There is an ancient riddle about which came first, the chicken or the egg. This riddle has become proverbial as a marker for situations in which it is impossible to state with certainty which of two events caused the other. “It’s a chicken and egg situation,” they say. But this is not about that riddle. For the purposes of this brief essay, the egg comes first. The egg comes before the chicken, because it is the egg which must develop into the chicken.
I don’t eat fried chicken much any more: too much cholesterol. It’s really too bad that I have to watch my diet that way, because I grew up on my mother’s fried chicken, and it was really good. I remember loving fried chicken when my mother would cook it up for Sunday dinner. I would have been surprised - no, I would have been shocked - if I had sat down to the table, expecting a platter of golden-brown fried chicken, and been handed a bowl of scrambled eggs instead. I think most of you would have been disappointed, and even if you like scrambled eggs better than chicken, you surely know the difference.
We all know the difference between a chicken and an egg. They look different, they act differently, and they certainly taste different when they’re cooked. And yet, according to some people, there’s no difference between a chicken and an egg. They’ll tell you that an egg has all the DNA of a chicken, and that an egg, once fertilized, will certainly become a chicken. And isn’t that the same thing? Well, no. If Wendy’s handed out fried-egg sandwiches to people who ordered their Crispy Chicken sandwiches, they’d have a riot on their hands.
There was an essay in the Sunday Gazette here in Colorado Springs stating that very thing, but using people instead of chickens as an example. There’s a ballot measure here to recognize embryos as legal persons as soon as conception occurs, and we’ll have to vote on that November 4. One of the arguments used in favor of the initiative is that embryos are people, because they have all the DNA of a human being, so they should count as human beings themselves.
Now, as soon as you think about chickens and eggs, and realize that a fetus is the equivalent of an egg for a mammal, you’ll realize that embryos and fetuses aren’t people. They’re potential people, and, under the right circumstances, in about nine months, they’ll turn into real, independent people. But there’s nothing certain about it. Just as many eggs end up as omelettes, instead of turning into frying chickens, about half of all concepti spontaneously abort. All that DNA is necessary to make a human being, but it isn’t sufficient. There’s a lot more to being a human being than just having the right set of chromosomes.
Glenn A Knight
In my study
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Glenn, I'm not sure if this is the post in response to mine or not, but I will post my revised argument here. Hopefully you will find it slightly more compelling or at least intelligble. I look forward to a discussion based on my elaborated comments (though I can't imagine anyone finding them objectionable). :)
Glenn kindly asked me to write a five paragraph essay to replace my off the cuff remark previously. My attempt went an extra paragraph long, hopefully everyone will stay for the conclusion.
The question at hand is whether inability to have an abortion limits a woman’s right to choose. I will attempt to convince one and all that if elective abortions were made illegal a woman’s right to choose would not be infringed and many more children would have the ability to live out their lives.
I should start by defining elective abortions. An elective abortion shall be understood to mean an abortion undertaken for any of the following reasons: want to postpone childbearing, cannot afford a baby, has relationship problems or partner does not want pregnancy, too young / parents or others object to pregnancy, having a child will disrupt education or job, or want no more children. According to wikipedia’s article on abortion in the United States(1) these categories accounted for 91.8% of all abortions in 1998. Risk to fetal health accounted for 3.3%, risk to maternal heatlh accounted for 2.8%, and Other accounted for 2.1%. I will assume that these last three categories are non-elective abortions.
The problem, as I understand it, is that women who do not want to be pregnant end up pregnant. There are only two ways for this to happen. First, they have unprotected sexual intercourse with a partner. Second, they have protected sexual intercourse with a partner and the contraceptive fails to work. The effectiveness of modern contraceptives range widely, but the common methods vary between 99.95% effective and 98% effective. (2) From this evidence it can be concluded that a majority of pregnancies that are terminated in abortions (91.8%) are caused by failure to use proper contraceptives. At this point the woman has already made two choices, first she has chosen to have sex exposing herself to becoming pregnant. Second, a large number of these women have chosen to have unprotected sex thereby increasing her risk of becoming pregnant.
