For some reason, the argument always bogs down on the “human being” part of the formula; I’d like to see more skeptical discussion of the “innocent” part.

Gestational diabetes is a clear demonstration that the fetus is utterly unscrupulous about the welfare of its own mother; in time of famine, it would cheerfully starve her for that extra pound of birth weight. Now, obviously, this selfish behavior is not the reasoned, conscious choice of a moral actor. But the proper reach of the law extends to protecting citizens from unlawful assault, even by the use of proportionate force against maniacs who aren’t legally responsible for their own actions. Nor is the personal right of self-defense conditioned on the mental state of the attacker.

At most, a fetus might be endowed by the state with a right to safe haven in an incubator, if it can survive there. I can’t see how it can ever have an unconditional right to continued adverse occupancy of a womb.

Not clear.

Left out of the so-called partial birth abortion debate is why partial birth abortions are being performed.

Suppose, for sake of argument, a large number of such abortions are performed for anencephaly. Suppose the polling question is rephrased as “do you support this procedure, described by groups opposed to abortions as ‘partial-birth abortion’, and by medical practitioners as X, in cases of anencaphaly, a condition in which much or all of the baby’s brain is missing and in which case the baby has zero chance of surviving?”

Similarly for questions on parental notification: what if the girl’s parents are abusive (in the limit, we could posit a situation where the father is the girl’s stepfather)?

Finally, look at my post from April 3rd, 2005 at 6:33 am and tell me who’s more out of step with the average American.

In writing, Roe allows for restrictions on third trimester abortions. In actual practice, however, my underestanding is that they have not been allowed. Moreover, large majorities support restrictions on second-trimester abortions, which are not restricted in practice; it’s safe to say that Democrats who oppose partial-birth abortion bans and parental notification laws are on the fringe of public opinion.

Here’s what the 2004 Democratic Party platform says on abortion: We will defend the dignity of all Americans against those who would undermine it. Because we believe in the privacy and equality of women, we stand proudly for a woman’s right to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade, and regardless of her ability to pay. We stand firmly against Republican efforts to undermine that right. At the same time, we strongly support family planning and adoption incentives. Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.

Here is the 2004 Republican Party platform’s position: As a country, we must keep our pledge to the first guarantee of the Declaration of Independence. That is why we say the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and we endorse legislation to make it clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children. Our purpose is to have legislative and judicial protection of that right against those who perform abortions. We oppose using public revenues for abortion and will not fund organizations which advocate it. We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.

Without more details, that’s misleading. You’d have to detail what third trimester abortions RvW allows, and then look at polls on that topic.

For example, my impression—-though I don’t see that anyone has firm numbers on this—-is that quite a few third trimester abortions are done in cases of anencephaly. I’d wager that people’s opposition to third trimester abortions would on average change in that case.

I agree that there are more people who are extreme at the the pro-life side of the spectrum than the other. So? What has that to do with anything?

You’re claim that Dems are as beholden to the pro-choice extremists…

As long as the pro-life activists deny the right to an abortion in the first trimester, and as long as the pro-choice activists defend the right to an abortion in the third trimester, they will both be out-of-step with majority sentiment and will be opposed or ignored.

You again appear to be conflating an uncondition right to a third trimester abortion with a conditional one. I would wager that a majority is opposed to an unconditional right to an abortion in the third trimester, but I’ll also wager that a majority is in favor of third trimester abortions where the life of the mother is in danger.

I agree that there are more people who are extreme at the the pro-life side of the spectrum than the other. So? What has that to do with anything?

As long as the pro-life activists deny the right to an abortion in the first trimester, and as long as the pro-choice activists defend the right to an abortion in the third trimester, they will both be out-of-step with majority sentiment and will be opposed or ignored. And the two opposing factions have absolutely no ground for compromise. So the status quo will not change, except that the pro-life forces are more organized and more zealous and are more motivated to make gains in their position wherever they can, and they have.

As someone says above, most people will identify as “pro-choice” or “pro-life” but their actual position is almost invariably more nuanced than the “official” pro-choice or pro-life position. Neither movement, as an activist movement, has room for someone who does not take the extreme position. In regard to politics, which is the context here, the pro-choice position and the pro-life position can be fairly characterized as protecting the woman’s rights to her body and reproductive choice absolutely in the case of pro-choice, or protecting the fetus’s right to life absolutely in the case of pro-life. Both positions are dogmatic and both deny the legitimacy of the claims of rights the other position makes.

That’s silly. What fraction of those of us who consider ourselves pro-choice fit your outline of a “pro-choice extremist”? I’ll wager it’s at least one order of magnitude lower than the fraction of pro-lifers who fit your definition of “pro-life extremist”.

