This is a repost of an article originally published in March at another site that has since gone away. —Kent Pitman
Language is a complex beast. A single word, or a sequence of words taken together as a phrase or sentence, may mean one thing now and quite another thing later, or may mean one thing to you and still another to me.
It’s is a messy thing up close, barely withstanding scrutiny at times. It’s amazing that we not only use but rely upon such a clumsy contrivance.
And yet language is all that stands between any of us and profound loneliness. Sometimes it drives us. Sometimes we drive it. Yet it’s all we have to connect us with each other, to remember our past, and to discuss our possible futures.
I say a thing and it means something to me. You may hear it differently than I said it. Your words are not my words. I describe a piece of music as “pretty” or “sad” or “touching” and that sets an expectation for you, but you later hear it and say “wait, it’s not that at all.” I haven’t lied to you. We each come to know words according to our experiences and needs, and the result can be quite different.
Of course, we can rush to the dictionary for arbitration, but the dictionary can’t be said to know. A dictionary isn’t a source of truth, just a statistical record of commonly observed usages. It doesn’t drive language. Language drives the dictionary.
It’s a folk art, not a fine art. It is messy, irregular, and practical, bending in all kinds of places that no one would ever design. It is organic.
I may put a thought into words, and you may surprise me by hearing an intepretation I never intended. You may even prefer to hold me to that interpretation. Language can ensnare us. Sometimes it reveals hidden truths. Sometimes it just makes a mess of simple thoughts for reasons no more profound than its unsophisticated form. To borrow the parlance of Star Trek out context, language is itself “stone knives and bearskins.”
Language supports ambiguity. Ambiguity itself is ambiguous, so let me be clear about the three kinds of ambiguity I know of: I may use ambiguity to talk about something I don’t fully understand, speaking in blurry terms about things I know only in a blurry way. Or I may understand things quite precisely but not want to reveal what I do and do not understand, so I might choose to speak in ways that hide my knowledge. Or I may be speaking plainly and precisely about something in the world that is itself ambiguous.
We are admonished not to let others put words into our mouths, but really the greater threat is not to let others put meaning into our words. Words are windows into our intent, but when ambiguity arises, the benefit of reasonable doubt must go to the one uttering the words, not the one hearing them.
This creates a special burden in politics. A politician is elected who has promised to do well for our country. What does that mean? Surely the same promise, made by a different person, might imply something different. We cannot simply rush to the dictionary and expect to find from the meaning of the words what the politician will do.
Two woman become pregnant. One has struggled for a long time to get to this point, wishing more than anything for children, but now she has a miscarriage. The other never had any intent to have children and gets an abortion. Two fetuses, neither to ever be born. Must that imply my emotions for each are the same? May I be happy for one and sad for the other? May I say one has lost a child while not the other?
It’s again a question of language. If one fetus is a child, must the other be? I say no. Language is messier than that. You may think a chicken egg is just a chicken, but if your server in a restaurant brings you fried eggs instead of fried chicken, you’ll quickly reconsider and insist it was your intent that should dominate, not someone’s self-serving desire to construe your words differently than you intended.
Then when does life begin? When does an egg, or a fetus, become a person? I think the magic occurs when a pregnant woman freely chooses it. I think life must be chosen. Forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy against her will is nothing less than slavery. I don’t always hear it articulated this way, but I think this is what it is to be pro-choice. The decision to bear a child ought to be a personal choice, not a fate forced by governments, dictionaries, or bullies.
So I take my cue from the woman’s choice. It seems reasonable and appropriate to celebrate from the moment a woman excitedly announces she has chosen to be pregnant, and to mourn if she loses that child. But it seems equally reasonable not to mourn if a woman elects an abortion because she doesn’t want kids—or doesn’t want them yet. Perhaps the choice is painful for her, perhaps not—I look to her for guidance. Even good decisions can be difficult ones. It’s her life, and her right to decide whether and when she will have a child. I celebrate and support that freedom to choose.
