It is well known and not disputed that, for social, cultural and economic reasons, parents in Asia use abortion as a means to eliminate unwanted female children in favor of sons. New research published in the Proceedings of ...(back to the article)
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I'm not sure if anyone is reading this thread anymore, but in case you are I just want to point out that Prof. George actually invites you to enter into reasoned argument with him (see page 207 of "Embryo"), and convince him if you believe he is wrong. How many of you who disagree with his position are prepared to take up this challenge? Sara, I will follow up with you by email.
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Hi Joe, I certainly would meet with Prof. George. But I don't expect to get around to reading his book until the summer and won't be on campus after that (assuming that I actually graduate). But I'm sure his book will stand on its own.
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Sara, I am sorry about the condescending tone of my post. Thank you for responding, even though you are under thesis pressure right now. When you are done with your thesis, I will consider corresponding directly with you. However, please consider that your location on the Princeton campus gives you the rare opportunity to have this conversation in person with Robert George himself. I am certain that he would welcome you and treat you with respect. His book does indeed deal with the issue you raise regarding the nature of the embryo, so please read it when you get a chance. Best of luck with your thesis.
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Something that has no arms, no legs nor a head and looks like a large piece of chewed gum at 3 months following conception is a clump of tissue with no chance of becoming a living breathing human being, no matter what you think and/or say. It is precisely the reason this non-viable clump of tissue, foreign to the mother, is aborted naturally through a miscarriage ending the pregnancy.
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a very interesting website i came across on sex selective abortions: http://unwantedgirlchild.blogspot.com
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@@previous... was just using it as a familiar expression. not meant to be insulting. i apolgize if that's how it cam across.
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Sara, it's awfully ironic to hear you cry condescension, in view of your own post on this very thread: "so a word to the wise, be careful with that line of argument."
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Just one other thing... you could tone down the condescension just a tad. It doesn't really help your case.
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Joe, Though I haven't found time yet to read his entire book (I am a senior, I have a thesis due on May 1st, so cut me some slack, eh?), I have read an excerpt. George does an excellent job of establishing that an embryo is a human organism. But, there was never any disagreement on that. I agree that an embryo is a human organism, and never thought or said otherwise. But that says absolutely nothing about whether or not every human organism deserves our protection, whether it has a "right to life." Furthermore, it says nothing about whether a woman's right to govern her own body could in some cases supercede the embryo's right to life (if it indeed has one). I apologize if this is dealt with in another chapter of "Embryo" that I haven't read, but I assure you I will read it and if you like, you can provide me with your email address and I'll contact you over the summer with my answer.
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Brandon has argued his point well, both in the article and in his posts. No doubt he has studied the work of Robert George, one of the brightest stars at Princeton today. The pro-choice arguments about alternative views of personhood have all been exposed and demolished in his book "Embryo: A Defense of Human Life". Sara Viola, I suggest you find a copy and read it carefully. Then maybe you can find an original argument to justify abortion. But I'm betting you can't.
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@previous: You're simply denying that a human organism exists from the completion of conception. That's not an argument, and it's you, not I, that needs to do some embryology reading. From the way you're phrasing things, though, it sounds as if you're referring to a "human being" only as a mature human being...perhaps an infant or even an adult, in which case we have a serious disagreement about terminology.
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Sometime when you want to learn what develops when during a pregnancy week by week feel free to educate yourself. The clump of tissue that my friend miscarried at 3 months was a clump of cells with no, ZERO, chance of becoming a human being. You should read more of those text books you're so fond of mentioning and learn about the fact that not every conception ends up producing a human being. I'm sure it is mentioned in there some where.
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@7:49pm: Well, you're certainly entitled to your opinion. But if you want to convince anyone of your position, it's going to take actual argumentation rather than a list of assumptions and preferences about the proper way to deal with ethical problems. Though I agree that some "fringe" events can distort ethical debates, I don't think Sara was talking about any fringe cases. She didn't bring up anything about disabilities. In fact, she brought up a rather mainstream objection about what qualifies as murder intuitively and rationally. But you have not addressed that question in your response.
