Ultrasound imaging technology is coming along so fast that you can now get a near-real time, moderate resolution image of a living fetus. Unfortunately, this new technology is also having an unfortunate consequence.
Sophisticated ultrasound scans that show foetuses as early as 12 weeks appearing to “walk” in the womb have had a dangerous impact on the public debate over abortion, leading doctors and scientists said yesterday.
The emotive photographs, taken with new fourdimensional imaging technology, have created a misleading impression that foetuses become viable and potentially self-aware at a much earlier stage than is actually the case, according to experts on foetal development.
Of course some people are interpreting generic activity as some sign of special human attributes in fetuses. Kevin Beck has found one prime example of a right-wing blog trying to imply that this is “dangerous” information, because it undercuts abortion arguments.
Nonsense. Fetal tissue moves. One of the things we know from developmental neurobiology is that embryos don’t form inert blobs of muscle first, and then at some later date start plugging the neural wiring into it—it’s all concurrent. As the first relatively undifferentiated scaffold of muscle and connective tissue is assembling in a region, the first threads of nerves reach out to contact it. Among other reasons, it means the major pathways can get laid out at a time when distances are short and the number of alternative choices small. Embryos are busy places, where cells are shuttling around everywhere and whole masses are shifting, and sure, in many species fetal growth is accompanied by twitches and shrugs and all kinds of superficially impressive activity. If you were trying to wire your house by stringing live cable to all of your outlets and appliances, wouldn’t you expect sparks and flashes and all kinds of odd activity?*
Here, for instance, is a zebrafish embryo at 24 hours post-fertilization.
That’s what they do: they twitch, repeatedly. Initially, it’s uncoordinated and slow, and they gradually get better at it, and send these rolling waves of muscle contractions down the length of their bodies to generate these rhythmic thrashing motions. You can’t read too much into it, though. The number of neurons involved in the circuit can be counted on the fingers of two hands in each hemisegment. It’s a handful of cells in a poorly understood circuit, repeated over and over again for each myotome. There isn’t even any central control—at this age, neurons of the hindbrain reticular formation are sending axons into the spinal cord, but they’re creeping along at a rate of about 100 µm/hour. They aren’t even there yet!
It’s even neater to watch (but much, much harder to photograph) the embryos at 18 hours post fertilization. The muscles are just beginning to differentiate—you can see some striations starting to emerge—and the first motor growth cones creep out of the spinal cord and head towards their targets. Even before they get there, random activity in the neurons is releasing transmitter, causing the fibers to twitch feebly. All you need is two cells interacting to get spontaneous motion. Sometimes just one is enough.
It’s a sign of the lack of awareness of the general public, and their willingness to be sucked into emotional visuals, that they think the movement of embryos somehow implies the onset of humanity. Movement and growth is what embryos do. Awareness and thinking, eh, not so much.
*One curious thing is that invertebrate embryos seem less prone to the kind of spastic activity I’m used to seeing in vertebrates. Grasshopper embryos were always a little eerie, I thought; they were completely still (except for a set of specific purposeful movements like katatrepsis, that position the embryo within the egg) while all these axons were precisely and silently wending their way through the tissues. Speaking of emotional interpretations, I find the impression of planning and intent more apparent in embryos that are sitting utterly still, rather than the ones that wobble and twitch. Malign, sneaky little buggers, hiding their busy, busy little plots…but naturally, they aren’t really doing anything consciously, either. They have even fewer neurons than my fish.
“That’s what they do: they twitch, repeatedly. Initially, it’s uncoordinated and slow, and they gradually get better at it, and send these rolling waves of muscle contractions down the length of their bodies to generate these rhythmic thrashing motions. You can’t read too much into it, though. The number of neurons involved in the circuit can be counted on the fingers of two hands in each hemisegment. It’s a handful of cells in a poorly understood circuit, repeated over and over again for each myotome. There isn’t even any central control–at this age, neurons of the hindbrain reticular formation are sending axons into the spinal cord, but they’re creeping along at a rate of about 100 µm/hour. They aren’t even there yet!”
>> Are you talking about yourself now? So you can be aborted from this planet too.
That’s original. No one has ever thought of insulting PZ’s brain capacity as a method of dissecting his arguments, rather than actually dissecting his arguments and demonstrating false premises or bad steps in his logic.
Apologies to any sarcasmometers overloaded as a result of this post.
Brilliant comment, Quantum. Shows no understanding of what was written before you, but you got your self-important saracastic jibe in. Well done.
Whats the current best estimate of how long after conception a fetus becomes “selfaware”?
