Thanks for confirming that the Principle of Double Effect is just as stupid as I always thought it was.

Let’s see, mother’s life is in danger, so we can’t give her an abortion, but we can sterilize her (and thus prevent her from having any more children– and by the way, I thought Catholic sexual morality condemned the separation of sex and procreation!) even though that will lead to certain abortion.

Look, there’s truth to Double Effect, in that intentions matter and actually doing something accidentally is of course different than doing something intentionally. But doing something intentionally and PRETENDING that you are doing something else has no moral meaning at all- in fact, it’s worse, because you cause additional harm (the sterilization, for instance) and it involves a lie as well.

The bottom line, of course, is that I doubt this is even a correct statement of Catholic morality on abortion. I assume that, for instance, shooting down a plane on 9/11 is justified without reference to the principle of double effect. What’s really happening is that pro-life Republican Catholics want to pretend there’s no exceptions because that’s how they justify dissenting from the Church on other “life” matters but not this one.

I understand that you’ve run out of arguments, but this constant reference to the “conceptum” is simply reliance on a theological concept. It has no scientific or practical validity. All living cells and organism go through development. That is exactly the point. The fertilized egg is not a human being, it develops into one. Abortion interupts the developmental process before the fertilized egg becomes an independent human being, while it is still a part of the woman’s body. That’s why it’s up to her to decide what to do with it.

Again, I don’t find your arguments unpersuasive on either a moral or theological level. I simply find them unpersuasive on a legal level. I think they are good arguments to be made to a woman considering having an abortion. They are simply not good arguments for criminalizing her and her doctors for failing to be persuaded by you. That is the difference between you and me. I don’t really expect to persuade you either, but I am not trying to criminalize your “failure” to be persuaded by my arguments.

A fertilized egg is, scientifically speaking, merely a blueprint for a human being, not a “human life”, unless you define “human life” as any strand of DNA that can replicate itself. The fertilized egg is certainly the beginning of the process of that particular DNA strand replicating itself, and beginning to build a full human being, but the point at which an actual “human life” comes into being is essentially indefinable except by practical, functional capacities, foremost among them being independence from the mother.

You are just trying to reduce what is irreducibly human–every counterexample you bring up merely ignores the obvious–the conceptum undergoes development, because only human beings development and go through different stages of maturity. Nothing else you’ve talked about does.

Dependence for matter to be used in development is not the same as dependent with regards to existence–the conceptum is its own principle of existence, which is separate of the principle of existence of the mother. Just because it relies upon the favorable conditions of the mother’s womb does not mean that it lacks this principle of existence.

I’ve already implicitly admitted that my arguments are unpersuasive for someone like you. It doesn’t mean that they’re not sound or rooted in self-evident principles.

A fertilized egg is, scientifically speaking, merely a blueprint for a human being, not a “human life”, unless you define “human life” as any strand of DNA that can replicate itself. The fertilized egg is certainly the beginning of the process of that particular DNA strand replicating itself, and beginning to build a full human being, but the point at which an actual “human life” comes into being is essentially indefinable except by practical, functional capacities, foremost among them being independence from the mother.

May I remind you that an appendix, a kidney, a liver, is also dependent on the mother for nutrients, for it’s very existence? the difference is that they never become independent of the mother, whereas at some point a fetus does. Although in some circumstances even an organ can be maintained independent of its original body, it can be removed and sustained by articifical means. Certainly cell lines can be maintained indefinitely, and there are good reasons to think we can actually grow organs from our own cells outside the body, for future implantation either in ourselves or in others. But functionally speaking, when such an organ is maintained outside our body, it is no longer “part of us”. Just as a child, once born, is no longer part of the mother.

Your use of the word “foreign” is rather dubious now that you explain it further, which also suggests that your condescending attitude is misplaced. You should see how shallow and unpersuasive your own arguments are, and how they have little to do with science and reason, and merely act as facades for your religious faith. I’m not sure why you feel the need to hide your faith behind these superficial arguments, in that the argument of religious faith is actually more persuasive than these abstract assertions you are making. The only rationale for that is your uhwillingness to admit that the real basis for your pro-life stance is theological, which would undermine your efforts to have them made into law.

And yes, I’m aware that a bullet is not a living human being. You’re the one who brought up that analogy, however, so you have to face the consequences of it. But neither is a fertilized egg a living human being either. It is a genetic template for one, a potential human being, but it is for a very long time merely a growing template, not an actual independent human life separate from the mother. The fact that its DNA is distinct from the mother in no way obviates the fact that it is in function utterly dependent on the mother for every single element of its existence, and cannot survive outside the mother until a very mature stage of pregnancy. It is not “foreign” in any sense of the word. It is merely genetically distinct, while not being functionally distinct.

