ABORTION: FOUNDATIONS & APPLICATIONS

PERSONHOOD: MY METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS
I believe true science and philosophy will always confirm and verify the veracity of Scripture. The reason they ultimately do is their epistemological foundations rest upon the presuppositions of Scripture. Indeed, logic itself – which is essential to all rational thought and therefore, all knowledge – would be rendered meaningless and impossible if the Triune God of Scripture did not live.

I did not lay out a case for these assertions in this paper because my topic was abortion, not the existence of God or the reliability of Scripture. See John M. Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God: An Introduction (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1994) for an extensive defense of the preceding arguments; called the transcendental argument for God’s existence.

I include these remarks for two reasons: one, so it is clear I do not view Scripture as lacking in efficacy or merit in any way; and two, so the reader understands the worldview from which my convictions arise; namely, that of orthodox Christian Theism centered on the historical person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. I believe the Bible is the Word of the One True God to humankind and is authoritative in all areas of life but I also believe it is wise to explore the truth from different angles. That is what I tried to do in this discussion.

ABORTION & PERSONHOOD: SOME APPLICATIONS
Even though most of this discussion has dealt with philosophical or scientific considerations, it is fitting to end with some application, especially for the local church.

The first practical step is for the individual to not advocate for abortion (or have one!) and the second is to actively work to curtail and eliminate abortion. This second step alone could easily be an entire book if dealt with in detail. I want to cover it briefly in order to give the reader a flavor for some pro-life strategies and ideas. It is not comprehensive but rather selective and cursory, nonetheless it still helps bring the issue of life to where we live.

NOTE: For many of these application suggestions, I am indebted to the Dr. Steven R. Tracy of Phoenix Seminary. For another great resource on this topic, see Terry A. Schlossberg, “Pastoral Care in the Abortion Society,” BioEngagement: Making a Christian Difference through Bioethics Today, eds. Nigel M. de S. Cameron, Scott E. Daniels and Barbara J. White (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), 249-260.

EDUCATION: For the local church, it is a fantastic idea to preach a special sermon on Sanctity of Life Sunday. Perhaps some good pro-life literature can be made available either in the bulletin or at a table. There should be a strong pro-life component to the teaching element of the church as a whole so as to creae an atmosphere which values life and cares for the vulnerable.

COUNSELING: A healthy local church should be staunchly pro-life but it must also avoid the danger of becoming overly self-righteous and condemning. This means the church leadership must be aware there may be many people in their congregation who have been affected by abortion in some way. Women who have had abortions need to learn to understand the love and forgiveness of God. If the church staff is not equipped to handle post-abortive counseling, they can tell their members about services offered by Crisis Pregnancy Centers.

RESOURCES: A church as well as family units should set aside a portion of their budget that in some way reflects their pro-life position. Also, the church itself should work to become a resource for mothers contemplating abortion. Members can temporarily house young unwed mothers, for example. The greatest pro-life resource to develop is a foster care and adoption ministry.

For example, Roosevelt Community Church in downtown Phoenix, Arizona has a ministry called Roosevelt Adopts. The church only has about 80 members but it has started a fund to assist those who desire to do private adoption. There are a few volunteers who offer training, networking and general assistance to those thinking about adopting or fostering. Best of all, the pastor and his wife have adopted two beautiful children themselves, ages four and eight.

There are many more practical ways for both churches and individuals to truly act pro-life; for example, not utilizing health care professionals who perform abortions. If the evangelical church in the United States would just start by passionately tackling some of the basic issues I have talked about, it would go a long way towards solving the abortion crisis. I pray this is exactly what we do. I hope we do it with all the love and passion required for the task.

Jim Lippard's Review of My Fifth Personhood Post

Jim Lippard has put up his final review in our abortion/personhood discussion.
You can read it here (and be sure to check out the comments, too!):

http://lippard.blogspot.com/2009/12/vocab-malone-on-abortion-and-personhood_19.html

I want to thank Jim for the conversation and his time.
It would not have been the same without him ...

vM!