This use of language may seem messy, but it’s not hypocritical. It’s just the nature of language. Some situations are just complicated—like the earlier matter of the fried chicken versus the fried eggs. Does wanting fried chicken make you somehow a hypocrite? I think not. The situation is what it is, and language bends to accommodate.
Evangelical conservatives like to claim the right to define words like “moral” and “values” and “life,” as if these words had clear definitions that were theirs to determine in a “one size fits all” way. We must resist that. Language is not the property of any individual or group, nor is there any particular meaning of a word that will be universally applicable in all circumstances.
Language must not be dumbed down into a rigid tool of oppression, but instead must remain flexible so that we are empowered to express ourselves, each in our own way. Through language, we don’t just define life, but we define our lives. We don’t just talk about how to conceive a child, but how to conceive the world.
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Comments
I love how you worded your last sentence best of all.
R as usual.
on many levels
Julie, I am then glad at many levels. :)
I think you have articulated the pro-choice version of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. During the eucharist service the words of the priest turn the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Likewise, the attitude of the mother literally turns a fetus into a person.
I suppose it also works the other way if she changes her mind. Then the "person" turns back into a fetus and can be disposed of without further ado.
But there's a problem. If the woman waits too long, then the fetus turns into a person whether or not she wants it to, and abortion is no longer an option. In that sense the fetus is kind of like Cinderella's pumpkin being changed into a golden carriage by the fairy godmother. In the case of the fetus the fairy godmother is Roe v. Wade, which pretty much bans abortion after the second trimester, and unlike the Cinderella story, by the third trimester the golden carriage-person can no longer turn back into a pumpkin-fetus.
If women have the power to turn a fetus into a person, one can only wonder what other magical powers they might have. I'm a down-to-earth kind of guy, and such questions are quite beyond me.
Language is inherently ambiguous in its connection to the real world, I think, and while it seems completely natural to say that there's a clear correspondence between the two, subtle philosophical issues remain.
Folks on both sides of every issue tend to not think clearly, tend to allow emotions to cloud their thinking ability, and then all becomes a morass of hateful name-calling.
I've heard pro-lifers use language and cruel wording so judgmental it makes me weary just thinking on it.
And pro-choicers denigrating all of Christianity as tho' there were nothing redeeming to be had from any of it.
We tend to throw out (if you'll pardon the expression here--no pun intended at all) babies with bath water every time someone opposes a stance we have taken in this country.
Black and white thinking is what modern psychology would call it.
What we need is rational, calm discussion if we're ever to get anywhere, with every grey area covered distinctly and calmly.
Hysteria gets no one anywhere positive.
And progress takes conscious effort.
Thanks again.
Mishima, its a complex space and I think no matter how you cut it, it ends up with contradictions and conflicts which are resolved pragmatically. I see your issues, but I don't find they trouble me as they do you. A fair response to your questions would take more space than I have here. And even then I probably wouldn't satisfy you because in the end, at least as I perceive it, you won't be happy until you get to decide the fate of others, and the solution I seek is one that is uneven, allowing people to satisfy themselves. I think that conflict between us is tough to resolve. My goal here is only to find a different kind of compromise than has been sought by others, not to really solve the problem for everyone, as I think it's easy to show no such solution exists as long as people want to impose their will or morality on others, given that more than one kinds of morality exists and if anyone can impose their will, then two people with incompatible beliefs can, and there is no further gain to be had once such a conflict is met. I'm satisfied that there are those straddling the middle here who have found comfort in what I wrote, even if it can't please everyone.
PW, I think you're hitting some great points. As noted to Mishima, my goal here wasn't to satisfy everyone, just to remove some cruelty and name-calling in the discussion and allow a few bridges where they have any chance of forming. I really appreciate that you think I made any headway at all.
Kanuk, a fine exercise in ambiguity of response. I'll hedge likewise in my response, except to say I'm glad you showed up.
Jackie, yes, substituting other actors or verbs or even alleged synonyms as nouns can often yield fascinating changes in perspective. I like switching the roles around and seeing where that gets me as a tool for evaluating equity. A kind of variation on the old maxim about how to fairly divide a candy bar without fancy tools: one person cuts and the other chooses which piece he gets. It's not the outcome that can be balanced, sometimes, but the degree of control anyone gets going in... And sometimes not even that, I guess. But one tries as best one can.
