Good News for Reproductive Freedom

by: huntsu

Wed Sep 12, 2007 at 03:47:05 PM EDT

A doctor has no duty to tell a woman considering an abortion that her embryo is an "existing human being," a unanimous state Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.

The 5-0 ruling scrapped the possibility of a trial touching on the question of when human life begins.

That's 5-0, by the way.  Republicans and Democrats voted on that one.  But there's more:

The decision, citing past rulings, said the court "will not place a duty on doctors when there is no consensus in the medical community or among the public" on when life begins.

And that is the rub.  The anti-abortion crowd will constantly run around and scream that there is scientific proof that life begins at conception, but they are unable to prove it using the scientific method.  It is only through a severe and complete misunderstanding of what science and the scientific method are that can get a person to believe science can tell when life begins.

Many people say life begins at viability, when the fetus is capable of living outside the womb on its own for a significant period of time.  Others say it begins at the quickening.  Still others at the first heartbeat, and a rare few believe it begins at birth. 

But these are definitions, not duplicable experiments.  There has to be an experiment to challenge the idea (i.e., one that can fail) and it has to be repeatable.  Then it goes through peer review and other people try to repeat the experiment.  But there is no experiment to determine when life begins, and the mere fact of a scientist saying something doesn't mean it's scientific.

Now, there are issues at hand with this case, and I am not belittling the plaintiff's pain.  She maintains she asked her doctor if her six week old fetus was a baby, and he said, "'Don't be stupid, it's only blood.'"

That makes him a crappy doctor, and in my opinion should be taken to the medical board for review of his medical knowledge.  But it doesn't mean that every doctor has an obligation to inform pregnant women that a fetus is a full-fledged human being.