The following was found added to the article:
By the way, I think the above could be rewritten and included, but I don't have the time and energy to do it. I hope someone else will. --LMS
I agree with Larry on this one, if the pro-life position was correctly stated. Something along the following lines would be much more accurate than what is written: "Pro-life advocates largely adhere to the view that life begins at conception. Thus abortion is considered murder, proscribed in most religious traditions."
No disputing that many pro-lifers carry an excessive amount of accessory cultural baggage that appears at least archaic if not incomprehensible to many contemporary people, but the "abortion is murder" theme is the basic issue. DMD
Superb. DMD
Hm, but I think it has gone too far the other way now, esp. with the statement about a vague biological basis. I'm anti-abortion personally for religious reasons. I'm also against it politically, but here I switch to a biological and civil argument rather than expecting everyone to adopt my religious views. I'll put those arguments below for everyone's amusement, but the point is that I think there's a danger of taking the fact that we're religous to imply that our political argument is also fundamentally religous.
If you think its too anti-religion now I certainly won't object to a more neutral wording, so long as it is clear that the majority of of pro-lifers hold their view for religious reasons; that's simply a fact. They also _justify_ their beliefs by appeal (rational and otherwise) to non-religious argument, but that's a reaction after-the-fact. They know that religious arguments don't wash with pro-choicers, so they have to resort to non-religious arguments for a point of view that they still nonetheless hold for religious reasons.
BTW, is the pro-abortion side any more grounded biologically?
The idea of an average timeframe in which a fetus is viable isn't really disputed, nor is the idea that a fetus is always of species homo sapiens. The arguments I see from both sides tend to be on a civil rights basis, anyway. Where's the controversy (or room for vagueness) in the biology itself?
I don't think there are any arguments about the biology: the arguments are about social policy. We do want to enact social policies forbidding certain kinds of harm to certain persons in certain situations. The question is whether that desire is rationally applied to fetuses in conflict with our equally valid desire to protect the self-determination of the women carrying them.
Anyway, here's my argument from the non-religous point of view. Biologically, we're always the same species from conception. In terms of civil rights, then, to argue that babies which can't survive without mom don't warrant protection as other homo sapiens is to judge the right to life on essentially technological grounds - if somebody invented a machine which could support a 1 week old fetus outside the mother after, say, it was removed by induced labor, and then let it develop to maturity, we should then move the legal cutoff back to 1 week, since we could, with no difference to the mother, raise the child to maturity. But this philosophy says that we let the state of available technology affect what we elsewhere call inalienable rights. And how different is that from selectively offering rights based on the business concept in which one holds a receipt for purchase of a slave?
I'm certainly not arguing "technological grounds". "Viability" is certainly one other point at which we might say the state can step in, and it is perhaps a more rational one than conception, but I don't think that pro-choicers in general hang their argument on that one hook. Even if there were some technical means to bring any conception to term, I for one would certainly not require it--that would be even more horrific. The majority of conceptions have genetic defects and either never implant or are spontaneously miscarried without the woman ever knowing. It would be just as irrational to interfere with that natural process to protect every zygote as it would be to interfere by aborting every zygote.
Or even more fundamentally, in a balance between a women's freedom to choose a non-critical (to her own life or long-term health) medical procedure and the question of whether a certain creature is considered human, shouldn't we adopt a person-until-proven-otherwise attitude? Biologically, sure, there are differences in how a pre-natal fetus must be provided its oxygen and food (from an umbilical connection to its mother) and how an infant must be provided its sustenance (by being slapped on the butt and then fed by hand), but what bearing does that have on human rights? We have negligence laws for people who let infants die by not feeding them, even if they live out in the woods and can't give them away without taking a 9-month long hike to town. Here neither biology /nor/ religion are really at issue, AFAICT.
The question to ask is WHY we wish, as social policy, to protect persons from harm in ways we don't apply to other things like objects, animals, human tissues, and similar things? A dog is an aware, sentient being no less than a person, but we don't protect them unconditionally. My own skin cells are living cells with my unique DNA no less than the few cells of the zygote from which I came, yet I shed thousands of them to die regularly. What is it about people that makes us want to protect them? I think it is rational to point to things like feeling: people experience feelings, perceptions, thoughts; they have memories, opinions, intentions. Murdering a person puts an end to all those valuable things, while my shedding a few skin cells (or even killing a few brain cells with a drink) does not. Killing a cow might cause it to experience pain, but we even allow that on grounds that the benefit to society of the food is great enough to justify it. If we make these kinds of judgments about other biological things, why should we not make the same judgments about zygotes? Clearly, an 8-cell zygote that hasn't even started cell differentiation yet, and has no nerve cells, no brain, no sense organs, etc. does not possess any of those qualities--intentions, memories, thoughts--that we find special about "people", so applying the protections we grant people to those cells is as ridiculous as applying them to my skin cells. On the other hand, one might reasonably argue that an infant at some later point of development does have some of those things--so it might be reational to apply some of those protections at some point before birth. This argument has nothing to do with "viability".
