For Psychology Today Blogs: The complexities of abortion - How becoming a mother made me a better thinker.
As a young teenager and through a lot of my college career, I identified as "pro-life"; that is, I believed that women should not have a right to abort a fetus they created as a result of voluntary sexual intercourse. After taking my undergraduate Bioethics class (and falling in love with the subject - indeed, it is the only Bioethics class I ever took even though it is now my main area of research), my professor helped me to see that there are pretty solid pro-choice arguments - the most convincing for me being Judith Jarvis Thomson's argument that no person is obligated to use their body to sustain the life of another person. Just as I cannot force you to give me even in milliliter of blood to sustain my life (even though I am a person with a right to life), a woman cannot be compelled to use her body to sustain the fetus (even if the fetus were considered a person). I carried that view with me for a long time, through my graduate training, and right up until July 2008, when I saw my daughter's image for the first time on the ultrasound screen. That first image was, to use Rudolf Otto's term, awe-ful. The ultrasound technician pressed the wand against my belly and the little fetus somersaulted in response. While the technician continued to speak to us, my little tenant continued frolicking in my womb. My husband and I drove home in silence afterwards. While stopped at a red light he commented, out of the blue, that after seeing our fetus, he could never bring himself to abort it. My response seemed so foreign given my beliefs: Neither could I.
There is a lot more to the article, and it is a must read. Please take the time, read every word, it's that important.
I find it supremely unimportant. There's nothing new there at all, except for the notion that this cavalcade of trivialities represents some new-found and higher appreciation of the subject. Really, the overall quality of the argument is not any better than yours.
ReplyDeleteWhen she starts her article off with a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, claiming that the fetus "somersaulted in response" to the ultrasound wand, I don't have very high hopes for the rest of the contents. As she should know very well already, fetal movement is automatic and unrelated to the fetus' 'perception' of its maternal environment, because fetal movement is perceived long before there is a brain capable of guiding movements in response to external stimuli. It is a way the fetus develops its muscles and joints, and one of the causes of amyoplasia is insufficient room for fetal movement.
She mentions Judith Jarvis Thomson's pro-abortion argument (which has influenced the one I've been making here) and then entirely drops the subject. You'd think that if her pregnancy made her a better thinker, she'd be in a position to refute Thomson's argument, which is not premised on any notion of fetal personhood at all, but the simple point that it is entirely illegitimate even for other people to use another person's body for their own survival. This is something which any anti-choice advocate has to deal with, and not a word do I hear about it, save that she actually wanted to keep her daughter. But that's irrelevant. Thomson's argument is not an argument for always aborting a fetus, but simply allowing women the choice as to what they would like to do with their own body. Her decision to keep the child no more refutes Thomson's argument than a voluntary organ or blood donation legitimizes a regime of forced 'donations'.
Lastly, her comments about fetal personhood are made without any reference to what science and neurology actually understands of "personhood". It isn't as complex as she makes it out. A baby—that is an actual, physically independent child—doesn't pass the mirror test until 12-18 mos. By this standard, saying that a fetus is not a person, and a baby is is actually rather conservative, since the baby itself cannot recognize itself as a person before a full year outside of the womb. And why? Because the mental apparatus that gives us our sense of personhood, our visual and aural ability, our sense of telling self from the "outside world"—all these things cannot begin to be understood until the fetus is outside of the birth canal and begins interacting with the world.
That is why the notion of fetal "personhood" is and will always be absurd. There is nothing complex about it. Anti-choice advocates are simply wrong and relying on undemonstrated theological constructs like "ensoulment" to justify their opposition to abortion. But if the fetus gained a "soul" at conception, why wouldn't it be able to pass the mirror test upon popping out of the womb? Why would it need to take 12 whole months at least to recognize itself as a real person?
Nullifidian - the writer had a personal revelation after seeing the ultrasound yet you claim she's wrong to do so based on your own interpretation of biology - something that other, more experienced biologists also disagree with?
ReplyDeleteWay to go with your argument in the comment section of this pro-life blog - I'm sure your statement will make all these anti-choice people run out and start aborting their fetuses.
Nullifidian - the writer had a personal revelation after seeing the ultrasound yet you claim she's wrong to do so based on your own interpretation of biology - something that other, more experienced biologists also disagree with?
ReplyDeleteI haven't claimed she's wrong based on my interpretation of biology. I've shown how she is wrong to attribute a causal connection to the presence of the ultrasound wand and fetal movement by presenting the biological facts. Women perceive fetal movement as early as 16 wks. At that time, the fetus still has roughly two months to go before it attains a level of neural organization where it is theoretically possible to perceive and respond to anything, when the thalamus and cortex organize themselves into layered structures and when the thalamus starts sending out projections into the cortex. (Incidentally, this is also how I know that anti-choice propaganda about "fetal pain" prior to 23-25 wks. is just that.)
You can appeal to as many anonymous authorities as you like. This is not going to change the fact that fetal movement is detected long before there is any capacity for sensory perception and that fetal movement is a mechanism for building and strengthening muscles and joints, not a reaction to ultrasound wands, cooing, or anything else a person might do near a fetus.
