1

Interesting. A few days ago I asked my wife what she would do under the circumstances if her pre- born baby was diagnosed with Downs Syndrome. I already knew the answer. She had produced three Adonis-like state champions and an high school validictorian and experienced all of the the pride and joy of parenting. Her answer:

"Of course I would carry that child to term and I don't know any Christian who would do otherwise."

2

Eugenics, a term first coined by Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton

The creed of Eugenics is founded upon the idea of evolution. ~ Francis Galton

Dedicated to the memory of MY FATHER. For if I had not believed that he would have wished me to give such help as I could toward making his life's work of service to mankind, I should never have been led to write this book. ~ Leonard Darwin's dedication for his book The Need for Eugenic Reform

3

Franklin Roosevelt. Joni Eareckson. Christopher Reeves. Stephen Hawking. No one can place a value on what these, and people like them, have contributed to the world through their leadership, spirit, and insight. Yet those of Peter Singer’s viewpoint would say they lack a quality of life that is worth sustaining them through their challenges. How many future geniuses or loving Down Syndrome children have been destroyed because of this short-sighted, self-centered point of view? How many Mozarts or Van Goghs or Einsteins never drew breath because their birth would have ‘challenged’ or ‘inconvenienced’ their parents, who listened to the advice people like Singer give? Eugenics is simply man’s most sophisticated way of trying to put himself into God’s place…and failing, miserably, at the job.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord. “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

4

It is not immoral to abort a baby with Down Syndrome. In fact, I would argue that it is more moral than aborting a baby that is healthy.

You argument misses the point. It's not about the morality of aborting babies, it's about the morality of restricting a person's rights to do as they please to their body. The morality of abotion is something a person needs to deal with for themself, not something that others need to force on people.

People have rights, that's true. However, you make the mistake of considering unborn babies people. They are not...yet. Certainly, they have the potential to be people, but until they are born, they are part of the mother.

5

“It is not immoral to abort a baby with Down Syndrome. In fact, I would argue that it is more moral than aborting a baby that is healthy.”

How can you determine that? How can any human being sit in judgment of whether another human’s life is worth existing or not?

Personally, I came to the pro-life position out of doubt. By the time a baby is born, it’s a human being whose life is to be treasured and valued. At conception, it’s a cluster of cells. I can’t say at what point it changes from a mere growth to a human being, and so I choose to err on the side of caution and not support killing that which might be a child. But I shudder at the arguments that say abortion is okay on the grounds that some lives aren’t worth living. It may be true, but no man has the wisdom or authority to judge his fellow men that way.

6

I wrote a short post called The Right to Have a Perfect Child, based on former Washington Post journalist Patricia Bauer's article The Abortion Debate No One Wants to Have.

In that article, Bauer describes Margaret, her Down Syndrome child, and questions the wisdom of the trend to abort such children. She poignantly says, "What I don't understand is how we as a society can tacitly write off a whole group of people as having no value."

Which is the point, of course. If it is our judgment that Down Syndrome children live lives not worth living, who else should we place in that same category and where does that sort of God-like thinking ultimately lead us?

7

Enigma,
Their right to do what? Kill their baby privately? Can I kill my toddler as long as I do it in private?

you said.."you make the mistake of considering unborn babies people. They are not...yet. Certainly, they have the potential to be people, but until they are born, they are part of the mother."

That's utter nonsense and here's why. Let's leave religon out of this and see where it leads....(from Robert George)"go to the standard texts of modern human embryology and developmental biology—for example, the texts by Keith Moore and T.V.N. Persaud; Bruce M. Carlson; Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Mueller; and William J. Larsen. When we consult these works, we find little or nothing in the way of scientific mystery or dispute. The texts tell the same story and answer the key question in the same way. Anyone who wishes to know when he or she as a distinct living member of the species Homo sapiens came into existence need only open any of these books and look up the answer."

Your claim that we are not human until we are born is flawed. We are distinctly human from the moment of conception. We are not a cat or a dog or the possible beginning of any other creature other than a human. The only difference is the level of our development and our location. A newborn baby is just as dependent on the mother as the fetus. He needs the total care of his mother. Feeding, cleaning, clothing, holding, etc...

8

Certainly, they have the potential to be people, but until they are born, they are part of the mother.

There are so many problems with that simple statement that it's hard to know where to begin.

By the simple logic of the meaning of the word "potential," if babies in the womb are only "potentially" people, then they are potentially something else, too. What precisely would that be? A puppy? Goldfish?

And they are not part of the mother's body. They have their own genetic code, and some have a completely different blood type.

My sister is severely brain-damaged (born with umbilical cord wrapped around her neck), my niece has Down syndrome, and my son has pervasive developmental delay. (Contra Singer, by the way, he loves sci-fi and can tell you any of the most detailed minutiae from Star Wars to Star Gate and plays basketball with Special Olympics; he has a pretty mean 3-point shot.)

The Singers of the world disgust me. Note, also, that he's a hypocrite, since he extended extraordinary medical care to his mother dying of alzheimers, which according to his own utilitarian ethic was an immoral thing to do.

9

It is not immoral to abort a baby with Down Syndrome. In fact, I would argue that it is more moral than aborting a baby that is healthy.

I'm not sure I would agree with the above but I do think it illustrates how the eugenics argument here is a red herring. If eugencis was a significant factor the primary concern would not be with Down's Syndrome babies being born but Down's Syndrome babies growing up to have babies. Likewise eugenics advocates would probably be more worried about the numerous abortions performed on perfectly healthy babies which on balance makes the legalized abortion as found in the US or Europe a very poor eugenics policy. Not surprisingly those with a eugenics bent, such as Romania under Ceausescu outlawed abortion (& birth control too).

What this comes down to is not the 'life unworthy of life' argument but the older argument about when human life begins. Don't believe me? Let's try this:

Imagine someone invents a really hi-tech condom. It is able to sense which sperm carry the Down Syndrome gene and pervent ONLY them from passing. (If you wish you can use a pill or simple medical procedure in place of a specialized condom). The result would be exactly the same. Thousand sof people alive today would never had been born since they would have been stopped before fertilization.

Yet I don't doubt for a moment Joe would hail this as a major medical breakthrough. I don't think for a moment a single pro-life voice will be raised at the concern that the population of those with Down's Syndrome will be snuffed out to zero once the current generation passes on. What's the difference? I don't think we would feel as good about a hi-tech condom that prevented the fertilization of babies that would grow up to be boys, girls, gays (well some might applaud that), or designer babies (say filtering out all sperm that carried anything other than blonde hair blue eye genes). Yet wouldn't applauding such an innovation basically be the same as saying it would be better if we prevented babies with Down Syndrome from being born (or in this case conceived)?

The difference here is that pro-lifers set the goal post at conception so what happens before does not involve human life per their definition. Most pro-choicers do not set the goal post there but later on in term hence there is no ethical difference between the acts, the ethical difference lies with the definition used.

10

Their right to do what? Kill their baby privately? Can I kill my toddler as long as I do it in private?

A toddler is not an unborn baby. Before birth, a child is still inside and connected to it's mother, putting it under umbrella of her right to do with her body as she wishes. If she wants to ingest an abortive substance, or have part of herself removed, well, that's up to her.

If the maternal instinct is not strong enough to keep the mother from aborting, what makes you think legislation would be?

I would rather there were no abortions. I would rather there were no unwanted pregnancies or bitrh defects. I'm not saying that aborting a baby is a good thing, I'm saying that restricting a person's right to do with their body as they choose is a greater wrong. If that entails them aborting a child because it will be born with Down Syndrome, so be it. If they abort a child because it will have brown eyes and they want blue, that's their choice. I may not agree with it, but i recognize that it would be more immoral to restrict them from doing so.

