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:   
   >> HeartDoc Andrew, in the Holy Spirit, boldly wrote:   
   >>>   Michael Ejercito wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>>> https://ethicsalarms.com/2025/05/28/re-abortion-another-bia   
   -makes-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   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)