Said LeRoy Carhart, quoted in "LeRoy Carhart, abortion doctor whose battles reached Supreme Court, dies at 81" (WaPo).
The legal way to analyze the question has been to say that because we can't know when life begins, the issue is who should decide (and to give the decision-maker role either to the individual who is pregnant or to the people acting through their legislatures).
But Carhart's quote seems to say more than someone must decide, so let the woman decide.
He claims to know that she has a power of knowing: "I do know the only person who knows when life begins is the mother of the life that she’s carrying."That comes after expressing resistance to the idea of knowing: "I don’t think I know... I don’t think any of us know... certainly the scientists don’t."
Why the sudden switch from unknowability to knowability? I extrapolate that it's definitional. The woman knows what's inside is a human being because it's a human being when she believes it is. If so, then for that one person, and for her alone, to believe is to know.
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108 comments:
So Northam was a little extreme in deciding that life begins after birth ?
Life begins at conception. Society is free to determine what life to terminate and why. Whether that is morally justified is another matter. Attempts to determine some point between conception and birth as the point where life begins is merely arbitrary and not based in science.
No one knows- certainly not scientists- when a life begins.
So, let the mother kill her child. B/c it must be alive to be killed.
*f/ked up answer on how to get a desired outcome
That last paragraph is a search for Carhart's meaning, not my own pronouncement. Please don't be distracted into disagreeing with me. I don't believe the statement "for that one person, and for her alone, to believe is to know."
We know when life begins. We haven't decided when the life has human value.
Human life begins at conception.
The rest is deception.
"The legal way to analyze the question has been to say that because we can't know when life begins"
The legal way starts with an obviously false premise: "we" "can" know, it's just that majorities in many countries prefer not to.
"because someone must decide, so let the woman decide"
But since abortion involves a medical procedure, the decision is not just to abort the baby but also to authorize a professional to perform the procedure. In no other area of medicine do we let a patient decide, by herself, not only that she deserves a treatment but also that, by her decision alone, a professional should be able to provide it.
"The woman knows what's inside is a human being because it's a human being when she believes it is. If so, then for that one person, and for her alone, to believe is to know."
Well stated. It is the logical outcome of modern individualism: a pure subjectivism claiming all knowledge comes from within--whether on the nature of one's body or the presence of life itself. To believe is to know.
Carhart: " ... the life that she’s carrying." Does the woman know when she starting carrying this life?
Women are magic; useless to ty and understand it logically.
When it serves its purpose the Nice People will believe a thing can be known.
When it doesn't serve their purpose the Nice People will solemnly declare a thing is unknowable (and thus their view should prevail).
Parsing for reason or logical accountability (consistency, etc) is futile--even if you could somehow force them to admit their fallacious thinking and/or contradictory positions the Nice People will simply declare that logic/reason aren't the only way things should be decided (nor, in fact, that The Truth should be determined) and their emotional response/lived experience/whatever is just as valid epistemologically. If you disagree you're cruel and it's fine to reject you--the Nice People won't tolerate (some) cruelty.
What belief or position gives a Nice People-favored group the most power, the least accountability--the least responsibility for their decisions or the consequences therefrom? That's the one they'll hold: it's not some crazy coincidence that it always works out that way!
The unborn are the only humans whose humanity is defined by the person most impacted by their feelings on that human's humanity. To me that is the most psychotic way to define humanity. Rightly so, we do not condone any other circumstance where one person gets to decide if another person is worthy of being called a life. When that has happened in the past we have condemned such "feelings". Part of our legal tradition has been to fight against such arbitrary rules based on ephemeral traits or circumstances to assure there everyone is protected. It is an equivocation to simply define out of existence some for the sake of others. "Endowed by their creator" does not carry with it the implied: "After they are born." One is not created at birth. Of course if you reject a creator, then I suppose you can reject any portion of the inalienable rights folderol.
Perhaps he'll learn the answer in the undiscovered country.
Man is a rationalizing animal, not a rational one.
The death penalty is permissible under our Constitution.
However, to apply the death penalty, the standard of proof is "beyond a reasonable doubt".
When the legal system can provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt of when life begins, then I don't believe I should have any valid opinion about the mother's choices BEFORE that time.
OTOH, after that time, no one in our country has the right to commit the murder of an innocent person.
It seems really rather simple. If you DO NOT have proof of when life begins, then you must err on the side of not committing murder.
Far better for (ten guilty men) 60,000,000 innocent babies to go free ...
That slides knowing into a variety of belief.
Belief, like trust, loyalty, bent, aversion, hope, habit, zeal and addition, can be modified by adjectives like wavering, obstinate, unswerving, unconquerable, stupid, fanatical, whole-hearted, intermittent, passionate, and childlike. Tendency verbs. (Ryle)
Knowing is a capacity verb having to do with getting things right. You ask how somebody knows, and why somebody believes. You don't ask why he knows.
But you can slide them around, under the pretense that they're introspective events and no longer related to their being mere conventions in accounts.
As for the fetus, it's a human if the parent thinks it's a human, because then it has a relation to the parent's plans. Look at the parent, not the fetus. If not, not.
I learned from my ex-wife that there are some women who have given birth without even knowing they were pregnant. I had to look it up. Turns out it's rare but it's true. Sorry good doctor, and thanks for playing.
First Do No Harm... OOPS!
The "right" to decide on the life or death of the baby she is carrying is surrendered by the woman as part of the social contract in the same way that a man surrenders his right not to fight if drafted.
