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[Moderator]

Hi, folks. I know this is a hot-button issue, but it's possible to disagree on an issue and still keep things civil. Please refrain from name calling in your future posts or they will be deleted.

[biologist]

That is, in general, the big issue.  Most people do not feel that a gastrula -- or an acardiac twin -- is a "baby."  Sure, it has a human genome (more or less in the case of some serious defects), but that doesn't make it a person in my book.  If you take one single blastula and take it apart, plate it out and grow it in a petri dish so that you wind up with a lawn of 100,000 totipotent cells, each one potentially growable into a baby, do you have one "person with a sacred, immortal soul" there, or do you have 100,000 people?  You will never convince me to treat such cells as people, so although you are welcome to try, it would be a waste of time and bandwidth.

You, however, had to complicate the issue with this fat housebreaker, who was not standing around minding his own business, but had intruded into a space where he was not welcome and had no right to be.  Most people would agree that an individual or society could use violence, if necessary, against such a man.  However, agreeing to that would raise the issue of whether the same could apply to an unwanted fertilized ovum "intruding upon" a woman's body and life -- and where a rapist's sperm is involved, the vast majority of us think that it does.  You tried to duck this argument by either saying or strongly implying -- however you like it, your call -- that rather than use violence, one should learn to live with the housebreaker.  To most of us agnostics, that sounds like the plot of a horror story, not a sensible analogy.  If you have an unstated philosophical premise, say something along the lines of "If a man robs you of your cloak, give him your shirt also," feel free to tell us now what it is and let us decide for ourselves whether we'd rather live with it or laugh at it.

[person]

biologist says: "You and Cicero offered arguments that you believed to be unassailable and I (and a couple of others) believed to be flimsy."

Well, if you'll have a look at my post, you'll see I never offered any arguments at all in defense of a pro-life position.  I simply tried to clarify a couple of points where other posters had said false things.  So my suggested explanation regarding why you find my pro-life argument so flimsy is that I've never made one.

[person]

This is an exchange that I should comment on:

BIOLOGIST:> Yes, I do think that the government has no right to proscribe
> the use of narcotics either for medical purposes (most MDs will
> not prescribe adequate doses to chronic pain sufferers for fear
> of prosecution) or for recreational purposes. If you are
> harmed by using drugs inappropriately, having been informed of
> the risks, you are harming yourself with your own full consent,
> as opposed to your repeatedly offered example of punching
> someone in the nose, in which you harm someone else who did not
> consent. American society does not dispute your right to do
> other dangerous things for your own pleasure, such as
> skydiving, but you do not have the right to shove some other,
> unwilling person out of the plane. This is a qualitative
> distinction, not just a matter of degree. Without some such
> distinction, how can there be any firm limit to a ruler's
> power?

CICERO: Right. Exactly what I have been trying to say since the beginning. Your right to swing your fist, even if you have very good reasons for doing so, stops where your neighbor's nose begins. Thus the only reasonable question for debate is over whether or not a fetus counts as a "nose." My friend, you are now making the very argument I have been advancing all along. The only difference is that you do not want to grant the fetus rights and I do. I can understand that disagreement. I have not been arguing about that. I've stated before that that is the question.

ME:  I agree with both biologist and Cicero that the main point is that there is a difference in kind, rather than merely in degree, between outlawing, say, recreational drug use, and outlawing assault.  And I agree with Cicero that the main question in the abortion debate has to be over whether killing a fetus is more like the former or the latter.  I have contended, as has Cicero, that it is more like the former.  That's where the action is.

My mistake, apparently, was in beginning my comments on this thread by pointing out that Diane's glib comments about how the government doesn't get to make any decisions about what women do to their bodies.  Those who believe that laws against prostitution or recreational drug use are just and reasonable will have to agree that there are some instances of laws controlling what women do with their own bodies.  And thus, there's no apriori reason to rule out legislation outlawing abortion, even if one grants the (false) supposition that the fetus is actually part of the woman's body.  This was all I was saying in that first bit of my first post.  I was just pointing out the error of Diane's common sentiment that the government has no right to control these things.  The government does control some such things (drug use, prostitution), and most of us think that's OK.  Biologist is evidently a libertarian, and thinks such laws are unjust.  OK.  Then, once again, my main point is, and always has been, that the embryo isn't part of the woman's body--it's a distinct organism.  

