Posted on 09/11/2004 5:48:34 AM PDT by unspun
I can't help but shake my head when I hear them defend partial-birth on the basis of the health of the mother.
The funny thing is that the talking heads never challenge them on what further harm threatens the mother from a birth that is already complete.
Some of our friends here are conflicted over the abortion issue due to libertarian considerations, the desire to avoid further government intrusion into private matters. I disagree with them, but I understand where they are coming from.
Partial birth abortion is a litmus test that separates the conflicted from the demented. There is no justification on earth for such a procedure, unless you are prepared to follow the Dutch into open euthanasia, where doctors kill their patients at their own volition. I know, there are supposed safeguards, procedures, review boards, bla-bla-bla but interviews with Dutch doctors found that they didn't bother with all that if they felt like someone needed to go.
Cowboys understand that there are some folks that just need killin', but cowboys are generally thinking about folks that shoot back. Dutchmen and Democrats prefer to off the defenseless.
Women who favor abortion tend to see it as a power issue, the all-powerful state versus a defenseless woman, and a pregnant one at that. They are half right; it is an issue of raw and naked power, but the defenseless one is the baby, face to face with an industry for which death is its product, face to face with someone who kills more people in a day than a typical soldier will kill in his entire career, and with no one to protect it but its mother.
And she has other priorities.
Fine. There are a lot of opinions about when precisely a spot of flesh becomes human, is it at conception? Is it sometime later, at the quickening? Is it when it becomes self-sufficient, sometime in its mid-twenties? (or later, these days...) There is no logical alternative to "the moment of conception" but good people can quibble. Find me one who can defend killing it when its already out of the womb and laying on a table, and I'll show you someone who needs... excuse me, I'll show you someone who has sold his soul.
No, of course not.
Abortion should be treated by the States as it was in the 1800's -- with the butchered remains of six-week-old unborn children (who possess hearts, brains, arms, legs, etc.) produced as Evidence, the Abortionist convicted, and then led out to the Gallows and hung until dead for Murder of a human being.
Abortionists should receive a Civil Trial (according to the Murder Law of the several States, under the Tenth Amendment).
And then, of course, they should be Executed.
Best, OP
OP, if that post is your Best on this issue, -- this human dilemma, - I pity you.
And she has other priorities.
I agree that human life begins at conception and would like to see abortion outlawed altogether. But, like your sailor, I'll take whatever progress we can achieve (like partial birth abortion bans) along the way.
Perhaps raising the laws and regulations concerning laboratory animals and comparing that to the age at which the unborn feel pain can help open a few eyes. Someone told me once that there was a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals decades before there was an organization to protect children...
Okay. (shrugs)
Indeed, marron, there is no logical alternative to the moment of conception as the beginning of life, in the present case human life. But if good people want to quibble nonetheless, it seems they have to do so by disregarding the evidence and findings of biological science – which happen to substantiate the logic.
From the moment of conception, we see all the hallmark signs of life: of an apparent self-organizing principle at work that is able to develop in "inert" matter, in what appears to be a sui generis process, the increasingly greater complexity needed to support the successive generation of increasingly complex, emergent life-function capabilities: the formation and higher-order organization of molecules, cells, tissues, organs, nervous system, brain that are unique to all complex living forms generically, and to living human beings, with particular emphasis on the brain system in the latter case.
If a thing “grows” (unlike purely physical systems, which rarely do, or at least not in any kind of discernibly “intelligent” way), and is the child of a human mother, logically we must suppose it is a living human child. (There’s no refuting evidence from empirical, natural observation on this point.) Logically, we must suppose that it is already an individual human life form seeking further development and expression, since that’s precisely what it does, in utero, without any help from its mother aside from nutrition and the maintenance of developmental conditions conducive for its successful realization as a fully-fledged human being, given enough time.
On logical and empirical grounds, it seems to me that we are justified to presume that a specifically human life is involved here, from the very beginning – that is, from conception, from which all its life processes fundamentally derive their origin.
