Check out the headline of an item I read on Sparkpeople this morning:
The article goes on to state:
Since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973, opponents have questioned the safety of medical procedures used to terminate pregnancy. Now, a new study contends that having a legal abortion is safer than carrying a baby to term.
The risk of death associated with a full-term pregnancy and delivery is 8.8 deaths per 100,000, while the risk of death linked to legal abortion is 0.6 deaths per 100,000 women, according to the study. That means a woman carrying a baby to term is 14 times more likely to die than a woman who chooses to have a legal abortion, the study finds.
- snip -
Grimes and his colleagues had several reasons for undertaking the study, published in the February issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology. One is that medical abortion, in which a woman can take a pill early in pregnancy, instead of surgical abortion, “has changed the landscape of abortion, and the mortality information needed to be updated.”
Another reason is that in many states, women are given information before getting an abortion. “There’s been a proliferation of these women’s-right-to-know pamphlets, and some of them are misleading, if not downright incorrect or patently wrong,” Grimes said.
- snip -
Dr. Donna Harrison, director of research and public policy at the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, disagreed with the authors’ conclusions.
- snip -
Dr. Mitchell Creinin, professor and chair of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California, Davis, said that pregnant women considering their options “are often scared by the rhetoric.”
“If a state is going to feel a responsibility to be involved in this private matter, we need to ensure that the material is factual,” said Creinin, who wrote an accompanying editorial in the same issue of the journal. “If it comes from the state or the government, people assume it’s true,” he added.
It’s no secret that I support women’s rights to choose what’s best for themselves reproductively, socially and economically. Neither you, nor I, nor any government officials or agencies have any business regulating and interfering in the intimate details of people’s lives. The decision to have – or not have – an abortion is one of the most serious decisions a woman may ever make. And I honestly don’t know if I could have made that choice myself. Fortunately for me, I never had to find out. But, many women are not as fortunate as I. They must make this decision and they need accurate information to do so. They also need emotional and practical support before, during and after the decision – either to abort or carry to term – has been made and carried through. What they don’t need is self-righteous busybodies calling them criminals or sinners or sluts or any other foul names. What they don’t need is people telling them they can’t decide for themselves because busybodies with their own agendas (religious or otherwise) have already made the decision for them. The age of paternalism passed a long time ago in most developed countries. It’s time for the USA to catch up with its peers and start showing equal respect for all of its citizens too.
– the chaplain
Spanish Inquisitor
January 24, 2012 at 10:51 am
This will have zero impact on the so-called pro-life side, because they are not, and never have been, concerned with the life or health of the mother. It’s all about the fetus, and what Jesus has to say about it (even though he has had zero to say about it).
So they wouldn’t care if there was a 50% death rate in all pregnancies, as long as we don’t harm the little babies-to-be.
Moe
January 24, 2012 at 12:30 pm
Actually Spanish, I think it’s always been about women – and keeping them in their place and less dependent on men. For all the sincere pro-life people out there, there are just as many cynical men (they’re men for sure) who don’t like their wimmen folk independent.
Chappy – the consequences of illegal abortions are almost always left out of the discussion. I dont even see pro choice asking what wuold happen if women had to return to the back alleys.
Ahab
January 25, 2012 at 11:43 am
Having listened to a lot of anti-abortion rhetoric for my blog, your assessment is correct, Moe. If one goes by the antis’ rhetoric, they seem to think that once abortion is outlawed or Planned Parenthood defunded, abortions will magically cease. Back-alley abortions never enter their minds. It’s as if they have no concept of how or why they should prevent the unwanted pregnancies that lead to abortions.
It’s definitely about patriarchy. I’d have more patience for anti-abortion folks if they focused on preventing unwanted pregnancies through comprehensive sex education and access to contraception. Unfortunately, many oppose both, which tells me that it’s really about controlling women’s bodies, as you suggested.
Spanish Inquisitor
January 24, 2012 at 1:07 pm
Moe, of course you are spot on. The WAY they control women, (and it may be a sub-conscious thing) is by pretending to have so much concern for the fetus – for life! – while really they could not care less about the fetus.v They certainly don’t show, objectively, much concern for life.
Barefoot and pregnant.
Moe
January 24, 2012 at 1:13 pm
And it’s always obvious, isn’t it, that this deep concern for the ‘unborn’ (such a creepy word) pretty much evaporates the minute it’s a baby needing shelter and nourishment.
Ahab
January 25, 2012 at 11:45 am
Ain’t that the truth.
John
January 24, 2012 at 1:32 pm
Yeah, why should the government interfere with who I do or don’t want to murder? If I want to murder someone, who is the government to get involved in that very personal decision?
Kagehi Kohn
January 24, 2012 at 4:35 pm
Yeah, and, of course, unless you are an idiot, by making it illegal in *all cases*, you simply take the choice out of the hands of the doctors, or the mother, or father, and let the government, in cases of medical emergencies, murder the mother (and possibly fail to save the child in the process). That is *sooooo* much better.
Also, murder implies someone with memories, and personality, not a lump of tissue, which may not even have a nervous system yet, not that you, or any of the rest of you calling it murder, give a frak about facts.
John
January 24, 2012 at 6:01 pm
Yeah right, because murder is justified in some extenuating circumstances, lets take murder off the criminal books and make it a free for all. Really great logic that is.
As if your side could care less whether you kill something with a nervous system or not. Oh dear, that one did have a nervous system. Oh well, big deal.
Kiwichap
January 24, 2012 at 8:05 pm
John, rather than telling ‘our side’ what we think, could you perhaps tell us what you think? I find it very difficult to equate a zygote, blastula or gastrula with a fully-developed human being, complete with self-awareness, memories, aspirations, etc, even though these are all stages on the same developmental continuum. Do you have a similar difficulty or do you see a zygote and, say, a new-born infant as equivalent beings? If so, what, in your opinion, makes them equivalent? They clearly don’t look the same, their morphologies are quite different and their responses to stimuli are not comparable. To me, this means that an early-term abortion and the murder of a fully-formed human being are not morally equivalent; to you, it appears, they are. Would you care to explain why I should change my thinking? What is it that makes a blastula as much a ‘person’ as I am?
John
January 24, 2012 at 8:15 pm
What memories and aspirations does a new born baby have? Probably none, and if it it does have any they wouldn’t be on any higher level than a sheep. So if that’s your argument, I guess we’ve reached the moral stage where mothers can kill their new borne if they’re inconvenient.
the chaplain
January 25, 2012 at 8:33 am
John:
Welcome back! Long time no see. So far, you’ve simply ridiculed straw men. Would like to move past that and provide arguments for your view?
John
January 25, 2012 at 8:47 am
You want arguments that killing people is unconscionable. I’m afraid if you need arguments, you are beyond help.
BTW, do you have any argument why I shouldn’t kill you? You’re annoying me, so why not?
Kiwichap
January 25, 2012 at 3:15 pm
And that’s why this is always going to be a morally difficult debate. The problem is that there is a developmental continuum between zygote and full personhood – not an easily recognised event at which personhood begins. Late-term abortions make me queasy for this very reason – the more a feotus comes to resemble a person, the less comfortable I become with the idea of terminating it.
Interesting that you make the comparison between a new-born infant and a sheep. Peter Singer has developed a fairly provocative argument (against human use of animals) that extends this thought – well worth seeking it out.
I’m disappointed that you haven’t made any attempt to answer the questions I posed as I really would like to understand:
1) If you see a zygote and, say, a new-born infant as equivalent beings?
2) If so, what, in your opinion, makes them equivalent?
3) What is it that makes a blastula as much a ‘person’ as I am?
To me, these are serious questions and you’ve made no attempt to give them serious answers. Do you have any or should I just go with my instincts and assume that you have nothing sensible to contribute to this important debate?
Kagehi Kohn
January 25, 2012 at 5:22 pm
That is because people like John don’t make such a distinction. To them, its all the same. Which is why he doesn’t:
a) Address the fact that its already illegal, save under extreme cases, to do something to a “baby” as a opposed to something that doesn’t even qualify yet.
b) Can’t/won’t address why its legal for the government, in those extreme cases, to murder, by forced inaction, the mother.
