EMBRYOS AND FOETUSES HAVE RIGHTS BECAUSE JOHN PACE SAYS SO

Mr John Pace wrote a response to an article of mine that was also published in an abridged version in The Times of Malta on January 16 (physical edition) but somehow did not make it to the online version. Apparently the editor chose “Life alone has no rights” as the heading, which, while factually true, is not the heading I submitted. This makes Mr Pace’s criticism of the title at best inconsequential, but I will address his concern (as well as the rest of his response) below.

Mr Pace says that the “unbelievable title” is a “defiant disrespect of life inspired by another faith extolling the culture of death”. I suppose Mr Pace eats, and he eats plant or animal food that were once alive before they were killed to end up on his plate. So even though I did not choose the title myself, it is still factually true that life alone has no rights, otherwise Mr Pace would have to renounce eating any living beings or things. And what would he eat then, sand? To be rational, factual, logical and non-hypocritical, Mr Pace would have to concede that far from extolling a “culture of death”, the claim that “life in itself has no rights” is a claim that even he subscribes to if he thinks about it. This is confirmed by the simple fact that he eats.

Mr Pace says that my “misleading philosophical arguments” are motivated by a “pro-abortion agenda”. My agenda is the truth. Rather than assuming an agenda, Mr Pace would have done better to point out my “misleading philosophical arguments” and refute them with his own rational philosophical arguments. In the few instances where he tries, he fails miserably, and his response mainly consists of assertions that are not backed by any sort of argument or evidence.

Pace says that I “reluctantly” concede as a reasonable claim the scientifically confirmed fact that human life starts at conception. I wonder how he got the impression that I “concede” this “reluctantly”, when I could have simply chosen not to mention the fact. In my original article I argued how non-sentient non-conscious foetuses that do not yet even know they exist let alone have interests, cannot have rights. Mr Pace fails to address any of my points and simply resorts to blanket assertions and prejudicial and at times slanderous claims.

Mr Pace says that my claim that “life is an insufficient attribute for assigning rights, otherwise killing plants would be murder” is tantamount to “deviously (equating) different levels and functional purposes of life to justify (my) theory”. But of course, he fails to address the salient point, which is that rights are only relevant to beings that can be aware of their existence. His prejudice makes him mistake rational arguments for deviancy. He would have done better to explain how beings that have no awareness at all can have interests, and therefore rights. His so called “levels” and “functional purposes” are irrelevant until he defines them and argues for their relevance himself. He does not even attempt to, since he apparently believes that faith-based assertions do not require argument or evidence.

Mr Pace says that “without saying why, (I assert) dogmatically that pre-conscious, pre-sentient beings with no interests, have no rights” and that “rights should be ‘granted’ only to individuals who can appreciate them by being conscious, sentient and having an experiential welfare”, and he mistakes this claim (which he again fails to address with his own arguments) as saying that “rights are granted by someone under certain conditions like awards for merit”. It is a fact that either one has rights, or one doesn’t. It is also a fact that rights only apply to individuals to whom those rights are beneficial and matter.  It is a further fact that pre-sentient and pre-conscious foetuses do not even know they exist let alone have an experiential welfare. Subsequently it is a fact that it would be irrational to believe that beings or things who do not have an individual experiential welfare have any rights. Far from making assertions “without saying why”, I have, in the limited space available (there is enough philosophical literature to read if anyone is interested), given a sufficient indication as to why beings or things without an experiential welfare cannot have rights. This is not dogma, dear Mr Pace. This is a reasoned argument leading to a conclusion that may be changed given sufficient arguments and evidence to the contrary. You can’t blame me for your failure to provide any.

Mr Pace says that my “superficial thinking is blind to the fact that if something lives it has an intrinsic right to live and act according to its nature”. Again, Mr Pace’s own superficial thinking makes him once again overlook the fact that if anything that lives has an intrinsic right to live, we wouldn't be morally permitted to eat anything. Mr Pace’s lack of logic and failure of critical thinking mistakes my own reasoned and evidence based arguments as “superficial”, when if he stops to think for a moment and sheds his prejudice and indoctrination, he would notice the obvious contradictions in his thoughts and assertions.

Mr Pace goes on to say that I “(seem) to be unaware that all life on earth, especially human life, has a valuable purpose within an interdependent global system”.  And yet, he fails to even mention the purpose, who gives it, and why it is special in the case of humans. I would have loved to read what he makes of this, but alas, Mr Pace is only fond of dogmatic assertions lacking any arguments or evidence.

