Tuesday, 24 April 2012
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Aspects of Being “Pro-Life”
By Nic Don at TheopoliticalPeter Kreeft is the professor of philosophy at Boston University. He is Catholic, and therefore often associated with the pro-life movement. (He has written a Socratic assessment of the pro-life/pro-choice debate, which may contribute to the association as well.) Recently he wrote a book based on a journal he kept, recording his general life advice for his children to read after he dies.
In this book, called Before I Go, he describes what it means to be pro-life. Here is what he says:
“Life” means much more than just biological survival. It means all the levels of human life, from the biological to the psychological to the interpersonal to the religious.
Therefore, to be “pro-life” means:
- loving and caring for your bodily health and the health of the planet that nourishes it
- loving and caring for play, that up-rush of life that we share with the higher animals but not with the lower (that’s why we play with dogs, not with worms)
- loving and caring for other human biological lives, not killing them by abortion, euthanasia, suicide, or starting wars
- loving and caring for other human psychological and spiritual lives as you care for your own, loving others as you love yourself
- loving the moral law that tells you how to do that
- knowing and loving nature and the nature of everything: man, woman, animals, God, and even sister death; not acting against their natures but “painting with the grain”
- loving the source and inventor of all life wherever He comes to you: in nature, in conscience, in the Bible, in the Mass, in children, everywhere, even in death.
He summarizes by saying, “See? Being ‘pro-life’ is bigger than #3 alone.’”
What do you think of this account of what it means to be “pro-life”? Is this an account of the “pro-life” perspective that makes sense to those who call themselves “pro-choice”?
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Comments (121)
@PrisonerxOfxLove@xanga - i hardly believe that a fetus without sentience has the same nature as a person. by that logic, tumors have the same nature. they have just as much human DNA as a fetus.
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Once excuses like "dependence" become acceptable then authentic human rights are destroyed because they become merely what people feel they should be. "
i don't think physical dependence is a bad place to draw the line at. unlike socially dependent beings (invalids, children, etc), a fetus cannot simply be placed in the care of another person. therefore, if responsibility is restricted to a single other being, i think that being should have full say in whether that type of dependency continues. the only way i'd become pro-life is if they come up with a method to transplant a fetus to another uterus.
also, i should mention that i don't believe in inalienable rights. i'm more interested in what works for society. when abortion was illegal, abortions were still performed. they were far more dangerous, and often resulted in the death of the mothers. so, i don't believe that banning abortions really solves anything. i would seek out an abortion if i found out i was pregnant, legal or otherwise.
"Wouldn't you want your rights based on your human nature rather than on what someone else felt about you or determined about you?"
yup. and that includes the right to control my uterus and whatever is inside of it. so the fact that you feel i should be reduced to an incubator for nine months shouldn't matter.
"And if someone else were able to make that sort of judgement wouldn't it mean that they were better than you because equality of among men really did not exist?"
i'm not sure what you're getting at. i don't believe that a fetus IS equal to a sentient, physically independent human being. i DO think i'm better than a blob of tissue the size of my thumb.
I think there are much more important things that are *actually* in the Bible, that Christians should be focused on. Like for instance, salvation.
@flapper_femme_fatale@xanga - Do you believe sentience/sapience should be the determining factor for personhood?
@QuantumStorm@xanga - no, i think physical independence should be. a person should either be completely independent, or it should be possible to transfer any dependency to a person or persons who is/are willing to take on that responsibility.
@flapper_femme_fatale@xanga - Oh shit, well there goes an entire generation of nerds living in mommy and daddy's basement...
@QuantumStorm@xanga - oooops sorry, hit submit too soon.
example: my cat, sitting right next to me, is physically independent. while i provide her food and water and shelter, anyone can do that. my boyfriend also feeds her, when i'm not available. if i were to have her removed from my care, she could continue to thrive without me.
the same cannot be said for a fetus. it also cannot be said, usually, for at least one being part of a Siamese twins relationship. parents usually opt to separate the two children, even at the expense of one child dying because he or she cannot exist independently. why? they determine it's better to have one thriving child than two suffering children. if that's acceptable, why is it not acceptable for those same parents to remove dependent beings from their own bodies?
@QuantumStorm@xanga - i distinguish between social and physical dependence. the nerds living in their parents' basements won't die as a direct result of being kicked out.
@flapper_femme_fatale@xanga - So by that argument, what about newborn children? Or children that are a few weeks old? At what point is the cutoff? See, the thing about a cat is that, unlike a newborn baby, a cat can, for the most part, fend for itself even if no one chooses to care for it. If you leave a newborn baby alone? THIS... IS... SPARTA
@QuantumStorm@xanga - unless you're adamant about breastfeeding, babies can be handed off to someone else the second they're born. and even then, there are wet nurses.
@flapper_femme_fatale@xanga - Something funky is happening with the Xanga comments again... I was writing a new response and instead it appended it to my last comment...
@flapper_femme_fatale@xanga - It is well known that an acorn has the same nature as the oak tree. Similarly the fertilized egg has the same nature as a human being 1 month old or 90 years old.
Sentience is another restriction that you arbitrarily impose on a human being to take away its humanity. Sentience, like choice, or dependence or your feeling about your mother, has nothing whatsoever to do with the nature of a thing.Sentience as a matter of fact, varies so greatly among human beings that according to your way of thinking, the smarter and more aware a person is the more superior he is to other less intelligent people.
Again I ask you, would you want to be discriminated against or even murdered by state sanction because you didn't meet some arbitrary intelligence-sentience test?
@flapper_femme_fatale@xanga - The umbilical cord in the womb or a bottle in loving arms are merely modes of feeding and location.
