Let's Talk About Killin Babies

::Note:: I wrote this a while back in response to Joyce Arthur's pro-abortion essay. It's a long one, so hold on to your butts!

"A human zygote, blast cyst, embryo, or fetus is a human being with a right to life, and abortion is therefore murder and should be illegal." Joyce Arthur said this but in the next breath she claimed that this logic is "deeply flawed." My purpose in writing this is to say that's absolutely false. "Personhood: Is a Fetus a Human Being?" by Joyce Arthur came to my attention while in a friendly debate with a liberal friend of mine. I found it to be a dishonest and a misleading piece of work. I have decided to go through Arthur's work and correct the "facts" she has stated to justify her stance on abortion.

As I commonly say in my debates with liberals, I want to call a spade a spade and I will go into a little more detail on this subject later on. The subject is abortion. The stances are either for or against it. I will not call someone who is for abortion "pro-choice", inversely I will not call someone who is against abortion "pro-life." I will refer to them as pro-abortion and anti-abortion respectively. Another tactic I refuse to use is to call pro-abortionists "anti-lifers" the way Arthur insists on calling those who are anti-abortion "anti-choicers."

As Arthur begins her argument, she immediately casts aside the life of the child in the womb and refers to it as a peripheral issue "regardless of whether a fetus is a human being" and clearly places the fact that "women will have abortions anyway, even if it means breaking the law or risking their lives" as priority number one in the abortion debate. Her Olympian detachment to the life of a human being should automatically disqualify her as one who's opinion matters in a discussion about a fetus being a human being or not. She goes on to say that because these women, even if they believe abortion is murder, will be doing it anyways, "we should leave the decision up to women's moral conscience, and make sure that they are provided with safe, legal, accessible abortions." One could write a book about all of the logical fallacies in that statement alone. With that logic in play, we should make murder legal and leave it up to the people's moral conscience and provide them with safe, legal, accessible murders... I'm pretty sure almost every person who commits murder knows it's wrong... She goes on to say, "ultimately, the status of a fetus is a matter of subjective opinion, and the only opinion that counts is that of the pregnant woman." Not only is this misleading due to the fact that the status of a fetus is not a subjective opinion which I will cover later on, but it puts a paramount on the extremely biased thoughts of a woman when she is pregnant. This is absurd and a plague through the ranks of pro-abortionists and feminists alike who think they are the center of the universe.

Now on to the fun part.

          Deconstructing the Pro-Abortion Language

Before I get into language of that specific to pro-abortion rhetoric, I need to point out some obvious errors in Arthur's writing. She claims that the words "human" and "human being" are completely different. This, of course, is false. One only has to get through middle school to realize that words may have multiple meanings and a word that is an adjective in one context can be a noun in another. In a way that insults the reader, she conveniently omits the fact that the word human can be used as an adjective and a noun. She uses the example that a flake of dandruff is human but not a human being. True, however, the question she says which she is often confronted with is, "isn't it human?" referring to the fetus. The answer is yes in every form of the word human. One must wonder why she is straining at this grammatical gnat and what camel she is trying to silently digest here. It's almost as if, judging by her explanation, she was once caught up in this grammar war in a previous debate with someone and had to write it down and leave out half of the truth so that she can be unequivocally right. (Which, by the way, is another tactic of the pro-abortionists and the left in general. They will never agree even when you have a valid point, except on rare occasion).

Arthur herself admits that she doesn't actually know what "humanity of the fetus" means. She said, "[people who use the phrase] may mean its physical human qualities." and after that assumption she takes one step further in her demonizing tactics by saying, "but it's ambiguous, maybe purposely so." Not only is her explanation of the phrase wrong, but I take issue with her building a case without knowing anything about the foundation of the argument. Surprisingly enough this can be done quite easily and is a very common practice when one is lacking evidence. Here is an example by the late Hugh B. Nibley who was illustrating the same point on a different subject through a story he called "The House That Jack Built."

Nibley said:

1. It is common knowledge that Jack built a house. It is this house which we are discussing.

2. There are rumors that a great deal of malt - very probably stolen - was stored in the house. What lends plausibility to  the report is the building of the house itself - by Jack. Why a house, if not to store the stolen malt?

