Viability Now at 22 Weeks
A baby has been born at one day less than 22 weeks gestation, has survived, and is doing well. This birth may have significant ramifications for abortion law because it reduces the time of viability to just over half a normal gestation period. It may impact futile care theory and the occasional attempts to refuse wanted life-sustaining treatment for prematurely born babies. The birth could affect personhood theory, at least for those who refuse to depersonalize born infants, because it could materially alter their moral view of the moral worth of later stage fetuses. So, welcome to the world Amillia Sonja Taylor. Your birth might become a significant event for expanding the perception of who qualifies to be in the human family.
Labels: Personhood Theory. Gestationn
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 6:37 AM
38 Comments
38 Comments:
What was the last point before this point of 22 weeks?
That is good news.
Since Wesley wants to discuss personhood, I'll take the bait.
Philosophically, I think as science and medicine pushes viability well beyond the point of "natural viability," it will challenge many peoples' notion of personhood. Including, your own.
Imagine if they manage to by-pass conception altogether, perhaps making haploid humans. That might seem far-fetched now, but viability by artificial means at 22-weeks is equally such.
Lots of babies who are born after 22 weeks don't do well at all. What this means, of course, is that development in the womb is a highly individual thing (we already knew that, or would if we gave it a moment's thought.) This in turn points up the illogic of designating an arbitrary point in a pregnancy, before which a child is not viable, and after which it is. Until you are dealing with an individual, you simply don't know.
As long as the fetus develops inside the woman, you are going to have competing rights, regardless.
The woman will ALWAYS have precedence, for not doing so depersonalizes HER. People who think women should always carry fetuses to term don't believe women are fully human but instead are nothing but incubators.
It's the height of dishonesty to claim the anti-abortion crowd really cares about fetal rights. They don't. What they care about is preserving outdated sex roles and cracking down on women's sexual autonomy.
Susan:
"People who think women should always carry fetuses to term don't believe women are fully human but instead are nothing but incubators."
That's a very misleading phrase there. "Always carry fetuses to term" is silly, of course - most people who are pro-life do indeed make allowances for ectopic pregnancies (which will result in the death of both mother an child), for rape or incest pregnancies (side note - statistically, rape and incest account for a very *small* number of pregnancies), and of course the removal of babies who passed away in utero.
Most of those aren't the cause behind abortion. The majority of people having abortions do so because either 1) they are young and find pregnancy inconvinent, 2) they don't want the financial burden of a pregnancy, or 3) the baby is disabled or otherwise different and they don't feel they have the ability to care for a child like that.
"It's the height of dishonesty to claim the anti-abortion crowd really cares about fetal rights. They don't. What they care about is preserving outdated sex roles and cracking down on women's sexual autonomy."
Hardly. You've obviously never visited the website of Feminists For Life, and you've never heard any testimonial from women who have had abortions. There is nothing anti-feminist about any of these folks.
Here's a question for you - why is it so important that women be allowed to have all the sex they want without consequences of any kind? Likewise, why should men do the same thing?
The problem is there's always been a double-standard. Men are encouraged to go out and cut a wide stripe in the female population, but any woman who does the same thing is considered "bad" or "slutty." In the gay community, there's no bond of any kind to encourage people to remain together; random sex is common, especially among gay males.
Instead of examining that standard and encouraging better behavior among men (which would reduce the number of STDs spread in the population, reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, and protect the integrety of all families, both gay and straight), women are encouraging each other to be as bad as the boys are, which is leading to more problems.
I am all for a fetus' rights. I don't understand this obsession with sex that our culture seems to have; if we visited a country where food was obsessed over with people idealizing it, flaunting it, etc., we'd assume that the country had some really wrong-headed ideas about food... oh wait, that *is* us.
Still, instaed of doing things in moderation, we end up with a culture that dives right in and over-indulges in what should be good things, turning them bad, and you end up with unborn babies that are thrown away. How did Bradbury put it? We live in a disposable society. Blow your nose on someone, crumple him up, throw him away, pull another out and use him up, too, like a tissue.
Not every issue is about sex, Susan. I don't like people treating other people like they're less than themselves. The only way to guarantee that all people get equal treatment is to extend equality to *all* people, including the derranged, the mentally ill, mass murderers, people with Down Syndrome, people of size, people of color, female people, male people, teenagers, little children, babies, and the unborn.
