Support Choice Much?

The Infinite Womb

An IEET article observes that Juntendo University researcher Yosinori Kuwabara "predicts that a fully functioning artificial womb capable of gestating a human fetus will evolve in the near future." Cornell University's Dr. Hung-Ching Liu who has successfully implanted and grown mouse embryos in a lab-created uterine lining says it could be as soon as 2020 for animals and 2030 for humans.

The article notes that "In an unusual twist, this technology offers justification to pro-lifers in the abortion debates." How so? A few weeks ago, a Facebook friend asked the following question:

Let’s say we build a machine that’s a perfect simulation of a womb. It can take a human egg and sperm and replace the need for a woman to carry it. However, the machine is scalable, so that it can carry the human through the entirety of its development, all the way to the point where the cells naturally break down and stop working (i.e., through adulthood, old age and death). If the human never leaves the womb, and goes through all the same phases of development that you and I do, at what point do we consider it alive? Do we ever consider it alive?

The current state of affairs is a strange moral place where the worth of the fetus is determined solely by the mother. If she wants to keep the baby, the fetus is infinitely precious and you can be prosecuted if you harm the "child in utero". However, if the mother decides she doesn't want the child, the fetus is determined to be no more important than a wart.

It is an odd thing that this one person determines the worth of another living thing. Even a dog's worth is not determined by its owner - just ask Michael Vick. Right, wrong or indifferent, this situation is certainly odd and unique.

But my FB friend's question calls attention to the 'magical birth canal' sophism - i.e., there is something magical about the infant leaving the birth canal and taking a breath that validates its sanctity or humanity or its life. This is presumably why some docs can perform partial birth abortions because so long as the face is not exposed and a breath is not taken the child is not considered fully human and the activity is not considered infanticide.

If this current way of thinking is applied to the artificial womb scenario, it would appear the object growing in an artificial womb would not be considered human or 'alive' unless and until it took a breath of outside air or the mother deemed it so.

Applying the current ethos to the artificial womb reveals how ridiculous the current thinking on this matter can be. Add to that the potential to more readily observe the fetal development - albeit maybe not as transparently as the womb galleries depicted in the image provided with the article - and the likelihood of earlier and earlier application of the 'life' or 'baby' moniker increases. Just as ultrasounds affect the way a mother now views the developing fetus within her womb, so seeing the developing human form would certainly affect future observers.

However, one suspects that abortions could become increasingly rare for those using artificial wombs as the purposefulness of the sans-sexual insemination process would move it ever closer to former Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders' wish that every child be a wanted child. If women could harvest eggs and store them for future artificial insemination in artificial wombs and be rendered functionally sterile with birth control, the need for abortions due to accidental pregnancy could theoretically be eliminated. And it is difficult to imagine a couple purposefully initiating the artificial womb process and then pulling the plug at some later stage of development - that is, those who were careful and purposeful.

One can just as easily imagine a world in which individuals desire the natural birthing process, careless partners not preventing pregnancy, or those without access to birth control still using the "dark and dangerous place" for gestation.

However, having the parallel option of artificial wombs would certainly bring clarity to the double standard that is debated even today. On the one hand it would be easy to understand that a vandal who removes the fetus from the life giving sustenance of the artificial womb could be easily charged with murder. What would not be so easy to understand is why the woman who separates the fetus in her womb from her life giving sustenance would not be so charged. If those two cases are not equivalent, then one is tacitly stating that an artificially produced child has more right to life than a naturally gestated fetus.

VP Debate: Who's Religious Interpretation is Omniscient

Last night during the debate the second to the last question put to the candidates asked how their Catholic religion informed their views on abortion. Two things struck me as I listened. First, both men say that Catholicism informs their views. Both said that the church doctrine says life begins at conception. Biden said that he would not let church doctrine override a woman’s ability to choose and Ryan said that he would not let church doctrine interfere with exceptions of rape, incest and health of the mother. Looks like total agreement so far. So the only things I can see that may differentiate the two are their thoughts about late-term abortions and who pays for it. If I understand it correctly, the GOP position is that late-term abortions should be discouraged or prevented and that taxpayers shouldn’t be footing the bill. Is this the crazy, snake-hair, arm-waving, clothes rending, maniacal, Tea bagging, woman-hating, misogynistic, Big Bird slaying, wacko policy that is to be resisted at all costs?

One wonders in our current climate that if the same religious doctrine informs both of them and they conclude different things about whether we should do in the womb what would never be done outside the womb as well as different notions about who should pay for this activity, does that mean one or the other is a liar? Also, Biden said:

But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews, and I just refuse to impose that on others, unlike my friend here, the — the congressman. I — I do not believe that we have a right to tell other people that — women they can’t control their body.

This thinking obviously ends somewhere. I doubt that Biden would make the same comment in support of Peter Singer’s idea that a newborn should not be considered a person until 30 days after delivery and therefore ‘aborting’ or killing disabled babies within 30 days of birth would be a moral good. Would Biden in that case refuse to impose his views, religious or otherwise, on peoples of other faiths? I should think not.

