Perhaps all should read the history on communist Romania to understand what occurs when you force pregnancy on society. Bottom line anti abortion is discrimination based on gender.
10
False premise. The war over abortion is not a war of science, it is war between one side that accepts science, pro-choice, and the other that rejects it, anti-choice. Despite the Right’s constant attacks on truth and reality, there are actual objective facts in the world. We do not live in a wishy-washy soup of diametrically opposed, equally valid factoids.
10
I don't think that the nature of the zygote/embryo/fetus/"pre-born baby" is really the issue for most of the pro-choice crowd. The question is whether or not it ever has rights that supersede those of the person within whom it exists. To use another persons body against their will is not a basic right in any civilized society, but anti-abortion proponents would like to give this extraordinary right to fetuses, at the expense of all fertile women. Whether it's a clump of cells, a Panda, or a happily gurgling Gerber baby, granting it the right to effectively enslave a sentient human being, even temporarily, is the beginning of a very slippery slope.
12
Look at the cover image of this article. I see five free-thinking, intelligent, compassionate young women protesting against abortion. You really want to argue that they don't care about women's rights and that they don't want what's best for women? The notion that the pro-life movement is solely dominated by the male thought process is categorically false. Tens of millions of amazing women in this country believe in the unborn's right to life... are their experiences and viewpoints worth nothing to you?
Equally false is that the pro-life movement has no basis in science. Public sentiment against abortion has risen in the last few decades (see Pew and Gallop research on the matter), and this is largely attributed to the scientific advances in medical imaging and monitoring devices. From a medical standpoint, it's now almost impossible to argue that a third trimester fetus doesn't possess the unique qualities attributed to humanity (such as emotions, brain function, and a heartbeat). None of that has anything to do with religion.
There is a very real debate as to when a fetus becomes a human and when it should receive a full set of rights as defined under US law. Screaming "my body my choice" or "no uterus no opinion" isn't going to make that debate go away. I suggest that both sides engage this debate with science... not emotional outbursts.
3
Liberals are only claim to care about science when it relates to climate change. When scientific advances show a human fetus, only weeks old with fully human characteristics, ignoring science means they still get end a life and get paid for it.
1
Look out the saints are comin' through
And it's all over now, baby blue
.....
Now – scientists, too...
Just knew we’d put all that technology from the moon-landing to good use...
More than worth the 50-year wait...
.....
Isn’t that a fetal heartbeat we’re hearing through this modern stethoscope...
Never mind – just the mother’s...
1
Right to Life? Pro-Life? What happens once any child is born?
Does this suggest the life of a child means anything to Pro-lifers once a child is out of the womb?
https://medium.com/@teresadlonghawkes/pro-life-679f7a4a1e4e
#TIME'S_UP!
'No Means No' must also apply to a woman's right to choose reproduction, not just to sex.
4
Science will absolutely settle the debate, but it has to be you know, like, real science, not from organizations formed to debunk actual science. I get that religious conservarives don't like science that rains on their positions, that doens't mean the nonsense they make up and pay faux experts to repeat is like you know, real science.
3
Most pro-lifers are amazingly disingenuous in their cherry picking of protecting "Life". While they protest abortion on one day, the next they are electing politicians who glorify war and the theatre of death. "Hypocrite" doesn't begin to define them.
4
A big help in reducing abortion would be give all women birth control.
Every pro-life and evangelical I have talked with all use birth control.
2
Increasingly, the anti-choice movement is an evangelical Christian phenomenon, which means it's associated with Intelligent Design nonsense, climate change denialism, homophobia, xenophobia, opposition to sex education, opposition to contraception, and in favor of the notion that God--and not Vladimir Putin-- arranged for Trump to become president.
These people will rely on "science" only to the extent that it can be twisted to confirm their prejudices and gut instincts. Their science is what real scientists would call truthiness.
3
Well, the right wing is well versed in peddling junk science. They've been doing it with evolution for 150 years, and with climate change with going on 50. Why would their approach to facts be any different here?
4
We are a confused and morally deficient race of beasts.
How can we claim an absolute right to kill each other?
So many married couples want to reproduce but are unable.
Thousands would be glad to adopt but aren't considered.
We know the rights of the pregnant woman are absolute.
But we as human beings should have organized a system
that sustains the mother-to-be, offers placement in adopted homes with financial incentives, cost sharing and follow-up.
We kill each other every day, out of anger, neglect, greed, racial and religious prejudice.
This activity that we call organized religion is incapable of reasonable follow-through in a consistent way.
We human beasts do not value ourselves.
We are so intelligent, so capable, but so inept that we allow
one human being to kill another rather than have to face the
inconvenience of the nine months needed to establish the existence of another human being complete with all of it's costs and promise.
There is only one “science” for me. If it’s growing in a woman’s body, the full/grown woman takes precedence. Call a fetus whatever you want. If it’s not growing in your body, it’s none of your business!!
11
Abortion isn't about "science," it's about busybodies trying to interfere in the lives of others.
5
@Henry Miller Just like gun rights, no?
At an alarming rate, we have witnessed increases in the war between religion and science - from abortion to climate change to nuclear proliferation, reason butts heads with the human belief system. There is now a drastic need for a paradigm shift in human thought throughout the world..
In the near future, we will program the human mind in the computer based on a linguistic "survival" algorithm, which will provide irrefutable proof as to how we trick the mind with our ridiculous beliefs about what is supposed to survive - producing minds programmed de facto for destruction. These minds see the survival of a particular belief as more important than the survival of all. When we understand this, we will begin the long trek back to reason and sanity.
See RevolutionOfReason.com
2
If you cannot trust a woman with a choice, why trust her with a child. This debate continues to be ridicules and has to be put to rest. No one, should interfere with a woman’s right to choose what she does with her body and her fertility. If you don’t want an abortion, guess what that’s your choice, don’t have one!
3
@Susan Don't want a gun? Don't buy one. And don't ask me to pay for your abortion and I won't ask you to pay for my gun, OK? Want to have several abortions? Terrific. I'll collect as many guns as I please.
Until science proves that women aren’t people, it really has no involvement in the issue. Even corpses can’t have their bodies used without previous written consent.
9
Stop using the phrase "pro-life". The position is "anti-abortion."
3
In the big story about boys in MAGA hats the photos in the NYTimes told the story best and I found the boys culpable. In this story, the accompanying photo shows young people holding up an unborn child in utero. Was it doctored? We all know now that babies are viable way before full term. The photo shows that. Though I abhor the way Trump manipulates the abortion argument cynically for his own political ends, I also believe The NYTimes is intransigent in its position that the woman's choice transcends that of the obvious life of the unborn child.
Carl Sagan’s book titled “Billions and Billions, Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium“, contains a rather interesting chapter on the topic of Abortion. (Chapter 15 to be precise).
After reading this chapter I never wavered again on how I felt about the abortion debates.
I agreed with Carl Sagan and his wife Ann Druyan's take on abortion.
1
Fetuses: Human, yes, Human Beings, no.
Life and science are far more important than our personal convenience. Babies are suffering horrific deaths for convenience's sake. Both sides can be reasonable on this and save so many innocent lives.
There is a long period from conception until when a heart beat is detected. If anyone is waiting anywhere close to 24 weeks to finally decide that a baby is now inconvenient, they're killing a life that is formed, knows their voice and feels pain. The now ancient Roe vs Wade is a disaster that we'll look back on one day as flat out barbaric.
It doesn't have to be absolute one way or the other. Simply dialing back the date at which abortion is inhumane (based on scientific fact) would save so much suffering and horror. Let's be adults on this. Because our children need us to be.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/01/18/march-life-revisit-abortion-decision-roe-wade-medical-discoveries-column/2593096002/?fbclid=IwAR0yWp2Eu0hjK57i-5mlG7WfiRDCoQMSMY6PaLgxu-T1WKeCZHpnczfrxZk
1
@Cnet
You have been misinformed. A developing heart does not lead to a conclusion of that there's a "baby". There is no "scientific fact" that a pre-viable fetus "knows your voice" or feels pain. Let's be adults about this and deal with actual science. Science can't determine the answer to the problem of when rights exist, but it can inform it.
2
It seems to me that the only solution to this entire problem is an artificial womb. That shouldn't be too difficult to make if we turn all of distracted attention of morality to producing a safe have for a blastocyst to incubate into a living being. Sure seems much more cost effective than all this time off of work for marching for life/perceived rights of women/mothers/blastocysts.
Once the womb is manufactured then it will simply be a matter of passing the appropriate laws that human females must submit to harvesting every 28 days and males can be imprisoned for not ejaculating into a sterile laboratory tube upon request. (Just bring back that old testament law about men spilling their seed upon the ground.)
Then the government can just assign babies to those couples who qualify or, as will eventually happen, send them to raising farms.
Dang! That all sounds a bit like the thinking that began the book "Brave New World".
But, when you think about it, it does resolved all the problems. Every unique ovum has the chance to become inseminated by an unique sperm and from there to become a unique human being destined to the same struggles and hardships, love and enjoyment, which we all have. No man will be made to claim the off-spring thereby adding to his financial obligations and all women will be free of the burden of raising an unloved and unwanted child on her own. Just an endless supply of workers for endless factories of non-essential extremisms.
1
A woman has the right to choose what to do with her body but she doesn’t have the right to choose the junk science which claims that human life begins when the head exits the birth canal rather than about the time the earliest premature babies survive birth.
1
I can't make sense of it. Starting within the Christian beliefs that a fetus is a god-created human soul, continuing to the infant once born, is born in sin, a sinner doomed by Eve to maybe get saved and maybe not get saved, why don't they favor sending an innocent new unborn soul directly back to God? Isn't that why they don't care about babies after they're born, cause they took on the mantle of sin at birth so don't deserve food and care? Until the pro-life people show their Christian love to born babies, they reveal themselves to be morally bankrupt.
3
Like Dred Scott, Roe will fall. It is only a matter of time.
100 years from now, society will look at the Pro-choice movement the same way we look at slave owners.
How to get where we are today:
Destroy sex education in schools and homes by promoting junk science and faith based doctrine
Limit information and access to birth control-be surprised by the increase in pregnancy
Be appalled by the number of people seeking abortions-seek to force the ignorant, unlucky, and/or careless to carry babies to term
Fail to provide adequate support for these children and their mothers after birth
Total hypocrisy!!!
2
Are Humans the only animals on this planet.
Are we the only living beings on this one Earth competing for precious life-sustaining resources?
Is the universe of unborn babies infinite?
If you believe that the answers to all of these questions is "Yes", then please move to the Moon, or to Mars, or anywhere that your precious religious persuasions do not endanger all that is beautiful and amazing about our Earth.
Your fantasy-based beliefs have no place on this very real and finite planet.
1
On the Abrahamic side of the equation is the biblical mandate to multiply. This is a part of the belief system of Roman Catholicism, as well as parts of Jewish and Christian Orthodoxy; also Islam—and Mormonism.
Any discussion on this subject must acknowledge that the population multiplier effect is at the root of all planetary resource related problems and these problems cannot be addressed until humans change the way they think about sexuality and population growth. Each and every person on this planet is a resource consumer. As it is with any species, the human can only continue to exist as a unified interdependent whole living in consonance with the resource regeneration of the planet. At present, this understanding is absent from the religious discussion.
To the extent that abortion becomes a part of the solution of overpopulation, deep set feelings on when life begins based on ancient religious scripts and interpretations need to be brought into the open. For example; with regard to the beginning of life, early Judaism taught that life begins only after a certain period of time in the womb; yet the Roman Catholic Church later on extended the sanctity of life even to the forbidding of the prevention of it through contraception.
Time to face planetary reality.
www.InquiryAbraham.com
3
I wonder if the Covington pro-lifers are doing their part by keeping their zippers in upright and locked position. The science on that is well established.
5
How on earth to these religious (so called) bigots come to believe abrotion is the only issuie that matters, as many do?
They will brook any lie, hide any misbehavior, support any corruption as long as the perpetrator claims to believe abortion is the worst sin any human being can commit.
Surely they don't believe God agrees.
Abortion is not a key issue anywhere in the Bible. Jesus did not go there. The church iteslef countenanced and even supported abortion for hundreds of years.
More than that, its impossible to take thesae jokers seriously that their concern is for human life when they refuse to support families, refuse racial and gender equality, and refuse effective birth control.
If these folks want to be taken seriously they can stop making up sciency stuff, support already-born forms of life, asnd seek social support and social justice.
Until then they just look stupid.
3
I will add to those claiming that the zygote stage is not when "life" begins, as the egg and sperm cells are both alive before conception, by pointing out that technically, birth may not be when personhood begins, either.
"Person" is fundamentally a legal term, and implies rights that stem from the fundamental evidence of human status, which involves consciousness. Those familiar with both psychology and metaphysics tend to recognize that full personhood requires evidence that the entity upon which it is conferred shows recognition of its own individual identity, which is the foundation of agency (and, in criminal justice, culpability). Before birth, it is difficult to argue that the entity possesses this. Indeed, those familiar with the "ego-organizer" research of Renee Spitz may argue that until a baby shows that it knows it is a separate entity from the environment--usually, by voluntarily responding to others with smiles after a few months--it is existentially equivalent to a fetus.
This is also why we don't talk of "murdering" most animals. Not that we wish to be cruel to them, but murder is something only done to the existentially conscious.
So the argument should examine at what stage this living clump of cells is existentially deserving of the legal protection that a "person" claims. The problem I have with most pro-life positions is that it tends to deny this to pregnant women, who can easily demonstrate consciousness, in favor of an entity that cannot.
2
New York just codified that abortion is legal for any reason up to 24 weeks. How is this possible, when premature babies born at 24 weeks have a 50% chance of survival.
What kind of doctor would abort a healthy 24-week fetus, and how in the world could he/she sleep at night after witnessing the results.
Shame on Cuomo not just for signing this bill, but for celebrating it.
2
The simple truth about this matter is that its really all about morality, ethics and conscience. New York's Governor is set to happily sign a bill that would make it perfectly legal to kill a perfectly healthy kid. As long as that kid was 1 minute from being born. At that same time that same Governor and almost all of you who agree and applaud this law would pretend to be aghast, shocked, mortified and upset if a woman gave birth to kid in a toilet and 1 minute later tossed the kid in a dumpster. My question to all of you is that 2 minutes is the difference from being a human being or just a piece of meat? That's what you believe? It always amazes me how any of you can sleep at night and even more so when I hear one of you claim, like Nancy Pelosi, that they are religious. I'm neither all that religious nor anti abortion within limits but the absolute abortion religion fanatics who champion this law are totally incomprehensible to me.
It doesn't matter what the science or politics or religion says.
Only thing that matters is that it is MY body and I get to decide.
3
In the other recent op-ed about abortion, I sought to answer the question about why anti-abortion folks only seem to care about fetuses and not born humans. It's due to Catholic dogma: only the unborn are perfectly pure and free of sin. That's why they use the language of "innocent babies in the womb". As soon as you're born, you're no longer innocent and hence not worthy of the same reverence and respect. So the fetus is more important than the mother and neglected children because it is unstained. Ridiculous of course in the 21st century but that's how they think.
2
Is there a Right more absolute than the Right to Life?
The pro choice groups cite their experts, the anti abortion groups don't. Wonder why. Moreover why do these catholic kids think they have the right to force choices on women.
Proposition: if I discovered I was pregnant but didn’t wish to give birth, I would permit any gynecologist to remove the fetus and put it in the care of anti-abortion zealots.
Let those people find a uterus to bring it to term, let the baby be born, and then nurture the infant with shelter, sustenance, loving care, and decent education until the age of majority. Let them also cope with physical or mental deformities as a parent would.
The ethical paradox of the anti-abortion side is that many are also opposed to the use of birth control, resulting in unplanned or unwanted pregnancies. Both issues - birth control and abortion - are largely part of religious belief.
The wall of Separation of Church and State has been broken, and religion often insists on making laws for all of us based on their religious beliefs. The effort to make religious belief sound scientific is pretty transparent.
Those who believe birth control and abortion are immoral are free to abstain from both. Leave the rest of us alone!
1
Food for thought. The elderly are often a burden on families and society. They frequently contribute little or nothing and absorb a great deal of resources that could be used by others. If mothers have the right to eliminate a fetus at their sole discretion for convenience, would not society, through government, have the right to eliminate non-contributing or under-contributing elderly for the same reason? If a fetus has no rights to life, there must be a point at which those who are elderly also lose that right when they become completely dependent or simply inconvenient. If an elderly person's family cannot or chooses not to support them, can they be 'discarded?' Society has the right to be healthy does it not? And if society's health can be improved, is it not a collective right to determine how this is accomplished? It seems that the right to life, liberty, and happiness does not exist in utero; why should it exist for one who becomes dependent because of Alzheimer's Disease? It is not science, but ethics that must deal with these issues, no?
Science is a red herring. The implications of abortion extend to cultural choices.
However, if concern over the prospective child is a real concern, simply forcing a birth and abandoning mother and child in abysmal conditions is hardly a responsible approach.
Until the pro-life folks demonstrate a more complete grasp of the societal issues, and act to provide sensible treatment of infants and mothers born into conditions with no one to look after them, the pro-life movement looks cruel and short-sighted and unlikely to solve any problems that forced delivery will generate.
4
Prof. Ziegler absolutely knows that the control over a woman's right to choose IS a LEGAL fight.
The "abortion war" tag line is a public relations label used by those who wish to deny a woman that legal right.
And, as has been exposed by the Covington Catholic student coverage, many of the young people in the photo may have been required to attend the event by their schools. One cannot send immature minds, encased in the bodies of teenagers who attend an all-male high school, to an event which is based on forcing one's beliefs on other people and still expect them to display respect for others. Not the education we need in a civil society.
2
We should all be working together to give women birth control and reduce unwanted pregnancies.
Abortion is an artificial divide created by Republicans to get evangelicals to vote Republican.
It is similar to the NRA and Second Amendment.
Then Republicans cut taxes for the billionaire class which hurts those same voters.