If we agree that we cannot "know" when life begins (and I disagree, biology tells us it is conception) than surely, we as a society have an obligation to err on the side of preserving the life of that baby at all costs except the life of the mother.
History demonstrates that reasonable people can disagree about almost anything. So our rules should be congruent with broad consensus.
Scientists do know when life begins. When egg meets sperm. Can they "know" exactly when that happens inside a woman's body, maybe not, but just because you have shades on your windows, it doesn't mean nothing is happening inside your house. The only question is a legal one. Not a scientific one. It's not "when does life begin". It's when do we legally recognize as a life. It's time to stop clouding the abortion debate with the "clump of cells" argument. Recognize abortion is a taking of a life. Then decide when it's OK and when it's not. Let's get a modicum of honesty into the debate.
Trouble is the many heroes who are willing to give up their life for another. especially for an innocent other. Those guys and gals feel a deep moral duty to all innocent children. And they vote too. The pre Roe days saw unwanted babies born and adopted by loving parents.
Pure sophistry on Carhart's part.
We also don't know when life ends by the same reasoning- is a person with no brain activity, but breathing, alive or dead? However, we don't, as a matter of constitutional law, grant that decision solely to that person's closest legal relative- the process for adjudicating that decision is done via legislative action. Abortion should be done similarly.
Sure, it is going to be a messy political fight over the next several years- I suspect we will eventually have Congress either pass a bill granting abortion for the entire 9 months of pregnancy, or SCOTUS will become a Democrat majority in which case it will reinstate Roe v Wade on the first day of such a new court, but with a 9 month window.
Carhart's quote seems to say more than because someone must decide, so let the woman decide.
it's Clear, isn't it?
It's a BABY... IF the woman wants it.
It's a lump of cells.. IF the woman Doesn't want it.
Things MATTER, if (and Only If), they matter to a woman.
Things have VALUE, if (and Only IF), they are of value to a woman.
And, since things matter if (and Only IF), they matter to a woman..
And, since things are allowed to exist if (and ONLY IF), they matter to a woman..
THAT MEANS, that if a woman's 2 year old child (or 75 year old parent) doesn't matter to her..
Carhart had a clear conflict of interest regarding the question of when life begins. Therefore, I don’t think his opinion matters except to note that it was probably extreme. Others have noted that it should be up to the woman. What did he contribute of value to the question?
The egg is alive. The sperm is alive. Life never starts. It only ends.
“As for the fetus, it's a human if the parent thinks it's a human, because then it has a relation to the parent's plans. Look at the parent, not the fetus. If not, not.”
But the demanded rights don’t include the male; there needs to be a test case to test whether a woman had the right to destroy a man’s child — presuming he wants the child.
It is all rationalizing to absolve peoples guilt for killing a baby. There is no doubt at all that it is killing a baby (because science) but that only seems to be important when people want it to be.
Abortion is sometimes thought to be necessary, always evil.
We're never going to reach agreement. Ann Coulter recently had a column stating that absolute negative stances on abortion are leading to more net badness because so many are positive absolutists who vote on this single issue.
I have sometimes thought that slavery (also evil) would have eventually died out without the horrible losses of our Civil War, with less net badness, if the north had just let the south keep their slaves. It would have been worse for the involved slaves, but avoiding the massive loss of life, economic destruction, and damage to our culture might have been on balance a good trade. Other countries eliminated slavery without such destructive wars. I think even limiting the focus to the black community, it would have been a better way to go.
So I am starting to believe with abortion. Abortions are concentrated in leftist communities; just consider how many reliable votes Democrats have (literally) sacrificed by aborting 25 million or so black babies since Roe (talk about disparate impact!). Similarly, if they want to sterilize themselves (once over 18) with mutilating surgery and hormone treatments, let them go for it. They won't eliminate themselves completely, but will limit their numbers to demographically and politically trivial numbers. We will have to take a hard stance on them recruiting children, but that would be a much easier sell to the deciding middle if we let the adults do what they want to themselves.
Bing Chat supplies the following ...
The definition of life has long been a challenge for scientists and philosophers. This is partially because life is a process, not a substance. This is complicated by a lack of knowledge of the characteristics of living entities, if any, that may have developed outside of Earth.
According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, life is “the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body”.
Dictionary.com defines life as “the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally”.
Which boils down to ... life is that which is not dead.
I think the simplest answer is the best: Conception is the combination of two DNA sets, and it begins the process that results in birth. It doesn't start before that moment; prior to conception it's just male and female secretions going about their business. But conception changes everything.
When is the soul installed? Who knows? When or for how long is it acceptable to abort a fetus and end a pregnancy? That's a philosophical and moral question with a societal answer, hence the rub. But pretending that a life hasn't been terminated is dishonest and wrong, I think.
Personally I think first trimester limits should be set, and that eliminating it altogether is a mistake.
Carhart begins with a false dilemma in scientific discourse, and then proceeds to obfuscate it into the judicial domain. "I am unable or unwilling to think through some science, which gives me leave to declare something about rights, which I'm not willing or able to think through either. QED." In ancient Rome, the patria potestas nominally gave fathers the right of capital judgement over their offspring during the father's life. No question about the scientific or judicial status of the child. Several questions about philosophy and theology, however.
It’s not you- it’s some of you and some of someone else. That’s not you…
…and yes, mothers don’t always know, do they? Nice try…
Fifteen weeks is a compromise of rationality and neurotic…
The idea that a woman either “knows” or “decides” is one of the most diabolical aspects of the abortion issue.