So again, the question is not biology; it's social policy and religion. If you think it is rational to use force (and make no mistake--if you advocate laws, you are advocating force) to restrict a woman's freedom to protect some cells that don't have any special properties my own skin cells don't have, you must convince me WHY it is rational to do so. If your only reason is that those cells have a "soul" or something, then I remain unconvinced. --LDC
I wouldn't disagree--as long as you present the position honestly and accurately, that is, as long as the argument accurately reports what most people on that side of the argument actually believe and what arguments they actually use. I would expect the same from the pro-choice side. So while I, for example, do not think "viability" and "dependence" have any relevance to my position on the issue, those arguments are in fact used by many others on the pro-choice side, so I would expect them to be included here. --LDC
I am more concerned here about what coverage of the arguments belongs in an encyclopedia article than in the arguments themselves, but as long as we're here--please don't dignify your [semantic argument]?s by calling them "biology". Real science doesn't hide behind definitions and wordplay, but actual observable facts. Every cell of every organism has some unique feature; something that distinguishes it. "Developing organism" is meaningless; all cells develop in some way. If I put a skin cell in a Petri dish with food and water it would live, metabolize, grow, divide, and continue living and developing for many generations, no different from an amoeba or any other living cell. If I implanted into someone geneticially similar to me, it would attach itself and go to work. Unlike a fertilized egg, it will never become anything but a skin cell--but neither will an amoeba become anything but an amoeba. You can't say that, however, about cord-blood stem cells. They can develop into anything, from a heart to a brain, and they've always been discarded for all of history. If you judge the "value" or "worth" of a cell by what it can become, then cord-blood stem cells deserve equal treatment to embryonic stem cells. If you emplant a cord-blood stem cell into a developing embryo at the right stage, it will attach itself and divide and become part of the growing organism just like any of the other cells, and the embryo will grow up to be a genetic chimera (which occur naturally from time to time as well).
If you don't want to use the word "soul", then tell me why you seem to think that (1) there is some definition of "life"--using only physically observable facts of nature--that applies to a newly fertilized zygote that does not apply to a cord-blood stem cell; or (2) why you think it is rational to apply laws designed to protect "people" from harm to entities that have no means of experiencing harm or anything else. You can't even say that a zygote is unique in that it can become a human being while other cells can't--that's not true anymore. Somatic cells can be cloned and develop into full organisms. And you certainly can't say that clones won't have rights--because then natural identical twins wouldn't either. --LDC
That's not a fact, it's a definition. Definitions aren't facts, they're just semantic games. If that's the way you want to play it, then fine--I totally concede your definition of "human life" to include zygotes (although you don't specify at what point that achieve this--"conception" is not a point, it is itself a multi-stage process). It's also clearly a mistake to say that anything is "created" at conception--a fertilized egg does not contain any atoms or energy that didn't already exist in the gametes, so I fail to see your point there. But so what? That's just a definition, it doesn't actually say anything. Your argument seems to be: (1) "Human life" includes people at all stages of development; (2) The state should step in to protect "human life"; (3) Therefore, the state should protect zygotes. Premise 1 is a completely rational definition, and I think many pro-choicers would even agree. But then premise 2 becomes false, because the majority of people don't believe that the state should protect zygotes at the expense of their mother's autonomy. So in order to make your argument work, you must explain why premise 2 remains true under your definition of life that includes zygotes, using real political arguments, not just sematic wordplay. Until you do that, you're just blowing hot air.
Secondly, all of this belongs on commentary pages. The "Abortion" page should report on the basics of the arguments, and maybe even link to some more detailed ones, but it should not contain the arguments themselves. --LDC
I agree that the debate itself should happen here. Deciding how to characterize the positions from a neutral point of view is a tricky one, though, and I like the suggestion that it represent the most common arguments from each side, whether they be religous or whatever. I started looking around for demographic info, but so far the normal rhetoric is all I'm finding. Anybody know of sources which have attempted to survey how many people hold a particular view on abortion? -J
Hank, and anyone else who hasn't done so, read neutral point of view carefully. If you cannot abide by it, you are simply not welcome here. --LMS
I, and others before me, dedicated substantial thought and time to objectifying this article only to have an unexplained reversion of all changes and additions. Since my attempts to neutralize prejudicial words and phrases were completely removed without thought, dicussion, or examination it seems as if the process is broken in this case. Futhermore, the following summary definitions might make a good unbiased overview, but I would expect someone in particular to modify it to remove the word freedom and add the work baby killing or something equivelent.