Peace to you and your good lady this evening.
What troubles me is not that I cannot decide the fate of others. Rather, I'm troubled by the idea that, having decided that developing humans up to a certain point can be killed for literally any reason, we are then not even supposed to make a moral judgment about that, even not to suppose that the developing human is a person in any sense, because that definition must be left to the so-called mother.
In that context it wouldn't even be possible for the "mother" to be wrong. If she says that the fetus is a person, then it's a person. If not, then it's not. One couldn't even argue that the fetus is in any sense a person, because only one individual has that right. Indeed, one could not even give advice on that issue if one were asked by the mother for an opinion. Because for the mother to ask you if you thought the fetus is a person, would be like asking you if you thought she should like spinach.
If the issue of personhood is utterly personal and utterly the property of the mother, then no one else could even reasonably talk about it. The "complexity" you talk about wouldn't exist, as the whole issue would entirely subjective.
I inhabit a world in which things are really right or really wrong, really moral or really immoral. This is a world in which people can give right or wrong answers to moral questions, a world in which (gasp!) even I could be wrong. I am hesitant to leave that world for one in which moral decisions are seen as a matter of individual preference, and issues such as the personhood and moral status of the fetus are totally subjective and individual.
Although certainly I do not think everyone should have an abortion, I do think there are cases where it is plainly immoral to carry a pregnancy to term and is only moral to have an abortion. But my point is that even as I think this, I also do not wish to decide which cases are which. I go with the slogan that has been used of late “Trust women.” Not that I even trust them all to make the same choice. But, on the whole, I think each of them will individually make better judgments for themselves than others would do for them.
And besides, if 60% of the population takes position A and 40% position B, then how are we to decide what to do? Do we just allow the tyranny of the majority? That would leave 40% with no representation. Do we allow the 40% to dictate the 60% filibuster style? I reject that, too. Why not let position A win 60% of the time and position B win 40% of the time. That's going to make everyone have a stake and a bit of control of their own lives, but it also has the property in the aggregate that it means that each theory wins a number of times that's proportional to its number of supporters. I'm not saying it satisfies everyone, but it's hard to imagine an outcome that satisfies more people.
You're absolutely right that I don't think it allows a mother to be wrong. So what? Your position assumes there is a universally good position and a sometimes bad position. I think your position is sometimes bad even when you think it is unassailably good. To me, overpopulation is a serious sin worthy of us all considering how to stave off. To me, there are situations where would-be parents judge they are not up to raising a kid and do not want to carry and give up a child; I think it would be immoral certainly to require them to, and I moreover think it quite moral for them to make a responsible choice to not allow this situation. So my point is not that I am right, but again that there is no “safe” position. And so while you yearn to tell someone they made a wrong decision, my point is there is no source of authority to ever know what wrong even means. So there is nothing to be done. Let people decide for themselves, yes. Isn't that the essence of both freedom in general and freedom of religion in particular? We err constantly on the side of benefit of the doubt, for example in our courts, suggesting that if there is reason to think that the person even might need the benefit of the doubt, we should let them off. I'm saying nothing more here.
I inhabit a world in which things are more often than you think really right and really moral or really wrong and really immoral, too. I just don't draw my rules from religion. And I do not agree with you on what is and is not moral on some occasions. And, moreover, one of the things I think immoral is trying to impose morality on others as if I had a lock on the right morality. Pluralism is a kind of morality. It is complicated because it has rough edges where real moral systems come into conflict. It requires acknowledging that people will have to bend where they'd rather not. But this situation particularly offers a relatively fair way to do that, in my judgment. I am not asking you to leave a world of morality for one that is subjective. I am asking you to understand that you must co-exist in a world that has other senses of absolute morality that conflict with your own, and suggesting that there are ways to cohabit politely even with people who disagree. Were it not so, we'd insist everyone have the same religion. And that would end badly.
