The abortion debate is not about rights at all. It is a philosophical disagreement over the personhood of the fetus. Is it a “person”? Then killing it is murder, for surely it has done no wrong. Is it a blob of tissue? Then abortion should be permitted with as much freedom as clipping your fingernails.

Purely naturalistic “science,” at least in the modern sense of the word, cannot answer this question. As far as science is concerned, we are merely proteinous lumps of cellular material, a highly sophisticated chemical reaction. We have no more intrinsic value than an amoeba or lump of coal. Right and wrong, freedom and oppression, human or not — all of these concepts are utterly meaningless if microscopes and the periodic table are to be our moral arbiters. There just is no such thing as right and wrong, because those are metaphysical concepts in a purely physical world. The idea that “you” have “rights” is absurd, because there is no you in the first place.

Of course, nobody lives consistently with this world view and everyone intrinsically knows that they can make choices; even those who affirm chemical determinism still care very much whether they live or die, if for no good reason at all.

By conceding, as we do in all of our laws, that human persons have value and rights, we are inferring (due to philosophical principles) that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. This principle has nothing to do with science and is a presupposition taken on “faith,” as some of the less-informed have rather derisively termed it. The existence of laws themselves necessarily involves the imposition of one person’s morals on another; if a fetus is a person, the aborting woman is certainly imposing her morals upon it, as well. So let us have done with this, “Get your rosaries out of my ovaries!” nonsense. (Though I must give the pro-choice crowd credit for an unusually catchy chant.)

We cannot solve this debate by appeal to science alone. As a consequence, we must take the whole of human knowledge and bring it to bear on this issue. So what do we know?

1. The Constitution grants certain rights to individual human persons.

2. A fetus is certainly an individual human — it has its own DNA code and will develop into a separate human being. (Blood chimeras are the exception to this rule, and would lead me to believe that human value may not begin at conception; that being said, I believe in banning abortifacient contraceptives for reasons I shall enumerate below.) This fact is not debatable: fetuses are separate human lives, and abortion ends those lives.

3. The question remains, is the fetus a person; that is, is it in possession of a “soul?” (I use the term here merely to denote that which makes people, people, and gives them value over rocks.) Most arguments in favor of legal, unrestricted abortion claim either a)) the fetus is not developed enough to be considered a person, b)) it cannot survive outside the womb and is therefore not a person, or c)) its geographical location (inside the womb) makes it not a person.

(A) raises the question — why do we draw the line where we do? Why not claim that anyone below the age of five is insufficiently developed to be a person, or claim the same of anyone below sexual maturity? The line is arbitrary. Some assume that fetuses have no memory, but I certainly have no memory of being younger than three. Should I have been killed without pity by my mother if I became too inconvenient? I should hope not. (It’s also worth nothing the plethora of psychologists and psychiatrists who believe we do, in fact, retain memories of what it is like to be in the womb.)

With (B), what about those with no immune system, who cannot survive out of a self-contained system (“Bubble Boy”)? Are they persons? By the reasoning of the “viability” crowd, they are absolutely not. Killing them for any reason is perfectly acceptable.

(C) is laughably absurd. As a previous poster observed, someone who claims that a fetus is not a person as long as one little toe is still in the womb (or in the birth canal, or six inches away from the birth canal, or whatever) has not thought through their own position. Not because it is impossible, but because we have no reason to believe that this is the case (ergo, see #4) and, consequently, this line is wholly arbitrary. Not exactly good grounds for killing.

4. If a hunter is out in the woods and sees movement that he thinks is probably a deer, does he open fire? NO. He waits to see that it is not, in fact, a fellow hunter. To me, this is necessary caution — if we cannot be very certain that the fetus is not an human person, we should not kill it cavalierly.

Finally, we arrive at the contentious issue of rape and incest abortions. Let us simplify: either the woman chose to commit incest in which case it is her own dumb fault that she is pregnant, or she did not, in which case it is rape. So we really only need concern ourselves with rape.

Believe me, I do not like the idea of telling a woman who has been raped that she will have to bear the fruit of this heinous crime; however, the anecdotal evidence I have seen suggests that many (perhaps most) women are very upset by their abortions. A baby — however unplanned — can be a source of true joy, the only silver lining in a very dark cloud. Why add more pain to already devastating pain by participating in a terrible crime? (Of course, if the fetus is a person, then killing it is still murder – I cannot kill someone who causes me emotional pain, however tempting.)

And also — why should we kill the innocent child, when we do not even kill the rapist? (In my opinion, of course, rapists should be burned at the stake but, fortunately for them, I am not king.)

That is all.