He also makes, in reply to my comment, the insulting, and bloody stupid, assertion that somehow doctors have no clue what they are dealing with and might *accidentally*, I presume, abort a 6 month fetus, instead of a 2 week blob of tissue.
In any case, I will bet dollars to donuts that he is also one of the, “Once its born, I don’t give a crap if it starves to death in a slum, just so long as we don’t commit murder in a doctors office.” Its generally par for the course for so called, “Right to Life” types. Only the abortion matters, not what happens to them after they are breathing.
Spanish Inquisitor
January 26, 2012 at 10:42 am
I wonder how much of it is simply the word. We’re talking about people that really don’t apply much logic or thought to their visceral reactions to the concept of “abortion”. It’s as if they’ve been trained (in church?) to react to the word, like a person who begins to salivate at the mere mention of a favorite food.
Perhaps we should call it something else, maybe something more clinical, like “contraception termination” or CT for short. Women can go to CT clinics for a procedure.
Or maybe even give it a positive, lighthearted name, like “Spring Glade”, which evokes thoughts of misty waterfalls, and positive ions, and greenery, and tropical hibiscus.
Spring Glade Clinics has a nice ring.
OK, I’ll pull my tongue out of my cheek now.
tommykey
January 25, 2012 at 9:24 am
BTW, do you have any argument why I shouldn’t kill you? You’re annoying me, so why not?
Well, you’re making the choice to come here. You could also kill yourself, and you won’t feel annoyed anymore.
John
January 25, 2012 at 9:40 am
I’ll take that as a “no, I have no argument, no moral foundation”.
the chaplain
January 25, 2012 at 9:45 am
Go ahead and show us your “moral foundation.”
Spanish Inquisitor
January 25, 2012 at 10:08 am
{sniff, sniff} What’s that smell?it’s vaguely familiar. Eau de troll? I can’t be certain, but it seems to have no substance, merely an obnoxious presence.
Open the windows!
John
January 25, 2012 at 10:25 am
How about “don’t kill people”. On the moral advancement scale, its the equivalent of inventing fire, or inventing the wheel, but obviously the neanderthals around here haven’t even got that far.
Moe
January 25, 2012 at 12:28 pm
Don’t kill people? We’re all there John. But invisible cells dividing aren’t people any more than are cancer cells dividing. But, I hear corporations are people – is dissolution murder?
Dont kill people? WE kill people all the time – by war and by execution.
tommykey
January 25, 2012 at 12:19 pm
No, it’s more of a “I’m just taking a quick look and leaving a quick comment before I have to work” kind of reply.
tommykey
January 25, 2012 at 12:48 pm
How about “don’t kill people”.
Gee, we don’t believe in killing people either. Personhood applies to the born, not the unborn. That’s why we don’t give social security numbers to the unborn or allow people to claim the unborn as dependents on their tax returns. It’s why we celebrate birthdays and not conception days. It’s why all of our forms of identification have our birthdays instead of the days we were conceived.
To grant personhood rights to the unborn is to make the pregnant woman subordinate to the fetus and lets the state hijack a woman’s body and her life and turning her uterus into a public domain. It means that when a woman miscarries, the state is obligated to investigate the miscarriage and place the woman under suspicion for murder, which is not particularly compassionate, especially if it is a pregnancy the woman wanted to carry the term and now she has to endure the added tragedy of being investigated for murder. Nice moral foundation you have there.
Speaking of moral foundation, funny how it is the pro-choice side that advocates for neonatal care for pregnant women who want to carry their pregnancies to term. It is the pro-choice side that supports in greater numbers a social safety net for poor parents. It is the pro-choice side that supports comprehensive sex education and access to contraception to reduce unwanted pregnancies, thereby reducing the number of abortions.
Because you are a male and never have to worry about getting pregnant yourself, your anti-choice views are just a platform for you to grandstand and make try to make yourself feel better. “I have a moral foundation and you dont, so nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah!”
Now go do something useful like taking out the trash for your mom.
Lithp
January 25, 2012 at 12:49 pm
I’d say bodily autonomy is more important. If the fetus doesn’t have that, there’s nothing wrong with killing it, now is there? So say all people have the right to bodily autonomy & that a fetus is a person. Well, that would seem to settle it, wouldn’t it? But you’ll note that the fetus is attached to the umbilical cord which is attached to the uterus which is attached to…
Uh-oh. We seem to have run into a problem your “argument” doesn’t address. The fetus appears to be attached to another person who ALSO has bodily autonomy.
Now, this leads us to some interesting implications. Can we violate the mother’s bodily autonomy in the name of the fetus’s rights? Can we say she can’t remove the umbilical cord from herself? Can we control what she eats & drinks, force feed her if necessary? Can we tell her if the pregnancy kills her, that’s just too bad?
If we can do all of that, what makes the mother’s bodily autonomy less important than the fetus’s? Some would argue that the fetus can’t defend itself, but this does not make sense. If you enact laws to restrict the mother’s bodily autonomy, now she can’t defend herself either. Others would like to say that a right to life trumps a “right to convenience.” That’s interesting. So I can take whatever I feel is necessary from you–money, blood, organs, etc.–to save someone who is dying, provided it doesn’t kill you?
The bottomline is this: The law is supposed to be fair. Making laws that target pregnant women is this nasty thing we like to call “discrimination.” No other citizen is being forced to provide for another citizen’s life functions. So even if we hold that the fetus has rights, the pro-life argument doesn’t work.
Also, as an aside, babies do indeed think & form memories, they just do not keep them at later ages. A zygote without a brain, however, does not.
tommykey
January 25, 2012 at 12:51 pm
Slight correction:
your anti-choice views are just a platform for you to grandstand to try to make yourself feel better.
John
January 25, 2012 at 5:39 pm
Look at the rubbish we have posted here today. We’ve had killing an innocent human being justified by saying, oh well we execute criminals, we “kill” corporations, and we wage war to defend our country. So oh we’ll, may as well have a free for all and kill kids too.
We don’t put the unborn on our tax returns, because they don’t need a lot of upkeep or tax concessions. We don’t celebrate conception day, because we don’t generally know when that is. Do you hear what drivel this is?
Oh and because we don’t want to ever offend people in a grieving state, we should never investigate murder right? Really? Never heard that crazy talk before. Oh yes, let’s take murder off the criminal books, because we would never want to offend people while they are in such a vulnerable and emotional time.
You don’t know what I think about neonatal care or sex education, and it’s completely irrelevant. That’s the logical equivalent of “yeah and your mother wears army boots”.
The question “I can take whatever is necessary from you to save someone” is kind of ridiculous. We do after all force men to pay child support whether they like it or not. So we take resources against their will to support their offspring, and ignore their “autonomy”. Are you guys at least going to be consistent and say that forced child support should be stopped because autonomy is the overriding principle?
Tommykey
January 25, 2012 at 6:52 pm
We don’t put the unborn on our tax returns, because they don’t need a lot of upkeep
Right, because we all know that pregnant women never need to visit a doctor about their pregnancy between conception and birth, make changes to their diets, lifestyles, etc.
We don’t celebrate conception day, because we don’t generally know when that is
Really? Because I can identify the exact dates my two kids were conceived. I’m sure a lot of parents know when they conceived their children, but they don’t do anything special to mark the date.
Oh and because we don’t want to ever offend people in a grieving state, we should never investigate murder right?
Okay, so we have you on record as wanting to mandate investigating miscarriages as possible murders.
You’re a misogynistic douchebag. Adieu.
John
January 25, 2012 at 7:28 pm
If your country is so backward that you have to pay to visit the doctor, what is that to me?
And of course, no tax system is going to let you claim the unborn whilst abortion is legal. Yeah right, claim the deduction, oops decided to have an abortion again this year for a little extra money. Maybe if you weren’t such a misogynist, abortion could be banned and deductions for expecting mothers would at least be an option the govt could consider.
Spanish Inquisitor
January 26, 2012 at 10:03 am
Great rebuttal there.
