Originally posted on Medium.com
August 7^th, 2022 ~ 4-minute read

Faith Gibson, LM

Part I (of III)

The curious idea that a two-cell fertilized human egg is legally a “person” with constitutional rights

Assuming that the two microscopic cells pictured above are genetically normal and healthy, and they safely negotiate the journey down through one of their mother’s fallopian tubes to her uterus, and then successfully implant themselves into one of its walls, AND assuming the pregnant woman in whom they reside is also normal and healthy, then this fertilized egg has the potential , but not yet the reality, to become a viable human being in 10 lunar months or about 280 days.

But it does not follow as the night that two fertilized human cells,
or even several thousand embryonic cells, equate to personhood.

These fertilized cells, and the rudimentary organs that will develop over the next several weeks, are not yet a human being, they are just human cells undergoing pre-programed biological and chemical changes. At this stage of development, they have not acquired the biological abilities and the element of “consciousness” that we typically equate with a fully formed human being.

As such, we would not normally define an ovum, zygote, blastocyst, embryo or non-viable fetus to be a “person”, any more than someone would point to a newborn baby named Abraham Lincoln lying in a crib, and claim the baby was the President of the United States.

Lincoln would indeed become president many years later, but he wasn’t the president while he was still an infant. He had to mature and grow into his role. The same is true for the concept of personhood.

There is a specific and substantial barrier to bestowing the legal status of personhood on the “products of conception” prior to the stage of viability (sometime after six months, or 24 completed weeks of pregnancy).

This based on a number of obvious factors:

• The fertilized egg is essentially invisible
• It is unconscious and cannot make any decisions for itself
• It has no independent existence outside of enclosure in its mother’s body
• It has no gender or a name
• It doesn’t have a birth certificate, a passport, other identity papers, cannot open a bank account in its own name
• It’s unable to exercise any rights of ownership, vote, or serve on a jury,
• Can’t be inscribed into the military or held responsible for paying income or property taxes.
• It can’t be sued, criminally prosecuted, or otherwise held legal responsible for anything, including the fact that its presence inside its mother’s body may well lead to her death due to complications of pregnancy, childbirth or during the 12 months of the postpartum.

Reality Check before Continuing:

In spite of the many rational barriers to legal personhood for embryos and pre-viable fetuses listed above, it is very possible that state and federal laws will be passed in the relatively near future that grant personhood status to the products of conception, beginning with the moment of fertilization. The Texas legislature has already passed a bill declaring that it is a:

“first degree felony if an unborn child (“an individual living member of the homo sapiens species from fertilization until birth, including the entire embryonic and fetal stages of development”) dies as a result of the offense punishable by imprisonment of not less than 5 years and not more than 99 years“

The “pro-life movement” is a sustained, well-financed, worldwide system that is highly organized and has been working at many levels of society for the last half century. This including the membership and economic resources of the worldwide Roman Catholic as well as Protestant churches, college campus organizations and a strong social media presence in many countries.

Its leaders are very effectively at sharing their recruitment techniques internationally. Many American groups have become very active in partisan politics to help elect or appoint ultra-conservative judges with the goal of overturning Roe v Wade. They obviously were very effective.

So it is useful for us to understand what legally bestowing ‘personhood’ on the products of conceptions would mean personally and to us as country. The following “Costs and Consequences” section delves deeply into those particulars.

Keep in mind that: “To be informed is to be forewarned”.

End of Part 1

Next Post ~ Part II: Costs and Consequences: Legal & economic liabilities and social burdens for all 50 states associated with the status of personhood for fertilized eggs, embryos & pre-viable fetuses.

The “put me back” cry!

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Short Biography

If you are wondering about my personal background or where I stand in regard to the issues in this essay, I have included this short biography that starts with by my family’s historical religious background.

I know this is a very unusual topic in today’s world, but i believe this deep but brief dive into my family’s religious history helps us remember why “freedom of religion” was one of the founding principles of our country.

In America, we are generally free to believe in the religion of our choice, including the right to be agnostic or an atheist. If something is against our religion, we can’t be forced to do the ‘prohibited’ activity (play cards, drink alcohol, dance, use contraceptives, etc)

But at a practical level, freedom of religion as a democratic principle also means I can’t stop other people from doing something because it is against MY religion. At the moment, it seems that many on the national stage have forgotten this core principle of our democratic process. 