In no other legal question do we abrogate societal value judgements to the people who have the most at stake. This would be like a victim’s family being the judge and jury in a murder case. We see that such people can’t make fair judgements because they are too emotionally tied to the results of their decision.
By granting the pregnant woman this right (a euphemism, because it’s actually a forced responsibility) society clearly sends the message that the children conceived in unplanned pregnancies are not their responsibility, so only she can decide the moral question.
When forced to make this kind of Sophie’s choice, and given the option to look away from the humanity of the baby, of course many will do so. Once the decision is made, rationalization becomes necessary. So the sleight of hand between “deciding” and “knowing” is like patting the post-abortive woman on the hand and telling her, “you did what you knew was right.”
This is diabolical, pure evil.
""I don’t believe the religious scholars do. I do know the only person who knows when life begins is the mother of the life that she’s carrying.""
I don't understand why a pregnant woman would be endowed with any special powers to understand biology, philosophy or law. If he means that it gains life when she thinks it does, this is sophistry and indeed, many woman who choose to abort, do not delude themselves about what they're doing, though some do.
From the standpoint of being objective, an abortionist and a woman considering abortion are among the least objective people you could find.
"I don't know who's a real human being, I think only the slave's master knows whether the slave is a slave or a human"
Makes just as much sense as what he said.
News flash: you're not the "mother" until what you're carrying is a human being.
So if you're "the mother", then you're carrying a "human being", and to abort that human being is homicide, and should be murder.
Kid's been out for three years, and mother decides to beat / abuse / kill the kid
Is that murder? Is that child abuse?
Yes?
Why, after all "the mother" decided it was appropriate, so who are you to say otherwise?
We all get a voice on whether or not someone qualifies as a human being. We get to decide that your slave is a person, not property, we get to decide that your "fur baby" is NOT a human, and not entitled to human rights, and we get to decide when that entirely genetically distinct from you is a human being, not just a clump of cells.
In an America where the FDA gets to decide what you are allowed to put in your body, and where the Federal Gov't is celebrated for interfering with people's "private media decisions" when it comes to pain killers, and where you choosing to try to kill yourself is against the law, there is no possible sane or honest way to claim that the rest of us dont' get to "interfere" WRT abortion or trans mutilation of children.
Why am I not a leftist? because the Left is fundamentally dishonest. This is just another example of that
there needs to be a test case to test whether a woman had the right to destroy a man’s child — presuming he wants the child.
Not in the U.S. there doesn't. That's settled law.
1. I was actually in his clinic on business one day. It was a fortress. No windows. Metal detector to get in the door. He parked inside the building instead of on the street.
Inside, staff had created a bulletin board that read, “You are a hero, Dr. Carhart.”
The clinic in Bellevue was about 200 yards away from St. Mary’s of Bellevue. My uncle was a priest there for a time.
2. Carhart was involved with all sorts of litigation. Judge Kopf of Lincoln wrote an opinion that was something like 300 pages. I think he got reversed by the 8th Circuit, but maybe SCOTUS rev’d the 8th. Can’t recall.
In any event, Judge Kopf recused himself from all future abortion cases.
3. Carhart had a near monopoly in NE. He certainly made a fortune.
4. He was active in his church. Methodist or something.
Let's use the very same brain waves the ABSENCE of which define the end of a human life. Broadly that's at about 10 weeks actual gestation, not 10 weeks from the woman's last period. That makes a reasonably strong medical argument for 12 weeks from the last period Day 1, a rather obvious marker.
That comes from my late father-in-law, 51 years a Pathologist, often responsible for formal declarations of death. Totally secular criterion.
“They’re at war with us,” Dr. Carhart said after the killing. “We have to realize this isn’t a difference of opinions. We need to fight back.”
And today the Left is at war with us on this trans business. I’m fighting back.
Thursday, Nebraska’s proposed new 6 week abortion ban failed. The old 20 week law remains in effect. My state Senator was the critical vote. He’s a Republican. He tried for a 12 week bill. I agree with his vote.
chickelit said...
“As for the fetus, it's a human if the parent thinks it's a human, because then it has a relation to the parent's plans. Look at the parent, not the fetus. If not, not.”
But the demanded rights don’t include the male;
ahh! but! the demanded rights Totally DO include the male.. As long as the male is the one pregnant
In the same way, if the female has a penis.. Then she has no rights either.
i think.
typingtalker said...
According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, life is “the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body”.
Which boils down to ... life is that which is not dead.
which raises a Serious Question: What about the undead???
If a vampire gets pregnant, is her vampire baby alive? or undead?
And Please don't get all imaginary..
with your talk about how "vampires can't Get pregnant"; We are talking about: The Real World
I too join the consensus and further do not believe that even the doctor believed what he is quoted as saying about belief. Sounded like a bullshit copout to me. He is maintaining a detachment from and adhering to a hazy definition of the area within which he is known for working. At best he’s admitting moral ambiguity.
Car drivers are in the best position to decide if their speed is dangerous or acceptable. We need to end the policing of vehicle speed.
He should ask one of his former clients whether he's alive. He might get a pleasant surprise!
"The legal way to analyze the question has been to say that because we can't know when life begins ..."
Oh BS. The legal question is, "What is it murder to kill?". No one is in any doubt that an abortion kills something that is alive. But killing something is not always, or even usually, murder. It isn't murder unless the law says it is. In this case, current American law, in many states, says that it is murder to kill an unborn baby if the mother wants it alive, and it is elective surgery if she doesn't. Showing once again that the distinctive characteristic of the feminist is a maniacal determination always to have it both ways.
