Aliza Shvarts is a monster

Yes, Rod, you think she's a monster ... and I think she's a monster ... and sane persons everywhere will conclude she's a monster.

HOWEVER ... let's all start an office pool here on the Crunchy Con blog and take bets on how quickly she surfaces on Oprah Winfrey's show or "The View" and gets the usual softball treatment and "validation" of her behavior.

Then lets start another betting pool to see how quickly this leads to "copy cats" and become the theme of popular YouTube videos.

Aaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhh!!!!!!!

Rod:

For a Full Monty on the banality of evil, check out my blog for Shvarts' video of herself holding forth on whatever it is that fills that empty head of hers. It's, like, ohmygod! Paris Hilton talking about, you know, like, this class she took from from Foucault or something! I mean, like, totally, you know?

You have to see it to believe what a lamebrain she is. Talk about sin making you stupid!

"Our site is temporarily down due to a surge in traffic." - Yale Daily News

Speech is silvern, but silence is golden...

Maybe the Swiss proverb carries more truth than ever - piling on may just encourage the usual suspects...

Banality of evil, Mark? I just watched Pia Lindman's spectacularly stupid video, and I think it's almost worse than that: it's the banality of banality.

I can't wait to see what Camille Paglia has to say about this.

From the quoted article
But Shvarts insists her concept was not designed for "shock value."

I think we can make that a "brashly lying monster." To make this kind of statement, one must either be monumentally stupid or think everyone else is. When it comes to the artists and their admirers these days, I think both options contain a lot of truth.

Yes, but of what value is the conversation if it doesn't proceed past "Ewww, gross."?

Well, even that is an opinion formed for or against the magical quality of the embryo that "pro-life" people propose to be inherent in it.

According to the Drudge Report, this entire project was a hoax.

Hoaxes' Spring Maternal...

This reminds me of something the late Ann Landers used to say: In a society where anything goes, eventually everything will.

>>>
Thought experiment: if you are pro-choice, does this disturb you? Why, if the embryo has no moral status as human? I'm not asking in a rhetorical way; I really want to know.
>>>

For the same reason that I would be disturbed if an 'artist' over the course of year acquired and humanely euthanised a dozen puppies, dissected the corpses, and used the body parts in an exhibit - not, by the way, in an exhibit that had some redeeming scientific value, but a shock piece such as was described in this hoax.

Because it would be a senseless waste for no useful purpose.

I have tutored many fine students such as Ms. Shvarts and they are responsible for many solutions.

Wife and I both laughed when we saw this since it was so obviously a hoax.

I oppose making abortions illegal but if it were physiologically possible to do what this person did I would consider it a sin. Purposely risking ones health/life/future fertility just to make an artistic statement seems to run against several commands. (Body as temple of God for one).

Steve

Attn: Rod Dreher
Your BS detector is defective and a recall has been issued. Please bring it to your nearest authorized dealership for recalibration.

Jillian, I have on good authority here that mean people suck.

Just saying...

Now let's see, what is the average cost of each artificial insemination - several thousands of $ per try, and how many does it take to achieve a pregnancy, on average (hint - more than one or two, just like normal sex), and assuming this college girl had all that money, how many years of this process would it take to repeatedly get pregnant and then abort to get enough "material" for this "exhibit" do you suppose? (See Sig's note on the BS detector problem.)

Any ideas on why you were so eager to believe it?

Ann Landers had the recurring challenge of detecting the annual Yale student letter which was written to stump her - full of outrageous problems but just enough that was credible to pull her in.

That Yale tradition apparently lives. She gotcha.

Even had this not been a hoax, the professionally outraged do well, as I mentioned above, to leave these stories alone and move on, the better not to play into the perps' hands on either the one hand or the other - goin' to see Miss Aliza was a mug's game in any case. As it is, the "artist"-who-cried-wolf's credibility is shot, such that the next time readers pro or con are tempted to see Shvarts an' egg 'er on, they'll know to ignore her now, believe her never...

What if they gave an orgy and nobody came?

"Any ideas on why you were so eager to believe it?"

Please note, Elizabeth, that in his original post Rod said he had doubts about this "artist's" veracity.

Having said that, with this crowd anything's possible. Ever hear of zombietime.com?

"I've been saying that about La Skeletor of the Right for years."

Don't know about that, Scott. I'm not yet convinced that her gig isn't purely schtick (not that this in itself precludes the need for a good M/N health policy...)

And of course, one could define performance art as schtick that mistakenly takes itself seriously.

