The things you learn when reviewing your International Law notes. I won’t get into too much background, but the International Criminal Court was set up to deal with the most serious of crimes, including “crimes against humanity.” Crimes against humanity incldes things like murder, genocide, ensalvement, torture, etc. The definition of “crimes against humanity” also includes this:
Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy and enforced sterilization or any other form of sexual violance of comparable gravity.
Guess who opposed it. Hint: They’re as “pro-life” as this cartoon would imply:
If you guessed The Holy See, you would be correct. From the horse’s mouth:
At every UN international conference, even at the last one, which was held in Johannesburg in 2002, the same influential groups still try to return, although in a different way, to the issue of abortion. This was the case during the Conference, which aimed at creating the International Criminal Court. Then there was an attempt to declare the so-called ‘forced pregnancy’ a crime against humanity. If such a general formulation had been accepted, the spouse’s objection to terminate a pregnancy could have been a punishable act – crime against humanity. However, after a hard struggle two principles were accepted: first of all ‘forced pregnancy’ was defined as the unlawful confinement of a woman forcibly made pregnant, with the intent of affecting the ethnic composition of any population. Secondly, such cases have nothing in common with the law regulating abortion. The result is that the principles of the above-mentioned Article 8.25 remain legally valid.
So they agree that a woman should not be forcibly impregnated (i.e., raped), but they’re happy to support forced pregnancy, and refuse to consider it a crime against humanity — because, I suppose, women are not fully human.
There it is: the trump card to pull out the next time that some anti-choicer argues that opposition to abortion is all about the babies, and isn’t about wanting to dehumanize women or force them to remain pregnant against their will. That’s exactly what it’s about, to the point where they don’t consider forced pregnancy to be any sort of crime, and where women’s rights are less important than human rights — “humans” being the male of the species, naturally.
This is definitely one I’ll save. Thanks for the heads-up.
Ugh. I realized as I clicked “Submit Comment” that my auto-fill put my first name in the ‘name’ field, and my full name in the email field. What the hell?
In your smugness, you’re leaving off much relevant text of Article 7. For the Rome Statute, “forced pregnancy” does not mean “rape.” For that reason, I would be careful before pulling out your gotcha moment.
Also, the quote you provide and your own text deeply misunderstand the ambit of Article 7.
First, the statute lays out a limiting definition of crime against humanity. I have highlighted the relevant part:
So, no, a spouse’s objection could never be considered a crime against humanity even if your definition of forced pregnancy (i.e. rape) held true.
Furthermore, the crime of rape is already included in the Statute. Section 1(g) includes both rape and forced pregancy:
Again, of course, for such to constitute a crime against humanity the rapes must be part of a widespread or systematic attack against civilians.
And finally, section 2(g) defines “forced pregancy:”
Reading comprehension, darling. I never said that forced pregnancy means “rape.” I said that the Vatican agreed to the convention so long as forced pregnancy was defined as forcibly impregnating someone against their will — i.e., rape/genocidal rape. It was the Vatican who claimed that including the term “forced pregnancy” would give women the right to — gasp — abortion. And they are in favor of forced pregnancy, according to their definition. As a result, the Rome convention was clarified to define “forced pregnancy” in an extremely limited way.
Get it? The Vatican does support forced pregnancy. They would only sign the convention if it was defined in a way that only applied to forceful, genocidal impregnation.
Yeah, obviously. That wasn’t my argument — that was the Vatican’s argument.
Seriously dude, read the post and the links before you tell me I’m misunderstanding something. Please.
What’s interesting is how many forced pregnancy advocates as of late have gotten more public about how they see banning abortion as a way to alter the ethnic make-up of a community. Missouri anti-choicers jumped the gun a little on this and explictly advocated for abortion bans in order to make their community more Anglo.
So, it’s a crime to physically confine a woman, barring her access to abortion, but it’s not a crime to politically confine a woman’s rights, barring her access to abortion?
If you’re in a country where you have no rights, power, or ability to leave, what the hell is the difference?
What Akeeyu said.
Amanda, for some reason I can’t click your link. I’m in Missouri, and I really want to read it. Can you paste just the link?
