Define Irony – Liberals rely on religious dogma, while Conservatives rest on medical facts

I was in the Senate Judiciary committee yesterday to testify in favor of senate bill 146.  I didn't actually get to testify, as the "pro" side had many more supporters than the "against" side of the testimony.  However, others including Indianapolis Right to Life and the Indiana Catholic Conference did an exellent job of providing the facts. 

Basically, this bill would force abortionists to inform a woman, before her abortion, that her baby might feel pain, that adoption alternatives are available, that there are physical risks to having an abortion and that human life begins “when a human ovum is fertilized by a human sperm" (conception).  It would also force abortion doctors to have privileges at a local hospital, but this portion of the bill was widely accepted by the committee.  (No vote on the bill was taken, but this should take place next week.)

Indianapolis Right to Life, represented by our own Sue Swayze, (accompanied by a doctor from Ft. Wayne) presented medical facts supporting all aspects of the bill, but especially showing that unborn human beings have the ability to feel pain in the womb and that human life begins at conception.

The conservatives were relying on medical facts.  As much as liberals like to claim that we are attempting to install some imaginary theocracy, not one reference to the bible was used by supporters of the bill.

The liberals who were against the bill sang a different tune.  The JCRC (Jewish Community Relations Council) an ultra-liberal, pro-abortion group testified that they cannot practice their religion if state law defines human life as beginning at conception.  What?!?  Yes, you read that correctly.  They also stated that because God breathed life into Adam, human life must not begin until a baby takes its first breath.  So it's ok to kill a baby the day before the due date...just not once it is born...wow.

The liberals were relying on religious interpretation (very poor interpretation if you ask me) and the conservatives were basing their positions on medical facts.  Somehow that's not "newsworthy"...go figure.

Here is an excellent explanation of when life begins, medically, by the Reachout Pregnancy Center in Arizona:

Medical science has given us that answer. The magic moment is: conception. It is at that moment that the unique combination of chromosomes that define you first came into existance. Before conception, that blueprint did not exist anywhere; after conception, it did. From that point on, your body grew and developed, but -- unless you get an organ transplant or some such artificial addition -- nothing new is added except food, fluids, and oxygen. Scientifically, biologically, and medically, life begins at conception.

Much as I might like to claim credit for brilliant deduction and originality, I did not figure this out myself. It was first theorized by the medical researcher Karl Ernst von Boar in 1828. Over the next several decades doctors and researchers were able to observe the process of conception in the laboratory, first in animals, later in humans, and by the 1850s this was well-recognized scientific fact.

An acquaintance of mine who is a doctor once commented that when his grandfather went to medical school in the early 1900s, he was taught that life begins at conception. When his father went to medical school in the 1920s he was taught that life begins at conception. When he himself went to medical school in the 1950s, he was taught that life begins at conception. Now his daughter is going to medical school, and she is being taught that no one knows when life begins.

How have we become more ignorant, when medical science has advanced so far in almost every other way imaginable? Did new medical discoveries somehow bring the old conclusions into doubt? Hardly. Ultrasound, intrauterine photography, genetic engineering ... all have confirmed and reconfirmed what was discovered in the 1800s. What's changed is that the medical establishment has changed its "knowledge" to conform to the prevailing political winds.

Comments

[Buzzcut]

You know the day that I became pro life?

Agonizing Decision: Multiple Pregnancies Are Often Pared Back In ‘Fetal Reduction’ Wall Street Journal; New York; Nov 21, 1997; By Barbara Carton

This was a front page article in the Wall Street Journal on that day in 1997. In the most horrific, graphic terms it described the "fetal reduction".

It's not often that the Wall Street Journal brings you to tears.

It's not even debatable that the baby feel pain during an abortion. The article is quite graphic in its description of the evidence of fetal pain, wrything in agony as it dies after being stuck in the heart with a needle and being injected with saline.

It's barbaric. And the prevelence of "selective reduction" after IVF is the main reason that I think IVF either needs to be banned or at least heavily regulated.

[Kurt]

Ryan:

You hold out too much hope for the other side on this issue. It's purely emotional, with arguments built out of straw and sand.