UPDATE.2: Surprise! Yale now says the whole thing did not involve self-induced abortion, but rather was "performance art" by Shvarts. IOW, a hoax. What a total and complete cretin.

The cretins, IMO, are those who actually believed that this was real and not a hoax. Before I finished reading the news item a second time, my BS Meter starting buzzing real, real loud. She may be a "maroon" (or a quadroon?), but she at least got her 15 minutes and suckered a lot of people, for whatever that's worth. Street Theater, perhaps?

The sick heifer probably tortures puppies too. I agree. Absolute cretin.

Ummm, this is a really good and effective and powerful piece of performance art. Provocative, sure, but also really challenging.

I'm surprised Rod can't see that the strong anti-abortion charge in this piece of art. If you hear about it and you're disgusted (as I'm sure even many pro-choice people would be), the next logical question is: if abortion is simply a personal choice, then *why are you so shocked?*. In other words, the piece challenges the pro-choice attempt to say that abortion is simply a morally neutral personal choice.

I truly hope the "artiste" wasn't trying to prove that women should have absolute autonomy over their own bodies. This has set any feminist cause we maybe subject to back a thousands years at least, including equal pay for equal work.

It's people like this that caused me to lay down my 'EXACTO' knife and 'KOOH-I-NOOR' technical pens many decades ago and never look back. That plus the fact that the size of my ego wasn't large enough to cover my lack of talent, maybe Miss Shvart's ego is.

An interesting note in the article about Yale's ethical standards that would prohibit such a project:

"Ms. Klasky suggested that Yale would not have permitted a project of the sort described in the student newspaper. “Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns,” she said."

I get the part about "mental and physical health," but what's this about "ethical standards"? Is it a violation of the ethical standards of Yale to kill human beings at the embryonic stage of life? If it is, do they prohibit embryonic stem-cell research? If they don't, then what's the problem with Aliza Shvarts's performance?

(http://reluctantpenitent.blogspot.com/2008/04/why-does-yale-have-problem-with-aliza.html)

So there was a male, or more than one, willing to make biological "donations" for this purpose? Why isn't the "collaborator" coming forth to take credit?

Story still doesn't add up.

Abortifacient herbs are very strong. The dose required to abort is close to a fatal dose for the woman. Unlikely that she could hit it just right, repeatedly. So she caught her menstrual blood.

Not only is this not art, it is not new. But it is easier than learning to draw, paint or sculpt, or write a script.

Rob G. - My comment about being eager to believe the story was about commenters.

Leaving aside all other aspects of this disgusting story, when will people who feel like creating and/or sponsoring art wake up and realize that all things transgressive have become incredibly boring and tiresome. It is way past time to come up with a different approach, as opposed to trying to figure out a way to be more transgressive than the last transgressor. A very limited imagination at work here. This might make me want to yawn even more than it makes me want to hurl.

I'm perfectly aware that most pro-choicers are not like Aliza Shvarts. I was just asking why they think what she did is so terrible, if it's just a clump of cells.

>>>>
I'm perfectly aware that most pro-choicers are not like Aliza Shvarts. I was just asking why they think what she did is so terrible, if it's just a clump of cells.
Posted by: Rod Dreher | April 18, 2008 3:30 PM
>>>>

And I answered that question.

Also, someone who kills a million people is a monster - this, not so much.

ScurvyOaks raises the following objection:

"Assume that Roe went away tomorrow, and that abortion became illegal. What exactly should that, i.e., the illegality, mean? Who would subject to criminal prosecution, and -- particularly -- what should be criminal punishment be? Same possible punishments as those that apply to murder? If not, why not?"

I'm assuming that ScurvyOaks is asking about cases like Aliza Shvarts's, which involve embryos rather than a fetus.

I suppose the answer would have to be "whatever punishment is sufficient to prevent it from happening."

There seem to be two factors to take into account in comparing this case to other acts of killing a human being:

1. The humanity of the embryo requires some reflection. It doesn't look like a human being.
2. One cannot determine whether any embryos were in fact killed.

Why is 1. relevant? Don't people who oppose embryo destruction claim that we have to protect the embryo irrespective of its appearance, because it is a human being? That's true, but appearance is relevant in thinking about culpability. It's hard for a sane person to be in doubt about the humanity of a 20-year old. The appearance makes the humanity quite obvious. The humanity of an embryo, on the other hand, requires some thought before it is grasped.