Mennonites and other “Plain Peoples”    

Mennonites are a protestant Christian sect that traces its origin back to 1521, just four years after a Catholic monk by the name of Martin Luther nailed a list of 92 theses (i.e. questions for discussion and debate) to the cathedral door in Worms, Germany.

This turned out to be the starting gun of the Protestant Reformation. Unfortunately, it quickly turned into an all-out war between Catholicism as the State religion of western European countries, and those who were “protesting” certain religious beliefs and practices of Roman Christianity.

This “protesting” was a direct and specific result of a new, world-changing technology — the Gutenberg’s printing press — the 15th-century  equivalent of today’s “world wide web”. Gutenberg’s decision to print the Jude-Christian bible in the ‘vernacular‘ — the language spoken in the different languages spoken by people living in different countries and regions was a global game-changer. This immediate result was very different interpretation of various religious beliefs and principles. 

At that time, all copies of the Judeo-Christian Bible were in Latin, which was only a written language and could only be read by formally-educated Catholic clergy and a few academic scholars. As a result the lay public couldn’t read biblical scriptures for themselves and sometimes questioned the differing biblical interpretations provided by different members of the clergy. One of the most contentious issues was baptism as the formal method that someone became a member of a particular Christian religion. 

Many of those who were ‘protesting’  specifically objected to Catholicism’s baptism of infants. This formally made each baby a member of the Catholic Church at a time when they, as infants, had no conscious choice in the matter.

These “protesters” soon separated themselves from Catholicism by becoming “Protestants”. As members of various Protestant churches, they believed the Bible provides the principles for declaring one’s “faith”, and that required formal membership in a Christian church to be a conscious “act”. This required each individual to develop critical thinking skills, an ability that babies don’t have but older adolescents and adults do have. Having matured into “the age of reason”, they can understand the concepts of internal “beliefs”, and the particular of what they specifically believed, and why that was a “proper” expression of their Christian faith that translated into church membership.

In a strange and convoluted way, this 16th century controversy is very similar to the current political conversation about pre-birth personhood as a legal status: Is the quality we call  “personhood” inherent in the unconscious fetal tissue and its organs, or does it develop over time as the biological foundations of “consciousness” progressly increases until it produce what today we would describe as the characteristics of “personhood”?

This contentious theocratic argument mirrors the argument between those who “baptized” infants as manifestation of “faith” as a potential consciousness to be mysteriously acquired at some later time, and those that believe consciousness is an active state that develops over time as fetal tissue and organs undergo a metamorphosis into the consciousness of “self”, which is then is acknowledged as the legal status of “personhood”.

But the real issue here, historically and in our own time, is simply that both sides of this controversy are motivated by the best of intentions, share the same basic belief in the sanctity of human life, and want the same outcome — an appropriate honoring of the lives of unborn babies.

We are a people of good will who are in basic agreement over the sanctity of human life. We are not arguing over the fact that a fertilized egg somehow mystically metamorphosis into a human being. Like the 16th century disagreement over infant baptism vs. baptism after the person has reached “the age of reason”, the issue is not the ultimate outcome but whether “personhood is instantaneous at conception or develops slowly over time. However, the outcome — personhood — is the same.

Despite the strong feeling and opinions on both sides, the presence or absence of that elusive element we call “personhood” — how and when it occurs — is and will remain an esoteric concept, as there is no legal or scientific way to “prove” either of these theories in a court of law.  Common sense and common decency both call for all of us to acknowledge that we don’t and can’t know the answer to this spiritual question.

All we are doing now is to argue over the timing — does personhood arrive in a flash at conception, or is it the consequence of a slow, but steady, biological development and accretion of more sophisticated abilities that rise up out of the void of unconsciousness to slowly coalesce into consciousness some time after 20 weeks. Only when the characteristics of consciousness becomes a plainly visible attribute that we can all see and all agree on, would the legal status a fetus “become” a “person” in the legal sense of the word.

The hard “lesson” here was taught in the 16th century. the bad old days of religious persecutions in which BOTH sides were Christians who believed in the very same God. The harm done by one side against the other side, was a totally useless and unnecessary a war against itself.

Surely we are smart enough to not go to war over with one another over a distinction that ultimately doesn’t make a difference. What remains unknown is whether or not American will be seduced by partisan politicians to go to way against our neighbors over these differing but ultimately irrelevant question of timing in a war between a fertilized egg on one side and a 20-plus week old fetus on the other.

