Fetal Life and
Abortion: Human Personhood at Conception
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Displayed Responses 2010
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2010
July 30th: Outline for Personhood at Conception
June 1st: Fathers have equal rights and responsibilities
March 10th: When did you become human?
January 15th: Common-Decency Is Basic to Humanity
Self-Help Study of "unbornperson.org" for demonstrating the beginning of human personhood from the time of conception ( fertilization: ) You may wish to use this Editorial Note as a sketchy outline for your project. Comments and questions are welcomed.
In the 1973 decision, Roe v. Wade, Justice Blackmon said that if human personhood were demonstrated as beginning at the time of fertilization, the federal case for legalized abortion would collapse. Of course! Who would think it permissible to kill innocent human beings! In the United States, that was about fifty million abortions ago.
I would not attempt to say that the Court made no attempt to meet its own challenge, but I would suggest that it leaned too heavily upon the opinion of others, under the guise of incompetency on the question of when human life begins, and on their non-responsibility to face the question, even though it is so central to their deliberations. For us who still stand on the sidelines watching the further development of Roe, as in "Casey" and "Nebraska," we would like to see, not what, but who, is being killed by legalized abortion.
And so, let us start, at the beginning, to answer that question. Our subject of investigation is the individual, human being, a member of our society, the human race.
Starting with ourselves and all others of our kind, we note a twofold characteristic of our makeup, a material component and a non-material counterpart, sometimes called the biological and the human, the two of which are so immersed in one another that they constitute an individual (undivided) whole. We can know a non-material reality, such as beauty, but not without the help of our material, sense faculties with which we provide our intellects a contact with visible and audible objects that we call beautiful.
At fertilization, we see the two parental, reproductive cells become one, the offspring of human parents.
From this time, onwards, while developing itself, under the guidance of his or her genetic information acquired from the parents, at fertilization, the offspring is in command of the pregnancy, even throughout its completion at birth.
Although parents produce offspring, it is interesting that the process is called reproduction, producing copies of themselves, that is, producing offspring of their own species. This species status of the offspring is established at fertilization, when all inherited characteristics are passed on to the offspring, from the parents. It follows, then, that the offspring, in the single-cell stage of his or her existence, by inheritance, is already a human being.
Since every human being is a person, it follows also that a human person is present from the time of fertilization. Note: At this point, it will be helpful to distinguish between human reproduction and the reproduction of the lesser animals, in order to see the source of the non-material characteristics of the the child, since they are not contributed directly by the parents. This would include a study of the soul, the principle of spontaneous self-motion in the living thing. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
____________________Reprinted from displayed responses August 10, 2002:
Question: I have not heard any recent report on the father's right to defend his child under threat of abortion. Do you have anything on that?
Reply: Frustration and discouragement mark the plight of a father who wishes to fulfill this responsibility. Even when he resorts to harsh measures, such as physically blocking the entrance to the abortion chamber, he is not permitted to excuse himself from trespass by saying that he has an obligation to save the life of his baby. His claim of "justification" in whatever course of action he chooses to pursue, has been discredited, on appeal, by various court decisions. That is because Roe v. Wade defines the unborn baby to be "not a person in the full sense." Evidently trespass laws may be set aside to relieve the distress of those who are persons, unless they should be "not persons in the full sense." And as in the case of trespass with the unborn baby as an exception, so also with deliberate killing; the baby waiting to be born is an exception to the law against killing ones neighbor.
Looking back for specifics, I notice that in the year 1988, after ten years of inaction, at least sixteen cases were filed in nine states by fathers, sometimes husbands of the mother, for injunctions to stay the abortion. One permanent injunction and two preliminary injunctions were issued by trial courts that year, all of which were overturned on appeal. The Supreme Court refused to hear those three cases, leaving the rights of fathers to be one of the major issues unresolved by Roe v. Wade and its progeny.
In our own time, in fact in this week's news, there is a story out of Philadelphia wherein a man had obtained a preliminary injunction to restrain the aborting of his baby. Two or three days later, the injunction was dissolved by another judge, leaving the woman free to kill their unborn baby. Ironically, only a day or so later, the woman suffered a natural miscarriage.
