But still, the trade-off is worth it.
Yes! It comes down to: “Which ‘wrong’ would you rather be?”. The answer tells us a lot about your character.
These are issues I have been internally debating for years. Of course, we can’t skirt the logical conclusion of your argument which is that if life begins at conception (and I don’t know whether or not it does), then there is no logic to an exception for the victims of rape or incest. Less palatable now, but that shouldn’t matter.
Well stated. Welcome to the fight!
Speaking of the libertarian position on abortion, I was on former New Mexico Governor Johnson’s campaign site and came across this:
- Life is precious and must be protected. A woman should be allowed to make her own decisions (obviusly abortion) during pregnancy until the point of viability of the fetus.
Quite the contradiction of terms: saying life must be protected and then saying a woman has a right to destroy a life literally growing inside her. He also does not say when the fetus can live outside the mother, which I believe the date can be as less as six months, so long as the baby goes through extensive hospital care. I assume he means “viability” as being able to live outside the mother with assistance. I’ve heard liberals take the “viability” argument to an extreme before: that even the newly born up to the age of 3 are technically “unviable” because they cannot take care of themselves without parental help. I assume Governor Johnson isn’t this radical.
The other libertarian in the race, Ron Paul, is pro-life, although I think he says that is because of his decades long experience as an OBGYN (reproductive doctor).
“I’ve heard liberals take the “viability” argument to an extreme before: that even the newly born up to the age of 3 are technically “unviable” because they cannot take care of themselves without parental help.”
I call bs on this – can you provide a source?
I’ve heard is usually a euphemism for I believe.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer
http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1993—-.htm
http://www.discovery.org/a/16431
http://bioethics.com/?p=3205
http://books.google.com/books?id=K_Z61K8f1F0C&pg=RA1-PA18&lpg=RA1-PA18&dq=bioethics+infanticide&source=bl&ots=IhlCrguZnI&sig=k8-3EAqKREkGJEJT8LhJn3uH700&hl=en&ei=IxkdToLFGoagsQPk75C8DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CCgQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
Thanks for providing sources – however I’ve looked that the sources you linked but cannot find anything to support your statement.
His wiki page makes no mention of 3 years – and certainly nothing about being unable to look after themselves as a measure of person hood. Ditto the second link.
The third link only discusses a statement about 30 days in passing – and the references are not actually listed on that article. I searched for a bit but was unable to track down where that statement comes from. The discovery institute is renown for misrepresenting views so I’m going to need the actual source for that not a second hand.
The book also gets no hits for 3 years and I’m not really going to read it all unless you can point to a specific page. What I’ve read of the second chapter makes no mention of anything to do with your statement.
Try googling Peter Singer, who is a “bioethics chair” at one of the Ivy League schools (Harvard, maybe? I don’t remember).
Singer has touted just that, children up to some age out of the womb are not yet human.
I personally find this a conversation of “is it convenient” or not, and totally disgusting.
Andy,
I used to tell my best friend who was a huge proponent of abortion, that I would not even abort a child that resulted from rape. Why? Because that child is still part ME and I’d be killing a part of ME.
Boy, she really flipped over that argument because she kept hammering that I should have the right to kill an innocent child because of rape, even though the CHILD had NO part of the rape and was an innocent victim of circumstance.
I’ve said this before, but, perhaps it is worth repeating:
Life on Mars as been identified by tiny microscopic ‘proof of life’…
And, yet… “Proof of LIFE” when a child is growing in a womb isn’t?
HELLO?
Ever seen the movie “Rob Roy”? Interesting in that it has some pro-life undertones to it. (Odd for Tinseltown.) The villain gets a woman pregnant and tells her to go look for “an old crone with a twig” and “root it out.” Conversely, the hero finds out that his wife is pregnant by a rapist and tells her “It’s not the child that needs killing.”
Brilliant line!
Amen! “Do not kill the son for the sins of the father, nor the father for the sins of the son.”
I would only add that in the absence of certainty we must side with life.
it is a human being and should be accorded some protection, but not as much protection as a born child. if it was accorded equal protection, we would need to treat a woman who hires an abortionist to kill her baby the same way that we treat a woman who hires a hitman to kill her husband.
Wrong topic for the problems we face today.
“[T]he decisive question: is an unborn child a human being or not?”
Seen this before:
To the Nazis: Q. “[T]he decisive question: is a Jew a human being or not?”
A. We want to kill them so they must be sub-human based on all the bad things Hitler said they did.
To the Southern Slave Holders: Q. “[T]he decisive question: is an Black Slave a human being or not?”
A. We want to enslave them so they must be sub-human based on how easy they are to kidnap from Africa (their own “people” even sell them) and based on how similar when they work they are to horses, and almost as strong.
