>Date: 8 Sep 1996 06:49:27 -0500 >From: "Robert Sade" The body of Jan Narveson's case against restrictions on abortion is well reasoned; many (including me) end up in the same general place as he. His account, though, doesn't answer some concerns this libprof thread has been wrestling with. He suggests that the matter of maternal obligation turns on the question of rights of the fetus: *My argument, then, IS an argument about "the obligations of pregnant women" but the argument is that they have no obligations that are generally relevant to the matter, and that is precisely because of the absence of rights of fetuses.* A focus of our earlier discussion was the question of when rights appear; this appears to be central to Narveson's argument as well. His answer to this question seems to be that rights appear at birth, or so I infer from his comment that infanticide is *a biggish deal to the infant himself, who by this time is out in the world, with mind more or less switched on*. Maratos-Flier made the point, and I agree, that there's precious little difference neurologically or in any way other than cardiopulmonary function, between a late-term fetus and a newborn. In other words, if rights are based on the presence of a `mind' of any description, EITHER A FETUS HAS THE SAME RIGHTS AS A NEWBORN (FOR WHATEVER REASON) OR A NEWBORN LACKS RIGHTS IN THE SAME WAY AS A FETUS LACKS THEM, ACQUIRING THEM AT SOME LATER TIME WHEN THE BRAIN HAS REACHED A HIGHER LEVEL OF FUNCTION. Is Narveson proposing the biological event of birth somehow endows the organism with rights? Or are rights simply a matter of social sentiment and convention? It is true that *once an organism emerges from the womb, it can be cared for by other people besides its mother*, but this is a social observation that is being rendered less and less pertinent (soon to be rendered obsolete) by advancing extra-uterine support technology, which allows care by other people down to 20-24 weeks gestation now and down to conception soon. If rights are linked to capability of support by others, soon the zygote (even, one could cogently argue, the gamete) will be a rights-bearing entity. I find this position untenable. That is why I proposed a criterion of rights-bearing status to be capacity for volitional choice (or rationality, or some similar capacity), appearing in very early infancy. This, of course leaves the door open for the troubling practice of infanticide (at least of the early newborn), which, if abortion is to be unrestricted, may be unavoidable. A second important problem with Narveson's account is the question of rights of children. He says to pregnant women *"Either have an abortion, if that's how you feel about it, or else take reasonable care of the kid, especially since if you don't' do so, the kid is going to end up being a menace to us; or else, just let us take care of it and you can go your own way in peace."* But what if she doesn't want to take reasonable care; if her son has the same (limited, negative) rights as everyone else, she can just leave him alone, walk away, as it were. But that's OK, because then `we' can take care of him. Who is we? I'll volunteer, up to a point, and so may you. But lack of responsibility among many young people today could easily make the burden of unwanted children overwhelming. What happens to the excess children whom nobody wants? Five year old children are in fact no menace to anyone, so it makes little sense to force the parents (I wouldn't exclude the father) to care for the child to avert an imminent menace to others. Who, then, if anyone, should care for children? Do they have a right to be cared for? If so, upon whom does that right impose an obligation? Can the parents just walk away from responsibility? I won't rehash the earlier discussion on this point (my view was that the positive right of children to be cared for arises from the voluntary choice of parents to create them, placing the obligation of care on the parents), but it seems to me that it remains a problem in Narveson's account as well. Best regards. --Bob ___________________________________________________ Robert M. Sade, M.D. Professor of Surgery Department of Surgery Medical University of South Carolina 171 Ashley Avenue Charleston, South Carolina 29425 Office telephone--803 792 5278; Page operator--803 792 2123; Office fax--803 792 8286; Home telephone -803 723 2148; e-mail--sader@musc.edu =========================================================================== >From: "Aeon Skoble" >Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 08:29:27 +0000 > if rights are based on the presence of a `mind' of any description, EITHER A > FETUS HAS THE SAME RIGHTS AS A NEWBORN (FOR WHATEVER > REASON) OR A NEWBORN LACKS RIGHTS IN THE SAME WAY AS A > FETUS LACKS THEM, ACQUIRING THEM AT SOME LATER TIME WHEN > THE BRAIN HAS REACHED A HIGHER LEVEL OF FUNCTION. That doesn't follow. As you know, the fetus is continually developing. It might very well have a "mind" similar to that of a newborn a few weeks before it is born, but a 2-day old fetus surely has nothing that could be called a mind, as it doesn't have a brain or central nervous system at that point. =========================================================================== >Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 07:48:26 -0700 (PDT) >From: Fred Foldvary >Subject: fetus or embryo? On Mon, 9 Sep 1996, Aeon Skoble wrote: > before it is born, but a 2-day old fetus surely has nothing that > could be called a mind, as it doesn't have a brain or central nervous > system at that point. 