Abortion History Museum

The Principles of Medical Ethics (The American Medical Association, 2001), w/ Commentary

Posted on March 1, 2015 by intelligentchristianfaith

[Comments following the document]

I. Preamble

The medical profession has long subscribed to a body of ethical statements developed primarily for the benefit of the patient. As a member of this profession, a physician must recognize responsibility to patients first and foremost, as well as to society, to other health professionals, and to self. The following Principles adopted by the American Medical Association are not laws, but standards of conduct which define the essentials of honorable behavior for the physician.

II. Principles of medical ethics

A physician shall be dedicated to providing competent medical care, with compassion and respect for human dignity and rights.
A physician shall uphold the standards of professionalism, be honest in all professional interactions, and strive to report physicians deficient in character or competence, or engaging in fraud or deception, to appropriate entities.

III. A physician shall respect the law and also recognize a responsibility to seek changes in those requirements which are contrary to the best interests of the patient.

A physician shall respect the rights of patients, colleagues, and other health professionals, and shall safeguard patient confidences and privacy within the constraints of the law.
A physician shall continue to study, apply, and advance scientific knowledge, maintain a commitment to medical education, make relevant information available to patients, colleagues, and the public, obtain consultation, and use the talents of other health professionals when indicated.
A physician shall, in the provision of appropriate patient care, except in emergencies, be free to choose whom to serve, with whom to associate, and the environment in which to provide medical care.

VII. A physician shall recognize a responsibility to participate in activities contributing to the improvement of the community and the betterment of public health.

VIII. A physician shall, while caring for a patient, regard responsibility to the patient as paramount.

A physician shall support access to medical care for all people.

* Adopted June 1957; revised June 1980; revised June 2001.
Comments [By: Dr. John D. Ferrer)

I. Preamble
The medical profession has long subscribed to a body of ethical statements developed primarily for the benefit of the patient. As a member of this profession, a physician must recognize responsibility to patients first and foremost, as well as to society, to other health professionals, and to self. The following Principles adopted by the American Medical Association are not laws, but standards of conduct which define the essentials of honorable behavior for the physician.

The well-meaning medical professional can rightly focus his or her attention on the patient. While there are greater goods besides the interests strictly of that patient, there is a presumed right of autonomy, and a demarcated domain of responsibility to where the Doctor is most responsible for his patient and only secondarily responsible for other concerns bearing upon, the patient’s family, other medical professionals, the medical profession, the community, or society at large. The doctor does not act in a vacuum, but neither can he or she do the job if forced to treat all affected parties equally. The patient is his or her no. 1 concern/responsibility. The principles that follow are given with the understanding that the doctor-patient relation is a special and important relation putting patient autonomy and well-being above anyone else’s autonomy or well-being. Implied with the “patient’s interests” are issues of privacy, lifestyle choice, informed consent, security of property, and so on.

II. Principles of medical ethics
1. A physician shall be dedicated to providing competent medical care, with compassion and respect for human dignity and rights.

The first principle of medical ethics obligates the medical professional to (1) compassion and (2) respectful care. That respect is both for (2a) human dignity and (2b) human rights. This statement cautiously avoids the more contentious phrase “sanctity of life.” While sanctity can have a non-religious sense, and that’s a large part of how the phrase is used in U.S. legal history, it can also have a religious sense. And this document is not intended to meddle in theological or religious matters. Plus, the term itself has been a hotbed of debate (ex., Unsanctifying Life) Also noteworthy is the term “rights,” or, more specifically “human dignity and rights.” The child-in-utero is a human being, and that is medically and scientifically beneath dispute. A legal battle has been waged, and, for the most part settled, that “personhood” rather than “humanity” is the key foundation necessary for legal protection under the law, at least when it comes to any “right to life” claim. In short, (legally defined) “persons” have a right to life but no such reassurance is guaranteed for any other human beings. Implicitly then, all other human beings fail to have a legally recognized right to life.

Abortion raises some stiff challenges to this fundamental principle of medical ethics. While the mother’s autonomy, informed consent, and privacy concerns might comport with a pro-choice medical practice, the same pro-choice persuasion militates against the “human dignity and rights” of the child. Doctors are to treat the mothers “dignity and rights” of privacy, autonomy, informed consent, etc. above the life of the child. Also, the pro-choice position would have to understand this principle to be saying that the doctor’s patient is the mother and not (also) the child. If the doctor had a doctor-patient relation with both patients, mother and child, then he’d be responsible for compassion towards both, for dignity towards both, and for rights of both.

(II) 1. A physician shall uphold the standards of professionalism, be honest in all professional interactions, and strive to report physicians deficient in character or competence, or engaging in fraud or deception, to appropriate entities.

Here is stated the collegial ethic expected in the medical profession. Doctors should hold each other to a high standard of moral fiber, professional decorum, and overall integrity. Applied to the abortion industry, however, one does not have to look far to find that the abortion procedure, combined with the ethical and social baggage it carries has tended push the abortion industry down to the “bottom of the barrel” in medical culture. Stated another way, Bernard Nathanson, who conducted or presided over tens of thousands of abortions admits that abortion clinics were often “staffed with incompetents and losers” not to mention perverts and criminals (Nathanson, M.D., The Hand of God: A Journey From Death to Life by the Abortion Doctor Who Changed His Mind, pg. 102-21). Now these are bold accusations, but there are practical reasons why the abortion industry is troubled by integrity issues.

First, medical practice is largely understood to be about helping not harming humans, yet abortion harms human beings in the worst way, by killing them. This potentially eviscerates the ethical core of medicine. “Medical harm” is a contradiction in terms, especially in the case of “medically killing innocent healthy human beings.”

Second, as Nathanson points out, the abortion procedure itself is banal and uninteresting–the more cutting edge technology would, instead, be obstetrics or fetology or neo-natal health. By 1991 “only 12 percent of residency training programs required training in first-trimester abortions. Abortion is surgically unchallenging work that hardly fits within the classic bounds and aspirations of young physicians in training” (Nathanson, 123-24).

Third, since abortion is a morally contentious procedure involving the willful killing of human beings, the more high-minded physicians and surgeons, especially the skillful elite who want to “change the world” and make big money doing it, they gravitate to other medical fields like cardiology or oncology, where they can serve in protecting, extending, and improving life. The reality of abortive medicine, according to Nathanson, is that of a “tedious, assembly-line, marginally respectable occupation that demanded little or nothing from the physician technically or ethically. . . . [T]he doctor would examine [the mothers] once they were under anesthesia, and then suction out the uterus–never to see the patient again. . . . [I]s it any wonder that flotsam and jetsam like [list of convicted criminals in the abortion industry] and their ilk are driven to the scummy shores of abortion?” (1991, 122).

Fourth, medical practice is hard enough on it’s own. It can be thankless, stressful work, with long hours, under high regulation, tons of policies, and the ever-present threat of lawsuits and just bad press from patient complaints. When the psychological burden of abortion is added in, it becomes even harder to maintain a healthy, community minded, classy work environment. The abortion industry just is not the kind of career field to which upstanding and talented students generally aspire.

Fifth, by the law of supply and demand, the simpler surgical procedures are relatively easy to offer driving down the price for abortions. While bypass heart surgeries, colon resections, and cancer treatments can cost into the six figures ($100,000 +), the typical abortion costs about the same as a Botox treatment, $300-500. Both are outpatient surgeries. Both are relatively easy to perform. Both are convenience industries where there is little/no threat to the life of the person involved. And the ethical gains are questionable or merely subjective. Medical professionals who spend long years in training, and aspiring towards medicine for many years prior, rarely gravitate towards abortion as their first choice just as clothes designers don’t aspire to have their designs relegated strictly to thrift store racks.

III. A physician shall respect the law and also recognize a responsibility to seek changes in those requirements which are contrary to the best interests of the patient.

Legality and morality dovetail here as physicians recognize the importance of both, and seek to honor both as much as possible. There may be some subjectivity or dispute over what counts as the “best interests of the patient.” We cannot assume that patients generally or always know what is best for them. But neither can we assume that doctors always know what’s best for their patients. Hopefully, however, if both the doctor and patient are seeking the do what is best for the patient, then between the two of them they can come up with a viable health plan. The doctor still has a duty to respect the law even if he recognizes an occasional tension between the law of the land and the patient’s needs. In such cases, it is not uncommon for doctors to “prescribe” health plans where a certain medicine or medical procedure is made available through non-traditional means, such as non-FDA approved medicine, or late-term abortions illegal in a given state. This “round about” methodology may or may not be “good,” but it’s probably better than directly contradicting the state or federal laws, for example, as did Dr. Kermit Gosnell , or Dr. Allan Kline, or Dr. David Benjamin, or Dr. Robert Crist, or Alicia Ruiz Hanna, or Dr. Mind Kow Hah, or Dr. Abu Hayat all of whom are criminally convicted abortionists.

This point, however, does not assume that the “law of the land” is always right. So these “round about” methods may be necessary, for example, if at some point in the past medical laws prohibited the use of the only known cure for a disease, or if FDA regulations are obstructing the release of good medicine because of crony capitalism or political interference. Now, the doctors just mentioned would amount to a pretty poor case for “righteous revolution,” but there could still be medically revolutionary actions where the law is contradicted on ethically higher grounds.

1. A physician shall respect the rights of patients, colleagues, and other health professionals, and shall safeguard patient confidences and privacy within the constraints of the law.

This respect for the law is clarified in terms of the various “rights of patients, colleagues and other health professionals.” Privacy laws are understood not in the strict “rights over my body” sense (Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, 1973) but also in the sense of doctor-patient confidence. Patients have a right to expect their doctors not go about, unprofessionally, gossiping about patient needs and issues, or worse go broadcasting and selling patient information for a profit.

This AMA statement is only a brief synopsis and not an explicit analysis, so we should not expect a full-length discourse on what “rights” are included. It is enough to have suggested “compassion,” “dignity,” and “privacy.” Although, one wonders if such a rudimentary right as “life” or “well-being” is left unmentioned precisely because of abortion or euthanasia where modern medicine has, potentially caved in on itself conflating “compassion” with “killing human beings.”

2. A physician shall continue to study, apply, and advance scientific knowledge, maintain a commitment to medical education, make relevant information available to patients, colleagues, and the public, obtain consultation, and use the talents of other health professionals when indicated.

Medical professionalism entails a commitment to continuing education, patient information, and professional cooperation. The abortion industry, however, runs counter to these in several ways.

First, informing the patient is bad for business, specifically, women are at least a little less likely to follow through with an abortion after having an ultra-sound. Dr. Joseph Randall, former abortion doctor, explains, “They [the women] are never allowed to look at the ultrasound because we knew that if they so much as heard the heart beat, they wouldn’t want to have an abortion.” (Randall, “Pro-Choice 1990: Skeletons in the Closet,” New Dimensions, October 1990). The procedure is simple, effective, relatively inexpensive, easy to perform, highly informative, and would be a foregone conclusion if a women has an actual cyst or tumor in that part of her body (such as an ovarian cyst). In the case of pregnancy ultra-sound could help identify stage of development (if the woman is unsure), thus affected which abortion procedure would be best; and it can also identify a host of complications such as tubal or ectopic pregnancy, which can be life-threatening. There is some dispute over what percentage of women actually decline an abortion because of an ultra-sound, but there remains a strong enough possibility that women (or doctors!) see the gestating child and lose heart. Dr. Bernard Nathanson credits ultrasound as the main cause for his leaving the abortion industry, even though he was one of the founders of NARAL (1991, 125ff). His video “The Silent Scream” (1984) is little more than an ultra-sound video with commentary and has come to be an icon of the pro-life initiative.

Second, the abortion doctor is not acting in good faith towards his medical colleagues in neo-natal medicine, fetology, or embryology. He makes his living in by killing their patients. This is not “cooperation” but contradiction. As one doctor is delivering a 22 week old premature baby on one floor of the hospital, another doctor may be performing an abortion on another 22 week old child in utero.

3. A physician shall, in the provision of appropriate patient care, except in emergencies, be free to choose whom to serve, with whom to associate, and the environment in which to provide medical care.

Medical doctors serve within the free-market so they have great liberty to choose their field, their associates, their work-environment, and so on, at least as as far as they are trying to serve the best interests of the patients within the normal and realistic constrains of modern medicine. This principle is in place, in part, because of conscientious objections on the part of medical professionals who do not wish to be forced to work with certain people whom the don’t trust, or serve particular patients who are (for various reasons) problematic, or conduct procedures to which they conscientiously object. Procedures may be objectionable because of their questionable merit, unjustified danger, or because they are intrinsically wrong (or believed to be wrong). This principle, however, may come under fire or be forced into reinterpretation under the recent healthcare mandate where the Government has taken a much more active role in private healthcare insurance. Time will tell how this debate will play out, and whether doctors will be forced to take questionable patients, or perform procedures against their conscience.

Of course, it is problematic to define “appropriate patient care” in such a way as to include willfully killing human beings. Yet, abortion explicitly does just that. When applied to abortion the various terms for the medical field–such as “healthcare,” “well-being,” “patient care,” or “appropriate”–become errant irony; a kind of bad joke that pulls a smiley mask over millions of dead babies.

VII. A physician shall recognize a responsibility to participate in activities contributing to the improvement of the community and the betterment of public health.

The physician understands his work as a kind of service, entailing responsibility to improve the community by serving the healthcare interests of his patients. He or she has a mind not just for individuals but for the larger picture of public health. Abortion raises a stiff counterargument here though since each abortion procedure nullifies it’s healthcare gains by killing a human being every time.

One may theorize about how abortions tend to occur among low-income and single-parent households, meaning that aborted is a kind of pre-natal crime prevention. There may be some merit to this argument, but make no mistake, it is a utilitarian argument–and illustrates the utilitarian fallacy dehumanizing a human being; objectifying a human subject. It treats an individual human life not in terms of any intrinsic value, or as some rights bearing individual. Yet if the child-in-utero is a right-bearing individual (or if it might be so) then the living world should treat that child-in-utero with at least the minimal “compassion and dignity” as any other defenseless dependent human being. Even if the “better society” argument were true, and abortion did help reduce crime rates, it is not clear that we as a people are better people under this abortion-precedent, no matter what economic or legal gains we’ve made at the expense of our children (for an economist’s take on this subject see Levitt & Dubner, Freakonomics, Harper, 2009, ch. 4).

