Debra at Bread n Roses writes:
I was thinking about something I read by someone who seemed to not understand the difference between potential and being.
I think Debra is referring to this conversation I was having with deBeauxOs of Bread n Roses, in which she said:
The potential for life existed before she was conceived and during my pregnancy,
Debra says:
Having had six kids and two miscarriages I think I understand the concept.
If I understood correctly, Debra is saying that the unborn child is not "real". It's potential.
No, potential things do not have the characteristics of "real" things. Unborn children have the characteristics of other members of our species. The ONLY difference with unborn children is that they are younger. That is all. You don't switch "species" from the time you are conceived to the time you are born. You are a human being.
The interaction between a parent and the unborn child is not "potential". It's real. You tap the belly, the baby taps back. That's not potential, that's real. Babies learn in the womb. That's real.
But if you miscarry, you have no funeral, no papers nothing...why?
Not true. You can have a funeral in the Catholic Church and in other churches. My miscarried child is comemorated at the Shrine of Holy Innocents, New York City. My child was miscarried after three weeks of life in the womb. My priest held a Mass for my baby.
After doing a quick search on this issue, I came upon guidelines by none other than Health Canada for dealing with miscarriages:
Because viewing, holding, and having private time with the baby [NOTE: it's a baby, not a potential] may be impossible, health care providers should spend time with the parents talking about the baby and the parents' broken hopes and dreams. It is important to encourage the parents to honour their baby in some way; for example, they might name the baby or make a keepsake album with cards and perhaps an ultrasound picture.
Also:
Burial and Cremation
Provinces and territories differ when it comes to cremation, burial, and tissue disposal regulations. Health care providers need to familiarize themselves with the regulations in their province or territory. This information should be made available at the hospital unit. Professionals need to discuss the options regarding burial, cremation, and disposal of remains regardless of the baby's gestation and weight.
When arranging burials, cremations, or other memorial ceremonies, health care professionals should consider the following factors:
Funeral services and burials are an individual choice, based on preference, tradition, culture, and religion.
Parents may choose to have the baby share the family burial area.
Individual and family preferences, as well as cultural beliefs and customs, may differ from the norms prescribed by institutional guidelines.
Funeral homes are showing signs of increased understanding - not only of infant deaths but of the resulting needs of parents, siblings, and extended family and friends. In addition, they are becoming more sensitive to the needs for services for babies weighing less than 500 grams and who are less than 20 weeks' gestation. It might be helpful to include funeral directors when discussing or planning programs, or educating staff.
So you see, it's a BABY. Not a "potential" baby.
Debra writes:
Because despite how you have extrapolated the future, the "child" was only a potential child.
Not according to Health Canada. Not according to the Criminal Code. Even though the Criminal code does not consider the unborn child a person, the term "child" is used. "Unborn" is not synonymous with "potential"-- only with being in a state of gestation.
And devastating as the loss may be for you, no one else feels it they way they would if the child was already born.
Not true. Some women do feel it as bad. Some don't. I didn't. I did not have the time to develop an emotional investment in my child. But that does not mean I did not consider my unborn child a "child".
Sometimes, even other members of the family feel bad, too.
The potential of a future with a child for someone who does not want to have a child is just as devastating. and if we force that future on them it is equally as harmful as forcing someone who wants a child to have an abortion.
I will apply the same argument as I did in the Empire of Death Strikes Back conversation: would we "abort" a newborn in the same circumstance? The answer is no. Ergo, this objection does not address my assertion that the unborn child is an equal.
The situation of an unwanted child is not as devastating, because the child who suffers abortion is DEAD, whereas the unwanted child, as abused as he MIGHT be, is still alive. He has the potential to turn his life around, to make something of himself, to go on and have a happy adulthood. Plenty of people do. They're ALIVE. Their lives, in and of themselves are worth something. When they're dead, they're dead.
So with the ability to recognize the meaning of potential, one is able to both support the right of pregnancy and support the right of abortion.
The meaning of "potential" [baby] has no basis in reality. When women look at the ultrasound, they don't say "hey, there's my POTENTIAL child." or "Oh look, it's my fetus!" They say "Oh, there's my baby!"
This is the mental gymnastics of the pro-abort crowd. The unborn child is acknoweldged to be a human baby, let's treat him like one. Health Canada, the Criminal Code, and EVERYONE else speaks plainly about the unborn child as a baby.
ONLY when abortion comes up is the baby a "potential child".
That's the mental gymnastics of the kind used to suppress the Black man in 19th century America. He's human, but he's not.
fern hill wrote:
Bang on, Debra. When I was pregnant, it felt like an alien invasion. I wanted this potential stopped. And I got it stopped.
If the invasion was potential, not acutal, then it wasn't an actual invasion. So it was an invasion, in your mind, by which you mean another being was inside you.
But what was this being? Not POTENTIALLY, but ACTUALLY.