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@Sara Viola: Yes, of course I'm familiar with the various approaches. There's Jeff McMahan's dualist view (the primacy of mental life), the natural law view, the substantial identity view, the Singerian view, the future-value view, and a few others. But most of these aren't held by non-philosophers, perhaps unfortunately. My main point, through all this, is that the intuition most people share about valuable human life is that it is human, whether it looks strange, foreign, or immature. We shouldn't discriminate against certain human beings based on their stage of development. And no, I don't view DNA strands as especially sacrosanct, and I realize there are "fuzzy line" issues with evolutionary concepts of species. I also know that a small number of fetuses are deformed in ways that make them look a lot less human to our partisan eyes (just like severely deformed adults don't look very human to us). But when you bring up all these special cases, you have to admit that you're arguing on the sidelines of ethics. EVERY ethical system is fuzzy around the edges, and it makes no sense to try to discount one ethical system relying MERELY on the debatability of certain unusual problem cases. There's a right and a wrong way of conducting ethical inquiry, and I'm inclined to think the right way is to compare standard cases across ethical schemes.....................And @P'10, your claim that a miscarried embryo is not a complete, functioning human organism (forget about personhood for now) is simply false. The reasons for my view may be found in most biology textbooks, but your rejection of those facts seems to be based on mere appearances. Before modern medical advances, people might have understandably thought that a clump of cells, because of its tiny size an strange appearance, could not possibly be a human organism. "It doesn't look anything like me" is the thought many of them might have. But we've moved beyond that primitive stage of inquiry, and science has shown us that many of our intuitions are wrong. Of course an embryo does not look like an adult human. It's not supposed to. It looks exactly the way a human organism is supposed to look at its particular stage of development. I could say, perhaps facetiously, that adult humans are just clumps of cells, arranged in such a complex way that the whole of them can do high math and play basketball. Taking a reductionist view based on appearances gets us nowhere. We have to focus the debate on what clusters of cells MEAN, whether there are 10 of them in an organism, or trillions.
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@@P10, I agree with your characterization of the potentiality argument. But you've also made a number of unfounded assumptions. (1): "Brandon's claim, though it is entirely separate from this article, is that in discussions of abortion, we're already dealing with a human person." It is not at all clear than embryos or fetuses qualify as persons any more than your gametes count as persons. There is an enormous literature on personhood and it is by no means a settled matter among bioethicists. Alternative views of personhood (i.e. those that are not based on human genome content or having human parents) include requirements of consciousness, self-awareness, and sentience, among others. (2) Since you argue from instinct in the following matter: "do you really, truly think that a man who murders his wife should receive any less of a punishment the murder if his reason was that his wife caused him suffering? There's NEVER an excuse for murder in the law unless it can be shown that the killing is obviously impulsive, unpremeditated, or unintentional." If intuition drives your decision to punish all murderers equally, whatever their motive or lackthereof, then you need to seriously consider the widespread intuition among the vast majority of pro-life Americans regarding who would be committing a crime and who would be receiving punishment if abortion were to be made illegal. The vast majority of people think that the physician, rather than the woman should be punished if abortion is made illegal. Now if someone hires a hitman, they are held responsible by law for the murder, even though they did not pull the trigger. It's hard to understand, then, why pro-lifers, if they truly believe the embryo is a full human person and that killing it is equivalent to murdering an innocent human person, why they would not hold the woman responsible. My guess is that they do not believe that abortion and murder are equivalent, at least not to the extent that they often talk about it. If intuition works for you, it can also work for pro-choicers... so a word to the wise, be careful with that line of arguement.
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Oh to be young and convince of such absolutes... You say "There's clearly a human being from the moment of conception" no there isn't. Too bad I can't show you the clump of tissue my friend miscarried a while back. There was no human being there. And then there was the fetus born too early with no kidneys, thus no lungs, thus stillborn, whose funeral I attended. But hey, I won't try to try and convince you of anything. You already know it all!
