I see that Lance Mannion has taken up the question of when “life” begins. I see that Shakespeare’s Sister mostly agrees with Lance; Jedmunds of Pandagon mostly doesn’t.
Now I want to confuse everyone by arguing that “when life begins” is the wrong question. It’s the wrong question because life doesn’t begin. Or, at least, it hasn’t begun on this planet in a very long time. However life got to Earth — between 3 and 4 billion years ago, I believe — once it established it hasn’t been observed to “begin” again. It just continues, expressing itself in countless forms. The forms come and go — in a sense — but not life itself.
It will be argued that fertilization marks the beginning of a unique individual and is, therefore, a significant moment in the life process — the point when a life begins. But let’s say a couple of weeks later the egg divides into twins or triplets. Did those individuals’ lives begin with the conception? Or, since they didn’t exist as individuals at conception, is the cell division something like an existential reboot?
Further, in the grand scheme of things, is any one moment really separable from all the other moments, the couplings, the countless episodes of cell mitosis going back to the first stromatolites and microbes and macromolecules to the beginning, which is beginningless as far as I know, considering that a stray enzyme at any point over billions of years would have resulted in you being a lungfish?
I don’t have an answer to that. I’m just sayin’ “beginnings” are way overrated.
The real question, seems to me, is when does an individual begin? Is there a clear, bright moment at which we can all agree, “yep, that’s Fred,” and be done with it?
Some argue that the product of pregnancy is a unique individual from conception because its DNA is different from its mother’s. But if unique DNA combinations are what make a unique individual, you’d have to conclude that the twins from the third paragraph are the same person, divided. And if we give you a transplanted heart, lung, and kidney, each with unique DNA combinations from their respective donors, does that make you four different people?
I don’t think science can help us with this one, people. Indeed, if you step back and look at human civilization throughout space and time, you might notice that “person” is a social construct that has been constructed in very different ways by different societies. At various times only men, or only people of a certain skin color, or only people from our tribe, or only people of a particular caste or class, were considered “persons.” We may think we have reached maximum enlightenment by considering all human beings “persons” (assuming we all do, which I question), but it’s possible our distant descendants will expand “person” to include, say, other primates, whales, dolphins, and border collies. You never know.
The argument made by many opponents to legal abortion is that the product of pregnancy is human life, and human life is sacred; therefore, it must be protected. There’s no question that a living human embryo is both alive and human, but when you call it “sacred” you’re throwing a religious concept into the mix. And the great religions of the world do not at all agree on the question of when (or even whether) “human life” becomes “sacred.” Some say at conception, some say at “quickening,” some say at viability, some say at birth. And some will tell you that everything and nothing are equally sacred, so stop asking stupid questions.
The reason we’re even having this discussion is to settle the question of abortion as a matter of law. But as a legal matter, the question of when humans are allowed to take the lives of other humans rarely has absolutist answers. Some kind of regulation about who can kill whom is necessary for civilization, since we can’t very comfortably live together in communities without some assurance our neighbors won’t throttle us in our sleep. But there are always loopholes. Through history, in many societies (even Christian ones), a noble could kill a peasant or slave without penalty. Today governments can order wars or impose a death penalty, and legally that’s not murder.
I tend to get impatient with people who argue that laws are based on morality, and abortion is immoral, therefore it ought to be illegal. As I said in the last paragraph, there are some laws essential to human civilization. These laws regulate who can kill whom and who can own what. They make commerce possible by imposing penalties for fraud. They make complex human enterprises possible by enforcing contracts. Exactly how law has regulated these matters has changed considerably over time; the important point is that, within a given society, there are basic rules everyone is supposed to agree to so that society can function.
The realm of morality, however, is separate from the realm of legality. There are all manner of things that we might consider immoral that are not, in fact, illegal; adultery is a good example. Such acts may have harmful personal consequences, but regulating them isn’t necessary to civilization. And I don’t see what’s immoral about, say, misjudging how many coins you should put in the parking meter. That’s why I tend to see the legal versus moral question on a Venn diagram. The diagram here isn’t entirely accurate since the blue area should be bigger — law and morality intersect more often than they don’t. I’m just saying that answering the moral question of abortion (assuming we ever will) does not tell us whether an act should be legal or not. In fact, since abortion is legal (with varying restrictions) in most democratic nations today with no discernible damage to civilization itself, I’d say the abortion question falls outside the blue area of the diagram.
