July 5, 2004
Murder and Trimester Legerdemain
Astute readers will note that I've moved Andrew Sullivan farther down my blogroll, which I maintain according to the order of the sites that I try to visit each day. Frankly, I feel that the revelation of his drastically different presentation for different audiences granted permission to conclude that time would be better spent reading and addressing other writers. However, before I move on, so to speak, something that Sullivan posted last week has continued to bother me:
But the Church does not always spend enough time absorbing scientific developments - especially when they conflict with established dogma. Case in point: there's an obvious distinction between personhood and life - as Wills points out. Sperm is life, but it is not a person; fertilized eggs are routinely aborted naturally (is nature murderous?); miscarriages are a sad but permanent part of our biology; intuitively the abortion of a two week old fetus does not seem to us as equivalent to the abortion of one at six months; and so on. To my mind, life and personhood are so important as values that considering conception as their mutual origin is the safest moral option. But I wouldn't insist on baptizing or formally burying a miscarried fetus. And I can see perfectly well how others might disagree on when personhood begins; indeed, how the Church itself once disagreed. This makes the issue not one of theological certitude but of moral judgment. And that's why I believe that in the political realm, keeping abortion legal in the first trimester differs from condoning it. It's a balance between women's control of their own bodies, the prudential difficulties of making abortion illegal, the allowance of a free people to make such moral judgments for themselves, and the need to retain respect for human life - even if it is not indisputable that a person is at stake. If I were a public official, that judgment alone would make me ineligible for the sacraments. And that shows how rigid the Church has now become.
One could observe that the "rigidity" of the Church has been a complaint of Sullivan's with respect to his central concern, a factor that justifies speculation about his motivation for pushing the organization out of politics. But what leapt out at me was the parenthetical question: "is nature murderous?" As an excuse to believe what one desires, that might be passable rhetoric, but even a moment's consideration proves it to undermine the very lesson that Sullivan wishes to draw.
The question functions rhetorically because it's a truism. Because of the lack of motive, it is a quality of nature that it is not murderous. Of course, nature kills all the time; in fact, it will get everybody eventually. "Is nature murderous?," thus applied, therefore either absolves or implicates every instance of a human's death at the hands of fellow humans. An earthquake in California could collapse a wall on top of homosexuals; that fact does nothing to justify Islamicists' doing the same. Nature sometimes claims the lives of the pre-born; that fact does nothing to justify secularists' doing the same. If the pre-born are human beings with a right to live, killing them with the motive of convenience is no less murder than any other calculating killing.
With the matter of whether the pre-born are "persons," Sullivan turns his head from truth even more profoundly, albeit more subtly. What could the Church possibly learn about the "personhood" of young humans by "absorbing scientific developments"? It seems to me that honestly doing so would lead to the change in position to which Sullivan alludes. Science has allowed us to trace the development of a person back to the moment at which two distinct cells carrying two people's DNA combine to form a brand new entity, which thereafter proceeds to develop through the human lifecycle, if not prevented from doing so.
Conception is a clear milestone for when a particular human being becomes a particular human being. Yes, an embryo has no brain, no heart, no arms, but it develops them of its own initiative; nobody reaches into the womb to contribute them. If the Church — any church — were to declare personhood to be a subsequent implantation from God, then it would have failed to absorb scientific developments.
All that remains is Sullivan's "intuition" that there's a personhood-related difference between a two-week old and a six-week old. And to be sure, supporters of abortion have nearly reached the point of declaring the mother to grant personhood, saying that an organism is a person when the mother wants it. Unfortunately, that encourages a view of personhood that is not inherently permanent, because a mother can want and then not want a child. Moreover, it brings us back to the question of when what might be called autonomous personhood begins — that time at which the mother can no longer "kill" her child.
In being thus brought back, we return also to the realization that Sullivan slipped his own deadline for murder into the debate: "I believe that in the political realm, keeping abortion legal in the first trimester differs from condoning it." Clearly, as the issue now stands, pro-abortion politicians are not working according to this definition, as their votes perpetuate abortion up to, and often including, partial birth at full term. Is that an evil worthy of "theological certitude" and judgment of ineligibility for the sacraments?
