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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 เม.ย. 2012
- The Case for Permitting Abortion Until Birth
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The bioethicist argues that humans do not gain real sentience until infancy, and that even mothers who commit infanticide should be treated far more gently than other murderers.
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Jacob M. Appel:
Jacob M. Appel is a bioethicist and fiction writer. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. from Brown University, an M.A. and an M.Phil. from Columbia University, an M.D. from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, an M.F.A. in creative writing from New York University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He has most recently taught at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and at the Gotham Writers Workshop in New York City. He publishes in the field of bioethics and contributes to such publications as the Journal of Clinical Ethics, the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, and the Bulletin of the History of Medicine. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Daily News, The Chicago Tribune, and other publications.
Appel has also published short fiction in more than one hundred literary journals. His short story, Shell Game With Organs, won the Boston Review Short Fiction Contest in 1998. His story about two census takers, "Counting," was shortlisted for the O. Henry Award in 2001. Other stories received "special mention" for the Pushcart Prize in 2006 and 2007.
He is admitted to the practice of law in New York State and Rhode Island, and is a licensed New York City sightseeing guide.
Appel contributed a Dangerous Idea to Big Think's "Month of Thinking Dangerously," advocating that we add trace amounts of lithium to our drinking water to help reduce the suicide rate.
Appel is a Big Think Delphi Fellow.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Question: How should bioethicists think about abortion, and where do you stand on the issue?
Jacob Appel: Well, I think the two questions that a bioethicist has to ask in the abortion debate are; one, is it a question of when life begins, or is it a question of either permitting or prohibiting abortion based on independent phenomena. If you are interested in the question of when life begins, then the motivation for the pregnancy should be utterly irrelevant to your decision-making. If you believe that a fetus attains a personhood past a certain age, even if that fetus is the product of rape or incest, it wouldn't make sense to allow someone to terminate a pregnancy if you believe that fetus is personary.
In contrast, there are other reasons one might oppose abortion rights independent of when the fetus begins -- when the life begins. One might say, I acknowledge that fetuses aren't human beings. Life doesn't begin until birth. But if we ban abortion, we reduce the likelihood of teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease; we can reverse the social and sexual revolution of the 1960's. Which many people do advocate and do believe, and from their point of view, whether or not the fetus is a human being isn't a relevant question.
I think as a society today and bioethicists particularly have largely focused on the question of when life begins. I am fairly radical in my views in the sense that I would permit abortion up to the point of birth. I think that the arbitrary distinction that fetuses apply or personhood at a certain point is simply too grey an area, a too uncertain premise to enforce in law. The example always use, and it's somewhat trivial, but at the same time evinces the question well, I think, is small children making Jello. If you have a small child making Jello, they put the colored water in their refrigerator, they run away, they come back 30 seconds later, they put their finger in the Jello, is it colored water or is it Jello. And they do this over and over again until suddenly and miraculously it becomes Jello. The development of a fetus operates the same way. Birth is an easy guideline. The truth is, since I believe that sentience and cognition, or consciousness define life, there probably are infants in the first few days of life who don't really have cognition. Who don't have in this sense, sentience, but for a practical, realistic way of running the world, we couldn't live in a world where we euthanized them, or allowed infanticide.
Read the full transcript at bigthink.com/videos/the-case-...
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Did he really just argue against infantacide based on practicality and not the moral implications?
Jonathan Hrovat he argued that practicality must be considered, therefore he thinks that abortion should be considered illegal SOONER than what it would otherwise be.
@@henrymerrilees9066 because democrat abortion argument, if carried to is logical conclusion, argues for the murder of infants. So he puts a provision in there for birth being the limit based on it being a simple and easy regulation. Truly dark stuff
@@henrymerrilees9066 no, he LITERALLY said he thinks abortion should be legal up until birth.
Damn. What the hell is wrong with the world. People wonder why the U.S. is so divided.
When you learn to devalue others you can devalue anyone, even your children. It's a sign of how messed up society is that a anyone can so casually, arbitrarily, and inconsistently devalue human life and anyone takes them seriously.
