Showing posts with label Person-hood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Person-hood. Show all posts
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Natural abortions: a miscarriage of divine justice?
Posted by Jonathan Pearce on Sunday, December 11, 2011
The statistics for miscarriages are notoriously difficult to assess completely accurately. This is partly due to the fact that many miscarriages go unreported (those after 6 weeks of gestation, which are known as spontaneous clinical abortions). However, the greater reason is that early pregnancy losses – those that happen during the first 6 weeks of pregnancy, generally tend too happen without the mother even knowing.
So why am I writing about this? Well, because statistically, it means that anywhere up to 75% of all pregnancies, of all fertilised eggs, die. This is a staggering number of pregnancy losses (It is estimated that 3 out of 4 eggs that are fertilized do not fuse their DNA correctly, and therefore either do not attempt to implant or fail at implantation).
The reason for talking about this is twofold. Firstly, for people who critique abortion on religious grounds, it makes somewhat of a mockery of their arguments. Secondly, again from a religious perspective, it does make God look a little callous. Nay, brutal and unloving.
So let’s explore these issues.
God is supposedly omnipotent, all-powerful; and omnibenevolent, all-loving. We also hear very often how terrible clinical abortions are. Now I don’t want to investigate clinical abortions per se but I do want to look at the standards that Christians adopt when approaching abortion, and then when they evaluate their perfect God. The general approach, rightly or wrongly, is that abortion is the murder of human beings. If this is the case, then the death, at the hands of other humans, of any and every embryo from blastocyst onwards, is bad, abhorrent and so on.
Given this state of affairs and given this appraisal of the ethics of abortions, let us then look at the God scenario.
Let us assume that somewhere between 60% and 75% of human embryos are fertilised and subsequently die naturally. The numbers aren’t so relevant, though the sheer volume does make you stop and think a little harder. This raises these points:
1) God has the ability to stop this from happening
2) By allowing it passively, he is actually actively declaring that the deaths serve a greater good
3) The manner in which these deaths serve a greater good is necessary for this greater good. In other words, there can be no other way that this greater good can eventualise which causes less suffering, otherwise god, as an all-loving being, would have chosen the alternative option.
4) The vast majority of these deaths go unknown to anyone in the world. Thus the deaths can have nothing to do with humanity and our ‘journey’, begging the question as to exactly how they can serve a purpose.
5) Since such deaths occur on such a scale, and no decent reason is forthcoming, then perhaps foetal life isn’t as sacrosanct as many claim.
The standard Christian response to issues such as these which fall into the category of the Problem of evil is to offer the ‘Omniscience Escape Clause’. This posits that we cannot know the mind of God, or would not understand the reasons as to why such evil must exist. This again begs the question as to what kind of reason could be beyond our comprehension, and what kind of reason could actually justify death on such a massive scale. Even if, by some appeal to our idiocy, we cannot understand through cognitive deficiency as to why these deaths must occur, then it would be appropriate for God to at least let us know that these deaths aren’t in vain; that they DO provide a mechanism for achieving a greater good. Some kind of revelation, one way or another, would be decent.
What we come to, as a conclusion to this scenario, is this: either God is not omnibenevolent; or God does not exist; or embryos are not so sacred and arguments over what defines personhood are called for; or that millions of foetal deaths a year, unknown to humanity, are necessary for a greater good.
Of all those options, the last one is by far the most improbable, and yet the one adhered to by most, if not all, Christians.
To read more by Jonathan Pearce, visit is great blog at: http://atipplingphilosopher.yolasite.com/
Thursday, April 12, 2012
AZ Legislature Passes “Pregnancy Begins 2 Weeks Before Conception” Bill
Arizona‘s Legislature yesterday afternoon passed three harsh anti-abortion
bills, including one that defines pregnancy as being two weeks before
conception. Known in some circles as the “egg drop” bill, lawmakers
apparently believe they are more knowledgable than physicians at
determining gestational age. The attempt to redefine pregnancy of course
is to reduce the legal window of when a woman may have an abortion.
Arizona Republican “pro-life” Governor Jan Brewer would not comment on her intent to sign or veto the bill.“State Rep. Kimberly Yee (R-Phoenix), the bill’s sponsor, was not immediately available for comment. Her assistant said that Yee, a former aide to former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), was voting on the House floor,” The Huffington Post reports:
State Rep. Matt Heinz (D-Tucson), a physician, said he did not want the state to set the gestational age since science could not provide a precise one. “I imagine it will be a legal dispute. How can a judge determine gestational age?” Heinz said. “If medical science can only determine gestational age to within 10-14 days, how can a superior court judge do it?”The Huffington Post also notes:
…
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill to prohibit abortions after the 18th week of pregnancy; a bill to protect doctors from being sued if they withhold health information about a pregnancy that could cause a woman to seek an abortion; and a bill to mandate that how school curriculums address the topic of unwanted pregnancies.
The 18th week bill includes a new definition for when pregnancy begins. All of the bills passed the Senate and now head to Gov. Jan Brewer (R) for her signature or veto. Passage of the late-term abortion bill would give Arizona the earliest definition of late-term abortion in the country; most states use 20 weeks as a definition.