[Great Post]

Great post, Ryan. Thanks for being there along with Sue Swayze for all the pro-life, pro-family and pro-faith folks across Indiana.

[Batman]

Go get 'em Ryan

[Kenn Gividen]

Since when did liberals ever rely on honest facts?

In his book, Don't Believe Everything You Think, Thomas Kida outlines six basic mistakes we make in thinking.

The first error is that we prefer stories to statistics. It if for this reason that liberals earn the moniker, "Bleeding Hearts."

When was the last time you heard an NEA liberal confront the statistics regarding the failure of government schools?

When was the last time you heard a militant gay extremist honestly confront the serious health risks associated with their life style?

When was the last time you heard Bill Maher, engage in meaningful conversation sans sarcasm?

When was the last time you heard Al Gore seriously consider the data that disproves his falling earth theory?

etc.

[Chris Douglas]

Good grief, Kenn, get off it. Try encouraging and recognizing committed relationships. Imagine what kind of lifestyle straights would have if neither the State, nor their church, nor their family recognized and reinforced their relationships. It would be chaos... which is what exists in the gay community, especially that part of the community which attempts to live a closeted existence isolated from their community.

Here I sit tonight with Tom in another room, a fire in the fireplace, and Beethoven. Yesterday we had dinner with my parents and visited with family beagle who is in distress. (I gave the beagle years ago jointly to my parents and to Tom, all of whom were pining for one. Growing up, we always had a beagle in the house. But I digress.)

This evening, as I do every Sunday, I picked up my Grandmother, 98 years old, and brought her to my house. She played the piano while I worked... had a dinner of leftovers that Tom returned with after having dinner with an elderly female friend .. virtually a second mother...who is in difficulty. Then I drove her home. (She's always pleased when I have breakfast with our family minister, Dick Hamilton, now retired, as I did last week.)

Being able to lend companionship and helpd to my aging parents and grandparents, as they did me in my youth, is the principle reason I returned to Indiana after military service and graduate school. The fact the Grandmother is going strong at 98 I attribute in part to the fact that she knows she continues to be loved, valued, and her presence enjoyed every day.

After dropping off my grandmother with a kiss and mutual good wishes for the week, I return home to my fire and my desk to find you describe our "lifestyle" as unhealthy, when the writers of this blog have been doing everything they can as long as I have known them (some of them for 10 years now...) to prevent gays from achieving a healthy and orderly lifestyle in Indiana. Who are you to judge?

[Kenn Gividen]

Chris,

That's a nice story.

[Stacey]

Chris,

You sure are angry. Kenn's comment must've hit a nerve since you didn't rebut it. All you can do is attack people personally.

[Chris Douglas]

Indignant, Stacey, not angry. The true picture of our "unhealthy lifestyle" I wrote of above in itself is intended to refute the stereotype of who we are, perpetuated through such casual slurs of millions of decent, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens who deserve better treatment.

The unhealthy lifestyles.. multiple sex partners, public park hookups, etc,... come from those gays who are not in healthy committed same sex relationships reinforced by their families, churches, friends, and employers. Imagine if heterosexuals were subjected to a similar environment... no protection from discrimination in the workplace... ostracized by family, peers, and church for their "behavior"..... See how secretive and uncommitted they would become, all but the most courageous...... and you have some idea of why same sex relationships suffer. On the other hand, Tom and I are fortunate in being embraced by all of the above.

The discouragement of stable same sex relationships produces.... voila!... unstable same sex relationships. And to the degree that gays and lebians venture into ill-fitting heterosexual relationships that subsequently produce divorce, heterosexual marriages suffer as well.

[Kenn Gividen]

Below is a quote from the San Francisco Chronicle:

"A new variety of staph bacteria, highly resistant to antibiotics and possibly transmitted by sexual contact, is spreading among gay men in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles, researchers reported Monday.

"The study released online by the journal Annals of Internal Medicine found the highest concentrations of infection by the drug-resistant bug in and around San Francisco's Castro district and among patients who visit health clinics that treat HIV infections in gay men in San Francisco and Boston."

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dhqp/ar_mrsa_ca_public.html

[Chris Douglas]

Thank you, Kenn. If you hadn't posted this, I might have.