Judging by quantum’s post, apparently some never do.
i don’t see this as any different than the undirected twitching of a corpse just after death. Nerve endings fire, that doesn’t imply conscious direction.
Just this friday, my wife had her first ultrasound. She was at week 13+0, and the ultrasound was to check for Downs Syndrome (the risk was evaluated around 1:10,000).
I’m happy to say that the experience was breathtaking. It wasn’t a fancy 4D ultrasound, but the oldfashioned 3D kind.
But when we saw the fetus for the first time thrashing about, jumping, swinging its arms – well it brought tears to my eyes. It was the first time the pregnancy was really real, like in gut feeling real, not just intellectually real.
But the thing is. We have been planning to have a child. We dropped contraceptives, and are planning how to make paternity and maternity leave function together with my wifes school.
In othe we want to have a child, so we see the fetus as the child it will someday become.
If the risk of Downs had been greater, and a biopsy had confirmed this, then we would have had an abortion. If the pregnancy had been unintional, and we didn’t want a child, then she would have had an abortion months ago.
You cannot legislate against free choice, just because some people are squemish!
I may be getting my facts wrong, but self-awareness, as far as I recall my first-year psyche, doesn’t manifest itself until well after birth, perhaps not until after one’s first birthday. Self-awareness should be not be confused with consciousness. Most vertabrates we could argue are conscious, but not all are self-aware. Self-awareness requires a certain amount of introspection and the realization that one is an individual, distinct from others andthat one’s experiences are experienced similar to others sharing those experiences. Please don’t quote me on this, this is not a text-book definition. Perhaps any psychologists/neurologists can expand upon this?
But this fits hand in hand with the neocon plan of dumbing it citizens down. Science classes are almost laughable and health or, FSM forbid, sex education? Banned in many areas.
How are people supposed to make fully informed decisions one way or another if they lack even the basic knowledge that is required? If all they are hearing is that ” ‘poof’ invisible sky daddy placed a miracle in your womb, how DARE to think to do anything about it you sinful child you.” Well its hard to fight that with any facts if they are never even exposed to the facts.
This goes beyond misrepresentation or dishonesty and well into indoctrination and it has been happening in our schools for years.
“Whats the current best estimate of how long after conception a fetus becomes “selfaware”?”
And
“I may be getting my facts wrong, but self-awareness, as far as I recall my first-year psyche, doesn’t manifest itself until well after birth, perhaps not until after one’s first birthday. Self-awareness should be not be confused with consciousness.”
As I recall, and I read this a while ago, detectable brain activity, beyond what would be called brain dead in a born person, is detectable sometime around 20-24 weeks. Not too far off from the Supreme Courts 2nd trimester criteria of when a fetus becomes viable and abortion can be restricted.
Off the top of my head, this is about as good a criteria for early consciousness and a line between what is the start of human life and what isn’t.
Quoth Bill Hicks, “You’re hot human ’till you’re in my phone book.”
“Self-awareness should be not be confused with consciousness.”
Yeah, self-aware was the wrong word. Consciousness is probably closer. I assume there’s no point where the fetus is unconsciousness one minute and thinking “Doooood!!where the f**k am i?” the next. Im just curious about when we think the brain starts to move from “unthinking” to something that we can reasonably call consciousness. Intuition would say that it doesn’t “need” to be consciousness till quite late in the process.
Along similar but more serious lines (I like all the Bill Hicks I’m seeing around here these days), in Peter Singer’s Practical Ethics, he makes a great philosophical argument for abortion that leads him to conclude that really, killing a newborn infant isn’t so bad, but let’s just back to that up birth because it’s a convenient place to draw the line. All I can say is, infants better watch out for me – I’m in the mood for a California cheeseburger…
Thanks Brian, thats what I was trying to find out.
“he makes a great philosophical argument for abortion that leads him to conclude that really, killing a newborn infant isn’t so bad”
A argument that leads to this conclusion is not “great”.
The quality of an argument isn’t defined by whether or not you like its conclusion.
As a guy who works for a medical tech company, it’s cool to see the new tech getting more and more common. 4D imaging is really coming along, and it’s making diagnoses much less invasive.
I’ve always felt that fetal images would just get more and more misused, though. Sort of like those pins of fetal feet, it’s a way of anthropomorphizing fetuses just because they look like us. I’m of the opinion that actual consciousness trumps potential consciousness in every decision. You’d think people would get more upset about ape poaching and habitat loss, if they cared so much about human-shaped things.