To the Bolsheviks: Q. “[T]he decisive question: is an aristo or bourgousie or White Russian kulak fighting for reactionary ideas a human being or not?”
A. We have to defeat them so they are insects and vermin to be eradicated based on all the bad things they have done and want to do, and based on the fact that we have to break a few eggs (non-human eggs at that) to make our progressive omelette. And look, when they run out of food they turn into cannibals, so they can’t be human.
The common denominator in all these historical examples of treating those you want to kill or enslave as sub-human, the common thread is unavoidable: The desire to kill and enslave came first. The rationalization that your victims were sub-human was only that: a rationalization you reached after the fact to excuse you from your crime.
No. Jefferson, a slave-owner, with Adams’ help, stumbled on the truth in a blaze of Divine Inspiration which once he postulated it, appeared to both of them to be self-evident, like cogito ergo sum. Here it is and you’ve heard it before:
All people are created [by their Creator] equal. Not born equal, created equal. If you got human DNA you are equal with everyone else with human DNA from point of creation or conception. What’s so hard to understand? Everything else is just rationalization for the murder and exploitation of your equals if you first might find some other reason (usually economic or ideological) for wanting to kill or exploit. Remember you won’t be the first person in history who thought of a good reason for killing your equals.
Jefferson said it but then could not free his slaves, and Washington waited until he was dead. Jefferson did the next lesser thing, though. He treated one of his slaves as his Wife Sally. Was that expiation enough? Discuss amongst yourselves (and with the 600,000 dead from the Lincoln and Davis War)*.
*First names: Abraham, the Patriarch of the Chosen People and Jefferson, you know who he was.
“Jefferson, a slave-owner, with Adams’ help, stumbled on the truth in a blaze of Divine Inspiration which once he postulated it, appeared to both of them to be self-evident, like cogito ergo sum. Here it is and you’ve heard it before:
All people are created [by their Creator] equal. Not born equal, created equal. ”
They obviously did not think that black people or women were equal or they would have, you know, treated them that way. They were completely oblivious that anyone would reasonably think that “all people” would include blacks and women. I know this puts a spanner in the divine inspiration business but that’s life.
How does the fact that their actions didn’t match up with their inspired words put a spanner in the “divine inspiration” thing? One can receive truth, even pronounce it, and then not live up to its ideals.
By pronouncing the ideal of “all men are created equal”, the Founders opened the door to freeing the slaves and recognizing the equality of women in the law as well. I’d say that’s a pretty inspiring thing!
About your female friends who’ve made the “painful” decision to have abortions: Consider that one of the reasons this is an anguished decision is because they know it’s wrong, and they know it’s not the only way to deal with an inconvenient pregnancy. The woman who overcomes her qualms has a seared conscience, so either she will live her life suffering over the great evil she has done, or she will be numbed to a great deal of evil.
I can’t abide this notion of human beings debating and/or deciding whether a mass of cells, an embryo, a fetus or a fully-fledged but not yet exited the womb infant is a human being.
One of those un-answerable conundrums that humans set up for themselves, like whether or not the death penalty is a good thing or a bad thing. It seems presumptuous and way above our pay grade.
Legislatures and Supreme Court justices purporting to decide when human life begins, whether such and such stage of development is a person with attendant Constitutional rights of a citizen, and crafting decisions accordingly, strikes me as absurd. I can only imagine that the crafters of a framework for these United States would find such a debate beyond belief.
Abortion needs to be decided with the gut, not the brain. It should be an easy decision.
Roe (which is a pseudonym) felt she was used/manipulated by a pro-abortion lobby into becoming the case célèbre. Wade was the doctor.
Life is LIFE whether you snuff it out early or snuff it out later.
Should women have the right to snuff out their children if she feels they are too burdensome? Why stop at abortion?
In China, women are allowed to know the sex of their babies and purposely abort them if they are girls.
Margaret Sanger wanted to be ‘rid’ of ‘undesirables’ via abortion.
Am *I* an undeserving life? Are you?
I have a contract with GOD and JESUS. He has my back.
This country needs to go back to GOD.
Yeah. I said it. This country has gone to HELL in a hand-basket since it/we rejected GOD.
In China, women are allowed to know the sex of their babies and purposely abort them if they are girls.
In fact, (or so I’ve read
)there is a preference for male children in this country, as well, and genetic typing to determine sex is becoming more common. The sex of the embryo becomes discernible at some fixed stage in development, some number of weeks.
Designer children is becoming as popular as designer jeans, picking sperm with some attributes you think you’d like your offspring to have.
(hopefully that offspring will grow up to become an ax murderer)
Me myself and I think we’re, collectively and individually, insane.
Margaret Sanger wanted to be ‘rid’ of ‘undesirables’ via abortion.
