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Abortion

  
  

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We're The Great Old Ones Now
11:26 / 24.04.02
Kit-Kat:

I was suggesting that it might be possible to remove the foetus with roughly the same amount of invasion etc. - I simply don't know enough about medicine, though. If you know better, I yield the point, but I see no reason in principle why it might not be possible to create a technique which would put the two proceedures roughly on a par. Obviously, neither is ideal...

The next question is whether a somewhat greater amount of discomfort is a price people would be willing to pay to avoid termination, and if so, how much. I don't know that, either.

Haus:

how about if the foetus can be transferred from womb to womb without surgery, by matter transport

Congratulations. You win. I just don't care enough to argue with you when you display this level of contempt.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:38 / 24.04.02
Put the toys back in the pram, Nick.

I was in fact not showing contempt, but rather proposing a hypothetical mechanism by which advanced technology could make the process non-invasive - a futurological analogue to something like keyhole surgery. It may sound science-fictional, but then so do artificial wombs.

The hypothesis frames the question "if we can remove the objection that this will involve subjecting women to a more invasive and dangerous surgical procedure than abortion, what are the other objections?"
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
11:41 / 24.04.02
Well, the thing is, the foetus attaches to the lining of the womb, and in the early stages is pretty much indivisibly attached - the lining and the foetus will have veins in common, etc. So it's hard to see how the embedded foetus could be removed from the womb without also removing the lining. Current surgical early abortion practice involves a suction method, which detaches the foetus and the lining to which it is attached - leaving the rest of the lining. It is sometimes the case that the suction procedure actually misses part of the foetus, and in these cases the abortion is incomplette and will ahve to be done again. So it's pretty obvious that the suctionmethod is no good for removing a foetus that one wishes to keep alive. It also seems to me that a surgical operation to detach the foetus and relevant lining would have to be invasive - even if it was possible to do it by microsurgery, the foetus would still have to be removed somehow, which would at the very least involve dilation of the cervix (I would think) and other invasive procedures.

If we are talking about later abortions, where the foetus is more fully formed, abortion procedures are highly invasive, and where there are medical problems after six months (e.g. baby will be stillborn) I believe a birth is induced.

I would guess that most women who have early-term abortions do so for non-medical reasons, such as not wanting a child or to maintain a child, or to go to term with a view to having a child adopted (especially if the women is employed in a high-pressure environment - I understand that the physical aspects of pregnancy can make it very difficult for women to work surprisingly early on). I would also imagine that many of these women would prefer a relatively quick and non-invasive procedure to a more invasive procedure even if that does mean that a termination is involved.

However, in the event that a woman has moral qualms about having a termination but wishes to avoid going to term (for whatever reason) the solution you suggest might be preferable.
 
 
Tom Coates
11:59 / 24.04.02
I'm not going to get heavily involved in this debate, but I think I have to say that personally I'm split about what's the right thing to do. And so on that basis - since it's such an incredibly important issue, I've decided that it's a decision that every individual has to make for themselves. It seems clear to me that arguments about the foetus 'not being alive' are simultaneously patently absurd and yes essentially true. Clearly there are many circumstances in which the birth of a child or the bringing of a child to term would be appalling etc. etc. But the thing is it's not supposed to be qualm-less, is it? It's supposed to be a difficult decision to make. And you've got to weigh your own ethics in it. Your own positions on things. Other than delineating the size and shape of the space in which people should be free to make their own decisions according to their own moral, ethical, social beliefs and personal circumstances, the law has no role to play...
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
12:53 / 24.04.02
Kit-Kat - you may well prove to be right. Thanks for the expansion.

Haus - if you want to convince me that you're not displaying contempt, I'd suggest that 'put the toys back in the pram' is not the way to go. I re-iterate - I have no interest in arguing with you at that level. I'm tired of the Haus suit and its bored superiority. You've cultivated a persona which exists somewhere between Jeremy Paxman and Oscar Wilde, and I'm just not playing that game with you any more, here or anywhere else. You want me to be civil, I will. In return, you can do the same.

If you want to introduce fictional science into this discussion, that's up to you. Since artificial wombs are reckoned to be 'within ten years', and large scale matter transport comes in the 'theoretically impossible' category, they fall into rather different worlds. You would probably have done well to indicate that you were serious, rather than relying on the goodwill the Haus suit goes out of its way not to generate. The hypothesis was already framed as you suggest. No need to make it laughable before we examine the arguments.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:38 / 24.04.02
I regretfully suggest that you are seeing parodic hyperbole, and in fact bored superiority, where it is not present. "Matter transportation" was an attempt to elide through hypothesis the problems explained in greater depth by Kit-Cat Club above.

Making pronouncements about abortion/foetal transfer without understanding the processes is likely to generate a "bored" response, because it is *boring*. It's what men have been doing for a very, very long time.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
13:42 / 24.04.02
As I said. I'm bowing out. You can demonstrate your brilliance on others.
 