Later in comments where you imply that abortion is part of a solution to a potential overpopulation situation that you fear... or that parents who feel unfit should have abortions... strikes me as disgusting in its disregard for the value of human beings.
This is a complex issue and I struggle in articulating a proper balance of the rights of women, fetuses/unborn babies, and yes, fathers too. What generally is clear to me is that when someone suggests that the balance all is with the individual women, I viscerally know that that is not a balance at all. It is an abdication of any accountability.
As to the question of when life begins, I think it’s more a philosophical question. Defining it at the moment of conception sounds neat but if a few days after the egg is fertilized something goes wrong and the fertilization doesn’t take, I’d hardly regard that as a loss of life. So it’s somewhere between conception and a few days before actual birth. That it should be a question for an elected body is silly, though they do have to set laws on when abortions are legal. But we all know that these efforts to define the onset of life are Trojan horses to curtail abortion.
I’ll repeat what I said earlier. Don’t be a stranger. You worked hard to acquire a good reputation on OS. Don’t squander it.
This approach to morality makes morality an entirely personal thing. In doing that you eliminate even the possibility of making a moral judgment on someone else's action. If I happen to think that setting fire to kittens for one's own entertainment is morally acceptable, and you think it's not, on what basis could you criticize my view? If morality is an entirely personal thing, you can't.
In effect, you reinterpret moral statements as statements of personal preference. If I say that "setting fire to kittens for one's own entertainment is morally wrong," in your view that really means "I personally don't set fire to kittens for my own entertainment," or "I don't like the idea of setting fire to kittens for one's own entertainment." Moral utterances become solipsistic, applicable only to the individual. At that point, morality, as we typically conceive of it, no longer exists.
What makes abortion controversial is that moral frameworks do not overlap. This is not an issue of finding truth. It is an issue of either bullying others into accepting a morality they do not subscribe to or else acknowledging that because a substantial number of people have moralities that differ, it's necessary to say we can't decide for them.
Would we make laws requiring people to eat kosher if it turned out the religions that believe in this were majorities? Vegetarinanism is another. People have conflicting moralities. I understand why a vegetarian doesn't like me eating meat. I'm grateful that they are not as militant about their concern as some pro-Lifers are about theirs. But in the end, I ask to be allowed my conscience and probably you do as well. I'll bet you would not be sympathetic to being told that you have flexible morality just because you (perhaps) like cheeseburgers.
Or if this analogy doesn't work, I'm sure I could come up with one that does. Perhaps, for example, you are pro death penalty when others are not on moral grounds. Or you believe in recreational or medicinal drugs when others think they are somehow immoral. I'm not trying to pick on on you about one of those; just the opposite, I'm trying to say that we must evolve a society that understands these variations are real and must be accommodated. Not only is it expensive and arguably immoral to be bullying others, but there is no obvious way to decide who is right.
I'd even grant you that there's a different discussion to be had over very late term abortions. The overlap of people is very different at that point. But the notion that a few cells is a person is like saying a stack of lumber is a house or some nuts and bolts are a car. I just don't buy it and I think at the point that the pro-Life movement points to that position, they lose the religion-independent consensus that is required in order to make this a sufficiently broad moral issue that we'd need to have a broad-based societal backing, independent of specific religious choice.
Your comments weaken your argument. Quotes:
"it's not a big deal to get an abortion, and it may be a very good thing"
"the notion that a few cells is a person is like saying a stack of lumber is a house or some nuts and bolts are a car. I just don't buy it..."
Suppose others were to say:
"it's not a big deal that CO2 is increasing, and it may be a very good thing"
Some (maybe you given your past writings) would reply that science supports their position on climate change and therefore a moral case can be made to take legislative action to restrict people's use of fuels that increase CO2. If that was argued, then pro-lifers would argue that the science that says, absent intervention, fetuses become people is more provable than, absent intervention, CO2 from burning fuels will cause negative climate change.
And, if someone opposed to CO2 restrictions summed up their opposition as "I just don't buy it," critics might conclude that they are not the best person to create philosophic arguments that compromises are not possible.