Indiana, San Francisco is a place your children go to get away from you, forced to reject virtually all your values because they you have rejected who they are. They live with wild abandon there in the Castro.

How much different the world would be if we promoted stable relationships, rather than banned them, driving our youth to places like San Francisco and away from our lives of moderation and decency in our midst.

Your posting is an argument for my position... unless Kenn, you are in agreement with the crackpots here who think homosexuality can be stamped out. The answer to the spread of sexually transmitted disease, whether gay or straight, is generally to encourage fidelity to a partner. Heterosexuals have an institution and network encouraging it... gays are actively discouraged from it.

I'll bet you'd find that the spread of the disease is considerably less in that part of the gay population in San Francisco that has settled down to "boring" monogamous life... it would be interesting to see a survey of where the folks now living in the Castro grew up.... bet you'd find a majority of people who came from outside California...from lots of conservative Midwestern hometowns.

Bet the parents of those suffering would now prefer they remained at home in Indiana with a partner, rather than suffering through the infections and absesses brought upon them by the life of abandon they entered into when they left home.

[Gypsy ravenhill]

I was extrememly shocked to hear that a well known TV minister tells his congregation that life begins with the first breath.This man is VERY conservative,in every other way.He does not even believe you could have a beer,and still be a Christian.Yet,he said it is OK to get rid of a fetus,just as you would get rid of a cancerous tumor.How crazy can you get?

[Ryan McCann]

Who is the TV minister?

[Ed Fox]

Facts are funny things, and this argument is, at heart, merely a question of definition, not of fact. The pro-life argument defines "human life" as the first creation of a particular human genome, if we accept the above exposition.

Obviously "human life", as opposed to "a human life" began some time ago. We are each beneficiaries of a continuous line of that inheritance. Clearly each new human life is created from living matter; the life never stops; the question is when do we recognize a new, separate, existence.

I see no reason to rule out the belief that "a human life" begins with the first breath. Certainly the Bible gives support to such a definition. Culturally it is supported by such phrases as "the breath of human life", and "a living, breathing person".

The JCRC was not arguing that the first breath gave rise to the individual's genome; I doubt that they were arguing that a human fetus cannot be accorded protection against physical harm. Their argument seems merely to address their belief in when "life" begins.

There are many other standards that have been used historically in western and other cultures. The formation of the fetus was one, as were the first movement of the fetus, and quickening (the word comes from the old meaning of "quick" which was "alive" as in "the quick and the dead." This is another example of culturally engrained views of when life begins, including some that occur after birth. Viability is another one, perhaps more modern, and a moving target as it depends on our technological ability to keep a fetus alive outside of the womb. It could easily be thought to depend on location, as a fetus that is viable in a modern American neo-natal ward, would likely die in a primitive society, even in 2008.

When someone is clinically dead, they are deemed revived, that is to say alive again, not at conception, but when their heart starts pumping, or they begin to breathe on their own.

Many arguments get tangled up here. The idea that a human life begins with the first breath does not imply that it is acceptable to kill a fetus. We have all kinds of cultural and legal restrictions about how to treat human parts. And deciding that "life" begins after conception would not necessarily preclude restrictions on what could be done to a fetus. There seems to be a good emotional argument that a living, breathing human person, with a family and a life expectancy of more than seventy years, is not exactly the same as a two-week old fetus that has a good chance of miscarrying. On the other hand they both have some things in common. Few people would argue that a corpse is alive, but it contains an individual genome, and we require that it be treated with respect.

We also accord human rights in varying degrees. You have to be a living, breathing human over twenty-one years of age to exercise full rights, in this country, and even then there may be some limitations. Young children, while unarguably human, enjoy only certain rights, mostly because they are not able to exercise their basic rights independently. The assertion of "individual rights" by some stranger, usually a lawyer, in the name of an individual who cannot speak for himself has troubled me for a long time. There is no doubt that such an individual has rights, but being subject to someone else deciding what is good for me does not accord well with my conception of my rights. It feels more like the restrictions imposed on my rights by government in the name of society and its good.