Just look at this latest Republican tax cut.
The deficit will increase from $600 Billion to $1 Trillion.
The expected debt increase over the next ten years is $12 Trillion. That is $80,000 per taxpayer.
And this is after 8 years of relentlessly railing against the debt when it was Obama.
Every Republican senator voted for it. Not one Democratic senator voted for it.
I wouldn't mind if those Republican voters got fleeced, but the whole country is getting hurt.
2
Science will settle the issue for those who believe science is the ultimate arbiter of truth. But it will not settle the issue for staunch adherents of choice or pro-life for the reason that for them science is just one, perhaps the latest, rhetorical device in the debate and evidence for the litigation crucible that will determine abortion's status.
Just as our litigious society misuses law to make every grievance a cash cow so science has become not only a rhetoric for opposing ideologies but has fostered a lucrative industry which serves ideological special interests. With elite science institutions deemed biased by pro=life forces, (and creationists), there is the growth of alternative science for those who want their preconceptions validated by "alternative facts."
So as the debate becomes desperate and frantic it becomes reckless in its self serving use of religion, constitutional rights, moral verities, ethics, civility and now science, stretching their parameters with little regard to the distortion they cause in all these resources. The abuse is wrought by both sides although by far the biggest damage is by pro-life forces for whom all these resources are simply confirmation bias.
We seem to have forgotten the dreadful toll that illegal abortions cause and have caused. It was my view that those numbers and the demographics of those numbers was the leading cause of abortion reform. Once those numbers included wealthy Caucasian girls the story changed dramatically. I doubt there wasn't a community touched by the horror of an illegal abortion casualty. This isn't in the arguments today. And it should be. It isn't whether an abortion will happen - but where and under what conditions. We seem to ignore history and don't learn from our mistakes.
1
There should be no argument as to whether American citizens should be forced to harbor or carry *anything* within their bodies -- unless they consent.
I wish the press would stop using the words "women" and "girls" to discuss this. We're talking about citizens or people we've permitted to live in the US, and that's the basis for any law that affects people within our borders. That they are female citizens is almost beside the point, since even gender-identifying men who give birth are genetically female. It's their validity as people, their rights as citizens against an intrusive state, that is the real issue.
1
What about a different look at this? The Stanford Mexico City Policy study in sub-Saharan Africa showed that, as access to comprehensive family planning, including abortion as an option, is restricted, the number of unintended pregnancies, abortions and maternal deaths goes up, and vice versa. In other words, legally restricting abortions seems paradoxically to increase the overall number being done. If pro-life advocates want to save the maximum number of babies, perhaps the most effective way is to allow abortions when needed. But perhaps this debate isn't entirely about saving babies...?
2
It seems reasonable to think that both sides would rather see fewer, rather than more, abortions. Evidence already exists supporting the idea that readily available contraception and evidence-based sex education reduce the number of abortions. Why are the so-called "pro-life" people not clamoring for these policies? Could it be that their interest is not in reducing the number of abortions, but rather in controlling women's bodies and lives?
4
To not accept her own control of a woman's body means you believe government has the right to control any person's body any way the government wishes. Abortion was never seriously threatened in the West until medical doctors were able to exclude women's traditional choice of midwives and female family members or close friends. Abortion inducing herbs and mixtures are mentioned in the oldest writings that exist on Earth. When men stop participating in the debate and only women can vote on any question regarding abortion I will pay attention and respect their democratic choice. On this topic men have no right, no prerogative, and should have no authority whatsoever.
2
What rot.
Lots of herbs and concoctions are mentioned in the oldest writings on earth. But they don’t induce abortions. Or perhaps you also know how to turn lead into gold?
Abortion was never safe and effective before men became doctors. If you really think so, show us the rise in birth rates during the 20th century.
Also: men, not. Men have every right as citizens to speak and act on every issue of public importance (and unimportance). It’s not only parents whose voice matters on schools, or retirees on social security, or farmers on agriculture. As others point out, abortion does affect women as women, but women as citizens.
Roe is not under threat. It's well settled law. The fight will be over what constitutes 'reasonable restriction' . Science will play a key part in what looks to be a decades long dispute. My guess is that net result will be that the States will vary in implementing different standard of reasonable restriction. There will be Red and Blue states for abortion rights.
1
Your mouth to God’s ear. Have you consulted Neil Gorsuch?
Dred Scott was settled law, too.
The anti-abortion group is nothing more than hard-core religious people who have a hard wired belief in the soul. That is a non-scientific, nonfactual concept that doesn’t belong in the discussion. That’s the truth of it though. And last time I checked, our constitution provided for the separation of church and state. But, underneath that notion is really just men using propaganda in the form of limbo and floating souls as a means of keeping their heels on the throats of women. And many women, as well as men, are ok with that. Baaah.
51
@Lisa
What about prolife atheists? They don’t believe in a soul; they’re opposed to abortion on moral grounds, not religious grounds.
3
@Lisa Please explain your comment - "our constitution provided for the separation of church and state." You as well as many others in our country, continue to misuse this concept to be anti-religion. The actual wording reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This obviously does not apply since there is no suggestion that the government is going to establish a religion - but it could apply considering that the government may get in the way by "prohibiting the free exercise thereof" in such instances. Best not to try to quote the 1st amendment in this argument.
3
@Lisa
You are correct but it's more than that, it is the age old belief that women are wanton sirens who entrap the unwitting man. Remember Eve persuading Adam to eat the forbidden fruit? Even more recently, poor Kavanaugh being villainized by an evil woman (girl).
Women need to obey and remain barefoot and pregnant, the punishment is stoning or fire. The fear is that if women had choice of when to reproduce that would challenge men's shaky hold on control.
6
Abortion foes will seize on any claim that they think supports their case. The fetal heartbeat agenda is one of those. Does anybody think that a fetus is viable at the time a heartbeat is detectable? No, not even the craziest opponents of abortion think that. But it provides a means to deny abortions to women and is therefore sufficient.
The telling argument in this debate is the opposition to contraception by many, if not most religiously motivated abortion opponents. They are not interested in the millions of unwanted children that would result from a ban on contraception. And very few of them practice what they preach, as evidenced by the fact that very few families have a dozen or more kids and very few women die early deaths after having been treated like breeding stock. And that is a trend across the world - as societies mature economically birth rates decline because women begin to have economic value outside of breeding.
So why is there a contraception “debate” in this country when contraception is a mark of social progress everywhere else? The answer is obvious. Misogyny drives the debate in this country. The desire is to control the lives of women by compelling them to either deny their sexuality or deny their ambitions to live full lives unburdened by unplanned children.
The better question to be asked in this political argument is do you want to oppress or elevate women? After the last election, it’s easy to see how the political lines have been drawn.
3
Thomas Aquinas, whom several popes have pronounced the greatest Catholic Theologian, considered abortion of a human in the womb an especially evil form of murder. However he also defined human as composed of body and soul. He was quite sure there was no human soul present until at least 40 days (perhaps as much as 90 days) after conception. Before the soul entered, the fetus was not human and in essence no more than a plant. Killing it then was not abortion to Aquinas. I have noted Hindu and other eastern religions set the entry of the soul at 120 days after conception. So when the fetus becomes human is debatable on religious grounds.
That life begins at conception is not debatable. It does not. The sperm and the egg must be alive before conception can occur. Pasteur worked this out scientifically in the nineteenth century.
5
If we are to discuss the well being of the woman and the health of the unborn, then we must also consider the economics of the situation. Imposing the demand that pregnancy be carried to term endangers the woman in a nation whose rate of complications at birth is nothing to be proud of . Further, such action binds the woman to costs of prenatal and postnatal care and two decades of the cost of raising the child. It can also represent a massive disruption of existing career development including possible loss of a job which would further impair her ability to contribute to a healthy family financial situation going forward.
As an adoptive parent of an infant myself, I am deeply aware of the financial and social costs of the choice to raise the child of an unplanned pregnancy. To legally bind a woman to such a financial and social burden is to impose a form of of unpaid involuntary servitude. A viable fetus alone is not cause to bind a citizen to spend half her working-age life and >$100,000 caring for a state-imposed child.
5
Nothing you say overrides my bodily autonomy. "It's generally considered a human right. Bodily autonomy means a person has control over who or what uses their body, for what, and for how long. It's why you can’t be forced to donate blood, tissue, or organs. Even if you are dead. Even if you’d save or improve 20 lives. It’s why someone can’t touch you, have sex with you, or use your body in any way without your continuous consent.
A fetus is using someone’s body parts. Therefore under bodily autonomy, it is there by permission, not by right. It needs a person's continuous consent. If they deny and withdraw their consent, the pregnant person has the right to remove them from that moment. A fetus is equal in this regard because if I need someone else’s body parts to live, they can also legally deny me their use.
By saying a fetus has a right to someone’s body parts until it’s born, despite the pregnant person’s wishes, you are doing two things.
1. Granting a fetus more rights to other people’s bodies than any born person.
2. Awarding a pregnant person less rights to their body than a corpse."
65
@Againesva But is any human right, and particularly the concept of bodily autonomy, so sacrosanct that other considerations are not to be weighed. I, for one, have never understood why the organs of a dead person cannot be taken to save others' lives, even if it were against the will of the dead individual when alive. In the same way, if the fetus is viable, has cognition, can feel pain, can react to stimuli -- does it not have a right to live, even if the woman in whose body it still resides wishes to abort it?
6
@Againesva ‘Nothing you say overrides my bodily autonomy’ Agreed but doesn’t that give ground to anti-vaxxers too? Should the state be allowed to force people to vaccinate themselves and their children presumably for the good of society if we,as individuals, have absolute bodily autonomy?
2
@Againesva
All of these comments and replies avoid the unpleasant reality that homo sapiens (people) are mechanisms like everything else in the universe. There is no such thing as rights, autonomy, choice and consent.
.
There is only activity - physical activty of ensembles of particles that interact according to the laws of physics.
More reinforcement to the argument that the country needs freedom from religious zealots.
2
Wait... aren't we a little concerned about the possibility that the baby might be human, and capable of suffering agony during an abortion? "The 1980s saw the advent of arguments that stressed fetal pain — an issue on which there is very little consensus..." I should hope, if I were you, that the science ends up backing you on that one.
Concerned, but not paralyzed. Pain is sometimes unavoidable. Ask a surgeon about operating on young children.
You will note no antiabortion group is researching pain-free abortion. They’re just using the unproven specter of pain to justify restrictions.
1
The writer is wrong, and the article is misleading. On the central issue in the abortion argument, and separate from anything else, the science is crystal clear and compelling, individual human life begins at conception.
2
@Fred Wild
Nope. You're being misinformed. Life doesn't begin at conception because life doesn't "begin". It's a cycle. Combining the DNA of the sperm with the DNA of the egg doesn't make a baby. I can isolate that DNA, combine it in a test tube and no baby is crawling out. You correctly claim that a zygote is a potential new individual, but so are the individual sperm and egg prior to fertilization. In 1973 a CONSERVATIVE Supreme Court reasoned that viability was a good compromise for when rights began. Now that's compelling, but still arbitrary.
Only if you so define it. There’s no universal definition of life, hence nothing crystal clear about it, scientifically or otherwise.
Your argument is probably along the lines of, 2 cells become 4, then 8, ergo life. Yes, but dependent, along with the millions of other cells, on the woman’s body, millions of which die every day.
Therefore you’re deciding these particular cells are somehow special. Not on any scientific basis, never mind universal truth, but to rationalize your exogenous belief.
1
@James K. Lowden
So whether you are alive or not is an open question, and society may disregard your claimed living existence at will.
Let's address this. Take the science. If the claim is that life begins at conception, question is what life, who's life? If the claim is that a human life begins at conception then here is the next question: how do you define a human being? Is a human being a single cell? If yes, it would imply every cell in ones body is human. Not a human cell or a human part, but a human - full and complete. Tell me if that sounds even reasonable! Clearly, it does not. Cells are parts of human beings and they die off every moment with new cells replacing them. So to argue cells are complete human beings is factually incorrect.
Let's examine life. If the argument is life begins at conception then let me posit this. The unfertilized egg cell is alive and so are the semen cells that try to fertilize it. When an egg is fertilized it remains an egg cell that has received additional material and essentially just modified. Nothing ever died or stopped living. The cells were always alive, long before conception. At this point it is still part of the woman's body. Her egg, modified; not a human being, nor guaranteed to be a one at this point.
To the pro lifers: how does it matter to you what any woman does to her cells?
People who want abortion do not take it lightly. It is not an easy choice, you don't have to make it harder or more dangerous.
By all means counsel them if you want to. After that, just back off! It is too personal.
If you can't take my suggestion, why should I take yours?
1
Sam Harris has been trying to push the idea that David Hume's philosophical observation - "it's impossible to get 'ought' from 'is' - has been definitively disproven.
In the past year or so, there have been signs that Harris is beginning to realize his mistake.
The unspoken assumption of most scientists - adopted mindlessly by such commentators here as Gemli and Socrates, who regularly put forward a metaphysics of positivism without realizing it - is that "life" is no more than a complex organization of dead, insentient matter.
If that is what "science" is, then of course science has nothing to do with morality (that is, if you understand Hume's point, and Harris' failure to refute it).
it is then the height of irony that the anti-abortion, anti-life movement, which seems based on a profound misunderstanding of science AND theology AND metaphysics (i.e.., "intelligent" design, an oxymoron if there ever was one), has put itself in an impossible position, using the metaphysically nihilist beliefs of quantitative science to support their dualistic, theologically incoherent religious beliefs.
If the actions of the anti-life movement didn't result in enormous and wide spread suffering and death, it would be comical. But then, why expect rationality and enlightenment from a movement that overwhelmingly supports the madman in the White House?
www.remember-to-breathe.org
(and really, kids in MAGA hats are the victims???)
2
The one thing that always gets me about the anti-abortion crowd is how they can claim all sorts of quite obscure biblical references and simply miss or ignore the passage where God settled the issue once and for all, Genesis 2-7. I guess if I were in their position, openly defying the word of Got to advance their own hubris, I'd ignore that passage, too.
1
As a woman who is 52-years young, I’ve been technically able to bear children for 40 years.
I have two wonderful children.
I have the chance of getting pregnant every month of my life. I do my best to use birth control to manage my body's capabilities.
But birth control fails sometimes.
I support your right to adopt. I just don’t support you demanding that I bear a child for you on demand.
6
"Science will not solve the abortion wars, and neither will reversing Roe."
Agreed.
Whether Roe (1973) or Planned Parenthood (1992) remain intact, the abortion issue will never go away. Purists on one side may endeavor to harness the power of the federal government in order to absolutely outlaw abortion across all of the states. Purists on the other side endeavor to harness the power of the federal government to remove all hindrances to access to abortion.
Right now the states have some capacity to regulate access. Roe and Planned Parenthood require that the states afford some degree of access. But imagine that Roe/Planned Parenthood were (partially) overturned thereby affording states more control of access to abortion. Would access diminish? Maybe not.
In 1972 the states of Alabama and Mississippi afforded greater access to abortion than California, Vermont, and a whole host of other states. Fewer states maintained more liberal access. (Who knew?) But surely California would not revert to its 1972 form were it afforded the opportunity.
Affording the states more capacity to regulate access might defuse some of the tensions. But, again, purists on either side will *never* be satisfied. That's just life.
@chaunceygardiner
"Purists on the other side endeavor to harness the power of the federal government to remove all hindrances to access to abortion."
That would only be true if RvW didn't put major restrictions on abortion. It does. Leaving nut jobs aside, I'm unaware of any pro-choice movement that is not specifically focused on protecting RvW.
I don't understand the premise of this article. The abortion debate has nothing to do with science. It all comes down to one sentence in the 14th Amendment, which defines a person under the law. A citizen has to be "born or naturalized" to be granted rights under the Constitution. A fetus simply has no rights under the COTUS, while the person who carries it, does. Period. In fifty years the religious right has been unable to change that one sentence. The 14th also states we are "all equal before the law". The Religionists believe that men have a right to choose their own destiny in life, while women do not, a clear violation of this clause as well. And that's not even considering the 13th Amendment's clause prohibiting involuntary servitude, because ultimately, that's what this religious fascism is all about.
4
Science and authority. I think that in the recent past the majority of children by the fourth grade gave up trying to follow science and math and decided to accept authority, both religious and secular for their world view and practical guidance. Future children will all be educated more successfully or there will be no future.
@JVM
Ah, you've fallen into the trap. There is a movement to make science education all about making little Johnny and Sally their own little scientists, coming to conclusions from empirical observations, only it never has and never will work that way. We (humans) don't, and as a practical matter can't, work that way. We need and must choose the authority we trust.
The change in science education that is actually necessary is for the public to be able to tell when information is coming from the peer reviewed scientific community, understanding the importance of uncertainty in science, and being able to know when to delay judgement on "new" science till it's been chewed on by the scientific community for years.
@Mike Holloway. Soooo.... We are talking critical thinking skills? I agree. But the general population is woefully weak in this area.
1
Thank you NYT for the brief mention of the misrepresentation of science in the abortion wars. There needs to be much more. What Dr. Ziegler fails to mention is that constructing "alternative science" is a standard right wing propaganda ploy these days. See Chris Mooney's "The Republican War on Science" (http://www.waronscience.com/home.php). In fact, anti-abortion pseudo-science takes it's cues from the evolution of creationist pseudo-science that also got it's start in the 70's. Similarly climate change denial. Similarly anti-vax (in so far as the right can claim that one, which at the present time it largely can).
You see, you're doing it again. You're doing the journalism false equivalency thing, again. "Alternative science" does not deserve the benefit of the doubt. Science is not "he said/she said".
Again: Life does not "start". Fertilization does not produce a new person. Combining sperm and egg DNA does not make a baby. Science can not settle an ethical, legal, and religious problem.
2
It's quite simple: anti-choice groups and I disagree about the time a fertilized egg becomes a person. And they think that their opinion is more important than my right to determine what to do with my body.
7
A 24-week fetus in your body is not your body.