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@P'10: I'm sorry, but the claim you've made is just not a serious bioethical argument. There is no such thing as a "potential" anything. If something is merely potentially existent, then it (at the time it is spoken of) has NO BEING, and no place in existence. Now, to claim that a potential human being (i.e. the potential union of sperm and egg) deserves human rights WOULD indeed be absurd, but this is NOT, and has never been, the pro-life claim. There's a big difference between a "potential human person" and a "human person with potential." We are all human beings with potential. Brandon's claim, though it is entirely separate from this article, is that in discussions of abortion, we're already dealing with a human person, one which has the potential (and need) to develop by a continuous process, eventually becoming an adult. Most philosophers and lawyers agree that Justice Blackmun's use of "potential human being" in Roe v. Wade is nonsense, and philosophically irresponsible. If we're talking about a "potential something," then we're talking about something that doesn't yet exist. But embryos and fetuses do exist. There's clearly a human being from the moment of conception. This is a biological--not ideological--reality. To deny this is fundamentalistic and silly. Just as there is no such thing as a potential rhinoceros, there is no such thing as a potential human person. It is telling that pro-choicers are hesitant to call the human embryo/fetus something minimally meaningful, but also refuse to call it *nothing,* as they seem to believe it is. That's pseudo-scientific nonsense. And also, do you really, truly think that a man who murders his wife should receive any less of a punishment the murder if his reason was that his wife caused him suffering? There's NEVER an excuse for murder in the law unless it can be shown that the killing is obviously impulsive, unpremeditated, or unintentional. The case I'm thinking of is one where the man commits murder deliberately, in to remove the source of suffering in his life.
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My story was presented to put all this pontificating within some real context. There are much more serious health problems women can face during their pregnancies beyond the usual stuff I described. Potentiality doesn't a person make. You can have all necessary parts to build a car, doesn't mean you have or will have a working car in the end. So the the real live person, in this case the woman, takes precedence over the potential person she is carrying any day. And no one has the right to allow her to be essentially taken hostage by this potential person for 40 weeks of her life and potential detriment to her health. As for bit about the husband who kills the wife who makes his life miserable, extenuating circumstances tend to be taken into consideration in such cases. Hey there is a teen in the news today trying to use the bullying he was receiving in school as a defense for what he did to a classmate. They may or may not affect the sentencing but that is a whole other rat hole. To get to Brandon's point I think it is a shame that some cultures value women less thus think it is OK to abort female babies. I remember reading not too long ago about all the problems this practice was already causing in some Asian countries. There were too many males vying to marry too few females which was becoming a crisis for the region but can't remember the specifics at the moment. Who knows we might end up with one woman and many husbands before long! So this will come back to bite those who practice it, if not sooner, definitely later.
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I think the reason that pro-choice posters aren't responding to the thrust of your article is that we fully accept the consequences of pro-choice policy. The demographic consequences of abortion do not present a new moral barrier against abortion rights. I'll echo the many previous posters who have said that feminists and sympathizers should work towards changing societal values rather than eliminating rights for demographic purposes. This same logic applies to gender based affirmative action in the workplace: feminists usually don't think there should be mandatory quotas for men and women, rather we should work towards assuring that employers don't discriminate when hiring. As for your scientific argument...I still don't see the moral distinction between embryo and a soon-to-be-embryo combination of sperm and egg. An embryo does not have all the material it needs to grow into a human being; it still requires the nutrients and material that the host mother provides. The argument that "all the necessary biological material is present" at most advances the abortion-should-be-illegal time to the time when the fetus is viable enough to be delivered and survive. Also, if your argument isn't based on potentiality, then how do you justify calling an embryo part of the human species? Whatever you choose to call it, an embryo IS a cluster of cells, and it probably serves less function than a mosquito. Justifications for the moral superiority of humans, to the best of my knowledge, rely entirely on human traits that embryos lack. The fact that an embryo has human DNA does not give it any more of a right to life than a human cell floating in a petri dish, unless you submit to the potentiality argument, which is extremely flawed.
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I'd just like to echo Pro-Choice Feminist Here's point of view. / While this article has a sensationalist headline, it's actually not a very interesting addition to the debate. As a pro-choice person, I have already decided that an unborn creature may be aborted for a variety of reasons. That gender can be one of these reasons is certainly unfortunate, but not necessarily more troubling than the idea that birth defects can be a reason for aborting. (Note: I am a female and consider myself a feminist). As has already been articulated, the feminist-pro-life counter would be to seek to rectify the problem (real or perceived) through cultural, not legal interventions. / I find it fascinating that given the Schvarts fiasco at Yale you didn't decide to write about that; that story, in my opinion has much more interesting repercussions in the abortion debate. / Other than that, I'd just like to thank you for your customary dose of paternalistic concern. However, I should point out that I'm a big girl now and don't require Big Brother's constant supervision, no matter how benevolent his love might be.
