Abortion: Scientific Truth: 2

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Abortion: Scientific Truth: 2

16 Ú MÍ NA BEALTAINE, 2017

The main aim, with this paper, is to assist women, who unexpectedly become pregnant, to understand what the abortion choice does to human life and to learn where they will find trustworthy, loving care. Theirs can be a new life, properly filled with hopeful anticipation and joy.

There are none so blind as those who will not see. - John Heywood, 1546

No attempt is made here to say what legislation the Irish State should frame. When scientific understanding and secular values are absent, however, resulting laws are open to challenge. This present work, by reference to science, shows catchy slogans - used to promote abortion legislation - to be false.

Human Rights and common decency say that human life, vulnerable or otherwise, should have a secular value. The State should not prevaricate about the values it espouses, regarding abortion, but put them clearly to the people.

Clár Ábhair

1] The Basic Questions.

2] The Start of Life - Legislators avoid this.

3] Must a Fœtus be ‘self-aware’ and ‘morally relevant’ to escape Termination? Are all Adults ‘self-aware’ and ‘morally relevant’?

4] Can ‘potential Persons’ be terminated? Not if such do not exist…

5] A Clump of Cells? – not really… not at all.

6] An Embryo’s Body - living outside the Mother’s Body.

7] A Mother’s Life and Health – and Abortion helps this?

8] A grievously ill Conceptus - and a grievously ill Adult.

9] Why Dehumanising eases Killing.

10] A Woman’s Crisis.

11] The Glory of Nature: Painted Ladies.

1] The Basic Questions

Core issues regarding abortion include the following:

1. is a full human being present at all stages of life {the zygote (fertilized egg), blastocyst, embryo

(usu. from 3-9 weeks), fœtus (usu. 9 weeks to birth)} and, if so:

2. is the secular value of protecting lives robust ?

Research shows that predispositions in people can outweigh factual information. Basic science scarcely features in discussions on the physical world. A robust, dispassionate conclusion on abortion, therefore, is hard to attain.

Psychological predispositions can conflict our thoughts. The English Houses of Parliament produced a note (October 2015) on how Bias effects witness testimony in Court:

it is important to avoid the fallacy of supposing that, because a witness has confidence in his or her recollection and is honest, evidence based on that recollection provides any reliable guide to the truth

Recall Bias will tend to colour a witness’ account of a crime. Prejudices, Biases and Comfort Zones – are some of the terms used in neuroscience and psychology, underscoring that “we see what we want to see”.

The Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year 2016 is post-truth – an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’. It was for the Citizens’ Assembly to step back and choose truth, for the Irish people, following an in-depth, published investigation.

People all over the world marched, on Earth day 2017, to support advances in Science, in all fields. ‘Scientific Method’ is that analytical tool (not confined to science) which, through induction and deduction (ie the logical process), combats predisposition. The tool is used in this paper to clarify terms heard in the abortion debate – as well as underlying issues of science and psychology.

Introducing our two fœtuses:

Gráinne - HI!

Héébee : Yá'át'ééh : Halito : Grias god :

Áine - Dia Dhuit!

السلام عليكم : Kedụ : Ciao : 今日は :

From a secular standpoint, it should be said, society ascribes some intrinsic value to an individual’s life. This value can change, depending upon time and place.

2] The Start of Life - Legislators avoid this

Apart from making works of art, sexual intercourse is the only means by which, under Nature, we can be involved in creation. Here, our two conceptuses discuss supposed doubts about when life starts.

When life begins’ did not interest the European Court of Justice (the 2010 A, B and C case). Indeed, it just noted the widespread ending of lives like ours ‘upon request’. How unabashedly callous.

Food, Water, Oxygen and Warmth were to be my only needs after conception. That’s when my life began. How wretched: abortion laws are always openly expedience- rather than evidence-based. I hope and pray that some brave person will show up these falsehoods. Even the ‘Higher-ups’ do not think any more.