If we are not sure of when life begins then we should ERROR ON THE SIDE OF CAUTION and presume it is at conception least we commit GENOCIDE.
Simple as that.
Nonsense. We know the answer to the question “when does life begin?” It begins when the sperm fertilizes the egg.
The question we can’t seem to answer is how do we morally justify ending that life? Since we can’t answer it, we pretend the life doesn’t exist.
Well, he's not stupid, so he's being dishonest: life begins when the egg becomes fertilized.
The question is: when does that nascent collection of growing cells become a nascent human being that could be viable if removed or ejected from the uterus, rather than just a group of cells that are not yet externally viable or recognizably human?
"The egg is alive. The sperm is alive. Life never starts. It only ends."
Yes. Life is effectively eternal. The question is when a separate new life begins.
Because all we have is opinions on when the fetus is human, we can let the people decide, which is called making laws. Why not just let the mother decide? Because those who disagree with abortion view abortion as murder. Because the most radical want abortion right up to delivery and maybe even after delivery.
So far, every answer is more accurate than Dr. Mengele er... Carhart.
An individual human existence begins when the chromosomes inside a sperm and an egg co-operate for the first time in the first mitotic division. They line up together on the median line of the egg cell while forming the mitotic spindle on each side of the line. Then they divide using the spindle to draw 23 sperm chromosomes and 23 egg chromosomes to each side. Then a dividing line runs down the cell and an individual existing human has performed his or her first act. This mitotic division will be repeated until millions of cells exist and then division is continued to supply new cells as needed until that individuals dies, i.e., ceases mitotic division. But in the meantime cells have specialized, organs have formed, a child has been born. That child has the same identity as the individual formed at conception - not only are all its cells descended from that first mitotic division but at that fateful moment, conception, the sex and race and looks of the child were determined. Whatever reception such a sex, race and good looks (or not) will get at birth in whatever country or society the child is born in is the fate of the child and what the child makes of that reception is its human history.
LeRoy Carhart decided to make a lot of money the easy way. Getting into the abortion industry is a quick and easy way to wealth. $200 an hour for being a butcher who does the same procedure all the same. Compare that with the effort you'd have to make as a lawyer, a hedge fund operator. Even to run FTX and fool everybody, you'd have to think, think, think. Or Jeffrey Epstein - he needed a little black book and lawyers. And then he ended up in prison. And then he was dead. Elizabeth Holmes skids into jail. But Leroy Carhart just kept killing through it all. And now he's dead. He fitted in to the society we now have - the one where twelve year-old girls want to commit suicide rather than be women who will encounter a LeRoy Carhart
The woman knows what's inside is a human being because it's a human being when she believes it is.
And if she changes her mind the next day, then it no longer is.
That’s when the rationality of this approach goes up in smoke.
In 2012 Gallup reported that 17% of U.S registered voters said they would vote only for candidates for major office who share their own views on abortion, and that slightly more pro-life voters than pro-choice voters say they would vote only for a candidate who shares their views, 21% vs. 15%. FWIW.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/157886/abortion-threshold-issue-one-six-voters.aspx
“In no other area of medicine do we let a patient decide”
What about sex change surgery/medication?
"When does life begin?" was always the wrong question. The fact that something is alive doesn't necessarily prohibit its owner from killing it. Even if your house plants are alive, you're allowed to throw them away in a dumpster. You can't do the same to a dog or cat. You can, however, euthanize your dog and cat and nobody finds that morally objectionable.
The question raised by the abortion debate is whether human embryos and fetuses are the kind of living things to which society attaches moral significance, and therefore will not permit to be destroyed at a whim; or whether they're more like houseplants or rodents, i.e., things that are alive, but in whose lives society perceives no real importance.
Pro-abortion people seem to attach approximately the same degree of moral importance to fetal life that slaveholders attached to the lives of African slaves. Although slaves were regarded as human beings, they were also deemed to be property that a slaveholder could destroy if he chose. By the same token, proponents of abortion rights claim essentially contend that fetal life is the property of the mother to keep or destroy as she pleases. In this view, a fetus or embryo has no moral value other than that which the mother/owner chooses to recognize and respect.
Blogger Black Bellamy said...
The egg is alive. The sperm is alive. Life never starts. It only ends.
Of course !
Carhart was a quack, and I'm sure made a lot of money from his quackery, in addition to being regular feted by the anti-natalist death cultists. But we do know when life begins, it's at conception, at least according to >95% of biologists.
Believe the science! Except when it's intolerably inconvenient.
It's gaslighting to say that nobody knows when life begins, it begins at conception, and any other point requires creation of new purpose-built concepts of what life is that only exist to support their assertions of "where life begins." What they mean is that they don't want to admit that they support infanticide.
He devoted his life to death.
Ellie- I would go at it from the other side.
Life begins at conception.
When is it valued enough to let live?
What stage is considered legally ok to terminate.
How long do women have to kill their unborn?
@ Bart Hall
Let's use the very same brain waves the ABSENCE of which define the end of a human life.
There is a flaw in your logic. The absence of brain waves is used to determine that there is no possible future for the body lying on the gurney. The decision for a formal declaration of death is based on the fact that medical science knows no way to recover from that state. No amount of medical intervention will help, so the decision is to NOT intervene medically.
On the other hand, with the unborn, there is EVERY expectation that life will continue UNLESS medical intervention is taken. In the first case, you can do no help so you do not intervene. In the second case intervention does specific harm. If your father-in-law had a patient in front of him that he felt WOULD lead a viable life, regardless of the vital signs ,then he would expend significant effort to try and make that happen. So in the end of life scenario, the brain waves are the proof there is no future, in the beginning of life scenario they are not.