Rick

A fertilized egg, or an embryo, or a fetus is not a child — any more than a caterpillar is a butterfly. A fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus is NOT a separate human being. It exists inside a woman’s body, attached to her body, unable to exist outside her body for many months after it implants in the uterine wall. You and I are separate human beings. A newborn baby and his or her mother are separate human beings. A separate human being does not and cannot affect the health and life of another separate human being by the mere fact of its existence. Every cell, every organ, every chemical and biological process, every physical system in a woman’s body is directly affected by the developing fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus. She cannot pick up the fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus; hand it to her husband or best friend or her own mom or dad and say, “My doctor says I have pregnancy-induced diabetes; can you take the baby for a while?”

A baby inside a plastic incubator in a hospital is a separate human being, because the plastic incubator is not a living woman, and the baby can have no effect at all on the incubator’s existence. A fetus inside a woman is not a separate human being.

The question is, Do humans have the right to life, or not?

That’s not the question at all, in my view. Clearly, humans do NOT have the right to life, in any pragmatic sense. If there was an intrinsic right to life that derives from being human — as opposed to a conditional right to life that is contingent on being patriotic, or on being the right color and religion, or on wearing an approved military uniform, or on being affluent enough to hire the best lawyers; then there would be no executions or wars.

I believe that what opponents of legal abortion are arguing for is not the right to life, but the right to birth. The right to be born. Once born, the right to life becomes increasingly conditional on how the circumstances of your existence shape your choices and opportunities.

So…you’re saying you approve of states regulating reproduction in cases where abnormalities or birth defects have a higher than average probability?
Should incest be illegal if both parties are consenting adults? Should the state be able to require such a person who becomes pregnant to have an abortion?

# 93 The conjunction of sperma and ova is a potential human, not a human.

I am glad to see we have sparked the debate on who really is allowed to be called human. As long a something is not human, we may do what we wish to it.

What is a potential human? What is its species name? Is it evolving from a sub-species? The embryo is clearly not the same as the mother. DNA does define us a Homosapien. How does one change from homosapien to human? There is a clear false dichotomy being argued.

Development, location, capacity, and health cannot be used as indicators of humanness. All are human. The history of the world is littered with examples of the powerful defining the weak as less than human in order to morally exploit them.

Unless you reject Marbury v. Madison outright, there is no tenable position to take other than that any statute, including th S.D. one, that prohibits abortion on demand for a pre-viable fetus is unconstitutional, and any statute that prohibits abortion post viability when the mother’s health is at risk is also unconstitutional. This is the law of the land. period. This is the Constitution because that is what the SC has said it is. See Marbury. There is no argument to make until the Supreme ourt changes its precedent.

Until then, every S. Dakota legislator who voted for this bill should be impeached and removed from office for viaolting their oath of office to uphold the constituion and the laws of the United States. The rule of law demands it.

A fetus can’t produce or acquire its own energy. It cannot adapt to any environment outside the womb, it cannot reproduce, it is not mobile/has no locomotion. And if a protist is highly organized enough for “life” I’m not sure it helps your argument. anyway it isn’t about life, it is about personhood.

And Jenny, let’s be intellectually honest here, your justification for incest babies included:

“*the baby as an opportunity* to have a genuinely loving relationship”

and

“*The baby is a threat* to the man who exploited the mother in the first place and forces everyone to acknowledge the crime committed against her.”

These are both instances of arguing that having a baby conceived of incest is justifyable as a means to 1. provide the incest victim with something to love, and 2. threaten and embarrass the incest perp. and have others acknowledge the crime comitted against the victim. This is exactly using the baby as a means to other ends.

But Kant probably is not a compeling authority for a religious person.

As for your question “what is it?” It is a fetus. That is why it is called such. Something not yet human, something that cannot live on its own but instead is attached to the mother and lives off of the functioning of HER organs, something that has the potential to become a human being after the mother fully gestates. Pre viability it has undeveloped organs – but most importantly an undeveloped brain. You shouldn’t view this as a biology issue, it should be a philosphical one. Your six year old has a sense of *identity.* It is becasue of this she has rights as a person. She thinks, she remembers and has continuity of consciousness. She understands she is a distinct living being differntiable from the object world. When she suffers, she can feel it and remembers it and it stays with her. And she can survive on her own. These are the operative issues, this is why there is a ethical distinction between murdering a six year old and having an abortion.