Tommy: “You’re a misogynist”
John: “No, you are.”
Sheer brilliance!
Kagehi Kohn
January 26, 2012 at 2:18 pm
Having abortions for the tax credits? What the hell planet do people like you even live on? That is only slightly less supported by any kind of facts what so ever, or sane, than the moron we have trying to pass a law to ban the use of fetuses in food products, based on the insane idea that “recombinant techniques” only apply to like.. humans, not say, sugar producing plants, or well… bloody anything else.
Its right up there with the equally insane ideas as, “wide spread voter fraud”, and, “welfare babies”, or the idea that non-whites represent the majority of out of work and/or government helped people in the US. Not one damn one of which is bloody true, based on actual facts, but which whole long lists of idiots keep trying to legislate against, on the delusional theory, without one scrap of evidence, that its happening.
How about you show that women either do, or, for that matter, would go through all the problems, real and potential, just to do what you suggest?
No one gets an abortion to get a tax break, or because its “convenient”. That is pure bullshit, and only people like you, who don’t talk to, want to know, bother with actual facts, or ever so much as deal with someone making such a choice, have ever claimed so.
Well, ok, I admit, this isn’t entirely true. I have heard of dozens of cases where conservative, supposedly pro-life, assholes have secretly trundled their daughters off to clinics, to get the very thing they appose, because its more “convenient” for their daughter to do so, and avoid embarrassing daddy by getting knocked up out of wedlock, than to actually adhere to their false principles. Its the flip side of idiots that insist abstinence works, and hate birth control. When it fails, you need to make sure no one knows about it, if possible. The very people that claim to believe in this shit seem to be *far* more likely to be found in a damn clinic, getting one, than the people that don’t think there is anything wrong with it.
It comes from the difference between respecting life, but recognizing that sometimes you may not be in a position to support, or save, it, versus respecting lies, dogma, fantasy, and delusional theories about what, “all those other people are secretly doing, while I am not looking”. Its real easy to justify, “Just this once, to save my, or someone else’s, reputation.”, than it is to seriously ask, “Will this baby be a) truly cared for, b) healthy, or c) still have a mother, if nothing is done to save her?” Noting that (c) counts for any kids they already have, who would be without a mother, because their 2nd, 3rd, etc. pregnancy went horribly wrong.
John
January 26, 2012 at 8:46 pm
Well duh, of course noone does it for the tax credit, because there is no such tax credit. And yet again this nonsense that you’re better off dead than being born into a less than ideal circumstance. Let’s kill all the poor people too eh. I mean let’s be consistent. It’s not worth living if you’re poor right?
Spanish Inquisitor
January 27, 2012 at 9:33 am
Actually, I’m beginning to think that the death of all internet trolls might be a positive advance for society. Not quite there yet, but getting close.
Chappy, I thought you were going to open the window, let the stink out?
Kagehi Kohn
January 27, 2012 at 5:30 pm
Dude, you are the one claiming that women would/where doing it for a “deduction”. Nice that you then back peddle, and claim that I am the one who is clueless here, while, I note, ignoring everything else in my reply. We are done here. You are just like every other low IQ, think they know everything because they “believe” stuff, conservative. Don’t understand, don’t want to, can’t address anyone’s points, because you have nothing at all to address them with, just keep banging the same wrong shaped object, in the wrong hole, while insisting the problem is that no one will give you a hammer, not that you are trying to stuff a star into a circle.
Kind of hard to argue with someone that literally a) can’t make any distinctions, or understand why there might be such a thing, and b) accuse other people of bringing up false problems, when you where the one that introduced them in the first place.
I think you have a fine carrier as a “debater” for the right wing. Just make sure, like they do, that the audience if stacked with people that won’t notice that your claims are information free, you have no defenses, and that you refused to address anything your opponents say. But, don’t worry, the people that stage these things are real good at making sure that that usually doesn’t happen, and the only ones serving up questions at the end softball everything…
Kiwichap
January 25, 2012 at 7:07 pm
At risk of being boring, I’d still like to get your answers to some questions:
1) Do you see a zygote and, say, a new-born infant as equivalent beings?
2) If so, what, in your opinion, makes them equivalent in spite of their obvious morphological differeneces?
3) What is it that makes a blastula as much a ‘person’ as I am?
To me, these are serious questions and you’ve made no attempt to give them serious answers. Do you have any or should I just go with my instincts and assume that you have nothing sensible to contribute to this important debate?
John
January 25, 2012 at 7:33 pm
Kiwi chap: what’s the point of interacting with your notions of “equivalent beings”? I’ve been lectured here that personhood requires aspirations and memories. Yet newborn babies have neither. Maybe if you’d like to at least show me you are willing to be consistent and allow the slaughtering of inconvenient new born babies, then the basis of your question might at least be considered to have some semblance of rationality.
Spanish Inquisitor
January 26, 2012 at 9:40 am
Hey, John. Don’t be an asshole. You haven’t been “lectured” about anything. Words in a comment in a post does not a lecture make.
You got an opinion? Fine. You’ve stated it. Now back it up.
If all you do is state your opinion, then when asked to support your equivalency of zygotes to newborns, you deflect, insult and generally avoid the question, then you add nothing. So put up or shut up. Otherwise, you’re a troll, and should be ignored.
John
January 26, 2012 at 8:43 pm
Yet again, I have to point out that you have not told us tat YOU subscribe to some equivalency theory. Is it acceptable to kill a newborn baby because it lacks memories, aspirations and other things that adults have? If not, then you blew your own argument without me having to say a word. If you do advocate killing babies, then at least be open about it so we can see clearly the issues.
Spanish Inquisitor
January 27, 2012 at 9:31 am
Well, now that you mention it, roasted baby au vin is quite delicious, if prepared correctly. If not, it tastes like a gamey chicken..
Now, is the issue clearer? Can you now answer the question without deflecting it with nonsense about killing babies?
Kiwichap
January 26, 2012 at 9:40 pm
But I DON’T think that killing new-born babies is the equivalent of terminating early-stage foetuses – I thought I’d made that reasonably clear. It appears that you think that these things ARE equivalent and I’m interested in knowing why you think this. As I’ve written, there’s a developmental continuum between zygote and full ‘personhood’ but I can’t see that that makes zygotes and ‘full persons’ (or, for that matter, the transitional phase of the new-born infant) equivalent to each other.
You argue that you want me to be consistent – if I’m comfortable with the termination of an unwanted gastrula then I MUST also be comfortable with killing an unwanted new-born baby. That’s just arrant nonsense! The point that I’m trying to get across is that I simply DON’T see these two stages on the developmental continuum to be equivalent – it appears that you do and I’m asking you to elucidate that point of view. Surely that’s not too much to ask.
Incidentally, the phenomenon of an “inconvenient new-born baby” is a ghastly thing. The notion of a new mother contemplating her newly-arrived offspring with loathing and resentment is one of the saddest things I can imagine – sad for the mother and probably even sadder for the person that the baby will develop into. That’s why I think that abortion-on-demand should be an option that’s available to women who are pregnant and don’t want to be.
John
January 26, 2012 at 9:52 pm
If its a “continuum”, how exactly does that help you? You haven’t told us what you think constitutes full personhood, and what attributes that entails. If you want me to refute your position, you’re going to have to clearly state a position. If development is a continuum from conception to adulthood, am I then right in saying it should be a lessor crime to kill a child? Maybe 18 years prison for killing an 18 year old, but 3 years prison for killing a 3 year old? Maybe 9 months prison for killing a new born? Is this the kind of continuum of evil that you have in mind?
Kiwichap
January 26, 2012 at 10:35 pm
I continue to cordially invite you to explain to me why you think that a zygote and a person (or a child, or a new-born infant) are equivalent beings. So far, you’ve chosen to ignore this invitation. Seriously; I’m willing to be convinced but you’re going to have to address my questions if you’re going to change my mind on this.
