[extropy-chat] Famous author self destructs in public! Film at eleven.

[Samantha Atkins]

A fetus is not a child until it is granted that status by the woman  
carrying it.  Otherwise women are subject to unbidden duties by any  
failure in contraceptive viability (if available) or any lapse in  
attentiveness to such protections.    Where do you get the jump that  
it is a duty to have children?

The entire notion of when a set of cells becomes a human child with  
all the rights and duties attending thereto is hotly debated.  Is a  
blastocyst a "child"?   Are the sperm and egg before union somehow a  
"child"?  Does it take a sperm and an egg?  If we take an unfertilzed  
egg and replace its nucleus with the nucleus from an adult cell from  
say the adult's finger is the result also a "child"?

Your anecdote makes your attachment to the argument understandable  
but it does not give you the means to claim that you have proven  
abortion is murder or that every pregnant woman has the duty despite  
all her needs and wishes to carry to term.

- samantha

On Jun 3, 2005, at 9:31 AM, John-C-Wright at sff.net wrote:

> Or perhaps not so famous; or perhaps a polite difference of opinion  
> rather than
> an act of public self destruction.
>
> Mr. Beauregard is alarmed that my manners have been displayed with  
> less than
> grace in public. Allow me to reassure him that the result is not so  
> terrifying
> as he fears.
>
> It seemed to me as if I were making a logical argument, followed  
> with what I
> admit was a heated rhetorical flourish. Let us glance at the  
> argument one last
> time, and then at the flourish.
>
> The argument, as it stands, is unexceptional. The first axiom is  
> that parents
> have a duty to care for their children, which means, to protect and  
> love them,
> and safeguard their health. As far as I can tell, no one disputes  
> this axiom.
>
> The second axiom is that to will the result implies to will the  
> means necessary
> for that result. This axiom is based on the nature of cause and  
> effect. A duty
> to produce a given effect, logically implies a duty to effectuate  
> the cause
> leading to the effect.
>
> Children pass through a foetal stage of development in the womb.  
> The health of
> the child at a later stage is dependent on the health at the foetal  
> stage.
>
> If the foetus is safeguarded by proper prenatal care, a healthy  
> child might be
> born. If the foetus is aborted, a healthy child cannot be born:  
> indeed, the
> preventing of the birth of a healthy child is the sole purpose of  
> an abortion.
> Again, as far as I can tell, no one disputes this.
>
> Prenatal care is logically implied from the duty to care for the  
> child. This is
> a direct deduction from my first two axioms. Prenatal care and  
> abortion are
> mutually exclusive. One cannot kill the foetus and bear a healthy  
> child. Indeed,
> the child after abortion is as unhealthy as it is possible to be:  
> namely, dead.
>
> Therefore the duty to safeguard the health of the child logically  
> excludes the
> option of aborting the child. QED.
>
> I can see how this argument might provoke honest disagreement; I do  
> not see how
> one can honestly conclude the author of it is suffering a mental  
> breakdown.
>
> To dispute the argument, one must either dispute the common notions  
> on which it
> is based, or detect an error in the reasoning. Merely insisting on  
> one term as
> opposed to another in the chain of logic does not affect the  
> outcome. It does
> not matter whether you call the child a “product of conception” or  
> “foetus” or
> “a mass of cells” or a “banana.” One can substitute x and y values  
> for the terms
> in the equation, but if the values point to the same object in  
> reality, the
> outcome of the equation is the same.
>
> Now it is with some embarrassment I turn to my heated rhetoric.  
> Obviously not
> everyone who supports aborticide gets a sick thrill from it. Some  
> are reptilian
> in their callousness, some are sincere and innocent. So the comment  
> was
> impolite, and, what is much worse, illogical. To bring up the  
> motives of the
> opposition in a debate is argumentum ad Hominem. Ad Hominem is an  
> informal
> logical error. I confess.
>
> In case the point of my little story was not clear, let me  
> emphasize it. I was
