dissenting futilitarian no. 4
DESCRIPTION
Issue 4 of an epistolary newspaper addressed to Canada's Members of ParliamentTRANSCRIPT
D EAR HONOURABLE MEMBERS.
I do not believe you can
appreciate how good it is to write to you.
I have agonized over the issue of - well, is
it really an issue? Far from it! It is a rat’s
nest of issues: human life, definitions,
expertise, rights, abortion, women,
embryos - help! I struggled on with
the demon, this foul issue.
I confess to you that I was still
persuaded that it is the foul issues
(I thought, for instance, of slavery in
the past of the U.S.A.) with which the
fiercely divided people most need help
from their leaders. I believed that a
l ea d e r (MPs like yourselves, for instance)
was a person who would spy the way out of
the bog that we are in (and what a great bog
this is!) and then, with the rhetorical art
that marks the politician, convince the people
to follow - thus: ... Leading the people ... Out
of the bog. Brilliant! But I came to see tha...
Forgive me: why am I reporting to you my
conclusions? I should just return to the actual
events of my tale, so you can see everything
for yourselves with much more clarity and
delight, for is this not the journey you have
already made? Am I (wrestling with these
important questions) not doing all you have
already done? Will it not be pleasant to run
quickly over your steps and see all that you
have accomplished, survey all the questions
you have laboured so greatly to answer?
As you recall from my last report,
I had had the scales torn from
my eyes regarding the vehement opposition
to Motion 312. Now I understood: it was
prompted by fear that any committee of
MPs meeting to hear “what medical (or scientific?)
evidence exists to demonstrate that a child is or is not a
human being before the moment of complete birth” would
very likely finish with an answer that would
support restricting abortions, even though
opponents of the Motion said that “The biological
or medical status of the fetus is irrelevant” to the
question of abortion. (Why hate the Motion
if it would lend no such support?) The fear
is that listening to scientists (i.e., those
in the modern world who are equipped to say
what kind of thing it is that resides in
the womb and how we should refer to it: a sac
of cells? an individual human being?) would
quite likely lead in the direction of: human
being not gestational sac (thus backing us
into the laws against harming human beings,
raising the spectre of criminalization, etc.).
That looked to be the exact case against
the motion.
How interesting it was, then, that both
those like Mr. VALEUR-DE-BOIS (people
ready to count the Resident of the Womb a
human being) and those who opposed his
motion were inclined to think the evidence
called for by Motion 312 might very well lead
you, dear Members, to a common conclusion!
It now struck me that, in my own efforts
to fathom all of this, it was worth making
a U-turn back to my earlier question: is it
clear in Science what a human being
is? I was given more prompting to do so by
the following.
Is a person who says, “There will never be a
consensus on what the fetus is, because this question is
inherently subjectiv e and unscientif ic,”
in agreement with the person who says,
“Fetuses are b i o lo g i ca l ly ‘h u ma n ’ in the sense
that they are composed of human tissue and DNA”? But it
was one and the same person who said both!
There is a mystery here, I thought, that I
wished to unravel.
I was reading the words of Ms. J. HARTO OR
(a name that had been passed to me by my
friend Prema) and, desiring to understand
how this author could say both things, I read
on. “Despite the potential that a fetus has for becoming a
human being, and its similarities to a human being, we cannot
say that a fetus i s a human being,” but all the same,
she wrote, “Fetuses are biologically ‘human’.” (I do
not, she added, “secretly think a fetus is really a
creature from outer space....”) ‘Human’, then, is a
quality; ‘human being,’ an entity. “A flake of
dandruff from my head is human, but it is not a human being,
and in this sense, neither is a zygote.”
In other words, we can identify scientifically
what is f r o m a h u ma n b e i n g , but we
cannot tell whether a fetus IS a human being.
I wondered, is there any bit of organic matter
on the planet thought to be more baffling
than this?! Why is it that only the fetus seems
to exist in this fog of oblivion? And then I
had a clue, in Ms. HARTO OR ’s conclusion!
“Because there can be no consensus on the matter, the
va l u e ac c o r d e d to a f et u s is a subjective,
personal matter. Individuals, not society as a whole, must
choose what the stat u s of a fetus should be.” Is it
that Science is unsure of what the fetus is, or
is it, rather, that s o c i ety is unsure of i ts
va l u e ? “Society,” she said, “cannot decide what the
fetus is. There’s a wide divergence of opinion on whether
a fetus is a p e r s o n , or a human being, and what its
m o r a l va l u e should be.”
