[Peace-discuss] Re: [UCprogressives] Re: Pro-choice [was Re: letter to my former comrades]

[ppatton at uiuc.edu]

>
>I agree that it's quite worthwhile to consider the elements 
of choice and
>personal responsibility in this debate, Ken.  But your 
conclusion ("it's
>wrong for the government to forbid abortions") depends on an 
unstated
>premise: namely, that abortion does not end a human life.  I 
can't think
>of many cases where you would think it wrong for the 
government to forbid
>the taking of human (or indeed a good bit of non-human) life.
>
>Regards, Carl

Carl-
I agree with you that a woman's right to control her own body 
is not, by itself, a sufficient argument that abortion should 
be allowed.  I think the central issue is the question of the 
humanity of the fetus during the first and early second 
trimesters of pregnancy, when most abortions are performed.  
The question we need to ask is what traits do humans possess 
such that killing them is wrong.  Given an answer to this 
question, we can then ask whether first trimester fetuses 
possess the needed traits.  I think it is especially 
instructive to imagine what traits a non-human (such as an 
intelligent machine) would need to have before we would 
consider destroying it to be murder.  I would like to suggest 
that the valued traits include self awareness, higher 
cognition (the ability to anticipate the future is of 
particular importance, since killing a person thwarts all of 
their future plans), the ability to learn and use a language, 
and the capacity for emotional experience.  Note that I am 
not suggesting that a person must possess all of the valued 
traits, just some of them.  A person suffering from aphasia 
(the inability to use language, usually due to damage to 
Broca's or Wernicke's area of the cerebral cortex), for 
example, can still anticipate the future and experience 
emotions.  A person suffering damage to their cinguate cortex 
may exhibit a loss of emotional affect, but can still talk 
and think.  Developmentally disabled people still exhibit the 
valued human traits to a degree, and often possess "islands" 
of surviving normal human cognitive ability for particular 
tasks.  All of the valued traits that I have mentioned depend 
on the functional integrity of the cerebral cortex.  Many 
states recogize the special importance of the cerebral cortex 
by defining death as the irreversable cessation of cortical 
function.  The cerebral cortex is a late developing brain 
component.  At the end of the first trimester of pregnancy, 
the cerebral cortex is little more than a sheet of 
proliferating cells.  The entire body of the fetus, at this 
point, is smaller than a newborn baby's brain (size matters, 
because it is a rough indicator of complexity).  An organized 
cortical electroencephalogram isn't detectable until late in 
the second trimester.  I'm pro-choice because I don't believe 
it's reasonable to equate aborting a first trimester fetus 
with murdering a fully formed human person.  It's more like 
removing the feeding tube from a brain-dead patient.
-Paul P.
__________________________________________________________________
Dr. Paul Patton
Research Scientist
Beckman Institute  Rm 3027  405 N. Mathews St.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign  Urbana, Illinois 61801
work phone: (217)-265-0795   fax: (217)-244-5180
home phone: (217)-344-5812
homepage: http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ppatton/www/index.html

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the
source of all true art and science."
-Albert Einstein
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