11

In that article, Bauer describes Margaret, her Down Syndrome child, and questions the wisdom of the trend to abort such children. She poignantly says, "What I don't understand is how we as a society can tacitly write off a whole group of people as having no value."

Indeed a somewhat similar argument has erupted over deafness. Anyone who knows someone who is deaf is probably aware that they often have their own culture that is somewhat insular. I remember recently something of a tempest erupted at some reports that medicine might be able to eliminate deafness in many, maybe even all, cases at some point in the near future. Some advocates blasted this as attempting to destroy a culture and writing off a population as defective etc.

Yet at the same time society would certainly consider it child abuse if parents purposefully made their kid deaf or deprived him of medical care that could prevent it. As much as you love your sister as she is you would almost certainly go ballistic if you learned the doctor purposefully wrapped the cord around her neck. It's undeniable that you would take steps to prevent your children from being born with Down's Syndrome or brain damage even though you don't value human life afflicted with those defects any less.

I'm skeptical of the attempt, therefore, to paint his as a picture of whether or not we should kill anyone in the US who has Down's Syndrome.

12

The odd grab-bag of moral pronouncements you offer at the beginning of your post is neither here nor there. It is irrelevant to both evolution theory and bioethics or eugenics that some eugenicists cited Darwin. It is irrelevant to the morality of selective abortion today that some eugenicist programs were immoral in the past. Few bioethicists regard the Hippocratic Oath as having any moral force beyond mere symbolic stature, and at any rate it does not offer a blanket prohibition of abortion. (The passage you cite is a deliberate mistranslation by Edelstein, who argued that the actual text, prohibiting "destructive pessaries" - one kind of device used for abortion - was actually a blanket ban based on his interpretation of what Epicurean philosophers would have said, notwithstanding that they actually didn't say it.) (I have written a bit more on the Oath here.) The Hippocratic Oath was recognized as significant only at times, and mostly not so for most of history; it became widespread only during the Renaissance (along with much other ancient lore). It was not eugenics that de-centralized it; the Nazi eugenics movement explicitly grounded itself on (a perverted reading of) the Oath - which is a compliment of sorts, and the Declaration of Geneva, written after the Nuremburg Trails, is explicitly based on it. It was the rise of modern bioethics - grounded on reason and philosophical principles, not ancient traditions - that made it obvious the Oath was unusable.

As for Singer, note that the criteria for personhood that you cite (being an athlete, etc.) are examples, not definitions. Since you think you don't need to address his ideas to reject them, I suppose you don't need to explain them either, but nothing you've written here gives a rational grounding for accepting or rejecting Singer. At any rate, he plays almost no role in the common practice of selective abortion to prevent genetic abnormalities.

Finally, as to the actual substance of your post: there's no reason to say that anyone thinks people should abort fetuses with Down Syndrome. Pre-natal screening for that condition is predicated only on the observation that many people do choose abortion in that circumstance, with the implicit moral conclusion that it's OK to do so. And if it is indeed OK, then it's also true that it would be better for various reasons to do so earlier in the pregnancy.

The real moral question is not whether these abortions should be made easier, safer, and cheaper, if they are going to take place, but whether they should take place at all. And your argument against that, I think, is both weak and off-target.

Against the claim that the quality of life for a person with Down Syndrome is too low, you offer a claim in direct opposition - that they do have a good quality of life. First, this seems to implicitly accept the ground of the utilitarian argument - that if they did not have a good quality of life, selective abortion would be justified - which I did not think you would do. Second, the argument about high quality of life is clearly not going to be true in all cases, so it is not clear why prospective parents should be required to take the chance on the outcome in any particular case. Finally, the idea that persons with Down Syndrom are "put here by God to change hearts" is even more offensive than the idea of aborting them: nobody is required to have a child with Down Syndrome, but if those children are born they are required to be treated as persons, not as object lessons or tools for religious proselytization.

As for why these abortions should be allowed, the argument is not precisely that their quality of life is too low to qualify as commanding moral protection - even Singer would admit that almost all individuals with Down Syndrom qualify as moral persons, even by his high standards. But there is no reason why prospective parents should have a child with Down Syndrome if they do not want to. Some may choose to, and feel no disappointment at the limitations that child will face; others will choose not to have to abandon their hopes for their child's opportunities and successes before that child is even born, and will opt to bear children with a wider range of capacities and opportunities in their future. Since no one is obliged to bear any child for any reason, parents are justified in choosing to bear the child they choose and refusing to bear one they do not choose. (And the reason, again, for not choosing in some cases is that doing so inevitably means that many of the possibilities of life that Singer mentions will be simply unattainable before the child even has the chance to try for them.)

Imagine you could choose before conception whether your child would have Down Syndrome or not. It's conceivable that some would deliberately choose a fetus with trisomy, but it's inconceivable that more than a tiny few would do so. And there would certainly be nothing wrong with the others choosing to have a child that did not carry that particular genetic debility. If so, and if abortion is a morally open choice, then it is just as justifiable to abort a fetus with Down Syndrome as to not conceive that fetus in the first place.

So, in the end, the issue has little to do with Down Syndrome, really (and nothing to do with eugenics, or the Hippocratic Oath, or whatever). It is the familiar question of abortion concentrated in one particular circumstance. The problems represented by Down Syndrome are reasons why parents might choose abortion in those cases, but the morality of that choice has almost entirely to do with the morality of abortion itself. (A debate we need not revisit here.)

Obviously the people who choose abortion in cases of Down Syndrome - even the ones who might not choose abortion otherwise - believe that abortion is morally justifiable. If that's true, there is no reason for them not to do as they do; the Down Syndrome is merely their motivation, but the moral question lies elsewhere.

13

Imagine you could choose before conception whether your child would have Down Syndrome or not. It's conceivable that some would deliberately choose a fetus with trisomy, but it's inconceivable that more than a tiny few would do so.

If this was the case do you think that many would even permit parents to choose to purposefully conceive a child with birth defects? Imagine the hypothetical condom was reversed so that it would only let through sperms with defect genes. I'd suspect any parents who purposefully conceived a child with a birth defect would be prosecuted. This is different than parents who are told they have a higher risk of having a child with a defect choosing to nevertheless go forward anyway.

An excellent point Keith, you nicely took down a lot of Joe's distractions with Singer & Nazi's. The Darwin stuff, obviously, is left over crap from the endless evolution/ID debates that go on on this site.

14

1) What is German for "Useless Eater"?

2) There's a flip side to Eugenics which I have never seen explored. What about the "Wanted Child (TM)", the engineered/eugenically-perfect kid? Who has no choice but to be Perfect, regardless of reality? As a former kid genius, I can attest that the parents who deliberately engineer/eugenicize a GENIUS (TM) will be expecting getting Wesley Crusher or Jimmy Neutron -- an intellectual performing seal. That's the fantasy.

What they'll get is the reality -- ever heard of the late Dallas Egbert III, of steam-tunnel fame?

15

Given the choice between hanging out with a stranger who has Downs versus a stranger who is "normal," I will always pick the stranger with Downs.

People with Downs tend to much more easy-going and friendly than humans with the normal allotment of chromosomes.

That said, I am not going to force my personal preferences on a pregnant woman who has strong feelings to the contrary. Why should I be allowed to do that?

16

My wife is preggo. When we went in for the last checkup they couldn't believe we didn't want an amniocentesis.