You do that and you don't have to worry about violating female rights. The trouble is, nobody wants to do that. It's too inconvinent.
"People who think women should always carry fetuses to term don't believe women are fully human but instead are nothing but incubators...It's the height of dishonesty to claim the anti-abortion crowd really cares about fetal rights. They don't. What they care about is preserving outdated sex roles and cracking down on women's sexual autonomy."
What a load of garbage. As so many have done for decades, you're desperately trying to remove the life-and-death aspect from the abortion issue and instead tie it to feminism. Plenty of people oppose gender stereotypes, support women's rights, and at the same time support the rights of children not to be killed.
TE wrote:
"Still, instaed of doing things in moderation, we end up with a culture that dives right in and over-indulges in what should be good things"
I think many in our culture do try to do things in moderation, but the question is, what is "moderation"?
If we're talking about sex, moderation might be abstinence or condoms, depending on your POV. Moderation for abortion might be allowing it in various trimesters, allowing it, but not funding it with public dollars, passing out condoms to prevent unwanted pregnancies, or many, many other things.
Royale:
Your right, there are different yardsticks that can be used to define "in moderation," no question there. The trouble is that we aren't even trying to start defining it, which is why people do so many stupid things that end up letting themselves get hurt.
Either abstinence or using condoms is much better than rampent no-consequence sex. The Atkins diet or simply cutting down on calories and taking a 30 minute walk daily are both better alternatives to eating too much and not getting enough exercize. Using a nicotine patch or gradually cutting down while getting counciling are both better than smoking two packs a day. And, designating certain establishments open to smokers or giving them a separate place to enjoy themselves is better than ruthelessly cutting off their ability to find a place to smoke.
No matter what we try to do, we go overboard. People don't want others to smoke, so instead of finding constructive ways to help they cut back on medical assistance given to smokers. They want to make people thin so they ridicule people of size instead of offering more options. People want to enjoy good food, but instead of varying their diets and limiting the amount they take in, they pig out on huge portions and don't exercize.
It's all a big problem and it's what I *really* believe is behind the abortion issue - too much of a good thing getting out of control.
If a fetus is viable, shouldn't he or she be delivered rather than aborted if the woman no longer wishes to gestate? It would accomplish the same thing--protecting personal autonomy--without destroying human life. Wouldn't it?
Susan, I am anti-abortion. Wouldn't call myself a crowd. I care about women and I care about children, both before and after they're born. I'm not characterizing you as a culture-of-death child-hater, so perhaps you could refrain from making ugly assumptions about my motives.
Well, I've always been opposed to abortion because it messes up sex roles and gives women sexual autonomy.
I've never really cared about developing fetuses that don't make it, though I have seen people grief stricken for fetuses that didn't make it and wouldn't think of consoling them by saying that it wasn't a child yet. It was clearly a child to them.
Only a marriage should have sexual autonomy, individuals (and therefore, one sex) should not have any sexual autonomy.
And sex roles are genius! If we didn't already have them, we should invent them. There is absolutely nothing wrong with sex roles, especially if we have a marriage culture in which most people truly marry and become one fully human flesh. Trying to get rid of gender roles hurts the environment, increases homelessness and poverty, and causes world wars. Gender roles increase happiness and respect and fairness and world harmony.
"Only a marriage should have sexual autonomy, individuals (and therefore, one sex) should not have any sexual autonomy."
Well, that's bound to be a popular position. Long live the sexual counterrevolution!
Unfortunately people who have tasted autonomy are not likely to want to give it up.
Susan wrote:
"It's the height of dishonesty to claim the anti-abortion crowd really cares about fetal rights. They don't. What they care about is preserving outdated sex roles and cracking down on women's sexual autonomy."
Sex roles may be a complication of it all, but I wouldn't go so far to say it's about preserving outdated sex roles.
Rather, and I am highly convinced of it, but generally with plenty of exceptions, I think the majority of anti-abortion people are more concerned with outlawing abortion rather than fetal rights.
I get this because any "solutions" I've heard to abortion focus exclusively on the criminal justice system, particularly criminalizing it, which I think is poorly suited for dealing with abortion (long detailed analysis available if you want).
So, I must conclude - either they do not care about fetal rights per se, or they are blatantly naive.