BTW, it is a curiosity that a) the left is not so interested in “choice” when it comes to reforming the education of children via vouchers, reforming healthcare, reforming health insurance, reforming MediCare, reforming Social Security, voting for unions with secret ballots, etc., and b) as Prager notes,

The human fetus has no worth except for what the mother says it has. If she thinks it is worthwhile, it's infinitely precious. If she doesn't, it is infinitely worthless. It is a very odd moral scheme. It applies nowhere else in life, where one individual determines the complete worth of something else. We don't even allow that for dogs. We don't say dog owners determine the worth of dogs. But human fetus owners determine the worth of a fetus. It is a fascinating development in the degradation of our value system.

So, of course Biden and the left would impose their views if post birth canal abortions were proposed. (Although, as Ryan noted, "The vice president himself went to China and said that he sympathized and wouldn’t second guess their one child policy of forced abortions and sterilizations." This might cause one to seek clarification from Biden and the left on the post birth canal abortion issue.) By confronting the Singer dilemma we see that both Democrats and Republicans are willing to impose their notion of morality on others via legislation. (This is the old “We’ve established what kind of girl you are, now we are just haggling over price” gambit.) In the case of abortion, we are just publicly discussing when that imposition will happen and where legislative lines will be drawn. For Dems to pretend that they aren’t drawing lines, imposing their moral will and legislating morality is self-delusional. All participants in politics want to impose on others as much of their morality as possible, and no group is more insistent on that than the left. Which brings us to the second observation.

Biden noted that his Catholic faith “has particularly informed my social doctrine. The Catholic social doctrine talks about taking care of those who — who can’t take care of themselves, people who need help.” We know by his statements and policy preferences that this means the state should take from some and give to others in the name of compassion. Why is it that he does not feel the same restraint for this imposition of religious charity on “devout Christians and Muslims and Jews” - as well as the groups he left out, including atheists - as he does for abortion? Where is the wall of separation that is lauded by those on the left? Why is it acceptable to impose this aspect of his religion on others while imposing restrictions on actively extinguishing the life of a human is not acceptable? (If you think that assessment is overwrought, he said that he accepts the notion that “life begins at conception” - I did not put those words in his mouth. If he really believes that life begins at conception, then at the very least he thinks that abortion is the ending of nascent human life.) Is Mr. Biden really arguing that the state should be the charity arm of the Catholic church?

So Biden and the left are pro-choice on extinguishing nascent human life (and, incidentally, for teacher's unions to invest heavily in Bain and other risky Wall Street schemes) but not pro-choice on how you can educate your children, health insurance, medical care, end of life decisions, Social Security, etc. He is consistent on one thing though: who it is that will pay for all of this.

This is an election that involves larger themes: the size and nature of government; limited powers v statism; individualism v collectivism; liberty v egalitarianism; the locus of charity; E pluibus unum v multiculturalism. Those concepts and choices are fairly clear. Unfortunately, most of the conversation is focused on personal character assassination and the tit-for-tat of dueling experts.

Worth of a Fetus

Prager notes:

The human fetus has no worth except for what the mother says it has. If she thinks it is worthwhile, it's infinitely precious. If she doesn't, it is infinitely worthless. It is a very odd moral scheme. It applies nowhere else in life, where one individual determines the complete worth of something else. We don't even allow that for dogs. We don't say dog owners determine the worth of dogs. But human fetus owners determine the worth of a fetus. It is a fascinating development in the degradation of our value system.

Notable Quotable

The left is pro-choice on extinguishing nascent human life, but it is not pro-choice about where you can send your child to school.

~ Dennis Prager - 2012 09 05 - Hour 2 - 3:40

Akin's Offense

John Podhoretz makes a good point about the nuance and difficult nature of holding serious and deeply moral positions. The moral grappling by those who hold the uncompromising pro-life view is sincere and heartrending.

Those that mock the earnest pro-life position mistake certitude for imperfect principled struggle. Surely one can appreciate the pro-lifer agonizing with the two horrible conditions of pregnancy by rape and what they perceive is murder. Often the pro-lifer concludes that the sanctity of human life narrowly outweighs - not eliminates - the other considerations. Serious thinkers must wrestle with competing principles. One wonders if those who mock this view of human life ever give credence to the internal moral struggle of the pro-lifer.

What strikes me, though, is the offense Todd Akin has given—not just to victims of rape, but to his fellow pro-lifers. The most difficult moral issue when it comes to abortion comes with cases of pregnancy due to rape and incest. (These are, relative to all live births, extraordinarily small in number.) The pregnancy in such circumstances is not only unwanted but the result of a barbaric and traumatic criminal attack. And yet consistent pro-lifers argue such pregnancies should not be ended by abortion. This is usually held up as an example of their fanaticism, or their cruelty, or their desire to punish women, or some other charge.

In fact, though, it is precisely when it comes to these most difficult cases that the underlying philosophy of the pro-life movement finds its moral strength. They argue that the unborn possess an independent right to life, that one would and should not do to them in the womb what would never be done to them one second after they were born alive. Wanted or unwanted, conceived in love or in violence, they are ensouled and they are people.

This is not a conviction I share, but it is a conviction for which I have enormous respect.

And as an aside, how is it exactly that publicly repudiating a man and pleading with him to drop out of his race for the Senate comes to mean that Romney and Ryan are in “lockstep” with Akin?