What the hell good is that information going to do us?

80% of couples abort their children if they find out they have Down Syndrome.

Sick.

17

And they are not part of the mother's body. They have their own genetic code, and some have a completely different blood type.

Our mitochondria have their own "genetic code". Nobody argues that they aren't part of our bodies.

Fetuses with the same blood type as the mother aren't any less a part of the mother than fetuses with different blood types.

Do not waste time trying to find support for the anti-reproductive rights position in science.

A woman does have the right to determine what comes out of her vagina, especially if what comes out of her vaginas is bigger than her vagina.

A bunch of rich white guys wearing expensive suits and ties will not take that hard-fought right away, particularly not when the rich white guys are doing so based on a fear that somebody's deity is going to be "angry" with "America."

18

Larry,
In our society, we label some preferrences wrong. If it's my preferrence to drive your car (without your permission) should I be allowed to? No. That's stealing.
A woman has the right to choose what she does with her body. But when she makes a choice that results in the creation of a new life, she must live with that choice. How does it follow that the baby must be made to pay for his mother's supposed bad choice by forcing him to be put to death? That's just nonsense. This whole arguement boils down to whether or not the living thing inside the mother is human or not. And there is no question there. The only differences between that child and one that has his feet on the ground is his level of development, his level of dependence, and his location.
If you can't justify killing a toddler with the same arguements you use for killing the unborn, then your arguements fail. The only thing that remains is what is the unborn. And as I pointed out earlier, among standard texts of modern human embryology and developmental biology, life begins at conception. That life is distinctly human. Just because the baby is inconvienient for some does not give them the right to kill the baby.

You people keep falling back on the old arguement for slavery. The black man was not considered a man, he was considered part of the owners property.

Enigman,
Why would you rather that there were no abortions?

19

If this was the case do you think that many would even permit parents to choose to purposefully conceive a child with birth defects?

There is a strong "pro-disability" movement in certain quarters. Many deaf persons are adamant that they would prefer deaf children (for complicated reasons involving "Deaf culture" - the community of sign-language speaking persons who have evolved their own cultural milieu and ways of life and see that threatened by attempts to eliminate or "cure" deafness). Other persons with disabilities are outspoken about wanting a world, not in which disabilities are cured or prevented, but in which "disability" is made less meaningful because the practical aspects of living have been made more accessible for all people.

I'm sure there would be a very concerted outcry at any attempt to criminalize the refusal to use technology to eliminate "birth defects". In a deeply unreflective country where moral principle holds virtually no sway - where "I've got mine" is the prevailing ethos regarding taxation and social services, where racial concentration camps are a recurring phenomenon and the religious-right President openly advocates for torture - I honestly don't know what the majority population would stop at if they came to see preventable disabilities as a drain on their taxes. But that sentiment would certainly not be universal - we have empirical evidence against it already.

1) What is German for "Useless Eater"?

Pat Buchanan

20

This from today's "NewsBusters," which exposes liberal biases in the MSM . . .

Here's a front-page headline from Thursday's Washington Post: "Down Syndrome Now Detectable In 1st Trimester: Earlier Diagnosis Allows More Time for Decisions." Why couldn't the Post be precise: earlier diagnosis allows more time for abortion decisions?

Reporter Rob Stein says a new test combining blood screening and ultrasound "can pinpoint many fetuses with the common genetic disorder 11 weeks after conception. That allows women to decide sooner whether to undergo the riskier follow-up testing needed to confirm the diagnosis." Then in paragraph four, the A-word finally appears: "Screening women before the second trimester allows those who might opt to terminate a pregnancy to make that decision when doctors say an abortion is safer and less traumatic." Safer for whom?

Stein does not attempt to report on one obvious question: how many detected Down syndrome babies are abortion? What's the percentage? In a touching op-ed by former Post reporter Patricia Bauer last month, she wrote: " I don't know how many pregnancies are terminated because of prenatal diagnoses of Down syndrome, but some studies estimate 80 to 90 percent."

In a piece about her daughter Margaret, she told of people disapproving of her decision not to abort: "In ancient Greece, babies with disabilities were left out in the elements to die. We in America rely on prenatal genetic testing to make our selections in private, but the effect on society is the same. Margaret's old pediatrician tells me that years ago he used to have a steady stream of patients with Down syndrome. Not anymore. Where did they go, I wonder. On the west side of L.A., they aren't being born anymore, he says."

Despite having no numbers on Down abortions in his report, Stein ends his article with the Irish surgeon issuing the report: "Malone and others, however, said they doubted the approach would result in more abortions." But then, what's the point of the new test, if not to make abortions more numerous?

21

JB

"When we went in for the last checkup they couldn't believe we didn't want an amniocentesis. What the hell good is that information going to do us?"

Well, there are other chromosomal abnormalities that are far far more severe and painful for babies than Down's Syndrome.

But maybe you don't care about preventing unnecessary pointless suffering. Or maybe you think that God just might "bless" you with a horribly hopelessly ill infant because he wants to "teach" you something.

It's your personal decision, of course. None of my business.

22

A woman has the right to choose what she does with her body. But when she makes a choice that results in the creation of a new life, she must live with that choice.

That's wishful thinking on your part.

How does it follow that the baby must be made to pay for his mother's supposed bad choice by forcing him to be put to death?

That is an absurd argument. How does it follow that for the rest of its life the baby is going to be forced to do all kinds of things merely because he/she was born? Did the baby ask to be born?

You people keep falling back on the old arguement for slavery. The black man was not considered a man, he was considered part of the owners property.

Born babies today have less rights than black slaves did. What is your point?

23

"Screening women before the second trimester allows those who might opt to terminate a pregnancy to make that decision when doctors say an abortion is safer and less traumatic." Safer for whom?

The woman -- you know the American citizen with the rights that are vested in her from being born in the United States (per the US Constitution). The woman who gets to decide what comes out of her vagina without interference from rich white men pounding on "holy books."

24

Larry, the reason we are "forcing our personal prferences on the woman" having an abortion is because she is infringing on the rights of another person with rights - none of us has unlimited rights. My right to free speech ends at slander. Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. A woman's right to her body ends where the rights of the child begin. The question is, when can the unborn be defined as a person with rights?

It is not merely religious or personal opinion, any more than whether or not blacks are persons with rights. While I am not of the mind that personhood begins at conception, I think we can come to a reasoned conclusion about when the fetus *is* a person with rights. Hence my article Citizens">http://www.twoorthree.net/2005/03/citizens_for_re.html">Citizens for Reasonable Abortion Limits. The only objection that liberals will probably have is that I think that point is very early on in the pregnancy - perhaps at 6 weeks.

I mean, my wife is 10 weeks pregnant, and we just heard the child's heartbeat. And that was with a crude listening device. I assume that the child's heartbeat (which could be considered one of the markers of personhood) begins much earlier than 10 weeks.

The practical outworking of this approach is that, women would be able to take "morning after" pills, but probably would NOT be allowed enough time to find out they were pregnant by missing their period. But perhaps that is the best way - by the time they find out (6 weeks), they already have a child w/ a heartbeat.

25

Stein ends his article with the Irish surgeon issuing the report: "Malone and others, however, said they doubted the approach would result in more abortions." But then, what's the point of the new test, if not to make abortions more numerous?

Gee, Terence, perhaps some women get abortions because they are afraid of delivering a sick baby or a baby which will require greater than the usual time and expense and responsibility to raise.

If these women can be more certain that their baby is healthy, then they might be less likely to abort.

Got it?