Human development being a ‘continuum’ doesn’t help me at all – in fact, it makes the moral question very difficult indeed. As I’ve written, the later-term an abortion is, the queasier I become: (a) termination of a gastrula – completely sanguine; (b) termination during the third trimester – very queasy indeed. This ‘variance of position’ is, I think, morally defensible on the basis of the demonstrable morphological differences between a gastrula and a foetus during the third trimester. I really would like to read a cogent argument from you to try to dissuade me from this opinion.
You used the phrase “If its (sic) a continuum” which suggests that you think it might not be. Perhaps we’re getting to the crux of the issue here; I think it’s obvious that embryological development IS a continuum but you seem to think otherwise. Can you defend that position?
John
January 26, 2012 at 10:56 pm
Well of course development is a continuum. The thing is: So what? If we should care about that, then killing a newborn should be regarded as a minor misdemeanor, since it can’t do anything interesting that an adult can do. It can’t do anything that a sheep can’t do. Do you think killing a sheep should be a crime? What is the significant morphological difference between a new born baby and a sheep? They’ve both got 4 limbs, 2 eyes, and similar bits and pieces. The adult sheep is probably smarter. So what’s all this morphological argument, and why should I care?
Kiwichap
January 26, 2012 at 11:45 pm
You should care because you’re trying to convince me that I should re-think my position. (Nothing I’ve written is any attempt to get you to re-think yours – all I’ve done is to ask you earnest questions that you’ve failed to address.) I DON’T think that killing a new-born infant should be a minor misdemeanour but I DO think that terminating a gastrula should not be considered any sort of crime whatsoever.
You keep on saying that if killing a gastrula is OK then, logically, so should be killing a baby. Alright then, let’s limit ourselves to those two defined points on the developmental continuum – I say that killing a gastrula is OK but killing a baby is not and that this is due to the profound morphological differences between the two. Now, tell me why I’m wrong. Hint: simply re-stating the “if it’s OK to kill the one then it logically follows that it’s OK to kill the other” line you’ve been going with so far is not going to get the job done – you’ll have to come up with an actual argument for why the specific points on the continuum we’re limiting ourselves to (gastrula and new-born baby) are fundamentally equivalent in spite of their obvious and profound morphological differences. (NOTE: please notice that I’m still not trying to convince you of anything, I’m just inviting you to have a crack at changing my mind. Present my with a cogent argument and you might succeed.)
John
January 27, 2012 at 9:52 am
Spanish Inquisitor: I don’t need to reply to you now. Since you’ve stated you’re happy to kill new born babies as well, then the differences between them are moot.
Kiwichap: You tell me what important morphological difference there is between a sheep and a new born baby that allows the former to be killed and not the latter, then I will answer your question. On the off chance you can come up with an answer, I’ve got a strong suspicion that it will answer back your own question. If you can’t answer this question, then the whole morphological line of thinking is clearly a furphy.
Spanish Inquisitor
January 27, 2012 at 10:39 am
How convenient. You can rationalize ignoring me. Won’t be long you’ll be able to ignore everyone here, then you’ll go away. Happy day!
the chaplain
January 27, 2012 at 11:27 am
I opened the window a couple of days ago, but we haven’t had any breezes sufficient to take away the troll stench. I used up my store of troll food several years ago and never bothered re-stocking. Apparently, there are still some crumbs in the basement.
Kiwichap
January 29, 2012 at 3:21 pm
Sigh …. OK, so clearly you haven’t got an argument to justify your position that a gastrula and a new-born baby are equivalent beings. That’s a pity – I really was interested in reading a good, tightly-argued case for why I should agree with you on this crucial question. Incidentally, at what stage in this “discussion” did I suggest that I think that killing a sheep is morally justifiable?
John
January 29, 2012 at 7:00 pm
So then, the basis of your position is that it isn’t morally justifiable to kill a sheep, which is why we can’t kill a newborn. But we can kill a child in the womb, because it is a lower life form than a sheep. Sheep is the cut off point for life forms that deserve dignity, is that right?
And your basis for this cut off point would be what?
Kiwichap
January 29, 2012 at 8:05 pm
“So then, the basis of your position is that it isn’t morally justifiable to kill a sheep, which is why we can’t kill a newborn.”
This is just getting silly. I haven’t written anything about my opinions on killing sheep but you seem to want to infer that I posit some sort of equivalence (or lack thereof) between sheep and infants. Call me a bluff old traditionalist but I think it’s better stick to the topic under discussion. Your earlier post suggests that you do have an argument to back up your position that a gastrula and a new-born baby are somehow equivalent in a way that I simply can’t see:
“…then I will answer your question.”
So, once more, may I respectfully ask that you provide this answer without shooting off on your ovine tangent and without me having to learn the secret handshake that will get you give me the benefit of your wisdom? Seriously – if you’ve got a case to make, I’d genuinely like to read it! (Slight irony here: I’m the Kiwi yet you’re the one with the sheep fixation.)
John
January 29, 2012 at 8:18 pm
Well hang on now, you’re the one who brought up the concept of morphological differences as a supposed interesting basis for differentiating the right to life of creatures. I’m not the one who suggested that was a meaningful differentiator. But if you want to me to give that idea credence as a topic for discussion, you’re going to have to explain this concept to me, showing why morphological differences or similarity between a sheep and a new born give one, or the other, or both a right to life. If you can’t answer these simple questions we have to assume that this idea was simply a furphy.
BTW, you’ve got to talk the language of the listener, so I thought sheep should be something close to the heart of a kiwi.
Kiwichap
January 29, 2012 at 8:56 pm
OK, one more crack at this and then I really have to go. Confining ourselves to humans (and the various stages along the continuum of human development), with no digression into sheep, goats, any other quadrupeds, arthropods, paramecia or other non-human creatures: (a) is it your position that a gastrula and an infant are in some way equivalent? (A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will probably be useful here.) and (b) if so, what are the characteristics that they have in common that convince you of their equivalency?
These appear to me to be fairly straightforward questions, to which I really would like to get your answers. Please bear in mind that I have not made any attempt to change your point of view, I’m just trying to understand what your point of view is. If you’re not willing to explain your position you’ll miss your chance to persuade me through reasoned argument. This could be your best opportunity to make a difference to the way someone else thinks – please don’t blow it by veering off into specious and evasive nonsense that isn’t germane to the questions I’ve asked.
John
January 29, 2012 at 9:16 pm
Do I really have to explain this? You are not familiar with elementary biology? They are equivalent in that they are both human creatures. Glad I could give you an education.
Kiwichap
January 29, 2012 at 11:07 pm
Well, I’ve got a bachelor’s degree with majors in both zoology and botany so I do have at least a nodding familiarity with elementary biology but thanks for asking. At least you’ve now given what looks like a straight answer so we’re on a solid foundation for further discourse. So, with some trepidation, I’ll try to push my line of questioning a little bit further…
Show me new-born examples of (1) a human and (2) any other vertebrate and I’d back myself to be able to pick the human one of the pair. Show me examples of the same two species at the gastrula stage and I’d be highly unlikely to discern any difference at all between the two specimens – even though one of the two has the POTENTIAL to grow into a human entity, neither of them actually IS a human entity. This is why I don’t lose any sleep over the death of potentially-human gastrulas, whether by spontaneous abortion (or ‘miscarriage’ to use a more socially acceptable term) or by medical intervention. [As an aside, estimates are that about a third of all human conceptions end in spontaneous abortion and, while such events are doubtlessly upsetting to at least some of the people directly affected by them, our wider societal view is that these deaths are really no great tragedy and certainly not something to inspire high moral dudgeon. We don’t ask women who’ve miscarried impertinent questions about what they might have done to bring about the termination (just how heavy WAS that shopping you were carrying madam?) and we don’t go into collective mourning when one occurs. This seems to be a rational response to the death of a not-yet-human creature.]
So, finally, to my question: from a morphological point of view, a gastrula is a gastrula is a gastrula and not yet a chicken or a human or whatever else it might develop into in the absence of some sort of intervention – naturally-occurring or otherwise. Most of us are pretty sanguine about most of the deaths of gastrulas (or is that gastrulae?) whether by human miscarriage or by a breakfaster casually scraping the little pink dot off his fried egg. Is this not, in either case, a sensible (non-)reaction to the death of a not-particularly-significant little bundle of cells?
