Objection
Update. I tweaked this a little to make it clearer that it was the idea behind the law I was criticising and not the lawyer.
Irrelevant? Really?
The right to life of Miss D’s unborn child continues until it is dead, the High Court heard yesterday. The courts cannot engage in “a measuring exercise” about the capacity of the child prior to birth, a lawyer representing the unborn said. “This is a live foetus, that is the beginning and end of it, and the fact it has no brain and cannot survive after birth is irrelevant,” James Connolly, SC, said.
He’s the lawyer who is arguing for that side, so he has to say something, but the idea behind what he says is peculiar. The fact that it has no brain and cannot survive after birth is irrelevant. Is it? To whom? On what grounds? How could it be irrelevant to, for instance, the person who has to give birth to it? How could that be anything other than, precisely, relevant? About as relevant as any fact could be.
Mr Connolly, who was appointed by the Attorney General last week to represent the rights of the unborn in the D case, said the right to life of Miss D’s baby was entitled to protection under the Constitution. The Constitution, he submitted, did not permit the courts to measure the quality or duration of life of an unborn. Miss D’s baby has the same rights between its birth and its death as any other child under the Constitution.
Did he say that? Or did the reporter get it wrong? If he did say that, it must have been a slip, because ‘Miss D’s baby’ is not born yet, and that is the whole point.
This business of refusing to measure quality or duration of life is the heart of the matter, of course. It’s interesting because it can sound like the moral high ground, but in fact it’s cruel and punitive and coercive. It’s cruel to say ‘No you may not measure or evaluate your quality of life and decide to end it if it is nothing but intolerable suffering with no hope; no, you must stay alive whether you want to or not because we say so.’ It’s also cruel to say ‘No you may not evaluate the quality of life of your foetus; no, you must let nature take its course so that you can watch it die as an infant rather than ending its futile gestation because we say so.’ It’s a live foetus, and that is the beginning and end of it; life life life, that’s the only issue. Bullshit. Dandelions are alive, fleas are alive, bacteria are alive; so what? Cells are alive; so what? Life is not the only issue; sentience and consciousness are a huge part of the issue, and it’s just theocratic willfullness and tyranny to brush them aside in order to sashay around on the putative moral high ground.
You missed a word, which I would insert here: “… it’s just theocratic willfulness and tyranny and sexism to brush them aside…”
All abortion debates, no matter what language is used by the opponents of women controlling their own bodies, is in fact about just that – exerting control over women, especially over women’s reproduction. You don’t have to be a radical feminist to see that (but it helps).
He probably meant that its irrelevant *to the law.* Not irrelevant from a moral perspective, or any other perspective.
There isn’t much context to go on there, but I’d estimate this his position is basically this: that the law prohibits terminating a fetus. It doesn’t prohibit terminating a viable fetus. It doesn’t prohibit terminating a fetus with a chance to survive more than a week. It doesn’t prohibit terminating a fetus capable of feeling pain or emotion or capable of one day growing to be able to feel pain or emotion. It prohibits terminating a fetus, end of story. If this is a fetus, the law prohibits terminating it. It is a fetus. Therefore it may not be terminated. QED.
That’s how legal reasoning works. Its awfully bloodless.
I’d also like to note that its not quite fair to assume that Mr. Connolly actually holds any particular view on abortion. He’s an attorney who is arguing what appears to be the legally correct decision. He’s part of a profession of advocates, he was appointed to his role in this case, and he’s doing his professional best. His ethical commitments require this of him.
The correct target of criticism is whoever got this law passed.
Patrick, sure – I did say that at the beginning: he’s arguing that case, he has to say something. I’m not really criticising the guy who said it – the agent – I’m criticising the thing said. Not that I made that very clear – but that’s what I meant. It’s the idea in general, not Connolly in particular for saying it.
I have to agree with Patrick on both his points. The lawyer‘s quite possibly is saying it’s irrelevant from a legal standpoint as opposed to an ethical one. I am not a lawyer, but it appears he’d be right too. Also, again as Patrick says, it seems strange to be surprised (in a, perhaps, statistical sense as opposed to a purely morally indignant one) at the arguments, however disingenuous, made by a lawyer during a trial. Their whole purpose is to, if they think it’ll help the case to which they’ve been assigned, fly just about anything up that argumentative flagpole and see if it flutters. The original post could, of course, have been merely criticising the argument within the context of the case.
Incidentally, I’ve always been somewhat sceptical of the term “a woman’s right to choose…” given that it seems to fairly straightforwardly beg the moral question of the ethical status of the foetus. None of this though is to say that I oppose abortion and I certainly don’t in this case were any decision against termination would seem simply barbaric.
Sorry, OB, I didn’t see your last comment before I posted mine; one your qualification renders basically irrelevant.