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@previous poster: Judith Jarvis Thompson's view on abortion is hardly relevant here. Her argument attacks the "2nd pro-life premise," that it is always wrong to kill intentionally an innocent human being. She tries to make the case that in certain situations, it is not. This approach is in contrast to other writers, who attack different premises (e.g. "fetuses are human persons," etc.). This is standard bioethics, and Thompson is an interesting contributor. But again, as Brandon reiterated below, this article doesn't take on all of bioethics. How is it possible to, as you suggest, "separate" the issue of gender-selective abortion when the evidence tells us it is a major reason for abortion? You can't be a cafeteria pro-choicer, accepting some propositions and not others, at least if you want to have consistency with the ethical system you've committed yourself to.
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Brandon, here's an interesting philosophical essay you might find interesting (even if you find ways to disagree with it): "A defense of abortion" by J.J. Thompson http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0048-3915(197123)1:1%3C47:ADOA%3E2.0.CO;2-G Also, ethically, I think you have to separate the question of characteristic selection in children (it's not just gender, although that may be the most indefensible) from the broader abortion debate.
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Well, to answer your question, Brandon, no, I don't think that a woman should lose the right to have a sex-selective abortion anymore than I think she should lose the right to abort her baby because s/he will be born with a debilitating illness or because she won't be able to take care of the baby financially, or whatever other reason(s) a woman might have for wanting an abortion (assuming that it's not coerced). However, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't work to change the cultural attitudes that make people view women as burdens in the first place. I guess another example might be the issue of lower-income women having abortions because they can't afford anymore children. Should more efforts be made to expand antipoverty legislation that benefits poor and working-class mothers? Yes. Should we prohibit abortions for financial reasons? In my view, not at all. Also, in response to another point in your article regarding the supposed feminist silence surrounding this issue, there's actually been quite a bit of heated debate between pro-life and pro-choice feminists regarding this matter, so I don't think that's a fair charge.
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@10: I'm not sure to which anonymous you are referring, but I'll respond to both the "embryos are only clusters of cells" and "not having sex is preventing life" arguments. The pro-life position is not based upon protecting "potential life," but actual life in the form of the embryo, fetus, infant, adolescent or whatever stage of human life is under discussion. None of these are "potential life;" each is simply a particular stage in the development of the adult human being. At each stage in development from conception through adulthood, the human being contains the biological material necessary to bring itself through to the fullness of human life. This is not politics, but science. And so, the embryo is not simply a "cluster of cells" but a human in the early stages of development; it is life. This also takes care of the assertion that "not having sex" destroys potential human life, for we are not dealing with potential, but reality. BUT...this is all neither here nor there, as no one has treated the main assertion of my column: that the pro-choice position requires that those who hold it accept, if they want to be consistent, sex- and other eugenics-based abortions as well within that right - in fact, as a quite natural and logical consequence of their ideology. Will they remain consistent and admit to this? Or will they eschew such abortions and undermine their entire philosophy? This is the question that has been lost in a series of red herrings on this page. That all being said, I truly appreciate all the comments here. They have been, by and large, respectful and interesting. I look forward to reading more of them. Brandon
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the effects of a lopsided sex ratio: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/22/world/asia/22brides.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin
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can any of the pro-lifers here respond to anonymous's post below? i've heard that argument before and I've yet to hear a response that doesn't undermine the pro-life position.
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Reading your comment makes me wish I had been aborted.
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neither male nor female fetuses have any serious claim to life.
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@P'10: While your story is clearly heartfelt, and no doubt similar to those of many other women, you simply haven't given a moral account of WHY the suffering pregnancy causes justifies or excuses the termination of the life of a human fetus. If the pro-life position is taken seriously, the alternatives are thus: a pregnancy which brings serious hardships and frequent suffering (and possible child care), versus the direct termination of the life of an innocent human being. In our society, we view intentional killing as perhaps the worst moral wrong there is, and in our society, we prosecute intentional killing in all cases, even when that killing puts an end to someone's suffering. Put it this way: if a husband murders his wife, he will not receive an ounce of sympathy or leniency if he claims that she caused him (perhaps truthfully) a great deal of suffering over a period of time. So while your account of your own experience is indeed powerful, you presume settled the question of whether it is acceptable to terminate the life of an innocent human fetus. So it's hard to see how this can help the debate.