Posted by Justin Katz at July 5, 2004 3:22 PMAbortion
I've been thinking through when life begins for plants, and how it relates to personhood.
(Part 1)
Is a seed a plant?
No.
Why not?
Well, it's not growing.
So, something has to be growing to be a plant?
Yes.
Then a seedling's a plant?
Yes.
From the moment it breaks the shell and starts growing?
Yes.
What if the seedling was frozen in the middle of growing, so it stopped? Would it still be a seedling?
Yes, as long as it wasn't killed.
But it's not growing.
I suppose not.
But it's not dead.
Right.
So, one could say that a seedling is a plant, from the moment it starts growing, unless it is killed.
Correct.
But we know what a plant is.
Yes.
Posted by: Joe Marier at July 6, 2004 12:10 AMPart 2...
So we know what a plant is. But how many seedlings survive, even to the point that they break through the soil?
I don't know.
But it can't be many?
I suppose not.
But does that change the fact that they are, in fact, plants?
No.
So, the identity of a thing is not dependent on whether or not it will continue to be that thing in the near future.
That sounds right.
Posted by: Joe Marier at July 6, 2004 12:22 AMPart 3:
So, we've determined that there's a distinction between a seed and a plant. The difference is growth, or "life". We can know this difference. Additionally, even if life is precarious at a certain stage, the thing-that-is-alive is still the same thing. Does that make sense?
Yes.
(cont.)
Posted by: Joe Marier at July 6, 2004 12:32 AMSo, is a sperm cell a life?
Umm...
Rather, is a sperm a life, in the same sense that a seedling is a life?
No.
Why not?
It's not growing.
So, it's the same as a seed?
No.
Why not?
Because a seed just needs nourishment to begin to grow. A sperm cell needs nourishment, plus the egg cell to grow.
So, is the sperm cell plus the egg cell analagous to a seed?
Not exactly.
Why not?
(Er, Justin? I think I hit a logical brick wall here. Following this line of reasoning, it would seem that a pre-implantation fertilized egg isn't a human person, unless a solid distinction can be made between a fertilized egg and a seed, both of which need nourishment to continue growing... I may need to think harder about whether a seed is a plant or not.)
Posted by: Joe Marier at July 6, 2004 1:34 AMJoe,
Well, there are two difficulties, here (at least for me). The first is that I don't know much about the early stages of plant development (i.e., within the seed), and I'm not sure about the mechanism whereby the sperm and egg become one organism (but I believe that implantation in the uterus is not required for the step at which they join into a new organism). With respect to the seed, I'll assume that we're talking about plants that require some sort of pollination (so that the seed isn't just a direct offshoot of the plant).
The second is that we do not value plants as much as we value human life (and/or we shouldn't). For perspective, think of a tree that grew money: wouldn't each seed be precious, as well. Or think of a humanoid plant.
Given all of the above, I'd suggest that your difficulty lies in your conclusion that a seed is not a plant. One reason that your conclusion seems plausible is that a seed remains in stasis until planted (and can remain that way for a while), whereas a fertilized human egg does not.
So, while insisting that plants aren't particularly helpful in this bit of moral pondering, I'd suggest that a seed is a plant, but that our utilitarian view of plants, which would be wholly inappropriate in our thinking about humans, makes it morally possible to make distinctions between a seed and a tree.
(One could argue that abortion takes a similarly utilitarian approach to human life, wherein the value to the mother determines the value of the life.)
Posted by: Justin Katz at July 6, 2004 10:16 AMJustin,
Thanks for the input.
I concur that I may need to know a little more about biology to flesh out the dialogue.
In the first part of the dialogue, I'm trying to establish identity, not value. As in, we can know what life is, and know it by sight and reason, apart from assigning value. And because we can know what life is, we can know what human life is (thus dispensing with the fallacy that when life begins is a matter of faith). After that, I can start pointing out the Wills has it wrong: there is not life without personhood.
