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Biopolitics and the “Culture of Life”

Akansha Bhargava

Akansha Bhargava
Ethical Technology

Posted: Nov 1, 2010

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“It is amazing how much people fret over the right for a child to be born, yet afterwards are totally unaware or unconcerned with what is in the child’s best interests. “

What percentage of the “pro-life” group are you painting with that paintbrush?

You’re right, it is a generalization—one that probably applies to people on both sides of the political spectrum.  I tried not to take a definitive stance on abortion namely because my personal beliefs are that it is not black and white.  I think there are situations where it is wrong (third trimester), situations where it is ethical and justifiable (rape, incest, pre 14-week / pre-initiation of the neural crest formation), and medical situations where it shouldn’t even be an issue (i.e. ectopic pregnancies, anencephaly, etc.), and a whole range in between.

Anyway that’s not the point of this article.  The purpose of this piece is to acknowledge that sometimes controversial issues (like defining life and applying that definition to policy) are complex and therefore need to be treated as such.  I’m advocating that we take a fuller, more comprehensive look at problems from different perspectives to ultimately decide what is best on both an individual and societal level, instead of taking a simplification like “life is sacred” and applying it indiscriminately to all ethically contentious situation without either evaluating or understanding the implications.

Thank you for this thoughtful essay.
So often in life we create that which we most fear; we bring about that which we most want to avoid.
Perhaps the different sides are discussing different issues, though we think we are talking about the same issues.
Both sides come from a stance of love and a desire for justice.
The “pro life” side believes that there is no such thing as disability. “Disability” is a label applied by some people to others.  To define some people as “disabled” or “suffering” is what leads to a culture that fears death, to a culture that inordinately seeks to control, to a culture that sees “care-giving” as a one-way street where only the person being cared for benefits. This in turn leads the person being cared for to be considered a burden. For this perspective, there is too much reliance on an ethic of autonomy.
The “pro quality of life” contingent (I count myself here), see it as a justice issue to intervene if possible to prevent or alieviate suffering for those who would choose otherwise. An ethic of compassion would say it is the individual and only the individual who can say if their situation is suffering or not. For some the answer will be no, for others, yes (e.g. the deaf community).
Both sides fear a slippery slope. The “pro quality of life” fear having their healthcare decisions made for them as much as the “pro life” group fear injustice stemming from some deciding what is life for others.
As we enter an age of personalized medicine, regenerative therapy and enhancement, how will the application of these technologies effect us/affect us in the long term, generationally? If we can not provide equal access (and we already can’t reach that measure now), how will that impact those without access?
If we were to apply Rawls’ “veil of ignorance” how would that influence our own perspectives?
There are no easy answers and, I fear, no “right” answers.

My experience is that anti-abortionists don’t care much about those who are born; they more or less want to sacrifice the living for the sake of the unborn—and if this is an exaggeration on my part, it is not much of an exaggeration.

You should really READ your sources before trashing them.  The Catholic Church does not oppose contraception because it destroys human life, although some methods do just that. You ridicule a ridiculous argument that is never made.

If you would do a little reading in Catholic circles, you would know that the problem of leftover embryos IS being discussed. However, this issue stands as evidence that IVF itself is misguided. One thing being discussed is embryo adoption. Now that we have leftover embryos, we discuss it; but the evil is the fact that they were made and leftover to begin with.  Destroying human life for research purposes is never good. You are one step away of rounding up homeless people and experimenting on them. Note your language: They’re gonna die anyway, “why not USE them?” Using people. It is never good to use people, especially if it kills them. And embryonic stem cell research has not resulted in anything yet, and it may never. Adult stem cells are used to treat hundreds of diseases today. So, what is the value of all that death you see as so useful?

You don’t know the whole story of the Terry Schiavo case either. Her husband wanted her dead, period. He could care less how she died, let alone “in peace.” Is starvation and dehydration really a peaceful way to die? Do you know how she came to be in her infirmity? Could it be that perhaps the husband didn’t want her to be able to talk about it? Do you know? You make him sound like a merciful saint: Do not forget he had a girlfriend and a conscious—not persistently vegetative—wife was an inconvenient commodity.