I like what Akeeyu said, assssss well. It reminds me of something a stranger said to me in the deli last week: “free speech isn’t worth much when you’re poor.” He was quoting Lenin, or paraphrasing. I’m off-topic here, so sorry for the people who want to read about forced pregnancy. I think that’s interesting, but know too little about international law to really contribute meaningfully. To be honest, I didn’t even really understand the political cartoon above until Jill mentioned the vatican in her reply to the above jerk.
But what I want to talk about is – why is law school sooooo much about abstract freedoms, and soooo little about the economic disparities that render those freedoms abstract? It’s hard to get worked up about the right to do this or that when everybody’s so goddamned poor.
In fact, I had this thought the other day – couldn’t we scrap equal protection jurisprudence as it stands today if we had just one suspect classification, namely, wealth? With money, all the minorities could buy all the political power they need.
Here I’m rambling, so goodnight and goodluck.
Avi, you need a break from economic determinism. It’s getting to your head.
These people are evil. Truly, truly, evil.
We’ve got a doozy of a comment in the moderation queue for this post.
i would recommend letting the comment loose so the posters can have a go at deconstructing it.
as akeeyu said above, can the case be made that nicauragua, ethiopia and el savador are, in effect, committing crimes against humanity by advocating forced pregnancy to the point of detriment to the mother’s (and fetus’s) life?
Most assuredly (and this should be obvious even to the Vatican, and the fact that it isn’t says something scary), any nonviable pregnancy that will kill the mother should be legally abortable, and said abortion should be both readily available and free (i.e. covered by that real pro-life thing: universal healthcare). An ectopic pregnancy, for example, will never result in a living baby—the best you can do is have a living woman at the end of it. But nooooo, removing a doomed embryo before it bursts out of the fallopian tube and kills itself would be wrong.
It’s like refusing to take out a suicide bomber that’s setting up to blow up a huge office building, because said suicide bomber has a hostage (who cannot be rescued and will die anyway).
Such a policy (and y’know what’s really freaky? It feels like I’m attacking a strawman argument here, but it’s NOT; it’s actual policy in some of these countries that take their cue from Catholic doctrine), in essence, commits murder to avoid euthanesia. Although, I am sure they are pleased to call the former “natural causes.”
Oops.
I’m sorry! It was like eight pages long!
Jungles of Injustice and You: the Big-Hearted Guerrilla
ART HAS BEEN ON MY MIND. And “art” has been on my mind. And Doing Something to Help has been on my mind. And ideas have begun to come together for me as if revelatory. Which is funny, because the…
Krya: To be fair, just for the academic exercise, Catholics are perfectly happy to treat an ectopic pregnancy once the embryo has died. And it is not all that unusual for the first sign of the pregnancy being ectopic to be the rupture of the fallopian tube, since women freaquently don’t get prenatal care or, sometimes, even know that they are pregnant, in the first eight weeks of pregnancy.
Then, of course, there are the cases in which the woman in question gets early prenatal care and therefore knows about the ectopic pregnancy before it ruptures. How “pro-life” is it to tell her that while it is technically possible to treat this problem with a simple procedure or medication, leaving her alive, healthy, and fertile, she’s going to have to wait until a crisis occurs, risking her life, health, and fertility, all so the doctor can say that the “baby” was dead before the intervention occured*? Then, presumably, the doctor is supposed to leave her to contemplate the fact that she will shortly experience extreme pain, shock, and probably die, despite the fact that medical intervention to save her from that fate is not just possible but easy.
The final irony is that the hostage in your analogy is not just doomed but brain dead…or at least not brain alive. An embryo has no ability to experience pain or fear or contemplate its fate. Unlike the woman carrying it.
*Which, depending on the laws inacted, he or she is going to have to be able to swear to or risk her/his own life on a “murder” charge. Again, oh-so “pro-life”.
Forced pregnancy?
It is the woman’s choice to become pregnant.
It’s not about the “babies,” to these people, it’s about preserving life. If you believe that life begins early on in the womb, then it is your position that abortion is murder.
If you believe that, then by your logic, it would be like saying you are forcing someone not to commit murder.
