Personhood in the abortion debate

[Magnanimity]

it is alive since conception, is not a human person until a later stage of developement,

This is the pro-choice “gradualist” argument, and it is IMHO their strongest argument. They reason that as a human develops, the attachment between her and “the mother” increases over time (eg, to lose a daughter in utero, while terrible, is not equivalent to losing a newborn, and even more impactful and dramatic would be to lose one’s 10 year old daughter). Most will admit this as true, so what accounts for it? The pro-choicers will say that a human’s intrinsic worth/value/dignity grows over time, as that human’s life gets more bound up and intermingled with other lives. Real connections happen and co-identification occurs (eg, mother sees a part of herself in her daughter and vice-versa). So human dignity gradually increases over time and through real connection(s). Your interlocutor likely believes in this gradualist notion, but she can’t quite articulate it yet. It is a powerful argument and hard to undermine.

individuality: a person is distinct in itself and from the others;

The fetus most definitely would not meet this qualification except in the most crudely scientistic of ways (reducing a human to the merely physical aspect). Fetuses and newborns have their identities wrapped-up entirely with “the mother.” So mother-fetus or mother-newborn is a community of persons. It’s a bonding and not accidentally. Without such bondings, research is fairly clear that newborns suffer. Without taking care of all the basic needs of the newborn it will die quickly. But even if you merely meet its food/cleaning needs, it will suffer from lack of being nurtured. It will be deprived of natural human connections and bonding. So it cannot be said to be “individuated.” Its identity is only understood (initially) with reference to “the mother,” and later to a wider community of persons (eg, the family, friends, schoolmates etc).

 

[Convert3]

This is a simplistic view, but there is intelligence built into an embryo. Two cells combine their DNA to form a complex child. It may not be the brain as we know it, but God’s miracle of life requires some pretty intensive decisions in these “chemical reactions” to create a child in only nine months.

 

[LeonardDeNoblac]

Real distinction doesn’t necessarily imply separation.

 

[LeonardDeNoblac]

The pro-choicers will say that a human’s intrinsic worth/value/dignity grows over time, as that human’s life gets more bound up and intermingled with other lives. Real connections happen and co-identification occurs (eg, mother sees a part of herself in her daughter and vice-versa). So human dignity gradually increases over time and through real connection(s).

Doesn’t that make human dignity accidental and not essential?

 

[1Lord1Faith]

It is a powerful argument and hard to undermine.

I don’t see that argument as a powerful one. The way you’ve framed it, it seems like an argument based on attachment. It doesn’t really seem to be based on a person’s development as being a measurement of it’s personhood.

For example, is someone really upset about the death of a ‘fully developed’ person who they have absolutely no attachment to?

And, wouldn’t someone dying of old age be mourned more than anybody else?

 

[Freddy]

I would ask her, what species is the fetus in the woman’s womb than if it isn’t human? Every other animal is defined as that animal, biologist students will disect a pig fetus and call it a pig fetus. USA federal law makes it illegal to sell or break fertilized bald eagle eggs because they are bald eagles. So why do we give one standard to all the natural world but then give a lesser standard to other humans?
I think the best way is to be respectful and ask questions to let her see the double standard and why it doesn’t make sense.
Also a human has different (lesser) cognitive abilities when they are sleeping or drunk, doesn’t make them less human and it sure doesn’t give anyone the right to kill them

The argument is not whether a few cells are human. They obviously are. Just as a few cells from any part of your body are human(in the adjectival sense). Don’t confuse the argument. Which is that a woman may not consider the few cells to be A human. As in a noun. As in a person.

And it’s not the case that the few cells have less cognitive abilities than a full grown baby (or someone sleeping or drunk). It hasn’t even developed anything at all that could possibly be described as cognitive facilities.

A person in a very deep coma will still have brain activity. But those few cells have nothing at all that could be considered anywhere near the equivalent.

So therefore the woman doesn’t consider them to be a person and you have to accept that that is her position. Trying to define personhood in a manner that supports your position and telling her that she must accept your view is going to go nowhere.

 

[LeonardDeNoblac]

A person in a very deep coma will still have brain activity. But those few cells have nothing at all that could be considered anywhere near the equivalent.

The problem with this argument is that a person in a very deep coma or a mentally instable person have limited or no ability to intend or will in act (even though they have these abilities in potency, as also an embryo does ), wich are the mental activities that are meaningful in a person. Defining mere chemical processes going on in the brain as a meaningful personal mental activity would make the human person fundamentally equal to other animals, plants or even non-living beings.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

A person in a very deep coma will still have brain activity. But those few cells have nothing at all that could be considered anywhere near the equivalent.

The problem with this argument is that a person in a very deep coma or a mentally instable person have limited or no ability to intend or will in act (even though they have these abilities in potency, as also an embryo does ), wich are the mental activities that are meaningful in a person. Defining mere chemical processes going on in the brain as a meaningful personal mental activity would make the human person fundamentally equal to other animals, plants or even non-living beings.

