XPost: sci.med.cardiology, soc.culture.usa, soc.culture.israel   
   XPost: talk.abortion   
   From: MEjercit@HotMail.com   
      
   https://ethicsalarms.com/2025/05/28/re-abortion-another-bias-mak   
   s-you-stupid-op-ed-in-the-nyt/   
      
   Re Abortion: Another “Bias Makes You Stupid” Op-Ed in the NYT   
   May 28, 2025 / Jack Marshall   
      
      
   It’s kind of funny when headline writers are so clueless and biased that   
   what they think is a “res ipsa loquitur” story proving one thing   
   actually reveals something completely different.   
      
   The headline on a Times op-ed ed last week was “A Brain-Dead Woman Is   
   Being Kept on Machines to Gestate a Fetus. It Was Inevitable.” (I’m   
   using my last gift link of the month on this one, so you’d better read   
   it!) The writer was Kimberly Mutcherson, a professor at Rutgers Law School.   
      
   The entire piece radiates contempt for the concept of treating the   
   unborn as human lives, which, you know, they are and rather undeniably   
   so. Readers are informed that Adriana Smith is brain dead, and has been   
   connected to life support machines for more than 90 days to save the   
   life of her baby. Smith was nine weeks pregnant when she died from   
   multiple blood clots in her brain.   
      
   “Her fetus’s heart continued to beat,” writes the professor, as if it   
   was an abandoned car with a functioning carburetor. Georgia, she   
   explains, is one of those crazy, fetus-worshiping states where a nascent   
   human being is deemed a human life that can’t be snuffed out on a whim   
   if it has a heartbeat. This, to the op-ed’s author, the headline writer   
   and the New York Times is completely unfathomable.   
      
      
   “Legislators did not seem to have considered a situation in which a   
   pregnant woman is legally dead,” she sneers. Funny, I don’t see why the   
   death of the mother compels the decision that the child she is carrying   
   should be considered a non-person and a life not worth saving. The   
   professor quotes the dead woman’s mother as saying, “We want the baby.   
   That’s a part of my daughter. But the decision should have been left to   
   us — not the state.” Wait: don’t we all believe that it is a proper   
   function of the state to protect the lives of human beings and to pass   
   laws that embody that duty? Do families have the option of letting the   
   children of parents who are killed die from neglect because it’s the   
   family’s “choice”?   
      
      
   What is stunning (depressing, annoying, telling) about Mutcherson’s   
   essay is that she can’t grasp why anyone would argue that a brain dead   
   mother should be kept alive so a vulnerable human being can become   
   strong enough to live a life outside her womb. Many quotes in the op-ed   
   make that clear, like…   
      
   “Reproductive justice advocates have long been clear that abortion law   
   is never only about abortion. It is about the exercise of control over   
   all pregnant women, regardless of whether they plan to carry their   
   pregnancies to term. That’s why the anti-abortion movement has pursued a   
   broad agenda of legal personhood for embryos and fetuses.” My comment:   
   “The Horror”! These misguided people think that a human being’s life   
   should be saved if at all possible. The monsters! This is the “It isn’t   
   what it is,” “Handmaiden’s Tale” propaganda of the political left, not   
   objective analysis. Anti-abortion advocates think that living human   
   beings shouldn’t be killed, that’s all. The position has nothing to do   
   with “controlling” the people who want to kill them any more than laws   
   against murder are “about the exercise of control” over citizens who   
   would like to kill someone.   
   “This kind of catastrophic event was inevitable, given the expansive and   
   imprecise laws written by legislators who generally lack medical   
   expertise, and the inability of politicians to fully predict every   
   emergency situation.” My comment: The professor isn’t referring to the   
   mother’s death as the “catastrophic event,” but rather the brain dead   
   woman’s body being kept functioning so her baby can be born. I can   
   conceive of valid arguments for why this should be considered bad policy   
   or a situation requiring special legislation. But what’s the   
   catastrophe? The author is incapable of comprehending that in a   
   utilitarian analysis, a Kantian analysis favoring human life, and   
   reciprocity principles (“If you were the fetus, what would you want the   
   hospital to do?”), the situation is thoroughly defensible.   
   “Emory University Hospital, once Ms. Smith’s place of employment, would   
   not be legally allowed to remove organs from a brain-dead person without   
   family consent if this person hadn’t previously registered her wish to   
   be a donor, even if doing so could save or improve dozens of lives.   
   However, according to Ms. Smith’s mother, the hospital informed her   
   that, because of the fetus her daughter was carrying, it could not   
   legally withdraw the artificial means of keeping her body functioning.”   
   My comment: So? The professor thinks that’s an apt analogy: the dead   
   woman’s organs can’t be harvested without her prior consent, so they   
   will be allowed to die along with her. But a liver isn’t a human being.   
   Never mind; abortion advocates can’t concede that what is at stake in an   
   abortion decision is a second human life. If they do, they know what   
   abortion becomes.   
   “Knowing the tremendous work that the body of a pregnant woman must do   
   to sustain and nourish a pregnancy, the harm to the fetus from being   
   trapped inside a body without a functioning brain cannot be known with   
   certainty.” My comment: Consequentialism, the refuge of the ethically   
   inert: “It’s a bad decision because it might not work.”   
   Mutcherson concludes by calling the situation “dystopian”—there’s   
   “The   
   Handmaiden’s Tale” mentality again. She can see no benefit or reason to   
   try to save a human life. Bias has not only rendered her stupid, but so   
   morally and ethically blind she can’t see the other side of a genuine   
   ethics conflict.   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)