A baby is conceived and should be left to live until death at some time in the future. My parents lived to age 88, I am now 60. Why say some may live and others should die? Do not have any false gods before you.

I really want to jump into this wholeheartedly since I also brought this subject up in the other thread about capital punishment but I have no energy this week.

Between building a new house, working full time, commuting between Charlotte and DC every weekend and trying to generate a flow of correspondence to my "boy" in Iraq I'm worn out. Hey, I'm a little on the downside of the hill so to speak.

My view, as succinct as I can make it, is this:

Conception is not only a right but a responsibility, a contract if you will, between the parents and the future child. It is one of the most important and irrevocable contracts one can make in life. And I believe that contract begins at conception. I believe the child acquires the fundamental rights of all of us (including life and liberty) at that time. Therefore the mother relinquishes total control of her body (morally and legally) for the time it takes to bring to term, the life she and her partner have created. I do not recognize her right to terminate that which she has created. She is not the owner of the new life. She is the caretaker or steward of it's rights until maturation and legal emancipation.

This "is" an individual rights issue but not the one usually made.

Very well put Jesse Brown. Congratulations!

it doesn't matter what anyone thinks about abortion.
We can do it, so we will do it.
science mitigates biology.
it is only a choice between backalleys or clinics.

dafydd, i would be interested in hearing you state your position, especially after those tantalizing hints. ;)
here is mine,
slightly repackaged for the patterico-bots. ;)

Matoko Kusanagi:

Briefly, I don't believe an entity is a person unless it has a soul. I don't believe a human soul can inhabit a body until the body has that element that completely separates it from all other animal life on the planet: the highly developed cerebral cortex. The cortex of all other animals, even other primates, does not begin to approach the complexity of the human cortex.

As I understand it, the cortex is almost fully formed by the twenty-fourth week of a typical human pregnancy; then, within a week or two after that, it fairly abruptly activates -- which should be detectable by, e.g., an MRI or a PET scan. Just about six months into the pregnancy, ironically enough: at the beginning of the third trimester.

Legally, I would declare a fetus with a functioning cerebral cortex a person, one without such a non-person (either pre-person or never-to-be-person, in the case of, for example, anencephaly).

"Fetal persons" would be protected the same as if they were already born: that is, you cannot abort them unless it's to save the life (not just health) of the mother... and even then, you must make some attempt to save the fetus.

No liberty interest of the mother or father would trump the right to life of the fetal person, just as it would not in the case of a six month old baby.

"Fetal non-persons" would not be considered persons under the law for any purposes. Legislatures could still regulate abortion; but the mother and father would each and collectively have a liberty interest that would, if violated, trump such regulation. Courts would have to determine whether a particular regulation was permissible or violated the liberty of the mother or father.

A woman seeking an abortion well before the third trimester would not need to get an MRI or PET scan; but if it were questionable, right on the line, then such a test must precede any abortion, as it would determine whether the fetus is a person or not.

Any other regulation is a local issue that should be decided state by state.

Pro-lifers think I'm pro-abortion because I wouldn't ban it entirely prior to the cortex activation; but pro-choicers think I'm anti-abortion because I would absolutely and utterly ban it after that point except "to save the life of the mother;" no other exceptions -- not health of the mother, not poverty, not rape, not incest; also because I would allow all sorts of other regulations: notification of the spouse, parental approval, a ban on partial-birth abortion, a "cooling off" period, the requirement that the woman be informed of alternatives or about psychological problems that sometimes result from abortions.

I would never support a state requirement to tell a woman any claim that is not truthful: you can't be forced to tell her something false, just to scare her away... you can't be forced by law to tell her that 50% of all women who get abortions end up sterile, for example.

However, I have no objection to a state law that would require abortion providers to tell a potential patient something that is true -- such as a requirement to tell her that an extremely high percentage of newborn infants are adoptable, no matter what the race, even those with birth defects.

Basically, nobody agrees with me, and everybody hates me. So what else is new? <G>

Dafydd

Do I know your position?

I've been trying to summarize the commentary every day, but you're right that it can be difficult to follow if you don't have a lot of time. Still, it's been a model of civil debate, and I've been very pleasantly surprised by the results.

Patterico:

I expected it to be civil; that was never in doubt.

My point is that you have a very large number of highly intelligent, nuanced people commenting on your blog... which means you'll get about 1.3 times as many distinct positions as you have commenters!

You should be debating or discussing with a single person who shares enough of your axioms to make the conversation meaningful but not enough to make it redundant.