On the question of morality I disagree a lot with Ezra Klein when he says “confused polling on abortion is evidence that Americans have confused views on abortion.” I think people are not so much confused as limited. Our conceptions of life or humanity or individuality or the self are to a large extent conditioned into us by our culture. It’s very hard to step outside of our conditioning and take a broader view. We’re all blind men feeling an elephant — our ideas about what an elephant is depend on what particular part we happen to be feeling (an elephant is like a a tree trunk? a wall? a fan?). Following this metaphor, there are all manner of people in America today who do not feel confused at all about that elephant. They’ve got hold of its trunk, and they are certain it’s just like a snake. End of argument.
If anything, most people aren’t confused enough.
Our notions of where a fetus fits on the morality scale depend very much on the angle from which we view the question. A fetus is human. But humans are sentient, and a fetus is (so science tells us) insentient. A fetus is like a parasite, or a lower life form. A fetus is God. A fetus is a baby. A fetus is not a baby. A fetus is a potential baby. A fetus is sacred. Nothing is sacred. Everything is sacred.
How about, All of the above?
In case you’re wondering, from a Buddhist perspective it might be argued that since a “person” is an aggregate of the five skandhas (form, sensation, perception, discrimination, consciousness) and an embryo or fetus has only form, it’s not a person. On the other hand, Buddhism teaches that each of us is all of us, throughout space and time. The cells of whatever is conceived contain all life forms, from the beginningless beginning to the endless end, perfect and complete. Interfering with life’s attempts to express itself is a serious matter.
So where does that leave us? It leaves us with individuals who have to make hard choices. Struggling with hard choices is a distinctively human activity. I think it’s something we need to do to be fully human. It helps us wake up. The decisions we make may be less important than the fact that we can make decisions.
I have written in the past (such as here) why I think abortion should be legal, at least until the fetus is viable. My opinion is based mostly on the effects of abortion law in the lives of women. You might notice I don’t spin my wheels much over the question of morality, since I’ve come to see that morality depends on the state of mind in which one acts as much as the act itself. People do “good” things for selfish reasons, and “bad” things for altruistic reasons. Judge not, lest ye be judged.
So, I say, ambiguity is good for you; don’t be afraid of it. Go forth and be human and work it out for yourselves.
[Note: The title of the post refers to the first koan of The Mumonkon. If it doesn’t make any sense to you, that’s OK.]
I happen to be in an ethics class( yes I’m a little old for this but another degree would help) and it is all men and 2 women (older people getting certified.). I had to do a presentation on an ethical issue and chose emergency contraception. From the questions asked- I ‘ve decided that your average 30-50 year old man does not know enough about the basic biology of this to even make a decision much less be passing laws. Their ignorance is dangerous. Levonorgestrel, by the way, acts to inhibit ovulation therefore there is no ethical problem ie no abortion.
I ‘ve decided that your average 30-50 year old man does not know enough about the basic biology of this to even make a decision much less be passing laws.
If they could get pregnant they’d probably get interested enough to learn, huh?
With all the medical research we are capable of in this day and age, it’s interesting how little we seem to focus on (or hear about) this basic, age-old question, isn’t it?
Outstanding!
What were the laws regarding abortion during the the time the Framers were drafting the Constitution? Both here and in Europe? And what rights were given children, much less fetuses?
Law and morality is an interesting issue. A lot of Anglo-American civil law does not reflect moral concerns, but rather seeks to provide an adequate remedy for a damage suffered. While tort remedies do include punitive damage awards, their purpose is to deter similar behavior by other tortfeasors which is not deemed in the public interest. Contract remedies are strictly for loss resulting from the breach of contract.
Criminal law is where morality tends to creep in; the drug laws which are criminalizing black males are driven in part by a puritan morality (Wonder who benefits by having large numbers of black males in the criminal justice system on drug charges?).
Yes, if men could get pregnant, we’d know a lot more about the process. If white people were black, there’d be a lot less complaining about affirmative action. And if women were men, they’d cut us a little slack on our vast swaths of ignorance.
Will they make it illegal for a woman impregnated in one state to go have an abortion in a place where it is legal?
It seems like a natural extension of their logic. The father has rights in the child as well.
Is that what they are going to do?
What were the laws regarding abortion during the the time the Framers were drafting the Constitution? Both here and in Europe?
English common law didn’t criminalize abortion until “quckening,” or the point mid-pregnancy when the infant is felt to be kicking. I believe that was pretty common in Europe. In the U.S. abortion didn’t become illegal in the states until the late 19th century.
Will they make it illegal for a woman impregnated in one state to go have an abortion in a place where it is legal?