As a side point, you say:
"No one runs for office claiming they would like to relax laws against killing already-born humans."
Actually, assisted suicide is something that is put on the ballot. Returning abortion to a ballot issue rather than having a Supreme Court ruling that removes it from democratic compromise would be a way for a society to negotiate the balance.
So, I think that your attempt to write some supposed objective analysis of how the ambiguity of language is part of a way to support abortion rights is unproductive and a distraction. And, your use of terms like "slavery" and "bullying" show that you are more than comfortable using language to distort the debate rather than progress it.
Abortion is a tough issue, of course, and part of the difficulty has to do with language. The shorthand phrase "when life begins" is common usage, but I think it obscures a couple of other issues. First, we're not really talking about "life" or even "human life", but rather personhood. That is, under specific conditions we think of a human being as a person, and to a large extent the abortion controversy has to do with where we draw the line between personhood and non-personhood. (We saw the same issue, I think, with Terri Schiavo and other cases where people have fallen into permanent vegetative states, with no higher brain function.) Second, though this is much less contentious, we're also talking about the nature of rights, which is still a point of discussion for philosophers.
I won't dive into this debate itself, but I will say that I think in a lot of discussions, people talk past each other. Those who are pro-lifers might say, "The rights of the fetus outweigh the rights of the mother" (though they don't usually couch this in terms of rights). Those who are pro-choice might answer, "One of the entities we're talking about doesn't have rights."
As you know, I have some personal insight into this matter having been involved in the in vitro process. As a consequence, I find language is severely abused in this debate.
The first offense is the blanket statement that life is sacred. Who can argue with that? But that's not the question; the question is, is all life equally sacred? The answer is all too obviously no.
Most obviously, if those who make such a blanket statement truly believed all life was equally sacred, they would not engage in or support any wars. That is doubly the case with those who purport to followers of Jesus. Indeed, his early followers chose death rather than take up the sword.
But of course, the overtly, ostensibly devout will disagree vehemently with that proposition, so let me return to my personal experience to offer another illustration:
Your house is on fire. Your six-month child is secured in a high-chair and a half-dozen frozen embryos sit on the table. You have time to save your child or your half-dozen frozen embryos, which will it be?
I submit there wouldn't be the slightest hesitation in sacrificing six lives (as defined by "personhood at conception") for one. Indeed, to do otherwise would be truly immoral.
But the thing is, were you to divide this into two countries, country A and country B would survive fine. We do this with multiple sovereigns all the time. And the one bit of data I told you is that there are big fractions that believe both, so we know right away that it's not destabilizing to society as a whole to think this. It's not like proposition A is "people should be killed at will" because I think we know most people wouldn't agree.
The worst case is something utterly arbitrary, actually, like "wants to drive on the right or left side of the road". Leaving this to chance would create havoc so it must be decided arbitrarily.
But most things are more compatible than that. So if we could let country A and B co-exist without warring next to one another, then what's the harm of letting them share borders and merely allowing individual households to disagree. I think the answer is that individual tempers might fare differently than national tempers, and the risk of "war" (between neighbors) might be higher just because there are more opportunities to deviate from the average. But if we train our people to be tolerant, really I think situations like this can be made to work. It's just tricky.
The alternatives to tolerance are no better. Especially if you don't label the alternatives when you're choosing who's going to win. I think saying "everyone can control their own lives and they'll have to grit their teeth once in a while about others" is fairly optimal compared to "group A will win and group B will lose" (or vice versa).
By the way, I don't know if you ever saw my article Just a Gut Feeling I Have, which offers a different take on gut feelings.
But I'd draw the two issues togethre by saying what all of these issues shows is that claims these situations have “obvious” or uniquely determined “common sense” views is short-sighted. They are more like existence proofs that there are different rational points of view. And that's again why I argue for tolerance.
To equate an individual choice to abort with the societal choice to abort our species -- if not all life on the planet -- by denying and/or failing to confront the consequences of reckless consumption is just one more example of false equivalency.
