This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

It's because there are things that are matters of belief that shouldn't be legislated. As conservative Joe Scarborough pointed out recently, he doesn't believe that homosexuality is right, but said that Jesus talked a lot more about divorce, which he himself had been through.

Do you want to outlaw divorce, homosexuality, eating a kid (goat) with its mother's milk? The examples you cite are examples of non-consensual activities, and they just don't compare to a private medical decision. The law doesn't exist so that nobody will ever be offended by the personal choices of others, it exists to maintain order and prevent people from harming each other.

You think outlawing abortion will make it go away? Think again. The countries with the lowest abortion and unwanted pregnancy rates are the countries where it's legal, and where contraception and sex education are readily available. The countries with the highest rates are the ones who've outlawed abortion and sex ed. In fact, the states here in the US who've made abortion virtually impossible to get and sex education a thing of the past have the highest rates of unwanted and teen pregnancy right now, while the citizens of Massachusetts have the lowest rates of these things. Hell, the fine citizens of MA have the lowest divorce rate in the country, come to that.

And since when did conservatives get to thinking that passing a law would magically fix all problems? If a law criminalizing abortion were passed, and we went back to the days of back alley coathanger abortions, you think that's any more pleasing to the Lord?

Natasha:

Could you point out where the fetus/baby consents to the act of its own killing?

Then the whole notion of consensual acts just doesn't apply.

So, let's go back: Is abortion a moral evil or not? On what basis do you make this claim?

As to my supposed implication of making abortion illegal: My argument does not depend on making abortion illegal. In fact, if Christians simply lived what they believed instead of hedging their beliefs with illogical nonsense, we'd go a far way toward eliminating abortion, divorce and other behaviors which the Christian faith declares to be sin. My whole point is that Christians cannot consistently hold that abortion is a moral evil and yet uphold its legalization.

As to your use of statistics, you first of all don't cite any studies, and second of all do not actually note whether or not the divorce rates are comparing apples to oranges. As I've said in other venues: Perhaps the MA divorce rate is lower because more people are living together outside of marriage than are getting married and not divorcing. That would tend to drive the statistics down. I'm not, of course, suggesting that my supposition is the case--I have no data to support it--but I am suggesting that one-to-one correspondences with statistics, especially to establish some pseudo-moral superiority, is highly suspect.

Would you like to actually address my arguments instead of arguing tangents?

Your questions are loaded. Your definition (that life begins at conception) is implicit in each.

Why does life begin at conception when it ends at brain death? Many cells in the body are still alive even after someone is decapitated -- in fact, most of them are, even in the brain. But brain activity has stopped.

I think it is reasonable to apply the same criteria to the start of life as to its end: when brain activity begins, there begins life.

So to answer your question: abortion is no longer a specific enough term. Murder is a moral evil -- but before brain activity begins, abortion is not murder.

Tall guy:

While I do not concede your point about brain activity, nonetheless, since recordable brain activity begins at 43 days, (the brain, spinal cord and nervous system forms earlier, at 20 days, and though brain activity is not recordable prior to about 43 days, one cannot definitively say there is no brain activity), this would bar any abortions from six weeks on. Do I have your agreement that you will work to prohibit any abortions after six weeks' gestation?

Unsurprisingly to you I'm sure, I find your markers of brain activity to be exceedingly more arbitrary than the point of conception. After all, whether or not we can record brain activity, clearly the brain is forming and at work in this early development.

In fact, any other marker aside from conception is imminently more arbitrary than choosing conception. For one thing we know for certain: human life begins at conception. We don't actually know when brain activity begins; we only know it's not measurable prior to about 43 days. We used to not be able to measure subatomic particles, but our inability to so measure them didn't obliterate their existence. There is only one consistent and coherent marker here: Personhood begins at conception. No other scientific observation supports any other view.

As to your question why life begins at conception but ends at brain death--you have made a fundamental category mistake. Death is only measured in part by brain death; other factors come into play. And in point of fact, the measuring of death in terms of brain death is the measuring of death of only one--though clearly a significant one--human system. The human person is much more than merely their brain activity. Whereas apart from conception, there is no brain activity, no respiration, no heart activity--no person. Comparison between conception and cessation of brain activity are two different categories, and thus there is no parallel equivalency between the two.

Furthermore, death has not always been measured by the cessation of brain activity, and as we come to know more about the biological processes of dying, we may come upon a further measurement which better guages when actual death occurs. And when that happens, if it should happen, measurment of death by the cessation of brain activity will seen to be just as arbitrary a marker as other candidates.

Conception, on the other hand, has never ceased being the fundamental and absolute marker as to the initiation of human life. It is indeed the sine qua non, both measurement and factual event.

Thus your markers prove to be merely arbitrary and lacking in substantive rationality.

Ahhh...I see the clear connection between a decapitated adult and a developing 5 week old baby.

Except of course that decapitated adults have a definitive predestination to make any calvinist proud.

One can record brain waves from aborted fetuses at 7 weeks immediately after delivery.

Very few abortions are done before 7 weeks but while I agree that life begins at conception, I would be delighted to apply a "brain death" standard to the unborn child.

Shari:

Yep, that would pretty much eliminate abortions on the "brain death" standard, wouldn't it?

In fact, given that according to the Guttmacher Institute, more than half of all abortion are performed before nine weeks or within five weeks of the first missed period (which realistically is going to be about the six week point, or 42 days, at the earliest), we are, realisitically, looking at eliminating nearly all abortions simply by instantiating 43-day brain wave activity as a norm.

But like you, I reject this norm for the much less arbitrary point of conception.

Also you really cannot rely on abortion dating statistics. In the pathology lab where I used to work, measurement based dating that we did in the lab (when there was enough of the baby remaining intact) almost always dated the fetus as being older (sometimes significantly) than the requisition that accompanied the so called "Products of conception."

In the two years that I worked there, I NEVER saw an aborted fetus that was earlier than 7 weeks. The vast majority were 8-12 weeks. And it was the most gruesome work I've ever done and ultimately the experience convinced me to give up my "it's an individual's personal choice" stance.

EVERYONE considering an abortion should share such an experience first. Notions that one is simply sucking out a microscopic ball of cells is so far removed from reality that it is frightening. Putting a tiny baby in a blender is more like it. Five fingers, five toes, rib cage and head, arms and legs...often able to guess the sex...brutal, just brutal.

Natasha writes:

"And since when did conservatives get to thinking that passing a law would magically fix all problems? If a law criminalizing abortion were passed, and we went back to the days of back alley coathanger abortions, you think that's any more pleasing to the Lord?"

I have no doubt that it would be very pleasing to the Lord, based on the fact that the number of murders would be down significantly. I have never understood the "back alley" thinking. Killing in the "back alley" is wrong, so let's fix it by killing in the open?? That does not make any sense at all...