@James East
I don't know about eternal but around 800,000 lifetimes?
This dude is evil. he philosophically believes that a new born isn't yet worthy of life but because it's not practical his cutoff is birth. What a horrendous human being.
This man's argument for abortions up until birth:
1.) Its too hard to define when "personhood" begins, thus we should just forget about it.
2.) But Im going to define personhood as "sentience" or "consciousness".
3.) Although I haven't qualified those terms nor defined them in any way, Im also going to claim that this begins after birth.
4.) Since personhood has been arbitrarily declared as beginning after birth, we should focus on the practical benefits of abortions...
5.) Practically, it alleviates the social ill's of a rapidly degenerating society without actually solving the root cause
6.) Also, It relieves us of the inconvenient consequences of irresponsible behavior.
7.) Thus, abortions up until birth are okay!
Just... Wow!
EVIL!!!
Heinous stuff. But on it's face, just rife with fallatious and incorrect assertions.
Claiming to be wise they became fools....Romans 1
Lmao remember when this was a radical stance?
Now it’s a legitimate policy in New York. I’m not sure where I stand on this issue yet but it’s scary to think something that was once considered murder is now acceptable.
child sacrifice after two years is gonna be the norm because of leftards like thesep
Holy shit this guy should never be in a position of power.
This man is sick.
Did just say that because the line of personhood is so vague and a big grey area we should just declare none of them human and allow the killing of them?
Complete non-sequitur.
If you cannot distinguish when a fetus becomes human, the logical follow-up would be to declare all of them human so as to be safe and guarantee that no life will be lost.
The third rail he keeps trying to avoid with his argument is that, yes, birth IS an arbitrary line, but people naturally perceive it as a hard line because once the baby is born our empathy naturally prohibits us from accepting infanticide as an acceptable option. He maintains that personhood is dependent upon the person and when that person becomes self aware. In reality, I think personhood depends more on our capacity to see ourselves in the object claiming it on some basic, instinctual level. We do this automatically with newborns. We have not traditionally done it with fetuses, but only because for the longest time we had no way to regard them in the womb. Now that we do, and people can see more of themselves in a fetus as it becomes more developed, that line delineating personhood has shifted back to sometime prior to birth. That is why you see so many people opposed to late term abortions, even if they are otherwise pro-choice.
His “practicality” argument glosses right over this problem. He just assumes an initio that everyone agrees with good contention that to be human you must be self-aware, and that if we could show that a 10 day d child is not self aware, all of society would be ok with killing it. But it wouldn’t. Society would have a HUGE PROBLEM WITH IT, even though this guy never bothers to ask why.
That’s because he can’t. Once he entertains the notion that personhood may be dependent on the relationship between a fetus or newborn, on the one hand, and existing human beings, on the other, he loses the ability to shift all responsibility for existence to the object claiming personhood. Instead, we bear responsibility for its personhood as well, and also the moral burden of drawing the line where our empathy says we should. We cannot ethically punt that responsibility to the fetus and its capacity for self-awareness the way this guy does. If we have empathy for the fetus, it is our duty to figure out why, and to give it the same consideration that we do in our other affairs.
@@UnlessRoundIsFunny yeah, sure. I would say life begins at conception, because any other standard of personhood you try to apply ends up applying to a birthed human. For example, if consciousness decides humanhood, what about someone in a a coma? If self-awareness decides humanhood, what about newborns or people with late-stage Alzheimer’s?
@@stevegoldson67 Drawing the line at conception has the same practical benefits as drawing it at birth. Each is a static, easily defined metric whose parameters are dependent upon universally accepted criteria (nobody is arguing over when conception occurs or what "the moment of birth" means--we are all on the same page). Personally, I believe that life begins at conception as well. But if you ask me whether I would choose to save an 8 month old fetus or a recently fertilized embryo, I would choose the 8 month old fetus without giving it a second thought. Trying to figure out why I would make that choice leads to some uncomfortable answers, at least as far as the humanity of the embryo is concerned. On some basic level, I regard the embryo as either not quite human, or, if human, then something that possesses "less" humanity than its 8 month-old counterpart. I haven't figured it out yet, but then, neither have most people. It is a hard question with no easy answers, which is why we all still fight over it.
