Tim Tebow, Missionary Field Work
The following Open Letter was originally posted by me on Jill Stanek’s blog. As I said there, I have a weak spot for the invincibly clueless. It is presented here with a few additional thoughts.
Dear Planned Parenthood, NOW, and all other Baby Bully Organizations:
First, as Christina presciently observes in a comment above,
“When you’re reduced to pitching a hissy fit that a mother brags about her baby, you’re screwed.”
Focus on the Family are expert fisherman, and you Big Mouth Bass took the bait. You allowed yourselves to be exposed for just who and what you are:
Haters of motherhood, fatherhood, family and babies.
What on earth were you thinking when you decided to commit all of your forces, even your reserves in a battle against the Tebow ad? WERE you thinking at all?!
FOF couldn’t lose this one. You were outgeneraled. If the ad aired with no opposition from you, they won a small victory.
If the ad was shot down because of you, then they won a great victory.
And, as has come to pass, if you committed all of your forces and the ad aired IN SPITE OF YOU, then they won a Waterloo or Gettysburg at your expense.
Sometimes it’s best to know when to just shut up.
What’s that? You’re not anti-child, anti-motherhood, anti-fatherhood because many of you have your own families?
It takes more than the biological act of reproduction to forge a mother’s heart. Having experienced the beauty of procreation, knowing the utter dependency of the infant child on the mother, advocating the deaths of scores of millions of babies shows a certain disconnect in you.
Your shrill opposition to the Tebow ad betrays your black hearts.
This past month, you allowed the nation an unprecedented peek behind the curtain of the pro-choice movement. You’ll never recover from it. Not content to let the pro-lifers have a brief warm-fuzzy 30 seconds, you have generated weeks of video and articles that will be played over and over for years to come.
Everyone is looking at you and listening to your opponents with renewed interest. People are starting to question your denial of continuing Margaret Sanger’s Eugenic war aimed at Blacks and Hispanics, while you operate 80% of your abortion mills in the inner city. Somehow you need to convince people that 18 million aborted Black babies has helped lift up the African-American community from poverty, misery and despair.
You need to do some damage control, and fast. You need to jettison “CHOICE”. It won’t work anymore. You blew that one.
You need a new slogan, new verbal engineering. You need to somehow convince women that abortion is a good.
But I warn you, such a task is not going to be so easy as it was thirty-seven years ago. Science is gaining on you on all fronts.
There is an ever-growing body of medical literature showing a link between abortion and breast cancer, and an ever-growing body of MD’s and Ph.D.’s such as myself who are committed to making that information accessible to the public.
There is an ever-growing body of literature showing that abortion induces its own unique manifestation of post-traumatic stress syndrome. To match it, there are burgeoning healing ministries such as Lumina, Rachel’s Vineyard, and Silent No More Awareness, to name a few.
Don’t laugh you fools. I was at the Supreme Court steps at this year’s March. Silent No More had a dilemma. There were 70 men and women present to give their testimonies. They wanted to give everyone their shot without having to turn anyone away for the sake of time.
Were that not enough, 3D and 4D ultrasounds have completely unmasked the lie that it’s just a clump of cells. The Endowment for Human Development has remarkable video and ultrasound clips:
http://www.ehd.org/
Check them out while you reinvent your sales campaign.
Please, do yourselves a favor and try to stop these attempts at denying and debunking the scientific data. You’re just adding to the growing realization that you are aggressive in maintaining current levels of abortion, as opposed to being passively in favor of them. Really, you need to be honest and just suggest caveat emptor then move on from denying the rising tide of casualties.
And then there is the fact that this year’s March drew well over 300,000 people, half of whom were under the age of 25. The significance? These young people know full well that if the escape hatch of abortion is welded shut, they won’t have the same ‘choice’ that others have had.
A new generation is embracing the responsibility that you’ve ducked. Your blood should be running cold.
You’ve got your work cut out for you inventing a new vocabulary. Your movement’s best days are behind it now. Truth is on the march. Like Hitler, you’ll ride out the remainder of the war you started in your bunker as you go down to total defeat.
Check out my blog if you need more insight into yourselves. I can’t say that I wish you luck. I do pray for your conversion.
Sincerely,
Dr. Gerard M. Nadal
Posted by: Gerard Nadal at February 7, 2010 1:00 PM
I’m picturing ordinary prochoice citizens seeing the ad and wondering why “He’s my Timmy, and I love him!” is such a horrible message.
Dr. Nadal,
What an awesome piece of work! It was probably everything I wanted to say to the pro-choicers, but couldn’t piece together. It’s always amazing to me how evil will eventually shoot itself in the foot every time. Please submit this around the web. More people should read it!
God bless,
Elizabeth Shearer
Just got finished watching the Tebow ad. If NOW et al hadn’t made horses’ patoots of themselves bitching about it no one would have thought of it as a pro-life add. I’d have assumed it was an ad for pre-natal care. She could be speaking out against spina bifida for all anyone knew.
These pro-aborts don’t just hate real chice, they’re furious because Focus on the Family is not a right-wing Christian hate group. All the hate is coming from left-swing secularist/atheist/pagan groups.
The USCCB has a lovely Prayer for Embryonic Children you might want to post. Speaking of embryonic children… please share your thoughts as a scientist on the military handing out Plan B. http://www.archden.org/index.cfm/ID/2777 has some horrifying estimates on the failure rate. If maximum success rate is 80% (minimum 23%) is the military going to bully these young women into getting surgical abortions?
What are your thoughts on substituting “fertilized ovum” instead of embryo? I can only one use of that phrase – from an ethicist assuring Catholic hospitals that Plan B isn’t an abortifacient!
Thanks for the post! God bless you for your service to the unborn.
“Just got finished watching the Tebow ad. If NOW et al hadn’t made horses’ patoots of themselves bitching about it no one would have thought of it as a pro-life add. I’d have assumed it was an ad for pre-natal care. She could be speaking out against spina bifida for all anyone knew.”
You’re exactly right BHG, I was going to say the same thing…
BHG,
Thanks for your kind words about the post. Regarding terminology, “embryo” is an umbrella term that covers several distinct stages beginning with the fertilized ovum which we call the zygote. It continues on to include cleavage, morula, blastula, gastrula, etc.
I’m not sure I understand your concern about the use of embryo regarding Plan B. Can you elaborate?
My husband and I caught the ad when it aired. We were absolutely shocked. THAT is what all the fuss was about? 😉
Dr. Nadal,
You hit the nail right on the head. I saw the Tebow commercial, and I really didn’t see what all the fuss was about! Mrs. Tebow was praising her son, just like any other parent would do with their child.
I don’t know if you are aware of this, but in 1989, the American Life League made a video featuring players from the New York Giants 1986 Super Bowl squad. In this video, the players make a plea to stop abortion. Here’s the link for it below:
God Bless!!
Tamtam,
Great Video! Thanks for passing it along.
God Bless
Sound tactical criticism. One reason I haven’t joined NARAL or volunteered for Planned Parenthood is that they are indeed getting to be quite clueless. By remaining apart from this blind alley, I am free to develop a genuine pro-choice argument, which is quite fulfilling, even if I don’t have a prime time venue to present it from. The Tebow ad was perfectly legitimate free speech. Mrs. Tebow has every right to make her choice, and every right to share it. She has no right to legislate it as THE choice for every woman in America, but I haven’t heard that she did that.
Now here is where you allow your sense of revulsion, tinged with just a bit of smug arrogance, to lead you astray:
“Having experienced the beauty of procreation, knowing the utter dependency of the infant child on the mother, advocating the deaths of scores of millions of babies shows a certain disconnect in you.”
