Valuing All Human Life: Fetus Killing is Murder in Texas
A new Texas Supreme Court decision validates a Lone Star State law that treats the killing of unborn life--other than in the abortion context--as potentially murder. From the story:
Texas laws allow the killing of a fetus to be prosecuted as murder, regardless of the fetus' stage of development, but they do not apply to abortions, the state's highest criminal court has ruled.Wednesday's ruling by the Court of Criminal Appeals rejected an appeal by Terence Lawrence, who said his right to due process was violated because he was prosecuted for two murders for killing a woman and her 4- to 6-week-old fetus. The court ruled unanimously that state laws declaring a fetus an individual with protections do not conflict with the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling that protects a woman's right to an abortion...
The Supreme Court has emphasized that states may protect human life not only once the fetus has reached viability but 'from the outset of the pregnancy,'" the court said. "The Legislature is free to protect the lives of those whom it considers to be human beings."
The "fetus" in question was actually an embryo, which is what nascent, developing humans are called from conception through the eighth week. Be that as it may, what this means is that when the personal autonomy right of a woman is not at issue--which is the unique circumstance involved with abortion--federal and state laws are increasingly protecting the intrinsic value of unborn life with the support of the courts. Good. All human life should be deemed worthy of protecting.
This has also been the ethical issue involved in human cloning and ESCR. Hopefully, the new stem cell breakthrough will eventually bring that contentious issue to an end as James Thomson and Ian Wilmut have predicted.
Labels: Intrinsic Value of Human Life
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 12:13 PM
13 Comments
13 Comments:
I'm pro-choice and i dont have a problem with this court decision... seems to make sense.... but i guess that one could make the potentially idiotic
remark that it sends the "wrong message" for women who seek abortions that a foetus or an embryo is actually worthy of some protection... lol!
i'm much more worried about the state of abortion in my home island right now... absolutely 0 women attended hospitals in search for a clinically aided abortion.. O.o. obviously this means their going to midwives for having their pregnancies terminated in possibly highly dangerous ways :(
Wait a second - "from the onset of pregnancy" is not an embryo in a test tube. There is no obligation to implant embryos or freeze them forever. We can't force women to carry everything that labs cook up that has 23 pairs of "human" chromosomes, rather, we really ought to forbid implanting them. But since we can't go that far (marital/medical privacy), we should at least forbid implanting anything that isn't a naturally conceived embryo, ie, the union of a man and a woman.
Oh, and we should forbid using artificial wombs to create people too, if not all life. But surely for human children, "External Birth Incubators" should be outlawed, right?
That sounds very paranoid if you ask me, man! O.o. Holy Spaghetti Monster! hehe =) Relax a little!
Yeah, I'm very paranoid all right.
Consider these recommendations to Congress from the PCBE:
1. Prohibit attempts to conceive a child by any means other than the union of egg and sperm.
2. Prohibit attempts to conceive a child by using gametes obtained from a human fetus or derived from human embryonic stem cells.
Why just "embryonic" stem cells?? Why does it also say that we should not deny children "the direct biological connection to two human genetic parents"?
Given how happy Wesley is about those new pluripotent stem cells derived from adults, perhaps the loophole of sperm derived from women's skin cells and eggs derived from men's was intentional, no?
I'd love to be proven how paranoid I am, ricardo, on each of the issues I raise in these three comments.
Okay, John, I'll level with you.
I'm pro-life and I don't believe in IVF because too many times either 1) selective abortions are performed when a woman implants too many embryos for her to carry and 2) too many times the babies created outside of the womb die - the statistics are high for a woman with an implanted embryo to lose that embryo shortly after implantation. It's not healthy for a baby to be concieved outside the womb.
And I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts that any baby created by taking skin cells, turning them into embryonic cells, and making male cells into "eggs" and female cells int "sperm" as you are worried about, would result in a dead baby. I don't doubt that the child would die before or during implantation. So for that reason I'm totally against any kind of reproduction outside the old fashioned variety, which you and I both agree on.
But here, now, I have an issue with what you say:
'Wait a second - "from the onset of pregnancy" is not an embryo in a test tube. There is no obligation to implant embryos or freeze them forever. We can't force women to carry everything that labs cook up that has 23 pairs of "human" chromosomes, rather, we really ought to forbid implanting them. '
No obligation? No, we can't *force* a woman to carry a baby that's been created outside the womb, but to my thinking, those babies are already alive the minute they're created. We *do* have an obligation to preserve them in some way. No matter *how* they were created, if they're created, we adults owe those kids the right to life, and if that means that some woman may carry a baby created in a vile way (woman = sperm, man = egg, as you fear), that baby, which was *already created* has a right to have a shot at living.
