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Abortion
myrmecophaga
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Posted 12/21/07 - 02:33 PM:
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#51
oligopolist wrote:

I agree, so can abortion be referred to as homicide then when it isn't illegal? I come to the word murder as an honest expression that applies regardless of law or personal belief OUTSIDE of the belief that a fetus isn't life. That is also a valid belief but I don't see the logic behind it.

Homicide is a totally morally un-weighted term, and thus is the one we should use in a debate which includes among other things, morality:

homicide

Function:
noun
Etymology:
in sense 1, from Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin homicida, from homo human being + -cida -cide; in sense 2, from Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin homicidium, from homo + -cidium -cide
Date:
14th century

1 : a person who kills another
2 : a killing of one human being by another



Murder

Function:
noun
Etymology:
partly from Middle English murther, from Old English morthor; partly from Middle English murdre, from Anglo-French, of Germanic origin; akin to Old English morthor; akin to Old High German mord murder, Latin mort-, mors death, mori to die, mortuus dead, Greek brotos mortal
Date:
before 12th century

1: the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought
(2 a: something very difficult or dangerous <the traffic was murder> b: something outrageous or blameworthy <getting away with murder>)


As you can see, murder is a crime, homicide is not. Thus with legal abortion it is not murder but homicide. And only that if you consider an unborn fetus, or indeed zygote (less developed), to be human. I do in as much as it contains human DNA. I do not consider its 'life', however, to follow basics that human life entails- it is emotionless and socially purposeless at this stage.

Note: I quote only the noun murder as it corresponds directly to homicide.

Edited by myremecophaga on 12/22/07 - 01:25 AM
"It would be wrong to call it Patriotism, because the word is so given to misunderstanding. It is better expressed as a concern for your country that runs so deep, you find it physically impossible to switch off and cultivate the garden" -- Lord Deedes.

"Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?"- Henry Ward Beecher
oligopolist
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Posted 12/21/07 - 03:09 PM:
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#52
myremecophaga wrote:
Homicide is a totally morally un-weighted term, and thus is the one we should use in a debate which includes among other things, morality:


So then Abortion is homicide? One who has an abortion, 'has committed homicide."? I am not being argumentitive, I agree. I think homicide is a better term to use than murder as well. Abortion is justified homicide then. How does that work for the rest of the thread?
myrmecophaga
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Posted 12/22/07 - 01:29 AM:
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#53
Essentially it works for the rest of the thread by removing the barrier that we so often have in semantics.

I have yet to see the argument that religion has no place in laws refuted, so I shall assume that there is no disagreement on the point. Until, therefore, somebody argues against abortion from a secular stance, the topic can be considered resolved, I think.
"It would be wrong to call it Patriotism, because the word is so given to misunderstanding. It is better expressed as a concern for your country that runs so deep, you find it physically impossible to switch off and cultivate the garden" -- Lord Deedes.

"Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?"- Henry Ward Beecher
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Posted 12/22/07 - 02:04 PM:
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#54
Oligopolist,
The problem with deontology, and with rational philosophy in general, is that it can force you to defend principles that in the real world can be at times ridiculous. Here we have a very true statement that human life begins at conception -- balanced against a very false statement that the product of human conception is always a human being. It's not necessarily true.

You have said that a fertilized egg constitutes a human being, and therefore termination of that fertilized egg (or what ultimately develops from it) is murder or homicide because it is a human being.

In that case, I have a few human beings that I would like you to meet. All of the following started as a fertilized human egg (and not in some lab -- this is the old fashioned way).

1. Gestational choriocarcinoma
In this disease, which usually results from an aneuploid sperm or egg, the fertilized egg does not develop into an embryo or a fetus, but turns into an undifferentiated invasive and metastatic cancer. This is the sole product of this conception, i.e. there is no fetus. Shown here are a uterus and the brain of a woman who died of metastatic choriocarcinoma; the tumor is clearly visible. By your system, this tumor is a human being; to kill it would be murder or homicide; and the surgeon or oncologist who treats the cancer is a murderer.