VIII. A physician shall, while caring for a patient, regard responsibility to the patient as paramount.
1. A physician shall support access to medical care for all people.

Concluding this list is a summary statement that the doctor is, foremost, responsible to the patient and that includes supporting access to medical care for all people. The AMA may have also tipped their hand politically prefiguring a kind of universal healthcare almost a decade before the Affordable Care Act was passed. Nevertheless, conservatives and liberals alike can stand by the idea of having as many people as possible receiving reasonably inexpensive by quality healthcare. They may disagree over how that is best achieved, but no one is arguing that people should be unhealthy or neglected in the healthcare system.

Again, it must be noted, that it is assumed that the doctor does not treat the child-in-utero as a patient. The terminology here is critical: “medical care for all people.” If that said “all human beings” then children-in-utero would be included. As it stands, this statement specifically excludes such non-persons so that a whole class of human beings can be willfully and maliciously destroyed for the convenience and arbitrary interests of an oppressor class all without contradictory the idealistic language of this statement.

Posted in Ethics of Abortion, Scholarly Reviews, Terms and Definitions, Uncategorized | Tagged Abortion, AMA, child-in-utero, Healthcare, medical, medicine, mother | 1 Comment

The Profiteering Argument

Posted on January 1, 2015 by intelligentchristianfaith

In everyday discourse terms like “contract killing” “mercenary” and “profiteering” are offensive accusations. They connote slander and liable. This body of terms, when used literally, point to a person who is receiving payment for killing someone. This inference is clearly slanderous because it seems deeply unethical to make money, or even make a living off of killing people, or in this case, killing a human being (it’s disputed whether the child[ren]-in-utero count/s legally as “person/people”). Yet, this “career” is precisely the kind of contractually arranged killing involved in every paid abortion. To make this argument stand, however, some qualifications need to be added and some caution extended.

mercenary ops First, we should distinguish normal military senses of these terms from their sense used here, in abortion. The more common use of “mercenary” is in reference to military settings, where soldiers make a profession out of combat, allying with foreign armies, and that can and does include training for, planning, and conducting missions to kill military targets. There may even be “collateral damage” and “casualties of war” who are not intended targets but are innocent victims such as human shields, bystanders, and family members. Without excusing or defending these sorts of behaviors, we may treat these as a sidebar, since abortion is not a military exercise in that sense. The “targets” are not morally, politically, or legally guilty characters who’ve waged war (declared or undeclared) against the nation or state. The targets for execution are always innocent victims. “Enemy combatants” might be justified targets on the battle field, but they are never targeted in abortion. Instead, abortion always targets the morally and or legally innocent. If military mercenaries, war profiteering, or contract killing is even theoretically justified–maybe it is, maybe it isn’t–that remains a different matter than the sense used here, in the sterile setting of an abortion doctor’s office. There is another sense of “military” which may correctly describe abortion, but this sense is clarified later. For the time being, it should be admitted that any “mercenary” sense of abortion is not strictly and literally a military sense of the term where children-in-utero are strategic targets of political or otherwise foreign military opposition.

Second, the terms “profiteering” and “contract killing” are used literally, not metaphorically. These terms point to the idea of death-profiteering and have clearly negative pejorative force, but to the extent that they factually describe an abortion industry where people make wages by killing other human beings in contractual arrangements they are still appropriate terms. Abortion as it is normally done involves paying doctors to kill a human being, ending a pregnancy relation between mother and child, and this arrangement involves contractual standing between the patient and doctor. As such, this scene is literally “contract killing” and “profiteering” from human death. No assumption is made here that “contract killing” or “death-profiteering” require illegal behavior; though some onlookers might want to infer illegality when hearing such disparaging terms. Legal things can be evil, and good things can be illegal. Even if contract killing, profiteering, and mercenary work are legal they could still be highly unethical and constitute, in themselves, an evidence base against legalized abortion (-on-demand). A term to avoid however would be “assassin.” This term comes close to the idea of death-profiteering but assassination carries undue connotation of political targets or some other target of established notoriety, whereas the unborn child is not necessarily a human being of notoriety or political standing.

Third, the term “mercenary” has a broad range of meaning with senses and implications that might not be rightly imported into this debate. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, it has four main senses. In the adjectival form it means 1) “motivated solely by a desire for monetary or material gain,” or 2) “hired for service in a foreign army.” These two senses are mirrored in the nominal form (the 3rd and 4th senses); so, a mercenary is 3) “a hireling” or 4) “someone employed for service in a foreign army.” Although the connotation may suggest otherwise, when calling an abortion doctor “mercenary,” one cannot safely assume abortion doctors themselves are greedy, worldly, money-grubbing, or intend anything that would reduce the value of human life. Also, the terms could, problematically, suggest disloyalty since affiliating with a foreign army could set a person against the interests of his homeland. Clearly, the term “mercenary” has some tenuous connotations. The term can however be used to describe a person who is hired for what would otherwise be a military type of act, in this case, killing a person. Presumably, many abortion doctors operate with charitable interests intending to help serve struggling women and families through their medical practice. But, that presumption is just that, a presumption, a well-intended and gracious interpretation of the circumstances. The facts of the matter, however, show a monetary transaction where a medical professional is hired for the explicit purpose of killing another human being and ending a pregnancy. There is at least a monetary motive. There may be other more altruistic motives as well, but these remain conjectural. To the extent that the contract includes monetary gain, and the action is more like military than medical practice (i.e., killing instead of saving life), then the abortion doctor’s practice can be correctly described as mercenary.

But one may object that abortion is medical practice and this military connotation is misleading. True, the work of an abortion doctor is not literally a military act, as if he were operating as a soldier with military objectives such as assassinating warlords, or busting up terror cells, etc. The “targets” in abortion are always innocent victims who do not qualify for legal or moral guilt in the normal sense of those terms. The child-in-utero is not a military target, yet he or she is the normal target in abortion. The terms “death-profiteering” and “contract killing” do literally describe the work of an abortion doctor but the term “mercenary” seems to import a military connotation that isn’t quite right. For this reason, one may prefer to leave this term “mercenary” out and try a simpler route of argument, using other terms instead, without the added explanatory baggage. But the term “mercenary” might not have to be ruled out if the act of abortion is shown to be more like militant than medical.

The normal sense of “medicine” or “medical practice” entails health care. Broadly, medicine refers to “The science and art of diagnosing and treating disease or injury and maintaining health” (American Heritage Dictionary). Pregnancy is a physical condition but it is not a disease. Treating a pregnant woman for hypertension, nausea, or hormonal imbalances would constitute medical treatment, since her physical condition is in flux, it can eventuate harmful symptoms or diseases, and her health requires additional monitoring in this special time of her life. But pregnancy itself is not a disease. As such, it is not normal medical practice to “cure” pregnancy by a policy of ending it wherever possible. If one could “end” the flu wherever it appeared, that would be good medical practice. Likewise for cancer, asthma, diabetes, and so on. Pregnancy is not among these things though it is, admittedly, a precarious state rife with threats and challenges to the mother’s health. If abortion were medical treatment in the same sense as administering a nearly 100% successful cure for a disease (such as the polio vaccine), then abortion should be administered wherever there is a pregnancy, and especially where pregnancy reaches epidemic proportions. Clearly, no abortion-choice advocate thinks of medical practice this way. To the abortion choice advocate, abortion is thought of as a health-related choice to which every birth-capable woman should be entitled but not obligated. She can have an abortion, but she does not have to have one, nor should she have one for the sake of ending an epidemic–mass pregnancies are not an epidemic. To the abortion-choice advocate, pregnancy is not a disease to be cured–or else one should advocate for more and more abortions, as many as there are outbreaks of pregnancy. Instead of saying, “keep it safe, keep it rare, and keep it legal” one would have to say, “keep it safe, keep it legal, and keep ’em coming.” Even the most adamant abortion-choice advocates do not think this way. Nor should they. Instead, they understand pregnancy as a circumstance that the mother should have the option to discontinue at her leisure.

But if pregnancy is not disease, then it is not strictly something to be “cured” by medical professionals. There are health concerns involved in pregnancy, and medical practice should address these. But to the extent that one’s treatment of pregnancy includes killing another human being, it is no longer clearly or rightfully a “medical” act. Any claim to “medicine” is contradicted by willfully harmful and deadly behavior. Medicine is about cultivating health, not harm; it is about healing not killing; it is about promoting life not promoting death. There is a broad category for actions that include death and killing for the “greater good.” This is the normal stock and trade of military actions. War is hell. Pacifist and military activists alike can admit that. Military exchanges often include loss of life, even in successful missions where a greater cause is advanced. Abortion is, in this way, akin to military action where–supposing for the sake of argument–there are “greater goods” advanced at the expense of human life. Meanwhile, it is tenuous to call abortion practice “medical” since pregnancy is not a disease, and as a physical condition pregnancy can be treated to promote health, prevent disease and injury, and all that can be done without killing any human beings.

It may be objected further that doctors still should honor the wishes of their patients, and they may include aborting a child-in-utero. Generally speaking, doctors should honor their patients wishes, provide informed consent, and seek to help not harm their patients. Medical ethics affirms all of these. Medical ethics however becomes much more conflicted when the persons wishes including harming oneself–such as a person operating out of a clinical paranoia or depression. And medical ethics would normally oppose any patient who wishes for the doctor to kill another human being. Yet abortion is the willfull killing of another human being. Even when it is admitted that medical ethics, over the years, has come to accommodate cases of abortion, the overall body of literature on the subject reveals a deeply conflicted and, thus, internally inconsistent literature. It is difficult, if not impossible to assimilate abortion-on-demand (i.e., abortion cases not including moral threats to the mother’s life) into a clear, internally consistent, normal sense of “medicine.” When people go to a medical doctor, they expect him or her to promote life, promote health, treat diseases, and maintain integrity with the principle of non-malfeasance. the patients interests are honored, but not if they include killing another human being. They expect the doctor to treat human life as intrinsically valuable, not as merely instrumental values–where people are objects valued strictly in terms of their usefulness not to others. Abortion does not fit any of these, not consistently at least. It may promote the health and interest of a woman who does not want a baby, but it does so in a way which kills the child-in-utero. It refutes its own claim to “medicine.” Abortion treats the gestating human being as instrumentally valuable (according to whether the mother wants the baby). A class of human beings becomes disposable, with no intrinsic value that must be respected by the doctor. To the extent that doctors treat human life so casually as to be disposable at the whim of another person, that doctor is not acting as a medical practitioner but as a mercenary.

In conclusion, abortion is literally contract-killing and death-profiteering. It can rightly be understood as mercenary in the sense of receiving payment for willfully harming and killing against another human being, an act which is not medical but military in its instrumental treatment of human life.

Posted in Ethics of Abortion, Philosophy of Abortion | Tagged Abortion-on-demand, argument, contract-killing, death, mercenary, military, pro-choice, profiteering | Leave a comment

Conspicuous Absence of Humanity

Posted on November 16, 2014 by intelligentchristianfaith

Much of the abortion debate rages over sophisticated biological terms like gamete, sperm, egg, haploid, diploid, embryo, fetus, zygote, conceptus and so on. One should be careful however not to let the terms slip from distinctly human debates–to other animals. That is, biological and legal precision merit careful terminology that does not intentionally cloud otherwise clear concepts; in particular, the issue is over human embryos and human fetuses and human zygotes not over indistinct a-speciated embryoes, fetuses, and zygotes. This terminological care is important for several reasons.

First, the abortion debate, as the phrase is normally used, is not raging over other animals but over human beings (i.e., members of the species homo sapiens).

Second, whatever one may say about speciesism, there remains a widely recognized legal (and perhaps moral) difference between killing a non-human animal and killing a human being.

Third, it risks intentional ambiguity (which is ethically questionable) to opt against saying “human fetus” or “human embryo,” and instead say “fetus” and “embryo” when those terms apply equally to horses, pigs, dogs and cats in their respective developmental stages.

Fourth, vague and indistinct terms risk blurring matters worse than they already are. For the sake of ethical and legal clarity one should remember, in the course of this poignant debate, that one is never talking about a mere embryo, fetus, zygote, blastocyst, etc. One is talking about members of the human species, which are biologically identifiable as genetically distinct living human organisms of the species homo sapiens.

But what is this supposedly “precise” clarifying term: “human”? One could venture deep into existential and philosophical explorations on this loaded question, but much of that is unnecessary for this simple point. “Human” is the adjectival form or abbreviated nominal form of “human being,” and that, at minimum, indicates a organism which is a member of the species homo sapiens.

Technically speaking, gametes, like sperm and eggs, are not human organisms in the same sense as a conceptus since the sperm and egg cannot conduct the full functions of biological life such as digestion, growth, reproduction, and excretion. They do not, therefore, constitute a stage of human development since they are precursors to the first stage of a genetically distinct living human organism, occurring at fertilization. Gametes are more like organs or organelles in that they conduct a function of life for the larger organism but are not themselves organisms.

A lot goes into the weighty word “human.” Ethicists, politicians and philosophers alike would do well to acknowledge its force and be careful not to obscure, blur, or neglect it where it truly applies to individuals.

Posted in Ethics of Abortion, Philosophy of Abortion, Terms and Definitions, When does Life Begin? | Tagged egg, gamete, human, human being, life, organism, sperm | 1 Comment

What are “Rights”?

Posted on July 21, 2014 by intelligentchristianfaith

In the abortion debate, all sides are liable to refer to our “rights.” The “right” to life, “right” to privacy, or the “right” of personal autonomy. The language is so common it might seem odd to think that some ethical systems make no appeal to rights or treat “rights” as conventional language devoid of any factual force (i.e., amoralism/irrealism, and some forms of utilitarianism, for example). Below is a video introducing potent concept.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZlsXKH5xtM

Posted in Ethics of Abortion, History of Abortion, Terms and Definitions | Tagged abortion rights, civil, Ethics, moral, natural, right of privacy, Right to life, rights | Leave a comment

Human Rights or Person Rights (revisited)

Posted on July 20, 2014 by intelligentchristianfaith

Human rights may be contested and violated in many ways around the world but it seems axiomatic in the modern era to affirm “human rights.” In other words we tend to affirm some legally functional if not ethically substantial sense of human rights. The basics therein are thought to be some combination of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and or pursuit of property.

