Although it is not in every work, the search for identity is a theme that writers have woven into all genres of literature. Some authors have their characters search through time consciousness. Proust, for example, and Updike, too; both belong on the list of authors who have used time as the basis of “identification.” The search, however, isn’t limited to awareness of or relationship to past or present. Other authors have used love, death, war, morality, coming-of-age, survival and heroism, and even society as the background against which characters seek and find—or lose—their identities. The theme of identity permeates literature with good reason: We’re always in the business of either finding out who we are or refining who we are.
Identity is a complex issue, of course. We speak of “wearing masks” that both define us (our Egos) to those we meet and hide us (our Ids) from those with whom we interact. That we behave in certain ways, profess certain beliefs, and adjust our appearances for both the daily grind and for “special” occasions, indicates a rather common obsession with identity. On a very basic level, the search for and maintenance of identity makes us into lexicographers of the word human. We are nothing if at not first “human.” Everything else, especially identity, is piled onto that elusive concept, a concept to which we have ascribed different attributes. Just as the dictionary writers add new meanings, new definitions, so we often redefine human, that is, what it means to “be human,” and what it means to be “a human (being).”
Circular definitions (“a banana is a banana”) usually enter the discussion when one tries to explain either identity or human being. With arguable degrees of success, we’ve been in the business of trying to define what it means to be human for all our intellectual history. If you go to a site like Dictionary.com, you’ll see that human means “of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or having the nature of people.” Yeah. So what does that meaning mean? A banana is a banana. It’s banana-like. Not very helpful, right? Try out your own definition right now; give it the circularity test. Go ahead, really. I’ll give you a moment since you are giving me a moment. I’m serious; I can wait…
Let me guess. You’re thinking, “Does he want me to define the modifier human? Or does he want me to say what ‘a human’ is? Adjective or noun? What are we looking at here? Can I define human being? And why does he want me to define either? Is it because there appears to be an obvious relationship between having an identity and being (a) human? Isn’t identity a psychological concept, but the concepts of “human” or “being a human” are biological (sedentary bipedal mammal with keyboard)? As always, when I read this guy, I have to ask, ‘Where’s this headed?’”
When I was a teenager, I had a discussion with friends that was far beyond my ability to form anything but the simplest of arguments on identity and the “nature” of human. But maybe that’s where some discussions always end: In simplicity, or, maybe in reduction. Surely, though I can’t remember the details of that debate, in my youthful limitations, I argued as much from ignorance and emotion as I did from logic. And, of course, when emotion walks onto the stage of debate, reduction usually ensues, sometimes often with raised voice, as though volume makes an argument. Take questions on ethics and morality, for example. Take, identity and the definition of “human.” Or, address the very difficult matter of abortion as an example tied to defining human and identity. Complex and controversial as the issue of abortion is, it centers on what it means to “be human” and how we define human and identify. In that reduction, we see two fundamental positions: Pro-choice and pro-life.
Among the arguments of pro-choicers one hears that 1) “It’s” the woman’s body to do whatever she wants to do with “it”—an argument that uses it to represent both the woman and the fetus, i.e., the identity of either depending upon the point of view—and 2) The fetus is a parasite, an inconvenient (from different perspectives) one to be kept and tolerated or discarded at will. Among the arguments of pro-lifers one hears that 1) All life has value and is even “sacred” and 2) The unborn also have rights because they have individual identities. I’ll admit both groups would argue against my reduction of their positions, but bear with me for a moment.
Reducing the arguments for and against abortion to just two representative positions each would most likely be deemed unacceptable by either side because neither side wants to accept the simplistic definition imposed by the other side. After all, the tenets of both sides are also coupled with personal and group histories, including both joy and sadness, confusion and surety, hope and despair, adherence to or rejection of philosophical, religious, and cultural traditions, and physical and psychological well-being. And then the circumstances of conceiving add complexity, such as in rape and incest, lust and love, inheritance and image, drive to continue the species, though in any or in all of these the fetus is, in fact, not an active participant, so it lacks any intention, good or evil, positive or negative, beneficial or inimical in its own conception. If we who are defined as “human” have so much difficulty with our own identity and definition in spite of our extensive experiential backgrounds, the fetus has infinite difficulty because “it” has no intellectual or experiential tradition, personal or cultural, to use as a point of departure.
