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|Abortion and Moral Personhood
Abortion, still a controversial political talking point, really shouldn’t be much of an issue. Whatever moral problems arise from abortion, properly conceived, stem from the fine gradient of cognitive and moral development that fetuses and children experience. And though the demarcation between the child worthy of moral consideration and the organism without the proper cognitive status for this consideration is not clear-cut and absolute, it is nevertheless true that the extreme ends of the spectrums are rather obviously recognizable. A zygote, blastocyst, or early embryo clearly do not possess the sorts of characteristics that qualify it for moral consideration, while the opposite end of the developmental spectrum, a normal adult, obviously does possess such characteristics. Why people are still debating over the moral status of zygotes is beyond me.
At heart, though, even pro-lifers realize their extreme position that accords moral rights to embryos and zygotes is not unassailable. In their zealousness to equate abortion with murder, and zygotes with fully developed human beings, they ultimately contradict their own intuitions. For instance, if one asks a pro-lifer how an abortion doctor, or a researcher studying embryonic stem cells, should be punished in the event that abortion and stem cell research is prohibited, they frequently reply with a wide assortment of punishments that are decidedly unequivalent to the punishments we normally apply to murderers. Some pro-lifers will even be so astonished at the question that they will simply stare at you blankly, as if the implications of the legislation they’re attempting to push had never been considered. But in the end, few would say the punishment should be life in prison, the death penalty, or even anything longer than 50 years in prison. The responses vary, but most betray an intuitive understanding that the death of an embryo, zygote, or blastocyst is not equivalent to the death of a small child or an adult.
In a similar manner, if you ask a pro-lifer to consider a hypothetical scenario where they have the chance to save either one child from a burning building or ten thousand children from a burning building, inevitably the staggering majority will answer that they’d save the ten thousand children rather than only the one child. However, if you then rephrase the question and ask them if they’d choose to save either one child or ten thousand blastocysts from a burning fertility clinic, they almost invariably choose to save the single child over the multitude of blastocysts. Of course, this response is nonsensical if they truly believe that moral personhood should be attributed to blastocysts, and it reveals a deep-seated uncomfort with the implications of their position.
Such questions give pro-lifers difficulties because their moral understandings have often been distorted and twisted by religious dogma that demands obedience rather than understanding. But a true understanding of morality seeks to find the reasons behind our behavior. Why should we not harm others? Why should we behave morally toward others? When considered thoughtfully, it becomes apparent that we should not harm others because they do not desire such treatment, because they dislike or fear the pain it would cause, and because we are capable of empathizing and understanding their point of view by considering our own reactions to the situation. We can understand that it is wrong to steal, not because this is yelled down at us by divine fiat, hurled from God’s breath like a lightning bolt, but because we can reason that theft is unfair and would produce displeasure in ourselves and others. That is, we recognize acts as immoral or wrong based upon the cognitive states they can induce in others (i.e., fear, pain, pleasure, etc.), and as a result of that, the capacity to have these cognitive states—to fear a potential outcome, to feel pain and displeasure, to reciprocate, and so on—is a necessary requirement for moral personhood. An entity that lacks such states, like a stone, would not deserve moral consideration because the stone cannot fear our actions toward it, feel pain, or understand the unfairness of its plight as we pick it up and hurl it into a dark, murky lake. This distinction explains at once why we do not accord special moral status to entities totally lacking cognitive capabilities, like rocks, plants, and bicycles. It also neatly accounts for our moral treatment of animals, who are not treated as our moral equals presumably because we don’t think they are our cognitive equals, with those creatures that are less cognitive (e.g., insects) being given little moral regard while those that are more cognitive (e.g., dolphins, apes, and dogs) being frequently empathized with and cited as creatures deserving of rights. It also conveniently explains the moral intuitions that guide the pro-lifers to answer the questions mentioned previously in a way that conflicts with their pro-life stance. They’ll save a single child over 10,000 embryos from a fire because they recognize that the child can fear the fire, would feel intense pain and suffering, whereas the embryos would not because they lack the relevant cognitive traits.
How could a pro-lifer respond to such a devastating criticism of his or her position? Life begins at conception! Such is the cry of the angsty pro-lifer in response to irrefutable reason. Their endless barrage of worthless platitudes and stock catch-phrases suffice when argument will not. For whatever reason, the claim that life begins at conception is supposed to be a show-stopper in the debate over abortion, and yet it is actually a mere red herring, consisting of reasoning as poor and flawed as the other justifications for the pro-life position.
First of all, the blithely asserted “scientific” fact that life begins at conception is not exactly true. Biologists are actually a hell of a lot more subtle than that, as they’ve learned that black and white distinctions such as that are quite difficult to draw—a fact well known to biological systematists trying to demarcate species within an evolutionary framework, where creatures often blend into each other in fine gradients. The same is true of life itself. Traditionally, a living organism is said to be capable of regulation of its internal state, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and reproduction, as well as possessing a complex cellular structure. But the inclusion of these characteristics is entirely arbitrary, and leaves out many entities that have most of these characteristics, though not all. A virus, for instance, can be said to possess many of these traits. It cannot grow or reproduce on its own, but it can take control over a host cell and use its cellular machinery to replicate itself, just as life can. Even fire seems to possess many of these qualities, to a degree. It burns energy to grow and reproduce itself, it can be said to respond to stimuli in a sense, and so on. The ultimate proof of the fuzzy distinction between life and nonlife, of course, is the fact that all living organisms were derived from nonliving replicators. Like viruses, our earliest ancestors probably could not replicate themselves on their own, and one proposed theory has them latching onto crystals as a mechanism for replication (because unlike a virus it did not have the good fortune of existing organic cells to parasitize). So if anything, the whole definition of life is already murky without bringing zygotes and gametes into the question.
But do scientists really say life begins at conception? Most, actually, would think the question rather pointless. Life is a cycle. Humans have a diploid stage, which is the stage in which we have sets of chromosomes from both parents, and we have a haploid stage, which is when the human gametes (the sperm and egg) have chromosomes from only one parent. In humans, meiosis produces male and female gametes with half the normal number of chromosomes, and the mitotic process that builds our multicellular bodies only begins once the haploid gametes merge to produce a diploid zygote. Pro-lifers like to trot out the fact that our gametes are haploid to try to show that they are only “half of us” and thus not fully human yet, whatever that means. But if chromosome number defines humanity, then I suppose those unfortunate few with chromosomal disorders, like Down Syndrome, are not human according to pro-lifers; though I’m fairly certain they also oppose the abortion of those with Down Syndrome in spite of this. Likewise, pro-lifers would probably be fairly amazed to learn that many organisms, particularly fungus and protists, have a strange life cycle wherein the multicellular “life” stage is the haploid stage, whereas the diploid stage is reserved for the zygote alone. In these particular fungi and protists, the zygote divides by meiosis, halving the chromosome number, and then the haploid cells divide by mitosis to produce multicellular organisms (or in the case of the single-celled protists they “live” as the single haploid cell). With this understanding of the murkiness of the life cycle, it makes sense that scientists do not proclaim just when “life” begins in human beings, whether it be during conception, implantation on the uterus, or whenever else. This distinction is unnecessary and pointless. The gametes, zygote, and multicellular human are all part of the life cycle.
