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--- thoughts:politics:abortion [2021/09/10 16:48] – [On being a man] Owen Mellema
+++ thoughts:politics:abortion [2021/09/11 19:32] (current) – Owen Mellema
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 ==== On Mercy ====
-My opinions on the mercy of abortion are varied. I think most of us would agree that there is a point at which if a person is suffering, it doesn't make much sense to want them to remain alive. For example, cancer patients will sometimes decide to not take another round of painful treatment, and instead decide to die. On the other hand, it is very difficult to determine where this point is.
+My opinions on the mercy of abortion are varied. I think most of us would agree that there is a point at which if a person is suffering, it doesn't make much sense to want them to remain alive. For example, cancer patients will sometimes decide to not take another round of painful treatment, and instead decide to die. On the other hand, it is very difficult to determine where this point is, because suffering is endemic to the human condition.
 At this point I will propose what I expect to be a controversial definition of a life worth living. Life is worth living if there is the possibility of enjoyable things. By enjoyable, I mean every sense of the word: Pleasure, Satisfaction, Love, etc. I think that it is acceptable that we allow a person whose life will be defined by unceasing pain to die, because the pain will likely make it so that nothing is enjoyable.
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 Fourthly, and although this is not technically an argument, I'd just like to point out that all of the opinions I have presented above are //more// pro-choice than opinions I have heard certain women themselves express, especially my mother. I'm sure someone could find some way to exclude them from consideration, but that just seems silly. if //they// don't get to comment, why should //anyone//?
+===== When does life begin? =====
+The biggest question that I all but skipped over in my argument was the question of where life begins. This is a tricky one, and I think most people have not given this question the thought it deserves.
+First, I want to dispel the notion that this is a question the scientists have "found the answer to" and that the "science is settled". This is not a question that scientists can answer, unless scientists have branched into philosophy out of boredom. They can't answer the question any more than they can answer the question of whether the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus |Ship of Theseus ]] is the same after it's journey as it was before. It's fundamentally a question of applying labels to things, determining physical attributes of them.
+The reason that there is controversy over the definition of life is because we arrive at a weird continuum of development, with absurdity in it's endpoints. On one side, at the moment the baby emerges from the womb, we can say for certain the baby is alive. On the other side, at the moment at which the man's sperm imprints on the woman's egg, it seems a little silly to call it a human. If all it takes is an egg and a sperm, does that mean that a sperm or egg is a half-human?
+Now, if both endpoints are clearly what they are (human on one side, non-human on the other), it makes sense that a second before or after those points would be the same thing. (Or else, does touching air magically make it a human?) If a second, why not a minute? And hour? A day? A month? Perhaps even -- nine months? And then you arrive at the other end of the continuum, either at the idea that the baby emerging from the birth canal is not human, or the sperm imprinting on the egg is human. The astute among you may recognize this as an instance of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki%27s_Wager|Loki's Wager]].
+Personally, I think that a good definition of when a baby is alive is when it has a heartbeat. This means the baby, while not self-sufficient, is truly a separate system from the mother entirely, and is something approaching human, as we understand it. After all, all humans have a heartbeat. The heartbeat is generally audible at the beginning of the second trimester ((Source: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/7247-fetal-development-stages-of-growth)), so I think that's a good cutoff. (Even though the heart actually starts beating much earlier, it is in a very early stage of development.)
+Another, much earlier definition is after the formation of the placenta. The placenta is a marvel of human evolution, a necessary step between laying eggs giving live birth. Without it, the mother's immune system would eradicate the baby, in the same way it would eradicate any other foreign substance. Because the placenta is needed to protect the baby from the mother, it could be argued that this is the phase at which we consider it a human and a separate system. That would be at the beginning of the first trimester.
+===== Conclusion =====
+Childbirth is a truly fascinating and marvelous process. Perhaps it's my background as a software engineer, but I can't take for granted the fact that the creation of such a highly complex system //just works//, no project managers or engineers with blueprints needed. Think about it - it works well enough that it is considered unusual when a baby has even a small defect!
+They come out of the womb, grow a bit, put together some patterns, and before long they are doing crazy stuff like programming computers and writing blog posts. Life is truly special, and every moment of it's incredible journey should be cherished, especially including it's beginning.