Nate, I’m glad you posted this. It gives me a chance to write a followup to my abortion post on FB, which I’ve been meaning to do for weeks.

Overall, I tend to agree with you - for now. What I mean by that is, as someone who is anti-choice and would like to see the practice of early induced abortion end in this country, I favor a complete legal prohibition. But to enact such a prohibition at this point in time would not accomplish my objective - ending abortion.

As hard as it would be to accomplish a legal ban on abortion, to actually end the practice requires the much harder work of convincing our compatriots of the inherent sanctity and dignity of life, which, when truly accepted, leads to the conclusion that life begins at conception. When that is accomplished, the legal ban will and ought to come, but almost as an afterthought. To transform the hearts of pro-choice people the way the hearts of white southerners have been transformed to abhor the evil of slavery will accomplish far more than using the blunt force of the law to attempt to end the practice of abortion I so abhor.

Understand that I am not arguing that it would have been better to wait for white southerners to be transformed before enacting a legal prohibition on slavery. There is some pragmatism here - enforcing a ban on slavery is far, far easier and doable than enforcing a ban on abortion. The “hearts and minds will follow approach” to ending slavery was appropriate for that reason. The point I am trying to make by referring to slavery is that at this point in our history, slavery is universally rejected, even in regions where it was once embraced. But for the very real problem of human trafficking, the legal ban on slavery is almost irrelevant now.

Regarding my emphasis on pragmatism, however, I do think it is important to point out that there is a decent argument to be made against the well-known and oft-deployed “coat hanger/back-alley” objection to a legal ban on abortion. The objection fails in my mind because it a) does not account for the (albeit limited) deterrant effect a legal ban would have, but, more importantly, b) usually attempts to shift the moral agency of the act of an illegal abortion from the abortion seeker to the abortion opponent. Nonetheless, Nate, you are right when you write,

“Just like drugs, abortions will happen. Our foremost choices relate to how we can shape the ongoing discussion of the treatment of life (a debate which must be made larger than just abortions, as science is treading new ground every day), and what relationship with the country and the law the many people who believe in abortion will have.”

But I think you come up short though when you conclude, “We don’t have much power to improve that relationship, but we have tremendous power to make it worse, just as the war on drugs inexorably turns citizens to criminals every single day” and also, “Their behavior and beliefs will not change due to the force of my own convictions.” I believe that we do have the power to make our convictions about the sanctity of every human life resonate. Yes, it will require a lot of time and hard work, and as I said, I’m not in favor of a legal ban in the meantime. But to resign onself PERMANENTLY to the idea that “abortions will happen” is to deny the ability of the individuals that make up a society to morally progress. This I cannot accept.

Nate said:

The idea that aborting the living, breathing result of rape somehow mitigates the evil of the crime is flawed.

First, and somewhat mundanely, whatever ease or difficulty one has with the shades of meaning in words like “living,” the word “breathing” seems clearly problematic here, and I only point it out because it’s a slip that reveals a particular kind of conceptual imagery, and which may reflect a kind of prejudice.

Secondly, I’m not sure most people in favor aborting a pregnancy resulting from a rape would think it “mitigates” the evil of the rape in any meaningful way — only that carrying the pregnancy to term and delivering a child would compound the trauma needlessly; and it may be informed by some sense of the awfulness of growing up knowing that your father was your mother’s rapist, or of ever learning that, or of lying to a child to protect him from it. Sure enough, hardly any of us would think these traumas worth murdering someone to avoid; but most of us don’t believe abortion is murder. More below.

And:

Why do we have an intuition about this (as I claim) but not about a child? Why do we not know in our guts that a human being is something too fundamentally good to simply hack off and destroy because of the terrible twisting inflicted upon it?

I don’t think anyone would suggest killing a child born of rape; the big chasm here, again, is in how one understands the status of the contents of a pregnant woman’s womb.

