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

[Jay Borden]

Would I protect the life of the fetus in the image?  No... but I feel
the question isn't fair to the scenario.    (Yes, I get it... I say
"Yes", and then you shout "AH-HA! It's an animal!"    Sort of the "I
can't believe it's not butter/their actually drinking Folger's coffee"
type of trap).

 

If holding up any photo was enough to prove a point, then this probably
wouldn't even be a part of the discussion.  It's the CONNECTION that
matters.  (If the image was connected to the PERSON, i.e. "this is the
life that's growing inside you", you have connected the dots on
something VERY REAL, and not something generic (i.e., your photograph).
High-quality, low quality... perhaps having the mother listening to the
HEARTBEAT as the child is in the womb is enough to create the
connection.  (How many stories have you read about how a surrogate
mother decided NOT to give the child up for adoption after the baby was
born?)  I am a proponent of doing more to MAKE that connection instead
of trying to quietly (and coldly) cover it up.    Like I said in my
original post... the religious-right is probably the wrong folks to
carry the torch, but I feel there is a grain of truth on what they're
trying to accomplish.

 

(Your photograph, of course, goes down a very slippery slope.   If women
discover that chimpanzees are actually growing inside them, then we have
all the makings for the next apocalypse... (well played, Mayans... well
played)).

 

I am not against any of the items you spoke of in regards to sex
education, contraceptives, etc.  In fact, I'm for ANYTHING that gets
people to stop using abortion as a form of "after-thought birth
control", or anything argument that convinces them that that "the child
is better off dead than any life they could have here..."  When it comes
to your stat, I'm only questioning whether the conclusions you draw are
related.  Yes, higher or lower birth rates matter (in my mind, anyway).
If Europeans are not replacing their own population, then this becomes a
question of a much larger picture.  Are Europeans having less sex?  Or
is their use of birth-control so overwhelmingly good that its forcing
their population to shrink? I don't know the answer to questions such as
these ... but stuff like that is enough of a head-scratcher to start
wonder if there is a larger picture going on.   (You have to make sense
of the input before you can understand the output).  It's enough of a
question mark in my mind to where the conclusion of "war on women's
rights" might not be the primary factor in "abortion rates".   (Heck, I
was browsing an article not long ago about how the abortion rate had
increased in the US since 2008 due to the poor economy... I wonder what
the abortion rates are for Greece, Portugal, or Spain...)

 

I'm at risk for getting mired in (and creating) the same trivial
semantics I was trying to avoid.  Let me step back and try to bring
about a larger point.  I am against trends that try to make abortion
easier.  I fully understand the NEED for abortion in extreme cases...
(and when I say extreme, I mean life-threatening).   I am against the
argument that puts women's rights ahead of the rights of an unborn
child.  Does this put women in a potentially unfair position, and saddle
them with a larger burden?  Sadly, yes.  If you want to make it fair,
then we have to trump nature and issue a uterus to every male as well.
But... until then, this is what we've got.

 

I consider myself very much a fiscal conservative... but very much a
social liberal.  I have no problem with sex education, discussion,
practices... etc etc.  I don't care if you want to marry a man, a woman,
or a pet rock.  But I do have a problem with societal acceptance (and
celebration?) of the results of bad/poor decisions.  There is an element
of "shame" that we have lost when it comes to giving people pause about
making a potentially really bad decision.   Sex Education?
Contraception?  Absolutely.  But don't accompany it with a celebration
when all that education is tossed out the window, and don't try to
lessen the weight accompanying making that really bad decision...
otherwise... nobody learns nuthin'.

 

And perhaps "shame" is too strong a word.  We've lost the undertone of
guilt.   I don't mean that life has to be as harsh as "The Scarlet
Letter"... but I don't think it means that we should be celebrating a
woman's "personal victory" when it comes at the cost of another human
life, or throwing baby showers for girls that can't even legally order a
beer.

 

And again, I'm not going to do battle on the "Moral vs. legal" front...
I'm not equipped to do so, and my last Ethics class was 20+ years ago.
(My Kant, Niche, and Aristotle are all very much out of date)....  but I
feel in my bones that the easiest way to classify life is at the point
of conception.  (Even an agnostic like me doesn't go as far as the
Catholics).  The science, reasoning, logic, classification that try to
describe the differences in that point forward is just (I feel) a
rationalization and a compromise when it comes to life that can't yet
speak for itself.  

 

You won't find me protesting at the local abortion clinic, and you won't
find me rallying against the killing of fellow humans in war.  But you
also won't find me at any baby showers thrown for a single teenage
mother.

 

 

Jay

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jay Borden

DataWedge, LLC

p 208-874-4185

f  214-722-1053

 

For support questions, please contact: 

dwsupport at datawedge.com

 

From: Gier, Nicholas [mailto:ngier at uidaho.edu] 
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2012 3:21 PM
To: Jay Borden; Nicholas Gier; thansen at moscow.com
Cc: vision2020
Subject: RE: [Vision2020] What if other cartoonists . .(fetus image
didnotforward)

 

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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