1
Regardless of law, a rich person can always go elsewhere to get the procedure. Clearly, this is a law that punishes the poor, and nothing more.
Secondly, a large number of people believe human life begins with first breath. There is no science here, as science depends on falsifiable statements, and what constitutes a human being is an arbitrary definition.
2
Disclaimer: I am a Christian and I do believe life starts at conception. I also accept that not everyone agrees with me. Therefore, my wife and I have decided that we won't ever have an abortion. We've also decided to spend our time and money helping organizations that facilitate adoptions and help single mothers.
I know that this probably won't go over well, but when does life begin? When does a fetus have rights? The liberal/progressive response that I hear is upon birth. So does a 8 month, 29 day, 23 hour, 59 minute, 59 second old fetus not have any rights until it takes a breath? I would ask parents if they believed that their child was not a person with rights and value the second before it was born. Obviously this isn't the same as a one hour old embryo To me this seems irrational and illogical. So what about an 8 month old fetus? 6 month?
The other side of the coin is that conservatives seem to stop caring once the baby is born. Pro-life has to be pro-worker, pro-family, pro-education, pro-food stamps. The hypocrisy is sickening.
I'm typing this as I'm rocking my 15 day old baby girl (our fourth child). I know she was a person before 15 days ago :)
6
@Ryan
See Carl Sagan's article “Abortion: Is it Possible to be both “Pro-life” and “Pro-Choice”?” http://www.2think.org/abortion.shtml
Only one thing in it that I object to. He sloppily refers to "human life starting" when he obviously means "human rights starting". The semantics are killing this debate.
And, as Carl points out, life, actual "life" does not start. Life is a cycle. Sperm and egg are alive, not inanimate. Referring to "life starting" is an archaic hold over from when people did, in fact, believe that life sprung from the inanimate. Science can't settle the debate, but it does inform it.
14
@Ryan "So does a 8 month, 29 day, 23 hour, 59 minute, 59 second old fetus not have any rights until it takes a breath?" Who is aborting at that moment in time? Only a tiny fraction of all abortions are late term and those for when something has gone wrong.
1
@Ryan
Google the "sorites paradox" or "heap paradox."
The paradox goes as follows: consider a heap of sand from which grains are individually removed. One might construct the argument, using premises, as follows:
1,000,000 grains of sand is a heap of sand (Premise 1)
A heap of sand minus one grain is still a heap. (Premise 2)
Repeated applications of Premise 2 (each time starting with one fewer grain) eventually forces one to accept the conclusion that a heap may be composed of just one grain of sand.).
1,000,000 grains is a heap.
If 1,000,000 grains is a heap then 999,999 grains is a heap.
So 999,999 grains is a heap.
If 999,999 grains is a heap then 999,998 grains is a heap.
So 999,998 grains is a heap.
If ...
... So 1 grain is a heap.
(from wikipedia)
The fact that we cannot draw a clear dividing line at the point at which the fetus becomes a person deserving of a full suite of human rights does not mean that we must conclude that a zygote and a newborn have the same moral status.
For that reason, it doesn't mean that pro-choicers are hypocrites.
It means that you're splitting hairs when you ask questions like that. They're intended to be "gotcha!" questions, but they add no value. No one is saying that a fetus one moment before birth is demonstrably different than a fetus one minute after (morally), and no one is saying that abortion one minute before birth is morally permissible.
3
Science, spelled "God". The ant-abortion movement is fuelled first and foremost by fundamentalist Christianity. There is no reconciling fundamentalist Christian views to those of non-sectarian women's rights. "Science" is just a convenient battle ground and, I would suggest, is utlimatley irrelevant to the goals of this segment of Christianity on this matter. Were the science to be definitive, the battle ground would simply shift. That is the way of fundamentalism and theocracy. Here and in the Middle East.
6
@Rebecca Hogan, I can see your point. But what you miss is also clear, this is not the way people take decisions. As a biologist I can assure you that hormones like testosterone have an overwhelming and decisive influence on what we do. Everybody, you too, I think, knows this, has experienced this behaviour. Evolution has made us so. So have some empathy towards those girls that have not been able to withstand the call from nature. Abortion is for the most of them the only possible way out. Another thing is, of course, that sex, and all the implications of it, should be discussed more openly in your country. That is the most obvious way to improve things in this field of human behaviour.
5
I have always been against abortion. What I am extremely against though is Christian fanaticism. We have fought wars for the last 18 years against Islamic fanaticism while half of our country wants only politicians who pass the religious litmus test. Practice your faith as is your Constitutional right but keep it at home and in the house of worship where it belongs. The Constitution that I swore to defend for eight years also states a separation of the two.
One more word on abortion, people have had sex throughout the centuries with unwanted pregnancies. In the present age though there are myriad ways of birth control but they only work if people are educated. The Ignorance and denial from the Right about birth control is astounding.
6
@Charles Stockwell
No birth control works 100% of the time.
Abortion "rights" is mostly a story about men attempting to control outcomes for women.
If you remove all the men from the debate around abortion, the vast majority of women left standing would be more than OK with themselves making their own choices.
Alternatively, you could pass a law outlawing abortion but, simultaneously force the male, with the DNA match as the father, to provide 100% of care for the human life until 20 years of age + full college tuition.
That would solve the "abortion rights" issue.
Suddenly all men would become pro-abortion.
9
Absolutists, particularly those of the religious persuasion, are impervious to the legitimate scientific method. They seek out selective bits of "science" to reinforce their intractable religious beliefs. All other viewpoints are summarily rejected.
It's essentially pointless to attempt rational engagement and debate with these types. They have sacrificed their critical thinking upon the altar of fundamentalism.
5
Can abortion advocates at least agree that abortion kills "something" with unique human DNA? It may seem ridiculous, but I have even read comments in The New York Times saying "please don't use the word abortion, it's just about choice." If you're going to say science is on your side in this argument, you have to at least admit that we are talking about abortion and be willing to define that as a procedure that kills "something" that has unique DNA (not a body part of the father or mother).
3
Where do the anti-abortion people find evidence that God prohibits killing?
Certainly nothing in the Tanakh -- the Jewish Bible -- supports that position. The Jewish position is that a child already born is not viable until the eighth day, hence circumcision is not performed until the eighth day after birth.
And the Bible is replete with instance after instance where the Lord God of Abraham orders killing of whole groups, so it doesn't appear that God is opposed to killing. Indeed, on Passover , God himself killed the first born of the Egyptians.
The supposed prohibition on killing derives from a poor Greek rendition of the Bible that renders the "ten commandments" as a prohibition on killing rather than a proscription of murder. A very fundamental difference.
4
Oh it is not about science. All these lawmakers know that and I assume the author knows that too. The mechanism that allowed abortions to be legal is privacy.
My womb is not some city in South Carolina, it's inside my body. It just doesn't get more private than that.
The abortion 'fight' has become nothing more than fodder for fundraising.
7
One thing is for certain, the vast majority of Nations in this world do not allow abortion on demand beyond the first trimester. And if one reads Roe v. Wade carefully, the SC left that decision to the States to restrict beyond the first trimester.
It is ironic that Liberals use science as a weapon against Climate doubters, yet clearly deny the most basic of sciences.
2
Religious extremists believe in magic. Republicans humor them and have bible study sessions in Congress. They believe in their own kind of magic that we call lying or magic mixed with whisky and soda, which we call cynicism.
What religious zealots have in common is a collective inability to see forest from trees: the core of their emptiness is the absence of humanity and all the messy ambiguity that entails. Instead they substitute a bogus certainty that's nothing more than a palliative for existential panic at the absence of a self identity rooted in community.
Bertrand Russell called religion a cosmic anxiety. It drives the compulsion for magical belief, whether religious fable or political ideology -- in fact all systems of coping that avoid the crushing weight of freedom that comes without compass or owner's manual.
Whether the god of the invisible hand that directs the market, or the god of clubs with exclusive membership and status, or the god of ancient fables told and retold for a millennium of successive generations, all are rationales for the irrational aversion of responsibility to do the work necessary to make freedom meaningful without making it meaningless for others.
The two bargain bins in the basement of modern life are religion and ideology. Religions of righteousness can be found on the clearance rack for one size fits all.
10
This is not really a scientific debate.70% of fertilized eggs are technically alive and will eventually grow into viable human beings.Both sides would agree to this and here is where the "science" ends.The actual debate is philosophical.Does the pregnant women have the right to stop the development of this zygote before it becomes viable(able to live outside the womb).The term "pro choice" actually includes both alternatives.The woman has the choice either to terminate or not to terminate within some time limit.This is not a scientific decision.Using scientific terminology only confuses and disquises the real issues.Clearly the rights of the fertilized egg do not supersede the rights of the woman carrying that egg.So "Pro Choice" is really the most accurate term to use no matter what that choice might be.
5
Full disclosure, I am pro-life. I do believe to reduce significantly reduce the number of abortions Men hold the key. Women are not objects of conquest, they need love and support at the most vulnerable of times, possibly in ones life. The problem is the origins of this philosophy is religiously based. These include, respect for your body, responsibility for your actions, sacrifice, and yes suffering. The problem is this is a serious contradiction of today's "free love", do what you feel, and "people are going to do it anyway. Most people equate sex the same as a good meal or ride at the fair. You can't have it both ways. Abortions issues were always there and to a certain extent will always be, but that doesn't mean we can't try harder and God Forbid if we invoke religion and morality. Morality does not come from the stars it comes from deep spiritual commitment to a higher power and an aspiring to climb to a higher level of spiritual fulfilment, men and women are capable of this.
2
@MiguelM
"... we invoke religion and morality..." Would that be YOUR religion and morality? It is certainly not a religion or moral values I accept.
At this time we have, as of 2004, here in the United States, the, "Unborn Victims of Violence Act," which recognizes an embryo or fetus as a legal, "victim," if injured or killed under any 60 plus federal crimes of violence if commited on federal property. An exception is made for abortion.
To me there appears to be a glaring discrepancy between this law and current abortion law.
In one, the embryo is considered a victim because a violent act was committed upon the mother and its, "life," comes to an end. Both the mother and the embryo or fetus are considered as two separate and unique victims.
Look at two examples: Example A, a woman, ten weeks pregnant seeks and obtains a legal abortion.
Example, B, a woman, ten weeks pregnant working on pentagon property is attacked and killed, the fetus is also killed. The attacker is prosecuted and convicted of killing her and the fetus. He is sentenced for both killings. under the law, the killer didn't have to know his victim was pregnant.
There seems to be a glaring discrepancy between the laws. In one case the termination of the embryo or fetus, is considered homicide. (Homicide is defined as unlawful, "killing," of another.) In the other, the mother can at her sole discretion choose to terminate the pregnancy. The embryo or fetus in each case is made up of flesh and blood. How can it be a, "person," in one case but not in the other? Some clear parameters, based on science seem to me, are sorely needed.
7
@A P
I agree with you. Here is an excerpt from my earlier comment.
.
This is not a debate or discussion about when life begins. This is a discussion about definition. What is a human being or more precisely what is a homo sapien? Even more precisely what is a primate, a mammal, a vertebrate, an animal, a living thing, a protein, a molecule, an atom.
.
You get the point. Withoug going into the history and development of science we need to define what we are talking about. At what point to we ascribe to a collection of atoms an additional quality that goes beyond the laws of physics. Modern physical science does not distinguish between the behavior of a collection of particles that are part of any primate and that which is part of a rock.
.
This renders moot the discussion about when to end the "life" of an infant when it is inside the mother. The thing we call "life" is just a mechanistic process. It is just as amoral to "end the life" of a fetus in any stage of development as it is to "end the life" of an infant when it is outside the womb.
.
Similarly, the discussion about the "right to life" can be turned around to a discussion of the "right to kill" - whether it is a fetus or a baby ouside the womb.
3
In 1965 the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut that government cannot deny its citizens access to reproductive services and counseling. In 1973 Roe v. Wade SCOTUS ruled that a woman's right to privacy includes her right to an abortion.
In 2019 anti-abortion (“pro-life”) zealots still try to make abortions, birth control, sex education and reproductive health services illegal based predominantly because of their religious interpretations. They claim moral and ethical authority against abortion but it’s rooted in Catholic and Evangelical Christian dogma. They incorrectly exaggerate abortions kill babies. An embryo/fetus 20 weeks or younger is not a baby because at that stage it cannot sustain itself outside the womb, as current court rulings agree. Pro-life arguments purporting moral high ground are thinly veiled theocratic demands that all Americans must follow your theology.
Enough already. If any American woman doesn't want an abortion, she may choose to not have one, but pro-lifers cannot deny all women the right to a safe medical procedure.
America government is secular so it’s fair to all citizens by favoring no one religion or sectarian interpretation. Please refer to our Constitutionally guaranteed Freedom of (and from) Religion as well as the Establishment Clause. In the kindest terms, please keep your church out of our government which exists for and is defined by We The People, inclusive of everyone.
6
@Question Everything
You say ".... pro-lifers cannot deny all women the right to a safe medical procedure."
.
How is medical procedure that tears apart the mother's child when it is 4 months from term - a safe medical procedure?
3
@HH
Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't catch your citation for the percentage of abortions that occur after 20 weeks. Mind reposting it?
2
Science, as Sir Karl Popper observed, consists of assertions which are capable of being falsified. If no possible experiment can disprove an assertion, it isn't science, no matter how much scientific and technical apparatus is piled up next to it, and this is the problem with every argument described in this article.
This is because the point at which the fetus becomes a person is a matter of religious or metaphysical conviction.
Period.
Personhood is a moral concept, not a scientific construct, and no amount of logical argument can establish objectively where it starts.
All these attempts to pretend that science can demonstrate something which can only be arrived at by faith only serve to obscure the fact that the goal of the anti-abortion movement is to establish their religious doctrine as the law of the land, which is plainly forbidden by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
3
I completely agree with your opinion that the Establishment Clause is the best guide to the abortion question--in the absence of sufficient scientific advance. However, if there were a clear understanding of the biochemical basis of consciousness and rigorous accompanying theory the situation changes completely. Such a theory would presumably be subject to the test of Popperian falsifiability.
And what defines personhood if not consciousness?
@KC
"And what defines personhood if not consciousness?"
You suggest that this solves the problem, but it only moves it. Personhood is still a moral category, and while consciousness may some day appear to be a purely neurological phenomenon you can't bridge the gap from one to the other before the infant is able to leave the womb without some element of faith. In this country the law should not be used to promulgate religious doctrine.
Besides, whatever level of consciousness newborns possess is presumably shared with most mammals, if not all higher vertebrates, but infants are full members of the human community just the same.
I struggle to understand why pro-choice proponents took a "science based" argument in the first place. The issue should be decided on the merits of rights, and rights alone. Simply put, a woman has a right to control her body - full stop. The foetus, by virtue of the umbilical cord and placenta, is not simply "conjoined" to the mother, but, in effect, it is an extension of the mother's body. A mother should have full rights over her own body, what is inside her body, and what comes out of her body. It strikes me as a fundamental right of personhood to have such rights over your own body, to the extent that impregnation should not diminish those inalienable rights, or provide allowable incursions into those rights of bodily autonomy.
The mother's right of bodily autonomy exists prior to that of the foetus, since a foetus's putative bodily autonomy is entirely alienable, dependent upon the mother.
4
Americans are in desperate need of a more developed law on rights to privacy. We have almost none.
Our data is mined and sold. Our habits are registered by tools we use and sold. Meanwhile, the spread of video cameras and home microphones threatens to invade our homes and lives until we have no privacy at all.
Look at what we allow to paparazzi. Telephoto lenses look right into lives from vast distances, and it is all allowed.
Why? Its link to abortion has been very damaging to the development on privacy law needed on many other things. Other things are linked too.
European countries have laws that protect privacy. We don't. We can't, because it is all wrapped up in our most contentious issues.
We need to protect our privacy. Go debate abortion on its own terms. Let us have our privacy.
2
Unfortunately the Trump administration has appointed some of these forced birth extremists and junk science peddlers to high-ranking positions in the Department of Health and Human Services that controls basic and medical research funding. They already cancelled grants supporting important research on sexual health and behavior and, again, extremely promising studies on the use of fetal stem cells for Zika virus research and healing Alzheimers and Parkinsons. An example is Charmaine Yoest, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Public Affairs. Yoest was president and CEO of Americans United for Life, a forced birth activist organization, that for years peddled the myth that Pepsi contained fetal stem cells, leading to boycott efforts and years of pushback by industry and the federal government. The same organization is peddling anti-vaccine campaigns purporting that vaccines are produced using fetal tissues. These people are now overseeing science and medicine in our country with terrible effects.
3
One side is based on science, including choice and global warming. The other side simply doesn't believe in science.
One side believes sex is nice, whether or not procreation is the aim. The other side believes only in procreational sex.
One side abides by the Constitutional separation of church and state. The other side believes in shoving their religion down everybody else's throats.
One side believes in women's civil rights. The other side thinks "The Handmaid's Tale" is an instructional guide.
One side endorses policies that help children once they are born. The other side couldn't care less about children once they are born.
One side believes in decent and humane government, with good and affordable health care for everybody. The other side wants to drown government (and health care for all) in the bathtub.
One side believes that everybody has a right to freedom, prosperity, tolerance, and happiness.
The other side believes the rich and the powerful may do as they like, while the rest of us must struggle merely to survive.
13
Imagine if the Right to Life movement valued women as much as fetuses. They might have pay higher taxes to help cover the medical costs of pregnancy, childbirth, maternity leave and day care.
Imagine these Right to Life folks yelling at politicians to make sure pregnant women weren't losing jobs, healthcare and education in order to carry a pregnancy to term. Instead they yell at women getting Pap tests at Planned Parenthood Clinics.
We all want fewer abortions. The difference is how do we achieve that goal? We can try prohibition, or we can focus on helping women.
6
Ms. Ziegler is a lawyer, not a scientist.
I am a scientist, not a lawyer.
There is no argument about the science. What the argument is about is whether science even matters, and what problems science can address.
