RoR: Forum

I voted for the last option, infanticide, with considerable hesitancy but the other options looked even worse from a standpoint of liberty.

Something about this poll seems like one big loaded question.

Post 1

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 7:16am

Something about this poll seems like one big loaded question. (Luke S.)

I agree.

When one says they oppose an option, does that mean they believe it should be criminalized? What if you personally wouldn't choose that option for yourself, but you don't believe it should be withheld from others?

I can see how you are left with the most odious option (#9) (just saying the word "infanticide" makes me shudder) but you're right...it is the "best" option from a personal liberty standpoint...if, as I suggested, the poll is actually asking which options you would want to see criminalized.

Not sure I like this poll at all.

Erica

Edit: The poll has now been changed so that #9 is not infanticide, but the much more reasonable : "I believe abortion should be legal." (I can definitely vote for that one, and leave it at that.)
Thanks, Ethan, for the clarification, and the correction.

(Edited by Erica Schulz on 3/02, 1:00pm)

Post 2

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 8:01am

So, Luke, you support infanticide at birth?

(Edited by Hong Zhang on 3/02, 8:01am)

Post 3

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 10:57am

Is most certainly a loaded poll - NOT an objective one...

Post 4

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 12:29pm

I accidently promoted this poll this morning :-(

It's all my fault

Post 5

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 12:35pm

I realized I could edit the poll and was going to delete all the questions whenI noticed that the person who made the poll had only made a typo. The "I beleive abortion should be legal" title was really meant to be the first question rather than the title. The edit software allowed me to change the title and I swapped the last option for "think abortion should be legal.

I forget who made this poll, but it was one of our regular posters. As I said, it was a typo caused by the poll form. It rather confusing!

So, it's sort of fixed :-|

Ethan

Post 6

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 1:14pm

I voted for opposing 3rd trimester abortions. This is still a difficult question for me. For my own personal ethical consideration, I tend to try to look at where a fetus becomes a sentient being, i.e. it develops the physiological structures responsible for consciousness (this appears to be the pre-frontal cortex and develops around the end of the second trimester) so if I was involved with someone who was pregnant, and we both wanted to end the pregnancy, I would probably not feel comfortable doing it after the end of the second trimester. Before that though, and certainly in the first trimester, I would think nothing more of it than the death of a non sentient animal, perhaps regretable, but certainly nothing at all like the death of a person.

Still, even after the 2nd trimester I would never feel comfortable compelling someone to forcibly sacrifice themselves for the sake of a child growing in them if they did not want to, though I would also not feel comfortable with terminating said pregnancy given that the baby is now physiologically capable of being a human person. I would have some internal conflict over this.

This, of course, does not weigh into consideration the fact that this person, even though it has the physiological mechanisms for conciousness, has essentially lived its life in a muted black box with very few sensory experiences let alone many years worth of them required to develop a recognizable person concioussness. Would anyone disagree that a person who has lived a rich, fulfilled complex life is 'more' of a person than someone who has been closed up in a dark silent padded room throughout their whole life? Though I have never had children so have not had a close interaction with a young child in order to discern to what degree they exhibit a rich emotional response and personality, I would imagine one pretty quickly develops.

So I couldnt in good conscience ever support infanticide. There is such a thing as adoption. I hope that, in the future, should someone want to terminate a pregnancy after the end of the 2nd trimester, other private (probably religious organizations, although I would probably support such an orginzation since I always think more people = good thing) may step in an encourage them ($$$) to carry to term and then take the child off their hands.

I also do not see on the poll "I think the human race is an abomidable cancer on the planet and deserves extinction and abortions should enforced by law!" Jeez, some objective poll!!

Post 7

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 4:19pm

Mea Culpa?

I posted the poll, as a counterpiece to the Abortion Redux thread. In that the author says most Americans are neither entirely pro- or anti- abortion, and I expected this poll's results to mirror that assertion.

There was certainly no intention to "load" the questions, I simply tried to arrange the options from most to least restrictive. Wording any poll is difficult, but I don't think there was anything tricky about the choices, and I don't have a problem with Ethan's re-edit.

I meant this poll simply to gage sentiment, not to be an exhaustive list of choices.

I expected most people to answer somewhere around viability, and was actually surprised at the votes for the first several choices and the last choice, infanticide, although I do know someone who supports the Roman custom of exposure.

I'd like to know what exactly seems "loaded" about the poll, unless it was just the difficulty in wording, since the options seem to be clear. Did anyone vote for an option that they really didn't support? The only possible vagueness I saw was that some people might not realize that the mother's life being endangered would implicitly be an exception allowing late term abortions when they might otherwise be "opposed."

And by "oppose," I meant to be willing to outlaw.

Ted Keer

Post 8

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 4:26pm

I am glad Ethan changed the wording of the last option for which I voted. That makes me feel much better about the poll and my selection of answer.

