From: nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos)
Subject: Abortion and Religion I: The Great Paradox
Summary: Continuing "The Mind-Body Problem and the Abortion Issue
Keywords: paradox, afterlife, abortion, secular
Organization: USC  Department of Computer Science
Date: 14 Dec 92 17:28:28 GMT

In the past week I have posted excerpts from a copyrighted essay, "The
Mind-Body Problem and the Abortion Issue," on which I am still working.
These appeared under the title, "Neuroscientist(s?) versus the
World-Enigma Part 1" [resp. Part 2], on talk.abortion and
talk.philosophy.misc, with Part 2 also appearing on sci.bio.  In this
post, to reflect the shift in topic, I am removing sci.bio and adding
talk.religion.misc.  I am also repeating some excerpts from Part 2 to
maintain continuity.

******* From "The Mind-Body Problem and the Abortion Issue"  ************
Copyright 1992 by Peter J. Nyikos

At some stage in embryonic or fetal development we are presumably
dealing with a conscious individual.  The exact point is a mystery, of course;
but it seems to me that there is a *prima facie* case for it happening by the
time brain waves are first detected.  The same kinds of brain waves are used
to determine whether comatose patients are brain-dead, and it is only at that
point that cessation of life-support systems was (by no means always) allowed
by law until the recent (extremely disturbing, to me) Nancy Cruzan case.  
These brain waves can be picked up, 
as remarked above, around day 40, still within the first half of the first 
trimester of gestation. 

    Whenever it happens, we are from that point on dealing with an individual
self, with its own personal identity. In the event of abortion this self 
is prematurely wiped out, perhaps forever.  

    One of the great paradoxes of the abortion issue is that the major
religious groups at the forefront of the movement against abortion are the
evangelicals and the Roman Catholics, the very groups one would think most
able to contemplate this aforementioned event with equanimity; whereas the
secular humanists, whom one would logically expect to be most appalled at the
very thought of such an event, are by and large supportive of unrestricted
abortion.  [There are notable exceptions to both of these generalizations,
but I will deal with them elsewhere.]

    After all, the Roman Catholic church officially subscribes to
the doctrine that there is a God who judges each individual according to that
person's conscience, and rewards or punishes him in an eternal hereafter
accordingly [Romans 2: 12-16], and this view is shared by many
evangelicals.  Those who have been aborted, being incapable of evil, would thus
be spared any punishment in the life to come. 

    On the other hand, secular humanists typically do not even take the
possibility of a life after death seriously, and most of them place a high
value on individual life--except, paradoxically, in the case of the unborn.  I
say "paradoxically" because, while the secular literature rightly mourns the
death of even those who have had a very full and long life, the death of young
people, who have not had the chance to taste life as fully, is especially
imbued with tragedy for them.  This is a recurring theme in fiction and
biographies as well as accounts of plagues, famines, wars, and genocides.

    In the latter half of 1992, for example, we have been treated to
numerous newscasts on the starvation in Somalia, and these generally give
special video emphasis to the tragedy of starving children there.  This has
been the pattern for many years, both in newscasts and in documentaries;
we have seen similar footage at the time of famine in e.g. Ethiopia and
Bangaladesh.

    In a similar vein, the fact that the wars against the
American Indians included massacres of defenseless women and children is taken
to be a special blot on the history of the United States.
   
 By process of extrapolation, the death of one not yet born would seem be
even more tragic, and killing the unborn even more abominable.  A nascent
consciousness is obliterated without ever knowing what sort of life in the
outside world it could have been born to, a life that would have been fleeting
enough without this violation:
         One Moment in Annihilation's Waste,
         One Moment, of the Well of Life to taste--
         The Stars are setting and the Caravan
         Draws to the Dawn of Nothing--Oh, make Haste!
                                  - The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym,
                                    by Edward Fitzgerald, 2nd ed.
     
         Oh Threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
         One Thing at least is certain--This Life flies;
         One Thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
         The Flower that once is blown forever dies.  [ibid.]
     
    To expand on the metaphor in that last line: in abortion, a life is nipped
in the bud before it can bloom, and in some cases with the accompaniment of
agonies such as most of us have yet to experience, and, hopefully, never will
experience. 

    But those in the pro-choice movement resist extrapolating backwards,
both as regards the killing and as regards the accompanying pain.  Most of
them would undoubtedly be appalled by the thought of young children being
tortured and many would probably side with Ivan (and his brother Alyosha, to
whom he is speaking) in _The Brothers Karamazov_ when he concludes his
impassioned account of man's inhumanity to children with the oft-quoted words:

     Tell me yourself, I challenge you--answer.  Imagine that you are
     erecting the edifice of human destiny with the object of making
     men happy at last, but that to this end it was essential and
     inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature--that baby
     beating its breast with its fists, for instance--and to found
     that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the
     architect on those conditions?  Tell me, and do not lie.
				from the chapter "Pro and Contra"

"Torture to death" is an apt phrase for what happens to the fetus in an
abortion by salt solution poisoning, which can take several hours to kill the
fetus.  I believe that if the full details of this barbaric method were
generally known, the ensuing public outrage would cause this method to be
banned. [It has indeed been banned in Japan, which has had abortion-on-demand
for the last three and a half decades, but only because it often causes
complications for the mother.]  Apologists for abortion are quick to point
out that this method is used in only a small fraction of the cases--but
then, Ivan Karamazov did not even say "one in every thousand"; he said 
"only one".   

   Most of the other legal methods of abortion take much less time to kill the
fetus, but are just as gruesome otherwise.  Some methods, such as the
injection of prostaglandins and hysterotomy, are different in that they by
themselves are not directed at killing the fetus.  Nevertheless, the fetus is
either killed before applying the method or, if it survives, it is then either
killed or left to die a death which could, again, be long and agonizing.  I do
not want to go into any more details here, but I will say this: were I a firm
believer in reincarnation or rebirth, I would be horrified at the prospect of
being the victim of abortion in some future life, at a stage where I can feel
everything that is happening to me.

[End of copyrighted excerpt.]

The Ivan Karamazov quote has been the subject of discussion on
talk.abortion.  There has been some disagreement on the meaning of
"unavenged," for example, and also on the message Ivan is trying to impart.
The continuation sheds some light on this:

         "No, I wouldn't consent," said Alyosha softly.
         "And can you admit the idea that men, for whom you are
     building it, would agree to accept a happiness based upon the
     unexpiated blood of a little victim?  And accepting it would
     remain happy forever?"
         "No, I can't admit it."

Alas, all too many today accept just such a happiness and even claim any
means of abortion directed at attaining it to be a "right"--not just a
legal right, as in abortions before viability, and in abortions done
to preserve maternal life "and health" afterwards, but a natural right
extending all the way to birth, for whatever reason.

But the most important message imparted by Ivan and Alyosha to us today
seems to be that if one does take the path of "the unexpiated blood of 
a little victim," that mankind really cannot be happy forever if it regards
this path to be morally justified, especially if all regrets about it are
dismissed as anti-choice propaganda.

Newsgroups: talk.abortion