I should have made it clearer. I knew it was the thought, not the guy, I was disputing, but I didn’t actually say that. Clarity, clarity!
Patrick: “The correct target of criticism is whoever got this law passed.”
That would be the Irish electorate – article Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution was approved by referendum and we’ve had several more referendums since then to deal with the fallout. But I think Bertie Ahern deserves a special dose of blame. He promised legislation following the last referendum, which would at least have brought clarity to the situation even if neither side was happy with it, but he chickened out.
Here is my impression of what Connolly is trying to guard against. The judge is evidently exploring the idea that the right to life is restricted to foetuses which have the potential to have a real life, in the sense of having something more than a pulse:
The judge said that what was being protected in Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution – under which the State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and guarantees to respect and vindicate that right – was the “right to life”. Applying that provision to this case, there would be “no life”.
What Connolly is saying is: don’t go there, Judge. Irish law has never set much store by arguments about the quality of life – that’s irrelevant to the right to life. The remark about the foetus having “the same rights between its birth and its death” looks silly, but I don’t think it was a slip. If I understand him correctly it’s the best argument he has against the judge’s suggestion, which would restrict constitutional protection to foetuses without fatal abnormalities. It is illegal to strangle a newly-born baby because of its poor quality of life and short life expectancy. If it is born with the same rights that a normal baby has, why should it have lesser rights prior to its birth? Do its rights diminish when the abnormality is discovered during pregnancy and then catch up at birth? Surely not. The natural reading of Article 40.3.3 therefore is that “the unborn” covers all living foetuses and all are protected.
I’m not a lawyer but I think Connolly is on solid ground here. I will be surprised if the judge rules that an abortion is lawful in Ireland even in such a case as this. Fortunately for Miss D none of the lawyers seems to think there is any way she can be prevented from having an abortion in the UK.
As to whether Connolly actually believes in his own case (although we are all agreed that it’s not relevant whether he does or not): I don’t know anything about him but my guess is that the AG would always prefer to appoint a strong pro-lifer in a situation like this. It’s a matter of justice being seen to be done – you want the pro-life people to feel that their case was presented with as much conviction as possible.
This business of refusing to measure quality or duration of life is the heart of the matter, of course.
Boring, and question-begging against the pro-life position.
Ed said: Incidentally, I’ve always been somewhat sceptical of the term “a woman’s right to choose…” given that it seems to fairly straightforwardly beg the moral question of the ethical status of the foetus.
Actually, Ed, I don’t think there is any question-begging here at all. Surely any person’s sovereignty over their own body is a very basic right. But it is a basic feature of rights-based ethical and political thought that people’s rights can clash. It is sometimes the case that the rights of different individuals can come into a conflict where no compromise is possible, so that some adjudication of the priority of the conflicting individuals’ rights must be made to resolve the conflict. Such a conflict-resolving adjudication does not negate or deny either person’s right, it just acknowledges that one person or the other’s right in this case is more important, and gives reasons for privileging one over the other. So to assert that every woman has a right to control her own body and medical decisions does NOT presume that a fetus she might be carrying has no rights: The very substance of the abortion debate amounts to whether we ought to ascribe rights to fetuses at all; and if we do, whether and under what circumstances the rights of the fetus ought to trump the rights of the mother, or vice versa.
My own opinion is that it is patently ludicrous to ascribe rights to fetuses – or “unborn children,” to point out an instance of real question-begging language. And even if one wanted to ascribe some sort of rights to fetuses as potential future persons on the basis of that potential, such tenuous conditional rights based on potential should never justly trump a right as basic as a woman’s sovereignty over her own body. (In this particular context, it is clear that an anencephalic fetus clearly has no potential to ever be a person, so even that tenuous logical basis for extending rights to a fetus is inapplicable.)
But that all is rather astray from the main point: The rights language is not question-begging. In fact, it highlights the very legitimate point that even if one gives a fetus rights, the rights of the fetus do not simply obliterate the rights of the mother: If their respective rights come into conflict, their rights ought to be balanced or prioritized on some rational basis.
The fact that the anti-choicers never even consider the possibility that a woman’s sovereignty over her own body is a right of any worth or weight is one of the features that reveals the real hatred of and desire to control women which underlies the movement. “Think of the children!” is here, as it almost always is, a smokescreen for the real agenda.
Ed: I’d also like to say that your point was worth responding to because you framed it in a way that showed thought. As opposed to the comment from ’emmanual goldstein’ I cross-posted past: He is clearly just a troll, and I won’t feed him.
I may be taking your position to the extreme here G.but do you mean you would have no problem with a woman having an abortion so she could fit into her prom dress.
