I appreciated this article and all its premises with which I am not qualified to argue. It all sounds terribly logical and very clever. But it also sounds, quite unintentionally I’m sure, rather smug.
What a lovely luxury it is to be a biologist and never to have to come down on one side of the argument or the other. You can be a fence sitter with impunity and never have to defend nor condemn. Though it should be said turtles similarly sit atop posts, and it has pretty much the same effect. Which is to say nothing moves forward.
Because for me what gets in the way of all the clever logic here and the nice words from President Biden is the 60 million abortions - in the US alone - that have taken place since Roe v Wade. Most of which had nothing to do with saving the life of the mother, penury circumstances or a tragic mistake.
So go ahead and nitpick all you want when “life” begins. The fact is with the numbers we’re looking at abortion is a form of contraception. It’s the blackest of blackest marks on our history as humans. Unless you also can’t decide if we’re actually human, and then it won’t matter.
As an aside I can only imagine how frustrated Dr Prete’s son, Ben, feels if his dad’s approach to whether or not he’s an adult yet is the same as the one applied to when life begins. Good grief, here’s a suggestion, allow him a rite of passage and drop the science from the equation.
Thanks for the comment. I appreciate your perspective. I certainly did not mean to be smug. The point of the essay is that if you have a position on one side or the other (and, personally, I do), you can't argue for the position with biology. The answer simply doesn't lie there. So, trying to do so, simply gets in the way of any meaningful discussion.
It's really not about being picky about the details, it's about understanding the details. Personally, I think the discussion is one that has to do with ethics, compassion, personal choice, and public policy. Misunderstandings about biology will not help anyone make their case on any of these issues. It'd be like trying to convince someone that it's immoral to steal by telling them that stealing causes cancer. It's just nonsensical even though you'd be fundamentally right to say stealing is absolutely wrong. That was my point.
Ben, by the way, enjoyed consulting with me on the essay, and it led to a number of very sophisticated and nuanced conversations about what it means to transition into adulthood. He had a number of very thoughtful and thought-provoking opinions on the topic.
In any event, thank you very much for your comment. You made a number of very valuable points.
Hello Frederick, thank you for taking the time to respond, and in a thoughtful way too.
I fully understand the need to divorce the biology from the debate, as you make clear it simply doesn’t work. However, somewhere we must make the call, as we do when deciding life has ended. Never easy, but to prevaricate is cowardly I believe.
Without making some call on when life is viable it gives credence to those who wish to divest us of any responsibility or blame for our actions in the matter of aborting babies as a form of contraception. Which, using the logic of looking at when abortions skyrocketed with the advent of birth control, is exactly what has happened.
One could reasonably argue that the elimination of any shame in seeking to abort a baby using the argument it’s not a baby it’s a “clump of cells” is at the root of the tens of millions of abortions carried out with impunity. The problem is that’s a seditious lie we’re being told. There is always a price to pay.
I am not an advocate for eliminating abortion as an option for women. I am an advocate for it being legal, available - but rare. We are certainly very, very far from rare, aren’t we.
People often wonder aloud why the world is such a forlorn place. They shouldn’t. We now have people advertising their abortions on their t-shirts, screaming it out from podiums in Washington DC, and declaring they’re happy they aborted their baby otherwise they wouldn’t have won an Oscar. And we have a President along with many members of Congress who nod and wink at this behaviour. Ever heard them condem it?
As a result we have destruction of the family, particularly in poor communities and even more particularly in black communities. In black communities in New York for example we have Planned Parenthood on almost every corner. Consequently more babies were aborted in these communities than were born in 2020. That’s a very poor way to have “Family Planning”, or even to care for the health of the mother, as Planned Parenthood purports to do.
That’s where we are.
So to my mind it’s definitely a luxury to sit on the fence, even if logic and science are the fence posts. I believe history will look back at this time and judge us to be the barbarians we are. We are reaping the wind.