And, again, my assertion is that most of us, even if we were to refer casually to a woman’s “baby” who is unborn — either as a mere imaginable future potentiality, perhaps even in the case of a woman who isn’t pregnant yet but trying, or as the supposed resident of a quickly growing belly — the assertion that a zygote or embryo before a woman has even started to show — what we are told and can infer is visually unrecognizable for what it is but by the specialist and can perhaps fit on a large thumbnail — is in fact a child or a human person, is, even if we were to follow the steps of an argument agreeing with each step along the way, in a very basic way impossible for us to believe or to process as true, like an assertion that an acorn is in fact an oak tree. It’s something, sure enough, and many of us will happily agree to assertions that it is something precious and even sacred, but assertions much further than that sometimes start to sound like rhetoric or trickery, other times like declarations of unshared belief.

Also, I think the abortion opponent’s insistence that abortion is immoral and unacceptable even in cases of rape does display an admirable consistency — the exception, any exception, seems to discredit the severity of the moral claims. But it’s harped upon because it illustrates how far out of the mainstream the strict abortion opponent really is: not many people would endorse the murder of children conceived from rape, so when even those who are uncomfortable enough with abortion to want it prohibited make exceptions for the case of rape, they’re revealing that they probably don’t really feel the personhood of the embryo, though they may nevertheless hold it in enough esteem to want it protected legally in most cases.

And that fact also bears on your “abortions will happen” point. (Which is true. I can speak at least of Argentina — which is an officially & constitutionally Roman Catholic country where abortion is illegal, and where I have had much more casual and frequent awareness that peers had abortions in college or whatever than I have ever had in the States.) It seems to me the effort of the ardent pro-life believer ought not be a political or legal effort at all; it ought to be an effort at convincing the public.

OK I have to say this.

Why do thinking people even give a modicum of time to the ‘it will happen anyways’ argument? There are thousands upon thousands of laws and regulations comprising our legal system. I would venture that during the course of any given day, nearly every last one is violated in some fashion by someone, somewhere. So if every law would fall before the ‘it will happen anyways’ approach, shouldn’t that indicate that it is obviously not worth considering?

A better question would be: How much will it happen anyways, and what is at stake? Well, I am reasonably sure that if you were to start executing abortion doctors and imprisoning those who seek abortions, it will happen anyways, but nowhere near the current rate. I’m also pretty sure that if you believe that human life is in danger, then the stakes couldn’t be higher. On the other hand, if you think what is at stake is a bunch of cells no more fundamentally valuable than any other, then one doesn’t even need to consider how much abortion would happen if made illegal, since your position logically precludes passing such a law in the first place.

So, again, I just don’t get why this keeps getting serious treatment as an argument.

I think the reason why some pro-life people fumble when rape/incest is mentioned is because pro-life people do belive in choice. They believe that when two people consent to having sex, they have made the choice to accept whatever consequences result from that action. The problem with rape is that one person involved was not given a choice in the matter.

“Yet most people are, to my perception, fundamentally Manichean in their feelings on this issue. Rape is an evil: its result is therefore of the same substance. Eliminating an evil substance is good.” …
“Why do we not know in our guts that a human being is something too fundamentally good to simply hack off and destroy because of the terrible twisting inflicted upon it? A child, innocent entirely of the evil that became the agent of its creation, represents the fundamental impossibility of repressing the deep, down goodness of things.”

Nate, I don’t think it’s anything so directly ontological in people’s minds as “rape-produced fetus = evil substance.” I think it more likely reveals a broadly shared understanding—the extent to which certain kinds of autonomy are seen as non-negotiable for all but the least modern among us, e.g., Ms. Palin. Our understanding of sexuality and the life that it can produce is not that it is some substance, some ontological category of pure good whose dark opposite is produced in a rape or case of incest. For us, the singular goodness of the human life we can produce takes its on greatest meaning in the specific context of romantic love. So my suspicion is that such a large majority of people, including lots of pro-lifers, support the rape/incest-exception because requiring the birth of those children would violate the most intimate, and among the most treasured, freedoms of modernity: the freedoms to choose who we love and who we produce life with. I am somewhat sympathetic to your argument, and glad you raised the issue, for the record; I am just not sure about your diagnosis of those who would deny it any force.

