Posted by
Noelegy on Wednesday, October 11, 2006 11:29:49 AM
[Cross-posted in the comments to the "Why feminists support school shootings" column]
Please understand before I ask any of these questions that I mean no disrespect to anyone on either side of the issue. I'm just offering food for thought.
By the logic that a blastocyst or embryo or fetus is a human being, can the acorn then be said to be the tree? The egg the chicken? I realize that one of these examples is vegetable and the other animal, and therefore not human, but if you take the logic of "human DNA=human" to its conclusion, that's what you get.
I saw a preview for next week's "Nip/Tuck" last night in which they're growing a human ear on a mouse's back (technology I'd heard of before), eventually to be transplanted to a human. Whose DNA is it? Is it part of the mouse? Part of the human? Who does it belong to?
There's an uncommon medical phenomenon known as a teratoma, in which tumors are found to contain hair, teeth, fingernails, eyes, etc. It's thought that the human who hosts this "monster tumor" once was a twin, but the stronger twin absorbed the weaker in the womb (this is explored in the book and movie "The Dark Half"), and the weaker may never resurface at all, but instead existing inside the stronger for years. That was once a human being. Does the stronger twin have the right to have it removed? Regardless of its current potential to become, it once had the same chances as its twin.
I had a bone spur removed from my foot six years ago. I had injured my foot and chipped a bone, and when it healed it formed a spur. That was causing me much pain and inconvenience, and even though it was a "part" of me and I'd grown it inside me, I had it removed with no further thought. I've also had kidney stones, something my body grew without my permission.
But that's different, you say. I didn't choose to have those things happen. But it's still my DNA. In the future, I might be cloned from these things (scary thought!).
Now I'm thinking of a "Heavy Metal" story in which a neurotic artist saved EVERYTHING that her body cast off--skin cells, hair, fingernail clippings, even going so far as to extract her own teeth--and unveiled a hideous life-sized statue made of her own cast-off DNA.
Maybe I'm participating in a little reductio ad absurtium here, but I'm trying to figure out the magic combination. Is it human DNA alone that makes it worthy of protection? Or is it the notion that the woman obviously chose to get pregnant by engaging in sex without protection and she should thus be willing to pay the piper?
If a woman who chooses to abort is "playing God" by imposing her own will over that of God's by choosing whether the fetus is to live or die, don't we do that all the time? By that logic, something as simple as CPR or the Heimlich maneuver is imposing one's will over God's in the matter of life and death. One is taking a life and the other saving a life, but it's still the same concept: saying No, I know what's best in this case.
It seems so hard to have a reasoned discussion about this very heated topic without one side shrieking "baby killers" and the other side screaming "fascists." I'm just curious about some of the shades of grey that exist between black and white.