h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>(b) your mind is already made up and you can't be bothered gathering enough information to change it.'

I would suggest that perhaps that is true for a bloke but not necessarily for a woman. No matter how much a woman is 'pro-life' or even 'pro-choice for others but myself could never have one' there will always be circumstances that influence or guide a person to a decision they never thought they would ever make.

It is relatively easy for everyone to have an opinion on something (and indeed they should) but when the situation stops becoming theoretical, and becomes a reality then even the most hardened opinions will change.

I will leave it there

Mort

Mmmm. I sometimes wonder if I am the flip-side of that.

I am pro-choice, and in theory I put the needs of the adults concerned over and above the needs of a small blob of tissue (in the weeks while it IS no more than a small blob of tissue of course). But sometimes I wonder, if I fell pregnant, whether good sense would prevail, or whether I would whistle everyons' happiness down the wind for an ideal.

My mind was changed slightly on the subject of abortion, by Carl Sagan's essay on the subject published in 'Billions and Billions'. He argues that there is no right to life for something which is no more than a person *in potentia* and that abortion is acceptable before the foetus thinks in demonstrably human ways. I find this argument persuasive, because it allows me to be both pro- early-abortion and anti- late-abortion, which is where I have always been intellectually, with the odd moral qualm.

Ben

The problem with humanity is that we think far too much of ourselves. That certain tribes are allowed to hunt whales because it is part of their culture or that people in orange sashes are able to march around intmidating people in green sashes says it all. There is no doubt that humans think in a quite distinct way from other animals on this planet but what of it. Rights off humans should never go before the responsibility of humans even if those choices are hard to make. All this lilly livered nonesense about abortion goes on while we spend millions on cosmetics and new alloys for pointlessly fast cars yet still do less than is necessary about curable diseases and starving people.

For a woman to have a pregnancy terminated is a harrowing and heavy responsibility this we should put before the childs or the fathers rights. There are enough children in the world to expend our love on already. Furthermore it is our responsibility to make more effort at getting things in this world sorted out before we go exercising our rights and pandering to our vanity and so called cultural needs.

Creating more children, using more resources, abusing each other and finding new ways of wrecking the only planet have got to live on is folly, but it is our self given right and sadly I dont see many people willing to give up that right. What is even sadder is when people see others whose actions expose their greed and vanity that they choose to use everykind of made up religious dogma and false morality to shout them down.

"But sometimes I wonder, if I fell pregnant, whether good sense would prevail, or whether I would whistle everyons' happiness down the wind for an ideal."

Ben, I'm not *entirely* sure what you meant there - was it that you might change your mind on your personal decision about your plans for your life, or that you might start thinking that no-one else should be allowed to choose?
I wouldn't have thought it was the latter, but the former doesn't seem to conflict with a pro-choice position. If you decided that it was the best thing to have a child, that's your choice whatever factors you took into account in making the decision.

The latter - from the safety of not being pregnant it is simple to say 'I would have an early abortion', but once those hormones start tilting the balance, who knows what I would do...

B

An excellent point, re:hormones Ben. I do think that that is one of the reasons why it IS a good idea, pace Two Bit, to debate abortion (and other emotive subjects, e.g. rights to deadly self defence or the death penalty). It allows people to sort out what they *think* about something, and to compare the arguments, when they're NOT being affected by it.

Of course, once you ARE affected by it, your opinion might very well change - but at least if you've had the argument, you start from some actual existing considered position, rather than having to take up a position when you may not be thinking straight (whether it's because of hormones, a gun to your head, or some other pressure).

H.

One of the reasons that I am grateful for being a woman is that I know I cannot rely on my feelings - hormonal misery feels absolute, and all of the time I *know* it is just a physical con-trick, a sleight-of-the-month that makes subjective misery appear to be objective evaluation.

Ben

Gosh, I've never thought of it like that Ben! I do know exactly when the best time for dealing with awkward buggers at work is tho'

You are not wrong there! - i am commonly known as psycho b**ch from hell when mine kick in

You know what you feel, you know what you _have_to do but those hormones are a hard thing to fight.

Mort - pro choice (with a very bad hangover

>pace Two Bit

That was very sloppy. In a perfectly normal conversation, you let it slip that someone is keeping pace with me, or in other words you're following me. I knew you were out to get me.



