Nat Hentoff: When do we become human beings?

Jewish World Review ^ | 11/29/06 | Nat Hentoff

[Caleb1411]

Overlooked in the wake of the midterm elections and the Supreme Court oral arguments on partial-birth abortion is a South Dakota abortion case in the federal courts that casts a sharp shaft of light on the national abortion debate. The case is not connected to partial-birth abortion or to a South Dakota ban on nearly all abortions in that state which was thumpingly defeated by the voters on Nov. 7.

This case is about a South Dakota law that gets to the very core of the abortion controversy: When do we become human beings?

The law would require that doctors tell women intent on having abortions that the procedure would "terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being."

Arguing against this at the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, a lawyer for Planned Parenthood, Timothy Branson, said the language of this South Dakota law "injects an ideological component into the discussion of the unsettled question of when human life begins. "This is the first case," he emphasized, "that really shows where the line is."

Yes, it is.

As Adam Liptak reported in the Oct. 31 New York Times, a panel of the court of appeals agreed with Planned Parenthood and blocked enforcement of the law. Many states do have "informed consent" laws by which doctors must provide factual information about the procedure to women, and its health risks. These laws have been upheld by other federal appeals courts.

What, then, makes the South Dakota "informed consent" law different? Before this case (Planned Parenthood v. Rounds) — that "really shows where the line is" — reached the Eighth Circuit, Karen E. Scheier, a federal district court judge in South Dakota — had stopped enforcement of the law with a preliminary injunction back in June 2005, in

[Mr. K]

The Eigth Circus strikes again!

[claptrap]

I thought it was only tissue mass unless the mother wanted
a baby then it became human.

[OldArmy52]

When human life starts?

20 weeks after birth or so? I forget.

[Manfred the Wonder Dawg]

Several (many?) years ago, we lived in Dick Armey's district and my wife served as a volunteer in his local office. At a town hall meeting in Denton, Tx congressman Armey was asked why he opposed federal funding of abortions. As a new child of God (he was redeemed while in office), he told the crowd (I was there) that he had sought out the best minds to ask the question: "Going backward from birth, when does one cease being human?"

He said that the Aggie scientist walked him back through every stage of human development. Dick Armey said that there was not one single point - all the way back to conception - that anyone could claim one ceased being human. And since he considered human life as a creation of God in His image, he could hold to spend tax money on what he rightly considered murder.

I have rarely been as proud of a politician as I was that evening.

[SkyDancer]

Well from a Biblical perspective, in the book of Leviticus it states that life is in the blood and blood circulation doesn't form until the 18th. day after conception, so ......

[Courdeleon02]

Nat Hentoff is one of those good liberals. There are not many of them but he is one.

[goldstategop]

Nat Hentoff is that rare human being: a pro-life atheist libertarian.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus

[lilylangtree]

First, what differentiates a human from all matter? At what point does the differentiation become human.

[dead]

"Who can deny the fetus is ... a separate genetic entity? Its humanity also cannot be questioned scientifically. It is certainly of no other species."

Once a human being is created, it is a human being until the day it dies. It should not be legal to kill him or her at any point on that timeline.

[secretagent]

Once a human being is created, it is a human being until the day it dies. It should not be legal to kill him or her at any point on that timeline.

Should we give the death penalty for murdering a 100 cell human blastocyst, or life imprisonment without parole?

[diefree]

I have admired Hentoff ever since he fought for Kelly Michaels in the child-abuse hysteria case in the 1980's.

[dead]

Should we give the death penalty for murdering a 100 cell human blastocyst, or life imprisonment without parole?

That would depend on a lot of variables, like any murder, and would be up to the laws in place at the time of the crime, the prosecutors and jury to decide.

The majority of criminal cases resulting from the killing of a human being don't result in either of those two sentences.

[SamuraiScot]

Should we give the death penalty for murdering a 100 cell human blastocyst, or life imprisonment without parole?

Depends on whether it was willful and premeditated, doesn't it?

[litehaus]

Become human?

---

According to Ima Nutjob, President of Iran, it's when you become a muzzy....