Well that’s different! It’s really quite a bit
clearer now, I thought! The mystery was
not the nat u r e of the fetus at all; it was
the va l u e & stat u s of the fetus! The
nat u r e of the fetus is likely quite clear,
which is why people think the evidence
will show it. The “wide divergence” is about the
va l u e of the fetus, and thus its stat u s
and p e r s o n h o o d (those who va lu e i t
bestow on it the stat u s of a p e r s on ; those
who do not, do not).
But people on both sides in this debate were
not being clear about this. They were blurring
nat u r e & va l u e and treating them as
the same thing, as if both were uncertain.
Sometimes the people doing the blurring
were the same people who tell us (and quite
emphatically) that “The task of properly classifying
a fetus in law and in science are different pursuits,” and
that “the status of a fetus should be based on personal
beliefs, morality, and circumstances,” not on science:
“science is irrelevant to the question” of when a
fetus becomes a person: “that matter
is a legal and philosophical one, not a medical
one.” Are we not all agreed that
blurring these issues is most
unhelpful ! Let us, then, endeavour
to say what we mean and mean what
we say! Plainly, this bore further
scrutiny.
I returned to my question (was
there consensus in science
or dissensus , as to the point at which we
begin?) almost accidentally, for I found
myself one afternoon in a used bookstore -
one of those dust-filled dens clogged with
thousands of cheap paperbacks and obsolete
manuals (but in which the occasional gem can
be found). I came across a set of textbooks on
human reproduction and I decided to track
down that sentence, in each, that explained
what ensues at conception, for surely such a
sentence would be found. But oddly, in these
texts no mention at all was made of what
conception conceives:
“The moment at which sperm and egg combine is the moment
of conception or fertilization -– the beginning of embryonic
life.” (Virginia E. Johnson, William H. Masters, & Robert
C. Kolodny, Human Sexuality, 3rd ed., 1988, 109.) Life
has begun, but whose life? The embryo’s. –
“Fertilization ... initiates the growth of the new human
being.” (Gary F. Kelly, Sexuality Today: The Human
Perspective, 1998, 280.) It was so easy to say,
‘intiates a new human being,’ but this text
did not; fertilization initiates “growth.”
“Once freed from the ovary, the ovum can survive for about
24 hours. If it is fertilized during that time, a pregnancy
may ensue.” (Gordon Edlin and Eric Golanty, Human
Sexuality: The Basics, 2012, 56, 59.) What ensues is
“a pregnancy,” which is a condition of the woman
- not a new individual, as the embryology
texts had said.
But these were not embryology texts; they
were texts in the field of Sexology. Was this
a scientific challenge to the Embryologists?
Did these books show that there was not
a consensus within Science? If you are
like me, since we were kids we have always
believed that science ought to be changed
by scientists for scientific reasons, the pivot
of our conviction being that fifth-grade
class on Galileo: if the Church didn’t like the
science, tough for the Church. That is modern
thought. I therefore asked, What was
the scientific evidence, gathered by the
Sexologists, that proved the Embryologists
wrong to call the fetus a human being (or
showed them to be advancing merely one of
many uncertain theories)?
I began to hunt for this. But it occurred
to me one day that Sexology is at the
front line of the application of science. It is a
blended study of sexual biology, behaviour,
and therapy - some of whose concerns are very
clear in the title of this text: Human Sexuality:
Making Responsible Decisions. These were
textbooks developed to train the people
whose job it was to help pregnant women
No.
4 5 JUNE
2012}}
The DISSEN TING FU TILITARIAN {{
L ET T E R S TO M EMB E R S O F PA R L I A M E N T F R OM A C I T I Z E N O N T H E S U B J E CT O F T H E P R O P O S E D I N V E ST I G AT I O N I N TO O U R H U M A N I T Y
W h a t c a n w e k n o w ? W h a t b r a i n s h a v e w e g o t ? W h a t c a n w e s k i p ? W h a t m u s t w e n o t ? !
B
The Honourable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , M.P.House of CommonsOttawa
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and one-celled consumers of supermarket
goods. But then people began to ask, in two
beats: “Do we want to treat these women as
killers? Is that embryo human?” And so a Fog
of Mystery filled the womb.