2. Hydatidiform mole (aka molar pregnancy)
Another example of a zygote that never develops into a fetus -- it develops into an undifferentiated mass of fetal tissue that can cause severe pre-eclampsia or eclampsia in the mother and be fatal. It can also accumulate genetic errors and become an invasive choriocarcinoma. Here are a couple pictures of this human being. By your scheme the gynecologic surgeon who removed the mole is a murderer.




3. Scleroderma
This is a horrendous autoimmune disease, in which patients get progressive fibrosis (essentially formation of scar tissue) in various parts of their bodies, including their skin, muscle, heart, and lungs. A study of women with scleroderma has identified fetal monocytes in the circulation and the skin lesions of women with scleroderma. They are known to be fetal, because they had Y chromosomes in them. Women don't have Y chromosomes, and they cannot pick them up from their mother before birth. This was true even in women who didn't have a history of ever being pregnant, suggesting that women who become pregnant, even if they lose that pregnancy, can retain a live population of fetal cells in their own bloodstream. The disease arises from an immune response to the fetal cells, which have different HLA antigens. So here's a case in which there is the product of conception, which never becomes a fetus but becomes an undifferentiated population of foreign cells in the mother that induces a terrible chronic disease. Are these cells a human being? If you could kill those cell populations, would that be homicide?

This patient with scleroderma is nearly completely unable to move her fingers, and this is irreversible.


And this is the heart of a scleroderma patient -- the cardiac muscle has been largely replaced by fibrous tissue:


These aren't the only examples; there are some other conditions like teratomas in which a fetus never forms. And this is ignoring the many situations in which a grossly malformed, nonviable fetus develops.

So if you're going to defend the principle that all fertilized eggs are human beings, and that something is a human being if it's developed from a fertilized human egg, then you have to explain how these above examples are human beings, and how that fits into your conception of murder and homicide. If you think (as I do) that it's ridiculous to call a metastatic choriocarcinoma a human being, then you cannot defend the position that a fertilized egg, by definition, is a human being -- which takes you into a gray zone that's not easy to argue from a deontologic perspective.
Paul - http://www.pbase.com/drpablo74

"Everything you can think of is true..." -Tom Waits
myrmecophaga
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Posted 12/22/07 - 02:11 PM:
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#55
A fairly easy problem in my opinion- if you specify healthy fetus(healthy in as much as it is able to become a human) then you surely have no problem.
"It would be wrong to call it Patriotism, because the word is so given to misunderstanding. It is better expressed as a concern for your country that runs so deep, you find it physically impossible to switch off and cultivate the garden" -- Lord Deedes.

"Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?"- Henry Ward Beecher
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Posted 12/22/07 - 06:22 PM:
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#56
I was hoping someone would say that, so we could explore how incredibly complicated your statement is.

Oligopolist's contention is extremely easy philosophically (not that it's uncomplicated -- but it's so well-defined that it's easy to debate). He says (as many do) that a conceptus (a human fertilized egg and anything beyond) is a human being. That defines a human being at an unambiguously fixed biological point; and while one can debate whether the term 'human being' applies, one cannot debate what conception is.

What you have done is negated that position. You've said: "Ok, I guess life doesn't begin at conception -- or at least it cannot 100% reliably be known to begin then if the occasional conceptus will turn into an invasive choriocarcinoma or something. It's only when the fetus is healthy or recognized as such that it is a human being."

So instead of a fixed, easy to identify point, you have a nightmarish infinitude of possibilities in which everyone gets to interpret what constitutes a healthy fetus.

I've given you three examples of a conception that don't even result in a human embryo -> fetus at all.

But I can give you far more examples of human embryos that will never develop into a live-born human being. Say you have an embryo with TNF-alpha deficiency, or with hemoglobin Barts, just two examples of genetic diseases that will produce a non-viable fetus. Most miscarriages are the result of genetic errors in the fetus. And frankly in 2007 there is NO way of knowing in advance which fetus is "healthy" versus which ones have a lethal genetic error that is incompatible with survival even until full term gestation.

And then you have diseases like anencephaly -- a disease in which there is a live-born infant, but the infant doesn't have a brain -- there's a brainstem and a little bit of midbrain, but that's it. Those children will only survive on life support, and they die within a couple years, never able to even breathe off a ventilator -- and they never get a brain. Or children with genetic diseases like trisomy 13 or trisomy 18, or Tay-Sachs disease, or spinal muscular atrophy, (and there are many others), who will all die in childhood.