Two Bit Paranoid Moron

Think this way...a mother has a baby girl who has a first birthday, and a second, and so on. this kid is now, say, twelve and three quarters. The mother then decides she doesn't want her "problem" anymore. So she kills her. Murder. "Oh no," she says, "It was just an abortion". "WAIT JUST A MINUTE!!!!" scream the so called "pro-choisers", "There is a serious difference in age here!!".
Mommy goes to jail.
Somwhere else a mother murders her 3 year old boy.
Same reaction.
Then a mom strangles her three hour old baby in the hospital.
Same reaction.
But this time an onlooking pro-lifer says, "serious difference in age?!? He looks the same as he did three hours ago! He is also the same size, has the same mind, thinks in the same way, and feels the same feelings."
Anti-lifer: "So what! He's out of the womb. You can't kill him."
Pro-lifer: "No kidding, but does it make a difference where he is positioned at the time of murder??" Sarcastically; "Here, put him in this box, it will simulate the darkness. Now kill him"
Anti-lifer: "But wait..no..I know, if the baby is still conected by the umbilical cord, he is totaly dependant on the mother's nutrients. Yeah, thats it. Then you can kill him"
Pro-lifer: "And he isn't totally dependant afterwards??"
Anti-lifer: "No!...well kind of...well yeah, I geuss." Then triumphantly: "A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with her body!"
Illogical and off the subject, but we'll argue it.
Pro-lifer: "Illogical and off the subject, but I'll argue it."
Anti-lifer: Silent
Pro-lifer: "Was that it?"
Anti-lifer: "Uh, yeah, I guess."
Pro-lifer: "Oh, alright. Let's just pretend, for the sake of arguement, that the woman has that right. But she still does not have the right to do anything to someone elses body; like, say, her husband."
"OK"
"Or her son"
"Uh..O..K"
"Or her unborn baby"
"Ummm...I...Wait a minute! A fetus isn't human!"
"How so?"
"Well, it's not born yet!"
"So what -- and I am born yet. Whats the difference?"
"He -- I mean it -- is still considered part of his -- it's -- mothers body."
"So the fact that it can think and has feelings and looks like a human and has a brain and a heart and takes in nutrition...what do YOU think it is -- a MONKEY???
"No I..well..you know..it's a..a..a thing!...?"
"Well, nice chating with you. Next tim I meet a living creature that looks, acts, and has the same genetic makeup as a human I'll second guess myself and kill it if thats all right with you."

Hmmmm...who's winning this argument...

Not you that's for sure. Mainly because noone here wants to kill healthy unborn babies, which you strangely fail to mention. Partial Birth Abortions are only used in the most desperate of circumstances. My wife knows someone who had one of these because her baby had no brain or back of the head, just a face. It's in that sort of dire situation that partial birth abortions are performed.

As for early pregnancy terminations, there is a difference between a barely differentiated clump of cells that probably will become a human and a 8-month old baby in the womb. A difference that anti-choice fundamentalists cannot seem to see.

Ste

Iluvatar's post, which is full of emotion and logical fallacies, prompts me to dig out my copy of the Carl Sagan book and I select some exerpts from pages 176-180 of my paperback copy of "Billions and Billions":

"To date, murder uniquely applies to killing human beings. Therefore, the question of when personhood (or, if we like, ensoulment) arises is the key to the abortion debate. When does the fetus become human? ...

"... Our one great advantage, the secret of our success, is thought - characteristically human thought ...

"Thinking occurs, of course, in the brain - principally in the top layers of the convoluted 'gray matter' called the cerebral cortex... large scale linking up of neurons doesn't begin until the twenty-fourth to twenty-seventh week - the sixth month...

"... brain wives with regular patters typical of adult human brains do not appear in the fetus until about the thirtieth week of pregnancy - near the beginnining of the third trimester. Fetuses younger than this - however alive and active they may be - lack the necessary brain architecture. They cannot yet think.

"... If we wanted to make the criterion still more stringent, to allow for occasional precocious fetal brain development, we might draw the line at six months. This, it so happens, is where the Supreme Court drew it in 1973 - although for completely different reasons."

I follow Carl Sagan's view because I find his argument is rational, and it is based on first principals. He cuts through the crap.

Before six months what you are doing when you terminate a pregnancy is killing something which is *not yet a human being*. I accept that you are killing something which probably would *become* a human being. But up until that time it isn't.

