Abortion and Personhood

[Gaunt]

Time and again you see the arguments that "abortion is murder!" or that one is "killing babies." These arguments, while great for emotional appeal, presuppose the issue of whether or not a fetus is a person.

Are there any anti abortion arguments that do not revolve around the fetus being a person on the same level as a child out of the womb? and if so, What are they?

[TQWcS]

Time and again you see the arguments that "abortion is murder!" or that one is "killing babies." These arguments, while great for emotional appeal, presuppose the issue of whether or not a fetus is a person.

Would the arguement that it has a soul fall under killing a person?

[Gaunt]

If you are arguing that it has a soul from conception, then yes I'm inclined to say that it is the same as claiming it to be a person from conception. Unless you think that deer and trees and such have a soul as well and should likewise be protected because of it.

[TQWcS]

No, because we aren't arguing if trees or deers have souls. Most Christians believe the soul does not exist prior to the moment God gives it to that human body just conceived through the human procreative act. The Bible indicates that life begins at conception, and that the Lord forms the baby during the pregnancy. In the Genesis narratives alone, the phrase "conceived and bore" is found eleven times. The close pairing of the two words clearly emphasizes conception, not birth as the starting point of life." (See: Gn 4:1, 17; 21:2; 29:32, 33, 34; 30:5, 19, 23; 38:3, 4) .... and now, saith the Lord that formed me from the womb to be his servant" (Is 44:2, 24; 49:5).I know that these are references to conception but there are plenty of other references that the soul is created at conception. Scriptures reveal that a child’s character is already present while in the womb: see Samson (Jgs 13), Jeremiah (Jer 1:5), Paul (Gal 1:15), Esau and Jacob (Rom 9:11), John the Baptist (Lk 1:13-25), and the Lord Jesus Christ (Lk 1:26-38 ).

A good point was brought up by C. Everett Koop, "My question to my pro-abortion friend who will not kill a newborn baby is this: "Would you kill this infant a minute before he was born, or a minute before that, or a minute before that, or a minute before that?" You see what I am getting at. At what minute can one consider life to be worthless and the next minute consider that same life to be precious?"

If you do not believe the soul enters or is made at the moment of conception then when? How can we draw the line when and where it contains a soul and when it doesn't?

[ST88]

Are there any anti abortion arguments that do not revolve around the fetus being a person on the same level as a child out of the womb? and if so, What are they?

This civic argument against abortion is, I think, the "be fruitful and multiply" view, where it is always beneficial to increase the population. And so, by corollary, it is detrimental to decrease it. For a religion, naturally, they would want to produce more people who were part of that religion. For countries currently experiencing zero population growth or a pop decrease trend, this might be something to think about. But this is a privacy vs. society interests issue, like China's one-child policy, the other side of the same coin.

As population increases so do the chances that tax revenue will grow, that commerce will continue to grow, and that the population will become more viable due to variability and the capitalist impulse. By depriving the society of this "potential person," you are contributing to its decline.

This does not address the over-extended resources argument, but this ecotopic view has only been around for a short time compared to civilization in general.

[Gaunt]

If you do not believe the soul enters or is made at the moment of conception then when? How can we draw the line when and where it contains a soul and when it doesn't?

The use of "soul" in this instance is the same as "personhood." There obviously is a case for being against abortion if the fetus is a person from conception. However, the stipulation in this thread is that fetus is not a person from conception.

For countries currently experiencing zero population growth or a pop decrease trend, this might be something to think about.

Is this something that can/should be enforced in a free and democratic society though? It seems to me that, while policies like China's one child mandate can be enforced due to its totalitarian nature, in societies based on the freedom of the individual, this would contradict the very principles that society was founded on.

[ST88]

For countries currently experiencing zero population growth or a pop decrease trend, this might be something to think about.

Is this something that can/should be enforced in a free and democratic society though? It seems to me that, while policies like China's one child mandate can be enforced due to its totalitarian nature, in societies based on the freedom of the individual, this would contradict the very principles that society was founded on.

"Enforcement" would be the wrong approach. The better approach would be "encouragement." In America, we have the child tax credit. I'm sure that the left-leaning democracies of Europe (the area with lowest pop growth), could think up some government-based encouragements for people having more children, if that was their goal. Banning abortion need not be part of the process, but encouraging births probably should be.

[Jose]

Bible indicates that life begins at conception, and that the Lord forms the baby during the pregnancy. In the Genesis narratives alone, the phrase "conceived and bore" is found eleven times. The close pairing of the two words clearly emphasizes conception, not birth as the starting point of life.

"Conception," is defined as the union of sperm and egg. Neither of these was known until the invention of the microscope, and the mammalian egg was not discovered until the 1800's. Therefore, the Bible can't be referring to this particular event, because it was unknown when the Bible was written. Current translations use the word that we use for sperm/egg fusion (which may be why we use this word to mean sperm/egg fusion). It would be interesting to know what the original Hebrew actually said.

