PZ Myers discusses abortion and how asinine the anti-choice positions actually are. From the article Abortion rights are human rights.
[…]
However, the equivalence of mother and fetus is an untenable proposition. A mouse has more complexity and autonomy than a fetus, and we don’t even hesitate when the choice is between the life of a mouse and a human being. We don’t even argue about it. And to argue that a single-celled zygote or even an embryo with a few dozen cells at implantation is anything but a negligible component of any moral equation is utterly absurd. It’s a fantasy of the deeply ignorant, the kind of people who think the babies on Pro-Life Across America billboards are actually accurate representations of the age-specific fetus, to think that there’s something cute, adorable, personable about a self-organizing mass of cells.
So I have to agree, and think the only reasonable conclusion, is reflected in this memorial to Dr George Tiller, the man murdered by an anti-choice fanatic.
Dr. Tiller listened to his patients, he trusted their decisions, and he knew that the people he was helping deserved his ear and his trust. He treated his patients like people (which really shouldn’t be such a radical position but, because of how anti-choicers have shaped the narrative around abortion, it is). He believed that those he helped were more important than the fetus inside of them. That is not a morally-bankrupt position. THAT IS THE MORAL SIDE.
Trusting patients, seeing them as individuals, believing in their abilities to make decisions for their own specific lives: THAT IS THE MORAL SIDE.
Thank you for everything you did, Dr. Tiller. Thank you for everything and everyone you championed. Thank you for risking your life to provide your patients with a safe and legal medical procedure. Thank you for doing so with no regrets, no animosity, no judgement, and no apologies.
You, sir, were a moral man on a moral mission. And I won’t forget it. WE ARE THE MORAL SIDE.
Well said. Also, a brief summation from the comments section of that same post which bears repetition; many thanks to mythbri for making clear and concise argument:
This conversation has been had over and over again with other similar commenters here. Is any further evidence necessary to demonstrate that there are non-religious folk who are still anti-choice (even though both of these commenters seem to be in the “I’m pro-choice, but” category)?
…
jimashby
Here is why I despise “I’m pro-choice, but” people more than people who are just plain anti-choice:
You are setting arbitrary conditions on my humanity.
Do you understand this? Do you get that I am a person with bodily autonomy 100% of the time. Not just for 20 weeks. Not just for two trimesters. Not even 99.95% of the time.
I am a person (with all the rights that entails) 100% of the time.
That does not magically change when or if I become pregnant, and honestly, it scares the SHIT out of me that anyone thinks that it does.
You know why the anti-choice and the “I’m pro-choice, but” positions are necessarily misogynistic? Because you are making the assumption that there are women out there that are making choice that you don’t approve of, and that your opinion of their choices is even remotely relevant or worth respecting.
You think that it’s okay for a woman’s choice about her own body to be irrelevant. You’re okay with the fact that arbitrary “viability” restrictions on abortions DO cause women to have children they don’t want. You’re okay with the fact that these arbitrary restrictions DO cause women to lose their health or their life. And while you’ll probably claim that you’re not “okay” with these things, this is the fucking reality of the situation. Okay? Your wishfulness for a perfect legal solution does not magically make this solution the reality, and if you’re aware of that and are okay with the collateral damage this causes to some women who slip through this imperfect and wrong system, then I’ve got nothing further to say to you.
You know why I despise you “I’m pro-choice, but” types? Because I don’t see you doing anything to curb the erosion of reproductive rights that we face in the U.S. I see you shrugging your shoulders and saying “That’s plenty of time” or “They can always go somewhere else for an abortion.”
You know why I despise you “I’m pro-choice, but” types? Because in these discussions, there is barely a smidgen of difference between you and an anti-choice type.
Deal with it.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
16 comments
June 7, 2013 at 6:55 am
john zande
Arb, Robert Neilsen has an interesting post/discussion going: When Does Life Begin.
Prayson, of course, is at it.
http://robertnielsen21.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/when-does-life-begin/
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June 7, 2013 at 8:31 am
cocacolafiend
If we could get rid of the rubbish, propaganda etc. that surrounds abortion, we could deal with the real issues, such as the psychological trauma some women face after having them.
They need support and proper, unbiased counseling, not further judgement.
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June 7, 2013 at 8:54 am
syrbal
Propaganda that surrounds abortion? You mean like religious types being shown pictures of late term abortions and taught that is what ALL abortions are like? You mean like billboards telling minorities that abortions are want the white majority WANTS to cut their numbers?
What we need is rid of the propaganda that tells women they are not the right ones to make decisions about what happens to their own bodies. We need rid of propaganda that bases the worth of women on whether or not they are producing children.
