Concerning the world system of abortion: a dialogue in nine parts


 


OK, this is LONG. But it's worthwhile, I think, even though greater folks than I have run their ships aground on this reef.

1.
Progressivus: You, then feel that abortion is murder?
Fundamentalibus: I do, sir.
Progressivus: Because you believe that a fertilized egg is a full human being? Sir, it does not resemble a human being in any physical particulars, nor does it have any of the abilities of a human.
Fundamentalibus: It has the DNA of a human.
Progressivus: But so does every cell of the human body--and you do not object to the deaths of those cells.
Fundamentalibus: It also has the ability to become a full living human being.
Progressivus: But not by itself.
Fundamentalibus: No, this is true.
Progressivus: If that were the case--if we were oviparous, like birds or lizards, this problem would not exist, would it?
Fundamentalibus: Quite so. But this is not Barsoom .
Progressivus: Alas, no. But this fertilized egg, in and of itself, even though it is microscopic, incapable of motion, or any activity we consider human, and without substantial external help is incapable of becoming a human being--this is a full person, and destroying it is murder? How can that be?
Fundamentalibus: Because God implants a human soul into that cell at the moment of fertilization.
Progressivus: Into a single cell? Is that possible?
Fundamentalibus: With God, all things are possible.
Progressivus: That is undeniable. But if half of all fertilized eggs do not implant in the uterus, is this not a wastage of human souls? There would be billions of human souls--as many as all humans that are born, perhaps--whose life is short, dark, without sensation or activity!
Fundamentalibus: I have no quarrel with God with respect to His acts. If a woman miscarries, I believe that God takes that soul back.
Progressivus: You do not believe, then, that a fertilized egg has original sin? That, without baptism, or willing acceptance of Jesus as one's personal savior, that soul is doomed to hell.
Fundamentalibus: I will not engage in such chop-logic foolery. This is not the Middle Ages, nor are we scholastics. God does not damn the innocent based on abstract rules. Let us have no babies floating in Limbo!
Progressivus: I would just as soon avoid them as well. But it is at fertilization that the soul is implanted? And then, as the cells divide, the soul takes possession of the other cells?
Fundamentalibus: So I believe.
Progressivus: So then, do twins share a common soul?
Fundamentalibus: Why, what do you mean?
Progressivus: A blastocyst, long after fertilization can lose a group of its cells, and that group of cells also implants in the uterus, and twins are created. So do twins share one soul?
Fundamentalibus: That is impossible.
Progressivus: Does the soul divide in two the way the body does? That would mean a soul can be chopped up into pieces.
Fundamentalibus: I am not certain that that is impossible...but no. It is too distasteful I do not believe it.
Progressivus: Then the creation of a twin would be one case in which a soul is not implanted at conception, but later.
Fundamentalibus: Aaargh! I must concede--you are correct.
Progressivus: So the rule has exceptions.
Fundamentalibus: So it would seem.

2.
Progressivus: So let me ask you this: if a baby is born without a developed brain, does it possess a soul?
Fundamentalibus: Yes. That would be no excuse to abort the child.
Progressivus: Horribly disfigured? Blind, deaf and dumb?
Fundamentalibus: In God's eyes, all His children are beautiful. It is not our place to destroy a life, before or after birth. Even a tiny embryo too small to see.
Progressivus: So this organism, this--entity--
Fundamentalibus: Entity will do.
Progressivus: This entity, then, is a person, even if it never develops to full maturity?
Fundamentalibus: Yes. Of course.
Progressivus: A person with rights? No different from a birthed child?
Fundamentalibus: Yes, yes, yes!
Progressivus: Even if it stays an embryo? A blastocyst?
Fundamentalibus: You tire me. Yes, of course, yes. No difference.
Progressivus: So if a blastocyst were kept alive outside the mother, it would be a full legal person? It could, say, inherit property?
Fundamentalibus: Where are you going with this? It would be a person,but a minor. Laws could be enacted...
Progressivus: If it were kept alive for 21 years, would it be an adult? Could family fortunes be preserved that way?
Fundamentalibus: yessss...
Progressivus: If it were then subdivided to create a twin, would it be a sibling or a child?
Fundamentalibus: This is monstrous! I don't know! Such a prolongation would be an abomination!
Progressivus: But, letting it die, an equal one?
Fundamentalibus: Oh, I see your ploy! No, extracting a live embryo intact out of a mother's womb would not be the same as birth, and letting it die afterward would NOT be the work of fate. You cannot work around this crime in that manner!