 
Cherry Bomb
13:47 / 24.04.02
Play fair. There are gradations. I don't see a just-fertilised egg as a tiny human. It's hard to see exactly where that category becomes accurate. So one group of people is arguing that this tiny human has rights, and another is saying 'it's not a tiny human yet, and the mother has the right to call a halt until it is'. And there are thousands of variations on the theme.

True Nick, but you must admit that many people DO think a just-fertilized egg is a tiny human. There are actually people who "adopt" embryos that would otherwise be used to for stem-cell research and attempt to grow them to term in order to save the lives of what they consider to be tiny humans.

Obviously that's an extreme example, and you're right - there are gradiations. But simply because you and I can see that, and simply because you think "choice" vs. "child" is a bit of an old hat argument, unfortunately does not mean that the debate at that level is too tiresome to continue. Tiresome it may well be, but until we can move beyond this crux, if we ever can, the debate will continue.

You are right though; the "artificial womb" opens a new side to the debate. Several suits have brought up some interesting aspects to it. I said I would be open to this option if I became unexpectedly preggers. But then there is the question - would that mean I'd have to raise this child, too? And what about the invasive procedure (didn't consider that first time around)? And arent' there enough unwanted children out there? Aren't there enough children without adequate access to the things human beings need in order to develop into healthy adults?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
14:55 / 24.04.02
Essentially, I think all the points raised by Cherry's last paragraph are entirely relevant.

Moving on, I am interested by Tom's statement:


But the thing is it's not supposed to be qualm-less, is it? It's supposed to be a difficult decision to make.


What do people think? Should abortion be a difficult decision, or should it be seen, although by no means desirable physically or psychologically, as a form of late-in-the-day contraception?

An interesting source of thoughts on this might be a recent attempt by a group of pro-life activists to make it illegal to provide the morning-after pill over the counter, on the grounds that, according to a 19th-century statute, abortifacients were not legally to be provided by anyone other than a doctor, and that the MOP was an abortifacient.

So, what is the difference between an abortifacient, an abortion, and contraception, morally/ethically speaking? They are all attempts to derail the natural course of procreation...
 
 
Rev. Orr
15:09 / 24.04.02
Well surely the difference in effect, is that a contraceptive prevents fertilisation of an egg whereas anything that acts after this occurs is an abortifacient. This would be a pseudo-legal argument and ignores the ethical or emotional difference between the two terms but that's the point of their actions - changing definitions would be too hard so let's try playing with words. As to the difference between an abortifacient and an abortion that depends entirely on your ouwn viewpoint.

In the end, I can't see that there is any alternative to the idea that where you decide 'life' starts and what weight you put on that life are intensly personal and subjective decisions that have to take a leap beyond the available facts whatever you decide. Where this is open to a profitable debate where concensus is necessary is to what extent society or the law has any part to play in this process. As most laws seem to be based on the concept of when a foetus is capable of life outside the womb, certainly for the timeframe available for abortion, then I'd say the possibility of full-term artificial gestation would cause these laws to be re-examined.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
16:27 / 24.04.02
Cherry writes:

True Nick, but you must admit that many people DO think a just-fertilized egg is a tiny human. There are actually people who "adopt" embryos that would otherwise be used to for stem-cell research and attempt to grow them to term in order to save the lives of what they consider to be tiny humans.

I wouldn't argue it for a second. I don't mean that I don't want to argue it because it's old hat, though - just that it is, formulated like that, insoluble. The two sides are discussing different things and neither is prepared to move. On the one hand, an instinctive or religiously informed decision that the fertilised egg is a tiny human. On the other, a scientific and women's rights-informed position that it's a woman's right to control her reproductive capability and decide when she has a child, and that this entity has no separate rights until it is a feeling, thinking entity capable of apprehending the self - which comes rather later.

This argument dissolves in the presence of an alternative to termination which does not involve carrying a child to term - a process which naturally enough makes a huge impact on a woman's life, and on her feelings regarding the child. It becomes a question of not 'is it right or acceptable to terminate this pregnancy?' but 'is it more right or acceptable to terminate it or remove it but keep it alive?' That only applies, as Kit-Cat points out (I'm sorry, K-C, I keep misspelling your name...), if the proceedure is reasonably uninvasive. If it requires a caesarian, the goalposts move again.

I didn't say it was ideal, by any stretch. I'm not selling it. But I think it will become impossible to ignore. It seems likely to me that the pro-life lobby (or at least that part of it which is not actually technophobic) will press for this as an alternative to termination, most especially where Catholicism remains definitive of morality.

And arent' there enough unwanted children out there? Aren't there enough children without adequate access to the things human beings need in order to develop into healthy adults?

All true - so are these things more important than the possibility (or certainty) of a 'tiny human being' or less?

I'm not happy pushing this too hard - as Haus so kindly pointed out, I'm a boy...

In a rush, so more will have to wait.
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
17:07 / 24.04.02
For instance: both sides agree that it not right to take an innocent individual's life. I don't think you'll find anyone who'll disagree with that.

