This letter to the editor of the Baton Rouge Advocate was printed on April 26, 2008; because the online version of this republicunt rag expects you to PAY four bucks or more to link to letters written by NON-STAFF and which are easily transcribed from the printed newspaper, I've done so here, because I refuse to give my debit card information to these douchebags. (And no, I didn't write the letter; I found it remarkable that ANYONE surviving in the hellhole of Baton Rouge would have the courage to buck the uber-catholic/protestant bibul-banging fanatic majority and use his real name!)
Speculation, soul, abortion, choice
Saturday, Apriil 26, 2008
Baton Rouge Advocate
A writer (letter, March 1), lamenting that U.S. laws prevent forcing a woman to bear a pregnancy she decided to abort, speculated the soul “appears at the very instant of conception.”
Speculation about imaginary entities, such as souls, should never threaten laws that protect women.
The entity, soul, is maintained by tradition, which some people hold more important than fiction because tradition has age. Wikipedia (online) covers “soul.” The paragraph on etymology, which reports “soul” is some 3,000 years old, seems trivial since the underlying concerns and dialogue must have started nearly a 100,000 years ago.
Other paragraphs --- about philosophical views, religious views, etc. --- cover speculations. Thinkers like Plato and Aristotle commented on something prehistoric men imagined might address real concerns: souls empowered awareness and immortality.
Wikipedia’s “list of Star Wars characters” is also fascinating but too new and too widely known as fiction to enter arguments about human reproduction. And in the “information age,” it I unlikely Star Wars characters will ever have the status of ancient phantasms such as the soul.
Facts about human reproduction are also in Wikipedia. The entry “twins,” includes the statement, “Identical twins occur when a single egg is fertilized to form one zygote which then divides into two separate embryos.”
Considering the writer’s speculation that a soul “appears at that very instant of conception,” what happens to the soul when the resulting zygote divides to form identical twins? Does the soul divide and double; does it stay with only one of the embryos, leaving the other one soulless; does an additional soul appear; did two souls appear at conception?
Most people who would force a woman to bear a pregnancy she would abort neither hold the man accountable nor complain about the ubiquitous natural abortions. Estimating the number of natural abortions is difficult. Reported miscarriages approximate 20 percent of known pregnancies; many conceptions naturally terminate too early to be noticed or otherwise go unreported; stillbirths must be included. Perhaps more than 10 million conception are naturally aborted in the United States each year!
Most people who lament laws that protect women ignore these spontaneous abortions. Spontaneous abortions are usually a natural response to something gone wrong --- chromosomal abnormality in the fetus; problems with the uterus, cervix, or placenta; polycentric ovary syndrome; an unhealthy mother/father.
Just as it would be wrong to reverse nature’s abortions, it would be wrong to force a woman to bear a pregnancy she decided to abort. Imaginary entities and people’s opinions about them have no place in the arguments about responsibility, accountability and forcing a woman to bear a pregnancy that she decided to abort.
PHIL B.
Retired chemical engineer
Baton Rouge
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