Finally, where the hell is the personal responsibility of the woman and the man here? Sure have unprotected sex, get pregnant, sure get an abortion, do whatever you want.
Sometimes if you do something irresponsible you have to live with the consequences of those actions. If you get pregnant because you failed to use contraception, then you have taken on the responsibility of the life you have created.
The unfair thing here, is of course that the man in many countries (even in countries like the US) do not have to take on that responsibility. That is bullshit: the man bears just as much responsibility to the life created as the woman.
But ultimately this is about personal choice: If you choose to create life, then you accept the responsibility of the consequences that flow from your actions . . .
Otherwise keep your pants on.
The catholic church’s position on abortion is highly hypocritical, and so are many right-wingers (Im pro-life but I like executing people).
However, the basic moral proposition that a person is formed early on and is therefore a human and is entitled to all the basic human rights you would have afforded to women, is far from a hypocritical position.
It is ironic that you seem to argue that abortion protects women’s rights when it destroys the rights of the person she holds inside.
(I’m actually pro-choice, but I highly respect and think there is something to the moral position of “life” than we give credence to on the left.)
you must be highly respectful of life since, as you claim, you “like executing people.”
“It is ironic that you seem to argue that abortion protects women’s rights when it destroys the rights of the person she holds inside.”
i dont really get this line of thinking…first off, anything that isnt outside of someones body i can hardly consider a “person”. it seems like its a matter of which matters more, the woman or the fetus since you cant grant them both equal rights (and why exactly would you? a fetus does not = a living breathing woman). i for one, think that yes, woman ARE people, and a fetus is kind of but not really heh. so i just dont understand that argument.
A fetus isn’t a person. A fetus is human, but so is a corpse. Neither has rights, because they’re not considered alive.
A pregnant woman, however, is both human and a person with fully-vested rights.
Again, reading comprehension could do all of us a world of good.
“Forced pregnancy” under this convention refers to things like purposely impregnating Jewish women during the Holocaust to perform experiments on their fetuses, or Serbian soldiers systematically raping Bosnian women and forcing them to bear their children as a means of ethnic genocide.
It also refers to forcing women to remain pregant against their will. Pregnancy is medically distressing for many women, and forcing them to remain that condition is cruel.
And it’s not a woman’s choice to get pregnant. It’s often a woman’s choice to have sex, but sex does not equal pregnancy. That’s like saying it’s a man’s choice to get into a collision because he drives a car.
Right. And one of the ways to accept responsibility is to terminate a pregnancy that you don’t want.
This is an very imperfect analogy, but if I’m driving in a car and I get in an accident, should paramedics refuse to treat me because a collision is a known risk of driving?
First, Alanis, look up the definition of “irony.”
Second, your argument that the Vatican or pro-lifers or whoever want to give the fetus the same rights as women is not true. Even if we assume that the fetus is entitled to the same basic rights that women are, abortion is still a morally sound choice. Are women who have, say, failing kidneys allowed to use someone else’s kidneys, without that person’s consent? Could I use your blood in a transfusion if I needed it to survive, simply by coming up to you and sticking a needle in your arm without your permission? No. If a fetus is not wanted, and the woman is therefore not giving her consent for it to use her body for its survival, then arguing that she is not allowed to forcibly remove it is in effect giving the fetus greater rights than the woman.
Ever heard of rape? Incest? Coercion? Birth control failure? These aren’t rare events.
Yes, because EVERY child deserves to be placed with parents who absolutely do not want them. Oh, and condoms never break, nor do birth control pills ever fail, so it’a always their own fault.
And on the other hand, if a man and woman are routinely irresponsible about birth control– or just don’t have the money for it — these are pretty much the last people you want raising a kid, anyway you slice it.
Finally, I’m sick of this holier-than-thou attitude that people take: “don’t have sex if you don’t want babies” and “keep your pants on” DOESN’T WORK. People like and need teh sex. And that’s OK. It’s healthy and normal. When you take out the crazy, made-up, religious angles of sex and reproduction– the idea that it’s somehow bad, so you deserve to be bogged down with an unwanted child if you have it, or the idea that a tiny clump of cells is more important than a person whose life is already in progress — the “pro-life” arguement makes little sense.