‘When life begins’ did not interest the European Court of Justice (the 2010 A, B and C case). Indeed, it just noted the widespread ending of lives like ours ‘upon request’. How unabashedly callous.

Restructuring and packaging new chromosomes completes conception, so initiating the life of a baby – or babies - if the conceptus divide before gastrulation.

A natural model of progression for life exists in the Animal Kingdom. To excuse abortion, the start of human life is given loose, made-up definitions (sometimes related to the nervous development). It may be claimed that killing is not murder, if done before any one of a number of occasions after conception, arbitrarily chosen.

Suicidal ideation – in a mother-to-be – is a reason for abortion in Irish legislation. The condition is as rare as 1 in 500,000. The Irish legislation is a falsehood. No authority, apparently, looked into what is involved in the raw killing of the Unborn – so brutally termed ‘terminations’. The reasons for killing our young, where this is freely permitted (in the US, eg), are found to be ‘social reasons’ (ie personal ease). Highly disciplined professionals, even like Lawyers and Scientists (often thought to conduct rigorous analyses), will follow perceived social norms and emotional one-liners. The European Court of Human Rights spoke of an ‘Expectation’ that abortion be available in EU countries. This term is used in psychology: it does not relate in any way to factual evidence.

Regarding another construct, the Irish Government pulled up the abortionist Court (the 2010 A, B and C case) for coining the word ‘secular morality’: ‘morality’ is a religious term. But then, the EU Court says whatever it wants – even using bad English to promote bad law.

3] Must a Fœtus be ‘self-aware’ or ‘morally relevant’ to escape Termination? Are all Adults ‘self-aware’ and ‘morally relevant’

‘Morally relevant’ and ‘self-aware’ are again legal constructs, devised for little individuals, so they can be steered towards their untimely death, with scant or no regard for fœtal autonomy.

Abortionists go for so many catchphrases to excuse killing us. You never hear a whisper about this from the Higher-ups. With new, advanced research, genetically built-in moral understanding and other traits are shown in children, as young as six months. Confirmed abortionists, pursuing their agenda (irrespective of evidence), ignore the capacities of the Unborn. The new field of prenatal psychology has developed in only the past twenty-five years.

Abortionists can fall ill themselves and lose moral relevance and self-awareness. We’re on a natural one-way path to being morally relevant and self-aware. It’s not being ‘morally aware’ for people to end our journey for someone’s social ease or - when abortion reaches industrial proportions - for the sale-value of our organs (reported in the US as recently as April the 25th, 2017).

Established (but out-of-date) theory on human development says life starts with a ‘blank moral slate’ (the 1967 English Abortion Act). As Gráinne noted, studies in prenatal psychology now show that the fœtus is aware early on - reacting and emotionally active. Other research suggests the hard-wiring of a moral code in the brain. At six months, the unborn child can see, hear, experience, learn, taste, has been developing a nervous system since around 5 weeks and been able to feel pain, like an adult, since around 8 weeks. The fœtus can absorb negative emotions like anger and stress. Harm is done to the fœtus when a mother does not want her child and her feelings are transferred. Wavering authorities, lacking mettle, continue to allow dated science, on air and elsewhere, to influence discussion and outcome.

For adults, Lewy Body Dementia (LBD) is, early on, notable for up-and-down swings in adults. The adults may act normally one day but exhibit dramatic reversals the next (ie be morally irrelevant).

Repugnant, ‘see-through’ legal definitions advanced solely to allow killing are truly macabre. Extreme abortion activists advocate killing children before they are deemed to be ‘self-aware’ (c5 years old). The criterion of self-awareness is undermined, of course, because the infant has a rational nature, equal to an adult’s, whose capacity may be removed temporarily or permanently, eg. by accident.