Note, once again, that that's not in itself any kind of pro-life argument.  It's just a simple clarification.  Again, that's all I've done.  I think there are pretty compelling pro-life arguments.  Cicero's been defending one kind.  I could defend other kinds, but I haven't.  When one can't even get a little clarity on simple preliminaries, going on to complex arguments isn't really a good idea.

[biologist]

I would say your first message dated 12/05, 13:31, constitutes an argument.  That was where you expounded at some length about your view that no reasonable person would deny that the government has the right to interfere in what we do with our bodies (a very doubtful conclusion masquerading as a premise), followed by a paragraph about how a fetus isn't part of a woman's body anyway and she shouldn't have the right to "chop innocent human beings into little bits."  It's not a convincing argument, but it is an argument.

[biologist]

Person, you write:

I was just pointing out the error of Diane's common sentiment that the government has no right to control these things. The government does control some such things (drug use, prostitution), and most of us think that's OK.

Again, I'm not going to resort to the temptation to copy some of your slurs to me and throw them back at you personally -- especially now that the moderator is watching -- but you haven't come close to demonstrating any error on our part.  Whether a government or other entity DOES something is an entirely different issue from whether it has the RIGHT to do it.  A rape victim in most states can readily obtain emergency contraception or an abortion, although in your opinion this is morally wrong.  Nor can right or wrong in most cases be determined simply by plebiscite (exactly how common does Diane's sentiment have to be before it outweighs "most of us think that's OK"?) because the whims of the masses are ever-changing, and sometimes they are blatantly misguided.  Even if 97% of the American population was all for torturing people into confessing terrorist sympathies, it would still be wrong.  Moreover, at the moment the masses mostly disagree with you.  Most Americans, monotheists included, think it's OK if the rape victim dodges that pregnancy.  If our majority status means that she has a moral right to do so, then you can pipe down now, friend, you're outvoted.

[Cicero]

biologist wrote:

> That is, in general, the big issue.  

Said so myself many hours ago.

>Most people do not feel
> that a gastrula -- or an acardiac twin -- is a "baby."  Sure,
> it has a human genome (more or less in the case of some serious
> defects), but that doesn't make it a person in my book.  If you
> take one single blastula and take it apart, plate it out and
> grow it in a petri dish so that you wind up with a lawn of
> 100,000 totipotent cells, each one potentially growable into a
> baby, do you have one "person with a sacred, immortal soul"
> there, or do you have 100,000 people?  

Reasonable enough.  The question then is "when does it start to count as a person"?  At what point does the collection of cells become a "person" in your book?   This is not baiting; I just want to know.  I find the question difficult and fascinating.


>You will never convince
> me to treat such cells as people, so although you are welcome
> to try, it would be a waste of time and bandwidth.
>

I'm sure it would.  I haven't at any point tried to nor do I intend to.  All I have been doing is asserting that "Choice" is not really the issue.  Clearly, now, we both agree on that.  The issue is "personhood."

 
> You, however, had to complicate the issue with this fat
> housebreaker, who was not standing around minding his own
> business, but had intruded into a space where he was not
> welcome and had no right to be.  Most people would agree that
> an individual or society could use violence, if necessary,
> against such a man.  

Yes.  I agree most would say you could use violence.  But can you say that you can kill him?  Yes, I know that if you don't you will be out one house.  That stinks.  But does it justify killing him?  That has been the point all along.  Even when another person causes you harm, even harm you can't bear to think about, we have agreed as a law-abiding, civilized society that we are limited in the extent of our retaliation.  