"See, I would. If you're alive, the chances are very good that your life tramples on innocent individual lives."

Yes, the chances are very good. I'm sure if we applied chaos theory we could discover that a child suffering in Africa was caused by your birth. Are you to blame for this? It doesn't really matter (for this part, anyway). The thing that matters is do you call it "right"? So you think of it as a "good thing"? I sincerely doubt it, and I think you'll find most people on either side agree that the unneccessary death of an individual life is not a good thing. Some may call it "unavoidable", but that's far from "good".


"I think that's what a lot of people have a hard time accepting."

I'm not so sure. I think most people come to this realization fairly early in thier lives, as I did, and they come to the conclusion, as I did, that you are not to blame for the fact that your existence means someone or something doesn't get the chance to live a full life.
 
 
SMS
21:28 / 24.04.02
I've been thinking about Persephone's earlier post in which she said she would pour the foetus down the drain if it were in an artificial womb. And she gives two reasons for this

1) Because a child exists in the world that is biologically hers, her identity is altered.

and
2) She does not want to meet her child later in life.

Remember that in the case presented, a scientist was going to take care of the baby after it was born from the artificial womb, so we aleady have an adoptiv mother that may be getting a bit attached to the idea.

This seems very much the same as a case in which I slip my girlfriend an abortion pill without her consent because she is pregnant with my child. I hope that nobody here advocates that. So, Persephone needs to explain the moral differences between the two cases. The second reason given for aborting the fetus does not constitute a difference. What about the first? Is a woman's identity altered in a way different from a man's identity?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
23:37 / 24.04.02
This seems very much the same as a case in which I slip my girlfriend an abortion pill without her consent because she is pregnant with my child.

Does the fact that you are altering a function of her body without her consent have a bearing here?

Because, actually, one interesting question about the artificial womb is that, in a sense, the "I have the right to choose what happens to my body" question is either removed or moves to the battleground of what choice the woman has in having the thing yanked out of her in the first place. So, is there a question of "copyright", if you will - that Persephone still has entitlement to terminate the gestation even if it is outside her body as the foetus is "her creation", but has not yet attained the status of "human" that would forbid the termination?

SMS also raises the interesting question - if the child is outside the womb, and thus not the *responsibility* of the biological mother in the sense that she must deal with bearing it to term within her own body, does she lose any claim to be more intimately involved in the process than the father, who contributed half of the genetic material?
 
 
Persephone
02:28 / 25.04.02
SMatthewStolte:

When I wrote what I wrote, the scenario in my head did not include an adoptive mother-in-waiting who might genuinely want my child. I still had in my head this paternalistic scientist who seemed to have no problem saying that a woman could be told to take care of a child that she wouldn’t choose to have. This just struck me as super-clueless... this man has not considered that not being able or willing to take care of a child might be a woman’s specific reason for having an abortion? My feeling was that certainly he does not have any child or mother’s welfare in mind, but more probably he has some Frankenstein curiosity to see whether he can successfully grow a baby in a bottle and nevermind the consequences. So anyway, I was continuing the argument with him in my head... and he said something like, “Looks I have to do everything around here. Fiiiiiine, I’ll grow the baby in the jar and I’ll take care of the baby out of the jar. Happy now?” And I was not happy with that, and I had my reasons... but mostly I thought that it was just not any of his business. Anyway the scene went on --still in my head, as scary a place as that is-- that the fetus was taken from me without my consent, was forcibly taken from me... and ended with me vandalizing the lab and committing feticide. Which is all to say, it was a very specific imaginary situation that I had in mind and I don’t say that I would take the same action in every situation. It’s not plug and play.

I don’t think that your secretly slipping your girlfriend an abortion pill is analogous enough to the above to be workable: 1) You are introducing something into your girlfriend’s body --something that will make her bleed, actually. I am breaking into the scientist’s lab and smashing one jar, if I can’t undo the lid. One’s a bodily crime and the other’s a property crime, and those aren’t equal to me. 2) I wasn’t thinking that the scientist was the father of my fetus, so I don’t have the same relationship with the scientist as you do with your girlfriend. Also, your girlfriend is not a jar. I appreciate your point that a man’s identity must be allowed to be equally altered by the existence of his child, as I am saying that a woman’s identity is... but the scientist is not that man in my life.

If you want to talk apples and apples, and if you want to isolate the idea of identity and abortion (and the morality of), perhaps we could assume that your and your girlfriend are the co-owners, as it were, of your very own jar-baby and go from there...


Johnny the zenarchist:

I’d like to rephrase, if I may... I suppose that I would not disagree that it’s not right to take an innocent life. What I disagree with is the underlying implication that the speaker is “right” --i.e., has had nothing to do with the taking of innocent lives. So you have accepted that you are not to blame for lives that may have been trampled by your existence... but I am not talking about blame, I am talking about the awareness of benefit or perhaps privilege. Maybe everyone gets this and I’m just a late bloomer. But ideally this awareness would engender sympathy, which helps people live together, and not guilt, which pretty much doesn’t help.