The only pro-life argument that I can almost agree with it the Buddhist position. A fertilized egg has the potential to become a human being, therefore it should be given that chance; fully consistent with a world view that is against even willingly killing animals. However, almost no Buddhist monk is authoritarian enough to say that abortion should be illegal and even some of the more conservative monks walk the fine line between life and freedom of choice.
Id agree with you if the argument was a scientic one. But a “philosophical argument for abortion” that leads to the murder of newborns has failed. Its like making a philosophical argument for preemtive war that also allows one to murder the first born male of every household in the unlucky country. (Over the top maybe but you’re the one who brought up the dead infants :) )
Anyway, what is this great argument for abortion that Singer has put forward.
Technology has always carried with it changes in moral perceptions. The 19th century embryologists demonstrated that human embryoes are uniquely human from conception (no vegetable/animal/human progression), and so the old rules about abortion prior to quickening were voided. Research in embryology was directly related to the passage of anti-abortion laws in most states in the US at that time.
Whether abortion is moral or legal ought to be entirely separate from actual developmental biology. As the 4d images and the debates of the 19th century show, though, improvements in technology can lead to changes in the weight of certain moral arguments. The only thing sillier than a bunch of deists and delugians arguing for more restrictions on abortion on the basis of 4d imaging is a developmental biologist arguing that this kind of research is morally neutral.
Brain activity does NOT equal consciousness…
Terry Schiavo was quite the wiggler, too.
But we can not directly detect consciousness right now. And consciousnes implies brain activity, so if there is none we may safely say that there is no consciousness, but if there is some, we can not. So, it is quite reasonable to draw the line just there.
Huh ? Our laws about something ought not to depend on our knowledge of it ? WT… ? This is the way of fundamentalists to have laws and commandements independend of the reality !
No Nym:
I doubt people would say the research is morally neutral, or that ultrasound evidence could not enter into moral arguments. The crux of the matter is that people’s emotional response to something that resembles a human being (even more so because it wiggles) is overwhelming the actual scientific evidence that is more appropriate to the argument. The point is that this data is easily misinterpreted as evidence of something that is not there.
I agree that a philosophical argument and a scientific argument are different, but I still don’t see how the conclusion makes it a good or bad argument. A good argument is based on its rationality and consistency, and can at least asymptotically approach the true, correct solution. I could say that my personal philosophical basis involves me stealing purses from little old ladies, because I really like that conclusion, but I don’t think I could make a very good case for that.
In any case, I can’t do much justice to it in the time or space I have now, nor do I recall all of the particulars. Roughly, it involves starting with a variation on a utilitarian (not really traditional utilitarian) scheme, and working from there. He blurs the line between people and animals, and asks us what makes them different? If one rejects “it has potential to be xxxx” as a valid point, which I think most of us do here, then the natural question becomes, “if a pig is more intelligent than a baby, why can we kill a pig but not a baby?” or something to that effect.
Ultimately, he concludes the most important thing has to do with the self-interest of the being, and its desire to continue living is what makes killing it wrong. I’m the first to admit this is kinda scary territory, but he handles the implications of this case by case and if you’re curious you can read about it.
If you’re interested, I’d start here.
Singer’s argument was certainly a compelling one; it was fun to watch the squeamish and Catholic in my first-year Philosophy class squirm over that, balking at the concept of arguments being valid or invalid based on their logical progressions, not their content and conclusion.
My own thought is that we tend to determine human death as the cessation of brain function and heartbeat, so it makes some sense to determine human life as the beginning of those functions (both in tandem; after all, a heartbeat without brain activity is just using the mother as life support). Last I looked, that ended up being a pretty reasonable amount of time; not that I wouldn’t value a fully-formed human over a fetus any day of the week.
“Brain activity does NOT equal consciousness…
Terry Schiavo was quite the wiggler, too. ”
Granted.
That’s why I said beyond being brain dead. Or in the cast of Terry Schiavo a persistent vegetative state. The lack of certain brain activity is what made virtually all doctors say that Terry Schiavo was not experiencing consciousness.
It is the best of my recollection that brain activity, beyond that of Terry Schiavo’s, is detectable in fetuses at around 20-24 weeks.
Brian: The line being set at third trimester was suggested to me by a friend back in 1987 or so, interestingly enough, for the same reasons you cite. It made sense then and it does now. If we’re going to argue that an organism is potentially human enough to make abortion a serious question rather than a medical procedure for removing a growth, the measure of brain activity seems the most rationally defensible measuring stick.
That such a measure is opposed by right-wing loonies merely exposes their agenda for what it is: Forced birth.