I recently read that the development of the necessary accoutrements of organic human life that the in utero child must complete prior to birth does not include completion of the brain system, which actually continues to develop, post-partem, for a significant time period. Biologists tell us that the human child’s brain continues to develop and “organize itself” for something like a year (or more) after birth. And that afterward, it may continue to receive impressions that lead to further "modifications" of itself throughout its successive lifetime.
On this theory, perhaps we can say a person isn’t fully human until his brain is "completely" formed and developed, approximately 12+ months after birth. And since the "brain" is supposedly the sine qua non of the human species, maybe nobody can be considered "human" until they're at least 12+ months old....
Somebody ought to clue Peter Singer into this. He’s the certifiably insane “philosophy professor” from Princeton. For some strange reason completely inscrutable to me, Princeton continues to give Singer an august chair (in Ethics, no less), retain him as a distinguished faculty member, and pay him a salary.
Singer’s the “infanticide guy” – that is, he actually justifies the post-partem “mercy killing” of healthy children for a period of a year after birth on “ethics grounds.” This gives the parents a kind of “free-look period,” after which if they decide they don’t like their kid, or any inconvenience to themselves the kid might cause, they can freely and conveniently get rid of the kid, without incurring the penalty of law. He calls this (I gather), some kind of legitimate exercise of “parental choice.”
And so on the above-indicated brain-development theory taken out of context, Peter Singer’s supposedly "ethical" theory of "parental right" might actually be correct....
People, what kind of a world do you want to live in? The answer to this question most definitely should never be left up to the ideologues out there…. Unless your idea of a good life, well lived, involves the model of the concentration camp, or the model of the Marquis de Sade….
Thank you for another beautiful, insightful post, dear marron.
In the case of abortion, I suppost it is tyranny of a minority fomenting tyranny of a majority, to the result of obliteration of a minority.
When a minority coercively creates contingencies which invade the souls of all so as to affect their wills to do things destructive, we have the stuff of mind control, cults, and totalitariansim at work.
Hitler knew this --well, at least his demons did.
You're hoping for a Constitutional Amendment in order to overcome Roe v. Wade?!?!
That is Bass-ackwards. The truth is, we need about One or Two more States Right's Judges on the Supreme Court in order to Re-Affirm the Tenth Amendment (an Amendment we already have), in order to Outlaw Abortion in about 30 States, the Conservative States of "Bush Country".
That is a vastly more realistic Goal than aiming for 2/3 of Congress and 3/4 of the States for a pipe-dream Constitutional Amendment.
The Libertarian goal of simply re-affirming the Tenth Amendment is more realistic, more workable, and will save a lot more unborn babies a whole lot sooner.
Live in the Now. For that matter, Live in Reality (no offense).
Best, OP
That is Bass-ackwards. The truth is, we need about One or Two more States Right's Judges on the Supreme Court in order to Re-Affirm the Tenth Amendment (an Amendment we already have), in order to Outlaw Abortion in about 30 States, the Conservative States of "Bush Country".
As I recall, the United States Supreme Court cannot simply reaffirm states rights and ipso facto therefore nullify Roe v. Wade. Instead, the court would have to specifically overrule Roe v. Wade in accordance with their own rules - which I believe have been laid out in Planned Parenthood v Casey.
IOW, the Casey case is what the court cited in overruling Bowers in its recent Texas homosexual case: Lawrence v Texas:
However, since there are only 27 amendments ever passed, that is the least likely method of altering an existing, wrong, Supreme Court decision. The two more likely ways are these: 1) Elect a sufficient number of Senators plus a President who believe that Justices should obey the law as written, and by appointment change the majority of Court to that view. Or, 2) Congress uses its constitutional authority over the jurisdiction of the federal courts to withdraw a subject from their consideration.
The latter is about to be used, again now. It does run the risk that an arrogant Court would rule that its jurisdiction is basic and Congress cannot do that. And that would create a REAL constitutional crisis.
Billybob
It seems the best I can do as a voter is to help elect conservative Senators and re-elect the President.
Would that then throw it to the President to determine whose position his Justice Department will enforce?
And does the Congress have the authority to defund any activities of the Court on any case related to what Congress has taken out of the Court's hands?