Now there is legal precedent in Roe v. Wade denying preborn humans the recognized status of “person.” With abortion, however, if we are going to parse out which humans have/deserve human rights then we are drawing our ethical conclusions not from humanity–which the child and mother have in common– but instead on some other sense of “personhood.” Fetuses, adults, and toddlers are all human and none of them are more or less human, they are just human beings at their own respective stage of development. Yet their legal personhood is subject to legal redefinition and has been variously expanded and contracted over the years for example with various civil rights legislative actions like the Dred Scott decision, abolition, women’s suffrage, etc. Meanwhile, with all those individuals, their humanity has not changed.

Putting these pieces together, we might say, for the sake of consistency, that the case for keeping abortion legal is only tenuously identified as a human right. One would do well to abandon the term of “human rights” when the relevant distinction is over personhood and not humanity. We might call that position a matter of “personal rights” or “people’s rights” but as long as one class of humans is being killed by another class of humans that would be a human rights violation if anything.

Posted in Abortion Laws, Ethics of Abortion, History of Abortion, Philosophy of Abortion | Tagged Abortion, Ethics, human rights, people's rights, person rights, stage of developmemt | 11 Comments

Is abortion animal abuse?

Posted on July 18, 2014 by intelligentchristianfaith

hurt dog Biologically speaking, human beings are classified as a kind of animal. Specifically, we are animalia (kingdom), chordata (phylum), mammalia (class), primate (order), hominidae (family), homo (gensus), sapiens (species). Often our status as animals is not terribly helpful in moral or legal discourse. But in at least one case, the ASPCA intervened on behalf of human beings establishing a precedent that could have some interesting implications for the contemporary abortion debate.

In the middle of the 19th century, the United States did not have much legal protection against child abuse. So long as children were not killed by their guardians the state was reluctant to intervene. Those were different times back then, and traditional–some would say archaic–family roles were the norm. So children could be put to work at a young age, physically abused by one’s parents, neglected, and so on. Children did not have the legal rights back then that they do today. But all of this would begin to change in 1874. West’s Encyclopedia of American Law (2d ed., Gale Group, 2008) reports:

In 1874, a badly beaten girl known only as Mary Ellen became the first legally recognized victim of Child Abuse in the United States. Before 1874, society offered little protection for minors. Children were considered the property of their parents, and neither the government nor private individuals intervened when they were injured, overworked, or neglected. Mary Ellen was rescued from unfit parents only after the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) stepped in on her behalf. ASPCA advocates pointed out that if Mary Ellen were a horse or a dog, her mistreatment would be prohibited by statute. A judge agreed that the young girl deserved at least the same protection as an animal

Despite having ambiguous or otherwise problematic legal standing, this girl, Mary Ellen, had to find legal protection not as a human being but instead as an animal. At the time, there were stricter (or clearer) legal restrictions on animal abuse than on children. And so, this monumental case established an area of legal protection for children, against their parents and guardians on the basis of animal rights.

To my knowledge, no court case has yet connected abortion to injunctions against animal abuse. Ethically, one may grant that some cases of abortion might be justified on the basis of saving the mother’s life, but even then, one might object if the abortion involves additional abuse. For example, it is common practice to euthanize sick or dying pets. And meat-eating is still a common practice. But in both of these cases, there are legal restrictions on how one goes about killing and disposing of the animals. Setting aside, for the moment, the legal nuances, and focusing on the ethics, we can probably agree that it is unethical to euthanize a dog or cat or horse by way of a hour long acid burn or by tearing it apart limb from limb. That defeats the purpose of a mercy killing (euthanasia–eu [good] thanatos [death]). In the case of meat eating, torturous slaughtering methods are recognized as unethical and are liable to violate numerous healthcodes. The effort there is to make the death as quick and painless as possible.

Some abortion methods currently practiced are relatively painless (physically) for the mother, and occur before the child-in-utero is developed enough to have any nerve endings. Such measures can weaken the accusations of “abuse”, but they do not resolve it. Even though those cases would not involve pain or torture (for the child), killing is still abuse. It’s just not necessarily an abuse that that the victim knows or feels to be abuse. Abuse is not simply a matter of pain and suffering, but goes further into the realm of harm. People can be harmed without any physical pain or psychological suffering so long as their well-being, potential, or person is somehow damaged. A drug-addict can abuse himself, or be abused by someone else even while feeling painless euphoria. “Pain and suffering” are not the sole measures of harm. The child-in-utero can be harmed, and so, can be abused, even without (physical) pain or (psychological) suffering. Even if no torture was involved, that child-in-utero is manifestly abused since ALL of its unique potential as a human being has been forever halted. It’s only value now, would not be as a subject, but as an object such as medical waste or fertilizer.

So it is established that the child-in-utero is a human animal and is abused in abortion, even when it is early stage abortions when the child can’t yet feel pain. Unfortunately, many abortions fall well outside of even this scenario. It is thought that somewhere around the 20-24th weeks of gestation the child-in-utero has sufficient neural wiring to be able to feel pain. On this basis several states have passed “fetal pain” bills, banning abortion on demand (with some exceptions) from that point forward. The “fetal pain” bills could be bolstered, then, by admitting the technically correct description of abortion as “animal abuse.” It is abuse in that it harms the child-in-utero by killing it, and in cases of sufficient neural development, by physically hurting it too. Furthermore, many late term abortions would be considered torture if done to anyone’s pet–much less a protected animal or endangered species.

Dilation and curettage, for example, involves a circular blade, called a curette, used to dismember the human fetus piece by piece and then sucking each piece through a surgical vacuum. The practitioner may have to inspect the remains to make sure that all the body parts have been removed. This is to assure that no dead tissue is left inside posing a later health risk to the mother. The procedure is, for at least some doctors, emotionally trying as the fetus can be developed enough to look like a small baby. It is no stretch of the term to call something “animal abuse” which involves dismembering a still-living animal and then sucking it down a vacuum hose. Such cases go beyond simply “harm,” beyond “pain and suffering,” and into “torture.”

Someone might object that we allow meat-eating in the U.S. We are numb to those kinds of animals abuse, such as painful slaughtering techniques, poor cage and pen conditions, poor feeding conditions, genetic and medical tampering, etc. There is a potentially legitimate case here, but it would be tangential to the issue. If animal rights activists are to be consistent in promoting the life and well-being of all animals, at least the higher-order (more intelligent) animals, then they have every reason to AGREE that abortion is animal abuse and should be stopped. No one here is saying that animal abuse is good and ethical. There would just be disagreement over the particular ethics of meat-eating, and whether human beings have a relevant kind of superiority over the rest of the animal kingdom to justify meat-eating or even to exempt certain practices from “animal abuse.” Without getting side-tracked on this issue there is, at least, a long-standing precedent and nearly universal understanding that even if human beings are animals, we are not on the same level as animals. Hence it’s more regrettable to lose one’s child than to lose one’s dog. And we can eat fish and fowl, but not human fetuses. This understanding has legal standing. Legally speaking, it’s not animal abuse to slaughter a cow in a meat-packing plant. Moreover, a meat-packing plant might get shut-down and it’s staff face criminal prosecution if they were known to dismember healthy live cattle limb by limb and suck their parts down a vacuum hose and throw them away. Some kinds of abortion exceed legal standards for killing cattle in a meat-packing plant.

Abortion practice as is currently legal in different parts of the United States permits harming animals, causing the pain and suffering of animals, and torturing animals. Abortion is clearly animal abuse. Perhaps we could use another legal precedent prohibiting child(in-utero) abuse because it is also animal abuse.

Posted in Abortion Cases, Abortion Laws, Abortion Practices, Ethics of Abortion, History of Abortion, Kinds of Abortion, Philosophy of Abortion, Terms and Definitions | Tagged Animal Abuse, animal rights, child abuse, child rights, child-in-utero, court, Precedent | 1 Comment

Hobby Lobby, Birth Control and Abortion

Posted on July 2, 2014 by intelligentchristianfaith

The recent supreme court decision in favor of Hobby Lobby has reignited a national debate. With wide debate and flared tempers, misinformation abounds. Let us clarify a few things here for the sake of keeping things truthful and hopefully civil.

1) Legally speaking, corporations are persons and so they have the general rights and privileges of legal personhood. According to to the Citizens United case of 2010 corporations can be understood legally as persons. The US Code 27 section 7701 compliments this idea saying, “The term ‘person’ shall be construed to mean and include an individual, a trust, estate, partnership, association, company or corporation.” This point establishes that the general rights of persons extend (as some sort of entitlements, privileges, or freedoms) to people acting in a group context, including businesses. Now, of course, law code is complicated and the full range of freedoms may be applied differently to businesses just as adults have different legal privileges than minors. But the general point remains. People are people even when they are in groups, even when they are working together for a common product. It would be legally questionable and, in some cases, perhaps even immoral, to deny all legal personhood status of people groups, even when they have a common productive cause, as with businesses. For example, this concept of corporate personhood has been used to establish that, just as it is illegal for the government to kill people because they are of a different political party than the current administration, so too is it illegal to destroy a business on the same basis. If it’s illegal for the government to search and seize a private citizens property without a warrant then it is likewise illegal to search and seize a businesses property on the same basis. Regarding Hobby Lobby, this fact allows a lot of room to move for religiously charged businesses since it allows for businesses to have freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of assembly, and so on. We may admit that every right is somehow “bounded”–having respective limitations. But corporations, businesses and companies, whether Planned Parenthood, Hobby Lobby, or Chick-Fil-A all have their respective freedom of conscience and to the extent that they are not also public (government) institutions they (broadly speaking) retain the same kinds of freedoms that individuals share.

2) Hobby Lobby complied with Obamacare broadly, as it is the law of the land now, but declined to support the inclusion of 4 out of the 20 kinds of birth control entailed therein. Hobby Lobby showed no institutional opposition to birth control broadly but to particular forms of birth control specifically. If Hobby Lobby were taking, for example, a fundamentalist Catholic stance then they might oppose all forms of birth control. But in Hobby Lobby’s specific case, it was a special kind of birth control that piqued their conscience. They approved 16 kinds of birth control but objected to 4 particular kinds that were not merely contraceptives (i.e., contra-conception–preventing conception).

3) Birth control medications are nowhere outlined as an explicit right in our founding documents This point has a trivial sense and a significant sense at play. Obviously, the medical technology in the 18th and 19th centuries was not terribly sophisticated by today’s standards and it would be anachronistic to expect the Declaration of Independent, the Constitution or the Bill of Rights to outline such birth control medications in their civil rights. More to the point, the core rights of life, liberty, pursuit of property, pursuit of happiness, and then the subsequent explications of these in the Bill of Rights do not clearly establish a field for erecting the rather nuanced “right” to birth control medications. We can grant, at least for the sake of argument, that legal history admits a “right of privacy” (see also, “What’s Left of My body, My Right”). But even that principle is an implication established in court precedent and not strictly in our founding documents. Moreover, as seen below, it is not clear that corporate sponsored, government mandated, free birth control medications are strictly entailed in that rather abstract “right of privacy.” Much less would it be a strict entailment of the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

4) Birth Control medications are currently available already. People who want birth control medications can get birth control medications already. This point seems obvious, but it points out a sense of entitlement that might be fueling this debate. If someone understands free birth control as a right, then his or her offense over Hobby Lobby might be justified. If someone understands paid birth control as sufficient to satisfy that entitlement, then it would not be justified to take offense at Hobby Lobby’s legal position in this case. Of course, even this characterization is simplified. Nothing is free, even if Hobby Lobby conceded their case, the birth control would not be “free” since someone (else) has to pay for it, and the insurance plan would still likely involve insurance premiums and copay and deductible. But the core of this point is unphased; one can still have broadly equal access to contraception without having that access through corporate subsidized government mandated insurance packages.

5) Hobby Lobby employees have always had the individual freedom to purchase whatever birth control means they can legally acquire. Building on the last point, Hobby Lobby was not prohibiting women from purchasing their own birth control. Hobby Lobby was refusing to materially support inclusion of particular birth control options in their corporation’s private benefits package. Meanwhile employees could stay employed, keep all their benefits, and remain in good standing with the company even if they were to purchase those “offensive” forms of birth control. The issue does not seem to be simply about “birth control” but rather about a particular methodology for accessing a particular kind of birth control.

6) There has been no court precedent yet establishing that employers must provide healthcare for their employees. It is not an established right to have employer-provided insurance plans covering all or most FDA approved forms of birth control. Those entitlements are instead part of a mandate initiated by a partisan vote in 2010, the Affordable Care Act (or, ACA, or Obamacare). That healthcare mandate just barely survived a prior supreme court ruling (5-4 vote) where it’s constitutionality was challenged. The saving grace for it regarded the federal government’s right to tax the citizenry, and so those who paid the “fee” or “penalty” for opting out of the mandate were technically paying a tax in lieu of paying for their own insurance plan. Previously that “opt-out” fine was called a “fee” or “penalty” because of the negative connotations of calling it a “tax.” The ACA has been hotly disputed, very partisan, and even a campaign liability for its supporters ever since it was enacted. Needless to say, a great many Americans question whether the the ACA is legitimate in the first place, and Hobby Lobby has been a test case for one of its (supposedly) most intrusive elements. It was not a court ruling, or a constitutional amendment, or a right in the Bill of Rights, which established that employers must provide healthcare for their employees, much less that that healthcare should include contraceptives, much less that that healthcare should include most of the FDA approved contraceptives, much less that some of those would also be abortifacients (supposedly), much less that that healthcare should intrude upon and trump a person’s freedom of conscience and or freedom of religion.

