In December of last year I blogged on how a federal district court judge in South Dakota slapped a preliminary injunction on a law passed by the legislature in 2005 that required abortion doctors to inform mothers seeking an abortion that abortions “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.” Why? Because “unlike the truthful, non-misleading medical and legal information doctors were required to disclose, the South Dakota statute requires abortion doctors to enunciate the state’s viewpoint on an unsettled medical, philosophical, theological and scientific issue — that is, whether a fetus is a human being.” I decried the display of common ignorance by a federal judge on the matter of when a distinct human life begins.
Now it’s New Jersey’s turn. A woman sued a doctor for not telling her the baby she was about to abort was a human being. He told her it was “only blood.” She claims that had she known it was a human being she would not have aborted it, and would have avoided the emotional trauma the abortion caused her.
The case went all the way to New Jersey’s Supreme Court. They ruled that a doctor has no responsibility to tell a woman that the unborn is a distinct human being. Why? Because nobody knows when life begins. Common ignorance strikes again. If we can’t trust supreme court justices to get basic biology right, what can we trust them with?
Thinking to Believe 
September 18, 2007 at 9:31 am
It’s strange that the scientific community can determine the date and origin of human life on earth with such certainty. Yet they cannot determine whether it is scientifically inaccurate to call a human fetus nothing but a pool of blood. And they cannot determine, scientifically speaking, whether a human fetus is a “human being,” as opposed to a gorilla or a sea cucumber.
It’s as if we all agree on the parameters. If the unborn is human and alive, it is a person. The desired conclusion is that the unborn is not a person. Therefore, the facts are that the unborn is not alive or not human. (Alternatively, it is scientifically unclear whether a fetus is human or alive and, as we all know, if it’s uncertain whether there is a human behind the bush, it is morally acceptable to fire your shotgun.)
These rulings should be kept in mind when considering the court rulings saying that the science clear as to evolution and the dating of the earth.
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September 18, 2007 at 10:19 am
Arthur,
Very good point! Of course, they can and have determined when a human being comes into existence, but act as if they are agnostic for political reasons. They have turned the biological question (when does the life of an individual human being begin) into a philosophical question (when does the life of a valuable individual life begin) because they know they cannot justify their a priori conclusion through science. Abortion is a conclusion in search of premises: any will do so long as it results in a dead baby.
Jason
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