Dan,

Let me make sure I’m understanding you correctly. Are you saying that all laws are practical compromises between how much we want to lessen a given bad action’s frequency and how much effort we want to expend in doing so? And that, therefore, it’s a mistake to spend much time at all with “bad actions are going to happen” and to move onto “how best can we reduce bad actions, given that they’re very likely to happen despite our best efforts”? If this is what you’re saying, then I can’t help but agree.

As for why thinking people find the former statement such a big revelation, I can only offer that moral purity is a pretty strong siren. We’d all prefer that practical reality would be as we wish it to be—it’s so easy to see what needs to be fixed! That imaginative space is pretty captivating, and we’d rather live there than in the world where we have to accept that fetuses will always be killed, every day, as long as human being are around in sufficient numbers and without sufficient education.

“I’m also pretty sure that if you believe that human life is in danger, then the stakes couldn’t be higher.”

I think those are the stakes to a large number of the problems our laws seek to fix. We already use the means you mention in the drug war, executing drug dealers and putting drug users in jail, all at least nominally because we care about the human lives that drugs destroy. The moral clarity is harder to come by in the drug war than in the abortion question; but I think anyone who has paid attention to how well these extreme laws (passed with the highest of stakes in mind) have worked can tell you that the stakes’ height bear little relation to the effectiveness of extreme laws.

Banning abortion on the federal level would be an extreme law. In many ways, Roe’s legalization on a national level was extreme law. But I suspect the post-Casey compromise allows about as much freedom for persuasion as people who want to overturn Roe really want: giving the abortion decision back to the states will just put abortion on the same track as gay marriage. That is, it will become gradually accepted state by state, with many permutations that anti-choicers don’t like. Better to leave the room for education and persuasion, with government resources that Casey allows if you want to reduce the number of abortions.

@Matt: I do believe in our power to change people’s beliefs through argument, and I fully endorse (and attempt to myself promote) such organically political activity. I also agree that at such a point as it became more advantageous than disadvantageous to ban abortion due to widespread agreement, I’d support the banning of abortion procedures.

I do have some concern, though, that further exploration of that fantastic scenario might create a more complicated picture. I suspect, for instance, that a number of other significant shifts will have to have taken place for it to be possible. I think women would have to no longer bear the expectation of primary responsibility for children, that extra-marital sex will have to have been largely destigmatized (talk about something that isn’t going away!), and that pregnancy itself will have to be made more facile, either through abundant resources for pregnant women or through medical advances.

Btw, if you do want to write more on this subject, I’d be interested in having you guest-post it here. I’ve offered guest-posts to people in the past; the offer holds for anyone without a personal blog who’d like to write about something of particular interest to them.

@Robbie: I do, of course, write from the prejudice of a belief that the various stages of pre-infant in utero existence constitute human life: the post was intended largely to explain (and explore) why I resented the implication that those of us with that bias were being somehow inconsistent by not supporting this strange and particular exception.

Also, to clarify my point about the mitigation of evil, I meant to say that the unwanted pregnancy was part of the evil of the rape. I claim that people believe that evil is mitigated by severing the active pregnancy part of that evil, making it closer in quantity of evil to a rape that did not result in pregnancy.

@Missy: I think you’re probably right, actually. I had never really thought about it that way.

@Jess: I’m interested in your objection to my claim of Manicheanism, but I’m not sure I understand (yet) the rub in your counter-proposal. It seems to me that one is still left with a muddled selection of goods in the scenario you describe without clear ways of weighing them. I suspect that a clearer unconscious schema is necessary to explain the strong and largely clear-cut intuitions most people have on this subject, which is why I think that good/evil substance judgments—while certainly unarticulated—reveals more usefully what people are thinking. But I’d be very interested in hearing you say more, particularly if you’d be interested in talking about your own sympathy. I’m a sucker for finding that other people agree with me even a little bit.

@Dan: Hb is a far better interlocutor on this subject than I am, but since I held precisely your opinion for most of my life I’d like to at least respond to it.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ve been converted on the abortion issue (in a very qualified sense, as I mention) largely by extension from my conversion on issue of the drug war. A character in The Wire remarks: “Drugs, that’s a force of nature. That’s sweeping leaves on a windy day.” Such sentiments struck me as somewhat risible until I spent a fair amount of time being introduced into the world of what that really meant. Or, to be more precise, until I gained a slightly better understanding of what degree of action would be required to truly counter the human desire for drugs. A useful legal principle might be: the force required for the banishment of an activity is commensurate with the desire of a populous to engage in it.