7) The particular contraceptives at issue were (they claim) abortifacients. If Hobby Lobby conceded to 16 out of 20 types of contraception. So what was wrong with those last 4? The representatives of Hobby Lobby believe those to be abortificients, that is, abortion-causing drugs. These four are (1) Copper and (2) Hormonal Intrauterine devices (IUD’s), (3) Levonelle (“Ella”/”Week-after-pill”), and (4) Plan B (the “morning-after-pill”).* Now whether these are “abortifacients” depends, in part, on the definition of pregnancy and the definition of abortion. Some have attempted to define pregnancy as beginning only at or after implantation. And by that definition IUD’s and “morning after” pills and “week-after” pills would not qualify as abortificients since, besides undermining conception, they prevent implantation and thus prevent pregnancy. But in the event of conception, which sometimes happens, there is a human being inside of the women; her biological child-in-utero, hence she is now a mother. It seems terminologically confusing, and conceptually contrived, for a mother to be with child and yet not be pregnant. In that way, Hobby Lobby has a biological and medical case. And apparently, the recent decision shows they had a persuasive legal case too.

8) One can be pro-choice and still disagree with a particular or coercive means of birth-control access, or pro-life and agree with that means. The Hobby Lobby case has proven politically and ethically divisive already. But, it should not be treated simplistically as if all pro-choice advocates are pro-obamacare and think little of corporate personhood or religious freedoms. Nor should one lump all pro-life perspectives in with anti-obamacare Christian conservative camps. A libertarian, for example, may affirm a broad right of access for people so that they can do what they want with their bodies, but he or she likewise may affirm that no business or outside party should be forced to pay for your healthcare and especially not something so private and personal as your intrauterine devices or morning after pills. The Green family, owners and founders of Hobby Lobby, may be conservative evangelicals but they may have ideological agreement with liberals or non-Christians who appreciate their conflicted position.

9) Some of the birth-control measures in question are not normally used to regulate menstrual cycles or balance one’s hormones. It has been argued that contraceptives are often used for non-contraceptive medical purposes so the Hobby Lobby case obstructs access to a more general sense of healthcare–where pregnancy and children are not at issue. Given the previous points, this argument falters. Copper-IUD’s are not normally used to treat hormonal and menstrual irregularities, cramping, bleeding, etc. Copper-IUD’s are not hormonal treatments like that, in fact, they are known to (sometimes) worsen the side effects of one’s menstrual cycle. Likewise, the morning after pill (Plan B) and the week-after pill (Ella) are occasional medications, not regular medications. They are to be taken after intercourse, hence they are not designed for regulating one’s menstrual cycle but instead for effecting the woman’s body temporarily to prevent either conception/fertilization or implantation. The hormonal IUD (Mirena**) can be used to regulate menstrual symptoms. Meanwhile, the 16 other types of contraceptive care were no objection to Hobby Lobby, and among those are several options for the non-contraceptive benefits that some women need. The issue remains that some ethically distinct forms of birth-control were lumped together with purported abortifacients, thus pitting competing interests against each other and generating an unnecessary ethical dilemma.

10) Hobby Lobby can support women’s interests, women’s healthcare, and the well-being of women even as they oppose abortion. To pro-life camps, it seems very duplicitous to call abortion “healthcare”, even when it’s early stage abortions. It should be noted that one may identify cases of rape or cases of high-risk pregnancy as ethically distinct from other kinds of abortion. Even pro-lifers have differing views on those special cases. Regarding other cases, sometimes termed “abortions of convenience” it is not nearly as clear that these are healthcare in any normal sense. Pregnancy care would be a safe sense of “healthcare.” Neo-natal and maternity care would be a safe sense of “healthcare.” But there is ideological conflict, perhaps a contradiction, when the medical field overlaps with the intentional killing of human beings, as is the case with abortions of convenience. Hobby Lobby has an ethical case for treating abortion (of convenience) as harmful or at least as a non-healthcare issue. In this way people who advocate for women’s health can still object to the selective abortion of any child for any reason so long as they are still in the womb (and in the 1st or 2nd trimester). In this vein, it is not necessarily “oppressive” to women to affirm a mother’s duty to care for, and not kill, her child, even if it is in utero. Experts may disagree over some details, but there’s at least some principled distinction between preventing pregnancy and ending pregnancy. One kind takes a life the other prevents it. One is a kind of killing the other kind is not; one is abortion the other is contraception (properly speaking). When contraceptives are used for non-contraceptive purposes, that may be distinguished ethically from strictly abortifacient uses. According to Hobby Lobby’s legal case, they can support women’s health including non-abortive medicine to treat things like menstrual irregularities or similar problems.

11) Freedom of Religion is a serious and well-established right, far more basic than that of any abortion access. Admitting that abortion access is currently part of the “law of the land,” the freedom of religion is even more basic, having deeper roots (1st amendment of the bill of rights) an older precedent (1791), and has been long used as a cornerstone in jurisprudence, even defining a great deal of what it means to be the constitutional democratic republic that is the United States of America. Without exaggeration it may be argued that the freedom of religion is the most sophisticated and hardest fought natural right among the panoply of natural, civil, and human rights. As a right, it entails several other rights including freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of petition, and freedom of the press. And only in extreme cases, or certain private matters, is religious discrimination tolerated in society. That context in place, mainline religions are bound to have ideological conflict with contemporary culture. At the least, it may be said that so long as a religion’s particular conscientious objection is clearly principled, well-established as normal, natural, or necessary to their religious ideals, and not trivial, individual, novel, or nominal then that conscientious objection should be legally respected as far as is practically possible.

This is not “new” territory by any means. So many “gray areas” in this right have been well-tested across a long case history. One cannot just invent a religion, create a trivial or nominal “sacred” practice that is otherwise illegal and then claim “religious freedom” protects that practice. This domain is still quite gray as can be seen with political forms of Islam (sometimes associated with ‘radical Islam’ or “Islamism’). But regarding the Hobby Lobby case, and its problem with abortion, this is no shallow objection. This is a deeply principled issue overlapping (potentially) with natural law (society has taboos on killing people), civil law (murder is illegal”) and religious ethics (“Thou shall not murder”). The issue in view here is, in some ways, opposite of, say, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and their taboo on blood transfusions or faith healers who reject modern medicine. Those religious views clearly and demonstrably threaten to kill human beings; meanwhile Hobby Lobby is fighting to NOT be required to help kill human beings. They are not fighting TO BE ALLOWED to kill infidels, or TO BE ALLOWED to force people to convert to their religion, or even TO BE ALLOWED force marriages, circumcise young girls, or engage in polygamy. All of those already have deep legal precedents and no clear room in U.S. law. But before 2010 there was no legal mandate that businesses help their employees pay for abortifacients. It is not the religious objection but the coercive mandate that seems novel, trivial, and nominal. Even tracing the ACA mandate back to abortion-specific policies that would only take the case history back to about 1973. Meanwhile, the ethical and legal history banning murder, and all it’s affiliates–conspiracy, malicious intent, malice aforethought, accidental manslaughter, negligent homicide, etc. can find much deeper legal precedent. The ethical identification of abortion as murder has been sounded ever since Roe v. Wade has passed and, ethically speaking, those folks have a case, even if legally speaking it’s no longer considered murder (i.e., in the legal sense murder is unlawful killing).

Restated, the freedom of religion issue for Hobby Lobby regards a novel government mandate demanding that they not just offer insurance benefits to their full-time employees, not just offer insurance with contraceptive coverage, not just offer insurance with 16 kinds of contraceptive coverage, but also that they include 4 other kinds of contraceptions that are believed to be abortifacients, killing little human beings in their most defenseless state. One cannot say that the ethical conviction against killing is a triviality, or it’s uniquely religious, or some “trumped” up objection. Objections to killing can be religious, and with Hobby Lobby, they were religious. But they are not necessarily religious nor would they have to be strictly religious. There is a well-established natural law standard that killing human beings is generally wrong. It may be a “necessary evil” in times of war, self-defense or even with capital punishment, but those only illustrate just how ethically compromised a situation must be before killing is better than the alternatives. In the case of abortifacients, Hobby Lobby has a conscientious objection against abortion and it also happens to be a religious objection. Infringing on Hobby Lobby’s freedom of religion is no small matter and should not be done when so many other options are available for their female employees.

12) Hobby Lobby could have paid a fine instead, but that would still comply with and sponsor the Affordable Care mandate which included abortifacients. According to reports, the Supreme Court Justices who most antagonized the prosecution pointed out how Hobby Lobby could have simply paid a fine for each instance where they refused to adopt the particular insurance requirements for their employees. And if those fines were multiplied across all their employees it would still be less expensive then the per-day fines they were paying for refusing the Affordable Care act entire. While this argument works financially, it does not work ethically–if one refuses to direct and financially sponsor mandated access to abortifacients. Hobby Lobby held the principled ground that they should not have been required to offer such access on pain of monetary penalty. To be forced to compromise one’s religious convictions for the sake of a government mandate pits rights against rights, governmental power against constitutional principles. No such conflict is necessary, and so, Hobby Lobby should not be pitted between their God or their government. It would be wrong and unethical to fine people for holding to their religion, and that is what those particular Supreme Court justices were essentially arguing.

13) There were numerous other options available for female employees of Hobby Lobby If a female Hobby Lobby employee wants contraceptive access, she has a bevy of options in front of her that would respect Hobby Lobby’s freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. She can pay for her own contraceptives. She can pay for her own abortion. She can get pregnant and have a baby and raise it. She can do the same and give it up for adoption. She could use any of the 16 other contraceptives that would be been covered. She could have a friend or family member pay for her contraception. She could get a second job with relevant insurance benefits. She could leave this job and take one elsewhere with relevant benefits. She could practice safe sex in other ways. She could join a healthcare consortium bypassing the insurance world. And if all she needs here is to prevent pregnancy, she can, of course, be abstinent.

Given these facts about the case and its surrounding context. It is clear that Hobby Lobby was perfectly within their ethical and legal rights to object to the four abortifacient forms of contraception currently entailed in mandates within the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). With the many alternatives available to women, there is no clear need to infringe on the religious rights of the Green family and their business Hobby Lobby.

*There is some medical dispute over whether and how much the various contraceptive medications and devices have an additional abortifacient effect (for the affirmative see here, for the negative see here). There are currently three types of Intra-uterine devices on the market: the copper-IUD called Paragard, and the Hormonal IUD’s Mirena, and introduced in 2013, Skyla. The hormonal IUD’s can be used to regulate discomfort or complications related to one’s menstrual cycle. But, as with Copper-IUD’s, Ella, and the Morning After pill, they are designed primarily to prevent conception but, in the event of conception, they are also thought to affect the lining of the uterine walls thus inducing an early abortion by preventing implantation in the uterus and subsequent gestation.

** Skyla, another type of IUD, was not released till later, in 2013, and would not have been among the approved medications in the original ACA mandate, and would not have been addressed in the Hobby Lobby case.

Posted in Abortion Cases, Abortion Laws, Contraception Practices, Ethics of Abortion, Family Planning, History of Abortion, Philosophy of Abortion, Sex an Sexuality, Terms and Definitions, Uncategorized, When does Life Begin?, Women's Issues | Tagged Abortion, birth-control, Contraception, Healthcare, Hobby Lobby, religious freedom, separation of church and state, women's rights | Leave a comment

What’s Left of ‘My Body, My Right’?

Posted on July 2, 2014 by intelligentchristianfaith

The right to privacy just might be the most widely touted justification for abortion today. Implied within the right to life and to liberty, the concept of “privacy” demarcates the sacred domain of self-possession (my body), autonomy (my choice), and liberty (my freedom). Without the right to privacy one cannot defend against forced marriage, coercive medical procedures, physical abuse, slavery, forced labor or any other forms of coercion. And of course, abortion isn’t a right if a mother cannot do what she wants with her body. One mantra, long circulated under the right to privacy is: “My Body, my right.” But when these words are pressed, and the idea inside squeezes out, there’s might not be very much pro-choice power left.

The right to privacy has legal roots in the 1927 Olmstead v. United States decision where the letter of dissent, penned by Justice Louis Brandeis, articulated this previously unstated right. The case concerned Olmstead’s suspected smuggle and sale of alcohol. The “privacy” issue regarded how authorities gathered evidence against him. Brandeis argued that our founding fathers had “conferred against the government, the right to be let alone – the most comprehensive of rights and the right most favored by civilized men.” Olmstead was convicted, by a 5-4 decision, on covert wire-tapping evidence, gained without a warrant. Brandeis’ dissent letter, however, proved pivotal forty years later in the 1967 Katz v. U.S. case which overturned the Olmstead ruling. In between these events was the 1965 Griswold vs. Connecticut ruling where the right to privacy was applied to sexual ethics–bringing that conversation closer to the abortion debate of today.

In Griswold v. Connecticut the issue was contraception, specifically within marriage. The ruling found in favor of the the Executive Director of Planned Parenthood, Estelle Griswold, who advocated for the free use of contraception (at least) within marriage. The predominate justification for their case? Privacy. Married couples have the right of privacy whereby they can choose for themselves whether to direct their sexual relations toward pregnancy or not. Following the Griswold case, Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) would extend the right of contraceptive access to unmarried couples as well. In that case, the right to privacy joined with the equal protection clause to give unmarried couples the same access to contraception as married couples. While the Eisenstadt case is important, the Griswold case is widely considered to be the more groundbreaking decision leading up to Roe v. Wade (1973).

In Roe v. Wade (1973), the right to privacy was one of the main justifications for the ruling, in favor of Jane Roe (Norma McCorvey), granting a qualified right of abortion access. Together with the concurrent Doe v. Bolton case (verdict rendered the same day, January 22, as R v W) abortion access was granted to U.S. women on an unprecedented scale. The privacy argument refers to a woman’s right to manage her body how she sees fit, with minimal intrusion from others. Her contraceptive practices are primarily her choice to make, in part, because she bears the greatest responsibility for what happens to her body be it pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, child-birth, or subsequent motherhood.

This controversial ruling (R v W) has been disputed ever since, however some sense of “right to privacy” has never been disputed, since it is understood that the federal and state government should generally respect individual citizen’s rights to conduct their private affairs privately, and to manage their own bodies with general freedom from interference. It is this special right (a.k.a., sacred right) that is implied when people say things like, “the government should stay out of my bedroom” or “you can’t tell me how to raise my child” or, more crassly, “don’t tell women what to do with their vaginas.” Pro-choice and Pro-life advocates can all agree that there is some sort of privacy right implied in the basic legal and human rights of U.S. citizens. The terminology is not explicitly stated in our founding documents yet some sense of it has always been understood therein.