So we now have a pregnancy which will result in a healthy child (remember we’ve removed the 8.2% of abortions that happen for other reasons). The woman has exercised her right to choose twice already. Under current federal law she is now presented with the option of choosing again whether or not to abort the fetus. Let us assume that this choice is removed and she is forced to carry the child to term for nine months. This is definitely an inconvenience to the woman, but also a natural consequence of sex (more especially unprotected sex.) The opposition has argued that this woman is then saddled with the cost, in time and cash, of raising this potentially unwanted child. I submit this to be a false claim.
After giving birth a mother is presented with yet another choice. She may choose to keep the child and raise it with or without her partner, thereby requiring about $200,000 - $250,000 and 18-20 years of her life. Her second option is to place the infant up for adoption. There are a sufficient number of families that would like to adopt infant children that the mother of the infant is actually in able to pick from competing families. This is a viable alternative to raising the child yourself or aborting the fetus, and one which would be used much more frequently should abortion be made illegal.
In conclusion, it has been shown that without the ability to have an abortion, a woman still has three decision points, or choices to make in the process of a pregnancy. First, does she choose to have sex? Second, does she choose to use contraceptives thereby severely decreasing her chances of getting pregnant (98-99.95% effective). Third, even if she ends up pregnant through failure of contraceptives, does she keep the child or place it for adoption? This demonstrates that the removal of abortion from the list of options to terminate a pregnancy in no way removes a woman’s ability to choose, nor does it saddle her with an unwanted child that she is forced to raise. References are found below.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States#Reasons_for_abortions
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_birth_control_methods#Effectiveness_calculation
I look forward to comments.
In actuality, Doug, "The Chicken and the Egg" was posted in response to a post of Agim's, in which he had said that the first reason for opposing abortion was that the fetus was a human being. As I point out in this post and the next - "Mighty Oaks from Tiny Acorns Grow" - the case that an unborn child can be considered a human being from the moment of conception is not sustainable.
I do have a couple of comments on your present post. First, you are speaking of therapeutic abortions, that is, those that are induced. The reason I mention this is that you state:
"So we now have a pregnancy which will result in a healthy child (remember we’ve removed the 8.2% of abortions that happen for other reasons)."
Actually, by all of the estimates I've seen, only about 50% of pregnancies, and possibly many fewer, result in healthy births. Quite a number result in spontaneous abortions, that is, abortions that are not induced by a human agency.
One way to look at this, if you are a believer in an omnipotent God, is that God is the greatest abortionist of all: He terminates around 50% of all pregnancies, many of them without the knowledge of the potential mother.
Some spontaneous abortions occur when the pregnancy is sufficiently advanced to be recognized. These are usually called "miscarriages." Many others occur so early in the process, prior to implantation or shortly afterwards, that the normal menstrual cycle is not significantly disrupted.
Secondly, I don't think you can dismiss all of the reasons you list for "elective abortions." For example, "having a child will disrupt education or job" may have a very significant impact on someone's life, depending upon her income and her situation. You don't know whether the job in question is merely for a little extra money, or a means of self-expression, or is the sole means of supporting four or five people.
But the main thing that comes across here is the bizarre arrogance of your position. By what right do you, or anyone else, presume to tell a woman that it is more important for her to have a baby than to complete her education? By no right at all!
This is the basic issue, Doug. Put very simply, either a woman is an independent person who can make her own decisions, or she is a slave. Slavery is illegal and abortion isn't. And that's the way it should be!
More later.
Hey, good pair of essays Glenn. I'm not going to step into the debate with any respectable commentary.
Just occurs that, if the fetus=person bill does pass, it's going to shoot the infant mortality stats to crap. The US will trail the rest of the world in public health. Ah well, c'est la vie.
Glenn,
I will assume that your ignorance was due to my failure to communicate and not intentional as a way to confuse the issues at hand. I stated in my post that I was discussing elective abortions, which means by definition that miscarriages do not count. You did not see them listed in my statistics because no woman that has a miscarriage has a choice in the matter. My post was purely regarding voluntary abortions performed by human beings (doctors generally speaking).
Second, I certainly can dismiss all of the elective abortion reasons that I did as elective. You stated that:
“For example, "having a child will disrupt education or job" may have a very significant impact on someone's life, depending upon her income and her situation. You don't know whether the job in question is merely for a little extra money, or a means of self-expression, or is the sole means of supporting four or five people.”
This would still be an elective abortion. The woman could continue to work while pregnant, her employer by law must give her time off for delivery of her baby, and should she place the child for adoption she would return to the job in roughly the same set of circumstances as if she had had an abortion instead.