With all those difficulties with the claim of life beginning at conception aside, the obvious refuation is that this is just simple misdirection from the relevant moral issue. Whether the zygote is living is irrelevant to the matter. We frequently eat and kill living things. Plants and insects are living as well, and we do not endow them with special moral consideration. So the mere fact that a zygote is alive is far from any sort of justification to treat it morally. The pro-lifer can then try to argue that we should treat it morally because it is alive and human, but once again, this distinction is problematic. Not all living humans are accorded full moral personhood, and it is even acceptable to kill human beings in certain circumstances. Even the most ardent pro-lifers, for instance, would acknowledge that a baby born without a brain should not be treated as if it is worthy of a right to life, and few would say it must be connected to a life support system for the duration of its empty, nonsensory life. Similarly, a human skin cell is living and human, but few pro-lifers would be willing to assert that my continual scratching of my crotch, which results in the continual death of the skin cells down there, is tantamount to murder. Clearly, something more is needed than merely being living and human.
How could a pro-lifer possibly overcome these impenetrable objections? In my experience, they cannot, but not for wont of trying. Perhaps the favorite tactic when cornered in such a dispute is to make the argument from grossness. That is, they will try to demonstrate that abortion is immoral because it looks disgusting, and in trying to demonstrate this will link to silly websites plastered with pictures of aborted fetuses and embryos. Strangely, of course, there is a stunning lack of images featuring aborted blastocysts or zygotes. Presumably this is because they would not contain blood and would not be visible except under a microscope. So the argument from grossness, it should be noted, does not apply to emergency contraception like Plan B or stem cell research, thank heavens! Of course, the argument from grossness would equally well apply to the embryos of chickens, pigs, and cows. It would even apply to the adult chickens, pigs, and cows the pro-lifers are so fond of eating, preferably after dipped in a nice, fried batter. Naturally, merely because something looks gross or disgusting does not make it immoral. If we were to witness the home video of a pro-lifer’s pregnancy, for instance, most would find the video immensely disgusting, shuddering at that huge thing ripping through such a tiny hole, and nearly vomiting when the mother puts her lips to the infant’s head even while it is covered in gooey afterbirth and placenta. This, of course, does not make childbirth immoral. Also, it has been confirmed for me several times that when I am constipated and taking a huge shit, and then seek out all my friends to show them the huge shit I produced, which evokes reactions like ”that shit is nasty” and “seriously, you fuck, we don’t want to see that disgusting, mile-long shit,” this is hardly proof that shitting is immoral. And if it is, then I’m afraid we’re all going to hell. But in the end, unless the pro-lifer is willing to remark that anything that appears disgusting is immoral, this “argument” simply fails.
The last refuge of the pro-life scoundrel, for some strange reason, is the beating heart. Their bumper stickers, for instance, like to proclaim that near the end of the embryonic stage, a beating heart is present in the little “baby”. Why the presence of a beating heart is considered some indicator of moral worth befuddles me to this day. As with my other objections, many of the animals we eat have beating hearts, and yet that does not seem to provide them with very many moral rights, unless the right to be mercilessly harvested for McDonalds is a right. And beyond that, if I were to present a pro-lifer with a hypothetical person whose heart who has stopped beating, and whose blood is being circulated by a machine, it is doubtful that the pro-lifer would therefore find it acceptable to stab and and punch this person merely because they lack a beating heart. This is, like the appeal to life beginning at conception, nothing but a red herring.
So far, I’ve addressed some of the more ridiculous and common arguments for the pro-life position, but the last argument I’d like to address is perhaps the most respectable, as it at least attempts to produce a reasonable argument rather than a red herring, but it nevertheless fails. Basically, the argument states that because the embryo has the potential to develop into a normal human being, it should be treated as such. But the problem with this formulation is that even a single sperm or single egg has this potential, so masturbation could be seen as mass genocide, and a woman who has her menstrual period could be sued for neglect of her children. Of course, there is a more potent formulation. The more potent form runs something like this: after fertilization, or after implantation on the uterine wall, or after the heart starts beating, the probability that the embryo will develop into a fully-functioning human being increases dramatically, and therefore we should treat the embryo accordingly, because eventually it will possess the cognitive capacity that endows it with moral personhood. It is a more potent argument because it accounts for the probability of full cognitive development, and so sperm would not qualify, as a single sperm’s chance of becoming an adult human being is rather tiny. The problem with the argument, of course, is that the possibility of having the qualities relevant for moral personhood is an overt admission that the entity currently does not possess these qualities, and therefore should not be treated as if it does. For instance, it is possible that I could get a degree in science, train to be an astronaut, and then eventually operate a space shuttle and fly to the moon. This possibility, no matter how likely, does not mean I should be treated as if I currently can fly to the moon, of course, and NASA would be crazy to therefore offer me a seat on the next manned expedition to the moon. So this argument, like the others, doesn’t strike me as particularly successful.
In the end, pro-lifers will continue to show us pictures of cut-up, mangled babies, and they will continue to make bad arguments about beating hearts and the falsified “scientific” consensus concerning the beginning of life, but at least we can take solace in the fact that they are so horribly inconsistent and contradictory in their reasoning that they can be sort of amusing, like self-righteous clowns without grease paint.
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March 18th, 2009 at 10:35 PM
Just as an aside, I’d like to state here in the comments that though I threw out a lot of high-sounding scientific jargon in this post, I am not a scientist and am largely going off my shoddy memory in using the various biological terms here. So if any of you notice anything that isn’t correct or a misused term, let me know so I can correct my ignorance. I’m just a lowly humanities major whose interest in biology is only passing, so feel free to completely pwn me if I majorly screwed anything up, though to the best of my knowledge everything is correct.
March 19th, 2009 at 3:00 AM
I was a bit disappointed by your rebuttal of the “potential to be human” argument. I would say the development of a foetus is more analogous to a human’s college years. During the college years, she becomes more and more knowledgeable about her subject, deserving more and more respect from her peers as she learns until she finally graduates. No offence, but you are more like a sperm astronaut than a zygote astronaut
As a zygote biologist I couldn’t find any apparent biology flaws in the text, by the way.
March 19th, 2009 at 3:34 AM
By the way, I’m an atheist; I’m just currently on the fence regarding abortion. On the one hand there’s the woman’s right to not have a gut parasite, on the other hand there’s the potential human’s right to life. I’m not certain if one can talk about the rights of a potential human, though, hence the fence.