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June 7, 2013 at 9:18 am
The Arbourist
@JZ
I used to like philosophy, then the yobs got a hold of it… *sigh* Prayson seems to enjoy finding philosophical nuggets and seems happy to merrily deny women their agency using the words of others.
Update: His philosophical wanking is rebutted. :)
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June 7, 2013 at 10:10 am
Mera
As I posted on the thread, JimAshby is pretending that pro-choicers get abortions at 30 weeks for recreation
He can’t argue the point that post viability abortions are often on wanted children who are dead or dying, or on women who are going to die from pregnancy.
So he has to pretend that pro-choicers all want recreational abortions post viability. The later the better! Cuz baby killin’s is fun~!
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June 7, 2013 at 10:30 am
The Arbourist
@Mera
*sigh*
How many hoops do women have to jump through to get it through to the fracking menz that they are fully autonomous people? I’ll have to revisit the thread and get updated on the licking JimAshby is taking. :)
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June 7, 2013 at 1:03 pm
Prayson Daniel
Thanks John and Arb. Arb that was awesome comment at Robert post. You are super and clearly intelligent clear thinker. You too John. I hope I shared a little of my mind, when I stand next to giants, like you two, that stir critical thinking, even though we do not share the conclusion.
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June 7, 2013 at 6:30 pm
Mera
You could say that ‘life’ begins with the egg that is created 3 weeks prior to ovulation.
If that egg is defective in certain ways (polarity, it gets complicated) fertilization can STILL successfully take place, but the resulting zygote/embryo will spontaneously abort or fail to implant at some stage.
So no, fertilization is NOT the ‘beginning of life’, not in any real sense.
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June 8, 2013 at 8:01 am
The Arbourist
@Prayson Daniel
Thank you.
You are, in my brief experience, unfailingly polite on the blogs I’ve seen you comment on. A rarity on the internet to be sure.
It would be nice if you could put your considerable skills to arguing for less disagreeable points of view. :)
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June 8, 2013 at 8:05 am
The Arbourist
@Mera
But Mera you seem to miss the important idea that one should not mention science when it does not support your particular point of view.
Recall the hammers of ‘scientific fact’ deployed when in a *gasp* introductory embryology text, the embryo was described as human and thus the anti-choice/religious “life begins at conception” drum beat began, nuance and actual physical facts aside.
*sigh*
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June 8, 2013 at 8:22 am
Mera
@arb
You might find this to be interesting, from an embryologist:
You and I contain much, much more information, both genetic and otherwise, than a blastocyst. That’s why I can write this column and you can read it, whereas a blastocyst just.. .sits there. Indeed, that is the exactly the point of stem cell research: the stem cells in the blastocyst have not yet acquired the molecular programming required for differentiation, and so they remain pluripotent, awaiting the necessary molecular signals (the information) that will tell them whether to become nerve or muscle, skin or bone.
Yes, once upon a time we were blastocysts, too. Nothing more than a little clump of cells, each of them a snippet of DNA surrounded by cytoplasm. But that DNA was later transcribed into RNA, and that RNA was translated into proteins. And some of those proteins were transcription factors that told other cells in the blastocyst what to do, when to divide, where to migrate. Transcription factors regulated the expression of still other transcription factors. Genes were turned on and off with clockwork precision. Some genes were methylated, so they could never be turned on again.
In other words, the genome and the proteome of the blastocyst were changed as the embryo accumulated molecular information that the blastocyst did not have.
The embryo became a fetus, with complex orientations of tissues–loaded with spatial, genetic, biochemical and mechanical information that simply did not exist in the embryo.
The fetus became a child with a nervous system, and that nervous system sucked up information about the world, hard-wiring pathways for vision and movement, learning to make subtle distinctions between this and that, accumulating information that simply did not exist in the fetus.
In other words, the blastocyst launched a genetic program that both extracted and acquired information. It didn’t start out as a human being. It became a human being, with a personality, feelings, attitudes and memories, by accumulating information that was not there before.
Equating a blastocyst with a human being is like equating a brand new copy of an inexpensive spreadsheet program with the priceless databases that you’ll eventually build up with that program. It’s no less ridiculous than saying that a blueprint has the same value as a skyscraper–that it is the skycraper.
No. They are not the same.
We can certainly grant that a blastocyst and a fingernail contain the same genes. However, in 2001 we can no longer agree with his assertion that a fingernail can never become a baby. Clearly, it is quite within our grasp now to create a blastocyst from almost any cell of the body. Your hair follicles contain thousands–no, millions of potential human lives. Every cell in your body (save the erythrocytes) contains a nucleus, and that nucleus could be extracted and processed, and it could be placed in an enucleated oocyte, and you could implant that oocyte in a woman whose endometrium might be at the right stage for implantation, and that woman might carry the pregnancy to term.