Science does not address the question of a "soul" at present, and it is most unlikely (though not absolutely certain) that "soul" will ever be something that science can observe.
Science does not address "human rights" or "god given rights" either.
2
To the extent that a man can understand the life-altering implications of pregnancy and childbirth, I think I do. However, there’s no getting around that a unique individual is created at conception. And I don’t see the relevance of viability. Many adults, and I don’t mean the brain-dead, aren’t viable without some machine. Are we to deny them life-saving technology?
1
@Anonymous
I think that if you truly understood the implications of pregnancy and childbirth, you would not implicitly reduce a pregnant woman to a machine, as you've done here.
3
@Anonymous
"And I don’t see the relevance of viability"
You mean you don't see the relevance of the fact that a woman's body is involved. No other "non-viable" adults require the use of another person's body. Women aren't machines. We aren't TECHNOLOGY that you can pass out to other people for their use. How many times to women have to explain to men that we are not objects?
You say you know a lot about pregnancy... are you sure about that?
2
I so agree with you!
I have a very simple answer to abortion (that should make lots of people on both sides of the issue relatively happy):
1. - No more government funding for abortions; this way people will not get upset feeling their tax money is being spent on something they believe is wrong.
2. - Federal government takes a "neutral" stance on abortions; under this the federal government would take a stance on abortion neither supporting or opposing it.
3. - Increase the availability of birth control; fewer abortions (at least those relating to unintended pregnancies) would happen if all people had better access to birth control.
4. - Restriction abortions to the first trimester of pregnancy; this move
1
This is an excellent exercise on how to subtly cherry pick for exposure only the most dubious claims made on one side of a decades-long debate: bravo.
1
@American Patriot
Your number 4 would prevent abortions of fetuses with serious defects, which can't be identified until week 22 or later - as well as abortions necessary to save the woman's health or life.
1
One thing science has debunked is the "clump of cells" argument that inevitably comes up in any discussion about abortion. Technology has improved ultrasounds so that you can see that the fetus is more than a clump of cells. It doesn't provide an answer to the debate, but it does shift the argument. The question is not whether the fetus is a clump of cells or a baby, but rather whether a woman has autonomy over her own body to end what is recognizably, if inconveniently, identifiable as a life.
2
Science actually has nothing to do with it.
Science deals with objective facts, not with moral and legal decisions.
It's a matter of civil rights for women, regardless of what science says.
6
When it comes to inconvenient science issues that do not agree with their faith-based world view, right-wing conservatives either question the fact-based science, making erroneous counter claims repeated at nauseum, or they come up with baseless pseudo scientific theories disguised as factual. This has been going on for much of history and is especially irksome in present times, when effortless access to the best factual data is just a few clicks away. Besides the long standing anti abortion claims highlighted in this article, this metaphysical mindset among the general fundamentalist population is seen in the fields of evolution, geology, cosmology (as related to age and origin of earth and universe), and presently in climate change and its causes. In a classical putdown of a metaphysical concept offered to the great Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli, he dismissed the proposal replying "This is not even wrong", a statement which applies perfectly as well to the fundamentalist contrarians.
4
When it comes to abortion one of the main arguments from pro choice people is that it is the women choice because it is her body and the fetus is part of it, but in fact the fetus is a completely separate life form with different genetics and possibly a different blood type or sex. So the reason it should be up to the state to make these choices is because it is not women making choices for their own body's it is a separate body so it is up to the state.
1
@John Arbuckle Completely separate? Even though attached by an umbilical cord, which is essential to its continued survival, and through which it receives all nutrition, and unable to exist outside the woman's body?
Not my idea of separate.
8
@John Arbuckle
A fetus is not a separate body in the sense that you mean, no matter how many times you repeat it.
It is inside the woman and depends upon her body to nourish it.
Forcing a woman to carry to term is taking away her control of her own bodily functions. It is slavery.
7
@John Arbuckle - If you grant full civil and human rights to a fertilized egg, you automatically remove the civil and human rights of the living, breathing, sentient human being who happens to host that egg. That's gestational slavery. Since 2-3 women die in childbirth every day in the US, and hundreds more suffer complications that leave them with lifelong health problems or disabilities, you'd be forcing women to risk their life and health under the control of the state. In what civilized world would that be allowed?
5
This is not a debate or discussion about when life begins. This is a discussion about definition. What is a human being or more precisely what is a homo sapien? Even more precisely what is a primate, a mammal, a vertebrate, an animal, a living thing, a protein, a molecule, an atom.
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You get the point. Withoug going into the history and development of science we need to define what we are talking about. At what point to we ascribe to a collection of atoms an additional quality that goes beyond the laws of physics. Modern physical science does not distinguish between the behavior of a collection of particles that are part of any primate and that which is part of a rock.
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This renders moot the discussion about when to end the "life" of an infant when it is inside the mother. The thing we call "life" is just a mechanistic process. It is just as amoral to "end the life" of a fetus in any stage of development as it is to "end the life" of an infant when it is outside the womb.
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Similarly, the discussion about the "right to life" can be turned around to a discussion of the "right to kill" - whether it is a fetus or a baby ouside the womb.
2
@HH
There are no infants inside mothers. Women are pregnant with fetuses, though. How am I supposed to rationally engage with the group that believes that a 6 week embryo is an infant and claims that science is on their side.
3
The argument ought really to depend upon what it means to be a human being and a member of society -- which is really a philosophical question. For sure, a necessary condition of humanness -- as originally put forth in the late 60s Harvard definitions of human life, and death -- is the presence of heart beat, brain activity, circulation, and respiration. But social philosophers maintain that this is not the sufficient condition. To meet this criterion, a human being must be part of a social community, and be biologically independent. Such social dimensions involve the capacity to love, to communicate, and figuratively to sing. Fetuses don't possess this sufficient condition. They are not human beings and members of society, only so potentially. Law and philosophy would be wise to mark this difference. It would provide answers for defining life both at its beginning and at its end.
5
One’s belief in a woman’s right to have an abortion is inextricably tied to her religious beliefs and her relationship with her God.
In this country, we have freedom of religion. It is one of the basic tenets that brought people to North America.
No one should force their religious beliefs on someone else.
11
Under Obama, abortion rates took a unprecedented plunge. The pro-life groups took that as evidence that their restrictions worked. However, there is good evidence that it was actually ObamaCare (that the pro-life groups largely opposed) that was responsible for the plunge. Now that the Republicans are back in the Presidency, the plunge has apparently slowed down or (at least in Indiana), reversed.
Who really is pro-life here?
14
I'm just glad I'm past all this at age 65. Luckily I never found myself in the position of deciding whether to have an abortion. I always thought I'd have the baby and give him or her up for adoption. I do think abortion should be legal and available.
10
Breaking news: Science shows that pregnant women, unlike fertilized eggs or non-viable or damaged fetuses, are adult human beings.
They're capable of living full lives and making ethical choices. Leave them to do these things, and let them be the ones to decide whether an unplanned pregnancy would ruin their lives.
20
This debate is not a question of science. The majority of the anti-abortion crowd are conservatives and Christians – let’s remember what they say, or have said, about other science subjects:
1) The earth is only about 6,000 years old
2) Evolution didn’t happen
3) The earth’s atmosphere is not warming
4) Hedging their bets, if the atmosphere is warming, it’s not because of humans
5) The destruction of the planet’s ecosystem will not have adverse effects for humans
6) Smoking does not cause health problems
7) There’s no problem with lead in gas or in paint
8) Crack cocaine is much worse than regular cocaine
And the list goes on and on. Conservatives pick their ideological position first, then try to twist the science to support it. They are generally wrong. They want the respectability and the authority of science, without having to adhere to the rules, which first and foremost say you have to abandon your hypothesis when the data and the observations don’t support it.
Regarding the anti-abortion movement, at best the science is ambiguous (when does a clump of cells become a “human life”); in most other cases, they are flat out wrong (abortions do not increase the risk of breast cancer).
Do not confuse using the word “science” with actually doing science.
12
Born animals feel pain. And they clearly remember having it.
Until a fetus has the connected nervous system that the animals we kill have, it won't feel the pain we inflict on those animals.
Secondly, we know darn well that fetuses don't feel pain or we would all remember it. We don't remember it because human persons are late bloomers who come into existence through the interaction with already existing persons-years after birth. "Fetal pain" is a red herring; they are 2 words that separately mean something but that put together refer to absolutely nothing.
So much interest in the fetus, so little interest in the pain and the ways that pregnancy can damage a woman's body and instill lasting harm to her. "Pregnancy pain and damage" are 4 words that put together actually refer to real events, real demonstrable physical changes and the experiences of real persons.
19
Why aren't these same people marching to end war? After all, hundreds of thousands of innocent people are killed in wars, maybe millions. Why aren't these same people marching to end the death penalty?. Dozens of people on death row have been proven innocent through DNA testing. How many innocent people have been executed?
If the Right to Life marchers really cared about life, they'd march to end all killing.
23
Yes! And why do they not support programs to make sure all children (once they are born) have nutritious food, a great education and quality housing.
7
@Linda
You are indulging in the "what about" method of discussion. Whether you and I agree with "these same people" at least deal with their opinions on their merit (or lack therof."
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They sincerely believe that abortion is the killing of children. You and I may disagree with that, but we should refute it base on a logical discussion. Certainly, aborting an 8 or 9 month fetus is equivalent to killing a full term infant that just emerged from the womb. The real question is whethr the same can be said of a 1 to 7 month fetus. Do you have a definitive answer? i don't.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the answer to this question is infallible, free, widely available birth control with no side effects. No accidental pregnancies, and abortion rates will drop to nearly zero.
Yet nobody in the pro-life movement seems motivated to do this. I understand that hypothetically they want to claim that a fertilized egg is the same as a newborn, but their own arguments belie this: there’s no reason to say that late term abortion is especially heinous if it’s morally equivalent to an IUD preventing an embryo from implanting in the uterus.
I understand that pro-life people are very sincere in their beliefs, but there seems to be a willful blindness that when it gets down to brass tacks, it’s about women having sex. If it weren’t, there would be no exceptions for rape or incest, anymore than you could kill a newborn who was conceived that way.
Get honest, and start funding birth control research. If movements like yours weren’t standing in the way, the problem might have been solved by now.
13
@Mercury S - I was a young woman before legal birth control and before Roe. When birth control was first legalized, it was ONLY legal for married women. It was still illegal for doctors to prescribe it for unmarried women. That history illustrates very clearly that it's actually about controlling women's sexuality.
6
@Mercury S. You notice that anti abortion protesters never 'witness' outside fertility clinics, where embryos are routinely created and later discarded.
I think this is due to the women going to fertility clinics wanting to become mothers, whereas the abortion clinic patients clearly don't (at least, they don't want this particular pregnancy).
3
Because opposition to abortion is only one head of the woman oppressing hydra. They wish to seize control of women’s lives and bodies in the name of religion.
1
Real science says life begins at conception, so all abortions are ending "life". Science is pretty simple in this area, what would be constitutional and best for our country is not simple at all.
1
@vulcanalex...Ah, but what is the definition of life. Plants are alive. The cells in my little finger are alive and contain a complete set of genetic material. Is someone who is brain dead alive?
4
@vulcanalex
There is no blanket declaration by scientists that "life begins at conception." That's an arbitrary and often religious opinion.
Sperm cells and ova are already alive before conception, just like every other cell in your body.
The fact that something is alive does not in itself merit its protection. It depends upon what it is.
A fetus is only a potential. It's undeveloped. It's not a person.
But a woman is a fully developed person. And her body belongs to her. Not to the state. And not to you.
8
@vulcanalex
There is no real science that says life begins at conception. The closest science agrees to is the viability of life (usually around the time that an abortion is made illegal), and legally the actual birth of a human being.
3
With great respect to Professor Ziegler (not the phony "all due respect"), I think reference to "science" in the abortion war is a function of ideology. I am devoted to scientific findings. But no matter what science finds it will not change a single opinion on abortion, and certainly not enough to make a difference politically. We live an era of confirmation bias. No matter what people believe they will continue to believe it regardless of what experts say, because "expertise" itself is under attack. Every new fact simply confirms one's beliefs. What a shame that education doesn't teach a smideon of humility so that what scientists say actually matters enough to consider its findings.
2
@lhc
It's not a matter of believing or disbelieving in science.
Regardless of what science says, a woman has the right to control her own body.
3
Seriously? Certain parts of the underlying science are settled, including the medical necessity of abortion in some cases, the outside edge of fetal viability, and the lack of harm to women who have abortions.
10
@NorCal Girl The edge of fetal viability continues to get pushed earlier (thank you, science) and the lack of harm to women who have abortions is far from settled.
The issue isn't science; it's morality. Abortion either is or isn't moral.
It's also the 10th Amendment, which gives states the right to regulate medical practice (and everything else not specifically given to the federal government). Overturn Roe v. Wade, and every state will regulate abortion as it sees fit. Some will legalize it, some will forbid it. If you don't like your state's law, you will be able to lobby your state legislators. A woman who wants one will be able to go to a state where it is legal. And the poison will be drained from our national life.
1
@Jonathan Katz
No, the poison would not be drained. The abortion debate is about the confluence of a rock and a hard place: two lives that depend on one body. The conflict is in whether the state should be able to compel that body to support both lives. It is easy for outsiders to demand that, of course, a woman should be forced to gestate and birth a fetus. But the woman herself can argue that her body is hers and cannot be forced into servitude to another. As a rule, we do not legislate altruism. You can’t be forced to assist a stranger lying on the road. You can’t be forced to donate an organ, even to save another’s life. As long as people want to insist that women are different, that in fact the state can force them to donate their time, body, and health to another being, there will be this poison in our national life. It is analogous to slavery - we decided over an hundred years ago that a person’s freedom was not subject to popular vote. It was guaranteed by the Constitution to all.
26
@Jonathan Katz.....Is having sex with a porn star or Playboy Bunny moral? Is repeatedly lying moral? Is publicly mocking someone who is handicapped moral? If everything immoral was also illegal Pence would have been President a long time ago.
4
@Jonathan Katz
The right of the state to regulate medical practice is to insure ethical medical behavior.
The state does not have the right to restrict people from obtaining needed medical procedures.
And it certainly does not have the right to force women into slavery.
3
My body - MY choice!!
Definitions of life, and its start, are NOT relevant!!!
19
@Brien
Hear, hear!
It's "curious" that the religious side is the one that thinks that man creates life (vs. the notion that life is continuous) and that thinks that natural birth is painless for the fetus.
7
Science can tell you what is alive - it can observe cell activity, measure chemical and electrical responses, but it cannot hope to quantify sentience... when are we human - what makes an entity deserving of special protection?
Where you may see a life, others see something that while alive, is less than a human life. Start really thinking about it and it will make your head ache. Ponder this -say you think a fertilized egg is special just because it is alive, but nearly everything we eat is or has been alive - if everything that is simply alive is so special, then how can you justify your existence without feeling constant guilt about your own survival on the backs of other living things - and yes that even goes for you vegans... What about a cancerous tumor - it is alive and it is composed of very human cells.... Does it not have a right to live out it's life? But, you say, a carrot or a cancer are not human and can never become human! OK then, what makes them different? Please define it in *quantifiable* terms - no you cannot get away with 'a carrot doesn't have a soul'... something for which existence cannot even be proven, much less conferred... and no you cannot get away with "I've been told a carrot isn't human" - think for yourself here.... then apply those conditions to a fertilized egg. Does it pass your own test for humanity? Does your head hurt yet? Can you eat dinner tonight without feeling at least some guilt now....
6
The argument posed by the right to life movement is based on religion, not science. Religious beliefs regarding when life begins are religious, and not scientific. No one has been able to really define when life begins, so the "Right to Life" groups are, in essence, making a definition based on their particular beliefs, and then asking all other faiths (who may have different definitions) to conform.
13
@et.al.nyc - FWIW, there's only one mention of abortion in the bible. It's a passage in Numbers where a judge supplies a man with an abortifacient to force his wife to take to rid her of what's thought to be her lover's child.
The only thing remotely related to that is another passage where a judge rules that if someone attacks a pregnant woman and she miscarries, the attacker is fined as for loss of property. Only if the woman dies does the attacker face the penalty for murder.
During biblical times, abortion was not only legal and accepted, it was also legal and accepted to take a newborn under 30 days old out into the desert and leave it to die of exposure or be eaten by wild animals. So in spite of the fact that it's religious extremists who claim their bible/their religion opposes abortion, there's zero support for that in the bible without twisting passages that mean something else entirely entirely out of all recognition.
2
When does life begin? It rarely does. Life is a continuum and has been since the first bacteria evolved. The question has always been when does the human person begin. And before a functioning brain makes consciousness possible, there is no person, and there are no rights.
The only justification for awarding a single cell the same basic status as a thinking, feeling woman, comes from a belief in the religious doctrine of ensoulment at conception. Enacting laws based on that belief is an establishment of religion, forbidden by the Constitution for the purpose of protecting people – especially Christians – from religious persecution. Women who are forced to complete a pregnancy against their will because of this are being subjected to religious persecution, forced to live according to the religious beliefs of others.
29
FACT 1: There is no scientific consensus on what human life IS; no on when it begins. That's a fact.
FACT 2: 100% of people supporting limits on abortion are Conservative Christians. A religious group. No other group on the PLANET agrees with them. Hello??
Fact 3: Supporters of abortion restrictions have worked hard, and knowingly, to keep the conversation away from religion. Ask them to. See what happens. But- 100% are Conservative Christians.
All scientists should simply respond: "There is no science here; this is a con. This is religious stuff. Other than that- no comment."
15
Of course, in the picture at the top of the column, someone in that group just has to have a MAGA hat. Has to.
4
"At the moment the sperm cell of the human male meets the ovum of the female and the union results in a fertilized ovum (zygote), a new life has begun...."
[Considine, Douglas (ed.). Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia. 5th edition. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1976, p. 943]
"Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed...."