I believe some state legislatures already have such bills written up, if not enacted.
Will those opposing abortion fight just as hard to support unwed mothers? I haven’t seen that in the past. To me, it is just another way to separate the classes. The wealthy will go to another state or country if they they want an abortion. The poor will have to suffer. I have an elderly aunt who has always loved children.
She always wanted children, but found herself single and pregnant back in the 40s. She went to some kitchen table somewhere
and then almost died from the home remedy. The complications from that abortion made it so she could never have children.
I don’t want that for my children. I don’t want some old geezer deciding what they can or can’t do either. If they want to reduce abortions, they should support laws pro people having children.
They can get busy and help unwed mothers. I believe in separation of church and state.
It Didn’t Work
William F. Buckley at National Review, less than a year after Rich Lowry’s cover article “We’re Winning.”
Too delicious not to pass around.
http://www.nationalreview.com/buckley/buckley200602241451.asp
If the penalty for killing a fetus is less than the penalty for killing a child, that implies that a fetus is somehow less than a child in the eyes of the law.
Either a fetus has the full rights of a human being or it doesn’t.
South Dakota has the death penalty, and since we are talking about a conspiracy to commit murder, I think a 5 year sentence for the doctor doesn’t make any sense.
If two people conspire to kill a child, that is murder, usually considered heinous, and often results in capital punishment.
I think we should urge the South Dakota legislature to include death penalty provisions for any woman and any doctor who conspire to kill a fetus.
My history isn’t very good; but, I recollect that during the framers’ time, the wife and children were considered property of the husband. Not sure what that does to the argument. It seems that the efforts to make abortion illegal have reminiscences of this property idea. I still believe that if abortion is made illegal, then ALL parties should be held criminally liable, which includes the father–not just the woman and the doctor.
A related ethical question is ‘What is a Clone?” (As I have not taken Ethics, it could be related only in my imagination.)
Is a clone a person or is it property? If property, is the property of the person being cloned or that of the person requesting the procedure? Is a clone the sibling or the child of the person cloned? What is the difference between a clone and a twin? If a clone is made without permission, is this rape, property theft (of DNA at the least), or copyright infringement?
Plenty of late-night B.S. sessions here.
Great post Barbara.
The very sad truth is that regardless of the major problems facing our nation, the abortion issue may well determine the outcome of the next presidential election.I make it a point to watch religious programs on the tube, and most of the preachers place abortion alongside murder.
OT, but a great read, http://commondreams.org/views06/0225-29,html
Pratrap Chatterjee explains the Dubai Ports connection.
I feel so dirty now….
There’s a reason only 750,000 live in SD. Many who settled the prairie states were a little shall we say strange but strange was good if you lived in a sod hut miles from anyone. Get in to some hella conversations with people from the mountains and prairies after they been out there along time alone if you like that sort of thing. If not, there are diner/greasyspoons best avoided.
I don’t post that often on abortion but some may find some of this worth reading:
“No one wants to have an abortion. Every woman should have the right to have an abortion. No one else should count. Pro-choicers are no where near as bad as those who insist on imposing their ‘morals’ on others. Laws, perforce, need be based on those things we the people agree on. There is reason for concern if there are too many having abortions. If it becomes apparent that there are too many abortions within a group the reason should be ascertained and solution for the underlying problem sought. Bit like poverty. The thing that causes poverty is lack of jobs but too many want to blame the poor and many would no doubt like to make being poor a crime. Too many trying to affix blame to the individual when too often the individual is the victim. Most women can at least envision themselves in a position where they might need to have an abortion. It’s the males pontificating about abortion that piss me and JC off.
How does it come to be that a bunch of men come here to discuss abortion (some seem to have brought their own god with them), a subject that is manifestly none of their business but rather one that should be decided solely by women? Surely, each’s the first to: change a diaper , get up at night, comfort the sick child, read a bedtime story and play with the children; support assistance that ensures proper nutrition and healthcare for needy children; counseling for troubled and the less competent parent(s), and for headstart programs; be most knowledgeable of human reproduction and the female reproductive system including the role of the menstrual cycle; encourage each of his daughters toward limitless horizons and insist they be giving equal opportunity. And, when Publius pens the piece on unwanted children, he’ll be first to demand that all steps be taken to provide a secure loving environment that ensures each and every such child equal opportunity.
The unborn is part and parcel the mother. All decisions pertaining thereto, too, part and parcel the mother.
