[Vision2020] In praise of all beings with hearts and minds

[Moscow Cares]

Courtesy of today's (August 20, 2015) Moscow-Pullman Daily News with a special thanks to Nick Gier.

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His View: In praise of all beings with hearts and minds
By Nick Gier
I thank Michael Beirens for his thoughtful response (His View, Aug. 17) to my column on the Planned Parenthood videos (His View, Aug. 6). Beirens admits that he does not care what lawyers, doctors, and judges think, but they are the experts who bring our legal tradition and medical science to bear on the status of the fetus and a woman's right to choose an abortion. The separation of church and state does not permit religious belief to trump law or science, so Beiren's view of the fetus as a spiritual being cannot overrule a woman's right to control her own body.
The great Catholic philosopher Thomas Aquinas agreed with the Supreme Court: the fetus is not a person until the third trimester. Jacques Maritain, 20th Century Catholic theologian, states: "To admit that the human fetus is a person from the moment of its conception sounds to me like a philosophical absurdity. It is absurd to call a fertilized ovum a baby." Catholic canon law did not move the cut-off point back to conception until 1917. For more on the theological history of abortion, go to http://goo.gl/MRWPJ6.
English Common Law allowed abortions until the fetus "quickened in the womb," which is essentially the Roe v. Wade viability criterion. Under the influence of Sir William Blackstone (1732-80), quickening became the accepted standard for fetal personhood. Our founding thinkers would have followed Blackstone, and so should conservative judges who insist on respecting the intentions of the Constitution's authors.
Beirens argues that the fetus has a unique genetic identity, and this means that we must protect its life from conception on. Genetic identity, however, is not personal identity. Animal fetuses are genetically unique, but most people would not call them persons because of it. Identical twins are the same genetically, but as distinct persons they are issued different birth certificates and Social Security numbers. With the technology of cloning, every cell in our bodies could be made into zillions of distinct persons with the same genetic identity.
Most of the recent state laws challenging Roe v. Wade have been ruled unconstitutional. Some states and a bill now in Congress would ban abortion after 20 weeks, because supporters say the fetus experiences pain at this time. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association demonstrated the fetus does not feel pain until 28 weeks. Medical scientists in the United Kingdom have come to the same conclusion.
A new law in Arkansas that prohibits abortion after 12 weeks is now on appeal and will most assuredly be declared unconstitutional. A North Dakota law drawing the line at six weeks, when a fetal heart beat can be detected, has been ruled contrary to Roe v. Wade.
Animal fetuses have beating hearts, and they also feel pain. We must be able to make moral and legal distinctions between humans and animals; otherwise we would be compelled to extend a right to life to them. As a vegetarian, however, I would be in favor of that.
Just two weeks ago Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Barbara Jaffe ruled two chimpanzees were not legal persons. Attorneys for the Nonhuman Rights Project had argued Hercules and Leo, retired lab animals from the State University of New York, should be freed from their cages and allowed to live in a sanctuary in Florida. Judge Jaffe conceded this campaign "may someday succeed," because corporations now enjoy the "legal fiction of personhood."
Chimps share 97 percent of our DNA and their fetuses look just like human ones. (See the ultrasound at http://goo.gl/qQHeGj .) Scientific accounts of their high quality emotional and mental lives are certainly not fictional. How many of you will join me in protecting their right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"?

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Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .

"Moscow Cares" 
http://www.MoscowCares.com
  
Tom "free to be you and me" Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
  
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