At a certain level of desire, the only option, really, is war. I will declare myself your enemy and, if I see you, I will attempt to kill you. On the other end of the spectrum we have something like discouragement. Please don’t leave your socks on the floor. I don’t appreciate it. One of the problems with the drug war is that we dramatically misunderstand the costs associated with fighting it. Because we could not stomach actual war with the inner city, for example, we spend a lot of money trying to walk a fine line around war. Because we refuse to escalate it sufficiently, we are unsuccessful. And because we are unwilling to face how much fighting the war costs us even now, we disguise police corruption, doctor our stats, and continue to pretend to some degree of success. We go to tremendous effort to conceal the fact that if we faced, soberly, the cost of making drugs illegal, we simply wouldn’t be willing to pay it.

The question I began to ask myself, then, was: would I be willing to pay the cost of making abortion illegal? Robbie gives us useful anecdotal evidence from Brazil. Executing abortion doctors, as you mention, is another useful scenario. Am I willing to condone the execution of doctors who believe they are acting out of mercy?

Now, I grant you the force of this claim: “I’m also pretty sure that if you believe that human life is in danger, then the stakes couldn’t be higher.” Almost no one, in my opinion, gives this divide in the debate sufficient weight. If you make your scenarios about infants, it doesn’t seem that crazy to me to suggest that it would be reasonable to go to war with a neighbor who supports infanticide. If you make it about cells, contrariwise, it seems insane to do so.

So I should confess: part of what makes me more willing to lay down my sword and refuse to declare war in that fashion is that my certainty about the obviousness that human life begins at conception has been undermined by learning about the many shadows that begin to appear in arguments like these. The distinction between pluripotent and totipotent cells is, in my opinion, possibly the best and clearest line between non-human and human life. Once we grant that, though, we find that the body itself is the means of the regular slaughter of human life. A tremendous amount of infant death occurs without our even knowing. This doesn’t alter my belief that this distinction is the truest one: but I begin to be less willing to declare my opponent unfit for mutual society.

Also, I’ve come to wonder how much dualism is responsible for my convictions about abortion. I once believed that human beings were souls living in separable and independent bodies. Throughout my time at St. John’s, I was convinced that this view was untenable: too much of our selves are flesh, fluid, DNA, electrical signals, and, to be Biblical about it, clay. That breath of God that gives us life is no angel-winged entity that can hop out and be on its merry way: it is, instead, something closer to the Aristotelian notion of soul: that telos toward which we are created.

The consequences of this conversion have only slowly applied themselves to the rest of my personal cosmology, and are in the process of applying themselves still. One of them is to erode my belief that a Christian notion of salvation can hinge upon intellectual assent to points of doctrine. How can such a moment be the necessary one for all humans, when it does not even approach universality? How many totipotent cells never even dream of consciousness, how many handicapped humans never have their chance to sit in a library at college and ponder their St. Anselm?

Once I consider the possibility, then, that the abortion debate is not really code for me for the damnation of human souls, how do I weigh it against the plethora of evils I am willing to live with in those around me? I lose myself trying to even name them: the bombing of 100 civilians, most of them children, in Afghanistan; the vigorous efforts of a fellow parishioner to block all attempts at environmental legislation in the US government; the divorce of dear friends; the use of drugs by a friend who sees no problem in buying them from inner city drug corners; the blanket condemnation of homosexuals by a family member. The list goes on and on. Christians—rightly, in my opinion—take on themselves the tremendous burden of calling these things sin, and accepting the justice of personal damnation along with the damnation of all of humanity. But how can we Christians, who profess a personal savior who clearly stated the ultimate equivalence of all sin, possibly bring that position to bear in legislation?