[O'Rahilly, Ronan and Muller, Fabiola. Human Embryology & Teratology. 2nd edition. New York: Wiley-Liss, 1996, pp. 8, 29.]
“Fertilization is the process by which male and female haploid gametes (sperm and egg) unite to produce a genetically distinct individual.”
Signorelli et al., Kinases, phosphatases and proteases during sperm capacitation, CELL TISSUE RES. 349(3):765 (Mar. 20, 2012)
“Your baby starts out as a fertilized egg… For the first six weeks, the baby is called an embryo.”
Prenatal Care, US Department Of Health And Human Services, Maternal and Child Health Division, 1990
2
@Chris
I fail to see your point.
The words "a new life has begun" do not describe a person.
A fertilized egg is genetically distinct, but it's not a person.
An embryo then becomes a fetus. But it's still not a person.
A woman is a living adult human being. She is a person. It's her body, and her choice.
Quote that.
4
Good article. I'm pretty sure she means the 4th amendment, not the 14th, at the end of the fifth paragraph...
1
The definition of "viable" is changing and will continue to change.
A child isn't "viable" or capable of caring for itself for years after being born. Some care and assistance is needed but no one is suggesting that we should be allowed to simply throw unwanted five year olds out the car window.
With successful "test tube babies" every sperm and every egg is "viable" by the standard of "can we medically help this cell turn into a functioning human". Yet no one is arguing that we should make a woman's menses or a boys masturbation a capitol crime.
The underlying question to this issue is not one of science. It is a question of personal freedom and choice. Sometimes this choice seems obvious in the case of a 12 year old raped by her father, and sometimes it seems hear wrenchingly difficult in the case of a late stage health risk to both mother and child. However it is still a choice.
Thank you for pointing out that we are going down this rabbit hole of a changing science rather than looking at the core issue.
Is this a choice that a woman has the right to make.
11
@Mike
Agree, but typically think viability doesn't mean a child able to care for themselves, but a child able to be cared for electively (not a real word, I know) outside the womb, and not requiring connection to and parasitic sapping off a pregnant woman's body in order to survive.
But yes, firm agree on the framing requiring an assessment of freedom and not the amorphous ever changing viability
3
Congressman Barney Frank said:
For Republicans, life begins at conception and ends at birth.
32
Unfortunately the science ignorant, no-nothings seem to be winning over our politically overt federal courts to their religion-based point of view.
4
Just ask Ross Douthat what the truth is...he will give us the Catholic answer and teach more recist and sexist boys to harass people who aren't on their side. I guess this is the Times way to get closer to Trump.
1
Men are 100% responsible for the impregnating process. Instead of punishing women, let’s equalize the process
Let’s force men to pay 100% of the expenses associated with having the child. It would be mandatory as we can now use science to determine who the father is. Absolutely no exceptions. All of the medical, food, education, social, any expense that is associated with raising the child.
After all, a man got the woman pregnant, let him pay for it for his lifetime.
152
@FDNYMom
Well, not 100% of the responsibility is masculine. There is voluntary artificial insemination. And there is mutual consent to have children. That would seem to be more like 50/50 in quite a few cases.
4
@FDNYMom
And you know that some men would use that as a reason to kill the women they impregnated.
6
@FDNYMom
That's already the law in most states.
The introduction of scientific claims to the debate did not come slowly. Science was injected by the Supreme Court in the Roe vs. Wade decision. It took some time for old habits and set views to wash away, but it was the decision itself that (for better or worse) pinned the fight to science.
For a body that prides itself on phrasing decisions in a way that allows them to stand as precedent for centuries, tying law to a threshold that the Court itself acknowledged was both unstable (due to medical technology) and uncertain (due to imperfect scientific consensus) seems shortsighted. If this is the Court's model for dealing with inevitable technological advance, should they not also define "arms" in terms of their ability to take life?
1
Many on the pro-life side like to quote God as if their arguments come from God's lips to their ears. Thing is, they can't prove God's role in their conversations in a truly scientific sense, so I guess we're supposed to take their word for it. I don't. Moreover, I think their suppositions do not confer upon them the moral authority to limit women's reproductive options. It seems that these folks are confusing faith with empowerment; they are playing God with the lives of others.
As for when life begins, sperm are living human cells . They carry the male's human DNA. Eggs are living human cells. They carry the female's human DNA. Fertilization produces a different type of living human cell, one containing both the male's and female's DNA. One living cell is produced from two living cells. The statement that life begins at conception is a red herring designed to empower the 'faithful'; it is not, in itself, a scientific argument. At best, it's a definition. Definitions are not scientific laws. Nor should they form the basis for legislation that deprive women of their rights to direct their own lives.
Scientific arguments aside, the anti-abortion crusade has at its core a deep distrust of women's abilities to make intelligent and ethical decisions and a belief that women should not have the same rights that men have. I think that these crusaders should do some inner work on their own motivations for mucking around in the lives of a nation's worth of women.
180
@pjahwah
Perfectly stated!
4
Very well said!
3
@pjahwah
Those who quote God should be ignored as having no valid evidence. I will believe in God when he appears in court as a witness.
4
This article rather lets it slide that both camps have it wrong: the argument over when human life begins can't be a scientific debate, because that's not what science is. Science is about the observation and predictability of natural phenomena based on some model, not about forcing things that are fundamentally continuous into discrete categories. Scientists love to alias things and create taxonomies for the sake of communication, but that should not be mistaken for the creation of absolute truth (consider Pluto's re-classification). No one can observe when a gamete/embryo/fetus/baby becomes human, because that is determined by whatever we hold as the definition of human life, not by any scientifically observable event.
Scientifically, we are all just one continuous life stretching back to the first cells. We can't even necessarily say that our haploid or diploid form is more "important," from a scientific standpoint - many organisms are primarily haploid, and the sexual reproduction / diploid stage is an evolved feature to increase diversity. Common sense can enter in - we are most functional after we are born - but that is absolutely a political, moral, or philosophical position, not a scientific one.
There are millions of scientifically-observable events along the path from gamete to independent adult, but we must accept that picking and choosing which of those will grant value to the organism as a human is a philosophical decision, and leave "science" out of it.
4
The making of pseudo-intellectual boards with similar sounding names to advance your agenda is increasingly a tactic of extremists who usually lie on the right. It is part of what has lead to our 'post-truth' society and debate as well as the rise of hatred for experts. This is the same an extension of the fake pregnancy clinics- they use an extremely similar name and same font as a true pregnancy clinic (which provides true healthcare and adivse/perhaps performs all options including abortion) and then trick people to coming to them where they use lies and emotional manipulation to try and get the woman to stay pregnant. It is why people struggle to tell what is true science and what isn't when there are 2 institutions with similar sounding names making the same claims. The Right also employs this for Climate Science and for Vaccines. The very vast majority are incapable of going to and interpreting the literature themselves. So where does this leave us?
5
People will find ways to get abortions no matter what the ultimate fate of Roe is. We will go back to what it was prior to Roe, coat hanger abortions for the poor and the rich will go where it's permitted, like Canada. The religious will exult, their children will like before find ways to terminate pregnancies and perhaps ruin their future reproductive chances. Abortions like drugs and alcohol during prohibition will saturate the black market. Back to the sixties folks.
7
it's not about science. It never has been. It's about who is going to control women's reproductive systems - women themselves or men.
18
This one is so easy.
Give women birth control and get rid of 90% of unwanted pregnancies.
And every pro-life person I have talked with all use birth control.
4
@Independent. Some pregnancies are initially welcomed but go wrong - fetal defects are discovered or the woman's health requires that the pregnancy be terminated.
1
@Cal
Absolutely agreed. That's why I said, 90%.
The sheer hypocrisy of people who are demanding "right to life" and against more gun control to stop the killing of children and adults is mind-boggling.
7
But we eat animals that we know are fully sentient and intelligent...and we kill our dogs and cats (with the euphemistic language "put to sleep") when we make the determination that their life is no longer worth living (even though they themselves can't tell us that). How and why are those lives less important than an embryo the size of a pea with no developed brain or facial features (which, in the first trimester when 90% of abortions take place, is more or less what it looks like)? Aren't four legged animals also God's creation, if God is the issue here?
6
what a mess.
we were going in the right direction: abortion rates were at the lowest since 1972 by the end of the Obama administration. We ALL want to reduce the need for abortion. I worry that making abortion illegal at the same time they are trying to stop many forms of birth control will actually increase the need for abortion; not reduce it.
other thoughts:
1) for those doing this on a Christian basis (I am a Christian btw), the Bible does allude to "After the three months, the fetuses..."the thousands year old concept that 3 months was the key time frame
2) person hood for fetuses is ridiculous. The Bible calls a fetus, a fetus.
3) what the anti-abortion folks is for the fetuses to be MORE important than the female. So does this change the medical practice of triage? Does this mean, women will always come last for treatment? Sorry but if mu daughter is fighting for her life, and removing the fetus is determined by the TWO teams of doctors that are required to make such a determination (NO, Mr. Trump, women aren't having babies ripped out days before birth), then that is what we do.
4) where are the men in all this? Do they realize that they would be help in legal jeopardy for telling and giving $ for an abortion? Do they realize that they will be paying child support for 18-21 years? what if they hurt or kill the woman in anger?
5) i hope we live in place and time that gives women raises the $ ability and reduce the stigma to raise kids alone when they want.
4
It's science when you search out the facts and look for the best possible hypothesis, then theory to fit them.
It's junk science and a lie, when you decide on the result you want, then select or invent or twist facts to match.
Pretending that their anti-abortion lies are science is just a way to pretend this isn't a purely unconstitutional, theocratic attempt to write their religion into our law.
118
@SusanStoHelit Coming from someone who is not religious i still think nobody should have the right to end another humans life no matter what stage it is, that is one of my moral values.
1
@John Arbuckle, so you believe in forced gestation? That, sir, is a form of slavery.
Someone once observed, "If men had babies, abortion would be a sacrament." Can't help thinking about that when I read these sanctimonious comments from men.
2
@SusanStoHelit Every law ever written was based on a belief and anchored in a belief system. Instead of pretending you don't believe recognize what you have already believed. Belief systems are behind everything. Ancient pagan people believed they could earn better crops and fertility by spilling the blood of children. Believers in abortion believe the same hogwash today.
This isn't a fight about science, it is a fight between science and belief masquereding as science. The 'experts' the pro life people site who claim fetuses feel pain at 20 weeks, or who claim in the fertilized zygote lies a full human being, when you check their background are (not surprisingly) conservative religious beievers (usually Catholic or evangelical, some orthodox Jews) and therein lies the problem. They start off with the belief that a fetus is a full human being, they start off believing that a fetus feels pain, and then works to prove that by cherry picking what they find to 'prove that' (kind of like the woman who was in a vegetative state, whose husband wanted to let her die, 'scientists' showed her supposedly reacting to stimuli..and when they did the autopsy on her after she died, her brain was literally gone), much like creationists seek 'science' to prove god created things. Science looks at the evidence, forms a hypothesis from the evidence, then does data analysus or experiments and sees if the results match; they don't cherry pick facts and leave others out.
85
@bill d Science as we know it will never tell me it is wrong to murder you. In fact it might claim that some people would benefit, but it still cannot address the morality or immorality of murder. It cannot even distinguish murder from killing.
2
@bill d Good science also takes the evidence and throws out any theories that don't match that evidence. It is time for the Darwinian evolutionist to recognize that Charles Darwin's theory was flawed beyond help. There were too many things he could not have known at the time, that (now that we are aware of them) dictate that we throw out his theories. The fact of irreducible complexity such as our immune system and the clotting mechanism of blood are just 2 examples of how evolution could not have resulted in what we observe in humans or other living creatures. What is the answer? No one can scientifically prove creationism but we certainly can rule out Darwinian evolution and need to change all the science books to reflect that science doesn't have the answers.
Among the many debates that are surrounding abortion, something I almost never see brought up is one of the world's oldest alternatives to raising a biological child: adoption.
I am pro-choice, but it baffles me that so many activists refuse to even utter the word "adoption." Many write it off immediately as something that simply cannot be realistically done, despite the millions of people who are adopted, most of whom who grow up to be well-adjusted adults. What is it about adoption that's so taboo that we can't even discuss it, let alone endorse it or (God forbid) make strides towards improving the foster care system?
Whether you agree with abortion or not, we owe it to ourselves (and to the hundreds of thousands of children in foster care), to at least discuss other options.
@Autumn
Adoption adoption adoption adoption adoption
Better? I'm not scared of adoption or afraid of it. It's not taboo, it's irrelevant. It just doesn't change whether banning abortion is a violation of a woman's rights. You still can't force me to have a baby against my will.
Adoption is an alternative to raising an unwanted *child.* It still requires the woman to go through with *pregnancy.* If she doesn't want to do that, then adoption is not a solution for her.
15
@C's Daughter
I don't see how it's irrelevant, seeing as not all women get abortions for the same reason. Much like how there are women who have no desire to go through with a pregnancy, there are other women who do not wish to abort their child, but know they are unable to take care of that child themselves. Women are not a monolith. If activists truly do care about what women want to do with their bodies and offspring, as they claim they do, then I don't think it's too much to ask to consider the intricacies of how different women will approach an unwanted or difficult pregnancy.
Granted, I already mentioned that I'm pro-choice, and therefore believe that a woman who wants an abortion has every right to have one. I don't believe adoption should be given preferential legal treatment over abortion--I'm not "forcing you to have a baby against your will;" I'm trying to broaden the conversation and shed light on something that I don't see brought up often. I called adoption a taboo because few people are seem to be willing to talk about it. Your vitriolic response does little to sway me from that position.
2
@Autumn - Adoption is an alternative to parenthood, NOT an alternative to 9 months of pregnancy and risking one's life and health in a forced pregnancy.
As for adoption, you'd be surprised how many adopted children are unhappy because they lack a biological connection to the adoptive parents. Huge numbers of adoptees go on a search for their biological parents, looking for that missing connection they don't have with their adoptive parents. I think it's irresponsible if anyone is suggesting we force all pregnancies to come to term and then "just" adopt the children out. Besides, if every pregnancy were brought to term and many of those children were adopted, it wouldn't be long before the market for newborns to adopt was totally saturated. Then we'd start looking like Ceausecu's Romania.
5
The interesting thing about the real-time in utero imaging technology is that it has not brought about the mass conversion to right-to-lifism which right-to-lifers gleefully predicted when the technology first emerged. Instead, a new position on abortion has sprung up: those who are BOTH "pro-life" AND "pro-choice". Polls which allow respondents the option to identify as "both" consistently find that "both" outpolls "pro-life only", and also outpolls "pro-choice only". "Both" is a large and growing plurality position.
What does it mean when a respondent chooses "both"? Hard to say for sure, but, the most likely meaning is that choosing "both" means that the respondent considers fetuses to be live human persons, but supports the right to have an abortion anyway. In other words, the science is NOT the deciding factor.
5
As being both pro-life and coming from an advanced scientific background, I both understand and regret the pro-life movement's somewhat-off-the-mark reliance on "science" to define when human life begins.
The fact that the life of every human being who ever lived or will ever live began at conception is an absolutely incontrovertible scientific fact.
Questions of "viability" and "fetal pain" may be interesting, but ultimately divert us from addressing central question of the ethics of elective abortion - that is, the ethics the unencumbered, uncoerced decision to end the life one of our newly conceived sister or brothers. (BTW, most abortions take place weeks after conception, so think of a tiny rosebud, not a microscopic dot.)
Science can detect a human genome in that conceptus, but it cannot define what it is to be a human person. For those of us who are pro-life, science proves that abortion ends a human life and ethics makes known to us that elective abortion annihilates an unborn child.
2
@Hugo Furst
Hugo, remind me not to rely to heavily on your advanced scientific analysis on other topics. Your absolutism in the statement about when a life begins is a clear lapse in the scientific process. Conception is indeed the point at which the shared DNA sequencing for an individual is determined, but both the egg and the sperm were just as "alive" as the zygote by most definitions.
21
@Hugo Furst
Doctors define pregnancy as beginning with implantation in the uterus, but even that does not define a viable pregnancy. Many miscarry early, even more a missed period, and some do not survive the birth process.
8
@Hugo Furst: If you come from an advanced scientific background then you know what determines the outcome of fertilization and the subsequent gestation is the ordering of the A-T G-C pairs, their numbers, etc. If they are moved around appropriately--remove a few here, add a few there, change how they line up--what would have been a human can become a dog, or cow, or fish (maybe a rose?).
The outcome of that zygote you find so special is completely dependent on its DNA sequencing, and if you move it around, voila, no human. Maybe something else, or maybe nothing viable at all.
Yes lets pull real science into this. There isn't any soul, and there isn't anything more special about humans than any other creature other than perhaps the development of our cerebral cortices.
4
I would like to know more about the state of knowledge regarding implantation. I have heard different statistics about how many fertilized eggs fail to implant without any interference, or how much difference hormonal birth control or IUDs make in preventing either fertilization or implantation. This is a key part of "personhood" arguments and how they tie into the claim that birth control pills, or IUDs, or morning-after pills are equivalent to abortion (when in fact they're by far the most effective tools to make abortions less needed). If we could understand the disconnect between fertilization and implantation, that would highlight the ridiculousness of the idea that life crosses a magic threshold at the moment that sperm joins with egg.
4
@RM
Estimates of the percentage of fertilized eggs FAILS to successfully implant have increased over the decades. When I first started paying attention to this value in the 1970's, the figure was about 30%. Today, estimates suggest between 50% and 75%. So it would seem same to say that at least half of all conceptions do not implant.
However, if your reference to the "ridiculousness of the idea that life crosses a magic threshold" at fertilization is an allusion to the arguments many Christians make against abortion, you point is, paradoxically both (1) well taken, and (2) fails to undercut the deeper rationale of the traditional Christian objection.
Sadly, say I, many modern Christians have a adopted the "magic threshold" concept, assuming that biology thus proved their point. In fact the traditional Christian objection going back almost two millennia has to do with "ensoulment," the notion the God directly acts to create the immortal component of each human in the womb.