No, but I cannot answer in full at the moment. There are separate issues, I think you might agree. One is the difference between moral and legal status, the second is jurisdiction within the legal purvue. Moral and legal cannot be equated, but the primary issue we’re supposed to be discussing is the legal application, which is, as I see it, differientiating between State and Federal jurisdiction, legislative vs judicial action. Most of the demand for the overturning of Roe vs Wade, as I see it, is based on the perception that it’s a state’s issue, not a federal issue. There would still people who would want abortion banned, but it would then be a legislative matter, not a judicial matter. The problem is that a right has been defined as Constitutional which many feel is not, and therefore a matter which many feel should be legislated has been established by the judiciary. It’s hard to discuss this side without getting into the moral/legal debate, which shouldn’t really have anything to do with it. Imo…

” What about the child? Using a baby as living threat and acknowledgement of a crime? Using a baby as an emotional crutch for a incest victim?”
Using? I’m not saying it is good to use a child as a threat, I’m saying that it is the family of the victim who feels threatened by the child and therefore often pushes for the abortion. I’m not suggesting at all “have the baby and use it as a way to get back at the perpetrator”–Not at all. My point was that the victim herself, the one you are saying deserves the right to kill her baby, is generally not the one who wants to. It is usually the family around her who does, and does because they won’t face the reality of her victimization.

“Do you understand the genetic implications of incest, how the possibility of rare and often damaging homozygous regressive traits increases dramatically?”
I understand that there is this possibility, with close relatives anyway, but that doesn’t mean the baby should die for it. Why punish a baby for being less than perfect? It isn’t the baby’s fault!

lzrlou:”Do you understand what Kant meant when he wrote that it is immoral to use another individual as a means to one’s personal ends, but instead should be treated as ends in themseleves?”

I understand what he said but don’t understand when you accuse me of using my “religion to impose morals” on you, why I have to be subject to Kant. Aren’t you imposing your morals on me? Why should I heed what Kant said?

I agree with Kant on this, fwiw. And that is why I think killing a baby to prevent one’s own displeasure is wrong. Because that baby is an end in itself, not an extension of the mother. The child should not be punished just because the mother didn’t want to be pregnant.

lzrlou:”Do you understand the stigma that either a healthy or deformed child of incest would have to endure in its life?”
Do you understand that you are saying someone has the right to choose death for that child? Many with stigmas would prefer to make the choice for themselves of whether to live or die.

lzrlou: “No actually there is no baby yet. And no it is not a person. On what grounds to you call a bunch of cells that have yet to significantly differntiate a “baby” or a “person”??”

On biological grounds.
We have clear biological criteria for determining “life”–
1 highly organized
2 ability to acquire energy
3 respond to environment
4 ability to reproduce
5 ability to adapt

The unborn do those things, except reproduce, but then, my six year old can’t do that either, and I hope you don’t think she is still young enough to be aborted! That one is a matter of time. Given time, a rock will never get there. It isn’t alive. Given time, a baby will.

So the fetus is alive. But is it human? I’ll ask you again, if not, then what IS it? It isn’t part of the mother’s body..It has its own blood type, its own fingerprints, its own DNA. It has a separate heart, separate lungs, kidneys, etc. It can be conceived in a petri dish outside of her body altogether and placed in someone else’s womb. This is obviously, biologically, a separate specimen of homo sapiens from the mother. If it isn’t human, what is it?

By 18 days gestation there is a beating heart. Most women don’t even know they are pregnant by then. What do you mean by “yet to significantly differentiate”?

lzrlou:”Get thee to logic 101!”
Get thee to Bio 101.

Read Roe. Justice Blackmun go through an extensive history of how fetuses were considered both legally, medically, philosophically and religiously. After exhausting that history he looked how the Courts have treated fetuses under U.S. Constitutional Law. The answer, a fetus is not a “person” as defined by the U.S. Constitution. Not being a person it is not entitled to due process and equal protection under the 14th Amendment of the US. Constitution. Hence, a fetus does not posses the constitutional rights sufficient to overcome the Constitutional right to make reproductive decisions established in Griswold.

Interestingly enough it was the State of Texas that was making the novel legal argument in Roe. That novel legal argument was that a fetus is a person entitled to equal protection and due process. Blackmun, looking at legal history and the 6 other justices agreed, that the constitutional history and precedent did not support such an expansive reading of the 14th.

In essence, Roe follows Griswold and if one wants to attack Roe, the more logical way to attack it is undermining Griswold. Because once it is established there is a federal constitutional right to privacy in reproductive decisions (Griswold), state laws restricting abortion are almost by definition unconstitutional.

Now let’s talk about the problem with Griswold, which in my opinion is the weak link in Roe. Griswold essentially suggested that the state had no legitimate interest in regulating the private reproductive conduct of its citizens. That the right of such privacy could be gleaned from the penumbras to the Bill of Rights. Okay, if I’m a prolifer…why not strike down Griswold? Absent a Griswold right, there would be no federal constitutional liberty that the Court was bound to protect if a state banned abortion.

Let’s say that the state of South Dakota fearing a population decline mandated that married couples produce at least two children. Or in the alternative the state of New York, deciding that because of a fear of a population explosion, limits the number of children in a family to 2? What constitutional right would prevent such overreaching by government? Griswold does now…get rid of it and what happens then.