26

Why would you rather that there were no abortions?

Because I'd rather the circumstances that make abortions deisrable didn't happen (unwanted pregnancy, birth defects, rape, etc...) However, in reality, those things do happen and so abortion is an option.

As Kevin Keith pointed out, Down Syndrome really isn't the issue. It all boils back down to abortion in general, whatever the motivation might be. I take the position that the morality of abortion should only be of concern to those getting one, for everyone else the actual issue is weather or not to restrict the rights of the mother carrying the child in question, and that to do so is wrong. To anyone on the outside, the choice to remove a fetus should be no diffrent than her choice to remove an appendix. Elective surgery. (Do not take this to mean that I beleive a fetus and an appendix are on the same level, that's not the case.)

The rights of the mother outweigh any rights that might be ascribed to the unborn child so long as the child is still inside, connected to, and part of the mother. After that, it is it's own person, with all the rights that entails

27

Larry, the reason we are "forcing our personal prferences on the woman" having an abortion is because she is infringing on the rights of another person with rights.

Why is this true? Because you say so?

Stop insulting my intelligence.

Has everyone given up on trying to make a reasonable argument that a fetus has rights under the US Constitution which trump the rights of the woman carrying the fetus?

I mean, I could understand if you had given up by now because there isn't a very compelling argument to be made, as far as I'm aware.

But all these arguments start with by stating your goal as an established fact. Either that, or you truly see reproductive rights as a completely arbitrary set of rights that were given to women "accidentally" by a bunch of "librul morons" who happened to all be sitting on the Supreme Court bench at the same time.

Never mind that most Americans agree with those justices ....

28

A bunch of rich white guys wearing expensive suits and ties will not take that hard-fought right away,

That's the oldest canard in the book. Look at the leadership of today's pro-life movement. It's almost exclusively female. Early feminists such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady were anti-abortion because they saw the implicit anti-woman assumptions behind abortion reasoning.

Besides, it doesn't matter who makes the argument. It is either valid or it isn't. The pro-abortion lobby has to resort to specious reasoning, ad hominem arguments and Orwellian doublespeak to justify its position.

29

"People with Downs tend to much more easy-going and friendly than humans with the normal allotment of chromosomes."

Quite true, Larry. The sunny disposition of Downs Syndrome individuals has been well-documented. As a teacher, I can say they are without a doubt the sweetest kids in the world.

To abort or not? That is not for me to say unless it is my child.

30

Larry, the reason we are "forcing our personal prferences on the woman" having an abortion is because she is infringing on the rights of another person with rights - none of us has unlimited rights. My right to free speech ends at slander.

Your right to life stops at another's body. I have no right to your kidney or even a blood donation from your body against your will. That does not, of course, mean it would be moral to refuse to donate a trivial amount of blood if it was the only way to save someone else's life.

The practical outworking of this approach is that, women would be able to take "morning after" pills, but probably would NOT be allowed enough time to find out they were pregnant by missing their period. But perhaps that is the best way - by the time they find out (6 weeks), they already have a child w/ a heartbeat.

This brings up to two schools of thought regarding whether or not an unborn baby is a human beign. Just about everyone agrees that a born baby is a human being. Likewise just about everyone agrees a sperm and egg by themselves are not. Obviously at some point inbetween the cells go from 'just cells' to human beign. I divide the ideas about this into two categories, moment and process.

Moment schools put it at a specific moment. In earlier times many Christians thought the moment was quickening (when you can first feel the baby kick). Today most believe it is conception.

Process schools see it as a process where it goes from 'not very human' to 'totally human'. Roe.v.Wade was a process type decision (ironically the supporters of abortion rights in that case actually argued for unlimited freedom until birth and the court rejected it). Your post above sounds more like a process type reasoning which would put you outside the mainstream pro-life movement (you may or may not care about that).

I'm willing to hear both sides. I'll note that most biological events are usually process based. For example, adulthood happens as a process...we don't really think of a 17 year old as a child and an 18 year old as a full adult. Even legally we don't think that way since a 17 year old is much more likely to be tried as an adult for a serious crime than a 7 year old. Likewise we think of aging as a process, you don't switch from young to old the second you turn 65. At one point death was thought of as a moment (how many old movies are people pronounced dead when a person simply takes a pulse) but it too has been found to be more of a process.

Simply creating a distinct set of DNA doesn't, imo, automatically qualify as some type of obvious point to declare full personhood. In theory you could encode the DNA in a sperm & egg in a computer and then compute the resulting combination. That wouldn't mean a human person sits inside the hard drive. Also we now know that DNA is only part of the story. A lot of DNA is environment based, with certain genes being turned on or off depending on environment.

Stein ends his article with the Irish surgeon issuing the report: "Malone and others, however, said they doubted the approach would result in more abortions." But then, what's the point of the new test, if not to make abortions more numerous?

Just off the top of my head:

1. Information is valuable in itself. Many parents want to know the sex of their baby even though they aren't going to have an abortion based on that decision. Likewise knowing you will have a Down's Syndrome baby might make it easier to prepare for it mentally before birth rather than right after it.

2. It may be possible to find a way to treat Down's Syndrome. If so it would be useful to have a test to diagnose it.

3. AS with any other medical discovery, it may lead to additional breakthroughs.

31

Besides, it doesn't matter who makes the argument. It is either valid or it isn't.

I agree with you tom, however Larry is also correct in his exagerrated illustration. The people making the choices are people other than the person whose body is most intimately involved with those choices. The issue isn't that those other people are white men in suits....replacing them with black women in Barney the Dinosaur costums doesn't change the fundamental point.

The pro-abortion lobby has to resort to specious reasoning, ad hominem arguments and Orwellian doublespeak to justify its position.

I've noticed quite a bit of that from the pro-life lobby as well.

32

Roe.v.Wade was a process type decision (ironically the supporters of abortion rights in that case actually argued for unlimited freedom until birth and the court rejected it)

In Roe they did, but the lesser-known companion case, Doe v. Bolton, did basically legalize abortion during any stage of pregnancy for any reason or no reason.

By the way, I interviewed the "Doe" of Doe v. Bolton (her real name is Sandra Cano), and she wasn't even pregnant. She was involved in a custody dispute with her husband, and radical feminist lawyers seized on this poor, uneducated woman, got her to sign forms without reading them, and even spoke during TV interviews for her (Sandra's back was to the camera "to protect her identity" while her laywer spoke as if it was Sandra speaking).

And, as is well known, the "Roe" of Roe v. Wade, Norma McCorvey, says she lied about having been raped. And Bernard Nathanson, former abortionist and founder of the National Abortion Rights League, admitted that the pro-abortion lobby simply made up numbers of so-called "back-alley abortions" in presenting its case in the early 1970s. Then Ron Fitzsimmons, president of the National Association of Abortion Providers, said, "We lied through our teeth" about the number of partial-birth abortions performed during the Senate debate on that topic.

Are you starting to detect a pattern here?

33

tom

Besides, it doesn't matter who makes the argument. It is either valid or it isn't.

Sometimes arguments are made that seem so specious and strange that it is useful to look at who is making the arguments before analyzing the arguments further (to see if there is more to them than appears).

That is why the "validity" of arguments such as whether black people are "inherently" inferior to white people may be fairly assessed by taking into account, at least partially, the fact that the people making those arguments tend to be overwhelmingly (suprise!!) lighter-skinned.

We don't need to wonder why women are at the forefront of their personal rights.

But as to why Christians have predominantly taken up the cause of arguing that women's rights have less weight than those of fetuses ... well, there are a number of interesting explanations.