How do you come up with that postulate? How is an embryo a “person”? Can you come up with a self-consistent definition of “person” that
1. includes all embryos, fetii, children, and adults up to the point of brain death
2. excludes the brain dead (or includes an alternate definition of “death” and excludes all of the above after such point)
3. excludes somatic cells, unfertilized gametes, and cancer or otherwise altered cells
4. excludes cell lines such as HELA or Jurkat cells or even non-malignant cell lines such as transformed fibroblasts
5. does not count monozygotic twins as one person
6. deals with the issue of whether a clone (ie person derived from the somatic cell of another person or a simple artificial twinning event–it’s easy enough to remove one cell from a zygote at the 8 cell stage and one could incubate that cell just as well as the 7 cell residual embryo–though the cell’s usual fate is analysis for genetic defects–and is that analysis murder or not?)
7. deals with the question of whether the products of a hamster egg fertility assay are human or not (the hamster egg assay involves incubating human sperm with hamster eggs to see if the sperm can penetrate the eggs or not…usually the products of such conceptions die without dividing…occasionally they survive. I’m not sure any has ever lasted to the point of being tossed out alive, but I’m not sure it hasn’t happened either.)
8. again, is self-consisten and not based on simple prejudice.
Wow, great summary there Dianne! Can I use that in the next argument I get into? :)
Nicely said Dianne. That the fetus is human does not make it a person anymore than an acorn is a tree or an egg is a rooster.
Whether the fetus is living or not (although it seems rather obvious to me that it is alive) is beside the point. Nobody supports a woman’s right to choose on the basis the fetus isn’t alive, so pointing out “well, the fetus is alive!” doesn’t change anything. Obviously it’s alive. If it weren’t living, then she wouldn’t be considering abortion.
bwaahahahaha!
Damn. I was going to say something about Tony’s ignorance and shoddy logic, but you ladies already made every single point I was going to make. You even called him Alanis. I love this blog.
Wait, I just remember I was raised by a single mother. Tony said:
You might believe a hypothetical man “bears just as much responsibility,” but in reality, many many women raise children without any sort of domestic, emotional, or financial support from the men who clearly had nothing to do with the intercourse that turned out to be procreative, considering, as you said, “It is the woman’s choice to become pregnant.” I guess that why it’s the woman’s responsibility to raise the child alone, too.
So when it comes to statements like this:
I might not dismiss them as such typical, misogynistic, patriarchal crap if men bore the majority or even half of the responsibility for child-rearing in this country. (Of course, they still want the control of the population, however.) That aside, the basic idea behind feminism, and, whoops, you found your self on a feminist blog, is that a woman’s body is her own property.
Furthermore, I direct you to some brilliant comments by RMildred, who said:
I’m not an expert on theology, but isn’t much of the religious argument against abortion about the idea that the fetus has a soul, therefore it is human? (Which makes it understandable that adherents of said religions would oppose abortion, although in my opinion, it’s not appropriate to apply that to the laws of a country unless you live in a theocracy.)
The idea that all women who get abortions are freely having unprotected sex is a strawman argument that I can’t believe hasn’t been debunked. Many women do not have access to contraception or even basic health care/sex education (we are not just talking about US women, after all!) and rates of rape are depressingly high. Just a little while ago feministe had a post about a young woman working full time, going to school, the mother of three children, who was almost denied her right to sterilization. Furthermore, the expectation that a woman has to “put out” whenever her husband/boyfriend tells her to further diminishes women’s sexual autonomy. And with the hatred that people heap on single, especially young pregnant women and mothers (that they’re stupid or slutty or whatnot), I think that it is understandable that a young pregnant woman would rather abort than face nine months of people moralizing at her.
Although I don’t have a degree in it or anything, I have studied embryology. It’s a reasonable argument that a zygote *is* a separate life – because it’s genetically distinct from the mother and the father at fertilization.