False equivalency.
Fine, if no one knows when life begins, then is simply a matter of faith, I believe it starts at conception. You believe its start 10 hours after birth. Let's vote on it and majority wins.
Does my fetus qualify for a tax deduction? Does my fetus qualify for citizenship? Does my fetus qualify for child support?” These are questions Coombs says will likely come up in court. Can I drive in the HOV LANE if I am pregnant.
“I don't know how it is sustainable to have two different definitions of people, human people, throughout the country.” 5 STATES WANT personhood laws. Georgia can claim a fetus on your taxes as a dependent. Bible says BREATH=LIFE and CONCEPTION=LIFE which is it? Who will make it most beneficial for said parties? Endless litigation typical human behavior,
Lebenunwertes leben was the old formula.
"But Carhart's quote seems to say more than because someone must decide, so let the woman decide."
And he was simply quite happy with that since it meant M - O - N - E - Y for him.
It was all so convenient for him, donchaknow?
"I don't believe the statement "for that one person, and for her alone, to believe is to know.""
Althouse is afraid of her readers. She throws out this statement that I quoted so folks won't get too fussy. To make sue readers know that she's not agreeing that the abortion decision should be left to what a pregnant gal (or they/him/ze/whatever) believes. Don't worry Althouse readers, Althouse isn't saying that gals' beliefs are the same as gals' knowing, re abortion. Althosue knows that gals can't be the deciders.
Ironically this blog is a safe place where right wing loons can find comfort re thinking that their beliefs are knowledge.
BTW, if Althouse really wants to not believe that believers know things, she should come out and take a giant shit on all religious people. At least a pregnant gal has some interaction w/ the baby/cells inside her. Religious people that believe they know are fully existing in imagination.
That's probably not the implication Althouse was going for, though it is impossible to ignore re logic. Still w/o me typing here her readers are too mentally limited to notice.
Luckily my comment (as is usual) can be deleted so it is not seen on the thread. Keep these threads safe for mentally limited right-wingers.
Cool!
The fertilized egg is certainly metabolizing. Generally, that's enough to be considered living.
I think Kate got it right above: "We know when life begins. We haven't decided when the life has human value."
“When does life begin” is the wrong question although has become a stand-in for the right question. “When does a fetus or a baby get government provided legal protection” is the right question.
“At conception” is the standard religious answer although it wasn’t always so. In the past it was at quickening. “At birth” has become the common secular answer. There are arguments for other stages of gestation. We are a nation terribly divided on this question.
"Doc, I think that baby's alive."
"Why do you say that?"
"She's moving and crying. Her heart's beating and her brain is working. She's breathing oxygen."
"We don't know. Nobody knows."
"We should put her in a neonatal intensive care unit. Make best efforts to keep her alive. Right?"
"That's not my job."
"But you're a doctor!"
"I don't know if she's alive or not alive."
The doctor stabs the baby in the middle of the birth canal, killing her. The crying stops. The baby is dead.
"She's dead. Oh my God. You killed her."
"You don't know that. Nobody knows. And it wasn't my choice, anyway."
When mom wakes up, she gets a bill for $2,000.
Let's use the very same brain waves the ABSENCE of which define the end of a human life. Broadly that's at about 10 weeks actual gestation, not 10 weeks from the woman's last period. That makes a reasonably strong medical argument for 12 weeks from the last period Day 1, a rather obvious marker.
That comes from my late father-in-law, 51 years a Pathologist, often responsible for formal declarations of death. Totally secular criterion.
Bart, you've off by several weeks. Brain activity starts six weeks after conception, typically (but not always) eight weeks after the last menstrual period. That's the legal standard in all 50 states, cessation of any brain activity.
Brain activity is the vital life-or-death criterion we use to determine if a physician is committing homicide of not.
For instance, say a doctor is removing a beating heart from Bob. Is this a homicide? Are we killing Bob?
Yes, if Bob has activity in his brain, that's a homicide. But no, if Bob has zero activity in his brain, then the doctor can remove a beating heart without killing Bob.
Thus brain activity is the relevant criterion for homicide accusations, not heartbeat. Again, this is the rule in all 50 states (and the federal rule as well) which is why no heart transplant surgeons are ever prosecuted for homicide for removing beating hearts from brain-dead people. The standard is brain activity, not heartbeat. And, to my knowledge, the vast majority of pro-lifers are not upset about this. The morally relevant criterion for the life-or-death question is brain activity.
We might be wrong, of course, but that's what our rule is in our society, for everybody except the unborn.
There is no mystery, life begins at conception, the source of individual human evolution.
And if she changes her mind the next day, then it no longer is.
The Dezis (i.e. progressive liberals) share a common principle of ethics (i.e. religion) with the Nazis: life deemed unworthy of life... a Twilight faith, a Pro-Choice religion, a class-disordered ideology (i.e. diversity).
So in the end of life scenario, the brain waves are the proof there is no future, in the beginning of life scenario they are not.
False equivalency.
Same state as granny, but a different process, where granny is evolving with progressive viability, barring Her or her Choice, a baby evolves with a life bias... nay, prejudice.
So Northam was a little extreme in deciding that life begins after birth ?
Antilife. A baby aborted, survives, is administered cruel and unusual punishment on a cold gray slate... the audacity of life that seeks life.
There is a flaw in your logic. The absence of brain waves is used to determine that there is no possible future for the body lying on the gurney. The decision for a formal declaration of death is based on the fact that medical science knows no way to recover from that state. No amount of medical intervention will help, so the decision is to NOT intervene medically.