Don’t keep changing the argument. I didn’t say anything at all about intent or will. Someone with severe brain damage may have no option to use the will. There can be no intent. But the apparatus, the fully developed brain is still functioning.

In the first few weeks of pregnancy, what a woman is carrying doesn’t even have a brain to function. There is zero electrical activity until the 6th week and even then it is no more than you would get in the brain of a clinically dead person.

 

[LeonardDeNoblac]

Don’t keep changing the argument.

I’ve never changed the argument.
A non-human animal does have a functioning brain, but is not a person.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

Don’t keep changing the argument.

I’ve never changed the argument.
A non-human animal does have a functioning brain, but is not a person.

Wha…?

So therefore a few cells that don’t have a brain IS a person?

 

[LeonardDeNoblac]

The point is that having a functioning brain isn’t a sufficient criteria of personhood. Having intellect and will, at least potentially, is. And an embryo has intellect and will in potency, because it has in itself all the necessary elements for developing naturally and spontaneously into a conscious being in act, and its developement is the ongoing spotaneous and natural process of actualization of this potency.

 

[LeonardDeNoblac]

We’re not talking potency.

Well, personhood involves also potency. If it wasn’t so, a mentally instable person or a person in a state of coma (or even a sleeping person ) wouldn’t be a person.

 

[Magnanimity]

Real distinction doesn’t necessarily imply separation.

But what might community-of-persons imply about individuality? How do you think it should clarify what we mean by individual and humans as really distinct?

Doesn’t that make human dignity accidental and not essential?

It would make human dignity augmentable (and capable of receding). There could be a baseline of dignity, I suppose, that any and all humans possess. But the more intermingled and co-identified a particular human becomes with other persons (and those person with the particular—it’s a reciprocating process: persons-in-relation) then yes, it certainly seems that dignity/value/worth can increase.

it seems like an argument based on attachment.

So, what undergirds the attachment? The attachments of humans are real, they’re not fictions. What explains them? I don’t know the full explanation, but at some level it must be co-identification and intermingling of personhood. This is precisely why people use language like “it’s as if a part of me died too” when describing the loss of a loved one. And the more entangled your identity is with that loved one, the more you will really lose a part of yourself in that loved one’s death.

For example, is someone really upset about the death of a ‘fully developed’ person who they have absolutely no attachment to?

Quite right, but this is the point I’m making, isn’t it?

And, wouldn’t someone dying of old age be mourned more than anybody else?

So let’s imagine (as macabre as this might be to do so) various deaths.
A fetus dying in utero
Death of a newborn (say a 1 month old)
Death of one’s 10 y.o. daughter
Death of an old man who rarely showed any love to anyone at all, sort of despised his kids, divorced and never remarried, lost contact with everyone at the end.
Death of Jimmy Carter
Death of St JP2

What is it, do you think, that makes the relative communities experiences of all these deaths different? Would it not be the extent to which the life lost is entangled/co-identified/related to others?

The loss of JP2 will be felt the world over. To a lesser extent so would the death of President Carter. How about the old, miserable man dying alone? Who really mourns the death of the fetus? Certainly, the parents, siblings maybe, grandparents possibly. Yet, once this child is born, even if it passes at a month old, wouldn’t this be more devastating to all those familial parties at that time? And then the unimaginable loss of the 10 year old, we all know to be positively soul-crushing to parents, siblings, best-friends, etc. Those left behind saw themselves in the 10 yo and the 10 yo in themselves—real relations, co-identification. So all I’m asking is, if gradualism of human dignity/value/worth isn’t true, what accounts for all of this differentiation?

 

[LeonardDeNoblac]

So all I’m asking is, if gradualism isn’t true, what accounts for all of this differentiation?

Ignorance of other people’s situations and personal feelings.

 

[Magnanimity]

Ignorance of other people’s situations and personal feelings.

That’s too little for me to work with. Can you explain yourself more? Care to counter anything I’ve said?

 

[LeonardDeNoblac]

The fact that we don’t feel the same for the deaths of different people has to do with our knowledge of their situations and with our personal feelings towards them. But it doesn’t determine their dignity. Even the most lonely man on earth, without any friend and forgotten by his family, whose existence is practically ignored by every other human being, wouldn’t have less human dignity. That’s because our human dignity is intrinsic of our human nature. If it wasn’t so, then human dignity would be something relative and subjective, and it would be meaningless to talk about human rights.

 

[Magnanimity]

The fact that we don’t feel the same for the deaths of different people has to do with our knowledge of their situations and with our personal feelings towards them.

Try to approach this differently. Make it personal, to you, if necessary. Iow, why do people, in fact, have different experiences of the passing of those around them? What makes it seem, to the parents, infinitely worse to lose their 10 yo daughter than their 1 month old baby? And what makes losing the newborn worse than the miscarriage at 3 months pregnant? How would you account for this reality in your own life? What is it about the 10 yo that would make her passing soul-crushingly tragic to those in her life? If it is not a higher degree (amount?) of dignity/value/worth in the 10yo, then what is it?

