I fathered someone, but he’s not human yet
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.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
