Back during the summer, we discussed (see comments here) some finer points about cases in which there really is a moral argument for abortion. The clearest example is the case in which the mother will otherwise die, while the baby is still too weak to survive on its own. In that case, no harm is done to a child who is going to die in any case; and there is a life to be saved.
Unfortunately, a case of that kind has presented itself in Ireland. It isn't likely to draw wide commentary here in America, both because it happened overseas and because we have some very explosive stories in the press right now. Still, it's worth reflecting on as a clear example. Much of the Republican opposition to abortion is not fully considered, a defect that weakens the force of what is otherwise a highly principled argument.
There was an extremely sad post on Slate recently about a woman faced with the choice whether to deliver a child at something like 20 weeks or wait. If she waited, the child would almost certainly die in utero, but if it beat the high odds for a few more weeks it would have a much better chance of surviving and having a relatively normal life. If she delivered immediately, the NICU would be available to give the child the best possible fighting chance, but the child would likely face horrendous disabilities if it survived. In other words, a passive approach would probably produce either a clean death or a decent chance at health, while medical intervention would increase the chance of survival at the cost of almost ensuring terrible disabilities -- not just some health challenges, but truly horrible problems.
ReplyDeleteThe mother approached the dilemma about the same way we would a similar choice for an older child or unconscious adult who needed a terribly risky surgery, and who would face one kind of horrible danger of death or disability with the surgery and another kind (different but still terrible in its own way) without the surgery.
But of course she approached the whole dilemma with the assumption that she was trying to make the best decision for a creature that she already thought of as her baby. An interesting thing was that a few commenters were adamant that she must stop referring to the fetus as a baby. It had not been born yet and could not be considered a baby. Stop calling it a baby.
Now I've read the Irish story. How awful. It strikes me as very wrong to refuse the abortion. There was no question that the pregnancy could not be saved, and the open cervix presented a terrible danger of infection. Couldn't they at least have intervened aggressively to control infection? Obviously they thought the miscarriage would proceed spontaneously before things got too dangerous, but it still sounds as though they weren't really on the ball.
ReplyDeleteI would need to understand better whether the septicemia was a high-probability danger, and whether the risk could reasonably have been controlled, before I'd know whether it was unreasonably risky for them to wait for a spontaneous miscarriage. It does sound bad. Surely they would have intervened in an ectopic pregnancy? Why was this different?
There's a question of the law, because in Ireland there is a different constitutional and legal tradition. They may have been formally forbidden from aborting while there was a fetal heartbeat; I don't know.
ReplyDeleteThe legal question is separate from -- although related to -- the moral question. I'm no expert in Irish law, but the way the article is written suggests that there was some reason why the presence or absence of a heartbeat was a critical issue.
I suppose an ectopic pregnancy would kill the mother before the fetus could develop a heartbeat, so the same issue doesn't come up. But if you ignore the heartbeat issue, it's the same dilemma.
ReplyDeleteYeah.
ReplyDeleteSo the point is, this seems to be a pretty clear case for considering an exception. The link is to the comment on platforms, Democratic and Republican, and how thoughtlessly pure they are. Here is a case where some refinement is probably wise.
There may still be a moral argument against abortion even here, that could persuade someone who is Catholic (as she was not): but I think it's hard to make an argument that the law should force her to wait, when the miscarriage is already certain. There really is no harm to be done, and there really is a life to be saved.
First, I read a couple articles on this and none have what I would consider sufficient medical information to make a determination about what really happened. That said...
ReplyDelete"So the point is, this seems to be a pretty clear case for considering an exception."
An exception to what precisely? To the Irish law? If it's written so specifically that the presence of the heartbeat disallows aborting, the law is more strict that a consultation with the Pope would be on the subject. I also take issue with the summary of the GOP platform in the linked article. I think that saying that a baby has inviolable rights to life doesn't mean there are no exceptions, unless you also read the Declaration of Independence recognizing rights to "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as being an anti death penalty position.
In the Irish case, it could also be that Doctors don't make very good lawyers usually. We could also add into that the tendency of socialized medicine to produce unsympathetic systems that observe rules bureaucratically instead of examining the reality of the problem a hand in depth.
