It isn’t a “potential” life, it isn’t a non-human life … it is a new, living, individual, human organism. Go to your local university library and open up any embryology textbook if you don’t believe me. Anybody who has any respect at all for science has to concede that point. It’s a basic scientific fact.

Sorry, your science is outdated, and that’s not a fact.

Do you know what a teratoma is? For those that don’t, this description is from wikipedia: “The tissues of a teratoma, although normal in themselves, may be quite different from surrounding tissues, and may be highly inappropriate, even grotesque (hence the monstrous): teratomas have been reported to contain hair, teeth, bone and very rarely more complex organs such as eyeball, torso, and hand.” They are generally removed by surgery or chemotherapy.

That embryo that some regard as a human life, if left in a laboratory incubator to develop, and sometimes in a human body, will turn into a teratoma. Not a pretty thought, but true.

That leaves two possible arguments – either it was never a full human life, or its humanity has disappeared. I don’t know how the rest of you feel, but that second one is the scariest concept I’ve come across in a while. How is it possible to be human one week and not human the next? I don’t think it is.

Mike C said,
September 18, 2007 at 11:05 am

This may be sort of unrelated to what we’ve been talking about here, but one thing I’ve notice about the abortion debate (having been on both sides to some degree) is that both sides seem to be talking past each other. Both sides seem to be imputing opposition to their key issues to the other side.

So the pro-choice side, whose key concern is women’s rights, accuse the other side of being motivated primarily out of a desire to control and restrict women. And the pro-life side, whose key concern is the life of the child, accuses the other side of being all about abortion-on-demand and devaluing human life in favor of personal convenience. And it seems that anything either side says get interpreted by the other through the lens of these assumptions.

Of course neither side really matches up to the caricatures painted by their opponents. Pro-life people really are primarily motivated by a deep passion for the life of the child. And pro-choice people really are motivated by a similar passion for the rights of women. And both to me seem like noble motivations, which is why I so often find myself in the middle on these debates and not wanting to identify myself with the poisonous rhetoric of either side.

I keep coming back and reading this over and over. It’s one of the most intelligent comments I’ve read on this website. Once in a while in other discussions I’ve advocated this kind of respectful awareness of other’s positive motives, but then I get caught up in stating and defending “my side” and start to assume the villainy of the “other side,” dismissing them out of hand as stupid, crazy or evil. When the issues stir up emotions it’s easy for me to forget to see them as just as human as I am, not as caricatures. If only this was the guiding principle in all our debates.

I’d like to find a nicely phrased quotation about this idea to tape to the top of my monitor as a reminder. Maybe somebody out there has run across one?

I have no cut and dry answer to such a question either; it’s a terrible dilemma that people have to face every day. Their responses are based on many things such as the context of the culture, the resources available for taking care of the child, the severity of the problem and the prospects for a life of fulfillment and possibility versus a life of pain and frustration, and of course the personal values of the parent or parents. But harsh choices have to be made in a world with diminishing resources and burgeoning populations, and those choices will continue to become harsher as we get more crowded and more hungry. If we don’t get serious about limiting our numbers, what’s happening in Africa will happen everywhere.

There probably will never be clear cut lines to draw here. I just don’t view life as either on or off, yes or no. I have seen people in states of existence that I wouldn’t wish on the most despicable person. The word “appalling” does not cover it. I would not call those states “life” in any human sense.

As for the foster child population, you pointed out that many of the children were taken out of their homes long after birth, and for many abortion vs. foster care wasn’t an issue. Perhaps so, but the point remains that the system is already overburdened and if abortion is completely outlawed it will be worse. ( I know you’ve stated that you don’t oppose all abortions.)

Don’t get me wrong. As others have stated here, I don’t think that abortion is a desirable form of birth control. It’s awful under the best circumstances. But it isn’t going to go away if it is outlawed. It was illegal in most states not too long ago and many thousands of women died having illegal procedures or attempting it themselves.

According to Children’s Data Bank more than 513,000 children in the U.S. are in foster care. Only 4% are in “pre-adoptive” homes, meaning the foster parents intend to adopt them. Another 24% are fostered by relatives, while 46% are in non-relative foster homes, 8% in group homes, 10% are in institutions, and the remaining 7% are in something designated as “other.” So only 28% are being raised by people who are either related to them or intend to become related by adoption.

I don’t know for sure, but I doubt that most of those foster children are babies that would have been aborted. A very large number of foster kids are in the system because they come from abusive homes and were removed by DCFS for their own safety, health, etc. Many of these kids are older children and even teenagers that aren’t realistic candidates for adoption in the first place. (Quite a few of my friends in high school were these kind of foster kids.) While their situation is certainly important too, it really doesn’t have much to do with the abortion issue and whether there are people willing to take unwanted babies.

From my (admittedly anecdotal) experience, infants to be adopted are far more rare. Several of my friends have adopted through ECFA, and they had to wait several years before they were able to get a baby from a couple who would have aborted otherwise. The waiting list for adoption was just too long.