As for defunding the courts, that is the ultimate weapon Congress has. It cannot stop paying the judges -- that's written into the Constitution. But Congress could cut off their staffs, phones, heat and light, etc. LOL.
Billybob
Dear A-G, thank you so much for your kind words!
The more I meditate this problem of when life “begins” for the human person, the more I am convinced that life does not commence at birth – like Athena, springing forth fully formed from the brow of Zeus from some zero-point-and-counting absolute moment in time.
Rather, may we plausibly, hypothetically conceive that life is a process, the beginning of which, and the end of which, we cannot know with certainty by the technics of empiricism? And since we do not see its origin, we cannot say with certainly what could be its “end” -- which the human imagination typically conceives to be the death of the corporeal body -- in the “dust-to-dust” scenario. With absolute extinction as necessary consequence....
Yet perhaps we may conceive of life as an eternal process or journey, of which both birth and death are but milestones along the way.
You earlier suggested I should write something about Plato’s metaxy -- his idea of “in-between reality.” Well, without going into the details here (though I’d be glad to answer any questions I can), the gist of Plato’s idea is that man lives “in-between” the pulls (or poles) of immanence and transcendence. The human being has a “natural” foothold – so to speak – in both orders of time.
On both the Platonic and the later specifically Christian models, immanent reality is either a property or a by-product of transcendent reality, respectively. (I prefer the latter formulation, as originally propounded by Sir Isaac Newton.) Either way, the divine (i.e., transcendent) paradigm is posited as ultimate in this world, and the empirical (immanent) world is therefore to be understood as a consequence of it.
This question goes both to science and philosophy. The grotesque separation of these two main domains of human thought and knowledge must be reconciled, it seems to me, if we humans are ever going to be able to achieve real breakthroughs in our understanding of human nature, and also universal nature. Or so it seems to me.
But that is probably a subject for another thread, another time.
Meanwhile, an ancient “take” on this problem still seems to be enduringly valid: We humans have the promise of the Lord of Life that the ultimate destination or goal for the human soul (transcendence-in-immanence) is union with Him (absolute transcendence) – by means of the sheer grace of the Holy Spirit, mediator and “comforter.” This view would purport to constitute the ultimate truth of human existential reality, yet a truth that leaves individuals completely free to assent to or refuse that which has been the central truth of universal being and existence for so many of our greatest human thinkers, historically and cross-culturally speaking. JMHO FWIW.
I suppose that the modern mindset would be predisposed to find that, having made such a statement, it necessarily follows that my argument must be understood as evidence that scientific reasoning is impossible for me.
To which I would reply: If anyone thinks that, then possibly that person hasn’t yet realized the ramifications of what state-of-the-art science is saying these days.
FWIW. Thank you so much for writing, Alamo-Girl. Hugs!
Dear A-G, thank you so much for your kind words!
The more I meditate this problem of when life “begins” for the human person, the more I am convinced that life does not commence at birth – like Athena, springing forth fully formed from the brow of Zeus from some zero-point-and-counting absolute moment in time.
Rather, may we plausibly, hypothetically conceive that life is a process, the beginning of which, and the end of which, we cannot know with certainty by the technics of empiricism? And since we do not see its origin, we cannot say with certainly what could be its “end” -- which the human imagination typically conceives to be the death of the corporeal body -- in the “dust-to-dust” scenario. With absolute extinction as necessary consequence....
Yet perhaps we may conceive of life as an eternal process or journey, of which both birth and death are but milestones along the way.
You earlier suggested I should write something about Plato’s metaxy -- his idea of “in-between reality.” Well, without going into the details here (though I’d be glad to answer any questions I can), the gist of Plato’s idea is that man lives “in-between” the pulls (or poles) of immanence and transcendence. The human being has a “natural” foothold – so to speak – in both orders of time.
On both the Platonic and the later specifically Christian models, immanent reality is either a property or a by-product of transcendent reality, respectively. (I prefer the latter formulation, as originally propounded by Sir Isaac Newton.) Either way, the divine (i.e., transcendent) paradigm is posited as ultimate in this world, and the empirical (immanent) world is therefore to be understood as a consequence of it.