3. It is said that the malt was eaten by rats, and in view of the high nutriment content of malt (see Appendix A for  references to scholarly and scientific studies proving beyond a doubt that malt is nutritious), there is no good reason for  doubting this report.

4. The rats may very possibly have been killed by a cat, as some believe, and there is certainly nothing intrinsically  improbable in the event. On the contrary, studies made at the Rodent Institute of the University of So and So, etc… The  report that only one rat ate the malt is of course erroneous, since the consumption of such a large quantity of malt would  require many years and probably a large number of rats.

5. That the cat was chased by a dog is only to be expected. Only a fanatic would question it.

6. The same applies to the dog's being tossed by a cow, though it is admittedly a less common event.

7. 'At any rate' (a very useful expression) we can be reasonably certain that the cow was milked by a milkmaid - what  other kind of a maid could it have been? - and also (since there is no good reason to doubt it) that the milkmaid, whose  name may have been Bertha, was wooed by a man all tattered and torn. There are unmistakable references in the  newspapers of the time (or at most a generation later) to poorly dressed men known as 'tramps' roaming parts of the  country. There can therefore be little doubt that Bertha was engaged in a passionate public wooing.

8. The exact date of Bertha's marriage to her tatterdemalion lover is not known, though it may have been some time late  in January 1858. Certainly the court records of the time are silent on any earlie or later marriage.

9. Though there is no direct evidence that Bertha was mistreated by the man who wooed her so passionately, there is  every evidence of cruel neglect both in the proven fact that Bertha apparently had no house to live in (at least there is no  record of her having a house in the country archives) and in the character of the man who married and abused her.

It will hardly be necessary to point out to the student the solid advantage of such little touches as 'the exact date'… in No.  8. Since no date at all is known, it is perfectly true to say that the exact date is not known, implying that an approximate  date is known: 'It may have been in January 1858" - true again, perfectly true - it may also have been in September 1902  or May1320. Again, if there is no evidence whatever that Bertha was mistreated (or even that she existed), it is both shrewd  an correct to say that there is no direct evidence, implying, while not saying, that there is plenty of indirect evidence. Let the student check the above ten points for evidence. There is none! We have given the world a suffering Bertha and  her  brutal spouse without having to prove a thing."

Even though the phrase "humanity of the fetus" refers to the pain the fetus can feel, this doesn't matter because she went off on her own tangent and injected her own opinion as to when an infant can feel emotions.

As for the other phrases she tries to discredit such as, "it's a life" and "life begins at conception", I will show in the next section how those phrases are, in fact, scientifically accurate and correct. In the remainder of this section I will address the phrases used commonly by pro-abortionists.

"Pro-choice" is the preferred label by those who are pro-abortion. It is a fluffier way to say pro-abortion which makes the pill easier to swallow while detracting from the real issue, abortion. Abortion is wrong, so naturally they would want to step away from the association of even the word. If it wasn't wrong, then why not be proud to say, "I am pro-abortion"? The argument from the pro-abortionists is that they have the right to choose to abort the child inside of them followed by a list of justifications and endless detachment techniques. Anti-abortionists are guilty of it also by calling themselves "pro-life." However, at least "pro-life" is still more in line with, and honest to the actual subject of abortion while "choice" is just changing the subject entirely. It's wrong, misleading, and dishonest.