OF VIOLENCE & VIOLINS [personhood post part 5]

I am always astonished at how enamored abortion advocates are with Thomson’s bodily autonomy argument. To me, it just exposes the core cold-heartedness of the abortion defense quest. I think the argument demonstrates the utter moral ineptness underlying the whole premise of elective abortion. Pro-abortion proponents probably fancy it because it is the only pro-abortion argument that is not mere question begging. It stands alone as the sole exception in that it “grants” (even if for the sake of argument) personhood status to the unborn. The idea that pregnant mothers have an absolute right over their body in every way – regardless of what negative effects may come upon other persons as a result - is what gives the argument its thrust.

Thomson gives the well-known violin analogy, which I will cite here:

“You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "Look, we're sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you--we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you." Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says. "Tough luck. I agree. but now you've got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him."

The pro-abortion argument “works” in this scenario (in a sense) as far as it goes, but is the analogy accurate? Is abortion merely detachment and is being pregnant akin to being hooked up to a helpless violinist? If the answer is “no” to either question – as I think it is – then the analogy (and the argument) fails.

First is the problem of the person who is attached. In the analogy, it is a complete stranger who presumably has his own parents. In pregnancy, the person attached is the daughter or son of the mother! The child is not a parasite, invader or predator; for the mother’s womb is where it belongs, the womb is its natural and normal environment. Furthermore, the unborn has no intent to do the mother any harm, either purposely or inadvertedly (I wish the same could always be said the other way around). Legal scholar Eileen McDonagh argues in a way similar to Thomson and paints the child as a “trespasser”.

Remember, it was the mother’s action that brought the baby into this situation in the first place; it is not as if the baby slipped in unannounced when the mother was not looking … you could even say the baby was “summoned” by the mother.

Another huge problem is the nature of the attachment. To quote Greg Koukl,

“the violinist is artificially attached to the woman. A mother's unborn baby, however, is not surgically connected, nor was it ever "attached" to her. Instead, the baby is being produced by the mother's own body by the natural process of reproduction.”

Another big problem is abortion is not mere detachment; it is active termination. It is not merely withholding nourishment or unplugging, it is bloody and violent. To be true, the analogy would have to go more like this:

“After unplugging the unconscious violinist from my body, I asked a hit man to terminate him. The professional hit man came into the hospital room with a drill, bore a hole into the back of the violinist’s skull (right at the base of his neck) and subsequently sucked the violinist’s brains out into a bag. The hit man then threw the violinist’s body into a large furnace and promptly incinerated him – along with hundreds of other dead violinists. After that, I paid the man and merrily went on my way.”

Now I pose a question: which takes more care; a baby in the belly or a toddler out of the tummy? Obviously, the toddler is the greater “imposition” than the unborn. As a parent of three kids, all under four years old, trust me, the toddler is harder. Now if the mother is not obligated to care for a person dependent upon them in a passive way – via a tube or what have you – then why would the mother be required to engage in the much more active task of parenting the toddler?

Here we have another major flaw in Thomson’s analogy: it proves too much. If valid, then we should exonerate women like Susan Smith of North Carolina (who drowned her two children in the bathtub), Amy Grossberg (who with the father of the child gave her newborn a skull fracture before leaving the body in a dumpster) and Melissa Drexler (the infamous “prom mom”, who gave birth in her high school’s bathroom during prom and left the child – dead - in the trash before going back to dancing). Or we could just excuse it.

Case in point is another bright from MIT – Steven Pinker – who sees this all as simple evolutionary biology:

“parental investment is a limited resource, and mammalian mothers must "decide" whether to allot it to their newborn or to their current and future offspring. If a newborn is sickly, or if its survival is not promising, they may cut their losses and favor the healthier in the litter or try again later on. In most cultures, neonaticide is a form of this triage. Until very recently in human evolutionary history, mothers nursed their children for two to four years before becoming fertile again. Many children died, especially in the perilous first year . Most women saw no more than two or three of their children survive to adulthood, and many did not see any survive. To become a grandmother, a woman had to make hard choices….” – November 2 1997 New York Times Magazine “Why They Kill Their Newborns”

Pinker continues:

"Several moral philosophers have concluded that neonates are not persons, and thus neonaticide should not be classified as murder. Michael Tooley has gone so far as to say that neonaticide ought to be permitted during an interval after birth. Most philosophers (to say nothing of nonphilosophers) recoil from that last step, but the very fact that there can be a debate about the personhood of neonates, but no debate about the personhood of older children, makes it clearer why we feel more sympathy for an Amy Grossberg than for a Susan Smith."