March 19th, 2009 at 4:53 AM
Great essay, once again
I totally agree with your points in the last paragraph about masturbation/periods. I have ranted endlessly that if Catholics followed their beliefs to the logical conclusion a period would be a sin and a woman would have to be impregnated for the whole of her fertile life. Funny how they don’t try and push that one, especially as better living conditions has steadily led to the average age of a girl’s first period getting younger.
March 19th, 2009 at 6:04 PM
Yuigy, thanks for the comment, but I disagree that the argument from potential cognition is sound. As I pointed out, arguing that something has the potential for something is to admit it does not have the capacity in question, and therefore should not be treated as such. What you seem to be saying is that the fetus gradually attains cognitive status by degrees, and I’d agree with that. This is why I try to be explicit in talking about the embryonic stages or the gametes. At some point, we reach a sort of sorites dilemma of consciousness, for if we think the baby is fully conscious at birth, then it stands to reason it would be a day before birth, and if it is fully conscious a day before birth, then it would be conscious a day before that as well, and so on. The reason I don’t extend my personhood argument into the fetal stages is explicitly because the line between moral personhood becomes blurred at that point. But it’s safe to say that an embryo or single-celled zygote is not cognitive, just as it is safe to say four grains of sand is not a heap, though it is unclear just how many grains of sand make a heap as we increase the number of grains.
As for why I feel a fetus can be aborted, I avoid making claims of personhood in that case, for the reasons mentioned above. But you’ve anticipated my justification for finding fetal abortion acceptable: because it can be seen as an unwanted gut parasite, attached to us against our wills. In the same manner, if a homeless man were to barge into my house, steal my food, and so on, I’d have the right to kick him out, even if I knew he would likely die from exposure from living on the street. And if we aren’t morally obligated to help fully conscious beings like the homeless, then it would seem we should not extend those rights to a fetus, either.
By the way, I am only speaking of moral obligation in that previous paragraph about the homeless person. It would be quite giving and amazingly moral to open your home to a homeless person, and I personally would probably do so, but my point is that doing so is not a necessity, and it would not necessarily be immoral to turn the bum away, owing to our own rights that the other would encroach upon.
March 19th, 2009 at 7:08 PM
Nicely put. Though, pro-lifers so educated and articulate they ‘trot out the fact that our gametes are haploid’? Where do you go to engage in such thought-provoking exchange?
March 19th, 2009 at 7:28 PM
Nima, you’re right. I was being much too generous with that phrasing of their argument, which is usually rendered in their own words and resembles something like, “OMG but sperms is only half man and doesnt have a soul!” That’s unfortunately how the argument usually goes, but for the sake of literacy, I put it in my own words, heh.
March 19th, 2009 at 10:06 PM
Excellent article. I’ve been frustrated with this incoherency of argument for years, and am happy to see the correction so well articulated.
s/wont/want though
March 20th, 2009 at 1:11 AM
Thanks Mike, but I’m not sure what you mean by “s/wont/want though”.
March 20th, 2009 at 2:27 AM
Good points, I see how you mean now. Mike means that you should replace “wont” with “want” somewhere. Unix geek slang
March 21st, 2009 at 3:16 PM
BTW, SG, Jo’s web link above goes to a commercial site.
I found myself smiling as I read this, because it has all the same arguments against the pro-lie (not a typo) dogma I’ve been making since the days of Usenet News.
March 26th, 2009 at 8:48 AM
..the more someone wants to DEBATE this subject the greater symptom of the desperation theory with reflexive defenses..however DIALOGUE to alleviate desperation could mean there could be no abortion by choice..if emotions evolve with intelligent design…
March 26th, 2009 at 7:08 PM
“With this understanding of the murkiness of the life cycle, it makes sense that scientists do not proclaim just when “life” begins in human beings, whether it be during conception, implantation on the uterus, or whenever else. This distinction is unnecessary and pointless.”
“The reason I don’t extend my personhood argument into the fetal stages is explicitly because the line between moral personhood becomes blurred at that point.”
We DO have to draw the line of what constitutes “murder” somewhere, so the distinction isn’t “unnecessary and pointless,” it seems to me, but has practical implications. And the act of exiting the womb and taking the first breath seem as arbitrary as anything else as moral personhood factors. The idea of “the baby could live on its own if you moved it from the womb right now” makes sense to me as a determinant of when a fetus has achieved a significant level of personhood — that is, 7 months or so, if I’m not mistaken, for most fetuses. So, my question is, what do you think about third-trimester abortions, and what line do you draw when it comes to a concept like what constitutes murder?
March 26th, 2009 at 7:40 PM
Marnee, I’m saying that the distinction concerning when life begins in humans is a meaningless BIOLOGICAL distinction. Like I said, life is a cycle, and whether you call a sperm or a zygote “life” is thus a rather uninteresting question for scientists.
I’d also like to point out, as I did in the post, that “life” is not totally sufficient for moral personhood, so even if scientists did answer the question definitively, it wouldn’t establish anything concerning abortion. Plants, animals, murderers, soldiers in war, and so on are all living, for instance, but there are circumstances in which it is acceptable to end their lives (I’m assuming that the pro-lifer is not vegan, antiwar, or anti-capital punishment).
“And the act of exiting the womb and taking the first breath seem as arbitrary as anything else as moral personhood factors.”
And you’ll notice that I never said the act of exiting the womb establishes moral personhood. Personhood is established by cognitive capacities, which I emphasize throughout the post, not by having a beating heart, being diploid, or even through the process of birth.
As far as personhood goes, if we apply it to newborns, then it applies just as easily to a fetus still in the womb, a day before birth, and so on back in time, day by day, until that hazy line becomes unclear. This is why I very carefully used words like “embryo”, “blastocyst”, and “zygote” throughout this post, and never “fetus”, because I am emphasizing the very early development in which it is without question that these entities lack cognitive capacities, and therefore lack personhood.
However, I am also pro-choice when it comes to late term abortions, but my support isn’t based on arguments from personhood, which fall apart at that stage as a result of the blurring cognitive distinctions. What follows is what I said in a comment above, to someone raising a similar point:
As for why I feel a fetus can be aborted, I avoid making claims of personhood in that case, for the reasons mentioned above. But you’ve anticipated my justification for finding fetal abortion acceptable: because it can be seen as an unwanted gut parasite, attached to us against our wills. In the same manner, if a homeless man were to barge into my house, steal my food, and so on, I’d have the right to kick him out, even if I knew he would likely die from exposure from living on the street. And if we aren’t morally obligated to help fully conscious beings like the homeless, then it would seem we should not extend those rights to a fetus, either.
