Abortion

Obama: God Bless Planned Parenthood

Obama: God Bless Planned Parenthood

President Obama is the first sitting president to publicly speak on Planned Parenthood:

“When politicians try to turn Planned Parenthood into a punching bag, they’re not just talking about you,” he said. “They’re talking about the millions of women who you serve.”

“The fact is, after decades of progress, there’s still those who want to turn back the clock to policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st Century,” Obama said. “And they’ve been involved in an orchestrated and historic effort to roll back basic rights when it comes to women’s health.”

“Thank you Planned Parenthood. God bless you. God bless you,” Obama concluded.

I shouldn’t say this is particularly surprising as this is coming from a man that has supported infanticide if the woman so chooses. Pro-lifers have pointed out the implications of abortion for some time now, but it was simply dismissed as a slippery slope. First, I think it should be obvious to anyone that a distinct human being is inside that woman’s womb (it’s not the woman’s body) and it has all the capacities for reasoning and willing in its nature or else it could never develop its capacities into what we see in adults. Second, even if that is not granted, you are senselessly taking away the future hopes and dreams of that life. Lastly, you were once a fetus and that is all you need to know to see that abortion is wrong. If you were not identical to that fetus, then it was not you because you could never exist without first being a fetus. If one was to go back in time and take your life then, it would be just as wrong as killing you now.

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Planned Parenthood? More like Planned Gendercide

Gendercide, Infanticide. Genocide. There’s no substantial difference, once you permit one form of murder, you logically permit all other forms of murder. This is disgusting, to be honest. However, I’d be careful to qualify these video samples as only tentatively representative of Planned Parenthood’s official or overall position because it is possible that the employees are speaking of their own accord. Regardless of their overall position, I think something needs to be done against this. You can sign a petition or spread the word with friends, family, or the internet. Let’s put an end to legalized murder.

Scott Klusendorf Quotes

Here is a set of quotes of Scott Klusendorf. Enjoy!

“Religion and politics: Do you mean the federal government should not establish a state church (denomination) or do you mean that believers have no right to bring their values to the public square and argue for them, like everyone else does? If the former, I agree. If the latter, what’s your constitutional support for such a claim?”

“It is no more a religious claim to say an embryo has value than it is to claim a Black Man does. Suppose that instead of killing embryos for research, someone were to suggest killing ethnic minorities for that same purpose. Would anyone dare to suggest that those opposing the ethnic killings were simply forcing their religious views on the rest of us? Truth be told, the “religious” objection is a cop-out, a means of avoiding the question of whether all human beings–regardless of race, gender, level of development, and location–have an equal right to life.”

“What “pro-choice” now means: 1) You do not have the right to choose whether or not to purchase health insurance that provides for abortion, even if doing so deeply violates your conscience. 2) You do not have the right to choose whether or not your 12 year old daughter gets an abortion without your knowledge or consent. 3) If you are a religious organization, you do not have the right to choose to not to provide abortion coverage from your employees. 4) If you are a medical school, you do not have the right to choose whether or not to provide abortion training. In short, you will obey or we will bring the full force of law to bear on you.”

“For Thomson’s argument to work, the relationship between the mother and the intruder must parallel the mother’s relationship to her own child. Right away there are problems. First, there can be no intruder until two parents create him. Second, abortion is much more than withholding support—it’s actively killing another human through dismemberment or poisoning. Indeed, per Thomson, I not only have the right to remove an innocent intruder from my yard; I can cut him up and throw his body parts in the garbage! As abortion-choice advocate and philosopher Mary Anne Warren points out, “mere ownership does not give me the right to kill innocent people whom I find on my property.”

Stop Kony?

It’s interesting to see such a strong and viral reaction to Kony for what he has done to children in Uganda but see such a weak response to abortion activists who are responsible for murdering millions upon millions of lives. If only we put as much effort toward saving babies, we’d be ridding ourselves of a much greater evil. Think about it. If Jacob was aborted before he was born, we wouldn’t shed a tear but if they killed him as a child, we’re suddenly in an uproar. Abortionists may not masquerade their cause under the guise of Christianity like Kony does, but they certainly do so under the guise of feminine rights that they uphold in such a divine manner. Apparently, it is the woman who gets to decide who lives and who dies. Sound familiar? Yeah, I’d say it sounds like a feminist version of Kony.

Human Nature, Personhood, and Abortion Part 2

There was a good discussion that came out of the first part of my post, and I’d like to take the time to respond to some of the issues brought up in the comments. I haven’t had time to respond directly to some of the commenters so I figured I’d address it in a post. First, what I did say in the comments but didn’t in my post is clarify my position of human nature. So I will just repeat what I said in the comments here:

In the context of human nature, our soul is the form of the body (matter). Our soul is what makes the body alive and, because it is a rational soul, it has the powers of intellect, will, and the whatever powers the vegetative and animal souls have.

I also added that my arguments derive from an Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysical view.