Why more sympathy for one than the other; both acted as if it was unreasonable to expect them to have any obligations towards their own children – much like Thomson’s argument. In short, if Thomson’s argument works for abortion, it works for neonaticide, too. What is neonaticide, you ask? It is the term Peter Singer used to create a middle ground between abortion and infanticide. Further, does not Thomson’s argument teach us that we have the right to kill anyone who inhibits our liberty in any way? Hence, Thomson’s analogy from the violinst is an analogy for violence.

Another way that it proves too much is that it has to reject wholesale the idea that parents have any obligations or duties towards their offspring. Once again, Greg Koukl comments on this:

“Blood relationships are never based on choice, yet they entail moral obligations, nonetheless. This is why the courts prosecute negligent parents. They have consistently ruled, for example, that fathers have an obligation to support their children even if they are unplanned and unwanted.”

He further adds,

“Thompson is mistaken in presuming that pregnancy is the thing that expropriates a woman's liberty. Motherhood does that, and motherhood doesn't end with the birth of the child. Unlike the woman connected to the violinist, a mother is not released in nine months. Her burden has just begun. If Thompson's argument works, then no child is safe from a mother who wants her liberty.”

Another key difference, following John Wilcox, is that the Thomson analogy presents pregnancy as inherently bad. In fact, it is viewed as a diseased state. In most cases, pregnancy is healthy and safe for both mother and child. In fact, one reason the woman is pregnant in the first place is due in part to the fact that she is healthy – her reproductive organs are definitely working well, that’s for sure.

It is true a woman may experience nausea and insomnia, especially during the first trimester. Up until the 1960’s doctors in Canada and Europe would prescribe a drug called Thalidomide to fix this. Eventually it was discovered the drug caused severe birth defects, such as malformations, abbreviated arms or no arms at all. (thalidomide.ca/en/information/history_of_thalidomide.html)

Interestingly enough, both David Boonin and McDonagh list nausea and insomnia as part of the physical cost of pregnancy (one even calls it a serious injury to the mother). Richard J. Poupard asks a key question:

If it is permissible … for a mother to kill her unborn child in order to stop experiencing these symptoms, it ought to be permissible for her to take a medication such as thalidomide that would cause sub-lethal harm to her child in order to treat her symptoms, since, although the fetus would be harmed, he or she would not be harmed as much as in elective abortion.

How can Thomson et al. avoid this inescapable conclusion to their argument? Earlier in his article, Poupard puts all this in perspective:

If the right of bodily autonomy is absolute, as it needs to be defend the act of intentionally killing a human person, how could we fault the mother … which is worse: causing harm to a child or intentionally killing that same child? If autonomy, then it is unreasonable to disallow her to harm the same child using the same reasoning.

As a foster parent I have seen up close many abused children. My wife and I have had kids in our care who screamed bloody murder anytime I would go to hug them because of what they anticipated. We have had kids who smelled like smoke for a month after we first received them because they were so saturated with it. We had a child who was so dirty he turned the bathtub mud-black the first time he took a bath at our house on the night we got him. We have had children with Star Trek-like bugs literally coming out of their ear holes (and other various sundry holes as well). We have had infants who were neglected so badly by their birth parents that a fire man had to give CPR to resuscitate them; we are talking about a one-month old baby here! We have had a two-year old who walked with a permanent limp (resulting in an oddly humorous gait) because his father had beat him so severely. We even had one toddler whose scrotum was beat black and blue – I am not exaggerating – and a fractured skull and broken arm to match. This little boy was two years old and only weighed 20 pounds – severely underweight. I even remember one baby girl who screamed shrills of terror every night in the other room because her birth mother was on acid and the baby was having residual hallucinogenic trips.

