Legal and Moral Paradox About the Unborn
It is often asserted that the law does not recognize the moral equality of fetuses and embryos. That isn't entirely true. In the abortion controversy, the battle is over which should be paramount--the life of the fetus or the autonomy of the woman--and the law has concluded that it is the woman.
But in other than abortion contexts, the unborn do often receive significant protection, and even equal moral value. Case in point: The conviction for murder of Bobby Cutts Jr. for killing his pregnant girlfriend and their late gestational unborn child. I use the term "unborn child" because I am not bound by the political correct biases of the AP style book, which insisted in the story linked below on repeatedly calling the dead baby a fetus. More importantly, the word baby is more accurate in this context than fetus because Cutts may face the death penalty--not for the murder of his girlfriend but of the baby. I use the word "baby" because murder is legally defined as the illegal intentional killing of a human being with malice aforethought. Moreover, in this case, there are special circumstances for the murder of the child leading to the possible death sentence for her killing. That certainly means the fetus is considered a full human being in the context of this crime. From the story:
Cutts, 30, was convicted of aggravated murder in the death of the nearlyfull-term female fetus, which carries the possible death penalty. The jury found him not guilty of aggravated murder in Davis' death, a count that includes intent to kill with prior calculation. But they convicted him of a lesser charge of murder in her death.Society and the law take relativistic views about the unborn depending on circumstances. The paradoxes are remarkable. But this much is clear: Human fetuses and embryos have moral status--sometimes even equal moral status--to born people. And that is an undeniable truth.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:03 AM
17 Comments
17 Comments:
I think the thought of this story makes me feel terribly sick and disturbed. That is an awful story if I have ever heard one.
My opinions and feelings on abortion are: If you are raped or molested either one it is without question justified. I have mixed feelings about other scenarios that arise in conversations. If I was out running around town and slept with someone at random, I wouldn't ever want to have a child with that person. If I was seriously involved with someone and she became pregnant, even if I did not want to have the child I still would stay with and support my family.
RU486 is a sure fire way to get somebody mad. Personally speaking, I don't think it is as cruel sounding as abortion and no one is ever going to know about it because you have ended the chance for being pregnant all together. It saves people from having to have a more brutal and painful procedure later on after the mother decides to deal with the problem. I can't say that I want to see anyone, particularly young women doing this to their reproductive emotional senses, however it would rate higher on my scale than knowing of a woman who terminated a fetus. As far as I am concerned the body of a baby inside of a living breathing mother is a baby. I couldn't think of it any other way. I think early preventitive measures are in order. thanks for listening
NailsDegree: Thanks for stopping by. Let's try not to discuss the legality of abortion, per se. I am interested in how people react to what it seems to illustrate; how we place full value on unborn life in some circumstances, less on the same life in other circumstances, and little in still others. And it seems to me that we do so based on how we are affected or what our desires are, our narratives if you will, rather than on what it is that the unborn life actually is or represents.
Prior to Roe v Wade, the unborn child was recognized as a person insofar as the child could be represented in court to protect his self interests. Only "persons" have standing in court unless it is the government, After Roe, there became this schizophrenia in the law. The unborn child had value and would be protected ONLY if the mother agreed. The law could not protect all children equally because of Roe's convoluted reasoning.
So a tragic story of two murdered people becomes a case study in what is wrong in American law and society.
Perhaps we should ask Hillary and Obama if the fellow should go to prison or get hired by Planned Parenthood.
"If I was out running around town and slept with someone at random, I wouldn't ever want to have a child with that person."
One might take this a step further and suggest that it is an excellent reason not to sleep with someone at random.
Wesley, I deliberately use the term "fetus" to refer to unborn babies. I'd like to reclaim it from its current informal definition of semihuman possibly living cypher. I think prolifers should make more use of it for that reason. Maybe that would help do away with that thing you are talking about, where it's a fetus if you don't want it and a baby if you do.
Laura,
I wholeheartedly agree. I am pro-life and I make a POINT of using the word fetus in my arguments. I clarify the fact that "fetus" is just one of the many words we use to describe the various stages of human development, along with "neonate" (newborn) or "geriatric" (elderly).
If we can all stop being afraid of that word, it would go a long way toward helping the world realize that a fetus is simply an unborn human being.
Wesley, I don't know if I'm getting at what you are getting at. This case and public acceptance of the unborn victim laws that treat the unborn as equal victims of violence shows dissonance in public thinking about the unborn and abortion. Why should one person get the death penalty or a large penalty for killing an unborn against the mother's consent when there's no crime when the mother decides to do the same with an MD? In these cases, we've said if the woman wants the child, the unborn has enough value to be considered a victim. But if she doesn't want the child, it is a nothing. That nothing can be done away with for about $425 by an MD.
That is dangerous. Human value and the right to be protected from harm does not depend upon whether our mothers want us, think we are people (a Reno abortionist told me it's a person when the mother decides IT is) or if we impinge on our mothers' autonomy. Parents can't dispose of their kids because the impinge on their autonomy. Likewise we can't dispose of people because they crimp our autonomy.
