<div dir="ltr"><font face="georgia, serif">Good Morning Visionaries:</font><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">For those of you who do not get the DNews, you will find a longer version of this column below, one that will be published in the Sandpoint Reader next week. The full version is attached.</font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="georgia, serif">Will is one of our foremost conservative columnists, and e<span style="color:black;text-indent:0.5in">xcept for
some overly artful phrasing, he usually writes well-reasoned and evidence-based
articles. This piece “The Democrats are the Real
Abortion Extremists” is a surprising exception (</span><i style="color:black;text-indent:0.5in">The Washington Post</i><span style="color:black;text-indent:0.5in">, October 18, 2017).</span></font></div><div><span style="color:black;text-indent:0.5in"><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></span></div><div><span style="color:black;text-indent:0.5in"><font face="georgia, serif">In praise of all creatures great and small,</font></span></div><div><span style="color:black;text-indent:0.5in"><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></span></div><div><span style="color:black;text-indent:0.5in"><font face="georgia, serif">nfg</font></span></div><div><span style="color:black;text-indent:0.5in"><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></span></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:150%"><b><span style="line-height:150%;color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">George Will
Confused and Misinformed about Abortion<span></span></font></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align:center;line-height:150%"><br></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><font face="georgia, serif"><span style="line-height:150%;color:black"> In a recent column on abortion,
George Will criticizes the 1973 Supreme Court decision for arbitrarily dividing
pregnancy into three trimesters.</span><span style="line-height:150%;color:black"> He
claims that the judges “postulated, without a scintilla of reasoning, moral and
constitutional significance in the banal convenience that nine is divisible by
three.”<span></span></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:150%"><span style="line-height:150%;color:black"><font face="georgia, serif"> Will is famous for his erudition, so he should have known that the trimester framework for fetal
development is as old as the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who argued that the
fetus starts as a nutritive soul, transitions to a sensitive soul, and then
finally becomes a rational soul—a human person. <span></span></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="line-height:150%;color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">The fact that there is explosive brain
development in the fetus from 25-33 weeks gives credence to Aristotle’s theory.
(See <a href="http://www.NickGier.com/fetalbrain.pdf">www.NickGier.com/fetalbrain.pdf</a>.) Fetal movement, depending on whether it
is a woman’s first or second pregnancy, occurs from 13 to 25 weeks, the second
trimester. Contrary to Will, Aristotle’s trimester framework is neither
arbitrary nor unscientific.<span></span></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><font face="georgia, serif"><span style="line-height:150%;color:black">Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest Catholic
theologians, was profoundly influenced by Aristotle and he accepted his theory
of the soul with one crucial exception. Aquinas explained: “</span><span style="line-height:150%;color:black">The rational soul is created by God at the
completion of man’s coming into being. This soul is at one and the same time
both a sensitive and nutritive life-principle, the preceding forms having been
dissolved.”<span></span></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="line-height:150%;color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">The equally great Catholic theologian
Augustine believed that abortion should be restricted at the “sensitive soul”
stage. Augustine argues that abortion is not homicide, “for there cannot yet be
said to be a live soul in a body that lacks sensation when it is not formed in
the flesh.”<span></span></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="line-height:150%;color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">The idea of a formed (vs. unformed) fetus
comes from Exodus 21:22-25. The Greek translation, which the early church
fathers considered divinely inspired, states that if someone causes a woman to
miscarry and the fetus is “unformed,” he will pay only a penalty, but if the
fetus is “formed,” it is murder. This view was incorporated into Catholic Canon
Law and it was not changed until 1917, when personhood was moved back to conception.<span></span></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="line-height:150%;color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">English Common Law used the term “quickening
in the womb” to establish the cut-off point for abortion. “To quicken” means
“to receive life,” and this conforms nicely with Augustine’s “formed” and
“live” soul and the “viability” criterion of Roe v. Wade. Under the influence
of Sir William Blackstone (1732-80), quickening was incorporated in early U.S.
law, and, significantly, this would have been the position of our founding
thinkers.<span></span></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="line-height:150%;color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">Many anti-abortionists claim that genetics
make this traditional view obsolete and unscientific. The problem, however, is
that genetic identity is not personal identity.