Trans-Atlantic emigration in the search for religious freedom

My Mennonite ancestors crossed the Atlantic ocean in 1737 in a tiny ship named the “Townhead” search of religious freedom. It carried my 8th great-grandfather, Jacob Shantz, as well as and 20 other “co-religionists” from Switzerland. They landed in Philadelphia and settled in the southeast corner of Pennsylvania. This is still a farming area mainly populated by conservative religious sects such as Amish, Mennonites, German Brethren and other “Plain People”.

State-sponsored religious persecution vs. Freedom of religion

Jacob Shantz and my other ancestors left behind homes, farms, and all their possession to escape This was a reaction in to the Protestant Reformation. Adult males who refused to attend mass on Sundays were seen as “heretics” and a crime punishable by death. Those that refused to convert were imprisoned subjected to violent, cruel, and often deadly torture. If a man was married, this would include his wife, and all their children. Adults that refused to convert still refused to convert (men and women) were hanged, drowned or burned alive.

During the 16th and 17th centuries, the “Mennonite Book of Martyrs” recorded the names of hundreds of these unfortunate souls.

My life in 2022

As a mother, midwife and citizen, I am politically conservative and consider myself to be “pro-life”. For me, being “pro-life” includes concern and compassion for the lives of pregnant women with untenable pregnancies, and the human rights of children to be born into a family that wants, loves and can responsibility care for them, and provide a stable home environment.

Real-world Issues of Sexual Reproduction

I believe both men and women have a responsibility during their childbearing years to avoid unplanned pregnancy. That begins with the male of the species not ejaculating in the birth canal of a fertile female unless they have:

• discussed and mutually agreed to have a child at this time
• have the financial resource to carry that 18-year plan to completions

If you are an adult woman who doesn’t happen to live in this kind of a ‘perfected’ world, and find yourself having an unplanned pregnancy, I think the best response most of the time (but not always) is to have the baby. However, this is based on several important prerequisites.

In order for pregnancy to be safe for both mother and baby, the woman must be physically and psychologically healthy enough to bear a child. She also must be willing and able to accept her pregnant status, and all that goes with it. This requires a conscious intention to love, responsibly care for, and provide a stable home environment for a baby and growing child for the next two or so decades of her life.

If this is not possible at that point in time, or under the specific circumstances that she finds herself — she cannot responsibly care for a baby or make a home for growing child — then pregnancy termination as early as possible is the most compassionate solution.

A brief Aside: Deciding to make peace with paridoxial beliefs, our own and others

One of the realities of being an adult is the need to make peace with thinking, wanting and at times have two beliefs that in the strictest sense, can’t both be true and yet, you really can’t just decide to choose the one and deny or eliminate the “other”. The word for that is “paradox” which is a person, situation, or action that appears to have contradictory qualities or an opposite meaning.

After spending thousands of hours uselessly agonizing over all sorts of things that i could reconcile, it finally dawned on my that sometimes one just have to learn to live with a paradox. The issues that surround the “if, when, where and how” a fertilized human egg is metamorphosed from a two human cells into a sentient human being a status legally defined as “personhood”. The answers are a variety of mutually exclusive conclusions that can’t be reconciled with one another, i.e. a paradox.

I finally resolved the tension between these irreconcilables by making peace with their paradoxical nature. Maybe it just confirms the obvious fact that we aren’t divine, don’t have Divine Powers of concernment, but mere are human beings; we don’t know it all, can’t know it all, but we can accept that fact and move on, our intention being to “do our best” and leave the rest up to You Know Who. I believe this is called “knowing our place in the big scheme of things”.

 

Quite obviously, I do not believe that an embryo or non-viable fetus functionally becomes a conscious human being – an entity capable of internal and external experience and responsive to external stimuli — until after 20-completed-weeks of pregnancy. However, best scientific evidence identifies the attributes necessary for conscious to not be present until  23-to-26 weeks of gestation.

Prior to that time, decisions about the pregnancy belong solely to the pregnant woman, as she the person who is actually physically pregnant, and she is the only person who is in possession of all the pertinent fact relative to her life and her capacities to bear and raise a child at that point in time.