2. is relevant because in most of the non-ESCR cases involving embryos--the Aliza Shvarts case, the birth control pill, the day-after pill --the most that one can say is that someone's actions have resulted in a degree of probability that an embryo has been destroyed. Endangerment is not the same as deliberate killing, even when killing was intended, as it appears to have been in this case.

aquaman said:

"Abortion is a complex issue. Of course a fetus is more than a clump of cells; on the other hand, few people honestly believe frozen embryos have the same moral status as you or me. Most of us who are pro-choice come to that position precisely because of this complexity-- we wouldn't presume to make such a difficult choice for someone else, and we're angered when a stranger tries to arrogate to themselves the right to make that choice for someone we love."

Here we have a very common characterization of the abortion debate: supporters are "nuanced" whereas opponents see things as "black and white." It seems to me that it's the pro-choice side that's in favor of life-simplifying policies. The world would be much more complicated without abortion. Many more people than now would have to deal with babies with needs, in some cases needs exacerbated by illness and pain. How is it either nuanced or sensitive to the complexities of life to be in support of getting rid of needy human beings?

Perhaps the claim is that pro-choicers are aware that some immoral things should be permitted by the state, in order to respect freedom. Of course, this assumes that abortion opponents are unaware of this very obvious fact, which is nonsense. For the record, I'm quite aware of it myself. Neither the pro or the contra view is more nuanced on the matter. They both offer a simple answer to the simple question: "Should people be permitted to kill unborn human beings?" Or, if you prefer the abortion-friendlier way of putting it: "Should pregnant women be prohibited from having abortions in non-life-threatening situations?" The answer to both questions is either "yes" or "no." Both answers are equally devoid of nuance.

Not complex. The frozen human embryon is a human being, different from an adult in the same way as a child is different from an adult. That difference is one of growth and development. They embryo, the child, and the adult are NOT different in kind. They are not different things.

To say that the moral status of a human being begins at any point other than conception is a decision based on convenience and not on the nature of the thing (a complete human being).

To say "we can't KNOW that an embryo is human" is neither factually true nor any reason to rush in to destroy. Think about it: "Hmmm, I can't tell for sure that this thing is human, so it's okay to kill it."

No aaron they are not. But sperm and egg cease to exist at the end of conception, at which point a new thing comes into being, a single, organized unified organism that did not exist before. This new thing has its own natural course of development. None of this is either mysterious, esoteric or Biblical. It's basic biology.

"Are sperms and eggs each 1/2 of a human being?"

Sigh. The state of American scientific education.

"Are sperms and eggs each 1/2 of a human being?"

Sigh, the fatuous state of American rhetoric.

Amazing. She probably got what she wanted: publicity and attention (to what end though). She successfully (and shamefully) demonstrated multiple stereotypes: degenerate art (if it can even be considered as such), showmanship/publicity, hoax/fraudster.

What will she do now since she made a name for herself? Design and peddle handbags like Monica Lewinsky?

When will Americans wake-up to all this rubbish before it's too late and people like Aliza destroys our remaining values.

To answer your question - no, a human fetus has no moral status. It should be an interesting exhibition, though I doubt her art is actually any good.

TRP,

Freezing them isn't bad for them; it's necessary and morally right, as without freezing they would perish in their petri dishes like little Terri Schiavos (God rest her soul).

Two thoughts; one, that "epater le bourgeois" is a tried and true opening gambit. It will never go out of style because it always works. As witness the convulsive spasms of fury and loathing demonstrated here, which would surely have been very gratifying to the artist. You all were free to think for a moment and conclude, "hmm . . . another menstrual blood installation . . . how trite . . ." and return to your regularly scheduled programming--but noooo . . . . When you--figuratively speaking--waddle out onto the firing line and present a fat, cushy target, why be so surprised that the avant-gardists can't resist peppering you with birdshot?

Secondly, I must thank Max for again bringing the embryo onstage. It inspired a bit of surfing that led to the following fascinating link--a transcript of a bioethics discussion moderated by Leon Kass.

http://www.bioethics.gov/transcripts/jan03/session1.html

Obviously, I'm late to the party here, since I see that Reason magazine did an article on this in 2004. It's still interesting, though. Sixty to eighty percent of all fertilized gametes--which, in Max's opinion and those of others, are "little human being[s] . . . just like you are"--never implant at all and are simply washed away. An additional large percentage of those that implant never grow to term. This is because most of them are so genetically impaired that they cannot continue to develop.