Well, there are two things to say about that, Richard. The first is that this is a blatantly emotional button-pushing imaginary “example.” No one has ever presented any convincing evidence that such a thing has ever actually happened, and no actual women who are pregnant are so completely free of devotion and emotional attachment to their potential future child. Abortion is always an agonizing decision. Women who use abortion casually and without a second thought as a form of birth control are a deliberately crafted political myth. Like “welfare queens,” they are a rhetorically effective, emotionally manipulative invention of far right propaganda: They don’t exist in the real world, only in the minds and words of the Bill O’Reillys of the world.
Secondly, rights are not the be all and end all of ethics and politics. Individual rights are essential concepts for determining the proper limits on the power of a just state, but that doesn’t mean talking about rights makes all other moral judgments null and void. Of course a teen who decided on abortion for such a frivolous reason would be doing something selfish, small-minded, vain, petty and otherwise morally blameworthy. Such a decision would be morally wrong for a variety of reasons. But it is not a moral wrong on par with murder, because a fetus is not a person who ought to be ascribed the moral or legal standing of a person. Some moral status, perhaps – but not moral status equivalent to an infant or adult human.
To put it another way: If the alternative to letting one (imaginary) teenage girl get an abortion to fit into her prom dress is to give the state the right to control women’s bodies – to allow the government to use the full power of the law to FORCE women to stay pregnant against their will – I say, “Have fun at the prom, vain girl born of right wing myth-making rhetoric.” The price for stopping SOME women from making morally questionable abortion decisions (or at least, decisions that are morally questionable in some peoples’ eyes) is giving government the power to force ALL women to stay pregnant against their will – which is morally reprehensible in theory and practice. That price is far, far too high.
Within limits, it should and must be legally permissible to do some things that are morally wrong: Otherwise the law – which applies to everyone, all the time – becomes far too intrusive and controlling. Is cheating in a marriage wrong? Do you think there ought to be a law against it? Would you want to live in a country where the government’s law enforcement apparatus is so intrusive in citizens’ lives that it can detect and punish the crime of adultery? I suspect that you would find such government power excessive and morally wrong, both in principle and in practice. But somehow (judging just by your choice of rhetorical question), you think it’s perfectly fine for the government to intrude into women’s medical decisions about their own bodies.
Woo! Go, G, go!
The alternative to a woman’s right to choose is shackles in the delivery room…
Isn’t the real issue that if you accept someone’s right to choose something, it follows that their motives for making a given choice are nobody else’s business. There is no sensible or logical position that says – abortion is all right as long as women agonise over it, or feel bad about it. Either it’s their choice or it isn’t.
That’s why I stick to the point I made on a previous thread that for me the real issue is whether the foetus is a child. In my view it isn’t, hence the sole interested human being is the woman. It’s her body, which means that her motives are her own affair.
Fintan O’Toole says:
“Ours is, historically, one of the weakest parliaments in the developed world. We could begin to change that.
If we can’t elect a government with the guts to do its job, we can at least elect TDs with the gumption and self-respect to do theirs“.
The méar fada – the long finger, and the long fella followers are still living in the dark ages.
“I think Bertie Ahern deserves a special dose of blame. He promised legislation following the last referendum, which would at least have brought clarity to the situation even if neither side was happy with it, but he chickened out”.
Bertie Boy Teflon [nothing sticks] Taoiseach is more interested in going to Downing St. to make an even bigger name for himself under the banner of Northern Ireland Peace.
A subject like abortion, well,… is just mere chicken feed to this daily communicant/cra thumping religious lover
As for clarity! What clarity? Bertie would not understand its meaning in any sense of the word, even if one was with it – to hit him on the head.
Judging from his government record, you can bet your bottom dollar – if this charming pretender is again on the 24th May 2007 elected, he will leave the abortion issue – again, on the back burner. He will be too busy preening himself and gloating and thinking about the third time round ‘wonder-man’ success that he is to bother with subjects that would disturb his religious friends.
Apart from echoing “G”‘s expressions, I still think two other things are important here, apart form the traditional sexism/misogyny.
One, as I’ve said before is stupidity, and the second is power.
If you’ve got people who are very crafty/cunning, but not all that bright (intellectually speaking) in power, who are very good at manouvering, and suckimg up to their power base, as all the tea-cosies (tea-shacks? coffe-pots? tishwashers? oh hell, Irish PM’s ) seem to be, then you really do have a problem.
I understand that there has bee a referendum to sort this insanity out, but nothing has bee done about it.
Well, why not?
And how, under the Irish constitution, could their pathetic apology for a government be forced to do something about it?
Incidentally, my contempt for lawyers, as a group, has sunk to a new low, after the ghastly statements about “right to life” of a not-yet child that hasn’t got a brain, and will die, anyway within hours of “birth”.
UGH.
“Children have constitutional rights from day one, “those rights are not delivered to them by courier on their 18th birthday”.