One thing we do know: the Christian Bible isn't particularly generous to women. In fact, preachers throughout time have argued that God intended women to function primarily in society as child-bearers (preferably sons).

Do you suppose there is any chance that many Christians are sort of stuck in this mind-set? And that all this talk about the rights of the fetus is just a proxy for ensuring that the rights and wishes of the husband and men generally are given more weight than the rights of women?

Is that a possibility?

I think it's a possibility. Something to think about, in any event.

34

tom

Are you starting to detect a pattern here?

So what's your thesis tom?

That the majority of Americans get pleasure out of aborting fetuses and so they are willing to hire liars to make sure that this recreational pasttime isn't taken away from them?

35

Larry:
That said, I am not going to force my personal preferences on a pregnant woman who has strong feelings to the contrary. Why should I be allowed to do that?

Why should she be allowed to force her personal preferences on her unborn? I know I know, it isn't a person, it doesn't have rights etc etc.

36

Hey, Joe, good point. There's some interesting stuff in the comments above pointing out the difference between programmatic eugenics and the general influence of eugenic thought, but nonetheless the point stands that the abortion lobby has always been tainted, when not outright dominated, by an "eliminate the unfit" strain. For Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, of course, that was first and foremost black folks.

On a related note, a storm is being brewed where none was before by journalists and bloggers suggesting social conservatives oppose vaccinations because they might make sex safer; I take one to task at length, here: Comment Me No Comments on: Multiple Mentality -- Weakest. Argument. Ever.

Would love to see what you do with that article, and would sure appreciate a link if you do take up the cudgels on this one.

Also, I'm not yet appearing in The Church Directory. An oversight? I pushed the form a while back. . . .

Cheers,
PGE

37

People have rights, that's true. Ho+wever, you make the mistake of considering unborn babies people. They are not...yet. Certainly, they have the potential to be people, but until they are born, they are part of the mother.

You're wrong and here's why.

In order for something to be a part of the mother, as you maintain, they have to share the same DNA. An unborn child has its own DNA. Thus, there is absolutely no scientific grounds on which to maintain an unborn child is a part of the mother.

They may not even share the same blood type. How can this be, if they are part of the same human being?

38

Has everyone given up on trying to make a reasonable argument that a fetus has rights under the US Constitution which trump the rights of the woman carrying the fetus?

Is there a US Constitutional right to a perfect child? Because with Down's, we're not talking about the life and health of the mother, so don't bother that argument. It's about the convenience and I haven't read a Constitutional right to convenience either.

39

Joe, regarding quality of life, you can push it further. What about the quality of life of people in impoverished nations? Is it worse than the quality of life of a Down's kid in the US? How about quality of life in Somalia where starvation is chronic? Wouldn't it be better to consider preemptive elimination or minimization of those groups in Somalia by encouraging abortion to raise the global mean quality of life indicators?

Besides, isn't quality of life relative to a large degree? I recall reading somewhere that Mexicans are estimated to be the happiest people in the world. Isn't quality of life often based on perceptions of what is good? And knowledge of what is good? What about living to the extent of one's ability? Our Down's checker at the grocery store appears to be very satisfied cleaning floors and generally helping people.

The quality of life argument is an evasion, and it shows how purblind parents can be. I suspect most people who abort Down's kids do so out of convenience.

40

If they lied in congressional testimony then prosecute them for perjury. Certainly you can't call this administration a friend to partial birth abortion now can you?

As for the original abortion cases, that is interesting as historical trivia but its not really relevant. It's a little like being told Dread Scott's owner freed him a day before the famous decision. Whether or not that is true doesn't really alter the significance of the case. SC cases are more about laws than the actual case itself. In fact, if you read the original Roe case you'll realize the woman had already given birth long before! A few dissenters pointed out that the case was technically moot since she was no longer pregnant but the prevailing opinion was that was a spurious point. Certainly at any given time there are pregnant women and they have a right to press their interests in the courts & that shouldn't be denied just because major cases can easily take more than 9 months to make it to SC decision.

Doe v. Bolton's decision can be found on http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=410&invol=179. Basically GA had a highly restrictive law. Abortion was outlawed for non-residents, for residents it could only be done in cases of life, health, rape & incest. Then it had to be approved by 3 doctors plus a panel from the hospital that was to perform the abortion.

Some important highlights:

A. Roe v. Wade, supra, sets forth our conclusion that a pregnant woman does not have an absolute constitutional right to an abortion on her demand. What is said there is applicable here and need not be repeated. [410 U.S. 179, 190]

It then goes down to strike down the law for being unconstitutionally vague (since it leaves undefined what a physician can properly consider 'medically necessary'). I suspect you are probably referencing this section:

We agree with the District Court, 319 F. Supp., at 1058, that the medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors - physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age - relevant to the wellbeing of the patient. All these factors may relate to health. This allows the attending physician the room he needs to make his best medical judgment. And it is room that operates for the benefit, not the disadvantage, of the pregnant woman.

I found this from a pro-life site reviewing cases:

Doe is frequently cited for its definition of maternal "health." Because Roe allowed abortion in the second and third trimesters for the "life or health" of the mother, the following definition of "health" has been used to make abortion on demand available through all nine months of pregnancy:

But notice the slide of hand here. Doe didn't revise Roe but rather went after an anti-abortion law that was being defended on supposed health grounds. It basically said the state couldn't subject the doctor's decisions on abortion to different standards (hospital committes etc.) that it subjected other decisions to. Even more importantly, the law in question applied to all abortions...not 3rd trimester ones.

Ironically the decision was not meant to provide a loophole for doctors to get around the 3rd trimester restrictions but to prevent states from getting around Roe using the pretext of regulating medicine with exceptionally convoluted requirements for abortions only.

A lawyer could hypothetically try to argue that Doe.v.Bolton meant any emotional distress qualified as health and was exempt from late trimester abortion restrictions. To do that, though, he would have to convince a judge to ignore the part of the decision where they explicitly reasserted Roe's system. Also legal arguments are a dime a dozen, to assert this you actually have to present a case where such an argument worked!

41

In order for something to be a part of the mother, as you maintain, they have to share the same DNA. An unborn child has its own DNA. Thus, there is absolutely no scientific grounds on which to maintain an unborn child is a part of the mother.

Sperm cells and egg cells do not share the same DNA as the other cells in your body. Are they too seperate or a part of your body?

Is there a US Constitutional right to a perfect child?

No nor is there a Constitutional right to life except as it only involves the gov't taking away your life.

42

Why should she be allowed to force her personal preferences on her unborn?

For the same reasons she is allowed to force her personal preferences on the kid once its born. It's hers.

Babies don't get to decide what their name is. The don't get to decide what to eat. They don't get to decide what to wear. They don't get to decide what language to speak. They don't get to decide what religion to get indoctrinated into. They don't get to decide where to live. They don't get to decide what medicine to take.

Their parents get to do those things.

Their parents own them.

And that's after they are born! After they are citizens of this country under the Constitution!

Now you want to claim that before they are born they have some sort of right that trumps their mother's rights???

How does that work?

It looks to me like you simply want to legislate your personal religious beliefs into laws that force everyone else to adhere to your arbitrary preacher-concocted "religious" codes.

43

Ellen

In order for something to be a part of the mother, as you maintain, they have to share the same DNA.

This script is already debunked.

Our mitochondria have genomes that are separate from the genomes of our cells. Nobody argues that our mitochrondria are not parts of our bodies.

44

Ellen

It's about the convenience and I haven't read a Constitutional right to convenience either.