[aruanan]

When I was about five years old, I was taken to a museum and ushered through the hall enshrining Human Reproduction, The Miracle of Life. On one wall I saw encased specimens (whether potentially human or just clever reproductions, I don’t know) arranged developmentally from conception to birth. I started at birth and asked my father if the baby, dying at that stage, would go to heaven. As I approached conception asking the same question, the answers changed from “yes” to “probably” to “I don’t know” to “probably not” to “no”. It gets down to the question of whether being human is something you are or something that you have become. I suspect that something akin to ethnocentrism (ontogenocentrism?) is involved here--those folks running around with bones through their noses aren’t like us and we’re civilized, so they probably aren’t, yet. Some say the fetus is “much more actually human after the first 12 weeks of gestation” and that it “little resembles a human being” during the first few weeks of gestation, meaning that it does not look much like, well, a post-birth body. It doesn’t look like me and I’m human, so it probably isn’t, yet.

It’s interesting how closely the question of the origin of man as an individual resembles the controversy about the origin of man as a species. Did man come fully human from the hand of God or was there a point at which, during eons-long evolution, the genetics defining the species Sapiens appeared? Did that make it “fully human” or was it merely human in appearance? Did there appear at the same time or later those characteristics which we now call “spiritual”? The first view holds all men of different languages, races, and cultures to be members of a common humanity. The second view provides cover for all sorts of interesting self-justification from members of master races, true humans as opposed to sub-humans, individuals personifying the new socialist man or the master race. And just as that distinction has made possible the genocide of whole groups who fell outside the official classification, so, too, have millions of pre-birth human lives been defined into oblivion.

Genetically speaking, there is a time before which an individual of a sexually reproducing species does not exist and after which, be it ever so humble, it does. From that moment to the moment of its dissolution it passes through definable stages of development and degeneration. Here are some that apply to us: zygote, embryo, fetus, newborn, infant, toddler, child, pre-adolescent, young adult, mature adult, old-aged. Upon this continuum of development place an asterisk where “it” becomes “human” and perhaps another where its humanity ceases as far as the empirical world is concerned. Many would place the asterisks at conception and death (death defined as the irreversible disruption of the continuum). I do. It is this creature appearing at conception and disappearing at death that is human. Against this, talk about seeds not being trees and fertilized eggs not being chickens shows itself for the silly ontogenocentrism that it is--an acorn is not the tree, but both are equally oak. The full-grown rooster is not a fertilized egg, but both are developmental stages of the same chicken being.

If “human being” is a later stage of an individual’s existence, then what is the name for the being started at conception and ended at death? On the individual level the first view calls it human whether conscious or not, cripple, retarded, senile, diseased, sinful, intelligent, female, or male. The second view permits “quality of life and “value to society” to define the parameters of being human and those who have the power to do so to define those terms, whether a woman and her physician, N.A.R.A.L, or Big Brother.

[secretagent]

Depends on whether it was willful and premeditated, doesn't it?

Sure. Say it was the willful and premeditated destruction of a living human blastocyst.

Should we legislate the same penalty for that as for all other willful and premeditated murders?

[Malesherbes]

Very interesting post. Working backward, when do we cease to be human, is a excellent way to look at it.

[TravisBickle]

The law would require that doctors tell women intent on having abortions that the procedure would "terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being."

Since Liberals are often eager to bring in the death penalty debate whenever discussing abortion, I would like to see a law that puts the two on more equal grounds.

For example, instead of a doctor's warning about the termination of a life, there should be an entire jury trial. Let the lawyers make a case for the life of the unborn child. Let a jury of twelve decide whether the child should be killed; allow a judge to decide what is proper evidence to present to the jury. Require a unanimous decision, just as in death penalty cases. Then after a full appeal process has been exhausted, if all these people think that the unborn child should be aborted, allow the Governor to make a clemency decision that could spare the life of the child.

And if the whole process couldn't be completed within nine months, so be it.

[secretagent]

The full-grown rooster is not a fertilized egg, but both are developmental stages of the same chicken being.

Their apparent aptitudes for suffering vary, though.