It is very ironic that the founder of Planned Parenthood was a eugenicist.
Planned Parenthood today is profiting as an abortion provider, at taxpayer expense.
Which is an outrageous use of taxpayer money.
I’m probably not the only white pro-lifer who’s had “pro-choice” women sidle up and say, “The problem is that all the wrong people are having babies”, then tilt head down and raise eyebrows (that “you know, persons of color” look)? Yeeg. Always makes me want a shower.
I dont know when a fetus is considered a human with a soul. Being raised Catholic I was taught that it is at conception. I still don’t know.
I do know that when a woman decides to terminate a pregnancy she will get it done, come hell or high water. I also know that somewhere between 60% and 70% of women who seek abortion already have a child or children.
If abortion is illegal those women will go wherever they can or do whatever they can to get the job done. And the consequences can be horrendous. Plus leaving the existing child or children motherless – which can translate to parentless.
I say that abortion should be legal and available in sterile, safe circumstances, with follow up medical care.
Deciding on abortion is awful enough without being vilified by strangers who essentially don’t give a damn about the person and are only interested in foisting their own personal beliefs on someone else’s life. I have never seen an anti-abortion person step up and say, “I will raise your child.”
“I have never seen an anti-abortion person step up and say, “I will raise your child.” Then you’re looking in the wrong places; I’ve seen that sign many times.
Trust your Catholic teaching, Colleen.
The right to life is the foundation of every other human right. If that right is not inviolate, then no right can be guaranteed – Archbishop Chaput
The numbers often used by pro‐abortionists to back their claims are vast fabrications, mostly made up by
the pro‐abortion lobby as admitted by Dr. Bernard Nathanson, founder of NARAL. The widespread introduction of
antibiotics into medicine, not legalization of abortion, saved the lives of women who would have otherwise died due
to botched abortions. Mothers deserve better answers than the death of their children through the violence of abortion, legal or illegal.
Keith: I’m real familiar with Archbishop Chaput since he is here in Colorado. He seems to make a career out of trying to impose Catholic religious dogma on everyone in our state. His opposition to any form of artificial birth control; in keeping with Church doctrine; is particularly troubling since many pro-lifers contend that abortion largely could be done away with if birth control was more readily available.
Confusion after confusion:
Real familiar with the Archbishop? You might be if you went to church.
His adherence to Catholic dogma troubling? I see. So it would be less troubling if clerics dismissed the teachings of their churches.
Pro-lifers? What a funny name for unborn-baby killers.
I rub my eyes in wonder, SteveB. Perhaps it is time for you to stop, step back, and think a little.
Readers Digest: I haven’t had need to enter a Catholic church for many years. And I noticed you adroitly dodged one of my main points. Do you favor, or not favor, allowing access to use of artificial birth control?
SteveB,
I’m guessing you’re a liberal, since you appear to equate Archbishop Chaput’s “opposition to birth control” in your earlier post, to “allowing access to birth control” in your later post. For conservatives (and practicing Catholics) it’s not the same. No, really! Just because a conservative (or practicing Catholic) might think something is a bad idea (whether it’s smoking cigarettes, obesity, driving those terribly unsafe Smart cars, using those terribly dangerous mercury-filled light bulbs, or using contraceptives), it doesn’t necessarily mean the person is seeking to ban it; that’s what liberals do.
Conservatives and practicing Catholics respect man’s free will. I suggest you begin your reading of Humanae Vitae with Section 17; in the first paragraph, Pope Paul VI (40 years ago!) predicted modern Western society, and in the second paragraph, he predicted modern China and Al Gore’s view of reproduction. No demands, just an “I don’t see this ending well”.
We legally declare dead those who have lost a heartbeat and brainwave; why do we not leagally declare alive those who (at a few weeks gestestionally) obtain a heatbeat and a brainwave?
Excellent, concise, and to the point article!
Andrew: your article is well written and I appreciate your heart felt sentiments. At least, you’re able to get your point across without castigating as modern day Satans those who don’t share your views. Roe v Wade didn’t, however, start everything. Individual states already were de-criminalizing abortion and the religious wars already were underway. What Roe did was to end a patchwork of conflicting state laws; that decision is either good or bad depending on one’s perspective.
Once Roe goes away, if it does, I’ve read that the next SCOTUS decision to be targeted by some of the right-to-life groups is Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which overturned a law that outlawed use of contraceptives. One thing no one ever considers here is the impact of the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution on the abortion & birth control controversy. Opposition to abortion or birth control usage, to me, is a heart felt religious view and we all know the text of the 1st Amendment. Leaving abortion out of the discussion for a moment, how does one reconcile an anti-birth control viewpoint with the right of consenting adults to try to control their reproduction?