Granted, I don't think that child should be created at all. It's an abomination. There, you've got me, I'm with you.
But the only other possibilities for that embryo are either eternal deep freeze until the Last Judgment, or else the baby has to die.
So yes, from the moment of conception, a baby is a baby and has the right to be born. Period. End of story. I'm sorry, I'm totally against the external manipulation to create babies, but I cannot stand that attitude you hold that these embryos shouldn't be implanted.
When *we* adults make a mistake, or perform an evil, *we* must make restitution. We create an embryo in an abominable manner - fine. *We* are wrong. That baby has nothing to do with this. Repentence means paying a restitution and that means that baby has to either be preserved or adopted out to someone who's willing to carry it, with the intention of giving it a shot at normal human life.
Yes, outlaw the use of artificial wombs. Outlaw the conception of embryos through non-natural means.
But remember our adult responsibilty to all children. If that means that an embryo created in a lab has to be protected by this law to keep it from being destroyed, I'm behind that.
Think beyond your paranoia some, John. I agree with you on many, many levels, but I won't agree with you that any child should be destroyed under any circumstances. Period.
I don't think we should bring embryos created outside the womb to life. Even if we were to consider them alive before they have blood (which I don't and the Bible agrees with me), I think they should be released into the wild rather than implanted. I don't think anyone should feel an obligation to bring a lab created embryo to life, sorry. I think it is rather monstrous for scientists to pressure and guilt women into wanting to carry the lab's creations, and we shouldn't inadvertently be on their side.
We don't mourn embryos that are naturally conceived but never implant, we shouldn't mourn ones that are artificially conceived either.
"We don't mourn embryos that are naturally conceived but never implant"
We can't, we don't know about them. Infertile women who want babies do grieve about every cycle that passes without pregnancy, and that's about as close as we can come.
I agree with both of you, in a way. Maybe if there were a rule that any embryo has to get its shot, that would cut down on frivolous experimentation. But that's assuming some kind of conscience on the part of the experimenter.
John -
Please cite your source as to the Biblical agreement that an embryo without blood isn't alive yet. Also, please explain why blood flow determines the presence of a soul.
According to the birth narriative in John, Gabriel the Archangel appeared to Mary and told her that she would concieve a son by the power of the Holy Spirit. The moment she agreed, proclaiming herself God's handmaiden, she was with child.
She next visited her cousin Elizabeth. According to the narrative Elizabeth was six months pregnant with John the Baptist when Mary was visited by Gabriel. Afterward it states that Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months and then departed. If Mary remained with Elizabeth for three months, then she was with her cousin for the last months of her pregnancy.
Patience - I'm getting there, it just takes time to build the case.
The heart begins to beat between 18 and 21 days after conception, which is when blood flow begins in the baby's body. The Bible says that it was *in* the sixth month that Mary visited her cousin, Elizabeth. That means it could have been the beginning or the middle of her sixth month of pregnancy. And at some point within that same month Mary came to visit.
Now, it doesn't say that Mary was present for the birth of John the Baptist, but I shall assume for the moment that she was, even though the last mention of her before the Baptist's birth was of her leaving after a three month visit. So saying, we can assume that three months after her arrival, John was born and she only stayed somewhat longer than the baby's birth. That's given the timeline set down in Luke.
Mary was told of Elizabeth's pregnancy at the Conception of Christ. We can assume that Mary, out of devotion and family obligation, hurried as fast as she could to help Elizabeth. After all, Elizabeth was very, very old, past child-bearing age, and needed all the help she could get while pregnant.
I feel it is safe to assume that before Day 18, Mary arrived to help her cousin Elizabeth, or else the Bible would have said, "It was in the seventh month" or what have you. Instead, the Bible says, "It was in those days," implying a very short time span after the Visitation.
So, can we agree that Jesus was probably concieved less than 18 days before Mary's visitation of her cousin? The Bible says she "traveled to the hill country in haste to the town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth." It stands to reason that the Visitation was a very short time before the trip to Elizabeth's house, given the wording here.
That leads us to Elizabeth's reaction. When Mary arrived, Elizabeth blessed her. "And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled."
As much as I revere our beloved Queen of Heaven, I have to say, I doubt very seriously that Elizabeth's baby leaped for joy at the approach of Mary herself.