By the way, I am only speaking of moral obligation in that previous paragraph about the homeless person. It would be quite giving and amazingly moral to open your home to a homeless person, and I personally would probably do so, but my point is that doing so is not a necessity, and it would not necessarily be immoral to turn the bum away, owing to our own rights that the other would encroach upon.
April 6th, 2009 at 1:35 PM
Oh you trying to make the abortion argument so clean cut. I’m not religious, but the fact you used a bum breaking into your house. Two people who had sex know that it used for reproduction. Why should the fetus have to suffer for their mistakes? It is innocent. The problem with moral personhood is our morality of constitution comes from us all being created equal. That falls under when life begins which is conception. Even if it isn’t ‘totally sufficient’ why would you not give the life benefit of the doubt? And by using your logic we keep the current system where if everyone deicded to get abortion they could do so. We need to find a way to limit the amount of abortions. I don’t treat you with moral consideration because acting-with-moral-consideration is an end in itself. I found your states of mind the only interesting point in the whole article.
April 6th, 2009 at 6:38 PM
“I’m not religious, but the fact you used a bum breaking into your house. Two people who had sex know that it used for reproduction.”
I don’t find this to be adequate criticism of my argument. Merely because reproduction is a possible consequence of sex does not mean that those who have sex consent to having children. In the same way, if I move into a bad neighborhood it is a possibility my home will be robbed, but just because I know this is a possibility doesn’t mean that I therefore consent to being robbed. Perhaps I moved to that area because it is next to one of my favorite libraries or restaurants. The situation with sex is fairly analogous. People using birth control are not having sex to have children, but for the pleasure it produces, which is quite obvious.
“The problem with moral personhood is our morality of constitution comes from us all being created equal.”
That is incorrect. Personhood has nothing to do with the declaration of independence. Political documents do not establish moral truths, because moral truths are not equivalent to laws. This is why, for instance, we consider it moral to give to charity, but we don’t make laws making charity-giving mandatory.
It also isn’t clear that this applies to zygotes. The quote is “All men are created equal,” and it isn’t at all clear that zygotes are intended to fall under the meaning of “men”. After all, surely “slaves” did not fall under this rubric when it was written.
April 6th, 2009 at 9:36 PM
Personhood shouldn’t even have to deal with the argument at hand. You have to remember that we have a law against the murdering of human beings. The fetus itself has its own unique dna. You mentioned suffering but by being prochocie you are not going to limit the number of abortions (which I might add you left out addressing from my previous comment.) The problem is how are you prochoice and for partial birth? When your argument doesn’t even apply to it? After 8 weeks the fetus suffers and as ’silent scream’. At least you bothered to come up with a decent argument The prochoice people I met always use the old argument of ownership which is very easily disprovable.
April 6th, 2009 at 9:57 PM
“The fetus itself has its own unique dna.”
So do somatic cells, yet no one would charge me with murder if I scratched you and killed some of your skin cells in the process. If you read my post again, you’ll see that I have already addressed any claims about moral consideration having anything to do with DNA or being genetically human.
“You mentioned suffering but by being prochocie you are not going to limit the number of abortions (which I might add you left out addressing from my previous comment.)”
That’s because I have no reason to limit the number of abortions. Why would I want to limit abortions if I don’t consider them immoral or wrong?
“The problem is how are you prochoice and for partial birth? When your argument doesn’t even apply to it?”
My argument in the original post only applies to zygotes and embryos, that is correct, but I’ve explained in the comments why I think aborting fetuses is also not a moral problem. Basically, even though a fetus has degrees of consciousness that start to warrant moral consideration, the fact that this entity is imposing itself on the mother against her wishes makes it acceptable to abort. This is why I used my analogy of the homeless man. If I decide to live in a bad neighborhood, knowing that bums inhabit the area and frequently invade homes, and a bum then invades my home and attempts to live off my food and shelter, I have every right to kick the bum out into the street, even if doing so will cause the bum to die, and even though the bum has the cognitive capacities that would make him worthy of moral personhood. The basic point is that individual freedoms supersede the right to life when another person’s right to life is parasitic off of someone else without that person’s consent.
April 6th, 2009 at 10:56 PM
Well skin cells don’t suffer obviously so it’s completely irrelevant post 8 weeks. pre-8, there’s still a difference in the fact that the fetus has its own unique DNA
the question is, is that relevant? and if so, or if not, why? or why not?
That’s because I have no reason to limit the number of abortions. Why would I want to limit abortions if I don’t consider them immoral or wrong?
Well you are objectively wrong after 8 weeks because then the fetus does suffer and is under moral consideration. That is why you are wrong for late term abortions. Your arguments don’t stand up at all. All I have to say is pre 8 weeks you still have to account of health risk mom has for getting abortions done. I’m just throwing in your case is hardly perfect. We still have a lot late term abortions.
My argument in the original post only applies to zygotes and embryos, that is correct, but I’ve explained in the comments why I think aborting fetuses is also not a moral problem. Basically, even though a fetus has degrees of consciousness that start to warrant moral consideration, the fact that this entity is imposing itself on the mother against her wishes makes it acceptable to abort. This is why I used my analogy of the homeless man. If I decide to live in a bad neighborhood, knowing that bums inhabit the area and frequently invade homes, and a bum then invades my home and attempts to live off my food and shelter, I have every right to kick the bum out into the street, even if doing so will cause the bum to die, and even though the bum has the cognitive capacities that would make him worthy of moral personhood. The basic point is that individual freedoms supersede the right to life when another person’s right to life is parasitic off of someone else without that person’s consent.
Yeah, the homeless-man argument is a completely separate issue
that I think fails and is more properly replaced by something like the airplane issue. Your “homeless man” argument would apply just as well to the toddler. So it would be perfectly moral for the parents to kick their toddler out on the streets, even if he may die as an irrelevant consequence. Why does the “homeless man” argument doesn’t apply just as equally to a toddler?
April 8th, 2009 at 5:50 PM
“Well skin cells don’t suffer obviously so it’s completely irrelevant post 8 weeks. pre-8, there’s still a difference in the fact that the fetus has its own unique DNA”
I’m not mentioning skin cells because they suffer, but because they “have their own unique DNA”. If you think it is acceptable to kill skin cells, then you should feel likewise about an embryo or zygote–citing the “unique DNA” is no argument for personhood or moral consideration, for obvious reasons.
“Well you are objectively wrong after 8 weeks because then the fetus does suffer and is under moral consideration.”
I am not saying that late-term fetuses can’t feel pain and suffer. As I note elsewhere, my arguments about personhood and cognitive capacity only apply to embryos and zygotes, not fetuses. For fetuses, I grant that they have cognitive capacities, but note that they can be seen as “parasitizing” the mother, and thus the mother is not morally obligated to support the parasite.