In Biblical times, as now, it was clear that something was going on well before birth. It was clear that there was a fetus in there. It was pretty clear that sex was involved somehow, but certainly didn't guarantee it. Beyond that, it made sense that God had done something special to make the baby begin to form in the womb.

Medical science at that time was based on the Ancient Greeks, like Hippocrates. He had analyzed a great many embryos from animals, and defined how it works--information that wasn't really overturned until over a thousand years later.

1. The embryo forms from water. We know this because there is nothing but water there before the embryo can be seen.

2. The embryo starts out as a plant. We know this because the small blob doesn't look anything like an animal, but does look a little like pond scum. At this time, the gods infuse it with the soul of a plant.

3. The embryo then develops into an animal. We know this because the embryo looks like an animal. In fact, we know that embryos from animals and people look just about the same, so it's clear that even human embryos pass through the animal stage. The gods add the soul of an animal, to join the soul of the plant.

4. Last, the embryo develops into a human, and the gods infuse the final, human soul. It is only at this stage that abortion is forbidden, because it is only at this stage that the embryo becomes human.

5. And, of course, the sex of the child is determined by which side of the uterus the embryo develops from. The right side causes the child to be a boy, and the left side causes the child to be a girl--and this is why you must lie on one side or the other after sex in order to choose the sex of your child. But it is not so simple. The womb must be hot to produce a boy, and cool to produce a girl. A child that grows on the left side of the womb, but the womb is hot, will be neither boy nor girl, but in between. So, also, it is with the child that grows on the right side of the womb, but the womb is cool. It is in this way that we get "intersexes," like the child of Hermes and Aphrodite, or the man who acts like a woman, or the woman who acts like a man.

It is only in recent years that the definition of "personhood" has been extended all the way forward to fertilization of the egg. When I was growing up, it was well known that "personhood," or the entry of the soul, didn't occur until the third trimester.

[Jose]

As population increases so do the chances that tax revenue will grow, that commerce will continue to grow, and that the population will become more viable due to variability and the capitalist impulse. By depriving the society of this "potential person," you are contributing to its decline.

This does not address the over-extended resources argument, but this ecotopic view has only been around for a short time compared to civilization in general.

In a small civilization with resources to spare, this argument makes sense. The more of us there are, the better able we will be to defend ourselves, or get tax money, or whatever.

China, however, ran up against the over-extended resources argument. It's not very hard to extrapolate current trends and see that we will run up against it pretty soon, too. If you look at the "ecological footprint" of Americans or of other people in the world, (i.e. the amount of land area it takes to support one person) comparing this to the average available "footprint" per person, we find that Americans are way above almost everyone else, and way above the average. That is, we are using far more resources than would be available to us if everyone used them equally.

The anti-genetic engineering folks say that genetically engineered plants are not needed to solve the world hunger problem, because it's not a problem of having enough food, its a problem of distribution of the food we have. The ecological footprints tell us otherwise. If we distributed everything equally, Americans would have some serious belt-tightening to do.

If this is already the case, what's going to happen in 50 years? The official policy is that "technology will find a way." It's not at all clear that it will.

At this point, the religious directive to multiply is directly opposed to the directive to prosper. Do we protect human life at all costs, even if many of the humans who are born must starve? Do we allow the population to increase to the point that some new infectious disease can spread rapidly and wipe us out? Or do we just start having wars? Or do we think about it, and come up with solutions like Planned Parenthood, in an effort to keep the population from reaching the point where we have passed the carrying capacity of the earth? It seems to me that only the latter makes sense, since it does the greatest good for the greatest number.

If personhood begins when the fetus develops enough to have the soul of a human (as well as that of a plant and that of an animal), and a few lesser life forms are lost to abortion, then those few are lost. It seems somewhat fanatical to save them at all costs, if those costs include rampant disease and serious food shortages for overyone else.

Lest I be misunderstood, I don't suggest that this is an argument in favor of abortion as a population-control device. That would be horrendous. There are much better ways to do this, through encouragement, revision of the social norms and expectations, and contraceptives. I merely note that a consequence of defining personhood as conception, and thereby forbidding abortion, removes one of the options (albeit one we would rather no one choose), and helps us creep a little faster toward the time when we really don't have enough resources to feed us all.

[Amphigorey]

Bible indicates that life begins at conception, and that the Lord forms the baby during the pregnancy.

It is only in recent years that the definition of "personhood" has been extended all the way forward to fertilization of the egg. When I was growing up, it was well known that "personhood," or the entry of the soul, didn't occur until the third trimester.

Ensoulment at conception is an interesting subject. I would be interested in hearing people's explanations of zygotic twins, or for the case of separate zygotes combining into a single individual.