As for motion signaling consciousness — Terri Schiavo has already been brought up. And even traces of consciousness don’t indicate the presence of an intact personality, as can be seen in any late-stage Alzheimer’s sufferer. Why, some politicians have even been known to string entire, coherent sentences together. (Though I must confess this is merely an anecdotal account; I know of no recorded instances.)
So a true measure of what human awareness is is probably beyond our ability to define, at least at this point. That doesn’t mean we should force pregnancy to term, or force brain-dead hunks of meat to remain connected to life support for years after the animating presence has dissipated.
Of course, that doesn’t matter to the goddish louts out there, who are more interested in squirming cartoons than they are in reality.
OK, I accept that you can put forward an arguement that is logiclly sound and has ugly conclusions. They maybe interesting to debate but how useful are they in the real world?
I’m sure you can think of economic arguments that seem valid but that are rejected because they fail to allow for things like social justice.
Carl Sagan advocated the “brain activity” criterion in an essay reprinted in one of his later books, Billions and Billions I believe.
It’s incredibly useful. What is left out? What’s the counter-argument? I don’t find the conclusion ugly – for it to be ugly, there would have to be another logical argument for why that is so. Aside from being morally neutral or almost neutrol, an abortion is about the best thing that can happen for everyone involved, almost always. Every last problem we have stems from being overpopulated.
In your example, if I was displeased that some economic argument seemed valid but thought that it was lacking social justice, I would then make an argument for the necessity of social justice, and how it was lacking that.
Singer’s argument is basically the same argument being made here: the “cut off point” should be determined by brain development. Singer just points out that if you think self-awareness is the correct point, and if you think killing animals is okay for this reason (they’re not self-aware), then you should also be okay with killing newborn infants up until their first year (when self-awareness supposedly develops). Singer only endorses infanticide in cases where the quality of life of the child would be extremely low. But then he rarely endorses the killing of animals; so on his terms he’s consistent. (How he reaches this position is somewhat more complicated.)
I think PZ has also argued in the past that infanticide isn’t unethical in some cases (if I recall he said he wouldn’t begrudge mother’s in harsh conditions where contraception and abortion were unavailable). I tend to agree.
bpower, have you ever considered that the conclusion is “ugly” because it disagrees with yours? If there’s no significant brain activity, there’s nothing to really kill.
I think the only thing making this “ugly” to you is that you’re assuming the conclusion is wrong: That you think there is something in there, neurology be damned.
Being ever vigilant with regard to the unscientific, I’m just wondering: Can one have “four dimensional imaging” if the fetus is not a hypercube?
If the 4th dimension is time, then the old-fashioned word “video” would do fine, methinks.
Wrong. Most religious people believe thinking is a function of the soul, and, by extension, so is movement (except in invertebrates, I guess). Whether or not there is an ‘advanced brain’ is not an issue for these folk; in their universe, once ensoulment occurs, the foetus has all the normal thoughts and feelings of a ‘normal’ healthy toddler. Pro-choicers have been founding much of their supporting arguments on scientist’s theories of foetal brain development for decades, and we’ve been losing ground every step of the way. Most present and future victims of antichoice propaganda automagicly tune out any and every explanation of how brain development affects what a foetus is capable of thinking or feeling, because they believe the ‘soul’ already does that, and therefor, brain development is totally irrelevant.
Pro-choicers need to wake up and realize that arguments about brain development – especially logical arguments based on evidence – suck up tons of energy, and can only hope to win over scientists and the strongly science-interested. For the other 95% of the population, starting out with arguments about brain development is like nailing your foot to the starting block before the footrace begins.
Full-term or near-term infants may not be self-aware, but they certainly act in their own self-interest, even if they don’t do it consciously. Newborns cry when they need something, and stop crying (ideally!) when they get it. Even if it’s instinctual, it’s a far cry from anything a 20-week fetus is doing. I’ve got no problem with abortion up to 24 weeks or so (later, if there’s a medical issue for the mother and/or fetus), but infanticide is another matter entirely.
Either way, I think self-awareness is a weird criteron. A year-old baby may not be Descartes, but is definitely conscious of its existence, even if not its existence as a separate being from its parents.
funny result of this would be that killing somenoe while anesthetised would not count as murder, because he is not self-aware.
And, also, you should note that this is NOT the usual appeal to consequences, but legitimate objection that stinger’s “cut off point” cuts off people that are quite surely not dead.
4-d is the standard term. A single video frame is 2-d; when you do through-focus sampling, you build a 3-d data set; when you’ve got multiple 3-d data sets acquired over time, you call it 4-d.
And what should we do then ? Give up ? Conjure up some nice demagoguery and cheat all the folks into believing it ?
Grown women move, too.