If a mother could hold a first-trimester fetus in her arms, then put it back in the womb, it would not inspire anywhere near the same upwelling of love and devotion that holding a new-born baby, or even a surviving preemie, inspires.
You can argue that technically a bundle of cells is a new human being, which in a limited technical sense it is, and you are of course free to act on that conviction if you CHOOSE to do so, but a mother who loves the new-born baby in her arms is no less devoted to her baby, just because under other circumstances, she might have aborted the pregnancy before it resulted in a baby.
“One reason I haven’t joined NARAL or volunteered for Planned Parenthood is that they are indeed getting to be quite clueless.”
what are some of the other reasons why you didn’t join Planned Parenthood or Naral?
Well written, as usual, Gerard!
If a mother could hold a first-trimester fetus in her arms, then put it back in the womb, it would not inspire anywhere near the same upwelling of love and devotion that holding a new-born baby, or even a surviving preemie, inspires.
You are wrong, Siarlys, to make that judgement.
I held my first trimester baby in my hand and felt love and devotion for it, in the same way that I have felt for my born children -except it was coupled with the grief of losing my child.
I have personally talked to over a hundred women who have had the same emotions over their miscarried babies who they held in their hands. Please don’t be so quick to assume that others feel the same way you do about unborn babies- especially mothers of those babies.
Siarlys, I liked your comment. But I wonder about something.
You speak of the cluelessness of NARAL and PP, and of this leaving you to develop your own “genuine procohice argument”. Isn’t that a little premature?
In my own journey, I found incompatibility between what each side was presenting as facts. Rather than just choose a side, I looked for validation of what one side or the other was saying by looking for sources that put forth information in non-abortion contexts. For example, I could look at what the Encyclopedia Britannica said about human embryology, and look at books intended for ob/gyns and for the general childbearing public, and compare this to what each side, “prolife” and “prochoice” was saying about the development of the entity targeted for destruction in an abortion. I found that what the “prolife” were saying was much more accurate than what the “prochoice” were saying.
So rather than start with a premise — that the “prochoice” side is right and the “prolife” side is wrong, why not come up with questions to look into about the rightness or wrongness, benefits or drawbacks, etc., and then see what sort of stand makes sense? I think you’re probably likely, as I was with the death penalty, to end up in neither camp. But you’ll be your own thinker, and your efforts to impact public policy and to advise those around you will be much more likely to bring about positive change.
(and I would have given ANYTHING to have been able to put the baby back in my womb and allowed her to continue growing!)
Dr. Nadal:
My concern about terminology resides in the use by an ethicist pushing Plan B! The pro aborts specialize in redefining conception and pregnancy, for example, See http://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF09D12.pdf
In 1965 ACOG stated, in its first Terminology Bulletin: “CONCEPTION is the implantation of a fertilized ovum.” Forty years later Rachel Benson Gold, flatly asserts in a 2005 article Guttmacher Report on Public Policy: “…the medical community has long been clear: Pregnancy is established when a fertilized egg has been implanted in the wall of the uterus.”
The author of the article reviews 4 medical dictionaries to trace the evolution of conception and pregnancy – always trying to fudge the humanity of the embryo and the fetus. In reading the study I hope you’ll see what I see, the peculiar idea that science can fiddle or twist with the facts for the greater good – population control/eugenics.
Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to be the genesis SJ’s idea that different “understandings” about embyology are possible – always asserted by non-embryologists, of course!
[…] on the Family are expert fisherman, and you Big Mouth Bass took the bait,” said Nadal in an open letter to Planned Parenthood and […]
Jasper, my mother was a Planned Parenthood volunteer, back in the days when it was a mostly local, mostly volunteer organization, and she was a firm advocate of birth control availability. She also firmly believes it is best to wait until marriage to engage in sex or have babies, but she has a realistic sense that in every generation, a significant number of men or women will not wait. I did not become actively involved in Planned Parenthood because it was never a big priority for me. I’m repelled by what it has become more recently, for reasons that have been pretty well covered on this site, and which I’ve added some details to more than once:
1) It is more of a revenue-generating business than a non-profit volunteer service provider,
2) It has a definite profile that there is a positive good to abortion, and/or a legal right to have an abortion, which is in sharp conflict with my own understanding of constitutional law: that citizens have a right to be left alone by the government, and that there is a period in early pregnancy when the new life growing within the mother is not sufficiently independent or self-aware that the state should make this decision for the individual woman concerned.
3) Their barrage of press releases about the Scott Roeder trial was a good example of a kind of hysterical fixation on their immediate priority that does not make for good government, good administration of justice, or even for a pleasant community to live in. Every procedural ruling is not a fit subject for every pressure group watching a trial to offer opinionated commentary on, and who do they think is listening anyway? Its not about given this group or that group what they want, its about applying consistent rules for all individuals in an equitable way. Frankly, they should shut up about the conviction too — if the trial shouldn’t be about abortion, neither should the verdict. Roeder committed premeditated homicide; his motive was irrelevant.
GERARD NADAL HAS DELETED THIS LAST PARAGRAPH AND REMOVED A HEARTLESS DIG AT BETHANY’S LOST BABY. I FIND THE REFERENCE USED AFTER WHAT BETHANY SAID TO BE REPUGNANT. APOLOGIES ARE IN ORDER, BUT I WON’T HOLD MY BREATH.
Christina, I appreciate the method you suggest, but at age 56, I haven’t suddenly decided to be pro-choice. I read about Roe v. Wade in the New York Post when it first came out, and remember thinking “That’s a good balance.” Since then, I have watched from a distance the tactics of those who call themselves pro-life, and the tactics of those who provide abortion services, and the various opinions I’ve heard in a number of churches and social circles. I’ve heard women say “I could never have an abortion” who rushed to do so when they actually became pregnant. Over the past twenty years or so, I’ve settled into a set of conclusions that I believe are fair to all, and firmly grounded in constitutional law.
I sympathized with the extensive logistical arrangements made to protect patients from intimidation by “Operation Rescue,” because if a woman has a legal right to make that choice, nobody should physically restrain her on the ground that “I don’t think you made the right decision.” On the other hand, I don’t accept the mind-set that has grown since, that any slightest public criticism of abortion is somehow a violation of anyone’s constitutional rights. Nobody has a monopoly on free speech.
“.. that citizens have a right to be left alone by the government, and that there is a period in early pregnancy when the new life growing within the mother is not sufficiently independent or self-aware that the state should make this decision for the individual woman concerned.”
Siarlys,
My sons are not ‘sufficiently independent’ either, they are very dependant on me, ie for food and housing. I was thinking about terminating their dependance on me. Would you mind? Should the state have a say? I suppose I could put them up for adoption but why bother…
“if a woman has a legal right to make that choice, nobody should physically restrain her on the ground that “I don’t think you made the right decision.””
So let us just make it illegal. Slavery used to be legal. The Holocaust was also legal (and used as a defense at trial by some). Doesn’t make them objectively right, even if they were considered subjectively right by many. What limits do you place on the term ‘dependence’? What about ‘self-aware’?
Of course you would give anything to put a spontaneous miscarriage back in your womb
No, Siarlys. I wouldn’t ever want to put a spontaneous miscarriage back in my womb.
I would, however, want to put my baby back in my womb.
My original point was, just because a woman treasures the baby she holds after birth, does not mean she would never consider abortion in other circumstances, and, just because she had an abortion, does not mean she could never love a baby.