What a misnomer!
You could have fooled me that Irish children have rights.
What about the constitiutional rights of thousands of children in the past who were industrial schools and
reformatories.
NOBODY IN IRELAND STOOD UP FOR THEM WITH REGARDS THEIR RIGHTS.
“THE STATE WAS IN BREACH OF 21 OF THE 30 ARTICLES ON THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS 1949”
The IRISH state, from 1949 to the present day was, and STILL remains, in breach of Articles 1 to 13 (inclusive), 19,22,23,25,26,28,29 and 30.
IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.
The principles of the Proclamation WAS
a promise to cherish “all the children of the nation equally” (though often misinterpreted as referring to Irish children and their rights, it actually meant people of all religions, who were all seen as ‘children of the nation’).
A CHILD IS IN NEED OF HELP AND THIS NATION BY ITS SILENCE/LAW IS FORCING HER TO TAKE THE BOAT TO ENGLAND JUST AS IT DID THOUSANDS OF GIRLS/BOYS OF THE SAME AGE OF THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS/REFORMATORIES OF THE PAST LIKE THIS SAD GIRL WHO WERE ALSO IN DESPERATE NEED OF CARE.
“So long as the 6,000 remain anonymous and silent, the sand in which we collectively bury our heads remains comfortably undisturbed”.
So says Mary Raftery, co – author of Suffer the Little Children. Mary, is very well respected by victims/survivors of institutional child abuse. I am saying this so as to remind those who give her stick, that she is by us well and truly supported.
6,000,and more I would envisage. No, little footprints neither must not appear in the sand. They will spoil its smooth pattern, and we cannot have the golden sand ruffled. Not good for appearance!
I
G
I’m not sure calling Richard’s prom-dress-obsessed girl ‘a blatantly emotional button-pushing imaginary “example”‘ is entirely fair – I saw it more as a thought experiment, and one which you responded to sensible in all respects other than your rather unpleasant insibuations about Richard’s motivations.
That said, I think there is one area in which your position is unclear: you say that
a fetus is not a person who ought to be ascribed the moral or legal standing of … an infant or adult human.
This appears to suggest that you regard a foetus’ presonhood as starting at birth (since that is the definition of foetus), which presumably means you feel that an infant born, say, a month pre-term is more of a ‘person’ than one still unborn at term, even though the latter will be more phisiologically developed. This strikes me as a position which is difficult to defend: if this is your position, how would you defend it, and do you on these grounds oppose all abortion law (which would be consistent, if startling)?
PS Sorry about the apalling phrasing of the phrase ‘a foetus’ presonhood as starting at birth (since that is the definition of foetus)’; I should have written ‘you regard presonhood as starting at birth (since the definition of foetus is a developing mammal after the embryonic stage and before birth)’. Mea culpa.
“I saw it more as a thought experiment”
A thought experiment?! That’s an awfully charitable reading. It’s an utterly familiar bit of right-wing boilerplate – from exactly the same Box o’ Phrases as “welfare queen in a Cadillac.” It’s not thought experiment and it’s not thought, it’s just brandishment of a stock epithet.
Prom dress. Honest to Christ.
Also, I want to echo what Dave said. Go, G, go!
Marie-Therese does make a blindingly compelling point. Ireland does look more than a little peculiar coming over all dewey-eyed about the rights of the dear little fetus when it was so content to let so many actually born children be treated SO APPALLINGLY for so many decades. It is very difficult not to suspect a different (and much less dewey-eyed) agenda.
Sag mir wo die SCHWANGERE MÄDCHEN sind…[W]as ist geschehen…[S]ie sind nach England gegangen. Wann wird je versteh’n, wann wird Die Irische Regierung verstehen?
Niemals! Niemals! Niemals!
Mädchen pflückten sie geschwind. The girls have picked them everyone? as well as the rest of us – and they are right dandelions indeed!
They are known as pests or weeds to the common person.
Miss D can travel to UK. But no details of the judge’s reasoning yet. It may be solely about Miss D’s right to travel, not about the Irish constitution entrenching Ratzinger’s right to insist she gives birth to a dying baby with half a brain. (Marie-Therese: 1000 apologies if I haven’t got that quite right.)
Should have read: “constitutional” six posts but one.
“But they know- or suspect- that to suggest bringing Irish abortion law into some kind of line with European norms would be electoral suicide. They might be right- and are, therefore guilty only of cowardice.
“But there is another group that is not afraid of clarifying the law- because it agrees with it. At one time, the Taoiseach’s position was that the Oireachtas was duty-bound to legislate in the parliamentary term now ending to give effect to the ruling of the Supreme Court in the X case of 1992. The Government has not done so and neither Fianna Fáil nor the PD’s,-if their manifestos are anything to go by- intend to do so during the life of the next Dáil if they can help it”.