Another phrase that usually follows the choice argument is, "You can't tell a woman what to do with her body!" Actually, yes we can. A woman (or man for that matter) cannot use her body for prostitution. You cannot use your body to harm another. You cannot use illegal drugs. You cannot use your body to take away the right to life, the right to liberty, and/or the right to the pursuit of happieness (wealth/property). Abortion does just that to the life inside of the womb. The irony is that there are laws in many states that prevent a mother from using drugs or alcohol during pregnancy, although the same mother can kill the fetus at any time. The comeback is usually something along the lines of, "it's part of the reproductive organs." Wrong again. Here's a list, for those who aren't familiar, of the actual female reproductive organs. We'll start from the most superficial of the internal female reproductive organs. Vagina, Cervix, Uterus (womb), Fallopian tubes, and finally the Ovaries. No fetus. You can find that information in any anatomy book of any size anywhere. This one is a no-brainer. Comparing the fetus to a parasite to justify that claim doesn't hold any water either. The fetus has it's own circulatory system and unique DNA. To such a statement Professor Peter Kreeft made the rather comical observation, "But in that case, every pregnant woman has four eyes and four feet, and half of all pregnant women have penises! Clearly, the absurd conclusion came from the false premise that the fetus is only part of the mother." You wouldn't consider a tape worm a part of your digestive system would you? Didn't think so.

This is one of my personal favorites, "the fetus is just a mass of cells." Well, I hate to break it to you but… technically, so are you. Here is a quote from a doctor who has actually seen an abortion. I don't think you're gonna convince him that "it's just a mass of cells." "I opened the sock up and I put it on the towel and there were parts in there of a person. I'd taken anatomy; I was a medical student. I knew what I was looking at. There was a little scapula and there was an arm, and I saw some ribs and a chest, and I saw a little tiny head, and I saw a piece of a leg, and I saw a tiny hand. ... I checked it out and there were two arms and two legs and one head, etc., and I turned and said, I guess you got it all ... It was pretty awful that first time... it was like somebody put a hot poker into me."
-Dr. David Brewer. Testimony of David Brewer, MD, former Abortion Provider. Priests for Life.

There's, of course, many more phrases to be covered but I want to move on to our next subject.

          Of Course a Fetus is a Human Being.

Instead of pointing out every error and blatant lie Arthur has under her category "Is a Fetus a Human Being", I'll just let the facts do the talking. The science is pretty clear about the beginning of human life. Life does, in fact, begin at conception.

Here's some examples from textbooks:

"Zygote: this cell results from the union of an oocyte and a sperm. A zygote is the beginning of a new human being (i.e., an embryo). Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm ... unites with a female gamete or oocyte ... to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual."
-Moore, K. and T.V.N. Persaud. 1998. The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology (6th ed.), W.B. Saunders Company, Philadelphia, pp 2-18.

"In this text, we begin our description of the developing human with the formation and differentiation of the male and female sex cells or gametes, which will unite at fertilization to initiate the embryonic development of a new individual. ... Fertilization takes place in the oviduct ... resulting in the formation of a zygote containing a single diploid nucleus. Embryonic development is considered to begin at this point... This moment of zygote formation may be taken as the beginning or zero time point of embryonic development."
-Larsen, W.J. 1998. Essentials of Human Embryology, Churchill Livingstone, New York, pp. 1-17.

"Fertilization is an important landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed... Fertilization is the procession of events that begins when a spermatozoon makes contact with a secondary oocyte or its investments... The zygote ... is a unicellular embryo... "The ill-defined and inaccurate term pre-embryo, which includes the embryonic disc, is said either to end with the appearance of the primitive streak or ... to include neurulation. The term is not used in this book."
-O'Rahilly, R. and F. Muller. 1996. Human Embryology & Teratology, Wiley-Liss, New York, pp. 5-55.

If that doesn't convince you then here's a few quotes from doctors on the subject:

"I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception."
-Dr. Alfred Bongioanni (University of Pennsylvania)

"After fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being."
-Dr. Jerome LeJeune (University of Descartes)

"By all criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception."
-Dr. Hymie Gordon (Mayo Clinic)

"It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception."
-Dr. Micheline Matthews-Roth (Harvard University Medical School)

Yes, that's right ladies and gentlemen. Dr. Micheline Matthews-Roth said it is "SCIENTIFICALLY CORRECT." But does science really matter to those who have an agenda? It's pretty convenient that the political left decides not to mention the science behind abortion when the science proves them dead wrong seeing as how science is usually their mantra. Why am I not surprised though?

