Jasper’s comment at Jill Stanek’s over Ilana Goldman’s refusal to answer Bob Enyarts question “What is it?” happened to coincide with an existing unpublished post of mine.

While reading through Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen’s book Embryo:A Defense of Human Life, it occurred to me so few people who argue in the abortion debates, both pro-life and abortion-choice, really understand the scientific basis for life. The biological depth is astounding, and invites a serious philosophical debate. The authors are disturbed by the diminishing level of discourse – where rationality regarding the evidence is being plainly and willfully ignored. (Ilana Goldman illustrates this irrationality so well.)

They point out various activities within the first 14 days after conception are not so easily explained. The possibilities of intercellular communication seem to be a fascinating area of biochemical research. There is sensing occurring, at a level we don’t yet comprehend. (If you think intercellular communication is not possible – you need to check out how single cell bacteria communicate.)

Some abortion-choice advocates call embryos non-sentient tissue, but their arguments are – subjective:

All human beings with rights are sentient; No embryo is sentient; therefore no embryo is a human being with rights.

If the argument is over living flesh and blood, and “what it is”, then sapience is a pre-requisite to sentience, because it is impossible to have a subjective (sentient) homo-sapien, without first having an objective one. Self-awareness does not require communicating self-insight to others, so any perceived observation of another’s self-awareness is completely subjective. It is an imposition of an external idea of awareness upon another, completely impossible without the underlying matter – the flesh and blood.

Put another way – arguments over flesh and blood rights doesn’t work if their own flesh and blood, (including their sense of self-awareness) is removed. So another approach would have been to ask Ilana – “what are you?”

How can one demand rights while denying pre-requisites underlying their own sense of personhood?

It begs the question.

Human Rights abortion, cowardice, flesh & blood

Some abortion-choice advocates make a claim for an individual human being’s sovereign right to use their own body at any moment, as they wish, including giving life, or killing the life inside.

To be meaningful, such a right must be held by a living human being, a somebody; the dead don’t exercise such rights over their bodies, for rather obvious reasons.

What gives rise to individual body rights if there is no life?

This is the studiously avoided question, one which abortion-choice advocates fail to answer.

Human life is a prerequisite for any other right a human being might possess, including bodily sovereignty. Life is of infinite worth, but what is assumed is that it is not of infinite worth (that it has less value than a “right”) for the purposes of killing the unborn. The “right” cannot stand without that question begging assumption. The argument is then made that giving life is an act of voluntary charity that is extended to another human being and so giving life need not be extended to the unborn.

Such an argument is generally ignorant of virtues, and lacks an understanding of how the virtues impact lives. To one who makes such an argument, compassion must be shown, their misunderstanding forgiven, for they are in the dark.

Whenever one lives completely at the sovereign power of another being, they live at the mercy of that sovereign power, because charity is a distribution of benefits, but mercy is shown by the powerful towards the weak, when it comes to life, and the execution and judgement of sovereign power. Mercy is about compassion, that is suffering, whereas charity doesn’t require suffering of the giver. If such suffering does occur in the execution of sovereign power, then that’s called grace.

So the claimed “right” to abort is the “right” to be unmerciful to one who is completely dependent upon that living sovereign, and utterly lacks compassion and grace.

So here’s some more questions:

What does it mean to be merciful?
What’s unique about the mother/child relationship?
Can you kill someone who is fully dependent upon you?
Your mother extended mercy to you, why don’t you extend it to others?
Is such a right a sign of love?
Is killing your child an act of love?

Do you devalue your own life when you do so?

Why should anyone be shown mercy, if a mother doesn’t show it to her own child?

The biggest thing missing in such arguments is love, because it is upon love that the other two, mercy and charity, exist.

So here’s another question: by who’s grace was that original sovereign bodily right given?

Human Rights abortion, compassion, flesh & blood, forgiveness, grace, mercy

In the abortion debate there is a line of argument that goes like this:

The fetus is not a moral sentient being because it doesn’t think, therefore it’s not a person and can be killed.

Such arguments are known as body/self dualism.

As you can see, those who argue this believe a human body exists, then later a “person” inhabits that body. The premise is non-sensical and needs to be shown as such.

Using that logic, how can one demand bodily rights when one doesn’t view their body as intrinsic to their person? Since the origin of their personhood is doubtful, evidence must be produced that they are in fact valid and rightful owners of said body, the body they are claiming ownership over, for how do I know I’m not dealing with a “person” who’s using a stolen body? In fact, how do I know if there’s not more than one person in that body?

Sounds foolish? Yes – but that’s what they are arguing: that human beings aren’t intrinsic. They demand we treat them as intrinsically valuable human beings, while arguing that the fetus is not.

Take the proverbial advice and never argue with a fool – because people might not know which one is which.

Morality abortion, dualism, flesh & blood

Lately I’ve been grappling with the idea of “intrinsic value” which seems to be, well, essential, to most thought provoking pro-life human value arguments. This idea escapes so many people – in argument after argument I’ve noticed that few seem to grasp what “intrinsic” means, offering instead their own interpretation. And it’s not merely the pro-choice crowd that misunderstands the idea.

Stand to Reason’s Greg Koukl, while interviewing Robert P. George (who, along with Christopher Tollefson wrote “Embryo:A Defense of Human Life”) mentioned that radio host and columnist Dennis Prager, while understanding the pro-life position, also failed to grasp the meaning of “intrinsic value”. (Listen to STR Podcast of 2/19/08 at 37:30 in)

Inspiration being what it is, the other morning I woke up with bread on my mind – how wonderfully diverse bread is, and yet so representative of humanity in terms of illustrating this idea of our intrinsic value.

Like people, bread comes in all sorts of shapes, sizes and different forms, from whole loafs to flat breads to rolls and biscuits. Sometimes yeast is added, sometimes it isn’t. It also comes in various colors, textures and tastes based upon numerous ingredients, yet it all has one single thing in common: grain flour.

From a challah loaf to a pita pocket, without grain flour, there is no bread. It could be said that particular ingredient is intrinisic to bread.

The analogy to human beings is that our flesh and blood, the human cellular material which is the combined ingredients from both mother and father, defines us as humans – not any other ingredient that might be added after.

Our flesh and blood is intrinsic to our nature as human beings, to our very personhood as beings. Just as you can’t remove the grain flour and still have bread, you cannot remove flesh and blood and still have a human being regardless of their concious state.

Disconnecting personhood from flesh and blood (dualism) undermines all bodily rights reasoning for abortion. How can you rightly claim it’s your personal body, if you don’t believe it has a coherent, intrinsic value as a whole?

When Christ lifted up the loaf, he may have been illustrating more about his relationship to humanity than what was immediately apparent.

Human Rights abortion, flesh & blood, George, intrinsic-value, Koukl, Relationships, Tollefson