The point is that what we have here is not "scientific proof" but an argument that begs the question of what is the definition of human life. (To beg the question is _not_ to consider the heart of the argument; to assume that it has been decided in your favor at the outset.)

The pro-life crowd declares that life begins at conception, and follows up with scientific evidence that merely echoes that assertion. More precisely, conception is fusion of two gametes to from a new genome. Therefore it is not surprising to find that it results in a new genome. Essentially the argument goes: "Life begins at conception because conception results in conception."

It does not address the question of how to define when a new human life begins. Conception seems certainly to be a good candidate, but there seem to be others. Since "life" is a word, and words are defined by human usage, the question is open and does not admit scientific determination.

It is also a very, very bad idea to start making words the subject of legislated definition, especially when those definitions are proposed by people who have not studied language and are not familiar with where words come from and how they work. In the past we have included legal definitions in our laws, but they were implicitly, or explicitly, limited to the particular law, or laws, in question and were not intended to impinge on everyday usage. Other countries and cultures have tried to exercise more control over their languages with results that experts agree are beneficial neither to the language in question, nor to the society that tried to codify it.

Perhaps this is a good example of the kind of damage that could be caused by such a course. Pro-life supporters oppose abortion. (There are some differences in the extent of that opposition, but in general they agree.) For political reasons, they seem to think that it is an advantage to claim that life starts at conception, (I am sure that many of them firmly believe this) and that any abortion is thus murder. (Often their proposed legislation contradicts this simplistic point of view.) But you could be fervently against abortion and believe, as the JCRC seems to do, that life does not begin at conception. If the point is to limit abortion, that is limiting an action which is permissible under our Constitution. If the point is to compel belief that life begins at conception, that is clearly not allowed. Nor is it necessary to achieve the first end. Passing a law that makes a general definition such as that could unnecessarily attack their freedom of belief. To understand that you have to be able to put yourself in their place, and understand that they have beliefs that are not yours. Such an ability is what distinguishes Americans from other peoples, and that attracts people from every corner of the globe to come here to live.

[Ryan McCann]

This mystical dychotomy of life boggles my mind. It almost reminds me of John Edwards' "Two Americas." There seems to be one type of life you describe in detail...let's call it physical life...where a sperm fertilizes an egg. Then there is this second type of life that is rather mystical that you cannot define.

I reject this dychotomy of the biological and the mystical. I do accept that a person is more than his or her physical body. In other words, they have a soul that will live on when their physical body dies. However, the physical and spiritual are connected.

It is very convenient for some to say that we cannot know when the mystical form of life you describe begins, because if we cannot know then why would we protect this lower form of life (a baby) over the wishes of the mother (who obviously would be a higher form of life in this scenario)?

You seem to assume that pro-lifers oppose abortion first and then form an opinion on when your mystical form of life begins. I believe this is false. Instead, they reject your life dychotomy and define life in all its forms to begin at the point of physical life or conception. You can see that if this is true, then all abortion would be abhorrent because it would violently seperate the physical person from his or her soul, through death.

You are also incorrect in your statement that the JCRC would not be against protecting a "human fetus" (aka a baby) against physical harm. Abortion is certainly physcal harm (death) against a "human fetus" and the JCRC supports that unequivically.

[Ed Fox]

The point of my post was not to express a position on abortion, but to explain that the post's claim that pro-lifers depend on scientific proof is fallacious. When life begins is a question first of definition, not of scientific proof. The mystical life you allude to is not subject to scientific inquiry, let alone proof. You are welcome to your beliefs; you may be correct, but you cannot prove them scientifically.

As you say, pro-lifers, at least some of them, define life as beginning at conception. That is their right. Imposing their beliefs on others is not so obvious.

I do not make the assumption that pro-lifers oppose abortion first, and then decide that life begins at conception. I state that some probably do not. I said that their insistence that everyone accept that life begins at conception is unnecessary but politically expedient in the public debate over "choice".

You are incorrect in saying that I wrote that the JCRC would not be against protecting a "human fetus". I wrote exactly the opposite.

To recapitulate: the article says that pro-lifers depend on scientific proof that life begins at conception. You and I agree that they _define_ life as beginning at conception, and then try to claim the mantle of scientific proof.