It's Big Think that allows such sick radicals. There was a video elsewhere from BT about "Why monogamy is ridiculous." Disgusting.
He's dead right on how dumb it is to draw an arbitrary line in where personhood begins, which is exactly why it doesn't begin at birth. He needs to pick up a biology textbook and discover that life logically begins at conception. Sentience is an arbitrary factor.
Unclenate1000 life exists before conception. Pick up a biology textbook.
Do you personally adopt or foster previously unwanted children? If not, why not? Is it because you would rather not? Hmm...interesting
@@henrymerrilees9066 a human's life begins at conception. not before that. you still need to pick up a biology textbook.
@@oddiophile97 I’m disabled, Crohn’s, Gastroparesis (translation is misleading because it’s not fully paralyzed), SIBO (slow or reversal of large intestine digestion), and a couple more that symptoms don’t interfere in quality of life. Most adoption agencies are still run in connection with churches. I can not adopt because “I must have committed a sin” to have these diseases or illnesses. Yes we could have gone through a private adoption agency, but they are 10’s of $1,000 more expensive. Just sharing because many do not know this. A pregnancy for me would put me & the babies life at risk. All illnesses but my Crohn’s didn’t present until after we got married. A specialist told me the likelihood of carrying a baby past 4 months would with 95% certainty never happen.
@@sunkissed_grl I don't necessarily believe that adoption is an alternative to abortion. I also think it's great that you want to adopt and I wish you every bit of luck with that endeavor. However, there are far too many children in need of families that never get them. Far too many wind up in tragic situations. It's also nearly impossible for the average person to adopt as well. Most people aren't as wealthy as those who are able to adopt. Btw, you might start looking to adopt a foreign baby/child. It can be a lot more affordable and more straightforward..
You sir are a monster
Lets say someone shot the girl and the jello, why are they charged with 2 counts of murder?
This guy is laughably and dangerously ignorant of the actual complexities of the moral questions surrounding the abortion debate. I feel almost physically sick at the attitudes his ignorant and simplistic reasoning has led him to. I am not a 'pro-lifer' by the usual definition of the term, but this person is effectively saying that the only reason he doesn't recommend allowing the killing of infants is because it's diffucult for him to establish a precise post-natal time point when it should be disallowed.
Killing Babies at any stage is wrong, the Baby has his or hers own body and no one has the right to touch the Babies body, the Baby is a human Being and that is a fact and there are no valid reasons to kill an innocent Baby. Go and watch a first, second and third trimester abortion, partial birth abortion is sick and can never, ever be justified, turning the Baby around in the womb then pulling his or her legs out, then the body and the arms leaving the head just inside the vagina. The abortionist then uses scissors to puncture the back of the neck and when he does that the Baby clench his or hers fists and the Babies body goes completely stiff until death, the abortionist then plunges a suction tube into the Babies neck and sucks the Brains out.
Pro-choice is the worst form of hypocrisy, they take the choice, rights and body away from Our Innocent Babies. My mind boggles to try and understand how these pro-choice people forget they were once in the womb and were allowed to be born, all those who are in favour of killing Babies in the womb have already been born, again Hypocrisy!!!!
I can’t believe this guy actually said the pro abortion argument out loud. He actually admitted that the logical conclusion of their argument is that there are infants that would qualify for abortion under that line of thinking, and that the distinction of birth as a limit for time of abortion, while convenient, is no more than an arbitrary point in the baby’s development
I am so stunned. Holy shit. The fact he would feel comfortable saying these things out loud is indicative of a rotting society.
This man is evil!
We live in a truly sick world.
If anyone's wondering: this is Jacob Appel speaking in the video.
His name is in beginning
@@kaws3076 Thanks. It's been a while, but maybe when I posted this comment, they didn't include it in the video.
He thinks infanticide is fine. That's disgusting.
I generally think Jacob Appel generally has good ideas, but he got this one extremely wrong!
Thanks, the description didn't include this guy's name and I was wondering about it!
