Abortion and schrodinger's cat

[lapislazuli]

I was reading an account by a woman who had an abortion, then got pregnant a few months later and decided to go through with the pregnancy. She referred to the aborted child as a “fetus” and the child she is currently pregnant with as a “baby.”

This made me think of a famous example from physics in which it is asserted that understanding things a certain way can lead to a cat that is thought of as alive and dead at the same time. This is called Schrodinger’s Cat and is summarized like this:

Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935.[1] It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects. The scenario presents a cat that may be simultaneously both alive and dead,[2][3][4][5][6][7][8] a state known as a quantum superposition, as a result of being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur.

That’s from Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger’s_cat. The page gets pretty detailed but this in some ways is basically the bottom line:

According to Schrödinger, the Copenhagen interpretation implies that the cat remains both alive and dead until the state is observed. Schrödinger did not wish to promote the idea of dead-and-alive cats as a serious possibility; on the contrary, he intended the example to illustrate the absurdity of the existing view of quantum mechanics.

Which reminds me of a pro-choice view that the unborn baby is a “baby” or “child” when the mother/parents think it is, and a “fetus” or “clump of cells” when it’s thought to be that way. Which does also create an absurd situation. I looked around and sure enough someone on the Internet has already posted about this.

The issue of personhood is the crux. Not when is a fetus alive or human, but when is it a person? I have heard all different types of rationales. The instant of conception (which is kinda odd because most fertilized eggs don’t embed and are thus ejected from the body), when the heart beats, when there are brainwaves, when it is can survive outside of the womb, at birth, or (my personal belief) when the mother forms a relationship with it. It is unprovable in quantifiable terms and therefore should not be influencing our legislation.

This means it’s a person when the mother decides it is, which does describe a similar situation but from an opposite point of view. In one view, the baby is alive from a certain point like conception or heartbeat; on the other side it’s a person when the mother says so. So two people could look at the same pregnancy and see a “child” who is alive or a “clump of cells” that is not a person. In this way the baby can be viewed as alive and dead (or not a person) at the same time.

epporsimuove.dreamwidth.org/16543.html

tl/dr - example from physics that showed the perceived absurdity of quantum mechanics may inform the abortion debate.

 

[fisherman_carl]

If you don’t know whether it is a person or not the only moral choice is to not kill it. If a hunter heard a sound in the bush and he doesn’t know if it is a deer or his hunting partner then he shouldn’t shoot at it. If a contractor is demolishing a building and he doesn’t know if there are still people inside it would be immoral for him to knock the building down. The point is it would still be immoral if you did not know whether it is a human person there or not. Because you might find out later that it was a human person and you would be guilty of unjustified killing of a human life. The only way abortion could be justified is if it is not a human person and you know it. Just like shooting at the deer could only be justified if you know in fact it is a deer and not a human.

 

[lapislazuli]

If you don’t know whether it is a person or not the only moral choice is to not kill it. If a hunter heard a sound in the bush and he doesn’t know if it is a deer or his hunting partner then he shouldn’t shoot at it. If a contractor is demolishing a building and he doesn’t know if there are still people inside it would be immoral for him to knock the building down. The point is it would still be immoral if you did not know whether it is a human person there or not. Because you might find out later that it was a human person and you would be guilty of unjustified killing of a human life. The only way abortion could be justified is if it is not a human person and you know it. Just like shooting at the deer could only be justified if you know in fact it is a deer and not a human.

That makes a lot of sense.

 

[PRmerger]

This means it’s a person when the mother decides it is,

Which is utterly chilling.