Quite obviously, I do not believe that an unborn embryo or non-viable fetus is “a person” — a consciousness that we would recognize as a human ‘being” — until some time after 20-completed-weeks of pregnancy. Before that time, the pregnant woman, and only the pregnant woman is in possession of all the pertinent facts relative to her life and her capacities to bear and raise a child.

To think otherwise is to accuse GOD as making a mistake when creating the human species, that the fertilized human egg really should be deposited in the man’s body and not the woman’s.

Fortunately, or unfortunately (hard to say), but that is not how it worked out. Since it is her pregnancy (not J. Alito or Gorsuch, Tomas, or Kavanaugh’s) it is up to the  woman to decide whether she needs to terminate a pregnancy or carry it to term. She is the one who is pregnant, and prior to clearly established fetal viability, she is the only one who should be making these decisions.

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END here — cut & paste text below into a blank document ^O^

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Human pregnancy is an internal biological reality that is totally dependant on the woman’s physical body. Human pregnancy as situation in which a member of the human species is inside another member of the human species in an arrangement best described a “a host” and “a guest”, a biological phenomenon that is totally unique to mature females of the human species.  And for the first 7 months, the “quest” is 100% dependent on its “host” to provides all the necessities of both life and growth.

If men figure out how they can be pregnant, these decisions will be theirs to make. But right now, it is still women who get pregnant, give birth and provide the life-giving necessities for their infants. This means it is the woman’s decision to make.

I do not believe that GOD made a mistake when S/HE/IT decided that the best and safest place to grow the next generation of the human species was inside the body an adult woman.

After developing for nine months, this newest member of species is finally fully developed and is physically able to live outside it mother’s body. Only then is it fully equipped to be born into an air-breathing world. Then the pregnant woman who gestated this infant for nine long months becomes its mother, and continues to care for the child until it finally becomen an independent adult about 18 years later.

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Continue to Part II (of III)

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by faith gibson, LM

Assuming that the two microscopic cells pictured above are genetically normal and healthy, and they safely negotiate the journey down through one of their mother’s fallopian tubes to her uterus, and then successfully implant themselves into one of its walls, AND assuming the pregnant woman in whom they reside is also normal and healthy, then this fertilized egg has the potential , but not yet the reality, to become a viable human being in 10 lunar months or about 280 days.

But it does not follow as the night that two fertilized human cells, or even several thousand embryonic cells makes a person.

Embryo @ 4 weeks

As such, we would not normally define this ovum, zygote, blastocyst, embryo or non-viable fetus to be a “person”, any more than we would point to a Abraham Lincoln as an infant laying in his crib and claim it was the President of the United States. He would indeed become the president many years later, but he wasn’t president when he was an infant. He had to mature and grow into his role. The same is true for the concept of personhood.

Photo of a future Human Being!

There is a specific and substantial barrier to bestowing the legal status of personhood on the “products of conception” prior to the stage of viability (some time after six months or 24 completed weeks of pregnancy).

This based on a number of obvious factors:

• The fertilized egg is essentially invisible.
• It is unconscious and cannot make any decisions for itself.
• It has no independent existence outside of enclosure in its mother’s body.
• It doesn’t have a gender or a name.
• It doesn’t have a birth certificate, a passport, other identity papers, cannot open a bank account in its own name
• It can’t exercise any rights of ownership, vote, or serve on a jury,
• Can’t be inscribed into the military or held responsible for paying income or property taxes.
• It can’t be sued, criminally prosecuted, or otherwise held legal responsible for anything, including the fact that its presence inside its mother’s body may well lead to her death due to complications of pregnancy, childbirth or 12 postpartum months.

Reality check before continuing:

In spite of the rational barriers to legal personhood for embryos and pre-viable fetuses listed above, it is very possible that state and federal laws will be passed in the relatively near future that grant personhood status to the products of conception, beginning with the moment of fertilization.

The “pro-life movement” is a sustained, well-financed, worldwide system that is highly organized and has been working at many levels of society for the last half century. This includes the members and economic resources of Roman Catholic and evangelical churches, college campus organizations and a strong social media presence. Its operatives are very effectively at sharing their recruitment techniques internationally. Many of these groups have become very active in partisan politics to help elect or appoint ultra-conservative judges.

So it is useful for us to understand what legally bestowing ‘personhood’ on the products of conceptions would mean personally and to us as country. The following “Costs and Consequences” section delves deeply into those particulars.

Keep in mind that: “To be informed, is to be forewarned”.