Propagation of the species, for humans, perforce entails successfully rearing an offspring to reproductive age und so weite. So for each generation, the mother has far far more to do with this than the offspring. For humans, propagation of the species is not currently a problem, but for say polar bears, now that’s a different matter. For the propagation of polar bears which the more important, the mother or the cub?
For those who do believe that life begins with conception and I don’t include myself in that group, I ask this question:
If a woman suffers a miscarriage, do they feel that a death certificate should be issued?
Also, I don’t know the details of the South Dakota bill to ban abortion statewide, but from what I’ve read, it allows an abortion only to save a woman’s life. I wonder how this will be determined. What about the woman’s mental health, especially if she has been raped or the victim of incest?
Are those who rape and commit incest important to the survival of the species?
Are those who rape and commit incest important to the survival of the species?
Not OUR species. Whooping cranes, maybe.
I read Lance Mannion’s post yesterday and I was a little dismayed with some of it. No, I do not think men should be required (by law, I assume) have a say in whether the woman they impregnated can have an abortion, because the law cannot guarantee a fair, honest and equitable relationship between a man and a woman. Good luck. Yes, I do think it is an attempt to “shame” a woman to insist to her that she is killing her child, and that no one has the right to shame stranger in that matter, for this essential reason: ABORTION IS A RELIGIOUS ISSUE.
Whether or not the fetus is a person, and whether or not Lance Mannion, maha, I, or the wooden-headed governor of South Dakota think it is or isn’t, is a matter of personal spiritual belief. Should we agree that it’s OK to “shame” a stranger for having spiritual beliefs that differ from ours? I was saddened to see that Lance apparently thinks so. That’s Michelle Malkin territory. But then, I think Lance was missing the point, which maha once again nails perfectly, here.
If “religious” people are going to support the obcenity of war without attenuating their so called religious beliefs, they gotta feel good about something.
Between the right of men to kill anyone they please on the battlefield, and the right of women to control their own bodies,
it’s clear which of the two the majority of the worlds religions choose, time after time.
The worlds preeminent religious mantra: Our enemies bleed, our women breed.
If the woman is not permitted to have an abortion in the case of rape, would the rapist be allowed “parental rights” once he is released from prison? Could he demand that the child be brought to prison to visit him? Could the rapist’s parents demand grandparent rights?
How many woman in S. Dakota were involved in the authorship of the bill to ban abortions?
Good post, Barbara. Thanks, first of all, for ditching the “when does life begin” meme that is the intellectual equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard. And thanks for going in interesting directions from there. Like you say, the question is about personhood, not life; life is continuous. Live egg, live sperm, live fertilized egg.
The only thing I can think of to add is: without brains, we aren’t people. This is meant in the literal sense – scoop the brains out of my head, and all that’s left of ‘me’ is a body, a body no longer inhabited by a person.
So it goes without saying that the fertilized egg, the embryo, the early-stage fetus before the brain forms is unambiguously not a person. Maybe that only covers the first six weeks or so after conception, but if they wind up getting abortions banned and we have to start back from zero, ISTM that this is where we start: by saying that there should be an absolute right to abortion during those first weeks, on exactly those grounds.
What I find interesting in the question of when does life begin/abortion is the question of when does it end. The Terry Shrivo(sp?) process was the playing out of this other end of the issue. To allow Terry to die (cease to have the chemical reactions of life) was to acknowledge that there is something more to life than just a body producing and consuming energy. Once you accept that, then life does not begin at the moment of conception.
I also wonder how much of the various thinking we have today about life (animal rights included) are the result of moving from an agricultural society where one killed life for food to one of industrial where we are removed from the killing for food.
Dan, I think that last paragraph of yours is an important window onto a huge aspect of this.
Seventy-five years ago, my ancestors — mostly Hoosier farmers — made life-and-death decisions literally every day. Wringing a chicken’s neck for dinner. Butchering pigs. Putting down the runt puppy. Sexing the cockerels out of the nests. Taking a foundering horse out of its misery. Hunting varmint raccoons and tanning their pelts for sale. Bringing home a choice buck in the fall for your winter meat.
This daily acquaintance with death made them very comfortable with their own authority to make decisions about what lives, and what dies. I have no doubt that if abortion had been available, they might have viewed it in a similar light. You don’t bring more kids into the world than you can feed. God makes a lot of life; but it doesn’t all deserve to be nurtured to adulthood. And we, as humans, are empowered to do some of that choosing — because our own survival depends on it.
When we lost that intimate connection with our food supply, we lost that sense of authority — as well as our confidence in the ability to make those choices responsibly (which my great-grandparents also took careful pride in). The abortion debate rages now because some people don’t trust other people to make the kinds of life-and-death choices Americans once made almost instinctively.