I’m not really sure what point this is supposed to make. I mean, it doesn’t prove anything at all.
I could make a similar statement about child abusers. Just because a woman treasures a child she has, doesn’t mean that she would never consider abusing a child.
Just becaue a woman has abused a child, doesn’t mean she will necessarily abuse other children.
See how this type of reasoning proves nothing?
Jasper, good point. Since when is a young child really “independent”?
And what does it mean to be “self aware” exactly? Does it mean that you have the ability to understand things around you and collect memories?
Siarlys, you have said that you have no memories before 1 1/2. If you were truly “self aware” before then, perhaps you would have memories of being breastfed, of having your diapers changed, etc. But since you don’t, perhaps you weren’t self aware, and therefore you were a non-person until 1 1/2 years of age. Plus, until you were able to walk, you were completely dependent on someone to carry you around if you wanted to go somewhere. You were completely dependent on others to provide you with nourishment, bathing, etc. That also would disqualify you to be a person, according to your logic.
If I were to use your criteria for personhood (sufficient self awareness and independence), I would have to conclude that until a child becomes an adult and is making their own living, they are not truly persons.
[…] Haters of Motherhood, Fatherhood, Family, and Babies By B Treece From Dr. Gerard Nadal, pro-life scientist, professor, and researcher, in his “Open Letter to Planned Parenthood and […]
“Of course you would give anything to put a spontaneous miscarriage back in your womb”
Ugh…how ignorant and heartless.
Gerard, you must have totally misread or misunderstood what I said in response to Bethany, because as I recall I was accepting what she said.
Before considering any apologies, you will have to email me a copy of exactly what you deleted, and explain what exactly you found objectionable. There were no “digs” heartless or otherwise. Bethany’s experience is her own, and whatever I think another woman should be free to choose, I would never question her own account of what it meant to her.
Jasper, you did have the option at birth to leave your children in a hospital or other safe place if you were unwilling to take responsibility for the children. I’m not sure what would happen if you walked into a courtroom and said, I want to surrender all parental rights and responsibilities. But there is one difference from abortion: it is physically possible for another adult to take your children, care for them, and feed them. There is no way to transplant a fetus from your uterus to even the most willing recipient.
“But there is one difference from abortion: it is physically possible for another adult to take your children, care for them, and feed them. ”
“There is no way to transplant a fetus from your uterus to even the most willing recipient.”
No but they can carry the baby to term for adoption.
Now, would I be compelled by the state to make an adoption happen? I just want to terminate their dependance on me. I just want to kick them out of the house.
Remember, the women isn’t forced to carry their babies to term so someone can adopt, they just have the their baby removed and killed. why should I have to do the extra steps but the pregnant women doesn’t?
Gerard, you must have totally misread or misunderstood what I said in response to Bethany, because as I recall I was accepting what she said.
Maybe this will help you understand.
Imagine a woman losing her newborn baby in a car accident. She says, I would do anything to have my baby back!
I respond, “I can certainly understand that you would like to have your car accident back”
Would that make any sense at all? See, the car accident is what HAPPENED to the baby. It is not the baby, obviously!
Just as the spontaneous miscarriage (actually, in my case, it was a missed miscarriage) is what HAPPENED to my baby. It is not my baby.
I think that at 56 years of age, you should be able to discern that this is the case and understand how you intentionally manipulated your words in an order to dehumanize my baby. I don’t buy the idea that you don’t know what you said.
I’m not hurt, because I expect comments like these from the pro-abortion side – just don’t pretend like you don’t know what you’re doing. I despise intellectual dishonesty more than anything else.
Bethany, I don’t have an email from Gerard, but what you felt, as you present it, is what is important, Gerard’s concern is also of concern to me, but secondary. I could make the kind of semantic distinctions that I find many people make here, since “car accident” would be more analagous to sympathy over loss of a car, not a baby. Car accidents do damage or destroy cars, they may or may not also kill a passenger, including a baby. But that’s not really important.
My original intent was to acknowledge that I would respect whatever value you put on your loss. Any woman who was looking forward to motherhood would mourn experiencing the event commonly known as a miscarriage. Some do, and some do not, refer to the fetus lost as their baby. You do, that is enough for me. Apparently I don’t have the grasp on language to say that to you.
I had made a broad general statement, you said that was not true for you, I acknowledged that the generalization was not universally valid. No generalization is.
What underlies my position in this entire discussion is that different individual men and woman feel and experience and respond to the same situation in very different ways. I have no reason to tell you “that’s not your baby.” I see no reason to require another woman to conform to the choices you would make.
Siarlys, sorry. It does’t work that way. There is no way that you can actually respect my feelings when you advocate killing babies like the one I lost.
It is impossible.
You know and I know that you think that babies are worthless tissue which can be killed at the whim of the mother, therefore any of your sympathies or compassion regarding babies lost to miscarriage will be considered false and meaningless.
You believe my baby was worthless, but you would pretend to care if you think it would hurt my feelings otherwise. How is that supposed to be “respect”? I mean, really. I’m sorry, I don’t buy into lies.
And just a tip: calling a baby a “miscarriage” isn’t respectful either. Even if you are trying to pretend to respect my feelings, your words say it all.
I don’t have the grasp on language to say that to you.
No, it isn’t that you don’t have the grasp on language, Siarlys. Your language skills are just fine.
It is that you are determined to use dehumanizing language to describe the unborn, at whatever cost.
Well, now you’ve put it fairly accurately. As long as I advocate that any woman should be legally free to make a different choice than you did, you consider that an insult to your baby and how you feel about him or her. Therefore, nothing I could say would be accepted as showing any respect for your choice. That also provides some insight in why you insist on overturning Roe v. Wade. Until every woman either fully shares your own feelings, or is forced to act as if she did, you cannot feel fully vindicated.
I would prefer to simply say, if you cried over your baby, gave him or her a name, and buried him or her as a lost child, that is what he or she is, period, and other women may, up to a point, make a different choice for themselves. Apparently that won’t work for you.
That also provides some insight in why you insist on overturning Roe v. Wade. Until every woman either fully shares your own feelings, or is forced to act as if she did, you cannot feel fully vindicated.
That has nothing to do with it. And by the way, I cannot,. and do not expect to force anyone to “feel” any certain way on any issue. I cannot force anyone to believe slavery is wrong, or that rape is wrong. But I support keeping laws in place to protect people from being slaves or from being raped.
And no, you are absolutely wrong. I was against abortion long, long before I lost my baby. I am against abortion because it takes the life of a human being. That is not an emotional stance- it is logical.
I suspect that you believe that John Walsh didn’t oppose child murder before his son was killed. It would make just as much sense as what you are implying about me.
I would prefer to simply say, if you cried over your baby, gave him or her a name, and buried him or her as a lost child, that is what he or she is, period,
Would you say the same thing if I held a burial for a ladybug and cried and called it my baby? How far are you willing to lie in order to convince yourself you are a nice person?
and other women may, up to a point, make a different choice for themselves. Apparently that won’t work for you.
Well, obviously!
Would you cry over a ladybug and bury it and call it your baby? Is there an anguished debate going on over whether a ladybug is a baby, between people Serena Gaefke describes as “good people” who are “seeking the truth”? No, this discussion is about the process of human pregnancy.
I have no doubt that your convictions were well formed long before you married. What I find disturbing is that so long as there is one person in the world who looks at this difficult question differently from you, that appears, from the way you write, to be taken as an affront to your own right to live your life exactly as you have done.