Kagehi Kohn
January 30, 2012 at 4:28 pm
Swore I wasn’t going to do this again with you, but this is the stupidest thing you have said yet. So are cancer cells. So is the blobs of cancer cells, which they still, to this day, use to run tests, from a woman that has been dead for over 61 years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks
Asserting that they are both human life isn’t saying a damn thing at all. You and me both lose more “human life” in skin cells each day than there is in an gastrula. Trying to claim that it being “human” constitutes some terribly amazing thing, for which no distinction need be made, is… just bloody…. I don’t know the right word for it.
John
January 30, 2012 at 4:42 pm
I didn’t merely say they were human, I said they were human creatures. Ie human organisms. A clump of cancer cells or skin cells are not human organisms. Is that the best you’ve got?
Kagehi Kohn
January 30, 2012 at 5:04 pm
Please explain how you know that the clump of cells you keep insisting is important will:
a) Actually be born anyway.
b) Won’t have major defects.
c) Qualifies as more human than any other lump of cells.
The last one is kind of important, because we are making strides in figuring out how and why cells do not act like embryos, in later life, so its at least plausible that your argument that a clump of cancer cells isn’t human will, fairly soon, mean jack all. One could, in principle, with enough understanding, a) repair what ever was making it grow out of control, b) switch it to an embryonic state, and c) implant it, and have it develop into a child, presuming other genetic errors do not derail this in the process. All the same information is there, in the cell, as was in the gastrula, the only difference that exists *at all* is which genes are turned on, and that some of them got fowled enough that they went into constant replication.
So, no, actually knowing what the frak I am talking about, I don’t see your claim that there is a difference between a clump of cancer cells, and a clump of the same size gastrula cells as meaningful at all, beyond that one happens to be malfunctioning, something that **could** happen, at any time, do to a whole host of things, including diet, the mother’s body having an unexpected reaction to the implanted cells, the use of some drugs, without knowing she is pregnant, some genetic glitch that doesn’t even kick in until later stages, or who knows what else that *might* turn your precious “pre-baby” into nothing but a mass of malfunctioning cells, just like the lump of cancer cells.
Either human is human, and thus *all* human tissue qualifies, as anyone with the slightest clue about genetics could argue, or the moving, thinking, breathing ones are more important. Its pretty clear you have no clue why the former isn’t helping you, but you also quite definitely don’t like the latter either, which puts your claims in a category called, “Not having a bloody clue what I am talking about.”
John
January 29, 2012 at 11:58 pm
I doubt heavy shopping would have any effect at all.
You can’t tell if a gastrula is human? What exactly does your personal perceptive abilities got to do with anything? What if I can tell the difference, what then? Does humanity depend on technology or ability to perceive? If I personally don’t have the perceptive faculties to differentiate a baby human from a baby chimpanzee, does that mean there is no difference?
Of course how sanguine a particular person may or may not be, or ought to be, is the topic of debate. Saying you don’t care is of course not an argument.
So is that all you’ve got?
Kiwichap
January 30, 2012 at 10:03 pm
The point is that a gastrula ISN’T a human being by any measure that I find compelling. It’s a POTENTIAL human but, to me, that’s not the same thing as actually being human. As has been pointed out elsewhere, with cloning technology as it soon will be, ANY nucleated human cell will be a potential human being but I don’t think that anyone is likely to mourn the destruction of myriad potential humans whenever anyone scratches his nose – that just wouldn’t be sensible. And, similarly, it’s not sensible to get too upset when a small bundle of cells dies through abortion – we adopt a sensible attitude to spontaneous abortions and I think we should extend this to induced abortions. Taking a consequentialist approach, it seems pretty clear that elective abortions are usually carried out so as to benefit the principals involved in the situation – some humans benefit, no humans suffer. This seems like a good outcome
It seems that the fundamental difference between us is that you think that an abortion represents a terrible damage to a future being – the human that the gastrula would have become had it not been killed – whereas I see it as just killing a little bundle of cells. For me, no human ever arises if a gastrula is aborted, therefore no human gets hurt. Your point of view might make perfect sense if you’re a dualist (are you? – I suspect that you might be) but it just doesn’t make sense to a rational materialist like me.
As I’ve noted before, I’m not trying to convince you of anything, just trying to understand your point of view. You, on the other hand, seem to be keen to mount an argument that will change the mindset of most readers of this blog – it seems improbable that you’d enter into the discussion if this were not the case. So, here’s what I think is the challenge for you:
a) come to the understanding that, odd as it may seem to you, not all people share your philosophical point of view regarding the dual nature of mind and matter
b) armed with that understanding, try to mount an argument that will be compelling to a materialist
Good luck.
John
January 30, 2012 at 10:20 pm
There is no moral dimension for the rational materialist beyond whatever feels good, and seems expedient. That’s the true pointlessness of this discussion. There are some rational materialists who think genocide
Is a good thing. The justifications vary. Perhaps they think it will help save the environment or whatever. The end always justifies the means.
Trying to convince you is pointless, because you have no set of founding principles to start from. What is a human? Why is it better than a sheep? You have nothing insightful to say on these topics because it is simply whatever opinion makes you feel satisfied, consistency be damned. So there is no foundation from
which to have a rational discussion.
Kiwichap
January 30, 2012 at 11:20 pm
Nonsense. The oft-repeated canard that materialists cannot be moral is just ludicrous and, frankly, should be beneath you. One of the powers that my thinking matter gives me is the ability to empathise and that’s all I need in order to act morally. Simple really – I can imagine how others might be affected by my actions and this guides my behaviour.
And what is to prevent a materialist from being a moral consequentialist? ‘The greatest good for the greatest number’ is a moral foundation that is available to anyone without having to resort to some more nebulous foundation that is, presumably, gifted to us from some authority or another. Sorry, but that just isn’t necessary.
“There are some rational materialists who think genocide
Is a good thing.”
And there are some dualists who would agree. So your point is…??
Kagehi Kohn
January 31, 2012 at 5:03 pm
Actually, its dumber than that. We have to derive a reason for what we believe, even if that reason “starts” with what we feel. He has the same dilemma, in that he “feels” that its wrong, but his justification for it is…. betting its that someone/something else told him he was right. Convenient that he didn’t have to think his way to that perspective, and can therefor ignore every contingent situation we might possibly bring up, including the mother’s own life, the loss of that mother, for other existing children, and her husband, family, friends, etc.
Nice, clean, and clear cut. X says its wrong, and I feel so too, so it must be. Yet we are the ones looking at things in terms of “feels good and seems expedient”. There is a reason why supposedly “moral” religious people are often pro-death penalty, while those like us absolutely abhor it, and its not because keeping those people alive is “more expedient”. Its because innocent people die too, and it doesn’t do anything to prevent more crimes. Both “logical” reasons. Yet, the “moral” one, we are told, is to do away with them, because they *might* escape, or something, and its “convenient” for the victims (i.e., closure, even if its entirely false closure). This issue is no different. The people looking at he “expedience” here, or insisting that we need to make the decision based on what we *feel* about it, are not the ones saying, “Sometimes it may be unavoidable”, its the people that see protecting a potential life as “necessary”, and the failure to do so as something that “feels bad” to them.
John
January 31, 2012 at 6:12 pm
Nobody “told me I was right”. I had to think it through. The inability of other people here to answer even elementary questions shows who has done thinking.
Kagehi Kohn
February 1, 2012 at 3:58 am
Right, sorry… Got you confused with the absurd Biblical revisionists that usually show up on these sorts of threads, whining about “ensoulment”. Not that you have, yet, explained what exactly you do think, or answered the question of why every other life involved is worth less than that of something that isn’t even at a stage where there is better than 1:3 odds it will be born anyway. In any case, its pretty obvious you don’t have any clear explanation, just the “certainty” of your feelings about it, which was my point in the first place. You can’t accuse us, who have explanations for our view, of thinking purely in terms of “what feels good”, and “utility”. And, frankly, if you are talking about the person who is actually carrying the child, please, go find evidence that abortion “feels good” to even a slight majority, never mind a significant one, before you babble bullshit about how easy it is to make such a choice. You are lucky you are dealing with guys so far. If you had to argue with a women, especially one that found themselves in the position of making such a choice….