All of this makes the cost just too great for me to accept. I cannot bring myself to pick pick up a sword and execute an abortion doctor when I consider the whole nature of sin in this world and when I consider the true, epic scale of Jesus’ call for us to be the means of creation’s redemption. I fear that it’s shortsighted, that it involves inevitable hypocrisy, and that it relies upon highly questionable theology, let alone political philosophy.

“The distinction between pluripotent and totipotent cells is, in my opinion, possibly the best and clearest line between non-human and human life.”

What does this mean?

This is the First Things article where I first encountered the terms.

“We know the key epigenetic markers of pluripotent stem cells, and we know the markers of zygotes, which are one-celled human embryos. The stem cells that scientists seek are “pluripotent” (with the capacity of a cell to develop into most all the tissue types of the human body), while zygotes are “totipotent” (with the capacity to develop all the tissues of the human body, and extra-embryonic supporting tissues like the placenta, in an organized and self-directed manner).”

Even if I granted some distinction between totipotent and pluripotent it makes no difference in this discussion because by the time an abortion is possible the baby’s cells are way past both. They are already differentiated and committed to their lineages. The baby’s cells are only totipotent or pluripotent for days. Abortions occur at weeks and months.

To clarify: I meant “even if I granted some [teleological] difference…”

@Martin G: …Right. That’s why I refer to the phenomenon of embryo death. “The death rate of fertilized eggs in the womb is about 75%.”

This is what I meant when I wrote:

“Once we grant that, though, we find that the body itself is the means of the regular slaughter of human life. A tremendous amount of infant death occurs without our even knowing.”

Ah, I see what you mean. I wonder though, what is the teleological change you see occurring between totipotency and pluripotency?

To quote the First Things article I referenced above:

An entity is a human embryo only if the organic material is able to be human—if, in the language of Aristotle, it is apt to receive a substantial human form. Not every collection of organic material, even material that includes an oocyte and a diploid nucleus, can be a human being. We know this because we know that teratomas (naturally occurring tumors)—together with hydatidiform moles (disorganized entities that occur in humans and other animals as a result of certain types of defects in fertilization) and even oocytes themselves—are not human embryos, yet they all have as their starting material an oocyte and a diploid nucleus.

With respect to the biological conditions for the origins of a human zygote, this means the single-celled entity brought into existence must possess the inherent active biological disposition for self-directed development toward species maturity (including the capacity to develop all tissue types necessary for a differentiated human body and extra-embryonic supporting materials). In other words, the cell must be characterized by an epigenetic state of totipotency.

I think the Aristotle reference is particularly useful. Totipotent human cells are apt to become humans, pluripotent cells are not. This way of differentiating between stem cells that are embryos and stem cells that are not strikes me, as I mentioned, as being the clearest place to separate human and non-human life.

Totipotency is qualified though, right? A totipotent cell cannot become any species of creature; it has the capability to differentiate into any cell type within its own species however nothing beyond those bounds. So, human being seems still imbued in that first totipotent cell. Right?

Correct: totipotency does not mean that it can become any possible cell, but that it can become any human cell. The reason I consider it to satisfy the requirements of being human life is that it is “apt to receive a substantial human form”, or, in other words, will continue of itself to develop into a human being if it is not prevented from doing so.

I am a little unclear. If totipotent cells are human life then what changes when the totipotent cells becomes pluripotent?

They become parts of a human organism, rather than an organism in and of themselves. The distinction First Things was making was in terms of stem cell research, as they were trying to discern a clear criterion for stem cells that could be used as a means to an end (to borrow from the categorical imperative) and ones that couldn’t.

I borrowed their use of the term pluripotent to explain why I thought human embryos clearly qualified as life in a way that, say, sperm and egg cells do not. I went on to bring up what a holocaust nature herself is under such circumstances. If you happen to be convinced that all embryos constitute human life as I am and is the author of that First Things article, then this fact should color every thought about ye olde miracle of life. Those of us who are Christians, of course, may find it very easy to understand this as an aspect of the Fall, as yet another sign that the world is not as it was meant to be. I have some sympathy, though, for the people who believe that our understanding of human life should arise from the natural order, those who might perceive this fact as a strong argument against the idea that embryos are actually “human life” in the sense that is pertinent to the abortion (or stem cell) debate.