When I reflect on this, I can not help but think that we are living in a brave new culture that increasingly treats precious human life as the undesired dirt on the bottom of an otherwise clean shoe. Abortion is just one more way we use to scrape off the human refuse … I can not help but think that Thomson and her arguments are only sharpening the knife.

NOTES:
*To his credit, Jim Lippard does recognize the analogy isn’t quite tight when he says, “The problem with this scenario is that it isn't quite analogous to pregnancy except in case of rape.” I wonder if Jim is aware that some pro-choicers do say pregnancy is almost identitical to rape. Eileen McDonagh comes to mind.

Eileen McDonagh, Breaking the Abortion Deadlock: From Choice to Consent (New York, Oxford University Press, 1996).
John Wilcox, “Nature as Demonic in Thomson’s Defense of Abortion,” The New Scholasticism 63 (Autumn 1989), 463-484.
David Boonin A Defense of Abortion (Cambride, England: Cambrideg Univ. Press, 2003), 137.
“Suffer the Violinist: why the Pro-Abortion Argument from Bodily Autonomy Fails” Christian Research Journal vol. 30, no. 04 2007, 32-40.

Jim Lippard's Review of My Fourth Personhood Post

Jim Lippard has posted a fourth critique of my last post on abortion and personhood.
Here is the link:

http://lippard.blogspot.com/2009/12/vocab-malone-on-abortion-and-personhood_18.html

This time covered two topics: viability & wantedness.

vocab

THE ARGUMENT FROM VIABILITY & WANTEDNESS CONSIDERED [personhood post, part 4]

ABSTRACT
Is the human fetus a person with the appropriate rights that follow or is the human fetus something less – a nonperson – and therefore not entitled to the inherent rights due a person? I argue for the former and against the latter to defend the position that the unborn human embryo is a full person at the moment of conception and should be afforded the full rights due human beings by their very essence.

THE ARGUMENT FROM VIABILITY
Viability refers to the unborn’s ability to survive outside of the womb. Viability as a determining factor is unwise because if the child is now outside of the womb, the child’s location has changed, true, but how has the child’s essence - what it is at its core - changed?

Around 24 weeks most children can survive outside of the womb (dependent on medical technology, of course). If viability is a valid way of reckoning personhood, then we would have to assume children in the developed world are persons earlier than those in underdeveloped countries because the technology is not available for them to survive until later. How can access to quality medical facilities affect the status of a person? If viability is a legitimate means to determine personhood, then the fetus of 21st Century America is much more of a person than the fetus of 18th Century America.

Even if we were to “grant” personhood based on viability, then should it not follow we should also make illegal any abortions after the time of viability? This would mean any abortions after 6 months gestation would be off limits.

Besides, as technology improves so does viability. For example, Kenya King of Florida was born on June 16, 1985, at eighteen ounces. She was a mere nineteen weeks old; about 4½ months after her life began at conception. [1]

The whole viability discussion is backwards, anyway: are not the defenseless among us the ones we should be more likely to protect and care for? If someone is not viable without us, should we cast them aside because they depend on our help for their survival?

An analogy: my wife is a Type I diabetic and totally dependent on insulin for her survival. Does this dependence make her less of a person? She is certainly less viable without insulin than are other persons.

There are more difficulties associated with the viability hypothesis. Bioethicist Andrew Varga points out a number of them when he asks,

“how does viability transform the nature of the fetus so that the non‐human being then turns into a human being?”

and

“is viability not just an extrinsic criterion imposed upon the fetus by some members of society who simply declare that the fetus will be accepted at that moment as a human being?” [2]

These are penetrating questions and I think the answers are clear: in regards to the first question, “it does not” and in regards to the second question a simple “yes” will suffice.