Would you cry over a ladybug and bury it and call it your baby?
Nope, but if I did, would you be willing to say “if you cried over your ladybug, gave him or her a funeral, and buried him or her as a lost child, that is what he or she is, period,”?
If not, why not? You apparently think my unborn baby was less significant than a ladybug- so why not give me the same “respect” if I were to do something like bury a ladybug in that manner?
Is there an anguished debate going on over whether a ladybug is a baby, between people Serena Gaefke describes as “good people” who are “seeking the truth”?
nope, and that’s irrelevant.
No, this discussion is about the process of human pregnancy.
And I have asked you a simple question which you have not answered.
I have no doubt that your convictions were well formed long before you married. What I find disturbing is that so long as there is one person in the world who looks at this difficult question differently from you, that appears, from the way you write, to be taken as an affront to your own right to live your life exactly as you have done.
This quote shows how very sadly ignorant you are on this topic.
It’s not about ME or YOU, it’s about the babies involved. Until you get that, you’ll remain in the dark.
But Bethany, who authorized you to speak for any baby but your own?
One thing that skews this debate, is that one the one hand, there are those in Planned Parenthood who think they need to rescue ten year old “sexual beings” from Catholic and Muslim and Mormon parents who deprive their children the sex education that the advocates of sex education believe every child deserves. On the other hand, there are those who are so convinced they know the full significance of what is growing in another woman’s womb that they must rescue these fetuses from their own mothers.
The hypothetical ladybug did not grow in your womb. Your baby did, and I will call it your baby, simply because it grew inside you and that is how you felt about it.
Of course it is hard to allow another woman to “choose” what you believe to be murder. I’m sure that is a perfectly sincere belief on your part. But, if millions of us disagree about something so fundamental, perhaps it is best to take a step back, continue talking, but let each mother come to terms with how she will handle the situation.
You could still look forward to “What if they built an abortion clinic, and nobody came?” Like Gerard asked himself, what if Roe v. Wade is never overturned, but women CHOOSE life?
But Bethany, who authorized you to speak for any baby but your own?
Now there’s a nonsensical question, Siarlys.
Do you ask those who publicly oppose child abuse, “Who authorized you to speak for any child but your own?”
Do you ask those who publicly oppose rape, “Who authorized you to speak for any woman who you don’t know personally?”
What a ridiculous question. I don’t need authorization from anyone to speak up for those who can’t speak up for themselves or defend themselves. (And certainly not from you.)
One thing that skews this debate, is that one the one hand, there are those in Planned Parenthood who think they need to rescue ten year old “sexual beings” from Catholic and Muslim and Mormon parents who deprive their children the sex education that the advocates of sex education believe every child deserves. On the other hand, there are those who are so convinced they know the full significance of what is growing in another woman’s womb that they must rescue these fetuses from their own mothers.
What does one have to do with the other? You’re confusing and mixing issues together.
The hypothetical ladybug did not grow in your womb. Your baby did, and I will call it your baby, simply because it grew inside you and that is how you felt about it.
No, actually you never did call my baby a baby. You called him/her a “spontaneous miscarriage”.
But regardless, if I were growing a cancerous tumor in my body, and for some reason I became attached to it and called it my baby, I am certain you wouldn’t give me any respect for that point of view either. There is no reason for you to respect my point of view on my baby if you believe it is truly just a mass of tissue. It is disingenuous.
Of course it is hard to allow another woman to “choose” what you believe to be murder. I’m sure that is a perfectly sincere belief on your part.
It’s not simply a belief or opinion that a human being is being killed every time someone has an abortion. It is scientific fact.
But, if millions of us disagree about something so fundamental, perhaps it is best to take a step back, continue talking, but let each mother come to terms with how she will handle the situation.
No, it is not best to let each mother handle the situation, any more than it is best to let each mother decide whether she will abuse or kill her born child. Some choices shouldn’t be allowed because they harm or take the life of other human beings.
You could still look forward to “What if they built an abortion clinic, and nobody came?” Like Gerard asked himself, what if Roe v. Wade is never overturned, but women CHOOSE life?
Would you be willing to allow rape to be legal, but just try to convince all men that women were valuable and should be respected? What a naive expectation that would be. Sure, it would be wonderful, but is it realistic to expect it to happen? Of course not.
By the way, Siarlys, how were you personally involved in abortion? Did you pay for one yourself years ago? Did you have a partner who had one?
Let me start with the last question. I have never gotten a woman pregnant, much less paid for her to have an abortion. Obviously, I was not aborted. I’ve never been a woman, and don’t ever expect to be. So, that doesn’t leave much in the way of personal involvement. I’ve never escorted a woman to a clinic where she planned to have an abortion either. I’ve never been asked for my opinion by a woman who was thinking of having an abortion. My motives are purely altruistic. I just want the best possible legal framework for sorting out a difficult question.
Your question about rape is a little silly, because if the definition of rape turns on consent, and a woman has not given consent, nobody else needs to be consulted as to whether the act is, or would be, rape. She might commit perjury, but that is another question.
Before consent was a recognized legal issue, rape was not so much a crime against the woman concerned, as against her father or husband, or sometimes brother if her father were dead and she were unmarried. In fact, in some jurisprudence, while the perpetrator might be killed, she was considered damaged goods and could be more or less thrown away. In the code of Hammurabi, the rapist was punished by tying the woman to him, and throwing them both into the river. I’m glad we have advanced beyond all those legal codes.
Child abuse is another red herring. I never cease to marvel at how much damage “pro-life” people are willing to propose, what horrendous sociological theories I see cited, in an effort to show that a fetus should not be removed. There have been human cultures in which children were literally considered the property of their parents. Even as adults, a father could kill his children if they displeased him. We don’t allow that any more. On the other hand, our law retains the concept that parents have considerable liberty in raising their children. Children are not mere creatures of the state — even if the legislature wants to require all children to attend public schools, parents have a constitutional right to send them to parochial schools. Even if the child doesn’t like that decision, no court will over-ride the parents.
Despite the misconceptions of some social workers, the law still allows parents some leeway in use of corporal punishment, although if there are bruises and lacerations, much less contusions, the law will generally intervene. People argue a good deal on where that line should be drawn, but considering the complexities involved, and recognizing that all parents WILL make mistakes, even within any framework of law, I don’t think that is the worst place to draw the line. Dr. Spock’s 1954 edition of the famous baby and child care book covers the subject rather well. Not all wrongs can be righted by passing laws on the subject, but some wrongs rise to the level that we can and should.
When it comes to abortion, it is an unavoidable fact that nobody but the pregnant woman can carry the pregnancy to term. So, that, in my seldom humble opinion, gives some weight to the idea that no court should impose upon her how she responds to her pregnancy. On the other hand, some time well before delivery, if she had already endured six months of pregnancy, joyfully or morosely, what is present in her is a baby, capable of metabolic independence and possessing all the basic organs and functions of a human baby, including self-awareness, and therefore, she may not destroy it.
You may not like that, you may not agree, but there is no logical or moral inconsistency, despite your strenuous efforts to create one.
Your question about rape is a little silly, because if the definition of rape turns on consent, and a woman has not given consent, nobody else needs to be consulted as to whether the act is, or would be, rape. She might commit perjury, but that is another question.
And what in the world does this have to do with the question I asked? What possible relevance does your statement have to do with anything?