However, at that point, it’s still using a lot of proteins and other compounds from the egg (that’s why eggs are so big compared to other cells) and continues to use nutrients from the mother throughout pregnancy. And human gametes (sperm and egg) have a fairly high rate of mutation/error so many zygotes are unviable and end in miscarriage.
I’ve seen a human fetus collection, and it’s a little bit creepy, because even the first trimester fetuses have perfectly formed fingers and ears even though they are about the size of a thumb. However, organ and organ system development are far from complete at that stage.
Jill, I’m away from my computer this week, but if you need research on this subject, it was the topic of my note.
C
micheyd: Feel free, but two words of warning. One, be prepared for the response “how can you compare a bayybeee to a cancer cell” or “are you saying you can’t tell a person from a sperm cell” or some similar emotional appeal. It isn’t possible to make a rigorous definition of “person” that both fits the strict (no abortion from conception on) pro-life position and excludes all the entities such as cells in culture, brain dead people, etc that has any logical consistency. So the only possible response to a request for such a definition is an emotional appeal. Two, explaining the hamster egg assay to a pro-lifer can be…interesting. I quite enjoy it myself but then again I’m known to have a rather low sense of humor. Proceed at your own risk.
This is an very imperfect analogy, but if I’m driving in a car and I get in an accident, should paramedics refuse to treat me because a collision is a known risk of driving?
It’s not imperfect at all. Especially if the paramedics agree to treat you, but only if you were wearing a seatbelt, or only if somebody else caused the accident.
Heh, well I’ve had a lot of abortive (har har) conversations like that, but if they decide to try to argue biology, it always comes down to the famous “sperm magic” – because basically, they’re arguing that fertilization is a defining moment. Which it is, but not of personhood. Of course, this is a hidden metaphysical argument, but they’ll never admit they’re trying to cloak their beliefs in the rigor of science…
exangelena: It’s a reasonable argument that a zygote *is* a separate life – because it’s genetically distinct from the mother and the father at fertilization.
Two words: tetragametic chimerism. A person with tetragametic chimerism can have an organ that is genetically distinct from the rest of him/her, due to the merging of fraternal twin blastocysts. That doesn’t entitle the genetically unique organ to any rights (After a cholecystectomy: “Don’t you dare incinerate that gallbladder of mine! That’s murder!!! I’m a chimera, and my gallbladder is the sibling I never had! Give it to me in a little jar, and I’ll get it a Social Security Number and take it to vote and stuff.”).
I’m in love. Bridgetka’s answer was so perfect I hate to add anything, but I have a couple more words to add.
Monozygotic twins: Two people, one set of genes. Are they a single person because they are not, in fact, genetically distinct?
Cancer: Yes, I know. But cancer cells are genetically distinct from their hosts. Most have major, recognizable differences, such as extra chromosomes or major relocations of parts of chromosomes. Does that make a cancer a separate life from its, er, parent?
The argument from genetics only sounds reasonable until you examine it too closely. It doesn’t really work.
Ha. Just ask them in return how they can compare a bayybeee to a fertilized egg. Since I’d imagine they’d have some difficulty telling a cancer cell from a fertilized egg, or at the very least, they are much closer to each other than either is to a baby.
“is entitled to all the basic human rights you would have afforded to women”
Basic human rights? Since when do I have a “basic human right” to help myself to your body and use it to keep me alive against your will? As far as I know, your right to bodily autonomy is the most basic human right there is. Inviolable by me without your consent. Even if you’re my father, I can’t prevail upon a court to strap you down and so much as extract a drop of blood from you, even if I’ll die without it, and even though blood donation is a relatively noninvasive procedure.