How about a right to be free from arbitrary laws based on some preacher's interpretation of an ancient holy book?

Do you think that's in the Constitution somewhere?

45

Our mitochondria have genomes that are separate from the genomes of our cells. Nobody argues that our mitochrondria are not parts of our bodies.

Except, as I understand it, mitochondria are still identified as totally ours. Different, but still identifiable. And mitochondria, being inherited from only the mother, is only half of the story.

If you have an unborn child with only mtDNA, you'd have quite the unusual child.

An unborn child is a product of both parents, with an entire DNA of its own. Can you say that about a sperm or egg?

46

Boonton

In fact, if you read the original Roe case you'll realize the woman had already given birth long before!

Better yet, I urge everyone to listen to the original arguments before the Supreme Court in the Roe case. Then you'll realize why 1973 seems like the dark ages in many respects -- especially when it comes to discrimination against women.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1998/roe.wade/audio/

47

How about a right to be free from arbitrary laws based on some preacher's interpretation of an ancient holy book?

Do you think that's in the Constitution somewhere?

Show me where.

Show me a religion that believes it's okay to kill a human being (there's a lot of them) Is that okay, too?

48

An unborn child is a product of both parents, with an entire DNA of its own. Can you say that about a sperm or egg?

True by weight the child is almost entirely the mother's with a tiny fraction from the father. By DNA its about 50-50 but so what? As I pointed out you could combine the DNA using a powerful computer that wouldn't make the code that comes out a human beign. As we learn more about the interplay between DNA and the environment we learn that a lot of what we 'inherit' isn't coming from the DNA alone but the interplay between the DNA and the environment the child is exposed to.

49

How about a right to be free from arbitrary laws based on some preacher's interpretation of an ancient holy book?

Tell that to Nat Hentoff of The Village Voice. He's an athiest and still strongly pro-life. You can make the pro-life case without ever having to resort to a religious argument.

The pro-abortion side has to resort to such nonsense (and the many lies noted above) because they know they cannot win the case on scientific or moral grounds.

And speaking of Roe, I do strongly encourage everyone to read the case. You'll see that it's simply a conclusion in search of reasons.

Even people who are generally pro-abortion are embarrassed at how poorly reasoned the case is.

50

as I understand it, mitochondria are still identified as totally ours.

Yes -- and why is that Ellen? Why is that the case when the DNA of our mitochondria is totally separate from our genomic DNA and when that DNA passes from our mothers to us directly without the recombination events that lead to our genomic DNA?

Why do we call mitochondria "ours" ? Why does anyone claim to "own" their mitochondria when mitochondria have their own genomes, completely separate from the genomes that make us unique human beings?

You're the one who brought DNA into this. That's why I'm asking you.

51

Ellen

Show me a religion that believes it's okay to kill a human being (there's a lot of them)

Evangelical Christianity.

Is that okay, too?

My understanding is that it depends on the circumstances.

52

He's an athiest and still strongly pro-life. You can make the pro-life case without ever having to resort to a religious argument.

Let's hear it. Can you summarize the main points?

The pro-abortion side has to resort to such nonsense (and the many lies noted above) because they know they cannot win the case on scientific or moral grounds.

The "case" has been won on the merits at least twice in the last 30 years, without relying on religious arguments. And most Americans agree with the conclusion reached by the Supreme Court in those cases: namely, that female human beings in this country do have a fundamental Constitutional right to control what comes out of their vaginas and absent some extremely compelling reason to take that right away from them, that right is going to stick.

The desperation clearly lies in the anti-reproductive rights movement who, because they are unable to persuade their representatives in Congress that "abortion is murder" and should be outlawed (and prohibited by the Constitution), seek to install ultra-conservative shills on the Supreme Court who agree before-hand that the scope of women's reproductive rights are to be determined by rich white guys.

53

You're the one who brought DNA into this. That's why I'm asking you.

Well...if you don't believe in God, it must be all random chance that humans evolved that way.

54

Show me a religion that believes it's okay to kill a human being (there's a lot of them)

Evangelical Christianity.

Is that okay, too?

My understanding is that it depends on the circumstances.

like convenience? Christianity, as the Bible teaches it, does not allow for the killing of another human being for the reasons that most women choose to have an abortion.

Self defense - ok. And most people would allow for abortions in the case of "self defense".

55

namely, that female human beings in this country do have a fundamental Constitutional right to control what comes out of their vaginas

Perhaps if they would take more responsibility about what goes into their vaginas, the debate would be a lot simpler.

56

I don't mind if this debate gets simpler but I'd rather it not be conducted in simpleminded fashion. There's a huge array of blogs and forums out there where simplistic arguments & slogans can be posted & this blog has hosted numerous abortion flame wars.

Since we've heard the simple arguments before many times maybe we can try to work with more difficult arguments that maybe we haven't yet seen condensed to bumper sticker format?

57

And most people would allow for abortions in the case of "self defense".

And for pregnancy that results from rape. Are fetuses from rape less human than test tube babies? Or does that somehow fit under self-defense?

Christianity, as the Bible teaches it, does not allow for the killing of another human being for the reasons that most women choose to have an abortion.

What about just being afraid that someone is going to do something to hurt you but not really knowing for sure? Does Christianity allow killing under those circumstances?

58

Why do we call mitochondria "ours" ? Why does anyone claim to "own" their mitochondria when mitochondria have their own genomes, completely separate from the genomes that make us unique human beings?

How does this make the case for an unborn child being a part of the mother?

We get DNA from both our mother and our father, and the combination make us our own unique person, right? (regardless of whether or not specific genes have been turned or off, they have still been passed on)

59

And for pregnancy that results from rape. Are fetuses from rape less human than test tube babies? Or does that somehow fit under self-defense?

Do two wrongs make a right? One of my best friends gave birth to a baby that was conceived during her rape. She has no regrets that something good came out of something bad.

What about just being afraid that someone is going to do something to hurt you but not really knowing for sure? Does Christianity allow killing under those circumstances?

You tell me.

If it's merely a "feeling" or "fear", I'd say no. There are a lot of people out there who fear their own shadows and if they killed somebody everytime they were afraid - yikes.

60

Boonton

Since we've heard the simple arguments before many times maybe we can try to work with more difficult arguments that maybe we haven't yet seen condensed to bumper sticker format?

Okay, how about: let's say you know that your fetus has some variation of trisomy that is known to be absolutely devastating. YOu're in the second trimester and the doctors are certain your baby is going to be extremely sick and for the duration of its short life (90% likely to die within a six months, 99.999% within three years) it must remain essentially in a comatose state, fed by tubes, and even then we can't be sure that it won't be experiencing severe pain or some sort of primitive mental anguish. The cost of keeping this baby alive even for the short term (say three weeks) is going to be enormous and during the entier time that is alive the doctors will be wondering when and how to "pull the plug" and allow nature to take its course in the least painful way possible for the baby. No hospital is willing to pick up the tab for providing even the minimal care that this baby will need to keep it as free from pain as we can possible expect to (given that the baby can't communicate).

Question: is it okay to abort this baby in the first, second or third trimester? is there a reason why it's not okay at any of these trimesters? and is there a reason why it's not okay which does require invoking a deity?

My personal opinion: as I've described it, this particular fetus can be aborted at any stage or put to sleep after it's born without a whole lot of soul-searching.

61

Ellen

If it's merely a "feeling" or "fear", I'd say no.

It's always nice to meet to meet someone here who opposed the invasion of Iraq.

