Abortion and Schrodinger's Cat

[epporsimuove]

I really don’t have anything to say today. I have been having an exciting and civil discussion about abortion all day on Facebook (weird, right?). I am going to copy a bit of what I wrote here so I can remember this because I think it is something I am going to be talking about a bit more.

The question was whether a fetus was a human and therefore watching an ultrasound before an abortion would be traumatic, or whether it was just an object in which case an ultrasound should not be traumatic at all.

My reply:
It is not one or the other. It is not a binary; not a baby or an inanimate object. Until birth (or the third trimester, second by some states) the fetus exists as Schrodinger's cat, neither a person nor inanimate. Some religious and spiritual beliefs have a different view of when the mass of cells becomes a person, that's fine. But it is not a fact, it is a belief. Therefore, the government should not be making decisions based on said belief.

The issue of personhood is the crux. Not when is a fetus alive or human, but when is it a person? I have heard all different types of rationales. The instant of conception (which is kinda odd because most fertilized eggs don't embed and are thus ejected from the body), when the heart beats, when there are brainwaves, when it is can survive outside of the womb, at birth, or (my personal belief) when the mother forms a relationship with it. It is unprovable in quantifiable terms and therefore should not be influencing our legislation.

So, now I am thinking of doing a post on my absolute hatred of binaries.

I would also like to say that my journal is usually not so abortion heavy, but the recent Oklahoma law has me up in arms.

Comments

[dorkpie]

I never thought of abortion this way before, but it does make an absurd amount of sense (at least to me).

[epporsimuove]

I'm glad it makes sense to you. I am trying to find a new way to frame my discussions of abortion, so it is good to hear this works for someone.

[forpassionlikecrime]

You should talk to this kid in my senior design group (who I hate, naturally). He's so religious-y.

He refused to go with us to the Tilted Kilt because he doesn't like to be in places that serve a lot of alcohol and have scantily clad women.

To piss him off, I put up a new desktop background of a mostly-naked Grace Park (http://hellcrazy.net/hella/ass/images/Grace-Park-7.JPG). He stares at it, incessantly.

I'd like to see you argue with him because I would just laugh.

Also, his ring-tone is Popular from Wicked. Supposedly, only for his sister. If that's true, then no one but his sister ever calls him. He knows all the words, though. I played it and he was pretty much lip-syncing.

[epporsimuove]

Can't reply, distracted by the pretty!!

[silveradept]

That nicely captures the difficulties of binary thinking. I may steal it for my own personal philosophy.

If I may offer something else, from my understanding of it, the possible trauma would be greater for those women who were victims of sexual violence - they would then have to endure seeing a result of that violence, but also have to endure a penetrative act (and to be legal abortion, it would be a penetrative act fairly soon after the violence) without exception.

[epporsimuove]

Feel free to steal.

You point about the ultrasound is dead-on. It is something the original poster and I discussed as well, but she was really focused not on this specific policy, but on the binary question of whether a fetus is a baby or not.

However, it still bears repeating, this law is awful.

[silveradept]

Ah, okay. I didn't know that the discussion was chiefly about the Schrödinger status of the fetus.

Three Problems

[johndacajun]

First, you say this in regards to someone who has the viewpoint of person-hood beginning at conception "(which is kinda odd because most fertilized eggs don't embed and are thus ejected from the body)" I'm not quite sure what is odd about this view while knowing these facts, since people who hold this view believe in miscarriages and natural causes of death.

Second, you stated your view of when person-hood begins as "when the mother forms a relationship with it." So does this mean that if the mother never forms a "relationship" the baby it's not a person? Also this view is completely subjective to an observer, and not objective to the being itself.

Last but not least, with your use of Schrodinger's cat in dealing with a fetus, you state that the fetus would be "neither a person nor inanimate." This would would be incorrect if applied to Schrodinger's cat since Schrodinger states that the cat would be both alive and dead, not neither alive and dead. So in all reality the Schrodinger's cat argument supports the pro-life viewpoint since the fetus would be both a PERSON and inanimate. Thus in the case of an abortion you would still be destroying a person.

P.S. Would it be morally correct to put a sealed box, that contains Schrodinger's cat, into a garbage compressor since the cat is both alive and dead?