| I mentioned earlier that we have to answer the question first and foremost, what is an unborn child, before we can answer any other questions about this issue. Your suggestion that an unborn child is like a seed, the seed is not the flower, was a thought I responded to by saying that yes, you are right, but all you've said is that an adult is not the same as an infant. Because the seed, if it is of a begonia flower, is a begonia. They are just at different levels of development. Just like you have a one-year-old who is an infant, a 3- year-old is a child, a 14-year-old is an adolescent and a 25-year-old is an adult. We have identified stages of development. Yet the thing is what it is through all stages. It's a human being.
Beings produce other beings just like themselves. So it is irrefutable that this is a human being.
There is another stage which I didn't mention and that's the stage of embryo. During the embryonic stage, the unborn child is still a human being. It's just an embryonic human being. It is still what it is. I mentioned last week that a thing cannot change from one thing into another thing. In other words, there can't be alterations or changes in a thing unless something about that thing always remains the same. You have changed from a child to an adult because the "you" which is you, your soul or whatever, your personhood, has stayed the same throughout the changes. The changes have been to accidental things about you, your body, for example. Different things have happened to your body and the same is true of an unborn child. No, an unborn child is an individual being and that's absolutely obvious from the biology and also from the reflection that, if you are a female, and you have a being with a penis inside of you, obviously it's not you because women don't have penises. So the being inside you is a separate being.
Then you simply have to ask the question, what kind of being is it? It's a human being. There is no other answer to that. How do we know? We look at the genetic structure to know for sure. But we also know it is a human being because it is the offspring of another human being, and that is the way things work. Beings produce other beings just like themselves. So it is irrefutable that this is a human being. And actually, no one even argues that anymore. They argue in what they think is a more sophisticated level by saying that it may be a human being, but it is not a person. Then the question is, well, what the heck is a person then if it's not a human being? That's a different kind of discussion. But the point is that we have a human being here.
Now, when you are faced with these more difficult questions as you've raised here, the case of the life of the mother, or with someone who is emotionally unstable, the way to deal with it is, actually the way the caller suggested with the illustration of the two people drowning. In other words, you treat the unborn child as a fully human being and you answer your dilemma on that basis. This is why I asked the question, what would you do given the scenario of an unbalanced woman and having a 2-year-old child? Well, whatever you do with the 2-year-old you would have to do with the 2-month gestation child as well, because they are both human beings in their own right and they both have the same value that ought to be protected by us.
If we can't say we would kill the 2-year-old then we can't say we would kill the 2-month-old in gestation.
That's why I always ask those questions. They sound like cheap shots at first, but keep in mind that I am applying a moral rule here. I'm applying a way of thinking about it. I have come to the conclusion that an unborn child is a fully human being and will also argue at another time, or if the question comes up, that it is fully personal. It's a second issue, but it's a fully personal human being from the time of conception. Therefore, it deserves the same kinds of protections as a 2-year-old, or a 6-year-old or a 30-year-old or a 90-year-old. Therefore, when we run into these conflicts we treat it as we would one of those other human beings. We ask the question, if the mother is mentally unstable, what should we do with her 2-year-old? If we can't say we would kill the 2-year-old then we can't say we would kill the 2-month-old in gestation. It's a very direct question.
What about the case when the mother's life is in jeopardy? Here the caller's illustration is an excellent one. You have two people drowning. You can only save one. You must choose one or the other. Actually, the illustration can be made more complex to be more accurate. You don't have just two people drowning, you have two people grappling with each other, dragging each other down. You can either act to save one, or not act at all and they both drown. That is the case when you have a woman whose life is in jeopardy because of the unborn child, a tubal pregnancy or something like that. In a case where the mother is going to die and the baby is going to die, then you are going to have two corpses on your hands already. It is not a choice to kill one, it is a choice to save one. And that's what you do. But keep in mind, now, I am not treating the unborn child as a non-entity or a non-valuable thing. I am treating it as fully human and fully valuable. But I am making my decision based on the problem that I am faced with -- that I have two human beings that are in jeopardy and I can only save one. Which one do I save? I make the choice to save the mother, because if I didn't do that, then both would die.
You see what that does is provide a coherence in our thinking on this issue. It allows us to come to some rational conclusions on the identity, the ontological nature, the nature of the being of the unborn child, and then to apply that consistently to our ethical decision making regarding this issue. This is why I am against abortions for rape and incest because I don't think we should kill another human being and complicate the crime of rape or incest with the crime of taking an innocent human life. It's consistent and it can be defended. We must be careful that we are consistent and not muddled on these issues. |
