Tangents  
Created: 06 Nov 2000 Copyright © 2000-2003 by owner.
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Posted: 23 Nov 2000

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The Abortion Rights Dialogue:
Right and Truth in Conflict

Oddly, much of the strife surrounding the issue of abortion rights has to do, not with the practice itself, but with the verbal maneuvering surrounding it.  And of this, perhaps at least as much energy is devoted simply to vilifying one's opponents as to arguing one's own point.  Can this be attributed to the raw emotionality of the issue?  Surely some of it can; people on both sides of the issue have become emotional, even to the point of violence, defending what they see as their just rights — or the rights of "the innocent unborn."  But there are also underlying factors, embedded in a group's philosophy, which suggest that emotionality is not just a spontaneous offshoot, but an essential component of the appeal, without which the surface argument would lose much of its force, if not collapse altogether.  That this is so reveals a tendency in our society to adopt opinions on important issues on the basis of how they sound and how they make us feel, rather than with thoughtful consideration of how well they are constructed and substantiated.  Not only do we talk at, not to, one another, we do so without listening, either to others or even to ourselves.  We even apply different definitions to the same terms.  And then we are surprised when true communication does not occur.

As an initial illustration of how communication is subverted by manipulation, let us consider the labels which one side chooses to identify itself and its opposition.  The term pro-life suggests a belief that every life is precious and worth maintaining, perhaps, at any cost.  But is this term appropriately applied?  Texas Governor George W. Bush is described as solidly "pro-life."  Yet while his opposition to abortion is well known, it is also no secret that Bush is a strong proponent of capital punishment and that he has no moral objection to war "to protect our national interests."  And Mr. Bush is not alone; a quick scan of conservative ranks yields a substantial count of nominally pro-life people, whose aversion to taking human life under circumstances other than abortion is not as intense as the label might suggest.  This is not to judge the rightness or wrongness of capital punishment and war, or the morality or integrity of those who advocate them under certain conditions, but only to point out the imprecision of the pro-life label.  It would seem, therefore, that many who claim to be pro-life are not truly so; they are merely anti-abortion.  Likewise, evaluation of the term pro-abortion reveals the absurd implication that abortion is a desirable thing, perhaps one which all women ought to experience.  But defense of a woman's right to abortion does not constitute advocacy of the practice itself as positive and ennobling.  To be accurate, then, a proponent of abortion rights can only be said to be pro-choice; the notion of being pro-abortion is preposterous.

Certainly not all of the anti-abortion movement's ideas are so unabashedly skewed.  Opponents of abortion register a number of salient points, such as the inherent value of human life and the virtue of sexual abstinence, which are worthy of thoughtful consideration and discussion.  As with other purposefully creative figures of speech (such as "liberation army" and "people's democratic republic"), however, a propensity for using liberally defined terms signals a warning to most experienced observers.  While any movement might judiciously employ slanted terminology as an easy way to garner popular support, over reliance upon this tactic is characteristic of movements whose key principles and objectives are based on questionable premises and shaky reasoning, and is a tip-off that other claims by the same source warrant skeptical scrutiny.

Therefore, when the question is asked, "Who is harmed by abortion?" it behooves us to examine the responses carefully.  From one side we hear, "No one!"  And from the other, "The baby!"  Indeed?  Perhaps we should ask, then, precisely what is meant by the word baby, for although it might seem obvious under ordinary circumstances, the range of responses to the preceding question indicates a considerable difference of opinion.

"A baby is an infant human being," would seem an answer acceptable to most.  But even here, we find it necessary to clarify what a human being is.  For some, the answer is simple:  A human being is any individual human, from the moment of conception (or of quickening, viability, or birth, depending on whose opinion is sought) until the moment of death.  Attempting to present personhood at conception as a scientific concept, professor of philosophy Dianne Irving asserts:  "During this process, the sperm and the oocyte cease to exist, and a new human being is produced."  But the basis for the idea of a human being as the immediate product of conception is more semantic than scientific.  While Irving has the mechanics of the process correct, her simplistic assertion, that a unicellular zygote is a human being by sole virtue of its genetic identity, is bound to draw fire from both sides.  Even among those who believe that a human being exists from the instant of conception, perhaps most would find Irving's mechanistic interpretation demeaning, for without the mystical concept of soul,1 it essentially equates human beings with the products of copulation of any other species.

There are, of course, those who subscribe to a more complex view.  While they concede that a human zygote is both human and alive, the term human being implies to them something of greater significance than merely one, or even one-million-and-one, insensate cells containing human genes.  To most people, the very word being —as it is customarily applied to deities, spirits, and humans, but not to other living things — implies sentience, a capacity for conscious self-awareness, a quality which no single cell or tissue possesses.  It is this sense of being, they contend, from which any meaningful value of human life truly derives, and without which the personhood of a fetus is not established in any objective sense.

Regardless of which position one takes on the issue of soul-versus-sentience, there appears a general consensus that a human being is, in some vital respect, an entity much grander than mere protoplasm and chromosomes.  As a National Bioethics Advisory Commission article opines, "Little is known about the correlation between genes and the sorts of complex, behavioral characteristics that are associated with successful and rewarding human lives; moreover, what little is known indicates that most such characteristics result from complicated interactions among a number of genes and the environment" ("Risks" 234).  That such statements appear in articles on both sides of the issue illustrates the pervasiveness of the idea that a human being represents something qualitatively greater than mere chemistry and genetics.