Which mystical dummy voted for the first option of opposing contraception altogether?

Hong asked:

So, Luke, you support infanticide at birth?

I have to wonder who sanctioned her question, but it is a good question. As I said, I voted for it with much hesitancy, but the question itself dropped all context.

A baby born with basically no capacity for consciousness due to brain damage would have no rights.

So I cannot sit here and say I would oppose infanticide in all cases.

Ted, what is the Roman custom of exposure?

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 3/02, 4:28pm)

Post 9

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 5:37pm

The Romans, and many other cultures, held, or do hold, that a newborn child (for the Romans, usually only males) either should be left out naked on its first night, so that weaklings are weeded out of the race, or might be left outdoors intentionally with the hope that they would die as a form of "family planning."

In the case of the Romans, if the child survived the night, it was considered obligatory to raise him, even if he did have a deformity. Of course, there was always the midwife's discretion not to slap the child as well, if it did not breathe spontaneously, and was somehow "amiss." (I consider this passive euthanasia, and an alternative to Luke's choice of infanticide if meant as active killing, which I would oppose.) But the Romans also held, through Pater Potestas, that a father might slay his children at any time until they married, presumably for some moral impropriety. Exposure and father's privilege were largely defunct customs by the time of the empire. Those who are unfamiliar with such customs should read Robert Graves' I, Claudius, one of the few books to make both the readers' and critics' top-100 list for Greatest books of the last century.

I have not sanctioned anyone on this thread, but have certainly enjoyed Hong's more provocative comments on this and many threads.

Ted Keer

Pictured is Peeter O'Toole's ex-wife, the exquistite Sian Phillips, above as Caesar Augustus' rodhamaniacal wife Lidia, from the BBC production of Robert Graves' novels, and below as the Jesuit Mother-Superior Helen Gaius Mohiam in the 1984 movie adaption of Dune. Beware the Gom Jabbar that bites...

(Edited by Ted Keer
on 3/02, 5:44pm)

Post 10

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 7:07pm

On this issue I have to revert to the concept of the rights of the individual to life. Before viability there is no chance that the fetus can survive as an individual outside the womb and at that point, in my opinion, it should be accorded welcome to the human race, with all its privileges. There is no excuse for delaying abortion to the stage.of viability.

Post 11

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 7:33pm

Luke,

If only it were so simple as infanticide�would you support the parents in prostituting their child with �basically no capacity for consciousness�? We know there exist potential customers for this, and it may be just the harmless solution those customers have been looking for, and a way for the family to turn misfortune into fortune. After all, he/she/it has no rights. On what grounds would you oppose this, (if you would oppose it)?

Post 12

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 7:40pm

Luke, I am sorry but I think you are a nutcase (much worse than the "dummy" who voted #1). Fortunately you are sane enough not to have any child of your own.

(Edited by Hong Zhang on 3/02, 7:45pm)

Post 13

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 7:40pm

Paul,

But do you set viability at a fixed date, or do you let it vary as technology gets better? The problem that I see is that few three-year-olds are viable independent individuals without minute-by-minute, often second-by second supervision. And with technological betterment, artificial viability will keep creeping backwards. Conception, quickening and birth are more easily definable and obvious cut-offs.

Recently, a child born at 23 weeks was the first of that age, 5 months & 1 week, to survive to be released from the hospital. I am sure there were heroic efforts. And I doubt that the child was unsentient when it was delivered.

BTW, I did not mean this poll to hijack the Abortion Redux thread. Posters here should at least read that thread if not post there instead.

Ted

(Edited by Ted Keer
on 3/02, 8:27pm)

Post 14

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 8:32pm

I find Jon's and Hong's posts provocative though I question their sincerity in seeking honest answers versus simply trying to provoke a flame war. This applies especially when Hong deems me a "nutcase" and shows gratitude that I currently enjoy a childfree lifestyle -- quite odd considering that such a lifestyle results from contraception, a benefit that I would not enjoy if the person voting against contraception had his way while Hong considers that person better than me.

In any case, addressing what rights, if any, a permanently "not sapient" human would have would require at least a full length article if not a book. Jon does raise an interesting point about using the body of such an entity for a variety of purposes. I could even imagine a day when scientists could deliberately conceive and raise such an organism in a tank for experiments, organ growth, etc. As for prostituting it, while I find the idea personally repugnant, I would have a hard time arguing against the practice legally if one assumes that individual rights arise from the capacity to reason.

However, the very idea of deliberately creating a damaged human being in the first place strikes me as utterly immoral and arguably worth outlawing.

To be honest, this subject has never interested me enough to pursue beyond offering support for the existing Roe v. Wade decision. So I regret getting mired in a discussion that, in the long run, will not affect me one way or the other. So I guess readers can think whatever they want based on my remarks made strictly off the cuff.