And then you have diseases that are not 100% fatal in childhood, but have high mortality rates and the children who survive suffer greatly -- like sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, and common variable immunodeficiency. Or ones that don't have a known genetic cause, like tetralogy of Fallot and hypoplastic left heart syndrome, which are major anatomical errors that are lethal in infancy without major surgery.

And then you have diseases that aren't lethal, but result in a very impaired and often shortened life span, like Down syndrome, or Turner syndrome, or Fragile X syndrome, or DiGeorge syndrome.

So where is your cutoff?? What distinguishes a healthy from an unhealthy fetus? You can make as many cogent arguments about this as you want, but you're not in the position of picking an obvious, unambiguous cutoff like conception or birth.

You're also raising an additional problem, that being when do we know that a fetus is healthy? Do we decide based on how the fetus looks at 7 weeks gestation? 10 weeks? 20 weeks? Do we need to base it on ultrasounds? If so, what kind of ultrasound and who is the operator? Do we have to base it on genetic testing? If so do we have to do an amniocentesis or do we have to do chorionic villus sampling? Do you do DNA testing by looking at a karyotype? Looking at likely genes? Or do you have to sequence the entire genome (which has only happened a couple times and takes years to do)?

I'm making the point that healthy can be defined as many ways as there are people in this world. Conception can only be defined one way. So you've killed Oligopolist's deontological argument by basing a moral on something that no one can possibly define.


Look, my wife and I are expecting a baby in about 4 months. We've known she was pregnant ever since she was 7 weeks, and I have loved that baby as a human being ever since that point, irrespective of when the philosophical definition of human being applies. But of course I cannot generalize about this. I mean, we're 33 years old, we've been married a few years, we're professionals, our educations are done, and we had been trying to conceive for over a year. I cannot possibly look at this issue as if I'm wearing the same shoes as people who are carrying a sick fetus, or someone who will take the moral implications of abortion over the personal implications of parenthood.

Furthermore, I define 'healthy fetus' (when known) much more stringently than most. Why? Well, I'm a pediatric subspecialist, and I've seen the worst of the worst diseases that can befall a child. My wife is a radiologist who specializes in prenatal imaging, and she's seen the same. And having taken care of MANY MANY patients with (for example) cystic fibrosis, many of whom have wonderful, productive lives, I also know that if we knew in advance that the child she's carrying would have CF, we would terminate that pregnancy without a second thought. We would never intentionally allow a child to have that kind of life.

But this is consequentialism -- it's a whole world apart from Oligopolist's deontologic point that all fertilized eggs and every conceptus has the same moral significance as a healthy live human.

Edited by Swordfishtrombone on 12/23/07 - 06:44 AM
Paul - http://www.pbase.com/drpablo74

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Posted 12/23/07 - 11:43 AM:
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#57
Swordfishtrombone wrote:
So where is your cutoff?? What distinguishes a healthy from an unhealthy fetus? You can make as many cogent arguments about this as you want, but you're not in the position of picking an obvious, unambiguous cutoff like conception or birth.

Easy, the cutoff is when there is a MORE than reasonable possibility of a specific outcome. It is definitely reasonable to expect a fetus, once conceived, to develop into a human child as our biology most often occurs and intends. It is an exception or failure if it does not, no matter how many cases you know of, it is irrational to claim that a fetus isn't a human because it might fail or go wrong on it's own accord or due to random environment.
When I invest in a CD, it's a CD once I put my money in and the account is created even before it gains any interest, it's still a CD. It's no longer a CD once I terminate it and it no longer exists as an entity.
A plant or tree would be another example, maybe better since it's biological. Once you plant a tomato seed and it germinates, it's a tomato plant. Even as a sprout, it's a little tomato plant. It's alive by all standards that it will ever have. We allow the killing of plants at any age as we do with a fetus but we still call a plant at any age, 'life', and you are still 'killing' one when you terminate it. Just because we morally justify abortion does not mean that it is not killing a human life or that a fetus is not a life , it just means we allow it like we do a plant. We have decided as a society, by a dwindling majority, that the value of a fetus until 20 weeks old is the same as a plant and less than a dog.
Of course we are allowed to kill plants but if you do stomp out all those seedlings, you are 'killing' them and it is called 'herbicide'. None of which is emotionally or morally biased unless made so. When it comes to abortion, a large part of the issue is that a section of society doesn't want to view a fetus as life until a certain point because they don't believe in violence and killing for other reasons but can see the reason for allowing abortions. Instead of reevaluating their morals, they are redefining words to fit their moral view. It's something we do in human society on a regular basis unfortunately.