But how far does that right to privacy extend? When pressed, it seems like there are some important qualifications that can be pitted against a blanketing sense of “privacy.”

1) Certain public health issues restrict the right to privacy

An HIV-carrier can be tried as a criminal for willfully spreading HIV. Though his or her disease may, in some sense be “his own business,” it becomes a public issue when he covertly or duplicitously infects others. Similarly, a smoker may be allowed to smoke at home, but not necessarily at public restaurants or at work. It may be one’s personal right to smoke a cigarette, but since that private behavior has public consequences there is no universal right to smoke just anywhere one wants. Furthermore, there are certain behaviors that are illegal even among consenting adults who, regarding their right to privacy, have no personal objections. Illegal drug use and prostitution are considered such pressing public health issues that we have governing prohibitions in place.

It might be exaggerating things a bit to call abortion a “public health crisis,” but that assessment has merit. In a brutally literal sense, medical abortion, among preventable causes, is by far the single leading killer for human beings of any age or race.* According to CDC reports for 2011, abortion claimed the lives of 1,058,490 children in utero, meanwhile malnutrition claimed 3,009 lives, various accidents (firearms or otherwise) claimed 126,438, suicides and homicide claimed 55,756. Doubtless, there are preventable cases of heart disease and Type II diabetes that could be added to those numbers, but it should be clear that the million plus deaths annually from abortion easily tips the scales when compared against other preventable deaths. Were there more than a million deaths from salmonilla poisoning, or malnutrition, or suicide, or drug trafficking, or medical malpractice, then hardly a politician in Washington would fail to join the campaign against such preventable fatalities. Those numbers would easily count as a public health crisis in any other field. Even when a basic right to privacy is granted, public health crises present a plausible boundary line for personal autonomy. People might have a general right to do what they want with their bodies, but not necessarily if their actions constitute a public health crisis and especially not if their behavior extends that health crisis to other human beings.

2) There is no privacy right regarding child-abuse.

It is widely granted that parents have a right to raise their (minor) children how they see fit. Their home is a private bastion of liberty where they can talk, think, feel, hope, believe, and generally act as they see fit. This includes child-rearing, discipline, character formation, and even naming one’s children with most any name one sees fit. This domain of freedom has also been touted in justifying home schooling and personal choice of religious or non-religious education. Yet in spite of all that liberty at home, there is no “privacy right” allowing sexual, physical, or gross verbal abuse. The children are still individual human beings with their own rights even if their status as minors qualifies the nature and extent of their legal autonomy. In these circumstances, the general right to privacy for parents is bounded by a more basic right of the child, to life and liberty and his/her pursuit of happiness. Phrased ethically, the parents have a moral responsibility to care for and support their children towards health and well-being and not treat them like slaves, robots, sexual partners, or punching bags.

Regarding the subject of abortion it is common parlance to refer to a pregnant woman as a “mother” and to refer to her gestating human fetus as her “child,” i.e., “mother and child.” There is legal precedence for referring to the preborn human being as a “child-in-utero” and to the pregnant woman as “mother” (see, The Unborn Victim of Violence Act, 2004). To be fair, she may prefer not to be a mother, she may scorn motherhood, or otherwise dislike being called a mother, but biologically she has begun motherhood as soon as another human being has begun inside of her. She does indeed have great and rightful freedom to conduct herself how she sees fit, but now that another human being is involved–and biologically there’s no dispute over whether the child-in-utero is a genetically distinct homo sapien–she is a mother and any abusive acts on that human inside of her is literally child abuse. Admittedly, the legal system, via the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, does not deem assaults on children-in-utero as “abuse” unless the child is harmed by an aggressor besides the mother.** However, the child’s physiological status is the same regardless of whether the child is killed by an assailant or by an abortion doctor; whether the child is wanted or not. It is still an abused child. He or she is no less harmed regardless of who is doing the abusing.

3) There are competing responsibilities of parenthood

Similar to the last point, it should be noted that parental behavior regarding their own bodies can still harm their children. While parents have a general right to privacy regarding their own bodies, their bodies, nonetheless, are part of their person so that gross negligence of their own bodies or abandonment are unethical and sometimes illegal. If a single parent says, “It’s my body, and I want my body to be in California” but their child is in Maryland, then that parent’s autonomy is competing with his or her legal responsibility as a parent. To leave that child unaccompanied in Maryland is child abandonment. Moreover, if that parent participates in illegal drug activity, prostitution, or otherwise extremely risky behavior the state can rightly take that child away from that parent for his or her gross negligence. One could even be ethically and legally culpable for willfully self-destructive behavior like suicide attempts, morbid obesity, abusing over-the-counter drugs, or any number of behaviors that leave children with a dangerously unreliable parent. That parent’s right of privacy infringes on his or her responsibility as a parent, and in some cases that parent’s behavior is both criminal and unethical. Regarding abortion, a woman might not want to think of her preborn child as a “parasite” or wish any harm on it, but she does want it out of her body to let “nature take its course.” In that sense, she may seek a more gentler characterization of the abortion process so that her behavior is construed passively, selflessly, or in otherwise nicer tones. In that way an abortive mother may try to sanctify her intentions so that she’s not willing any harm, or is aiming for the “greater good.” These efforts have some ethical value, but do not necessarily counterbalance the fact that a mother’s children have some rightful expectations that she will not recklessly destroy herself or harm them through her body. For example, it is unethical for a smoking mother to give her prenatal child cancer or birth defects, or for her to use illicit drugs and deliver a crack baby, or to acquire HIV and knowingly confer it to her pre-born child. These acts are not just done to one’s self, but directly affect someone else. It is no longer a strictly “private” issue now that someone else is involved. Abortion, as such, is not just an act on the mother’s body but also harms the child. For example, some abortificients (abortion medications) are known to reduce the mucosal lining in the uterine wall where the embryo would otherwise implant. This leaves the embryo with nowhere to go, it is expelled from the womb. The pill was an action of the mother, affecting her own body, but its effects did not rest with the mother. The effect was a quiet abortion, where another human life was taken. In this way, abortion can be ethically similar to other actions of mothers that harm their babies–even if the action was intended to be of a different sort, like smoking for pleasure, or drinking for fun, or taking recreational drugs to hide from the world. These acts might have different ethical weight themselves, but all of them also carry the ethical weight of child-abuse when they harm the child-in-utero.

4) There are competing responsibilities of citizenship

Some minimal responsibilities are expected in exchange for the many rights and privileges of citizenship. For example, one is not at liberty to plot treason against one’s president nor to attempt to assassinate the president, even if one is only “planning” such a thing without yet acting. It is illegal to even conspire to do such anti-government activities. It does not matter if one’s activities are all contained within personal journals with the materials kept in one’s home. One may have a right to bear arms, but not t0 bear the schematics for an assassination attempt. Frankly, a person might even be “joking” yet if the threat looks real enough, that behavior could be grounds for criminal charges. The right to privacy does not grant unqualified liberty to mobilize one’s private domain for public harm, as that is non longer a merely private matter.

Ever since Roe v. Wade pre-born children are not considered legal persons and therefore do not have the rights of citizenship. The mother, presumably, would still have that right of citizenship qualifying her for special privileges granted to U.S. citizens like miranda rights or voting rights in U.S. elections. She would also be subject to the laws of the land, and so she has laws which prevent her from child abandonment and child abuse, and of course child mutilation, and serial murder of children. Her privacy is already infringed upon regarding her motherhood, such that she has civil duties as a mother. The preborn child is at least analogous to the born child such that it’s not stretch of the imagination to think a real mother should act like a real mother, even if she’s only pregnant right now. Also, if any further legal precedents are established that raise the relative legal status of the child-in-utero, then they might come closer in status to “citizens” and be a more rightful boundary on the “right of privacy.”

5) It is illegal to use one’s body to injure or kill other people without other overriding justifications

It is illegal in many cases, and unethical in more cases, to use ones body to harm others. A person has the right to go skydiving, but not to willfully land on another person killing them. In that case, both parties are killed. Two evils have been done–both a kind of homicide. Of course successful suicides can’t be prosecuted, but it’s still a criminal act, and there’s little dispute about whether it’s generally evil to kill oneself, especially if someone else is killed too. On a lesser scale, a person might jokingly fall all over people at a party receiving bumps and bruises and giving them as well. The person might be amusing, but he’s still harming other people by use of his body. One’s right to privacy is restricted by the general principle of non-malfeasance, do no harm to others. Even if one’s own very body becomes the instrument of harm, it is still unethical and in many cases illegal, to harm other human beings with one’s body. Abortion involves a mother’s instrumental use of her body, by a doctor’s assistance, to create a hostile environment for the child-in-utero. To use one’s body for harm is still unethical, and not a natural privilege within the “right of privacy.”

6) Rights to privacy can be abdicated

In the recent case of Bowe Bergdahl American audiences were scandalized, in part, by his reported treachery. This U.S. soldier who swore allegiance to the U.S. Army, supposedly betrayed his fellow soldiers abandoning his post, going AWOL, with intent to ally with the enemy. If those reports are validated and Bergdahl is found guilty, he will not have a strong “right to privacy” defense in his favor. By swearing allegiance and signing his respective contracts he made a substantial commitment to the United States of America to loyally serve as long as he is able and allowed. He retains his freedom of conscience–he could agree with the enemy. He retains some freedom of speech–he can say what he wants in his journals. He retains freedom of religion–he can worship or not worship however he sees fit. But his body is not fully his own, since he abdicated certain privileges of free citizenship for the sake of becoming a soldier. Berhdahl is not entirely unique here either. Most every working man or women abdicates some degree of personal freedom and privilege for the sake of conforming to a work environment. That’s the price people pay so they can bring home a paycheck. People can exercise their right to privacy by not working in those jobs. If they don’t want to agree to their terms they don’t have to work for that business. Fashion and film industry can have rigorous expectations of their employees, “You must dye your hair,” or “You have to be willing to do nude scenes,” or “you cannot let your body weight exceed 115 pounds.” People may also abdicate certain privacy rights as legal punishment. Some criminals are forced to wear trackers monitoring their location in the event of trespassing on a restraining order. One of the paradoxes of the right to privacy is that it’s a facet of one’s autonomy, but one can autonomously sacrifice certain aspects of privacy. Relating to the subject of abortion, a parent’s right to privacy might be restricted by parental duties but that very privilege to choose to get pregnant or raise a child is itself a rightful exercise of one’s privacy. Parenthood has always been a normal constraint on one’s privacy. Stated positively it’s a heavy blessing people assume when they are willing to invest some of their freedom as a sacrifice for the benefit of children. Reluctant parents may have a harder time coping with the lifestyle change, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are parents and parenthood naturally constrains our privacy. Those who do not want that constraint would do well to avoid parenthood. Killing one’s child, however is not “avoiding parenthood,” since parenthood has already begun at conception. That is more like willful failure as a parent.

Bringing all these different qualifications together, a stiff critique emerges against the certain liberal uses of the “right to privacy.” One can grant some sense of the right to privacy without allowing abortion under it.

*The CDC reports the total deaths for the U.S. population as ranging between 1.9 million and 2.5 million between 1970 and 2011 per year not including abortions. In that same time frame, abortion rates ranged from 0.74 to 1.3 million abortions. In 2011, those reports estimate that there were 2,515,458 deaths (not counting abortions) and 1,058,490 abortions, making abortions about 1/3 of all fatalities in the U.S. Yet even these numbers are skewed because natural abortion (miscarriages) are not counted whereas natural deaths that occur as complications from old age are counted. Abortions might be better compared to preventable circumstances like workplace accidents, traffic fatalities, or preventable diseases like Type-II diabetes.

**One could argue that our legislation is due for updating since 1973. Some things that have since been legalized in the name of abortion create inconsistences for established laws, precedents, and ideals within our legal system. For example, mutilating a human corpse for the sake shipping purposes is illegal, but if it’s in utero then that is standard practice of dilation and curettage abortions. Likewise, a pregnant mother who is woefully derelict of her maternal duties cannot be legally tried for all the negligence and abuse inflicted on her preborn-child, yet if it’s a “wanted” baby that would seem to make her the aggressor against the child as in the “Lacy and Connor Law” so that if she kills the baby through drug and alcohol abuse, she could be tried for negligent homicide, manslaughter, or at least child abuse. Likewise, if a pregnant woman is assaulted on the way to the abortion clinic, intending to get an abortion, and miraculously the thief forgets to take her wallet but does push her down, killing the child on impact–he actually saved her time, and money by killing the baby in a much shorter fashion. He can be criminally charged for killing the child, for assualt, and for theft, yet the thief was only incidentally involved in an abortion procedure intended by the mother. The mother’s “intentions” did not change the nature of that child any more than it changed the ethical status of that assault.

Posted in Abortion Cases, Abortion Laws, Abortion Practices, Contraception Practices, Ethics of Abortion, Family Planning, History of Abortion, Philosophy of Abortion, Sex an Sexuality, Terms and Definitions, Uncategorized, Women's Issues | Tagged Abortion, Abortion-on-demand, access, child, duty, human rights, mother, parent, personhood, privacy, responsibility, right | Leave a comment

Are Human Fetuses Parasites? (revised 5.6.19)

Posted on June 24, 2014 by intelligentchristianfaith

Occasionally abortion-choice advocates refer to fetal humans as parasites. We know what they are getting at. The child-in-utero is dependent on the mother, drains her energy, eats her food, etc. But, is “parasite” the right idea here? Are fetal humans really parasites?

No, fetal humans aren’t really parasites.

“Parasite” is a different relation entirely from the mother-child relation. That said, there is a strained sense in which fetal humans can be considered “parasites,” but it’s not really fair or consistent to treat them as literal parasites because in the biological sense children-in-utero aren’t parasites. We know this for several reasons.

Problems with the Biological Sense of Parasite

1. Fetal humans are the same species as their parents.

Tapeworms or hookworms or leeches can all be parasites as they are not the same species as the host animals they infest. Pregnant human mothers carry human children. Their pregnancy always refers to human offspring. Being the same species, the child is not a parasite in the normal biological sense of “parasite.”