There may be instances of fathers who feel unburdened by the legal restraint against defending the lives of their unborn babies. Roe v. Wade "rewards" their irresponsibility. But there are some men who are devastated, in varying degrees, by the Court's unreasonable discrimination against the natural prerogatives of their parenthood, as fathers of their babies..
If I may suggest a fundamental flaw in Roe v. Wade, I would ask the viewer to consider whether the Court has jurisdiction in the matter of denying the father's natural right to defend the life of his baby. In the very nature of parenthood there are equal rights and responsibilities on the part of both parents with respect to the welfare of their baby. The working out of these responsibilities may vary, compatible with gender differences and traditional cultural roles which describe the family. But the right to whatever is reasonably necessary for each parent to fulfill those responsibilities, is the same right for each.
The Court has no jurisdiction for having removed that equality, an equality which belongs to nature, by human right, and not by human discretion. In this unjust process, the Court destroyed the time-honored concept of marriage, which also belongs to the workings of nature and not to human judgment. The partnership clause has been stricken!
There is no evidence that the Court gave much thought to the rights of the father. But this should not free them from accountability for their neglect of a major issue pertaining to justice, individual and social. With the thoughtless pursuit of "granting" the mother unrestricted freedom to kill the baby, the Court toppled the basis of all social structure, the family!
Should any of our viewers wish to comment on this problem, we would welcome any insights on the matter. We feel that the more Roe v. Wade is "spot-lighted" for truth and justice, the sooner will we experience its total collapse. For additional reading, you may refer to our Notable Quotations. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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____________________Reprinted from displayed responses, May 8, 2000:
Question: You speak strongly against the Court's use of the expression: "potential human being." Is it because you see this as a ploy for denying, or at least questioning, human existence at conception?
Reply: Our first objection to the expression "potential human being" is that it has no corresponding reality in the concrete universe. For a more detailed explanation, may I refer you to Section 3.
For this moment, keep in mind that a potentiality (capability) has to exist in, and be possessed by, a subject. This subject must be capable of possessing it. A doorknob, for example, could not have the capability of reproducing itself, because it is not a living thing.) To say that something has the capability of doing something, we would have to demonstrate compatibility between that something and the supposed capability.
There are two different situations in which potentialities can be considered. In the first, the subject having the potentiality continues to exist in its own nature after the potentiality has been actualized. An embryonic rabbit, for example, has the capability for reproduction. Time and further physical development will be required for that potentiality to become actualized. It is the same rabbit, individually and specifically, which in its embryonic condition had only the potentiality to reproduce, that is now actually a parent.
That which is possessed potentially must be rooted in the kind of thing which is capable of possessing its actuality. If something had the potential for acting, even in the distant future, as a human, it would already have to have been a human to possess that potentiality.
In the second situation, if it were possible for something to have the "potential for being a human," it would cease to exist as soon as the potential is actualized. (The something would have been replaced by a human being.)
But nothing in the natural world has the capability of becoming something of another kind, that is, having a different nature. Its only capability, in the realm of being, is to continue being what it already is. The biologist notes that there is no transition from one species to another. Even Darwin's observed changes were always from one variety to another, within the species. (When he spoke in "Origin of Species," despite its title, he was speaking of the origin of varieties within the species.)
A special problem enters into this second situation, wherein something of one specific identity (nature) is said to become something which has a different nature. Examined carefully, it can be seen that there are no examples of such a transition ever having taken place in our natural world. We must be careful not to assume that we have an example of a transition from the potential to the actual, by saying that "the first something" had a potential for becoming "the other something" (that the potential is in one subject and its actualization is in another.)
If it were said that sodium has the capability of becoming table salt (sodium chloride) we would see no basis for the claim. Left to itself, sodium never becomes table salt. It is only when sodium interacts chemically with chlorine that table salt is produced. In the process, both the sodium and chlorine lose their individual and specific identities in favor of the compound.