It could have looked something like THIS:
That's a 7-week old embryo. I'm not saying she aborted at 7 weeks, I am saying it was something like this.
Now what is this being who is living inside her body? It has an actual existence. Obviously. It fulfills all the criteria of human life-- it has human DNA, intakes nutrients, intakes oxygen, eliminates waste, expends energy moves,and so forth.
So, by the laws of biology, it is a human being.
Socially, we can see that people refer to that being as a baby. ONLY when the abortion debate comes up does the word "potential" come up. People do not react as if they baby is only a "potential". The discussion over unborn children betrays that fact. We talk about babies, unborn babies, unborn children, at very worst, fetus. NEVER do we talk about "potential babies" or "my parasite".
So what that tells me is that there is a kind of doublespeak in order to preserve this convenience. The doublespeak dehumanizes the baby so that abortion is not seen as actually killing.
Which it is. Abortionists say so. Heck, look at the National Abortion Federation guidelines, and it speaks of administering "foeticidal agents" to fetuses in second trimester abortion. "-Cide" is a suffix meaning "death". So the fetus is alive, and we know that abortion kills it.
There's no "potential" about that. That's reality.
So we know the fetus is alive. By the laws of science, it can only be a human being, because two humans produced it (and two individuals of the same species will not produce an individual of a different species); because it has the genotype DNA for humans; and because its morphological structure that it maintains its self-organization. It doesn't split off to become something else.
So, by any commonsense look, the fetus is a human being. It's not a potential human being. It's a human being whose personhood is denied in order to preserve the right to kill it. Now where have we seen that before?
anne cameron writes:
But for sure, "potential" is very different from "being". We all have potential.
(...)
I'm sure I have the potential to be a raging bitch, that doesn't mean I intend to work overtime to fulfill that potential...in fact I'd do whatever I could to abort that potential!
The thing is, that "bitch" does NOT exist, but anne, does. The fetus DOES exist. It's not a "potential" being. It exists. We treat it like it exists. We know it corresponds to all the criteria for a member of our species. That's a fact.
suzette writes:
The thing, as with everything in life, is that it's not black and white.
Except the right to abortion. That's black and white,and should be uncontested.
That's a ridiculous statement, and people cannot operate without some "black and white".
The laws of science are fairly stable and rigid things. A fetus is a human life. He's a member of our species. That's a fact.
Suzette wrote:
If a child dies before it's born, it's a miscarriage or still birth.
It's a child. Thank you for proving my point. It's not a "potential child". It's a child. NOBODY speaks or acts as if that child did not really exist.
Despite the fact that I've seen my unborns, I consider them potential children,
Except she acts like they're her kids. She calls her and her partner "parents". You can't be parents of potential children. When you're a parent, you have KIDS. You also don't name potential being. "Potential" means not in existence yet. The children are in existence. They are treated like children in existence. They are referred to as if they are children in existence.
This is all semantics. ONLY when this abortion debate comes up, does the word potential come up. Nobody has those discussions with the word "potential".
I don't have children, I am pregnant. Big difference.
But she called her and her partner "parents". She referred to her babies as interacting with one another. She calls the unborn a "child".
Again, all these mental gymnastics. There's no plainspokenness, because plain spokenness can't accommodate the contradiction. You know a side tries to dehumanize another side when it has to make all kinds of semantic allowances to explain the apparent discrepancies.
I can't even get offended by the argument that a fetus is equal to a baby or an adult human being, because it has so little meaning in a practical and philosophical sense. It's truly alarming that some people frame it as an equality issue.
Of course it has meaning. People treat their unborns like their kids EXCEPT when the abortion issue comes up. Suzette called her and her partner "parents". Call them her "kids" and treated them like her kids.
ONLY when the argument comes up does she make the effort to say "oh, by the way, they're not really kids".
Except she just called the unborn child a "child". But it's a potential child. Which is it? Is it a child or a potential child? It can't be both.
brebis noire wrote:
And scarier still is the anti-abortionist stance that seeks to separate the woman's body from the fetus.
Well, if the fetus is an equal, it can be conceived as 100% taken up in the woman's body, he's still an equal and still should not be killed.
The only thing that has permitted these women to start framing their arguments the way they do is medical and pharmaceutical technology (including birth control pills), along with vast, pooled amounts of knowledge and expertise. Without that, pregnancy would be a much scarier business than it already is.
Well, no. The right to life of the unborn child had been asserted before the advent of ultrasound technology, even in the early 20th century. Just read the old Catholic Encyclopedia.
I can appreciate that we do currently live in a world where this expertise and medical know-how is a part of our lives, but I don't see it as justifying the hijacking of a woman's life for a pregnancy and a life she does not want or cannot have for any number of reasons.
I realize that some women feel that even if the fetus is a person and an equal, it's still okay to kill him. But most people acknowledge that innocent equals should not be killed.