As for your point regarding dependents like toddlers and small children, it is important to note that mothers are not morally obligated to support them, either. This is why it is perfectly legal to give them up for adoption and so on. In the case of a fetus within the mother, unfortunately because it is inside the mother an abortion is necessary, even though it can feel pain, because we shouldn’t expect women to support what amounts to an unwanted parasite growing in her gut and to experience the pain and burden of childbirth against her own consent.
April 10th, 2009 at 9:10 PM
“As for your point regarding dependents like toddlers and small children, it is important to note that mothers are not morally obligated to support them, either. This is why it is perfectly legal to give them up for adoption and so on. In the case of a fetus within the mother, unfortunately because it is inside the mother an abortion is necessary, even though it can feel pain, because we shouldn’t expect women to support what amounts to an unwanted parasite growing in her gut and to experience the pain and burden of childbirth against her own consent.”
On adoption, giving a child up for adoption isn’t refusing to support, it’s transferring the obligation to support. The mother can’t throw her toddler out on the streets and let him die, she has to transfer her obligation to support him to someone else; and then, that obligation is held by the new parent. *a mother obviously can’t throw her toddler out in the streets even in the name of “self-defense” because supporting him is a burden, for example,but that’s exactly what the “parasite” argument amounts to keeping the fetus alive is a burden, therefore I can kill the child in so-called “self-defense.”
April 11th, 2009 at 8:38 PM
Hmmm. All I am reading, like the poster said; a bunch of science jargon. As one of your quite amusing tests said, I rely more on my gut feeling and belief system than logical reasoning; to be exact I think you called me an “ass-hat”. The whole controversy on abortion, I find, is a waste of time. Our fore-fathers even signed a big piece of paper that said that we are to have a separation of church and state. And to listen to SOME not all of these Christian hypocrites go on and on about how it’s against GODs will, well where is that lovely, I guess it’s a big piece of string by now, separation. Then you get the whole morality thing mixed in with it. The controversy over whether or not Abortion should be legal or not is, to say the least, Messy, messy, messy. It’s worse than a 4 year old left alone in a white living room, with white rugs and couches and pudding; we all know what is going to happen. But if we just stopped arguing and stopped following our monkey DNA, by throwing poop all over the place then we would all be better off.
Here it is a perfectly logical way to solve this debacle, allow abortion but have a cutoff date, so that doctors aren’t pulling limbs of the unborn child out of the mother. Of course after the politicians and everyone gets through with it the law description will probably sound a lot fancier and less crude but still mean the same thing. In the end, it is the woman body, it’s her life that is being altered not anyone else’s, not these whacky Christian protesters, not the governments but hers. The fact that we as a people are even arguing over these just shows how much we are letting our poop slinging brothers DNA take control.
And a little tid-bit of information for you: even though I find you to be quite brilliant in a very twisted and cynical way, aka scientific, if you want to be heard and understood try adding a dictionary link or something to your blog. Please take into consideration that the newspaper is written at a fourth grade level and even then some people still have a hard time understanding it. You have some following. Very interesting ideas and your post have made me think a little bit differently, so keep writing and I’ll keep on following.
April 12th, 2009 at 4:23 PM
Hey gasonline when you get a chance I’d like you to respond to my last post.
April 13th, 2009 at 3:42 PM
Well in any case, Theorizer, if it was religion alone then I’d all be for abortions. I was debating gasoline on partial birth and see if he can prove to me a good argument for it. The problem is after those weeks it is under consideration and it should be illegal on moral obligation basis.
April 14th, 2009 at 12:05 AM
Hmmm. What I was trying to say basically is that the Government real should have no power, they shouldn’t be allowed to warrant whether or not abortion is “morally” right. Especial when the, main argument is religion and even morals, because every single person has their own set of morals and guidelines that they follow in their life i.e. free will. The first amendment of this country’s constitution, The United States of America, clearly states, that there is to be a separation of church and state. If we have to ask ourselves, if abortion should be legal, where is that separation? It seems as though the line between decisions made for our countries well being and our countries eternal souls has become blurred. When we start to mix religion and government together, problems can arise. That is why our forefathers decided to keep the two separated. The decision to have an abortion in no way, shape or form harms anyone, because technically almost 30 of our states press charges for the injury of a pregnant woman, not the actual termination of the pregnancy. So, the only reason why the government would become involved is because of religious reasons. And well, there is a much bigger problem there when this starts to happen, because where will it stop? First, it is the abolishing a woman’s right to free will, to make her own decisions, which affect her personally. Then it leads to putting gays, into concentration camps in order to save their souls from eternal damnation. It starts with one act but when and where will the line be drawn if ever. To take away a person’s right to make their own decisions, especially ones that could potentially ruin their lives, is not only wrong but it goes against the constitution. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”( excerpt from the Declaration of in dependence). And if having the child ruins any chances the parent would have to finish high school or go to college, how is that mother supposed to support that child?
When a single woman is forced to have a child she does not want and cannot afford to have the quality of life for this child should be questioned. “Today, it costs as much as $289,380 to raise a child a year, excluding any kind of formal education”(Jean Chatzky). Most women looking into abortion ask themselves what kind of life they can give that child. If they cannot afford to feed or house that child, what then? They die at the age of five from starvation and the cold. A child should not be brought in to this world, when they simply would not have a chance to live it because of their mother’s hardships. Be it from one stupid, irresponsible night or the horrors of rape. It is not fair to bring a child in to this world when they cannot be cared for and loved the way it should be.
April 14th, 2009 at 6:22 PM
First off your arguments aren’t good at all theorizer. I’m not going to really address them. You ask when its going to stop taking rights away? Well first off that isn’t the issue so your going off topic.
>It is not fair to bring a child in to this world when they cannot be cared for and loved the way it should be.
I don’t think so, the child rather exist to never exist at all. Let us not forget adoption where there are 10 good families wanting a child that has been aborted. None of what you say stands at all. Your just spouting your own opinion and no facts.
if abortion should be legal, where is that separation?
Abortion isn’t a religious issue. Many atheist are prolife advocates. It is a moral issue and that is why saint gasoline tried to use moral consideration argument.
And well, there is a much bigger problem there when this starts to happen, because where will it stop?
I’d agree with you if we were discussing government expansion taking over our lives. Socialism and whatnot. That is what you should be worried about. Abortion is debateable because does the right exist in the first place? Just like does the right for me to murder you exist in the first place?
Another point about how weak your argument is:We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”( excerpt from the Declaration of in dependence).
That actually defends prolife point because it shows that if we are created which happens at conception then the unborn baby should have the unalienable Rights.
All civilize societies restrict individual freedoms when that “choice” would harm an innocent person. Do men have the freedom of choice to rape a woman if that is his choice? After all, it’s his body, why do we have a right to tell him what to do with it? Why do we have a right to impose our morals on him? By emphasizing a rapist’s right to choose, we clearly are completely ignoring the rights of the woman.