Max and you others have made it clear that your deeply held conviction that the embryo is a tiny human is not amenable to discussion. So I'm taking that as stipulated, and just wondering, how do you make sense of this? Millions, nay billions, of tiny creatures that never drew breath, never had a brain or a heart, never amounted to more than a few cells, were created and ensouled only to die. They were never baptized. So do you imagine them all grown to a mystical perfection in Heaven? Are they in the upper circles of Hell, where the limbo of the unbaptized was originally placed? Or in whatever form of limbo nouveau was authorized by the most recent papal declarations? Do we all have dozens or hundreds of children we never heard of, awaiting us in a future state? (This sounds kind of vaguely Mormonish.) Our earthly population is so vastly outnumbered by the billions on billions of dead embryos created since time began that it would almost seem that our real purpose was only to serve as vehicles for God to create and then kill off our embryonic by-products. Does it ever give you pause that any given sex act is much more likely to result in a dead embryo than a live baby? I'm not trying to make fun here, honestly. I just can't help feeling that a God who would set up this state of affairs is a little weird and creepy. I wonder how you arrange your own thoughts so that this seems glorious and good to you.

I'll try to post my reply now. It may take more than one post; not sure how big our posts are allowed to be.

No Part Two. It all fit.

"When something dies [naturally] is irrelevant to the question 'What is it?'"

And more importantly, it is irrelevant to the question, "When can I kill it?"

"And yet out of doubt you come to definite conclusions about how God would have us behave."

No, I do not come to those definite conclusions by doubt. I come to them by faith.

I would like to here back for Sig on the matter btw. :-D

Max, I appreciate what I would still regard as your confession of faith--even though you pre-emptively characterize it as "fact." I would gladly treat it with respect and walk away, but unfortunately, in your great reverence for the embryo, I think you have short-changed the concern owed to my sisters and daughters, and I don't think the ways that you want to put your reverence for embryos into practice would be for their benefit. So I'll have to continue to oppose you, and we remain at an impasse.

I think it is true that very few people feel the certainty you feel about the embryo's personhood. That doesn't prove you wrong, of course, but it does mean that the kind of appeals you tend to make to tradition when discussing things like marriage would appear to be more on my side in this case. Some women--though not all--will mourn a miscarriage as if it had been a child. The closer to birth, the greater the identification of fetus with baby. Most women--unless they are desperately desiring to get pregnant--don't feel all that upset if their period is late and then comes after all. They don't beat their breasts and wail "Oh my God, my baby just died!" They just shrug and say "Oh well, guess I'm not pregnant after all." I don't know of any woman who will grieve inconsolably over a late period--probably indicating a fertilization that didn't work out--as they would for a dead baby. There may be some who would, but I think most of us would think they were perhaps a bit disturbed. But if a fertilized egg really is a person, shouldn't we expect people to be just as upset as they would be if their baby died? If they're not upset, doesn't that say something about their real beliefs on the subject?

Fertilized bird's eggs are as much birds as fertilized human eggs are humans. But if your child breaks an egg--even if it is an all-organic, free-range, guaranteed fertile egg--no one says "Oh my goodness, Johnny, stop killing baby chicks!" He could break a whole dozen, and you wouldn't be horrified and think you had an infant psychopath on your hands because he was slaughtering darling little baby birds. You'd just hand him a paper towel and tell him to clean up the broken eggs.

I'm fairly sure I've had at least two very early miscarriages. i don't feel that I have two more children waiting for me in heaven. I believe in having respect for an embryo for what it is--an embryo. That's not the same thing as a person, though. The more I learn about human genetics and biology, the more I'm in awe of the really cool complexity of the whole process, and the marvel by which it, sometimes, results in a human being. At the same time, though, I am ever more convinced that this process is an elaborate kluge that developed over time. If God instituted it all at once, by fiat creation, then God is either not a very good engineer, or he is a very unkind practical joker.

Of course. But not to the point of the willful destruction of innocent human life.

One. Who is really innocent? Do you mean by this sin free? Don't all people have a sinful nature.

Two. The mother who knows that her death or illness resulting from a pregnancy might have a very young child placed at risk. At what age is your proposed innocence (I dont mean to put words in your mouth so correct my understanding here if I got it wrong) end?

Three. What level of risk/suffering do you think God expects us to go through if it entails bearing a child that cannot live after being born? Why didn't God make this explicit? Again, if this is really murder, why do you think God neglected to explicitly condemn what is now the most common kind of murder in history?

Steve (apologize for coming in late and if I am totally off from what you and Sig are discussing just ignore)

Max, you keep talking about the amount of suffering God may expect "us" to suffer. This would be more impressive if I could see it in action. Just what kind of suffering is it that YOU expect to sacrificially endure for the sake of embryos and fetuses?

