and does that question even have an answer? But more importantly- is it necessary to know when debating abortion? My answers are – we’ll never know, probably not and no.
I told Jovial in comments that when is a zygote a person is a moot question. I should have explained it in more detail. So here goes.
When a zygote is no longer just a clump of cells doesn’t matter at all in the abortion argument. It is a red herring thrown out as a distraction.
In any situation except for pregnancy, we allow people the freedom to choose to risk their own health, happiness and life in order to save the life of another. We do not force people to donate blood, or tissue, or kidneys. We do not require people to risk their lives to save another or face legal ramifications. We do not jail people who don’ step in front of a bullet for someone else, or throw themselves into traffic to push someone out of the way of a speeding bus. We don’t have a draft for the military (yet), or for the police force or fire department either. They are people who have chosen to risk risk their life for the benefit of others. We don’t even force parents to donate blood or tissue or kidney or bone marrow to their own dying child- the parents get to choose if that is a risk they want to take.
It is up to each individual to decide if risking their life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is worth saving another person.
But not when it comes to pregnancy, though the situation is not any different than forcing someone to give a kidney to someone else. It doesn’t matter if you think that it is a clump of cells or a baby from the moment the sperm hits the egg, because it is up to the person who is risking their life, liberty and happiness who gets to decide to take the risk to save a life (or carry a life in this case).
I know, this is a modern country and the risk of dying from pregnancy has been drastically reduced. But there is still a risk. There is also a risk in having an abortion. The only person who can make that choice, who can choose which risk they want to take, is the person who will suffer the effects of that choice.
Everyday a large number of women choose to take that risk and others don’t. Some women have easy pregnancies. Some (me included) do not. Some women want children so badly that there is no risk they wouldn’t take. Some don’t want children (or more children- me included) and would rather risk the consequences of an abortion than a pregnancy and motherhood. That so many women choose to take that risk everyday does not negate the risk.
Now I know what some of you are thinking- a woman decides to have sex, if she didn’t want to get pregnant she shouldn’t have sex. Except that sex is a biological drive, and if women weren’t meant to have sex except to reproduce, then women would only have orgasms when they are ovulating. We also have a biological urge to eat, yet when someone gets food poisoning we don’t blame them for having a failure of discipline. If we eat so many times a day over the course of our lives, the likelihood of getting food poisoning at some point is pretty high. Same thing is true of sex and pregnancy, though only very lucky people get sex three times a day.
So the chances are that even with birth control, most women will get pregnant at some time in their lives. When that happens it is up to the woman to decide if risking her life, her health, her economic status and her liberty are worth the risk of having a child. When that clump of cells becomes a child is not the real issue, who gets the choice to take the risk is.
It’s a red herring for people trying to keep the women down, sure. I’ll buy that. If the objective is to simply oppress women, I think that making all sorts of claims about the definitions of life might be a good way to swing votes.
Since it’s true that every person asking the question isn’t necessarily in the business of oppression, it’s possible that the question of humanity is important to the abortion discussion. In the case of my wife and myself, it’s important for us to come to a conclusion about the definition of life, because we might be comfortable having an abortion if we didn’t feel that we were dismissing the life of a human being.
… the risk of dying from pregnancy is valid; sure. I don’t think a reasonable person is going to argue against that. Your comparisons to stepping in front of a bullet or into traffic is an effective use of hyperbole, but it doesn’t address the other risk you addressed: the risk of losing happiness. Removing an invasive cluster of cells that’s just making you feel sick each morning might be legitimate, but the moment we call the cluster of cells a human, we’re saying that we’re going to kill a human being who stands in the way of our happiness… and at that point, I think we’ve run into a real dilema.
By saying that the definition of life is entirely unimportant and irrelevant to the discussion of abortion, I might suggest (and I am speaking in hyperbole) that the definition of life is unimportant for anything I want to do, and that I should be comfortable dismissing the life of anybody if they get in the way of my economic status, or my liberty, because we have not sufficiently defined what a human being is… and by not defining a human being, we’ve failed to ascribe any value to a human being.
How is the bullet analogy hyperbole? It is one person risking their life for another- very simple and not hyperbole.
It’s not failing to ascribe any value to a human being- it is simply being consistent in how much we require people to sacrifce for others.
As far as you and your wife go- she may discuss it with you but you still aren’t taking on any of the risk. And since you have never been pregnant (and most likely never will) assuming that someone has an abortion simply to avoid morning sickenss is seriously condecending.
Er, not hyperbole. Rhetoric. You’re saying something that we agree is obvious. Yes, we do not force people to jump out in front of traffic.
In terms of consistency, we agree that there’s no requirement to risk dying to save somebody’s life… but I think risking your *happiness* might be worth a human life, and failure to do so might be considered inhumane. So, if a cluster of cells is a human life, keeping with consistency would require me to say that I’d have to value the human life over my own happiness. But again – that’s only if I define a life that way. And that’s the crux of my argument. My question from the start was simply me asking you at what point do you suggest that a human being exists amidst the cellular blob?
I did not mean to be condescending with my avoidance-of-morning-sickness statement. I was connecting morning sickness with unhappiness of any kind. I appologize if I offended, as that was not my objective, nor do I actually assume that most women treat abortion as casually as I suggested.
And what I am saying is that you may consider it inhumane to choose happiness over being a human incubator, but you will never be in the position to make that choice- so it will never be forced on you.
And we don’t require people to sacrifice their own happiness for someone else’s life in this country. If we did then not only would giving blood be mandatory, but donations of egg and sperm would be compulsory in order to give those who cannot conceive on their own a chance to create life.
You may be confusing the idea of murder with the idea of being a life support machine to someone else. In a murder- someone who is capable of sustaining life of their own has that life taken from them by someone else.