So yes, it’s better if I say that I think certain things are “unavoidable,” and what this does is reduce the relevance of “good” and “bad” to me. And I think that’s helpful, actually, in this debate, though I don’t expect a lot of people to agree with me.


Nick:

Right off the bat, the two definite dealbreakers for the artificial womb in my view are 1) if the fetal transfer procedure is invasive to the biological mother’s body, and 2) if the biological mother is assumed to bear the responsibility of caring for the child as conceived. I’ve already said this, but to answer your question directly... I’d say that the artificial womb does not have “the potential to break the deadlock in the majority of cases,” because in the majority of cases the idea of having a child does not stop at the point when the fetus comes to term, to say nothing about the reality of having a child.

If you guarantee against these two points, then we can talk about identity copyright... but I wonder if that issue is so complicated after all. Isn’t the thing that has made abortion so complicated from the beginning of time that women are so intimately involved both in childbearing and childrearing, and men somewhat less so? And if all things became equal, then what would we argue about?

Finally, re: “two sides are discussing different things and neither is prepared to move,” I would personally love to see the pro-choice side either accept as true or highly possible that life begins at conception --basically, take an anti-life position in some cases. That, to me, is choice.
 
 
YNH
06:46 / 25.04.02
If the olive branch in the debate must be "okay, it's life," then so be it. It's life, fully dependent upon and at the leisure of another life: namely the biological coincident to the womb in which its squatting. The trouble is, if the women's rights contingent accedes this, Nick's point about incommensurate terms becomes more true, rather than less. (Did you hear it? They said murder was okay!)

Let's be more clear about a couple things, though, before this moves on. The artificial womb solution, with the possibility of relatively non-invasive surgical extraction of the fetus, is, um, a bit fanatical. Consider that the male reproductive apparatus need not be destroyed by a relatively non-invasive surgical procedure that both renders the discussion moot and can be reversed.

I think we're still arguing the "well why was she having sesx if she didn't want to deal with the consequences?" line when, in fact, medical technology provides a different picture.

Seems more the domain of contract law than copywrite: if both partners knowingly consented [a situation which could lead to embryonic development] without first outlining the parameters of the contract, then the right of possession determines ownership of said material (or something.)

Identity copywrite would lead to a nice situation where we could really start calling large biotech firms demonic when they purchase genetic lines.

And, finally, to keep Nick interested. Isn't what you're suggesting (but emphatically not selling) and extension of the grubby hands of Capital into the very instant of creation to fuel its need for new blood?
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
11:27 / 25.04.02
Persephone:

I'd yield in the case of either of your deal-breakers. I think 1. is a matter of technique, and I think there would/will be pressure to perfect a technique which is as non-invasive as possible; but if there are insurmountable obstacles, then my points simply aren't relevant. 2., on the other hand, would be a piece of ham-fisted moralising, a completely artificial obstacle.

Isn’t the thing that has made abortion so complicated from the beginning of time that women are so intimately involved both in childbearing and childrearing, and men somewhat less so?

My God, what a can of worms to open. Dialectics, power relations, group dynamics, cultural shapes...but yes - with some reservations. Perhaps, if you remove the aspect of physically carrying a child and the risks and rewards (?) that entails, you weaken one of the barriers in understanding between men and women dealing with unwanted pregnancy or planned children. But I'm not sure I've understood you entirely - can you expand your thinking here a little for my fuddled mind?

An anti-life position...now that would be brave, and in some ways such a thing might force people into a confrontation with responsibility and power, as well as choice. I'm about to dive into the 'judgement' topic on a related issue - I'm a fan of acting without taking refuge in notions of over-arching Right and Wrong, more "this is what I think is the most right thing, and I stand by that decision in the face of the consequences I foresee, and by my responsibility even if it turns out worse".

Thanls for giving me stuff to think about.

YNH:

Hey! I thought you'd gone off and left us! I have a pint somewhere here with your name on it...

You're quite right about the 'clips on boytubes' method of contraception - God, that's interesting. Websearch time.

I'm not sure about your contract law, though. The third party also has possession of the material, by definition. Or was that what you meant?

As for identity copyright - hey, if genetic identity can be patented, we all have our own. The danger is that it could then be sold...brrr...I think that's a debate for elsewhere, though. Along with your fascinating depiction of capital reaching into birth...Would you mind making a new thread with a fuller outline of how that works? I'm intrigued (you knew) but I don't think it would be terribly respectful of a rather touchy and emotive topic to get into it here.
 
 
Ethan Hawke
12:37 / 25.04.02
Because, actually, one interesting question about the artificial womb is that, in a sense, the "I have the right to choose what happens to my body" question is either removed or moves to the battleground of what choice the woman has in having the thing yanked out of her in the first place. So, is there a question of "copyright", if you will - that Persephone still has entitlement to terminate the gestation even if it is outside her body as the foetus is "her creation", but has not yet attained the status of "human" that would forbid the termination?