Also, you state the following:
“But the main thing that comes across here is the bizarre arrogance of your position. By what right do you, or anyone else, presume to tell a woman that it is more important for her to have a baby than to complete her education? By no right at all!”
Never did I say that a woman should have a baby instead of complete her education. I stated that she should have the baby instead of an abortion. I went to college with many pregnant women who took classes during their pregnancy. Even if she did not want to continue going to school while pregnant the worst that would happen is that the completion of her education would be postponed by 9-12 months.
Finally, you stated:
“This is the basic issue, Doug. Put very simply, either a woman is an independent person who can make her own decisions, or she is a slave. Slavery is illegal and abortion isn't. And that's the way it should be!”
Glenn, you seem to jump to a faulty conclusion here. A woman’s inability to have an abortion in no way removes her ability to make her own decisions or makes her a slave. As I said in my previous post, the woman chooses whether or not she has sex. If you choose to have sex there is always a potential for getting pregnant. With my solution she gets to choose whether or not she keeps the baby, if she gives it up for adoption life is not much different for her than if she had an abortion. Life is significantly different for the unborn fetus in these two cases though, as it is destroyed / killed in the abortion scenario and goes to a loving family in the adoption scenario.
As a side question Glenn, I wonder if you think that men are slaves when it comes to this issue? After all, as a man, in most states if you get a woman pregnant you have no say in whether or not she has an abortion. If you would like to have the child and raise it, and she wouldn’t she can have the abortion and there is nothing you can do about it. On the other hand if you do not want the financial and emotional burdens of raising a child and would like the woman to abort the fetus and she decides to keep it, you are on the hook for child support at least for the next 18 years. Does this mean that men are reduced to slavery or indentured servitude for that time period?
Frankly Glenn, I am amazed at your reaction and see it as an indication of the strength of my argument. I argued based on facts and logic, you attacked me with straw men and pseudo personal insults in response. I am both surprised and disappointed by your response. I hope that next time you take the time to attack the issue with your normal incisive logic
Doug, I'm sorry I wasn't my usually incisive self. As far as I can tell, the strength of my reaction to your argument was not due to the strength of your argument - that is, I wasn't frustrated at being unable to overturn your logic. Rather, I was reacting to the complete absurdity of your argument. Let's take this one point at a time, and I think, at this point, the key is the nature of choice.
Let us suppose that you have an illness. The doctor tells you that you may choose between two treatment options. One will cost you more money, and has a better cure rate; the other is cheaper, but the changes of a complete cure aren't as good. (When I say one is cheaper than the other, I'm assuming that we've taken your insurance situation into account. Whether you have no insurance or good insurance coverage, the one treatment is less expensive than the other, net of any insurance benefits.)
So, you can make a choice. Now, it's pretty obvious that your prior behavior, that is, previous choices you've made and backed up with actions, will have an influence upon your choice. If you chose a lucrative career field when you left college, saved and invested your money wisely, and kept your expenses modest, you will have enough money that you can ignore the difference in cost. In that case, you are free to select the treatment plan with the likelihood of a better outcome.
If, on the other hand, you are not well off, your choices may be stark. You may have to decide to take out a second mortgage on your house, dip into your retirement savings, or make other sacrifices. You may even feel that you have no choice but to accept the treatment with the less favorable outcome.
While your prior choices, and the behaviors based on them, may affect your ability to select one alternative or the other, they are not determinative. Nor, may I say, is any outside body going to force you to accept one treatment or the other, based upon a choice you made earlier. To take one of many examples, if you need treatment for liver damage caused by years of drinking, no one is going to refuse to treat you on the ground that you chose to drink, knowing that there was a risk of liver damage from alcohol abuse.
"Risk" is the key word here. There is a risk to every activity. Every time you cross the street, you may be struck by an on-rushing car. By choosing to cross the street, do you thereby choose to be struck by a car? I don't think any reasonable person would say so. Choosing to undertake an activity which carries a risk of some particular outcome is not the same as choosing that outcome. Decisions cannot entail all of the possible outcomes, because 1) we can't know all of the possible outcomes, 2) we can't know the probabilities of all of the outcomes, and 3) some of the outcomes are contradictory (that is, not all of the outcomes can occur).
