John C. Wright's Journal

When my third son was still in the womb, he had a name, he had a sex, and my firstborn son (who delighted in rubbing mommy swollen tummy and asking how the baby was doing), even he, despite that he is only four, knew something that apparently grown men cannot get through their heads: my son was a person, was a member of my family, before emerging from the womb.

If you claim that an ordinary person will not use the term “offspring” when talking about a fertilized egg that comes from a chicken, or an acorn from an oak, or the two new aemeba who spring from their single parent organism, or, in fact, any organism that gives rise to another organism, I must politely doubt.

But, let us not get bogged down in a merely semantic discussion. If you do not like the term ‘offspring’ to when one organism gives rise to another organism, we may substitute a less accurate term if you like, any term you prefer.

The term does not matter to me. Changing the names of objects does not change their properties. We can argue the proposition of whether people in the past used the term ‘baby’ or ‘offsrping’ to refer to unborn babies at another time.

You have for the third time said that a fertilized egg produced from a human mating is not a “fully human” person. I for the third time have said that I admit this is the case. My entire argument is simply the proposition that we owe fatherly duties to those organisms that we father, even at the early stages, before they are rational creatures. You are the one who keeps talking about “complete” and “fully developed” human beings, not I. I am the one who keeps saying babies are undeveloped, incomplete, not rational, and not ‘human’, which is why we have a duty to care for them.

Obviously organisms in early stages of development will not have the properties later developed. Of the properties present in an organism, those that change are accidental, those that remain constant are essential. I am arguing that humanity, human rationality, is an accidental property; I am arguing that the fact that the object is an organism to which I gave rise is an essential property, since his humanity and human rationality may come or go as time passes, but the fact that I fathered him will always be the case, come what may.

The object I reproduce, whatever you chose to call it, before it turns into a human, before it turns into a baby, before it turns into fetus, is something. No matter what other properties this object may or may not have, we know for certain that it has and must have these two: (1) it is alive (for if it were not alive, the abortion would be redundant) (2) it can be killed (for if it could not be killed, the abortion would be futile). Do you agree with me so far?

I ask you if we have a moral duty to care for this object. You answer that it can care for itself without much need. I ask again if we have a moral duty, at least, to refrain from harming this object.

You answer that caring for the mother is indistinguishable from caring for the object she carries. With all due respect, this is simply not the case. There are certain things which will certainly kill the object she carries, that might not kill the mother. Exposure to x-rays is one such thing; smoking cigars or crack cocaine; a sudden blow to the stomach; a properly-done abortion procedure.

So I ask again, do a parent have a moral duty to care for, or, at least, not to kill the object we are discussing?

Looking back over my posts, I wonder what proposed laws I espoused. What are you talking about?

I admit I am a supporter of long-stanging principles enshrined in Anglo-American Common Law, and resist changes coming from the bench. By those principles, the homocide of my son, had the live of my wife been threatened, would have been justified under a plea of self-defense. No criminal penalty attaches to a justifiable homocide.

I hope you notice the difference between the realistic way to approach the issue and the unrealistic way. If reason says that killing a baby is homocide, but that homocide is sometimes justifiable, this is a remarkably different from a play-pretend school of philosophy that says a baby is not a baby, killing the unborn is not killing, aborting a fetus is like removing a life-threatening tumor; even though the result might be the same in the particular case we are discussing here. The realistic way looks at the facts and draws a conclusion; the unrealistic way avoids the unpleasant conclusion by calling the facts by different names.

To answer your question, as far as I can tell, sperm taking from a father without his knowledge puts him in the same postion as a mother who is raped. His child exists without his consent. May he kill the child in such a case? I would say not. Should he protect it?

Well, if you found out tomorrow that you had accidently engendered a child during a moment when you drugged, or drunk, or hypnotized by space-aliens, so that you had absolutely no memory of the event, no memory of the woman, and had never in any way consented to the birth, what do you think the honest, honorable, duty-bound thing to do would be? I hope that slitting the baby’s throat and pitching him into the sea is not the first option.

I acknowledge there are cases where a father may lay down his duty to be a father if and only if he passes it along to another man who will adopt his child. All that happens in this case is that someone ELSE has the duty to protect the child, it never happens that the child may be killed with impunity. I submit that the sperm donor is in a situation analogous. If the mother has a husband who adopts the child born of the sperm-donation, the child is not a bastard, but is that husband’s child in the eyes of the law.

