Post by IrishMauddib on Oct 30, 2008 13:33:21 GMT
I got roped into an abortion conversation recently. It is not a subject I have held much of an opinion on before and I rather mindlessly took the atheist approach of pro-choice. Not all atheists are pro-choice but it is definitely more likely that they would be than if you are theist. So I took this almost default position. I finally have had time to address it so I will post my thoughts in a long essay for the purpose of scrutiny.
The entire discussion for me appears to come down to when does “life” begin. Surely once life has begun then to end it is murder by any standard. The problem is therefore that people arbitrarily declare subjective points about when life has begun without any reason or backup for it, just to support their pro-life Agenda. They do this without facts or evidence… purely from the heart. Subjective… useless.
The issue here is that everyone has a definition of their own over what life is. And mostly they are subjective and arbitrary with no back up.
Take someone who says life begins at conception. However the cells that go into creating a human being are "alive" also. The contradiction is if life BEGINS at conception then if the cells that go into creating a human are alive what has BEGUN here? For something to BEGIN something has to either start that was not there before, or has to restart after being stopped. This is what BEGIN means. However this clearly hasn’t happened! What is new that wasn’t there before? Not life clearly as the cells before conception are alive. What has stopped here and then started again? Nothing, unless you want to pretend the two cells die at conception and then come alive again anew. So no dice here!
What has been added at conception that was not there a SPLIT second before that. And a split second before that. It is an infinite regress which quite neatly explains the catholic churches position on contraception. When you are caught in this regress you are invariably forced back to admit that contraception is just as “evil” as abortion.
I have even heard people also say that life begins at the first division of the cell. Here, it is said, everything necessary for life is now present. Same problem here however! What is present in these two cells that was not present when it was one? Nothing! It has just made an identical copy of itself. Nothing here is something that wasn’t there before. There is just two of them now that’s all.
Let me detail a further problem with both of these views. There is a little known to the general Joe but very common occurrence in the zygote that hammers a hole right into the "at conception" argument. Imagine the cell is a "new life" for a moment.
Often the cell splits into twins. More often than you think. What has happened here? Has a new life popped up AFTER conception? This kills the "all life is at conception" idea. Or has the life of the one become two halves? I would love to see you tell twins they are only half-alive!
Why are there not more twins then if this happens so often? Well because often, for no reason we know yet, one twin REABSORBS the other. What happened here? Did half alive twins become one? Did one murder the other? Is one life suddenly dead, or if you are religious cast into eternal limbo as an un-baptised soul?
No CLEARLY this arithmetic of souls makes NO sense.
My thinking on this then is to find a new definition of life. We need one that we can not only define but actually find a starting point to. What makes YOU alive in a way a goat is not? Or in a way a plant is not? What makes the developing baby alive in a way the zygote was not? What makes the zygote alive in a way the sperm was not? What makes sperm alive in a way that a brain cell is not? What makes a growing foetus alive in a way a growing tumour is not?
We need a new definition of life.
To find this I asked "What makes humans different from plants, animals, tables, cars, minerals or anything else?" I can find only ONE THING. "Self" "Awareness" "Intelligence" "Consciousness" Whatever you label it, it is this aspect of ourselves that makes us alive in a way nothing else is. It is this that makes us “human”. It is this part of us that assigns “rights” and it is TO this part we assign them. Without it there would be no such thing as “morals” or “rights”.
This instantly gave me a problem. No one can “see” consciousness. No one can define it. We do not know what it is. So how can I use this to define when life “begins”? This disturbed me for a time until I realised something else.
No one has yet explained Gravity or Mass. They are something we are JUST as used to as “self” and we have many equations (E=Mc2 or G = m1-m2/d2 and more) based on them. However no one knows what it is, where it comes from, how it got there or anything. CERN scientists are right now as we speak are hoping to discover what mass actually is. A very interesting experiment I am sure you have heard of as people were afraid they might cause black holes while doing it.
However even without knowing WHAT it is we do have SOME indications of when it is not there! If there is no mass there it doesn’t matter if we do not know what it is. Its definitely NOT there. We do not need to know what it is to be very clear it is not there. If there is no gravity we may not know what it is but we are d**n aware it’s gone as we float up and hit our head off the ceiling.
So this is what I looked for. Is there a point in foetal development when we KNOW without ANY doubt consciousness couldn’t be there? The answer is yes.
Without higher level brain activity of a certain type we declare a person DEAD. Therefore if we can identify a point in foetal development when this same activity isn’t formed yet then we can clearly call it “not alive yet”.
Can this point in time be identified? Reasonably well yes! Here is a quote for you which nicely sums up about 50 papers I have read on the issue:
K.J.S. Anand, a researcher of newborns, and P.R. Hickey, published in NEJM say "intermittent electroencephalographic bursts in both cerebral hemispheres are first seen at 20 weeks gestation; they become sustained at 22 weeks and bilaterally synchronous at 26 to 27 weeks.
