Abortion And The Right To Life - Part Iii

By Author: Sam Vaknin
Total Articles: 58
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No one disputes the now common view that the main crime committed in aborting a pregnancy - is a crime against potentialities. If so, what is the philosophical difference between aborting a fetus and destroying a sperm and an egg? These two contain all the information (=all the potential) and their destruction is philosophically no less grave than the destruction of a fetus. The destruction of an egg and a sperm is even more serious philosophically: the creation of a fetus limits the set of all potentials embedded in the genetic material to the one fetus created. The egg and sperm can be compared to the famous wave function (state vector) in quantum mechanics - the represent millions of potential final states (=millions of potential embryos and lives). The fetus is the collapse of the wave function: it represents a much more limited set of potentials. If killing an embryo is murder because of the elimination of potentials - how should we consider the intentional elimination of many more potentials through masturbation and contraception? The argument that it is difficult to say which sperm cell will impregnate the egg is not ...
... serious. Biologically, it does not matter - they all carry the same genetic content. Moreover, would this counter-argument still hold if, in future, we were be able to identify the chosen one and eliminate only it? In many religions (Catholicism) contraception is murder. In Judaism, masturbation is the corruption of the seed and such a serious offence that it is punishable by the strongest religious penalty: eternal ex-communication (Karet). If abortion is indeed murder how should we resolve the following moral dilemmas and questions (some of them patently absurd): Is a natural abortion the equivalent of manslaughter (through negligence)? Do habits like smoking, drug addiction, vegetarianism - infringe upon the right to life of the embryo? Do they constitute a violation of the contract? Reductio ad absurdum: if, in the far future, research will unequivocally prove that listening to a certain kind of music or entertaining certain thoughts seriously hampers the embryonic development - should we apply censorship to the Mother? Should force majeure clauses be introduced to the Mother-Embryo pregnancy contract? Will they give the mother the right to cancel the contract? Will the embryo have a right to terminate the contract? Should the asymmetry persist: the Mother will have no right to terminate - but the embryo will, or vice versa? Being a rights holder, can the embryo (=the State) litigate against his Mother or Third Parties (the doctor that aborted him, someone who hit his mother and brought about a natural abortion) even after he died? Should anyone who knows about an abortion be considered an accomplice to murder? If abortion is murder - why punish it so mildly? Why is there a debate regarding this question? Thou shalt not kill is a natural law, it appears in virtually every legal system. It is easily and immediately identifiable. The fact that abortion does not enjoy the same legal and moral treatment says a lot. Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, United Press International (UPI) and eBookWeb and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com. Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com