Nevertheless, because all hard evidence suggests that human sentience ultimately depends upon brain function, it follows (from a non-mystical standpoint, at least) that conscious awareness is not present at conception, and does not arise until much later, when the fetal brain and sensory apparatus are fairly well developed.  The lapse of several months between conception and consciousness gives rise to the disagreement about precisely when a human being comes into being.  And it is this fundamental disagreement about the essence of a human being — what form it takes and when it comes into existence — which leads to earnest and often heated differences about whether abortion is harmful or not, whether it constitutes murder or merely removal of unwanted tissue.

Emotion, as we have seen, is an inseparable part of the issue.  Unfortunately, people who are ruled by their emotions are often easily manipulated.  As a notorious example of how misinformation is used to exploit emotion, consider Operation Rescue's photographs of pitiable little corpses, often lying alongside the cruel surgical instruments used to abort them.  They are undeniably human, undeniably infants, undeniably dead, and undeniably wrenching to our parental instincts.  However, the fetuses pictured are also undeniably the products of near- or full-term pregnancies.  According to a fact sheet published by the Planned Parenthood Foundation, "Today, 88 percent of all legal abortions are performed within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and 55 percent take place within the first eight weeks of pregnancy.  Only 1.5 percent occur after 20 weeks" ("Medical").  Indeed, only a fraction of a percent of abortions today are performed during the final trimester of pregnancy, most undertaken to protect the mother's life or health.  Clearly, then, the type of abortion shown in Operation Rescue's photos is atypical, even quite rare.

So what is the purpose of such deliberate distortion?  It is not difficult to figure out:  An eight-week embryo simply does not fit most people's mental image of "a baby."  It is tiny — about three centimeters long; it has a curiously shaped head, but no face, to speak of; it has gill arches, like those of a fish; its barely developed limbs terminate in stumps; its vestigial tail has only recently vanished; its rudimentary nervous system is capable only of autonomic and reflex functions.  With a form not yet characteristically human, it is visually indistinguishable from the embryo of most any other mammal, or, for that matter, from that of a bird or reptile.  Though the embryo is both functionally alive and genetically human, and though some of its organs have begun to function, at that stage it neither physically resembles a human infant nor exhibits any hint of consciousness.  While most people become upset at the idea of "killing babies," the questionable resemblance of an eight-week embryo to their perception of a baby is insufficient to establish an emotional connection.  Thus it is clear that the distortion is a crucial element of Operation Rescue's strategy; without it, the appeal would fail to evoke the desired response.

Is it possible to move beyond such obfuscation and fanaticism, to reconcile fundamental differences?  Can we find a compromise solution that most people can tolerate, even if they do not entirely agree with it?  For some, obviously, the answer is an unqualified "No!"  Yet although differences in personal belief about soul and sentience are not likely to be resolved anytime soon (if ever), there is reason to hope that understanding and cooperation in pursuit of common goals are possible among people of differing beliefs.  One organization's statement of purpose, as expressed by Mary Jacksteit and Adrienne Kaufmann, declares, "The Common Ground Network for Life and Choice works to open new channels of communication in the abortion conflict and to promote the exploration and development of cooperative efforts between pro-choice and pro-life supporters.  Its members share a belief that developing and sustaining processes that allow pro-life and pro-choice individuals to come together in a non-adversarial manner is essential to the future well-being of our society."  Amid the furor, there exist pockets of civilized, meaningful dialogue.

Fortunately, the ill-motivated but much publicized actions of fanatics are an aberration.  The majority of people on both sides of the abortion issue do not base their opinions on dubious propaganda, but on philosophical reflection or religious belief.  Naturally, these processes vary markedly from person to person, even within a particular discipline, and often even in the same person over a period of time.  The issue of soul-versus-sentience is one not readily resolved to everyone's satisfaction, given that each person's feelings on the matter are shaped almost exclusively by personal belief and emotion, and hardly (if at all) by empirical evidence.  Even among those who are opposed to abortion as a purely discretionary procedure, there are many who concede that it ought to be an option in cases of rape, incest, severe and untreatable birth defect, or danger to the mother's life or health.  Perhaps, until we have acquired adequate evidence upon which to base public policy, we can acknowledge that the morality of abortion is essentially based on personal belief and is, therefore, an issue upon which honest people may conscientiously disagree without being branded "murderers" or "lunatics."  Perhaps, until the day when scientists pinpoint the time when human awareness emerges, we can agree to let doctors and patients (advised, if they wish, by their chosen counsel or clergy) make their own medical and moral decisions, without the interference of politicians, televangelists, and the news media.  Perhaps, even though we don't accept each other's beliefs, we can learn to understand and tolerate them, resolving to disagree peacefully and respectfully on this issue, while cooperating on other matters where our interests coincide.

=SAJ=



Footnote

[1] The seemingly straightforward idea of soul as an immediate result of conception is complicated by the phenomenon of identical twins.  If we suppose that a human embryo is imbued with a unique soul, then any subsequent division of that embryo to form identical twins must also divide the same soul between the two new individuals.  Yet while identical twins are strikingly similar in many respects, they are obviously not two manifestations of the same person; they are discrete individuals.  It follows, then, that soul (if it indeed exists) must arise some time after conception. This returns us to the question: "When?"

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Works Cited



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The original article was a freshman-level college composition submitted for credit in November 2000.  It has been modified for Internet presentation through some editing of content and the addition of hyperlinks.