Blaghag on Republican efforts to redefine “person” to mean “any human being from the moment of fertilization or the functional equivalent thereof”:
You know, maybe these people have a point. Maybe being ejected from a womb is an arbitrary cutoff point for where life begins. Maybe we do have to take it back to the zygote—the initial cell formed after fertilization. After all, that zygote has the potential to eventually become a human being!
Just like how every egg has the potential to become a zygote, which is why all girls now must constantly attempt to become pregnant after their first period, and any subsequent period will be tried as murder.
And how every sperm has the potential to become a zygote, which is why now all ejaculation except for procreational purposes will be tried as mass murder (though we can downgrade wet dreams to involuntary manslaughter).
And how every ovary and testis has the potential to produce gametes, which is why now any accidents that damage them will be tried as involuntary manslaughter, but voluntary sterilization will be tried as murder.
And how every stem cell has the potential to become a gonad, which is why now all stem cell research will stop immediately, even that done on lab derived adult stem cells.
And how every nutrient you eat has the potential to become a part stem cells, which is why now eating will be illegal. Look, we solved the national obesity epidemic too!
And how many inorganic molecules have the potential to become a nutrient, which is why now moving will be illegal, lest we disturb the fate of an atom to become incorporated into a particularly delicious carbohydrate (which you can’t eat, sorry).
And how stars have the potential to produce different elements, which is why… well, I’m not sure if we can do anything about supernovas, so we may have to let that slide for practical reasons.
She left out swallowing, which is both a mortal sin, and cannibalism.
nocturnal emissions — SO STOP SLEEPING, GUYS!
(Wonder if *that’s* what’s happened to those DWM goopers?)
Life begins at quantum indeterminacy.
The Democrats have to stick with being the party of positives – job creation, women and kids health. That has to be the lesson of 2008. They cannot get sucked into this and put themselves in the position of denying even something this farcical. It is a Turd Blossom/Koch Brothers trap. I guarantee it.
This is a reductio ad absurdum of a fundamental and well-discussed argument (in feminist and general philosophical journals about 45 years ago) that potential personhood is not personhood and that’s really all this bullshit turns on besides some notion of a soul.
Would this definition mean that corporate entities can no longer claim personhood?
The point of a reductio ad absurdum should be to make the OTHER person sound absurd.
Functional equivalent? I don’t get it.
american taliban
Failing to acknowledge a clear reality like the fact that humans DEVELOP in the womb – and the corollary fact that it’s (much) more wrong to abort an 81/2 month fetus than a zygote, blastocyst or embryo (the first two months) – is absolutely typical of this race of people we call Republicans, who have a kind of developmental disability in recognizing degrees of anything or nuance of any sort. Just because THEY can’t see it, EVERYONE has to pay a price.
Forgive the all-caps blasts. Just wish I had a pro-lifer to yell at.
the corollary fact that it’s (much) more wrong to abort an 8 1/2 month fetus than a zygote, blastocyst or embryo
Even that statement is moral opinion, not fact.
On the upside, maybe if they got “person” redefined corporations could no longer claim to be persons.
There is an organization working on a constitutional amendment that will deny corporations of the rights of personhood that they now enjoy, and which enable them to dump unlimited amounts of money into swaying our elections.
This is what happens when religious fanatics run goverment.
@11 – I suppose you’re right. However, I’m swayed by recent arguments from Sam Harris that there are indeed “facts” in the moral realm, and if you can agree that it is a “fact” that the fetus approaches personhood as it develops, then it doesn’t seem that far a leap to find a corresponding increase in moral wrongness in ending the older fetus’ life.
After all, a belief that the “fetus” without rights magically becomes a “baby” with rights once it leaves the womb and the cord is cut is just as irrational as the belief that the soul enters the egg upon fertilization.
And how every ovary and testis has the potential to produce gametes, which is why now any accidents that damage them will be tried as involuntary manslaughter, but voluntary sterilization will be tried as murder.
