ACTUALLY HUMAN

There is no potential to have tea if there is no tea.

By FRATER BOVIOUS
Guest Writer to Joe Catholic

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(CARROLLTON, Cradle of Civilization) -  An article, by "ethicists" no less, and which requires imbibing something stronger than tea to digest, asks the question: "After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?"


Indeed.


I wrote about this from one viewpoint over at The Spiritual Advocate but would like to actually answer via this blog, as the question requires an answer. The short answer is because it is a baby, which is to say that it is a human being and deserving of all the rights and protections normally accorded to a human being.


Much of the "debate" over the status of a fetus under the law, and now by extension a newborn, hinges on whether it "has rights". Any way you slice it, this question of rights has to do, fundamentally with its status as a human being. It may be disguised as a debate about "person-hood", but this distinction is speculative and subjective rubbish.


That the baby is objectively a human being is not debatable. I will demonstrate with a rubber ball.

This is a picture of a red rubber ball. You may have seen one of these before. There was a time when it was not a red rubber ball, it was instead just an idea in someone's mind, or in various stages of production, i.e. a mess of chemicals, a puddle of goo, etc. But at some point when the idea of a sphere is merged with material, i.e. rubber, it becomes a ball. Please note, it did not gradually become a ball. There was rubber, machinery, workers, etc. and then - a ball. There is no point at which someone would deny that the ball has the equivalent of ball "person-hood" that it later somehow achieves. There are the component parts that go into making a ball, and then there is a ball. There is no in between state.

Once it exists, the red rubber ball is full of potency. It may sit there doing nothing for weeks or months, nevertheless, all that time it has the potential to bounce, roll, be kicked, be a source of amusement. It also has the potential to be melted down into a puddle of goo. At that point, it ceases to be a ball, largely because it has lost the form of a ball, i.e. that spherical shape so handy for bouncing. What has not changed is the matter the ball was made of, i.e. rubber. But, rubber by itself is not a ball, and the idea of a sphere, by itself, is also not a ball. Matter and form together make a ball. This concept was called by Aristotle hylomorphism or matter-formism. That this is a correct understanding of reality is not in question.

Lest you think that the form of the ball gives an out to people that think the form of a human is not a fetus, please, think again. A ball can be red or blue. It can be a golf ball with dimples or a beach ball full of air. All of those aspects are the accidents of the ball, that is the non-essential attributes of specific balls. The essential attributes, its essence, to name two, are its sphericity and its bounciness. So, hold that thought.


The point is this: For the ball to bounce it must exist. Which is to say, for a ball to have the potential to bounce, it must first exist. Fancy ways of describing this use terms such as "act" and "potency", or actuality and potentiality. And, simply, for something to have any potency, it must first have actuality. This may seem counter-intuitive, I suggest a cigar and a scotch to help you ponder this. In fact, I shall join you...

OK, ready? The word "potential" is used a lot to signify something that is incorrect. The term "potentially human" comes to mind when speaking of a fetus. Now this is critical - the implication is that something that does exist, but is not human, has the potential to be human.

But, you see, that is exactly wrong. For if this were true, it would be logical to state that a dog or a tree is potentially human. As Inigo Montoya said to Vizzini, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." For the word potential describes a quality inherent in the object. Only a human being has human potential, that is, the ability to be all the things we equate with being human. 

That the above is true is recognized by everyone with any intellectual integrity and cannot be seriously debated. So, the concept of "person-hood" is brought in to supposedly impact the argument about the status of a fetus, or now as distressingly proposed in the article that triggered this post, a baby.
 

This is a baby, well, a toddler. You may have seen one of these before. There was a time when it was not a baby, it was instead just an idea in someone's mind, a gleam in daddy's eye, as they say, and two separate bits of genetic material that needed to be put together. All the genetic information it would ever need was present in its entirety in those two bits of genetic material - a sperm cell and an egg cell. But at some point, once those merge, the moment the sperm meets the egg, at that point it becomes a human. Right? Well, no, not actually. We still need the form - so far we just have the material. What is the form? See note at the end. Meanwhile, please recognize, the sperm and egg did not gradually become human. There was man, woman, genetic material, etc. and then - a human.

Once it exists, the baby is full of potency. It may sit there doing nothing for weeks or months, nevertheless, all that time it has the potential to grow, develop, learn to walk and talk, go to school, graduate, get married and be a parent in turn. But none of those potentials exist, can exist, if there is no human to start with. Even if the point of person-hood were valid, which it is not, it would at any rate simply be one of the potentialities of being a human.


Simply - if a human ever has the potential to do anything, it has always had that potential. Many many potentials go unrealized; nevertheless, the potential is there but only because the person is there. A ball may be made and then put on the shelf for months or years, the factory may burn down before the ball ever actually is bounced, but that the ball could bounce is unaffected by the time that elapses between when it was made and when, or if, it bounces. The fact that it never bounced means nothing. It is still a ball.

And a human is a human. The fact that for a period of time it is in the womb, or that for a period of time it is entirely reliant on others for survival, or that some people want to make a specious claim that is does not have person-hood, means nothing. It is unarguably human. That is why the baby should live.

About form - and whether or not being a fetus has anything to do with being a person, it does not. Some people have red hair, some have gray. Some people are young and some are old. Some have all their limbs, and some lost a leg or arm in an accident or war. No one would seriously argue that a man with two arms has "person-hood" while a man with one arm does not. These things are the accidents of a human being, not the essence. The essence in this case is in its form, that is, whatever it is that coupled with material makes us human. It is tempting to think that our essence or form is encoded in our DNA, but that is wrong. The DNA is not our form, the DNA is part of the material that is joined with the form to make a human. So, what is the form of a human? Aristotle called it the soul. It is that thing that distinguishes us from all other animals, i.e. our rational soul. That is all we have space for here about that.

FB