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

Tue Mar 20 19:48:46 PDT 2012

Jay, even if you don't attend the shower, shouldn't you pony up for some diapers? I  mean, you really want her to carry the fetus to term, right?

Sunil

Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2012 12:14:47 -0700
From: jborden at datawedge.com
To: ngier at uidaho.edu; ngier006 at gmail.com; thansen at moscow.com
CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] What if other cartoonists . .(fetus image	didnotforward)

RE: [Vision2020] What if other cartoonists . .(fetus image didnotforward)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 BordenDataWedge, LLC p 208-874-4185f  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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