If you're not into facts, and need a more emotional approach here's a description of an abortion to add to the one previously mentioned:

"I watched as the contents of the woman's womb came through a suctioning device and into a stainless-steel pail sitting at his feet. I stepped back and wiped the perspiration from my brow. "This is kind of gruesome," I said…. The doctor said, "At this point in a pregnancy, the products of conception aren't much." I stepped forward and peered into the pail. This time I broke out in a cold sweat. I backed up and leaned against the wall, my eyes closed. Dear Jesus! I thought. I just saw someone murdered! And I just stood and watched!
-Nurse Don Haines. Don Haines. 2002. The Day I Became Pro-Life. New Man Magazine 10/29/2002.

Contrary to what many non-scientists believe, human beings are not constructed in the womb - they develop. In fact, all the major organ systems are initiated within the first three weeks after conception. The process of embryonic development is a continuous process, with no obvious point at which the fetus magically becomes a "person." In fact, the development process continues well after birth, including many characteristics that determine our personality or personhood.

As you can see, from the medical textbooks to the ones who have actually witnessed the horror that is abortion, the fetus is, in fact, a human being. Here's a couple more fun facts for those who still don't want to face the truth:

Fetal heart begins to form 18 days after conception. Measurable heart beat 21-24 days after conception
-Heart Development at the Loyola University Chicago web site

Fetal brain begins to form on day 25
-"Life Before Birth" Life Magazine Educational Reprint 27, April 30, 1965, page 6.

Brain waves produced by 6 weeks
-Brain development slideshow at Temple University

78% of abortions occur after fetal brain waves have begun
-Elam-Evans, L.D., et al. 2002. Abortion Surveillance -- United States, 1999. Surveillance Summaries 51(SS09) 1-28. (Center for Disease Control and Prevention).

          Does a Fetus Have a "Right to life"?

The declaration of Independence of the United States of America claims, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among those are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" The right to life is one of the most important principles of law within a free republic.

Arthur's whole argument was based on a Fetus not being a human being by using the method previously shown by Hugh Nibley. There was a lot of talk but no proof. With the scientific evidence, which the left basically worships, I just laid out for you, I can say easily and with confidence, a fetus is a human being and human beings have the right to life.

In her argument, Arthur makes the assumption that anti-abortionists believe that the fetus's right to life is "negotiable" and "certainly not absolute or paramount" on the basis that anti-abortionists are ok with abortion in special circumstances such as "rape, incest or a threat to a woman's life, or even health." First of all, most anti-abortionists only believe that the threat to the mother's life is the only legitimate reason to have an abortion. The others should be on a case by case basis and this is basically a compromise to those who want to use abortion as a form of birth control... Which is the case in most abortions. She further insinuates that this compromise (for lack of a better word) is to appease those who rant about abortion being about controlling women's rights. To which, my simple response is: a woman does not have the right to murder and a "woman's rights" are not more important than the fetus's right to life.

The total disregard of life of the infant human being inside of those women who believe in abortion is sickening. Arthur says herself, "even if a fetus were a human being with a right to life, this right doesn't automatically overrule a woman's right to choose" This feminist, women-and-what-women-want-are-above-all-else, ideology is ridiculous. Women are no better than anybody else including the person inside of her uterus. This is just common sense. She goes on to justify this statement by saying that being pregnant restricts her freedoms significantly. What freedoms? A pregnant woman is just as free as anybody else. Yes there are some physical changes and possibly some psychological consequences but she should have thought about that before having sex, let alone letting the man ejaculate his sperm into her. What did you think would happen? Of course there are some accidents where the condom rips or the pill doesn't work or whatever it may be but you made the choice to participate in the act that creates life. If you're not ready to have a baby especially if you're not married, don't have sex. It's quite simple really.

          Can a Fetus Be a Legal Person with Rights?

We all remember Roe v. Wade right? Let me refresh you on a couple points I want to hit on. Jane Roe (a.k.a. Norma McCorvey), of Texas, claimed to have become pregnant as a result of a rape which led to special laws or legal exceptions for women such as a woman's right to abortion based on a "right to privacy," (which is not specified in our U.S. Constitution). Roe mandated a policy commonly known as "abortion on demand." On a little side note, In 1987, she admitted that she lied about being raped. (again, why am I not surprised?).