Once again, my assumption in all of this reasoning is that the duty to care for the object we are discussing begins the moment the object begins. If you want to make the argument that the duty is contingent on something the object has to do, or something it has to become, to trigger the duty, I would be happy to hear what you have to say.

PS: whether you called me a sophist or not, since all I said was that I was not taking offense, surely we are both glad that no offense was offered. As I said, I am grateful for you patience.

PSS: I checked with my wife. She said she of course would have died rather than hurt the baby she was delivering. I would have killed him to save her. Those are the only two choices open in the scenario we are discussing, i.e. mothers life is threatened. The so-called third choice: kill the baby and pretend he was an un-person so that the moral choice is treated like a matter of mere personal taste, convenience, or arbitrary preference, this option is not a choice, it is flight from choice into an imaginary neverneverland where actions are without consequence.

When you say that a blastula is not the “offspring” of a human mating, you are misusing the term. My dictionary defines the term ‘offspring’ as: The progeny or descendant of a person, animal, or plant; a child of particular parentage; a result; a product. I believe this is the normal way the word is used.
But I will not insist on particular terms. You may substitute an even more neutral word than “offspring”, if you wish. You can call my baby “the Object” if you wish, but all that will happen is that I will interpret the phrase “object-killing” to be the same as the phrase “baby-killing”. Changing terms does not change facts.

The comment that “it is only the advent of very recent science that one can engage in the sophistry of calling a fertilized egg a complete human being or offspring” is itself sophistry. It is what is called a straw man argument. What I said was that we have a duty to care for our offspring whether baby despite that baby is not human YET. How could I be claiming babies were complete humans when I deny that they are humans at all.? Good grief, man! My baby is not even as “complete” as my pet cat, who at least knows how to use the litter box!

I will politely overlook your gratuitous comment that I am a sophist: I am a lawyer. All lawyers are sophists by definition. If, at any point, this discussion with me no longer engages your interest, you may withdraw with no dishonor.

Texts written in the Middle Ages deal with how far along a fertilized egg or “homunculi” must be developed before it has a human soul. I must smile at your conceit that “modern science” has some unique contribution to make to the discussion. My friend, your ancestors knew where babies came from.

If you admit that aborting a blastula ‘destroys’ him, it must follow as a matter of logic that destroying someone is not the same as caring for him. If the object we are discussing, the baby, is a product of human mating, and if we humans have a positive duty to protect the products of our mating, then the conclusion that destroying the products of our mating is a dereliction of the duty is unavoidable.

I am amused by your claim that the highest duty we owe someone may be to destroy him. Nonsense. There may be many reasons to destroy someone; there may be higher goods to which we can ruthlessly sacrifice a baby without regret; but it is not done for the sake of the baby’s highest good.

My turn to answer your questions:

I do not know what you mean by a “worthwhile proposition”? What an odd phrase! I thought we were discussing duties. The duty of a soldier may be to emerge from this foxhole and rush the enemy barb-wire under machine-gun fire. The duty of a fireman may be to rush into a burning building every reasonable man would want to rush out of. Brother, this is what anyone would call a rum deal. Duties are rarely worthwhile propositions.

My wife’s roommate from college is married and has two children. Her daughter is so severely mentally retarded that she can hardly move. Her eyes rarely track objects. Her name is Maia Aron. She has blond hair.

Her mother cares for her. I am not wise enough to say whether her life is a ‘worthwhile proportion’ or not: but I am certainly not heartless enough to say to her mother’s face that her daughter’s life is “not worthwhile”. The very idea of judging whether another person’s life is ‘worthwhile’ or not is an arrogant one. But it is obvious that the mother is carrying out her duty to care for her child.

Consider the severe consequences of a mistaken judgment about the worthiness of a child’s life, I was told, early on, that tests showed that my first born son would have spina bifida. The doctor warned us that he might be born hydrocephalic, deformed, retarded, the whole nine yards. The doctor recommended aborting the child. Should I mention that the test turned out to be mistaken? That my son is now a fine and healthy and four-year-old?

Would I be willing to sacrifice my wife to save my baby during child-birth? No, I would not. My first child was breach-born. I was prepared to instruct the doctor to kill Orville and let Jagi live if it came to that.

She was heavily sedated at the time, which is fortunate, for she would have countermanded the order, and sacrificed herself to save the baby.

Thanks to modern medicine, the birth was carried out by caesarian section, with no long-term complications. I was spared from having to make the very choice you mention.

It should be clear that I can indeed think of a circumstance where I would be justified in killing my own son, because I was nearly in one.

It should also be clear that my wife cannot think of a circumstance where she would be justified in killing her own son, because she would rather die.