I think I see now. Would I be right in understanding you were I to say that the change from totipotency to pluripotency would an awakening of the ability of the baby to actualize its potential for the first time?

Part of the reason that I am so interested in this topic and the way you are making your statements is that we are capable of speaking to the situation without having to resort to religious thought. I of course endorse religious thought, but it is often prudent not to do so in mixed audiences. Contrariwise, this type of talk ought to be amenable to the most secular of ears.

Nate,

Forgive me for responding only to your original post, as I have not read many of the other comments yet.

Byron White’s dissenting opinion in Roe v. Wade suggested that the ruling was a mistake not because of the particular outcome, but because any edict at all at the federal level would have the effect of squashing the debate at the grassroots level.

Violent crimes against persons and property in America have traditionally been the province of the States. The 9th Amendment reserves to the States all rights not explicitly given to the federal government; the Constitution does not give the federal government jurisdiction over, say, murders and robberies (unless they are somehow inter-state).

Why should abortion be any different? If the States were allowed to exercise their proper authority, there would be at least 50 golden opportunities (and thousands more if it descended to the local level) for the kinds of reflection and balancing that you’re talking about.

This is an excerpt from Justice White’s dissenting opinion:

“The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant mothers and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the mother, on the other hand.”

Several states, over the years, recognizing the disputed nature of Roe vs. Wade, have set in place legislation concerning abortion that would take effect immediately, in the event of an overturn of that decision. Some for it, some against it to varying degrees, but with a lot more room to talk about shades of gray —- as it should be.

I regard Roe vs. Wade as more of a usurpation of unconstitutional federal power than anything else.

I have to disagree with the idea that our job as Christians is to make it so that fewer abortions happen. Our job as Christians is to obey God’s commands (among other things, obviously, but obedience has a very high priority). John 14:15: “If you love me, you will obey what I command.”

We are not supposed to stop other people from sinning. We’re supposed to stop ourselves from sinning. What this means is that I absolutely cannot commit abortion, or condone it, or, as far as it is in my power, allow it. Whether or not people do it is none of my concern - They’re in God’s hands, as I am, and their sin is between them and God. (Now, of course I care about the people - Abortion is an awful thing to go through, and we should love and care for everybody who’s hurt by it - But on Judgement Day, I’m not going to be called to account for anybody else’s decisions.)

I also think it’s probably a sin to fail to punish murderers - As we can see from Genesis 4:10, spilled human blood cries out to God for justice, and as we can see from Genesis 9:6, we are responsible to make that justice happen. However, I note that this doesn’t mean all murderers must die - Mercy can be shown - But showing mercy to a convicted murderer is very different from allowing it, legalizing it, or funding it.

The funny part comes when I consider what power I have - I’m a U.S. citizen, which means that the U.S. government derives it’s mandate to rule by the sword (at least ostensibly) from my consent, and the means of the transmission of that mandate is the vote. If the laws of the country are evil and I don’t use my vote to rectify it, that’s guilt on my head.

That’s why, for instance, my conscience won’t let me vote for Obama. For the record, my conscience doesn’t much like McCain either, but it seems like a choice between him and abandoning my civic responsibility altogether (which is extremely tempting, but I think it’s sort of a middle evil, and I’m not going to do it).

Anyway, I’m about to break my late-night blogging rule, so I’ve gotta sign off. I enjoyed reading the discussion thus far, by the way.

If Christians aren’t supposed to stop other people from sinning, why are they supposed to punish murderers?

And if you’re concerned with the evilness of your country’s laws, aren’t you concerned with the amount of bad things they prevent or cause? And then wouldn’t you endorse lessening the incidence of those bad things?

This is an interesting and very aesthetic website - I’m impressed. However, I have to confess myself disturbed by a bunch of men, who will never know what it is to be a woman, spending lots of time philosophizing about the contents of my womb.

Somebody quoted: “An entity is a human embryo only if the organic material is able to be human—if, in the language of Aristotle, it is apt to receive a substantial human form.”