Douglas,
ReplyDeleteI remember your objection to my reading of the platform from the earlier discussion (indeed, interested readers can find our exchange at the end of the discussion in the comments of the earlier post).
It's fine if the right reading of the platform is understood by everyone to mean something like, 'We regard abortion as a moral horror and a violation of a baby's right to life. However, of course we understand that there are cases when the baby won't live anyway, and saving the mother's life is the most (and indeed the only) important question.'
Or even, as I understood you to say, 'A baby in the womb has a right to life that is not to be infringed, although like every right that can't be absolute with no exceptions.' I'm not sure what sense it makes to say that a right 'shall not be infringed, except when it must be.' The Latin here is exceptis excipiendis, a phrase put to good use by Friar Tuck in Ivanhoe -- but on a less dire subject than the one at hand.
Was the mother's life in danger? We say now that of course it was because she died. But from the description of when the mother collapsed, it sounds like, had the miscarriage completed 18-24 hours earlier, she would have survived. Early in her hospital stay, she appears to have been requesting termination because she was in such agony, not because she felt her life was in danger.
ReplyDeleteWas it absolutely certain the miscarriage would complete? I don't know but so long as there's life (a fetal heartbeat), there's hope.
I don't know how you resolve the morality of abortion in this example. Percentages? If the chance the mother will die without termination minus the chance the baby will survive is greater than 50%, terminate; otherwise not? That might not have been enough to save this young woman. If a woman who is suffering this type of miscarriage survives without termination 60% of the time then even if her baby has only a 0.0001% chance of living, she wouldn't qualify for termination.
I know you want to consider the moral, not policy/political implications of this story, Grim, but ... Irish law has now killed a healthy young woman who wanted very much to be a mother - and forced her to suffer for days beforehand. This is *the* poster story for why so many women hate and fear legal restrictions on abortion. And it has made me wonder if we can actually write decent (in the literal sense) anti-abortion legislation.
Elise,
ReplyDeleteDon't read me as being opposed to your raising the political or policy (or legal) issues you see as relevant. I only want to make a distinction between those and the law, because it is truth both that (a) the law in these matters ought to flow naturally from a moral understanding, but also (b) there are cases when a moral argument has a greater right to be deployed than the force of law.
In this case, I think it would be quite reasonable for a Catholic woman to decide to run significant risks to her own life in order to give her baby the best possible chance. That's a moral choice based on a moral argument. I think it could be morally valid for a doctor to advise her against that, for reasons of her health, if it was the doctor's opinion that the baby's survival was not a real potential. The doctor could be wrong, but if that was the legitimate medical opinion, the advice would not be immoral.
The law, well, I don't see how it can tread in the space where the mother will die and the child also. I don't think it really belongs even in cases where the mother will die and the child may survive.
That still leaves a great number of abortions outside of these kinds of clear cases, which the law might (as we decide as a community, and preferably at the state level so as to respect that there are different sets of values among Americans on the subject) govern in one way or another.
I question whether Irish law mandated this result. The article suggested that the miscarriage was virtually inevitable once the cervix opened at such as early stage. That meant that there was no realistic chance of saving the baby. It didn't necessarily mean that doctors were obligated to kill the baby instantly in order to save the mother. Evidently in most cases of this type, you can stand back and wait, and the miscarriage will proceed naturally. There is a good moral argument to be made for waiting rather than actively killing the baby, especially when you consider what a slippery slope we are on in choosing any other approach.
ReplyDeleteAt some point, waiting may become too dangerous for the mother. What this article is missing is any information about when that was, and whether this mother's agony and death were medically inevitable or even predictable. We do have means for controlling both pain and infection. What if this was more an example of incompetence and uncaring medicine than of the dangers of anti-abortion traditions? Yes, in hindsight, they probably could have saved her by aborting instantly, assuming they would then practice competent medicine (a big "if"). But they could have achieved the same result by sterilizing her even earlier.
All pregnancy-related medicine has to find a way to make trade-offs between the health of the mother and the health of the fetus. Even the traditional staunch pro-life position that admits of exceptions only for serious risks to the health of the mother has to wrestle with this trade-off. It sounds easy to say we should abort when it looks hopeless for the fetus, but there's rarely a bright line there.
