For those who are irresponsible with their sexuality and get pregnant, and especially for those who have been raped, we need to offer support — financial, physical, mental, and emotional. We need to stop arguing and start assisting. I’ve taken someone to get an abortion. I listened to the rhetoric at the clinic. They were using soft marketing, speaking in terminology that lessens the blow. If you have to create a marketing plan and an environment in which women will be convinced what they’re doing is not morally wrong, maybe something IS morally wrong. When one has to lie about developmental stages and when, as has been shown on youtube videos, young women are encouraged to lie about their ages so they don’t have to report a rape but can dispose of the evidence instead, there’s a problem. When a fetus is called a blob of tissue instead of a developing child, there is a problem. We’re being duped.

Interesting that Fanny called abortion clinics in the US “specialised clinics.” Sounds to me like she’s fallen for the rhetoric, too. It is, of course, wrong to murder abortionists. And a few HAVE been murdered. Because I am pro-life, I am appalled at ANY loss of life. From turtles and polar bears to butterflies and babies. The abortionist who is murdered has no chance of changing his mind. My friend and I cannot reach him with our book or our quiet mentoring because he’s been killed by a murderer. Silenced forever like the many babies he’s aborted. That’s so sad!

I sure hope that if we do move to Malta the folks there will welcome us with an open mind and come to know us as people — not call us names. We’re just a family trying to live life as best we know how. We’re kind of artsy and kooky and creative and different. But I don’t think we’re rabid. : )

What I do know and what is not talked about very often on your blog is to me the most important thing: contraception. I am not sure about contraception in Malta. Is it easily available? Are condoms easily available for young men? (Forget the ‘you must wait till you’re married’ lark) Is it easy to obtain the pill?

p.s Thanks to you I now know why my Geneva-Malta direct flight stops in Catania…

[Daphne – Contraception is widely and easily available. Condoms are sold everywhere, by dispensing machine in bar lavatories and even in supermarkets. You need a prescription for the pill, of course, but it’s sold at every pharmacy (the importers and distributors make sure of that; a good example of how religious control is broken by the profit motive, which is often the only thing strong enough to beat it). All you do to get a prescription is go to a doctor. And now they’re promoting contraceptive hormonal implants for women over 40, for whom the pill is too risky. But no matter the amount of contraception, women and girls are still going to get pregnant, because accidents happen and the only way to avoid those accidents is to take the pill religiously at the same time every day. Though there are no restrictions on the pill, there is a widespread mental block about it among women here. The months and years of horror stories have made them fearful of it, and the fear runs deep.]

[Daphne – Here we stick to abusing children after birth; we find it more convenient that way.]

Definitions change. Non-human animals can be described as persons (not people – which refers to humans). Not too long ago, black people were not considered as persons – I say this just to show you how definitions do change. However, if one is to change (or try to change) definitions, one should explain one’s definition. So here goes. To me (and for my purposes), a person is a conscious and sentient individual whose life may fare better or worse depending on circumstances and the acts of oneself or other persons.

Regarding Germany “granting rights” to non-human animals, it did no such thing. If anything, it gave certain priviledges to a few species. Property, by definition, cannot have rights (an analogy would be the case of human slaves). All non-human animals are presently legally either private or collective human property. The reason why Germany did not grant legal personhood is that if it did, it would in effect have abolished non-human animals’ property status, thus banning all use of non-human animals.

Regarding the possession of a brain linked to a nervous system meaning nothing, I am surprised that you make this claim. It is exactly the brain linked to a nervous system that makes one an individual who experiences unique experiences that are not exactly shared by anyone else.

The fact that non-human animals are killed despite having a brain and a nervous system does not prove or disprove anything.

Regarding laws that humans make, making it an offense to kill or mistreat humans, well, first of all it is humans who make human laws; secondly, laws change (institutionalised human slavery has been abolished); and thirdly, when debating morality, laws are irrelevant to the debate.

Also, rights are not granted – they are acknowledged and may be enforced through laws.

Regarding children born without brains, this is poses no moral dilemma, since children born without brains do not survive.

Regarding malfunctioning nervous systems, I never claimed that a nervous system must be perfect to be of moral concern. All that matters is that the individual is unique and is capable of having unique experiences.

Regarding comatose people (and other similar predicaments), even comatose people are not totally brain-dead, and there have been cases where comatose people, when they got out of the coma, recalled things they heard while in a coma.

In any case, it was not my intention to switch the topic to animal rights. All I wrote was that personhood necessarily entails that the individual in question has to have a concept (no matter how primitive) of a self, which requires as a minimum a developed brain linked to a nervous system. Any”one” without a brain connected to a nervous system (implying an individual with unique conscious experiences) would be a thing.

Firstly, non-human animals are not “persons”. Whereas Germany was the first country in the EU to grant rights to animals in its Constitution, in 2002, it did not grant legal personhood.

The possession of a brain linked to a nervous system means nothing. Cows and pigs have brains connected to a nervous system and they are slaughtered every day so that we can eat. So are chickens. Human animals have a brain linked to a nervous system, and their are laws in place which prohibit the killing of any human. If one of us ignored these laws he/ she will have to pay for it some way or another (presuming he is found out). Humans do not eat each other, or rarely do, and there exists a natural abhorence to cannibalism, as there is to murder.