I came across this while researching information and thought it was interesting. It's from http://www.emedicinehealth.com/abortion/article_e...
emedicine abortion article wrote:

Determining life

When does “life” begin? That is one of the issues surrounding the controversy about abortion. The legal issues are these:

* Loosely defined, the term viability is the ability of the fetus to survive outside the mother’s womb without life support. A number of landmark US Supreme Court decisions dealt with this question. In Webster v Reproductive Health Services (1989), the court upheld the state of Missouri’s requirement for preabortion viability testing after 20 weeks’ gestation (gestation is the period of time a fetus develops in the mother’s uterus, usually 40 weeks). However, there are no reliable or medically acceptable tests for viability prior to 28 weeks' gestation.

* The preamble to this law states that life begins at conception, and the unborn are entitled to the same constitutional rights as all others. By 1992, in a ruling controversial for its inclusion of mandatory waiting periods, elaborate consent processes, and record–keeping regulations, Planned Parenthood v Casey tried to address the issue of viability by inserting language recognizing that some fetuses never attain viability (for example, a developing fetus with certain brain disorders will never live on its own). In Colautti v Franklin, the court overturned a Pennsylvania law requiring doctors to follow specific directives in certain medical cases and recognized the judgment of the doctor in these matters.

The argument you are using to claim a fetus isn't a human life because it might not be a human being yet is pretty similar to the 'insertion of language' attempt made by the state of Pennsylvania to discredit the concept of viability as established in RvWade. So maybe can you see the logic, though morally different, in the argument that some 5 year olds may develop a brain disorder or Leukemia so it should be ok to terminate them and call it an aborted parenthood?

Swordfishtrombone wrote:
But this is consequentialism -- it's a whole world apart from Oligopolist's deontologic point that all fertilized eggs and every conceptus has the same moral significance as a healthy live human.

I didn't state that, you asked me a confined question based on your limited options, not mine. Firstly, I am not concerned with defining 'healthy' or 'Human being' but there is an obvious definition anyways here, which is 'provably' healthy or unhealthy. If you find out something is wrong with your pregnancy, a number of different legal and medical options present themselves that weren't available prior to discovery. We can debate what constitutes a 'human being' by moral standards but not so much in biological terms. That can all be bypassed by reading the rest of what I wrote. The statement I am making is that once conceived, a fetus is life and is human and to abort it is an act of homicide similar to capital punishment. I would be weighing a fetus with the same moral significance as a convicted criminal who has been sentenced to death. I am saying they are both something that society deems rational justified homicides. That's not my personal moral belief of it, just society's according to the law.

http://law.jrank.org/pages/13319/Webster-v-Reprod...
Review of Webster v Repdroductive Health Services
Both Sides Now
Rehnquist announced the Court's decision. While the nine justices took eight separate positions on some of the questions raised, five agreed that Missouri's prohibition of the use of public facilities and public employees to perform or counsel about abortion, as well as its law requiring doctors to perform tests regarding fetal viability, was constitutional. The Court also permitted Missouri to retain its policy statement that human life begins at conception because the statement had no legal effect. [/quote wrote:

Here is what I am trying to say. Human life begins at conception, the law allows the killing of one based on viability, it doesn't dispute whether or not it is a life. The law assumes that an unborn child is appropriated the same rights as any other human being and to terminate one must fit under a specific set of conditions. It is still viewed as a justifiable homicide, but instead of endangerment or intent determining it's legality, it is it's viability and physicians are aloud to determine the 'legality' of the procedure themselves within the given regulations. It becomes an illegal act once it is determined that the fetus could live on it's own without life support. By that standard, we could technically call that 5 year old (1 month old if it makes more sense) with a terminal disease and on life support, "fair game for termination". I rationally don't equate those things because of a MORAL view I have that it IS acceptable to kill an unborn child given certain regulations and not a terminally ill child. It's strictly a moral view however and won't go far in a philosophical or intellectual debate with someone of opposing morals. What I believe will go far is defining as objective of a perspective as possible, such as 'Life begins at conception.' and forgoing the multitude of exceptions and failures that may occur to allow me to redefine it to justify my cause. I mean not entirely, I evaluate and understand what the potential failures are but the state of something doesn't change simply given it's potential, does it? The fact any other creature at any given age can cease to be what it would have been otherwise through disease or mutation doesn't cause the same issue.

From the Supreme Court's syllabus in 'Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey'
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/U...
[quote=Supreme Court's syllabus in 'Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey'
(g) No change in Roe's factual underpinning has left its central holding obsolete, and none supports an argument for its overruling. Although subsequent maternal health care advances allow for later abortions safe to the pregnant woman, and post-Roe neonatal care developments have advanced viability to a point somewhat earlier, these facts go only to the scheme of time limits on the realization of competing interests. Thus, any later divergences from the factual premises of Roe have no bearing on the validity of its central holding, that viability marks the earliest point at which the State's interest in fetal [p836] life is constitutionally adequate to justify a legislative ban on nontherapeutic abortions. The soundness or unsoundness of that constitutional judgment in no sense turns on when viability occurs. Whenever it may occur, its attainment will continue to serve as the critical fact. Pp. 860.

This goes further to support that the law sees a fetus as life, "fetal life", and determines the legality based on dependency not 'life actual' or when 'life' starts. I am not claiming that the legal definition is the way to go, I am pointing out, thoroughly, that the law DOES view a fetus as a life and the allowance of abortion is a form of justified homicide. The state's act of allowance is not any indicator of the living status or definition of a fetus, simply it's judgment based on social climate. The main argument that has been used to capture the 'pro-choice' crowd has nothing to do with the fetus at all. The primary language used by Kennedy and the other voices on this matter have tried to convince everyone that a woman's 'right' to have an abortion is why woman are more equal in today’s society and that without it woman can't be a functioning member of society because, "They state can tell them they HAVE to carry a pregnancy to full term.", and therefore are slaves. See, now THAT is a distorted use of semantics in every for imaginable and a complete disservice to women's rights. It's a woman's right to vote and representation that by any definition makes her equal to another in our society. It was WW2 and women joining the labor/work force that started the push. When the men came back, the women wanted to keep working. It wasn't until 3 decades later that USING THE RIGHT TO VOTE women were able to change the way abortion is perceived. It's absolutely demented to think that a woman's 'right's' are maintained by her right to kill her unborn child. I know this isn't your argument Swordfish but it is the majority of the argument I hear unfortunately and needs to be addressed as well.

I think my goal here as in most cases is to attempt to get everyone to take another step back and getter a better view of the bigger picture. I think it is almost always beneficial to do so but there have been exceptions. In this case we are talking about the emotional charge of words like murder or homicide being used for abortion. My main point still remains that those who view it as murder, aren't doing it to create an emotional charge in someone else, it's simply how they view it. We have shown how difficult it is to define murder vs. homicide even using the same dictionaries, lol. Both sides seem to agree that murder/homicide/killing is wrong, it's in their coping skills that we find a difference. One side sticks to 'killing is wrong unless justified, abortion isn't justified so abortion is wrong.', while the other goes with 'killing is wrong, abortion is justified so abortion must not be killing therefore a fetus must not be a life and an abortion is a matter of a woman's right to freedom." (That is the order in which that was derived. An unborn child was universally considered life until we decided we had to find a way to justify abortion) Just stepping back and seeing how it all came about is enough to through serious circumstantial evidence against the validity of the 'pro-choice' argument. Basing science and logic on the words of Ted Kennedy is a BAD idea. smiling face Why not just call it what it is, justified homicide and argue it under that pretense? I have made a lot of headway with die hard religious friends with that argument. No one has been reborn and decided to embrace the concept but they have at least agreed on the legality of the issue, which is as good as it gets. The general argument I propose is, if abortion is wrong in the eyes of God, it isn't as clearly defined in our societies as he's allowed them to be so it must be an issue for God to resolve, not man and his courts. Again, no conversions but it's a valid point that not all biblical concepts are clear enough to be law, even for them.