You are assuming that a decision to do x is also a decision to do y, where y is one of the possible outcomes of x. You are then trying to conclude that a pregnant woman has, by deciding to have sex, decided to give birth. (By the way, this argument may be an example of assuming the conclusion, a fallacious procedure.) But a decision, for the meaning to have any term, involves intent. Certainly a woman can decide that she wants to have a baby and, therefore, that she will need to have sex. (Although there are alternatives, these days.)
But a woman need not decide to have a baby in order to have sex, and the decision to have sex does not entail the decision to have a baby. My point about miscarriages was that, even without contraception, a live birth is by no means an inevitable, but rather a somewhat unlikely, outcome of the sexual act. I recall reading years ago that couples who were trying to have children, and who used the "rhythm method" to determine the most fertile periods in which to have sex, took on average three months to conceive.
In order for you to support the claim that a decision to have sex is necessarily a decision to have a baby, you would have to show that there was a constant correlation of the two actions. As it is, the decision to have a baby is a decision entirely separate from the decision to have sex. And it would, in fact, remove a considerable power of decision from a woman to impose upon her the task of carrying an unwanted baby to term.
Glenn,
Your most recent post is far more elucidating than the previous one. Unfortunately, I think I have either failed to properly communicate my position or it has not come through as clearly to you as I had hoped.
You close by saying:
"In order for you to support the claim that a decision to have sex is necessarily a decision to have a baby, you would have to show that there was a constant correlation of the two actions."
You are absolutely correct, if I was making that claim I would have to demonstrate that correlation; however, I am not making such a claim.
I’d like to start where I think we can both agree. First, when you make a choice there are often statistically less significant outcomes that can happen that are not intended. For example, I might choose to cross the street with the intention of getting to the other side. This does not guarantee that what I intend to happen will. I could be hit by a car trying to cross the street, struck by lightning, or have something else happen to me that prevents my original intention from happening. We all assume a level of risk in crossing the street. That said, people choose certain activities to mitigate the risk of unintended outcomes to choices. For example, you might cross with the lights, in a cross walk, looking both ways before you cross in order to mitigate your risk of being hit by a car. This does not completely eliminate it, but does lessen the risk. My point here is to demonstrate that no matter the intention behind a choice we must accept that there is a risk that the outcome of the action will not be the intended one.
I’m pretty sure that we can both agree that when a voluntary abortion happens (as outlined in my first post) it is because becoming pregnant was an unintended result of a choice. In this case a choice to have sex, whether that was protected sex (crossing with the light, in the cross walk, looking both ways) or unprotected sex (jaywalking against the light).
Here I believe is where you and I start to differ in opinion. I will have to make some assumptions about your position in order to illustrate mine in comparison. Please feel free to correct me if I have failed to understand any significant portions.
I do not perceive pregnancy as a physical illness such as liver disease or lung disease that results from someone choices. It is a natural outcome that results from someone’s decisions yes; however, it is not a disease. Unlike liver disease or lung disease, a healthy mother carrying a healthy child to term will not result in the death of the mother. A person with untreated liver disease or lung disease will certainly die from these ailments.
I have no idea when life begins. What I do know is that barring human intervention one of two things will happen, a healthy pregnant woman carrying a healthy baby will have a miscarriage or will have a baby. I think we can all agree that once the baby is born it is human and has a right to life.
Perhaps, I am wrong but given your past analogies I am left with the opinion that you perceive unwanted pregnancy to be equivalent to an illness. If this is true, I would be curious to hear your reasoning. I personally do not understand how reproduction can be grouped with illness, but that is me.
I appreciate your last post and always enjoy these discussions. I look forward to better understanding your position and determining if my initial guess is correct. More importantly I look forward to your logical argument for your position. It never fails to challenge my own position in some new way, and occasionally even to change it.
I want to thank you for raising the matter of low-probability outcomes. Certainly, all sorts of outcomes are possible from many kinds of action. However, one cannot really be said to have decided or chosen a low-probability outcome, or any outcome, unless one intended one's action to result in it.
For example, if one crosses the street, one may indeed be struck by a car. If one goes for a walk, one may be struck by lightning. But one sure cannot have intended such consequences, and intent is a critical matter in any contract.