An embryo in my womb is not sufficient in and of itself to become a human. It can only become human if I consent to invest nine months of my own life enduring a swelling belly, swollen ankles and aching feet, nausea, sleepless nights, hormonal changes that may impair my mood and cause me to be depressed, dietary restrictions, excess hair growth, substantial financial costs, potential career costs, up to 36 hours or even more of excruciating labour pain, and, last but not least, the risk of permanent physical injury or even death.

I’m not sure how a man could ever really understand that.

Maybe I could put it this way: do you have two kidneys? If so, you are basically sentencing another human being to death by not undergoing an operation to remove one of them and donate it. The operation has only a small risk of failure and most (but not all) of the time you will suffer no major ill effects afterwards. Shouldn’t we pass a law impelling you to get your kidney taken out to save precious human life?

Zoe - thanks for your comment!

I’m confused by your comment about being disturbed by “a bunch of men, who will never know what it is to be a woman, spending lots of time philosophizing about the contents of [your] womb.”

You may not be surprised to hear that this is not the first time I’ve heard this, and I’m not tempted to dismiss it without fair consideration. My perspective on a lot of things has changed more than I would have predicted due to circumstantial change. I find living in the city, honestly, has changed a tremendous amount of my political beliefs, as it’s altered the picture I have of our country, its problems, and its strengths.

That said: I would not say to you, for instance, that unless you lived in a poor, inner-city neighborhood, as I do, you have no right to “philosophize” about conditions in inner-city schools, or conditions on our streets. Frankly, I’d encourage you to do more philosophizing about it; people need to pay more attention to what’s happening in America’s cities. Does it not affect you if people are dying on the streets of a city you don’t live in?

I don’t want to belabor the point; I just don’t see any reason, as it stands, that men are not involved in the contents of your womb. We are, after all, the fathers, brothers, and sons. Whether women choose to believe that what they bear is human life or not, and how they choose to treat that life has tremendous impact us and our world. We have whole lifetimes of relationships with the children that women bear; do you really think the swollen ankles give you unique privileges to speak to the status of these humans’ rights?

I hope I don’t come across as being deliberately insulting; I’m just trying to convey some of the feeling behind my position, whether I am right or not. As a human being, it can sometimes hurt my feelings to be told I should be unconcerned with the fate of other human beings.

Zoe,
the embryo inside you would become a human if you allowed it or if transferred to an artificial uterus. it is a separate human life, generated when sperm entered the ovum. the decision whether or not to allow that to happen should be whether to allow sperm to reach the ovum, in other words, having sexual intercourse. otherwise, the decision to abort is the action of the woman to kill the growing human being. It might be legal, but it’s still killing.
yes, giving a kidney would be a good thing, but it’s already inside my body, and i didn’t have to have sex in order to put it there.
men do a lot of philosophizing because they are a part of the equation. they usually put the sperm next to the ovum. so they are a part of the problem/solution. if they’re not, then the woman should probably tell them that right up front. therefore, they can make an intelligent/moral decision about whether or not to allow their sperm next to her ovum.

Not to open up a whole new can of worms, as always seems to happen on Monadology when this subject comes up, but how do people who believe life begins at conception feel about Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer cloning? When would the life of a human created by SCNT be considered to have begun?

Since I knew absolutely nothing about Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer cloning, I checked out its Wikipedia entry.

According to Wikipedia:

In SCNT the nucleus, which contains the organism’s DNA, of a somatic cell (a body cell other than a sperm or egg cell) is removed and the rest of the cell discarded. At the same time, the nucleus of an egg cell is removed. The nucleus of the somatic cell is then inserted into the enucleated egg cell. After being inserted into the egg, the somatic cell nucleus is reprogrammed by the host cell. The egg, now containing the nucleus of a somatic cell, is stimulated with a shock and will begin to divide. After many mitotic divisions in culture, this single cell forms a blastocyst (an early stage embryo with about 100 cells) with almost identical DNA to the original organism.

If the simplicity of this explanation is to be believed, it seems like life begins when the egg receives the shock, after it has received the inserted nucleus. The conception, though different than a traditional one, results in the same totipotency that ought, I believe, to define what qualifies as human life.

But I don’t know how helpful this is; can I ask what you’re curious about in asking the question?