I could indeed see that it would make
life easier if the CHOICE blazoned on
the protest signs I had witnessed were the
choice between, on the one hand, bringing a
pregnancy to term and, on the other, a health
procedure involving the removal of what
is not human . That is a choice between
innocence and innocence. But did people
really have cause to believe they did not
know? (And yet, still, as per our laws: if you
don’t know, and believe there might be a
human being residing there - in that womb,
in that derelict building - can you simply
proceed to destroy and demolish?)
Did people really have cause to believe they
did not know? That was one question. But I
began to wonder about something else: did
people really believe, themselves, that the
nat u r e of the fetus was a mystery?
I did some looking. Faye Wattleton
(another head of U.S. Planned Parent-
hood) said that, “we have deluded ourselves into
believing that people don’t know that abortion is killing.”
To pretend that it is not sends a signal of
“ambivalence, a signal that we cannot say yes, it kills a
fetus.” American activist Merle Hoffman
writes, “We must be able to speak the truth to ourselves
by answering the question, ‘Is it a woman’s r i g ht to
c h o os e or is it k i l l i n g ?’ by saying yes –to both
- and taking full responsibility for that profound and
powerful truth.... It’s c h o os i n g v i ct i m s ... – you
choose, and that’s the power of that.”
Writer Camille Paglia declares herself
“a firm supporter” of abortion rights, but notes:
“I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder,
the extermination of the powerless by the powerful.
Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the
ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which
results in the a n n i h i lat i o n o f c o n c r et e
i n d iv i d ua l s and not just c l u m ps o f i n s e n -
sat e t i s s u e .”
Ms. Paglia does not find the logic of
abortion altogether beautiful: “I have never
understood the standard Democratic combo of support for
abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely
it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve
execution? –The pro-life position, whether or not it is based
on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved
than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on
demand.” But, warts and all, that logic is hers. It
is Hoffman ’s too: “It’s not just blood and tissue;
you leave it alone, in nine months you will have a child....
You have to accept the fact, ‘Yes, I am t e r m i nat i n g
p ot e nt ia l l i f e : t h i s i s my c h o i c e ’
- and that is an enormously powerful thing.... Within the
abortion decision women c h o os e t h e r e s u lts
o f t h e i r s ex ua l ity .... The act of abortion and
choice is p ow e r . It is women at their most powerful,
exercising the right of fetal existence....”
As unsettling as these statements sounded,
I also thought, how strangely refreshing
when compared to the denial and dithering
and blurring of distinctions I had so often
encountered in recent months. At least this is
consistent. No fear of Science here!
And yet, I was beginning to see there was a
position in this debate that was far different
from anything I had yet encountered. What
more was there to discover? You shall see
soon, as my letters come to an end.
I am, etc.
1 1 D i s s e nt i n g f ut i l ita r i a n . b lo g s p ot.ca
(including the panicked women who ask,
‘What am I going to do?!’) to make responsible
decisions. And they were published in times
when a abortion services were available
and b people often preferred to respond
to you according to ‘your morality’ not theirs.
I thought about this. What would I have
done, were I a clinic worker who: 1 did not
especially va l u e the fetus (and said, like
Ms. HARTO OR , that “life is cheap” - which
is to say, not usually so hard to replace),
2 did not like challenging someone else’s
moral outlook (which I understood to be as
circumstantial & culture-bound as mine), and
3 was faced with a young woman who was
pregnant, and very sad about the fact? I
would find my job a lot easier if I said nothing
about what she was pregnant with and just
talked about what she wished to do with
‘her pregnancy’. To such a person as me, that
would indeed seem the easiest way to help her.
Have you noticed something? People do have
other interests in sex than babies, and if your
field is to counsel those people it may seem a
lot easier to do that if you just don ’t have
a view on what the fetus is. So that becomes
a good reason for texts like these to narrate
the steps from zygote to embryo to fetus,
etc., instead of naming what is created. As to
what that was , the answer of these texts
seemed to be, Let it alone!
At the same time, it was also clear that this
had no bearing whatsoever on any “point in
the development of man’s knowledge.”