THE ARGUMENT FROM WANTEDNESS

“Pregnancy when wanted is a healthy process, pregnancy when not wanted is a disease – in fact, a venereal disease.” [3]

These are the words of situational ethicist Joseph Fletcher. They represent the typical argument from wantedness in a succinct fashion. The question is should the powerful be allowed to “unwant” the weaker at will or do the weaker have an intrinsic value that transcends their wantedness? Why should a child – at any stage of development – be measured by the parent’s desires?

Columnist Sidney Callahan writes,

“We usually want only objects and wanting them or not implies that we are superior, or at least engaged in a one-way relationship to them.” [4]

Let us put the issue of wantedness in perspective. Old school pro-life advocate Dr. J.C. Willke suggests the Planned Parenthood slogan of “Every Child a Wanted Child” should include the sentence “and if not wanted, kill!” [5] This would help “fill-in the blanks” of the innocuous sounding slogan and help us mentally complete the thought.

The most ironic example of the supposed importance of wantedness I have come across is from abortionist Suzanne Poppema’s book, which has the incredibly catchy title of Why I Am an Abortion Doctor. On page four of the book, she dedicates the work to “Peter, Andrew, Will, and Jenna, four of the most wanted children ever.” [6] I wonder how Jenna feels knowing her mother would have had a fifth child but that one was unwanted and was therefore terminated (Dr. Poppema talks about her own abortion in chillingly calloused terms for fourteen pages, 75-89).

This leads to an interesting discussion: are people who are unwanted non-persons? If so, then their worth is based upon something more than someone subjectively valuing them? It also makes sense for us to ask this: if a mother at a certain point no longer wants her children during their post-birth development, does this alter their status as persons? If not, why not? The abortionist has no grounds from which to consistently argue the issue. Generally, they retort with a “cat-out-of-the-bag” type of argument: “once the baby is born, that’s it, now it’s a person.”

On this notion, let us return to Dr. Poppema’s personal abortion. After telling her readers she “could actually feel the fetal convulsions not long after I was given the saline injection,” she then tells us “the embryo die[d] … two days later.” Before announcing it was “clear” to her she did the right thing, she recounts a conversation she had with her dying embryo: “I’m very sorry that this is happening to you but there’s just no way that you can come into existence right now.” [7]

The contradictions are numerous and obvious: first, why is the good doctor speaking to something that does not exist? Is the embryo a product of her imagination? Second, is it not clear from the embryo’s convulsions that s/he already exists? Third, how can something that does not exist die?

Here we have the confused logic of abortion in a nutshell.

NOTES
[1] Robert J. Morgan, Nelson's Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations, and Quotes (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000), 5.
[2] Andrew Varga, The Main Issues in Bioethics, 2nd ed. (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), 61‐63.
[3] Joseph Fletcher, The Ethics of Genetic Control (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1974), 142.
[4] Sidney Callahan, “Talk of ‘Wanted Child’ Makes for Doll Objects,” National Catholic Reporter, December 3, 1971, 7.
[5] Dr. J.C. Willke, Abortion: Questions and Answers (Cincinnati, Ohio: Hayes Publishing Company, 1985), 133.
[6] Suzanne T. Poppema with Mike Henderson, Why I Am an Abortion Doctor (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1996), 4.
[7] Poppema, Why I Am An Abortion Doctor, 89.

Jim Lippard's Review of My Third Personhood Post

Jim Lippard has posted a third critique of my last post on abortion and personhood.
Here is the link:

http://lippard.blogspot.com/2009/12/vocab-malone-on-abortion-and-personhood_16.html

Very interesting discussion going on here, so be sure to take part!

vocab

THE ARGUMENT FROM SIZE CONSIDERED [personhood post part 3]

ABSTRACT
Is the human fetus a person with the appropriate rights that follow or is the human fetus something less – a nonperson – and therefore not entitled to the inherent rights due a person? I argue for the former and against the latter to defend the position that the unborn human embryo is a full person at the moment of conception and should be afforded the full rights due human beings by their very essence.