In the other situations I mentioned the loss of life is a given unless someone else decides to take a risk to their own life or happiness because the person could not survive without the interference.
You can call it a life from the minute of conception, from the first cell division if you like. It doesn’t change my position. Actually- let’s cut the hypocrisy out of the argument all together. It is a life from the very beginning. It doesn’t change my argument- it reinforces it.
You can consider it inhumane that someone else wouldn’t make a sacrifice that you cannot make yourself and would never be asked to. I think it’s inhumane that we have 35 million plus people living in poverty, but I can’t force people to give to charities that would alleviate that, or to take a homeless person into their home. Both are things I’ve done on more than one occasion, but I chose to sacrifice my money, food, privacy, home, etc. to help support someone who cannot support themselves. .
It is about the ability to chose what is worth risking your life and happiness for, and what is not.
I hope that this conversation is just an intellectual exercise, and nothing more… because I’m not challenging your values or stating that anybody is wrong or right here. If this gets heated on account of emotional attachment to the topic, I’d just as soon bring it to a close. There’s nothing to be gained on either side if we both aren’t detached from the topic…
That said, I do see your point that it is not me that will have to be a “human incubator,” but… I don’t know that it’s reasonable to dismiss my considerations on account of me being male. If a woman (my wife, for example) came to the same conclusions, you wouldn’t be able to use that argument anymore.
You stated that I’m confusing murder with being a life-support machine. I understand what you’re saying, but… playing devil’s advocate here, let’s say that I’m a single father, with a handicapped child hooked up to a ventillator and a bunch of constant IV drips. And let’s say that the cost of keeping this child alive is very high. In a manner of speaking, I am functioning in a similar capacity as a woman incubating a child inside of her. The child cannot live without me and my support. The cost to me is great. My freedom, social status, economic status, etc., are suffering as a result of this circumstance, and the situation will certainly not get any better as time goes on. And, let’s say I’m unhappy as a result of all of this.
Am I in my right to pursue happiness at any cost in this circumstance? Based on the available criteria I’ve read in the post and in these comments, it seems like you are suggesting that I am in my right to end my unhappiness by pulling the plugs to my own child.
The single father argument doesn’t fly because you are not acting as life support for the child. The tubes and machines are they are not sacrificing anything to do so. Because hospitals are required to care for people even if they have no way to pay at all, the child would still be kept alive even if you ran out of money or just flat out refused to pay. Because of that- the hospital becomes the de-facto life support for the child and hospitals, being an institution and not a person, cannot decide to withdraw life support legally. Unlike a pregnancy, you could walk away from the child completely and be fairly certain that the child would still be kept alive. Now as that child’s parent- you may decide that the child is suffering too much in that condition and ask that life support be ended. If in your heart you did it because you could not face the financial burden that is something for your own conscious to deal with.
If you were a woman and we were having this argument I would be much harder on you because you would understand the sacrifice first hand.
It is an intellectual argument here. But everywhere else in this country a woman’s right to be autonomous and have the same absolute control of her body that a man does is threatened. So if I am passionate in my arguments it is because I see the daily attempts to make women slaves to their uterus.
What I was trying to say is that in most situations there is an alternative solution and as long as there is an alternative then that should be explored. But with pregnancy, there is not another alternative. The baby cannot be moved from someone who is unwilling to carry it to someone that is willing. The risk cannot be shared between both the mother and the father (which would give father more claim on the matter- but as it stands they take no risk).
So the question is- when there is no other option available, can you force your choice that you have made without having to take the risk onto someone who will have to take the risk and bear the consequences of your choice. Can you impose morality that costs you nothing, onto someone who has to pay the price for your morals?
for the sake of speculation….
what if the technology existed to transfer an embryo or fetus from a woman who was not willing to carry it to a woman who was?
would that change the question substantially?
Not really, even if everyone who would have had an abortion donated their embryo- there would still be a portion that would be having an abortion because of the fetus wasn’t viable. Not to mention- the strictest abortion laws disallow women who are carrying dead babies from having a theraputic abortion- they either have to wait to deliver naturally or have a c-section. (I had a friend who carried around her dead daughter in her for a week because the state law didn’t allow abortion that late in the pregnancy).
I think we can all agree that laws that disallow women who are carrying dead babies to void them are pretty stupid.
Rational people can certainly agree on that Jovial, but the medical term- whether it’s a live baby or a dead one- is aborting a prenancy. But that seems to be lost on the forced pregnancy nut bags.
I haven’t really read all the comments. I suppoprt everything you wrote.
I would add one thing to the part about the justification somes use against abortion, about its being a woman’s fault. Men are just as guilty. I know woman should take responsibility in the areas of preventing pregancy, but men should also realize the consequences of their actions. the need to procreate is a natural, but controllable natural impulse, like eating. No matter how minor a relationship might seem to men who have sex with women, they need realize the risks. The risk is getting a woman pregnant (duh!). But men should not be willing to take risk just because they cannot carry a baby. Every man who has sex with women, a majority of men, I assume, also need to make sure they willing to care for the possible child, or make sure other SAFE AND REASONABLE OPTIONS are available. Sure, men don’t assume the same risk, but that would seem more of a reason for making sure the societies we live in gives everyone the option to contraception, support and yes, abortions.
This comment is not meant to downplay women’s choices or the level of risk pregnancy represents. I just think men’s role in this debate needs to be emphasized rather than ignored even though the consequences for men and women are different.
I agree with that, Deek. I’ve carried the philosophy that a guy shouldn’t have sex unless he’s capable of dealing with being a father (financially, emotionally, etc.), since that’s an expected consequence of sex. I’ve probably pinned more of the responsibility on men, only because I’m a guy and I’m aware of my own sense of responsibility.