Your using old arguments and I was hoping saint gasoline would respond to my transfer of morality. I guess I got him on that issue. However, he made me reconsider first 8 weeks before it feels pain.
April 15th, 2009 at 5:17 PM
Wow. Ok Hmmm. The first time I was replying I wasn’t replying to your comment, it just so happens that you used that name when I was just using the word. And in case you haven’t realized there are thousands of children in the world dying and in need of a good home, so why bring a child into this world if it truly isn’t wanted? And you can’t possibly think that someone can debate the issue of Abortion without tying in Religion, because that what the whole thing is about really, if we want to make it illegal just because of morality or religious reasons. Also when I wrote: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”( excerpt from the Declaration of in dependence), i was trying to emphasis the Pursuit of happiness and how that can be taken away….. HA. You say i was using old arguments, but maybe I had to say them again but in a different way so you could understand it, which you obviously didn’t. Please just because you are getting all pissy because Saint Gasoline doesn’t want to talk to you, don’t take it out on me. Thank you very much : )
May 1st, 2009 at 11:20 AM
Well I was hoping he comment on the ‘moral transfer’ rebuttle I gave so I can see where I stand on the subject.
June 10th, 2009 at 12:25 PM
THe ‘grossness’ argument made a lot of sense, especially after the recent OpEd piece from Nick Kristoff about the feeling of disgust being critical in not just how ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ think but also how they feel.
If the whole reaction is not a rational one, then explanations and rationale will make no difference in changing attitudes. Not, that one shouldn’t try, just that the approach might need to change.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/opinion/28kristof.html
July 22nd, 2009 at 2:07 PM
The problem is I don’t like liberals poor economic ideas.
September 18th, 2009 at 10:37 PM
I kinda feel the same but I think if I ran for office I’d be a democrat. Republicans/neocons are big government like liberals except worse they think we should invade foreign countries for ‘freedom’. Also there are blue dog democrats/libertarians democrats in congress who are more for the free market.
May 25th, 2010 at 2:20 PM
I am always against abortion because it is a sin to kill an innocent child.”-*
June 13th, 2010 at 3:29 PM
My argument has always been along the lines of “Well if a fetus is an unborn baby and deserves rights, then you are an undead corpse and deserve none.” or “If they are protected by the law, they have to follow it, an no person, born or unborn, has the right to be on someone’s property without their consent.”
July 1st, 2010 at 12:48 AM
Wow, you’ve really mis-stated a lot of “pro-life” arguments, presumably to make them easier to rebut. You are definitely correct, however, that biology is not your strong point.
“the organism without the proper cognitive status for this consideration (worthiness) is not clear-cut and absolute…”
So, then, “cognitive status” defines whether a human can be killed? At what stage of development, exactly, does the transformation to “worthiness” occur? At birth? Six months after conception? Three months? Two months after birth? How do you propose to measure this characteristic, and who gets to decide on the cutoff point? That’s a slippery slope, if ever there was one. And does one human being really get to decide on another’s “worthiness”? That’s a little creepy.
“A zygote, blastocyst, or early embryo clearly do not possess the sorts of characteristics that qualify it for moral consideration…”
You don’t define those characteristics, so what, exactly, do you mean here? A fetus (or zygote, or blastocyst) is a human being at an early stage of development. Morality is an abstract concept, but you don’t really define that, either.
“…if one asks a pro-lifer how an abortion doctor, or a researcher studying embryonic stem cells, should be punished…”
Documentation required here; otherwise it sounds like you made this part up. The burning building scenario does pose an interesting problem, although it’s a bit of a Sophie’s choice. It’s also a bit apples and oranges, because a real, live kid is… well, is already here, while the status of blastocysts removed from women and stored in liquid nitrogen is unclear. Except for the fire, will they all develop into term babies? They are produced artificially (in vitro), and the whole process intertwines technology with the natural process of development. A couple of simpler, alternative questions: If a murderer kills a pregnant woman, should he be tried for two murders, or one? If a pregnant woman is attacked and survives, but the child in her uterus dies, should the assailant be charged with simple assault, or murder?
“…it becomes apparent that we should not harm others because they do not desire such treatment, because they dislike or fear the pain it would cause, and because we are capable of empathizing and understanding their point of view by considering our own reactions to the situation… we can reason that theft is unfair and would produce displeasure in ourselves and others. That is, we recognize acts as immoral or wrong based upon the cognitive states they can induce in others (i.e., fear, pain, pleasure, etc.)…the capacity to have these cognitive states — to fear a potential outcome, to feel pain and displeasure, to reciprocate, and so on — is a necessary requirement for moral personhood.”
So you can kill anyone as long as they’re asleep. It’s OK - they won’t feel a thing. I’m guessing that this bogus argument comes from years of trying to defend against the classic anti-atheist argument “how can you be a moral person without religion to guide you?” You’re trying to develop morality through logic, but morality, which is an abstract, human-only concept, is too free-floating for that. Should you shoot an enemy soldier who’s trying to kill you? Clearly not, by your argument, because that might cause them some unpleasant feelings. I would argue that humans show the same sorts of behaviour towards one another as do other mammals. Watch the squirrels in your back yard; they hang out together, fight with each other, copulate with each other, gang up against intruders, etc. In other words, they operate by a set of rules that evolution has provided for them, rules which they’re programmed to follow, and that ensure the survival of their species. If they didn’t follow those rules, their species wouldn’t survive - natural selection at work. Humans are no different, although our cerebral cortex works to trick us into thinking we are.
“This distinction… also neatly accounts for our moral treatment of animals, who are not treated as our moral equals presumably because we don’t think they are our cognitive equals, with those creatures that are less cognitive (e.g., insects) being given little moral regard while those that are more cognitive (e.g., dolphins, apes, and dogs) being frequently empathized with and cited as creatures deserving of rights.”
Not sure where you’re going with this. Do you look down on other animals as not deserving of rights because of their limited cognition? If so, then you’ve just said that you support abortion for the same reason. Do you respect other living things, even those with limited cognition? Then you’ve just said that you oppose abortion for the same reason.
“Life begins at conception! Such is the cry of the angsty pro-lifer in response to irrefutable reason.”
Your reasoning is “irrefutable”? I think it takes a fair bit of arrogance to blithely (”angsty pro-lifers”) dismiss the concerns that hundreds of millions of your fellow humans have over the termination of what they see as human life.
And the argument is not that “life begins at conception”. What begins is the life of a unique human being, who will continue to develop (if not scraped out of the uterus) for seven or eight decades. The germ cells are alive, of course, as are all of the supporting cells. It’s not life that begins, it’s the life of an individual.
“Humans have a diploid stage, which is the stage in which we have sets of chromosomes from both parents, and we have a haploid stage, which is when the human gametes (the sperm and egg) have chromosomes from only one parent.”