62

Here's another:

How would you (1) draft and (2) enforce a law banning abortions for "mere convenience" but allowing abortion for women who'd sooner kill themselves before having the baby?

63

Larry
How would you (1) draft and (2) enforce a law banning abortions for "mere convenience" but allowing abortion for women who'd sooner kill themselves before having the baby?

Depends on how you define convenience.

64

Larry Lord writes, "What about just being afraid that someone is going to do something to hurt you but not really knowing for sure? Does Christianity allow killing under those circumstances?"

I saw this baiting of the Iraq trap long before your sprang it, Larry. Your analogy is flawed, though. If that someone had twice attacked his neighbors, killed numerous in his own family, was paying others to kill innocents and had shot at you several times, then, yes, you'd be justified to defend yourself.

All those things describe Saddam Hussein.

They do not describe a baby in the womb.

65

If that someone had twice attacked his neighbors, killed numerous in his own family, was paying others to kill innocents and had shot at you several times, then, yes, you'd be justified to defend yourself. All those things describe Saddam Hussein.

I wasn't talking about killing Saddam Hussein. He's a loony megalomaniac (but aren't they all?).

I'm talking about the pregnant mothers and babies living in Baghdad and Fallujah who are necessarily going to get killed by rockets or melted by white phosphorous or whatever we decide to dump on them "for their own good."

Depends on how you define convenience.

I agree. Care to make a stab at that?

66

See now Larry's question about the baby was such a difficult question. The Iraq nonsense is not, nor is more squabbling over whether or not DNA makes one a unique person or not (BTW, while we are on it what about twins? Same DNA, same blood are they one person or two?).

67

I spent two years of my life working with retarded children and adults in both summer camp and group home environments. (We called them retarded then, I don't know what the PC term is now.) Many of them had Down Syndrome (although back then we used the term Mongoloid). As Larry noted they were typically friendly, and I enjoyed being with them.

Joe, if you have an ounce of real concern for these people, please write a post about the dispicable care we offer them as a society.

I was working with them because their parents had decided for one reason or another that they could not or would not care for them. For the most part, the parents did not visit or acknowledge their children in any way. Those of us who were employed by (in my case) the state of Pennsylvania became their de facto parents and caretakers. We were happy to do it, but the pay was ridiculously low, close to minimum wage — not for flipping burgers but for being the primary caregiver for human beings! At that time the position I held for 18 months had an average turnover state-wide of 6 months. That is, on average the Down's person's primary caretaker changed every six months.

There are many kind of babies born which you don't hear about — and don't likely want to hear about. Babies with no eyes and only a primitive brain, limbs that are more like flippers than arms and legs, …I'll spare you other details. But these are babies that end up in state institutions maintained by a staff paid as little as possible to keep the place running and the people in their care alive. Where is your outrage at how these people are "treated."

If you must promote the life-at-any-cost argument, please address the way we handle the lives and people that society does not actually care for in a meaningful way. At my group home there were no groups (Christian or otherwise) knocking at the door saying bring your kids and adults to our church on Sunday, or I'd be happy to have some of them come for dinner once a month — let alone anyone interested in adoption.

This is precisely the reason I find pro-life arguments so ridiculous: they end at the point of conception and say nothing about accepting responsibility and caring for that life afterward. When is the last time you heard an evangelical pundit complaining about the care for the retarded?

Andy

BTW, I do have a cousin with Down syndrome and he is well cared for by his (rich) family. That's very much the exception than the rule.

68

Tom,

What you need to realize is that Larry Lord is nothing but a troll. He is here simply to throw personal insults and sterotypes toward Christians and pro-lifers without any reasonable arguments.

69

Sorry for this second post on the same point, but my dander is up.

How is it that you can possibly use these people for what I can only think is political gain in the abortion debate?! It's revolting. These are unfortunate individuals on the very margins of "civilized" society often being cared for by yet other people on those same margins. It used to be that young people starting out in social work related fields "did time" in the trenches as primary care workers. Now it is not untypical for these jobs to be done by — to put it bluntly — anyone who can't find something better to do. The care provided is usually minimal and sometimes abusive.

You must somehow be idealizing the situation thinking that the potential parents of a Down's syndrome child are ready and willing to take on all the life-changing experiences that having a child like that will entail. I wish that that were true. But our culture sets expectations much too high and, quite frankly, punishes those parents who have the temerity to give birth to a less than perfect baby, perhaps one that requires a lot of support from the rest of the community. My own first hand experience in those situations is that parents distanced themselves from those babies as quickly as possible. Who wants to be required to have a babysitter on call not just for the first 10 or 14 years of their child's life but forever? What mother wants, when others are talking about the amazing things their kids are doing, to say that they were delighted that their 12 year old just learned to tie his shoe? Or no longer needed a diaper?

Joe, once you have addressed these kinds of issues you might win the right to use retarded children in the abortion debate. But not until then.

70

It's always nice to meet to meet someone here who opposed the invasion of Iraq.

Thank you. I did oppose the invasion of Iraq.

71

This is precisely the reason I find pro-life arguments so ridiculous: they end at the point of conception and say nothing about accepting responsibility and caring for that life afterward. When is the last time you heard an evangelical pundit complaining about the care for the retarded?

I find that accusation truly disgusting.

I work with severely impaired children. Of the five in my classroom, 2 of them are adopted - by Christian couples.

At one point, my husband and I were on a list to take in an impaired child as a foster child (we were taken off the list when he was diagnosed with cancer and as a single person, I'm pretty far down the list of folks that want foster kids with an eye toward adoption).

There is a woman in my church that has adopted 7 impaired children - some of them extremely severely.

My daughter's best friend is adopted - along with her two siblings, one of which has severe down's syndrome.

If you think our concern ends at conception, open your eyes.

72

Ellen--wow, uh, way to keep up your end of the argument! I think you're wasting time that could better be used on those who are not such wastes of oxygen, but if you feel this argument is useful--at least you're being vigorous about it!

-----------------------

AndyS makes an argument which has superficial merit disguising its deeply mendacious nature.

He's right: we should do more to care for those we are inclined to push out of sight. I think he goes way overboard in his critique, but living here in Japan I can tell you that the human tendency to "fix" "problems" by shutting them up somewhere has been forcefully brought to my attention.

Nothing else about the argument is anything more than static and sputter, though. Cut the crap, and AndyS has just told Joe,

"If you don't have a plan to solve someone's problems, don't you dare try to save his life!"

Uh-huh. Right. I don't often see *inverse* arguments from the neo-Maslovian scale of values!

73

"If you don't have a plan to solve someone's problems, don't you dare try to save his life!"

This isn't the problem with Joe's argument and you know it. Joe's argument is essentially nothing more than a red herring. If abortion is not immoral then aborting children who have birth defects is not immoral. If abortion is immoral then it isn't any more immoral to abort children with birth defects.

74

Seeker, your article on reasonable abortion limits is interesting. I’ve struggled with the issue, too, as does anyone without a dogmatic position. On the one hand, human rights surely include the right to control one’s own body. Boonton cited an example. Imagine a person’s life depends on a blood transfusion and there is only one donor who could provide the blood in time. I think most people would agree that, as immoral as it would be to refuse, the decision is the donor’s to make. And donating blood is far less of a commitment than pregnancy and giving birth. On the other hand, the foetus certainly has the right to life when it becomes a human being it. But it is difficult to objectively mark the transition.