3,
Progressivus: Actually, I was thinking along other lines. What if a blastocyst--either one that failed to implant in the uterus, or one that miscarried--got flushed down the toilet, but survived?
Fundamentalibus: You're insane! That's impossible!
Progressivus: Do you speak from your religious certainty, or from your scientific omniscience?
Fundamentalibus: Madness!
Progressivus: Tell me, my friend, why this is impossible. Give me your argument. I will accept Biblical verses.
Fundamentalibus: But...but...
Progressivus: "A person's a person, no matter how small..."
Fundamentalibus: Dr. Seuss does NOT count!
Progressivus: I'm waiting...
Fundamentalibus: Very well. Such a thing might be scientifically possible.
Progressivus: Well, then, if that were to happen, then you would have fully ensouled human beings that were microscopic, floating in every lake, every stream. They would be just as human as you or I--and killing them would be murder!
Fundamentalibus: Ridiculous!
Progressivus: And every time you boiled water, you might be a murderer?
Fundamentalibus: Absolute insanity! This is a completely absurd argument!
Progressivus: Is it? Is it? You say it is absurd to cohabit a world with microscopic humans, then? Humans you cannot see, that no rational individual could possibly even tell was there? That we should nonetheless be murderers of human souls if we so much as put chlorine in our swimming pools?
Fundamentalibus: Of course, Of course! This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of!
Progressivus: Then tell me how this is different from a microscopic human being in a woman's womb.
Fundamentalibus: ....
Progressivus: Tell me.

4.
Fundamentalibus: Very clever. You've tricked me very well.
Progressivus: I have not. Explain to me why a microscopic bunch of cells floating in a lake cannot be a human being , but that same bunch of cells in a woman's womb is.
Fundamentalibus: You and I were both such clumps of cells once, my friend.
Progressivus: Was I? Was I a fertilized egg?
Fundamentalibus: You were, as I was.
Progressivus: And what was I before that?
Fundamentalibus: You were a soul with God.
Progressivus: That's all? I was not a soul, a sperm, and an egg? Not three things?
Fundamentalibus: How can one person be three things?
Progressivus: You tell me. You're the Christian.
Fundamentalibus: Now hold on there...
Progressivus: Sorry. Just a joke there--I was out of line. But I was not three things? I was just a soul?
Fundamentalibus: I think so. I believe so, yes.
Progressivus: So at that point, the sperm and the egg were--what?
Fundamentalibus: I don't know. What are you getting at?
Progressivus: Were they not materials brought together for the process of making a child?
Fundamentalibus: That's reasonable. Yes, I agree with that.

5.
Progressivus: Raw material. But the result of that is a microscopic speck. Why is this not also raw material for what comes later?
Fundamentalibus: But it's complete! It's all that's necessary!
Progressivus: Do I have to throw you back in the swimming pool?
Fundamentalibus: Very well. No, it's not complete.
Progressivus: Is it not a long complex process by which the woman makes a baby--
Fundamentalibus: NO!
Progressivus: --from the raw materials she has been given?
Fundamentalibus: NO!
Progressivus: What's wrong?
Fundamentalibus: That's blasphemy!
Progressivus: Because, if you admit that it is she that makes the baby, then you would have to admit that she could stop making it.
Fundamentalibus: Yes! No!
Progressivus: Which might or might not be bad, but would not be the same as the murder of a human being.
Fundamentalibus: Blasphemy! God--
Progressivus: --supplies the soul, I believe I stipulated. Which would make the task a fairly secular one.
Fundamentalibus: But the soul is there.
Progressivus: Except if it's a twin.
Fundamentalibus: Yes, yes, except if it's a twin.
Progressivus: Why is that, do you think? Why would God make an exception, planting a soul later on in this one instance?
Fundamentalibus: I do not know.
Progressivus: It couldn't be an indication that it happens later across the board?
Fundamentalibus: No. I know this to be true. At fertilizaion.
Progressivus: Except for twins.
Fundamentalibus: YES! Except for TWINS!

