Pro-Life Science and Abortion

by Doctor Science

Shannon Dingle posted I'm Pro-Life and I'm Voting for Hillary, because she thinks "pro-life policies" should mean support for all kinds of children and parents, not just opposition to abortion.

It's a very thoughtful, nuanced post in general, but includes this statement:

I believe life begins scientifically at the moment of conception when new and unique DNA is created when the egg and sperm meet. Except in rare cases, like ectopic pregnancies and other circumstances in which the zygote can't become a fetus and then a born baby, life will continue from that point unless interrupted.

I've heard something very similar from many "pro-lifers", including some here. The problem with this paragraph is that it claims to be about "science", but is made up of errors or falsehoods.

1. "Scientifically" life does not begin, it is transmitted. There is no non-living link in human reproduction. The scientific answer to "When does life begin?" is "Three billion years ago."[1] For "When does human life begin?" the answer is "About 100,000 years ago."

2. Not all humans have new and unique DNA: identical twins are people, too. The process of splitting one zygote into twins is not instantaneous, and frequently the identical embryos recombine to form a single individual. At what point do you say "there are two human lives here"? If they recombine (or one absorbs the other) after that point, has there been a death? (I wrote about this point and the next 4 years ago, in A single cell is not a person: the problem of twins, but because I am basing my opinions on science, they've changed a bit since then.)

3. Conversely, some individual humans are chimeras: they contain two different sets of "new and unique DNA", when two distinct embryos (in your thinking, two distinct human lives) have merged in utero. If you start with 2 human lives and end up with one individual, does this mean that one of those human lives ended? Which one?

4. The statement that life will continue from the point of conception to birth "except in rare cases" is false. On the contrary, it's been estimated that only 30% of human conceptions progress to live birth. About 25-30% never make it to implantation (which is the start of pregnancy), another 30% die during the first week or so, 10-15% are recognized as miscarriages, and 1% are stillbirths.

It turns out that a large percentage of human zygotes are not capable of developing to the point of birth because they don't have a "clean" set of chromosomes. This is extremely surprising, and so far unexplained--though obviously a hot topic for research. It's surprising because in other well-studied mammals (mice, for instance), 90% or more of zygotes are good to go. It's also surprising because conception and early embryo formation are "mission-critical" for living creatures. Natural selection will act most strongly, random mutations won't be tolerated, and we expect the biochemistry to be very conservative and slow to change.

And yet, human reproduction seems to be *incredibly* buggy, much more so than for chimpanzees. My evolutionary-biologist instincts suspect this didn't evolve via natural selection, but is a mistake solidified by inbreeding during a severe population bottleneck at some point well before the evolution of Homo sapiens: from 200,000 years ago back to maybe 1.5 million y.a.

Regardless of cause, right now the reality is that most human zygotes cannot lead to a live birth. They're all human and alive, but only a minority of them are capable of becoming a human person. Most are not "babies", even potentially.

5. Saying "life will continue from that point unless interrupted". No, without the active support of a human uterus the death rate for human embryos is 100%. An embryo's life doesn't just "continue", it needs ongoing contributions from the mother to stay alive.

Even on the biological level, these contributions aren't automatic. It's becoming clear that the uterus isn't just an accepting and supportive environment for embryos, it's a testing ground. The uterus chooses (there's that word again!) which embryos are worth growing, and aborts the rest. That's why so many human embryos die in the first week or so after implantation: some are too buggy to make it any further and die on their own, but others are killed by the lining of the uterus.

It's been plausibly suggested that this is why humans menstruate--unlike the other great apes and almost all other mammals, which thriftily re-absorb the uterine lining instead. Costly, messy menstruation is worth it for humans, to clean out defective embryos that have embedded themselves in the uterine lining. It's the natural equivalent of a post-miscarriage D&C each cycle.

Science-based arguments can be made for putting "the start of respectable[2] human life" at a number of different times during development: conception, heartbeat, movement or "quickening" (traditional), brain formation, brain development, birth (another traditional point), etc. Some of these arguments may well be stronger than the ones for conception. And that's aside from the point that Christians should really be talking about immortal souls, not biological lives, and are using "when life begins" as a kind of rhetorical stalking-horse for "ensoulment", which is clearly not a scientific term.

The current "pro-life" movement doesn't date respectable human life from conception because that's scientifically irreproachable (it's not). They *chose* that point for non-scientific reasons, then picked the science to support it. It's dishonest, and follows a tradition of ignorance and bullshiting in the movement. I'm using "bullshit" in philosopher Harry Frankfurt's sense, to mean that they're not consciously lying, they just don't care about the truth.