The argument against the two pro-lifers’ positions I mention above entails, I believe, a rejection of the principal assumptions in those arguments. First, to say that life has value and is sacred is to speak axiomatically. It is somewhat self-serving position because in saying “Life has value,” one can ensure (and insure) his or her own life’s value. Pro-choicers would argue that neither value nor sacredness is self-evident, that both, in fact, are cultural baggage handed down through inculcated philosophies and theologies. Both might be psychological mechanisms that foster the continuation of the species (Kids, can’t live with them; can’t stop reproducing them). If (human) life has value, then the living live to reproduce, saving what has value. Second, to say the fetus has rights is to impose a legal tradition that has not permeated all cultures. The Romans, for example, sometimes abandoned malformed infants. And around the planet both today and historically, fully-formed humans have been denied “rights” and have been enslaved. Thomas Jefferson’s “unalienable rights” aside, not everyone accepts as a truth self-evident some universal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Probably billions of fully mature and rational humans have been treated as “sub-humans.” In this reduced argument for pro-choicers and against pro-lifers, I ascribe to them an ethical or moral system that is definitively situational. But isn’t that their position? Otherwise, there are moral absolutes, and the axiomatic thinking of the pro-lifers gains weight.
The two pro-choice arguments I enumerate are subject to both a bit of science and legal precedent by the pro-lifers. No, I’m not talking about Roe v. Wade (though the woman who was at the center of that ruling, Norma McCorvey, became in 1995 an advocate for pro-life). Rather I’m looking at the use, among other purposes, of DNA to convict criminals.
Let me start with the science and make it personal and then with justice. You are related to your biological mother. You carry some of her genetic heritage, but not all of it. Some of your DNA is yours exclusively. Since the OJ Simpson trial, the public has become more aware of the ramifications of this separate DNA, and TV crime show detectives and lawyers use DNA evidence to catch murderers (or identify either the pathological or the pathogenic). In “real life” detectives and prosecutors also use DNA to pin crime upon criminal and in some instances to free the falsely accused and imprisoned. Our legal system accepts that one’s DNA belongs to that person and to no one else, so it is admissible as evidence. Now if the pro-choice argument of “it’s my body” holds, then logically, the body that commits the crime is also the body of the mother—or an extension of it—because any singularity of body is demonstrable by its DNA. Short of convicting the offspring, the justice system could put the blame on the mother whose biologically identifiable body, or clone, committed the crime. Foolish argument? Maybe, but it is a logical extension of the “it’s my body” position.
We all know that we use DNA to convict or exonerate the offspring. So, legally we are in a contradictory bind. Do we accept the individuality of the offspring as defined by its DNA, or do we accept the joint ownership of the body (or should I say, joint ownership by the DNA?)? If one takes the “it’s my body” argument to its logical conclusion, then the current justice system imprisons only half of the real criminal. Of course, pro-choicers would say, “This is absurd.” (Not an argument) The mother neither participated in the crime nor had criminal intentions. (An argument) But is it absurd? How does it do anything other than reveal a basic contradiction in an Either/Or? Either the fetus is one with the mother fully or not one with the mother. How is it that pro-choicers are willing to accept DNA as indicative of individual human identity in one instance but not in the other? Is this where Emotion steps onto the stage of debate and loudly shouts an axiom with the face of Janus? Should pro-lifers shout in return, “Free the imprisoned! And put their mothers in jail”? Should the pro-choicers exclaim, “It’s not an Either/Or! Rather, it’s a Both/And”? DNA identifies both sentient individual and sentient clone. “It’s my body; it’s my body; IT’S MY BODY! That ‘whatever you want to call it’ has its own behavior’ as anyone who has ever put a hand on a pregnant woman’s stomach knows.”
But let’s say the pro-choicer decides that the DNA argument is specious at best. Now what does the pro-lifer argue? There’s always that other argument (#2), that the fetus is a parasite. It is true, obviously, that the fetus gets its life-sustaining chemicals from its host and simultaneously gets a safe house provided courteously by that same hostess. But here we go again with that stubborn DNA argument. Parasites have distinct DNA, and they don’t have the same physiology, form, or complex makeup of their hosts; but more importantly, they don’t turn into organisms that carry a considerable amount of their host’s DNA as a fetus does. And parasites don’t find sustenance and growth outside the host; parasites like malaria run their reproductive cycles within the host. “Human” (for want of a better word here) fetuses do not reproduce within the hostess, and they can become adult humans. With some care, the most premature of fetuses have been known to survive early ejection from the hostess and to grow into self-sustaining and reproducing humans. “Parasite”? I think not, at least not in the lexicon of biologists.