In this case, I would say that a common factor in all of the pregnancies you cite as leading to "elective" abortions is just that: the women involved had no intention of becoming pregnant. Without that intention, one has no basis for assuming that the decision to have sex was, per se, a decision to become pregnant, let alone a decision to have a baby.
There must be a better way to classify these various scenarios, and I may work on that.
Your comment about it being my view that pregnancy is like an illness is interesting, too. I don't regard pregnancy as an illness, although for medical insurance purposes it is certainly treated like one. Someone once commented to me that the difference between a flower and a weed is that the weed is in a place where it isn't wanted. Similarly, I suppose, the difference between a "condition" and an "illness" is whether the subject wants to be cured of it. Thus, if a woman regards her pregancy as akin to an illness, something unwanted which is interfering with her life, then it's a "weed," and she's within her rights to terminate it. If the pregnancy was intentional, and the baby is wanted, then the question of abortion doesn't arise.
Glenn,
An "elective" abortion by default is done because the pregnancy isn't wanted or intended. Where we differ in our opinion is at what point the woman can relieve herself of the low probability outcome that has reared its ugly head. You advocate that she should be able to abort the viable fetus (or whatever word describes the appropriate embryonic stage). I advocate that the natural consequences should be carried through to delivery of the baby at which point she can effectively "abort" her relationship with the child by placing it for adoption. Near as I can tell, we differ only in how quickly the woman can relieve herself of the unintended consequences of her actions.
I look forward to more clarification on your perception of unwanted pregnancy. I'm unable to reconcile abortions and the idea that all pregnancies are valuable because they bring another human being in to the world. (I realize that there is an inherent value judgment here that could be argued as false).
I'm surprised you had no comment about the man's position when it comes to abortions. I was hoping to hear your opinion on that subject.
Doug, this is where your reasoning goes.
P1. A pregancy is valuable because it brings another human being into the world.
P2. If a pregnancy is aborted, it doesn't bring another human being into the world.
C. Therefore, a pregnancy is not valuable if it is aborted.
The corollary of that would be that all of the pregnancy that are terminated by abortion were not valuable anyway.
Now then, the problem, again, has to do with potential versus actual. A pregnancy is valuable because it may potentially bring a human being into the world. However, most pregancies don't, in fact, result in bringing a human being into the world. So the potential is nowhere near the same value as the actuality.
How valuable is the possibility that another human being might be brought into the world? The way you evaluate the expected return is to multiply the value of the reward times the likelihood of the preferred outcome. If the odds are 50/50, then the value of the bet is equal to half the value of the prize. On that basis, a fetus is approximately half as valuable as a baby. A baby in Nigeria, where the infant mortality rate is around 500 per 1,000 live birth, is worth about half as much as a one-year-old child. And so on.
So, the fetus is worth a lot less than an adult human being, and not allowing the fetus to come to term may be of real benefit to an adult human. So you could go through with that sort of utilitarian calculation.
I could argue that babies aren't of any general value. They are valuable only to their parents, who wanted them, and who love them. So an unwanted baby is of no value at all.
Finally, it comes to this. I can't lock a woman up in a room for nine months without going through a considerable legal process and showing that she is guilty of a crime. See the Bill of Rights for the particulars. I don't see how, based on that principle, I can force a woman to spend the next nine months in a state that is abhorrent to her, for whatever reason.
Again, Doug, women have rights. Fetuses don't. You can't violate a woman's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, because of some presumed societal interest in encouraging the growth of the population.
Glenn,
For the moment, let's accept your proposition that a fetus is worth less than a baby and a baby is worth less than an adult human. From this you state:
"So, the fetus is worth a lot less than an adult human being, and not allowing the fetus to come to term may be of real benefit to an adult human. So you could go through with that sort of utilitarian calculation."
Let me ask you a couple of questions that follow from this logic.
1.) Since the worth of an adult exceeds the worth of a baby or a child, is the murder of a child or a baby less heinous than the murder of an adult?
2.) Should we punish child murderers less than people who murder adults?
3.) If I can make a logical case that I am more valuable than a 9 year old or a 90 year old, do my interests automatically trump theirs?
Are you sure you want to follow the logical path you have started down to it's conclusion?
If babies in general are of no worth, shall I assume that you will not be collecting any tax payer derived benefits in your retirement years? After all, without children in a next generation who will pay the taxes for your Social Security Glenn?