Abortion: A generally accepted, but highly contentious way to ending pregnancy for medical or other personal reasons. Pro-Choice: People who believe that the decision to end a pregancy is a personal freedom issue which should be left up to the pregnant mother. Pro-Life: People who believe that the fetus should actually be considered independent person in the eyes of the law thus making abortion equivalent to murder.
As all of these are different perhaps they should be separated?
OK, I'm done with my edits now. I have integrated objections to all arguments, as is perfectly reasonable to do (it's extremely useful information, for one thing). I have also done something that no one thought to do so far, namely, to distinguish the different positions it's possible to have about abortion. Frankly, I think there are only two reasons why someone cannot continue on in this fashion I've tried to demonstrate: (1) the person is so irremediably biased that he or she is incapable of it--in that case, please go work on some other article; (2) the person just doesn't know the subject very well--ditto. I'm rather disgusted with the way you all have handled this controversy. In the future, please try to be more adult about it. --LMS
--Jonathan
Larry, I'm afraid that part of the problem is that there is no agreement as to what is a "neutral" presentation. What exactly was the objection to the phrase "deliberate terminatation", for example? Why is this claimed to be a "strong phrase"? It is succinct and accurate. Does anyone seriously claim that the abortions being discussed (that is, excluding spontaneous abortions) are not "deliberate"? Or that they do not cause the "termination" of the pregnancy (not to mention, which I didn't, the life of the unborn)? The objection seems to be that the phrase was not sufficiently sympathetic to the feelings of the people choosing the abortion. In other words, my phrasing didn't adequately express a "pro-choice" bias. Now if I had said something in the definition about "killing of an unborn child", there would be cause for complaint. But "deliberate termination"? I would suggest that the problem here is not my lack of neutrality, but that of the"pro-choice" advocates. Similarly, the phrase "unwanted preganancy" is a very common usage, mostly by the "pro-choice" side in fact. Even in the case of theraputic abortions, whatever the reason, clearly the pregnancy being terminated is "unwanted", even if a pregnancy in general is. I suppose one could argue that this is obvious so the use of "unwanted" is superfluous. But I would not agree that my use of it violated neutrality. Of course it is entirely appropriate to include in the article a thorough discussion of all the reasons why one might want to choose terminate a pregnancy. But failing to enumerate them in the introductory definition is not an indication of bias. I can assure you that I had no intention to violate neutrality, and did not believe I did so. I made changes that I thought improved the accuracy and neutrality of the text. I was particularly concerned with what I felt were distortions of the "pro-life" viewpoint, that were obviously written by someone of the opposing view. As someone on the "pro-life" side, I felt I was more qualified to present the argument from that side than its opponents. I expected my arguments to be rebutted, but instead they were rewritten. Where I disagreed with the rewrite, I replaced it. Obviously endless rewrites are unproductive. But what is the alternative? I suggested clearly separating the "pro-life" and "pro-choice" perspectives, but that wasn't respected. I might add that I don't appreciate your scolding. I think the question of how to address this kind of disagreement is a serious issue concerning the wiki paradigm. That's the only reason I pursued it. If you have a solution, I'd be happy to hear it. Or maybe your solution is simply to tell people you disagree with that they're "unwelcome". Hey, I guess I can live with that. - Hank Ramsey
--Jonathan--
Which of course brings us back to bias in the other direction, if I may jump in. You cite these as reasons why people wouldn't /want/ an abortion and supply an anecdote that everyone you've known hasn't actually /wanted/ one: medical reasons, pontentially severe birth defects, because of rape, or even fear of being beaten by the family or the person who's sperm fertilized the her egg.
And these are valid reasons why someone might opt for one as the lesser of evils in a very difficult situation. (And of course these ideas are here on the talk page, which means that they don't have to be unbiased). But here's my point: all the claims I've heard (which makes my claim also essentially anecdotal, admittedly) are that the majority of abortions are done for convenience, not for medical, danger, rape or incest reasons. Those abortions are specifically excepted by many pro-lifers that I know, and were legal long before Roe vs. Wade. Okay, so much for tired rhetoric from my point of view. I'm just trying to point out that while your rewording was more neutral in one way, it also reflects biases of your own.
Which brings me to the second point of contention, that of a religous base for the pro-life side. We've now seen two wikipedians who've come across that idea and said "hey, /I'm/ pro-life for other-than-religous reasons." Which makes me suspicious of that concept. So again, if we're really so set on reporting what the /majority/ believes, we really ought to find some good statistics somewhere.