4] Can ‘potential Persons’ be terminated? Not if such do not exist…

So many loose phrases are coined to make abortion seem civilized. The sheer number and variety of these would make any open-minded person wonder. Related, fabricated legal constructs, with hideous intent, target little individuals for elimination. Such constructs do not describe circumstances in Nature. They are made up.

The terms – ‘potential humans’ and ‘personhood’ come from legal jargon – can you believe it? – conjured up just to allow us to be killed. Legal constructs can never be evidence-based – because the gruesome killing has to be the unchallenged outcome for those doing the so-called ‘terminations’.

How completely hypocritical! If I’m not a person, why were chimpanzees considered for ‘personhood’? The Nonhuman Rights Project argued, in court, that these animals are sufficiently self-aware to have basic rights. Judges will dither willy-nilly with babies’ and chimpanzees’ rights to life - to pander to society’s perceived emotional wants. Emotions and Biases underlie what should be non-discriminatory law.

To speak of a young animal as a ‘potential adult’, suggests that natural life stages can be disaggregated - for unnatural reasons. The only reason for speaking of ‘potential humans’, in law, is when the only definite hindrance to this ‘potential’ person’s life is our intention to terminate.

'Personhood' (yet another legal construct for facilitating abortion) is the status of being human, having individual human rights. Chimpanzees, our closest genetic cousins, share fundamental cognitive processes with us - with the vacuous implication that both species are ‘personised’ at some stage.

Proof that a person had not been personised would not be required in abortion law. This is because the ability to make such nakedly expedient law cannot include rules of evidence. In Nature, ‘personisation’ of a ‘potential adult’ is not a recognised process.

A 2010 BBC documentary noted that Shark Bay Bottlenose Dolphins had used a tool, communicated by sound to unborn calves and showed self-awareness by teaching a young animal how to fish. The journal ‘Mathematics and Physics’, in 2016, recorded Black Sea Bottlenose Dolphins in conversation. What sort of person would want to kill a dolphin calf, a baby chimp, a baby elephant or other intelligent animal, because it is not yet ‘self-aware’? Wanting to kill an unborn baby really only means that the baby is ‘too present’, an inconvenience.

5] A Clump of Cells? – not really… not at all

The embryo may be dehumanised by being called a ‘clump of cells’ (ie a ‘lump of meat’). However, every person you see has begun life as a single cell. Early embryonic cells do communicate intensely, via chemical and electrical means, regarding their future:

One Conceptus - showing many individual Cells chattering:

1] I’m just so totipotent…

2] I’m off to be in a leg…3] I’ll be the first cell in a hand…

4] No, I’m already differentiated for hand muscle…

5] I shall be helping in ordering you guys about: I’m going to be in an eye...

6] Well, I’m bagging one of the top jobs in the brain: I can just imagine what we shall all look like one day:…

7] C’mon guys – let’s do some body-building together!!!

8] There’s too much chatter here and I’m not sure what I’m doing – so I’ll probably just divide in two again and then see.

Rapid proliferation of embryonic cells precedes differentiation into specialized cells. Proliferation next slows: most adult cells stay metabolically active but do not divide again – unless needed to replace cells lost eg through injury. Embryonic cells intercommunicate chemically and electrically at a high level of purposeful complexity. Cells in adults, with human traits embedded in their DNA, continue to intercommunicate via both neural and chemical means.

Some arbitrary definitions for the start of life refer to stages of nervous development, shown by EEG (electroencephalography). There is no essential difference, however, between starving an unseen single cell of its sustenance (with a ‘morning-after’ pill) or suctioning out a ‘clump of cells’ (possibly dismembering real arms and legs). No nervous pain, as we know it, is caused if nerves have not yet developed but chaos is nonetheless visited upon living, intracellular communication. Just because the destruction does not stare us in the face does not mean that we have not caused another sort of pain and havoc, comparably frightful, but which we do not see or, more to the point, do not want to see. Such pain and havoc is real – and may be compared with the distress caused to a fish by dismembering it. Neither the fish not the early embryo has a neocortex – but they are both about half-way to what we see as full nervous development. In truth though, would either a heartbeat or writhing in pain prevent us from killing?

