But part of why it is so effective is that most people have seen an infant and even at 10 or 12 weeks you are able to see the similarities between what a fetus looks like and what they act like and what you experientially know that an infant looks like or acts like. It is visual proof that what you are considering aborting is nothing more or less than a baby.

So while you might be correct that at 12 weeks you could not tell if the fetus was that of a chimp or a human, when they have put the goo on your (or your wife’s) belly and are moving the wand across her, you know which it is. And it is as alive as it ever will be. I suspect this has a lot to do with the effectiveness of the use of ultrasound in preventing abortions.

Yes, I am sure that the pro-choice folk would say that my definition of human life is something like “shallow” or some other description that indicates that I see the world, in some instances, as black and white. But my contention is that the pro-choice logic begins at “abortion should be allow–and even encouraged” and THEN the discussion moves to “what argument can I use against those who consider it murder”. And that is why their definition becomes nuanced.

Biologically, there is no question about whether or not a fetus is a human life. No one talks about using chimp fetuses for stem cell research for humans, do they? Biologically, there is no question that a fetus is alive. All of the criteria such as movement, response to stimulus, etc. are met. Anything beyond that is nuance.

You may say that my definition of life becomes nuanced when I argue that, say, capital punishment is legitimate. The difference is that I am not saying “this person is not longer human, so we may kill him”. I am saying, “this person has forfeited his inalienable right to life so we may kill him”. The pro-choice position regarding abortion allows one person to choose to forfeit this right for another who is innocent.

Regarding exposure to images of a fetus, if there is a special nature that elevates human life above animal life (and I believe there is), then that special nature is not apparently present for weeks, as the fetus passes through stages that could be mistaken for the life of virtually any animal, then any mammal. At the latest, it is at 21st week that we can be distinquished from a chimpanzee. So while your observation is interesting, it doesn’t seem to me to get to a core substantive argument. Imagery alone cannot provide an answer, for as advertisers demonstrate every day, it can manipulate emotion. (For instance, show to those same individuals contemplating abortion referenced in your article images of fetuses of other animals and ask whether the abortion of any should be allowed to proceed, or whether the killing of all animals should be outlawed, and I suspect you would get statistically significant shifts.)

While I don’t subscribe to it, I do happen to believe that vegetarian buddhists have the purest and least conflicted grasp of the value of life. All others, whether pro-choice or pro-life, so far to me seem to be highly conflicted and reliant on the argument shutting down before any form of core truth is uncovered. From your perspective, however, that should be problematic. For if it proves rare and perhaps impossible to arrive at a core truth on the topic, that in itself suggests that it is on the conscience of each individual to discern, an implicitly pro-choice outcome.

But you are right that my argument is not particularly persuasive. Of course, neither is the pro-choice argument. The most persuasive argument is an ultrasound. I have the ultrasound of my two boys on video tape. It is a truly amazing thing.

But more than it being amazing, it is a convincer. When women contemplating abortion go to clinics, somewhere around 30% choose life when they do not see an ultrasound, but 70-90% choose life when they do.

http://www.massnews.com/2002_editions/01_Jan/12302preg.htm

I have many friends on both sides of this divide, all of whom I consider to be good people. I think of one example who has re-arranged an entire financial life to live with simplicity and frugality that others would benefit, and that person believes that life at the stage you describe does not have the character wherein rights are inherent. That person is a good person and will never personally derive any benefit, selfish or otherwise, from this topic. He will never accidentally conceive a child nor choose to abort one.

If you wish to see a pro-life position prevail, it seems to me that you have got to be better not only at defending it, but at persuading others that their views are incorrect. The vast majority who disagree with you will never abort and have no interest in exercising that current legal prerogative. That they are unwilling to criminalize it is due to their not being persuaded. You have stated only a position of firm conviction with which others can and do disagree, and said nothing (that I can detect) that would persuade them otherwise or even reveal that intent.

An old argument went that they were not a person until they were “quickened”, i.e. when the mother feels the baby moving. The problem is that we now know that the fetus is moving as early as 5 weeks after fertilization.

It is all ludicrous. The position was reached first and the arguments developed second.