#9 Benjamin: “what is the point of a limited government if it can’t even step in to stop mass killing of human life….” Then, it isn’t “limited” any longer. Who decides what is human and isn’t? A government that makes that decision is no longer limited.
#12 Gary Smith: “I think any woman who resorts to abortion is deeply hurt by it…..” How would you know; you’re a guy and can’t get pregnant? I always find it interesting that the large majority of the leaders of the pro-life movement are men.
#15 RKae: “It’s all to protect the sanctity of promiscuous sex…..” Are you saying, then, that married, or unmarried & loving, couples should not have sex unless they’re going to reproduce?
#18 Sioux Lady: I’m real sorry to hear of your friend’s miscarriage. Worth noting that some of those in the so-called “personhood” amendment movement have no answer when questioned about if a miscarriage constitutes manslaughter. Colorado has had “personhood” amendments on each of the last two election ballots.
#21 ceram deo: your reference to the “irrefutable” Bible is the crux of the matter. As I noted above, I believe opposition to abortion is a strongly held religious view. I don’t want to see the 1st Amendment gutted to satisfy a religious viewpoint of a minority.
#26 ST Malo: “I never saw any pro-lifers stampeding to the agency to adopt….” You imply another interesting point. Pro-lifers demand an end to abortion. But many social “conservatives” now also want to drastically cut back on the social programs that help support poor families. Guess life is sacred, for them, only until the time of birth.
#39 Delia: “this country needs to go back to God…..” Which one? The one who says black people were inferior; the one who says that gays can be “cured?”
#40 Colleen Marie: well said.
#39 Delia: “this country needs to go back to God…..” Which one? The one who says black people were inferior; the one who says that gays can be “cured?”
Blacks inferior in the bible? Please show me the passage.
Hate to bring it up but, most black people ARE intellectually inferior and they are far more primal. Should I show you the stats or will you say the stats are “raaaaaaaacist”? Doesn’t matter, because I can show you stats and you’ll cry that’s “raaaaaaacist”. You can blow your load all about racism and I’ll trump your pathetic @ss every damned time.
Jesus loved EVERYONE because GOD knew that we are all SINNIN’ son’zubitches.
Black tribes still exist in Africa. I’m sure their high intelligence quotient is holding them back. Plus, every ‘black’ city run by ‘black’ people is a hot mess. White flight is because white people don’t want to live in the ‘jungle’.
Black on black crime.
You idiots who cry for ‘equality’ need to live in the black ‘hoods’ and THEN make a claim for affirmative stupidity.
Jesus.
You know what? Your “affirmative action” says far more than some KKK klansmen can say about black people, you already tell black people, “Your too stoopid to earn this or that”….
You Lefties are hilarious with your contradictions. You are the biggest racists of them ALL!
Delia: Why don’t you show your stats instead of just mouthing off? Oh yes, I’ve lived in the ‘hood, as you call it. And I’ve spent quite a bit of time in east Africa too.
I’m glad to see that you want the country to turn to God, Delia, but I think you are absolutely wrong about black people being intellectually inferior. The discrepencies that you note in statistics are arguable to the extent that culture perverts and prevents black kids from being able to focus on education and maintaining moral rectitude. It is actually a truth that many many black people purposely set themselves apart from what they perceive to be a white dominated culture (whether that perception is true or not is not the argument here), and that setting themselves apart is there own form of self-lacerating, and undoing (why do a large percentage of blacks insist on calling each other niggers? You might say it is being primal, but what if they are doing it because it sets them apart from a perceived white dominated culture, and is an attempt at self cohesion?).
I am not condemning the American culture in this, but am only pointing out that the problems with the black community, as it were, are situational, not born in. And that situation (the perception), yes, is predicated largely on the history of slavery. Again, this is not to say that whites are endlessly guilty of oppressing blacks, as half of this country fought and died to free black slaves, but that black people’s perception of America are valid, though false (this is a possibility in Logic). This is where understanding can be found, because it is how you can examine premises. The black community may very well be stricken with bitterness in a land that they do not feel is their home, and respond with untoward pride from fear and anger of the shame of a history that lawfully considered them inferior.
Do not throw a blind eye to a vicious cycle that has entrapped blacks. Black children do not ask to be raised in a house that teaches them to set themselves apart, and their parents didn’t, nor their grandparents.
Leaders in the black community are wrong to try to put this on the shoulders of an unsuspecting American culture without creating a fair and balanced dialogue first. They are wrong to declare racism at every turn and every refusal of their ambition, but they too are part of this cycle.
I do not deny that the affirmative-action crowd is mislead, but you would do well to not dump on any class of people, especially in such a way as they could not possibly refute. If one declares another mentally incompetent it is to say their answers will always carry some defect. That itself is a departure from the spirit of “all men are created equal”.
