Todd Akin's Rape Comment Was Pseudoscience, But What About The Morality of Abortion? - Part 2 - Philosophy

In Part 1 of this series,  and today I am building a foundation for the definition of life and death, and on Monday, I will finish up with Part III.

First, as I mentioned in Part 1, no existing religious text provides an authoritive framework for morality in any case, not just abortion. Revelation heard secondhand is hearsay. So, we can eliminate, in America's case, the Christian Bible from the outset.  As I said previously, we are a government of the people, by the people, or as it often goes unnoticed, a secular government.

Yet, we know intuitively that good and bad exists. How and why is that? We will get to that more in Part III, but for now, let's just say that what society thinks of as morality changes with time, and I would argue, it has matured with our knowledge of how the universe really works.  (For example, in 19th century America it was considered by many to be immoral to sell life insurance.  Some people think it is perfectly acceptable to do so today.)

Part 2 is mostly about the philosophy of life and death.  Obviously there are countless words written on the topic, but I will start with what I believe to be some of the most relevant philosophies for the 21st Century.

First, an inconvenient truth to the pro-choice movement, but not a religious one.  It is, admittedly, the one philosophical hang-up I have with abortion.  It has nothing to do with murder, but rather the idea that in this universe, if it is possible it either has happened or will happen, and it will happen numerous times.  Therefore, the possibility of life is the same as life, and I like life.  

In a post that is riddled with quotes, I have to start with Niels Bohr, "A physicist is just an atoms way of looking at itself."  As far as we know, in a universe of 100 billion trillion stars that are similar to our sun, life is a tremendously rare occurrence, and that alone makes life a precious commodity.

That said, what are the consequences of ending the possibility of life?  This is where the philosophy breaks down.  Ending the possibility of life is not the same as ending life.  

My mother had a miscarriage several months before she conceived me. If she had carried that baby to term, I would not exist.  How do I know? Well, with any given sperm and egg combination, there are over a trillion different genetic combination possibilities, and that doesn't account for mutations or failures in genetic structure, which are common and the basis of evolution.  Some other life form of the human species would exist, but the probability of it being me is essentially zero. And while I already eliminated religion from the equation, it wouldn't make sense in this context either.  If life begins at conception, but a natural miscarriage occurs, did God change his mind?  Did he make a mistake?  Or What?  (Of course George when he was a boy.  For what that's worth.) 

But that is not the only reason why ending the possibility of life is the same as ending life.  Two primary examples are; 1. The billions of eggs that go unfertilized and are discarded by female bodies every month, and 2. Nocturnal emission.  (Better known as a "Wet Dream".)  Both are cases of the possibility of life unrealized.  I don't think many rational people would make an argument that either of those failures to produce life is immoral.

This now takes us to the point of conception. 

From that point, I present Mark Twain's quote, "I was dead for millions of years before I was born and it never inconvenienced me one bit." He was off by a few billion years, but he had the general idea. Nothingness for an individual is the same before birth as nothingness is after death.  At least, out of an estimated 100 billion people to have ever lived, there is no firsthand evidence that any person has ever come back to life to say otherwise.  (Near-death experiences don't count...that's why they are called near-death, not death, but we'll get to that.)

Then, as the Columbia University theoretical physicist Brian Greene has said, "I base this answer on a belief that life, and consciousness in particular, is the result of matter/particles being in specific, highly specialized arrangements. When particles cease to be in those arrangements, life and consciousness cease to be."  So, the opposite is also true, when matter/particles are in a specific, highly specialized arrangement, life and consciousness begins.

Basically, we now have somewhat of a philosophical argument built around the idea of what life and consciousness is.  Likewise, we have an idea what death will be like, and all available evidence points to it being just like it was before we were alive.  It won't be quiet and dark...it will be complete nothingness.  The opposite of existence.  The opposite of life, or never being born at all.

But when do we know that what was once life for a human is now death?  For doctors, it's not a heart beat, or the existence of fingers, or the shape of a thumb touching the lips of a developing mouth.  For doctors, death is when the brain ceases to function, and this is where we will pick up on Monday when we finally conclude this series on the morality of abortion.