>However, agreeing to that would raise the
> issue of whether the same could apply to an unwanted fertilized
> ovum "intruding upon" a woman's body and life -- and where a
> rapist's sperm is involved, the vast majority of us think that
> it does.  

A don't know who's in the majority, but I suspect a lot of people would blame the rapist and not the offspring.  Though I now understand why you aren't getting the point of the analogy.  You are hung up on the "invader" aspect.  I've already explained why that is irrelevant.  What matter is that he is there, it is your house, and you don't want him there.  You cannot remove him by force.  You can either live with him or kill him.  Which do you do?  It is a HYPOTHETICAL situation meant to illustrate a philosophical point.   Have you ever watched Star Trek?

>You tried to duck this argument by either saying or
> strongly implying -- however you like it, your call -- that
> rather than use violence, one should learn to live with the
> housebreaker.  

That's exactly what I was trying to say.  You have insisted, however, that I am saying "embrace the intruder."  Not at all:  I've said that it "sucks" to have a fat guy squatting in your living room.  "Suckiness" however is not justifiable grounds for extinguishing a life.  I think you agree on that, do you not?

>To most of us agnostics, that sounds like the
> plot of a horror story, not a sensible analogy.  

Yes, it would be really, really, really, really, really, really bad.   That's my whole point.  It's bad. It is, however, not AS bad as violating the principle of the individual's right to life. You have to be able to make the qualitative distinction between two awful things.  

>If you have an
> unstated philosophical premise, say something along the lines
> of "If a man robs you of your cloak, give him your shirt also,"
> feel free to tell us now what it is and let us decide for
> ourselves whether we'd rather live with it or laugh at it.

OK:  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . ."

Can you live with that?

Seriously, why do you insist so strongly on making this about ridiculing religion.  I've said absolutely nothing  that a non-religious person might not argue.  My whole approach has been Jeffersonian.   I think you are so eager to "laugh at" my religious beliefs that you don't care about my argument.  That is sad.  Again and again you accuse me of ad hominem, but you began out interaction here by insulting my marriage.  I suspect you are the one with the unstated premise, as our whole interaction appears really to have been about your hatred for Christians.  Well, you are free to hate me, I expect no less.

[biologist]

Why would you expect me to hate you; do you have one of those religion-based persecution complexes?  Actually, our ad hominem interaction began on another thread when you (seemingly unable to comprehend my overt statements that I was playing devil's advocate) said I had the ethics of a toddler, and you went downhill from there.  I haven't spent most of my time in this thread ridiculing religion; as an agnostic I respect all religions equally, which is to say, right up to the point when they gain enough power to start shoving themselves down my throat.  Asking you whether you would want your own wife to die for her embryo was a perfectly reasonable argumentative device (remember what happened to poor Gov. Dukakis?) but I will admit that the followup comment that I hoped she knew what she had if so was nasty and unnecessary.  Somehow, though, at this point I don't feel like apologizing for it.

As for your ad hominem attacks, they are amusing and stylish, showing a good but not excellent command of English rhetoric.  For example, you frequently remember that it is the predicate of a sentence that is scrutinized by listeners, whereas adjectives or clauses are glossed over.  Thus, when you say "Your bigotry is just further evidence of your irrationality," this statement contains the further statements "You are bigoted" and "You are irrational," but in an under-the-radar fashion that simply presumes them true and invites the reader to do the same.  Likewise, repeated entreaties to "please, try to understand..." or "Try to pay attention here" convey the implication "You are stupid" without doing so openly enough that the intended target can invite you to compare IQ scores.  On the other hand, when you said "[Y]ou are clearly incapable of logical thinking and cannot think beyond the most literal and simple-minded level," this was a slip-up, because it invited the reader to pause and question whether I write like a mentally deficient person (I flatter myself that pro-choice readers, at least, would disagree).  Suzette Haden Elgin could have gotten a book chapter out of you.