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[1] I first heard (read) this formulation in the 1980s, in a report about a scientist testifying at a Congressional hearing. I can't find the reference, though.

[2] I'm using "respectable" to mean "worthy of respect similar to that toward a person". Because I can.

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Coatlicue, an Aztec goddess combining aspects of fertility and death. This statue is in Mexico City.

It's strikingly difficult to find a Goddess of Miscarriage in any culture. I can't believe that women didn't pray to *someone* in their religious pantheons: prayer for solace after a miscarriage, prayer to avert another one, and prayer to have one, when a woman was pregnant and didn't want to be. I'm betting that lack of evidence here is because written records come from men, and miscarriage rituals fell behind a heavy veil of Women's Mysteries. Coatlicue is just one possible nominee.

Comments

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Sorry, I still don't see how "panic that they might do what you did" is insulting.

Are you saying that such people do not exist?

Or that there are none among us, that in later years appalled at the stuff we did while younger, and amazed at how we managed to survive? Seems like a perfectly natural reaction upon gaining experience, so hard to see as "insulting". Unless you consider "getting old" to be insulting, in which case may your age continue to insult you for a VERY LONG TIME.

There's certainly a modern tendency toward over-protection, and a recent reaction in "free range kids". I wouldn't be so sure that dynamic hasn't been playing out as long as there has been humanity.

[Marty]

wj, this is one thing that I tend to react to on some days. I don't think parents panic and decide what t based on some unreasonable fear that their child is going to do what they did.

I think people decide how they think is the best way to raise their child(ren), and it often changes as the child changes. I think it is insulting to write their conclusions off to panic.

[wj]

I don't see it as "writing their conclusions off to panic." I think that they have entirely legitimate concerns about their children.

But I think that, especially when it comes to sex, their approach to those concerns looks like what I would, in any other context, call panic. Certainly their words on the subject (talking to other adults, not their children) sound like someone in a panic.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Marty,
your confidence in parent's ability to decide what is "the best way to raise their child(ren)" is touching. Most parents that I've spoken with seem to be convinced that they're "just winging it", and hope that they're not doing much harm.

Okay, I guess after the 8th or 9th kid, you're an expert, but most people never get to that point these days. And kids (like cats, dammit) seem to have an infinite ability to surprise, so 'expertise' is of limited utility.

The disconnect between the reaction to parents bossing around "almost an adult" kids and governments bossing around "mostly competent citizens" is amusing, however.

[Countme-In]

More subhuman, anti-life, lying, cold-blooded murderous eminently killable vermin sign on with trump to murder Americans.

But Hillary has a thing for Negroponte.

It's a tossup.

Buy guns and plenty of ammo for the violence that's coming.

[Countme-In]

Oh, you want a link?

https://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/08/11/trump-names-serial-misinformer-betsy-mccaughey-economic-advisory-council/212342

[Bruce B.]

Looking at Dr. Science's careful research and reporting - which essentially isn't being engaged with at all - reminds me that from time to time, I think there should be a very strong burden of proof on any man discussing women's health issues. He should explain precisely why any woman, and society at large, should play the slightest attention to his position. Men do not in general know much about how women's bodies work, and when given the opportunity to learn more, they almost always (so far as I can tell) refuse to take it.

So we get the Nth sterile loop through stale, stagnant talking points rather than many (if any) guys taking the opportunity to get clues offered in the excellent way Dr. Science presents them.

Only someone who followed one of her links would know that a research project reports "Microarray analysis reveals abnormal chromosomal complements in over 70% of 14 normally developing human embryos.". That's staggering. Taken in combination with other things she reports on - some new to me, some not - it really does knock the props out from under any assertion that we can expect a random fertilized egg to develop into a healthy baby unless some sinister human agent interferes. I already knew that it was not the case in many sorts of situations, but the more research goes on, the more that individual lives seem to me as fragile as complex life in general in the face of a chaotic macro environment.

I appreciate the work you put into this, Dr. Science, and regret the lack of engagement with it.

[Bruce B.]

I would like to note that I managed to successfully suppress several urges to engage in invidious personal attacks while writing the above, and am off to claim a cookie.

[Bruce B.]

The underlying principle is a simple one: strong feeling isn't qualification. It may lead one to become informed enough to be qualified to hold an opinion on a subject, but by itself, strong feeling is just strong feeling.