The Bible says, There is a rich man and a poor man, and God has made them both. It may be that just one man out of the group whom you truly believe is mentally inferior will be judged more righteous than you, which, to say the least, would completely destroy your bias.
Amen.
Wow.
It’s all down to “culture”.
It’s the White man’s fault.
Cultures don’t make people. People make cultures. Black people make the same culture, wherever they go in the world. But it’s the White man’s fault.
Black Americans have had the benefit of living in the White man’s culture for hundreds of years. It hasn’t rubbed off.
Ultimately you have to acknowledge what’s under your nose. No, all men are not created equal. You can see it. Now, have the intellectual integrity to say it. You will feel the huge relief of no longer lying to yourself.
Nice little flyer here summarises it for you.
First of all, “All men are created equal,” refers to our standing before God and the law. Second, groups don’t exist. Individuals exist and families exist; groups are an artificial construct. What do I mean? I mean there is no such thing as the black man and the white man; there are only individuals.
Groups don’t exist, but families do? What is a family if not a group? What is a tribe but an extended family? A nation is just a larger version of the same thing – and a race…
Sheesh, why do I bother? If you’re determined to argue that black is white and day is night, nobody is going to convince you. None so blind as those who will not see.
Have a nice life.
Good God.
You think married people having sex constitutes “permiscuous sex”? You’re insane, you’re unacquainted with the English language, or you’re just a desperate Left-wing hedonist grasping at straws because your “good time” has been insulted.
Hmmm. You seem to be lumping a lot of people into your broad generality about sex. And you know all of this, how??
As a libertarian, I’ve never had a problem with abortion. All persons have a right to their own life, as a matter of property rights. And, as Horton would tell you, a person’s a person no matter how small. Fetuses have a right to life, regardless of where they happen to be living it at the time.
I agree with you that Roe v. Wade had farther repercussions than simply creating a new right for women. Every time the government makes a change in societal mores, there are unintended consequences. No-fault divorce not only made it easier for abused spouses to leave marriages, it created a new culture of single-motherhood and its resultant problems (85 percent of murdered children are in single-parent homes, for example).
And look at how often we see stories of mothers killing their children since Roe v. Wade, including the latest story. A quick Google search for “women who kill their children” will provide a sad picture of motherhood these days. Remember the movie “M”, which was about a perverted child murderer? If they made the remake, “M” would mean the many things she gave me…
Anyway, another great post by Mr. Klavan, and I don’t just like him because he looks exactly like my son.
Stephen B/Colorado:
Your Archbishop is doing precisely what he is supposed to be doing: upholding Catholic teachings. You seem to be afraid that he may actually be persuading people to see abortion for the sin it really is: the killing of an unborn human being.
You speak of imposing Catholic dogma on the state. Well, many, many non-Catholics share our opposition to abortions as do people of no particular faith or beliefs. Are they imposing their “dogma” too?
You ask: how does one reconcile an anti-birth control viewpoint with the right of consenting adults to try to control their reproduction? The killing of an innocent child at any moment is wrong no matter what – that takes precedence over all other considerations. It’s in that list of ten things we’re supposed to obey, you know the one I mean?
So East Coast, what are you saying? Use of any form of artificial birth control is wrong, because it might interfere with creation of a fertilized egg, as in a human? Oh, and he’s not my archbishop. I left that religion many years ago for reasons unrelated to abortion.
As a Catholic (lapsed or not) you know (or ought to know) the answer to your question about contraceptives. It doesn’t change the fact that abortion is a sin and is wrong, your attempts to sidetrack the debate notwithstanding. A way can always be found to cope with the reality of having created a child; destroying it is not one of those ways.
Actually, East Coast, I was looking for your answer. I’m not interested in how your religion defines, or doesn’t define, sin. No religion today has a monopoly on either good or bad.
If the supreme court was correct that negros were just property, surely they are correct about abortion, no? Opposed to slavery? Don’t own one.
Is a fetus or embryo human? Yes. It’s not dead, it’s not some other species.
It is also a complete unique organism, or the seed of one. (Unique except in the case of identical twins.)
But for the first stage of gestation, it is not even noticeable.
There are estimates that a large fraction (perhaps even a majority) of fertilized ovums never implant properly or result in a miscarriage in the first 30 days after conception; the woman never even knows she was pregnant.
The IUD works by preventing implantation, so the ovum dies. There are some pro-life advocates who regard every fertilized ovum as equivalent to a human being, and that therefore an IUD is an implement of murder – “carrying a concealed weapon”.
This is not reasonable. Neither is the position of American abortion-rights advocates that even a third-trimester fetus should be killable at will.