When Christians are eventually forced to fall back on "ensoulment" rather than "fertilization" (for the very reason you give) they will realize that the Christian objection to abortion is inexorably attached to our faith, to our believe in immortality; and thus our argument simple does not apply to the atheists.
Ergo, the law applicable to all, must allow abortion out of respect for freedom of conscience, but Christian are required to forgo abortion out of respect for the immortality of the fetus.
5
The science argument is about the wrong topic. Science is not relevant and will become less so because we're not far from the point at which any living cell with a nucleus containing a set of human chromosomes is a potential human being. At that point, for example, swabbing cells out of your cheek and sending them off for DNA sequencing will be destruction of a potential human being, too, and then the science argument becomes irrelevant. The real argument is more difficult. Society, and law, already make choices about which humans live or die, how safe they are or aren't, and who gets to make those decisions -- you don't have to think long to come up with examples where our law directly provides for killing even adult humans. Hopefully, such decisions are made in the interest of society including the interests in individual rights. That's the relevant argument. And to the extent that law is involved, religious views or dictates should not be determinative. In the abortion discussion, of course, a further issue is whether some participants in the debate would accept a legal outcome differing from their religious views or dictates, and what happens next.
8
What goes on behind closed doors. What goes on between a woman's legs- none of my business, none of yours. Obamacare ACA has the lowest teen pregnancy because contraceptives are mandated to be covered by everyone's insurance. The best way to curb abortions from a political/societal perspective? life long, affordable, local comprehensive women's reproductive care. Outlawing abortion. allowing one clinic per state, making it two and three days away, making contraceptives unavailable, shaming or promoting abstinence without education- a prescription for higher rates of both abortions and unwanted pregnancies.
68
What if 50 years ago instead of dividing into the "Pro-life" "Pro-choice" camps, there had been one movement started with the goal of reducing unwanted, unhealthy pregnancies to the bare minimum? All that energy. All that money. All that ferocious commitment focused on eliminating the need to even debate abortion? What if?
32
@operadog
Your suggestion is not only true retroactively, but provides a sound foundation for cooperation in the future.
The pro-live movement is primarily a Christian movement. On day, we Christians will realize that our believe in Freedom of Conscience means we must not force our reasons for objecting to abortion unto the secular world via anti-abortion laws that violate the Freedom of Conscience of others.
When that happens, then, exactly as you say, all this energy could profitably be redirected to deminishing the frequency of unwanted pregnancies.
And I would suggest that high quality universal sex education plus virtually free access to contraceptives would accomplish a lot.
Sadly, so many Christians find themselves irrationally objecting to both (1) abortion and (2) quality sex education + easy access to contraceptives.
12
@operadog
Therein lies the rub, to quote Hillary Clinton, why not make a world where abortion is legal but rare? The reality is outside medical decisions like saving the life of the mother, or where the parents have the horrid decision about a kid with severe defects and whether to go to term with it, a lot of abortions are basically a form of birth control, done to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy. The problem is that the pro life people, especially the conservative Catholics and evangelicals who are most of the pro life movement, are also anti sex. They fight against sex education, arguing it causes promiscuity, and cling to notions of sexuality from thousands of years ago, and with birth control having zero to do with scripture. They cling to the whole sex in marriage only, sex is for procreation (I don't care what they claim, that is their fundamental notion of sex), so they fight sex ed, they fight easy access to birth control because they aren't just anti abortion, they want to tie up sex, too, to a mythical time (that didn't exist) when people married as chaste virgins, sex was primarily to procreate..and as a result we have probably a million abortions that could have been prevented...and I won't even mention that pro life people are pro life until the baby is born, then it becomes "see ya, you are on your own'.
5
@operadog
Yes, reducing unwanted pregnancies would save a lot of women from the problem of obtaining abortions.
But this doesn't mean that abortion is "wrong." It only means that abortion is a bother that women would rather not have to endure, like an appendectomy.
And if a woman chooses to become pregnant, but then chooses to have an abortion, that is still her right.
4
Science is not conservative or liberal. It is apolitical.
Fetal viability has shifted a little, though less than anti-abortion people like to think. Your risk of a long, healthy life without disability is still not much better than 50-50 at 22-24 weeks. The biggest improvement in mortality was from the addition of lung maturing drugs some 30 years ago.
Fetal pain is still at around 25-26 weeks. Moving to avoid noxious stimuli before that is more like what an earthworm does...
And what many don't know: delivering a baby, whether by vaginal delivery or C-section is more dangerous to the mother than abortion...even surgical abortion. (New medical abortion is even safer.)
23
The abortion wars are not about babies, science, or the constitution. The abortion wars are about the control of women by men. For sure, religion has a role in this, but it is not the driving force behind men who are afraid of giving up control. Those women who march at pro-life rallies? Controlled by men. Aunt Lydia and the Handmaid's Tale is not a fantasy.
41
@Mimi I am a woman who is pro-life, and my husband is pro-choice. You don't get to speak for all women.
6
@Quinn
Why would you be pro life? You have no idea what you are doing to other women.
7
@Quinn
If you are what you call pro-life, then you are in favor of other women being controlled by men.
The anti-abortion laws are all being passed by overwhelming majorities of conservative male legislators.
4
The most common reason for an abortion is a lack of financial wherewithal. Interestingly over half of all pregnancies in the US are still unplanned and can (and sometimes do) tip an existing family into financial crisis. Why not start there?
19
@Katrin
I have seen no evidence that, as a group, those who call themselves Pro-Life are really pro-the-life-of-children. The groups are pro-birth, and that's it. I do know a couple of individuals who I respect because the do truly care about the lives of all and they do care about using all means to reduce the number of abortions (such as addressing the conditions which motivate it), but the behavior of "pro-life" groups overall does not match their stated goal.
Their behavior matches only the use of pregnancy and childbirth as punishment. That is why they really couldn't care less about the financial problems of the women they purport to care about.
8
@Katrin
Ya mean like the pro life people also heavily support the conservative agenda to get government out of our lives ie give huge tax cuts to the rich, paid for by slashing all social programs? Pro life in the US means protect the fetus, and not give a tinker's cuss about them or the mother once they are born.
5
@Katrin
I don't see any evidence for your assertion.
There can be many reasons why a woman is not ready to have a child.
All the women I know who have had abortions (and there are quite a few) simply were not yet ready to give up their freedom in order to raise a child.
4
I see both sides of this issue and don't want to see Roe overturned. However, calling a fetus a "clump of cells" is disingenuous. My niece delivered her baby at 19 weeks - he was fully formed and looked just like a small newborn. Yes, he definitely felt pain when they stuck needles in him. Sadly, he died after 10 days but make no mistake - he wasn't a clump of cells he was a real baby
7
@Lucy Taylor - No pre-term baby has survived if born before 22 weeks, and treated at a top notch NICU. Only about 25% of those survive, and of those who do, the majority end up with lifelong disabilities. Science hasn't managed to extend our ability to keep alive an infant born before 22 weeks.
As for pain, even full term newborns will cry when stuck with a needle but will stop the minute the stimulus is withdrawn. When my grandson was in a NICU 25 years ago, pediatricians were taught that newborns didn't feel pain. Some disagreed with that teaching but they pointed out what I just told you - that the second the stimulus was withdrawn, the infant stopped crying. They used to do cut-downs on my grandson to find a tiny vein, digging through leg tissue to dig one out, and all without any kind of anesthesia. And fwiw, he was a full term baby. And also fwiw, he didn't ultimately survive.
6
@Lucy Taylor
Who do you know that claims a 19 week fetus is just a clump of cells? Answer: No one.
Other than that, why your niece didn't know she was pregnant at 19 weeks is pretty unusual, unless she is very young and/or very overweight.
And just so you know, it is almost impossible to get an abortion at 19 weeks, unless you are in a blue state AND have pretty dire medical indications (e.g. life of the mother).
2
@priceofcivilization
Unless the state has some anti-abortion (and unconstitutional) law against it, it is perfectly legal to have an abortion at 19 weeks.
1
As Carl Sagan pointed out, there is no such thing in nature as a right to life. The religiously based belief that we are special enables us to abuse animals, restrict women's rights, and glorify zygotes, all in the name of wishful thinking about a life after death.
27
The law professor's overview of past and current efforts to enlist science into the controversy is lucid and useful.
On the other hand, the views she expresses as to whether the "underlying science" is conclusive or not, carry no weight whatsoever.
@Waltz - When the Green's, owners of Hobby Lobby, fought to be able to prohibit coverage of certain contraceptives, they claimed they were abortifacients. Science disagrees. But the court ruled that if the Green's had "a deeply held religious belief" contrary to the science, their beliefs should be allowed to determine coverage. That's not a good precedent for abortion rights.
8
@MegWright
That different. The Hobby Lobby case was a matter of fact: contraception is not abortion, no matter what the ignoramuses on the SCOTUS thought.
This article is about whether there is science behind when life supposedly begins, which is not factual but philosophical.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, during her confirmation hearing:
“It is essential to woman’s equality with man that she be the decisionmaker, that her choice be controlling,” Ginsburg told Senators during her four days of questioning by the Senate Judiciary Committee. “If you impose restraints that impede her choice, you are disadvantaging her because of her sex.”
The legal issue is the same: Do women have the same rights of individual agency as men? Or do women not have the same individual rights to make their own decisions as men, simply because of their sex? Do women have less rights than men because they can become pregnant, and therefore have no individual rights under the law when they are pregnant? Do they relinquish their rights to the government [the state] once they become pregnant, and the fetus has more rights under law than the mother carrying it?
Under the US Constitution, do women have the same rights as men, or not?
59
@L Or put another way, will the Supreme Court say that corporations are people but women are not?
12
No, this is not a "fight about science", whether the participants think it is or not. It is the selective use of science to bolster the case for one's values. Science has no position on "when human life begins"; that is a decision based on the individual's views about the nature of "human life". Science can only describe the process by which the sperm and the egg eventually become a fully developed organism. The point at which it becomes a human life is up to the observer, and one plausible view is that there is no specific point.
Analogous arguments can be made for the notions of "medical necessity" and significant "harm".
Ideological contenders always like to claim that their positions are based on the "facts". But it only distorts the role and function of science to try to enlist it as a combatant in the service of one's personal cause.
3
The courts have always had trouble forcing the square peg of science's provisional conclusions into their round hole of absolute true-or-false answers.
In particular courts stumble over the fact that one can always find *a* study or *a* scientist who will support any position, no matter how absurd. What matters is the consensus of the relevant scientific community, not what one wingnut or hired gun will testify to.
If judges are going to allow scientific evidence to decide cases they're going to need to educate themselves in both science and, more importantly, the philosophy of science.
2
Americans can't get over this issue because neither side can see the difference between killing and murder.
Yes, abortion is "killing" something that is alive and on its way to viability. No, abortion is not "murder."
By the way, I support abortion on demand for women of all ages without any parental consent.
13
@DD This is an interesting point. At least you're willing to say that abortion is killing. Abortion advocates usually try to avoid that basic fact -- so much for science.
1
The premise of this article is that "science should decide". That has led to "dueling science" as each side tries to use new facts "win" the "scientific debate".
I think it would be more consistent with democratic ideals to hold a clearly articulated referendum on access to abortion (as has been done in many countries).
Why not "trust the people" to decide directly what society's position on abortion should be rather than trust judges to interpret "dogmatized" science?
1
@formerpolitician - Which other of our rights should be subjected to referendum? How about civil rights for people of color? How about civil rights for LGBTs? There are many, many rights that we consider settled law, and although there'll always be people who disagree that "those" people are entitled to civil rights, our laws require that those rights be respected. Why is it ONLY women's rights to control their own bodies that should be voted upon?
3
@MegWright
You mistake my opinion.
What seems to be at issue concerning access to abortion is conflicting "rights". The "right" of the mother to control her body vs. the "right" of the unborn to security of person. Judging whose "rights" prevail is the issue. Hence, the scramble to "prove" that the fetus is a "person" - so that it can have full "rights".
This issue has challenged society in many countries. The voters in these referenda have generally decided that the woman's "right" to control her own body supersedes the fetus' "right" to security of person at least until the foetus is viable.
The most recent referendum on this issue was in Ireland and the rights of women by and large prevailed.
@formerpolitician
The opinion in your first post was pretty clear.
It said in effect that voting should determine whether a woman should have the right to control her own body.
The referenda to which you refer were held because there was opposition to official government policy. In the case of Ireland, the government bowed to the majority will.
But had it gone the other way, the women would still have had no access to abortion.
Voting is not the way to deal with human rights. They are guaranteed in the founding charter, the Constitution.
1
The abortion issue boils down to freedom. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...remember those quaint values that this nation was supposed to have been built upon?
Unless and until there comes a time when another person (male or female) can take over pregnancy from a pregnant woman, then you don't get a say whether a woman should have a right to terminate a pregnancy. I don't care if you're a concerned fellow citizen, a nosy neighbor, a disapproving parent or the partner who impregnated the woman in the first place. Unless you can a) take over physically carrying that child for 9-10 months (attending all prenatal appointments and avoiding all food, drinks, chemicals, etc. that endanger a pregnancy), b) go through the risk and pain of childbirth and several weeks or months of recovery c) and then assume the care and expense of caring for that child until the age of majority, then you get no say whatsoever regarding whether the mother of that child can terminate her pregnancy. It's a mother whose body, life and future is on the line and she is the only one qualified to make decisions regarding those issues.
78
It would be sad if the law courts gave equal credence to both sides of this argument.
For instance, in the case of a purported link between abortion and breast cancer, while there a number of 'experts' who support such a claim, every single involved learned medical body has sifted through all the evidence and find no support for such a link. Such is the nature of science. There can never be absolute proof for or against that purported link, but it would be unreasonable for an unbiased court to support the anti-choice suggestion that 'the science is unsettled'.
8
Funny that religious/conservatives are embracing science now after rejecting it as it applies to every other part of life. It won't work though because no one can even agree on a set of facts. How about addressing the circumstances that cause women to get abortions (lack of opportunities; un-affordable education; no access to health care; etc) and support them in their pregnancies (accessible pre/post natal care; affordable housing, child care and education; living wages and benefits; etc).
8
@Richard. Maybe some women just don't want to be pregnant. Some may not want children and would feel this way even if they could afford full time help. Some may not want a connection with the father.
2
It is not surprising that religious zealots would use bad science as a weapon to control women's reproductive lives for they are the same people who believe the bible is history, the virgin birth, deride evolution and believe male dominance over women is in God's plan.
When life begins is an opinion not a fact and opinions should not be forced on other humans. That is tyranny.
What is a certain fact that the anti choice people deny and refuse to believe including a recent Supreme Court Justice is that hormonal contraceptives do not cause abortions. Restricting contraceptives is really the end game for these people.
17
The "science" that will change abortion ... viability. I don't think we are ready for fewer and fewer weeks.. What's the plan?
Think this is where the fight is going to be very difficult.
2
Start by trying to argue the law.
Then argue the facts and the science.
Then if nothing else works, pound the table until the court listens to you.
Sadly, that last line is in there because it works on more occasions than it should. Yell loudly enough and people will remember that the law can change or be interpreted differently, and facts are all about how a person views them. You want the abortion debate to stop? Find a way to stop anti-abortion folks from slamming the table and spinning logic and science in a nonsense puritanical light.
You don't see a way? ... Me either.
42
@htg I do. Demand they prove that their "opinion" is NOT based on their religion. Prove it.
8
@htg. If you want to argue law, what is, and what should be, you must argue beliefs and belief systems. Only the most delusional are unable to see their own dependence on beliefs. All laws are beliefs in power and anchored to belief systems. You cannot tell someone it is wrong to speed in their car without relying on beliefs. You cannot define what murder is or differentiate it from moral killing without referencing a belief system. So instead of pretending you don't believe, take a moment to recognize what you have already believed, the belief systems on which you currently depend.
Some people don't want women to have abortions
Women's right to determine when and if to continue a pregnancy is the most fundamental civil right that women have
The rest is commentary
39
The debate which no one has is who are the parents of the fetus- no matter when you decide that a fetus is viable there is a mother and father involved.There is no immaculate conception.DNA is easy to obtain so each woman with a pregnancy also has a male partner who made the pregnancy possible. It is time for men to stop acting that a pregnancy is only owned by the woman- the men can be identified and are part of the calculation.They belong in the abortion debate-it is their child also.
1
@Janet Michael
Men don't carry a child for nine months and risk their health and their lives.
The donation of sperm is a matter of little time, no cost, and conveys no rights. And most definitely no right over another person's body.
The only role of a man in the abortion debate is to support a woman's right to choose.
1
The courts need to be educated on how peer review works.
4
The impure motives behind the big picture question - when does life begin - are exposed by religious disapproval, and even condemnation, for both the use of, and insurance coverage for, birth control and publicly funded sex education.
Drive abortion rates down by reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies. Then everyone - or at least everyone who's not a hypocrite - will be happy.
19
@common sense advocate - I was a young woman before legal birth control and before Roe. Then birth control became legal for MARRIED women, but illegal for a doctor to prescribe to an unmarried woman. THAT is prima facie evidence that it was always about controlling women's sexuality, and that's still where the opposition to contraception originates. Sadly, far too many people on the forced birth side believe that ONLY unmarried women get abortions, when married women DO get abortions for a variety of very good reasons.
12
The clearest and most compelling argument I have seen was on a bumper sticker:
Against Abortion? Then don't have one.
63
I’ve always been perplexed as to how the majority of anti-Choice proponents are also ‘Big Government’ opponents.
Anti-tax, anti-regulation, separation of Church and State. Except on the issue of a woman’s Right to Choose. That they want the Government to criminalize, for all women.
Hypocrisy or cognitive dissonance, you be the judge.
22
@Victor They forget, too, that a Big Government with the say-so on who MUST have a baby is also a Big Government with the say-so on who may NOT have a baby.
3
I’m not perplexed Pick either one and you’re right.
