An Announcement – Discussion III

I concluded my last post with the comment, “Next time I will continue with my discussion of "what can and should we do about the deficit…Where can we and should we cut?” which I started in my post "The Deficit – One Big Hoax (Part VI)."

However, after publishing my post "An Announcement – Discussion II" I received a comment from Robert Malchman Esq. of Brooklyn, NY, which led to an exchange that I would like to share with you.

Malchman wrote: 

I think you overlooked a key social policy point. All the current contenders want to see a constitutional amendment that life begins at conception. This is an outrageous, anti-life position for them to take. Every human ovum has the potential to become a life, and it is women's duty to ensure that every oven they have is fertilized. Willful failure to become and remain constantly pregnant during the years of fertility should be prosecuted as a murder every month. Anyone who can prove she tried to become pregnant, but was not able to conceive, should be prosecuted for criminally negligent homicide. 

The piece was fun. I'm stunned that anyone could have taken it for something other than satire -- the tip-off is in the first paragraph where you discuss consulting your dog. I guess the Republican Party has become so cartoonish that satire is indistinguishable from reality, a poor state of affairs. 

To which I responded:

I think your own piece of satire touches upon an important point, but I think you are wrong.

What I think you are suggesting is that the point of the Right's position on abortion is to require women to be continuously pregnant, i.e. to be plentiful, and there is support for this in the Bible. Genesis 1:28 “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

But from what I hear them saying, does not suggest that to me. I rather hear an anti-sex message. More than anything I hear abstain from sex outside of marriage, and this too has support in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 7:1-40 and to have sex only to procreate.

But while I think this underlies their views, they rely on the idea of "when life begins," for which I can find no support in the Bible. Furthermore, the idea that "life" must be protected is silly, since life exists in the form of a mosquito, and surely they do not mean that mosquitoes, or for that matter bacteria, which too is life, must be protected. What they must mean, though they never seem to say it, is that human life must be protected. They then postulate that human life begins when the sperm fertilizes the egg. But that is completely arbitrary. The egg looks no different after fertilization than before. If they argue that this ultimately leads to human life, than it can equally be argued, that the sperm itself, or the egg itself, leads to human life, and there is no doubt that the sperm is alive, even before it enters the egg.

What really drives this, outside the hard-core fundamentalists, is that traditionally, abortion was frowned upon, and the physician who performed them illegally was looked down upon as the lowest of the low. But this always coexisted with the dangerous back-alley abortion, or self induced abortion, and the abortion sought by those with the means to go to a jurisdictions where it was legal.

Just as we have learned, that many prejudices of the past don't make sense, whether it was that left handed was unacceptable, to that being gay is not normal, or that contraception in immoral, so it is simply moving with the reality that abortion is simply a late term contraception.

The question is not when does life begin, but rather when does human life begin. While abortion was frowned upon in past generations, it was never considered the killing of a person. It was never murder. The introduction of the idea that a human life begins at fertilization of the egg, inevitably leads to claims of murder, but it has no basis either in the past, or in logic.

The fertilized egg is no more a human that a tadpole is a frog, or a fertilized hen egg is a chicken, and I think few, if any would claim that to be so.

When does human life begin? I think that even during the time when abortion was always illegal, and even birth control was a violation of law, that it was when the fetus is capable of existing outside the womb, i.e. when the umbilical cord is cut.

Any other approach has no basis in religion, in the Bible or in precedent.

Please let me know if you agree, or if not point out my fallacies.

Malchman in turn rejoined: 

No, of course the point of the Right Wing is not the protection of "human life"; it's to discourage pre-marital sex. That's why it's fraudulent for them to call themselves "pro-life," they are, at best, anti-abortion and anti-sex. The point of my satire is to engage the Right on their own hypocritical term, "pro-life.” If you are really pro-life as opposed to anti-sex, then you would want women to be having sex all the time to get constantly pregnant. 

I hope finally to return to the subject I had embarked upon before digressing into this attempt at satire. So once again Next time I will continue with my discussion of "what can we, and should we do about the deficit…Where can we and should we cut?” which I started in my post "The Deficit – One Big Hoax (Part VI)" I will do that under the heading, “What can we, and should we do about the deficit… Where can we and should we cut.”