The Democratic position, AFAIK, is to support Roe v. Wade, which (again, AFAIK) doesn’t provide much legal support for abortions in the third trimester (except perhaps for the life of the mother). The Republican position, AFAICT, is to support the “Human Life Amendment” or whatever they’re calling it, which is pretty consistent with what you’re describing as the extremist pro-life view.

“Just a note for MQ —it’s not that hard to see why people would think God told them fetuses are people. In Isaiah 44:2 God refers to himself as “the LORD that made thee, and formed thee from the womb” (KJV) or “the LORD… he who made you, who formed you in the womb” (NIV). He doesn’t say “the LORD who formed a clump of cells that later became thee”. ”

I don’t get why anyone would think this tells in favor of an earlier gestational date for personhood or ensoulment as opposed to a later date.

Suppose I think (as e.g. Aquinas did—and he had read Isaiah) that there is no soul and no person until sometime after “quickening”, i.e. after the first trimester. So, sometime in the fourth month or later, the LORD (damn, caps-lock stuck again) made me and formed me in the womb. He certainly didn’t do it elsewhere, and someone else didn’t do it: I was formed by God, and in the womb. Yup. In the fourth month, or thereabouts. Prior to that, it’s a clump of cells. Course, God made the clump of cells, too. And at some point, God formed me out of the clump of cells, by implanting a soul in those non-ensouled cells. That view is perfectly consistent with Isaiah (as Aquinas and most of the history of the Roman Catholic church very well knew).

So all these passages say is that whenever I was formed, it was sometime before birth (i.e. in the womb), and it was done by God.

How is this supposed to show Biblical evidence that personhood begins at conception?

Do y’all really believe that these questions can be argued out once and for all, and that a conclusion can be arrived at that will serve as a once-and-for-all, rock-solid policy foundation? I mean, not just as far as you personally are concerned, but in some larger, more general, the-truth-has-finally-been-arrived-at kind of way?

A-ha-ha-ha.

Sorry. It seems to me that, especially on topics like abortion, we knock up against the limits of debate pretty quickly. Are there arguments on either side that haven’t been rehearsed, elaborated, and revisited a zillion times? Is this discussion really going to go anywhere it hasn’t already been? Is this a case where arguing further stands any chance of really advancing the discussion?

Especially in the case of something like abortion, you run up against feelings and experiences at a certain point, and pretty damn quickly. I’m not sure how susceptible these are to argument or analysis. (Or how susceptible to analysis they should be.) But, past a certain point, I’m not sure what the point of going after these feelings and experiences in analytic/intellectual/debating ways is either.

An example? A woman I know—Jewish, liberal, ‘70s-feminist—came out of Oberlin and went straight to work at a NYC abortion clinic. She lasted about a year. I asked why she left. She told me that nothing had prepared her for the reality of abortion. Many of the women experienced horrible moods and remorse. And in the procedure room she saw little fingers and feet being swept out of the women having abortions. She told me that the picture the pro-choice people who’d filled her with enthusiasm for the abortion cause had given her hadn’t included any of that.

These days, she continues to think—regretfully – that abortion should be legal and available, but she also thinks it should be discouraged. But it isn’t a position based on debate, consistency, intellectual rigor, or any such thing. It’s a position based on experience, intuitions, sympathy and feeling. Try to engage her in debate about abortion, and this woman—every bit as bright as you and I are—will tell you she doesn’t want to argue, her position is based on her experience and her feelings. She doesn’t want to debate; as far as she’s concerned, what she’s seen and how it made her feel have given her the material she needs to come to a (fuzzy, regretful, admittedly imperfect) policy stance. Make very single brilliant debating argument you want, you aren’t going to budge her. You’re just going to annoy her with your lack of respect for her experience and her feelings. And, in this case, I’m very much on her side—brilliant though your arguments may be, I’ll still think you’re totally missing the real point.

Anyway, perhaps it doesn’t hurt to remember that for many people the realities they encounter are far more important than the abstractions that arguments and debates over principles throw around. Rehearsing all the familiar old arguments … I mean, have fun doing so if you find it entertaining or enlightening, or it gets your blood stirring, or something. I’m not sure what you hope to accomplish, though.

I look forward to having this observation defeated by dazzling intellectual debating points …

“A fertilized egg is human. What else could it be?”

Is a blood cell human? Well, yes, it’s “human”, but not “a human”. Neither is a fertilized egg.

“It’s a human in its first minute, hour, week, month of development.”