To return to the argument:  unfortunately, my weak little mind does not in the least grasp what Star Trek has to do with this; perhaps you are "HYPOTHESIZING" an imaginary world in which one could use violence to remove the criminal yet run no risk of killing him, e.g., by "setting phasers to stun" and then beaming him out of one's house?  The right to the "pursuit of happiness" may be read to refer primarily to property, and none of those "unalienable rights" have ever been thought to be absolute.  The Constitution says that, with proper due process, the state may deprive people of liberty, property, or life itself.  And yes, I think that if the only alternative is to lose your house, that does justify killing the man who is trying to take it.  Why should you be more concerned about preserving his life than about making sure you or your children do not risk dying of exposure or disease when you are living on the streets?  That is not "retaliation", which would be pursuing him after he had been removed; that is self-protection.

[person]

biologist,

You'll claim this is yet another slur, I'm sure, but the fact is you're still not following what I'm saying.  You'll be glad to know I'm all done here.

[person]

oops.  I'll be all done here after this.  You say: "It's not a convincing argument, but it is an argument."

No, sorry, but you're dead wrong.  (Is that a slur?)  I didn't make the pro-life argument.  I simply stated that it is the pro-life claim that it's wrong to kill innocent human beings.  I didn't _give_ the arguments, because that wasn't my purpose here.  I was just clarifying the issue.  

If I'm telling you it wasn't an argument, and you're saying it was, what's your view on the status of my claim: (1) I'm lying, or (2) I don't understand what I myself wrote?

[another biologist]

I agree with Cicero, the question of when a cluster of cells becomes a person is difficult and fascinating. I don't pretend to have an answer. I do wonder why lines are drawn AFTER fertilization. Doesn't any given egg and any given sperm also have the POTENTIAL to be a human being given the right circumstances. Ala the famous "hamburger argument", doesn't your average big Mac also have the potential to become a human being once run through the proper biochemical machinery of a human being (i.e. digestion and reassembly as sperm or egg)? If it is deprived of that machinery, it ceases to have the chance of ever being human. Based on this line of reasoning, why isn't a hamburger also considered a human being? The logic seems to be the same applied post-fertilization. The zygote has the potential to be a human being if maintained on the biochemical machinery of his/her/its mother. If it can't, it doesn't. To me the interesting points of the argument isn't why there is a focus on when a human being becomes human AFTER fertilization, but why there hasn't been much discussion on why bits of tissue or individual cells aren't similarly potentially human prior to fertilization. With current cloning technologies, we can nearly have ANY two somatic cells being capable of POTENTIALLY forming an entire new person. If this is accurate, then a liver cell (or more inflammatory-but equally true, a rectal mucosal cell) is a human being given the genomic argument and potentiality argument. Every nick and scrape of the body that sloughs off a human cell would then be equivalent to removing a potential human. So the real question is what is the difference between a potential human and an actual human? Again, no answers, just some thoughts.

>Most people do not feel
> that a gastrula -- or an acardiac twin -- is a "baby." Sure,
> it has a human genome (more or less in the case of some serious
> defects), but that doesn't make it a person in my book. If you
> take one single blastula and take it apart, plate it out and
> grow it in a petri dish so that you wind up with a lawn of
> 100,000 totipotent cells, each one potentially growable into a
> baby, do you have one "person with a sacred, immortal soul"
> there, or do you have 100,000 people?

Reasonable enough. The question then is "when does it start to count as a person"? At what point does the collection of cells become a "person" in your book? This is not baiting; I just want to know. I find the question difficult and fascinating.

[biologist]

Well, I guess I'd have to go with (2), you don't understand what you wrote.  Here is a truncated version.

Second, the fetus isn't ever part of a woman's body... What [abortion] does--directly--is chop a fetus into little bits....Those who are against abortion are simply saying that we have no right to chop innocent human beings into little bits. Abortion opponents aren't trying to regulate what women do with their own bodies. We're trying to make it illegal for abortionists to kill innocent human beings.   The frequent attempts to suggest that pro-lifers want to control women are simply dishonest drivel...the fact that sometimes women are stuck with unwanted pregnancies doesn't mean it's OK to chop innocent human beings into little bits. Killing the innocent is not a way to deal with unwanted pregnancies.