I had said the following:

“But the kernel, in essence, is popcorn. It has “popcornness” (haha) and thus will develop and actualize its potency given something else in aactuality brings it about. So, yes, you pointed out there was an element missing, and that was a metaphysical principle that I didn’t bring up. Namely, that for something to transition from potency to act, it cannot do so on itself but must require something else that’s already in act or actuality to bring it about by acting as an efficient cause. So, the heat would be the efficient cause of the kernel actualizing its potency of being the popcorn; the heat is that thing in actuality which the popcorn comes about.”

To which one commenter replied:

“‘But the kernel, in essence, is popcorn’

Except it isn’t. Not every instance of a kernel will become, or has the capacity to become popcorn. In fact many don’t. It’s rare that I’ll have a bag of popcorn that doesn’t have a good dozen kernels that refuse to pop. The fact that not every kernel will actualize into popcorn seems like a pretty big hole in the argument. To connect this to abortion, not every instance of an egg and sperm make it through to gestation, or becoming a fetus.”

I respond that:

It is in essence popcorn. To say that because there are kernels that don’t develop into popcorn doesn’t at all bring a hole into the argument. When we see the kernel’s that didn’t pop, we tend to think that there must have been something wrong with those kernel’s that didn’t allow them to become popcorn. If they were like other normal kernels, they would have developed. Take for example trisomy 21. This occurs when something called non-disjunction happens during mitosis–which is the dividing and multiplying of cells to make copies. When this happens, the fetus has an extra chromosome and begins developing in an unnatural way and it doesn’t develop properly. This is what happens to the kernels, except the kernels don’t develop at all for whatever reason that may be. We say that this is normal insofar that it’s a common occurrence. But it’s not normal in the sense that it should not be this way. All things being equal, the kernel would develop properly. So, if the egg and sperm do not make it through gestation, this does not affect my argument at all. Genetic issues, problems, and accidents occur that may impede development or make it unnatural.

The commenter goes on and argues:

“We can establish as a given that any woman who can produce an egg is a human being. She has rights, she will more often than not have the capacity to reason, and is in possession of any number of other qualities that we attribute to being part of the human experience. She has grown to the point of maturity, or very near it.

Now, as far as the Zygote goes, it is completely dependent on the woman. After birth, an infant may be dependent on any number of sources – a father, a family friend, an orphanage, etc. However, while in the womb, the mother is the only viable option for survival. This parasitic tendency brings up two questions for me. The first is whether or not the worth of the zygote can empirically supersede that of the woman. The woman is an actualized human, while the zygote is a potential human. I don’t accept that they are the same in any regard other than in possessing human DNA.

The second question is how you distinguish between a zygote and a wart. Beyond their DNA strands, is there a difference in the relationship? Why then is it acceptable for a woman or man to eliminate warts, but sometimes unacceptable with other parasites? They are both dependent on the mother, and both have the capacity to grow and reproduce.”

I respond:

I find this parasite argument by pro-choicers to be alarming and, quite frankly, asinine (no disrespect intended). For one, a parasite is of a different species than their host. A fetus is of the same species. A parasite is an intruder coming from the outside. The fetus is right at home and where it’s supposed to be. I can go on and on. (See here for more points and citations to textbooks)

Now, the two questions that are brought up seems to be besides the point. What does it mean to say that the zygote can empirically supersede the woman? Are you saying that because the zygote doesn’t look or seem to be like an adult, that therefore it isn’t on par with a fully grown human? If that’s the case, then we should say infants and even toddlers are not on par with adults in terms of values or rights. But, I’m just grasping at air here. This is ambiguous. Also, the commenter says the woman is an actualized human. Umm, the zygote is an actualized human as well. The zygote is not a potential human, it is human. It’s a human zygote, just like an infant is a human infant. A zygote is just one stage along the stages of development just as adolescence is one stage along development. On what grounds do you not accept that they’re the same? I’ve already given the metaphysical case.

 

 

Human Nature, Personhood, and Abortion

This is probably one of my favorite topics to discuss and debate. I’ve got a lot to learn, but I feel like I’m fairly competent in discussing this issue and giving a good pro-life case (note the weasler fairly competent). I think one of the huge points of confusion in this debate comes when using terms such as human being, human nature, personhood, humanity, and human organism. These words have very different meanings in different contexts and this only asks for an equivocation to occur. Hence why I think defining one’s terms and usage of them before ever debating the issue is extremely crucial. Otherwise, you’ll just be tripping over your words and making a mess everywhere.

Personally, I hate treating personhood as if it’s some deciding factor for an individual to be counted as a person. See, my language already is assuming that there are human beings that are not persons, and this, I think, is problematic. Sadly, the philosophical community has assumed that a “person” is just a collection of traits that make one valuable. So, what I want to do is define my terms and proceed to explain my case for the pro-life exposition using thomistic language and metaphysics. In doing so, I will demonstrate why I have such a problem with this divide over personhood. Moreover, by using a Thomistic metaphysics, I will try and show that this “personhood” issue isn’t really an issue at all.