Part II (of III)

Costs and Consequences: Legal & economic liabilities and social burdens for all 50 state associated with the legal status of personhood for fertilized eggs, embryos & pre-viable fetuses

Preamble to my “Caution tale about biting off more than you can chew”

A number of Catholic countries in Latin America have laws making abortion a crime and authorizing the police to investigate women who have a miscarriage or give birth to non-viable premature baby. Those women thought to have “suspicious” miscarriages are arrested, jailed, and criminally prosecuted.

Since there is no way for a woman to legally prove that she didn’t “do something” to induce or increase the likelihood of a miscarriage or premature birth, these women are being imprisoned for up to 30 years for capital crimes. In one case where the premature baby lived, her mother served a twelve and half years prison sentence while her infant daughter was being raised by relatives. There are currently 51 such cases in El Salvador.

Americans should be very careful not to “bite off more than we can chew” when it comes to equating pregnancy loses with murder and manslaughter, and pursuing criminal prosecutions for supposed cases of “fetal abuse”.

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Legal & economic liabilities and social burdens for all 50 state associated with the legal status of personhood for fertilized eggs,
embryos & pre-viable fetuses

The Issue: Whether a two-cell fertilized egg (I.e. conception) and all subsequent stages of development as a zygote, blastocyst, embryo, or pre-viable fetus should logically be accorded the legal rights of a person under current state and federal law.

 

To Be or Not to Be (a person): That is the question currently surrounding the legal status of the fertilized human egg

If your answer to the question of “life” beginning at conception is yes, then the legal concept of personhood applies to the two-cell fertilized egg and all its subsequent stages of development.

• embryonic and fetal medicine departments and services
• construction of new hospital facilities to house maternity patents at risk of miscarriage or premature birth
• high-tech services for women with pregnancy-related medical problems
• addition codes for reimbursement of healthcare providers
• refusal of private health insurance carriers to cover the bill for hospitalization and ongoing medical treatment for embryos and non-viable fetus

Logically the legal personhood status of embryos and pre-viable fetuses as would also result in significant increase in the legal expenses for government entities.

This would include a brand new category of crimes:

• new statutory schemes to define those crimes
• new statutes to define appropriate punishment of those so convicted
• prolonged incarceration of those convicted fetal murder or manslaughter

If the police investigation of the death of an embryo or fetus is ruled to be a homicide, there currently is nothing in the US Constitution, or its 27 Amendments, that would prevent the use of capital punishment for the birth mother, father, doctor or any hospital staff members found guilty of murder or manslaughter.

Economic Impact on Society

These services would not be covered by private health insurances carriers, so state and federal governments would need to finance additional and expanded medical services for maternity patients, and embryonic-fetal intensive care. Ultimately, reimbursement for these additional health-related expenses would fall to the taxpayers.

Addition laws related to pregnancy, and unborn and newborn babies at all gestational stages

Every pregnant who has any reason to think she might be potentially have a miscarriage would be legally required to immediately seek hospital admission to special “Embryonic & Fetal Life Support” units of local hospitals. Available statistics for pregnancy miscarriages is somewhere between 15 and 26%, with 20% being a useful working number, which would be approximately a million women each year.

Since a pregnant woman is the legally-identified “caretaker” of the products of conception at all stages of development and viability, she is obviously responsible for immediately seeking emergency medical care for any signs and symptoms of a miscarriage or possible fetal demise. Any pregnant woman who does not do this will be reported by medical personal to the legal authorities to be investigated for abuse to the unborn.

Should the embryo or fetus be stillborn or die after its birth, the mother can expect criminal charges to be filed against her, ranging from criminal abuse of the unborn to murder or manslaughter . If the crime does not allow for bail, or she can’t afford to pay her bail, she will be jailed while awaiting trial. No exceptions will be made for mothers with other children to care for.

Expanded Legal and Service-related Responsibilities of Hospitals

In order to do everything possible to prevent that miscarriages and probably death of the unborn embryo or fetus, acute care hospitals will be required to provide both emergency and inpatient care to any woman with active signs or symptoms of a possible miscarriage. With an annual birth rate somewhere around 4 million a year that would be an annual rate of about a million miscarriages.