4
@Victor You forgot the second amendment, they want to kill everyone who isn't like them also.
3
One characteristic of Americans is their ability to persist. So many other, and civilized, countries have long since settled the abortion issue, essentially on the woman's right to choose. This strikes me as sensible, and hundreds of millions of people in these aforesaid countries live in peace with that. The defining difference is the power of religion in American public life, absent in other countries. Not religion, though; Christian evangelicalism. There are many arguments, I think, to be made against abortion . - maybe not - but one that will not stick is one that Christians hold over women. One runs up against the intractable problem of what to do with women who are not Christians, and what the heck is the Bible doing in the courts of the United States, up until recently a First World country, but now somewhere around Russia's status.
13
@Terence - It's not Christianity per se that's the problem. My Christian denomination is one of 40 members of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. They support full reproductive rights for women, including contraception and abortion. So what we have is SOME Christians attempting to hijack all of Christianity and speak for all Christians. Don't let them.
2
Why do conservatives always want to dictate reality, instead of accept it for what it is?
16
@arusso Usually, it's about money but in this case it's religion, which for some, is more powerful than reality.
3
@arusso Imaginary realities arusso what else, the defining ability of what makes humans different from other animals, that and language. The problem comes when we want to impose one imaginary reality on another imaginary realities. Or it could be vice versa. Either way we fight over these things.
1
Could we talk about women? Could we talk about the lives of women and girls? I am so tired of pictures that show a fetus floating, and somehow no woman is in the picture. OK, a fetus is alive, but it's a parasite, unable to sustain life on its own. And the woman or girl carrying it has a life, has a right to her life, has a right to make decisions about her own life.
37
@Blonde Guy Yes, and do they not have a right to self-defense? Even if we were to say that a fetus were a "person," if the mother's life, even her health and well-being are threatened, then she has the right to remove that threat. Look at the George Zimmerman case -- all he had to do was declare that he feared for his life and he was allowed to shoot a fully-grown, real live human being. And there's plenty to be afraid of in enduring pregnancy and childbirth, as any woman can attest to.
12
As a church-going man I have to go with what Genesis 2:7 has to say:
"Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being."
Life begins when you start breathing and ends when you stop breathing.
6
@Randy Hoops
I like that. Pretty close to the Jewish view too. So maybe God got it right...and maybe he or she is Jewish to boot!
That first gasp and cry is like a dramatic announcement: I made it, I'm alive. The past 9 months were all just preparation for entering the world. Now my journey begins.
1
And when Adam was born, Eve said God gave me a child, not 2 days after intercourse.
When roe v wade was decided the justices expected that science would eventually make roe v wade obsolete. For example, the viability of a fetus would be lowered by medical advancements, birth control advances would, hopefully, negate the need for abortions.
Alas, sometimes the future doesn’t arrive quickly enough....
Calling the abortion fight a disagreement about science is like saying Copernicus and the Catholic Church objectively interpreted the data on the earth's shape using different equations. Utter nonsense. In both cases one side uses scientific methods, and the other relies on God telling them what to believe.
231
@MPG
Your point is well taken but Copernicus and the church didn't disagree about the shape of the earth (spherical), they disagreed about its position. Church scholastics held that the earth was at the center of the universe. Copernicus argued that the earth orbited the sun which was at the center of the solar system.
See David Wooton "The Invention of Science: a New History of the Scientific Revolution".
16
@Steve M
I am embarrassed and saddened by my obvious mistake. I'd blame it on Trump for letting me think facts don't matter, but not really his fault in this case. Thank you.
23
God is not telling anti abortionists what to believe, people are. Lots of money and power
in telling people what God says.
5
The anti-abortion movement switches from one rationale to another as it becomes clear that they aren't convincing any new converts to join them. These shifts make them come across as dishonest. Although they're sure of their own moral superiority, they think "the end justifies the means." They'll adopt any argument that might work whether they really believe it or not.
Also seriously undermining their credibility is the hostility towards women they often fail to conceal. It's especially offensive when they're pretending to be deeply concerned about the well-being of women when everyone knows all they really care about are zygotes, embryos and fetuses.
16
At the bedrock, this question isn't about science; it's about the role of empiricism and the primacy of science and reason in our law.
Science is an enemy for people who insist that their presumed authority is merited. They won't let that delusion of inherent superiority be subjected to questions and tests. They can't answer the questions, so they won't let them be asked. They can't pass the tests, so they won't take them. They are better than you because they are better than you, so you need to comply. Period.
Abortion is just another skirmish in that struggle, following in the long line since slavery, women's suffrage, civil rights. They lose every time, but the fight thrills the rank and file believers. More important, it enriches the politicians who run on this retrogression. Nothing opens wallets like promising frightened people that you and you alone can make them great again, and nothing blinds them so nicely while you swindle them again. Which is why overturning Roe would be disastrous for the GOP:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/15/1582937/-Why-the-Right-Needs-Roe
10
Mary Ziegler is wrong. Abortion is about religion with the total rejection of science and logic. Is it reasonable for a woman to ruin her life for an unborn lump of cells? You can talk about potential but is it worth a woman giving up her potential for that of an unborn potential? Only if you have the delusional belief of a soul and mystical properties of life. Stop trying to use science to justify what is simply a moral question.
14
I have never seen such a group of lying, close-minded people in my life.
The science here is very much an issue, regardless of emotion or religious beliefs. At some point, like begins. The issue is determining when.
Which of you ignoramuses would say that it is NOT murder for a person to cut open a woman pregnant for 40 weeks and kill the fetus? Please raise your hand.
2
@Tom
40 weeks? Who said 40 weeks? That would indeed be tantamount to murder. Most pro-choice people
are willing to stipulate a reasonable cutoff gestational age after which voluntary abortion is no longer permitted because the fetus has become viable or nearly so.
2
@Tom - That's ridiculous. Current laws restrict abortion to the stage before potential viability, about 22 to 24 weeks, with certain crucial exceptions. NO ONE is pushing to lengthen that time frame.
And no, the issue is NOT "when life begins." That's the wrong question. If you grant full civil and human rights to a fertilized egg, then you automatically remove the civil and human rights of the living, breathing, sentient woman who happens to host that life. You'd force every pregnancy to be brought to term, forcing the woman to risk her life, her health, and her financial future, and sentencing the child to be raise by a woman who has ALREADY told you she's in no way equipped to be a mother. Statistics show that about 1/3 of male babies born unwanted end up in the adult correctional system for most of their adult lives. If you cared about babies, you'd care that every baby born was a WANTED child.
4
@Tom
Viability.
1
After the red staters outlaw abortion, they can move on to outlawing heroin in their communities. Then both problems will be solved and forever eliminated! Oh wait... Maybe outlawing something with widespread demand doesn't work after all.
13
Nationalizing a woman's womb for the 'benefit of society' is slavery. Remember the horrors of the Romanian orphanages, and the horrors of the Chinese one-child policy: two sides of the same totalitarian coin.
28
I suspect overturning Roe will ensure a robust cross-state black market of abortion pills.
4
It would be useful if the term "Pro Life" were replaced by the term "Pro Birth".
I have mixed views about abortion, but I would would find the anti abortion movement more plausible if they were more prepared to recognise that life continues after birth and that many mothers cannot cope with a new child, even a perfectly health one, for emotional, financial, health or other reasons.
The attitude of many pro lifers/birthers seems to amount to you got pregnant, it's your problem.
27
@ Frank - To be accurate, we'd have to change "Pro Life" to "Forced Birth" because that's really what they want - forcing a birth at any cost. Doesn't matter if that birth destroys a woman. Or if the fetus is viable. She got pregnant so she loses control over her destiny - and if God wants her to suffer, she should suffer - as long as possible.
6
@Frank Bannister - The forced birthers tend to think of that unwanted child as punishment for the mother for having sex without the intent to procreate. Sadly, "punishment children" don't fare well in our society.
6
The death of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland due to Irish doctors being afraid to treat her during a miscarriage (fearful of abortion laws) is instructive at this time. It will take only one GOP daughter, wife,or sister to die, for the anti-choice activists to have empathy for women in this situation. Ms. Halappanavar's baby was not viable and in fact died in utero, even though the pregnancy was very much wanted. Failure to help the pregnant woman sealed her fate, and she died, too. But Ms. Halappanavar didn't die immediately; she suffered over several days. It was tortuous and her husband had to watch.
37
@New reader No. The loudest opponents of legalized abortion are the privileged who quietly have abortions when they find themselves pregnant. My sense is that many GOP wives, daughters, and sisters will be able to secretly travel to a foreign country were abortion is legal. Those who will suffer from a possible Roe vs. Wade overturn will be poor and marginalized women who can't afford to travel.
14
The value of human life is the foundation of human rights; all cultures value the preservation of human life. Unique human life begins at conception. Therefore abortion is the termination of human life, which devalues all life. This is sound philosophic reasoning, and the moral basis for opposition to abortion.
Women can't fully participate in modern life if they can't control when they have babies, particularly when many choose to eschew children until after the age of 30. Contraception is imperfect, so we need abortion as a fall-back. This is a sound utilitarian argument for the right to have an abortion.
When we choose a point other than the beginning of life to grant full human rights to a developing human, we create a conundrum. Surely a baby one minute before emerging from the birth canal has the same humanity as it does one minute later? We don't let the mother decide the fate of the baby's life after it emerges from the birth canal, so why does she hold the power of life and death over it one minute earlier? And if not at birth or at conception, where in the continuum between the two do we draw a line?
There is not one right answer to this knotty problem of balancing the value of human life and the enormous burden an unwanted pregnancy places on a woman. I think it is important for all concerned to acknowledge the substantive arguments of the other side. Rational people will find your well reasoned favorite solution cruel and inhuman.
5
@Tom The question of when full and complete life begins is not simply answered. And it is not merely a matter of picking a point on the physical development scale. If you accept that a human being has a "soul" or spirit, then the question of when that becomes present becomes a large factor. Ultimately, the answer to the question is something that every person must come to on their own, according their best understanding of all the moral issues involved. No one should be allowed to impose their understanding on others by force of law. And that is why it MUST be left to the woman involved to make decisions about her own pregnancy, her own situation.
No one else can rightfully usurp those decisions and impose their own viewpoint on her.
5
@Tom no mother "holds the power of life and death" over a baby one minute prior to birth. Abortion at 40 (or 38, or 36...) weeks is not legal anywhere. Rather, the latest that elective abortion is legal in any state is 24 weeks. The vast majority of abortions occur prior to 12 weeks. A 12-week fetus is "uniquely human" in that it will develop into a human baby eventually. But the reason that abortion at that stage is constitutionally protected is because a woman's right to bodily autonomy and to control her own healthcare decisions outweighs any possible government interest in the potential human life encapsulated in that embryo.
Indeed, if conception is the point at which a being is entitled to "full human rights," then we should outlaw freezing embryos immediately. There is an implicit recognition that embryos are not entitled to full human rights.
Similarly, even in countries where abortion is illegal, there is typically an exception for cases of rape and incest. That the fetus in those cases is the product of rape is not the fetus's fault, and yet, fewer rights are conferred upon such a fetus. So even in such countries, there is at least some recognition that a fetus has less than "full human rights."
Every argument in opposition to pre-viability abortion is, at its root, based upon a premise that women are entitled to less than full human rights. Simply put, the anti-abortion movement is on the wrong side of the human rights debate.
9
Birth is not a minor event. It is a miracle to anyone who witnesses it for the first time. Not so conception.
The terms "junk science," and "debunked" often are used to shut down debate.
Abortion rights proponents have consistently moved the goal posts since Roe v. Wade, which allowed abortion in the first trimester and allowed the state to regulate it thereafter.
Then, abortion rights proponents argued that "viability" was the real test. Now, they simply say it's a mother's personal choice ... even as the baby is exiting the birth canal.
That is hardly a winning argument based on science.
As medical technology has pushed the age of viability earlier in the gestational period, 'science' has spoken. To claim otherwise is to push a version of science that does not live up to the word.
2
The abortion wars have produced some of the most ludicrous and egregious assaults on women's healthcare, defying peer-reviewed, longitudinal scientific studies. I stand on solid ground when I say that no one in the anti-abortion movement would accept healthcare based on their versions of science. Instead, they benefit from science-based medical advances every moment of every day whether taking medications for diabetes or being treated for a fractured hip. Bottom line? Like their use of Jesus as a cudgel to shame women, they've now weaponized science in their peevish battle against abortion and the lives of women.
40
@Kathryn Ranieri It used to be that Eugenics and lobotomies were considered to be part of modern scientific and medical thought. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, was a particularly energetic supporter of Eugenics.
We probably won't know in our lifetimes how abortion is regarded by future generations. But don't be too shocked if they view abortion rights supporters in the same light they see eugenicists.
4
@Liberty hound Lobotomies have fallen out of favor like blood leeching because we have amassed a body of scientific knowledge to better guide care; that care can include psychosurgery to ablate small portions of the brain. And, like the progression from lobotomies to targeted brain surgery, eugenics are now operating under the sophisticated cloak of respectability, called the American Way, as seen in our immigration policies, our many military skirmishes and outright wars on humans because they are deemed undesirable and threats to our freedom, our abysmal maternal death rates of women of color and our convenient, sometimes deadly, marginalization of people of color, LGBT, poor people and women. As for how people regard abortion in the future, I'd speculate that current practices will continue to recognize the need for pregnant persons to have access to this important health care. It's a matter of life for pregnant people.
4
@Liberty hound - Abortion used to be legal iun the US, and there's not one word against it in the bible. The only passage in the bible that mentions it at all is one in Numbers, where a priest provides a man with an herbal abortifacient to force his wife to take to rid her of what's thought to be her lover's child.
In the US, "Despite campaigns to end the practice of abortion, abortifacient advertising was highly effective in the United States, though less so across the Atlantic. Contemporary estimates of mid-19th century abortion rates in the United States suggest between 20-25% of all pregnancies in the United States during that era ended in abortion.[11] This era saw a marked shift in those who were obtaining abortions. Before the start of the 19th century, most abortions were sought by unmarried women who had become pregnant out of wedlock. Out of 54 abortion cases published in American medical journals between 1839 and 1880, over half were sought by married women, and well over 60% of the married women already had at least one child.[12] The sense that married women were now frequently obtaining abortions worried many conservative physicians, who were almost exclusively men. In the post-Civil War era, much of the blame was placed on the burgeoning women's rights movement."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States#Rise_of_anti-abortion_legislation
5
I fundamentally object to the use of the word "Science" in the title - it (unintentionally?) gives credibility to the junk science the anti-abortionists use to justify their actions.
As @EDM points out in his comment earlier, the scientific method is well established and not controversial. The attempt to discredit sound scientific methods and "who has the authority to determine them" is simply a way by the anti-abortion people to avoid an indisputable frame of reference to debate the issue. Why? They'd lose the argument.
If the anti-abortionists wish to make a case against the termination of a fetus, it is incumbent of them, in the same breath, to take responsibility to provide for a healthy and nurturing future for that new-born. That includes a whole social support structure for the parents, including medical care, child support, kindergarten, school and college education. Simply saying I am opposed to "killing an unborn child" but I don't care about its quality of life is a non-starter.
35
Levonorgestrel a.k.a. Plan "B" should be made available over the counter, without a prescription.
45
@BKNY
Levonorgestrel a.k.a. Plan "B" should be made available over the counter, without a prescription, at an affordable price, even if that means helping those with limited means.
1
@BKNY
It has been; I could go to CVS and buy a packet right now. It’s on the shelf next to the condoms. I think (but am not totally certain) that you have to be 18 to buy it OTC, and need a prescription if you’re younger. It’s not cheap, though, and that’s a significant barrier to access for some women. I think it (and other contraception) should be covered by SNAP and WIC; it would pay for itself in a year or two as the number of WIC recipients went down.
@BKNY
You can get it over the counter without a prescription.
When zealots misappropriate scientific terms its not a scientific debate. This is the same conflict as "intelligent design", which of course, is neither intelligent nor proof of any design.
65
What I learned from dialoging with pro-life and pro-choice people is that Absolute Truth is the strong philosophical concept at the of core of one group, while Situational Ethics guides the other. Healthy human sexuality is regarded as lust by the religious right and a gift by the left. Contraception is viewed by the left as far more perfect than it really is, while the right views it as imperiling marriage and families, since divorce rates began to rise as the Pill was first developed in the early Sixties.
Moral arrogance rules the right, intellectual arrogance the left, in my opinion. As an ob/gyn and abortion provider who listened to women making their decisions for decades, I know that these debates were peripheral to their central concern: what was right for their lives, their families and their future families.
A little more humility on both sides would go a long way to understanding each other and improving care for women and their families.
12
If all that is to say that the woman is the best to decide, I'd agree. Outlawing it makes that impossible. Restrictions make it more difficult.
12
Scientific ideas about human life and fetal development are by no means irrelevant to the debate over abortion, but science alone can never settle this comple moral and ethical issue. Justice Blackmun was correct when he observed in Roe v. Wade that scientists, physicians, philosophers, religious thinkers, and Americans generally disagreed over the definition of human life and the moment at which life begins. Given such disagreement, Blackmun asked, how could nine unelected judges possbily be expected to settle the question? I don't try to force anti-abortion Americans to accept my view of human life, and I think they should similarly refrain from trying to use the law and the courts to force me and millions of other pro-choice Americans to accept theirs. This issue cannot be settled scientifically. It may be that it cannot be settled at all. So it seems to me that the only workable solution is to respectfully agree to disagree.
17
Great column, thanks. The anti-abortion movement increasingly argues that "science is on their side" because that sounds a lot better than carrying a banner proclaiming "Forced-birth on demand." Which is what they do actually stand for.
Me, I'm an old school feminist. I support the right to abortion on demand without apology.
93
@UI
As a feminist myself, I don't recall this simplistic definition of abortion rights ever being a part of feminism. This is the rhetorical opposite of China's policy on forced abortion.
