ABORTION IS A POLITICAL FOOTBALL. The Abortion Issue was not a political issue until it was adopted as a wedge value issue that has no solution, so it keeps on generating value voters without end, because there is no either/or solution to abortion. The Mother is divided from the fetus abstractly, and then as an abstraction (the Fetus) it is defended as if it were a real person, which the mother is. What is a person?
A football is an interesting object because it has two equal ends, each pointing in an opposite direction. The football game goes back and forth, the ball going this way, that way, unable to end this feedback loop, until finally, the time is up, and one end of the football wins. But the football doesn’t then become a round basketball, ending the game, no the football game goes on forever. And so does the Game of Abortion.
The two ends of the Abortion Football is Life, but life divided. On one end you have the life of the Mother, on the other end you have the life of the Fetus. One life divided, split apart and each end of the divided life tries to take the football and run to the goal to end the pain of Life divided against itself. Just as with the NFL, there is no end to the Abortion Football because neither side can be the whole football.
Lets pull this game apart to see why it has no end. A person, human person must have a ME, a viewpoint that is unique. This is subjective view in that your ME is the center of your world and you can’t imagine yourself without it. In fact, the terror of having no ME is psychosis. You are aware but with no Center, and without a center there is no meaning and no coherent reality. It is your ME that makes you who you are.
A Fetus has no ME. The Mother does. The Fetus exists entirely as an object under the microscope of the objective mind. Your pet, however, has a Subjective ME because it feels emotions, responds with love to you, and feels guilt, pleasure, joy, and pain. So at what point in the evolution of the Fetus in the womb does it have a ME?
The line is arbitrary. One can make cells in a test tube respond to stimulus. Do they have a ME? You can make plants respond to stimuli, Do they have a ME. Are they a person? Where is the line? Obviously it is arbitrary.
All we can hope for is an arbitrary line between the Fetus and the Mother that says stop here. An agreed upon stalemate. The Abortion Football has two equal ends. You can’t have a football with only one end.
I don’t write this to create another endless abortion debate but to show that there is no debate possible, just an agreed upon draw so we can put the football down and go home to dinner.
Good piece with good point(s). It is interesting that you brought up the idea of “personhood.” Animal rights activists want animals such as dogs and monkeys to have stronger protections against intentional harm from humans, but not full human rights as we know them. In effect, they’d possess “personhood.”
So perhaps we remain with the old duality of the Ego: I am this. I am not that.
I don’t know if even a human baby has these notions. In effect, I think we just have to exit the womb at a point when our heads can fit through the birth canal, and we are more like baby kangaroos in a pouch for many years. We slowly acquire the idea of a self as separate from others.
Only with reference can we learn: I am this. I am not that. A womb has no reference points. So how can a fetus be truly human? So, I’d have to say, we probably are not fully human until say 30 years old? Until then, our parents can still punt us back.
Personhood is on the march once the old boundaries break down. A corporation is a person? A business is a moral person who has moral rights? I think Subjectivity is loosed into the world, for a Subject or I is a person who is Me view point. All life has a ME viewpoint. The spider sees the world as a spider viewpoint. An ant lives in its ant world. This is a revolt against the objective world view of materialism where everything is an IT without and I view point.