What you call "bullying others into accepting a morality they do not subscribe to" is something we do all the time. We do that even with abortion. If a woman believes that her third-trimester fetus is not a person and wants to abort it, she's out of luck, and in effect we bully her to accept a morality she does not subscribe to.
But I don't want to bully anyone. What I want is at least to be able to make a moral judgment on things that I think are morally wrong. For example, I think using abortion for sex selection is morally wrong, even though it is legal, and even if the mother doesn't see anything wrong with it.
Kent: "But the notion that a few cells is a person is like saying a stack of lumber is a house or some nuts and bolts are a car."
Perhaps personhood is not a very helpful concept. I typically don't use it in discussing abortion. At a minimum, a fetus is a unique instance of human life, which if left unmolested will likely develop into a normal human being. Abortion constitutes a termination of that life, and thus is a destruction of all that the fetus could have become. This is a simple statement of fact, not a religious or metaphysical statement.
Tom writes: "Your house is on fire. Your six-month child is secured in a high-chair and a half-dozen frozen embryos sit on the table. You have time to save your child or your half-dozen frozen embryos, which will it be?"
Well sure. But what would we say of the person who leaves the six embryos to die in the fire, because he doesn't want to be late for a movie? Or because all the embryos are female and thus not as "valuable" as a male embryo?
Sorry but your premise doesn't address the issue I raised -- the idea that all life is not equally sacred. Let me make my position clear, if I can. I'm not in favor of abortion for sex selection, and few people I know are. Yes, I'm aware it does happen, but to resort to that argument as a basis for an absolute prohibition against abortion is to trivialize one's position.
Indeed, most people I know aren't in favor of abortion at all, but they are aware that people sometimes face very difficult choices in life, and they don't think the government should be making the decision. Surely, as someone who often defends conservative views here, and does so quite well and quite reasonably, surely you can appreciate that argument.
Yes, the lines are difficult to draw in this matter, since ultimately a human life is involved. Where do I draw the line? Well, it certainly isn't at conception -- that is foolish on it's face. Having gone thru the in vitro process, I assure you I never allowed myself the luxury of thinking of eight-celled zygotes as my child.
It seems reasonable to me to draw the line at viability, that is at the point the fetus can survive outside the mother's womb. With present medical practice that is somewhere in the 20-24 week period. Beyond that, I can accept an allowance for rape, incest or the health of the mother -- or some other severe hardship circumstance. Again, I think that determination is best left to the woman and her physician.
Is that line drawn arbitrarily? Perhaps. But in my view, it is immoral not to draw the line.
Tom, the risk on viability is that eventually we'll find a way to say you can reproduce without a sperm and an egg, but just by cloning skin cells or something. In that case, will it become illegal to scratch an itch? I think viability is a poor line to draw. (My article Seeing Roe v. Wade as a Political Compromise, which you read and commented on, addressed this. Your position was the same there as here, but that's OK.)
Certainly, evidence is not on their side of the argument, if you place any credence in the findings cited in Freakonomics, that suggest crime goes down when abortion goes up, particularly in Red States.
But I suppose their attitude is to be expected following the Law of Inversions -- in this case, that logic is scarce where hypocrisy is plentiful.
As to the rest, I agree with you it's baffling that the GOP takes these seemingly conflicting positions of, basically, “all life is precious and it would be so immoral to ‘kill a baby’ that government funds must be expended to see it never happens, but yet no life is worth spending government money on once born and it's moral to cut off funds for food and medical care and risk that it dies or suffers awfully once born.”
Yes, and I think that the government argument is actually one of the strongest arguments against legal restrictions on abortion. I get nervous any time the government seeks to intervene in the doctor-patient relationship.
Government aside, I believe there is a moral aspect to abortion. As I mentioned before, abortion is the termination of a unique human life, and the destruction of everything that life could have been. I agree there may be circumstances in which that is appropriate. But let's at least be honest about what is happening, and not try to diminish the significance of it with phrases such as "it's not a person, just a fetus." This is actually what I was trying to say to Kent, though not very well.