First of all, I think it’s pretty plausible to say that at a biological level we are a human organism (well, duh). Now, I’d like to state that I equate being a human being with having a human nature or essence, and a human nature belongs with that substance that is human, i.e., a human organism. There is a substance (the human organism), that has a nature (human nature), and this nature is what makes the organism a human being.

From the get go, metaphysically speaking, a human organism is a human being because it has a human nature, and these cannot be separated. You cannot have a human organism that does not have a human nature because then the organism would not be human. Having a human nature, then, is a necessary condition of being a human organism.

Now, to address this issue of personhood and when a fetus “gains personhood”, we turn to the concepts of act and potency.  To say something is in “act” or to be actual is to describe the way something is. Feser, for example, uses a rubber ball to demonstrate this this. He explains how “among [the ball's] features are the ways it actually is: solid, round, red, and bouncy. These are different aspects of its ‘being’” (Feser 10). Potency is the way a thing potentially is. To continue Feser’s example a ball is potentially green or black if you were to paint it and it is potentially “gooey (if you melt it)” (Feser 10).

But potency just doesn’t mean a thing in actuality can possibly do anything or become anything. For something to be potential it means that the substance has these potencies built into it. Edward Feser explains it this way, “The potentialities Aristotle and Aquinas have in mind are ones rooted in a thing’s nature as it actually exists” ( Feser 11). So, while I have the potential to grow another 5 feet tall, I don’t have the potential to become a werewolf. The latter is not a potency that is a part of my nature. So potential is always inherent in the thing that is.

To take another example, a piece of chopped up wood cannot potentially be a steel ship. Why? First because the steel is an entirely different substance. The wood cannot change or become something that it does not have. To use a common sense example, I cannot give you what I do not have. The wood, however, has the potential to become a house, or an axe handle, or a wall. These things are potentialities that the wood can fulfill since its nature allows it to do so.

Now with these distinctions in place, I turn to the personhood issue and the properties that go along with it, the properties such as rationality, consciousness, self-awareness, volition, will, etc.

I’ve heard it said that a fetus might be biologically human, but it doesn’t have rationally or self-consciousness and thus doesn’t count as human. Already we have a problem here. The metaphysic is off and the assumption is that a human organism becomes a human being when it acquires some property such as rationality or self-consciousness (the common ones that are appealed to). First, I think we have plausible grounds to accept the metaphysic I’ve proposed. Scientifically we see that a human organism, from conception, if nourished properly and if it develops normally, it becomes a fully grown human organism with fully functional mental capacities. I think the substance view of human beings is quite possible. A thing or substance(human organism) contains a nature (human nature) that allows it to grow and develop into a fully functional thing (human being).

When a fetus grows into a baby, and a baby into a toddler, and the toddler into a child, why doesn’t the child gain some other property like non-rationality? Why does the child gain the property of rationality? This seems like a dull question to ask but I think it’s one that must be asked. Why doesn’t the child develop into a log cabin? Why not the property of having a butterfly mind? I think it’s very plausible to posit the answer to this as being because rationality moves from potential to actual, and potentiality can only exist in the thing itself, that is a human substance or organism.  These properties that were named earlier (rationality, self-awareness, consciousness, etc.) are actualized or gained precisely because they are potential in the substance itself. The human organism contains these properties in a state of potency, and thus they are always in the substance just waiting to be actualized. So it’s wrongheaded to try and divorce these states and say that the fetus is not human because it doesn’t have these properties actualized when the fact of the matter is these properties can only be actualized if the substance is human in the first place!

Personhood doesn’t even become an issue because, as I said earlier, personhood is inherent in the nature of a human, and during development, its properties of rationality, consciousness, and awareness is in a state of potency. Given enough time and the proper nourishment, this fetus would continue its natural development and these properties will inevitably be actualized. It’s like me grabbing the bag of popcorn kernels form my cupboard and throwing them all away. “What in the world are you doing?!” My mother screams. “This isn’t popcorn so what’s the point of having it?” I respond. “You have to heat them up. It is popcorn, you just have to let them develop.” I think a more telling action would be for me to grab the kernels out of the microwave while it’s heating up and just to throw them away since they’re not “fully popcorn”. My actions would be plain stupid and absurd. Similarly, to just abort the fetus because it hasn’t developed its rationality (or any of the other properties) is equally stupid and absurd.

The rationalization that a fetus can be aborted because it doesn’t contain personhood is completely off chart and I’ll go as far as say it’s utterly absurd. We accept our humanity yet we deny our humanity on the basis that some do not have the properties we have simply because they weren’t given the time of day to develop them. I fail to see any intellectual viability with those who are in favor of abortion. I welcome any dialogue and I look forward to it. In the mean time, popcorn anyone?

Work Cited

Feser, Edward. Aquinas: a beginner’s guide. Oxford: Oneworld, 2009. Print.

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