Well, then, we can kiss YouTube goodbye too.
@1: LOL!
Only a matter of time before the abortion protestors start going after Lance Armstrong and his doctors for his orchiectomy.
So, if the fetus spontaneously miscarries, does that mean we’ll be putting God on trial for Murder in the First Degree? After all, He – being omniscient – must have known it would happen, but didn’t do anything in his omnipotent power to prevent it, so clearly it MUST have been premeditated on His part.
I thought to Republicans a “person” means “any human being from the moment of fertilization or the functional equivalent thereof until the moment they’re found to be female, gay, African-American or Latino.”
@19 – nailed it.
Yesterday in class we learned about molar pregnancies- where an abnormal sperm fertilizes and egg (or vice versa), and instead of resulting in a normal embryo it creates a tumour, or some combination thereof.
I wonder what the “every conception is sacred” crowd thinks of that??
Now that they’re being all scientific and stuff about human anatomy, I guess we can expect them to accept the science about human evolution?
Nah.
I want to know what the fuck the “functional equivalent thereof” means. Are they trying to make sure the definition holds in the event that human cloning somehow becomes legal at the same time that abortion is illegal?
“And how every sperm has the potential to become a zygote, which is why now all ejaculation except for procreational purposes will be tried as mass murder (though we can downgrade wet dreams to involuntary manslaughter).”
Yup, Every Sperm is Sacred. Since men will internally destroy and re-absorb any spermatozoa that are not ejaculated, we’ll have to jail any men who cannot prove that they’ve had procreative sex every day or so. Actually, since only 1 spermatozoon can fertilize an egg and eventually grow to a human while all of the other millions die, potential unrealized, we pretty much would just need to jail all men once they start producing germ cells for, eventually, trillions upon trillions of counts of manslaughter. Also, because either sperm production or menstruation are unavoidable biological processes for most people, their parents would have to be arrested on conspiracy charges, as they clearly conspired to commit murder by having the child that they knew must inevitably become a murderer. Whoops, now aborting a fetus is murder, and NOT aborting it is conspiracy murder. Procreation is murder!!! Q.E.D. motherfuckers.
@15: I’m really digging The Moral Landscape, and I’m glad you are/did too. Your moral valuation, however, relies on the supposition that killing a human is always an evil, or at least a relative evil (in Harris’s model, that killing humans is always bad for human well-being; or put another way, that there are no circumstances in which killing a human is good for human well-being). If one does not accept that notion, then it does not follow that killing a fetus becomes more wrong as it develops toward personhood, as killing it may not be wrong in the first place, or its degree of development may have no impact on the circumstances that determine whether its a good or bad thing to kill it. I reject that notion: I think there are all sorts of conditions under which killing people is good for people generally.
As far as I’m concerned, birth provides a convenient cut-off; there is no overriding moral principle at play, unless one adopts the hardcore fundamentalist position (which makes us all guilty of murder, though that sort of works with the idea of original sin) or unless one adopts, say, a developmental model, which I would argue makes the logical determinant reproductive ability – any human who cannot reproduce is not fully developed/functional and can therefore be killed (maybe ‘demonstrably able to contribute to human well-being’ would be a better criterion, and more in line with Harris’s moral logic, though this opens the possibility of allowing the killing of infants, the infirm, the homeless, etc.). At issue is the fact that there are no absolutes (that’s actually not a paradox, as the necessary exclusion of the statement itself renders it less than absolute), moral or otherwise; birth provides a functionally-convenient cut-off for defining human life. Fetal viability, the measure that we currently use, is another one, though I would argue it’s somewhat less functionally-convenient. Conception/fertilization, the one the current crop of crazy fundamentalists want to use, is stupid, as it’s pretty much impossible to accurately police without revoking all privacy rights for women. Reproductive ability is another possibility, though I think that has more problems than the conception one. I like the idea of human good being our guiding principle for determining where the cut-off is, and I don’t really see a difference in the impact on human good between aborting a fetus at 2 months vs 8 and 1/2 months.