2. Standard references uniformly categorize fetal humans as homo sapiens.

Supporting the last point, no textbook or standard reference in embryology or fetology categorizes the human fetus as a parasitic organism but as a fellow member of the genus and species: homo sapiens. Literally and strictly speaking, that means fetal humans, from conception onward, are a member of the human race, and a part of the human family. Calling them “parasites” wrongly implies they are some harmful outside invader when, in reality, the fetal human is exactly where natural, healthy, human procreation placed him.

3. Parasites are inherently harmful to their host while the child-in-utero is not inherently harmful to the mother.

The normal or “natural” disposition of parasites is harm, danger, and disease for the host. that’s just how parasites work. If any parasite were to cease being harmful to it’s host, it would no longer be a parasite but a symbiote with mutually beneficial relationship to it’s host, or they would be cohabitants coexisting without benefitting or harming each other.

Now some pregnancies incur medical complications, and can risk the mother’s health or life, but that’s not an intrinsic or normal part of every pregnancy. Consider, for example, how some car rides end in a traffic accident. Just because some car rides lead to a crash that doesn’t make every car ride an inevitable car accident. The danger from parasites is normal and intrinsic with every parasitic relation. Every parasite is harmful to it’s host. For any pregnancy to count as a parasitic relation, every pregnancy would have to be a harmful parasitic relation.

4. Parasites are parasitic regardless of their developmental stage.

Parasites are defined by their draining/harmful relation to their host, and not by their stage of development. They are parasites regardless of their developmental stage. Parasitic worms like tapeworms, flukes, hookworms, and pinworms, survive just fine as larvae or adults, inside of human digestive tracts. Other smaller parasites (parasitic protozoa) likewise exist in a parasitic relation to their host in the body regardless of their stage of development. the same applies to ectoparasites like ticks, mites, leeches, and fleas. They are parasitic across several developmental stages including adulthood. If children-in-utero start as parasites in the womb, they’d need to be parasites even after birth and on to adulthood since parasites don’t stop being parasites just because they “aged-out” of the system. Parasites are parasites whether they are eggs, larvae, babies, or adults.

5. Fetal humans don’t fit into the three categories of parasites.

As mentioned above, there are three types of human parasites: protozoa, parasitic worms (helminths), and ectoparasites. Fetal humans aren’t protozoa or worms. And since they gestate entirely inside the womb, they can’t be ecto-parasites, that is, external parasites, like lice, mites, and ticks. So fetal humans don’t fit into the the established categories of parasites.

6. Not all dependence is parasitic.

Across much of the animal kingdom, and all of human society, offspring are dependent on their elders. Later in life, the senior members are dependent on the younger members. “Dependence” is not a sufficient criteria to qualify someone as a parasite. If we redefined “parasite” to include all dependency relations, that would indict most everyone since civilization itself is deeply interdependent across all social strata. Spreading the word “parasite” that thin is revisionary, and problematic – draining the word of it’s normal and classic usage, while insulting pretty much everyone for not being radically independent. Meanwhile, it’s the normal convention of society, whether human or other higher order animals, for young members of the species to be deeply dependent on their family and community. That’s no parasitism, that’s just society.

7. Mammalian mothers are psychologically built to have a healthy nurturing relationship with their gestating child.

The relation of mother and child is intrinsic. It’s a basic physiologically normal and healthy family relationship that includes conception, gestation, birthing, weening, and rearing of the child. And, for what it’s worth, it’s natural. The human body isn’t built specifically to birth parasites, as if the mother’s mammary glands are sized just right for suckling hookworms. Parasites are opportunistic, they can invade and leech off resources in the digestive tract, the bloodstream, or the skin. But fetal children can survive only in the mother’s womb, until viability when they can survive outside of the womb.

8. Humans need fetal offspring, but host species don’t need their respective parasites for thriving and survival.

Humans can thrive and survive just fine without any tapeworms, leeches, or parasitic microbes. But the human race would go extinct if we had no fetal humans. While parasites serve no greater good for the human race, children-in-utero are our only hope for survival as a species. The mother-child relation, in pregnancy, is the fundamental means of reproduction, the primary relationship for sustaining the human race. That’s the opposite of a parasite. Parasites prevent the host from thriving, harming, crippling and sometimes killing them before moving on to another victim. The parasite’s survival is a zero-sum exchange with the host. If the parasite thrives, the host does not. If the host thrives, the parasite does not.

9. Mother-child relations are symbiotic, not parasitic.

The relational dynamic between mother and child is more symbiotic than parasitic. The mother and child both stand to benefit from the relationship. The benefits of pregnancy aren’t just abstract ideas about “fulfillment,” “purpose,” and “family.” Studies are showing a range of practical benefits of pregnancy including improved cognitive function, reduced painful menstrual cramping, greater compassion/empathy towards others, and even reduced risk of certain diseases like breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and heart disease.

But fetal humans are still parasites in some sense, right?

Now that we’ve seen that fetal humans aren’t parasites in the normal, literal, sense of the word “parasite.” The English language is still flexible enough to where we can justifiably categorize any dependent relationship as “parasitic.” Your uncle Karl might be a parasite off of Grandma Bessy. And Jimmy might be a “social parasite” leeching off and accomplishments of others, without contributing anything positive himself.

In this loose, non-biological sense of “parasite” babies, in the womb or out, are parasitic –whether preborn or not–in the sense that they feed off of the nutrients fed to them through their mothers, and they are utterly dependent on their mothers. But even then, “parasite” is a poor choice of words because it implies only harm toward the mother when, in reality, she stands to benefit physiologically and relationally if she’s willing to carry that child to term. Nevertheless, if we are only focusing on the “dependency” aspect of parasites, fetal humans, babies, toddlers, and teenagers are all parasites.

In that strained sense of parasitism, human beings stay parasitic through much of their life. Parents of teenagers can attest to how their children are not fully functional adults without their insight, care, and provision. Handicapped adults or senior adults can also be deeply dependent on others, even harming their respective “hosts” by needing more of them than can be provided.

So the case can be made that people at most any stage of life are capable of being parasitic, even if, strictly and biologically speaking they aren’t parasites.

Problems with the Colloquial Sense of Parasite

1. Loaded Word Fallacy: “Parasite” is part of rhetoric strategy attempting to dehumanize and degrade children-in-utero so it’s easier to morally justify killing them.

Now, where does this exercise get us? It is a well-known aim of pro-life advocates to emphasize all the dignifying terms for the human fetus–baby, child, human, human being, boy/girl, person, etc. Meanwhile, pro-choice advocates are known to emphasize demeaning terms for the human fetus–such as fetus, tumor, a clump of cells, or parasite.* Presumably, if we grant one of these dignifying or demeaning titles for the human fetus we risk granting the whole batch of correlated terms – either humanizing or dehumanizing the fetal human. one has granted some of its correlate ideas.

Parasites are weed-like animals, unwanted, unsightly, something to be rid of. Insults, however, do nothing to change the biological status of a human being–and biologically the human fetus is literally a human being. Even if a human being were parasitic, he or she would still be a human being potentially carrying all the innate rights therein, whether that human is your brother-in-law, your great grandmother, or the child in your wife’s womb.

The “parasite” affiliation runs the risk of a “loaded word” fallacy, proving nothing in directly logical terms but instead slandering the preborn child with connotations of “weed,” “unwanted,” “harmful,” and “deadly.”

**2. Insufficient Cause: Even if a human was acting as a parasite, that alone isn’t enough to justify killing a fellow human being.**

To justify killing a human being, something more than “parasite” would need to be established, such as “deadly assailant” or “murderer” or “rapist.” That case can be made if the child represents a distinct medical threat to the mother’s life, such as with tubal pregnancies or other complicated pregnancies. The baby is instrumentally threatening the mother’s life, and so it would not be a loaded word but an apt description to call that preborn child–instrumentally deadly to the mother.

Perilous pregnancies are unfortunate but real, and when they happen that child’s presence threatens the life of the mother, and might be justifiably aborted on the grounds of self-defense. Those sorts of cases are widely admitted justifications for killing a human being, but apart from tubal pregnancies (and similar cases) the death penalty just doesn’t apply. The child is not a “Murderer” or a “rapist” or a “traitor.” He (or she) does not deserve the death penalty. Those terms don’t apply.

**3. Disanalogy: The mother-child relation is substantially different from a burglar/trespasser/malicious-intruder/etc.**

One might argue that the child is a “trespasser” and it’s legal in many states to shoot and kill a trespasser. It’s not legal, however, to kill a person whom your actions are the natural and historic means of inviting onto your property. Sex has been nature’s way of inviting a baby into the womb since time immemorial. The baby is not a trespasser, he’s an invited guest. Even with contraceptive practices, one is still inviting a child into one’s “home” despite the fencing and locked door. Sometimes that child still gets in the house, since you’ve still performed the natural actions that sometimes place that developing child in utero – through no fault of his own. That child was forced into existence, and placed in-utero, without any choice in the matter.

**4. Non-Sequitur or Ad Absurdum: Either fetal “parasites” should all be killed because they are harmful (ad absurdum) or parasitism doesn’t support the pro-choice position (non-sequitur)**

The “parasite” affiliation is also a non-sequitur or an ad absurdum argument. Non-sequitur means “does not follow.” The pro-choice position does not follow consistently with the “parasite” accusation. But it does align with some absurd outcomes which most pro-choicers don’t support.

Even if we granted the pro-choice rhetoric of “parasite”, it doesn’t follow logically to a pro-choice position since all human beings go through a parasitic stage in utero and therefore should be destroyed. Parasites are bad and should be killed or at least expelled as soon as possible. But pro-choice advocates aren’t trying to get every mother to abort. They just think mothers should have the choice to abort if they wanted to. But if fetal humans are parasites then all pregnant mother’s should abort their children just like everyone should get vaccinated.*

It does no good to distinguish between “wanted” and “unwanted” children-in-utero either. Parasitism is a relationship, not a desire. The parasite is a parasite even if the host is morbidly content letting that blood-sucker drain the life from her. A parasitic relation defines the parasite, and it’s entirely irrelevant whether the mother wants the child or doesn’t want the child-in-utero. That child-in-utero, if a parasite, should be killed for the mother’s own good.

5. Dependent Children should be loved and cared for, not killed.

We can admit that children, born and preborn, are very dependent human beings, desperately needing their parents. But just as puppies and kittens need extra love and care, so do baby humans. Their dependence is a reason to love them tenderly and care for them selflessly. Their dependence hardly excuses neglecting and killing them, as implied by this pro-choice lingo.

*And for anti-vaxers, they should take whatever measures are practically equivalent to preventing measles, mumps, etc. The point is not about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of vaccination in particular, but about the importance of disease prevention generally.

Posted in Ethics of Abortion, Philosophy of Abortion, Terms and Definitions, Uncategorized | Tagged Abortion, baby, child, dependence, dependent, human being, in utero, kittens, need, parasite, parasitic, person, puppies, symbiotic | 3 Comments

Unwaging the War on Women

Posted on June 18, 2014 by intelligentchristianfaith

[Originally presented by John D. Ferrer at the Bible and Beer Consortium at the Gingerman Pub, Fort Worth, TX 26 April, 2014]

UNWAGING THE WAR ON WOMEN

By: John D. Ferrer

The common language of party politics is slander and slur. Chief among these – especially in election years – is the phrase: “War on Women.” It is catchy, easy to remember, and packs persuasive power into a single sound-byte. But like most every point of pithy politi-speak, the phrase borders on propaganda. In this paper I contend that the “War on Women” is radically misconstrued such that conservatism broadly understood constitutes a crucial defense of womankind while the typically liberal feminist narrative does untold harm to women’s rights.

This subject deals in messy matters of gender, rights, and ethical ideology. So, it may help to observe the context for this poignant phrase, to help get our bearings before venturing forth we should ask what exactly is this “War on Women”?

The lingo can be traced back at least as far as 1996, to libertarian and former republican Tanya Melich in her book, The Republican War on Women.[1]Melich, a former republican turned libertarian, argues that the Republican Party underwent a fundamentalist takeover by when the Christian right overtook the party and swayed it against women’s interests. This lingo has since become common coinage at MSNBC, MoveOn.org, Center for American Progress, People for the American Way, ACLU, Planned Parenthoodand the National Organization of Women (N.O.W.), always as liable against republicans and conservatives. Besides those organizations, a bevy of democratic representatives including Nancy Pelosi, Hilary Rosen, Alan Grayson and Debbie Wasserman Shultz, are known to loosely brandish the phrase—particularly against the GOP. Media socialites can follow the latest republican attacks at the twitter feed, #GOPWarOnWomen and see all sorts of ways republicans and conservatives militate against women. One can also brandish one’s pro-women party lines with a “Stop the Republican War on Women,” banner or bumper sticker printed, of course, by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. House Democrats raised millions for election year marketing, in 2012, on this very theme. Democrats have been known to deny such accusatory language. But even a cursory search shows numerous democrats and liberals lobbing that accusation at political opponents.

Some republicans like Rand Paul and Mitt Romney have struck back accusing democrats of harming women through liberal policies, corruption, or just overplaying the phrase. But the democrat usage has led the conversation so far. Even Wikipedia agrees, the War on Women “is an expression in United States politics used to describe certain Republican Party policies as a wide-scale effort to restrict women’s rights, especially reproductive rights.”

The “War on Women” is a marketable phrase aimed almost entirely against social conservatives. But words are weighty matters. To accuse conservatives of “war,” even in metaphor, is a bold accusation. War means declared opposition, often with a long series of failed negotiations, displays of strength, and then violent deadly aggression till at least one side yields by submission or exhaustion. Warfare can be covert (Seal Team 6), cyber (the Stuxnet virus), guerrilla (Taliban), trench (WWI), blitzkriegs (WWII), sieges (3rd Crusade), ground (Gettysburg), aerial (Pearl Harbor), naval (Spanish Armada), marine (D-Day), and of course nuclear (Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

War is a powerful word. Some current events suit such strong metaphor. There are life-or-death issues like spousal abuse, sex slavery, and honor killings, and for these cases of literal violence and gross injustice, “war” is a penetrating and pertinent term. Those battles deserve whatever indignation and opposition we can muster.