And eat on their own. And breathe on their own.
At what point is the mother considered human?
At what point is the mother considered human?
Oh, well that’s just silly. Every good God-fearing pro-life Christian knows that women aren’t people. Children are gifts from God, and women are the wrapping paper.
My preference, preference not scientific logic, is that we should do our darndest to not put people in situations where they feel they need to abort. This is a toughie. I am against brainwashing the mother to accomplish this goal. I am strongly for a women’s right to choose. I feel proper support before she becomes pregnant is the way to go. It is a much more difficult solution, proper access to contraceptive choices and counceling, rape prevention, proper support societal support over enforcing her control over her own body, better adoption choices, etc. That said, we will never eliminate people desiring abortion. (at some point inthe process) We will also not eliminate people needing it due to particular circumstances. (eg health of the mother) My feeling is that heart and brain function (and not or) are a reasonable compromise for a cut off point.
I think the majority of women who choose abortion do it with much consternation, sadness, and trepidation. I get the distinct feeling that some groups view these women as making the decision to abort lightly. There maybe a very small minority of women who fall into that group, but I believe the majority of women don’t treat abortion as a prime method of contraception.
How do people feel about cultures that do abortions because the child is the “wrong” gender? Ultra sound makes it much easier to make that decision.
Going along with Jim’s comments, and slightly OT, I’ve been following the path of the “95-10” initiative. If it gains enough momentum, it will really be a shibboleth to divide those who are truly concerned about feti (for whatever reason) and those whose true aim is to control women and sex.
I should clarify – the “95-10” initiative does have an awful lot of keeping pregnant women pregnant in it, very similar to the fundie ideas, but also has a plank that would require coverage of birth control, free contraceptive access for those of low income, and real sex ed in schools rather than abstinence-only.
I wouldn’t want to control women or sex. I want them to give themselves to me willingly. :-) (the more the merrier) I think that would be much more fun than trying to control them. Too much effort. I view women as humans also and not just some vessel to put my johnson in and be at my beck and call. I want pleasant consentual interactions not interactions with some doll. (I don’t think that would be fun – with a doll that is.)
Never understood one thing.
There are people out there that believe that abortion should be illegal from conception.
Well to them I say they should put themselves on trial for murder evertime they have a wet dream, masteurbate, or have a period. Because each one of those times their murdering potential humans.
Of course I could just go to my normal, as a guy I cannot agree or disagree on abortion because it could never be my decision as my body isn’t involved. This of course would also force all guys to vote for free choice in the matter.
I want to see the potentiality principle applied to other areas of life: anti-logging activists chaining themselves to acorns–potential old-growth oak trees; KFC serving extra-crispy eggs–potential chickens; SUV drivers shoving living animals and plant matter–potential fossil fuels–into their gas tanks; that sort of thing.
Guess what, anti-abortion folks: the potential to have some quality is not the same as actually having it. And for every “potential Eisntein” you want to bring to term, isn’t there a “potential Hitler” we ought to abort by the same logic? Potential needs to be actualized, and in the case of the human fetus, actualization requires the willing use of an actualized person’s body. Because without a mother, every one of those potential people would be an actual microscopic clump of dead, discarded cellular tissue.
Remind those who are squeamish about abortion that whatever one may think of the status of the fetus/embryo, the full human status of the PERSON carrying it is well-established and that PERSON’s bodily autonomy is not yours (or anyone else’s) to bargain away.
If saving a human life is sufficient justification for violating the bodily autonomy of another human, then I expect laws enforcing the forcible donation of human kidneys and other tissues that can be taken from living donors to be passed immediately.
Singer covers this. A self-aware person has an interest in staying alive, he claims, even if they’re not conscious at the time. When you go to sleep you probably plan on waking up and it’s that desire that we should respect.
Personally, although I respect many of Singer’s conclusions, I think the whole foundation of ulitarianism based on states of consciousness, whether happiness, suffering, or desires, is kind of shaky.
Flame821:
They’re not. That’s the whole point.
Singer just points out that if you think self-awareness is the correct point, and if you think killing animals is okay for this reason (they’re not self-aware), then you should also be okay with killing newborn infants up until their first year (when self-awareness supposedly develops).
Most humans pass the rouge test, which is considered definitive for the presence of self-awareness if positive, at about 18 months of age. Several non-human animals, including dolphins and some non-human primates, also pass. A negative rouge test doesn’t definitely rule out self-awareness though. More animals and less developed humans than we realize might have it. My general feeling is that it’s probably safest not to kill any animals if it can be avoided. Particularly (sorry PZ) not any mammals. On the other hand, if an echidna or a cow suddenly started parasitizing me without my consent, I’d probably get rid of it by any means necessary.