Child abuse is another red herring. I never cease to marvel at how much damage “pro-life” people are willing to propose, what horrendous sociological theories I see cited, in an effort to show that a fetus should not be removed. There have been human cultures in which children were literally considered the property of their parents. Even as adults, a father could kill his children if they displeased him. We don’t allow that any more. On the other hand, our law retains the concept that parents have considerable liberty in raising their children. Children are not mere creatures of the state — even if the legislature wants to require all children to attend public schools, parents have a constitutional right to send them to parochial schools. Even if the child doesn’t like that decision, no court will over-ride the parents.
Again, where is the relevance to my question? Where?
You may not like that, you may not agree, but there is no logical or moral inconsistency, despite your strenuous efforts to create one.
You have yet to show one iota of scientific evidence to counter any of my points about the humanity of the unborn child.
You have contradicted yourself on many occasions- I don’t have to make an effort at all to see it.
1.) You say you oppose killing newborn babies, but you say that you would kill a newborn baby with anencephaly, if you considered it to be “tissue” and not a human being.
2.) You say that you oppose killing a human being, but you claim that after the third trimester, unborn babies are human beings, and yet you advocate allowing mothers to kill them based on a diagnosis of disease or disability.
3.) You say that a human zygote is not a human being, without offering any evidence whatsoever to explain what changes it from non-human to human or at what exact point this happens. You have yet to even determine for yourself whether a 17-18 week fetus is a human being, even though you think there is a chance it is!
4.) You say that you don’t conflate the person with the disease, but then you advocate killing the PERSON, and not simply trying to find a cure for the disease the person has.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
When it comes to abortion, it is an unavoidable fact that nobody but the pregnant woman can carry the pregnancy to term. So, that, in my seldom humble opinion, gives some weight to the idea that no court should impose upon her how she responds to her pregnancy. On the other hand, some time well before delivery, if she had already endured six months of pregnancy, joyfully or morosely, what is present in her is a baby, capable of metabolic independence and possessing all the basic organs and functions of a human baby, including self-awareness, and therefore, she may not destroy it.
So is the issue really about the humanity of the unborn child, or about the autonomy of the woman? because if it’s autonomy, the humanity of the child is irrelevant- you can’t just take it away from her when the child is 6 months…if it’s the humanity of the child, autonomy is irrelevant as well. Pick an argument and stick with it.
It is a little more complicated than that.
Solely in relation to the desire of the state, the community, the woman’s neighbors, to intervene, I favor her own autonomy.
But, when there is a metabolically independent, self-aware baby present, then the woman’s autonomy must yield.
In short, if I ever become convinced that the zygote is indeed a human being, that from conception onward there is a child present, just as surely as there is shortly before delivery, then, and only then, I will fully accept your position.
But before people who oppose abortion had to start casting around for arguments to win people over, much of the motivation behind the anti-abortion arguments forty years ago were indeed motivated by a desire to negate the woman’s autonomy, more than by concern for the child. I lived through some of those years. I was 19 when Roe v. Wade was announced.
My remaining caveat would be over a genuine threat to the woman’s life or permanent damage to her health. There have been times and places (19th century Ireland for one), where a case was made that it is a woman’s duty to sacrifice her life for that of her child. I don’t buy that.
“In short, if I ever become convinced that the zygote is indeed a human being, that from conception onward there is a child present, just as surely as there is shortly before delivery, then, and only then, I will fully accept your position.”
Siarlys, I want you to imagine moving backward in time. Backward five years, ten years. Keep moving backward. To when you were a child. To when you were a baby.
At what point in that backward journey are you no longer you, but merely some cells, with no inherent value as a human being? Can you choose a point?
Is it when you first acquired language? Drew your first breath? Dreamed your first dream? First experienced taste? First experienced touch? Was it when you first produced brain waves? When your fingerprints were first formed? When your heart first beat? When you first reacted to an outside stimulus? When you first communicated your presence to another human being? What is the crux of it?
If somebody killed you today, they’d be killing a human being of inherent worth. If they’d have killed you last year, they’d have killed a human being of inherent worth. If they’d have killed you on your first day of junior high school, they’d have killed a human being of inherent worth. At what point in that backward journey can the entity with your DNA be killed, without killing a human being with inherent worth?
What is the point, in that backward journey, where the transition from unique human being to mere potential happens?
“But, when there is a metabolically independent, self-aware baby present, then the woman’s autonomy must yield.”
Why should her autonomy yield to these characteristics, which develop in degrees (certainly self-awareness continues to develop long after the baby is born), but not to the human being that is already there before these characteristics develop to the degree where they are recognizable to you?
You are choosing to emphasize characteristics, such as self-awareness, as they exist in a typical adult human being, and proposing that we should value all human beings according to the degree to which they exercise those characteristics. But where could those characteristics have come from unless they were already present in the nature of the being that exercises them?
But, when there is a metabolically independent, self-aware baby present, then the woman’s autonomy must yield.
Why, and at what exact point is the self aware baby present?
I can best answer Bethany and Dan’s questions by my answer to Michelle’s. The backward journey is purely hypothetical, since we do not in fact devolve in that manner. The only time I will cease to exist is when I die, the end of life, not when I return to the beginning. This is also my response when a living, breathing, self-aware, mature person who has a genetic disability (or a disability from a severe uterine infection) says “I’m glad my parents didn’t abort me.” Well, they didn’t, or you wouldn’t have any opinion about it at all. If you are talking about it, abortion is not, and never can be, an issue in your life.
As a matter of fact, I recently spent the week-end with my parents, and in discussing my participation at this site, my mother mentioned that she had a bout of shingles when pregnant with me, and if she knew then what we know now, she might well have had an abortion. Fortunately, the tissue that grew into me was not infected, but the possibility that the spots that would grow into eyes might have been destroyed was indeed a horrific notion. I would expect some tests to determine the result of the infection would also be in order, if available, but if she had aborted at that time, I would have no opinion at all about it.
Whatever healthy baby she did have later might have had my name, it would not have been genetically identical to me, it would have had very similar childhood experiences, it would have been in kindergarten rather than first grade when Kennedy was inaugurated, and it would have been my parent’s oldest child, the only one they knew, hugged, raised. What difference would that make? One genetic combination among millions of possibilities would not be the one that came to fruition. The fact that I am here means that this hypothetical abortion is of no bearing on my life at all. It it had taken place, I would not be here thinking about it. Abortion is not an issue to me.
But, trying to go backwards, as Michelle suggests, to try to define a boundary from this side of things, after around three months back inside my mother, my eyes would begin to disintegrate, my neuronic pathways would begin to dissolve, my muscles would shrink, my brain would reduce itself to three little bumps with no capacity for thought. My liver, pancreas, intestines, would shrink back into stem cells. As I ceased to even be aware of my own existence, even to know inchoately “I want food” as a baby does, I would cease to exist. There might still be bone structure, but there would not be me. What had been the biological framework for a unique person (yes, I used the word person, not a problem) would no longer be present in the tissue rapidly shrinking into three layers of cells, then a globe, then a single cell, then splitting into two wriggling little cells. But long before then, I would have ceased to exist.
I forgot to add, in more than one of the Chronicles of Narnia, Aslan tells Lucy “What might have been? No-one is ever told that. What will be, that we can know.” Most likely, C.S. Lewis would not have applied that syllogism to the present debate. He certainly honored motherhood in many ways in his writings, and probably would have adhered to the traditional Anglican opposition to abortion. But no woman who has had an abortion ever can or will meet the baby that might have been. That baby is hypothetical. Likewise nobody can even know “what would have been” if a woman had aborted during a pregnancy which in fact she carried to term.