Gee, didn't I bring this up on the first page of the thread?

Sorry, sour grapes. Ignore me, or continue to do so.
 
 
SMS
19:35 / 25.04.02
If, by some chance, these threads are separated, a subtopic has grown here about "issues of Copywrite and Capital regarding birthing politics, abortion, and the rights of foetus and progenitor(s)"
 
 
YNH
19:40 / 25.04.02
Actually, SMS, if you and the other interested parties think the sub-top belongs here and doesn't disrespect the issue/posters, I'd be more than happy to post here.

Nick, after being granted magical powers by my amazon sisters, I was secluded in a tower to complete my final meditations.
 
 
SMS
20:31 / 25.04.02
No, it is perfectly fine as a separate thread. But because it has come from here, I wanted to make sure that there was a path from here to there.
 
 
alas
21:40 / 25.04.02
arrgh! two days ago I posted an eloquent response to all this that would have solved the abortion debate forever, but it was lost somewhere some how! Alas! Woe is me! (Or should that be "Woe! Alas is me!" ?)

At least I don't think it made it up.

First: everyone here should read Drucilla Cornell's argument (made in her book The Imaginary Domain) about abortion and the right of women to be treated as "free and equal persons" before the law (US, in this case). She provides a quick summary of her views (arguing against Judith Jarvis Thomsen's view) for the Boston Review in Oct/Nov 1995:

I think it is not reasonable to expect women to accept the legitimacy of any legal system that denies them the right to abortion. How can I make that claim? At the heart of the Kantian conception of reasonableness - and in The Imaginary Domain I foreground and defend the political conception of reasonableness developed by John Rawls - is the argument that the rightfulness of any law should be judged by the hypothetical consent of citizens suitably represented and evaluated as free and equal persons.

The Rawlsian conception of reasonableness is inseparable from the public evaluation of our equivalent worth as persons in spite of the very real facts of our differences. What does it mean to deny a woman the right to abortion as a matter of law? It means that she is denied her equivalent worth as a person -- the very moral status that rights are meant in this conception to recognize. Put as strongly as possible: the fact of a woman's sexual difference is used to justify her treatment as a violable object. Since this treatment denies women equality as persons, it denies us the fair conditions of cooperation in which acceptance of any law as rightful could be legitimately imposed upon us. An absolute condition of the recognition of this status for women is that we are regarded as free beings, able to make our own considered decisions about crucial aspects of our lives, and therefore I strongly disagree with the Supreme Court's decision in Casey, which permitted states to impose a waiting period on a women who has decided to have an abortion.

I agree with Thompson that the Casey decision confirms Roe v. Wade as precedent that must be followed, but as a matter of political morality the decision does so by denying women their full moral status as free and equal persons. For me it is not just a matter of who has the ultimate decision over an abortion, but of whether or not women are treated as free and equal persons capable of giving moral meaning to the act to abort without any help from the state in the form of restrictions, such as waiting periods. My argument is further developed through a legal defense of the equal protection of certain minimum conditions that can be posited as necessary for an adequate level of personal, social and political integrity. Since the body has psychic as well as physical reality, the demand for bodily integrity also requires that the woman be the arbiter of the meaning of her act to abort. A crucial aspect of developing any sense of who she is depends upon her being able to imagine herself as whole, as a being whose body is integrated through an imaginary projection of herself into the future.

(The complete text of her letter is available at: http://bostonreview.mit.edu/BR20.4/Cornell.html)

My earlier now disappeared post actually centered on this thesis: Adoption is at least as traumatic as abortion, for all involved parties. The pro-life stance does not honor life in all its complexity and vicissitudes but in fact, as I've suggested elsewhere, fetishize the fetus.
 
 
Morlock - groupie for hire
10:09 / 26.04.02
Hmmm, haven't got time to read the whole thing right now, work and all, but based on the excerpt above I agree with her conclusion, but not so much with her reasoning. Seems slightly naive to thingk that the State (or any kind of structured, enforced society) is based on anything other than the limitation of the freedom of one in order to ensure the freedom of another. But that's a tangent. For me, it comes down to the simple fact that I don't think anybody is qualified to decide whose life is more important, or how the mother's life will be affected if an abortion is denied. If we have to assign a nearly arbitrary 'expert' on this, it might as well be the mother herself. Make every effort to ensure she is aware of the options available, and then cross our fingers.
 
 
alas
12:18 / 26.04.02
It may be "naive," but I think her argument is that the Lockean foundations of the US actually demand/evoke this sort of logic. To deny women complete status as persons is to deny the validity of the philosophical foundations of the American experiment. Her argument is naive in the way that Locke, Kant, and Rawls, I guess, are then "naive."
 
 
Morlock - groupie for hire
16:24 / 26.04.02
Apologies, alas, but I am amazingly thinly read. Most of your post has just gone right over my head. Can you elaborate? I think what you're saying is that the US is based on the principle of individual freedom, but that anti-abortion laws restrict personal freedom by restricting choice. Please correct me if I've misunderstood.