2-day old fetus? A "fetus" is defined as an embryo in the later stages of gestation, normally after the 2nd month. Are you using "fetus" with that meaning, or are you using it as a synonym for "embryo" which does start after conception? Fred Foldvary =========================================================================== >From: "Aeon Skoble" >Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 10:02:24 +0000 > A "fetus" is defined as an embryo in the later stages of gestation, Sorry. I was using fetus in a generic sense. I realize that's not accurate now that you mention it, but it's been quite a while since I took biology. If I'm not mistaken though, my larger point, which admittedly was a tad on the nitpicking side, still works though. :-) =========================================================================== >Date: 9 Sep 1996 11:11:40 -0500 >From: "Robert Sade" Aeon Skoble said *> if rights are based on the presence of a `mind' of any description, EITHER A > FETUS HAS THE SAME RIGHTS AS A NEWBORN (FOR WHATEVER > REASON) OR A NEWBORN LACKS RIGHTS IN THE SAME WAY AS A > FETUS LACKS THEM, ACQUIRING THEM AT SOME LATER TIME WHEN > THE BRAIN HAS REACHED A HIGHER LEVEL OF FUNCTION. That doesn't follow. As you know, the fetus is continually developing. It might very well have a "mind" similar to that of a newborn a few weeks before it is born, but a 2-day old fetus surely has nothing that could be called a mind, as it doesn't have a brain or central nervous system at that point.* You are, of course, correct; I should have specified what fetal stage I was talking about. I was not referring to fetuses at all stages being the same neurologically as a newborn, but to a fetus just before birth. The point is that the brain doesn't change from just before birth to just after birth. Thus, the absence or presence of a mind cannot be used to distinguish a predelivery fetus from a newborn, which is what I took Narveson to be claiming. Best regards. --Bob =========================================================================== >From: "Aeon Skoble" >Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 10:15:08 +0000 > The point is that the brain doesn't change from just before birth > to just after birth. Oh, yes, I agree with that. Sorry for the confusion. =========================================================================== >Date: Mon, 9 Sep 1996 15:55:59 -0400 >From: jnarveso@watarts.UWaterloo.ca (Jan Narveson) The body of Jan Narveson's case against restrictions on abortion is well reasoned; many (including me) end up in the same general place as he. His account, though, doesn't answer some concerns this libprof thread has been wrestling with. He suggests that the matter of maternal obligation turns on the question of rights of the fetus: *My argument, then, IS an argument about "the obligations of pregnant women" but the argument is that they have no obligations that are generally relevant to the matter, and that is precisely because of the absence of rights of fetuses.* A focus of our earlier discussion was the question of when rights appear; this appears to be central to Narveson's argument as well. His answer to this question seems to be that rights appear at birth, or so I infer from his comment that infanticide is *a biggish deal to the infant himself, who by this time is out in the world, with mind more or less switched on*. My argument is that rights to NOT "appear" - that's the wrong sort of language, the language that amounts to intuition all over again. Beings too immature to be capable of communication are not in on the "Social Contract". I'm supposing (arguing, really, but not here) that entities inside the charmed circle of being with enough savvy to communicate and enough powers to make sizable differences to those they interact with are the ones who have to decide whether they will grant rights to various things and organisms outside of the said charmed circle - that is, decide whether to regard them, treat them, as having rights. This means finding some decent reasons for doing so - BUT these have to be reasons that are reasons from anybody's point of view, not merely reason that apply to some few or, for that matter, many but short of all. ("All", to be sure, is all in the relevant community or group or society. If it's human rights in general we're talking about, then "all" is simply everybody there is.) Now, the fact "that there's precious little difference neurologically or in any way other