That said and off my chest, I congratulate you on your parenting of Ben (my husband’s name by the way, a lovely name) and am very happy to know his collaboration on your article led to great discussions. I can only hope in that you talked very seriously about unprotected sex and the tragedy of the consequences of it. Given your thoughtfulness I’m quite certain you did.
I thank you again for your skill in making the complex reasonably simple in your article, and wish you and your family all the very best. Julianne
And it should NEVER be settled! Can't get pregnant? When you were created, God or whatever POWER you truly believe and trust had a much better plan for YOUR life.(& mine too).But, please do not judge what ever someone else decides or does. BUT, IVF should be not just illegal. It should NEVER be allowed. It has NOTHING to do with procreation between a Man or Woman. It is thousands of sperm and 10, 20 or more eggs extracted from a Woman and put in a petri dish to be fertilized.Watched closely, it is determined the cells from the one egg or sperm is defective, the Dr and woman make the decision.That so called embryo willbe
"We find the same problem at the other end of the spectrum when deciding whether or not a human being is dead."
Good stuff!
My husband and I had exactly this conversation when he had a chance encounter this week to be the first responder to/with a man who suddenly collapsed and "died" (wasn't so simple!).
Re your solid post: I dropped off reading Quillette when they showed chronic cluelessness on the "covid pandemic". Consequently, I missed your piece. I disliked every piece they ever posted on pregnancy termination "abortion". I would've disliked yet another piece being penned by a man (hey, sorry); but at least I would've enjoyed reading it.
I did pop in once and, lo and behold, ANOTHER "abortion" post by ANOTHER man, and it was awful.
I have de-e-e-e-e-e-eply held views on the subject; but the funny thing about time is that the world shifts and changes, and de-e-e-e-e-eply held views are then required to shift and change as well.
I keep thinking that I need to do an illustrated pregnancy termination "abortion" alphabet. I'll keep the link to your post to inform that project.
I appreciated this article and all its premises with which I am not qualified to argue. It all sounds terribly logical and very clever. But it also sounds, quite unintentionally I’m sure, rather smug.
What a lovely luxury it is to be a biologist and never to have to come down on one side of the argument or the other. You can be a fence sitter with impunity and never have to defend nor condemn. Though it should be said turtles similarly sit atop posts, and it has pretty much the same effect. Which is to say nothing moves forward.
Because for me what gets in the way of all the clever logic here and the nice words from President Biden is the 60 million abortions - in the US alone - that have taken place since Roe v Wade. Most of which had nothing to do with saving the life of the mother, penury circumstances or a tragic mistake.
So go ahead and nitpick all you want when “life” begins. The fact is with the numbers we’re looking at abortion is a form of contraception. It’s the blackest of blackest marks on our history as humans. Unless you also can’t decide if we’re actually human, and then it won’t matter.
As an aside I can only imagine how frustrated Dr Prete’s son, Ben, feels if his dad’s approach to whether or not he’s an adult yet is the same as the one applied to when life begins. Good grief, here’s a suggestion, allow him a rite of passage and drop the science from the equation.
Thanks for the comment. I appreciate your perspective. I certainly did not mean to be smug. The point of the essay is that if you have a position on one side or the other (and, personally, I do), you can't argue for the position with biology. The answer simply doesn't lie there. So, trying to do so, simply gets in the way of any meaningful discussion.
It's really not about being picky about the details, it's about understanding the details. Personally, I think the discussion is one that has to do with ethics, compassion, personal choice, and public policy. Misunderstandings about biology will not help anyone make their case on any of these issues. It'd be like trying to convince someone that it's immoral to steal by telling them that stealing causes cancer. It's just nonsensical even though you'd be fundamentally right to say stealing is absolutely wrong. That was my point.
Ben, by the way, enjoyed consulting with me on the essay, and it led to a number of very sophisticated and nuanced conversations about what it means to transition into adulthood. He had a number of very thoughtful and thought-provoking opinions on the topic.
In any event, thank you very much for your comment. You made a number of very valuable points.