You are right that you can not lock up someone for 9 months against their will. You are also correct that women have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You logic breaks down in the fact that they executed that right to liberty to put themselves where they are. The nine months is the natural consequence to the exercise of that liberty. (Statistically insignificant though it may be.)
What you have not clearly demonstrated to me is why a woman should be exempted from the natural consequences (even though improbably consequences) of a decision that she.
Hopefully, the above questions illustrate the difficulty in evaluating the worth of a human (fetus or adult). Are you holding back your tough arguments on me?
Doug, I think we've about run out this chain, as you're starting to repeat yourself, and I'm using marginal arguments just to keep things going.
Let's go back and review the basics. Your argument is that, if a woman has voluntary sex, she places herself at risk of becoming pregnant. If she does become pregnant, she should suffer the natural consequences of her actions. We can express this argument in this syllogism:
P1: Everyone should always endure the natural consequences of his or her actions.
P2: Having a baby is a natural consequence of having sex.
C: Therefore, women should endure the natural consequences of having sex, by having the babies.
That's an okay syllogism, Doug, but no one believes the major premise. I wasn't trying to argue that pregnancy is a disease when I pointed out that men and women get treated for syphilis and gonorrhea every day. I was merely pointing out that, in a world in which such diseases are present, one of the natural consequences of sex is sexually transmitted disease.
One of the natural consequences of overeating is diabetes. One of the natural consequences of smoking is lung cancer. One of the natural consequences of being male is prostate cancer. Etc., etc. There are lots of natural consequences of our actions, and there are treatments, if not cures, for many of them.
So is the major premise of your argument as stated in P1 above? I don't think so. If not, what is the major premise of your argument, the universal argument by which you justify the particular conclusion? You need a major premise, Doug, because it is not a sufficient argument just to say that having a baby is a natural consequence of sex, therefore women should always (or nearly always) give birth to the babies that result from sexual activity.
Glenn,
Pretty decent summary. The only thing I would disagree with you about is what my major premise is, which seems to be a good thing since you don't like the one you asserted.
I do believe in personal responsibility, but I also believe in modern medical care. So while my father has heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure through his own choices I do not begrudge him the ability to go and get himself treated for these conditions.
P1. Pregnancy is a unique condition / natural consequence since it has the potential to result in reproduction.
P2. Natural consequences should be faced when the adverse effects of the natural consequences are temporary.
C: Therefore when a woman gets pregnant she should carry the child to term barring physical danger to the child / mother from the pregnancy, and unique cases such as rape and incest where the emotional damage to the mother can be significant.
The key differences between my major premise and the one that you assert is that people do not die of pregnancy and abortion is not the only treatment option. People die of syphyllis, heart disease, diabetes, lung disease, and colon cancer if they are untreated. Second, all of these diseases have multiple courses of treatment that are invasive to various extents. For example, heart disease does not mean instant bypass surgery, they will try diet, splints, and other things first. Diabetes does not mean instant insulin (for type II non genetic diabetes). It is first attacked with diet, then pills, and finally insulin.
I propose that pregnancy is treated similarly and we use the least invasive procedure first, allowing the pregnancy to run to term and placing the child for adoption. This will work for approximately 92% of current abortion cases. Some of these may spontaneously miscarry, meaning the mother gets an abortion from God to use your terminology. I suspect that the majority will result in a happy child, placed with a grateful family, and a mother who will not have to deal with the psychological trauma associated with an abortion.
Given the two propositions and conclusion placed above, and the associated explanation, I look forward to your reply demonstrating the holes in this logical argument (if any exist).
I suspect this comes down to preference as to how long someone has to deal with the consequences of a bad decision. But I am always interest in tightening up the logic on my argument or seeing a fatal hole that I missed previously. I suspect that your reply will probably wind this conversation down as I doubt we will find further common ground, which is too bad.
You said:
P1. Pregnancy is a unique condition / natural consequence since it has the potential to result in reproduction.
P2. Natural consequences should be faced when the adverse effects of the natural consequences are temporary.
C: Therefore when a woman gets pregnant she should carry the child to term barring physical danger to the child / mother from the pregnancy, and unique cases such as rape and incest where the emotional damage to the mother can be significant.