In other words, it is not the presence of a brain or a nervous system which human beings, all over the World, took into account when they went about thinking of laws on which their society would function. The most important factor was deemed to be the fact that an animal was “human”. Humanity gave a creature rights and its humanity saw to it that other humans would generally respect the value of its life and abhor consuming its flesh.

Once we start giving too much weight to the presence of developed brains linked to nervous systems we start treading a mine-field of problems. Children born without brains and with malfunctioning nervous systems, or children who are not aware of themselves because of neural, genetic or metabolic defects may be killed with impunity. Same goes with adults in the same position. It becomes totally permissible to kill anyone who is anaesthetised or anyone in a coma. It can be argued that even normal neonates (after all only hours away from being a foetus) do not have a mature enough nervous system to be self-aware, and may be included in the disposable list. And on and on we can go.

However we all know that the laws of most civilised countries protect the right to life, amongst others, of human beings who may not, due to the fact that they are afflicted by some condition or other, strictly qualify as “persons” in the legal sense. In other words, apart from legal personhood, the legal systems of most countries take into account the fact that an individual is “human”, and this is all-important for that individual to acquire a right to life.

Please note that this is not a personal comment aimed at criticising your position. The point here is that that position shifts the abortion debate away from the principle of the right to life to the circumstances in which that principle may be overruled. That is the same point raised by anyone who does not share GOL’s unyielding stance.Though the reasons they give differ widely, the underlying argument is the same one.]

As I said, situations of the mother-or-baby sort are very, very rare (and becoming rarer), and one must also examine the exact circumstances. For example, if one kills a foetus when the main aim is treating the mother (as a side-effect, so to speak, of treating the mother), one is not deemed to have done anything morally or ethically wrong. For the sake of exactness, even the Church admits this.

These sort of cases, for example, present themselves when one is treating women in the case of ectopic pregnancies, when the Fallopian tube containing the embryo is removed, the embryo dying as a result. Another instance is when a pregnant woman is being treated for cancer of the cervix, which may very well result in the miscarriage the embryo/ foetus in the uterus.

To sum up, some forms of treatment may therefore mean that a baby will be miscarried or born prematurely, but as long as the baby is not directly killed (and that is not the aim of the procedure), but that the death happens as a result of the procedure, this is not considered morally wrong.

This, of course, means that although the right to life remains there, this does not necessarily always translate into life itself.

As Sybil said, bringing up these rare and serious life-or-death situations (which are not strictly speaking even considered to be direct abortions and are morally/ ethically permissible) as justification for abortion, with the myriad frivolous reasons people come up with in order to resort to the latter, is highly objectionable. The two cannot be compared.

Even those who hold that non-human animals have rights (like I do) will tell you that rights, to make any sense, are only owed to “persons”. Personhood necessarily entails that the individual in question has to have a concept (no matter how primitive) of a self. This requires as a minimum a developed brain linked to a nervous system, thus disqualifying an early foetus (human or non-human) from being a person and having rights.

Regarding your statement that what irks you is that some people who are “pro-abortion” are also lobbyists against bird hunting, perhaps this should make things clearer for you.

There are various reasons why people would oppose (some or all) hunting. These can be summarised in the following points:

1. Nature is the property of everyone, so hunting is theft.
2. Some birds are (or could become) “endangered species”, so we should protect them for the enjoyment of future generations of humans.
3. Killing is not justifiable unless done out of necessity.
4. All sentient/conscious individuals have the right to life (except in conflict of rights such as self-defence).

As you might immediately note, we can overlook reasons 1 and 2, since they are irrelevant to (and in no way comparable to) abortion.

Regarding reason 3, it would seem to apply in the case of abortion. However, the meaning of “necessity” varies from one person to another. There is no contradiction, for instance, in being for reason 3 (and approving of killing animals for food), and approving of abortion if a woman finds abortion necessary. Of course, people who are for animal rights would generally dismiss eating meat as a “necessity”, which brings us to reason 4.

Regarding reason 4, since an early embryo is neither sentient nor conscious, there would be no contradiction in being “for” early-term abortion (in the case of both humans and non-humans) and also being against hunting, since one may safely assume that hunters only hunt sentient and conscious birds (or other animals). The only contradiction would be if any “animal rights people” who oppose aborting non-human animal foetuses would be “in favour of” aborting human foetuses. Of course, you will not find too many of these.

So no, a complex issue such as this should not be reducible to “if you are against hunting, you should also be against abortion”. Pro-choice people may be as much against hunting as anti-abortion people may be in favour of hunting.

In such a case, when one has to choose between the life of the mother or her baby, I would choose the mother rather than have them both dead. It is only one, very rare instance, not “some circumstances”. Of course both mother and baby have the right to life, but sometimes (in very, very rare cases) that is impossible.”

But nowadays ,in the rare and extreme case of having to chose between the mother or child, one can still save the mother by emergency surgery whilst giving the grossly premature infant a very good chance of survival thanks to the splendid job done by the Special Baby care unit.

These dramatic choices may have been the norm in the old days , but are very rare nowadays and it is dishonest of the pro choice lobby to justify their stand by dragging in this classic ” mother or baby” arguement.