Those issues, however, are not in view when conservatives are accused of waging “war on women.” A March 21, 2014 Google search of “war on women” produced no hits on its front pages explicating spousal/relational abuse, sex slavery, honor killings, female genital mutilation or similar kinds of violence against women. Similarly, a search on the Huffington Post of “GOP war on women” did not produce any hits focusing on literal violence against women.[2] In this light, the language of “war on women,” does not just exaggerate; it fabricates. It expands “war” to include any sort of “violence” and expands “violence” to include most anything disagreeable to one’s ideals. To sympathetic ears, it is motivational language. It moves people to action, but then again, a gust of hot air can do the same thing.

In the court of public opinion the language of “War on Women” can pigeonhole conservatives into the worst category possible. This affiliation is because in war, are found man’s most vile behaviors: rape and riot, plunder and pillage, slavery and exile, genocidal despotism, and totalitarianism. Most everything wicked ever to darken the mind of man has been realized in the name of war. If conservatives are waging a “war on women,” then they affiliate with most everything heinous about humanity. Put bluntly, war is hell.

But no self-respecting conservative is declaring hell on women. Even still, let us suppose for the sake of argument, that there really is a conservative “war on women.” If there were, it would be a sort of “covert ops”–a malicious and deadly attack conducted in the guise of “family values.” The “War on Women” would then be violent conservative opposition to the needs and interests of women. This is not gendercide, but it still might be patriarchal oppression harming women in untold ways.

How is this “war” played out? According to the popular democratic narrative, contraception and abortion are the main battle fronts. Some smaller skirmishes can be found around hiring practices and the wage gap between men and women. Nevertheless, “women’s health” has been the prominent banner over these battles. By “women’s health” is meant, for all women uninterested in motherhood, the treatment and prevention of pregnancy. The language one encounters, unfortunately, tends to treat pregnancy as if it were a disease, the child a parasite, and in some extreme cases, motherhood a death-sentence. To a lesser extent, breast cancer screenings are also included as “women’s health”—as those services are also offered at Planned Parenthood sites. Recently, the issue of equal pay has re-entered the conversation via the Lily Ledbetter Act (2009) and the April 8^th (2013) Executive Order from the White house.

While breast cancer screenings and equal pay concerns are indeed feminist issues, these have not been the most prominent parts of the ‘war on women’ rhetoric according to feminist Linda Lowen, in a 2012 op-ed article. She enumerates seven “battle fronts” in the war on women. All of them are matters of abortion access and contraception. The same can be said about Sandra Fluke. In 2012 Fluke was a 30 year old Columbia University student, self-proclaimed feminist, and recent chapter leader in the abortion advocacy group Law Students for Reproductive Justice. Her 2012 congressional testimony became a national controversy when her plea for free contraception was interpreted by Rush Limbaugh as the pay-for-sex behavior one might expect of prostitutes and sluts. Not excusing Limbaugh’s verbage, Fluke’s point remains clear, women are being oppressed and discriminated against if they are not receiving free contraception from their respective employers, schools, or government. To Fluke’s credit, she has since expanded her declared position on women’s rights to include not just contraception but also the recent democrat legislation, the “Paycheck Fairness Act.” Nevertheless, it is clearly her views on contraception that vaulted her into the public spotlight, aligned her clearly with the Democratic party, and entrenched her sense of “feminism” deep within the egalitarian mold of liberal and progressive politics.[3]

Atheist writer Amanda Marcotte follows suit. In her February 27^th article, she notes a broadening view for Democrats and Republicans, wherein the “war on women” might expand to include issues of equal pay and other economic fears, going into the 2014 midterm elections. With democrats poised to lose the House and the Senate, a change from the 2012 strategy might help cut some losses. Yet by the end of the article she harkens back to what she calls the “standard” war on women issues. She approvingly notes how “the phrase ‘war on women’ immediately calls to voter minds a bunch of middle-aged men in suits trying to figure out how to take away control of the nation’s vaginas from the women who are currently sitting on them.” A month earlier, Marcotte can be caught chiding Rand Paul for directing a question over the “GOP war on Women” into the individual success of his niece and his sister. Paul said, “If there was a war on women, I think they won.” Instead, Marcotte says, “Paul didn’t mention little things like abortion or contraception,” and so, she continues, “the implication was clear: Women have it pretty good, so there’s no reason to get all bent out of shape about attacks on reproductive rights, ladies.” In this case Marcotte expressly reroutes the conversation from the individual, self-defined success of actual women, to, instead, the Democrat talking points of “abortion” and “contraception.”

Feminists like Amanda Marcotte, Sandra Fluke, and Linda Lowen are entirely unexceptional in their views. The 2012 Democrat campaign slogan of “Stop the GOP War on Women” and the incessant refrain of abortion and contraception with it have kept the subject focused on sex and pregnancy. The theaters of this war are not in the straits of female psychology, in the lands of beauty and cosmetics, or in the murky waters of gender studies, but in the nether regions of sex and reproduction. There are no bills criminalizing bras or mascara, nor bans on purses or romance novels. There are no court cases denying property rights, conscripting women into sex slavery, forcing marriage, or exiling them on poker night. The “war on women” is fought below the belt, inside the ring of “1st world” problems. Legalized abortion and inexpensive contraception is not enough, those are still republican violence against women. These must be free or very nearly so, with ever widening access. The “war on women,” identifies women primarily by their lady parts, autonomous vaginas and uteri more than as minds or persons, and especially not as people who might vote Republican.

What motivates this war? In flourishing liberal terms the motivation is oppression. Conservatives apparently want to subjugate women in archaic molds: property, baby-makers, or punching bags. The “war” presses women to become barefoot pregnant homemakers, kitchen slaves and thoughtless decorations for wayward males. In the famous feminist text, The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan describes such women as “walking corpses,” and domesticity is a “comfortable concentration camp,” where women suffer the “slow death of mind and spirit.”[4] While men fornicate and adulterize, enjoying more freedom and better pay, women are kept in domestic prison, bearing children against their will, carrying the brunt of the family. There is no public conservative ear for their fainting cries for justice. By this thought, conservatives worship the way things were, idolizing antiquity at the expense of modernity. Modern women know better, they do not fit those molds, they are every bit equal to or better than men with no relevant difference between them.

That “war on women” narrative does not describe conservatism; it is propaganda. As such, it errs on several levels. On one level it is the “boy who cried wolf.” Marisa DeFranco, a Massachusetts congressional candidate recently accused her own Democratic party of blatant sexism and waging a “war on women.” Why was she so upset? They left her off a recent polling ballot. Such usage trivializes a powerful expression. One cannot help but think of deeply needed feminist action in North Africa where there is female genital mutilation, or Central American sex trafficking, or honor killings in the Middle East. DeFranco’s polling omission is not an act of war, it is not violent, it does no harm to women generally, it might not even be sexist. More likely, if there was any deliberate exclusion at work, it is because she would weaken a democrat incumbent’s seat, and she vocally opposes the Affordable Care Act.

On another level this “war on women” narrative errs for its narrow view of femininity, typically ascribing to a liberal sense of womanhood which Christina Hoff Summers calls “Egalitarian Feminism.”[5] This narrowed view describes what is popularly understood as “feminism.” This conception does not simply advocate for women, but for a certain kind of liberal woman. The egalitarian feminist, and its more extreme form, “gynocentric” feminism is pro-choice, skeptical of gender differences, distrusting towards traditional marriage, and unconvinced by conservative family values; moreover, the egalitarian feminist exhorts aggressive legislative and judicial activism. This sort of feminist is the hero in Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique. This sort of feminist even had a place in the Republican Party before the influence of the “Moral Majority” around 1980. Tanya Melich’s book The Republican War on Women describes her struggles within the Republican Party as she has real but limited support for her pro-choice views and legislative activism. Historically, egalitarians have never been a majority, even in liberal affluent societies where women and men have great freedom to express novel and dissenting views.[6] Yet, egalitarianism and its more radical sister-theories are readily embraced in university level women’s studies programs. In Freedom Feminism Summers treats this category graciously, but is careful to point out another feminism which she terms “Maternal Feminism,” wherein a great many women see their unique and innate maternal abilities as a distinguishing dignity for women, and for those women, they have no great objection to being known as “Billy’s mother” or “Dan’s wife.” These maternal feminists may opt for part-time employment or stay-at-home status, may participate in the school board and local politics, all while serving selflessly in a traditional marriage and family. In this view a full egalitarian overhaul of sex, gender, family, and society would effectively disenfranchise countless women. These women lean towards conservative politics, conservative family values, and conservative mainline religions. While the egalitarians have the notoriety, the maternalists have the numbers.

It was only when these two sorts of feminism worked together that they were able to pass the 19^th amendment (for Women’s Suffrage). Egalitarians Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton would not get the traction they needed for that amendment to pass until they allied with maternalist Frances Willard and her Women’s Christian Temperance Union (Summers, 28). Willard routinely commanded three and four times as many supporters as all the Egalitarians combined. History remembers her as a figurehead of the temperance movement, and she is routinely white-washed from many feminist texts but she was perhaps the most famous women in the early 19^th century, far better known than Stanton and Anthony. She led campaigns for a host of human rights issues including prison reform, child welfare, handicap assistance, and of course, women’s suffrage. Even the temperance movement, was in its time a feminist cause because of rampant alcohol related harms against women like spousal abuse, rape, assault, and abandonment. Anthony, Stanton, and Willard all aligned on the temperance movement. Their alliance flexed some serious political muscle in the now-defunct Prohibition era.

And it was an alliance of maternalists and egalitarians which managed to get sexual equality included in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. For the record, the votes favoring the Civil Rights act in the house were 61% of Democrats and 80% of Republicans. In the senate it was 73% of Democrats and 94% of Republicans. Likewise, the spread for the 1965 Voting Rights Act was even more disproportionately Republican. Both maternal feminism and egalitarian feminism, no matter the terminology, are actual perspectives, of actual females, proposing actual theories of how women are best empowered, and best served, and about how their equality should operate. It is unfortunate that the notions of “feminism” and “women’s liberation” have come to be identified, in the public eye, as strictly radical and politically liberal. In this way, countless women who are genuine advocates for women’s interests, gender equality, and female empowerment refuse to use the term “feminist.” In this way, the history of feminism bears out a richer and more complex history than is seen in much of the modern womanist and feminist discourse. It may turn out that egalitarian anthropology only address a narrow segment of women, while castigating countless more women who revel in maternal glory.

Besides a tendency to “narrow” the view of femininity, another error in the “war on women” lingo is that of special pleading, or “cherry picking.” This is the error of selectively employing only the evidence in one’s favor. Democrats and liberals overwhelmingly aim the phrase “war on women” at conservative roles for women. Rarely does one hear a pro-choice advocate campaigning for greater respect for pre-born females under threat of abortion, nor is there strong argument for the uniquely important role of fathers and husbands in addressing the troubled circumstances of young or endangered mothers. Instead, the laser-focused aim is to shoot out the heart of conservative conceptions of womanhood, and attack traditional conceptions of manhood.[7] Feminist textbooks lambast conventional feminine roles as restrictive, oppressive, and cruel, and accuse most every institutional and societal setting of sexist oppression yet, one can hardly “find one [feminist textbook] that warns of the dangers of radical social engineering;” the “’Feminist revolution’ is celebrated without any indication that utopian ventures—from the American communes of the nineteenth century to the catastrophic Marxist governments of the twentieth century—have often produced immense human misery” (Summers, 71). Conservatives and liberals alike should confess their sins, admit their faults, and not explain away the latent misogyny that can creep into political locker rooms, or any other setting for that matter. Moreover, it is fair and responsible to admit the positive contributions of feminists regardless of their politics, and regardless of what brand of feminism they represent.

At another level, the “war on women” language errs for being overly divisive. Tanya Melich despite her heavy handed criticism of republicanism admits that “some of the issues—equal pay, federal help for locally controlled child care, elimination of discrimination towards women in the Social Security system, displaced homemaker’s aid, flexible work schedules, and rewriting of the widow’s tax—didn’t seem to raise the hackles of the [Republican party from about 1970 onward], and the convention included them in the platform” (Melich 61). Melich stops there, though, and chides Republicans for not supporting abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Melich does not point out however that abortion and the ERA did not divide Feminists from Misogynists so much as it divided Egalitarians from Maternalists—all parties broadly supporting women’s interests but disagreeing on the means and the extent to which those interests can ethically go. The disagreements are over what rights do any human beings have, male or female, and over how real, innate, and important are their respective gender roles. If it is unethical to kill human beings for the sake of convenience, or entertainment, or for profit, it is unethical for men and women alike. No inequality there. Women are no more permitted to abandon, neglect, or kill their children than are men. If men are not allowed to kill a tiny human beings, neither should women be allowed to abort them. The maternalist view does not promote inequality, but rather a differently framed equality than egalitarians. They can have a different view on particular ethical issues without suggesting men are excused from ethical duties which women are not. The details of these competing theories of feminism can be discussed and debated respectfully. There will be women on all sides of the abortion debate. But accusing the other side of hating women, or wanting hell for all women, i.e., “war on women,” that is wildly off the mark.[8]

At another level, the “war on women” language errs for being a caricature of the common sense suggestion that women and men are very different in valuable and honorable ways. They are equal but not identical. People on both sides of the aisle can agree that women should be treated as equals in dignity and worth, and agree that women are entitled to the same basic human rights as men, and with all that agreement still disagree over how to best ensure those rights at every level of society. Conservatives will tend to favor small government means. Liberals will tend to favor big government means. Conservatives will tend to be skeptical of European styled legislation. Liberals will tend to doubt slow inconsistent free-market answers. Conservatives might emphasize individual responsibility and economic issues while Liberals emphasize compassion initiatives and social issues. A person cannot safely claim that conservatives, in bulk, are waging a war on women if that means, simply that they disagree with him. Some of these age-old problems have a root system running through all layers of human history. It is not enough to nip at a few branches of contemporary Republican (or Democrat) policy and think that summarizes the complex history of femininity and women’s interests.

Another level in which the war on women falters is in regard to actual violence. As alluded to earlier, the language of “war on women,” when used overwhelmingly to describe non-violent liberal-agenda items, cheapens the phrase demeaning descriptions of actual violence and oppression. Instead of highlighting nefarious subtleties of the Republican agenda, the language of “war on women,” can run in reverse, dissolving a good phrase into so much sophistry. That phrasing could describe honor killings in Iran or rape-culture in Egypt but, unfortunately, it has already been commandeered by folks like Sandra Fluke as artillery against anyone who thinks she should pay for her own morning-after pills. If we identify all of the above as “war on women,” it affiliates obvious violence in 2^nd and 3^rd world settings with contemporary Democrat agenda items that fail to speak for almost half of female voters in the U.S. (i.e., about 45% of women voters). It is not necessarily a “war on women” to oppose liberal democrat politics.