You make some other interesting points, but your credibility is not at all helped by your neglect of key facts. If you keep ignoring key facts, you can justify anything. But Evangelium Vitae is about not ignoring key facts. If you read it, you would know. If we do not fight for life at its weakest, who will fight for it later on? Whose concept of “weak” is operative? If life exists at any stage or strength, it is to be defended.  To say weak life is not worthy of defense is to open the doors to capricious definitions of “weak.”

You know, it began with contraception. Then came abortion.  Then euthanasia of sick and old people. Now people are talking about sterilizing the unfit and breeding licenses. Soon will come the euthanization of the healthy but otherwise unfit. You talk about the good results, so-called, but you fail to see where it all leads because you fail to see where it comes from. It comes from a wanton desire to control human life, not only living humans, but life itself in its human form, a desire for control that cares not about the death and destruction left in its wake.

The Catholic Church has throughout its history cared for orphans, the sick, the disabled. It has run schools, hospitals, orphanages, and hospices. It says all life is worth living and worth defending and no innocent life is worth taking. Is there something really wrong with that? It is a defective principle upon which to build a culture?

@postfuturist: You do not know many in the pro-life movement.
@dor: “The ‘pro-life’ side believes there is no such thing as disability.” Do you have any back-up for that? Everyone wants to relieve suffering, it’s a question of means. Pro-life people do not advocate killing as therapy.
@Brenda: Good question.

“@postfuturist: You do not know many in the pro-life movement.”

I talk to John the XXIII members hours a week. You are correct that “the Catholic Church has throughout its history cared for orphans, the sick, the disabled. It has run schools, hospitals, orphanages, and hospices…” Unfortunately you are evading the issues at hand here by writing “you are one step away of rounding up homeless people and experimenting on them.” Do you REALLY believe that? it is hysteria; did you mean to say perhaps Heydrich and Jurgen Stroop will organize to round up the homeless to take them to labs? you think maybe the incoming GOP congress will begin plans on concentrating cattle cars at railheads, in preparation for an action next summer to remove the homeless from homeless shelters and hiding places under bridges? And how can you have a clue as to what Terry Schiavo’s husband was thinking a half-decade ago? his wife was in extremely bad condition, hopeless. You lack sympathy for HIS plight.
You are letting your emotions override your better judgment with slippery slope thinking.

OK, we’ve found an area of common fear and common mistrust.
Since neither side wants this kind of future, how do we prevent it?
Can we find an area of common hope and common promise?

dor,
Since he wont pay attention to what I wrote above, tell Mario Coccia that Christians ought to act like Christians. Sympathizing with Schiavo’s husband would have been a good & Christian thing to do as he was with her for years, suffering in his own way; then when there was no point in keep her as a shell of a person anymore, what did so-called Christians do?: they demonized her husband, which was quite unChristian of them.
My impression is—aside from its charity—religion (in America at least) is far too commercialized and rightwing. Rightwing, not conservative.
Jesus said to treat others as brothers and sisters, not send miscreants to behavioral-cesspool homeless shelters where they can eat starchy slop. I know we will never live in a virtuous world, however to what purpose be a Christian if Jesus’ teachings are ignored? such is merely wearing a badge.

Postfuturist: I guess I sounded annoyed in my previous post. Sorry. I will try to avoid that in the future.

Ok, here’s where I’m coming from. The basic premise is that it is wrong to use and kill innocent people for your own purposes. Maybe that is a false premise - more on that in a sec. Assume for now it’s valid.  We have exceptions to that premise for embryos.  So yes we are one step away (well, maybe two or three) from identifying other “useless” groups and using them in that way, too, because the same logic that excepts embryos can be used to except anyone.