Now, I could certainly tell you to find a teacher who will teach you to think like me, but that’s not an argument, it’s an admission that you don’t have persuasive arguments, because you don’t have anything to fall back on except theology. This is like talking with a young earth enthusiast about geology, you want to “correct” me by asserting matters of faith in the argument and proposing that I study at some biblical “science” school in order to see how much sense they make. Well, they don’t make sense apart from the theological framework that is their origin and basis. Which is fine, if you want to make theology the basis for human law, as plenty of people want to do these days. But calling that “natural law” is an oxymoron. Such laws are the creation of human beings.

The matter is certainly different, so there is at the very least a lack of material identity. As for the lack of formal identity, we can see it from the operations. An egg and sperm by themselves do not undergo development, resulting in a mature adult human being. The conceptum does. Basic science–we know what a thing is from what it does. And we know things are different when their natures are different. You can equivocate with the use of life, but the fact remains living thing [sperm or egg] is not the same thing as living thing [conceptum].

You say that your arguments are not theological, but relying on the notion of personhood is itself essentially an admission of just that, in that your definition of a “person” derives from a theological source, the moment of conception as defined by your church. There is no scientific basis for calling the moment of conception the creation of “personhood”, in that science has no definition of personhood to begin with. There are legal definitions of personhood, and none of them in any legal system that I know of include early pregancy, much less the moment of conception. The only definitions of personhood that I know of which begin at conception are theological ones. I think you know that, and are simply playing games with me in denying this. Certainly I feel fairly sure that your own reasons for citing conception as the moment of “personhood” is based on your religious beliefs and the teachings of your church, rather than on science. Do you actually deny this?

Show me where I talked about personhood in my arguments. As I stated in the last post, personhood is irrelevant to the question of when human life begins and if it should be respected.

To consider an embryo growing inside a woman’s body to be a “foreign object”, and thus not actually a part of her, is bizarre in the extreme, in that the only thing “foreign” about this object is the 23 original chromosones contributed by the male sperm, which once it entered her body belongs to the woman, not the man who ejaculated it. The “foreign” contribution is tiny. Every other bit of that growing body was contributed directly by the woman herself, her bloodstream and nutrients and so forth, building bit by bit every single aspect of that structure in very much the same way that it builds its own organs and skeletal structure. None of that can happen apart from the woman’s own bodily functions. Now, you can say that everything that the woman’s own body is made from is “foreign” also, in that every atom of our bodies comes from the consumption of nutrients from the world around us. The original 23 chromosones of the male sperm were excreted very early in the process, and only copies survive, copies made out of the woman’s own bodily fluids and nutrients.

When I say foreign I do not speak as to origin of the material, but to the distinctness of identity and being. All you are doing is affirming that the mother contributes matter which is taken up by the conceptum for its development. Doesn’t make it a part of the mother in the same way a kidney is a part. You can deny this, but that’s just your stubborness in the face of science.

But for the sake of arguments, let’s concede the point, that the fetus is a “foreign object” inside her body, not a part of her, but a separate “thing”. Well, doesn’t that make the pro-choice argument even stronger, in that how can you possibly say that a woman has no right to remove a foreign object from her body? If a fetus is like a bullet, why cannot a woman remove just as she would remove a bullet from her body. Sure, she may choose not to, but isn’t it her choice whether to remove the bullet? She is not obligated to house and feed this foreign body that has taken up residence within her system without her expressed permission or desire. If a squatter enters your house, even if he was initially invited to a party, if he refuses to leave, don’t you have the right to evict him?

Obviously, one reason is that a bullet is not the same sort of thing as a human life. Or haven’t you gotten that yet? Individual sovereignty does not trump all obligations–obligations and duties are prior to sovereignty and delimit it. But you probably have the order reversed. Given your erroneous attributions and assumptions, is it any wonder that some may find that it is not worth the time and trouble to respond to your posts, since to respond to all of your assertions would require much? Read George. And find a teacher who is willing to undo your ideas about nature and law.

“But it is not the same life, which is the obvious point. The sperm and egg separate are not the same as the conceptum, which is different in being and nature.”

You are trying to define “life” as if it belongs to some individual, with a clear beginning and end. Simply not so. The combination of DNA from sperm and egg is certainly the beginning of that particular DNA combination, but it is not the beginning of a separate “life”, in that the egg and sperm were already alive before conception, and the result is not a separate individual, but merely a new combination of already existing living material. The cell thus produced is not even differentiated into any distinctive parts or functions, which does not happen until the cells themselves are transformed in even more profound ways, as when the undifferentiated stem cells become differentiated cells. Is each of these cells a separate person? Well, with twins we say yes. With an appendix, we generally say no. But nowhere in that mass is there a “soul” that confers individuality or personhood, unless you have decided that soul is in fact our DNA, which would be a novel religious concept all its own.