You’re not granting a fetus that has no independent existance basic human rights, you’re granting it superhuman rights to essentially ownership over someone else’s body that aren’t granted to any actual living, breathing human. And in the process, you’re constricting the women’s basic human rights and relegating her to subhuman status. You’re taking away her right to personal autonomy and her right to make her own medical decisions. Where will it end? Since she doesn’t matter and the fetus is entitled to superhuman rights, why not lock her up for nine months in prison, a controlled environment where the well being of the fetus is always paramount? God forbid she should go jogging or do something in the course of thinking she has a right to walk around freely that would inadvertantly cause harm to the fetus.
the catholic church and friends fail to make a distinction between born and unborn life. There are unborn persons and there are born persons
the catholics believe the unborn should be treated as a “human being” (like any other) at the moment of conception
the “pro-lifers” call it a “holocaust of the unborn”-and one of their mottos is “life begins at conception”-mother theresa said abortion is the “worst evil of all” because it “preys on the innocent”
so with this viewpoint six million fertilized eggs aborted at the moment of conception is the SAME as six million murdered born people -oh wait excuse me it’s WORSE …because the unborn are innocent . Nice! Holocaust minimization AND bile spewing woman hatred in one pop gotta love the catholic church!
So lets take the fertilized egg out of the woman for a moment and look at this “morality”- if I have to choose to save the life of a toddler or the life of a fertilized egg in a petri dish-it’s six to one half a dozen to the other? But if I have to choose to save the life of one toddler or a million fertilized human eggs I should save the eggs because then I’d be stopping a holocaust ?
What if I saw someone about to jump off a ten story building holding a viable fertilized egg? Should I save the egg and let the person plummet to their deaths because…”that’s their choice” and “nobody forced them” to jump off the building and besides they’re a “baby killer” who “deserves to die” ? Because as we know killing a fertilized human egg is EXACTLY the same as killing a born human-no difference life is life and murder is murder. Oops I forgot -it’s worse to kill a human fertilized egg because the unborn are innocent. And that’s why the death penalty is okay because those people are guilty and even if they are innocent of the crime they are still born in “original sin” so they’re guilty of something.
And a woman who uses an I.U.D. is worse than jack the ripper.
Born life takes precedence over unborn life-if it doesn’t then what gives a woman the right to have an abortion to save her life?
If they can demonize women to the extent that killing a fertilized egg is the same as or worse than shooting a toddler in the head what’s to stop them from demonizing women who “murder their innocent unborn babies just to save their own selfish lives” ? If they want to portray such women as monsters sucking the blood of the innocent unborn babies they can, but they seem content
to just drill it into womens minds that God cares more about fertilized human eggs than a few dead “baby killing sluts”.
“pro-life” is a lie they are pro-unborn life and if a few rape vicims are forced to give birth against their will and if a few women commit suicide rather then be forced to give birth against their will and if a few women die from illegal abortions well …far be it for the prolife movement to let a few dead women distract them from their profound respect for the “sanctity of life”.
But hey give ‘em credit where credit is due at least they’re being consistent now that men’s lives are on the line-if they suceed in banning stem cell research men will also get to suffer and die because there are people who have more concern for fertilized human eggs than for born human beings.
I think that the big thing here is genetic difference that results from fertilization, rather than mutation, and has the potential to become a human individual. And no, I don’t believe in “sperm magic” or whatnot, fertilization is just generally how humans are conceived.
Tetragametic chimeras – from the cursory research I did a few minutes ago, have organs that are genetically distinct from other organs in their bodies. An organ – or a gallbladder if you will – is not a human individual, nor does it have the potential to be (I’m assuming this is the organ of an adult human, properly differentiated and such), although zygotes do. Stretching the fertilization thing a little further, in this case I guess you could say that the genetically distinct dizygotes took a rather different path.
Monozygotic twins – two people who are genetically identical, but are both genetically distinct from the parents. You don’t really have one monozygotic twin trying to abort another one.
Cancer – results from mutation, not fertilization. Tumors don’t have the potential to become individual humans.
I’m not a doctor or an expert in rare genetic disorders, so I’m not 100% sure about all of this, much of my knowledge comes from university biology for majors courses. Furthermore, advances in biotechnology, say, parthenogenesis or cloning, will certainly challenge our concepts of life.
Here’s a hypothetical for you…
A new illness appears. Since this is SciFiHexyLand, this is an illness that when contracted by a woman will kill her if she is not pregnant. The prescence of a pregnancy is the only thing (bizarrely enough… I love SciFiHexyLand) that will keep her alive.
An amazing new (equally bizarre) drug is invented. It effectively halts a pregnancy in its tracks, keeping the developing fetus in a sort of suspended animation inside the woman.