What a wonderful article. Deeply insightful.
Britwit asked, “If a woman suffers a miscarriage, do they feel that a death certificate should be issued?”
Well, I had a stillbirth in NYC and because he never “lived” we received neither a birth certificate, nor a death certificate either.
And on a creepier note, I had a friend who had a baby very prematurely (with a severe birth defect), who because the baby lived for 15 minutes outside the uterus received a child tax credit.
In my instance, we did not.
Isn’t that creepy and indicative all at the same time.
The truth is that one in three pregnancy ends not in a live child, either through early or late miscarraige, stillbirth or a nonviable child.
Nothing the law will dictate can change this fact of life.
Only when we all wake up and acknowledge the truth about this fact will we stop thinking we can dictate life and death.
Lastly, I have two daughters and am pregnant as I write. When I first found out I was pregnant this time, I just couldn’t have an abortion, my stillbirth changed how I feel about pregnancy for me.
But let me be clear, for all people to be free, women must have the right to choose: to continue or to end a pregnancy.
This move to criminalize abortion in South Dakota is a terrible thing.
Extraordinarily well written. There’s a lot of biology going on, some of which I cover in a blog entry of mine.
I found the word “ensoulment” to be a useful one when separating out the religious viewpoint from the biological one—and in order to be consistent, apparently the soul requires a hollow center in which to take up a permament residence.
I am male. I will never ever be presented with a situation that some women must face. I don’t like the idea of abortion, personally, and that is exactly why I will always support a woman’s right to choose.
Stephanie…it’s thoughtfulness and gravitas like yours that makes me feel better about the world in general. Thank you for sharing that.
Kudos Barbara! Your Blog has truly blossomed…….You have the company of some special people.
Bill Maher says life begins when you fuck someone.
I’ve always thought it along the lines of bizarre that a person could, on the one hand, say it was ok to go to war and kill strangers who you don’t even know or to sentence a criminal to death out of revenge but when a woman is unable or unwilling to become a mother for what ever reason she may have, they draw the line and call this a moral sin… Murder. Killin is killin folks and revenge is the basest of emotions. Yet we have legalized it in America and cling to it with a tenacity only found in psychopaths. We are the only civilized nation left on the planet that still uses the death penalty. We’re up their with Saudie Arabia and Iran on this one. War? The whole concept of killing men, women and children you don’t even know for some grand ideal. What ideal could be so great that it would call for the murder of strangers? This concept is even more bizarre than killing for revenge. What, killing strangers is ok as long as I’m imposing my beliefs or my system of government on them?
Britwit, in answer to some of the questions you posed in comment #24, the main sponsor of South Dakota’s abortion ban was state senator Julie Bartling. A Democrat, no less. Women are often the (nominal) heads of, or spokespersons for, anti-abortion groups in the U.S. Christian fundinazis come in both genders, you know.
It has already happened in the U.S. that rapists have tried to claim paternity rights over the offspring of their crimes. I don’t know that any such rights have ever been granted, but I would say that that level of insanity can’t be far off.
I can’t make heads or tails out of the first koan…But I find as I grow older I’m re-examining the basis for many of my moral values and can see that i’ve carried through life a lot of unnecessary religious guilt and social pressure imposed upon me by other’s values. One challenging work in the re-examing process was John Stuart Mill’s essay on Liberty. He points out that our freedom in expression is bound by a social pressure where the exchange of ideas is limited by the acceptance of a morality held by the overwheming majority. Meaning that to question your own morality openly becomes taboo if it is contrary to the accepted norm. For instance, take the issue of polygamy and try to engage in a meaningful dialog to seek understanding, and you will invaribly encounter an unreasoned arguement in opposition based on morality as opposed to reason. Much like the abortion issue.
I quess my point is that like the barrier in the first koan the object is to overcome that force that holds us back from true freedom in knowing who we are and to see that sometimes morality without understanding can be a form of slavery.
If Onanism becomes federal crime…I’ll be looking at a death penalty.
#30 God of Biscuits…
You’re welcome.
I have no clue what Julie Bartling is doing on this issue. She is in the district adjacent to ours and with court ordered redistricting may be in ours in the coming election. I don’t think she or the other Democrats who voted for the bill had a whole lot to do with design or motivation, but I may be mistaken. This bill is Roger Hunt’s baby and it is a baby born with a silver spoon in its mouth. Some of the Democrats voted for it because they are Catholics before they are Democrats. The distinction made at this blog is something they have apparently been unable to grasp. We in South Dakota have had the “abortion is immoral” idea hammered into us for years. The media and the schools are quite conservative..