Simple appearance or obvious features are a hollow guide to essence. A sliotar (a small, permanently hard ball in the Gaelic game of hurling) and a larger, deflated rugby ball only appear to be very different. Using superficial or fabricated information or half-truths, to justify killing our own kind, caught in a helpless condition, is not kind or compassionate but is perforce unseemly. And done in the cowardly knowledge that there will be no come-back.

6] An Embryo’s Body - living outside the Mother’s Body

The European Court (the 2010 A, B and C case) said, in a dismissive fashion, that an embryo only has ‘life contingent on its survival in the womb’. However, with access to the normal victuals – just like anybody – an embryo can live in another environment. There are the abortionist phrases: “I can do what I like with my body”, “I want bodily autonomy” and “I have a right to my privacy.” These ignore that there are two bodies.

The judge said I cannot make it on my own. My mother says I’m actually part of her body: my cells will go into a screaming overdrive when they enter the Abortion Clinic. What can I do? Aren’t clinics supposed to be places in hospitals for helping people! Help! Help!

The judge was just adding to media-spin - you are not part of anybody’s body. If artificial wombs are more highly developed, you could have time to find adoptive parents. In their Comfort Zones, it suits many people – legislators, judges, the media and the abortion industry, just not to know anything about the likes of us. I’m so sorry: I cannot help you. Willful ignorance is the weapon of choice in ‘getting rid’ of us.

Every conceptus is a full human being – just a very young one. Scientists have developed artificial wombs, in which embryos live outside a woman's body, as separate individuals. Work is ongoing, using advanced biomaterials, to allow ectogenesis – whereby self-organising human embryos grow to term, on their own. The California Conceptions Donor Embryo Program runs a service for embryo transfer.

On 25 April, 2017, Philadelphia researchers were reported to have kept premature lambs (close animal models for human fœtuses) in artificial wombs. The fetal lambs began the test at about the same gestational age as a critically premature human fœtus. Eight lambs were ‘born’ out of the wombs with normal development and lung functions – as in a mature infant.

A CNN news-reader said it would be yet 10 years before the procedure could be used for humans. Abortionists are concerned about artificial wombs. They will reduce the point of independent viability for human fœtuses to around 20 weeks – possibly less. Without any catchphrase, however, demands for late terminations will continue, whether the fœtus be viable or not. The abortionist bottom line has nothing to do with fœtal pain or viability. The Irish Government should know that Spin will only get you so far.

In thesaurus.com, synonyms for the common abortionist phrase ‘get rid of it’ are: i) kill and ii) assassinate.

7] A Mother’s Life and Health – and Abortion helps this?

A demand for access to abortion is sometimes made on the basis that the mother’s life or health may depend on this.

I hear people saying that I may cause my mother to become very ill if I’m not dismembered and suctioned out. My cellular messaging and my baby nerves are going berserk! Abortionists do not accept our death as being an ethical question. They clamour, in ignorance and without compunction, that ethics are values historically based - not just on innate decency - but on religion (how so they naturally do not say)!

There is no evidence for this claim about your mother’s life. The Abortionist emotion-laden vocabulary grows all the time, shoved down our throats. Slogans like the ‘mother’s’ life’ and the mother’s ‘health and mental health’ are used – successfully in places - only to suit an agenda. All of our cells, in their own way, will suffer terribly when we are pulled us apart! We, the littlest of humans, shall become hospital waste!

Evidence available on claims about the mother’s life and health rebuts the whole idea that abortion can be a cure for a condition. Amongst others worldwide, leading Irish gynecologists, including Éamon O'Dwyer, David Jenkins, Kieran O'Driscoll and Julia Vaughan, published the ‘Statement by Obstetricians’ (The Irish Times, 1/4/1992) saying that direct abortion is not justified by medical circumstances.