6.
Progressivus: My friend, you seem to be extraordinarily vehement in denying the woman a role in the making of a child.
Fundamentalibus: GOD makes the child!
Progressivus: God supplies the soul. Which, when all is said and done, is the really important part.
Fundamentalibus: I'm glad you're not a complete devil.
Progressivus: But why are you reluctant to say that the woman helps fashion the vessel for that soul?
Is it because you don't want to grant her the right to stop the process?
Fundamentalibus: She should not defy God's will!
Progressivus: She should not be able to turn to God and say, "sorry," and hand Him back that soul?
Fundamentalibus: That's NOT how it is! It's a BABY! She KILLS A BABY!
Progressivus: A baby you might drink in a glass of water and not know it.
Fundamentalibus: DAMN you!
Progressivus: Calm down.

7.
Fundamentalibus: I am sorry. But--when a bird lays an egg, the embryo is microscopic--and in a very few days, all by itself, it becomes a complete bird. The mother does nothing to that microscopic embryo.
Progressivus: I know. And life would be simpler. And I would enjoy meeting Dejah Thoris and riding a thoat across the red sea-beds.
Fundamentalibus: You make too much of the woman's role.
Progressivus: Do I? You seem to make it nothing at all.
Fundamentalibus: That is not true.
Progressivus: My friend, is a block of marble a statue?
Fundamentalibus: Of course not.
Progressivus: Then why will you not admit that a thing is not a thing until it is made so?
Fundamentalibus: Then are you saying that abortion is nothing? Perfectly acceptable? I'll never accept that.
Progressivus: My friend, you hold that the soul comes from God. Correct?
Fundamentalibus: Yes.
Progressivus: And hundreds of thousands of times a day, that soul is cast out into darkness after a flickeringly brief, blind, sensationless, inert life, by your own admission. But sometimes the woman's body takes that complete soul and ridiculously incomplete body, and begins to turn it into an entity that can survive on its own. And sometimes the woman seeks to stop doing that.
Fundamentalibus: And it's an evil deed.
Progressivus: It may well be. But is walking away from a block of stone the same as smashing a statue?
Fundamentalibus: You see it that way. I do not.
Progressivus: Is it the same or is it not?
Fundamentalibus: It is not the same.
Progressivus: Then I am content with our discussion.
Fundamentalibus: What? But you've proved nothing!