My take, the Court will uphold Roe. My other take, if prolifers really want to deal with this in a legally consistent way…push for a constitutional amendment declaring a fetus a person under the equal protection and due process clauses of the 14th amendment.

I’m sorry this is so long.

Have you seen some of the other comments? Use as much space as you need to make your point. Thanks for commenting. – Admin

It was interesting for me to read his challenge on privacy.

The concurring and dissenting opinions appear at the end of the majority opinion I linked to. I was worried there for a minute. I want folks to be equipped with all the info. – Admin

“I am with Mr. Byram on this in that this should be a question of states’ rights. Implied in his statement is another point which I haven’t seen addressed here yet: members of the GOP dare not overturn Roe.”

I say many legislative Republicans will be timid about banning abortion (should the judicial monstrosity of Roe V. Wade be overturned) because:
–the massive expenditure of political capital required for such bans will take away from projects more near and dear to them (War on Terror, tax cuts, spending cuts, illegal aliens)
–many Republicans, even many otherwise hard core right-wing Republicans, are still “pro-choice” in the sense that they cannot bring ourselves to compel a woman to bear and raise a child she doesn’t want, no matter how much of an irresponsible floozy slut she may have been in the conception thereof.
–I have lost count at the number of female voters, particularly here in California, who are otherwise Republican but can be stampeded into voting Democrat by anyone raising the spectre of an abortion ban, even here in California where the right to abort is practically enshrined into the state constitution!

Note: if many anti-abortion activists tout adoption as an alternative here, then please step up and put together networks for said adoptions. I find more talk than action here, particularly for “special needs” (i.e., damaged and retarded) children, who are more likely to come from such irresponsible birth mothers. Fetal alcohol syndrome and crack babies, anyone?

It’s easy to find homes for cuddly and healthy infants, even non-white ones (Korean and Chinese orphans get snatched up quickly by white adoptive parents after all) but damaged goods are frankly more difficult.

“I would estimate that upon the immediate overturn of Roe, the GOP loses anywhere from 30-50% of its base. Literally Overnight! My mother-in-law is in this group: fervent Christians who abhor the war-making and destruction done in our name across the globe but are GOP “one-issue” voters. That issue: Roe. Take it away, and the political climate changes instantly!”

Not bloody likely, JT. There is a Demunist Commiecrat ruling faction of the Democrat Party (and I call them that because of their frankly Stalinist “political correctness”), made up of entertainment industry elites, “academic” pseudo-intellectual elites, and traditional media elites. That faction has embraced decadence, promiscuity, the drug culture, and the celebration of homosexuality fully, and they spit upon people like your mother in law. They alone will ensure people like your mother in law will stay safely Republican for good.

“I would also lump many of my liberal-leaning Catholic relations who, being deeply rooted in a blue-collar work ethic, deeply distrust the Bush Administration, but who again (mostly because of the Pope) are “one-issue” voters. These are 2 examples from my personal experience. I’m sure you could think of many others.”

Ditto, as above.

Will all legal ages in South Dakota (driver’s license, right to buy alchohol, entry into public school)now be calculated from date of conception?

Given that most conceptions end in a spontaneous natural miscarriage, (and are usually not even known) how will this effect the state’s population data?

Given that every sexually active female might possibly at any time in South Dakota be carrying a legal person, what are the social and political ramifications? Is ANY action by the mother that could be detrimental to the Unborn Citizen potentially an act of Child Abuse? Will it be not only inadvisable, but illegal for a pregnant woman to smoke or drink?

I think these things have to be thought about, at least.

“Incest victims who have become pregnant often see the baby as an opportunity to have a genuinely loving relationship with another person, as opposed the exploitive relationship she was trapped in before. The baby is a threat to the man who exploited the mother in the first place and forces everyone to acknowledge the crime committed against her. No wonder the family of the incest victim usually pressures the victim to abort.”

Wow. Jenny, where are you from, perhaps, what planet? What about the child? Using a baby as living threat and acknowledgement of a crime? Using a baby as an emotional crutch for a incest victim?
Do you understand the genetic implications of incest, how the possibility of rare and often damaging homozygous regressive traits increases dramatically? you understand why incest is illegal and leads to abnormalities?
Do you understand what Kant meant when he wrote that it is immoral to use another individual as a means to one’s personal ends, but instead should be treated as ends in themseleves?
Do you understand the stigma that either a healthy or deformed child of incest would have to endure in its life?

“Some women feel differently after their experience, but we still have to deal with the reality that the baby is already there. The mother’s personal feelings don’t remove the reality that if the baby is a person then the baby has the right to live.”

No actually there is no baby yet. And no it is not a person. On what grounds to you call a bunch of cells that have yet to significantly differntiate a “baby” or a “person”??

Again, you beg question, you use conclusions as your premises, you reasoning is unfortuneatly circular. Get thee to logic 101!