John
January 30, 2012 at 5:37 pm
Why should knowing if it will be born be decisive to my thinking? A baby that is born may never grow up, does that mean I can kill it? We generally hope and aim and try to see it grows up, but we don’t kill it just because it may not.
Same thing re your defect question. A baby may be born, then develop some problem, but we don’t say it’s ok to kill it just because of what might happen.
Why is a gastrula mre human than a clump of cancer cells? Because a gastrula is a normal phase in human development. Cancer cells are cells that have gone wrong as far as normal human development. Furthermore, cancer cells can never result in a self sufficient organism. A gastrula can and normally does.
I dont see why i should care about your hypothetical question. Many outlandish things are possible in the minds of science fiction writers, and we have to deal with them as they arise. I doubt you could switch an entire clump of cells to an embryonic state. People have with great difficulty modified the DNA in cells, but not changed regular cells into stem cells. But hypothetically, if you managed synthesize an embryo, so be it, it would be a human organism.
Since we’re involved in ridiculous hypotheticals here, and you say we should only care about moving, thinking breathing humans, I wonder if that means its ok to kill people who are paralyzed. And if we find a technological way to oxygenate the blood without breathing, it would make it ok to kill people. Then if your final card is thinking humans, I ask how you know a new born baby does enough human thinking to make it worth saving?
John
January 30, 2012 at 11:32 pm
Yet you can’t empathize with the future child who would have grown up and had feelings, but you didn’t mind snuffing out of existence.
Empathy is very relativistic then isn’t it. Apparently then if I don’t feel empathy towards, oh say a new born, and it is inconvenient, then why not kill it? After all, this feeling is your moral foundation, and if the feeling doesn’t happen to put in an appearance, cest la vie. Doesn’t matter. Kill. A psychopath is just as moral as a saint. They just happen to not experience empathy at the same moments as you. Doesn’t mean they are wrong.
Kiwichap
January 31, 2012 at 7:46 pm
You’re right, I can’t empathise with a notional ‘future child’ when I’m contemplating the fate of a gastrula. I don’t think that this ‘future child’ has any existence – all that exists that could support this future entity is the little bundle of cells that actually does exist and this simply isn’t up to the job.
Now, if you think that some ‘future child’ DOES reside in the gastrula you’re getting into some weird and wonderful metaphysics and I’m afraid that I can’t follow you there with a straight face.
Yep, you’re right – morals ARE relativistic. They are mutable and should always be subject to sincere and reasoned re-evaluation. And a good job that this is demonstrably the case – without mutation / evolution of our collective morals we’d still be stuck with morally sustained slavery, subjugation of women, persecution of various ‘out groups,’ etc. So, yeah, you’re right, I do think that it’s a good thing that our moral perspectives are subject to change. Thinking about morality and advancing moral behaviour has been a central theme in the entire human project and the long history of philosophy shows that the ‘dialogue by which we convene a shared moral perspective at any given time and place’ has been going on for thousands of years. And because of this constant review and adjustment, we have been able to make moral progress. I’m seeing this as a GOOD THING! The thing is, it needs to be an inclusive dialogue and it looks like you’re keen to declare some folks as being unqualified to participate because they don’t have the same ‘foundation from authority’ that you, quite genuinely I’m sure, believe is absolutely REQUIRED in order to have a valid point of view. Well, this won’t stand – there is no reason why a rational materialist cannot have a moral framework built on a ‘foundation from reason.’ It’s still a moral foundation, just like yours, but it’s arrived at by a different mechanism. You might think it outrageous that anyone could view your ‘foundation from authority’ as anything other than the obvious one and only correct foundation to go with but I’m afraid that you’re just going to have to get over that if you’ve got an interest in dialogue rather than dictation.
John
January 31, 2012 at 8:12 pm
I haven’t appealed to any authority here. Did you really think you could throw in a false claim like that and nobody would notice?
So you don’t believe in potential futures of gastrulas. Of course as you know most of what makes a person who they are is already determined at this stage as evidenced by the similarities of twins. But let’s say you don’t believe in potential futures. They never existed you might say, so you don’t have to care about them. Well you should have nothing against killing adults either. Dead adults have no futures either. They have no future existence. As long they are killed without pain, no harm no foul, right? Why feel sorry about a potential future that will never be?
Of course you might lament something about the hopes and aspirations of the adult that were snuffed out. But new born babies have no hopes and aspirations, so if that’s all that bothers you, there should be no objections to killing new borns.
Now you say mankind is making moral progress. How do you know? Can you prove it? Someone from a thousand years ago might disagree with you, and I can’t see how you’d have a leg to stand on in disagreeing with him.
Kiwichap
January 31, 2012 at 9:34 pm
Getting rid of slavery seems like progress to me. Of course I wouldn’t presume to speak for you …
John
January 31, 2012 at 9:48 pm
That’s fine, I got you to admit the whole arbitrary basis of your value system has nothing underpinning it beyond what things seem to you.
Kiwichap
January 31, 2012 at 10:46 pm
And yours isn’t arbitrary because it comes from …??
John
January 31, 2012 at 10:57 pm
A consistent philosophy of the dignity of the human creature. Unlike your inconsistent position.
Kagehi Kohn
February 1, 2012 at 4:05 am
Right.. You disagree on one subject you know of, so you are right, and he is wrong, automatically, and being inconsistent. Still waiting for you to explain why the state gets to declare that the mother dies in an emergency, whether or not the baby will survive, since we are talking about “human dignity” here…
Consistent my ass.
John
February 1, 2012 at 6:11 am
No, he/you are not inconsistent because you disagree with me. You are inconsistent because you are inconsistent.
I have no idea what weird scenario you have in mind where the mother dies.
John
February 1, 2012 at 6:15 am
And I have no idea how anything I have said amounts to others “involved being worth less”. So all your whining about that is meaningless to me.
And your so-called explanations of your view are pathetic when they totally collapse under cross examination, and nobody here can answer questions.
As for feeling good, if there was nothing at all that made them feel good about it, then the sensible thing would be not to do it.
Kiwichap
February 1, 2012 at 11:36 pm
The consistency that you talking up here is notion that “it’s a human creature from the moment of conception and it needs to have the rights and protections afforded to any human creature at any time during its life – from zygote through to its natural death” or something similar – right?
And I’m inconsistent because I can look at a small bundle of cells and say “although that little blob could eventually become a human, it isn’t one yet.”
Is that about right?
John
February 1, 2012 at 11:45 pm
No, I’m consistent because that bundle of cells is factually speaking a human organism, and I am consistent in ascribing protection to human organisms.
You are inconsistent because you can’t explain to me a consistent basis for what organisms deserve protection. You seem willing to protect some and not others, but you won’t tell us why beyond your personal feelings.
Jenn Dyer
February 1, 2012 at 5:09 pm
If this argument was fun, you’ll have a lot of fun over at Slate where Amanda Marcotte has a post up about the Susan B. Koman Fondation pulling funding from Planned Parenthood. Oh the ignorance hurts.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/01/31/susan_b_komen_charity_throws_planned_parenthood_under_the_bus_.html
But at least there are intelligent people out there:
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/02/01/ebooks-for-breast-cancer-screening-and-education/
the chaplain
February 2, 2012 at 11:51 am
What’s really pathetic is that Komen Foundation funding for PP was being used for breast cancer screenings. It had nothing to do with abortions. So, since the foundation disapproves of one aspect of PP’s services, it won’t assist in any of them. Religious charities better not bitch when secularists and other non-Christians stop funding their soup kitchens and homeless shelters because we disapprove of those organizations’ Christian outreach in other programs. They can’t have it both ways. Jackasses.
the chaplain
February 3, 2012 at 3:14 pm
Check out this news:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/02/03/susan_g_komen_foundation_apologizes_for_pulling_funding_from_planned_parenthood.html
The Komen Foundation reversed its decision to withdraw funding from PP!