EDIT: The issue of becoming one's own moral agent also plays a role here. I doubt parents of a brain damaged child could prostitute that child after age of legal adulthood because it still could not act as its own moral agent. Hence, we have extraordinary laws in place -- and some new legal ground to break -- to cease caring for non-sapient adults like Terri Schiavo, for example.

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 3/02, 9:49pm)

Post 15

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 9:19pm

Ted:

I take you point about viability creep but I think that there is a problem with the term, "viability." There seems to be some disagreement about the term.

http://www.ppacca.org/site/pp.asp?c=kuJYJeO4F&b=139571

I have taken "viable" to mean that a fetus can survive out of the uterus without heroic measures � only with normal care and attention.

Sam

btw, I think it would be less confusing to readers of the thread if you would refer to me as "Sam" instead of "Paul."

Post 16

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 10:06pm

My view corresponds with Sam�s. And I think that �without heroic measures� is clear enough. If a caveman with a crude knife could extract the fetus and it would breathe and live, then it�s viable. If there�s no way he could do it, then it�s too early and not viable. Pointing out that a three-year-old needs �care� and isn�t viable, misses the point. We�re talking about a physiologically independent biological entity, with three-year-olds clearly qualifying. A two month gestated entity would not breath and live, but would dry up on the table if you took it out�as opposed to a seven month gestated fetus which would cry, breathe, and live. This criterion does not creep with technology or anything else, and roughly corresponds to the same stage Tibor Machan prefers: a brain sufficiently wired for rational capacity.

I prefer viability because I know that if wiring sufficient for rational capacity arose at four weeks I wouldn�t care and would argue that rights arise only later, when it is physiologically independent. Whereas, if wiring sufficient for rational function occurred at age four years, I wouldn�t care (wouldn�t agree that right to life had to wait that long,) and would argue instead that rights begin whenever physiological independence arose.

Post 17

Friday, March 2, 2007 - 11:21pm

Sam, Jon,

I vaguely understand what "without heroic measures" implies, but then you also run into the fact that children just before seven months actually used to have a better survival rate than children just before eight months due to the hyaline membrane surrounding the lungs which suppresses breathing during the eighth month of gestation. This means older fetuses would have less of a right than younger ones in some cases.

Whether cavemen performed Caesarian sections? They certainly could have, since the ancients clearly did. Also, is the necessity of mother's milk "physiological independence?" I assert it is not. Newborns need milk, which only comes from breasts, a part of some living entity's physiognomy. The modern existence of milk-substitute as an argument in favor of abortion doesn't sound right either.

I also see a problem with breach births, mildly deformed children, and so on. What defines heroic is hard to define, and then, do we switch standards at birth not because of an ontological change in the entity under consideration, but because of the economic expense of raising that entity? Don't tell my sister that raising my nephew puts no physiognomic requirements on her.

How heroic are the parents of autists?

The clincher for me, once I thought long about it (my standard has wavered over the years from 3-6 months) is an outwardly objective sign - quickening, and an obvious question about the mother's responsibility for her own actions or evasion of action. I just can't balance killing a five month-old fetus with what has now become the convenience of a woman who has spent several months evading a decision. I will side with the potentially human versus the undeniably irresponsible.

Ted Keer

(I'll try not to post too much more, since I believe I have made myself clear, but I would like an opinion on the responsibility/evasion of the late-term would-be-aborter. We seem to be arguing a period of six or seven weeks cowardly (my description) indecision versus a human lifetime.)

(Edited by Ted Keer
on 3/02, 11:45pm)

Post 18

Saturday, March 3, 2007 - 12:59am

Ted,

The hyaline membrane is no problem; it doesn�t change the fact that there is viability at a point of development, and none prior. Same for milk. The viability criterion still stands: Give milk to a viable preemie and it will digest it and thrive, give milk to an unviable preemie and it will not.

To refine this a bit, I would say: What would a normal, full-term baby need? OK, give that to the prematurely extracted fetus. Will it live? If yes, then it�s viable, if not, then not. If it needs something a normal, full-term baby doesn�t need then it isn�t viable. Anything in excess of what a normal full-term baby needs is �heroic.�

Something like 50% survival would do it for me�If 50% of the fetuses at week X were viable when given nothing more than normal babies need, then week X is the week of viability. (Even though the hyaline membrane or other phenomena may lower the percentage temporarily in the next week(s).)

I don�t have any strong opposition to drawing the line at quickening. Being with you on the �responsibility/evasion of the late-term would-be-aborter,� I think quickening, Tibor�s wiring-sufficient-for-rational-functioning, and viability all fall well after any reasonable decision line.

Post 19

Saturday, March 3, 2007 - 8:49am