I see in this:

Premise 1: a fetus is never part of a woman's body
Premise 2:  abortion chops a fetus into little bits
Implied Premise 1:  if a fetus [embryo, blastocyst, fertilized ovum] is not part of a woman's body, it must be a human being
Implied Premise 2:  fetuses are innocent
Implied Premise 3:  it is always wrong to kill innocent human beings
Implied Premise 4:  chopping a human being into little bits kills it
Conclusion:  Abortion is wrong.

This is really not a bad argument as it goes, although if you are one of the plasmogamy = pregnancy fanatics, Premise 2 is incorrect (postcoital contraception hardly "chops up" a single cell into little bits), and Implied Premises 1 and 3 cannot be so taken for granted because many people disagree with both of them.  Let's put it this way, it's the best argument the prolife side has.  Why be ashamed of it?

[biologist]

I regard the question of "at what moment does a genotype become a person?" as somewhat akin to the question of when an acorn becomes an oak tree, with the complication that personhood from the perspective of a social animal has social as well as physical meanings.  Almost everyone agrees that it would be silly to call an acorn an oak tree.  Although it has an oak's genotype and even contains a miniature root and leaves, it is too functionally different, and most acorns, like most fertilized ova, never mature.  Even after the acorn has put out its first shoot, we probably would not call it an oak tree.  When it is six feet tall, even if it is rather spindly, we would probably call it an oak.  Can we possibly determine the exact moment when we should all start calling it an oak?  If not, then there can be no logical demand that we must do so.  Notably, if you dismembered the embryo and grew lumps of callus tissue in cell culture to a mass equal to that of the sapling, nobody would call it an oak.

[Cicero]

biologist wrote:

> Why would you expect me to hate you; do you have one of those
> religion-based persecution complexes?  

Nice,  Keep the slime coming.


>Actually, our ad hominem
> interaction began on another thread when you (seemingly unable
> to comprehend my overt statements that I was playing devil's
> advocate) said I had the ethics of a toddler, and you went
> downhill from there.  

So it's about you not being able to let a previous slight go?   Very mature.
Your argument is motivated by what?  Vengeance?

>I haven't spent most of my time in this
> thread ridiculing religion; as an agnostic I respect all
> religions equally, which is to say, right up to the point when
> they gain enough power to start shoving themselves down my
> throat.  

I don't see how I have any power or have tried to shove anything down your throat.  I've just been trying to illustrate the fallacious nature of the "choice" argument.  You've already ceded my point.  I don't see why you keep attacking me.


>Asking you whether you would want your own wife to die
> for her embryo was a perfectly reasonable argumentative device
> (remember what happened to poor Gov. Dukakis?) but I will admit
> that the followup comment that I hoped she knew what she had if
> so was nasty and unnecessary.  Somehow, though, at this point I
> don't feel like apologizing for it.

Why not?  I have already apologized to you.  Maybe you need Christ more than you think.

>
> As for your ad hominem attacks, they are amusing and stylish,
> showing a good but not excellent command of English rhetoric.

So now you are judging my rhetoric?  In the words of Voltaire, "show me your qualifications."  
 
> For example, you frequently remember that it is the predicate
> of a sentence that is scrutinized by listeners, whereas
> adjectives or clauses are glossed over.  Thus, when you say
> "Your bigotry is just further evidence of your irrationality,"
> this statement contains the further statements "You are
> bigoted" and "You are irrational," but in an under-the-radar
> fashion that simply presumes them true and invites the reader
> to do the same.  

Sorry didn't mean to be "under the radar."  What I meant to say is "you are a bigot."  Better?

>Likewise, repeated entreaties to "please, try
> to understand..." or "Try to pay attention here" convey the
> implication "You are stupid" without doing so openly enough
> that the intended target can invite you to compare IQ scores.