“After all, a belief that the “fetus” without rights magically becomes a “baby” with rights once it leaves the womb and the cord is cut is just as irrational as the belief that the soul enters the egg upon fertilization.” Well, yes and no. There’s nothing magical about the transition: “fetus” and “baby” (and the concept of “rights”, too) are discursive constructs. There is no inherent meaning nor Truth: they’re functional categories that we use for interpreting the world. So while believing that there IS a magical transformation or even a non-magical change in membership in some sort of essentialized group is certainly as delusional as the equally, though differently-motivated, essentialist proposition of a magical transformation at the introduction of a soul, “a belief that the ‘fetus’ without rights magically becomes a ‘baby’ with rights once it leaves the womb” is not delusional at all, if we simply understand the change as a functional discursive shift, a shift that we construct/define as occurring when a fetus leaves the womb. Put another way, we consider a fetus to become a baby with rights once it leaves the womb because birth is the point at which we’ve decided to grant rights, as birth serves as a functionally-convenient point at which to define this transition: no magic and perfectly rational.
Pro-lifers mostly believe life begins at conception, which is pretty clear-cut, so all this modest-proposal-style mockery is a bit obtuse. Even I concede that there is something inherently human about an 8-1/2 month old fetus. If a thug beats up his heavily-pregnant wife and she miscarries as a result, would I think he deserves a higher punishment than if the only harm was to the woman? Well, yes, I would. And so would most people, if they were presented with such an example. So when does a zygote become an embryo become a fetus become a person? At the age of viability? That gets younger all the time, and what happens when we can grow a baby in a jar? People who pretend this isn’t a complicated and thorny issue are being very stubborn. Everyone pretty much has an idea of when they think personhood starts, but there is no one right answer, and mocking people whose answer differs from yours isn’t getting us anywhere.
@23 – I appreciate your constructing a thoughtful answer, but I must take you to task for a bit of willful obscurantism. Describing the ascription of ‘personhood’ to a fetus upon birth as a “functional discursive shift” doesn’t answer anything; you’re just being tautological. A simpler way to say it is that it’s arbitrary. No argument here. But just because people agree on something (i.e. it enters their “discourse”) doesn’t make them correct – it just means they agree. Consensus does not equal truth.
Not trying to be too hard on you here – I just think this sort of rationalization can be a bit dangerous sometimes.
@23 – I think your basic point is absolutely right, but if taken to extremes, it becomes an argument of unfettered relativism where one person’s argument is just as good as another just because the issue is “complicated.” It is complicated, but still, some positions make more sense than others, and the position that “life” – with the full panoply of human rights attached – begins at the instant of conception borders on ludicrous. Some mockery may indeed be justified.
Whoops – my third paragraph should have said @24. Mistakes were made.
This is a pet peeve of mine but life does not “begin.” Life began at some point in the distant past and has been continuous ever since. This is biology not religion. The egg and the sperm are both alive.
In the legal realm (again not religion) there is no good reason to change the law to recognize the unborn as people.
I can’t believe no one has yet made the necessary Monty Python reference: Every Sperm Is Sacred!
@28 – Horstman did. Awesome link tho.
All those who harm a gamete will be subject to the new “Vulnerable Users Bill” and have to pay a $2500 fine.
Got a question for you, and it’s not rhetorical – I’m totally pro-choice, anti-batshit-crazy people. But I was having a conversation with a friend the other day, and she said “well if we don’t consider a fetus as a person, why is it that we don’t let pregnant women drink?”. I have to say, she stumped me. Drinking is known to cause harm to a fetus that will carry on into the childhood and adulthood of that fetus, and most people are strongly against drinking while pregnant. But all of the arguments for not allowing a pregnant woman to drink could also be used against abortion.