If a heartbeat is detected on admission, but the fetus is subsequently stillborn within 24 hrs of its mother’s admission to the hospital, the death will be investigated by a special unit of the local police department to determine if there is any evidence of criminal neglect, voluntary or involuntary manslaughter or homicide by the parents or hospital personal. The hospital can also be sued for negligence in civil court and/or its staff members criminally procured if the investigators determines that the hospital staff did take all necessary measure to protect the life of the unborn.

Should a woman have a miscarriage and the embryo or fetus is born with a detectable heartbeat, then the hospital would be responsible for providing the pre-birth version of neonatal intensive care.

This would be a intensive and expansive and high tech process designed to keep embryos and pre-viable fetuses alive in special glass vats of warm saline solution hooked up to miniatures ECMO machines and other types of equipment that provide oxygen, circulate blood, and provide a pre-birth version of kidney dialysis until the embryo or fetus reaches the size and functional development of a newborn baby and could safely be taken off all life-support devices.

It would of course be very expensive to hospitalize and provide life support services in a fetal intensive care unit for hours, days, or weeks, months, or perhaps as long as a year for the expected 15% and 26% rate of miscarriages!

Life-extending care of critically premature fetuses with serious medical and developmental handicaps after discharge from acute-care hospitals

In addition, a very large percentage of fetuses that survive would continue to need sophisticated, around-the-clock care do to their many medical and psychological needs. Disabilities associated with profound prematurity include blindness, blind and deaf, inability to develop speech, severe cerebral palsy and a host of other ‘developmental delays’. This would require a massive undertaking for supporting these growing children either in their parents homes, or in special facilities to care for premature fetuses that have multiple handicaps.

Lesser legal issues

One can expect a very large number of the million or so women who have miscarriages every year to come under legal scrutiny for the possibility, however remote, that they somehow were responsible for their miscarriage or precipitous birth of a very premature baby. Certainly there would be a criminal investigation of all women who had a premature stillborn or a baby died shortly after its birth due to lack of viability.

There are countries in the world, El Salvador being one of them, that are sentencing women to between 12 and 30 years for having given birth to a stillborn baby with the assumption being that simply they did something illegal or failed to go to the hospital before the delivery. At present, there are 51 such cases in El Salvador.

Keeping the Unborn Alive: Questioning whether this is productive use of our country’s finite resources?

When one considers the expenses — medical treatments, prophylactic hospitalization of pregnant women and months or even years-long hospitalization of pre-viable fetuses after birth, accompanied by the legal costs for criminal investigations, prosecution trials, defense attorneys, long-term incarceration of women not be able to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that their miscarriage or pre-viable stillbirth was not their fault, orphanage care of their older children of single mothers, etc.

I can’t help but wonder if there is not a more positive way to use the tax dollars than financing a sectarian religious, medical and legal scheme to keep one-half-inch embryos and two-inch long fetuses alive in a warm saline solution in an Embryonic & Fetal Life Support Unit in busy hospital, while our judicial system incarcerates a growing number of women for having “suspicious” miscarriages.

Once more with feeling: “Do not to bite of more than you can chew”

I’d like to end by changing my “hat” back to the real world and own professional experience, and a particular tidbit of information from my life many years ago as an L&D nurse who actually has attended hundreds of those heart-rendering miscarriages and births of pre-viable fetuses.

I will probably came as a surprise to learn that there already is nationally agreed on ‘system’ for legally distinguishing between a miscarriage of the “products of conception” and the officially-defined “birth” of a premature baby. This simple, very workable definition has been used by the federal government, and vast majority (if not all) states, for the last 100 or so years.

If a woman delivers before 20 completed weeks of pregnancy (i.e., end of the 5th month), the “products of conceptions” are simply and legally disposed however the mother or parents wish or our hospital’s protocol. This generally means being carefully wrapped in a linen cloth, usually one of the blue or green surgical towels or small linen drapes so ubiquitous in hospital L&D units. Then these mournful little packages are carried down by one of the staff (usually the ward clerk) to the pathology department to be incinerated along with many other form of human tissue. No birth certificate or notice of fetal death was filed with the state, and no official burial was necessary.

However, if the delivery occurred after 20 completed weeks, the premature fetus has the official status of having been born, whether or not it breaths. The vast majority of these tiny fetuses don’t take a breath, or breathe only very briefly or erratically for a short time. With a minute or two of the birth, the placenta separates from the uterine wall. This abruptly ends the circulatory system that normally in which the mother provided a constant infusion of oxygen and other vital nutrients via their umbilical cord. In a couples more minutes, the fetus stops move its hands and feet, stops responding to stimulus, and loses unconscious as its tiny heart gradually slows down and finally stops.