Which is fine and correct, but it does not address the fact that the basis of any system of government that I know of is to sacrifice certain degrees of freedom in order to secure others, seen as more fundamental.
In this case (presumably) that the rights of the foetus would be considered more significantly violated by an abortion than the rights of the mother would be if abortion is denied.

I guess what gives me trouble is that I can't see the way from the philosphical ideals to any kind of practical policy. Yes, people should be free to choose, but what about those affected by these choices?
 
 
alas
17:36 / 26.04.02
Thanks for the reply, Morlock. To summarize Cornell's argument, however poorly, I do want to set aside the issue of artificial wombs, for the moment, because I haven't read her take on that issue; if I think about it further, I may be able to make some predictions, but it would take some thinking . . .

So, here's how I understand Cornell, and I hope I'm not distorting her too much (her prose is legalistic, understandably, because that's her training): Until the umbilical cord is cut, Cornell argues, unborn fetuses are not "free and equal persons" who have full moral status. The woman does. Their lives are until that point connected to and dependent on the woman's body. They have no personhood apart from that which they derive from her physical (and, even, her psychic) existence. Cornell argues that a woman's existence must be asserted as non-violable--but NOT the unborn fetus's existence, which is violable, RIGHT UP until the point of cutting the cord. Without a bedrock guarantee of this status in their community, no women has full status as a citizen. That is, women can never have full status as citizens until and unless their personhood is considered non-violable, even when taken as against the fetus they may be carrying. So a woman must have the right to take drugs and even consume alcohol while pregnant, you cannot legislate against those acts, because to do so assumes a violability to the woman's free and equal personhood. Note, such violability is almost never assumed for men, even though things that men do their bodies can harm their sperm and even cause birth defects.

Cornell at one point makes a comparison between the ethics of abortion and of organ _donation_. Forcing a woman to bring a child to term is the equivalent of forcing a person to give a kidney to another human being. We would not do the latter, even if that person were the only one whose tissues matched, the only one who could save the would-be kidney-recipient's life, because it would be a violation of their right to moral personhood. Even if the chances of any real harm coming to them are small, as it is in kidney donation--people can survive just fine with one kidney for a whole lifetime--we do not force people against their will to have their personhood violated even in order to save the life of another. So, Cornell argues, if women are to be considered full and equal persons, we cannot force them to carry a fetus to term.

I hope that's clearer, and I hope I didn't sound too snippy in my first response.
 
 
alas
17:46 / 26.04.02
oh--one point of clarification, re:
So a woman must have the right to take drugs and even consume alcohol while pregnant, you cannot legislate against those acts, because to do so assumes a violability to the woman's free and equal personhood. Note, such violability is almost never assumed for men, even though things that men do their bodies can harm their sperm and even cause birth defects.

I do not mean to imply that Cornell argues that women should not be held responsible for violations of the law, e.g., the drug code (although her politics suggest a critique of such laws--she's skeptical at a deep level of State-authority), but that pregnancy must NOT be viewed as an additional violation: e.g. that taking drugs while pregnant constitutes forcing drugs on a minor.

The problem, as I understand it, for her is that there is no end to those kinds of restrictions, and all of them end up assuming that women's existence, at any point in her life, is violable on the chance that she might become pregnant. If a woman trips and kills her unborn baby can she be sued for wrongful death?

That's the logic Cornell uses, and she believes that it's absolutely critical that without access to abortion through the entire pregnancy women are, fundamentally, not viewed as inviolable, free and equal moral subjects.
 
 
Morlock - groupie for hire
23:59 / 26.04.02
Right, now that I can follow. Thanks for the clarification. And don't worry about any snippyness, i am immune to such subtleties.

so basically, as long as the mother is providing essential life-support, the foetus cannot be considered a separate entity and thus has no rights. i can see the logic in that, now, but I'm still not entirely happy with it. Just seems a rather clinical justification for taking a life. Siamese twins and any person on mechanical lifesupport tend to spring to mind as other areas to which this kind of policy could be extended, and then it gets a bit scary.
i dunno, maybe i'm oversimplifying the argument, and maybe it's not fair to extend it to those other categories. will think some more, and come back later.
 
 
Tom Coates
10:43 / 27.04.02
I'm increasingly fascinated by the kind of intellectual thought-experiment of the artificial womb. I think the fact that we are considering it here rather than in the Laboratory brings a completely different slant to the proceedings. The question that we all seem to be scouting around appears to be, "Outwith of issues of the health of the fetus or the medical invasiveness of the procedure, are there reasonable circumstances under which a woman (or indeed any potential parent) might legitimately wish to abort a child rather than have it incubate in an artificial womb?"

And the answer to me seems to be certainly - YES. It all seems to me to hinge around the concept of whether or not the fetus is actually a living creature - or at which point legally you decide to draw a line in the sand and say it is living 'now'. I think we can certainly argue that the general point raised is that there is no capacity for feeling, pain or judgment in a small collection of cells and that it is only the fact that there might be potential for a full human life to emerge that separates them from the eminently disposable egg and sperm.