Like I said, there are many exceptions to this. I think the Catholic church has done an overall better job at minimizing unwanted pregnancy then any criminal law could ever do.
Susan,
I get it; pro-lifers don’t care about the unborn so it’s okay to kill them. Pro-family advocates don't care about battered wives, so it's okay to keep battering them.
Your comments demonstrate how self centered the abortion rights feminists are. You whine that not being able to do what you want to do to defenseless unborn children who are in the way and cannot defend themselves depersonalizes YOU. But it’s okay for you to depersonalize the unborn to justify doing what you want to do to them.
No wonder your movement is in such sad shape. Everything is about you Susan. You think you have a god given right to not have anyone or anything interfere with your life, your aspirations and sexual autonomy. Anyone who gets in your way is expendable, even if it means killing your defenseless unborn child. Is that what women fought for-the right to trample upon and depersonalize others as men have and still trample on them? That’s a reverse golden rule: Do unto others as others have done to you.
Even if pro-lifers don’t care about the unborn before or after birth, no one’s right to life and the right to keep from being harmed (because they are inconvenient, in the way and can’t defend themselves) depends on a world or mother that is ready for him or her or willing to support them. The unborn is the weakest member of our society and demands the most love and support. But then again, that’s what your movement is lacking. You are guilty of your own charges..
…like your charges that pro-lifers don’t care about the fetus. Your bio says you live in Reno. You can go over to Casa Da Vida across from Renown/Washoe Medical Center on Mill Street or the Crisis Pregnancy Center on Brinkby and tell them that they don't care or that the people like myself who contribute to their works don't care. I’m sorry, but maintaining traditional sex roles and cracking down on your sexual freedom is not worth my money or the pro-lifer’s long volunteer hours of service.
Your comment about sexual autonomy is the clearest statement about why we have abortion. Abortion is about sustaining the sex revolution. Thanks for admitting it.
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Susan:
It's the height of dishonesty to claim the anti-abortion crowd really cares about fetal rights. They don't. What they care about is preserving outdated sex roles and cracking down on women's sexual autonomy.
Funny. I always thought it was the height of dishonesty to prejudge the other side's motivations. As one can see on this blog, people decide on both sides of the issue for plenty of different reasons, and no one can really judge the deep down, interior motivations of the human heart.
Eileen - Amen. I would only add that it would be unfair to say "one does not care about fetal rights simply by thinking abortion should be legal."
So royale, you're saying one can care about something, but not care enough to do something about it? And it is unfair to claim a distinction?
John, it's not unfair because morality and legality were two very separate issues.
There is plenty one can do without making something illegal.
So, Royale, for those of us who believe abortion is murder, and who support the fact that it's illegal to murder, say, a 2-year-old, and think that an unborn child deserves the same protection under the law - what are we to do? Every now and then one reads about a toddler being murdered, usually because his toilet training is incomplete; or a baby, because it won't stop crying. It's very sad but it's true. I support the continuing trial, conviction, and imprisonment of those who kill infants and toddlers even though there's not a whole lot I can do to prevent the circumstances that lead up to it. Should I stop? Or should I declare that there's nothing morally wrong with killing a toddler so that I can continue to say it should be illegal?
Royale said: "I think the Catholic church has done an overall better job at minimizing unwanted pregnancy then any criminal law could ever do."
This is the same Catholic Church that tries to ban contraception wherever it can?
Mtraven,
As hard as it is to believe, I think social institutions, including the contraception-banning Catholic church, are much better suited to addressing abortion than the criminal justice system. The latter would only push it underground.
Laura,
What do you think illegalization would do? Whenever the government tried to prohibit other privately moral things, say drugs or alcohol, it led to greater secondary crime. For abortion, it would be that much worse given it overlaps with sex, religion, and personal liberty.
Furthermore, think about enforcement. How can police monitor abortion if they cannot tell who is even pregnant? Before a woman is even noticeably pregnant, we could never know who the "criminals" are.
No, prohibition would fail and fail miserably.
I think the best idea (perhaps least worst) would be to address the social problems giving rise to unwanted pregnancies. Contraceptions and education come to mind, but I think there are many more solutions out there that people need to be creative about.
I guess our disagreement is over abortion being a "privately moral" thing.