Mr Pace then says that I “unreasonably (decided) that just because (a foetus at 24-28 weeks of gestation) is not yet aware, that wonderful human being has no rights” and that “I brazenly (declare) that potential does not give it rights”, and that I ignore “its great maturity-value” that “demands preservation”. He dismisses my argument that since consciousness starts at 24 to 28 weeks of gestation, a human embryo before that time "is not even aware it exists and has only the potential of developing into a person with interests and, therefore, rights” as an arbitrary unreasonable decision of mine, when it is a conclusion I (and several philosophers) reached through reasoned philosophical arguments that Mr Pace evidently never encountered before. Mr Pace must think I am the originator of this kind of reasoning. No, Mr Pace, I'm just a humble avid reader of philosophy. Mr Pace yet again, fails to give even one argument against my conclusion, and instead throws about unsupported and irrelevant claims of “maturity value” (whatever that means) and asserts dogmatically without argument that foetuses “demand preservation”.

Mr Pace then goes on to ignore completely my interests-based rights view and prejudicially attributes to me a “dangerous reasoning” out of “utilitarian reasons”. The article that Mr Pace replies to, for anyone paying attention, makes it abundantly clear that I subscribe to a rights-based interests view that is clearly Deontological, not Utilitarian. But I suppose Mr Pace wouldn’t know the difference.

Mr Pace takes me to task because, he says, to me “an embryo’s specifically human DNA does not entitle it to rights” and he says that this “blatantly dehumanizes the early embryo to demean its life as insignificant and its death as unimportant. I have already shown how DNA is not a sufficient attribute for having rights, and that DNA is just a “code” for building and maintaining bodies, so I won’t repeat myself here. It is up to Mr Pace to show, with evidence based arguments, how human DNA gives one rights, without resorting to the circular question-begging argument that human DNA gives foetuses rights because it is human DNA. Mr Pace has all the work ahead of him. As for a foetus’ death being “unimportant”, it is a fact that death does not matter to beings who are not even aware of their existence. It is only to the prospective parents of the said foetus that its death may matter. This is not just opinion. One would have to throw all logic out of the window to believe otherwise.

Mr Pace then completely misrepresents what I wrote, and says that “against all reason, (I argue) that claiming an embryo’s humanity as an argument for attributing rights to it would justify granting rights to each spermatozoon which is also a human being”.  Mr Pace creates a straw man, and beats it by saying that “quite unscientifically, (I) deviously (equate) the whole human being with a cell component”.  Of course, I did no such thing, and the deviancy is his own.

What I actually wrote was that by Ms Zammit’s (the person I was replying to in my original article) own criteria (having rights because a being has human DNA or that a being is human) one would have to conclude that even sperm have rights because sperm does have human DNA, and human sperm is self-evidently human; and that the potentiality argument is no argument at all since even sperm has the potential to become a born human being. Mr Pace either fails to get the point, or deviously creates a straw man because of his failure to debunk my own true argument.

Mr Pace’s intellectual deficiency makes him mistake the reasoned arguments in my original article for “preposterous and deceptive pseudo-philosophical arguments”. He further adds a little more dogma-inspired prejudice, including a little slander in the mix, by saying that my arguments “serve to desensitize people from their natural abhorrence of intentional killing, thus preparing them for the legal acceptance of abortion, euthanasia and eugenic killings”.

Anyone who is familiar with philosophy knows that to be intellectually honest in one's search for truth, one must question everything, including one's deeply-held beliefs and opinions. This means that even the “natural abhorrence of intentional killing” of non-sentient, non-conscious, non-aware-of-anything foetuses, if one is to be intellectually honest, must be questioned. I have provided (in my own limited space) various reasons and arguments why the “natural abhorrence” of abortion is unreasonable. Mr Pace chooses to stick to prejudices and gut feelings. As for euthanasia and eugenic killings, given that I am Pro-Choice, I do support the voluntary ending of the life of a terminally suffering patient provided that the patient asks for the termination of his own life himself. Mr Pace simply throws euthanasia in the mix without providing a single argument for or against, simply in a feeble and childish attempt at demonizing me (ad hominem fallacy). As for eugenics, being Pro-Choice, I am obviously against the termination of the life of any foetus unless it’s the decision of the pregnant woman.  This makes the eugenics issue a devious feeble attempt at character assassination (once again, the ad hominem fallacy).

Mr Pace then quotes my reasonable claim that “until it is shown why pre-conscious and pre-sentient foetuses matter, the belief that they do is just a religious belief that should not be imposed”.  From this, Mr Pace deduces that this reveals a “very dark cynical view of the values of life, reproduction, humanity and religion". He would have done better had he at least attempted to answer my challenge. But of course, Mr Pace once again fails to grasp the basic foundation of intellectually honest philosophy: question everything. Instead he chooses to confuse science with philosophy by saying that “to be scientifically correct, it is the undoubted humanity of the pluripotent fertilized ovum…that establishes the fundamental right to life at all stages of its natural development”, as if science by itself can make any moral pronouncements. Mr Pace concludes by making a final unsupported assertion without argument or evidence, saying that “a human embryo has a natural, intrinsic and inalienable right to live”. Until Mr Pace provides a reasoned philosophical argument in support of that claim, his opinions remain religion-based prejudiced dogmatic beliefs that in a secular democracy should not be imposed.