than cardiopulmonary function, between a late-term fetus and a newborn.", and so forth, is true but does not figure at all in my argument. Rights are NOT "based on the presence of a `mind' of any description, EITHER A FETUS HAS THE SAME RIGHTS AS A NEWBORN (FOR WHATEVER REASON) OR A NEWBORN LACKS RIGHTS IN THE SAME WAY AS A FETUS LACKS THEM, ACQUIRING THEM AT SOME LATER TIME WHEN THE BRAIN HAS REACHED A HIGHER LEVEL OF FUNCTION." - that just isn't in the picture at all. The difference between a fetus, however late term, and a newborn is not an intrinsic difference in the organism, essentially; it is only in portability and what and how it is attached to others. Organisms in women's bodies belong, as we may say to those women, unless they happen tohave made specific agreements with others as to what is to happen to them. But once out of the womb, that is no longer so. It maywell be so that the resulting newborn is emotionally attached to that mother - indeed, it ordinarily is, and then the question of infanticide obviously doesn't arise. When it does arise, though, is when the woman is really disaffected, somehow, with having that organism around. But lots of other people profess to really care about it, and offer to take care of it. Question: do they therefore have the right to force her not to dispose of it by hacking it up, say? My proposed answer is that IF the woman has had the right of abortion at will prior to that, it becomes more reasonable for people to exclude her from doing such things. This is absolutely contingent on their being willing and able to care for the child themselves; but if they can do so and if she could easily have avoided the issue by not having the child in the first place, then it is, I am suggesting, reasonable for people to insist that she not kill the infant. The reference to the recently-born's interests in the matter is oblique and not of foundational status. Early on, it seems, infants become aware of the world around them, register pleasure and pain and other things, and in short hook onto the general sympathies of those who come in contact with them, and not just its parents (whereas prior to birth, that sort of thing is confined, so far as direct contact is concerned, to the mother). In short, we get interested in the creature, and begin very soon to treat it as "one of us", even though it's not yet in condition to do anything as sophisticated as participating in moral relations. To repeat: nothing along that line was proposed as signalizing the possession of intrinsic rights of infannts. They don't have those. (For that matter, od course, nobody does; but there are organisms, namely competent human adults and more mature children, who are quite capable of responding to others' proposals and interests and so on, in such a way as to be able to make life greatly worse or better for those others; any such, I have suggested, are "insiders", charter members, straightforward participants in morality. So the case for their having rights is simply the description of them as having interests such that claiming them and being willing to observe their retrictions intheir relations to others is sufficient straight off for their "having" rights. It is not for organisms falling well short of those features. They need a different story.) Is Narveson proposing the biological event of birth somehow endows the organism with rights? [No] Or are rights simply a matter of social sentiment and convention? [no. Why 'simply'? The story I (or David Gauthier, or Hume, or Kant) tell is hardly "simple", I should think. Claiming that rights are "simply a matter of social sentiment and convention" is putting in for simple-minded social relativism, according to which you have rights if and only if most of some bunch of people say you do. Sorry, that isn't my story. Our story is that there are good reasons for according rights to certain entities, including ourselves, that we can figure out what these are, and can criticize actually existing conventions in the light of the results.] "It is true that *once an organism emerges from the womb, it can be cared for by other people besides its mother*, but this is a social observation that is being rendered less and less pertinent (soon to be rendered obsolete) by advancing extra-uterine support technology, which allows care by other people down to 20-24 weeks gestation now and down to conception soon. " My comment: In a sense that's true, but in another, not at all. For a long time to come, at least, abortion will be an invasive operation from the mother's point of view. Her rights are such that we cannot require or forbid such operations for her; in principle, it doesn't matter how easy it is to take care of it after it's extracted from her. If rights are linked to capability of support by others, soon the zygote (even, one could cogently argue, the gamete) will be a rights-bearing entity. That simply doesn't follow on my account, nor is it true, nor is it what I said. I find this position untenable. Of couse - so do