SECOND THOUGHTS ON SIZE
If I had it to do over, I would have thought of a different title/angle for this section of my paper or perhaps not covered it at all, given that it is a weak argument only put forth by people who have no idea what they are talking about. On one hand, I thought it was important to write about because I have heard it (or some variation of it) so often but on the other hand; I am setting myself up to be accused of building up straw men for the sole sake of tearing them down. However, this is not the case, although it may be difficult for someone as erudite as Jim to understand how a person could hold to this view but I can vouch that I do hear this “argument” in a variety of settings.

I am not alone in this; prolific pro-life trainer and speaker Scott Klusendorf mentions this in a brand new book released just this year:

I speak at some of the finest Christian schools around the country. Yet without exception, I encounter pockets of students who think human beings can be killed because they’re the wrong size …. [1]

From the other end of things, a recent New York Times article featured a broadly similar argument (although the piece was on a much wider topic than just abortion):

In his State of the Union speech, President Bush went on to observe that "human life is a gift from our creator — and that gift should never be discarded, devalued or put up for sale." Putting aside the belief in a "creator," the vast majority of the world's population takes a similar stance on valuing human life. What is at issue, rather, is how we are to define "human life." Look around you. Look at your loved ones. Do you see a hunk of cells or do you see something else?

Most humans practice a kind of dualism, seeing a distinction between mind and body. We all automatically confer a higher order to a developed biological entity like a human brain. We do not see cells, simple or complex — we see people, human life. That thing in a petri dish is something else. It doesn't yet have the memories and loves and hopes that accumulate over the years. Until this is understood by our politicians, the gallant efforts of so many biomedical scientists, as good as they are, will remain only stopgap measures. [2]
*italics and bold fonts are mine, not the author's*

Things haven’t changed much; back in 1972, Dr. Bart Heffernan wrote an essay entitled “The Early Biography of Everyman,” in which he said this about these kinds of dead-in-the-water arguments for abortion:

“The blob theory, the main tenet of the tissue-of-the-mother school of embryology, has been advanced for public scrutiny without so much as a note of public criticism from the scientific community or the medical profession.” [3]

Maybe I should have called this section the argument from looks or the clump of cells argument or even the blob theory. At this point, I feel like Pontius Pilate: "what I have written I have written" (Jn 19.22). The lay version of this argument goes something like this, “How can something so tiny be a person? I mean, come on, it just looks like it’s a bunch of cells.”

SIZING UP THE SIZE ARGUMENT
One is immediately struck by the shallowness of such an argument: how does the way something looks on the surface determine its humanity or personhood? Pro-life advocate Steve Wagner coined the term sizism to describe this argument. He makes the point it is a form of discrimination to disqualify someone simply because their body is undeveloped. In the case of abortion, they are being disqualified for status as a person, which means they have no rights under the law, and can therefore be terminated at will.

The pro-abortion argument from size basically says those who are bigger have the prerogative to decide whether those who are smaller deserve to live or die. Is this fair? Abortion then is the meanest schoolyard bully of all time, killing the smaller kids because they get in the way of his fun on the playground at recess.

Even though size is never explicitly stated as a factor, there is an element of this train of thought in many of the more academic abortion rights discussions that focus on “competing rights” between the mother and her offspring: “I am bigger (i.e., more developed) than you so I can do what I want to you because you are an inconvenience to me.” In the course of his discussion of size and personhood, Wagner asks some great questions:

Why should we believe that microscopic human beings aren’t persons? How is your statement different from saying to a disabled person that he doesn’t count because of how his body looks and works? Should we call that developmentism, discrimination against someone for the body she’s developed? Think of a two-year-old: Isn’t she smaller than the rest of us? But she has equal value to adults in spite of her small stature. If she’s valuable, size is irrelevant to value, right? Isn’t the embryo valuable too? [4]

We should treat unborn persons – regardless of size – the same way we should treat any weaker or more vulnerable member of society; with care, dignity and respect. Minorities (as unborn persons are) in any society should be protected under the law by virtue of who they are, not because of their size.