And so the story goes, and it will go on and on and on. The government will not take on board the abortion issue.
An innocent person will first have to virtually die, before it will alert itself to its seriousness.
I do not mean to be disingenuous – but that is what I believe.
The newly elected government is going to have to stop burying its head in the sand (Mary Raftery nicely framed same).
“It is very difficult not to suspect a different (and much less dewey-eyed) agenda”.
OB:
This one for example. Bertie Boy already presented the nation with his dewey-eyes – when he recently appeared on RTE telling from HIS EXPERT/WELL REHEARSED PERSPECTIVE, the emotional sloppy story of how he came into ‘enormous cash funding’ whilst some years ago – minister of finance.
The drivelling – master of the spluttering waffle spin – gurrier played into the hands of the Irish softies and came out of it as a hero.
The Irish have a fondness for those of whom have about them – a mystique, and an edge. It gets their adrenalin going and pumping.
His “one of the lads” charm is staged/perfected to a tee and his constitutenty voters cannot get enough of him.
They are in awe of this working class “one of them” jackeen.
ONE REAPS WHAT ONE SOWS!
Thought experiments can work by testing the more extreme hypothetical implications of our moral assumptions, as that question did. I dunno, maybe it’s boilerplate etc. – though I’ve never heard the prom dress thing before – and maybe my interpretation was ‘charitable’. I’m not so sure, since the question had a point in testing G’s stated poisition (which is by no means an obvious one) but would have been totally irrelevant to a broader debate of abortion issues. Regardless, it certainly served the purpose of a thought experiment in that it led G to explain his views wrt the limitation of the language of ‘rights’ in moral questions…
True enough, outeast. I have heard the prom dress thing before though; there is a whole stock topos about women aborting so that they can wear a bikini, a new dress, tight jeans, etc etc; also so that they can go away for the weekend, so that they can go to the prom, so that they won’t miss that hot date, so that they won’t be feeling queasy for the company picnic; etc etc etc. In short, a consistent vein of misogynist sexist contemptuous trivialization of women and women’s autonomy and women’s right to and claim to autonomy. I consider it something like the opposite of a thought-experiment; more like an anti-thought experiment. Don’t even think about having any claim to your own life, your own right to make decisions about your own life, your independence, your freedom, your room to breathe, your adulthood, honey, because if you try it we’ll all get together and point out what stupid shallow trivial childish girly frivolous things you want it for, which is to say, we’ll all get together and point out what stupid shallow trivial childish girly frivolous kinds of human beings you all fundamentally are, thus convincing everyone that you have no right to autonomy and to make your own decisions, because you’re too stupid and too weak and too shallow and too likely to murder the baby just because you feel like going to the movies.
Make no mistake. This is deeply sinister shit. It’s essentially the same thing as the mindset that says women can’t travel without permission from a male relative.
“It is very difficult not to suspect a different (and much less dewey-eyed) agenda”.
POWER, POWER, AND MORE POWER. But first in order to get hold of this one has to very, very, very dewey-eyed.
The Taoiseach momentarily has the electorate in the palm of his hand eating all of the bread/seeds.
I SUSPECT THIS IS HIS AGENDA!
“It is impossible to get rid of a world without getting rid of the language that conceals and protects it, without laying bare its true nature. As the social truth of power is permanent falsification, language is its permanent guarantee and the Dictionary its universal reference.”
Subliminality… screams out at me in the first sentence alone of the RTE link that Nicholas kindly posted.
“The High Court has ruled that Miss D can travel outside the country for an abortion”.
The way RTE has stated this first sentence one automatically THINKS that the High Court HAS GIVEN HER PERMISSION TO HAVE AN ABORTION OUTSIDE THE COUNTRY.
VERY CLEVER! VERY CLEVER! VERY CLEVER!
I don’t understand Irish politics at all, but I do note that under the Constitution “In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred …
Humbly acknowledging all our obligations to our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ, Who sustained our fathers through centuries of trial” [especially, one assumes, in the aftermath of the Ferns enquiry]
(article 40:3) “3° The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal [Meh] right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.
This subsection shall not limit freedom to travel between the State and another state.
This subsection shall not limit freedom to obtain or make available, in the State, subject to such conditions as may be laid down by law, information relating to services lawfully available in another state.”
“There is no Twelfth Amendment. [Because it was aborted.] On 25 November 1992, three proposals were put to the people, the Twelfth, Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. The people rejected the Twelfth (which dealt with the right to life of the unborn) and approved the Thirteenth and Fourteenth.”