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As a woman who actually faced the question of whether or not to stay pregnant and deal with the consequences of being an unwed mother vs. abort and move on with my life I feel I have a unique perspective on this. I CHOSE to not have an abortion. It was my choice and not one foisted upon me by laws developed by a bunch of people who had never been in my shoes. Because it was my choice I was able to deal with 4.5 months of debilitating morning sickness, followed by constant acid reflux even after drinking water, feet that grew 2 sizes, extremely painful hemorrhoids during the last month, cramps in my calves that woke me up in the middle of the night, hands that briefly got paralyzed a few times and hip joints that got totally out of whack sometimes stopping me mid-step so I couldn’t move forward or back and not being able to sleep on my stomach for 8 months. Not to say anything about the continuous blood tests, 9 hours of labor followed by delivery of an 8 lb baby and stitches in a most sensitive part of my anatomy which tore during the delivery. Once I made the choice I knew it was the right one for me. Going thru all that during a pregnancy that I was forced to endure would have made me seek drastic ways out of that situation. So all this pontificating by people who treat women and their wombs as a vessel to deliver babies who haven’t a clue as to what exactly is involved in those 40 weeks bore me to tears. You have to want that pregnancy to turn into a baby that is going to be the sunshine of your life or else it becomes pure torture which is why in my book it is the woman's call, period.
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Miriam Webster Dictionary (Conservapedia? What? No labelling please.) reads: Fetus: specifically : a developing human from usually two months after conception to birth Embryo: A beginning, an animal in the early stages of development. Anyway, my point is that this is unique human life, humans beget humans from humans. the embryo,fetus,'clump of cells', each in its own stage, have a set of DNA. It is what a person looks like, at an earlier and earlier stage of development. have a good day!
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I don't see any contradiction in fully supporting abortion rights and wanting to change cultural attitudes which dictate that women should be valued less than men on account of their sex. Furthermore, I'm not sure how outlawing certain forms of abortion really gets to the heart of the problem (which is cultural misogyny).
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I really appreciate this article. It's well thought out and a pleasant surprise. Kudos! I wonder though, is the author missing hte main point, the problem I have isn't with abortion, but the perception of women as troublesome burdens. I don't think its a difficult quandary for feminists or pro choicers. If you establish a society that views women as valued contributors as opposed to current conceptions that women are burdens, the discussion about aborting female children could be eschewed. What is left is the never-ending debate about when life begins.
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I'm pro-life, and I've heard all of the pro-choice arguments below. I find most of them quite compelling, though they've never converted me. I'm surprised that no one is addressing the horrifying devaluation of female fetuses that Brandon is actually talking about. This is not only a dangerous trend for our society but a sad commentary on the fact that girls are still deemed less important and worthwhile than boys. However, I think Brandon approaches it from the wrong angle. We cannot really eliminate this problem without eliminating abortion rights, as he pointed out, but there are good reasons why feminists would cling to the right to choose, many of which have to do with their own health and freedom. The best way to change this horrible trend is to continue working to appreciate women. We like to consider the feminist movement over, but until families are just as happy to welcome a girl baby into their family as a boy baby, the work is not done.
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also, rhiannon, at the "clump of cells" stage, the term 'embryo' is applied, not 'fetus'. actually, the fetal stage is, by definition, postembryonic. a nascent embryo, however, is very literally a clump of cells. whether or not it should be thought of as anything more than that, at that stage, is a matter of debate.
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Rhiannon, "fetus" in Latin, means "fruitful" or perhaps "offspring". Conservapedia is not a dictionary.
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equal rights for unborn women, that's what I say. whether or not abortion is legal, it should be an unthinkable option. And anyone who refers to the fetus as a clump of cells should remember in latin it means "small one".
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Every time someone decides not to have sex, they are preventing life from existing. Shall we mandate that everyone must spend every waking moment procreating so that we ensure as few lives are 'lost' as possible?
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Very good article; you've really got the pro-choicers on this one: they can't deny the parallel you've pointed out, and they can't just keep adding on arbitrary modifications to their view in an attempt to account for it. The pro-choice posters below are mainly arguing with each other, and seem not to have much to say about the article itself!
