XPost: sci.med.cardiology, soc.culture.usa, soc.culture.israel   
   XPost: talk.abortion, alt.christnet.christianlife   
   From: MEjercit@HotMail.com   
      
   HeartDoc Andrew wrote:   
   >   Michael Ejercito wrote:   
   >   
   >> https://ethicsalarms.com/2025/05/28/re-abortion-another-bias-   
   akes-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.   
   >   
   > "It's written that GOD punished David&Bathsheba w/ a full-term   
   > abortion for their adultery. Thus, abortion reminds us that the   
   > adultery of http://AntiChrist45.com (#TrumpIsTheAntiChrist) is the sin   
   > to stop..."   
   >   
   > Source:   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)