Though shall not kill

Was followed by a whole lot of killing in the Bible.

Yes, I do expect God to be more explicit about such an important issue. OTOH, I believe he did not address it so that we might make the decision which is best for our families.

Just based on purely natural reasoning we do have to make judgments about the relative value of lives. By ruling against abortion you are placing the value of the unborn/fetus/baby above that of the mother, her other children and possibly her husband ( I am thinking of this as a world wide issue, not just in the US).

To make this really concrete I am a physician. Every now and then I am faced with the situation where I essentially have to choose (in the scenario of the emergency C-section) between potential life for baby or mother. I usually have one or two minutes to make a decision. I never have al the data I really need and I know that fetal monitoring has many problems. Still, I must make a decision. I can choose a course which is much, much safer for the mother but places the baby at risk of dying. I can choose the course which is safest for the baby but is much, much riskier for the mother. There is no certainty in either course. I really do make a life and death (potentially) decision. What should I do? What would you do? What should I tell the people I teach?

I have discussed this with a number of ministers/rabbis/priests. Most of the time I get non- answers or a pray to God for guidance answer. Some hold that I must take the course of giving the baby the best chance and trust in God to care for the mother. Have you ever seen a young mother die? It's horrible. Just roll the dice. No way. For me, I have decided that in that situation, unless I am in the unusual situation of having been able to talk it out ahead with the parents, I will err on the side of the mother's life. Natural law seems to me to indicate that to be the most reasonable course.

What do I tell my students? I tell them this is an incredibly difficult decision. I encourage them to talk it over with their priest/rabbi/minister. I ask that they think about it beforehand so that they will know what to do when the time comes. I tell them that I wish i really KNEW the RIGHT answer.

Steve

Tell them that any procedure that is a failure because a child lived is medicine.

Trite.

Steve, are you saying that the Bible gives you license to kill?

Just saying it is not so simple. From your writings I suspect you are not a pacifist. I would kill to protect my family. If drafted back into the military I would kill to defend my country. God ordered his people to kill. There is a long distance between thou shalt not kill and abortion.

How's that working out for you?

Pretty well actually. I have lived with this for a long time. It's just words for most people.

Steve

Oh, that should have been, "Tell them that any procedure that is a failure because a child lived is NOT medicine." but I think you picked up on that.

I've posted two replies already that have been held up. I'll wait to see if they make it through whatever filter that has snagged them.

I saw your comment, Max, but was hoping Steve would answer, since he's a doctor and I'm not. Your two examples, ectopic pregnancy and uterine cancer, really don't cover all the possible complications of pregnancy in which a mother's life might be at risk. The Catholic church has an elaborate rationale whereby they justify removing the entire fallopian tube to eliminate an ectopic pregnancy. There are other methods that eliminate the embryo stuck in the fallopian tube while leaving the organ itself intact, so the mother can become pregnant again with a viable fetus. The church forbids these, however. They find it more ethical to mutilate the mother unnecessarily. In Nicaragua and El Salvador, where the church has lobbied enthusiastically to get punitive anti-abortion laws passed, women have been left untreated until the fallopian tube actually ruptures and the mother is hemorrhaging before doctors will even go so far as to remove the tube with embryo--because the doctors fear that if they operate before there's an immediate threat to the woman's life, they'll be prosecuted for abortion. This is far from the benign ruling that you would make it out to be. And please don't say, of an ectopic pregnancy, "If by some miracle the child lives." There never has been such a case, and there never will be. Not until there's some way to sustain embryonic life outside the womb.

If the embryo were a little free-floating traveler encased in its own life-support system, needing to sleep on the couch in the spare room until it was ready to get on the bus and leave, no one would be so unfair as to deny it this favor. If the embryo could be removed from one person and implanted in another, I'd be more than happy to see you carry to term all the embryos you could handle. Sadly, the embryo does not exist at all unless it is embedded in the flesh of a real live woman with a mind and a voice of her own. I just don't see how it gets to be an individual, with separate rights and privileges, when it is living inside the body of someone else, feeding on her and obtaining oxygen from her. Until the embryo can be separated from her flesh, I think it is her voice that matters, not yours.

are you an idiot?
a quick 5 minute search on the internet would reveal that this was OBVIOUSLY a hoax.
but god forbid some anti-choice crazy like you would even attempt to learn about science.

ugh.

Sherman, we covered that issue about 75 comments ago.