There is always a possibility of twinning up to 16 weeks, and identical
twins, while being genetically unique, are obviously two different persons.
Furthermore, Aquinas (see above) and all orthodox Christians believe that a
person’s essence is created by God, not by biology.<span></span></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;vertical-align:baseline"><font face="georgia, serif"><span style="line-height:150%;color:black">Anti-abortionists
are now proposing laws that protect the fetus at 20 weeks, when they believe
that it can feel pain. But a</span><span style="line-height:150%;color:black"> 2005 article in the <i><span style="border:1pt none windowtext;padding:0in">Journal of the American Medical
Association</span></i> surveyed all the research and concluded “that a
fetus’ neurological pathways that allow for the conscious perception of pain do
not function until after 28 weeks gestation.” <span></span></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;vertical-align:baseline"><font face="georgia, serif"><span style="line-height:150%;color:black">In 2010 <span style="border:1pt none windowtext;padding:0in">t</span>he Royal College</span><span style="line-height:150%"><a href="https://www.rcog.org.uk/globalassets/documents/guidelines/rcogfetalawarenesswpr0610.pdf" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;border:1pt none windowtext;padding:0in;text-decoration-line:none"> of Obstetricians and
Gynecologists</span></a></span><span style="line-height:150%;color:black"> agreed with
those results and in 2012 the </span><span style="line-height:150%"><a href="http://www.acog.org/" target="_blank"><span style="color:black;border:1pt none windowtext;padding:0in;text-decoration-line:none">American Congress of
Obstetricians and Gynecologists</span></a></span><span style="line-height:150%;color:black;border:1pt none windowtext;padding:0in"> joined
the scientific consensus.<span></span></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;vertical-align:baseline"><span style="line-height:150%;color:black;border:1pt none windowtext;padding:0in"><font face="georgia, serif">Last Wednesday House
Republicans held a hearing on a bill that would ban abortions at the point that
a fetal heart beat can be detected. But animal fetuses have beating hearts,
they feel pain, they quicken in the womb, and they have unique genetic
identities.<span></span></font></span></p>
<p style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">The main problem with Aristotle’s concept of
personhood is that we now know that animals can show intelligent, emotional,
and moral behavior without large cortexes. Crows have distinctive tool kits and
they recognize individual human faces. Dogs
have a moral sense of being cheated on food portions. Alex, an African grey
parrot, was the subject of a 30-year scientific experiment, and he reached high
levels of cognitive performance. <span></span></font></span></p>
<p style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">We can no longer make a moral distinction
between our lives and those of our fellow creatures. We should therefore reject
the fallacy of “speciesism,” which privileges humans as the only beings with a
serious moral right to life. <span></span></font></span></p>
<p style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif">I challenge all of us to embrace a consistent
pro-life position that respects the dignity and value of all living beings. If
women at abortion clinics must to listen to a lecture about fetal pain, then a
similar script should be read out at every slaughter house in the world.<span></span></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:150%;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial;vertical-align:baseline"><span style="line-height:150%;color:black;border:1pt none windowtext;padding:0in"><font face="georgia, serif">Nick Gier of Moscow taught
philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years. <span></span></font></span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:0.5in;line-height:115%"><span style="color:black"><font face="georgia, serif"><span></span></font></span></p><div><font face="georgia, serif"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div style="height:auto;width:auto"><div><div><div><span style="font-family:georgia,serif">A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. </span><br></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><font size="2"><div style=""><font face="georgia, serif"><br style="">-Greek proverb</font></div><div style=""><font face="georgia, serif" style=""><br>
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not
in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it
without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your
own understanding!—that is the motto of enlightenment.<br>
<br>
--Immanuel Kant<br>
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