Dafydd

Patterico, it's civil, but it's BORING.
it's a snorathon/bloviathon for me.
you aint breaking any new ground, and you aren't even covering the old ground adquately, like ESCR and all different types of embryos we can create now.
Dafydd's position is something new and interesting.
Your infinte series of posts-on-abortion just reiterates ad nauseum a buncha old positions.

interestingly, i offered the same position as Dafydd on your blog (except i would include the hippocampus, seat of learning), but no one was interested in it.

dafydd

Basically, nobody agrees with me, and everybody hates me. So what else is new?

lol. i get that alla time.
hilarious that you and i are on the same page on this, when we usually fight. ;)

You should know, that using functionality instead of morphology as the criteria is part of my transhuman agenda. ;)

Maybe nobody was interested in your comment because you preceded it with a comment that said:

feh. FIVE parts of this idiocy?

I didn't read anything you had to say after that. There were too many other people making civil arguments to pay attention to you.

ta, patterico, that was my third comment.
i also commented (without response) on parts two and three.
at part five i lost my patience. ;)

too many other people making civil arguments to pay attention to you.

civil, and boring and old-fashioned. why not use modern technology to determine when "life" starts? you are just endlessly rehashing the same old tired arguments that never made any progress in the first place.

Dafydd,

Ensoulment begins with conception, because that is the point where a new human being begins (remember that Adam was a dead, soulless body until G-d breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and made him a living soul...a functioning brain is just one aspect of it). Death is the irreversible cessation of metabolism. This process takes about one hour no matter what caused it.

Abortion is homicide by definition (listen up pro-aborts. This is the truth of the situation. The legal issue is simply whether abortion can be justifiable homicide; and, if so, under what circumstances. Strictly speaking, abortion is justifiable when a pregnancy risks the life of the mother (not health...as noted previously). One can make the case for rape and incest; but that isn't the child's fault since a child never chooses his parents and can only choose his children.

CDQuarles:

Ensoulment begins with conception, because that is the point where a new human being begins (remember that Adam was a dead, soulless body until G-d breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and made him a living soul...a functioning brain is just one aspect of it).

I accept that that is what you believe. However, I was asked what I believe, and I don't believe in the literality of the Garden of Eden story.

(As a side point, even in the tale you cite, didn't Adam have a fully developed cerebral cortex before God breathed life into him? In Genesis, Adam wasn't created as an embryo, was he?)

Dafydd

CDQuarles:

And I've always wanted to ask something: why do some people (including you) spell the word "G-d?"

It's not as if "God" is the deity's name. It's just an English word that means (when capitalized) the theistic god of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles; etymologically, it probably comes from the Sanskrit word hu, which means "to invoke." (God probably means "the being we invoke," or maybe "the being that called the universe into existence.")

Jews have a tradition that it's impolite to say the name of God out loud; but they don't think that the deity is named Mr. God; the name you're not supposed to pronounce is typically written YHVH in Hebrew (Yod Heh Vav Heh, הוהי); the missing vowels (which are supposed to be assumed in proper Hebrew anyway) supposedly make it impossible to know exactly how it's pronounced.

This is also called the Tetragrammaton, a Greek word that simply means "four letters." It occurs more than five thousand times in the Hebrew Bible, and is supposed to be God's actual personal name.

It's sometimes transliterated into Yahweh, and from there, it gave rise to the proper noun Jehovah -- which I'll bet you don't spell J-h-v-h.

The word "God" is just a descriptive term, no more a name than Lord, Our Father, Him, or the Big Guy (I've never seen anyone write "the B-g G-y").

So how did this G-d thing get started anyway? There must be a story behind it.

Dafydd

Dafydd,

Adam had a fully developed cortex in the sense that he was made as an adult from the get-go, but not in the sense that it was functional before G-d (in the sense that Moses and his descendants were prohibited from inscribing or writing this form of his name) gave him life. In more usual, personal interaction with Him, Master or Lord is more appropriate, and God may be used. Here we are talking about Him in the I AM THAT I AM sense.

I understand your beliefs, but my scientific background as well as my religious beliefs imbue that story with a more literal meaning. I have, after all, have done CPR and ACLS hundreds of times.

Finally, no human reproduction was even possible until Eve had also been made as a dead, soulless adult body who also was given the breath of life as well. All subsequent humans were initially zygotes. Even Jesus started His human existence as a zygote where an altered polar body could provide the other 23 chromosomes.

CDQuarles:

Actually, neither of us knows when (or if) a human body is ensouled. I'm just pointing out that even if you believe in the literality of the second creation story in Genesis, neither Adam nor Eve got his soul before having a fully developed cortex <g>.

Jews traditionally believe that ensoulment occurs when the newborn baby takes its first breath. There is no Biblical backing for any particular time, though; it isn't mentioned, so far as I know.

I picked the occasion that I did because I do believe in a soul, but I don't believe a human soul can live in a subhuman body; and until there is a cortex there, the body lacks that which separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.

But that's just my opinion.

Dafydd

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