That’s because our human dignity is intrinsic of our human nature

I’ve already granted this. It’s not a part of the discussion either with me or with that interlocutor that you mentioned in the OP. I said,

There could be a baseline of dignity, I suppose, that any and all humans possess.

Your interlocutor said,

it is alive since conception, is not a human person until a later stage of developement,

I’m trying to get you to a place where you can find some middle ground. You want to say there is a certain amount of dignity that all humans everywhere possess. Fine. But what is it about attitudes like former President Clinton’s when he says that abortion should be “legal, safe and (very) rare?” Why should it be rare? Because possibly Clinton sees what you see—some intrinsic dignity/worth/value even within a fetus. But why should it be legal? Because, perhaps, Clinton also was tuned in to the gradualist concept. Trying to argue that the zygote has the same worth/value/dignity as Mother Teresa is just a non-starter with folks on the other side. It’s all-or-nothing thinking that most folks reject as extreme, if not ridiculous.

And, unless you somehow account for why it is that we have actually very different experiences of death based on how intermingled these lives were with our own, then you can’t argue with a gradualist (which most people are, even if they only intuit the truth of it and can’t articulate it).

 

[LeonardDeNoblac]

Try to approach this differently. Make it personal, to you, if necessary. Iow, why do people, in fact, have different experiences of the passing of those around them? What makes it seem, to the parents, infinitely worse to lose their 10 yo daughter than their 1 month old baby? And what makes losing the newborn worse than the miscarriage at 3 months pregnant? How would you account for this reality in your own life? What is it about the 10 yo that would make her passing soul-crushingly tragic to those in her life? If it is not a higher degree (amount?) of dignity/value/worth in the 10yo, then what is it?

How I am related to other people doesn’t change their intrinsic and essential dignity. Otherwise, their dignity wouldn’t be intrinsic and essential, but relative and accidental. It is only our personal awareness of their dignity that changes.
If we applied gradualistic approaches to other contexts, they would lead us to absurd conclusions. America, Oceania and Antartica definitely existed in the European’s world even before they discovered their existence.

I’ve already granted this. It’s not a part of the discussion either with me or with that interlocutor that you mentioned in the OP. I said,

The fact is, recognizing that every man possesses an intrinsic human dignity implies a recognition of some fundamental rights, like the right to life. One can’t have human dignity without having fundamental human rights.

Trying to argue that the zygote has the same worth/value/dignity as Mother Teresa is just a non-starter with folks on the other side. It’s all-or-nothing thinking that most folks reject as extreme, if not ridiculous.

I don’t care about what people believe to be true. What matters is the actual truth. It is a binary situation: either the embryo has human dignity and fundamental human rights or not. There’s no middle ground in this case.

 

[fhansen]

So, I have two questions:

1. Is the traditional and common definiton of personhood necessarily incompatible with the current understanding of the Church on the human nature of the unborn? If so, should Catholics abandon it? If think abandoning that definition for a new one would be tricky, because it could have serious implications in Christology and Trinitarian theology…
2. Do you find my counterargument convincing? If not, why?

Even if we accept her criteria for personhood, ask her to point to that magic moment in time when this profound transformation takes place, between when it would be absolutely right and good to butcher the fetus from its natural dwelling place in the womb vs. when such an act would constitute a complete moral tragedy, as a human person would now be murdered.

And by her logic, isn’t an infant less valuable than a five yr old, and a five year old less that an 18 yr old, etc, because cognitive faculties are less developed?

 

[Magnanimity]

How I am related to other people doesn’t change their intrinsic and essential dignity. Otherwise, their dignity wouldn’t be intrinsic and essential, but relative

You’re not even trying to address my questions here. I understand you have your own beliefs and are firmly committed to them. But restating your beliefs is not how one has a conversation, let alone an argument.

Again, what makes the death of the 10 yo worse for the parents? Why would her parents, siblings and BFF say “it’s like a part of me died too?” Why does this happen? What accounts for it?

I don’t care about what people believe to be true

You should. You’ll never persuade anyone without trying to see their POV. Nor will you be able to undermine their arguments bc you won’t be able to see what slivers of truth underlie their positions.

It is a binary situation: either the embryo has human dignity and fundamental human rights or not.

You still are side-stepping the question. Even if one grants that there is a baseline of human dignity/value/worth that all possess, it doesn’t follow that this dignity cannot increase or decrease, relative to how intermingled the person’s life is with others around her. The more intermingling and co-identifying (ie, the larger is her community-of-persons-in-relation), then, perhaps, her dignity/value/worth is augmented.

No man is an island. Pro-lifers hyper-fixate on the fetus as individual, and yet what makes the death of the 10 yo unspeakably tragic is not herself as individual, but herself as intermingled with the persons in her life. The parents and the BFF see themselves in the 10yo and the 10yo in themselves. These are real relations, not imaginary, which is why you feel a part of you dies too upon her untimely death. Humans exist as persons-in-relation. It’s what we are at our core—designed for and fully actualized only in community.