Most guys recognize this most of the time. They take their medical problems to a doctor or nurse practitioner or someone else with a bunch of clues, not to the first person who feels very strongly about their health. They take their cars to trained mechanics, now that it's so hard to get the tools it takes to be really qualified to tinker with one's own modern car. When they buy a house, they get a trained and experienced inspector to supplement their own appraisal. If their children get arrested, they seek out qualified legal help and hope for judges with the experience and clues to judge well. And on and on.

The principle doesn't stop working when it comes to abortion. There's genuinely no point in going on about natural development if we don't know what that is, any more than it would make sense to mandate that doctors have to deal with cancer via the four humors model. It's not a dodge to say "any attempt to say when human life becomes distinct is fundamentally arbitrary" when "human life" itself turns out to be so complicated a thing. And so on.

Strong feeling isn't qualification.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Bruce B, yeah this whole "life" thing is so messy and inefficent. Why, it's as it "just grew" and "changed in random ways because of random contingencies", rather then having been intelligently designed.

And the warrantee plan, to put it mildly, sucks.

I fail to see how any self-respecting deity, at least one who is not on boat for BIG-ENTROPY (ahem), would be willing to take credit for it.

[Bruce B.]

Snake: Yeah. Dealing with gall bladder and thyroid trouble for a while is enough to make one think the Gnostics were onto something with the idea that the Creator is insane, evil, or both.

[Bruce B.]

Snarki, I mean! Darned autocorrect. Sorry.

[wj]

I think that we can probably all agree, whatever our various political and theological views, that autocorrect is the Devil's tool. Certainly its propensity to generate chaos is suggestive.

[russell]

auto-correct and caps lock, both.

[Marty]

I DONT TYPE WELL ENOUGH TO USUALLY KNOW WHEN THE PROBLEM IS AUTOCORRECT, BUT I THINK CAPS LOCK ROCKS. ROCKS, YOU HEAR? ROCKS! (except it always capitalizes Russell which irritates me no end)

[Ugh]

I think McKinney gave away the game upthread where he said the undeniable human being is the woman (or rather that he was undeniably a human being). Since there seems to be some question about the fetus, it seems we should err on the undeniably human side. It also seems odd that the fetus should be given state enforced access to the woman's body, even if the rights were in equipose.

On the other issue, nothing beats the insert key in terms of evil. YMMV

[Lurker]

Marty and Snarki

the ratio of people having sex at an early age is high, and has been for about a generation and half now. The Pill has been available since 1960's, and abortion has been legal in the Western world for decades. It is nonsense to talk about kids nowadays "getting away with things".

My mother had the pill and abortion readily available, and actually, that's why I was born born as her first child, more than a year after she married. (As far as I know, she never needed to have an abortion, because contraceptives were used responsibly.) She could "get away" with things quite as well as I could, or my daughters will be able to. In fact, better, because she lived her youth in an age with extremely effective antibiotics and no AIDS. My daughters will need to be much more careful than she, because multi-resistent STDs will be rather commonplace at the time they are starting to have sex. I care a lot more for the health than the morals of my children. They can repent their errors, but a multi-resistant syphilis is much more difficult to cure. Sulpha seems to be the only cure, and it is by no means a sure-fire thing.

Yet, having contraception readily available does not mean that most people would have a huge number of sexual relationships. The median Finn has about four sexual relationships during their life. That is not so much, spread over several decades. The reason why we believe that polyamorous people are commonplace is that there is a very long tail of people with a huge number of sexual partners. If you have three or four sexual partners during your life, the odds are that one of them is a person with such lifestyle. So, while most people don't have a huge number of sexual partners, many have slept with such a person.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

Hi Lurker, interesting perspective; but I do have one disagreement:

"the ratio of people having sex at an early age is high, and has been for about a generation and half now. most of human history, the past couple hundred years excepted"

From a biological/anthropological perspective, people have sex as soon as the hormones kick in. Because of natural selection, going back roughly since sex was invented. (no, not 1968, more like 800M BC). That's what those hormones are for: making sure the species keeps on cranking along.

Deferring sex to get a bit more maturity is a really good idea in modern society, but is completely unnatural in a very fundamental way.

[liberal japonicus]

http://www.cwhn.ca/en/node/39365

One of the most reliable measures of national development is apparently an earlier age for the onset of menarche. So from that standpoint, Lurker's got a point, but when you plug in Snarki's observation that From a biological/anthropological perspective, people have sex as soon as the hormones kick in.

I hope you can see the societal problem involved...

[Hartmut]

Why don't the teens take an example in the Greenland shark?: no sex before reaching an age of 150 years. ;-)