On the other hand, with the unborn, there is EVERY expectation that life will continue UNLESS medical intervention is taken. In the first case, you can do no help so you do not intervene. In the second case intervention does specific harm.
This is right. I agree with this 100%.
The future life of the unborn baby is an important moral concern. The Supreme Court often talked about this, by the way, what they call "potential life." (What was infuriating was how they reduced the unborn to "potential life" for the entire nine months of the pregnancy!)
It's important to understand that terminating a baby's future life is not enough to qualify as a homicide. That's because we have specific legal criteria that has to be met for the homicide of a human being.
We can outlaw abortion for many reasons. We could name a whole laundry list of reasons for making abortion a crime. It doesn't have to be homicide to qualify as a crime. Attempted murder doesn't kill people, but it's still illegal.
Now that's my view. But I also acknowledge that many people think that very early abortions should not be illegal at all. I think states can allow those abortions without offending the Constitution. The Constitution doesn't mention abortion, and defining crimes is up to the states.
But classifying human beings as "non-persons" is an obvious violation of our equal protection clause. Saying homicide is irrelevant is obscene. Saying we have no idea when people die is a blatant lie. I beg our authorities to remove homicide from our abortion debate. Quit killing babies, and pay attention to our death statutes. (You wrote these laws, so follow your own laws!)
An individual human existence begins when the chromosomes inside a sperm and an egg co-operate for the first time in the first mitotic division.
Yes, without both male and female precursors, joined in matrimony during sex, a human life does not evolve from a cissexual source.
Science cannot discern between origin and expression, thus under the Twilight faith, the Pro-Choice religion, diversity ideology, it is licit to abort a real or perceived "burden" whenever the mood shoot strike. The German Socialists used this ethical religious apology to justify abortion of Jews in mass for social, redistributive, clinical, political, criminal, and fair weather progress.
Robert Cook said...
Well, he's not stupid, so he's being dishonest: life begins when the egg becomes fertilized.
The question is: when does that nascent collection of growing cells become a nascent human being that could be viable if removed or ejected from the uterus,
Bzzt. you don't have to be "viable" to be human.
If you did, then no one in an "iron lung", heck, no one getting kidney dialysis, is a "human being"
It is just a rule that you have to be a thoughtless moron in order to side with the Left on abortion?
Can I drive in the HOV LANE if I am pregnant.
If I ever get pulled over in the HOV, I'm telling the judge I identify as conjoined twins.
Let’s not judge because it’s just so judgey.
Pathetic abdication of responsibility
Carhart conflates life and consciousness. While the former begins at conception, the latter is believed by some religions to be an emergent phenomenon correlated with nervous system activity, but that is an article of faith.
If one found a fetus on Mars what would the headline say the next day?
As a holder of a BS in Biological Science there is no doubt that a life begins at conception. When egg meets sperm and the DNA mixes you have a new life. It’s no mystery.
just a group of cells that are not yet externally viable or recognizably human?
Those are two VERY different standards. The group of cells is recognizably human from the moment that the cells in it possess 46 human chromosomes each. Viability is much later.
I'm in the camp of so many others here - human life behind almost immediately upon the meeting of egg and sperm, and this is known - truly known, not "known" in the sense of "deeply felt." What we're debating is when it is or isn't legal to end that life.
I'll leave morality out of it.
To believe is to know? Sorry, that will not pass any logic test. Even belief in God is not the same as knowing that God really exists.
But we know when it ends, don't we?
Clip from a BBC interview with Carhart.
"The baby has no input in this as far as I'm concerned."
"But it's interesting that you use the word 'baby' because a lot of abortionists won't use that. They'll use the word 'fetus' because they don't want to acknowledge that there's a life."
"I think that it is a baby...I use it with the patients."
"And you don't have a problem with killing a baby?"
"I have no problem if it's in the mother's uterus."
"I don’t think I know when life begins. I don’t think any of us know when life begins; certainly the scientists don’t."
"I don’t believe the religious scholars do. I do know the only person who knows when life begins is the mother of the life that she’s carrying."
That's a Grade A #1 'above my pay grade' cop-out.
They don't know what a woman is either. Delusion is amok in the Progressive party
The question is: when does that nascent collection of growing cells become a nascent human being that could be viable if removed or ejected from the uterus
Mr. Cook, you are better than this.
Smarter.
You have to know that "viability" is survivability. That's a simple word definition. You also have to know that no baby is viable if the adults in the room decide to abandon her.
Newborns aren't viable. Just showing up on the Althouse blog and prattling "viability theory" is mailing it in. I'm not convinced you've read Roe v. Wade at all. Here's a quick primer on how bad it is. Note footnote 22 and its implicit approval of the killing of newborns in the opinion. The reckless and stupid citing of Aristotle for abortion rules.
How do you feel about killing newborns, Mr. Cook? How do you feel about killing innocent citizens of the United States?
You may or may not know that Roe v. Wade led to the Kermit Gosnell murder spree. I know it. If you care about human life -- and I know you do -- you need to up your game when you talk about this subject. Because regurgitating viability theory at this point in human history suggests you have put exactly zero study or thought into the subject.
@Robert Cook: The question is: when does that nascent collection of growing cells become a nascent human being that could be viable if removed or ejected from the uterus, rather than just a group of cells that are not yet externally viable or recognizably human?
It continually astonishes me that people address the question of ending a human existence by concerning themselves when that existence becomes meaningful, instead of addressing that end by what that end means.
