[Vision2020] What if other cartoonists . .(fetus image didnotforward)

[Gier, Nicholas]

Hi Jay,

You did not answer my initial question.  Would you protect the life of the fetus in the image?  At the low resolution of a sonogram, a woman would not be able to tell the difference between the chimp and the human fetus. Looking like a human being, having a heart rate, or having minimal brain waves has nothing to do with being a moral and legal person.

Lower or higher birth rates make no difference, because the rate is abortions per 1,000 women. Why don't you admit that it is good (sometimes graphic) sex education, shame-free and wide use of contraceptives, and a healthier view of sex overall? Conservative 
Americans are against all of these.

Whether you like it or not, philosophical "bantering" has determined law and morality since the time of the Greeks. Using Aristotle's own trimester divisions of plant, animal, and rational soul, the Catholic Church set canon law on abortion until 1917.  St. Thomas Aquinas, whom Pope Pius IX declared as infallible, used Aristotle and concluded that the fetus is not a person until the "completion its being."

English Common Law also followed philosophers and the judges who read them. Sir Edward Coke agree with Aquinas but other legal philosophers chose "quickening in the womb" as the cut-off point.  But of course all animal fetuses quicken in the womb, so that cannot establish a difference between animals and humans.

The difference between a legal and moral person and a biological species is not a "nice little" difference that philosophers have made up.  Since the time of Aristotle his definition of a person has been the foundation of secular and religious law on abortion. There is no grey area between the two categories: a being is either a person or not.

I agree with you that life is a continuum, but if it were just life that was at issue, then we would have to protect animal life as well. But there is explosive brain development in the fetal brain between 25-33 weeks (the third trimester) that indicates what Aquinas would call the "infusion of the rational soul"--a human person. (See two slides of the fetal brain attached.) The 1973 Supreme Court decision, although argued on different and weaker grounds, protects the fetus up to that time.

As I wrote in a recent column (did you read it?), new knowledge about the emotional and rational intelligence of animals (even parrots and crows) blows away Aristotle's theory.  I now hold that personhood should be granted any being that feels pain.  The best science on that subject concludes that the fetus does not feel pain until the third trimester, so Roe v. Wade is still good law in terms of the cut-off point.  

By the way, a conceptus is not a child, the zygote is not a child, and a first trimester fetus is not a child.  My questions were not loaded, but your language certainly is.

I agree that ordinary people (even UI philosophy professors) cannot and should not decide this crucial issue, but the best philosophers, scientists, and legal experts should, and I am confident that they will not agree with you and other anti-abortionists.

Thanks for the dialogue,

Nick








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