Without “bilaterally synchronous electroencephalographic activity “intelligence” “consciousness” “self” is just not possible. The thing that makes us alive…. That makes us human…. Doesn’t happen until 26/27 weeks. I therefore think we can safely say that life begins at this point. Something NEW has been added that was not there before. A human MIND. To BEGIN something new has to be there that wasn’t there before and I have identified just that very thing.
I then read about the US law on abortion. I found that they do not base it on this but they base it on “Viability” which according to one source: "The central holding of Roe v. Wade was that abortions are permissible for any reason a woman chooses, up until the "point at which the foetus becomes ‘viable,’ that is, potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid. Viability is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks."
24 weeks! The current law is actually within the parameters defined by a conclusion I came to completely differently and completely independently. I felt a little vindicated here. I came to a different medical conclusion, completely on my own but I came up with the same answer as Medical people going by a different route. Strong stuff!
Adding humility to my thinking and forming an opinion on abortion:
I then realised something else however. Often medical science can be wrong. Even though the same conclusion was reached by two different people here I decided to think to myself "Ok what if we are wrong". I decided that MAYBE consciousness is possible at 22 weeks when the electroencephalographic activity is sustained but not synchronous. I then went further and thought "What if there are flashes of consciousness during the 20 weeks stage when electroencephalographic activity was beginning.
I realised to be SURE I needed to go back to 20 weeks. To be totally SURE. This is a REALLY safe position. However I then got even more humble. We know all people are different. Some develop faster. Some slower. Even with 20 weeks we could be safe most of the time but we might abort a life who managed to get there before 20 weeks. I needed a margin for error. I needed a LARGE one to be TRUELY safe. I chose 40%. This number was large, but arbitrary and subjective. The only subjective reasoning I allowed myself in the whole process.
This brings me back to 12 (20 – 40% = 12) weeks which is where I currently now am at abortion. I believe that life starts at 26 weeks, we see the first signs of it at 20 weeks, but for abortion purposes we can be TRUELY safe at 12 weeks.
More back up for my position:
I thought my position might anger a lot of pro choice people. It is after all a reduction on their position. However someone who was actually trying to disagree with me showed me this website:
www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html
There person was a pro-lifer trying to prove me wrong but actually gave me a list of stats that supported my choice of 12 weeks. Look at the pie chart! 61.3% of abortions happen before 9 weeks. Around 88% happen before 12 weeks.
My conclusion therefore is not just matched by all science.... it doesn’t just have a STRONG margin for error.... but it ALSO reflects the reality! Nearly 88% of women have the abortion in the term I suggested! While further down 58% of all women who had an abortion said they wished they had had it earlier.
MY conclusion would be a win for pro-lifers as its HALF the current accepted cut off for abortions in the US. It is a win for pro-choice as its a MUCH safer and defendable cut off point. It is a win for women as it gives them their choice in the term they most often use it. Its win-win-win as far as I can see.
The entire discussion for me appears to come down to when does “life” begin. Surely once life has begun then to end it is murder by any standard. The problem is therefore that people arbitrarily declare subjective points about when life has begun without any reason or backup for it, just to support their pro-life Agenda. They do this without facts or evidence… purely from the heart. Subjective… useless.
The issue here is that everyone has a definition of their own over what life is. And mostly they are subjective and arbitrary with no back up.
Take someone who says life begins at conception. However the cells that go into creating a human being are "alive" also. The contradiction is if life BEGINS at conception then if the cells that go into creating a human are alive what has BEGUN here? For something to BEGIN something has to either start that was not there before, or has to restart after being stopped. This is what BEGIN means. However this clearly hasn’t happened! What is new that wasn’t there before? Not life clearly as the cells before conception are alive. What has stopped here and then started again? Nothing, unless you want to pretend the two cells die at conception and then come alive again anew. So no dice here!
What has been added at conception that was not there a SPLIT second before that. And a split second before that. It is an infinite regress which quite neatly explains the catholic churches position on contraception. When you are caught in this regress you are invariably forced back to admit that contraception is just as “evil” as abortion.
I have even heard people also say that life begins at the first division of the cell. Here, it is said, everything necessary for life is now present. Same problem here however! What is present in these two cells that was not present when it was one? Nothing! It has just made an identical copy of itself. Nothing here is something that wasn’t there before. There is just two of them now that’s all.
Let me detail a further problem with both of these views. There is a little known to the general Joe but very common occurrence in the zygote that hammers a hole right into the "at conception" argument. Imagine the cell is a "new life" for a moment.
Often the cell splits into twins. More often than you think. What has happened here? Has a new life popped up AFTER conception? This kills the "all life is at conception" idea. Or has the life of the one become two halves? I would love to see you tell twins they are only half-alive!
Why are there not more twins then if this happens so often? Well because often, for no reason we know yet, one twin REABSORBS the other. What happened here? Did half alive twins become one? Did one murder the other? Is one life suddenly dead, or if you are religious cast into eternal limbo as an un-baptised soul?
No CLEARLY this arithmetic of souls makes NO sense.
My thinking on this then is to find a new definition of life. We need one that we can not only define but actually find a starting point to. What makes YOU alive in a way a goat is not? Or in a way a plant is not? What makes the developing baby alive in a way the zygote was not? What makes the zygote alive in a way the sperm was not? What makes sperm alive in a way that a brain cell is not? What makes a growing foetus alive in a way a growing tumour is not?