Another unreasonable fact is that pregnancy and birth are a huge imposition on a woman, and women don’t want that burden forced on them. Especially as the consquence of a crime against them.
There are a lot of arguments made in bad faith on this issue. Abortion-rights advocates defend such extreme practices as partial-birth abortion on the grounds that it is appropriate in cases of severe fetal deformity (such as anencephaly) – but such cases are only a fraction of partial-birth abortions.
The U.S. has the most liberal abortion-law regime in the world, but abortion-rights advocates insist that any restriction is tantamount to a total ban.
My guess is that for the social liberals who hold such positions, their abortion advocacy is really a proxy for “sexual liberationism” – the belief that there should be no restraints on human sexual activities except rape, and that marriage should be abolished. Maintaining absolute freedom of abortion is a powerful signal that sexual liberationism is in control. And it helps ensure against a normal consequence of sexual activity.
These people expend very little effort on developing improved contraception, or defending contraception makers from predatory tort lawyers, which to me shows that “reproductive freedom” is not their real priority.
On the other side, there are some anti-abortion activists who do want to abolish not only abortion but also contraception, and restore “traditional” levels of fertility. (A futile fantasy: except for the limited post-WW II “Baby Boom”, American fertility has been in decline for 200 years. The peak of the Baby Boom was lower than 1910; since 1980 the rate has been below the Depression bottom.) There are some who hope to restore traditional tight restraints on sexuality.
A lot of abortion opponents expend very little effort on contraception, which would obviate most abortions – but would not result in the additional births they prefer, and (they believe) would enable sexual activity they dislike.
The abortion issue would be much clearer without this hypocrisy.
If your implied theory (I read your post as saying that more and better contraceptives will mean fewer unintended pregnancies and therefore fewer abortions) is a good one, then the data will show a sharp drop in unplanned pregnancies and therefore abortions over the past 50 years or so, since contraceptive use has skyrocketed. I doubt it will.
Since an IUD serves no purpose other than to prevent an embryo from implanting after it is conceived, why shouldn’t the IUD be banned? IUD’s have no redeeming value- they can’t be used for anything but murder.
abortion….so many opinions….that are none of your business.
When the child can live outside the mother’s body…it is viable.
I am against late term abortions because the child is usually viable outside the womb. Other than that it is between a woman and her god…not you and her god.
Get your own life, you don’t need to defend a the unborn child…if god wanted you to do that, he would have sent you a personal invitation to guard the uterus’s of the world
Though I may not always agree with Mr. Klavan, I always find his commentaries to be hilarious and well-articulated. That straight-face sarcasm gets me every single time.
That being said, I think the issue of abortion isn’t as easy as Klavan would want us to believe (or anyone wold have us believe for that matter). The issue boils down to an issue of rights i.e. it is a moral issue. Do we extend the same rights to unborn children on the basis of the fact that they are human beings or do we decide that the woman (alongside the man who knocked her up) have the right to choose the course to take in regards to either having a child, putting the child up for adoption, or sending that bundle of cells to the trash. The problem with the former view is that rights are moral conceptions and morality is, in essence, made possible by choice. Choice is the province of humanity; only human beings can make choices whereas other animals act on a purely perceptual level (i.e. their actions are guided by percepts and instinct and not concepts and rational deliberation). To claim that an unborn child has rights is bold; bold in that such an entity has no cognitive faculties and no ability to make choices…in the end, an unborn child is not a moral being. This begs the question, when is a child a moral being and are retarded individuals moral/human beings? I default on both those questions because I myself haven’t come to such an answer.
But what about the latter? The right to choose to have an abortion is essentially the right to choose to destroy the potentiality of a human life…we would consider this murder in a variety of contexts. What’s important here is that, without the parents, that child is a non-entity, a zero. The child is parasitic in its pure dependence on the parents and, in particular, the mother. This is why I think the right (i.e. the moral backing) ultimately rests in the pro-choicers. Does the government have the right to force couples to have a child if they do not want it or the right to provide the service of abortions (which means, effectively, the right to force you to pay for the abortions of others)?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
The problem with claiming that the fetus is a parasite is that the child remains a parasite after it is born as well. Should infanticide also be within the realm of pro-choicers?
Andrew,
“And if we as a free people decide that unborn children are children indeed, there is no moral alternative: we must not only end abortion but put our full efforts into supporting humane and broadly available methods of welcoming the unwanted.”
Yes, yes, and yes.
In NYC, every year for as long as data has been collected (1970′s) the majority of African American babies have been aborted. Result: black neighborhoods have plenty of old people and middle aged, but few kids. The rate among Hispanics is much lower, among non-hispanic whites much lower still, and lowest among Asians. Where are the Planned Parenthood clinics located? In black neighborhoods. “Where do you go duck hunting? Where the ducks are.” NYC is no more racist than any part of the US, but it is the center of pro-abortion propaganda. And what do the black politicians do? Bow down to the abortion lobby. Like leading their own people into the ovens.
oh well, let’s keep killing the blacks and hispanics and females, they inconvenience us. the crime rate will be better.