I know a certain percentage come to regret their decision, and some seek solace in trying to make it up to “my baby,” but that is in their own mind coming to terms with their own regret. (I agree that most likely, these are women who were lied to about what they would experience and what exactly was growing inside them — “it’s only blood” is an absurd falsehood, and doubly irresponsible in responding to a woman who has already expressly asked “It it a baby?”)
To try to work backwards denies the undoubted fact that we only live live forwards. “Back to the future” is a moderately entertaining approach to action adventure fiction, but it not only isn’t feasible now, there is good reason to doubt that the fabric of Creation will ever allow us to attempt time travel.
But no woman who has had an abortion ever can or will meet the baby that might have been. That baby is hypothetical.
The baby isn’t hypothetical. It’s dead. There’s a difference.
Fortunately, the tissue that grew into me was not infected, but the possibility that the spots that would grow into eyes might have been destroyed was indeed a horrific notion.
WTF? That has to be the most bizarre linguistic attempt to twist around the reality that the organism that is you, now reading this blog, is the same organism that at an earlier stage of life was in-utero with cells primed to develop into eyes.
I do’nt have much time tonight but just had to respond to this:
“Fortunately, the tissue that grew into me was not infected, but the possibility that the spots that would grow into eyes might have been destroyed was indeed a horrific notion. I would expect some tests to determine the result of the infection would also be in order, if available, but if she had aborted at that time, I would have no opinion at all about it.”
Siarlys, if your mother had killed you yesterday, you would have no opinion about it.
That’s the thing about being dead.
As a matter of fact, I recently spent the week-end with my parents, and in discussing my participation at this site, my mother mentioned that she had a bout of shingles when pregnant with me, and if she knew then what we know now, she might well have had an abortion.
Has your mother had any abortions?
I find it really odd that you would have a discussion with your mother about her being willing to kill you.
Just imagine if I ever had a discussion with my daughter or son in which I said, “If I had found out that you had a disease when you were a newborn, I would have killed you most likely.”
Amazing what people will actually discuss with their own children- and especially that the children accept it.
Siarlys, I find it very strange that you are okay with the idea that your mother would be willing to take back giving you life ,and instead kill you with difference circumstances.
You must not value your life very much. I am sorry about that. I think that I value your life more highly than your own mother. I know God does.
My mother is not at all willing to take back giving me life. She did give me life, and despite some tensions between us at various points in time, common to all parenthood and childhood, she is pleased with the way I have turned out. She would have been unwilling to take chances on growing me from damaged tissue. To me, that is a huge difference. I value my life too, but that is because I am here to value it. If I hadn’t been born, it would have been a moot point. But, what might have been? Nobody is ever told that.
If my mother had killed me yesterday, I would have experienced the knowledge that I was about to die. If she had had an abortion when four months pregnant, I would have experienced nothing, because I did not yet exist. Only a framework from which I did grow existed. What if the sperm which contained half the chromosomes I now possess had bumped into a rough spot on the cervix, and some other sperm had gotten to the egg first? Would my mother ever have known the difference? But the fact that we are speaking about it tells us all that the other sperm did not fertilize the egg. They all died, poor dears.
If my mother had killed me yesterday, I would have experienced the knowledge that I was about to die.
No, not necessarily. She could kill you in your sleep. She could poison you. She could use any number of methods to kill you without your prior knowledge. So maybe that means you don’t truly exist whenever you’re sleeping or unaware that someone is trying to kill you?
Has your mother ever had any abortions, Siarlys?
She would have been unwilling to take chances on growing me from damaged tissue.
There is a huge difference in your basic tissue and a growing human life in the womb.
I value my life too, but that is because I am here to value it.
Is the life of a person only valuable if another person values them, Siarlys?
What about how God values people?
Have you ever considered the idea that you are not just a fluke of nature- but that God himself had a specific purpose and plan for your life?
Have you ever considered that God values you, and that is what makes you valuable…not what some other person thinks about you- and not depending on what you can or can’t do- but that God created you and designed you with a purpose that no other person’s value system can take away?
I am deeply saddened to see how little you value yourself.
The Bible says that we are so valuable to God. God loves us so very much. We are not just a fluke of nature.
We are His creation.
Not a single one of us was created by accident. God knows each and every one of us even before we are created in the womb.
He knows everything about us, every choice we will make, every thought we will think, before we are even conceived.
He sent His Son to die on the cross for our sins, even before we existed, because He knew that one day we would need His atonement. There is no greater love than God himself coming to earth to lay His life down for our benefit. By His sacrifice, we are given life.
Siarlys, I am valuable and was valuable to God even before I was conceived. I know that I have inherent value because God created me in His image and He loves me.
I do not think that I am some random chance that happened, or that anyone could ever replace me.
Even though you seem to think it is true, no one could replace you either, Siarlys. You were created with a purpose. You are no accident.
And neither is any child.
Even my baby who died through miscarriage had a purpose and a plan too.
In his/her short life span, she was able to be instrumental in saving many lives. What a wonderful thing that God is able to use even the LEAST of us humans to bring glory to His name.
I am so thankful that I have a God who values me and loves me as His child. I hope that one day you can recognize that you have value too, Siarlys.
I hope one day you will realize that the babies you call tissue are very special human beings who deserve to be loved and valued for who they are, and you will work to protect them, not to devalue them anymore. I pray that day will come soon.
I am deeply saddened to see how little you value yourself.
I actually have a rather inflated opinion of myself, and I work at reminding myself that I don’t know everything, I can’t do just anything I want to, and I might even be wrong now and then. I don’t therefore assume that everyone else I talk to is right. I’m sure God has a purpose for me, because in a cold, random, statistically balanced universe, considering the way our culture presently functions, I should be homeless on the street, not through any fault of my own, but because I don’t have all the conventional little markers that make a resume impressive to the functional laziness of the modern human relations department. I have no doubt at all that God has been looking out for me, and I know some of the people God has blessed, using my as his instrument. I have cards from them to prove it, and none of us has any doubt that it was God, not me, who was doing the hard work. I admit I’ve enjoyed it and gotten some fulfilment from what I’ve been able to do along the way.
I’ve never held a second trimester preemie — the option to do so is quite rare, and usually, as it was for you, quite tragic, even though you also found divine purpose in it. There is a child I’m close to who was a preemie; I’m not sure what week, but his mother’s body simply couldn’t hold him, and when I first saw him his parents had brought him to church in a kind of draped cart, with all kinds of tubes still in him. (His sisters have been full term, with the aid of a cervical stitch).
I also have a little brother (as in Big Brothers / Big Sisters) whose sister died at the age of two after innumerable operations on her bone marrow and other problems. Their mother said the girl was looking at her like “no more operations… let me go… this is too much.” The girl was dead before her mother told me this. Mom would never have let her go without trying everything to keep her alive. While I appreciate that motherly instinct, I do wonder if it was kind to the girl. I might, if she were my daughter, have said “no operations.” Oxygen, food, warmth, care, but no operations. If she dies, let God have her back.”
The secretary of my church was on dialysis for many years, and drove herself to appointments. Eventually, her car took itself off the road — she literally couldn’t control it any more, and thankfully survived. She relied on paratransit after that. Then, she began to get diabetic gangrene. The doctors took off a few toes. It spread. The doctors said they would need to take off half her foot. No, she said, there will be no more operations. She died a few months later, had a terrific send-off, and of course, she made her own decision as an adult about herself, and she did NOT take her own life, she just refused thanathasia. But are we always doing right to decide for the future baby that he or she must be born into this world? I’m not sure that isn’t sometimes just as bad as deciding not to do so. It is a tough call, either way.