No, that was real pleading.  I did not feel that you were even making the effort to understand the argument.
 
> On the other hand, when you said "[Y]ou are clearly incapable
> of logical thinking and cannot think beyond the most literal
> and simple-minded level," this was a slip-up,

I agree. I spoke out of frustration.  It was unfair to judge you based on this limited interaction.  In fact, I have no place judging you at all.  Please accept my apology.

>because it
> invited the reader to pause and question whether I write like a
> mentally deficient person (I flatter myself that pro-choice
> readers, at least, would disagree).  

Fair enough.  I believe others would side with me.  That really doesn't prove anything.

>Suzette Haden Elgin could
> have gotten a book chapter out of you.

How kind.
 
> To return to the argument:  unfortunately, my weak little mind
> does not in the least grasp what Star Trek has to do with this;
> perhaps you are "HYPOTHESIZING" an imaginary world in which one
> could use violence to remove the criminal yet run no risk of
> killing him, e.g., by "setting phasers to stun" and then
> beaming him out of one's house?  

No.  I was referring to the establishment of hypotheticals.  That is how the old star trek series worked:  invent a planet to illustrate some interesting philosophical problem.  For instance, they visit a planet where there are two Kirks and two Spocks:  that's the problem of "personal identity."   Of course, no one ever objected that there is no planet on which there is a duplicate Captain Kirk.  To do so would miss the point.   See where I'm going here?

>The right to the "pursuit of
> happiness" may be read to refer primarily to property, and none
> of those "unalienable rights" have ever been thought to be
> absolute.  

I'm not saying they are absolute.  I'm saying that one person's unalienable rights outweigh certain limited rights.   This is why I oppose both the death penalty and abortion.

>The Constitution says that, with proper due process,
> the state may deprive people of liberty, property, or life
> itself.  

Yes, but only under certain conditions that I hold are not met in the case of abortion.   Besides, we're not talking about the state aborting babies (though surely you aren't implying that the state can abort whomever they want?  No, we don't want to reopen that can of worms).

>And yes, I think that if the only alternative is to
> lose your house, that does justify killing the man who is
> trying to take it.  

Well, then, that's were we differ.  Don't imagine we're going to settle that here.

>Why should you be more concerned about
> preserving his life than about making sure you or your children
> do not risk dying of exposure or disease when you are living on
> the streets?  

Because you are not worried about preserving HIS life.  You are worried about preserving the principle behind his right to life.  The argument actually is rooted in self-interest.  

>That is not "retaliation", which would be
> pursuing him after he had been removed; that is
> self-protection.

Ok, then, "self-protection."  But I believe our power of self-protection is limited under law.  I can kill you if you threaten my life.  I still maintain that I cannot kill you if you merely threaten my property.  No court would vindicate such a killing.  We have, then, a dispute of fact.  Any lawyers in the house?  Anyway, my greater point is that you SHOULD not kill for such things.  You think one should.  That makes me shudder, but that's your opinion.

I have no more time to spend here.  I'm sorry you are so full of animosity for me.  When I attacked you on the plagiarism thread, please understand that I was attacking a way of thinking that I find abhorrent.  I did not mean to attack you personally (I don't even know you), but I was sloppy about it and offended you.  I have already apologized to you several times.  If you wish to remain hateful, that is now between you and your conscience.  Peace to you.

Cicero

[another biologist]

As others have mentioned earlier, I used to live in a "shoot the burglar" state where if an intruder shows up in your home and refuses to leave, you can kill them--honest. They reported this in the papers once a month or so. It was considered fully justified in a legal sense (morally--well a different matter). I will completely stay out of the argument about property versus human life rights issues except to say that since this law varies from state to state (i.e. at least Texas and Louisiana have some permutation of it), suggests that our state governments also differ about the point where property rights and human life rights intersect. In this regard the analogy used pertaining to abortion is an especially interesting one since different governments fall out on different sides of what is appropriate if an unwanted intruder enters your home and refuses to leave.