Can you imagine, can you even begin to imagine, how much contempt a man married to a woman as cheerfully brave as my wife has for women who destroy their own young for light and frivolous reasons?
I hope you will forgive a tiny amount of impatience that may be creeping into my argument. I have lived through the situations you are discussing only as a hypothetical. The questions involved are profound.
Sorry. Must go. Baby crying.

Hello to the anti-lefty community. I am an author, newspaper editor, attorney, philosopher and general lazy lay-about. They say a conservative is a liberal whose been mugged. In my case, a conservative is a libertarian who became a father.

your message here

I am a fan of Ursula K. LeGuin; I read her Earthsea books back when they were the only books that had dragons on the covers. I also enjoyed her LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS immensely, and have always like the stories in her Hainish Ekumen background. Hence, I am disappointed when she uses her work as a platform for preaching against the institution of marriage.

In BIRTHDAY OF THE WORLD, the romantic and marital customs of the worlds of her Hainish Ekumen are explored in a series of short tales. On one planet, marriage is dismissed as a type of wicked magic; on another, marriage is always a foursome of two homosexual and two heterosexual relationships. On yet another planet, men and women hire loveless gigolos to stud them for reproduction, and seek love and romance only in lesbian unions. Far from being ecumenical, the customs of the Ekuman worlds have a monotonous provincialism to them: unromantic, unchaste, unfaithful, and, in a word, unrealistic.

No world is romantic: on the planet Seggr, brides and bridegrooms do not meet in a honeymoon cottage; instead, studs service matrons at a building with the indelicate name of “the fuckery”.

No world has chastity. On the planet O, two males consummate their homosexual passion and share a household and a bed without the benefit of the sacrament of marriage. Strangely, the main plot point in this tale is the difficulty of the homosexual lovers to find two acceptable lesbian partners to complete the four-way marriage quartet. Since there is no risk of pregnancy nor illegitimacy, and marriage is not a bar to sex-play, one wonders what purpose marriage custom allegedly serves in this society.

No world has fidelity. Even on the world of Gethen (whose people are neuter except when in monthly heat) each individual has a plethora of short-term sexual partners, with no courtship, no permanence, and no concern for who is fathering a child on whom.

In short, no world has laws or customs that tie sexual behavior to the realities of sexual reproduction. No world has a moral code that ties the act of sexual reproduction to the romantic and erotic passions that drive it.

Male readers will be particularly annoyed to note that no world has fathers raising the children they father, or cleaving only to the mother of his children, forsaking all others; and yet, somehow, inexplicably, the paternal instinct is strong enough to establish a custom that step-fathers are willing to raise the bastard children of their unfaithful bisexual lovers.

The message here is that typical humbug of the Left, that homosexuality is merely an alternate lifestyle, as arbitrary as which side of the road to drive on. The method of the message is also so familiar as to be wearisome: the author merely presents homosexuality as one of several quaint customs of quaint peoples, without any particular attention or emphasis, as if to acclimate her readers to the idea without ever noting what absurdities the idea involves.

Sadly, this message slowly leaches the stories of their entertainment value. After the fifth or sixth pointless slight against marriage, the book becomes a sermon we have all heard before.

If this is a sermon you like, you will like the book. If not, pass it by.

The tales are well written; indeed, certain of the passages are pure poetry. But Ursula LeGuin employs her considerable talents to a purpose unworthy of her gift. There is wit and charm and human warmth in LeGuin’s story-telling, but none of the stories are witty or charming enough to overcome the absurdity of the premises, the drudgery of the sermon, or the shallow inhumanity of the message.

Once I thought the abortion argument was about the definition of human life. Here we have an object (a fertilized egg) that some people say is human, other not. Those that say it is human conclude that, since it is wrong to kill humans, aborting it kills it, therefore aborting it is wrong. Those that say it is not human conclude that, since it is not human, aborting destroys a lump of cells that is not human, therefore aborting it is not wrong.

This argument turns on the defining characteristic that makes a human have human rights. A religious man might say, whatever has an immortal soul has human rights. The argument then would turn on whether or not unborn children had souls, and, if they did, at what point in time the soul was bestowed (St. Thomas says boys are ensouled after 30 days from conception, girls at 90 days). A secular humanist might look at some of the characteristics that differentiate humans from animals, and say, whatever reasons is a human, and if it does not reason, or does not feel pain, it is not human.