Everyone reading the is blog will die by one of two means: natural causes, or some form of homicide. There might be quibbles about which category a few specific causes might end up in, but that is utterly beside the point.
Move the clock back one tick, and that would still be true. Move it back to the moment of birth, or conception. Doesn't matter, the situation remains the same: only two ways a unique human existence will end — natural causes, or homicide.
Clearly, abortion is not a natural cause, it is the type of homicide called premeditated murder. Terms such as "reproductive rights" or "choice" elide the fundamental nature of what is going on. There is no dividing line, no limit, no detectable brain waves or heartbeat that sidesteps the brute fact that elective abortion always deprives a unique human existence of the opportunity to die of natural causes.
Note, there is no religious element to this: it is purely deductive reasoning.
Robert Cook, Carhart, Ann: do human existences have intrinsic moral value?
Better be careful about how you answer that question.
Carhart was (of course secretly) not respected within the pro-choice movement. He advocated for killing babies who survived abortion. He had a reputation for carelessness with the mothers' lives too. By his own patient numbers, travel records, and propensity for complicated, multi-day, high-risk abortions that should have been performed at hospital facilities, he could not have been available for full procedures at his two clinics.
His statements are consistent, if lawyered. More importantly, his actions and other words demonstrated extreme beliefs with which virtually no other abortionists would concur. He was the primary mover behind legislation to push abortion to the very end of the third trimester.
The only legislator on record voting to support this extreme position that I can recall was Barack Obama, back when he served in Illinois. He was the sole yea in one of the most leftist State Senates in the country.
St. Croix, you are mistaken. When there is fetal death, depending on age of conception, the mother is either given a D&C or is induced. The latter is a dangerous and horrible experience: if birth needs to be induced, it needs to be done at a hospital, and hospitals do it. Otherwise you risk infection or complications or rupture to the base of the woman's uterus. What Carhart did was claim he could just as safely dismantle late-stage dead babies, and live ones, inside the uterus and remove them in pieces through the vagina, or murder the still-alive later stage baby in the uterus and then induce outside hospitals. That's a two-day abortion. I never heard of a four-day one, as he performed on a woman who died. You can imagine the potential for injury.
Every abortionist has a favorite medical examiner, if possible.
Bullshit!!
Human embryologists from time immemorial held that "life begins at conception." If there were changes after Roe, they were political, not scientific. The facts didn't change.
Bullshit!!
Human embryologists from time immemorial held that "life begins at conception." If there were changes after Roe, they were political, not scientific. The facts didn't change.
Carhart was (of course secretly) not respected within the pro-choice movement. He advocated for killing babies who survived abortion. He had a reputation for carelessness with the mothers' lives too. By his own patient numbers, travel records, and propensity for complicated, multi-day, high-risk abortions that should have been performed at hospital facilities, he could not have been available for full procedures at his two clinics.
His statements are consistent, if lawyered. More importantly, his actions and other words demonstrated extreme beliefs with which virtually no other abortionists would concur. He was the primary mover behind legislation to push abortion to the very end of the third trimester.
The only legislator on record voting to support this extreme position that I can recall was Barack Obama, back when he served in Illinois. He was the sole yea in one of the most leftist State Senates in the country.
Life on earth began around 3 to 4 billion years ago,
I didn’t know that embryology was a field that’s been in existence since “time immemorial.” About 4 or 5 hundred years ago the priests who took on the role of embryologists drew famous pictures of what they thought were little humanoids curled up in the head of a sperm. They saw nothing special about conception.
At conception a new genomic identity is formed but anyone who asserts that a genomic identity is a human person is either full of it or politicking (I repeat myself). DNA is about as human as a piece of sheet music is a symphony. Instructions are not the same as the finished product.
Conservatives just want to control women, period. If they truly believe that depriving an embryo of a placenta is murder, then there are a lot of organ waitlist folks being murdered each year due to being deprived of the right bone marrow, kidneys, etc. etc. The forced gestationists would never say that these people are being killed and only talk that way about embryos and fetuses because they believe the unborn should have more rights than a potential organ recipient (which is unlikely) or that pregnant women should have fewer rights than a potential organ donor. (More likely).
At conception a new genomic identity is formed but anyone who asserts that a genomic identity is a human person is either full of it or politicking
So where do human persons come from, and how and when are they created?
hpudding: At conception a new genomic identity is formed but anyone who asserts that a genomic identity is a human person is either full of it or politicking ...
At the moment of conception, there is a new, unique, human existence. There are only two ways that existence ends. Apparently you are fine with murders of convenience.
Conservatives just want to control women, period. If they truly believe that depriving an embryo of a placenta is murder, then there are a lot of organ waitlist folks being murdered each year due to being deprived of the right bone marrow, kidneys, etc. etc.
Argument from analogy is almost always a mistake, which you multiply demonstrate here.
Abortion is murder. Of course, you can demonstrate that it isn't, but that would require divining where depriving a human existence of the opportunity to die of natural causes isn't murder, from where it is.
Good luck with that.
Notice how the conservative is too irrational to address the argument. (No surprise).
If refusing to donate a disposable or extra organ to a recipient who would die without it is not murder, then why would it be murder for a woman not to allow use of her placenta and uterus to an embryo or fetus?
Obviously the answer is that the conservative believes fetuses should have more rights than organ recipients and that pregnant women should have fewer rights than organ donors. But he cannot allow himself to admit it.
No matter. Even voters in some of the reddest states see through his misogyny.
