From: eeb1@quads.uchicago.edu (e elizabeth bartley)
Subject: Re: ATUI: The Conservative Position, and Why it's Morally Correct
Reply-To: eeb1@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 04:07:25 GMT

In article <1992Nov7.221350.2733@brandonu.ca> mcbeanb@brandonu.ca writes:

>     For me, the most convincing conservative argument is that of
>potentiality used in conjunction with the argument of probability.
>The first argument may be stated as such:  The fetus is a potential
>person from conception.  It is wrong to kill a potential person simply
>because of that potential, therefore abortion is wrong.  This seems
>reasonable, especially when applied to this analogy:  Suppose there
>was a cocoon which was tested by experts, and was discovered to be
>housing a man who was in some sort of temporary sleep.  It would not
>be right to terminate the life of the man in the cocoon simply because
>he would eventually wake up, exit his cocoon, and become a person.
>The main problem with the argument is the fact that it may be reduced
>to the absurd.  If a zygote is a potential person, then why isn't a sperm
>or ovum considered to be a potential person?  Surely it isn't wrong to
>terminate sperm or ova, because each are destroyed naturally by our
>bodies on a periodic basis.  The argument of probability clears this
>discrepancy up by saying that the higher the probability personhood
>will be achieved, the greater our obligation is not to destroy that
>potential (Noonan, 1972).  In one ejaculate there are anywhere
>between two and four hundred million sperm (Haas & Haas, 1990).  Only
>one of these sperm may fertilize an ovum, if the ovum is fertilized
>at all.  That means that any single sperm has, at best, a one in
>two million chance of creating what could be a potential person.
>Indeed, the potentiality of a sex cell to become a person is negligible.
>A newly conceived zygote, on the other hand, has about an eighty
>percent chance of implanting in the uterus and developing into a
>person (Noonan, 1972).

Can you cite your source a little more fully?  I can't believe 80% of
all zygotes would survive pregnancy (even assuming no abortion).

>                        There is a tremendous leap of probabilities
>at the point of conception, but I still like to draw the line at 
>implantation.  The zygote still seems too alien from a human
>perspective to be considered even a potential person.  A zygote
>has no cell differentiation to give itself human characteristics, but 
>this process is undergone after implantation.  With these arguments,
>one can safely contracept without grief, yet one can also adhere to
>a pro-life position concerning abortion.

But a single act of sex at maximum fertility can have as high as 25%
probability of resulting in pregnancy.  If a fertile woman has sex an
average of four times a week for a year, she would almost certainly
have gotten pregnant without contraception.  She may not be able to
point at the specific sperm and egg that she denied the opportunity to
become a person, but she certainly has prevented a person from coming
into being by using contraception.

-- 
Pro-Choice                 Anti-Roe                     - E. Elizabeth Bartley
            Abortions should be safe, legal, early, and rare.

Cthulhu for President -- when you're tired of voting for the lesser of 2 evils.