That logic justifies the destruction of anyone, period. Societies generally go through the trouble of deem certain groups, for public opinion, to be unloved, unwanted, unknown, unfit, undesirable, and otherwise useless and burdensome or dangerous members of society. So, given the logic, isn’t it abominable that perfectly good livers and lungs and faces freeze to death in city parks in winter? They are going to die anyway, isn’t it unethical to let their deaths be useless?

I am not saying anyone in particular will do it. I am not saying it will happen tomorrow or next year or any particular time. Hopefully, it will never happen. I am not saying the homeless, and not criminals or the institutionalized, will be the first or only victims.

I am saying that it is inevitable if we follow the logic. I am saying that the justification is there without any real safeguard to prevent it. I am saying that either the first exception and every exception to the premise is wrong, or the premise itself is wrong.  So, if the premise is wrong and it is okay to use and kill others for the advancement of knowledge and the enhancement of human, trans-human, or post-human life, then yes someone will be pulling homeless people out from under bridges one day to use them, and not just the homeless. It’s not like this kind of thing hasn’t happened before.

About Mr. Schiavo - I AM sympathetic with his plight, assuming he didn’t push Terry down the stairs in an a failed attempt to euthanize her when she was healthy. (I am being cynical, I admit it. I don’t know if he did that or not.) I merely disagree with his means of dealing with it. It is noncontroversial to say he wanted his wife dead - that’s what he went to court for. Terry is a victim of the very logic in question above. She was useless and burdensome. She’s dead now. Hopefully they used her organs and tissues, right?

Hope can only be rightly placed in that which can supply the hoped-for object. Science cannot be trusted to exercise restraint when it craves absolute license. Laws do not help much because they change. Everyone who wants to change a law appeals to some sense of justice and morality that is a higher and superior authority than the law. Yet, what that justice and morality consist in is different from person to person. Only eternal and objective justice and morality, which do not change and are constant from person to person, to which human laws ought to conform if they are to be just, is a worthy object of hope, because it would supply a just and good society for those that follow it. If such does not exist, then there is not much to hope in. Can we hope in man, unbridled from an eternal and objective concept of justice and morality? Unbridled man, from what I can see, is not especially reliable except to say that he will use others to serve his own needs if he can get away with it. If the law is against him, he will try to change the laws to suit himself.

“and not just the homeless. It’s not like this kind of thing hasn’t happened before.”

Mario,
Your last post is much better than the previous one (it always helps to prod one to ditch the obfuscation early), yet there’s too much to reply to, it would take a professor to do justice to it—we hope academics know exactly what they are saying, in justifying their doctorates, eh?
At any rate, harvesting homeless people is extremely unlikely. I’m not familiar with any other country (aside from Mexico), however it appears far more likely we would wind up something like ancient Rome instead; more likely, say, criminals might harvest organs from homeless. Etc. And so forth. On & on.

“To be consistent with their position of preserving life at all costs, religious conservatives would have to argue that IVF is wrong, which they do not.” Sorry, Ms Bhargava, but that is simply false. The Catholic Church does that very thing.

Read this: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19870222_respect-for-human-life_en.html

And this:http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20081208_dignitas-personae_en.html

You might as well read this, too: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html

These documents are not new, nor are they obscure. I’m not expecting you or anyone to agree with them. But you should at least read them before you say that their arguments do not even exist.

Also, “preserving life at all costs.” This too is false. The idea is to avoid killing innocent people at all costs. It is not unethical to allow an unstoppable death to occur, nor to prescribe pain medication to someone terminally ill knowing it may shorten life (without intentionally doing so), nor to stop heroic measures of artificial life support, nor to sacrifice oneself in helping others.

postfuturist, I didn’t see your follow-up post before I posted mine. Sorry, I don’t monitor these things every minute. I do want to be on civil terms with you, if you’re willing.