Now, Chris, I want to make a couple of things clear here: First, while I am a religious man, none of my arguments are based on my religion. There are arguments there, but I try not to bring them into the public policy square. Second, the morality that I would impose on society is no different than the morality that we impose when we say that one person cannot murder another or that one person cannot steal money from someone else at gunpoint. When you write legislation of a sort to control behavior, you are legislating morality, which is simply saying that something is right and something is wrong.

I think we are at a good stopping point for this discussion. For my part I wanted to display the dizzying logic necessary to come to a pro-choice position. I also wanted to get the argument out that life is a value woven into our society by the founders from the beginning. It should not be lost–even in a post-modern age.

n.
1.. A member of the genus Homo and especially of the species H. sapiens.
2. A person: the extraordinary humans who explored Antarctica.
adj.
1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of humans: the course of human events; the human race.
2. Having or showing those positive aspects of nature and character regarded as distinguishing humans from other animals: an act of human kindness.
3. Subject to or indicative of the weaknesses, imperfections, and fragility associated with humans: a mistake that shows he’s only human; human frailty.
4. Having the form of a human.
5. Made up of humans: formed a human bridge across the ice.

Depending on their definition (again this is no technicality, but essential, in my opinion) people differ on whether or not the sperm and egg united into one genetically distinct entity yet qualifies as a human life with inherent rights. The same applies at later stages: The permanently brain dead to some is human life, for instance, while to others has none of the positive characteristics that separate us as distinct from animals.

People seem to differ, and I assume you disagree with definitions that would produce conclusions different from your own. So I it is that I am interested in what it is that human means to you.

At some point, we must realize that the pro choice position is looking for technicalities to justify its position rather than take a rational view of life. As I have said multiple times, the pro-choice movement does not care about the definition of life. Or for that matter the definition of human.

So what about this other points of view on when rights should be conferred. Viability is somewhat insane based simply on the examples that you give. The Chinese (we may both be wrong, but my recollection agrees with yours) definition basically say that viability is (was) 1 year. A local hospital is saying that 24 weeks (gestational) is viable. I have seen another instance of 23 weeks. So if you are conceived in one place and time you receive rights at 23 gestational weeks, but if you are conceived in another at one year?

But the reason that I consider “viability” an insane definition of when rights should be conferred is because what it means is “viability in standard temperature and pressure for fully developed human beings”. In other words, out of the womb. But what if I went into space and stepped out of the spaceship without a spacesuit? I would certainly die and do so quickly. Does that mean that I am not viable? But a fetus needs a particular environment to develop. In my mind “viability” begins at conception.

I have repeatedly given my justification for why rights should be conferred at conception. At conception there is a living, distinct, human life. Our country was founded on the idea (among others) that life is a inalienable right granted to us by the Creator.

I (as do most Americans and perhaps you) reject a moral imperative that the life of the sperm or the egg prior to their unity have achieved that status, although the Catholic Church seems to embrace it. You on the other hand (if I understand correctly) argue that when life in each assumes unity with the other and produces a genetic distinction, it becomes human life with inherent rights and a moral imperative for preservation. Some do not consider a status of human life to exist at that point, but argue that only upon viability are moral imperatives and rights conferred.

Some traditional human societies argue that only upon actual birth do such imperatives and rights appear. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, because infant mortality was so outrageously high, the Chinese traditionally considered that a life only becomes fully vested at the 1-year mark, which is why by their traditional standards what we would have considered to be infanticide in exposing infants after birth, they considered to be within the realm of morality because infants weren’t yet fully vested. (Much less, therefore, do they consider infants within the womb to be vested with inherent rights and moral imperatives.)

Clearly in America, our consensus is willing to commit to viability at the latest. Unless you just want to rail against the majority without any truly persuasive attempt, it seems to me that you have to be able to justify why at the genetic union life achieves inherent rights, when the majority seems presently to accept that it is only later, when life has its other essential ingredients previously lacking.

Hence my question why it is at the point of genetic distinction, not earlier and not later, that you argue the criteria for human life is satisfied and it is vested with inherent rights and a moral imperative for protection.