Moreover, the “war on women” is liable to cut the other way. While I do not dismiss the great advances that Western civilization has brought, including both egalitarian and maternal feminists. And I do commend egalitarians and maternalists alike for their achievement in terms of broad equality between men and women, giving women tremendous economic, educational, political, and social access. Yet there remains to be made a case against the pro-choice and democrat assumptions in the “war on women” debate. For example, an abortion-friendly society threatens to do great harm to women. Some egalitarians might be liberated with greater social permission for casual sex, and less maternal responsibility. But countless more maternal-minded women are liable to find that the egalitarian values pressed upon them militate against their own aspirations for romance, security, affection, love, and traditional family. Such women are liable to feel betrayed by boyfriends who refuse to marry them, husbands who will not protect them, and the overbearing expectations of modern women, also known as dual-employed-working-mother-wife-cowgirl-domestic-goddesses.

It might also be mentioned that real live females are harmed when roughly 23 million girls are killed in utero via abortion-on-demand since 1973. A significant number of these mothers regret their abortions, or suffer physical side-effects following their abortion. Some women experience psychological side-effects like PTSD or Depression after enduring procedures like suction and curettage which literally slice and tear the child-in-utero limb from limb and suck it through a medical vacuum. Women are harmed when they are taught that they need abortion access to be “equal” with man, as if they are naturally unequal without the technological help afforded them by Democrats. Women are harmed when their dignified differences are treated like obstacles to conquer instead of distinctions to honor. Women are harmed when their customarily “feminine” approach to sexuality is replaced in society with a veneration of (stereotypically) “masculine” libido. Regarding that typically “masculine” libido, women are harmed when they are objectified and dehumanized in pornography and prostitution, industries still swelling to fit our sex-crazed society. Women are harmed when the “feminine” norms of society shift into such radical autonomy that hardly any women can keep up. It harms women to denigrate interdependence, exalting individualism at the expense of community. It harms women to exalt stay-away-from-home moms at the expense of homemakers, or to celebrate sex-without-commitment while compromising the marriage bed. Women are harmed when lax divorce laws leave otherwise reparable marriages dissolved. Ask a large sample of ex-wives and daughters from divorce and the pattern is clear: divorce is to families what civil war is to nations.

In defense of maternal feminism, it may be said that motherhood is a dignity, not a disease. Femininity is a privilege and duty. Childbearing is a sacred right and awesome responsibility. Children are a heavy blessing. They are evidence of prestige, not punishment. Strong womanly women are vital in love and marriage to bring out the controlled strength of service that is the heart of wholesome husbands. When males can fool-around all they want without social sanction, get paid to not work, stay dependent on parents long after college, playing video games and sex-surf the Net all day, they have little incentive to grow into responsible husbands and fathers. This leaves many women with no one worth marrying, one income, emotionally spent, romantically starved, having to quench their maternal instincts since pregnancy is not, for them, a dignity but a liability. There is nothing wrong with a woman wanting to marry a strong, mature, provider of a man. And when a grown woman stays single, even for good reasons, it is okay to mourn that fact since it is a real sacrifice and there is a normal sense of loss involved. It harms women to obscure their gender with revisionist images of macho super-women.

Returning to the phrase “war on women,” what is left at the bottom of the pool if we drain the whole debate of propaganda? It seems the wide world of feminine interests and values are pitifully represented here by the meager themes of abortion, contraception, and the sexual exploration they afford.[9] Never mind how countless women consider that exploration fool-hearty selfishness. Political liberals seem to think it a war on women to believe mothers should stay mothers till child-birth, but it is not a war on women to kill millions of girls in utero for the convenience of the maternal enemies. It is a war on women to think women should save sex for marriage, but it is not a war to shamelessly support teen sexual exploration where countless girls are emotionally scarred for life. It is a war to think that if anyone deserves to be killed after a rape, it is not the child but the rapist. It is a war to think that birth-control is too invasive and personal for public funding, but it is not a war to force millions of women against their will to help subsidize other women’s sexual exploits, no matter if they agree or not.

The accusation of “war on women” is a misnomer. The most that can be said of it, fairly, is that conservatives aggressively oppose radical feminism, but do not oppose women per se. Conservatives see certain conceptions of womanhood as being obsessed with privilege but derelict of duty. Conservatives support fair and equal treatment of women and recognizing women’s rights. Conservatives support equal pay for equal work. Conservatives support maternal rights and responsibilities. Conservatives support wholesome work environments for gainful employment, and healthy homes for raising young women to be smart, healthy, responsible, liberated individuals. In that sense, conservatives advocate for women’s liberation and feminism. Yet it seems the concepts of “feminism” and “women’s lib” were lost somewhere in the 1960’s and 70’s, having been refashioned into “Feminist Liberalism,” that is, a pre-packaged set of interests that women are allowed to aim for—notably abortion and contraception—together with a left-wing plan for how to achieve those interests.

In some ways, it seems that women’s liberation saddled women with impossibly high standards, both in and out of the home, while reducing societal reinforcements for family. In short, it was men who were most liberated, since they could add to their societal privilege the luxury of casual sex with little need to settle down as traditional husbands and fathers. The culture shift since the 1960’s has been a tectonic spread. The pill separated sex from pregnancy; Roe v. Wade separated pregnancy from child-birth; and no-fault-divorce separated spouses from each other. Each of these put more responsibility on women while giving males greater access to sex and less use for marriage. Meanwhile various perks and investments found only in family and community have been reallocated to other sources in a gradually growing welfare state including food stamps, college loans (and loan forgiveness), unemployment benefits, welfare benefits, social security, bankruptcy absolution, healthcare, etc.

These forces are not altogether bad. But they do make for a perfect storm of cultural forces that have “liberated” countless women from their stable homes and family. Women are left holding the checkbook, the spatula, the baby, and the car keys. Such women are running out of hands. Meanwhile males are left holding their joysticks (pun intended). There are harmful trends in U.S. culture weighing heavily against women including divorce, abortion, and single/teen motherhood—all of which have gone up in the course of the liberal feminist experiment since the ‘60’s. And to the extent that these constitute violence or lead to violence against women war cries should ring out. But, it should not be forgotten that women and men are different, and that is a good thing. A war, rightly waged, would appreciate that terrain and seek the best way to the most noble goals, in this case, honoring and empower women accordingly.

It is not Conservatives or Christians or Republicans militating against femininity. Instead they are enlisting men and women to serve in a larger culture war to fortify the better parts of our culture like faith, family, free-trade, and femininity. The world needs chivalrous manly men, together with the gentle strength of womanly women, sacrificially serving society as men and women, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers. The better parts of our culture hang in the balance, and they won’t defend themselves.

[1]NY: Bantam, 1996, upd. 2009.

[2]This claim regards the first two pages of listings only. In the Huffington Post search, there was some mention of actual violence but as a sub-topic, secondary to the focus of the article. For example, writer Laura Bassetttries to justify the language of “War on Women” despite Senator John McCain’s protests when he calls that language “outlandish rhetoric by partisan operatives” citing his support of feminist legislation called the Violence Against Women Act. Bassett contests this claim and returns the conversation to the focus points of abortion access and tax-payer funded contraception.

[3]For example, Fluke speaks of opposition to the Paycheck Fairness Act among women’s groups saying, “It’s important to understand that those are quote-unquote women’s groups with a particular conservative agenda and that’s why we’re hearing some of that messaging from them,” quoted in Kurt Gonska, “Interview with Sandra Fluke,” [on-line] (N.P., Standwithsandra.com, 23 April 2014), accessed 25 April 2014 at: http://www.standwithsandra.org/huffington_post live_ sandra_fluke_and_what_s_at_stake_with_equal_pay

[4]Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963, NY: W.W., Norton, 2001 reprint), 423-5

[5]Christian Hoff Summers, Freedom Feminism: Its Surprising History and Why It Matters Today (Washington DC: AEI Press, 2013), 10ff.

[6]David P. Schmitt, et al., “Why Can’t a Man Be More Like a Woman? Sex Differences in Big Five Personality Traits across 55 Cultures,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 94 (2008), 168-82.

[7]In some cases, the aim is more simply to attack men. For example, former Democratic congresswoman Jane Harman famously quipped, “There is no glass ceiling keeping women down, just a thick layer of men,” see Summers, 87.

[8]Such fallacies might include, but are not limited to, hasty generalization, loaded word, propaganda, straw man, ad hominem, and poisoning the well. And, not to mention, it is false.

[9]Equal pay efforts might make a mark on the 2014 and 2016 elections, perhaps to win some female votes, see Juliet Eilperin, “Obama to Sign to Executive Orders aimed at Narrowing Gender Gap In Wages,” (Washington Post, 7 April 2014), para. 2. But Conservatives can call such efforts redundant in light of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964. And any added laws or rules are liable to invite unforeseen consequences in vague wording, loopholes, and legislative conflicts with older laws, such as those foreseen in the Equal Rights Amendment debate which raged for almost 50 years without passage. Maternal feminist Phylis Shlafly campaigned aggressively against this bill, and found tremendous conservative support even though the bill sounds fairly innocuous. Its relevant language was section 1: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” Schlafly argued that that equality was already legally guaranteed and judicially defensible under prior laws, and that this particular amendment was so broad and so vague that it would be a field-day for agenda-driven opportunist lawyers. It would subject women to identical maternal-leave standards with men, reduced privileges in child-custody cases, equal vulnerability to the draft, unisex toilets, and a host of other absurd potential outcomes. Melich does not treat Schlafly as a kind of feminist, but instead as anti-feminist calling her anti-ERA campaign the “misogynist strategy” (Melich, 49ff).

Posted in Abortion Laws, Contraception Practices, Family Planning, Philosophy of Abortion, Sex an Sexuality, Terms and Definitions, Women's Issues | Tagged conservative, election year, female, gender, girl, liberal, political, politically correct, politics, propoganda, war on women | 1 Comment

Abortion History Museum

The Principles of Medical Ethics (The American Medical Association, 2001), w/ Commentary

The Profiteering Argument

Conspicuous Absence of Humanity

What are “Rights”?

Human Rights or Person Rights (revisited)

Is abortion animal abuse?

Hobby Lobby, Birth Control and Abortion

What’s Left of ‘My Body, My Right’?

Are Human Fetuses Parasites? (revised 5.6.19)

No, fetal humans aren’t really parasites.

Problems with the Biological Sense of Parasite

1. Fetal humans are the same species as their parents.

2. Standard references uniformly categorize fetal humans as homo sapiens.

3. Parasites are inherently harmful to their host while the child-in-utero is not inherently harmful to the mother.

4. Parasites are parasitic regardless of their developmental stage.

5. Fetal humans don’t fit into the three categories of parasites.

6. Not all dependence is parasitic.

7. Mammalian mothers are psychologically built to have a healthy nurturing relationship with their gestating child.

8. Humans need fetal offspring, but host species don’t need their respective parasites for thriving and survival.

9. Mother-child relations are symbiotic, not parasitic.

But fetal humans are still parasites in some sense, right?

Problems with the Colloquial Sense of Parasite

1. Loaded Word Fallacy: “Parasite” is part of rhetoric strategy attempting to dehumanize and degrade children-in-utero so it’s easier to morally justify killing them.

**2. Insufficient Cause: Even if a human was acting as a parasite, that alone isn’t enough to justify killing a fellow human being.**

**3. Disanalogy: The mother-child relation is substantially different from a burglar/trespasser/malicious-intruder/etc.**

**4. Non-Sequitur or Ad Absurdum: Either fetal “parasites” should all be killed because they are harmful (ad absurdum) or parasitism doesn’t support the pro-choice position (non-sequitur)**

5. Dependent Children should be loved and cared for, not killed.

*And for anti-vaxers, they should take whatever measures are practically equivalent to preventing measles, mumps, etc. The point is not about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of vaccination in particular, but about the importance of disease prevention generally.

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No, fetal humans aren’t really parasites.

Problems with the Biological Sense of Parasite

1. Fetal humans are the same species as their parents.

2. Standard references uniformly categorize fetal humans as homo sapiens.

3. Parasites are inherently harmful to their host while the child-in-utero is not inherently harmful to the mother.

4. Parasites are parasitic regardless of their developmental stage.

5. Fetal humans don’t fit into the three categories of parasites.

6. Not all dependence is parasitic.

7. Mammalian mothers are psychologically built to have a healthy nurturing relationship with their gestating child.

8. Humans need fetal offspring, but host species don’t need their respective parasites for thriving and survival.

9. Mother-child relations are symbiotic, not parasitic.

But fetal humans are still parasites in some sense, right?

Problems with the Colloquial Sense of Parasite

1. Loaded Word Fallacy: “Parasite” is part of rhetoric strategy attempting to dehumanize and degrade children-in-utero so it’s easier to morally justify killing them.

2. Insufficient Cause: Even if a human was acting as a parasite, that alone isn’t enough to justify killing a fellow human being.

3. Disanalogy: The mother-child relation is substantially different from a burglar/trespasser/malicious-intruder/etc.

4. Non-Sequitur or Ad Absurdum: Either fetal “parasites” should all be killed because they are harmful (ad absurdum) or parasitism doesn’t support the pro-choice position (non-sequitur)

5. Dependent Children should be loved and cared for, not killed.

*And for anti-vaxers, they should take whatever measures are practically equivalent to preventing measles, mumps, etc. The point is not about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of vaccination in particular, but about the importance of disease prevention generally.

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**2. Insufficient Cause: Even if a human was acting as a parasite, that alone isn’t enough to justify killing a fellow human being.**

**3. Disanalogy: The mother-child relation is substantially different from a burglar/trespasser/malicious-intruder/etc.**

**4. Non-Sequitur or Ad Absurdum: Either fetal “parasites” should all be killed because they are harmful (ad absurdum) or parasitism doesn’t support the pro-choice position (non-sequitur)**