Conciousness (including concious pain perception) is even harder to measure, but there is at least one reason to believe that a newborn might have it and a 40 week old fetus not: relative pO2 in room air versus the uterine environment. People lose conciousness when the oxygen pressure gets too low and umbilical vein pO2 is generally about 1/3-1/4 that of the arterial pO2 of a newborn. So the equipment may be ready, but not yet activated in a late fetus. That is, however, speculation on my part.
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Yes, probably. But not respecting someone’s desire is far lesser crime than murder, is’nt it ?
When you go to sleep you probably plan on waking up and it’s that desire that we should respect.
Actually, a person who is asleep or even lightly unconcious has a good deal more cortical activity than a fetus or a person in PVS.
How do people feel about cultures that do abortions because the child is the “wrong” gender?
That they get what they deserve: high crime, war, and no grandchildren because they have excess men (as the “wrong” gender is usually female). I would not in any way want to force a woman who wanted to have an abortion because the fetus was a girl to carry to term. She probably knows about what women go through in her society and wants to avoid that for her child.
I was always amused by the “potential Einstein” argument, but not because of the “potential Hitler” offshoot of it. Its horribly unlikely, but every time you kill a microbe you might be killing the ancestor of an intelligent species that now has no chance to flourish. If pro-life is taken to an extreme, you could be tried for genocide for taking antibiotics.
Except for blood or bone marrow, there are no other tissues which could save one’s life without killing the donor in the process. So that would be only a neglible problem…
btw1. appeal to consequences is not an argument ;-)
btw2. in our country it is for example illegal to refuse to provide first aid, so, there really are laws that put survival of others above someone’s personal autonomy.
One more point before I stop monopolizing the thread: One quick and simple way to decrease the number of later (>12 week) abortions that occur and therefore minimize the number of wiggling fetuses killed: make early abortion easier. Embryos definitely aren’t self-aware, clearly don’t have any cortical activity, and don’t wiggle. Making sure that every woman has easy access to abortion in the first 8 weeks of pregnancy (which, with all the barriers, is already when a small majority of abortions occur) would eliminate a lot of the problem of the romantiziation of the wiggling (but not thinking) fetus.
Except for blood or bone marrow, there are no other tissues which could save one’s life without killing the donor in the process.
Wrong. Most kidney donations are from living related donors. One can also donate part of a liver safely–both parts hypertrophy to allow normal function in donor and recipient. One can also–I kid you not–donate stool. Stool transplants are rare, but they are, in fact, occasionally used for intractable diarrhea due to hopelessly abnormal gut flora.
And in a really interesting twist on the whole issue, we now have a nineteen-year-old girl claiming her parents kidnapped her in an attempt to force her to have an out-of-state abortion.
Is it a full moon or something?
Not in this case. If disrespecting someone’s desire to live means to act on it and kill a person who wants to live then ‘murder’ is simply an equivalent shorthand description for this lack of respect (that is, except in self-defense or defending someone else who likes to stay alive and well).
But kidney transplantation is not life saving, it merely removes the need of dialysis. The partial liver transplantation is still too risky for the donor, and stool is not a tissue ;-)
But kidney transplantation is not life saving, it merely removes the need of dialysis. The partial liver transplantation is still too risky for the donor, and stool is not a tissue ;-)
But kidney transplantation is not life saving, it merely removes the need of dialysis. The partial liver transplantation is still too risky for the donor, and stool is not a tissue ;-)
If men were the ones who got pregnant and women tried to tell them all they couldn’t have control of their own bodies, they’d scream bloody murder.
But, according to singerian definition, there was no person killed, that is the point ;-) ( another issue would be proving the perpetrator guilty, because it would require to prove that the victim really wanted to stay alive )
Its horribly unlikely, but every time you kill a microbe you might be killing the ancestor of an intelligent species that now has no chance to flourish. If pro-life is taken to an extreme, you could be tried for genocide for taking antibiotics.
True, but most of the Snowflake ‘Baby’ Boosters are probably creationists, anyway.
But kidney transplantation is not life saving, it merely removes the need of dialysis. The partial liver transplantation is still too risky for the donor
No. People live longer after kidney transplant than if they continue on dialysis. Check any nephrology text. Partial liver transplant is somewhat newer, but is well accepted and fairly routine. See, for example, here and related links. I’ll give you the stool is not a tissue argument, though a major component of stool is, in fact, digested intestinal cells. Intestinal cells that could have been cultured and used to clone a new baby. So is digestion murder?