Paidir
Iarraimíd Ort, a Thiarna, d’anáil naofa a chur fúinn chun sinn a stiúradh inár ngníomhartha agus neart do ghrásta a bhronnadh orainn chun iad a thabhairt chun críche, ionas gur uaitse a thosófar ár n-uile bhriathar agus ár n-uile ghníomh feasta, agus gur tríot a chríochnófar iad; trí Chríost ár dTiarna.
Prayer
Direct, we beseech Thee, O Lord, our actions by Thy holy inspirations and carry them on by Thy gracious assistance; that every word and work of ours may always begin from Thee, and by Thee be happily ended; through Christ our Lord. Amen.
The above prayer is said at the commencement of each day’s business in the Dáil by the Ceann Comhairle, and in the Seanad by the Clerk of the Seanad.
“A Brief Summary Of Abortion Law In Ireland”. in OB’s, – Irrelevant – is worth reading.
And yet one has to ask, why are atheists sometimes so disrespectful, even rude, on the matter of religion? What makes them so angry, is it perhaps because they know in their bitter hearts that Jesus is Lord?
Why can’t they accept the quiet, simple comfort which the church gives to so many? Why must they portray gentle, scholarly men of faith and compassion as so many prating prelates who would see the defenceless ground into a living hell so long as it preserves their precious power and bloodless dogma?
By all means let there be debate, but please respect the fact that the men who demand (fucking demand, with the force of law) that this girl carry this broken fragment of flesh in her body until she can see it die having known nothing but pain, are doing it beccause of their sincere faith that in so doing she will gain a greater understanding of the goodness and mercy of god.
Halleluiah brother Don! Praise that sweet merciful Lord for giving such men the strength to endure the persecutions of the ungodly!
outeast, I’ll quote your whole post because it’s up the thread so far now: This appears to suggest that you regard a foetus’ presonhood as starting at birth (since that is the definition of foetus), which presumably means you feel that an infant born, say, a month pre-term is more of a ‘person’ than one still unborn at term, even though the latter will be more phisiologically developed. This strikes me as a position which is difficult to defend: if this is your position, how would you defend it, and do you on these grounds oppose all abortion law (which would be consistent, if startling)?
Your reasoning is peculiar. A infant born a month early is still BORN, therefore is at that point an infant rather than a fetus. The end. I neither said nor implied anything about any particular stage of physiological development: The only development (in the sense of “event”) which I take to be most relevant is birth, which is when the transition from complete physiological dependence on the mother for respiration, nutrition, etc. ends and physical separation (exit from the womb, cutting the umbilical cord) occurs. Any other stage of development simply doesn’t enter into the reasoning I offered, nor do I see any compelling RATIONAL basis for introducing it. All talk about when a fetus is “viable” (dependent on our ever-growing capacity for medical intervention) – or starts moving, or commences brain activity, or has adowable little fingers and toesies – is not about medicine, morality, or reasoning: It is emotional button-pushing rhetoric.
I do oppose all abortion law, but not on the grounds you attribute to me. Rather, I oppose abortion law on the grounds I clearly stated. I only raised the idea that perhaps moral judgments might be made about an individual woman’s choice with respect to her fetus to make it clear that (1) whatever moral status this implies for the fetus does not constitute full legal or moral rights, and (2) even if there are some moral judgments to be made about abortion, those judgments are not of the kind or weight that we should ever make them a matter of law and government coercion.
Well done, Don!
I think abortion should be treated as just another medical procedure, with absolutely no laws against it whatsoever, but neither should there be any laws compelling any abortion provider to perform an abortion in every case. Of course, because of the Hippocratic oath, every doctor should be compelled to provide an abortion in a case in which the mother’s life were threatend. Then, individual doctors might refuse to perform 3rd trimester abortions, some would only perform 1st trimester ones, ad infinitum.
Actually, I think you might be a bit off-base on that one OB. When it is not medically necessary to protect the health of the mother, abortion is an elective surgical procedure. Any surgeon is well within his or her rights to refuse to perform any procedure which is not medically necessary. Mind you, I think it is wrong for medical service providers to generally refuse to provide abortions – because terminating an unwanted pregnancy is a woman’s right. But the woman’s right to an abortion does not trump an individual doctor’s right to determine for him or herself, within reasonable bounds, what constitutes the “harm” in “First, do no harm.”
Of course, I might change my mind if the real obstacle to women getting an abortion was doctors who refuse to perform them. But the source of the access problem lies decidedly elsewhere – such as the terrorists who intimidate and threaten abortion providers here in the U.S., and sometimes carry out those threats.
At first blush, I don’t think the facts or ethics of this matter are quite parallel to the case of pharmacists refusing to issue prescribed medications – although I could certainly be persuaded otherwise.
Okay, G. I wasn’t sure; hence all the question marks.
I wasn’t really trying to argue the ethics, merely pointing out what I thought were two incompatible goals in Doug’s plan.