Royale,
I don’t agree at all that pro-lifers care more about banning abortion than the unborn's rights. I would not oppose abortion if it weren’t for the trampling of the unborn’s rights and what abortion does to the unborn-death by dismemberment, burning or sucking the unborn’s brains out during delivery etc. That is, I would not oppose abortion as long as it didn’t harm or kill an unborn human baby boy or girl any more than I oppose circumcision, appendectomies, breast implants or other procedures that do not kill innocent human beings.
There are some people who think it’s degrading to women and oppose abortion because of the impact it has on women. I certaninly agree, but that’s not the root of our efforts. It’s what happens to the unborn baby boy or girl. We want to outlaw abortion because of the unborn’s rights, or should I say, because they have no rights and can be disposed of at will by their mothers.
Law and criminalizing abortion will have quite an impact. It did pre-Roe and it will after Roe. We had about 100,000 abortion pre-Roe and then 700,000 the next year with a peak of about 1.7 million sometime late in the first Bush administration. Legalizing made it boom. Since the Casey decision gave states the right to regulate, something like 32 states have passed parental involvement laws. Since then we’ve had a 50 percent reduction in teen abortions, about 40 percent (80 percent of the 50 percent) which is accountable to new laws and taxpayer funding prohibitions.
Abortion is no less a private morality than my brother beating his new born son. Abortion is public because it’s what happens to another human being, the unborn child. When abortion is criminalized, there will still be abortion, but much, much less. It worked then. It will work again. Abortionists will go to jail or be fined. It’s going to be about the abortionist, not the women.
I don’t know what’s naïve about what we are doing but our policies/regulations we've gotten into law, our crisis pregnancy help centers, Catholic Charities and our educational and other efforts have resulted in at 25-30 percent overall reduction in abortion in the last decade. It may be naïve, but it’s working. When Roe goes, it will be better still.
Imagine if they manage to by-pass conception altogether, perhaps making haploid humans.
I almost missed this, royale. What is your definition of "conception"? Is it the same as "fertilization"? I think we have two words because they are two different things. Fertilization is the technical, materialistic term for when one gamete enters another and meiosis occurs. Conception is when people conceive - mentally - of a baby. It doesn't require fertilization, I have conceived with some women that turned out not be pregnant and probably never were, but I spent a few days in the state of conception, as meaningless and confusing as that is these days. But tests turned out negative, periods came, and the pregnancy is no longer a pregnancy. But don't tell me it wasn't a conception. And also, fertilizations occur all the time without conception taking place, because they thought he withdrew or the BC was working, and they go about their business for the next few days without ever thinking about the sperm that made the heroic effort and fertilized the egg, and the embryo almost grabbed the uterine wall, but just missed the window by that much. That happens all the time. But conception only occured if we had a womb-cam and were filming as part of some reality TV show. Otherwise, there was no conception, because no one conceived that a baby had been created.
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don, allow me to pose a thought question: what if a company came along and, for a hundred bucks, offered to impregnate women with the DNA from some guys hair she might pluck from her pillow? Hmm? There's no sucking of brains out, there's no killing... Would you oppose that anyway? I would oppose it because I think that men and women ought to have an equal say in their joining together to conceive a child together. I hate the killing too, because it's very dehumanizing and brutal, but it's by no means the only reason to oppose abortion. Equal reproductive rights for all people, and full consent for conception, is more conceptual and principled.
"This is the same Catholic Church that tries to ban contraception wherever it can?"
Ban contraception? Where exactly is that taking place? That church doesn't endorse contraception, sure, but they're not trying to make it illegal.
I certainly hope you're not referring to the grossly misnamed "emergency contraception," which is in fact not a true contraceptive but rather an abortafacient.
Hey John,
I've read your post several times and I don't get where you are going. I've worked a couple scenarios of what you might mean, but I think I need some more help or information to get it. Sorry.
Don, I mean, there are reasons to oppose abortion besides the fact that a human life is killed. Perhaps I should address the question to the hypothetical woman I just had a one night stand with: If I plucked your hair off the pillow in the morning, how would you feel about me deriving an egg, fertilizing it with my sperm, and hiring a surrogate to carry our child? Would you feel that your reproductive rights had been violated?
I think that equal reproductive rights, as in, each lover mutually consenting at the same time to conceive a child together, is the most important reason to oppose abortion. It would also make sex better and more loving and meaningful if there was a shared equal prospect of parenthood, together with each other. No one should control another person's reproductive rights, not through rape, not through abortion.