Given the reaction of both Elizabeth and her unborn (but formed and blood-circulating) baby, the reaction was to the presence of Jesus Christ, who was present *body and soul* in the womb of Mary.
This is prior to the development of the baby's heartbeat, of his veinous and arterial system, of blood flowing in his body. The passage indicates that the living Presence of Jesus Christ in Mary's womb affected both Elizabeth and her baby in a way that an unensouled blob of tissue without blood could never affect anyone.
You say the Bible supports your beliefs, which implies to me that you're a Christian. Every branch of Christianity that I have encounted, my own Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, Soutehrn Baptist, Pentacostal, Jews for Jesus, and Methodist, all agree that Christ was spiritually present in Mary's womb from the moment of the Visitation.
Jesus himself said that before we were born we were known and planned for by God. Although he did it more eloquently than I did.
So, given Jesus' sermons and the fact that he was present spiritually in Mary's womb from the moment of the Visitation, I argue that a Christian should not have any trouble accepting that the moment an embryo is concieved, the spirit is present. We accept that Christ rasied Lazerus from the dead - when he was *dead* dead, and had been dead for a while - and that Jesus himself rose after being *dead* dead for three days. If the soul can inhabit bloodless matter again, just because God wants it to, then why shouldn't we be able to accept that a bloodless embryo, like the embryo that our Lord Jesus himself was, could carry a soul?
I know this argument won't appeal or even make sense to someone who's not Christian. For them, I continue to point out that an embryo fulfills all the aspects of life - 46 chromosomes, can eat, reproduce, eliminate, etc. - and therefore should be treated as a living organism.
But to another Christian, I say, I would rather err on the side of caution than to sin against the Holy Spirit - to say that good is evil and evil is good - which is what I fear saying, "an embryo outside the womb isn't alive," might be.
We should *not* create any embyo outside the womb, but if any are created through our sins in such a way, we as adults are beholden to those children. And they should be protected under the law as much as any child I carry in my arms as I walk down the street.
It's so much easier to change the law so that from now on, we will not make embryos that we do not intend to implant immediately or as soon as possible and we won't make more embryos than it's safe to implant. That's how other countries handle it.
(There will be worries about the "spare" embryos we already have. 1. If the parents haven't given informed consent prior to fertilization (virtually all of those in storage) I believe that current practice is that the embryos are not available for research, 2. we can't make laws retroactive what people have already done under our Constitution.
For the concerns that people won't like the new law, that they've gotten used to having IVF available for banking embryos, we could point to the fact that we ended slavery although there were quite a few people used to that practice.)
Are any children that you carry in your arms entitled to be implanted in a woman's womb? Nothing is entitled to be implanted in a woman's womb, or an artificial womb.
Regarding your bible references, I don't see where it contradicts all the references to the life being in the blood. There are many old and new testament references to that. Just search by "life blood" in BibleGateway.com. And I'm not talking about a soul, just about when an embryo becomes alive, when it stops just being a chemical reaction and takes on a life of its own, a purpose, a pumping, effortful again-and-again exertion of will. The soul has always existed for eternity, and when soul ensouls a body is not the moment the body becomes alive. It might happen before, it might happen later. The life is the blood.
Oh please, John, not this ridiculous blood argument again! No verse you cite implies in any way that an embryo isn't "alive" until it has blood. You are pushing this farther than justified simply because you are so determined to block implantation of embryos.
Bernhardt -
I'm totally with you on your assessment of John's argument.
The Biblical implication, as interpreted by most scholars that I know of, is that the soul is created at the moment of conception.
The moment an embryo is created outside the womb, every adult human being has as much responsibilty to that child as to any other child, and moreso because the child has no ability to say yea or nay to its existence.
John, the only reason I can fathom that you don't want to acknowledge life at conception is that you're afraid that if we gengineer a baby someone (like me) is going to insist that we let that baby live and you're afraid of the potential problems that such a precedent will cause.
I, on the other hand, oppose gengineering from the onset - no babies concieved outside the womb. But that doesn't undo the fact that a couple produced dozens of embryos outside the womb so they could select the perfect one to be born so that their oldest child could be saved from a rare disease by that baby's cord blood, and that all the other embryos are still in deep freeze, rejected.
Those kids have a right to life. They've got a right to be born, because they've already been created by us adults. And as stewards of this planet, we have responsibilities that outweigh our wants and desires. Part of that inculdes making up for our errors.
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