…but you assert differently. At least the pro-lifers who are pro-life for metaphysical reasons have good reason to assume personhood of a fertilized egg. Your view, on the other hand, seems completely irrational and insupportable.

“All ‘stages’ are arbitrary.”

Sez who? You? There’s no reason that this must necessarily be the case and, indeed, it isn’t. There is a point before which cells aren’t differentiated but after they are. That seems like one very non-arbitrary change that could be used to define “stage”.

“But they became ‘persons’ only in family, in community. Conception doesn’t supply personhood, only potential.”

This would support the pro-infanticide view, which I personally think is a reasonable view. Almost no one else does because almost no one else questions the magical immediate personhood of a newborn baby. But if personhood is a social construct, then we’ve really got a lot of leeway here. Maybe women aren’t persons in a given social context. Then there’d not be any rights of theirs to protect.

“As I said before, people who elevate the interests of the fetus regardless of the interests of the woman involved are in effect patriarchal…”

“Regardless”? Maybe so, because that’s equivalent to denying the interests of the woman. But elevating the interests of the fetus above the interests of the woman for good reason is not patriarchal. It’s not even patriarchal in effect necessarily, which would be important to your practical argument.

You’ve got a good rap there, it’s like something from a pamphlet. But it’s not an argument.

A fertilized egg is human. What else could it be? It’s a human in its first minute, hour, week, month of development. All “stages” are arbitrary. This doesn’t mean that all fertilized eggs have the right to be born, grow, and become president.

All eggs and sperm are human, and have the potential to grow into persons if combined and nurtured. Obviously this is impossible.

Former folklore identified a moment called “quickening,” when the baby could be felt to move in the worm. Before that, it wasn’t a part of the community, of the community’s consciousness.

One becomes a “person” in community. All our kids had strong personalities that we could recognize, looking back, even before they were born. But they became “persons” only in family, in community. Conception doesn’t supply personhood, only potential.

As I said before, people who elevate the interests of the fetus regardless of the interests of the woman involved are in effect patriarchal, whether or not they’ve thought through the implications of their beliefs.

We can argue whether patriarchy is a good or bad thing. (Tribal society is usually led by a strong male, hopefully backed up by elders and wise women. Kingdoms are tribes with trappings. But kings aren’t necessarily the only form of government possible, or in modern conditions, the best. We can depart from our heritage for good reason.)

But that’s neither here nor there. That’s not the subject. Pro-choicers get so incensed because they think that pro-lifers are trying to pretend like the woman’s rights issue doesn’t exist or effectively doesn’t matter. But they also assert that the personhood issue doesn’t exist or effectively doesn’t matter. How convenient. Of course the other side does the same thing in reverse.

You don’t just get a solid majority with her no-abortion-with-limited-exceptions formula. You also get it with simple “limited abortion.” The country is closely divided, and pro-lifers get the good press these days, but the polls haven’t changed significantly in decades, and the polls are pretty clear: most Americans favor abortion rights. Note the careful use of the term “rights,” with its implication of freedom of action for the woman. The strict no-abortion position doesn’t even poll in the 30s, suggesting that Megan’s one step shy formulation is a home run, and the Clinton formulation – safe, rare, legal – is actually the solid majority view.

Far fewer people support elective abortion in the third (or even second) trimesters than support an absolute ban; more importantly, there is no national politician who supports abortion rights beyond what’s outlined in roe v. wade, while there are literally dozens of anti-abortion absolutists in the House and Senate.

None of this is directly relevant to the rather more intellectual discussion going on here (all horseshit aside), but I think it’s important to have a grasp on what Americans believe, and who has what position. Extremists win by pretending that the other side is equally extreme. With abortion, as with many other issues right now, the Republican position – as measured by where their elected officials stand – is the radical one. The Democratic position is not. Strict “pro-lifers” may insist that any abortion-accepting position is murderous and thus inherently radical, but that’s Humpty-talk. Radical means out of the mainstream, and Republicans like Santorum & Coburn are out of the mainstream on abortion, not Dems like Boxer or either Clinton.

I take your point about the fact that personhood does not imply an absolute right to life. Most people agree that there are circumstances (Just War, self defence, crowded-lifeboat scenarios etc) when undoubted persons can be legitimately killed.

However you can’t jump straight from there to “abortion is OK”. The question becomes: does abortion fall into any of the categories of situtation where it is legitimate to kill a person? Those cases where the continuing life of the fetus/child imperils the mother might well. But very few abortions are so clear cut.

BTW, just in case it wasn’t clear, my “…any other argument is horseshit” comment was meant to be a parody of and riposte to comment 61. I hope no one thinks it refers to comment 62, which wasn’t visible to me when I pressed “post”.