Hey ! Why you are insulting me by implying that I am an antichoice kook ?
…on the other hand, removal of one kidney shortens the life expectancy for the donor, and though routine, still not without risks, so.
You are confused. I’m not suggesting that laws requiring forcible organ donation “would be bad”. I’m saying that the people who advocate violating women’s bodily autonomy in the abortion debate show no signs of supporting the principle in other cases, even when the lives saved are those of fully-autonomous, born individuals. Ergo, the advocates of forced pregnancy either do not support the principle of involuntarily sacrificing human bodily autonomy for saving lives or they do not believe pregnant woman are fully human. Or both.
I am not a lawyer, and I suspect I am not one of your countrymen, but I’m willing to bet that any such laws specifically exempt people from this requirement if they have a reasonable belief that offering such assistance would be dangerous. The medical risks of pregnancy far outweigh those associated with surgical abortion.
And I didn’t say personal autonomy, I said bodily autonomy. I very much doubt those first-aid givers are required to, say, donate blood.
Sorry, if I’ve misunderstood you, but your : “Remind those who are squeamish about abortion that whatever….”
still sounds to me like trying to make an argument along the ‘forced donation wrong => prohibited abortion wrong’ lines
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but are generally small in developed countries, so, that argument does not apply
.
If you decide to quibble, I’ll give you that one.
I see you’re kidding me, but for clarity’s sake: of course an anesthetised patient is still a person according to Singer. The fact of a preference to continue existing doesn’t magically arise at conception and neither does it suddenly vanish when consciousness fades. It’s physically represented by one’s memory, part of one’s neurally encoded personality, and remains binding the way your property rights remain intact even while you don’t consciously think “I want my purse to stay in my possession”. Most people take it as a given that their implicit, unrevoked desire for ownership is reason enough to leave their property alone; nowhere is it required to constantly hold on to the thought.
Just hold on, we are coming closer at rather rapid pace –
Some of the neural coding forms well before you become self-aware for the first time, so, your … ehm… property should be protected then too.
To bounce back to the ‘abortion until conscious/self aware’ argument:
Philip K. Dick (author of a lot of interesting SF, some of which has been turned into mediocre action films, but I digress) wrote a story called “The Pre-Persons”. In it, Dick imagines an alternate future in which legislation allows a parent to abort until the child’s 13th birthday.
The justification for this law is that the ‘soul’ doesn’t actually enter the body until the 13th birthday, after which the child can demonstrate higher math skills (i.e.: calculus) to ‘prove’ that he has a soul.
In an interview, Dick says that “The Pre-Persons” is the only story he wrote that someone threatened to beat him up over.
Sure, it sounds wanky, but it always comes to mind whenever someone suggests ‘self-awareness’ or the use of a test to demonstrate such should be a standard for proving humanity.
One of the things that always strikes me when I see 3-d fetal imaging is that the babies are proto-white (orangy-white, maybe). Since the images are made without light, they could be colored in all sorts of ways, so long as there was sufficient contrast for inexperienced viewers to get the basic information. They could be blue, or green.
I think the proto-whiteness is part of the ways fetal imaging gets structured against choice and normalizing whiteness in just an insidious way.
I think it’s time to picture all the fetuses as black against a light background.
I”ll leave the philosophical musings to you academics, but the aspect of this that I find disturbing is how this will encourage the anti-abortionist radicals to push ultrasounds even more. As it stands now, anti-abortion groups have been landing grants to buy ultasound machines. They then install them in rented quarters next door or near to a qynecological clinic, such as Planned Parenthood, and try to divert their patients. The downside is that high frequency sounds are not not something to which a fetus should be exposed unless it’s statistically recommended for diagnosing some genetic or clinical condition. It can damage soft rapidly developing tissue. Furthermore the operators hired by the anti-abortion folks are rarely trained in the technique and subject the pregnant mother to far more sound than is needed for a sound clinical image. The anti-abortion crowd has also been installing the machines in vans and then parking them on the street outside of a Planned Parenthood clinic and tried to drum up business like carny barkers.
…on the other hand, removal of one kidney shortens the life expectancy for the donor, and though routine, still not without risks, so.
Risks… death for example. A co-worker of my dad’s needed a kidney. His father donated one. His dad died on the operating table, but they did do the transplant. So, he woke to find that his father had died trying to save him.
Then his body rejected the kidney, and last I heard he was back on dialysis. Imagine how he feels. Imagine how his dad DOESN’T feel.
Definitely there are risks.