Why do you think a human being in the womb who is fed by an umbilical cord is worthy of murder and a human being who is bottle fed by a stranger is worthy of life?@QuantumStorm@xanga - all good. i guess i'm more concerned with what the act of removing dependency does. taking an infant out of its mothers arms won't automatically kill it. otherwise, adoption, working mothers and single-parent fatherhood would be physically impossible.
@PrisonerxOfxLove@xanga -
"It is well known that an acorn has the same nature as the oak tree."
that depends on how you define "nature." i would go further than DNA, unlike you. and really... you aren't talking about nature. you're talking about potential. an acorn has the potential to become an oak tree. likewise, a fetus has the potential to become a person. i'm not really interested in enforcing pregnancies based on potential.
"Sentience as a matter of fact, varies so greatly among human beings that according to your way of thinking, the smarter and more aware a person is the more superior he is to other less intelligent people."
you keep clinging to the argument of sentience, without addressing what i consider to be more important: physical dependence. is there a reason for this? also, intelligence =/= sentience. for someone who claims to know a lot about science, you need to brush up on your definitions.
"Again I ask you, would you want to be discriminated against or even murdered by state sanction because you didn't meet some arbitrary intelligence-sentience test?"
if i wasn't sentient, i wouldn't be capable of caring. so i don't see how that matters. it's your opinion that sentience is an arbitrary place to draw the line, that abortion is murder, etc. i disagree. so whatever my answer would be is useless because we aren't thinking of the same thing. you think: abortion. i think: the Holocaust.
why don't you just ask me outright: would i have been okay with my mother aborting me? probably because you know i'd say yes, and you'd have to concede that some people actually WOULD rather be dead than unwanted. but why create questions based on terminology and opinion that we don't share, in some passive attempt to get me to agree with you?
why don't i ask you: would you want to be forcibly attached to a human being for 9 months, and have to change the way you live, against your will?
"Why do you think a human being in the womb who is fed by an umbilical cord is worthy of murder and a human being who is bottle fed by a stranger is worthy of life?"
that's easy: you can switch out the stranger at any time for someone else.
@flapper_femme_fatale@xanga - Well it won't automatically die, but its ability to survive on its own is highly suspect. If the baby is going to survive for beyond its existing energy stores, it's going to need the assistance of others. So if we're going to use physical dependency as the defining point, I think it's really important to explore that further.
@QuantumStorm@xanga - i would consider it social dependency if the support can be given by pretty much anyone, as opposed to a specific individual.
@flapper_femme_fatale@xanga -DNA is scientific proof that the acorn has the same nature as the oak tree and the fertilized human female egg has human nature.
But that can be determined by reason alone also.A human fetus will not become a dog or an oak tree. That is because it is human. It is human from the moment of conception until the end of its life.
Additionally, by what property does a fetal "something" all of a sudden turn into a human being? At what point does potential turn into actual?
Such questions again lead us to the conclusion that "potential" has nothing to do with whether or not a human fetus has human nature.
@flapper_femme_fatale@xanga - So are you suggesting that once the baby is born or is medically viable, it turns from physical dependency to a social dependency?
@FalconBridge@xanga - The Catholic church actually believes that capital punishment is acceptable in very extreme cases. It says it right in the Catholic Catechism. So that's why it doesn't say anything about the death penalty, because they don't believe it's totally wrong.
I think it's awesome that you posted this because, even though I'm not totally Catholic myself, I was aware of the fact that being pro-life isn't just about the debate about abortions. It's about all forms of life. That's the way it should be too!
@QuantumStorm@xanga - i'd agree with that. i do think there's a huge difference between needing someone to hold your bottle, and needing to be physically attached to a particular person in order to survive.
but i also think it's where we differ: you're focusing on the well-being of the fetus, whereas i'm focusing on the well-being of the mother. what's more important to me is that no woman ever has to be a mother against her will. whether it's a fetus that cannot survive without her is just an unfortunate afterthought to me.
@flapper_femme_fatale@xanga - Actually what I'm focusing is on the maximum preservation of life where possible. Can't really do much with well-being if the person is dead...
So, if personhood is defined as based on physical dependency on another person, Would that imply then that your definition of what constitutes a person is based on technological advances (eg: we lack the technology to transfer a fetus from one uterus to the other, or create artificial wombs)?
@QuantumStorm@xanga - i would agree with that. but i'm also using term "person" because it means something to everyone else, not necessarily to myself. i don't believe in inalienable rights, or that personhood in and of itself is anything special. but the lingo seems to be that, if it has a right to life that supersedes the rights of others, it's called a person.
so, what i'm saying i guess is... i'm not attached to the term person. the term means nothing to me, and not nearly as much as what the actual situation is. but, i will say that i'd no longer support abortion if they came up with a way to remove a fetus from the womb without damaging it.
@PrisonerxOfxLove@xanga -
"DNA is scientific proof that the acorn has the same nature as the oak tree and the fertilized human female egg has human nature."
again, that depends on what you define as "nature." here are a few from M-W that i think are relevant to the discussion:
"the inherent character or basic constitution of a person or thing"- what type of character does a fetus have in comparison to an adult?"the physical constitution or drives of an organism"- how does the physical constitution of a fetus match or differ from that of an adult?"the genetically controlled qualities of an organism"- what genetically controlled qualities does a fetus not yet have?
also, it's interesting to point out that nature comes from a root word in Middle English meaning "to be born."
"That is because it is human. It is human from the moment of conception until the end of its life."
where did i argue that a fetus wasn't human? or are you now trying to use "human" in exchange for "person"?
@flapper_femme_fatale@xanga - If you admit that a fetus is human, then you have conceded that abortion is 1st degree murder.