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June 8, 2013 at 8:32 am
The Arbourist
@Mera
Thank you for the information. :)
It is always nice to have something to source when my brain isn’t working on full coffee capacity. Did something similar appear on Pharyngula? The most recent abortion thread is filled with information and arguments that are valuable when arguing with the forced birth lobby.
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June 8, 2013 at 9:58 am
Mera
No, that’s all mine
And with the polarity thing, it usually serves to shut the forced birthers up.
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June 8, 2013 at 10:00 am
Mera
I’ll give you a nice one I grabbed from RH reality check, about fetal pain and sentience:
Are you willfully ignorant or are you just that uneducated about fetal development ?
Either way, you need to educate yourself before you take the liberty to make decisions for others based on false, or just flat out misleading statements.
Your glib and unsupported statements clearly will not hold up to any sort of scrutiny from an unbiased and educated mind.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt and presume that you are just plain uneducated so I will spell out reality of fetal development and the development of sentience and awareness to you.
A brain-dead person with a functioning heart/lungs/brain stem
will still show electrical activity in the brain, but they won’t show the
particular “brainwaves” that are characteristic of the higher
cortical functions of cognition. So the whole EEG isn’t “flat”, just
the part of the EEG profile that shows a thinking person is using that brain tissue.
(A better description would be the more scientific exactitude of “clinical significant electrical brain activity” to avoid confusion.)
At this point no “person” with sentience or awareness is present in
the body, and it is legal to discontinue life support, and harvest organs for transplant, as without a functioning brain the body is just a collection of tissue.
People who are diagnosed as clinically brain dead are routinely disconnected from life support and used to provide the organs for transplantations (no murder charges have ever been filled for this and none ever will be)
A fetus does not have the bilaterally synchronous electroencephalographic patterns in the cortical area of the brain
to be considered alive until 26-30 weeks of gestation, exactly like those who are diagnosed as clinically brain dead by physicians.
People who are considered clinically brain-dead, have brainwaves (and sometimes even a beating heart), just not in the part of the brain that means that they are still alive.
At this point doctors can start organ harvesting or turn off life support, no murder charges have ever, or will ever be been filed.
A fetus younger then 26-30 weeks does not have all the brain structure (cortex) or the synapse, neurons etc in place to show more brain activity then a person who is clinically brain dead, as measured with the same machine (EEG)
The heart might beat, but nobody is home.
No embryo or fetus has ever been found to have “brain
waves,” before 26-30 weeks gestation, although extensive EEG studies have been done on premature babies.
In fact a fetus does not have a functional cortex before
20-24 weeks gestation, no neurons, dendrites, and axons, with synapses between them are physically present.
(Pretty hard to show activity in a structure that is not even present yet)
Since these requirements are not present in the human cortex before 20-24 weeks of gestation, it is not possible to record the clinical significant electrical brain activity indicative of any form sentience and awareness prior to 20-24 weeks. (at that point the cerebral cortex can display some small intermittent non synchronous activity (“stutter”)
This is not surprising since it is pretty hard to show activity in a brain structure that is not even present yet.
Functional maturity of the cerebral cortex is suggested by fetal and neonatal electroencephalographic patterns, bilaterally synchronous
electroencephalograpic are ONLY seen at a minimum of 26 to 29 weeks gestation.
Studies used are;
-Hamlin,H. (1964), “Life or Death by EEG,”Journal of the American
Medical Association, October 12,113
-J. Goldenring, “Development of the Fetal Brain,” New England Jour. of Med., Aug. 26, 1982, p. 564
-K.J.S. Anand, a leading researcher on pain in newborns, and P.R. Hickey, published in NEJM
So until the fetus has the same level of clinical brain activity
(first seen at 26-29 weeks gestation, well after abortion becomes unavailable) as the woman in question, it is very dishonest (to say the least) to award the fetus more human rights than the woman.
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June 9, 2013 at 8:39 am
The Arbourist
@CCF
Oh, wouldn’t it be nice if we could do that. You’re absolutely right the abortion issue needs to be out in the open and framed in a healthy woman-centric way. It should be available readily in concert with the support and counselling you mention.
Women face enough barriers in society as is; we should be taking the barriers down not buttressing them as our anti-choice friends would have it.
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June 16, 2013 at 6:04 am
The DWR Sunday Disservice – Not My Law! – Sanctimonious Christiains and Their Codswallop. | Dead Wild Roses
[…] conclude, planting the confused flag of religious certainty, that Abortion is Immoral. Say no […]
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