Loose abortionist phraseology (once again) affords untrue ideas for people who want to be honestly informed. A good, basic rôle for the Irish Government, in the so-called ‘abortion debate’, would be to clear up relevant matters of vocabulary.

To excuse loosening Texas abortion regulations, the US Supreme Court cited ‘womens’ health’. They did not, questionably, refer to the life of a baby nor to the lack of evidence against existing Texas regulations. At times, it may be deduced, that courts ignore, avoid facts or simply bury relevant facts - with public Expectation in mind.

8] A grievously ill Conceptus - and a grievously ill Adult.

Willfully to terminate any organism, well or unwell, is to kill it. To improve the lives of grievously ill babies, who survive birth, there is a wealth of highly advanced, specialist work done by doctors. Theirs is a dedicated, overarching, exhaustive and scholarly effort. Even to form a perfunctory understanding of a small part of it leaves the reader asking why at all the dash to kill the unwell fœtus? Why only emphasise initial maternal distress, when there can be so much happiness and fulfillment for a mother – and a father?

There can be no grieving over an aborted child. Why do abortionists not refer to the developing perinatal hospice care? With a significant majority of ill infants live-born, parents are known to be glad to share precious time with their infant, even if his/her life be brief.

My mother says she does want to carry me to term. She says I upset her because I am not well. Some people are impressing on her to dispose of me and go on to have a healthy baby. I am terrified of that knife. I do count, I do!

Your future must not be presented as a choice between your mother being stressed – which allows you to live - and her being relieved – which causes your death. This is not a real choice at all. So many babies, even if unwell, now bring lasting joy to their mother and father – when perinatal counselling is provided. Where is my Dad to protect me?

Infants born preterm are vulnerable to complications, like respiratory distress syndrome, chronic lung disease, intestinal injury, a compromised immune system, hearing and vision problems and cardiovascular disorders.

Palliative care for the gravely ill neonatal is multidisciplinary. Medications and treatments, used in Neonatal Intensive Care Units, need adequately to be evaluated. Health and neurodevelopmental outcomes may require long-term attention. The goal is to provide the best quality of life and, when called for, symptom relief at the end of life. Killing grievously ill unborn babies/adults is not to be taken as different from killing other babies/adults.

Psychological predispositioning can and does elevate parents’ social comfort over a baby’s life, with various and varying degrees of awareness of the facts. An individual’s health and well-being should never be the reason to end his/her life. Nobody suggested that the abused child, Grace, is not human (28/IV/’17, thejournal.ie). The State paid out €6.3m after being found wanting for the abuse she suffered.

9] Dehumanising eases Killing.

Resource limitations and responsibility for others are the most common grounds for abortion, where it is freely available. For purely social reasons, therefore, ready recourse is had to ending young lives, often resolutely not accepted as fully human. Research has found that many people, safe in a ‘Comfort Zone’, are reluctant to embrace uncomfortable ideas - irrespective of evidence. Catchy slogans do not cover the evidence that abortion is murder, with the taking of an individual’s life. However, the resilience of abortionists, against the clear evidence that the conceptus has a human life, is not unexpected. A conceptus cannot vote. What has our society come to?

Why do so many people want to ‘terminate’ or ‘treat’ us? They should forget the polite euphemisms. There is nothing polite about being torn or suctioned to pieces.

Killing is always unnatural. However, killers are often influenced by a Cognitive Bias – which, for example, prevents people – not just us - from being seen as human. Dehumanisation is normally the first step taken in facilitating killing. Examples of dehumanization exist in every killing field: we now find ourselves right in the middle of such a field.

Cognitive Biases result from speeding up (simplifying) information processing. These thinking habits are pervasive and upset reasoning, simple or complex. Entrenched attitudes, eg towards certain people (stereotypes), can solidify under a welter of information from favoured or trusted sources (eg media, stars, politicians).

