If you define clusters of cells as "children," that is, to use Pat W.'s categories, if you define an oocite just penetrated by a sperm as a "child," or their fused nuclei, or just-implanted cells, if you call them "children," and if an early human embryo is a "child," or an embryo that has been implanted for a week, or two weeks, or three weeks, or four weeks, or five weeks, or six weeks, or eight weeks... if you define them all as "children," then of course that accounts for that ugly zealotry I hear in the tone of so many (not all) on your side in the debate.
And of course many who share your views are filled with sanctimonious zeal!: They have apparently hypnotized themselves into believing that a scrambled egg is a roast chicken dinner! I believe the proposition is an odd one, myself; beyond odd, actually; and I think anyone would think the proposition odd who didn't enjoy so intensely the feeling state which accompanies that inspiriting, energizing sanctimony that it motivates them to take leave of their common sense.
But hey, that's just me. Maybe eggs are "chickens" and seeds are "tomatoes" and an acorn is an "oak tree" and ingots are "cars" and a cocoon is a "silk ball gown" and fertilized oocites are "children."
Of course, DCF, if those 1.6 million are all really "children," then it is easy to push aside the fact that by banning legal abortion you assure that a great big pile of dead women's bodies will be produced by illegal abortion. A hundred and forty thousand women in that one country that one year, each dead because in her desperation not to have an embryo develop in her abdomen into a human being, she gambled, obtaining the only kind of abortion you will never, ever, be able to stop-- a dirty, painful, incompetent one. And so she dies, terrified and in pain, of sepsis or hemorrhage.
(Oh, God, I wonder how many of those women had children at home to care for who are now motherless? How many of them were the only support for their families?)
In my opinion, what you are doing is taking a religious notion, an item of pure dogma -- that clusters of cells are "children," in spite of the fact that anybody with two eyes and a brain can see they aren't except by stipulation -- and trying to shove it down the throats of those who don't believe in that piece of dogma, or item of ideology.
Embryos do become fetuses, and fetuses do become children, and it is hard for civilized people to decide exactly at what point the line between fetus and child should be drawn.
Of course you can evade the decision, if you simply substitute an article of religious faith -- an opinion -- (that is precisely what it is and all it is) for the hard job of figuring out an answer to the problem of how one makes stipulations that neither defy common sense nor tolerate infanticide.
I had a miscarriage at several weeks, and looked at what fell into the toilet, and it looked like some fatty gristle in a blood clot. It is madness, imo, to define that clot as a human being and force women to carry it in their abdomens against their wills until it does become, in fact, a human being.
But we draw lines all the time. We have to, to live. So, we could talk about it. Could we talk about it? Where should the line be, to be fair, and sensible, and civilized, and good, and compassionate?
Well, of course, for some, there's nothing to talk about. It's easy. It's about when a soul (opinion; religion) enters the cells.
I, personally, think three months feels right. I don't know whether that is the correct line or not. It's a hard decision, not a simple one. It takes a lot of thought by people of good will and good sense and a desire to minimize the misery of humankind.
I don't want five or six month fetuses being aborted. They are babies, to me. It takes no microscope for me to see that. I also don't want desperate women late with their periods sticking knitting needles up their vaginas or lying on a dirty table and having a drunken oaf scrape out their uteruses with no anesthesia after extracting sexual favors. Horrible things happen to these desperate women. But so frantic are they not to be punished for the few minutes of sexual pleasure that resulted in the feared conception that they will do anything, anything, to stop it from becoming a human being in their bodies. (I said "pleasure," but we know it was only that for the lucky ones; many, of course, have merely been used by a man as a receptacle for his sperm, and had no pleasure at all by which they earned this fate.)
(Oh, if only, if only, a microscopic cluster of cells would, oh, say, every fifth time, implant itself on the abdominal wall of the man. And start growing there. And he would start vomiting a lot in the morning, and he would realize that soon, if he didn't do something, there would be a human being inside his body, and he would have to, for years and years and years, ... well, you see what I'm thinking. What would guys think about a fertilized oocite then? LOL!)
Well, here's the thing. I think anybody who thinks there's a sacred soul in an oocite, that in fact it is a microscopic "child," should... not get an abortion.
I myself don't believe they are microscopic "children" there, though. I don't think most people do. And just because you stipulate it, doesn't make it so. And I perceive you wanting to use the law to force your religious precept down the throats of those who don't share it, and I can't help but resent it very much. I really do hate it when people try to make me accept their religious precepts by force of law.
I wish instead of arguing about sacred souls in fertilized ova (it is so difficult in any case to convert others to one's religion) the argument would be about how to make lives better for everybody, and help women not have unwanted babies grow inside them, and how not to kill five and six month old actual, not mystical, stipulated babies. No decision will be perfect. I know that. But some will cause much less misery than others; and some don't require that the whole citizenry be ruled by the religious precept of a part. |