Think about any argument made from the size of an individual implies: the bigger you are, the more of a person you are. Is Lebron James more of a person than Nancy Pelosi? Obviously, the answer is “no” and it sounds ridiculous to even pose the question – which is precisely the point. If an increase in size does not result in an increase in personhood, unborn microscopic humans are just as much of a person as you and I are; albeit, much smaller persons.

“SIZE MATTERS NOT – JUDGE ME BY MY SIZE, DO YOU?”

– Yoda to Luke while training him in the Dagobah swamp

A more penetrating question to ask is this: can any living being become anything else besides what it already is? How can something become a person unless its essence is already personhood? If the color blue is only blue and not the color red in the same way at the same time, its very essence – its fundamental property – must be blue and not red. Another example is that of the tadpole and frog. The tadpole is simply a name for a specific stage during a frog’s development. If one were to terminate a certain tadpole, then a certain frog would be terminated and no longer exist. This means you did not come from a fetus you once were a fetus.

Dr. Paul Ramsay expresses this same idea in different terms,

“Subsequent development cannot be described as becoming something he is not now. It can only be described as a process of achieving, a process of becoming the one he already is. Genetics teaches us that we were from the beginning what we essentially still are in every cell and in every generally human attribute and in every individual attribute.” [5]

This means while selves remain, stages pass.

Abortion advocates attempt to side step this issue by calling the unborn a "probability of a future person" or a "potential life". Tragically, even some evangelical philosophers have employed this confusing and misguided language. For a discussion of one such example - Norman L. Geisler - see Paul B. Fowler, Abortion: Toward an Evangelical Consensus. [6] Fortunately, Dr. Geisler switched his position on this issue in the mid-80’s; to compare his two positions, read the chapter on abortion in the first edition of his widely used Ethics book in 1971 and then compare it with the second edition. [7]

THE PROBLEM WITH THE PROBABILITY ARGUMENT
One way to think about the idea of probability (or potentiality) is that every adult was once an unborn person, just as every oak tree was once an acorn. An acorn is simply a mini-oak tree, just as a microscopic person is a mini-human.

The more gruesome – but true - response to this common dodge is citing a description of an abortion. Listen to a member of Planned Parenthood describing morcellation (morcellation is the technical term for when the baby is sliced into different sections during a D&E abortion) during a common late-term abortion procedure:

“The fetus was extracted in small pieces to minimize cervical trauma. The fetal head was often the most difficult object to crush and remove because of its size and contour. The operator kept track of the fetal skeleton.” [8]

This is not a potential skull being crushed or a potential skeleton being counted. These are actual – not merely “potential” – human body parts involved in this procedure. It is true the unborn are potential adults. The unborn are persons who are not yet adults but then again, so are teenagers!

In what should be a self-evident statement brought to my attention by Randy Alcorn, he points out, “One must have a head to be decapitated and body parts in order to be dismembered.” [9] Alcorn points out this obvious fact as a commentary on Dr. Warren Hern’s abortion manual, where the abortionist gives these instructions, “A long curved Mayo scissor may be necessary to decapitate and dismember the fetus.” [10] Alcorn then says what should be self-evident: “Human body parts are the product of actual human lives that have ended”. [11]

Noted author James T. Burtchaell puts it succinctly when he writes, “What we honor in humans is not their stages but their selves. The unborn is not a potential human but a human with potential.” [12]

Prenatal surgery – as well as the photography involved – has shed more light in this area as of late. “We don’t treat the fetus as a potential person,” says nenonatal specialist Dr. Thomas Elkins, but instead

We have been approaching the fetus as a patient for a long time … We can do a lot of things for that fetus that basically elevate it in every way and every sense to personhood. We operate for the benefit of the fetus … we monitor the fetus … We intervene when it appears ill and rush in to save its life. And I mean rush. It’s a two minute dash to the C-section room to get out a fetus who has collapsed its cord. It’s a dash for a life … [13]

SIZE, PARTS, & MACHINERY
There is a certain component of the size argument built into to the “parts” argument: this is the idea that since the unborn does not have a certain part manifest yet, it is not a person. Some people mention the first sign of brain waves; some - who are decidedly less informed - even cite the structure (or lack thereof) of the face.