I'm always reminded of my dear friend who exists at all only because her mother delayed treatment for uterine cancer long enough for her to be born. (The treatment was successful, and her mother lived another 30 years.) Not that I'm saying I should be the one to make such a decision for a pregnant woman in that dilemma, but the story shows that our ideas about what is hopeless are guesses. In a fast-changing medical world, there are guesses that aren't always up to date, and they depend a great deal on the skill and courage of the doctors and the mothers.
If we imagine a similar dilemma involving a six-month-old child, the trade-offs don't seem easy any more. Who could euthanize a six-month-old baby even if it were absolutely clear that it was the only way to save its mother? Or even to save the whole neighborhood? We'd have to be awfully darn sure the baby couldn't survive anyway, and even then it wouldn't be an easy path to square with our conscience. But a six-month-old baby has looked us in the eyes already, while a fetus is hidden and mysterious.
Maybe I ought to go a little farther, and raise a potential answer to this challenge:
ReplyDelete...it has made me wonder if we can actually write decent (in the literal sense) anti-abortion legislation.
For a long time I believed, as many do, that the only choice involved at the time of an abortion should be the woman's: that if I, for example, were opposed to abortion, it was my duty to avoid giving rise to the occasion for one. This was something that was wholly within my control.
More and more, though, I have come to doubt the wisdom of this position. The ubiquity of the practice, and the absolutism with which it is defended suggest that it is not being treated as the (in the literal sense) deadly moral issue that it is. Both pro-life and pro-choice studies show that the most common reasons for the choice are not life-or-death issues for the mother: they feel they have existing responsibilities that make them unready for another child, or they have a sense they can't afford a child, or they have some other goal with which a (or another) child would interfere.
Most of these situations could be handled with some combination of policies, possibly plus adoption. The issue is a literal matter of life or death to the baby, and that extraordinary interest deserves to be considered and balanced against the challenges the mother faces.
Our current policy puts that weight entirely on the mother. One question that early natural law theorists such as Hobbes and Locke agree on is that a basic principle of just government is to not to allow someone to sit as judge in their own case. Game theory has proven the wisdom of that: we are terrible judges of what is fair and equitable in cases when a benefit to ourselves is involved.
So it may be possible that, in cases outside the clear example where the law should not tread, a law could be just that put the question of abortion before a court with a judge and an advocate for the baby as well as the mother wanting the abortion, and with instructions to consider the baby's life-or-death interest against whatever interest the mother raised. Such a consideration -- again, limited to these cases in which the mother's life is not at risk -- might be a more just and equitable way of issuing a judgment that falls with lethal force.
I know you want to consider the moral, not policy/political implications of this story, Grim, but ... Irish law has now killed a healthy young woman who wanted very much to be a mother - and forced her to suffer for days beforehand. This is *the* poster story for why so many women hate and fear legal restrictions on abortion. And it has made me wonder if we can actually write decent (in the literal sense) anti-abortion legislation.
ReplyDeleteYep.
And then we have all the moronic legislators and pundits who don't even understand the basic mechanics of how birth control works, much less the mechanics of pregnancy.
ReplyDeleteNot confidence inspiring at all.
Since I have never been on BC, I didn't really know anything about what the pills do to prevent pregancy until this past weekend.
ReplyDeleteAs part of our marriage prep, the fiance & I were required to sit through an introductory NFP class. These days, I'm probably in a minority as a middle-aged woman who has never taken BC pills, but if I didn't know anything beyond "the pills is intended to prevent pregnancy, if taken as prescribed", it is unsurprising to me that lawmakers are clueless, too. But, it was also surprising to learn in that course - from the lady MD being interviewed about she and her husband following natural family planning - that NFP isn't taught in medical school... It would seem the default position of medical schools is that if you don't want to get pregnant, you don't have to do anything so complicated as to pay attention to the changes in your body throughout your cycle and understand what those changes mean, you can just use an artificial means of preventing pregnancy (regardless of some of the potential negative consequences of some of those methods).