You need to work a bit harder at understanding human development and reproduction. Human beings never exist in a haploid stage, only our germ cells do. A unique human being results from the combination of two haploid cells, a sperm and an egg; the result is a (diploid) human being.
“Even the most ardent pro-lifers, for instance, would acknowledge that a baby born without a brain should not be treated as if it is worthy of a right to life, and few would say it must be connected to a life support system for the duration of its empty, nonsensory life.”
So what? The issue here is not the termination of defective, non-functional organisms, but of normal, fully-functional ones. “Fully functional”, in this context, doesn’t mean “having reached the developmental stage at which some of us will now benificently deem them worthy of living”. It means moving along the normal human developmental path.
“Similarly, a human skin cell is living and human, but few pro-lifers would be willing to assert that my continual scratching of my crotch, which results in the continual death of the skin cells down there, is tantamount to murder. Clearly, something more is needed than merely being living and human.”
A skin cell is not an organism. The owner of the crotch, on the other hand, is. It is the assembly of cells into an organism that defines us, not our individual component cells, many of which are expendable by design.
“How could a pro-lifer possibly overcome these impenetrable objections?”
Not only ‘irrefutable”, but now “impenetrable”! Impressive self-analysis.
“Perhaps the favorite tactic when cornered in such a dispute is to make the argument from grossness…”
Another mis-characterization. Nobody is making the argument that “eew, it’s gross, so we shouldn’t do it”. The gross pictures are shown because otherwise, due to the structure of the female reproductive system, the entire process of abortion is invisible. As a result, it’s much easier to stomach. In fact, it’s almost abstract, like your arguments in this essay. You manage to ignore the fact that abortion results in a dead body. In fact, you impugn those who recognize that fact, which strikes me as unfair. Have you ever seen an aborted fetus? They are quite obviously human. And dead. And they were alive a few minutes ago, just before the abortion. It’s quite sobering, and I’d be worried about any human being who, on seeing one, didn’t react in that way.
“The last refuge of the pro-life scoundrel, for some strange reason, is the beating heart…”
The human heart argument is a bit maudlin, it’s true, but again serves to expose the reality of abortion to those who are otherwise completely insulated from it. The pregnant woman doesn’t see anything, and only experiences some cramping, which is effectively medicated away by modern pharmaceutical science. Why do you have such a hard time dealing with the reality of the procedure? Is the fetal carcass really so irrelevant to you?
“…the argument states that because the embryo has the potential to develop into a normal human being, it should be treated as such. But the problem with this formulation is that even a single sperm or single egg has this potential, so masturbation could be seen as mass genocide, and a woman who has her menstrual period could be sued for neglect of her children.”
See the above comment on your complete misunderstanding of the whole haploid-diploid concept. What’s special is not the gametes - after all, the male ejaculate contains about 250 million sperm, only one of which manages to transfer its genetic material into the egg, so 249,999,999 sperm die as part of the normal fertilization process. So, you can keep jerking off without guilt (unless you’re Catholic).
“…a more potent argument because it accounts for the probability of full cognitive development, and so sperm would not qualify, as a single sperm’s chance of becoming an adult human being is rather tiny. The problem with the argument, of course, is that the possibility of having the qualities relevant for moral personhood is an overt admission that the entity currently does not possess these qualities, and therefore should not be treated as if it does.”
Ever try to make moral-personhood contact with a newborn? Give it up! They’re just poop machines! Obviously OK to kill them. And, while you’re at it, take care of the two-year-old having a tantrum at the next table. Please. Clearly, the only people we must avoid killing are the adults, the ones who have risen to full, morally complete personhood. Although it’s not clear how they’ll make it to that stage, since incomplete (i.e. young) humans seem to have no value in your moral construct.
“…like self-righteous clowns without grease paint.”
They’re easy to spot - they’re the irrefutable and impenetrable ones…
July 11th, 2010 at 6:04 PM
I don’t presume to state exactly when the cognition of a human makes it achieve personhood. However, we can know whether an entity is a person or not at either extreme. For example, it is clear that an embryo does not have a capacity, and it is clear that a human does. There is some wiggle-room in the development of the fetus, though. My case only purported to show that embryos do not have these cognitive functions, not to demonstrate the precise day in which these functions are attained.
A couple of simpler, alternative questions: If a murderer kills a pregnant woman, should he be tried for two murders, or one? If a pregnant woman is attacked and survives, but the child in her uterus dies, should the assailant be charged with simple assault, or murder?
If a murderer kills a woman and the child is not a fetus, it is a single murder. If a man attacks a pregnant woman and the baby dies, he should be charged with murder (or manslaughter depending on the intention) if the baby is not an embryo. These questions are not difficult to address with my clear demarcation, whereas your intuitions about my thought questions are clearly riddled with hemming and hawing about irrelevancies.
So you can kill anyone as long as they’re asleep.
Someone who is asleep can still feel pain, and is obviously still a moral person. They presumably have a desire to live and not feel pain that an embryo has never had, and so there is a huge distinction there.
I pointed out that my system coheres with our treatment of animals because it correlates with the cognitive abilities of those animals. Those with greater cognitive abilities are generally treated better than those with lesser abilities (mammals versus insects, dogs versus lizards, etc.).
And the argument is not that “life begins at conception”. What begins is the life of a unique human being, who will continue to develop (if not scraped out of the uterus) for seven or eight decades. The germ cells are alive, of course, as are all of the supporting cells. It’s not life that begins, it’s the life of an individual.
The idea that the human being is “unique” or an “individual” is a silly distinction with no merit. You can have unique and individual cells that differ from others, but we don’t treat them as entities deserving of moral rights. What makes a human unique and invidual but not a germ cell? Because there are multiple germ cells that are all the same? Well, it’s untrue that they are all the same, and presumably your reasoning would lead you to conclude that identical twins are those not moral beings because they are not “unique” and individual, which is absurd.
You need to work a bit harder at understanding human development and reproduction. Human beings never exist in a haploid stage, only our germ cells do. A unique human being results from the combination of two haploid cells, a sperm and an egg; the result is a (diploid) human being.
You arbitrarily assert that the haploid gamets of a human are not “human”, but this reasoning is faulty if you understand biology. As my examples show, life progresses through stages, and many organisms exist in multicellular haploid stages (fungus, social insects, etc.). This just goes to show that the haploid stage AND the diploid stage are relevant to development and part of the life cycle of any organism, and to rule out one stage because it is not multicellular seems arbitrary and of no moral worth.
So what? The issue here is not the termination of defective, non-functional organisms, but of normal, fully-functional ones. “Fully functional”, in this context, doesn’t mean “having reached the developmental stage at which some of us will now benificently deem them worthy of living”. It means moving along the normal human developmental path.