My mother has never had an abortion. That is the last thing I’m going to say about her, because its really not my place to speak for her, but since you asked, I want to give you a straight answer. I got off on that tangent because it seemed relevant to talk about how I viewed the subject. If she cares to join this discussion, and she’s not the one who chose to drop in here, I am, she will speak for herself in her own words.
So SJ, no doubt it would have been better if the secretary of your church had never been born. No doubt her illness was such an imposition on people’s lives, such an aesthetic affront, so consumed was she in her own suffering, that all who knew her, had anything to do with her, simply wished her dead, or that she had never been born at all.
So wretched and beastly was her presence here, I’m sure that you wished her dead, that she wished herself dead, preferring never to have been born, and believe that the doctors ought to have put her down like the dog that she was.
I do have that correct, don’t I? Because that’s what you are saying when you say:
“But are we always doing right to decide for the future baby that he or she must be born into this world?”
The baby, AGAIN AS EMBRYOLOGY TELLS US, is a new human organism from the moment of fertilization. By the time you become aware of it, the new human being exists. By the time you become aware of genetic anaomalies, even your own criteria for personhood, e.g. brain, thought, nervous system, have been fulfilled.
On other threads you say I undercut myself by claiming ‘Science in Service of the Pro-life Movement.’ However, the science I present is the very mainstream science people such as yourself choose to deny, preferring to engage in your own modern day flat earth society; which really makes your quoting the Gallileo story all the more deliciously amusing. Modern day embryology has taken all of the guess-work out of it. Still, SJ, you soldier on in your flat earth mentality.
Tragic, really.
I actually have a rather inflated opinion of myself, and I work at reminding myself that I don’t know everything, I can’t do just anything I want to, and I might even be wrong now and then.
What does that have to do with inherent worth?
You base your whole idea of whether you are valued on how much you “know”. It is based on something that you think you can DO, not on who you are.
If you were in a car accident which left you mentally retarded and disfigured for the rest of your life, in your opinion would you still have just as much value as you perceive yourself to have today?
Would you still have a purpose?
I also have a little brother (as in Big Brothers / Big Sisters) whose sister died at the age of two after innumerable operations on her bone marrow and other problems. Their mother said the girl was looking at her like “no more operations… let me go… this is too much.” The girl was dead before her mother told me this. Mom would never have let her go without trying everything to keep her alive. While I appreciate that motherly instinct, I do wonder if it was kind to the girl. I might, if she were my daughter, have said “no operations.” Oxygen, food, warmth, care, but no operations. If she dies, let God have her back.”
You constantly mix issues that have nothing to do with one another.
We are talking about abortion, and then you throw in an issue about withholding extensive life saving intervention. That is a COMPLETELY different subject than taking the liberty of killing a child.
Tell me, do you see no difference in withholding extensive treatment for a preemie (except nutrition, warmth, love, food),
and in taking a preemie and ripping it’s arms and legs off to kill it? Or injecting it’s heart with poison to kill it? No difference at all? Really?
The secretary of my church was on dialysis for many years, and drove herself to appointments. Eventually, her car took itself off the road — she literally couldn’t control it any more, and thankfully survived. She relied on paratransit after that. Then, she began to get diabetic gangrene. The doctors took off a few toes. It spread. The doctors said they would need to take off half her foot. No, she said, there will be no more operations. She died a few months later, had a terrific send-off, and of course, she made her own decision as an adult about herself, and she did NOT take her own life, she just refused thanathasia. But are we always doing right to decide for the future baby that he or she must be born into this world? I’m not sure that isn’t sometimes just as bad as deciding not to do so. It is a tough call, either way.
Gerard’s response to this was right on the money, so I’m going to leave it with what he said.
Savage, Gerard, really savage. Now you want to kill elderly women to prove that an embryo is a baby. Again, I marvel at the analogies pro-life people will draw, holding swords over seventy year olds to save zygotes from destruction. That may be an unfair construction of exactly what you said, but, I think you will recognize, deep down inside, that it is no more unfair than your own construction of what I said.
Embryology tells us that from the moment of conception, there is a unique new pattern of 23 chromosomes which, if the process is not interrupted by all manner of factors, some natural, some deliberate human action, will grow into a human being. It is a matter of interpretation, not empirical data, to say that this is a person entitled to full legal protection independent of the mother. Like all scientists, you have your own viewpoint, perspective, convictions, biases, and you bring all of that to your work. So has every other scientist who ever lived.
The fact that you have a very deeply felt set of convictions, which you would have regardless of the science, and which your church had before sonograms and fiber-optic observation of fetal development, strongly suggests that you fit data into your conclusions, rather than arriving at your conclusions because you saw the data. That doesn’t mean your conclusions are wrong either, but it does induce some caution concerning statements like “taken all the guess work out of it.” I don’t think you are lying to me, but I think you are deluding yourself.
Since you don’t add a grain of salt to your assertions, I do add one when reading them. If you added the grain of salt yourself, you might actually be a more effective advocate, better able to actually change minds. Incidentally, NARAL doesn’t seem to be very good at adding a grain of salt to their own assertions — because they should be considering the data you put forward. Assuming they can make a valid point, they should do so by incorporating new data, as I tried to do with the data from 101 Reasons.
Moving on to Bethany’s car accident scenario, if a car accident left me essentially without either the personality or abilities I have now, it could be so damaging that no, I would no longer exist, and the useless body that used to be me would have no real purpose. I could envision being quadraplegic, equipped with a computer capable of taking dictation and performing program commands from a human voice, and still having a purpose. We could, for example, continue this conversation, and I could do online research and publish biographical articles. But if I were not even capable of thinking about such things, if my sole function were to site in a room and stare, unable to think, unable to make the value judgements I can make now, unable to recognize my niece if she came to visit me, no, I would have no purpose. Likewise, if I were continuously underwater for fifteen minutes, please don’t try to resuscitate me — too many brain cells would have been destroyed and I wouldn’t be there even if you stabilized heart and lung functions.
It may have escaped you, but sometimes I try to give you a broader picture of my life, so you have a context for our discussion. I understand the difference between
a) slitting a person’s throat,
b) a person consciously refusing treatment,
c) an adult deciding to refuse treatment for a helpless child,
d) killing a healthy child,
e) killing a child who is not healthy,
f) terminating a pregnancy before a child is fully present.
I consider (b), (c) and (f) to be acceptable, depending on circumstances. I consider (a), (d), and (e) unacceptable in any conceivable circumstances. You consider (f) to be no different that (d) and (e). That’s what we’re arguing about.
Embryology tells us that from the moment of conception, there is a unique new pattern of 23 chromosomes which, if the process is not interrupted by all manner of factors, some natural, some deliberate human action, will grow into a human being.
No, you can repeat this as many times as you want, but the fact is that embryology tells us that from the moment of conception, there already IS a human being present.
The zygote possesses ALL that is necessary for a human being to exist.
f) terminating a pregnancy before a child is fully present.
There is no such thing as a pregnancy without a child.
Moving on to Bethany’s car accident scenario, if a car accident left me essentially without either the personality or abilities I have now, it could be so damaging that no, I would no longer exist, and the useless body that used to be me would have no real purpose. I could envision being quadraplegic, equipped with a computer capable of taking dictation and performing program commands from a human voice, and still having a purpose. We could, for example, continue this conversation, and I could do online research and publish biographical articles. But if I were not even capable of thinking about such things, if my sole function were to site in a room and stare, unable to think, unable to make the value judgements I can make now, unable to recognize my niece if she came to visit me, no, I would have no purpose. Likewise, if I were continuously underwater for fifteen minutes, please don’t try to resuscitate me — too many brain cells would have been destroyed and I wouldn’t be there even if you stabilized heart and lung functions.