My question still stands Mike, since I was asking about the not whole, not healthy babies, the babies for which there were much more compelling reasons to consider aborting them than simply inconvenience for the mother. How many of those families you know of took on the difficult, expensive, heart-breaking ones?

Well, I only know three families personally who adopted through ECFA (it was a small church – only about 150 people), but at least two of them took children with various degrees of physical disabilities. One of those families ended up adopting four children and serving as foster parents to dozens more, and at least a few of them had “issues” – nothing extremely severe as far as I know, but they weren’t adverse to it if the opportunity and need had arisen.

Life at any price is sometimes a price too high to pay. It’s easy to overlook the price that others who are not whole or healthy have to pay.

Richard, I hear what you’re saying, and I understand to some degree, but… well, I’m not sure how to say this because I don’t want to be offensive… that kind of talk scares me. As soon as we start saying “maybe this person or that person is better off not living”, even in the name of compassion, I get nervous. The 20th Century has seen enough regimes that have killed off the handicapped, the infirm, etc. that I’m really leery of going anywhere near that. Don’t worry, I’m not going to call you a “Nazi” or anything; but I do think that this is dangerous ground to tread.

And personally, and maybe this is too much of a “religious” belief, but I am convinced that handicapped people (whether mentally or physically) are not less valuable or less deserving of a shot at life. Yes, their lives may be far more difficult than that average person’s, but they still can contribute so much to the lives of those around them, and gain so much joy out of life for themselves too. Every life is precious IMHO.

This is a bit of a personal issue for me too since my wife is physically handicapped from birth, though not severely (she’s missing an arm). Now I know that of course you wouldn’t say that people with her handicap should be aborted, but where does one draw the line? How handicapped does one have to be before their life is not worth living? That’s just not a question I’m comfortable answering. (And I wouldn’t even dare raise it with my wife – understandably she’s even more sensitive to such issues than I am.)

Richard, that’s not a fair accusation. I know many pro-life people who are doing exactly these things – adopting children, supporting single-mothers through their pregnancies, etc.

I’m glad to hear it. That’s why my comment asked, “how many” rather than saying “none of them.” Still I’m concerned with both the sheer numbers and with the quality of life for many of them. According to Children’s Data Bank more than 513,000 children in the U.S. are in foster care. Only 4% are in “pre-adoptive” homes, meaning the foster parents intend to adopt them. Another 24% are fostered by relatives, while 46% are in non-relative foster homes, 8% in group homes, 10% are in institutions, and the remaining 7% are in something designated as “other.” So only 28% are being raised by people who are either related to them or intend to become related by adoption.

My question still stands Mike, since I was asking about the not whole, not healthy babies, the babies for which there were much more compelling reasons to consider aborting them than simply inconvenience for the mother. How many of those families you know of took on the difficult, expensive, heart-breaking ones?

On your other comment about how both sides of this issue talk past each other, I agree and I’m glad you pointed out that it’s counter-productive to demonize each other’s motives and over-simplify each other’s positions.

However, I’m talking about a third issue here, besides the concern for the baby’s right to life and the concern for the mother’s right to choice. I’m talking about the quality of life for these children who will suffer every day far more than the baseline level of suffering in life that we have grown to accept.

Life at any price is sometimes a price too high to pay. It’s easy to overlook the price that others who are not whole or healthy have to pay.

Polly,
I agree with the goals for 3rd world countries but we are not helping when our President pushes for abstince only funding to be distributed in Africa. Heck, it ain’t much better in Texas.

Mike,
I know you are split so you may not be the ideal person to ask but how does someone on the pro-life side decide they know what is the best action for a pregnant woman to take?

I think most pro-life people would simply say that as soon as another human being is involved (and they would agree with macht that a human embryo or fetus is fully a human being) the dynamics change. They would say that they are not telling the woman what to do with her body so much as telling her what she is not allowed to do to the body of another human being. They would not agree with Claire’s belief that an embryo or fetus is just another part of the mother’s body until it is developed enough to survive on its own. They believe that it is already a unique, living human being from the moment of conception.

I’m not telling you what I think, mind you (frankly I’m not sure what I think). I’m just doing my best to let you know what more hard-core pro-lifers might say.

I don’t think abortion will stem the tide of population growth by a siginificant proportion. I think fundmental changes to those 3rd world cultures are needed. Specifically the ones I mentioned before: greater education including sex-ed, greater women’s rights, expanded investment and economic opportunity for both men and women, and modernization.

I specifiy 3rd world only because populations are declining in Europe, Canada, the USA and Japan. I think this has everything to do with economic prosperity and women’s rights, opportunities, and education levels.

In some traditional cultures males are preferred over females. If resources are slim or there’s a restriction on # of children, the females get aborted. So, there are fewer women. Gender based genocide seems to me to be the most counter-feminist result imaginable. I don’t know how prevalant this is, tho, and it’s possible I’m blowing it out of proportion.

@Mercredi
Thanks for clarifying my lazy post. RU-486 is what I had in mind but for some reason had a mental block in typing it.