But you provide no reasons as to why “moving along the normal human developmental path” is morally relevant. My own system, that emphasizes cognition and mental capabilities, explains the way we treat insects, our moral intuitions in the thought experiments I gave, and why babies born without brains are not treated as moral entities. Your own system is completely arbitrary and cannot answer these dilemmas satisfactorially, hence it is probably wrong or inconsistent.
A skin cell is not an organism. The owner of the crotch, on the other hand, is. It is the assembly of cells into an organism that defines us, not our individual component cells, many of which are expendable by design.
Again, you bring up a worthless moral distinction. Whether something is an organism does not matter in terms of moral personhood, unless you concede that plants and insects should also be treated as humans. Many humans are also “expendable by design”, if you take a broad enough view of nature and genetics.
Have you ever seen an aborted fetus? They are quite obviously human. And dead. And they were alive a few minutes ago, just before the abortion. It’s quite sobering, and I’d be worried about any human being who, on seeing one, didn’t react in that way.
My argument is expressly applied to fetuses. Have you ever seen an aborted embryo? They are NOT quite obviously human, and you’d be hard pressed to differentiate a cow embryo from a human embryo unless you had biological training of some sort. Pointing out the grossness of the procedure is not an argument.
See the above comment on your complete misunderstanding of the whole haploid-diploid concept. What’s special is not the gametes - after all, the male ejaculate contains about 250 million sperm, only one of which manages to transfer its genetic material into the egg, so 249,999,999 sperm die as part of the normal fertilization process. So, you can keep jerking off without guilt (unless you’re Catholic).
Why does it matter that many die? As a thought experiment, suppose that humans could have litters of millions of children at once. Suppose also that only one of these millions would end up surviving past 8-months in the uterus, while the rest die precisely at the 8-month mark. Would this make you think it is then acceptable to perform abortions? I don’t see how the differential survival is relevant at all.
Ever try to make moral-personhood contact with a newborn? Give it up! They’re just poop machines! Obviously OK to kill them. And, while you’re at it, take care of the two-year-old having a tantrum at the next table. Please. Clearly, the only people we must avoid killing are the adults, the ones who have risen to full, morally complete personhood. Although it’s not clear how they’ll make it to that stage, since incomplete (i.e. young) humans seem to have no value in your moral construct.
Babies are not just poop machines. This is a common lay misconception, but babies actually have a wide variety of cognitive capacities. They don’t even have to be a year old and they can develop preferences, process social information, and even reason morally! (There are a variety of studies showing these facts in infants; one of the reasons I know this is because my girlfriend studies infants!)
July 21st, 2010 at 6:48 PM
You’ve decided that fetuses are worthy of “moral personhood” while embryos are not. Yet, the only difference between the embryo and the fetus is that embryogenesis (appearance of bodily organs) takes place during the embryonic stage. Developmentally, the two stages are completely continuous. Why does having a liver imbue an organism with “moral personhood”? And, by the way, the fetal stage normally begins at 8 weeks, so I presume you’d be against abortions done after 8 weeks.
Seems awfully unfair and arbitrary to require “a desire to live and not feel pain” in order to avoid be killed. At 8 weeks plus one day, is your 1-day fetus capable of doing those things, really? And, if so, then it shouldn’t be killed at that time, but two days earlier it’d be OK to scrape it out? I think you’re trying to draw an imaginary line here, to allow yourself the wiggle room to feel OK about the killing of human beings.
You make no distinction between cells and organisms, which strikes me as disingenuous; that handy little omission allows you to conflate the destruction of human organisms with the destruction of individual cells, and therefore approve them both. On a related note, I never stated that the haploid gamete is not human, but simply that it does not represent a human organism. Again, one is a cell, the other is an organism (I’ll leave it as an excercise for you to figure out which is which). I cannot understand how you can assert that “whether something is an organism does not matter in terms of moral personhood”. Connecting the organism concept to, e.g., insects is specious reasoning; I did not say that no organism should ever be killed. The issue here is human beings, not bugs. The human organism appears at conception; unless it dies en route, it will develop into a mature human being, going through numerous developmental phases. It takes many years for all of its capabilities to develop, but you arbitrarily define 8 weeks as the point at which it becomes something different than it was before. But, biologically, that difference is just two points on a developmental continuum. At 8 weeks, any moral sense is years off. And why should the ability to respond to noxious stimuli (”pain”, although not consciously experienced by embryo or fetus, as far as anyone knows) make any difference whatsoever? What sort of a criterion is that? All animals experience pain, but you have no problem killing them.
Which reduces your argument down to the “moral personhood issue”, so let’s go with that for a moment. You emphasize “cognition and mental capabilities” as your criterion for permitting a human being to live. What cutoff point do you declare? How much cognition? How advanced the mental capabilities? An IQ of 100? 80? 50? How will you decide? And, if you do find a way to decide, then why not implement it at any age, not just in utero? Just cull the defectives wherever, whenever. Why not, if they don’t meet your standards.
I do apologize for not adding a little winking smiley face after my ‘babies as poop machines’. Maybe I should have used tags. You are correct that babies “have a wide variety of cognitive capacities”. So do puppies, chickens, and pretty much any other animal you’d care to name. But they can “even reason morally!”? Do you really mean they can make moral distinctions? As in “right” and “wrong”, whatever those terms mean? You might want to ask your girlfriend for some documentation on that one. I wonder what newborns think about abortion?
By the way, the notion that “identical” twins are truly identical is a common lay misconception. Their genetic composition is identical at the first cell division in the blastocyst stage, although, from that point on, DNA copying errors will inevitably occur, so the twins will drift apart in that way. In addition, they have different environments, which will cause subtle developmental differences. That effect is clearer to see in the case of higher-order multiple births, such as sextuplets (e.g. the one on the bottom of the pile has a disadvantage due to pressure; also, variations in the anatomy of the placenta can cause differences in oxygenation from one kid to another, etc.). With a pair of twins, the differences are there, but are often subtle.
I think you’re trying very hard to intellectualize a solution to a very basic problem - that we want to be able to kill unborn babies for the sake of convenience, but we don’t want any of those annoying guilt feelings. That requires a lot of cognitive hoop-jumping, and it’s only possible because we can’t see any part of the process (the whole first few months of development, as well as the abortion). So, it’s a bit abstract, and therefore fairly easy to think about and to justify, because no blood, no pain, no visible carcass (this, of course, is the motivation behind those who display pictures of aborted fetuses, i.e. to bring the process into view). I’m not necessarily against abortion, just conflicted, because I do see it as a struggle between the life of a quite helpless organism and the convenience of the mother, and I think we need to be more honest about what actually takes place after that speculum gets inserted, rather than pontificate about abstract notions of “moral personhood” and “cognitive capacities”. Those arguments strike me as relatively desperate (and inappropriately glib) attempts to deny that, during an abortion, a human being dies.