One thing that concerned me was the fact a fertilized egg can stay in stasis for a while, if frozen. And even a seed will eventually break down, if it doesn't start growing.
But why should the "stasis" of the fertilized egg or its eventual breakdown matter? Part of the problem is, as J pointed out, a "utilitarian" definition of personhood (i.e., this thing is a person because it can grow, develop, think, etc. - b/c it can "do" certain things). Somehwere on the net, I read a piece by a Jesuit high school theology teacher that espoused a more substantive definition, which seems better reasoned. Once a new, genetically distinct being comes into existence, a new person comes into existence. Thus, personhood depends on one's humanity, not ones particular stage of human development. Sperm and eggs alone would not qualify b/c they lack the substance of being a new human on their own. But once joined, they are a new substantive human, therefore a person.
Posted by: c matt at July 6, 2004 10:50 AMNow, some object to this definition b/c the blastocyst or whatever can split into two, then rejoin into one, etc, therefore there is no "person" until this stage settles down, so to speak. But the future state of something does not alter its past existence. For example, splitting a rock in two does not alter the fact that, at one point, there was only one rock. Likewise, splitting, then rejoining a rock does not alter the fact that prior to splitting and rejoining, there was one rock. Whether its the same rock or not is irrelevant - it was a rock before, it is one now. Destroying it at either time would have been rockicide. Thus, the "splitting/rejoining" blastocyte argument only shows that, in fact, you may be killing more than one person; it does nothing to refute you are killing at least one person.
Posted by: c matt at July 6, 2004 10:58 AMC Matt points toward something about which I've only just begun to think. When we talk about "personhood" and "life," even we who are religious, we tend to slip into a body/soul distinction. Some people believe they are completely distinct, and I would say it's obvious that one can speak of them as different things.
However, I think it's a mistake to think of soul (i.e., that which makes one a "person") as imposed upon a body. In a way, that leaves one unable to respond to secular Evolutionists' notion that consciousness formed out of — almost accidentally — our biological evolution, like an illusion for organisms that reach a certain level of awareness.
But there's something to that point of view when it comes to the early stages of human life. Certainly, our souls, our "persons" continually develop throughout our lives, so the Evolutionists might be correct that the soul grows out of the biology, with the body as God's mechanism for creating the spirit, created entirely new at conception and existing forever thereafter. In this light, the blastocyst, zygote, and fetus aren't awaiting their souls, as they are awaiting their brains; rather, their souls are at an early stage of development in conjunction with their bodies.
(N.B. Sorry for any lack of clarity. I've a lot on my mind and in my schedule today.)
Posted by: Justin Katz at July 6, 2004 11:31 AMJustin,
I typically don't agree with your attacks on Sullivan as I feel they are nit-picky and often miss the point of what he is trying to say.
But this time, I wanted to say that I feel you are exactly on the mark.
Yes, his position of legalizing abortion in the first trimester is a defensible position. But to try to assert that the Church's position is too rigid ? Too rigid for what ? He doesn't argue that it is too rigid for law. He seems to argue that it is too rigid based on theology ! Huh ?
His motive is clearly to paint the Church as unreasonable with respect to this issue - or actually, all issues.
And he has the nerve to complain about Michael Moore or Ann Coulter ?
No more need for me to elaborate - your post sums it up very well.
Posted by: Mark Miller at July 6, 2004 11:39 AMI agree with c matt that I was slipping into utilitarianism in my dialogue. My sincerest apologies. I'm not a utilitarian, but I play one in my head.
But I still think that whether a seed is a plant or not, it follows logically from both premises that an unborn child is a human person. If one accepts that the intentional killing of a human person is wrong (part two of the syllogism), then Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided.
And I have a meta-point: we have to figure out ways to communicate Catholic truth, and one of the best ways is the use of questions.
Posted by: Joe Marier at July 6, 2004 12:48 PM