John Walker, a writer for the group Libertarians for Life, has a helpful discussion about the idea of “machinery” and then supplies an appropriate response:

The question is how reason and choice make us persons. Is it a matter of a power we have? (Or a potential, capacity, etc., etc.) Or is it a matter of an act in which we engage? (Or a behavior, manifestation, etc., etc.) …

If act is what counts, how can we include in the category of person those who act at a lower level than others we exclude? …

I think the response [of the abortion advocate] would be that at some point "the machinery's in place" – the cerebral cortex, etc. But if the machinery isn't producing the output, then we are talking power again, not act. And talking power, one has to face the fact that the power exists before the point at which the cerebral cortex (or what not) is produced. "The machinery's in place" in the zygote, too – after all, the nature of this "machinery" is to grow. And even at birth, the machinery still has growing to do before the human infant will manifest any superiority to a number of the lower animals. [14]

Pro-lifers admittedly went too far when they attempted to turn Dr. Seuss into a pro-lifer by co-opting the Horton Hears a Who? movie because of the refrain “a person is a person, no matter how small” but what about Shakespeare? No one has exploited him yet, have they? Let me proceed to do that then, before it comes passe:

Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses … ? If you prick us, do we not bleed? … If you poison us, do we not die?
– Shylock in The Merchant of Venice

‘Nuff said.

UPDATE: Added the context surrounding the Michael Gazzaniga NY Times quote and changed the wording that leads into the new fuller quote(12/16/09)

NOTES
[1] Scott Klusendorf, The Case for Life (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Books, 2009), 455.
[2] Michael Gazzaniga, “All Clones Are Not the Same,” New York Times, February 16, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/16/opinion/16gazzaniga.html?_r=1
[3] Abortion and Social Justice, edited by Thomas W. Hilgers and Dennis J. Horan (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1972), 3.
[4] Steve Wagner, “The SLED Test – Four Top Arguments,” http://www.str.org/site/DocServer/2.1_four_top_arguments.pdf?docID=861
[5] Paul Ramsey, “Points in Deciding About Abortion,” The Morality of Abortion: Legal and Historical Perspectives, ed. John T. Noonan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), 66-67.
[6] Paul B. Fowler, Abortion: Toward an Evangelical Consensus (Portland, Oreg.: Multnomah Press, 1987), 76-77.
[7] Norman L. Geisler and W. Watkins, Ethics: Options and Issues (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 1989).
[8] Sadja Goldsmith, et al., “Second Trimester Abortion by Dilation and Extraction (D&E): Surgical Techniques and Psychological Reactions.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association of Planned Parenthood Physicians in Atlanta, GA, 13-14 October 1977, 3.
[9] Randy Alcorn, Pro Life Answers to Pro Choice Arguments (Portland, Oreg.: Multnomah, 1994), 54.
[10] Warren Hern, “Operative Procedures and Technique,” Abortion Practice (Boulder, Colo.: Alpenglo Graphics, 1990), 154.
[11] Randy Alcorn, Pro Life Answers, 54.
[12] James Tunstead Burtchaell, Rachel Weeping: The Case Against Abortion (San Francisco, Cali.: Harper & Row Publishers, 1982), 85. Dr. Denis Cavanagh said almost the same exact thing in his inaugural address as professor of obstetrics and gynecology in 1972 at the University of Tasmania. Cited in F. LaGard Smith, When Choice Becomes God, Eugene, Oreg: Harvest House Publishers, 1990, p 126.
[13] Harold Smith, “A Legacy of Life,” Christianity Today, January 18, 1985, p 18.
[14] John Walker, “Power and Act: Notes Towards Engaging in a Discussion of One of the Underlying Questions in the Abortion Debate,” 2000. http://www.l4l.org/library/poweract.html.