> not an antiabortionist at the time a doctor approached me and tried  
> to persuade
> me to extinguish my son (or, if your ears are too delicate to hear  
> things called
> by the right names, let us call him the mass of cells having the  
> potential to be
> my son). What the doctor was asking me to extinguish, in effect,  
> were all those
> golden days in which I now rejoice. Had I heeded his counsel, those  
> days would
> have been lost to me.
>
> All my joy would have been lost.
>
> And I never would have known the degree of the loss. My son’s first  
> footstep,
> his first word, or for that matter his last word, or any  
> grandchildren I might
> otherwise enjoy, would have also been aborted from my life.
>
> Now, just to make this clear, let me repeat that I would have lost  
> all those
> things from my life whether or not my son was a human being or was  
> a person or
> was a foetus at the time the abortion was contemplated. Obviously,  
> had he been
> extinguished at an early stage of development, all the later  
> stages, including
> the rest of his life, would have also been extinguished. The loss  
> to me would
> have been the same, no matter at what stage, early or late, the  
> extinction took
> place.
>
> So even if it is outrageous for me to impute a sick motive to those  
> who promote
> aborticide, I nonetheless submit to your candid judgment that there  
> is a sick
> atmosphere to the argument, in that it degrades the seriousness  
> (the sacredness,
> if you will) with which we cherish human life, born and unborn.
>
> The other point of my little story is that my wife is a heroine:  
> but the
> pro-abortion argument spits at her sacrifice and bravery. Mothers  
> facing birth
> are as soldiers facing battle or sailors facing a storm at sea: it  
> is a labor
> which will call upon her deepest reserves of courage and fortitude,  
> perhaps at
> the cost of her life. To tell mothers that this sacrifice is being  
> made for a
> non-person, and to tell her it is a reasonable alternative to  
> sacrifice her
> child to her own self-interest, robs the labor of any honor. Birth  
> labor is now
> merely pain suffered for the sake of a non-person, which is as much  
> to say, for
> no real reason.
>
> There is also something ghoulish about the whole topic.
>
> You see, I sometimes wonder what they do with the bodies. I am not  
> talking about
> abortion in the first week to ten days: I mean abortions in the  
> seventh or ninth
> month of pregnancy. I mean the fully developed babies whose only  
> crime is that
> they are not yet out of the womb.
>
> Where do they heap up the bodies?
>
> Are they in a pile somewhere, with little blue arms and legs  
> sticking up at odd
> angles, tiny fingers and toes motionless, toothless mouths and eye  
> sockets
> swarming with maggots? Do they inter them in a graveyard? (I assume  
> they do not
> inter them: the ACLU sued to prevent the burial of aborted children  
> in at least
> one jurisdiction.) I assume the bodies are disposed of as medical  
> waste, put in
> little plastic bags, and dumped in a landfill.
>
> Now, logically, if we accept the premise of the abortion argument,  
> that these
> are not the bodies of persons, not the bodies of human beings, then  
> there can be
> no moral objection to disposing of them as we would any other  
> livestock. If
> humanity or personhood is a characteristic acquired after birth,  
> then anyone
> deprived of life before birth has no claim on that status, even if  
> he is
> otherwise fully developed, and his corpse need not be treated with the
> melancholy respect we normally bestow upon the beloved departed.
>
> Theoretically, there should be no moral objection to grinding them  
> up and
> serving them as Soylent Green.
>
> Now then, reasonable people can disagree on this point. The  
> argument on either
> side is not so certain as to compel universal consent.
>
> And to soothe Mr. Beauregard's fret, let me hasten to add that  
> reasonable people
> can even buy and read books by eccentric authors, no matter how  
> distasteful the
> author's opinion is on unrelated topics, provided he can still tell an
> entertaining tale.
>
> My disagreements here are with ideas, not with people. My goal  
> should be to
> disagree without being disagreeable.
>
> JCW
>
>
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