Like I said, you feel you have no inherent worth. I find that terribly, terribly tragic and sad.
You don’t believe that God loves you despite what happens to you. You believe that you are only worth something as long as you can have a certain level of productivity.
I don’t know if it was your mother or father or someone else in your life who influenced and shaped you to feel this way, but I am honestly so, so sorry.
What a sad thing when you don’t know that you’re loved UNCONDITIONALLY.
The fact that you have a very deeply felt set of convictions, which you would have regardless of the science, and which your church had before sonograms and fiber-optic observation of fetal development, strongly suggests that you fit data into your conclusions, rather than arriving at your conclusions because you saw the data. That doesn’t mean your conclusions are wrong either, but it does induce some caution concerning statements like “taken all the guess work out of it.” I don’t think you are lying to me, but I think you are deluding yourself.
No, Siarlys, that is projection.
It is indeed you who has a deeply held set of convictions which you will not allow science to interfere with.
You continue to insist that a human being doesn’t exist at conception, when Science PROVES that it does.
THAT is willful ignorance. My belief about human life in the womb is supported by science and biology. You have YET to come up with a true scientific explanation for why you believe a zygote is not a human BEING. You have only provided philosophical reasons that you don’t consider those human beings to be PERSONS.
Since you don’t add a grain of salt to your assertions, I do add one when reading them. If you added the grain of salt yourself, you might actually be a more effective advocate, better able to actually change minds.
Siarlys, I am not naive. No matter HOW persuasive the argument, NO minds are ever changed unless the person being debated is willing to actually hear and consider the facts involved, and consider the idea that they might actually be wrong.
I cannot reach into your mind and force it to be concerned with the welfare of others less fortunate than yourself.
However, I have been a part of seeing many people change their stance from pro-abortion to pro-life after they looked at the evidence and realized that their position was very wrong.
It is not within my power to make your mind change- it is within my power to present facts, and let those facts speak for themselves. I can hope and pray that you will decide to listen but that is all I can do.
I can no more change your mind than I can make myself grow 6 inches taller.
No. you can repeat this as many times as you want, but the fact is, embryology teaches us that an embryo is billions of molecules and dozens of organs short of everything necessary for a human being to exist.
Don’t you have any sense, Bethany, of how childish it is for us to simply shout these opposites at each other? If we can still seriously disagree, then the science is NOT settled. At some point, a debate may end up with only the Flat Earth Society denying that the earth is a sphere and circles the sun, while everyone else knows better, and the data is irrefutable. But at this time, there is significant disagreement among both microbiologists and citizens on these matters. We aren’t disputing the data. We’re disputing the conclusions to be drawn from the data. Stamping your foot and saying “It is so science” doesn’t cut it. Claiming to “let facts speak for themselves” is self-delusion bordering on narcissism.
God will still love me after I’m dead, but that doesn’t mean there is any remaining earthly purpose in my empty body. Don’t you get it Bethany? If my mind is gone, I’m not there.
Siarlys, are you saying a mentally retarded and disfigured person has no soul?
We aren’t disputing the data. We’re disputing the conclusions to be drawn from the data.
Nope. You are disregarding the data itself.
The data never says anything about human rights- it simply states that an unborn child from the moment of conception is a human being. You have covered your ears and said “lalallalalaa” in order not to acknowledge what even most Planned Parenthood and NARAL people will even admit! It would be laughable if it weren’t so sad.
Stamping your foot and saying “It is so science” doesn’t cut it.
But presenting the facts as they are does cut it. And the science IS there to prove that an unborn child is a human being from the moment of conception. Just look at Gerard’s recent posts on embryology to see some of the science there. Good grief. The problem really is that some people prefer to hide from facts! And that’s all there is to it!
Bethany, if I wanted to cover my ears, I wouldn’t have bothered to be here at all. I’ve looked everything presented here straight on, and either said, yes, that’s true, but here is why I differ on the conclusion, or, no, that’s wrong, here is why.
For example, I have accepted the citations from microbiology textbooks Gerard has offered, and explained why it does NOT lead me to the conclusion that a zygote is the moral equivalent of a new-born baby.
On the other hand, I have given you detailed citations directly from Roe v. Wade, and you have said, oh no, some web site told me different, you must be wrong.
Your question regarding soul is way off topic, as were your previous comments along the same line. What I said is, if the physical body is sufficiently damaged, to the point that the brain is dysfunctional, a point may be reached where I am no longer there. Where my soul is, God knows. Just as the complete absence of brain activity, zero EEG, is accepted as a measure of death, even while there is still a heart-beat, if my body is on autonomic function, with no conscious thought, no self-aware me still present, nothing left even to wake up, then I’m gone. Turn off all artificial life support, perform no surgery, do not insert a feeding tube.
I never asked you whether you consider yourself to be in existence if you are brain dead. I asked you if you became mentally retarded, would you still have value? Instead of exaggerating the things I ask in order to prove your point, just answer the question as it’s asked.
For example, I have accepted the citations from microbiology textbooks Gerard has offered, and explained why it does NOT lead me to the conclusion that a zygote is the moral equivalent of a new-born baby.
Is a newborn baby the moral equivalent of a fully grown human adult?
No. A new-born baby cannot vote, it cannot make a living to support itself, it cannot speak, it cannot sign legal documents or own property, it can neither conceive nor raise a baby of its own…
But it is a complete, functioning, human baby.
There is a good deal of value judgement here. There have been many cultures in human history in which children, no matter what their age, were considered literally the property of their father until he died. A friend of mine, from Ethiopia, has trouble with the idea that in America, a child can ignore their parent’s wishes at age 18. He was raised in a tradition that father could beat the son no matter how old the son is. On the other hand, he has trouble with the idea that parents can leave their property to anyone they wish, rather than it being law that the children inherit, period.
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, generally facetious, “I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it.” In many cultures, that was literally true. Remember the line in Romeo and Juliet, “An you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend”?
For a lot of reasons, our culture does not consider children to belong utterly to the parent, to do with as the parent pleases. We may not expose babies on the mountain top if we have doubts about them. We may not beat disobedient ten year olds to death. But that is a value judgement we have made. Paternal power of life and death over the family coexisted with the Pythagorean opposition to abortion.
It is not uncommon for a “pro-life” person to argue, if its OK to abort a fetus, why not kill a ten year old? The reason is, because a fetus is a fetus, and a ten year old is a ten year old. I can break that down empirically, but ultimately, a ten year old is more than the sum of his or her parts. So is a fetus, but many of the parts of a ten year old aren’t even there yet, nor does what is developed acting in concert in the manner that the parts of a ten year old do.
I advance that argument only to the point that society should not forcefully step in while an undeveloped fetus is still inside a woman. If you view a fetus growing in you differently, society, by the same token, may not step in to tell you otherwise.
Again, you try using philosophy and “value judgements” to explain why you believe it’s acceptable to kill an unborn child. Yawn.
The fact is, a zygote has just as much potential as a newborn baby, and you cannot get around that.
A zygote is at one stage of development, and a newborn is at another.
I feel sorry for you that you MUST resort to philosophy in order to respond to my discussion instead of science, but I understand- because it is impossible for you to argue against what I’ve said using Science.
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