Sincerely, Frederick
Hello Frederick, thank you for taking the time to respond, and in a thoughtful way too.
I fully understand the need to divorce the biology from the debate, as you make clear it simply doesn’t work. However, somewhere we must make the call, as we do when deciding life has ended. Never easy, but to prevaricate is cowardly I believe.
Without making some call on when life is viable it gives credence to those who wish to divest us of any responsibility or blame for our actions in the matter of aborting babies as a form of contraception. Which, using the logic of looking at when abortions skyrocketed with the advent of birth control, is exactly what has happened.
One could reasonably argue that the elimination of any shame in seeking to abort a baby using the argument it’s not a baby it’s a “clump of cells” is at the root of the tens of millions of abortions carried out with impunity. The problem is that’s a seditious lie we’re being told. There is always a price to pay.
I am not an advocate for eliminating abortion as an option for women. I am an advocate for it being legal, available - but rare. We are certainly very, very far from rare, aren’t we.
People often wonder aloud why the world is such a forlorn place. They shouldn’t. We now have people advertising their abortions on their t-shirts, screaming it out from podiums in Washington DC, and declaring they’re happy they aborted their baby otherwise they wouldn’t have won an Oscar. And we have a President along with many members of Congress who nod and wink at this behaviour. Ever heard them condem it?
As a result we have destruction of the family, particularly in poor communities and even more particularly in black communities. In black communities in New York for example we have Planned Parenthood on almost every corner. Consequently more babies were aborted in these communities than were born in 2020. That’s a very poor way to have “Family Planning”, or even to care for the health of the mother, as Planned Parenthood purports to do.
That’s where we are.
So to my mind it’s definitely a luxury to sit on the fence, even if logic and science are the fence posts. I believe history will look back at this time and judge us to be the barbarians we are. We are reaping the wind.
That said and off my chest, I congratulate you on your parenting of Ben (my husband’s name by the way, a lovely name) and am very happy to know his collaboration on your article led to great discussions. I can only hope in that you talked very seriously about unprotected sex and the tragedy of the consequences of it. Given your thoughtfulness I’m quite certain you did.
I thank you again for your skill in making the complex reasonably simple in your article, and wish you and your family all the very best. Julianne
Very well put. Fundamentally, I do not disagree with you. Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts!
And it should NEVER be settled! Can't get pregnant? When you were created, God or whatever POWER you truly believe and trust had a much better plan for YOUR life.(& mine too).But, please do not judge what ever someone else decides or does. BUT, IVF should be not just illegal. It should NEVER be allowed. It has NOTHING to do with procreation between a Man or Woman. It is thousands of sperm and 10, 20 or more eggs extracted from a Woman and put in a petri dish to be fertilized.Watched closely, it is determined the cells from the one egg or sperm is defective, the Dr and woman make the decision.That so called embryo willbe
"We find the same problem at the other end of the spectrum when deciding whether or not a human being is dead."
Good stuff!
My husband and I had exactly this conversation when he had a chance encounter this week to be the first responder to/with a man who suddenly collapsed and "died" (wasn't so simple!).
Re your solid post: I dropped off reading Quillette when they showed chronic cluelessness on the "covid pandemic". Consequently, I missed your piece. I disliked every piece they ever posted on pregnancy termination "abortion". I would've disliked yet another piece being penned by a man (hey, sorry); but at least I would've enjoyed reading it.
I did pop in once and, lo and behold, ANOTHER "abortion" post by ANOTHER man, and it was awful.
I have de-e-e-e-e-e-eply held views on the subject; but the funny thing about time is that the world shifts and changes, and de-e-e-e-e-eply held views are then required to shift and change as well.
I keep thinking that I need to do an illustrated pregnancy termination "abortion" alphabet. I'll keep the link to your post to inform that project.
Cheers and Thanks!
Thanks so much for the comments. I appreciate your point of view!
Very interesting article!
Thank you, Benjamin. I appreciate your comment...