There are some technical problems with the way you set up the syllogism, Doug. The main problem is that you don't distribute the middle term. That is, here's a classic syllogism:
P1. All men are mortal.
P2. Socrates is a man.
C. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
You see that the term "man" appears in both premisses, but not in the conclusion. That's because "man" is the "middle term," the term that links the universal class to the particular instance.
In your case, if I may simplify a little, and leave out the exceptions for the moment, you're saying:
P1. Some pregancies result in reproduction.
P2. Natural consequences should be faced when their adverse effects are temporary.
P3. Therefore, a pregnant woman should carry the pregnancy to term.
That doesn't follow, Doug. There's no distributed middle term. As I analyze it, you have two separate arguments which you've mixed up together.
A. The argument from reproduction:
P1. Reproduction should never be prevented.
P2. Some pregnancies result in reproduction.
C. Therefore, some pregancies should not be prevented.
As you will immediately see, that's an argument against birth control in general, and not just against abortion as a means of birth control. It also has the weakness of a lot of "some" arguments, in that it raises questions about which pregnancies should and should not be prevented or terminated.
B. The argument from temporary effects.
P1. Natural consequences should be faced when their adverse effects are temporary.
P2. Birth is a natural consequence of pregnancy.
C. Therefore, birth should be faced when its adverse effects are temporary.
I'm not sure which of these two arguments you would prefer to use, or if you'd like to modify them, but at least they're in some kind of regular form now.
The real problem, as is almost always the case, is with your major premises.
Why should reproduction always be allowed to occur? That doesn't seem to be axiomatic, so what's the argument by which you derive that premise.
Why should one suffer even temporary adverse effects, if a remedy is available? You take an aspirin if you have a headache as soon as you feel your head aching. You don't wait nine months and then take an aspirin. You put a band-aid on a cut as soon as it starts to bleed. You don't wait for it to heal up by itself. And, after all, all consequences are temporary: Sooner or later you die, either of the problem in question, or of something else. Even the adverse effects of a fatal disease are, in that sense, temporary.
Glenn, as a quick answer to your last paragraph:
"You take an aspirin if you have a headache as soon as you feel your head aching."
Generally, no. I rarely take headache medicine even if I have a headache. In addition, this fails to apply to the unique condition of pregnancy as people do not generally do things that will result in a potential headache (like banging your head against the wall).
"You put a band-aid on a cut as soon as it starts to bleed. You don't wait for it to heal up by itself."
Again, for me generally no. If it will clot on it's own in a few minutes I will use a paper towel or washcloth to help it clot and then let the scab do it's job.
"And, after all, all consequences are temporary: Sooner or later you die, either of the problem in question, or of something else. Even the adverse effects of a fatal disease are, in that sense, temporary."
True, but not the point of this discussion. We are discussing adverse consequences from a natural decision that will not result in death and will be finished before you die (barring accidental death before you complete the pregnancy.)
Okay, now to the meat of your post. Thanks for cleaning up my syllogism, though I might point out that "natural consequences" appeared in both the first and second propositions of my initial attempt at a syllogism. Bear in mind that I have had no formal (or really informal training) in logic.
Perhaps I can try a syllogism that will narrow the subject down. Let me know how this one works. (Removing all exceptions for right now.)
P1. All viable pregnancies should be carried to term.
P2. Elective abortions destroy viable pregnancies.
C. Elective abortions should be prevented.
I think I have set this syllogism up correctly. P1 is a superset of P2. P1 and P2 intersect to result in the conclusion C. If you agree that this syllogism is logically consistent, then I believe it is up to me to defend P1. Is that correct?
You are getting there. There are other questions I could raise, but I think the key point is: How do you justify your contention that "All viable pregnancies should be carried to term"?
The biggest problem I think you have in defending that contention is that you have already raised a number of propositions as leading to this premise as a conclusion, and none of them was very satisfactory in making this point.
The second problem is to define a viable pregnancy. That is, a "viable fetus" is a fetus that could, if it became necessary, live outside the mother's body, as happens with premature births and some other circumstances. If you mean by a viable pregnancy, one which has reached the point at which the fetus is presumably viable, then you would allow abortions through the second trimester of pregancy. In other words, you would agree with Roe v. Wade.
If, on the other hand, you mean by a viable pregancy something other than one which involves a viable fetus, you'll need to define (and defend) that standard.
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