To say that abortion takes away a differentiated set of living human cells is obvious, but it is not at all clear that it takes away a human person, in that the collection of cells and DNA are not, in themselves, a person. When a fertilized egg becomes a person is essentially a theological or psychological definition, not a scientific one. We can set up all kinds of definitions for personhood, and many would have their own value for various uses, but for legal purposes I see little justification for considering an embryo to be a person, at least until very, very far into pregnancy.

You say that your arguments are not theological, but relying on the notion of personhood is itself essentially an admission of just that, in that your definition of a “person” derives from a theological source, the moment of conception as defined by your church. There is no scientific basis for calling the moment of conception the creation of “personhood”, in that science has no definition of personhood to begin with. There are legal definitions of personhood, and none of them in any legal system that I know of include early pregancy, much less the moment of conception. The only definitions of personhood that I know of which begin at conception are theological ones. I think you know that, and are simply playing games with me in denying this. Certainly I feel fairly sure that your own reasons for citing conception as the moment of “personhood” is based on your religious beliefs and the teachings of your church, rather than on science. Do you actually deny this?

“The definition of part can be refined so that it can answer your objection regarding: tonsils and appendices, but the fact remains that a foreign object or a conceptum is not a ‘part’ of the woman’s body in the same way as her kidney, tonsils, or appendix are. Having power over anything in her body, whether physical or legally recognized does not make whatever is in her body a part.”

This argument is self-defeating any way you take it. To consider an embryo growing inside a woman’s body to be a “foreign object”, and thus not actually a part of her, is bizarre in the extreme, in that the only thing “foreign” about this object is the 23 original chromosones contributed by the male sperm, which once it entered her body belongs to the woman, not the man who ejaculated it. The “foreign” contribution is tiny. Every other bit of that growing body was contributed directly by the woman herself, her bloodstream and nutrients and so forth, building bit by bit every single aspect of that structure in very much the same way that it builds its own organs and skeletal structure. None of that can happen apart from the woman’s own bodily functions. Now, you can say that everything that the woman’s own body is made from is “foreign” also, in that every atom of our bodies comes from the consumption of nutrients from the world around us. The original 23 chromosones of the male sperm were excreted very early in the process, and only copies survive, copies made out of the woman’s own bodily fluids and nutrients.

So there is no sense in which the embryo or fetus is not a part of the woman’s body. But for the sake of arguments, let’s concede the point, that the fetus is a “foreign object” inside her body, not a part of her, but a separate “thing”. Well, doesn’t that make the pro-choice argument even stronger, in that how can you possibly say that a woman has no right to remove a foreign object from her body? If a fetus is like a bullet, why cannot a woman remove just as she would remove a bullet from her body. Sure, she may choose not to, but isn’t it her choice whether to remove the bullet? She is not obligated to house and feed this foreign body that has taken up residence within her system without her expressed permission or desire. If a squatter enters your house, even if he was initially invited to a party, if he refuses to leave, don’t you have the right to evict him? Certainly we do. So I don’t see how your “fetus as foreign object” argument helps your cause. On the other hand, I don’t see how the “fetus as part of the woman’s body” helps your cause either, so I can understand your desperation. I hope you can see why pro-choice proponents like myself see that the arguments for making abortion illegal simply don’t wash.

That doesn’t mean that I think moral arguments against abortion, or even theological argumetns against abortion, have no persuasive power. I think they do. For many people, such as yourself and Daniel, they are very powerful and utterly persuasive. But they are not persuasive as legal arguments. I think the pro-life movement has made a terrible mistake in persuing the legal argument almost exclusively, in trying to overturn laws that permit abortion, and instead instituting a legal regime that would make it illegal. This is of course an example of theocracy, of imposing one’s own theologically based moral values on the lives of others. As I’ve said many times, it is fine for you to believe that abortion is murder, unless you try to use the legal system to address it in that manner, just as I think it’s fine for a communist living in this country to believe that property is theft, as long as he doesn’t try to get the state to support his beliefs with the power of compulsory state confiscation of private property.

But it is not the same life, which is the obvious point. The sperm and egg separate are not the same as the conceptum, which is different in being and nature.

Talk about personhood is not necessary to say that abortion takes away human life and should be outlawed.

Your own arguments are essentially theological ones, for instance, as are Daniel’s.

No, they aren’t.