I was just trying to put myself in the shoes of the abortion provider. I believe that women’s wishes with regard to their own bodies ought to be respected, and that abortion should be easily attainable, safe and affordable. But if I were a doctor, I would object to being legally compelled to end the pregnancy of, for example, a woman well into her 3rd trimester who presented herself while on drugs, and whose judgment I doubted. Maybe if she stopped using for a while, she’d want a child. I might refuse to do the procedure even if I were legally compelled, and accept the consequences. But why should doctors have to do this? If mainstream medical opinion says that a woman is entitled to an abortion, she ought to be able to get one fairly easily. But in the very unusual cases, as the one above, she might have to do a considerable amount of shopping around before she finds a doctor willing to perform the abortion (if she finds one).
Of course abortion is a far more serious and time-constrained procedure than cosmetic surgery, but the situation seems to me somewhat akin to a plastic surgeon refusing to augment already unusually large breasts. Or what about a man who feels himself to be a woman. Isn’t a surgeon entitled to refuse to perform a castration if he is of the opinion that the man hasn’t been sufficiently counseled? These patients may claim that they will be distraught until the procedure is done, but what about the conscience of the doctor?
I personally believe that we need to start moving society in the direction where fewer people are incarcerated for actions of conscience. But of course we need well-educated people whose decisions in this regard are rational, and not based on superstition. One obvious example is participating in an unjust war. The way it is now, soldiers, etc., have no choice but to follow orders. I say give them a choice. If they agree to be deployed, go. If not, refuse, with alternative service, not jail.
Don: “By all means let there be debate, but please respect the fact that the men who demand…that this girl carry this broken fragment of flesh in her body until she can see it die having known nothing but pain, are doing it because of their sincere faith that in so doing she will gain a greater understanding of the goodness and mercy of god.”
Why exactly should I (or anyone) RESPECT this “fact”?
Why does their “sincere faith” permit them to force another person to suffer?
And how exactly does this suffering contribute to “a greater understanding of the goodness and mercy of god”?
This is all bollocks. Frankly, I’m fed up with it.
Keith:
I think your irony detector needs ironing (unless yours is faux disgust, and then I need to get the iron out).
Don was right on.
I framed my question to G. as a thought experiment for myself,I was wondering if I asked him that would 2 things happen!1- he would acuse me of right wing propogander and 2- wanting the goverment to step in to tell a woman what she can do with her own body(this would work as well as the drug war does in my opinion)he did! the point I was trying to make was you can think that a feotus is an unborn baby or that abortion is repugnant and over used and still be pro choice because it is the leser of two evils.
G
Thanks for your reply. I accept that you consider birth to be both the most obvious watershed and the only valid one; I do feel, though, that to dismiss consideration of the physiological development of the foetus or infant as ‘peculiar reasoning’ is a bit steep. In the specific case that triggered this debate, for instance, the physiology of the foetus is central to most debates in progress – and because of the key issue of whether this foetus has even the potential to achieve personhood. That in itself suggests an approach to personhood which is dependent on physiology rather than merely passing the watershed of birth… But anyway.
While applauding with all my heart the right to choose, it is worth bearing in mind that after c.28 weeks [and some would argue 24], a foetus is generally viable outside the mother [in the current state of medical technology]. That does rather complicate things.
From a viewpoint of practical ethics, knowing what we know, the ‘life begins at birth’ position is as difficult to sustain as the ‘every sperm is sacred’ one.
Which is why contraception should be available on demand, children should be properly educated in its use, and first-trimester terminations should be available in a timely fashion.
Whatever we think of it as a matter of philosophy, as a matter of policy we should strive to make abortion legal, safe, and rare.
“I don’t understand Irish politics at all”.
Nicholas,
See: Wikipedia.
1)Fianna Fail Party = FF = Soldiers of Destiny.
2) Progressive Democrats = PD’s
These two parties are presently with each other in coalition.
However, that could change as there is on the 24th May 2007 an election.
I could go on giving you more information but do not want to go off topic.
Thanks, Marie-Therese. I’m trying really hard, but gosh it’s confusing.
Have I got any of this right? FF has had the largest number of seats for ever, and is sort of centre-right, and Catholic, and corrupt? And the Progressive Democrats are much the same, and not progressive at all? And in the forthcoming election FF will still get most seats, but just possibly a ‘rainbow coalition’ of other parties might emerge which could form a different government?