You can be ignorant on a subject, MLB, and I won't fault you (that's a generic "you"!). But if you're going to pass legislation on an issue, you should probably understand the basics.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, you cannot vote intelligently. I realize that when we're discussing Congress, the phrase "vote intelligently" is more than a tad oxymoronic, but I don't think it's too much to ask from public servants who are being paid from our tax dollars to do the due diligence.
...it may be possible that, in cases outside the clear example where the law should not tread, a law could be just that put the question of abortion before a court with a judge and an advocate for the baby as well as the mother wanting the abortion, and with instructions to consider the baby's life-or-death interest against whatever interest the mother raised. Such a consideration -- again, limited to these cases in which the mother's life is not at risk -- might be a more just and equitable way of issuing a judgment that falls with lethal force.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you trust government that much. I don't, and it's what keeps me reluctantly in the pro-choice camp even though I chose otherwise when I found myself in the same situation.
FWIW, when your water breaks or your cervix dialates during pregnancy, that is considered a critical and life threatening risk to both mother and baby. If you're anywhere near term, doctors will immediately induce labor despite the fact that a baby's lungs are the last thing to mature and even a week can make a big different to the baby's health.
ReplyDeleteYou can be ignorant on a subject, MLB, and I won't fault you (that's a generic "you"!). But if you're going to pass legislation on an issue, you should probably understand the basics.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, you cannot vote intelligently. I realize that when we're discussing Congress, the phrase "vote intelligently" is more than a tad oxymoronic, but I don't think it's too much to ask from public servants who are being paid from our tax dollars to do the due diligence.
Ah, but Cass, you have touched on another issue with this statement... Legislators are asked to vote on a myriad of topics and pieces of legislation, there aren't enough hours in the day for them to actually "know the basics" on everything they are asked to vote on. But, how much of what our federal lawmakers do are things they have no business doing, if they are to be faithful to the enumerated powers listed in the Constitution? The federal government has its fingers in too many pies that shouldn't belong to them, but to the states...
I don't disagree MLG, but it you're saying "it's too hard" for them to know whether limiting people's freedom makes sense or not, essentially arguing that maybe they shouldn't be weighing in on this issue either.
ReplyDeleteIt's kind of a double-edged sword - we don't really get to invoke the problem only when it's useful.
There's no easy solution to this issue. I fully understand and respect the position that human life is important. I don't believe it's "inviolable" because even adult life isn't "inviolable" and "can be infringed upon" under the right circumstances.
I've said this before, but the cold hard fact here is that no one can draw a bright line to say when a collection of rapidly dividing cells suddenly becomes "human". It *will* be, if allowed to continue dividing, but it's not there yet.
And that difference becomes even more stark in the scenario Grim poses: an adult with a life history and loved ones, fully sentient and capable of living on its own is compared to a proto-human that can't talk, can't breathe on its own, in many cases may not even be able to be seen with the naked eye.
I get the notion of a soul, but that's a religious concept. By what rationale do we impose our religious beliefs on others? Is it a rational we'd be willing to have used against *us* if the religion were Islam?
I don't think so, and so - with great reluctance - I conclude that government interference isn't going to make a bad situation better.
I don't expect anyone who disagrees with me to be "converted" to my way of thinking, but I do think it's hardly a hard to defend position. I see merit in both sides of this debate.
Forgive the typos, please. Long day.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you trust government that much. I don't, and it's what keeps me reluctantly in the pro-choice camp...
ReplyDeleteI'm less in that camp than I used to be, but the proposal I've offered is quite tentative. What I want to suggest is that there are good reasons -- from natural law theory, from Game theory, from both pro-choice and pro-life studies -- to suggest that there might be a reasonable way forward.
In terms of trusting government, the question here is not whether it is wise to trust government, but rather whether it is wiser to have an independent judge than one who is directly involved in the question. In fact it needn't be a government official -- if you preferred a judge of a different sort, as sometimes Jewish law is administered informally by a trusted official who has no formal governmental standing, that would be another way of addressing the problem.
In a way I think it would be good for everyone, even for the women involved. It's a heavy weight to take on, a decision with blood debt. Whatever comes of it, it might be well to have a trusted third party to sit in independent judgment.
soul...