Mr Schiavo had it hard—or did he? Terry’s parents wanted to take over caring for her. He could have been totally free of the burden by letting them do it. The reason it went to court is because they wanted to take their daughter and care for her, and he didn’t want them to do that. He preferred that she die than be cared for by her parents. She was in bad shape but she wasn’t comatose or persistently vegetative. I DO sympathize with whatever burden he had. I didn’t kill him or anyone else. I didn’t harm him. I didn’t even want him to care for Terry and be burdened by her. All I wanted was for him not to kill his wife. That is lacking in charity? He killed his wife, and I am the one lacking in charity. I suppose it’s possible.

He had other options.

Aren’t you curious about all this? Why would he want her dead like that, when he could have been free of her and let her live? Why would he go to court? Why would go through all that expense and trouble? Why not let her live with her parents? It all sounds pretty fishy to me.

PS
Mario,
the only flaw in your reply comment is:

“I AM sympathetic with his plight, assuming he didn’t push Terry down the stairs in an a failed attempt to euthanize her when she was healthy. (I am being cynical, I admit it. I don’t know if he did that or not.)”

If there’s no evidence whatsoever that Terry Schiavo was pushed down the stairs by her husband or anyone else, then no reason exists to bring the scenario up in the first place; it’s a micro-version of what conspiracy-theorists do: taking a remote possibility so as to magnify it out of any proportion. Writing of how Terry’s husband might have pushed her down the stairs is tantamount to something like Michael Moore saying 9/11 attacks were engineered by Cheney. Sadly, these misapprehensions great & small are very common. Today you could even write a screenplay about Terry Schiavo’s husband allegedly pushing her down the stairs; I could write a screenplay concerning Helen Keller assassinating JFK. At best, such is a low form of entertainment. Bad comedy.
I am thoroughly tired of reading anYthing on the topic of abortion or the related subject of embyonic stem cells. Call it oversensitivity if you please. Your most chilling point was that of homeless people being snatched. Naturally, it is not unheard of. Yet something such as that would take place in a totalist nation—and as far as I know, just for instance, China’s government and corporations wouldn’t so much as think of doing so on a genuinely organized basis. The culprits are criminals, syndicated or not. Truly organized (sanctioned) abducting of the homeless for cannibalistic medical purposes in the 21st century would be something out of Jozef Mengele or Pol Pot & the Khmer Rouge. From excessive paranoia.
However I am more sympathetic today to religion, seeing now that humans are not compatible beings, no reason to deny it anymore. The election Tuesday was the nail in the coffin for me, twenty years after the Cold War’s end we have to round through the progressive-reaction cycle again, and then start the cycle over later. Frankly, I’m too old to play childish games, and politics has become more childish.
Not to insult children, though, they have more sense than to indulge in politics ludicrous to a revolting degree.
Mario, this is the collateral issue: we are merely darwinist integers, ciphers, which is why religion is so important, religion/spirituality is the default. What is politics?: checks and balances, unending maneuvering; so however pretentious religion may be, and certainly is, IMO such is preferable to political pretentiousness. Mario, you might perceive religion/spiritualism as (for starters) moralism; I perceive it all as moralism, but more as escapist morality. The fairytales of religion are gobbledygook, but benign sophisticated gobbledygook having been layered for thousands of years. To write it baldly, if religion is moss, then pulling the moss off at this time takes too much of the substrate with it.
Houses of worship ARE more ethical than the predatory outside; the banality of arbitrary religious fairytales worth it—for families especially—in ecaping the unseemly realities of… well, far be it from me to belabor it! Let’s just say houses of worship/ashrams, etc., make good refuges, neutral zones, not merely for families but also for individuals; that is, until further notice many decades from now when human will not actually be human anymore.
Are you willing to accept the above without being hypercritical about it, Mario?

I accept what you say but I do not agree with it all. You know, my purpose in posting on this article is to point out that this medical student author has rather unprofessionally raised contrary positions to trash them, without even knowing what those contrary positions are. I find it rather distressing. I am beginning to believe that this website is not about truth or common grounds or anything like that, but a concerted attempt to establish a certain well defined memeplex in people to make them docile to the goals of post-humanism. Whether individual memes have any truth is irrelevant; repeat them often enough and people will believe them and the combined effect of the memeplex is the goal.