Moe
February 3, 2012 at 3:46 pm
Chappy – let me congratulate you – 100 comments is very cool.
tommykey
February 3, 2012 at 5:45 pm
Sort of. From what I have read, the funding only applies to this year and PP is merely eligible to apply for funding for 2013 but not guaranteed to receive it. This is just a ploy by SGK to put a damper on the criticism. But I think for a lot of people, their image is irretrievably tarnished.
the chaplain
February 3, 2012 at 8:09 pm
Moe – Thank you.
Tommy – most grants have a limited duration and renewal isn’t necessarily guaranteed for a lot of them. Yes, this may just be damage control, but at least the women who really need access to mammograms, etc., will be able to get them. If PP is smart – and the way they garnered so much support on this issue shows that their PR dept. can be pretty astute – they will seek wider sources of funding anyway. Any non-profit that wants to stay in business has to cultivate new donors all the time.
Kagehi Kohn
February 2, 2012 at 2:22 am
o.O
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=complications+pregnancy+mother+death&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-
8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
Or, if you don’t plan to actually bother looking at the search terms:
http://www.americanpregnancy.org/pregnancycomplications/ectopicpregnancy.html
And some statistics:
4,058,000 live births
1,995,840 pregnancy losses
http://www.americanpregnancy.org/main/statistics.html
That is not “abortions”, that is simply, “loses, do you complications. The one statistic, unfortunately, missing from this page is this one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_death
‘Maternal death, or maternal mortality, also “obstetrical death” is the death of a woman during or shortly after a pregnancy. ‘
‘WHO in its 2005 World Health Report “Make Every Mother and Child Count”, they are: severe bleeding/hemorrhage (25%), infections (13%), unsafe abortions (13%), eclampsia (12%), obstructed labour (8%), other direct causes (8%), and indirect causes (20%). Indirect causes such as malaria, anaemia,[6] HIV/AIDS and cardiovascular disease, complicate pregnancy or are aggravated by it.’
‘Unintended pregnancy is a major cause of maternal deaths. Worldwide, unintended pregnancy resulted in almost 700,000 maternal deaths from 1995 to 2000 (approximately one-fifth of the maternal deaths during that period).[10] The majority (64%) resulted from complications from unsafe or unsanitary abortion.’
You know, the sort of unsafe and unsanitary ones that happened “prior” to Roe vs. Wade, and which happen all the time (90% of the death of those 700,000 where in the developing world, where idiots like some churches also lie about condoms, and safe sex).
Over all, it means that only 1% die because of these things, under existing law, in the US, where it *is* an option to treat hemorrhage, infections, eclampsia and other things, with a) surgery that can’t be performed while saving the child, b) drugs for the infections, which would injure the child, or kill them both, if not treated, or c) in cases like ectopic pregnancies, it is *literally* not possible, in some cases, to carry the child to term, or long enough to be able to do early delivery, and where, in such cases, the longer you wait, the higher the odds the mother will *never* be able to even have another child (assuming they don’t die instead of just being rendered infertile).
There are, taking statistics from census, and other data on fertility, 50.8% of the US population women, out of 311,591,917 = 158,288,694. Lets assume that 1/2 of those are between 14-44. I don’t feel like looking that one up. Of those, between 14-44, 5,856,682 are probably infertile, and another 9,339,033 probably have trouble getting pregnant (statistics from here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/fertile.htm). So, that leave us with 15,195,715 women, of which 1.5 million of them will die some time this year, as a result of complications, during, or soon after, pregnancy. A number that, without legal grounds to save their lives, proper care, and all the other things being targeted by anti-abortion, anti-Planned Parenthood, etc., would rise, possibly not as high as in developing countries, but never the less would increase. Lets say it **merely** increases the risks 4 fold. That is 6,078,286 women, dead, because some people don’t understand that human pregnancies are not simple, uncomplicated, and go wrong, sometimes fatally (its still 1% where *all* the possible help is available).
On a side note, humans are one of like 6 species on the entire planet that has this problem (they are not all primates). What is the problem exactly? It seems, based on a study of those species, that the growing cells of a fertilized egg produces chemicals in those species, which causes them to *aggressively* tied into the mothers blood stream, to draw out nutrients. In most species, the wall of the uterus only thickens “after” implantation. The more aggressive the child is at stealing from the mother’s resources, the more likely it is that the mother’s body, in that species, will “pro-actively” thicken the walls, far beyond what other species need, in order to safe guard itself. This is why “ectopic” pregnancies is so dangerous.
So… I bloody well think its a bit more than a “weird scenario”. Its 1.5 million women, per year, even without people trying to send them and their doctors, to prison, because they had two choices, 1) risk the child, and maybe the mother with it, or 2) save the mother.
And, its these cold hard facts about human pregnancy that tell me that you have no damn clue, but the rest of us have hard, often heartbreaking, but necessary choices to make. And yes, some of them are a matter of pure utility, “Do we leave it legal, and at least make sure they don’t die from problems from that, like infections, or bleeding, or turn back the clock to where all those other 90% of the complication deaths happen, and kill 4, 8, 10, 20 times as many in the process of them having it done illegally? I don’t know.. What are the odds that, in a country of 158 million women, you might know one of the 31,657,739 that die, if in the worst case I gave above? And, is it any better if its only 4.5 million more than now? 99.9% of which die **not** from the thing you appose, but trying to have a live child, perhaps even when warned there where specific risks to them even trying.
the chaplain
February 2, 2012 at 11:53 am
Thanks for this comment. I was going to do something like this, but you did all the work for me – and better than I would have done anyway. It’s great to have intelligent, informed comment writers.
John
February 2, 2012 at 12:08 pm
Kagehi Kohn: A lot of statistics there, but its not clear what point exactly you are trying to make.
Firstly, you seem to think it important that perhaps maternal deaths are 4x higher in the developing world. That is presumably because of lack of advanced medical facilities. But you need advanced medical facilities to perform abortions. So how that helps your case, I don’t know.
Secondly, I don’t think any women are planning to have abortions because of the 1% risk of complications. I don’t think women are saying to themselves, I’d better abort this thing because I have a 1% risk of dying from it.
Thirdly, the suicide rate among those who induce abortion goes up by more than three times. So there’s no free pass to avoiding complications even if you do abort.
Kagehi Kohn
February 3, 2012 at 1:41 am
Apparently you can’t read either. 1% of all deaths due to complication happen in the “developed world”, that isn’t a 4x increase, its a 99x increase over ours. If you had bothered to check anything I linked to, you would find that some of those are a result of medical complications, while others are from “illegal”, “unsanitary”, or otherwise “dangerous” abortions, which happen anyway, if/when people feel desperate enough.
But, again, that is beside the point. The deaths that happen in the US are ***not*** do to cases of abortion. They are cases where the absolute best medical technology we have can’t save the mother, and quite often, not the child either, in cases where the problem happens well before it can be given premature birth.
In any case, I am lowballing the number of 4x. I said, as you failed to grasp, that even if it only quadrupled I would find it offensive. I would be willing to bet that it would be more like 10, 20, or 30 times higher. That isn’t a 1% chance of death, that would make it a 10%, 20% or 30% chance. And, if you are the women in question, why the hell would you even be willing, if you knew you had *all* of the markings of risk, to accept even a 1% chance?
As for statistics involving suicide rates – This happens in the case of losses that where unintended too, so its bullshit anyway, but we also don’t stop giving people anti-depresants due to the fact that the first 2-3 weeks, during which the meds haven’t yet kicked in fully, actually increase the odds of some of them committing suicide. Unfortunately, what we often get instead is complete lack or real support, to keep it from happening. Interestingly, in the case of abortions, not only is it likely they won’t be helped to deal with any problems, they will actually be hounded by idiots calling them murders, even if the only reason they did it was *because* they literally **couldn’t** carry the baby to term anyway.