The soul is (perhaps) a religious construct, but it isn't necessary. It is enough to talk about ends, in the way we have been doing in terms of the Politics. A child from conception has an end of its own: it is organized in such a way as to pursue its own existence and fullness, which is independent of the mother's or the father's. Its genetic code is unique, individual, and gives rise to this end naturally.
There's no need for religion to say that, although I think religion is wisely rather than improperly invoked in this deadly matters. The fact is that there is something about the child that is its own from the first: it has its own nature and its own ends, from the beginning.
Although, the reason for this post is to give aid and comfort to a point you've been trying to make for a while. I'm not in complete agreement with you, but I wanted to raise the issue in a way that would give you cover fire to say what you wanted to say about it.
ReplyDeleteSo say on. Wherever we end up, the point was to encourage you to speak freely, and to help ensure you be heard.
Cass~
ReplyDeleteI was speaking in more general terms of lawmakers voting on topics in which they have no true understanding, not about abortion in particular. There is much Congress involves themselves in which is beyond the scope of the Constitution.
From my position, with my view that an unborn child is deserving of protection because it is a human life, may be one where the Congress may legitimately involve itself, but there is much Congress shouldn't be doing. If they would limit themselves to what they meddle in, they would have less excuse for being ill-informed about that which they are voting on...
Congress really shouldn't be deciding about human life any more than making capital punishment illegal in all states- it's not their place. That was what was wrong with Roe v. Wade, legally speaking.
ReplyDelete"I've said this before, but the cold hard fact here is that no one can draw a bright line to say when a collection of rapidly dividing cells suddenly becomes "human". It *will* be, if allowed to continue dividing, but it's not there yet."
Indeed. The only bright line we have is conception. Roe v. Wade had the court use the trimester delineation, which in that sense was superceded by Planned Parenthood v. Casey setting viability as the line. Anyone familiar with the advancements in neonatal medicine in the last half century or so should see easily how arbitrary viability is in many ways. Where half a century ago, any baby earlier than X may not have been considered viable, in 2006 a baby of just shy of 22 weeks was delivered via C-section successfully. She appear to be growing up healthy and happy. Current medical standards cite 23 weeks as the earliest date of viability, but that is obviously not absolute. In 1950, viability was considered to be 33.7 weeks. Even in 1990 it was 25.5 weeks. I think it's safe to say we will continue to see that line move as technology advances, how far we cannot know. Given that, I'd have to argue that we'd best go with what we sure about and not something we know isn't based on a firm footing.
As to whether the cells are human- if we found those four cells on Mars, we'd most certainly say we found life, and if it isn't human, what is it?
If they would limit themselves to what they meddle in, they would have less excuse for being ill-informed about that which they are voting on...
ReplyDeleteCan't argue with that! :)
The cells *are* human. There's no doubt in my mind about that. And they are "life", something we should have some respect for.
ReplyDeleteDue to my own experiences in life, this is something I've given a great deal of thought to over the years, and I've never been able to come up with a formulation that resolves every doubt or weakness from either side.
We should respect all life, but we do draw lines. We protect sentient and intelligent animals less than humans. Millions of dogs are put to sleep, but we don't but people to sleep. A dog is more fully present in the world than a fetus. It's capable of surviving, dogs form close bonds with humans and many dogs actually have a large verbal vocabulary (they understand human words) and an even larger non-verbal one (they can read people quite well - interpret our body language and such).
Our respect for life is based on a mix of hierarchy and less clear cut considerations I would probably call moral sentiments. I realize we can artificially draw a bright line at conception, but we really should understand that it's an artificial line.
The Catholic church teaches that it's a sin even to prevent fertilization. That's actually a far more intellectually consistent position, IMNSHO.
The first trimester is another attempt to draw a bright line and it has ample precedent in law and tradition. Even in the US, if you read about the history of abortion law, legal prohibitions against abortion in the first trimester were in no way as common as many folks suppose. Women and midwives commonly used abortifacient herbs to terminate early pregnancies.
Oddly, many objections to this practice were based, not on respect for life but on men's property rights (women mostly didn't have many of those).