A sentence in the bill defines gestational age as “calculated from the first day of the last menstrual period of the pregnant woman,” which would move the beginning of a pregnancy up two weeks prior to conception.
Elizabeth Nash, states issues manager for Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research organization in Washington, said the definition corresponds with how doctors typically determine gestational age. She said since the exact date of conception cannot be pinpointed, doctors use the day of the woman’s last menstrual period to gauge the duration of a pregnancy. The method does not provide an exact date.
“It will have some impact, from what we understand there are abortions provided at that point in Arizona,” Nash said. “It will reduce access.”
The other two bills passed by the House include the state’s “wrongful birth, wrongful life” bill that prohibits lawsuits against doctors who do not provide information about a fetus’ health if that information could lead to an abortion. In addition, parents cannot sue on the child’s behalf after birth.Image: Chastity Belt by DonkeyHotey
The third bill requires that schools teach students that adoption and birth are the most acceptable outcomes for an unwanted pregnancy.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Every Sperm Is Sacred! Dem. Lawmaker Sneaks 'Life Begins at Ejaculation' Amendment into Vile 'Personhood' Bill
Despite being rebuffed by voters in Mississippi and Colorado, proponents of the “personhood” movement are still pushing to enact legislation in
states like Utah, Ohio and Oklahoma that would give zygotes the same rights
as American citizens. These bills would not only criminalize abortion in
all circumstances, they would also outlaw common forms of contraception, as well as in vitro fertilization.
To
poke fun at the absurdity of the measure, Oklahoma state Sen. Constance
Johnson (D), has tacked on a provision affirming — in the words of a famous Monty Python song — that every sperm is sacred:
State Senator Constance Johnson of Oklahoma City has served Oklahoma’s 48th Senate District since 2005, but it was yesterday’s introduction of Senate Bill 1433 that really pushed her over the edge. The bill sought to define human life as beginning at the moment of conception, before it’s even implanted in the womb, and offers full legal protection to those tiny multicelled lumps. In the words of the bill, “the unborn child at every stage of development (has) all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of this state.”
Johnson submitted an amendment of her own to the bill, which would have added the language,However, any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman’s vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against an unborn child.
Among
other things, Johnson’s amendment would essentially outlaw oral sex,
anal sex, and masturbation. Were it not a satirical bill, it would
almost certainly be deemed unconstitutional.
To prove that her amendment was in jest, Johnson voted with her colleagues to table it later
in the day. But it does illustrate a serious point: only about half of
fertilized eggs develop into a pregnancy. If Republican lawmakers are
willing to declare every cluster of cells with the potential to become a
fetus a person, why stop at fertilized eggs? Why not sperm as well?
To protest the inherent sexism of
the personhood bill, another Democratic senator attempted to add an
amendment that would require the father of the child to be financially
responsible for the mother’s health care, housing, and other expenses
while she is pregnant.
Posted at February 9, 2012, 6:32 am
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My Thoughts:
The whole concept of legally establishing personhood on a cluster of cells, is absolutely nuts. Here are some of the medical conditions that would be a criminal act under these bills:
A tubal pregnancy, which can rupture critical blood veins and cause the women to bleed to death and also to become sepsis (infection of the blood) which is also fatal to the women. The small cluster of cells would die because they are not receiving any blood supply from the woman, and when the woman dies, there is no medical way so far to remove the few cells and incubate them into a human. Are these law makers going to have surrogates waiting in the next room to receive these cells to incubate?
Spontaneous Miscarriage. That's when the body rejects the zygotes even after it attaches to the uterus. There are many reasons the body will reject it. Infection, failure of the cells to do what their supposed to do, some even become a cancer rather than developing human cells. This would also be a crime.
When there are problems either with a miscarriage or other reproductive issues, a D&C is required. That is vacuuming out any tissue in the uterus, including a zygotes and fetuses that are not developing or have died or are infected and threatening the life of the woman. This common procedure would be a crime.
And of course any otherwise legal termination of a pregnancy, whether it be elective, because of rape or incest. To perform one of these constitutionally legal procedures would be a crime in that state.
All forms of contraception that prevent the fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus, thus passing out of the body. These include most forms of the "Pill," IUDs, and other hormonal applications. Thus to use one of these forms of birth control would be a crime.
There is the situation that after sexual intercourse sperm will fertilize an egg and that egg will expel from the body, never attaching to the uterus. When this happens, there is a crime that has been committed. Of course, unless they make a law that requires every woman to collect any discharge from their vagina that will be tested in a lab to determine if there was a fertilized egg among the gunk.
So even though the Democrat Senator added the lyrics that ...every sperm is sacred. This is in fact what these laws are progressing to. So in the end they will legislate that every sperm and every egg, even before they meet are sacred and therefore must not be lost, but must be preserved at all cost.
Enough all ready. Let's not regress back to the religiously oppressive dark ages.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Every 7 minutes, women get a gift from God
Rick Santorum has proposed a constitutional amendment that states person-hood upon conception and any termination of the fertilized egg from that point forward would be an act of murder, no exceptions.
Mitt Romney strongly endorsed that idea when asked by Mike Huckabee on his Fox News show.
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