So a pregnant woman contracts the illness. If she gives birth she will die. She can take this drug that will keep her alive, but means that her pregnancy is extended indefinitely and the fetus, while still alive, exists only to sustain the woman and won’t be born.
Would the anti-choicers support this, giving the woman the same rights they want to extend to the fetus? Or would they be up in arms, decrying this “abuse” of the fetus to support the woman?
*twilight zone music*
And only if someone else owns the car you’re driving.
Yes it does. Cloning of mammals has been successfully demonstrated and the only reason the principle hasn’t been applied to humans is that people think that it is icky. So the gallbladder has just as much potential to be a human individual as the zygote–more, since more people could be cloned from it. (Note: They’d be unhealthy people, but I don’t think anyone wants to argue that a sick person is not a real person, do they?)
Some cancer cells are totipotent as well. Check out “teratoma” while you’re doing research. As it happens, a teratoma nucleus inserted into an aneucleated egg is capable of developing into an apparently healthy organism. Don’t think too hard about how we know this. As far as mutation versus fertilization, that seems to me to be nothing more than a prejudice. If the important thing is that the DNA be unique, who cares how it became unique? And that still leaves twins as a single person.
So? They are genetically identical to each other. And by the definition you proposed that makes them only a single person (or maybe half a person apiece.)
One twin aborting the other sounds…improbable except in cases where one twin dies, which would end the pregnancy (the rotting tissue has to be expelled or the mother dies) unless a therapeutic selective abortion is performed. So a dead twin could “abort” the living twin simply by being a stimulus to premature labor. Again, the only way to save the living fetus is a selective abortion.
However, if genetic uniqueness is the only criterion for humanity then the twins continue to be a single person, don’t they? Is it ok for one twin to force the other to donate an organ to it because, after all, they are a single person and if twin A gives permission for twin B’s organs to be harvested who is twin B to object?
Incidently, genetic uniqueness does not end with brain death. Are brain dead people really by some criteria “alive” then?
Mutation versus fertilization – Birth via fertilization is the way that humans have reproduced for the vast majority of human history. Again, I said earlier that advances in biotechnology will force us to rethink this debate, but for most people, even IVF is out of the question in terms of expense and availability. Everyone has somatic mutations (due to errors in DNA replication) but somatic mutations don’t grow into separate organisms.
I believe Dolly was cloned by inserting genetic material from the first sheep’s breast cell into a totipotent embryonic cell – the differentiated somatic cell is unable to become anything else at that point. Some advocates of cloning suggest that cloning via this method is basically like artificial twinning.
As for the monozygotic twins, I explained that they are genetically distinct from the PARENTS not from each other. Basically what I meant about genetically distinct zygotes was in the context of fertilization and pregnancy; a zygote (or at later stages of development, blastocyst, embryo etc.) is not the same as a woman’s intestine cell, because it’s genetically unique from her as a result of fertilization.
Brain dead people – there are many definitions of death, as some people, like Terri Schiavo, can be in a “persistent vegetative state” but still have their other organs functioning.
I never said that genetic uniqueness was the criterion for humanity or that twins aren’t people. Even genetic definitions of humanity are difficult to agree on (as are definitions of a species) – if we go with 46 chromosomes, then that leaves out people who have aneuploidy or trisomy, if we go with ability to reproduce, well, that’s even less on target …
Out of curiosity, what field are you in?
Talking to a person directly in front of one is how people communicated and gathered information for the vast majority of human history. Does that mean that writing, the printing press, TV, telephones, and the internet don’t exist or just that they’re inventions of the devil?
Ah, but they can and sometimes do. Consider the Hela cell. It started out as a mutated part of a woman’s cervix. It has now been transformed into not just a separate individual, but actually a different species (The next step in human evolution? Single celled organisms, apparnetly.) Many, not all, cancer cells are capable of becoming independently living organisms if they are taken from the host and cultured under the right conditions. With some manipulation, even non-malignant cells can be coaxed into becoming separate, independently living organisms. Some of my white blood cells are currently sitting upstairs from where I sit, growing in an incubator. Trust me, I am not also up there: they are separate from me.