Did people really begin to ask, “Are
the Embryologists right?” The
answer was, I could find no evidence of
that, no scientific arguments launched against
them, no charges of scientific error. Rather,
training manuals for doctors, clinicians,
et al. (that is, the people who sit face-to-
face acreoss a desk with the young women
in desperation) simply decided to describe
pregnancy differently. They chose to
approach the fetus from the angle of
va l u e , so as to leave open
to these women whatever
options matched their own
valuations; they left the
business of valuation to the
patients & clients. As Ms.
HARTO OR explained, “an
unhappily pregnant woman may view
her fetus with utter dismay, bordering
on revulsion. She cannot bring
herself to refer to it as anything
other than ‘it,’ much less a human
being.” It could be that to set
embryological knowledge aside may be an
easier approach to care of this woman, but it
has no implication whatever for the status of
that knowledge as knowledge .
Turn, on the other hand, to those whose
job it is to study what conception creates
and you find the Biologists speaking quite
differently. As the text Human Embryology
explains, “it is the penetration of the ovum by a
spermatozoon and resultant mingling of the nuclear material
each brings to the union that –marks the i n it i at i o n o f
t h e l i f e o f a n ew i n d iv i d ua l .” (3rd ed.,
1968, 43) How interesting it was to find that
Dr. A. Guttmacher , a physician who later
became president of the Planned Parenthood
Federation of America (a leading provider of
abortion services) had written:
“We of today know that man is born of sexual union; that
h e sta rts l i f e as a n e m b ryo within the
body of the female; and that the embryo is formed from
the fusion of two single cells, the ovum and the sperm.
This all seems s o s i m p l e a n d ev i d e nt
to u s that it is difficult to picture a time when it
was not part of the c o m m o n k n ow l e d g e .”
(Life in the Making: The Story of Human Procreation, 1933, 3)
It is notable, don’t you think, that Dr.
Guttmacher did not change his tune
later, when he ran Planned Parenthood?
A book on which he served as consultant
states that “all organisms, however large and complex
they may be when full grown, begin life as but a single
cell. This is true of the h u ma n b e i n g , ... who
b eg i n s l i f e as a f e rt i l i z e d ov u m .”
(The Human Reproductive System, 1969, 88) That used
to go down smoothly, ringing not a single
alarm bell; up until the 1960s you could even
spell out what was just said -– that there is
such a thing as a single-celled human
being -– without triggering gasps of outrage.
But to speak like that once abortion is being
practiced is to say that abortion kills a human
being: and that the pregnant women not
ready to have children and the doctors ready
to help them are killing helpless people. And
so people began not to say this, and to phrase
that line on conception differently.
But I could discover nothing that had happened
to remove the idea of a single-celled
human being from the established fund of
common knowledge , once it had landed
there - except the question of the va l u e
of the fetus, a question that is not relevant– to
Science. As we are told all the time, the
s c i e nt i f i c q u e st i o n and the m o r a l
q u e st i o n (concerning status , person-
hood , worth) are two different questions.
You can’t dent scientific knowledge by
claimingthat a fetus has no inherent stat u s .
When a person understands that they do not
want a thing, they are not suddenly baffled
as to what that thing is, are they?!
Such exhausting work this was, to sort this
out! But, with a little labour I managed it,
and you too have done it, I am sure.
It suddenly dawned on me that I had
at last answered my second question,
which was, Is science agreed as to the
point at which human
beings exist? I found no
“divergence” among scientists
except for P r act i t ion e r s
moved by the question
of value , which is not a
scientific question, and
offers no cause for abandon-
ing the established science.
But then it also struck me
that I had also answer-
ed my first question as
well! It was, Why,
by 1973, was the consensus we once had
about “The difficult question of when life begins” lost?
Was any Knowledge lost by then? What was
lost was the will to apply the Knowledge
that we still possessed, concerning when
a human being is formed. So we are not
really describing any collapse of consensus in
knowledge at all.
What reason did people have, by that date,
to say they “did not know when life begins,
which is now a difficult question”? It is not a
difficult question scientifically ; it is a
difficult question morally , because to apply
the standard answer of science - a human
being begins at conception - is to imply that
pregnant women not ready to be mothers
are killing their children. But there was a
j u st i c e issue here (as Ms. HARTO OR
and Mr. VALEUR-DE-BOIS have both
acknowledged) that made people reluctant to
say that. Science had said that there were one-
celled human beings -– not one-celled voters,
to be sure, but indeed one-celled bus riders
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