We need a new definition of life.
To find this I asked "What makes humans different from plants, animals, tables, cars, minerals or anything else?" I can find only ONE THING. "Self" "Awareness" "Intelligence" "Consciousness" Whatever you label it, it is this aspect of ourselves that makes us alive in a way nothing else is. It is this that makes us “human”. It is this part of us that assigns “rights” and it is TO this part we assign them. Without it there would be no such thing as “morals” or “rights”.
This instantly gave me a problem. No one can “see” consciousness. No one can define it. We do not know what it is. So how can I use this to define when life “begins”? This disturbed me for a time until I realised something else.
No one has yet explained Gravity or Mass. They are something we are JUST as used to as “self” and we have many equations (E=Mc2 or G = m1-m2/d2 and more) based on them. However no one knows what it is, where it comes from, how it got there or anything. CERN scientists are right now as we speak are hoping to discover what mass actually is. A very interesting experiment I am sure you have heard of as people were afraid they might cause black holes while doing it.
However even without knowing WHAT it is we do have SOME indications of when it is not there! If there is no mass there it doesn’t matter if we do not know what it is. Its definitely NOT there. We do not need to know what it is to be very clear it is not there. If there is no gravity we may not know what it is but we are d**n aware it’s gone as we float up and hit our head off the ceiling.
So this is what I looked for. Is there a point in foetal development when we KNOW without ANY doubt consciousness couldn’t be there? The answer is yes.
Without higher level brain activity of a certain type we declare a person DEAD. Therefore if we can identify a point in foetal development when this same activity isn’t formed yet then we can clearly call it “not alive yet”.
Can this point in time be identified? Reasonably well yes! Here is a quote for you which nicely sums up about 50 papers I have read on the issue:
K.J.S. Anand, a researcher of newborns, and P.R. Hickey, published in NEJM say "intermittent electroencephalographic bursts in both cerebral hemispheres are first seen at 20 weeks gestation; they become sustained at 22 weeks and bilaterally synchronous at 26 to 27 weeks.
Without “bilaterally synchronous electroencephalographic activity “intelligence” “consciousness” “self” is just not possible. The thing that makes us alive…. That makes us human…. Doesn’t happen until 26/27 weeks. I therefore think we can safely say that life begins at this point. Something NEW has been added that was not there before. A human MIND. To BEGIN something new has to be there that wasn’t there before and I have identified just that very thing.
I then read about the US law on abortion. I found that they do not base it on this but they base it on “Viability” which according to one source: "The central holding of Roe v. Wade was that abortions are permissible for any reason a woman chooses, up until the "point at which the foetus becomes ‘viable,’ that is, potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid. Viability is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks."
24 weeks! The current law is actually within the parameters defined by a conclusion I came to completely differently and completely independently. I felt a little vindicated here. I came to a different medical conclusion, completely on my own but I came up with the same answer as Medical people going by a different route. Strong stuff!
Adding humility to my thinking and forming an opinion on abortion:
I then realised something else however. Often medical science can be wrong. Even though the same conclusion was reached by two different people here I decided to think to myself "Ok what if we are wrong". I decided that MAYBE consciousness is possible at 22 weeks when the electroencephalographic activity is sustained but not synchronous. I then went further and thought "What if there are flashes of consciousness during the 20 weeks stage when electroencephalographic activity was beginning.
I realised to be SURE I needed to go back to 20 weeks. To be totally SURE. This is a REALLY safe position. However I then got even more humble. We know all people are different. Some develop faster. Some slower. Even with 20 weeks we could be safe most of the time but we might abort a life who managed to get there before 20 weeks. I needed a margin for error. I needed a LARGE one to be TRUELY safe. I chose 40%. This number was large, but arbitrary and subjective. The only subjective reasoning I allowed myself in the whole process.
This brings me back to 12 (20 – 40% = 12) weeks which is where I currently now am at abortion. I believe that life starts at 26 weeks, we see the first signs of it at 20 weeks, but for abortion purposes we can be TRUELY safe at 12 weeks.
More back up for my position:
I thought my position might anger a lot of pro choice people. It is after all a reduction on their position. However someone who was actually trying to disagree with me showed me this website:
www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html
There person was a pro-lifer trying to prove me wrong but actually gave me a list of stats that supported my choice of 12 weeks. Look at the pie chart! 61.3% of abortions happen before 9 weeks. Around 88% happen before 12 weeks.
My conclusion therefore is not just matched by all science.... it doesn’t just have a STRONG margin for error.... but it ALSO reflects the reality! Nearly 88% of women have the abortion in the term I suggested! While further down 58% of all women who had an abortion said they wished they had had it earlier.
MY conclusion would be a win for pro-lifers as its HALF the current accepted cut off for abortions in the US. It is a win for pro-choice as its a MUCH safer and defendable cut off point. It is a win for women as it gives them their choice in the term they most often use it. Its win-win-win as far as I can see.