Obviously, there’s a divide between the two sides of the debate. Pro-lifers accept an axiomatic right to life and the undeniable separate DNA of the fetus. Pro-choicers reject axiomatically derived values and favor the desire or perceived needs of the hostess who decides to abort a “clone” or “parasite.” (But they, also, rely on axioms) The argument has in the past few years gone Roman, with some defending the post-birth life of an abortion survivor and others defending the post-birth demise of the aborted left in the wilderness to die or be raised by wolves. Senate Bill 311, designed to amend title 18, US Code, “to prohibit a health care practitioner from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion,” has been defeated in 2020. Essentially, being born alive isn’t in the eyes of the government at this time a guarantee of any of those rights enumerated by Jefferson, at least not a guarantee of those rights for infants, or should I say, post-birth organisms capable of becoming, through some transitional developmental biochemistry, mature human adults.
And all this brings us to more questions, such as 1) At what age do Jeffersonian rights apply? 2) Who determines the rights and the extent of rights of others? 3) If there is no axiomatic right to life, then what justifies keeping you alive if society, or another member of society, deems you a burden subject to euthanasia or murder? Pro-choicers might argue that the Jeffersonian rights apply at the age of reason, that those rights are not absolutes, but rather situational and subject to change as culture changes, and that a mature sentient being can decide to terminate the life of another on the basis of economy, resources, or convenience (of whatever nature). Pro-lifers would reject those opinions, arguing, for example, that those who suffer some temporary psychological ailment that disrupts their ability to reason would make them subject to termination as the Nazis argued during WWII. Similarly, if humans enter the “age of reason” gradually, say between four and seven years old (I don’t know when), then what happens when they exit the “age of reason” in dementia. Is there a sliding frame during which the demented are partially rational and partially irrational, partly endowed with certain unalienable rights that gradually slip away with increased brain erosion or loss of self-identification? But then if “reason” is the guide, then one has to ask whether or not any “unreasonable” act at any time of life warrants others to consider terminating the “unreasonable actor.” (If so, goodbye many impulsive high school and college students)
There is, of course, the argument both sides could make from the “lesser of two evils.” That isn’t a new dilemma. In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna, the bowman, questions whether it is justifiable to kill his kinsmen among the rival Kauravas. Krishna, Vishnu’s avatar and Arjuna’s cousin, tells him that in a justifiable war he would be justified in his killing because one doesn’t kill the soul, just the body. Krishna favors the Arjuna and the Pandavas in the battle at Kurukshetra because in his eyes, the Kauravas would usher in a culture of hedonism and self-centeredness, whereas the Pandavas would usher in a culture of Dharma. In the abortion debate we appear to have a strange and topsy-turvy version of Kurukshetra. Those who would favor emphasis on personal needs, a modern version of Kauravas, believe nothing of significance is killed, just a soulless body. The modern Pandavas believe there is a “sin” in killing kinsmen, as Arjuna believed before Krishna convinced him he fought a just war.
We know from DNA studies that the fetus is, in fact, closely related to the mother, a kinsmen. Every abortion is the battle at Kurukshetra reenacted, the two sides of the debate falling in the camp of either the Pandavas or the Kauravas. The Pandavas argue that their opponents in the debate, the pro-choicers, are defenders of Anrita and the dissolution of universal moral law (Rita), a dissolution that necessarily follows from their acceptance of the identifiable Self as the sole authority on (human) rights. The Kauravas argue that the Pandavas fool themselves by thinking that there is Rita (Rta), that the Self, however it identifies according to situational necessities, is the decider and that “sin” or wrongdoing in almost any religious sense, is simply a cultural construct. Further, they argue that the only right is the right of the one who gets to decide what is right, what is “human,” and what identity is significant.
No doubt the pro-choicers will continue to say, “It’s my body” and “It’s a parasite.” And pro-lifers will continue to argue for the identification of the fetus as “human” with rights independent of its hostess because its inevitable future is a “human” presence. That arguing is not going to change until both can agree on what human means, what constitutes identity, and what a human is. Kurukshetra is an ongoing battle centered on defining the terms human, human identity, and a human. The abortion debate is a re-enactment of Kurukshetra.