I didn't realize you'd posted again until I happened by just now. Here you go--enjoy.

http://www.cuf.org/Faithfacts/details_view.asp?ffID=57

No, Max, I think it is you who have not read this carefully enough.

Catholic Theologians typically discuss the morality of three common treatments for ectopic pregnancies according to the principle of double effect.[4] One approach utilizes the drug Methotrexate (MTX), which attacks the tissue cells that connect the embryo to its mother, causing miscarriage. A surgical procedure (salpingostomy) directly removes the embryo through an incision in the fallopian tube wall. Another surgical procedure, called a salpingectomy, removes all of the tube (full salpingectomy) or only the part to which the embryo is attached (partial salpingectomy), thereby ending the pregnancy.

The majority of Catholic moralists reject MTX and salpingostomy on the basis that these two amount to no less than a direct abortion. In both cases, the embryo is directly attacked, so the death of the embryo is not the unintended evil effect, but rather the very means used to bring about the intended good effect.

To put this into simple language for you: salpingostomy means cutting a slit in the fallopian tube and removing the embryo, leaving the tube relatively undamaged. Conservative theologians agree this is not allowed, since it is not a "double effect," but rather a direct, intentional removal of the embryo. Methotrexate is a chemo drug that works on cancer because it targets fast-growing cells. That means it also kills fetal and placental cells. If administered to a woman with an ectopic pregnancy, it would cause the embryo to die and be expelled before it could grow to the point where the fallopian tube would rupture and the woman's life would be endangered. That is also not allowed. This leaves salpingectomy--actually cutting out and removing a portion of the fallopian tube--as the only allowable measure. As I said, mutilating the woman unnecessarily.

And, as I said, doctors in countries where there are stringent legal penalties against abortion, interpret this in such a way that they wait until the fallopian tube has already ruptured and the woman is hemorrhaging, lest they be accused of killing an embryo before its time and go to jail.

Here's another quote for you from the Catholic Encyclopedia, which you can find online at newadvent.com:

Abortion was condemned by name, 24 July, 1895, in answer to the question whether when the mother is in immediate danger of death and there is no other means of saving her life, a physician can with a safe conscience cause abortion not by destroying the child in the womb (which was explicitly condemned in the former decree), but by giving it a chance to be born alive, though not being yet viable, it would soon expire. The answer was that he cannot. After these and other similar decisions had been given, some moralists thought they saw reasons to doubt whether an exception might not be allowed in the case of ectopic gestations. Therefore the question was submitted: "Is it ever allowed to extract from the body of the mother ectopic embryos still immature, before the sixth month after conception is completed?" The answer given, 20 March, 1902, was: "No; according to the decree of 4 May, 1898; according to which, as far as possible, earnest and opportune provision is to be made to safeguard the life of the child and of the mother. As to the time, let the questioner remember that no acceleration of birth is licit unless it be done at a time, and in ways in which, according to the usual course of things, the life of the mother and the child be provided for". Ethics, then, and the Church agree in teaching that no action is lawful which directly destroys fetal life. It is also clear that extracting the living fetus before it is viable, is destroying its life as directly as it would be killing a grown man directly to plunge him into a medium in which he cannot live, and hold him there till he expires.

They go on to say that theoretically, your beloved principle of double effect could come into play, but then define it so narrowly that it becomes difficult to see how . . . and then follow it up with this:

Of course provision must be made for the child's spiritual as well as for its physical life, and if by the treatment or operation in question the child were to be deprived of Baptism, which it could receive if the operation were not performed, then the evil would be greater than the good consequences of the operation. In this case the operation could not lawfully be performed.

So . . . if in saving the mother's life, the fetus expires before emerging to the point where it could be baptized, then the operation could not be performed, because dying unbaptized would be greater harm to the fetus than death for the woman, who is already baptized. That's certainly what I remember being taught as a child.

Whew. And you ask why I'M "harping." Maybe you should ask these guys instead.

Why do I not address your "natural arguments"? Because, to put it bluntly, they're crap. Absent divine sanction, you don't have philosophical legs to establish your arguments. Concepts of "life," "personhood," and "human" are very complex. We could go round and round for several million years. My son is a philosopher, so I know this. My solution is simple: the embryo/fetus is embedded in a woman's body. Let her make the decisons about it. Then you can go out and argue your philosophy with all the pregnant women who will put up with it.

With all due respect, I think I'm done here, because I suspect you and I are the only people watching any more, and I'm not likely to convince you! I'm sure we'll engage again on another field. ; )

That's the greatest idea for a senior project I've ever heard of.