Having been present during this process many times, and watching closely, I sincerely believe the baby does not suffer, that indeed it just goes to sleep, and I think its spirit goes back home to its Maker.

In these cases, the 20-plus weeks protocols call for the tiny baby to be properly buried as is fitting for a member of the human species.

Possible Adoption of pre- and post-20 weeks as a standard

I think this historic definitions of pre- and post- viability based on 20 completed weeks of pregnancy would work for virtually 100% of non-medical (i.e. elective) terminations of pregnancy prior to viability.

As a country that at the moment is in danger of losing its collective mind, we should seriously consider this pre-20 completed weeks of pregnancy as a way to return the country to its senses by acknowledging the realities of the world we actually live in. Desperate 16 year olds, older adolescents, and women of all ages and marital status will continue to have untenable pregnancies. Without access to safe and legal abortion services, they and their unborn babies will die from dirty and/or incompetent back-ally abortions. Every time a pregnant woman dies, so does her unborn baby.

Or we could consider redefining the idea of “pro-life” to include the life of the mother and to acknowledging the human right of babies to be born into families that can responsibility care for them — feed, clothe, teach to walk and talk, socialize, and educate them over the course of 18 or more years.

In Conclusion, a Personal Note

I describe myself as “pro-life”, a category I define as including the lives of pregnant women and taking into consideration the human rights of children to be born into a family that can responsibility love and care for them for at least the next 18 years.

I believe both men and women have a responsibility during their childbearing years to avoid unplanned pregnancy. That begins with the male of the species not ejaculating in the birth canal of a fertile female unless (a) they aren’t married to other people, (b) have both discussed and mutually agreed to have a child and they have the financial resource to carry that 18-year plan to completions.

But if you are a woman who doesn’t happen to live in that ‘perfected’ world, and are “surprised” to find yourself pregnant, I personally think the best response is to have a baby if that is reasonably possible.

If that is NOT an option, then termination as early as possible is the only other workable solution. Yes, it’s not perfect, but neither is 16-year old girl being carried into the ER with a cold, dead 6-month-old fetus dangling out of her vagina, its head entombed in her vaginia.

Decisions have consequences; stupid decisions have disastrous consequences. Abortion bans are collectively a stupid decision, with far-reaching and disastrous consequences!

I personally don’t like the use of the word “choice” when it comes to the topic of women and abortion. Pregnancy is not like making a choice between coffee or tea, choosing the topping you want on your pizza. I prefer the more robust verb “to decide”, accompanied by the concept of importance. We are talking about “decisions” that are important, very hard to make, and have long-term consequences. That’s the exactly right verb for this conversation!

Abortion is a decision that every adult of voting age must make.

If you decide to vote for candidates that gleefully promise to pass laws banning all abortions starting with conception, no exception, then teenage girls, young women, married women and mothers with several small children will die, as will the embryos and miniature fetuses in their uteri. Sometimes this will include the truly gruesome deaths of older fetuses.

Or you could consider a different, and even harder decision, the one that defines “pro-life” to include the life of the pregnant woman and the right of a child to be wanted and responsibly raised. It acknowledges that, with the very rarest of occasions, we rarely ever know what is best for another person or know what they can and can’t handle, most especially a 14-year-old pregnant teenager or the desperate mother of six who has just received an eviction notice.

But these girls and young women may not be very sophisticated in the sense of worldliness but they know themselves. They are intimately familiar with the reality of their situation, what they can and can’t “handle”, what help is (or isn’t) available to them, whether they have reliable income and other forms of support necessary for bringing a new baby into their household.

I think it is an eminently ethical and rational to decision for us to decide to let these women decide whether to have a baby they know can’t afford to responsibly care for, or to terminate their pregnancy as as soon as arrangements can be made.

In that case, I hope you decide to vote for candidates that supports a woman right to decide what happens inside her own body, and that includes terminating an untenable pregnancy, safely and legally, as early as possible.

Personally, I think the historical definition described above as a very reasonable solution to an otherwise unresolvable problem. It would assure access to safe and legal termination of pregnancy before 20-completed weeks of pregnancy in all 50 states of the Union.

 

 

 

 

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