I don’t care so much if people agree with me. But to say things like the Church is against birth control because it kills sperm and ova is ridiculous. To say it hasn’t argued against IVF itself is false. It all adds up to unprofessionalism at best and a coordinated effort to deceive at worst.

Postfuturist, I am not your adversary even if I do not agree with you. I do not have time to respond to particular points in your latest post. But, your thoughts suggest that you believe there is something bigger than law and politics, something objective and real and transcendent that you want me to see and agree with. I speak here philosophically, not evangelically. I do not attempt to convert anyone by this, I am just thinking it through.

I appreciate your desire to have me share in that. But the thing you see, I have to say, does not seem very appealing. If established religions have not object that is real, then they are silly, whatever value they have otherwise. But you argue for a different object for what amounts to religious-like adherence. I am not with you on that. Eternal, transcendent Good that is prior to and superior to human law and ethical systems and to which all valid law and ethical systems must conform, must also have all other perfections. This can only be God as the Christian tradition has understood him.  If one begins to whittle away at the perfections in the attempt to come up with something transcendent that isn’t God, one begins to subscribe to an eternal transcendent sense of good that has no real, existing object.

Whether individual Christians and theists in general live according to what they profess: We are all imperfect and will fail. Our failures do not indicate falseness in the objects of our belief, however.

I apologize for the cynical comment. My admission that is was cynical is evidence that I do not know or necessarily believe it to be true. I am not a conspiracy theorist, nor am I hysterical, etc. Please do not draw hasty conclusions.

“Your thoughts suggest that you believe there is something bigger than law and politics, something objective and real and transcendent that you want me to see and agree with. I speak here philosophically, not evangelically. I do not attempt to convert anyone by this, I am just thinking it through.
I appreciate your desire to have me share in that. But the thing you see, I have to say, does not seem very appealing. If established religions have not object that is real, then they are silly, whatever value they have otherwise. But you argue for a different object for what amounts to religious-like adherence. I am not with you on that. Eternal, transcendent Good that is prior to and superior to human law and ethical systems and to which all valid law and ethical systems must conform, must also have all other perfections. This can only be God as the Christian tradition has understood him. If one begins to whittle away at the perfections in the attempt to come up with something transcendent that isn’t God, one begins to subscribe to an eternal transcendent sense of good that has no real, existing object.”