It has been suggested that the sperm and the ovum are "potential human beings." In the same sense as in the chemistry example, neither becomes a human being. At conception both lose their identities in favor of the new, single individual product, the "conceptus," which has a nature quite different for either of theirs.
Another problem: Those who assume that the product resulting from the natural fusion of the sperm and the ovum is "only a potential human being," must embrace the problem of how that potentiality is ever to be actualized. See how Aristotle-------- attempted to handle this problem.
It is our position that there is nothing in the world of nature which could possess the capability of becoming a human being. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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Reprinted from displayed responses July 3, 2003:
Comment: In your last posting, E.R. speaks about common-decency and how the acceptance of partial-birth abortion would infringe on the dignity of a society, as unfitting to the human culture. I agree with that thinking. It is not only that we are human; it is that we know that we are human and have to live up to what we are. I would place legalized abortion in the same class as legalized homosexual behavior, if that ever comes about. Abortion doesn’t fit into the pattern of what has always been known by the majority of people as responsible, human conduct. It is a contradiction of reality and, because of that, pertains to the realm of artificiality and falsehood.
Reply: There is a long-standing tradition of people “setting the standard” of acceptable behavior for membership within the society of human beings. Sometimes the code of conduct has been written into law, but there is a deeper standard in the gut-feeling of each person about what it is to be human, and to be different from the lesser animals. In this common understanding of ourselves, abortion is seen as an indecency. In the original meaning of indecency, abortion does not “fit in,” as you have indicated, with our individual and social human nature.
It is interesting to note that much of the world’s literature focuses on the uniquely human characteristic of an individual, and on the struggle to preserve that aspect of his or her dignity as a person. In reading the literature we understand the person, because we understand ourselves. This exemplifies our common-ness, in fact, as well as in perception. History is a record of people striving to maintain their moral integrity.
Under ideal circumstances we could trust the words of even a stranger. Why? Because people are expected to be truthful. We have a right to the truth; otherwise the society crumbles. If dishonesty were to be “tolerated,” social and commercial mingling would become intolerable. And this cause-and-effect relationship is not of human making; it belongs to the very nature of things.
You seem to be saying that legalized homosexual practice would be unfitting to human society because it would be a falsehood to use the reproductive faculties for something other than reproduction. Your observation throws some light on the indecency of legalized abortion, the misuse of the product of reproduction, namely the killing, rather than the nurturing, of the child. The insult to the society is the legalization of such behavior. The question here is whether falsehood should be imposed upon a society that knows dishonesty to be destructive of its foundation. For government to sanction abortion is to falsify the harm accruing to both the baby and the mother, by attempting to label abortion as something good, and worthy of Constitutional protection. By attempting to protect the “good” of legalized abortion with a “law” that was invented for this occasion, the Court displays its dishonesty. It is against such deceptive violence to common-decency that the people are instinctively rebelling.
Truth, which is to know things as they are, is sometimes forfeited in favor of a court’s ambition to “mould” society according to their own vision. Using your example from homosexual practice, the clamor for same-sex “marriage” is a demand upon the society to accept, or at least tolerate, a falsehood. There is no homosexual union that can truthfully be called marriage. Marriage, in word and in fact, is a unique reality, incapable of attainment by such a union. To “grant” marriage benefits to such a union is an added falsehood. Marriage benefits are rightly recognized by society because of the contributions made by the family to the society, namely the reproduction and nurture of children. In the case of legalized abortion, the added dishonesty is found in the deprivation of persons and their talents, taken away from the society by the Court’s Roe v. Wade decision.
If I may add a closing note, let me suggest that we, as a people, must begin to care for ourselves. Erosion of human dignity has been taking place. The recent fad of “political correctness” has silenced our native instinct toward self-preservation through moral integrity. An artificial, man-made standard has been placed in substitution for the natural formula of truth and fairness, as the norm of human behavior. Truth and fairness have been derailed by the false notion of “toleration.” Toleration of what is evil has become a “virtue,” and the evil has become a “good.”
The old saying is true: “One thing leads to another!” Should we not pause to ask: “Where do we go from here?” You may refer to our Theme Verse to help you with your answer. E.R. reply@unbornperson.org
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