Law is full of arbitrary lines drawn to say, "thus far, and no farther". Both sperm and egg cells are human or proto-human, even before they join. It's important to understand that the "life begins at conception" line neatly makes birth control OK, but if you want to say those cells are human before they join (and they are) then frankly the logical extension of that makes birth control almost as morally problematic as abortion. That's a pretty untenable position, especially when you consider how many women have died in childbirth over the ages. It treats living, breathing women with families as breeding cattle whose lives are secondary to a tiny cluster of cells that will one day become human. That just doesn't seem right to me, and it's what I can't get past.
We like to think of enlightened courts and doctors always making the right decision, but there are also many self serving zealots and malicious actors out there (not to mention negligent or callous ones).
I understand and share Grim's concerns about abortion. Always have, always will. It's just that I see the other side as well.
It treats living, breathing women with families as breeding cattle whose lives are secondary to a tiny cluster of cells that will one day become human.
ReplyDeleteIf I may say so, that's exactly the position I was trying to avoid. The idea wasn't to treat the women as secondary to the children, but rather to take both sets of interests as independent and serious concerns. The worst that could be said is that I might be considering the woman's interests as equal to the child's; although even there, I think I'm giving the woman some precedence by putting her survival in front in any case in which it is threatened.
Treating the child as a human being deserving of respect doesn't compel us to treat the woman as something other than that. We could treat them both as human beings, with interests that happen to be in conflict. That's not so unusual a situation. It happens all the time. We have a lot of common mechanisms for dealing with conflicts between two individuals.
Indeed -- very thorny issues of that kind come up in organ-harvesting disputes, for instance. Or in families that conceive a new baby as a potential transplant donor for an older child. But it seems to me that the thorny issues remain hidden from most of us at most times. We lose sight of many potential sources of vital conflict because we live in a rich country in fairly peaceful times. We rarely have to put our lives on the line for our loved ones, or watch them do so for us. I'm afraid that threatens to paralyze us morally when a dilemma raises its head, such as in pregnancy.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I have read on a few Irish sites, whoever told the mother that it would be a violation of the law to induce labor was in error. Although such inducement is to be a last resort, it is not illegal. From what the Irish papers are reporting, based on their information, this is more a case of malpractice by the physician than of bad law causing a death. Which does not change the sorrow at the deaths of mother and child, or the pain felt by the husband.
ReplyDeleteLittleRed1
Amen.
ReplyDeleteIt's all about who has control. Most of the abortion choices made in America are done by the Left, Planned Parenthood using somebody else's money, and brainwashed masses of feminist products.
ReplyDeleteIf one can consider that "choice", then surely do so.
As I understand it, Irish law mandates prison time for physicians who perform unlawful abortions. It is also my understanding from what I've read that the definition of when the mother's life is in danger is not clearcut. If both those are true then I doubt this is a case of malpractice. It seems more likely to be a case of doctors unwilling to risk a prison sentence.
ReplyDeleteI have a problem with laws that attempt to second-guess medical judgments. They remind me of the old test for a witch - tie her to a chair and throw her in a pond.
ReplyDeleteIf she sinks and drowns, she's innocent. If she floats, take her out and kill her.
Morons.
I realize we can artificially draw a bright line at conception, but we really should understand that it's an artificial line.
ReplyDeleteand
Law is full of arbitrary lines drawn to say, "thus far, and no farther". Both sperm and egg cells are human or proto-human, even before they join. It's important to understand that the "life begins at conception" line neatly makes birth control OK, but if you want to say those cells are human before they join (and they are) then frankly the logical extension of that makes birth control almost as morally problematic as abortion.
First, scientifically, I think there are errors here. "...but if you want to say those cells are human before they join..." - Egg and sperm are of human origin, but they are not human in the sense of a person- as opposed to the zygote formed at their union, which has it's own unique DNA and cannot be said to be simply a released cell of a larger, extant human, and so can only be determined to be a cell from a newly created human. Given this fact, I fail to see how conception is an arbitrary bright line. One can argue about the presence of sentience or 'human spirit' or 'soul' which makes one 'completely' human, but there is no denying that the zygote even is it's own unique entity, which, as I pointed out, if found on Mars would be labelled 'life' unequivocally.