In her argument against a fetus's rights, Arthur says, "the very fact that exceptional laws for fetuses would have to be created proves that they are incapable of having the same legal status as real persons." Is that so? Well I guess since the courts had to make special laws for women, that means women are incapable of having the same legal status as a real person... That would include you Ms. Arthur.

Because I want to talk about the Laci Peterson case, Lets examine the very liberal state of California's laws shall we? CALIFORNIA PENAL CODE SECTION 187 states, "Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being, or a fetus, with malice aforethought." Even in the state of California, the intentional killing of a fetus is wrong. For example, Laci Peterson was pregnant when she was murdered and Scott Peterson was charged with double homicide. The implications that a fetus could be murdered was not lost of the radical pro-abortion movement. Mavra Stark, the head of the National Organization for Women's Morris County chapter said, "If this is murder, well, then any time a late-term fetus is aborted, they could call it murder." She also said, "There's something about this that bothers me a little bit. Was it born, or was it unborn? If it was unborn, then I can't see charging [Peterson] with a double-murder." ...What a class act this Mavra Stark is.

Most notable among the exceptions to the California murder law is section b.3., which allows the "mother of the fetus" to consent to the "death of the fetus". However, none of these exceptions to murder correspond to the exceptions listed under justifiable homicide. The fetus is no in way attempting to commit a felony against the mother, but is doing what all fetuses do, including what you did as a fetus.

The terminology in the exceptions is bizarre, since the term "mother" implies relationship. How can a woman be the mother of a non-person (a fetus)? Doesn't the "death of the fetus" imply that it was alive? The law results in some rather unusual implications...

The legal arguments against abortion are examined from the perspective of the rights afforded all persons by laws of the United States. The Supreme Court, however, invented additional rights that were said to surpass the right to life. The legal definition of murder for the state of California will again be examined to demonstrate its logical fallacies. For the state of California, personhood is not established by an impartial set of criteria, but by the whims of another person.
-The fetus is granted personhood if wanted by the mother
-The fetus can become a non-person at the discretion of the mother
-However, a mother may not choose to kill her born child

My question is, how can the personhood of a human being be decided by another person? If the mother can decide that the fetus is magically a person, that fetus was a person all along.

          Does a Fetus Have a Social Identity?

Does it really matter? A human is a human no matter how it participates in society, and it has already been established scientifically that a fetus is a human being. I'm not going to get into this section any more than that because it really isn't relative to the discussion.

          Is a Fetus a Human Being Physically?

How about another quote from someone who has actually seen a fetus:

"I had a quick sonogram and then received a shot of methrotrexate. After the shot, I came home... I went to bed that evening around 9 p.m… I continued contracting and bleeding most of the night. Around three in the morning, I went to the bathroom. When I stood up, I noticed that the pain and the pressure was not from clots, but from passing the placenta. When I looked in the commode, I saw laying in the center of the placenta my baby. I saw the baby's perfectly formed hands, the little fingers. I remember the scream that came from my mouth... [from a 7 week abortion]
-Char, "I used to be Pro-choice...But…"

Arthur defends her position by stating "the normal meaning of human being implies a physical body of a certain size and shape with common attributes (excepting disabilities)." No, that's her meaning. She goes on to say, "Considering that the early fetus does not even look recognizably human, cannot engage in normal human perception or thought, and does not have the most basic human body functions, can we call it a human being?" The fact that people don't normally see a fetus and it's not really a part of every day life plays a huge role in the perception of a human being. People perceived blacks as inhuman but that doesn't make the blacks any less human. A developing human is still a human no matter how small, no matter how different a fetus may look compared to what our perception is. A tadpole is a frog but nobody questions that. This is a bogus argument for the pro-abortionists.

          Are Eggs and Embryos Stable Individuals?