The grooming of people to dehumanize target groups (eg, unborn babies, gooks, nips yobos, injuns etc) readily occurs. Activity in the brain’s prefrontal cortex (PFC) reduces if a subject thinks about a dehumanised group.

The normal human wish for mutual bonding can be inverted (and blood spilt). The term Cognitive Bias is akin to Comfort Zone, Group Think, Sloth or Prejudice (different, comparable technical terms). The value placed on human life relates to which group the activists in question have in their sights. Legislators, when they avoid Scientific Method and rigorous analysis, are accountable for the direction of society.

Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind - and therefore is winged cupid painted blind. (Shakespeare's 'A midsummer night's dream')

10] A Woman’s Crisis.

A woman may find herself pregnant and unprepared emotionally, financially and socially. She ought to have every support possible from the father, her family, her friends and the State. Without these, hers is a most desolate place. She may be a victim of dishonest love, rape or incest. Women who have an abortion are not to be judged (nobody is): they can have suffered grievous opprobrium, rejection and the many hurts inflicted by people of inferior grace.

My mother is falling apart from the stress of having me.

There are so many hypocrites telling girls - distressed out of their minds by times – that either everything will be solved by abortion or that this is wrong but then no practical help is offered. I keep wondering about my Dad!

Killing babies, well or unwell, term or preterm, is an activity which Irish people do not wish to see carried out in their land. 95% of women (in the US anyway) who have had abortions are said not to regret this. With Cognitive Bias, they will have dehumanized their babies. Women in Ireland, with a crisis pregnancy, need understanding, life-affirming counselling and support. Bodies which provide essential, practical assistance to pregnant women, for their life and health include:

1] Cura - http://www.cura.ie/ 01-6778588

2] One Day More www.onedaymore.ie tel. 086-0220362

3] The Life Institute www.thelifeinstitute.net/ tel. 01 8730465

4] Every Life Counts www.everylifecounts.ie tel. 01-8792382

Please, do not be alone. Be with people who do and who will care for you. You are special to us.

11] The Glory of Nature: Painted Ladies.

Of 15,000 different species, the Painted Lady is perhaps the most widespread butterfly in the world. The insect has two hind wings and two forewings. Classification in the Animal Kingdom is as follows: Order Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), Family Nymphalidae (brush-footed butterflies), Genus Vanessa, Species cardui. The Painted Lady Butterfly has a life cycle of around a month.

In one of the largest citizen-scientist projects ever, the butterfly was found annually to undertake a phenomenal 9,000-mile round trip from tropical Africa to the Arctic Circle and back. Migration south occurs every autumn, at speeds up to 30 mph and at high altitude – c1 km – out of view of ground observers. Painted Ladies thus return to Africa, each autumn, several generations removed from the insects which left earlier in the year. At less than a gram, with a pinhead brain, the fly cannot learn the route from older individuals.

Butterfly Conservation statements include: "The Painted Lady migration is one of the real wonders of the natural world." “Migrant insects continue to amaze the public and research community alike as they are capable of carrying out the most remarkable journeys.”

The point of this diagram is to appeal to readers that we all always tread lightly and carefully, whether with regard to our ecological or carbon or any other footprint, lest we tarnish something of the Infinite Wonders of our Universe. There is far, far more wonder and beauty than meets the eye to a single cell. Its atoms are 13.7bn years old and were created in the furnace of Space from radiation – the provenance and rôles of which, like that of many physical phenomena, intertwine an infinity of laws of infinite complexity. Both these and what else lies beyond our reach, in the Cosmos, state that we have great importance.

A broad principle of Balance in Nature is observed. Physical size, Time and Reason can be valued, each having their own reality and dimensions. We thus have answerability for how we reason. Between our personal Α and Ω, therefore, we are not overlooked, either in the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time, or in its vast expanse. We might look into this a little more in the other paper, please, for the sake of completeness.