All other lines are indeed arbitrary, and so much so that one has to question their value in being determinative for such a weighty matter.
Given this fact, I fail to see how conception is an arbitrary bright line.
ReplyDeletePuppies are their own unique entity too, though. They have personalities and would also be labeled "life".
The arbitrary bright line is the one at which we suddenly treat this "life" differently from how we treat other "life". I can't imagine having this discussion about a pregnant dog, for instance. Or a dolphin, or an elephant, or a horse any one of the other intelligent species on the planet.
There's a reason the Catholic church considers contraception a sin (not that most Catholics pay a whole lot of attention to that). It's part of the "God's Will" argument - your duty is to accept all children God sends your way, and also some notion that preventing a human life is sinful in the same way that preventing a fetus from fully developing and being born, is.
It's a continuum.
One more point about the other bright line (the first trimester). That is the point at which we can be fairly certain that if the mother has not miscarried, chances are good there will be a baby in 6-7 more months.
ReplyDeleteBefore that, miscarriages are very common. I got pregnant so easily and had such a relatively easy time that I didn't fully understand how much trouble many women have until other women my age started trying to have kids. I took successful pregnancy for granted, really.
But the mother's body can cast out the growing fetus for a whole host of reasons. The balance is pretty clearly weighted in favor of the mother's health and well being, though some miscarriages happen b/c of problems with the developing child too.
But a 1st trimester fetus had almost NO chance of surviving outside the womb until quite recently. So that wasn't it the reason most abortion laws, if they criminalized abortion, did so only after the 1st trimester.
I think there was some recognition that up until that time, pregnancy was tentative. But I also think that a developing child doesn't really look human until that time. We draw lines for all sort of reasons, but the 1st trimester line is pretty well established in law and tradition. I didn't know that until I read up on it.
Of course, this is a separate issue from the moral questions of ending a developing human life. I don't need to be convinced that those concerns are valid and important.
There's a reason the Catholic church considers contraception a sin (not that most Catholics pay a whole lot of attention to that). It's part of the "God's Will" argument...
ReplyDeleteI don't think that's quite right, actually. Here are a couple of references from the Catechism:
2203 In creating man and woman, God instituted the human family and endowed it with its fundamental constitution. Its members are persons equal in dignity. For the common good of its members and of society, the family necessarily has manifold responsibilities, rights, and duties.
...
2205 The Christian family is a communion of persons, a sign and image of the communion of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit. In the procreation and education of children it reflects the Father's work of creation.
Now, elsewhere it says that children are a gift from God, so there's an element of God's will in there also. But what is being expressed here is that the act of generation is itself a holy thing -- a reflection of creation -- even though it was chosen by the human beings who are members of the family.
Likewise, of course, the equal dignity of the members of the family is affirmed. That makes sense given the longstanding understanding of the Church that God is outside of time, but dwells instead in eternity (this has been the view since St. Augustine, for reasons you can read about in the Confessions, book eleven -- if it interests you let me know, because it is a long and complex argument that I would be happy to go through with you). On that view, a child is a fully formed being as much as anyone: the mistake is ours, for thinking that the child's small stature "right now" is what matters in determining his or her dignity. God sees the child, the boy, and the man all at once: or, if you like, the child, the girl, and the woman (and her children).
That's a formally theological argument, of course. Still, I don't think they are guilty of simplistically demanding that people adhere to God's will; there's a very sophisticated tradition at work.
C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity is interesting and accessible on the topic of God existing "out of time" - or at least as accessible as it's possible to be on an idea that threatens to make my head explode.
ReplyDeleteThere is also an interesting lay opinion on birth control from the Anchoress here, which works in the idea of God's will:
http://is.gd/IYrDsk
Do I agree? No, but as Grim implies, what appear to be strange religious ideas often - especially if they are part of a millenia-old religion - have an understandable, logically consistent basis. It's like math: grant a few basic properties and the rest unfolds logically.
...as Grim implies, what appear to be strange religious ideas often - especially if they are part of a millenia-old religion - have an understandable, logically consistent basis. It's like math: grant a few basic properties and the rest unfolds logically.