I was pleasantly surprised by this comment section. The plot is not lost
This man is evil
He said the pro-choice quiet parts out loud.
I don't like trolls.
His line of sentience or birth is equally as arbitrary as just about any other line you could draw, other than the biological line of conception. And that's not even to mention that there is no reliable way to tell when or if a living creature is sentient. We are even questioning if AI is sentient right now. There is nothing in biology that states that sentience is a defining characteristic of life.
This guy just basically said it's cool to kill a baby as long as you don't think he or she is sentient. Where did they find this "bioethicist"???
Life doesn't care what you think..
The correct answer is that abortion should be at will the first trimester, only available for catastrophic failure pregnancy in the second trimester, and totally illegal in the third. You can use ultrasound to determine the development of the fetus. The fetus probably has self awareness and cognition around 5.5 to 7.5 months.
vandertuber so do pigs. But we kill them 4+ years after birth.
Nik Kimarie I am simply arguing for moral consistency. Are you a vegan? If not, you can waltz out of this conversation you life murdering pathological emotionally defunct idiot, as you would call me.
Nik Kimarie if we live in a world where we are not okay with the death of NON-SENTIENT zygotes, how can you morally justify your leather furniture, bacon and eggs, etc.
An egg is just an ungrown chicken as you would say.
@@henrymerrilees9066 Becaus it's not a FUCKING HUMAN LIFE!
Mercutio Sawen for the sake of discussion, why does that matter?
Im pro choice... but i draw the line at 3rd trimester. The women has violated her choice of conscience because the time to ponder the question of termination has expired. I use to hold this guys view, but common sense must come into play
Life begins at conception
This man is sick. Just a video earlier he was promoting people to have sex with their pets and their children
Asia Rose No!
Here's the case against:
Abortions are safer if carried out earlier in pregnancy.
"This is Sparta!" - Leonidas.
But why only until birth and not until, say, 2y after birth?
“The Science” is basically a codeword for “The Satan.”
I’m not hearing of anything “scientific” that is not also “satanic.”
you read stormer?
I do, proudly. Recognized that "the science, the satan" thing from the beginning of the article about this sick lisping freak. Don't be ashamed brother.
Insanity....
..."if one thayths that perthonhood beginths at conthepthon, then you might thay..." What a fruitcake.
That guy is childless, that’s for sure
This poor bioethicist (spell check?). Where is this man's love for humanity: for meek? Eye opening language Big time. Just think about the fact every living adult has had the protection, nurturing and care of others to get there. We need to pray for those who think some babies are not worth it.
Can you imagine then somebody intentionally killing your unborn baby and not face any repercussions because that's not a person it's a thing :)) spectacular ....
This man is a psychopathe.
Mad scientists .
Up till birth? That is murder😳 A baby can be born at 24 weeks and survive outside the womb. The baby feels pain. I believe in karma. That's why this guy has a speech impediment😏
Thank you for posting this, Big Think! 😀
Have you seen this man in your dreams ??
Gods judgment is coming
Wow wr are truly depraved
Who the fuck!
Literal soyjack
Disgustingly ignorant.
Smart does not equal wise.
He is just being logical. Sometimes to find the best answer for everyone we have to let go of emotion.
Except his logically failed monumentally!
Nik Kimarie ethics don’t rely on emotion. That is why we don’t stone gay people for the most part anymore.
Bad logic is only logic in exercise. What he's being is ignorant. Or possibly emotional. He's asserting wildly wrong ideas. So he either doesn't know the facts, doesn't understand them, or has rejected them due to emotion.
Nik Kimarie we stopped stoning gay people because our personally defined subjective moralities overpowered the personally defined subjective moralities of religion and national identity, which claim to be objective.
Nik Kimarie compassion is the reason why people support choice.
Fetuses aren’t babies. Life isn’t sacred, we kill literally hundreds of millions of animals per day. And don’t tell me that a grown cow is less sentient than a single human cell.
You can use anecdotes and assign evil morals to decisions of those you can’t sympathize or empathize with, but that doesn’t make you right.
No one is pro abortion. No one. Not a single person.