T_U_T: It’s safe to note that *much* self-organization of neurons happens without the capacity for self-awareness; the same is true of every mouse and nematode brain though. The observation “there are nerve patterns” is a nice start – what it alone doesn’t tell me is whether the pattern enables some kind of desire (need this, hate this, want to keep this etc) a conscientious adherent to the Golden Rule would feel compelled to respect. How much possibility of injustice is there to an organism that never desired anything because it lacks a mental goal system to begin with? I would say there isn’t any.
I do think the moral standing of a fetus rises from second to third trimester. However I don’t see it rising so high as to override the mother’s right to an informed decision on whether the medical risk of continuing the pregnancy is acceptable, both for herself and what this means for the potential child’s health prognosis. The wiring for a goal system in the fetal brain may be in place late in gestation, but the capacity to engage it in conscious thought (“want to exist rather than not”) most likely isn’t.
In addition, an earlier post made a good point about tentative evidence that low uterine oxygen concentrations may preclude consciousness in the womb, see http://masseynews.massey.ac.nz/2005/Press_Releases/02-21-05a.html for a news piece reporting ongoing research.
Lastly, I found this paper helpful in distinguishing between plausible and implausible claims about fetal consciousness (for U.S.-specific reasons the discussion there is somewhat focused on pain perception, however findings about when the thalamocortical system forms imply a lower developmental boundary for all aspects of consciousness):
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/local/scisoc/brownbag/brownbag0506/fetalpain.pdf
Yes, and it gets only weirder as we move on to futuristic technology. Isn’t every body cell of mine a potential person because it could be used for repro-cloning? So are nonhuman cells given a heavy dose of genetic cognitive enhancement. And why stop at biology? It can be assumed that sentient artificial intelligence is possible (no physical law ruling it out) and will be constructed by greatly expanding on today’s programming knowledge and computing power. Does that mean I’m aborting an embryonic AI person when formatting over a disk copy of Alicebot? Should I feel bad for it?
When thought through to the logical end result, every piece of matter plus information, every stone and lump of dirt composed of elements suitable for building an artificial brain can be viewed as a potential person so long as there is enough usable energy in its light cone to reshape matter into thinking feeling structures.
In order to shield “potential personhood” against this inflation of possibilities, one would have to add additional assumptions like “only natural potentials count”, but if that is to be accepted, does the life potential of a person conceived through IVF somehow count for less? It is certainly not natural (in the “natural = unaffected by technology” sense) that I’m still alive, given how often I needed antibiotic treatment as a child. You see, I don’t buy into the argument that naturalness confers higher moral worth.
In other words, “potential” looks quite impossible to narrow down and delineate – everyone and everything has it. IMO, what makes sentient people special is not their past, present or future potential per se, but that they can attach value to it.
…on the other hand, removal of one kidney shortens the life expectancy for the donor, and though routine, still not without risks, so.
Actually, the immediate risks of kidney donation are quite comparable to those of completing a pregnancy. The mortality for kidney donation is 20-30/100,000, for completing pregnancy it is 10-15/100,000 in the US (higher in some populations: for example, African-American women have about a 22/100,000 risk of dying is childbirth– the same as kidney donation). I am unaware of any studies indicating that kidney donation can have long term health risks. Certainly one can live a completely normal life with one kidney–many people are born with a single kidney and their life expectancy is not compromised.
Diane-
I would be very grateful if you could post the references for your statement that dolphins have passed the rouge test. It is hard for me to imagine how they might, although I am inclined to think that they have self-awareness based on their complex social interactions.
Sphex–if you have time, look up Marten and Psarakos’ work, as well as Gordon Gallup’s. I can’t do it right now (crunch mode), but when I get home tonight, I’ll post more specific references. Those names ought to get you started at least, though.
RavenT-
Thank you so much. I had wondered how one might distinguish examining ‘self’ in a mirror from social behavior, i.e. curiosity in a funny-looking dolphin. Marten and Psarakos’ “Using Self-View Television to Distinguish between Self-Examination and Social Behavior in the Bottlenose Dolphin” cleared that up nicely. How incredibly satisfying! :)
From Soren:
“If the risk of Downs had been greater, and a biopsy had confirmed this, then we would have had an abortion.”
I’m aware of almost all of the arguments in this debate, and I have none to offer here.
Still. Your sentence makes me want to f–king puke.
My pleasure, sphex. It sounds like you got what you needed, so I’ll assume you don’t need further searching. If anyone’s interested in following up for themselves, I was just going to do the following PubMed searches:
1. marten psarakos
2. “Related Articles” on the result set from 1.
3. gallup g dolphin
4. “Related Articles” on the result set from 3.