so. Part of the point of my essay was precisely to deny the relevance of such stories to the fundamental question about abortion... "That is why I proposed a criterion of rights-bearing status to be capacity for volitional choice (or rationality, or some similar capacity), appearing in very early infancy." No good. To make volitional status OF ITSELF a sufficient condition for rights is to revert to the erroneous idea that rights are natural properties of things. They aren't. "This, of course leaves the door open for the troubling practice of infanticide (at least of the early newborn), which, if abortion is to be unrestricted, may be unavoidable." The door IS "open" to that, but its troublesomeness, as you call it, is a good reason for restricting it. It is simply not true that infanticide "may be unavoidable"; what's true is only that the subject is unavoidable. Of course it is: we must address it. But, as I've been pointing out, once abortion is unrestricted, the case, by any given mother, for infanticide becomes extremely thin, and the case against just letting her do this becomes pretty good. "A second important problem with Narveson's account is the question of rights of children. He says to pregnant women *"Either have an abortion, if that's how you feel about it, or else take reasonable care of the kid, especially since if you don't' do so, the kid is going to end up being a menace to us; or else, just let us take care of it and you can go your own way in peace."* But what if she doesn't want to take reasonable care; if her son has the same (limited, negative) rights as everyone else, she can just leave him alone, walk away, as it were. But that's OK, because then `we' can take care of him. Who is we? I'll volunteer, up to a point, and so may you." 'We' has to be particular real people. The woman must be able to know that some actual person will in fact take it off her hands, absolutely. I don't believe we can deprive her of the liberty to engage in infanticide unless this option is, really, available. It in fact nearly always is in contemporary society, where the list of those clamoring for infants to adopt is enormous. But lack of responsibility among many young people today could easily make the burden of unwanted children overwhelming. IF that happened, THEN we'd have to let those parents kill their children. So what? Resorting to force against lots of your fellow men in order to prevent that, in the supposed interests of the child or of anybody, is unacceptable. "What happens to the excess children whom nobody wants? Five year old children are in fact no menace to anyone, so it makes little sense to force the parents (I wouldn't exclude the father) to care for the child to avert an imminent menace to others. Who, then, if anyone, should care for children? Do they have a right to be cared for? If so, upon whom does that right impose an obligation? Can the parents just walk away from responsibility? I won't rehash the earlier discussion on this point (my view was that the positive right of children to be cared for arises from the voluntary choice of parents to create them, placing the obligation of care on the parents), but it seems to me that it remains a problem in Narveson's account as well." It does arise from that voluntary choice - but to say this is ipso facto to say that it's voluntary. As I read the above, it seems that the claim is that if people have voluntarily chosen to have children, then they're jolly well stuck with them. In my view, they are not. WE could certainly wash our hands of those unwanted children too - they could be unwanted by *anybody*, not just their parents. If that were so, we would certainly have no business preventing those parents from dealing with the situation by killing those children. But there is no problem of this kind in today's world, and especially not in our part of it. As I say, the lines of people desperately looking for infants to adopt is enormous. I know people who have paid thousand and thouands of dollars and waited years to get an unwanted Chinese or Korean infant; they'd have been delighted to get a white or brown one from down the street, if they were to be had. There is a tendency to talk about rights as if costs and benefits had nothing to do with the subject. That's the kind of attitude that winds us up with the absurd legislative messes that we actually have in so many areas. All costs are costs TO somebody, all benefits TO somebody. We internalize the costs of children by allocating children to those who are ready to bear them willingly, and, hopefully, to social benefit as well. If it isn't the parents, it had better be somebody else. If it's neither, then those children should not be around, and we have no business forcing anybody to keep them around. But the fact is that in this wealthy contemporary world, the case of the (more or less normal) infant unwanted by anyone anywhere is a nonexistent case. Jan Narveson (Professor) ===========================================================================