In other words, in a lot of people's eyes (and indeed my own), the fetus honestly isn't a living being of any kind until a certain amount of time into the pregnancy. This is not to say that one can't get invested in this potential creature to a greater or lesser extent - simply that it is equally possible not to.

However I think a large number of people - myself included again - would consider bringing a child into the world without taking individual responsibility for it to be a form of abandonment. This abandonment might be mitigated by circumstances (as in the case where one decides to have a child adopted rather than aborted, because of one's ethical position), but the adoption process is inevitably going to be a painful one for a mother (or father) to go through.

I think it's this sense of responsibility that we're skirting around - that for many people allowing their child to be incubated and brought up by another represents an abandonment of a connection that we'd still feel - it's an actual other PERSON who experiences the consequences of the decision to incubate. Whereas it's a medical procedure on oneself to remove a non-living proto embryo. [Again although I personaly would feel this way, I'm not claiming that everyone in the same situation would feel the same way.]

So basically, I'm arguing that the decision to abort does not disappear at all with the arrival of the prosthetic womb - and in fact there are legitimate reasons for individuals wishing to abort rather than to use such a device...
 
 
suds
11:49 / 27.04.02
this is a message for any people who are worried about the new bills which are being passed that will make a fetus into 'an unborn child' thus giving it seperate legal rights from the mother.
it may mean abortion will be made illegal in the u.s.

here is some more information:
"The Department of Health and Human Services wants to change the definition of "child" to include the period from conception to birth. This would allow the fetus to become eligible for health insurance coverage under SCHIP, and effectively raises the status of the fetus above that of the mother. Planned Parenthood opposes this change. It relegates women to second-class status and is little more than a thinly veiled attempt to advance fetal personhood. Furthermore, by making the fetus eligible for health care under SCHIP and not the mother, it fails to cover necessary postpartum care for women."


for information and a place to protest this, go here
 
 
alas
12:58 / 27.04.02
"effectively raises the status of the fetus above that of the mother"

That's the rub for me: that's what I really believe is at the heart of the anti-abortion movement, a fetishization of the fetus.
That is, look at the various definitions of fetish at dictionary.com

e.g. The American Heritage Dictionary:
1.An object that is believed to have magical or spiritual powers, especially such an object
associated with animistic or shamanistic religious practices.
2.An object of unreasonably excessive attention or reverence: made a fetish of punctuality.
3.Something, such as a material object or a nonsexual part of the body, that arouses sexual desire
and may become necessary for sexual gratification.
4.An abnormally obsessive preoccupation or attachment; a fixation.
Or this one from Webster's,
"A material object supposed among certain African
tribes to represent in such a way, or to be so connected with, a supernatural being, that the possession of
it gives to the possessor power to control that being. "

I'm not arguing that the foetus/fetus is a fetish in the sense of the sexual fetish, but in these other senses--particularly this last one by our old friend Webster. That is, it seems to me that the heart of the anti-abortion movement is not "pro-life" but a fetishization of the power/innocence of the child, which has been accruing since the mid-19th century. And the women's rights movement of that time was partly responsible for that change as they argued for the right to the care and custody of their children, arguing for a special relationship to the child, the ability to shape the future in ways that men "naturally" were foreclosed from. That was a powerful, if quite problematic strategy, but one made in the face of a legal system that absolutely denied their legal existence:married women were still "femmes couverts" in regard to their right to control their persons and property, and fathers had the EXCLUSIVE legal right to the care, custody, and labor value of the children. This debate is strongly haunted by tthat history. Progressive women's movements from that time did, I agree, help set the stage for the fetishization of the fetus, but they did so in a culture that has been prone to such distortions.

So, to me, the development of artificial womb technology is deeply problematic, because it is occuring in this context of a serious distrust for the power and rights of women to exist, and to assert their existence over this frankensteinian monster that is the image/ideal of the "healthy (white) baby" that trumps all other claims to human status.

And adoption, in a culture that accords the child this fetishized status, is often deeply traumatizing to the child as part of a system that demands it be and fulfill these quasi-religious fantasies of purity and innocence. Have you seen people deeply disturbed by their inability to have children? Desperately seeking to have a baby? Then having the "one precious child" that finally needs to fill the huge space that the time, money, energy, fretting, has created for it?

That's an equation for trauma. And, to me, it all stems from this sense that women are really not valuable, full human beings, especially when weighed in the balance against this fetishized, non-gendered child. We are all expected to worship and sacrifice at the altar of childhood. We are to accept that all the time, money, intellectual and material resources devoted to new fertility technologies is "worth it" because 1) the class issues involved pretty much guarantee that this system will serve to create new, white, healthy, genetically superior human beings and 2) those people dying around the world from AIDS, from hunger, etc., are damaged goods by comparison to the fetishized power of the healthy white baby.
 
 
Axel Lambert
16:34 / 27.04.02
This is how I understand it.