The Last time I checked, we were talking about "a human zygote, blast cyst, embryo, or fetus." Eggs are an entirely different subject. We have already established with scientific evidence that life begins a conception thus an embryo is a human. The argument that the embryo can split is null and void because the argument was based on when the soul enters the body. Science hasn't proven that we even have a soul. Of course, I believe we all have one but once science can prove when this takes place, if it takes place, this is only speculation and is still one of the mysteries of the universe. Personally I believe the people who buy Arthur's crap are the ones that need evaluation as to whether or not they are stable individuals as opposed to the eggs and embryos. But what do I know?

          Life Is a Crap Shoot

Again, this is a discussion for a time when one can prove when a soul is placed in the body. But I'll bite and indulge myself as to my personal opinion that isn't based on fact, per se, because there isn't any way to know these things. I figure I can do it once because Arthur has been doing it through her whole argument. (the house that Jack built). Her claim is that all those who don't buy her garbage are just hung up on the emotional aspects of it. She says, "If your parents had decided not to have sex the night you were conceived, you wouldn't have existed. If your father had worn a condom, you wouldn't have existed. Or, you could have been conceived, then miscarried. If you had been aborted, your mother may have had a later sibling who wouldn't have existed without your abortion. And so on. Ultimately, if you hadn't been born, it wouldn't matter to you, the same way it can't matter to aborted fetuses that they weren't born. The non-existent don't regret their non-existence, and when the living start worrying about the non-existent, they descend into irrational nonsense." Not everyone thinks this way, myself included. I believe that I would have been born no matter when my parents had sex and that my siblings would also be born. It's possible that the timing and such might have altered my looks and such but it's my soul that makes me me. The fact of the matter is, if a father had used a condom or straight up didn't have sex with the mother that night, the mother would not have been pregnant and there wouldn't have been a life to abort in the first place. Arthur's logic makes no sense. Nobody is upset about the non-existent. YOU CAN'T ABORT SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T EXIST. People are upset about the life being snuffed out because the parents were irresponsible and through no fault of the infant.

"Men release billions of doomed sperm over a lifetime, and virtually all of women's thousands of eggs go to waste. The number of potential, unique human beings forever lost to the world is astronomical." The key word here is "potential." Abortion isn't about the potential life of a human being nor is it about the billions of sperm or thousands of eggs. When you choose to have an abortion, you choose to end a life not a potential life.

"This is not to say that human life doesn't have value. Of course it does, but only the value that we ourselves bestow on it—in biology, life is cheap, life is wasteful, and death is vital. Nature does not value humans any more than worms, and in all species, vast numbers of eggs and seeds don't stand a chance of reaching maturity." In her endnote to this statement she says, "anti-choicers might claim that such death and wastage is natural or God-ordained, but that abortion is 'playing God', and this makes it wrong. But we play God every time we fly in an airplane, take antibiotics, ... predict a storm, and build a fire." No. No. No. We may risk our lives by flying in a plane, or riding in a car, or getting out of bed. We are playing god when we murder or jump off of a building. We protect ourselves by taking antibiotics or wearing clothes. Protecting our bodies is what God would have us do. Destroying them is not. We are predicting a storm through advancements in science not creating the storms. Do you get the point? Those are not examples of playing God. She goes on to say, "human beings take control of their destiny and manipulate nature in a way that animals cannot—this is what makes us human beings. If we can't be in charge of our reproduction too, we are no different than animals." Not only is this an opinion of hers and nothing more, it's ridiculous. Being human has NOTHING to do with manipulating nature. And to top it off she says"(And if anti-choicers further say that this still doesn't make abortion "right," I would argue that safe, legal abortion is one of the greatest moral advances of the 20th century.)" Moral advances? This shows you were the morals are for those who are pro-abortion.

          Conclusion

Scientifically a fetus is a human being with a right to live. When it comes down to it Abortion, is not about the women's rights, it's about the ability to act without consequences. When the decision is made to abort, in most cases it is used as a form of birth-control which is wrong on all fronts. It's the easy way out. It's not easy to be pregnant but that's life. That's natural. Abortion is not. You are, in fact, playing God.

"The greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion, which is war against the child. The mother doesn't learn to love, but kills to solve her own problems. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching it's people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want."
-Mother Teresa