So, I’m stumped. What’s a good way to shut her down if this comes up again? Why the double-standard of drinking while pregnant vs. abortion?
@24 said:
“Everyone pretty much has an idea of when they think personhood starts, but there is no one right answer, and mocking people whose answer differs from yours isn’t getting us anywhere.”
But of course, that’s not the case when it comes to those who believe a zygote is the same as a fully-formed, viable human being; they insist that EVERYONE MUST FOLLOW THEIR ANSWER and flat-out refuse to acknowledge that anyone else’s answer has any validity whatsoever.
In short, WE are not the ones “complicating” the issue, THEY are.
Like the bumper sticker says: “If You’re Opposed To Abortion – Don’t Have One.”
Just Curious — We DO let pregnant women drink. They can drink all they want. There’s no law against abusing your unborn child, as far as I know. Pregnant women who choose not to drink do so because they want healthy babies.
The fetus isn’t a person, but it is alive. People who want healthy babies want to take care of their fetuses.
I meant to say, Just Curious, (but didn’t make it clear) that it’s not a double standard at all. A woman may choose to have an abortion, and she may also choose to take good care of her fetus. It’s about CHOICE, a woman’s control over her own body.
Ah, yes. The logical conclusion to counting your chickens before they hatch.
*Literally*
Here’s a concept they can’t seem to wrap their heads around:
A full 40% of all foetuses are not viable, and as such, miscarry in the *first trimester*. That’s not even considering all miscarriages, stillbirths, and premature births over the course of a full term. Hell, half those early miscarriages go largely unnoticed.
But no, when you’re dealing with a rigid dogma, everything is in black and white.
Speaking of which, how do they feel about black people getting abortions vs white people getting abortions? My guess is that they think fewer white people should get abortions, and more illegal Mexican immigrants should. Like Rick Santorum does.
@31 If you intend to get an abortion I don’t care how much you drink, smoke, shoot heroin, etc. If you bring it to term [i]then[/i] you have harmed a child. That I care about, you shouldn’t harm children.
#31, there isn’t a quick and easy answer. Women have been prosecuted and convicted of fetal abuse for using illicit drugs and/or drinking to excess while pregnant. As Redwulf states, maybe the answer lies in mens rea–intent. If a woman intends to bring a child to term, and uses drugs inappropriately in a manner that causes demonstrable harm to the newborn (that can be discerned at or very shortly after birth), then I would consider a legal case. If the woman intends to get an abortion, and/or there is no discernable harm to the newborn, then I am not okay with her being prosecuted.
I may have a logic flaw here, and I would love to have it pointed out by fellow SLOGgers.
I think birth is an arbitrary point to declare someone human, but I can live with it.
Frankly, there are quite a few people around who got born just fine, but who don’t particularly qualify as human, based on their actions.
Her ironic take is as stupid and unrealistic as anything the right says.
#24 while I suspect you’re right that most people would agree the thug beating up a woman who miscarries as a result deserves a sterner sentence than someone who beats someone else and doesn’t cause one, that’s an issue for SENTENCING, not creating a new law.
Just you know, like the way if you assault someone now and cause minor bruising you get a lighter sentence than if you cause a permanent disability.
#CanuckEpicWin
@39: Of course it’s stupid and unrealistic. That’s her point.
She isn’t serious. They are. If you can’t figure that out, you have no business taking part in an adult conversation.
@18- No, it’s always the woman’s fault.
@31 – Here’s a physician’s perspective on drinking during pregnancy. One to two drinks per week is safe and fine, per a study of more than eleven thousand women.* The more a pregnant woman drinks (more than 1-2 drinks per week, that is), the higher the risk of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. In Europe, light drinking during pregnancy is not remarkable. In America, it’s simply not considered acceptable by most people, as a visibly pregnant woman in a bar might find out.
*A lay explanation of the science:
http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/201…