What matters, and why?
Let’s do a thought experiment. Suppose a 24 hour period during which every heterosexual copulation on the planet resulted in conception and then, 48 hours later, spontaneous abortion. Would that be a tragedy?
Then suppose a 24 hour period during which every infant born between 48 and 72 hours earlier, died. Would that be a tragedy?
It seems to me that people who think an embryo is just as important as a neonate would answer yes to the first. But what I wonder is, why? Why would that be a tragedy? More particularly, to whom would it be a tragedy? Can something be a tragedy to no one and still be a tragedy?
The problem is that no one would know about the first event. (Bracket people who are trying to conceive and fail on this particular occasion, for the sake of argument, because that’s a separate issue.) No one would know it had happened, including, obviously, the microscopic cluster of cells it happened to. If no one knows about it, and it has no effect on the outside world (thus being unlike a tree falling in the forest unheard by any humans), in what sense can it be a tragedy?
“Suppose a 24 hour period during which every heterosexual copulation on the planet resulted in conception and then, 48 hours later, spontaneous abortion. Would that be a tragedy
No.
Because… I read!
“Miscarriage or spontaneous abortion is the natural or spontaneous end of a pregnancy at a stage where the embryo or the foetus is incapable of surviving, generally defined in humans at a gestation of prior to 20 weeks.
No problemo for Ratzinger: no humans would know, but YHWH would, and would be heartbroken. (In other news, slay all the firstborn of Egypt, also no problemo.)
For rational people, on the other hand, no, the first is plainly not a tragedy. But (I guess) anti-abortionists would comment on the lines: a 36-week foetus is not decisively less sentient than a neonate, and mother and possibly father are emotionally attached to a 36-week foetus, so abortion of all 36-week foetuses would be a tragedy. Likewise 35, 34, 33, … , and we have nowhere to draw the line. Therefore abortion of all 2-day embryos is also a tragedy, even though no human knows about it.
Ratzinger and co would then need to explain why they don’t (as far as I know) baptize all heavy blood flows that might contain an embryo.
A neonate is a baby who is four weeks old or younger.
An infant is considered to be a “newborn” or “neonate” up to age 1 month (4 weeks old). This “neonatal period” represents a short time of life where changes are very rapid and when many critical events can occur.
During the first 30 days, most congenital defects (such as congenital heart disease) are discovered. Genetic abnormalities may show up and it is a time when infections such as congenital herpes, group B strep, toxoplasmosis and others are discovered as they begin to have effects on the baby.
Nature has its own way of dealing with same.
If we stipulate that women who actually want to carry a fetus to term aren’t affected by this mass abortion, it seems pretty obvious to me that, far from being some kind of tragedy, it would be a very definite boon for humanity. So many unwanted pregancies automatically ended! There’s nothing holy about an egg being fertilized; it’s happened trillions of times. There is, however, something very profound and meaningful about making the conscious decision to raise a child. Most women naturally want the child to come from their own wombs. And of course many women want to be able to choose when that’s going to happen. Women being free to control their own reproductivity is really just a matter of basic human rights, and the reason the issue is often not portrayed this way is because men don’t get pregnant.
I don’t believe personhood begins until baptism. Or maybe it is inherent in the sperm and the egg prior to their convergence. Or somewhere in between.
Exegisis of ancient texts isn’t going to help, but then neither is cold logic. The idea that ethical significance begins at birth, as suggested by somebody, is absurd. Birth can be induced, does that mean a medical procedure imbues it’s subject with an otherwise lacking value?
The idea that it begins at conception is equally inane, as you illustrate.
‘Viable outside the womb’ intuitively seems like a good sticking point, but that viability, if put into practice, would most often result in short, agonised lives.
I think the main point here is that no line need be drawn, because there ought to be no laws restricting women’s choices about what they do with their own pregnancies. Lines like that are only for laws. No one seriously believes that there would be a spate of late-term abortions if women were free to do what they wished about their unwanted pregnancies. The great majority of women and girls know whether they want a child or not, and would get early-term abortions in the event of unwanted pregnancy — if they were readily available, legal and affordable.
“far from being some kind of tragedy, it would be a very definite boon for humanity.”
Well the whole thing wouldn’t be a boon (or an unboon either) because it includes the mass conception. It would be a wash, is all it would be (provided we set aside the people who are trying to conceive, which of course would be a lot of people). A non-event.
I’m not a bit sure viability is the best criterion; I think awareness ought to play a much bigger part than it seems to. Of course, I suppose people shy away from that because it might seem to imply that it’s okay to kill neonates; but it needn’t imply that.
“Birth can be induced, does that mean a medical procedure imbues its subject with an otherwise lacking value?”
But the medical procedure does imbue its subject with something other than value: the ability to survive independent of someone else’s body. As G pointed out, that medical procedure terminates the conflict of rights. That’s no small matter.
The situation you imagined, OB, wouldn’t be a wash, because we aren’t comparing zero conceptions/zero magical abortions to billions of conceptions/billions of magical abortions. The comparison is actually one of millions of conceptions, x% of which are unwanted (the situation in reality) to billions of conceptions/billions of magical abortions (your imagined situation). In other words, a magical mass abortion would indeed solve the problems of some of those women because some small percentage of them would have been afflicted with an unwanted pregnancy even without your imagined 100% conception rate. That’s why I call the mass abortion a boon.
Ah. Gotcha, Doug. The complexities of thought experiments! I overlooked that particular wrinkle.
“Can something be a tragedy to no one and still be a tragedy?“
Curiously, yes. (Not that your embryo scenario is such a case.)
“The problem is that no one would know about the first event.“
Is that really relevant? (I’m inclined to think that “what really matters” is achieving one’s goals in actual fact, with knowledge of the achievement being of merely secondary importance.) Indeed, setting aside “people who are trying to conceive”, it seems to me that the mass abortion would still not be any kind of tragedy even if everyone knew about it.
It’s just not that big a tragedy when non-persons die.
Never mind the thought experiment can I get some of this action that is going on?
Seeing its outside the control of any person this experimental procedure would be
a) Devoid of moral implications for the persons involved, who made no choice to be part of it;
b) an appropriation of the reproductive capacity of people, free or not… a rape or sexual slavery.
In fact it reminds me of the situation asserted to actually exist under the (putative) patriarchy.
ChrisPer,
Obviously; but that’s beside the point. I was asking one particular (narrow) question, to which those observations are irrelevant.
As a footnote to your post–I read something really interesting a long time ago (sorry, can’t give you the source). Somebody did an experiment that showed that the scenario you’re envisioning is a reality. Wish I could remember all the details, with statistics. But basically–pregnancy tests were given to women trying to get pregnant a few days after ovulation (without telling them the results). An amazing number were pregnant but wound up not pregnant by the end of their cycle. So very early miscarriage is actually extremely common. It’s very hard to think of this as a tragedy…and I agree with you it’s equally difficult to think of a very early abortion as a tragedy.