Does that help explain it, Don? I'm not trying to deny what you said, just trying to say there are other social and legal reasons to oppose abortion besides the barbaric inhuman killing. My thought experiment was intended to show that even if there wasn't any killing, it would still be wrong.
The Catholic Church bans contraception among its own followers. It certainly has influence on the growing activity against contraception, see here for example:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407E2DC113FF934A35756C0A9609C8B63&sec=health&spon=&pagewanted=all
'Ban' is usually used with a legal meaning. Bans aren't voluntary. Religious prohibitions are, in this day, up to the ordinary person to choose to follow. Calling any religion's internal rules a ban is a stretch.
But weighing in late on how one could care about fetal rights and not push for a criminalization of abortion, a good parallel to consider is the slavery question in the nineteenth century. Slavery does not equal abortion, but from the standpoint of opponents of both, they were/are great moral evils. And yet, the anti-slavery contingent was divided between abolitionists, those who sought to confine slavery to places where it existed already, and those who felt that it could only be removed by education. And until far into the Civil War, it must be noted that Abraham Lincoln was of the second belief.
I would have been an Abolitionist back in the day, I think, but I can't deny that Lincoln and the rest cared about slavery. Similarly, I think abortion should be criminalized, but I can't say that people with less total approaches care nothing about the issue. I just disagree with them.
I take back "ban". Let's just say that the Church and many others work against the use and availability of contraception, even when doing so results in an increase in abortions (see the article I cited). Which indicates to me that much of the so-called "pro-life" sentiment is actually more anti-sex. This is fairly explicit in Catholicism, and you see manifestations of it here as in John Howard's comment above.
Raven,
I don't think it's fair to say the Catholic church is anti-sex. Maybe there's some of that somewhere, but they haven't gone out of business like the sect the Shakers who did not believe in sex, or were anti-sex. There are only a handful of members left.
My orthodox traditional Catholic friends have some of the biggest families in town and they sure don't seem to be apologizing for wha they do under the sheets when the kids are asleep. You didn't say this, but I don't think saying that they think sex is wrong outside of marriage of a man and woman or that you need to be open to life qualifies as being anti-sex. If you go into a fundamentalist/evangelical Christian book store and can get past the Left Behind and all the other the world is ending who is the anti-christ or how to fulfill your potential books, evangelicals have been writing about having good sex for a long time. So I think it's hard to say we have a general anti-sex sentiment.
I think when 50 percent of abortions are for women who have been taking contraception-650,000 a year-the case that contraception reduces abortion is a tough one to make. The new "new thing" the morning after/early contraception pill doesn't reduce abortion or pregnancy in the USA even when it is made easily available and the abortion rate is increasing elsewhere with now the it is OTC. Now, maybe there's more sex going on to explain it, but I think it's a tough case to make that contraception reduces abortion.
Wes should ban the word abortion from his site... those seem to be the longest threads!
John,
Yes, there are other reasons to oppose abortion, but for me the killing of the unborn is the central issue.
My comments were to show that pro-lifers are concerned about the unborn's rights. That's what drives us. It unjustly takes the life of a human being.
I am guilty again of over-abbreviating. The Catholic Church is not anti-sex in the sense of wanting to stamp out sex. They want to control sex by suppressing the natural urges and abilities of people to have the kind of sex they want, by insisting that sex has to be tied to procreation or it is somehow sinful. Thus their opposition to gay sex and contraception, which have nothing to do with the "murder" of embryos, but has everything to do with the attempt to regulate human sexuality by enforcing rigid norms.
There are many things wrong with this, but the most glaring is the ridiculous spectacle of (ostensibly) celibate males attempting to impress the virtues of procreation on the rest of us.
The Catholic church says sex has to be within marriage, but they don't say it has to be only for procreation. They teach how to use NFP to abstain from sex during fertile periods if the couple is not ready or prepared for another child. They can have sex that they don't intend to be procreative, but they should always be open and welcoming to the possibility.
Catholics are usually very well educated about fertility cycles, most public school grads are woefully ignorant about it.
And Don, you had previously said "I would not oppose abortion as long as it didn’t harm or kill an unborn human baby". I'll accept your new position as that being your "central issue" ;-) For me, though, equal reproductive rights and consensual conception are also central issues, and it's bad to overlook them.
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