To a whiter more male world!
PROCHOICE and proudly white!
or, we value all life, the unborn too, and make it precious by preserving it and nurturing it. encouraging child to reach their potential. safe homes. safe streets. mother and father.
usa – done.
If an unborn child is not a child, what is it? All one has to do is look at the 3D/4D photos and even video that are now available, and they will see it’s a child.
Those who harbor the fantasy that “it’s not a human being” are doing just that – harboring a fantasy. It goes against science and common sense.
They do it so they can sleep at night.
Libertarian? Don’t think so. The law and religion have been clear by their actions on this. Where are the cemetery plots for miscarried fetuses? Human beings that don’t deserve cemetery plots? Hard to understand. Obviously the churches say one thing but believe another. Does a fetus inherit its father’s inheritance if the father dies before the fetus is born? Nope. I hear arguments about DNA in this thread. My left big toe is full of human DNA. Does that make it a human being? If I cut it off and keep it alive in a lab feeding it from my chemistry set should it deserve a cemetery plot in a religious cemetery, or should it deserve an inheritance from my father? What if I cut off all my toes, do they get 1/10 of my dad’s inheritance?
What every libertarian should know is that he doesn’t know when a fetus becomes a human being. Nope he doesn’t. And nope you don’t. HE JUST DOESN’T KNOW. Obviously a ball of cells that exists at the start of conception is not a human being. Even if it wanted to watch Fox news it couldn’t. Since no one knows, there is a clear obvious date when we should declare that a fetus becomes a human being. Birth. That’s it. Birth. If you claim that you’re a libertarian and you want to tell me that fetuses become human beings at another time then I can only say that YOU’RE NO LIBERTARIAN. Religious people have their own opinions on this but libertarians should stick to BIRTH, because that’s what we know.
Notice I didn’t mention abortion yet?
Regarding abortions this is a legal conflict of rights. The rights of the mother and the rights of the fetus are in conflict. If there were no conflict of rights between these two parties there would be no question here in need of discussion. The law is clear, in the case of a conflict of rights between a non-person and a full person the full person wins. The fetus does not inherit. The mother’s CHOICE wins out.
“Where are the cemetery plots for miscarried fetuses?”
St. Joseph Catholic cemetery in Lansing, Michigan. Same as for dead humans who weren’t aborted.
http://www.wilx.com/news/headlines/Catholic_Church_Mourns_Buries_Aborted_Fetuses_Found_in_Dumpster_109537624.html
Actually, it is common enough, among Catholics, that if the miscarried child had developed enough for there to be a body to bury, we would bury the body with some kind of funeral service.
“Does a fetus inherit its father’s inheritance if the father dies before the fetus is born? Nope.”
Really? How was it then that Jean I was the heir of Louis X?
A human person begins when a human being begins. The “being” is the “person”. No other way of thinking about what we are makes any sense. When the supposed rights of two human beings are in conflict, society’s interest – obligation – is to preserve both parties’ rights to the fullest extent possible. Even, perhaps, in obliging the stronger party to cede some possible “right” in support of the weaker.
A lot of pro-lifers like to hold up pictures of fetuses and ask how we can not consider it human. It has a head, arms, legs, and maybe even a penis, which shows it’s a boy, right? But, everyone knows that if a man has no arms, or no legs, or even no penis, he’s still not only human, but a man. That’s because we are not pieces of meat. What makes us human is our ability to think conceptually, not our opposable thumbs. Because fetuses not only cannot think conceptually, but can’t even eat or breathe on their own, they are not yet human.
Speaking of thinking conceptually: many on the right fantasize that they can make the most important decisions for a woman on what she can do with her body, but can still allow a man to make his own decisions in business. I assure you that the Left can see the weakness in this argument. Once you have established the principle that the State can tell you what to do with the products of your body, you’ve established the precedent for the State to tell you what to do with the products of your mind, i.e. your company.
The solution? Put more energy into running your own life, and less into running the lives of others.
So if someone thinks I can’t think conceptually, then I’m not human. Oh, boy! My grandma suffers from dementia–if we follow this line of thinking to the end, it means we can kill her, and collect her inheritance.
I like this game–NOT!
#40 Jeanette (2nd reply): “SteveB: I’m guessing you’re a liberal…….” No, I’m a fiscal and secular conservative.
“Conservatives and practicing Catholics respect man’s free will……” Here, there is a dilemma as there are “conservatives” who on the one hand, believe in limited government. On the other hand, they want big government intervention in citizens’ personal lives (the religious right).