The compromise I’ve thought of is that a woman can insist on the removal of a foetus from her body at any time. But if her intent is to rid herself of the foetus then she has no say in what happens afterward. If the life of the foetus can be sustained then, de facto, the foetus is a baby with full human rights. If the foetus perishes then, sadly, so be it. Technology will be the only resolution to the abortion debate. If it becomes possible to construct artificial wombs, then no woman need undergo an unwanted pregnancy and no foetus need be aborted.

75

I would agree with you Don, if it becomes possible to transplant a fetus or nurture it in some type of artificial womb I think the right to abortion would end with removing the fetus from the mother, she would not be able to stop it from being cared for after that point.

This doesn't resolve the deeper issue over whether a fetus is really a human beign or is yet to become a full human beign. This isn't a trivial problem because just saying abortion should be legal tells us nothing about its morality.

76

Mahalanbois cites a new and different take on the abortion argument:

[C]onsider the following argument, which depends on a contrary-to-fact exaggeration to make its point. It's an argument that pro-choice proponents might use to undermine the belief of some abortion opponents in the absolute inviolability of the fetus's right to life.

Let's ask ourselves what position opponents of abortion — say on the Supreme Court or elsewhere — might take if two biological facts about the world were to change. The first assumption we'll make is that for some unknown reason — a strange new virus, a hole in the ozone layer, some food additive or poison — women throughout the world suddenly become pregnant with 10 to 20 fetuses at a time. The second assumption is that advances in neonatal technology make it possible for doctors to easily save some or all of these fetuses a few months after conception, but if they don't intervene at this time all the fetuses will die.

Abortion opponents who believe that all fetuses have an absolute right to life would surely opt for some intervention. Otherwise, all the fetuses would die.

Their choice would thus be either to adhere to their absolutist position and be overwhelmed by a population explosion of overwhelming magnitude or else act to save only one or a few of the fetuses. The latter choice would be tantamount to abortion since all the fetuses are viable. It would, nevertheless, take someone very, very doctrinaire to opt to have the birth rate increase, at least initially, by a factor of 10 to 20.

This is obviously not a knockdown, airtight argument (although delivered to the right audience, it might result in knock downs). As already noted, however, it's not the usual boilerplate and may induce induce fresh thinking in some people.

The argument's point is that if certain contingent biological facts were to change, then presumably even ardent abortion opponents would change their position, suggesting that their position is itself contingent and not absolute. After this is acknowledged, the haggling over the details might proceed.

http://mahalanobis.twoday.net/stories/1145218/

77

It would, nevertheless, take someone very, very doctrinaire to opt to have the birth rate increase, at least initially, by a factor of 10 to 20.

You would have to assume that men, as well as women (from cradle to grave) would be getting pregnant with 10-20 babies in order to get a factor of 10-20. If only women of child bearing age were getting pregnant, the factor would be much less.

Nice try, though.

78

Ellen

Thank you. I did oppose the invasion of Iraq.

Cool. We probably agree on most things, then!

Maybe someday America will come up with a solution to the "abortion problem" that makes us both happy (or equally unhappy). ;)

79

"I would agree with you Don, if it becomes possible to transplant a fetus or nurture it in some type of artificial womb I think the right to abortion would end with removing the fetus from the mother, she would not be able to stop it from being cared for after that point."

I disagree. If the fetus is not a human being with rights, it is property.

Besides,the last thing I want the state to do is to go to extremes to sustain an unwanted child when we have poor, hungry, breathing, suffering individuals. Eliminate those problems, and we can speak of such frivolity.

80

You would have to assume that men, as well as women (from cradle to grave) would be getting pregnant with 10-20 babies in order to get a factor of 10-20. If only women of child bearing age were getting pregnant, the factor would be much less.

Nice try, though.

You typed too fast Ellen, since men do not get pregnant now todays birth rate only includes women getting pregnant so yes the 10-20 factor is mathematically accurate.

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If the fetus is not a human being with rights, it is property.

Rob, I agree. But which is it? There is no compelling, objective way to decide. And even if the foetus is deemed a human being, there is the question of whether that ought to give to the state the authority to coerce another human being to provide the use of their body, as illustrated by the blood donor example. That’s why I suggest a compromise. Let the woman control what is unambiguously her property but let the extracted foetus survive if possible. I don’t see how not allowing it to survive in such a case would be much different than killing an unwanted baby after normal delivery.

I admit I haven’t thought through all the details. As distasteful as it is to put a price on human life, in a world of finite resources it could make a difference if sustaining the foetus would cost millions of dollars, or if the inevitable result would be a seriously deformed child.

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You typed too fast Ellen, since men do not get pregnant now todays birth rate only includes women getting pregnant so yes the 10-20 factor is mathematically accurate.

Actually, I read too fast ;-)

do you subtract the current birth rate to get that figure? Just asking, since the hypothetical is just that.

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Well let's imagine one woman today who gives birth. Typically she will have one child so the birth rate is 1. (twins etc. are still unusual) If this hypothetical came to pass she would have 10-20. So the rate would increase by a factor of 10-20.

If suddenly men also got pregnant in this hypothetical then the increase would actually be twice as much (20-40) since every woman who had 1 currently would not only have 10-20 in the future but would be joined by a male who had 10-20 as well.

If you check out the site you'll see this guy is very keen on mathematics so I would be very careful with challenging his work on that front (actually he is just quoting another person but still, his mind is really that mathematicallly sharp). But this is probably the least interesting question raised by the hypothetical.

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ok, I understand - I was questioning his math - I was getting the point of understanding it.

Now, how does this relate to killing unborn babies today, in the real world?

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Ellen and pgepps:

Ellen, you took exception to my question "When is the last time you heard an evangelical pundit complaining about the care for the retarded?" by citing examples of Christians adopting impaired children. That was not, however, my point. There are some good people of every religious persuasion that step up to the plate and provide a home for a tiny fraction of those in need. What frustrates me are the pundits (Joe is a minor one) who have a soapbox from which to push their religious/political agenda by exploiting the most helpless in our society for their own gain. Bringing children with birth defects into the abortion discussion is done only for rhetorical flair, not to advance our understanding. It is a way of pretending "pro-lifers" care more about these children more than "pro-choicers" do.

pgepps, you wrote: AndyS makes an argument which has superficial merit disguising its deeply mendacious nature. … AndyS has just told Joe, "If you don't have a plan to solve someone's problems, don't you dare try to save his life!"

What I was saying to Joe was to stop exploiting the weakest in our society to make your point. Unless you are trying to make the case that abortion is immoral except in cases of birth defects — a point that no one is making — using birth defects to bolster your argument is simply the worst sort of propagandizing.

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Ellen, you took exception to my question "When is the last time you heard an evangelical pundit complaining about the care for the retarded?" by citing examples of Christians adopting impaired children. That was not, however, my point.

1) I (personally) don't care what the pundits say - I disagree with them on a lot of points. At least they are not advocating killing the most innocent; or would you say that is the better stance?

2) We had a national organization (the name escapes me right now, but they were at our church for mission Sunday) that "sponsors" children that has a little heard of branch: people have the opportunity to specify that they want to sponsor an impaired child, either in the US or anywhere else.

3) There are few organizations that change social behavior. Mostly, it is individuals that do the work. Grass roots and all that. that is what is happening here.

Organizations don't adopt babies - families do.

Pundits don't sponsor them - churches do.

It's happening, it's just grass roots.

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Now, how does this relate to killing unborn babies today, in the real world?

Well why don't you read the argument. Are you just going to fight the hypothetical or are you willing to explore it?

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Here's another hypothetical - the researcher who is going to cure all forms of cancer is out there somewhere - not born yet...

Who is he/she? Is her/his mother going to abort him?