And in 2002 the FF – PD govt asked the people to vote to close the loophole the heretics on the Supreme Court had introduced, that a raped 14-year-old girl could have an abortion because (but only because) she said she was suicidal? And the Catholic bishops said vote yes, close the loophole, make raped 14-year-old girls give birth unless the pregnancy is actually killing them, and if they say they’re suicidal, excommunicate them for that as well? But in the event a majority voted no, including lots of ghouls who believe abortion is wicked even if the pregnancy is killing the mother, plus 3 people in Tipperary who think that maybe, just maybe, the government could come up with a humane abortion law instead? But no party is offering any such thing in the forthcoming election?
outeast: I didn’t say physiology as a whole was irrelevant – after all, birth is itself a physiological event. I said physiological stage of development was not relevant. Anencephaly is not simply a stage of development, it is a failure to develop normally. You framed the discussion in terms of a child born a few weeks early as opposed to a child born after an average full term – as if what I said gave some reason to consider that relevant. But nothing in what I said gave any reason to consider that relevant, without some, well, mighty peculiar reasoning. ;-)
That said, I see what you mean. I’m not sure I so much think birth is a watershed for personhood, although what I said could certainly be read that way. I think birth is a watershed for OTHER kinds of moral considerations, but only for a tiny part of personhood. Certainly birth is a watershed in terms of rights conflicts, since the end of absolute and complete dependence on the mother also ends the fundamental clash of rights (if one is inclined to go around assigning rights to fetuses, which I’m decidedly reluctant about).
In contrast, personhood is an extremely fluid concept that cannot be so neatly defined by birth. To cite one particularly infamous case, Terry Schiavo was a person – a fully functioning adult human being – before injury rendered her a non-person by virtue of total destruction of her prefrontal cortex and all the other bits of her brain that make consciousness, personality and identity possible. Similarly, what is not mentioned in discussion of this Irish case is that less severe forms of anencephaly might leave the infant more viable after birth, capable of surviving well beyond the three days projected in this case: A developmental error could leave more of the autonomic nervous system-governing part of the brain intact but still result in a lack of any forebrain in the organism. (I cannot prejudice the matter by calling such a creature “the child.”) Such a creature would have less personality, memory and volition than any fully functioning adult mammal – the family dog or cat, for example – but would still be absolutely sacred in the religious extremists’ eyes.
Anyway, I ramble. I just meant to say that personhood is much, much more complicated than birth – although the independence created by the birth event is certainly important in many ways.
G
OK, I get you on most of that. I still think we must be talking past each other on the stage of development thing though – I think there must be some fundamental communication breakdown somewhere. I’d like to clear my name on the ‘mighty peculiar reasoning’ thing, but I’m not sure where exactly you see the weirdness and I’m not sure it’s worth the effort of nailing down solely for the sake of soothing a mild affront to my ego:)
“The Labour Party appear to have almost completely ruled out supporting a Fianna Fáil government after the election in 2007. According to the Deputy Labour party leader Liz McManus, “even in the event of a hung Dáil, having another election would be preferable than supporting a Fianna Fáil government”.
There were/are different views within the Labour Party on the above issue. I will check it out to see for certain.
The Labour party would be the preferred choice of FF if it was looking for a bedfellow. Especially MORE SO if the required number of seats of 85/86 was not realised.
The PD’S, I note got all the plushy, plum jobs – which it more than likely bargained with FF extensively before entering last Government. There was in some political circles – resentment over this matter.
Colm O’Gorman of 1 in 4 has of late been – by the government – made Senator.
Actually, outeast, it’s not that I think your reasoning is peculiar as such. I just think that your reasoning must be adding something beyond what I actually said. Without being able to identify that something – which is some mysterious assumption/background belief that you find so natural that you can’t imagine how I wasn’t making it, and I find so odd that I can’t conceive that someone might make it – you are no doubt correct that we are indeed talking past each other in some way. The key point about the watershed event of birth from my perspective is that it ends the conflict of rights (or putative rights), and developmental stages don’t enter into that as far as I can see. The potential valuation of the fetus – whether one thinks of that in terms of rights, or capacities, or realization of potentials – might indeed depend on developmental stages in some ways. But except to point out that the value of a fetus – whatever that value is, wherever it comes from – simply isn’t on par with the value of a full adult human being and HER rights, I didn’t really care much about the origin, nature, and possible sliding scales associated with that value. From things you’ve said in this thread and others, that question interests you more than it does me, and so it’s natural enough for you to look at what I was saying through that filter – and thus your reasoning really isn’t particularly peculiar.
There. I hope that assuages your mildly affronted ego. :-)
“Ireland has one of the harshest abortion laws in Europe, one affording equal legal status to the pregnant woman and the foetus and allowing abortion only to save the life of the woman”.
It does say a lot about Ireland as well as Malta and Poland, who also have very strict abortion laws.
The Catholic Church dominates all.
I wish Miss D every success in all she endeavours to do. She has had to undergo an awful lot for someone so young.
When I was her age/much older I did not have a clue where babies came from.
I truly believed they were bought from hospitals.
I was so afraid of/for women/girls with big bellies – thinking stupidly of course, that they were very ill people.