Terri Schiavo wasn’t brain dead. Neither are people in PVS. To be considered brain dead, the person in question must have absolutely no activity on an EEG, no independent breathing, and a couple of other criteria that are basically meant to rule out the possibility of their brain activity being reversibly suppressed. Schiavo had, relatively speaking, a fair amount of neurological activity. She could breath independently and occasionally vocalized. Her cortex (the “thinking brain”) was totally destroyed, but she had some brainstem activity.
Diane,
Cloning of mammals has been successfully demonstrated and the only reason the principle hasn’t been applied to humans is that people think that it is icky
What? For the last couple of years a number scientists have been trying to create a cloned human embryo. South Korea/Hwang Woo-Suk? Team from Harvard? Ian Wilmut?
So the gallbladder has just as much potential to be a human individual as the zygote–more, since more people could be cloned from it.
The gall bladder isn’t a human organism while a human embryo is. Plus, no one has ever cloned a human being from a gall bladder while humans have been developing from the embryonic stage since we started existing so claiming a gail bladder has more potential to be a human individual (I’m assuming you mean some variation of “person” by this) is nothing short of absurd.
The fact that researcher may be able to take a cell (a part of an organism) put it in an egg without a nucleus and then prompt it to start developing in no way means a cell has more potential to become an adult human than an embryonic human.
Consider the Hela cell. It started out as a mutated part of a woman’s cervix. It has now been transformed into not just a separate individual, but actually a different species
The Hela cell is not an organism. You’ve asserted this before. This is not accepted by the wide majority of scientists. It is not a different species just because a few scientists made up a name for it.
So you’re saying that whether or not an entity is considered human should be based on tradition? It’s traditional to make humans via the fertilization route therefore embryos are human whereas cloning a human from a gallbladder is novel therefore any people so produced would not be a person? Strange logic.
Incidently, no one (unless the Raelians really did try it) has tried making a human clone for implantation in a uterus and development into a baby. Yes, a number of people have tried making totipotent stem cells from adult tissues. Some appear to have succeeded. It may be somewhat more difficult for primates than for other mammals (something about the centromere arrangement IIRC–which I may not), but it’s only a technical problem. If we want cloned babies we can get them.
Not more potential, the same potential. Per cell. And there are more cells in a gallbladder than an embryo. (Not that a gall bladder would be the best choice…something a little less terminally differentiated might be better. Blood stem cells or intestines maybe. Ahem. Of course, it would be extremely unethical to try any such thing…)
Dianne, all the stuff you[re talking about is just fascinating. Which field are you in? (you don’t have to answer) And do you know of any good books written such that a reasonably intelligent lay reader in which this stuff is explained? Becuase my interest is all aflame!
Dianne,
No, I’m saying whether or not something is a human being or not should be based on reality. Tradition has nothing to do with it. A gall bladder is not a human being. Scientists may one day in the future (we don’t know) be able to take cells from a gall bladder and manipulate them along with an egg and create a human being – that in no way proves a gall bladder has as much or more potential to become a grown human being than a zygote. Zygotes develop into grown human beings all the time while creating cloned human embryos and then taking that embryo thru the fetal and infant stages has come nowhere close to occurring.
People have tried to create cloned human embryos. For the most part their efforts have been complete failures. Hwang Woo-Suk and his team used 2000+ eggs and didn’t get a single cloned human embryo. Scientists from Britain also claimed to have created a number of cloned human embryos with less than 100 eggs (which leaves me doubting whether their research was on the up and up) but after the research was published the team broke up.
You don’t make totipotent cells by human cloning. You try to create a cloned embryo from which you might be able to extract cells if the embryo lives long enough.
I think it’s rather presumptive to save “If want cloned babies we can get them” when researchers haven’t been able to get a stem cell line (much less any kind of further development) out of a cloned embryo.
How can you say they have the same potential per cell? That’s simply not true. No one has come anywhere close to even getting a cloned human embryo (if such a thing has actually been created) to grow to the blastocyst stage much less any stage of human development past that stage. The South Korean’s used 2000+ eggs and 2000+ individuals cells and got nothing.