And, I “borrowed” the Venn diagrams and a couple paragraphs for Dakota Today. Thanks.
.
A couple of points about science/biology:
You state that “humans are sentient, and a fetus is (so science tells us) insentient.” I’m not aware that science has even done a particularly stellar job of defining what sentience IS, much less whether a fetus is or is not sentient.
One other point about people who equate DNA to identity: Many people do NOT have a single genetic profile which is identical in all of their cells. (Certainly, to some degree NONE of us do, because some cells don’t have DNA at all.) In cases of mosaicism, individuals have a mix of two (or more) genetic types. If unique DNA is the definition of a “new life,” then these people should be considered to be “thourougly mixed” twins, even though mosaicism is generally only detectable through genetic testing….
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001317.htm
The title of the post makes no sense to me. But that’s OK.
I enjoyed the refreshing pespective. Reminds me of my ethics and philosophy books. They always present so many interesting viewpoints until you realize they are worthless to you. And you are left, happily, with your own decisions. That is how you know true wisdom. You find you don’t need it, that it refers you back to yourself, and provides no Musts.
And you are left, happily, with your own decisions.
I understand that social psychological studies of conservatives find they tend to have “ambiguity” issues — e.g., intolerance of ambiguity, uncertainty avoidance, need for cognitive closure. So when they go about trying to make everyone else follow their moral rules they are acting out their own neuroses.
The title of the post makes no sense to me. But that’s OK.
It’s really a bad title; something like a Zen in-joke.
Comming out of lurk
Why is it the woman is the “evil do-er” when there is a pregnancy, wanted or not?
Beside the biological arguements, it is the woman who is blamed, it is the woman who society hoists the raising, it is the woman who is “loose, a whore, etc,” it is the woman who is the butt of jokes and repulsion.
If, and that is a big IF, the law was changed to include rape and incest, that will not be any great favor. OK, rape/incest? Prove it! No abortion will be allowed unless rape or incest can not be proven. Rape/incest will be proved only over time, probably several months. Which will put the pregnancy into the “to late, baby” catagory. And of course we must consider the parental rights of the future father. And the mental health of the mother? I can see confinement in a mental hospital for the good and safety of the mother. We wouldn’t want the mother to harm herself or the child would we?
I am old enough to know what it was like before birth control and women’s right to choose. Most young women have no clue of the threat to their autonomy, privacy and health they are facing.
Maha, your article was spectacular. Nothing is simple.
Leviticus 17:11 “For the life of a creature is in the blood.” Blood doesn’t show up in a fetus until approximately week 8.
How can it be a crime for a doctor to perform an abortion but not for a woman to have one? If mom hires someone to “terminate” her baby a moment after its born, that’s murder and solicitation to commit murder. According to the pro-lifers, there’s no difference between murder after birth and abortion before birth, so how can it be a crime afterwards to pay someone to do it but not a crime beforehand? Highlights the inconsistancy (and illogic) of their position.
A Methodist minister here in Chicago made an excellent point just after the 2004 election–that we don’t consider a fetus a person when there’s a miscarriage in the early stages of pregnancy. We don’t name it or give it a funeral.
http://makethemaccountable.com/articles/Christian_moral_values.htm
And as to men getting pregnant, listen to Granny Bee’s commentary, “Abortion for Men”.
http://makethemaccountable.com/gran/index.htm
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
Oh, and this is for those who think it couldn’t possibly be possible to impregnate men.
Wikipedia: Ectopic Pregnancy
A case in England in August 2005 in which a fetus in an ectopic pregnancy was successfully carried to term and delivered by Caesarean section is an example of a very rare medical event, possible only when the site of implantation is outside the Fallopian tube – in this instance, the abdomen. The woman and the medical staff were unaware of her condition until she delivered. There are only a dozen or so known cases of this in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ectopic_pregnancy
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
“Are those who rape and commit incest important to the survival of the species?”
“Not OUR species. Whooping cranes, maybe. ”
Of course it’s important to the cranes, why do you think they whoop so much?
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What a great article and 40 some thoughtful comments but until the corporate media brings this sort of enlightened debate to the hungry masses (who are at this moment checking N-CAR lap times or taking notes on smart home decorating tips or preparing to be fed the latest antidote against thought by organized religion) we are pissing in the ocean. Now, where did I put my cool camo trousers