Or just stop trying to characterize the "majority" of either group, which is always going to bother almost everyone. A pro-life moderate won't like to be classed with a bunch of zealots, zealots won't like being classed with a faithless moderate, ad nauseum.
Do you actually think that your change removed any doubt in the mind of ANY potential readers as to the meaning of the previous revision? It's not a question of your change being technically inaccurate so much as it not actually affecting the objective knowledge conveyed to the reader.
Major Point:
I really wish some people would try to come up with some sort of statistical survey results especially when those same people don't have any non-threatening personal contact with the unfortunate people who need to get abortions. Pop literature and propaganda literature tend to be very one sided, and can't really be trusted without contact with the people involved on the receiving end of the process.
My number one question to ask women who have abortions: Are you afraid of the consequences of not having an abortions? If ANYONE can find a statistically meaningful set across the women having abortions for whom the majority answer to that exact question is NO I will be shocked.
My number one question to ask "Pro-Life" positers: Do you feel that abortion is wrong in the eyes of God? If ANYONE can find a statistically meaningful majority across the people advocating a "Pro-Life" position who Don't answer YES I will be shocked again.
In addition to all of my reading my emperical evidence strongly suggests these conclusions, and I haven't seen anyone quoting anything emperical to oppose it.
--Jonathan--
Having said that, I think Jonathan is almost certainly correct in his prediction of the results of a contemporary survey on the questions he wants to ask. But I am not sure why he considers these questions important. - HWR
I suggested statistics as a more objective way to characterize the sides of the debate, though as I stated above I still think it's not very useful. The problem is that bias creeps in when we try to represent The pro-life side, and then The pro-choice side. As someone who is pro-life, I might want to characterize pro-choice people as entirely driven by selfish convenience, aborting 8-month-old fetuses because they don't fit into their career plans. Contrariwise, I don't like it when pro-lifers are characterized as bible-thumping zealots who think the law ought to reflect their religous dogmas.
Actually, I feel that the debate is obsolete - the current article does a good job characterizing what I see as the major bases for argument, without labeling any particular set of arguments as one side's position. All the bases are belong to us, so to speak. The edits seem to have settled down as well, so I see it as a great success of the Wikipedia. -J
On that note, perhaps someone can do a refactoring of this /Talk page? That means summarizing old comments, or outright deleting them if they're no longer of any interest to anyone. Just please try to be fair in doing the refactoring! --LMS
In defense of the pro-life side, there is some justification for their not listening much to the pro-choice side. That's because most of what the pro-choice side has to say must be trivially dismissed by the pro-life side. I am referring here to what could be called the "infanticide test". When an issue is advanced as a justification for abortion, you first consider whether it would be regarded as a justification for infanticide. For example, would you regard "family and social ostracism, loss of options due to loss of time and money to parental responsibilities, having forced continued contact with a man she no longer liked or respected, the prospect of harm to the child from an immature mother and possibly absent father, the possibility that the child might itself share undesirable traits of the father such as violent tendencies" as justification for infanticide? Most people wouldn't. The point is that if you believe that abortion is the taking of a human life, then most of the pro-choice argumnents are simply irrelevant. This fact has the potential of greatly simplifying the debate, by focusing on the central issue, but that appears to be threatening to the pro-choice side.
Be all of that as it may, what interested me about this discussion is not so much the abortion issue per se, but rather how the wikipedia paradigm can or should deal with controversial issues. One solution, of course, is refactoring to eliminate unpopular viewpoints. I am not sure that is the best one...
Er, is this a rant in general, or specifically in response to Larry's suggestion that we refactor this Talk page? I don't think anyone's suggesting that we remove comments which are still important and relevant (whether they be popular or unpopular) - just issues which have been resolved in the current incarnation of the Abortion article. I do think they should be preserved somewhere, perhaps on an Abortion/Talk/Old? page, so that new people don't come along and fight it all out again. -J
Mostly just a general rant. Actually I agree with Larry (if I understnnd what he's saying) that the discussion here could be summarized, but it would have to be done with care since much of the discussion was about misrepresentation of views. I also agree it could be useful to preserve the original dialog as a warning to others. Perhaps as Abortion/Rants??
--Jonathan--
And so on?
--Jonathan-- (Who hopes we can fairly and productively have everyones' position made clear.)
(I came looking for a history of abortion ...)
Sounds like they're saying: P should be forbidden except when Q is true. And that foes disagree on the grounds that when Q is true, P should be permitted.
Now, unless I'm having a really bad day, this sounds more like a excellent ground of compromise -- exactly the opposite of the point of contention.
Someone please clue me in. Ed Poor
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