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I regularly counsel woman who are seeking to abort their little sons and daughters. Several weeks ago, I spoke to a married woman who had gone through countless fertility treatments in order to conceive. This lady recently found out she was expecting a girl, and was not happy with the results. She now wants to abort this little girl. The one child policy of China has now crossed over the seas and landed in America. God forbid, if Americans adopt the practice of cannabilizing aborted children. There seems to be no end to the depravity.
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Nice article. This was an issue I was wondering about myself, and I've come to the exact same conclusions. However, @Hmmm, I would still very much like to see the "criticism and commentary on this issue" that you offer. That would be a great resource and would make for a good counterpoint.
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Nice Try, your post is succinct and well thought out but has some real problems. Primarily, it is flawed logic to posit that it is the "right to abortion [that] is more important than a baby's right to life". That is not the issue. Rather, the issue is a fundamental conflict between the rights of the potential baby and of the pregnant woman. It's not the right to abortion that is "more important than a baby's right to life" (ignoring the fact that a cluster of cells hardly qualifies as a baby), but rather, in the context and on balance, the particular woman's right to life and autonomy is more important than the potential in her womb at the time she aborts. Further, the proposition that more women die when abortion is illegal is not, in fact, wrong. You maybe need to cast your research net a bit more widely on that. I would love to be more comprehensive and pointed here but am at work and alas must make these posts on the fly....!
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Before medical advances, primarily proper sterilization procedure and antibiotics, abortion was hgihly risky and this was the primary reason to ban abortion pre-Roe. But the justices in Roe realized that this rationale (to protect women's health) would no longer support an abortion ban. Rather it supports liberalization of abortion rights. @Nice Try: The Ireland/US example is fatally flawed: #1 enormous religious and cultural differences between the two countries makes them entirely disanalogous even though both are developed countries. #2 small sample size, cannot generalize to the entire world after looking at two countries. This is why the WHO/Guttmacher report was so telling. They looked at the *entire* world.
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"By trying to hide behind the fact of deaths by illegal abortions, you are trying to evade the real issue at hand." Not really. The fact that large numbers of women died from illegal abortions before the passing of Roe vs. Wade is not a serious issue for you?
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Reading the Prince makes me wish I had been aborted
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Hmmm - perhaps you missed the UN's latest World Mortality Report. In it, when you compare countries like Ireland with strict abortion laws with countries like the US with liberal abortion laws, the maternal mortality rate tends to be lower in the countries with stricter abortion laws (assuming both countries are developed). While the mortality rate includes deaths from live births as well as abortions (legal or illegal), it is interesting to note that your proposition that the deaths of pregnant women will rise when abortion is made illegal is simply wrong. In fact, the factor that is most important in determining the maternal mortality rate is how developed the country is. You probably don't know this, but what caused the decrease in deaths by illegal abortions over the 20th century in the US was primarily due to advances in medical technology before Roe v. Wade. By trying to hide behind the fact of deaths by illegal abortions, you are trying to evade the real issue at hand. I would like you to explain why the right to abortion is a good thing or at least more important than a baby's right to life.
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Oops, I meant where abortion is illegal.
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It is incorrect to assert that "the right to choose is elevated over the right to life" in a society where abortion is legally, safely available. It assumes that the provision of legal, safe abortion is somehow anti-life, which is incorrect. Reality is, in fact, the reverse, which is to say that anyone who has removed the emotion surrounding this issue and has looked properly, from a truly pro-life standpoint, at all of the available research will know that on balance, it is only through providing legal, safe abortion as an option to autonomous human females that there can truly be a culture of life. The largest ever study on this matter (by the WHO) showed that there are no fewer abortions in jurisdictions where abortion is legal. Rather, the number of abortions stay the same, but the need to resort to illegal, unsafe procedures results in a massive rise in the resultant deaths of human females in the process. How is this a culture of life? Further, it is a logical error to blend feminists and pro-choicers in the way you have, as though they are (a) monolithic and (b) inherently synonymous. Finally, there is extensive feminist criticism and commentary on this issue, so your assertion of silence (which you say = hypocrisy) is again flawed. If you are interested in learning more, I would be pleased to provide you with links to various relevant reports.
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Some great points, Brandon. I like the analogy you make.
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