Reminds me of a comment made by a now-deceased friend in western Colorado back in the ’80s. He was about as conservative as anyone I’ve ever met: “I voted for Reagan to get government off my back. I didn’t vote for Reagan to have government in my bedroom or for government to tell me what my religious beliefs should be.”
I’ve notice that Steve makes the same mistake many folks seem to make.
The assumption that Catholics-speaking for myself here (and Christians) seperate their Faith (capital F) from every other aspect of their lives. In fact, the opposite is true. Our Faith and life in Christ pervades and infuses us in ALL aspects of our lives. My life in Christ is present at work, when I vote, when I respond to blogs. Not merely when “I’m in Church”. It cannot be otherwise.
He also seems to see some sort of Monolithic Religious Right too. I’m not seeing it and judging by the predicament of this country and culture, there isn’t one. That is one reason I am so grateful to some of the leading RC Bishops like Chaput and Dolan speaking up in defense of Catholic teaching and culture.
Keith: I commend you for living your religious beliefs in your daily life. I have a good friend who does just that. He’s a strong Christian, but doesn’t proselytize nor try to make everyone listen to how he “found Jesus.” He just quietly lives the life. The problem arises when those with strong religious beliefs try to impose them on others.
If you do some research, as I have, you will find differences among religious right groups. They’re not monolithic. But, generally speaking, they have similar goals; groups like Focus on the Family, American Family Association, Faith & Freedom Coalition, Discovery Institute, Alliance Defense Fund, etc.
Steve- Thanks for the tone of your response. It is appreciated.
I could give several old testament and even more new testament citations about preaching to the nations and converting Israel and then the Gentiles. So, what you see, perhaps, as “imposition” as you say, is a mandate from God to bring the you personally salvation. After all, don’t you want to spend eternity in bliss?
What goes on in our bedrooms should be kept private…but privacy in the bedroom can only go so far. If I murdered my daughter in my bedroom, all bets are off–I have violated the right to life of a fellow human being, and thus deserve the punishments that society deems appropriate to inflict on me.
Thus, it becomes important to determine whether a fetus has the right to life that we have. If a fetus does, then I have no more right to deliberately take its life, than I do to take the life of of my daughter.
Regarding your comment on second hand smoke: My view used to be basically the same as yours. However… Just before I quit, I was married to a lady who didn’t smoke. At home, I smoked in my office with the window open and a fan in the doorway to blow the smoke out the window. I had an electronic air cleaner on the furnace to absorb any smoke that the preceding didn’t catch. Etc., etc., etc… When I quit smoking, my wife had withdrawal symptoms right with me for the first three days. They were basically the same as my withdrawal symptoms: headache, etc. She was getting a lot more second hand smoke than I thought she was in spite of all my efforts to prevent that… If it did damage to me, it is likely it was also doing damage to her and for the same reasons…
Note that Thomas Aquinas was relying on the latest science in his position on when a baby becomes a baby and cannot be aborted – at the time of “quickening” when the mother could feel a movement, when the baby “was ensouled.”
When science showed the viability of the baby from the moment of conception, the Church included that information in its teaching (its not very effective teaching, going through a bad wishy-washy timid period) – and they say the Church is against science!
While “science” may show potential viability of an egg from conception onward, that life is not sustainable prior to about the 23rd week following gestation. That was while Aquinas said the fetus became “ensouled” at that point. Note, however, that this is a religious issue. This is not only a question of “privacy.” Not all religions, and, in fact, probably not all of the various Christian sects, hold that life begins at conception. Some of the world’s religions say life begins at the other end of the spectrum, i.e., when the baby draws its first breath.
So, perhaps we should aim future abortion debates at the First Amendment, that is, “let the Congress make no law regarding the establishment of religion.” Put another way, I have the right not to be forced into believing what you believe and you have no right to regulate my life thereby.
Does this mean that, if I adopt the religion of the Aztecs, I get to remove the beating hearts of my enemies, eat their flesh, and wear their skins in religious ceremonies? Not all religions accept the sanctity of life.
The question isn’t a matter of “Do we force religious belief on others?”, it’s “To what extent are we going to protect life?”
Just a few days ago, I read an essay written by a libertarian lawyer named Jeff Snyder on this very topic: The Right Right For Our Time. The article discussed the nomination of John Ashcroft, and the concern that Democrats had that he was pro-life.
To sum up why he considers abortion to be the “right right” for our time: your stance on abortion demonstrates your stance on government. If you oppose abortion, you value the life of others, even when it is a burden on you. If you support abortion, it’s because you are willing to take anything from others–up to and including their own lives–to support yourself.
An interesting read, to say the least!