People can make an autonomy argument, but they do so at the expense of the inherent value of human beings. We cannot dispose of human beings for the reasons given for almost all abortions. Human beings are not valuable or protectable just because they reach a greater level of development or change locations. That's nonsense.
If people want to make the dependency argument it will also come back to bite them. Don't come to my doorstep in a blizzard. I could say I don't have to support you no matter how temporary it might be and no matter how far it is to town or how big my house is or how much food, clothing and warmth are in my house to preserve your life under that argument. And if you are stuck off road in the brutal Nevada desert, sorry pal, but I don't have to stop to pick you up no matter how far from town you are and how dependent you are on me for your existence. I have a right to be free from the burden you could pose to me. The arguments for autonomy and dependecy are ridiculous because we don't allow people to dispose of other people because they impinge on our autonomy.
Cases like this show a dissonance on our thinking and I think it will be helpful. I support these because of that and because it adds another threat to thouse who would assault pregnant women and their unborn children.
Don: That's precisely what I am getting at; the dissonance. The value of the fetus has been utterly relativized depending on the narrative in play in each circumstance in which its value becomes relevant.
Hmmmmm. In your book, "The Culture of Death" you charged people to keep watching changes in abortion laws because of the connection to euthanasia laws. But then you indicated that the jury was out with you regarding whether abortion should or should not be legal.
Now you point of the ridiculousness that unborn humans only have worth that is imbued them by those with the power to kill them, rather than inate, intrinsic value as human beings.
Is the jury still out? I see that you don't want to touch that as not to cause division with those who support your other work, but it's causing me dissonance, that such a poignant defender of the right to life who abhors research on embryos and partial birth abortion could skip an entire stage (fetal) of human development.
Jacque: No, I didn't say that the jury was out about legality. I urged that people truly
grapple with the moral dimensions of abortion. I wrote that in the pages of COD and in my public work I am "agnostic" about the legality of abortion, a course I have decided upon for the reasons you mentioned which I think are of overriding importance.
But I went on to note that it seems everyone wants abortion to be rare. I found this puzzling. "If it is essentially like removing a mole or a tumor," I wrote, "why would it matter how many abortions there are? If a fetus is akin to a parasite, as some abortion rights advocates assert, why in the world would fewer abortions be desirable? The answer, of course, is that what is ended in an abortion isn't a mole, a tumor, or a parasite, and that is why the debate about this subject continues to rage."
Sorry for your disonance.
I apologize for misquoting you. It's been a few months since I read your book. And this would also to a good time to tell you how much I appreciate it and desire another edition- I didn't realize when it was written until you said that the Wendland case was still raging and I went and checked the copyright.
I understand your decision to be undeclared about abortion legality, (I'm in the closet in my academic department about my pro-unborn activism because I don't want my euthanasia research misconstrued as some religious vendetta or cliche). It's damn hard to be agnostic though considering how all my research (and yours too, if I remember correctly) indicates that current American euthanasia laws are rooted in Griswold's "right to privacy" which gave us abortion in Roe 20 years before euthanasia in Cruzan.
You really can't escape the connection- pro-unborn are going to take up the cause of the disabled, elderly, etc. because their fundamental belief is that all life has intrinsic value. Disability rights activists can't deny the bigotry in aborting disabled babies and anti-euthanasia folks can't ignore that protecting a premature infant who could legally be dismembered if not yet born is utterly absurd.
The term might not have been well chosen. I just wanted to indicate I don't advocate in that area.
And thanks for the compliment. I am thinking that COD will need an update soon, too. I have to finish this animal rights book. And then I'll talk to the publisher.
Do me a favor, would ya: In your book, mention people like me who are vegetarians, not because we believe that meat is murder, but because we oppose factory farming as morally abhorrent and bad dominion over those lesser creatures that should merit our care and mercy. Being pro-animal welfare is nothing close to being pro-animal rights- and I think people confuse the two.
Please tell the world that some of us vegetarians out there aren't b@tsh!t crazy. :)
J. I do make that point. In fact, it is an example of human exceptionalism, eschewing natural food for ethical reasons. We are the only species that does that.
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I can't disagree about an update to COD, but I vote first for an update to Consumers Guide to a Brave New World if there are to be any updates. So much has happened since then. We need someone to catalog it for us.
I found this about Obama's voting record:
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Aug. 2, 2007
Amendment to codify Bush Administration regulation giving states the option of covering unborn children in the State Children's Health Insurance program.
Obama voted no.
Yes, 49; no, 50
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I don't hold that vote against him, but it does bother me about the dems. From the description, the bill seemed reasonable, but i'm sure abortion politics manifested i's ugly head and prevented people from doing the right thing.
Unless, of course, it was federalism issue, but that's beside the point and an unlikely scenario anyway.
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