I believe passionately that every human being deserves to have been loved as a child, and every child deserves to be wanted. I also think that the earlier a termination can take place, the better for all concerned, which is why I agree with Hoo, that one should work out one's opinion on the matter before you ever fall pregnant.

In the best of all possible worlds every pregnancy would be a happy event, but this is not the best of all possible worlds.

All we can do, is do our best within it.

Ben

I agree that termination should take place as soon as possible.

However, in my opinion, it is hypocritical for us to consider killing a 8-month old fetus murder, but not to consider it murder to kill an adult dolphin or chimp, which is indisputably more self-aware and inteligent than the fetus. The fetus may have greater potential, but thats not all that counts.

I have major issues with the way that chimps are treated, but that really IS another subject. Dolphins I don't know enough about to form an opinion about.

B

It seems to be all about where to draw a line.

If there are continuums of humanity or consciousness, or any other property, then obviously claiming that any two neighbouring points are too close to enable a boundary to be placed between them logically results in no boundary ever being drawn at all.

If intelligence could be measurwed on a one-dimensional scale, it isn't feasible to argue that since two people of very similar measurements are little different there isn't such a thing as brilliance or stupidity. If there is a continuum of culpability for crime, no reasonable person would say that punishment is never just because it's unfair to discriminate between one person who is imprisoned and another who is considered insufficiently guilty to deserve the same punishment.

Whilst for some at the boundary, the distinction may not be *fair* (good for some, bad for others), if there ever is to be a line drawn, that's the way things are. *Unfairness* is an unavoidable side-effect of categorisation, but that seems more problem of philosophy than morailty. If you're going to decide to divide grey reality into two or more discrete sections, you have to accept there will be borderline cases.

Where possible, a boundary should be chosen to err on the side of caution, like reasonable doubt in criminal trials or choosing a point somewhat before the start of consciousness in the case of abortion, but there clearly will be cases where two rather similar cases end up with a different result.

As far as I can see, if a proper margin for error is taken for abortion, the normal cut-off point is not between a thinking fetus and an unthinking one, but between two unthinking fetuses, one of whom just happened to be on the lucky side of the temporal cut-off.

If a particular fetus had no prospect of significant life, having it forced to be born alive just to suffer for a few miuntes, hours or days to satisy the moral or religous prejudices of people who were not its parents seems to me to be monstrously cruel to the parents, (and if the fetus were capable of experiencing pain, to it as well).

One can only hope that if such unfortunate circumstances have to happen to anyone, they would happen to those who would make others undergo them.

I had a point, but I forgot it.

"the normal cut-off point is not between a thinking fetus and an unthinking one, but between two unthinking fetuses, one of whom just happened to be on the lucky side of the temporal cut-off."

Potholer, you are right, and Sagan makes just that point: "If we wanted to make the criterion *still more stringent* to allow for occasional precocious fetal brain develipment, we might draw the line at six months." (My emphasis).

If there is only black and white, where does that leave the smell of sweet peas or the sound of birdsong?

Surely one of the the challenges and beauties of the world is life is built out of an almost infinite number of dimensions of fuzzy logic? And surely our challenge, as spiritual beings, is to respect this complexity and sophistication, not reduce it, and box it, and define it? It could be argued that to attempt to do so is one of the greatest sins against the richness of ones own soul and the wisdom of the creator.

Ben
*reading 'Small Gods' at the moment, and always wary of fundamentalists of any kind*

(although really I should bookmark with something else, small footprints having been used as an icon by anti-abortion groups)

I can't type much because of an RSI thing, but thought I'd add this to the debate - I heard an IVF discussion this morning where they were saying how they can't freeze unfertilised eggs, so at the moment they freeze fertilised ones, i.e. embryos. These are for later use, or I guess once they are past their useby date they get given to the research scientists or biffed. Some rather large bioethical, medical, and social issues there too.

If you look to religion to find rules about what we should and shouldnt do amongst other things we wouldnt be allowed to eat shellfish, light candles on a saturday or touch dogs.

We should certainly have rules about how we proceed wiht abortions,IVF and genetic technology etc... but these should be based on logical arguments drawn from the facts. Its about time we stepped away from our superstious past if we dont make sensible choices about the future of medecine then people will still proceed with work in these areas and as a society we will have no control over what goes on.