This question goes both to science and philosophy. The grotesque separation of these two main domains of human thought and knowledge must be reconciled, it seems to me, if we humans are ever going to be able to achieve real breakthroughs in our understanding of human nature, and also universal nature. Or so it seems to me.
But that is probably a subject for another thread, another time.
Meanwhile, an ancient “take” on this problem still seems to be enduringly valid: We humans have the promise of the Lord of Life that the ultimate destination or goal for the human soul (transcendence-in-immanence) is union with Him (absolute transcendence) – by means of the sheer grace of the Holy Spirit, mediator and “comforter.” This view would purport to constitute the ultimate truth of human existential reality, yet a truth that leaves individuals completely free to assent to or refuse that which has been the central truth of universal being and existence for so many of our greatest human thinkers, historically and cross-culturally speaking. JMHO FWIW.
I suppose that the modern mindset would be predisposed to find that, having made such a statement, it necessarily follows that my argument must be understood as evidence that scientific reasoning is impossible for me.
To which I would reply: If anyone thinks that, then possibly that person hasn’t yet realized the ramifications of what state-of-the-art science is saying these days.
FWIW. Thank you so much for writing, Alamo-Girl. Hugs!
Dear A-G, thank you so much for your kind words!
The more I meditate this problem of when life “begins” for the human person, the more I am convinced that life does not commence at birth – like Athena, springing forth fully formed from the brow of Zeus from some zero-point-and-counting absolute moment in time.
Rather, may we plausibly, hypothetically conceive that life is a process, the beginning of which, and the end of which, we cannot know with certainty by the technics of empiricism? And since we do not see its origin, we cannot say with certainly what could be its “end” -- which the human imagination typically conceives to be the death of the corporeal body -- in the “dust-to-dust” scenario. With absolute extinction as necessary consequence....
Yet perhaps we may conceive of life as an eternal process or journey, of which both birth and death are but milestones along the way.
You earlier suggested I should write something about Plato’s metaxy -- his idea of “in-between reality.” Well, without going into the details here (though I’d be glad to answer any questions I can), the gist of Plato’s idea is that man lives “in-between” the pulls (or poles) of immanence and transcendence. The human being has a “natural” foothold – so to speak – in both orders of time.
On both the Platonic and the later specifically Christian models, immanent reality is either a property or a by-product of transcendent reality, respectively. (I prefer the latter formulation, as originally propounded by Sir Isaac Newton.) Either way, the divine (i.e., transcendent) paradigm is posited as ultimate in this world, and the empirical (immanent) world is therefore to be understood as a consequence of it.
This question goes both to science and philosophy. The grotesque separation of these two main domains of human thought and knowledge must be reconciled, it seems to me, if we humans are ever going to be able to achieve real breakthroughs in our understanding of human nature, and also universal nature. Or so it seems to me.
But that is probably a subject for another thread, another time.
Meanwhile, an ancient “take” on this problem still seems to be enduringly valid: We humans have the promise of the Lord of Life that the ultimate destination or goal for the human soul (transcendence-in-immanence) is union with Him (absolute transcendence) – by means of the sheer grace of the Holy Spirit, mediator and “comforter.” This view would purport to constitute the ultimate truth of human existential reality, yet a truth that leaves individuals completely free to assent to or refuse that which has been the central truth of universal being and existence for so many of our greatest human thinkers, historically and cross-culturally speaking. JMHO FWIW.
I suppose that the modern mindset would be predisposed to find that, having made such a statement, it necessarily follows that my argument must be understood as evidence that scientific reasoning is impossible for me.
To which I would reply: If anyone thinks that, then possibly that person hasn’t yet realized the ramifications of what state-of-the-art science is saying these days.
FWIW. Thank you so much for writing, Alamo-Girl. Hugs!
I'm personally sorry all the same.
You've summed up metaxy beautifully in this statement:
More importantly though I thank God for revealing Truth to us through His indwelling Spirit. Without Him, we would be deceived by our own vision and minds - but because of His revelations, especially in Christ Jesus, we know that everything is perfectly harmonic.
As Einstein once said "Reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
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