Thank you for extending a genuine relationship and understanding. I too am 30, married and excited/terrified about kids. I have had friends who have had abortions and friends who morally could not. I have been through the process as much as I can be and admit that my participation was in an act of justified homicide. It was partly my irresponsible behavior and lack of concern for the consequences that created one of the situations and I was at the clinic during the procedure also proving in complete fact that someone, even the doctors, are effected by the decision, not just the woman. It is my responsibility to be honest about the situation so I may learn from it and not continue the pattern of irresponsible behavior, which I have successfully done. Lying to myself about what to call it is a step away from that and towards denial. I indict myself along with any woman responsible as well as the other fathers and doctors involved, so it isn't in self interest or in a slanderous view of women in any way. I simply believe that the ongoing effort in our society to remove responsibility and truth for the sake of agenda is a tragic error.
myrmecophaga
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Posted 12/23/07 - 01:35 PM:
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#58
"swordfishtrombone" wrote:
So where is your cutoff?? What distinguishes a healthy from an unhealthy fetus? You can make as many cogent arguments about this as you want, but you're not in the position of picking an obvious, unambiguous cutoff like conception or birth.


You argue that there are many terminal illnesses that a child can be born with- in all these cases the child is still recognisable as a human. Whenever someone is diagnosed with a terminal disease, it has no bearing on the fact that they are human.

How do we attempt to decide when it is human and when it is not? I propose a simple, straightforward method:
Any baby, child or adult that we would recognise as a human being is (obviously) human.
We can define it that if a cell or group of conjoined cells have the potential to become the above, then they are a human.
If neither of the two points above can provably never be fulfilled, then the 'object' in question is not human.
If the above points do not decide whether the 'object' is human, then we consider it as such, as there is a chance it is fulfilling the second point.
"It would be wrong to call it Patriotism, because the word is so given to misunderstanding. It is better expressed as a concern for your country that runs so deep, you find it physically impossible to switch off and cultivate the garden" -- Lord Deedes.

"Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?"- Henry Ward Beecher
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Posted 12/23/07 - 06:29 PM:
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#59
You're still proposing something that people must agree on. And that is a conundrum. There is very little controversy in CONCEPTION, or BIRTH, or DEATH, or for that matter PREGNANCY. Those are what they are.

For something to be RECOGNIZABLE AS HUMAN, you need to LOOK using technology, and you need agreement -- and who is it who gets to agree? Obstetricians? Radiologists? Embryologists? Philosophers?

If your standard is "healthy", or "recognizable as human", or "stands a good chance of survival", then you have put forth a purely qualitative standard that is subject to myriad interpretations. It may be easy for you, it may be easy for me in my own way, but you're not going to find much concensus. Besides, even with the point "recognizable as human", well, human fetuses have gills (branchial clefts, really) and a tail during part of embryogenesis and that is completely normal. In fact our ears develop out of one set of gills.

Legal definitions are of little bearing to philosophy because they are inconsistent, they are compromises based on group opinion, and they are fixed in the context of their time. Furthermore, court decisions are also of little bearing to philosophy because they are decisions about specific cases and it's only through juridicial inference that they can be applied more broadly.

At any rate, my point wasn't to give my own answer here. It was merely to show that CONCEPTION while well-defined is not free of problems philosophically (let alone ethically or practically). And everything else between conception and birth is non-quantitative, subjective to some degree, and is identifiable only based on the technology one uses for observation. And that makes it a real gray zone when you're trying to have a conversation about it.
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Posted 12/25/07 - 04:11 AM:
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Recognisable as a human was a poor expression of living homo sapiens outside the womb, essentially you and me.
"It would be wrong to call it Patriotism, because the word is so given to misunderstanding. It is better expressed as a concern for your country that runs so deep, you find it physically impossible to switch off and cultivate the garden" -- Lord Deedes.

"Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?"- Henry Ward Beecher
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