Mario, you appear to be a genuine theologian, you state the quandary very succinctly. However, before replying to it, let’s clear up the sad legacy of Terry Schiavo’s demise: I still think cetain Christian critics of her husband were so harsh towards him as to be lacking the forgivesmess they would ordinarily espouse, letting hostility virtually negate their sincere pro-life convictions.
Schiavo’s husband stayed with her for many years, as long as he could stand, he could have fobbed her off (to be blunt) on someone else—however his judgment call was it was her time to depart this vale of tears. I was only having fun with your Terry being pushed downstairs remark; your comments are good, your perspective is a necessary one, against excessive temporizing, equivalent perhaps to the conservative truism (to
paraphrase) “what is not determinedly conservative is subject to erosion”; in other words a conservative is being unequivocal. All the same, you don’t have to be told we are dealing here with matters of faith & love, not reason & expediency, it gets very complex & complicated. I examine the obverse, you examine the reverse, and vice versa.
Not being a scientist I can’t discuss the topic of Akansha Barghava’s article. But men control women too much, and I am suspicious of the Church’s motives regarding women. Everyone has a combination of positive and negative intentions, all the way up to His Holiness Pope Benedict. Not to pick on the Church, though, because I was raised a protestant and was exposed too much to anti-Catholic propaganda, the Roman Church allegedly being the Church of ‘Mammon’, and all the rest of white trash eschatology. I visit a Catholic church regularly, because the priest there is a good one—a particular house of worship only being as good as its priest. Yet I make it clear to the Father I view faith as emollient, necessary fiction, succor, anodyne and above all—let’s not mince words—escapism.
Better to be somewhat of a wolf than a wolf in sheep’s clothing; and most men ARE wolves, which is why women have to be buffered from the strong interest men have in dominating women in so many ways. Not that Fallen people do not have to be reined in; however men control women to such a degree that all religionists, including His Holiness Pope Benedict himself are to be continually prevented from dominating women as if women were puppets, because men being Fallen creatures will without any doubt press their advantage in this regard to the fullest. An obvious fact. We are to be simple & young at heart, Mario—not in mind. Suspicion can be tamed into discernment if suspiciousness is benign and not hostile suspiciousness.
I go by Einstein’s dictum “science without religion is blind, religion without science is lame”. Beyond that, though, one goes into metaphysical logic-chopping, and since I am very susceptible to logic-chopping, I attempt to avoid it. Not to write that you are that way, Mario; yet the mind is prone to so many forms of blinkering memes; illusions, even outright hallucinations, one has to be very careful, extremely careful all the time. The mind is almost an illusion-device presenting self-deceiving memes on the screen of the mind. If you want to include soul-spirit with ‘mind’, such is permissible as well. IMO it is best not to be too rigid either way—that is to say being non-religious is acceptable IMO, but not being antireligious. Nevertheless, we need stone-cold atheists, too, in a darwinist world it does take all kinds, you can’t escape diversity unless you live in a monastery, convent, an intentional community… somewhere very isolated, though even in some sort of cloister you cannot escape diversity altogether—escape is only relative.
Mario, you understand the need for unequivocating morality as I understand the necessity for checks & balances. Men want power far too much, it is as simple as that, every man, whether he is a destitute wino lying in a back alley, or the His Holiness in the Vatican, must be checked in some way at different times.
There’s no easy way out save in the purest spiritual sense, you can surrender to God, but whether you go to Heaven is an open question.
As it is not what we say, it is what we do not; it is also not what we comprehend, it is what we do not. You understand how “if one begins to whittle away at the perfections in the attempt to come up with something transcendent that isn’t God, one begins to subscribe to an eternal transcendent sense of good that has no real, existing object.” However you perhaps don’t realize the risk of self-deception involved, the risk of giddily stuporing-off into the metaphysical ether; not you necessarily, but those more prone to such. Many men.
Very many.

PS,
here’s the rub, Mario; you write: “I am beginning to believe that this website is not about truth or common grounds”

Common grounds? are you sure there are common grounds concerning biology? faith is faith; biology is biology. You don’t have to be told this isn’t a theological site sponsored by a divinity school. IEET is not Hank Hannegraaf’s Christian Research Institute.

PPS
(apology for triple post). Mario, it can be distilled into one question: do you imagine the sow’s ear of darwinist situational ethics can be transformed anywhere at any time into the silk purse of piety? Because if you do, you are the most optimistic person who has ever blogged at IEET.

So let’s not consider the very pious to be gullible—let’s think of them as being extremely ambitious!

Would like to add (at the risk of over-posting) that religionists blog at IEET and expect no friction? Also, it is fair to inject politics into a religious discussion, since religion whelped politics thousands of years ago; religious memes are all over politics.
Christians say: “it’s from the heart, not the mind”, but then get into unending theological hairsplitting!
No real problem with Christianity; it’s Christians who are the confusing ones—what EXACTLY is it that they want?

Regardless of how accurately it portrays the pro-life group, I enjoy and felt enlightened by this piece. It’s a good example of engaging current political issues from a technoprogressive perspective.

Yes, yet the question remains: why do rightwing Christians want to blog at IEET? don’t Christian H+ sites exist for them?
When the Grand Old Pressurizers take over the House in January they will push their “pro-life” (pro-Republican) agenda even harder than before. Sometimes I think Rightwing Christians want us to get down on our knees and shout: “yes, we will sacrifice our lives for Jesus!”

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