However, on his most recent comment, I must disagree citing an argument I heard for abortion 30+ years ago in a college ethics class.
A fetus has "the potential" to be a human being -- it is not a person. In class, the statement was made "if technology reached a point where a kitten could be transformed into a human baby, we would all feel comfortable looking at a kitten and stating it has 'the potential' to be a human being, but it is not a person in its present state."
I agree that the same could be said about a fetus.
This is not surprising to me because in my admittedly non-legalistic view, the courts and especially The Court too often engage in the same sort of argumentation as the Pharisees of old. Again this is not surprising because when one starts with absolutist assumptions, one inevitably must resort to sophistry to defend them. Thus, sages throughout the ages have engaged in heated discussions to determine in effect "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin".
Thus the practical falls victim to the theoretical, and the presumed perfect becomes the enemy of the good. Anyone who doubts that is the case need only look to this Court and this Congress.
All of these things are intended to separate the human form from all other forms on the planet; plant, animal, viral, mineral etc. To do so is to use a moral frame of reference because the reality is – at least to humanity – there is no life without earth. (Lets not get silly here in an interplanetary sort of way!) Moral frames are personal not universal, except to the extent that we agree that they are so. But even then, the frames evolve with our understanding and with the evolution of cultural and language.
So then to my opinion, knowing that it is just that; mine.
It is the epitome of injustice (another word we need to define) to force your morality onto a society that is clearly wrestling with the issue at hand. Not being a woman, I will never have to make the choice so the argument is abstract. But even to a woman the argument would be abstract unless and until it is about the biologic processes of her own body and not another woman’s. For me, this is why we need to leave this decision in the hands of the affected woman and not try to craft a one size fits all answer for all women. As a society we can choose not to fund her choice, but I believe we have limited right to restrict it.
Ps – just for fun I made the comment “silly in an interplanetary sort of way” to demonstrate what I thought Kent’s excellent post would be about, language. Silly, a word which began life as a religious word meant “blessed.” Today if a woman friend told you she was pregnant, you might say she was blessed, but would you say she was silly? Later the word came to mean pious, then harmless and on to pitiable which became feeble-minded and now it contains a host of meanings relating to childish or ignorance. The same thing is true about the morality that the commentors are wrestling with. Morality is a cultural phenomenon and it is best to keep this in mind when commanding others to follow your perception of it.
I have a problem with the concept of personhood as applied to this issue. "Personhood" is a metaphysical concept that itself is open to debate. To say that the fetus is (or isn't) a person gets us into an additional issue, and probably complicates the main issue more than it illuminates it.
I'm happy to concede that a fetus isn't a person, and still argue that the life of the fetus has moral significance. A human life is a continuum, extending from fertilized egg to old age. It is always in some state of development; the fetus develops, the infant develops, the adult develops, and so on. As a human life develops there are various milestones, but no one milestone itself defines what that life is, nor, in my view, is there a milestone before which that life is without moral significance. I think it is accurate to say that a human life is a *process*, and that it is the same process no matter the stage of development it happens to be in.
Kent writes: "I have gone to pains to say it's OK with me if you think a fetus is a person. But I am being honest. It is just not a person to me. That is honest. Please stop using phrases like 'let's be honest' that do not acknowledge the legitimacy of my position if you want me to continue to make space for yours."
"Let's be honest" was not directed to you personally. What I was trying to say is that we -- we as a society -- should be clear about what abortion is and what it means. If some abortions are necessary and/or justifiable, so be it. But I worry that we (the societal we) will come to see fetuses (developing humans) as disposable, without inherent moral value. And as I said in a previous comment, I don't find "personhood" to be a helpful concept when discussing abortion, which is why I typically don't use it. Saying that the life of a fetus has moral significance does not entail that I think the fetus is a person.
If this ties anyone up in knots, it was intended to.
An open philosophical question, for example, is whether the nature, severity, or quality of death changes once you realize you are mortal and are able to perceive the concept of death.
There's more I could say here, but I'll leave it at that. I made some notes for a possible whole blog post sometime. Anyway, thanks for the useful contribution.