1
@Susan Lemagie
If memory serves, I believe I first heard a feminist scholar use it at the outset of a talk she gave in the 1980s that addressed the faulty teleological arguments of the era's zygote-obsessed side (i.e., their wrongheaded assumption that every fertilized egg is destined to become a child). She said that her talk would explore their arguments as a foundation for developing her counterclaims, but that she wanted to be clear up front that her own position was in favor of "abortion on demand without apology."
The talk took place in the late Reagan or early Bush I era, when feminists were very much playing defense (along with everyone else from the liberal to the left end of the spectrum), and many of us in the room (mostly graduate students) were thrilled to hear a scholar a few years ahead of us offer a no-holds barred embrace of what we perceived as the most fundamental of all women's rights.
I still feel that way. And I don't think my position is remotely simplistic because it is a position that tries to fully recognize and support the incredibly complex array of experiences that lead girls and women to seek abortions in the first place.
As for your claim that what I offer is "the rhetorical opposite of China's policy on forced abortion," I can only make sense of that accusation if you are misinterpreting me to be arguing that women should be forced to undergo an abortion if someone else demands it? Well, no, I am not.
13
@UI
PS: I believe the scholar in question was (the brilliant) Mary Poovey, and that the talk later was published as an essay called "The Abortion Question and the Death of Man" in a book titled Feminists Theorize the Political. But I might be misremembering and, if so, I'll here extend my apologies to Prof. Poovey in advance.
1
I'm disappointed the article (like perhaps the broader debate) doesn't seem to mention fetal consciousness or mental function, but only viability and pain. The development of the brain seems like a key factor in determining exactly when in a pregnancy to prohibit abortions.
3
@Jeff
We can't measure fetal consciousness or mental function. Neurons firing do not equal thoughts and we don't even have a working definition of consciousness: is a dog conscious? a snail? a cockroach?
4
The author writes about disagreement over the "basic facts" of the science. What are those basic facts? And what do established professional scientific societies that have published the research in this area say about them? Just like the fake "debate" on climate science that has been racing through the American media for decades now -- leaving us the only major country with a government in denial of the truth -- this article makes opinion superior to fact. All non-scientist need to know what science says is true so they can develop informed opinions on what policy should be.
11
I believe that no person has a right to another person's body. If you believe that a clump of fertilized cells is a "person," then you must accept that person is using another's body without permission. There is no sound argument for why a fetus gets to be a person, but also gets to use another person's body without their consent.
62
@Randall 'sound argument' give me a break it's called nature
@Randall - There are two classes of "persons" in the US: corporations and fetuses.
8
Why is murder wrong in the first place? Is it a moral argument or an economic one?
If it is a moral argument it is a religious judgement. Attached to an organized religion or not, the underlying assumption is a metaphysical balance between right and wrong. I'm not sure the lion and the tiger would agree, LOL. Regardless, we have a prohibition on allowing the state to champion the policies of the church. This argument is therefore a non-starter.
I argue that murder is an economic crime having to do with property rights. Every human being is at the center of a web of obligations and debts, running in two directions, towards and away.
A member of society is expected to contribute to the success of his family, workplace, community, and is also expected to recompense any type of credit society has extended to him, be it educational, financial or whatever. The murder of any person thus cuts the cords of all commitments to and from instantly and is the most egregious violation of property rights possible.
A woman, giving birth has made an investment and is expecting a benefit. The child is also the product of a civilization that expects some contribution. The most important one being that he or she engage in reproduction to carry on the species.
A fetus does not lie at the center of such a web. Up to a certain point in it's development a fetus has no economic life, no obligation to society, and no reasonable claim for more investment from anyone but Mom.
6
Unless we, as a society, intend to reduce half the population to just being incubators, there is no discussion, scientific or otherwise.
49
Pregnancy has serious impacts on a woman's body. Some are life-threatening. No one should have the right to insist that a woman take the risks involved.
To my mind, an acceptable "compromise" is to make abortion readily available in the early months of pregnancy and allow restrictions as the fetus develops. Exactly when the restrictions make sense are subject to the same kind of debates as other aspects of abortion law.
I have always believed that the ultimate solution would be to develop a medical procedure that is at least as safe as abortion and would remove a fetus when a woman decides, for whatever reason, that her pregnancy must be terminated. I don't know if such a procedure is even theoretically possible, but I'd like to see some investment into research pursuing it.
7
@Betsy S - What you suggest makes sense from the point of view of the woman involved. But you forget the orphaned fetus. Let's say it could be incubated outside the womb. Then, when born, it's automatically an orphan who must be handed over to someone else to nurture and raise. We know how that worked out in Romania. How about every child we bring into the world be a wanted child. Wanted by its parents, not by anonymous strangers or even orphanages.
3
I don’t see science as having any import on this issue. It’s personhood that’s being debated, when a human life begins, and this is not a scientific question. Because there can be no scientific or empirical proof one way or the other, I feel that our default position has to be pro-choice. If reasonable people can have different ideas about what an embryo or fetus is, we have to respect the wishes of each reasonable to decide for herself, without demanding that others follow suit.
43
The only moral and logical way to view abortion is that a woman has sole responsibility over her body, and the fetus is not a person and has no rights until it is born.
Accept this view, and we can end the abortion debate and turn to how best to reduce unwanted pregnancy, and give women the support they need to have and raise a baby when they decide to, not anyone else.
103
@Eric
And here is the paradox/conundrum or whatever you want to call it. The same people who oppose abortion also oppose contraception. They are utterly irrational. They basicly oppose sex.
29
@Eric: Why is your opinion “[t]he only moral and logical way to view abortion”? Did someone appoint you God? Or am I missing something?
1
As much as it would be wonderful if science could settle this destructive argument once and for all, it isn't going to happen. The anti-abortion side of the argument has been straining the limits of reason to include everything associated with birth control in their holy crusade to subjugate women while the woman's rights side have mostly just stuck to maintaining the ability of women to have some control over their reproduction.
Given the extreme nature of the attack on women's rights, there is no ground for reasonable compromise. If women were generously supported with easily accessible reproductive services, including early abortion then it would be possible to justify limiting abortions to first trimester or even slightly earlier.
Sadly the war on women rages on.
22
I am amazed at how so many opponents of abortion are also against programs that promote good nutrition for children, high-quality education, reliable and affordable healthcare, and shelter from the elements. I remain amazed at how many of them are for the death penalty.
Wait, no, "amazed" is not the word. I meant "appalled."
I mean, if it is so important for a fetus to become a bouncing newborn baby, why is it somehow less important to ensure that the baby grows up with great chances to have an active and fulfilling life?
220
@Jacob Sommer
It's because the baby is not really the issue. Making women live according to what fundamentalists define as their "essence" is really the issue: women are for having babies and being mothers.
38
@Jacob Sommer
Aren't you making a sweeping generalization? The people that I have worked with who are pro-life, are just that pro-life and work to make life better. That includes support after babies are born. That includes actions to combat food insecurity.
Have you ever talked with a BirthRight center volunteer?
4
@L M D'Angelo you may be correct about some pro-life activists, but it sure isn’t reflected in Republican politics. Several Republican-controlled states have anti-abortion laws that put women in jail for stillbirths and miscarriages, while also doing their best to reduce social supports such as Medicaid, food stamps, etc.
44
This informative and well-written piece ignores a basic problem -- perhaps because the author assumes that almost everyone already gets it: the abortion debate is about morals, on which neither science nor law can rule. I personally cannot find the constitutional right to abortion that the Supreme Court created in Roe v. Wade, but I do believe that the Court was correct in basing their decision not on the morality of terminating a pregnancy but rather on what the law says. The right to abortion, for better or for worse, and just like the "election" of George W. Bush, has been and will be determined by the majority of nine Justices. The "underlying science" is at best an excuse for a given view.
11
@joel bergsman Sorry morals are man made. No one forces a woman to get an abortion but many people want to stop women from protecting her health and welfare.
3
The fact that the March for Life folks are not storming down the gates of the offices of reproductive endocrinologists shows how little to do with science and everything to do with emotion. Millions of zygotes are formed every year in vitro and destroyed in the IVF process with nary a peep. Even more millions are kept in cold storage until the parents decide they are done having children and let them just sit, or thaw out. Why no protesters? The people they cater to are overwhelmingly white and middle class or wealthier. These people will always have access to a pregnancy of termination just as they did before Roe vs. Wade when their private ob/gyn would put D&C for Missed Abortion (aka miscarriage) and no one the wiser.
160
@KHM This times one million. I wonder how many of those protesters actually had IVF themselves?
6
It’s pretty absurd that America’s population of religious zealots has actually convinced so many women that it is in their interest to oppose legal access to a medical procedure which can potentially save their lives.
It must be nice to believe so firmly that one’s creator has granted them the right to deprive other individuals of free agency.
176
@ubique At what point does a baby become an "individual of free agency?" I always liked what Ronald Reagan said: "I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born."
3
@ubique
(Except in the case of rape.) Women have the ability to control their bodies and still not become pregnant.
If abortions were truly to save the life of the mother and not for the inconvenience of a pregnancy, how many would there be?
1
@common sense - If any of us had been aborted, we'd never have known the difference and life would have gone on nicely without us.
18
Seems to me the bedrock of anti-abortionism is the notion that babies are the (pick one) consequence / price / punishment for having sex. Otherwise it's pure hypocrisy when the concern for the child's rights & well-being stops at the moment of birth. Science has never had anything to do with it.
212
@Observer
Dear Observer,
I am a bit ambivalent about abortion but I think your 3 alternatives that result from having sex are lacking.
The 4th alternative is a new born baby with all the delight that a child can bring into the life of a family.
I do agree, science really has had little conclusive to add to the argument.
1
@gpickard - 2-3 women die in childbirth in the US every day, and hundreds more a day suffer complications that leave them with lifelong health problems or disabilities. So that's another alternative to having a "bouncing baby." Statistics also show that bringing a child into the world when you're not emotionally or financially equipped to nurture or support it brings almost a guarantee of poverty for the family, and is highly likely to produce a situation in which a child is resented, neglected, and sometimes abused or even killed.
18
@Observer
Well-stated. Sex is too often viewed a sin in theocratic eyes of anti-abortionists. Theocratic because a large portion of their movement is grounded in religious interpretations by the Catholic and/or Evangelical Christian sects.
American government is secular so it's fair to all citizens by favoring no one religion or sectarian interpretation. The Constitution guarantees every citizen the Freedom of (and from) Religion. That said, I wish the anti-abortion folks would keep their religion out of our secular government. If they choose to not have an abortion, that's their choice but they cannot choose for all women by criminalizing safe medical and reproductive services.
6
In 2014, the SCOTUS, in the Hobby Lobby case, held that a closed corporation had a Constitutional "freedom of religion" right that was superior to the government' law in a reproductive rights case.
The 'freedom of religion" is a right ratified by the states in the beginning. Under Hobby Lobby it would seem that any reproductive rights law must weighed against a person's "freedom of religion". As all recent restrictive laws are based on religious foundations, "Personhood laws" would be a violation of the "establishment" clause as the Court held that belief that life begins at conception was a religious belief, indeed "a deeply held religious belief".
Hobby Lobby was a 5-4 decision for the right wing of the Court. But what "is good for the goose is good for the gander".
3
All things being equal, Roe is on a collision course with science and technology anyway. In 1973, it was highly unlikely that a 24-week fetus (for instance) would survive outside the womb. Today, technology makes it possible for children born extremely early to survive. As technology advances, does the trimester approach still make sense?
Eventually we will need, as a society, to confront the issue of whose rights take precedence: the pregnant woman's, or the fetus' rights. Is there a time frame within which this would apply? Is there a developmental stage beyond which the fetus' rights would supersede the pregnant woman's? This is the real collision with science, but it is not how science is being engaged today.
We also, as a society, focus exclusively on abortion, but not on the other choices. I am a beneficiary of Roe. I am immensely grateful that it has stood. I want all women to have the right to choose. That is why I would like to see us focus not only on that particular part of the picture, but also on income inequality, health care, child care, support for those who choose to keep the child, support for those who choose to abort, and support for those who give the child up for adoption.
No one is talking about the bigger picture, and women will be the losers - and that is the one thing that doesn't change.
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@Andy Jo - MAYBE 22 wks. and that is really pushing it. until someone invents an artificial womb anything before that involves a lack of lung development that is not treatable.
But the majority of abortions take place before 14 weeks, so it's a moot point.
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@Andy Jo - No pre-term infant has survived if born before 22 weeks, and of those, only 25% survive, and that's if they're born in a hospital with a state of the art NICU. Of that 25%, the vast majority suffer complications that leave them with lifelong disabilities. So since 1973, the ONLY progress has been to be able to save a tiny fraction of infants born at 22 weeks and after. There's a limit to what science can do when it's up against human development. Unless there's an artificial womb developed, and the means to transfer an infant from the uterus into the artificial womb, then we're about at the end of "progress" when it comes to saving pre-term infants.
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@Andy Jo: "No one is talking about the bigger picture [income inequality, health care...]...". You might want to read about the "reproductive justice" movement (try a Google search with that phrase in quotes). E.g., from Wikipedia, the movement defines reproductive justice as "the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities."
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It's my religious and philosophical perogative not to believe in fetuses as souls or whatever. I think the abortion debate is really about whether women have the right to choose to have children or not. And until the right to lifers can convince me that they are willing to provide full economic, emotional, physical, educational, and health care for every child born, I will continue to hold my present position. Also if a woman does not want to carry a child, she shouldn't have to.
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@Rebecca Hogan
Should the mother have the right to terminate the child's life if she decides she doesn't want it 5 minutes after the birth? Your arguments apply as well after the birth as before. If not, why should she have that right 5 minutes before the birth? This is a hypothetical, because no doctor would abort a baby about to be born. Why? Because it would be no different from infanticide.
So if a woman's right to live her own life gives her the right to terminate a developing fetus early on, and if killing baby's about to be born is infanticide, we're stuck with drawing an arbitrary line somewhere in between. There's no easy answer.
Arguing that new life starts when sperm meets egg is logically consistent, but impractical and deeply unfair to the mother. Your argument for the right to terminate a new life is perfectly sensible from a utilitarian basis, but it justifies infanticide without tempering it with some respect for human life. Please don't pretend that your solution is complete, and that human life has no value until a mother deems it worthy. No individual should have the absolute power of life and death over another.
I agree that a woman should have the right to kill the fetus up to somewhere in the 4 month range, long enough for her to realize she's pregnant and act. Beyond that, only if her health is threatened. Women have rights, but they have responsibilities too, as does the society to value and protect life, and to pay for an adoption.
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@Rebecca Hogan
I am no 'right-to-lifer', not even close. But when you state, "And until the right to lifers can convince me that they are willing to provide full economic, emotional, physical, educational, and health care for every child born . . .", you must be careful. Many couples, and singles, would jump at the opportunity to adopt.
No, it seems to me that you state the fundamental issue in your concluding sentence, and almost as an afterthought - that "if a woman does not want to carry a child, she shouldn't have to". It is only about this, about a woman's right to choose.
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@Tom
Re: "Women have rights, but they have responsibilities too" --
-- and why, in your view, are women to be uniquely tasked with bearing this "responsibility"? -- and "required" to continue a pregnancy after four months? --
-- when pregnancy can threaten a woman's life, whereas men do not ever have to live under such a threat by a fetus?
It is obvious you have no knowledge of women who have had abortions past the 4 month range because it was discerned that their pregnancy was threatening their lives. Or because the fetus was so negatively affected by a genetic deformity (can you say, "anencephalus"?) that there was no point at having the woman endure further months of gestation.
It is also obvious you have not become informed about the recent reports in the news of the USA's high rate of maternal deaths -- to include women with medical complications in pregnancy who for one reason or another who carried babies to term -- and it killed them.
Check it out at:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/07/31/high-maternal-death-rate-shames-america-developed-nations-editorials-debates/866752002/
I got news for you: Pregnancy can kill.
For that reason, only women should have the right to determine for themselves whether they choose to continue a pregnancy -- despite the months "along" that pregnancy may be.
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I disagree. This is an argument about science versus emotion and empiricism versus religious superstition. Blind faith is not an argument.
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@Chuck Burton
“Religion gives us certainty without proof; science gives us proof without certainty.”
-Ashley Montagu
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So tired of this issue. There will never be a definitive answer that satisfies everyone, so act according to your own beliefs and leave others to act according to theirs.
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@Pat But what if someone were to say they didn't find murder morally reprehensible? Would you say "to each their own"? I happen to be on the fence on this particular issue, but I don't get the argument that permitting the killing of unborn children (if that's what you think it is) is a good compromise.
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@JKR
Some murder is lawful and thought of as morally justified such as capital punishment, self defense, war, and stand your ground.
Bu when it comes to the fetus which lives inside the mother and effects the body and the future life of the woman then termination can't be done under any circumstances including the life of the mother. The fetus becomes the only thing that matters.
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@Christina I think you've got the analogy flipped. Murder is generally prohibited but thought justified in very limited circumstances. Abortion, at least under today's status quo, may be performed for any reason, or none at all. There's no reason that a right to life position couldn't make similar exceptions for when abortion is justified. Indeed, the Catholic Church teaches that it is justified in certain circumstances, including when the mother's health is in danger (and, yes, some Catholics get that wrong but that is the official church position).
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There already is a well established way to weigh scientific evidence: well controlled peer-reviewed research that can be reproduced by others.
Sham "expert" groups set up by anti-choice advocates to support their pre-established beliefs do not qualify as "science." To suggest that such groups qualify as representing "science," as both the title and the content of this article might be taken to imply, is an affront to those who have worked over centuries to develop the scientific method.
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@EdM The overwhelming majority of these sham experts and their pseudo-scientific organizations are simply front groups for conservative religious groups who are appalled at the notion that women should have access to comprehensive reproductive healthcare.
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@Kathryn Ranieri
And who use it to motivate certain groups of voters and distract them from policy issues.
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@EdM
Thank you for expressing my immediate reaction to this “balanced” reporting. When will journalists learn about false equivalency? They try to turn science into he said/she said.
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