8.
Progressivus: I've shown to you that abortion is a different thing from murder. That was what I set out to do.
Fundamentalibus: But you haven't shown that a woman has a right to commit an abortion, nor that it isn't an evil deed!
Progressivus: Right? Evil? Do you think that we could come to an accord on these propositions of yours without agreeing on what those words, 'right' and 'evil' , mean?
Fundamentalibus: I suppose not.
Progressivus: If I were to say to you that I believed that God bestows on every woman the authority to decide on whether or not to make babies with the same hand that gives her both the power to create and the ability to judge, what would you say to me?
Fundamentalibus: That you are wrong.
Progressivus: Could you prove me wrong logically?
Fundamentalibus: You know I cannot. Divine revelation cannot be proved by logic.
Progressivus: And I could not prove to you I was right. If you will notice, I haven't tried. But to show that two things are not the same, that is within the purview of argument.. And that, you have admitted I have done.
Fundamentalibus: But that doesn't mean that they're significantly different. Abortion is a dreadful crime.
Progressivus: My friend, does God exist?
Fundamentalibus: Of course He does!
Progressivus: Can you prove it? Be honest now, you know this by faith, do you not?
Fundamentalibus: I am steadfast in my faith. But yes, there is no logical proof of the existence of God. 'No man cometh unto the father, but by Me," Not by logic.
Progressivus: And your assertions are based on the tenet that God exists--which you cannot prove.
Fundamentalibus: God exists. I will not entertain that doubt, not even for the purpose of this dialogue.
Progressivus: Very well. Let me ask you this: how do you prove two things are similar?
Fundamentalibus: You--enumerate their qualities, and see how many qualities they share.
Progressivus: And you then judge whether there are enough qualities to declare them similar.
Fundamentalibus: Yes.
Progressivus: Then you agree that the process involves the faculty of judgment.
Fundamentalibus: Yes.
Progressivus: Do you agree that human judgment is fallible?
Fundamentalibus: There is human judgment, and there is divine judgment. No, you won't get me that way, sir!
Progressivus: We live in a society that is established and governed by human judgment. Do you not agree that where human judgment is required in a thing, it should be acknowledged that judgment may differ on a question?
Fundamentalibus: I do not agree that this society should be governed by human judgment.
Progressivus: So you do not believe in the government established by the Constitution?
Fundamentalibus: Where it conflicts with divine law, no, sir, I do not.

9.
Progressivus: Then let me ask you this: Do you believe that a man who does not believe in God should be forced to worship that God?
Fundamentalibus: No, that would be hypocrisy. Also pointless: God will punish the unbelievers.
Progressivus: Then you do not believe that he should be driven to his knees and made to pray?
Fundamentalibus: Of course not.
Progressivus: Nor to follow any of the other practices of the faithful?
Fundamentalibus: No, I suppose not.
Progressivus: So if the First Commandment of the Law is "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me," that law should not be enforced on the unbeliever by the hand of man--by your hand?
Fundamentalibus: Damn you, no!
Progressivus: But you should enforce the others? Pick and choose which Commandments to apply to society--according to your human judgment?
Fundamentalibus: No, no, no! Damn you, all this trickery will not make me think this crime not to be a crime!
Progressivus: But it is not murder. After all this, grant me that: it is not murder.
Fundamentalibus: Yes, yes, it is not murder--but it is just as bad as murder! It is equivalent to murder!
Progressivus: In your judgment.
Fundamentalibus: AND in the judgment of God!
Progressivus: Which God will render, and not you.
Fundamentalibus: Why not by me?
Progressivus: Because your judgment is fallible. To wit: you were saying that abortion is murder, and now you say that it is not.
Fundamentalibus: You are a devil!
Progressivus: And if I am, that shows that you can be corrupted by the Devil. But I am not. My friend, we live in America, a nation that is governed not by divine judgment--except insofar as all creation is subject to it--nor to yours. It is instead governed according to the confluence of vast numbers of human judgments coming together and exercised in the framework of law--the Constitution and the laws of the land. You may be angered by the fact that these judgments disagree with yours. You may wish they did--it is a human desire. But a wise man will acknowledge that he is human, and not infallible in judgment--even when he is infallible in his belief. It is that wisdom on which this nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, is based. Do you see that? Do you see that?
Fundamentalibus: I do.
Progressivus: My friend, I do not expect you to say that abortion is not wrong, or evil, that it is not a terrible thing. I do not even want you to change your belief. And I expect you, I encourage you to live according to your beliefs--and your judgments. But you should not pretend that things are what they are not.
And, what is far more important, when people do not believe what you believe, you should not make them obey you anyway. That, as you have said, would be hypocrisy. Do you see that? Do you?
Fundamentalibus: You have given me much to think about.
Progressivus: Then do so. Until we meet again, friend.

Posted: Friday - June 30, 2006 at 12:27 PM        

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