Furthermore, I critiqued her non-response to the argument of Judith Thomson, which doesn't rely on anything being established about fetal 'personhood', and critiqued the notion that there's anything at all intellectually respectable or scientifically plausible about claims for fetal 'personhood'. If you have anything to present to rebut anything I've said, then please do so. If you only have arguments to authority, which are weak enough already even when the authorities are not anonymous, then I have no reason to change my view.
I'm sure your statement will make all these anti-choice people run out and start aborting their fetuses.
Right, because if there's one thing we pro-choice people want, it's to have everybody go out an get an abortion. It has nothing to do with protecting a woman's right to make her own medical decision, whether for an abortion or for carrying the fetus to term.
Nullifidian -
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't a "pro-life" argument. I thought she was understanding and compassionate regarding the pro-choice view. More so than I could ever be.
I thought she was understanding and compassionate regarding the pro-choice view.
ReplyDeleteThat may well be, but I don't care about her being understanding and compassionate beyond the bare minimum required to understand pro-choice arguments (which I accept that she does). I care only about what arguments and evidence she can bring to bear on the discussion, and on that level the article is a complete flop. There is nothing there. She doesn't even make a good case for the ostensible thesis of the article, which is that the abortion issue is a thorny one. She simply makes the tacit assumption that because there are so many people with so many different opinions about it, that all opinions must be accorded equal weight, but she doesn't provide a scrap of a reason why we should.
The fact that some people hold to the view that vaccines cause autism, that the sun orbits the earth, that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, that HIV isn't a causative agent of AIDS, etc. doesn't make these issues fraught ones or ones in which we must address the 'complexity' of deciding whether the age of the earth has nine digits in it or four. By the same token, the anti-choice crowd's arguments are marred by a small matter one can call lying. Scaremongering claims that there is a causative link between abortion and breast cancer, outlandish claims that fetuses have "eyes and ears" at 28 days (in reality they have nonfunctional primordia that may develop into these features, and the "face" is a couple of branchial arches), claims of "fetal pain" long before the fetus would be neurologically capable of any detecting any sensations at all, etc. All these things ought to bring the anti-choice movement into intellectual disrepute, and the more people write touchy-feely relativist articles, the more they are enabling the liars to take advantage of people whose understanding of embryology and medicine is poor.
Nullifidian - I'm sure you believe your biology studies qualifies you to make the claims that the 'anti-choice' crowd sits around and makes up lies, when more qualified biologists than you are have developed their own pro-life views through more exhaustive research. The pro-life crowd isn't just religious fear-mongers, but you believe your devotion to biological studies gives you intellectual superiority over anyone nonsensical enough to believe that abortion is wrong.
ReplyDeleteNullifidian -
ReplyDelete"She simply makes the tacit assumption that because there are so many people with so many different opinions about it, that all opinions must be accorded equal weight, but she doesn't provide a scrap of a reason why we should."
You are so far off the chart with your OVER-thinking, you are unreasonable. ie It does no good to try to reason with you. Your seemed intelligence smothered your common sense, if you ever had any.
Ben Sumner:
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you believe your biology studies qualifies you to make the claims that the 'anti-choice' crowd sits around and makes up lies,
Yes, knowledge does allow me to suss out lies about human embryology when they appear.
when more qualified biologists than you are have developed their own pro-life views through more exhaustive research.
Yay for more arguments to anonymous authorities! Since you only know me by a pseudonym, how did you come to establish my "qualifications"? And since there is no qualifying body that sits around formally rating scientists, how do you even manage to compare "qualifications"?
The pro-life crowd isn't just religious fear-mongers,
I never said they were. In fact, that's why they have to lie: they're trying to lure in the unwary non-religious or weakly-religious with sophistry and shameless appeals to emotions. If they had to rely on their religious shock troops alone, they'd be sunk.
You are so far off the chart with your OVER-thinking, you are unreasonable. ie It does no good to try to reason with you. Your seemed intelligence smothered your common sense, if you ever had any.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I sincerely appreciate that.
When I see people appealing to "common sense" in discussions like these, it's usually a way of dismissing and deriding the facts and doubling down on what you just "know" is true—especially when it isn't.
True common sense is an extremely uncommon commodity.
I find this article to be patronizing and sexist. Her argument seems to be that only people who have had a child grow inside them can understand the gravity of the importance of compulsory pregnancy. She doesn't even bother to argue against Thompson's strong theory because it so trivial after having a fetus somersault in her uterus. (BARF)Though it would be nice for her to tell us how, after her pregnancy, women should be the exception to sustain the life of another.
ReplyDeleteI've always been prochoice but I became more prochoice after I had my son. The enormity of pregnancy and childbirth should never be forced upon a woman against her will. And I'm not the only person in my circle of friends who have had that experience.
She wasn't arguing, she was just giving her thoughts on the issue. Compulsory pregnancy? No one forces a woman to get pregnant (exception being rape). But I would have to admit. I'm open to forcing women to not kill their fetuses. It will then be up to women to prevent fetuses from getting there in the first place.
ReplyDeleteShe wasn't arguing Thomson's 'theory', she wasn't 'arguing' anything.
TAAG, when I refer to arguing I'm using the definition:
ReplyDelete1. Give reasons or cite evidence in support of an idea, action, or theory, typically with the aim of persuading others to share one's view.
Jackie - Thanks for clarifying. The result is the same though. She even stated as much in the article.
ReplyDelete