But, heh, if you think being completely shitty to someone over something like that shouldn’t be counted as a *cause* of any of those suicides…
This isn’t about what you think the damn risks are, its about the reality of human pregnancies, and for a women in certain age ranges, with certain medical histories, or prior complications, the odds are not 1%, they are **much** higher. And, unless you plan to keep women from even getting pregnant, until you can prove they have *zero* risk factors (like that wouldn’t be even more Orwellian that what you already want), some of them will have them, and many without knowing it, and making it illegal, to the point of jailing, and investigating, even accidental losses, as some idiots would like, is inhuman.
Oh, and lets say, for the sake of argument, there was a valid reason, at all, to do such a thing, how the fuck many more of those 1,995,840 lost pregnancies that would be “investigated” would end up causing the women to suicide over that?
And, seriously, how the hell many have to die, for no reason, other than your sloppy, disinterest, definition of “human organism”, before the numbers are “too high”? How many put in jail, having already went through the pain of deciding they can’t take care of a child, then nearly killing themselves, to get an illegal one, only to them get arrested and tried for it? What the frakking hell is wrong with you that none of this matters, only your over broad, and absurd definitions?
John
February 3, 2012 at 9:17 pm
So what am I supposed to make of these statistics? The third world doesn’t have good medical facilities. But that means they don’t have facilities to perform abortions either. So that doesn’t really help your case.
And if there are women in the developed world who for whatever reason think that childbearing represents to them an unacceptable risk, then what are they doing getting pregnant? Why don’t they get their tubes tied?
Lots of new born babies die too. Usually from cot death. Occasionally because a mother gets post natal depression and kills them. I don’t see anyone saying there should be open slather on killing new born babies because (a) most of them are naturally occurring and (b) investigations would be inhumane to mothers. There must be something like 20,000 cot deaths in the US, but I don’t see any outcry that the authorities are unable to handle this appropriately, or that great numbers of women are suffering because of investigations. Apparently this can be sensitively addressed by all concerned. And since it is infinitely easier to kill a born baby than an unborn baby, there’d be unlikely to be any investigation whatsoever unless somebody actually came forward with positive evidence of wrongdoing.
For all your whining and statistics you haven’t shown that abortion is actually a good solution to any widespread problem that exists.
Kagehi Kohn
February 3, 2012 at 9:57 pm
Wow.. The level of shear, absolute, ignorance you show is astounding:
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_IAW.html
• Between 1995 and 2003, the abortion rate (the number of abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age—i.e., those aged 15–44) for the world overall dropped from 35 to 29. It remained virtually unchanged, at 28, in 2008. [1]
• Nearly half of all abortions worldwide are unsafe, and nearly all unsafe abortions (98%) occur in developing countries. In the developing world, 56% of all abortions are unsafe, compared with just 6% in the developed world. [1]
• The proportion of abortions worldwide that take place in the developing world increased between 1995 and 2008 from 78% to 86%, in part because the proportion of all women who live in the developing world increased during this period. [1]
• Since 2003, the number of abortions fell by 600,000 in the developed world but increased by 2.8 million in the developing world. In 2008, six million abortions were performed in developed countries and 38 million in developing countries, a disparity that largely reflects population distribution.
Yeah, 98% of them happen in the developing world, and I might add, some are induced by religious fanatics and bigots, for various reasons, but, according to you, “they don’t have facilities to perform abortions either”…
As for the question of whether its good or not, you will note the “drop” in abortions, world wide, but especially in 1st world nations. That is a result of “birth control”, a decline, in those “developed” countries of religious fanaticism, and an increase in actually health care, like PP provides, for women at risk of problems. The exception is for some like China, where its is quite high do to a) obsession with having boys, with abortion used to *literally* prevent girls being born, and b) limits on how many children people are *allowed*.
Its a complex problem, as so is solution like “adoption”, which ignore the stress, and possible equal likely risk of suicide, if you insisted that rape victims had to carry a child to term.
But, then for you, its all simple right? You don’t need statistics, facts, hard reality, or even awareness that, even in the absolute *optimal* conditions, its flat out impossible to not have a legal option to terminate, in cases where things just go seriously bloody wrong.
John
February 3, 2012 at 11:21 pm
So… a lot of women get hurt with unsafe abortions. This is supposed to be a good argument for abortion, the fact that it is so dangerous? That’s like saying a lot of al-Queda terrorists get hurt blowing up stuff, so the solution is for the government to run training courses for terrorists so they can blow stuff up without getting hurt.
Spanish Inquisitor
February 2, 2012 at 10:22 am
Send me your address. I have some fingernail clippings for your safekeeping. I may also send with it the results of my last haircut, and the biopsy residue of my moles. Oh, and some toe jam.
Chappy, how DO you keep attracting these idiots?
the chaplain
February 2, 2012 at 11:52 am
It’s a gift.
John
February 2, 2012 at 11:53 am
Are you really so obtuse that you don’t know the difference between a human organism and human cells?
the chaplain
February 2, 2012 at 11:56 am
No, its status as a human organism, as opposed to a group of human cells, is precisely what is at issue in this debate. It is your opinion – not a fact – that those cells are human organisms. Your opinion is not shared by all.
John
February 2, 2012 at 12:12 pm
No, its a biological fact. Look it up. A gastrula is an animal organism in the early stages of growth. This isn’t really a debatable topic.
the chaplain
February 2, 2012 at 12:17 pm
Hmm. I’m seeing stuff about “embryos” and the like – not “organisms.”
John
February 2, 2012 at 12:31 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryogenesis
Fertilization (also known as ‘conception’, ‘fecundation’ and ‘syngamy’), is the fusion of gametes to produce a new organism.
Spanish Inquisitor
February 2, 2012 at 11:57 am
No, but apparently you are.
n.
An individual form of life, such as a plant, animal, bacterium, protist, or fungus; a body made up of organs, organelles, or other parts that work together to carry on the various processes of life.
A system regarded as analogous in its structure or functions to a living body: the social organism.
John
February 2, 2012 at 12:15 pm
Spanish Inquisitor: thanks for providing a definition that destroyed your own argument.
Spanish Inquisitor
February 2, 2012 at 12:26 pm
You’re welcome. Is English your native language?
John
February 2, 2012 at 12:31 pm
Yes thanks. Is Spanish yours?
Spanish Inquisitor
February 2, 2012 at 12:49 pm
Si’, idiota, hijo de puta
the chaplain
February 2, 2012 at 2:02 pm
John:
You cited this: Fertilization (also known as ‘conception’, ‘fecundation’ and ‘syngamy’), is the fusion of gametes to produce a new organism. I’ll concede the term “organism” to you. However, the definition SI quoted shouldn’t be dismissed lightly. I think we’ve all agreed that life develops on a continuum. I believe there is a tremendous difference between the nascent organism embodied in embryonic form and an autonomously functioning organism comprised of “organs, organelles, or other parts that work together to carry on the various processes of life.” Why do the “rights” of a zygote, blastula, etc., trump the “rights” of pregnant women? Why do the “rights” of, say, a 30+week fetus trump the “rights” of a woman whose life is endangered if she carries the fetus to full-term? Do you think abortion is impermissible in all cases? If so, why? If not, why not? When, if ever, do you think abortion may be permissible?
Spanish Inquisitor
February 2, 2012 at 2:34 pm
I’ll bet John didn’t approve of Rick Santorum and his wife agreeing to terminate the life of his 20 week old fetus/son in order to save his wife’s life.
John
February 2, 2012 at 6:50 pm
Yeah, did you notice that SI’s definition included fungus? Organisms don’t have to have the same functions as fully formed humans to qualify. All they have to have is cells that work together as a whole. Sea sponges have no digestive system, nervous system or circulatory system, but they are still organisms. And gastrulas are autonomous. Nothing external is telling it what to do.
You haven’t told us why you think the “differences” are a deciding factor. Everything has differences. Merely saying there are differences is not an argument.
Whether there is an argument for abortion in the case where the mother’s life is threatened is really not an argument for abortion on demand. That’s like saying that because self-defence is a valid defence against a charge of murder, therefore anybody should be able to kill anybody else at any time for any reason whatsoever. That logic simply doesn’t work.