The "copy-right" of the fetus/child surely is divided 50-50 by the man and the women. But the right to abort is not. This is actually the only thing that disturbs me about this whole issue; 'the child is in the woman, therefore she must choose' is as good a rule as any, but the artificial womb argument (which we also saw in SHADE, remember?) hypothetically undermines any claim that "it's my body", "a women's body is her garden", etc. But what if the women doesn't WANT a child? Well, nobody asked the man that. For this argument to survive in an 'artificial womb' retorical context , the woman must (even apart from pregnacy) be closer to the child than is the man (Haus mentioned this to). I think she is. But would this bond between mother and child give her the right to, for whatever reason, without asking the father, terminate her future child? I think not.

Another thing. It kinda gives me the creeps to think that MY MOTHER had the right to, without asking anybody, not my father, any social circle, the law, etc - the right to ON WHIM prevent me from being born. Any argument in my mother's head would have been good enough. Just a thought.

Persephone/Haus:

The question of the intrusiveness of the transplantation of the embryo to an artificial womb really does not have much weight in this hypothetical context, now does it? Let's just say, for argument's sake, that it's exactly as intrusive as an abortion would be.
 
 
Persephone
23:39 / 27.04.02
Aaaagh, must... read... Ulysses...

I am not sure that I am following your argument, witwol...

The "copy-right" of the fetus/child surely is divided 50-50 by the man and the women. This is actually the only thing that disturbs me about this whole issue; 'the child is in the woman, therefore she must choose' is as good a rule as any, but the artificial womb argument ... hypothetically undermines any claim that "it's my body", "a women's body is her garden", etc.

I hadn't quite gotten to the idea of copyright in my earlier posts; but if it cannot be inferred, then I will say outright that I agree with the above bit of your analysis and argument. To wit, 1) in principle, fetus copyright (if such exists) is shared equally by both biological parents, 2) in present debate, abortion is phrased as "woman's right to choose" due to woman's responsibility for bearing child in own womb, which principle I also agree with, and 3) advent of technologically perfect artifical womb makes father's "right to abortion" is utterly equal to mother's... so far, so good?

The question of the intrusiveness of the transplantation of the embryo to an artificial womb really does not have much weight in this hypothetical context, now does it? Let's just say, for argument's sake, that it's exactly as intrusive as an abortion would be.

Now I'm lost... I'm thinking to your first question, yes? Isn't the point of this hypothetical artificial womb to remove the aspect of abortion--indeed, of pregnancy--that is intrusive to women, that involves their bodies? So if any part of artificial womb technology is "exactly" as intrusive to women, we're right back where we started from and what's the point? And for argument's sake, I've already said this would be a deal-breaker in my mind.

And just for funsies, I would propose that both father and mother --based on genetic copyright rights-- hold veto power. Father and mother must both vote "yes" to give their creation life. If either father or mother votes "no," or if both vote "no," then the fetus would be terminated --its life ended, if you like that phrasing better.
 
 
SMS
01:51 / 28.04.02
What is this world of liars:
It kinda gives me the creeps to think that MY MOTHER had the right to, without asking anybody, not my father, any social circle, the law, etc - the right to ON WHIM prevent me from being born.

You may consider, though, that very few people would argue against your mother's right to "prevent you from being born." The disagreement is really over how she may do this. Abstinence would have the same result.

Haus asked a question about whether abortion ought to be thought of as a late-in-the-day birth control. If you mean that they ought to in the sense that, feeling otherwise is somehow acting against women's rights; if you mean that men and women both should be obligated not to draw a moral distinction between the two, then I think that the answer is no. I'm picturing a woman who has taken a number of precautions to prevent a pregnancy, and has always said that she never wants to have children. She has also always supported women's rights. When she becomes pregnant, she soon decides that she does not, in fact, want an abortion after all, even though her lifestyle would have to change after having children. What a hypocrite! Is she doing any less than turning her back on all women by seeing this bundle of cells as somehow different than the sperm and egg from which it has grown?

If Haus' question is different from this, then I cannot answer it for myself.
 
 
Axel Lambert
15:16 / 28.04.02
Persephone:
Isn't the point of this hypothetical artificial womb to remove the aspect of abortion--indeed, of pregnancy--that is intrusive to women, that involves their bodies? So if any part of artificial womb technology is "exactly" as intrusive to women, we're right back where we started from and what's the point?

I thought the argument went thus: a woman gets pregnant, she doesn't want to carry a child inside her body, therefore she decides to have an abortion. Enter our hypothetical artificial womb. Now the tecnology exists that would let her choose between an ordinary abortion and a transplantation of the empryo to the artificial womb, both similarily intrusive, say. In this scenario not wanting to carry a child needn't imply an abortion, therefore her (and her only) right to abort on the grounds that she does not want to carry the fetus is gone, replaced by her and the biological father's right to decide whether to abort, based on arguments such as "I'm not ready to be a mother/father", "I don't want a child", and such.

I'm really just being the father's advocate.

Does this make any sense?
 
  

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