And anyone so uneducated and ignorant to think that putting a unique DNA sequence into a new cell creates in that moment an actual person is too dumb to have a discussion with. Every day thousands of labs work with human DNA inside or outside of cell-like structures - even complete genomic sequences. No one credible says that they are experimenting on actual, legal “persons.” Science can create complete human genomes artificially, from scratch. That alone doesn’t make them any more a human “being” than the organs that they can also create from scratch the property of any random person.
The conservatives beclown themselves every time they speak out on the knowledge that proves them wrong. They get their morals from a pretend deity proposed by bronze-age goat herders. Their attempts to control women and assert dominion over their bodies is made only slightly less despicable by how laughable these silly men are when you find out they’re usually involuntary celibates (incels) anyway with negligible familiarity of women in any way, shape or form - let alone physically.
What jokes.
Notice how the conservative is too irrational to address the argument. (No surprise).
Analogizing when situations aren't analogous isn't an argument, it is a mistake.
If there is no intervention after conception, that unique human existence will continue until term, or miscarry. Either way, the outcome is down to fate.
Conversely, refusing to donate an organ is to not intervene. The person needing the organ will die of natural causes.
With regard to pregnancy, which is what is under discussion, not something you threw at the wall, abortion is human intervention to end a unique human existence. In your false analogy, human intervention is required to extend a human existence.
End and extend are opposite. Your analogy is a fallacy.
And anyone so uneducated and ignorant to think that putting a unique DNA sequence into a new cell creates in that moment an actual person is too dumb to have a discussion with.
The moment of conception creates a unique human existence that will continue until its end of natural causes, or homicide.
Which part of that is wrong?
“Which part of that is wrong?“
The part where you obviously never worked in a lab or a clinic and dealt with the fact that these “existences” (not a legal term) are discarded routinely.
“Homicide” is a legal term.”Person” is a legal term.
“Existences” is not.
Keep that purposely ambiguous, non-clarifying language for your gig at the Vatican - or whichever hocus pocus enterprise intent on getting the incels and voluntary celibates dominion over female bodies is pushing this spooky, pseudo-spiritual, superstitious nonsense on you.
“Homicide” is a legal term. ”Person” is a legal term.
Wrong twice. Correction, wrong once, and misunderstanding the other time.
"Homicide" is a categorical term, that exists prior to legality. "Person" is also a categorical term preceding legality; however, the concept of "Person" is irrelevant here. It doesn't matter where you place personhood, the categorical nature of homicide remains.
Imagine this hypothetical: every person on the planet save you has experienced the rapture — Lord only knows what you did to deserve that, but never mind. In that event, you will die of some natural cause. Unless, in your existential despair, you throw yourself off a cliff first.
From this there are two unavoidable conclusions: death by natural cause is any end of a human existence that does not involve human agency; and, every death by human agency is a death that occurs before a death by natural cause.
Note: no deities are invoked in making this deductive argument. No matter what you think of any religion, these are brute facts that cannot be wished away.
Which brings me to "existence". I purposefully used that term because it is not pejorative, nor question begging. No matter when you think personhood begins, you cannot deny that the existence of a biological entity that is unique and eventually a person must precede that moment of personhood, whenever that may be.
There is no moment in your existence, from conception, where death by human intentionality will not shorten your existence compared to death by natural causes. Every death by human intentionality is, by definition, a form of homicide.
Therefore, abortion is always premeditated homicide — murder, to put it most bluntly.
Your analogizing was wrong, in a big way. Your assertion that homicide is a legal term is true, but trivially so, because it elides the reason why homicide is a legal concept. "Person", similarly, is not fundamentally a legal term, but your invoking it is a tell you do not understand the basic concepts. "Existence" is not a legal term, but a foundational one, against which you can have no rational objection.
There is no moment following conception where abortion is not premeditated murder, because there is no moment following conception where abortion does not shorten existence compared to death by natural causes.
Personhood has nothing to do with, nor do legal concepts. Unless you can deny simple foundational facts and their unavoidable deductive consequences, then you must admit that abortion is murder, full stop.
So, by all means, show me where I am wrong.
Oh, lucky me! An uneducable (involuntarily) virgin male is attempting to indoctrinate me into his cult of coveting control over the female bodies to which he lacks access. (That would be every one of them).
Oh well. He only has hundreds of millions of Americans to convince that they are all either murderers or electoral accessories to murder, including broad majorities in a number of fascist red states. So at least I’m not the only one.
The Nazis shared his view of abortion and harshly punished “Aryan” and other racially privileged women who sought them. So hopefully he can take solace in knowing the company he keeps in his quest for biologically moral purity.
(Although he probably does not even believe the things he says).
You do like to babble, rapture boy.
Have you ever read Numbers 5:11 - 31? (Doubtful - he probably knows as little of the Bible as he does biology). Abortion is ok as per your magical book of Hebrew fairy tales.
Every human sperm is a unique biological existence. So is every egg. Go save them!
In fact, the ancients upon whom you rely for your bioethics lessons used to believe in doing just that. Until they figured out what conception even was.
You’ve got a lot of saving and salvation-ing to do. Get cracking!
I'm done with you.
Of course, you could demonstrate how my conclusion is wrong. You didn't even try.
Instead of engaging the argument — no doubt because you can't — you end up like all progressives in a frenzy of insult and slander.
You’re the one accusing 85% of Americans of either being murderers or supportive of murder. But I’m the one who’s being insulting and unpersuasive?
Glad to see you bowing out. I don’t debate with people who don’t live in reality, anyway.
And neither does the rest of the country.
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