The reason why I could not decide who was right in this argument is that I defined human nature as a secular humanist; whatever reasons is a man. However, I was mentally alert enough to notice that we do not treat unreasoning humans like livestock. A man in a coma, a mad man, a retarded man, or a child, does not enjoy have an unhindered capacity to reason, and society does place restrictions and limits on the rights of such individuals. Children may be restrained by their parents, mad men may be incarcerated by the state, and so on. However, society does not allow us to slaughter children for bacon, as we do pigs. So, I could not decide the issue because I did not have a category in my mind for those creatures who enjoy human rights but who do not presently enjoy human capacity for reasoning.

All my doubts evaporated when I fathered a child. I saw a sonograph picture of my son inside my wife’s womb. He was a cute little tyke, and he was playing with his toes. I was as thunderstruck as if (taking your example) a Northerner who had never met a black, and who could not decide between abolitionist and anti-abolitionist arguments, met Frederick Douglass. Imagine our Northerner standing there with his mouth open, having a well-crafted speech by this dignified and gifted speaker, saying, “This? This is what a black man really is? How in the world could anyone say he was not human?”

That is what happened to me. I looked at a photo of my beloved son, not yet born, and I said “My boy! This is what an unborn child really looks like? How in the world could anyone say this is not a human being?”

(Actually, my reaction was much more violent and unforgiving. What I really thought was: “Who dares to claim my beloved son is merely a slab of meat, merely because he is not yet born!” It angers me that my son was not protected by the laws of this land.)
Now, you might be saying to yourself, “Ah, but that was a fairly well formed fetus, with a heartbeat and nervous system. There is a big difference between this and a blastula after one division. You are letting your paternal instincts blind you to the scientific reality that a fertilized egg is nigh-indistinguishable from an unfertilized egg.”

Well, now we come to the second argument. The reason why the question of the human nature of the fetus no longer concerns me is that a more fundamental issue, as far as I can tell, decides the question. It is the question raised by the mere existence of paternal or maternal instinct. The question is this: do parents have a moral duty to protect and rear our offspring?

I submit this has nothing to do with the whether or not the child fits a definition of ‘humanity’ and everything to do with whether or not he is my child. If an evil witch in a fairytale turned my son into a pig, I would not carve him up for bacon. If an accident deprived him of the use of his higher reasoning centers, so that he was no smarter than a pig, neither would I carve him up.

Does this duty admit of an exception when the protection and rearing of the offspring is inconvenient? If you condemn a mother who makes her children go hungry so that she can buy a new hat, then you place the maternal duty above the mother’s personal convenience.

Is there an exception when the protecting and rearing the offspring is not only inconvenient, but dangerous? For purposes of illustration, imagine a shepherd standing on the shore watching one of his sheep drowning. We might excuse the shepherd if the waters were dangerous. Compare that with a father standing on the shore watching his daughter drown. Would we excuse the father as readily?

Is there an exception when the child is unwanted? Suppose a family loves and cherished the child up until the Terrible Twos. Mom and Dad then decide, nope, after all, we do not want this kid: he is a burden; he is annoying us. Can they kill him? Suppose the child is cute when he is young, but then is no longer wanted or loved when he turns 12. Can they kill him then?

People who argue that is it better to be dead than to be an unwanted child should explain why it is that their argument only applies to children in the womb, not children out of the womb.

If they argue that, once you start loving a child, you should not stop, you should ask them, when is the proper moment to start loving a child? When he is born, not before? What if he is half-way out of the womb, with only his little feet in the air, but his head still inside? Can we kill him then?

If they say that Mom does not have a duty to love and care for her child before he is born, you should ask, what about a mother who knows, knows beyond question, that if she does not change her diet and smoking habits, the child growing in her will be born deformed. Does she have a moral duty to take care that her child is not born deformed? If you say that she has no duty to care for the unborn child, then, logically, you should applaud the pregnant Mom who smokes nine packs a day and wears a belt made of radioactive waste while bungee-jumping.

While the case of rape and incest is a case of unparalleled horror, I do not see how this necessarily excuses Mom from the duty to care for her unborn child. Would a rape-victim have the right to kill an unwanted son five or nine months after he was born? If not, why does she have the right to kill him five or nine month before he is born? The child did not rape the Mom; I do not see why his life is forfeit.

The final piece of the argument fell into place for me when I realized HOW undeveloped even children who are born are. They cannot focus their eyes, or turn over, or think, or speak. Newborns are not people. They are, however, children, i.e. undeveloped humans.

And what else is a blastula aside from an undeveloped human? It is alive; it has human DNA; and it could grow up to be President some day. It fits the definition of a child. So we should treat it as one.