ReplyDeleteActually, that was my point - that the Catholic view of birth control is intellectually and logically consistent :p From several comments back, my initial point was:
The Catholic church teaches that it's a sin even to prevent fertilization. That's actually a far more intellectually consistent position, IMNSHO.
There's no way I was going to be able to fully summarize the Catholic position on birth control in a drive by comment. But it has many facets. My reference to "God's will" was meant to refer to the belief that the purpose of sex is procreation. If you frustrate that purpose, you are opposing God's will.
Ah, sorry, Cass, lost the thread of that argument.
ReplyDeleteNo worries! I just wanted to make sure I had made myself understood. Often I think I'm just being brilliantly clear but in reality, I made things more confusicating... :p
ReplyDeleteJust one more aside.
ReplyDeleteWhat I fully meant to imply here is that the Catholic view of birth control seems to me to be the most (and possibly the ONLY) completely logically consistent view of the matter. It treats all states from unfertilized egg or sperm to fertilized-but-not-yet-implanted egg, to implanted egg (but what if it implants in a fallopian tube vs. the uterine wall?) to developing embryo to fetus to baby pretty much the same.
There are no artificially drawn lines - no sudden moment at which respect for life (even proto-human life) suddenly becomes paramount.
And for most of us, this logically consistent view is a deal killer. I greatly admire those for whom it is not, but I am not one of them.
I was a little confused by The Anchoress link. Is she arguing that it's OK to 'waste' your seed if you're mentally open to the possibility of having children?
Having just sat through the intro Natural Family Planning course at a local parish, what they said was (WRT not using artificial birth control) was that you are to be "open to life". The Church understands that sex isn't just about procreation; it is also a way for husband and wife to share their love for one another. Working *with* biology, if you wish to avoid becoming pregnant (for any number of reasons - the Church doesn't think you should be having children you can't properly raise [financially, emotionally, etc.), the wife just pays attention to her body, and, together with her husband, they abstain from relations during her fertile period. The Church has no prohibition against sex when the wife is unlikely to concieve ("wasting" seed). However, the Church *does* frown upon other sexual activity in which there would be no chance to being "open to life"...
ReplyDeleteAquinas' argument here is straightforward, although I dissent from one piece of it.
ReplyDeleteThe argument is that what he calls "the marital good" is actually three goods:
1) Procreation, which is holy because it is a kind of reflection of creation;
2) The spiritual union of man and wife, which is part of God's plan (per Genesis: "male and female he created them");
3) Pleasure -- also a good!
There is a hierarchy here, though, for Aristotelian reasons he imports into the traditional argument. Procreation is the natural end of the act, and so a violation of that natural end is an act against nature; even if the other two goods are achieved, the whole act is tainted.
(There is an exception, as the Anchoress notes, for cases in which one is too old to procreate: but she's wrong about why. There are a couple of cases in the Bible in which older women conceive a child miraculously, and that child is tremendously important: 'and Sarah laughed.' Thus, even the elderly may hope for the possibility of a miracle in a very spiritually pure way.)
As a matter of doctrine, this is proper enough, but I think Aquinas is wrong about the hierarchy. This is the sort of objection that JW would usually raise to Aristotelian thinking, but it makes sense to me to say that the 'principle end' isn't the only good to be had: all three things are goods. And they're true goods, each of them.
Thus, philosophically, sex seems to me to be rightly ordered as long as it produces any of the three goods, provided that it doesn't actively harm the other two. You might want to say "the more the better," so that sex that is both pleasurable and achieves a spiritual union of man and wife is better than that which does only one or the other.
I would only hold it disordered in cases when either (a) none of the three goods is achieved, or (b) one of the three is actually harmed: e.g., the sex causes pain to one of the parties, or the insistence of one partner drives a wedge between husband and wife. That would leave out rape, bestiality, and a few other things.
Yet I think, with that alteration, this is something very important captured by Aquinas' model. Even aside from the religious aspect, philosophically it seems solid to me. Thinking about sex in this way makes it into a spiritual or even a sacred act, an act of genuine love.