If he wants to clarify his views on the subject, I welcome him to do so, but I take his lack of response in these threads as an acknowledgment that his reasons for being pro-life are essentially theological in nature, rather than that somehow this charge isn’t worthy of a response.
You should know an argument from silence is a fallacy

As for your comparison to a bullet, a bullet is of course not a living organism, and if it can’t be removed then of course it is a part of your head.
Now you are just using part equivocally.

The definition of part can be refined so that it can answer your objection regarding: tonsils and appendices, but the fact remains that a foreign object or a conceptum is not a ‘part’ of the woman’s body in the same way as her kidney, tonsils, or appendix are. Having power over anything in her body, whether physical or legally recognized does not make whatever is in her body a part.

Using science to rationalize the state compelling the use of a woman’s body against her will to carry a fetus to term is simply both bad science and bad law.
To say that it is bad science is nonsensical, since the science itself is in no way affected by what you perceive to be bad law. You may say it is bad law; I say your notion of law is flawed and erroneous, being grounded in a disordered notion of individual autonomoy/sovereignty. As they say about first principles…

I will defer to your understanding. I have to believe that this is wrong, however. You are saying that even if the choice is certain death to the mother, the Catholic doctor must allow the mother to die to save the fetus? Or are you saying that the Catholic doctor can do something that he or she knows will cause abortion to save the mother’s life, but has to pretend that he or she really isn’t performing an abortion. (As you can see, I think the principle of double effect is silly.)

I’m not saying that the only arguments against abortion are theological arguments, only that most of the pro-life movement, including Daniel’s own strong pro-life stance, is based on theological beliefs, and not on scientific notions about “when life begins”. Life does not begin at conception, in that both sperm and egg are alive as well. Life is therefore continuous throughout the generations. The question is when does “personhood” begin. To identify personhood with a single strand of combined DNA at conception is one possible definition, but it is hard to say that a single strand of DNA encased by an egg is actually a “person”. At some point, that DNA grows into a person, but where exactly it becomes that is a matter of some art, not merely science. The traditional notion is that personhood is not acheived until birth, when the fetus is physically separated from the mother and able to survive on its own. Medical science is able perhaps to take a premature fetus at about 24 weeks (I’m not sure of the current state of the art) and sustain it outside the womb. Before that, however, it is in no way separate as a “person” from the mother.

The main point is that while non-theological arguments can be made for outlawing abortion, they aren’t terribly persuasive, and the only really persuasive arguments are theological ones, which is where the main thrust of the pro-life movement lies. Your own arguments are essentially theological ones, for instance, as are Daniel’s. If he wants to clarify his views on the subject, I welcome him to do so, but I take his lack of response in these threads as an acknowledgment that his reasons for being pro-life are essentially theological in nature, rather than that somehow this charge isn’t worthy of a response.

As for your comparison to a bullet, a bullet is of course not a living organism, and if it can’t be removed then of course it is a part of your head. People have plates in their heads, and the government can’t just remove those plates by saying they aren’t part of your head. We would not consider laws that take away a person’s right to remove a bullet from his body to be constitutional. Whatever the origins of the bullet, while it resides in a person’s body it belongs to that person, not the state, and they can do with it whatever they like, remove it or not, depending on their own personal health decisions. A fetus, regardless of whether one wants to think of it as coming from inside or outside the body, is a part of the woman’s body, and is her own “property” in the same sense that both a bullet and a tumor is, and she is therefore able to decide for herself how to deal with it. We could not justifiably enact laws refusing to allow a woman to remove a benign tumor, stating that somehow it’s not “hers” to decide what to do with.

Likewise, many parts of the body can be removed without causing much distress to a woman’s health, such as tonsils or an appendix. It would be unconstitutional to outlaw the removal of tonsils or appendici, even if exceptions were made in cases involving the patients health, for concern over the “independent life” of the tonsils and appendix.

Your understanding of science is one thing, but your understanding of law is another. Using science to rationalize the state compelling the use of a woman’s body against her will to carry a fetus to term is simply both bad science and bad law.

As for this piece of nonsense–if someone fires a gun at your head and it becomes lodge in your skull and you survive, and it cannot be removed without death, is it therefore a part of your head afterwards? Not at all. As is the case with any foreign object that becomes located inside the body, and is physically contiguous with the actual parts of the body.

A part is understood by its relation to the whole, including the function it serves and the benefit it promotes. A conceptum can be removed (obviously) without any permanent detriment to the functioning of the mother’s body, and it does not contribute to the mother’s physical benefit.

Your understanding of part is just plain wrong, and the fact it is used by pro-choicers in their standard rhetoric shows their ignorance of real science and the world.

As for Mr. Larison in particular, quit it with the mind-reading. Unless you can find evidence to back up your assertion in what he has written. Otherwise, you have no ‘rational justification’ to make your assertion.