After about 60 million artificial abortions in the United States since Roe v. Wade, where do you stand? And because volume isn’t an argument, don’t shout your answer.
Identity is a complex issue, of course. We speak of “wearing masks” that both define us (our Egos) to those we meet and hide us (our Ids) from those with whom we interact. That we behave in certain ways, profess certain beliefs, and adjust our appearances for both the daily grind and for “special” occasions, indicates a rather common obsession with identity. On a very basic level, the search for and maintenance of identity makes us into lexicographers of the word human. We are nothing if at not first “human.” Everything else, especially identity, is piled onto that elusive concept, a concept to which we have ascribed different attributes. Just as the dictionary writers add new meanings, new definitions, so we often redefine human, that is, what it means to “be human,” and what it means to be “a human (being).”
Circular definitions (“a banana is a banana”) usually enter the discussion when one tries to explain either identity or human being. With arguable degrees of success, we’ve been in the business of trying to define what it means to be human for all our intellectual history. If you go to a site like Dictionary.com, you’ll see that human means “of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or having the nature of people.” Yeah. So what does that meaning mean? A banana is a banana. It’s banana-like. Not very helpful, right? Try out your own definition right now; give it the circularity test. Go ahead, really. I’ll give you a moment since you are giving me a moment. I’m serious; I can wait…
Let me guess. You’re thinking, “Does he want me to define the modifier human? Or does he want me to say what ‘a human’ is? Adjective or noun? What are we looking at here? Can I define human being? And why does he want me to define either? Is it because there appears to be an obvious relationship between having an identity and being (a) human? Isn’t identity a psychological concept, but the concepts of “human” or “being a human” are biological (sedentary bipedal mammal with keyboard)? As always, when I read this guy, I have to ask, ‘Where’s this headed?’”
When I was a teenager, I had a discussion with friends that was far beyond my ability to form anything but the simplest of arguments on identity and the “nature” of human. But maybe that’s where some discussions always end: In simplicity, or, maybe in reduction. Surely, though I can’t remember the details of that debate, in my youthful limitations, I argued as much from ignorance and emotion as I did from logic. And, of course, when emotion walks onto the stage of debate, reduction usually ensues, sometimes often with raised voice, as though volume makes an argument. Take questions on ethics and morality, for example. Take, identity and the definition of “human.” Or, address the very difficult matter of abortion as an example tied to defining human and identity. Complex and controversial as the issue of abortion is, it centers on what it means to “be human” and how we define human and identify. In that reduction, we see two fundamental positions: Pro-choice and pro-life.
Among the arguments of pro-choicers one hears that 1) “It’s” the woman’s body to do whatever she wants to do with “it”—an argument that uses it to represent both the woman and the fetus, i.e., the identity of either depending upon the point of view—and 2) The fetus is a parasite, an inconvenient (from different perspectives) one to be kept and tolerated or discarded at will. Among the arguments of pro-lifers one hears that 1) All life has value and is even “sacred” and 2) The unborn also have rights because they have individual identities. I’ll admit both groups would argue against my reduction of their positions, but bear with me for a moment.
Reducing the arguments for and against abortion to just two representative positions each would most likely be deemed unacceptable by either side because neither side wants to accept the simplistic definition imposed by the other side. After all, the tenets of both sides are also coupled with personal and group histories, including both joy and sadness, confusion and surety, hope and despair, adherence to or rejection of philosophical, religious, and cultural traditions, and physical and psychological well-being. And then the circumstances of conceiving add complexity, such as in rape and incest, lust and love, inheritance and image, drive to continue the species, though in any or in all of these the fetus is, in fact, not an active participant, so it lacks any intention, good or evil, positive or negative, beneficial or inimical in its own conception. If we who are defined as “human” have so much difficulty with our own identity and definition in spite of our extensive experiential backgrounds, the fetus has infinite difficulty because “it” has no intellectual or experiential tradition, personal or cultural, to use as a point of departure.
The argument against the two pro-lifers’ positions I mention above entails, I believe, a rejection of the principal assumptions in those arguments. First, to say that life has value and is sacred is to speak axiomatically. It is somewhat self-serving position because in saying “Life has value,” one can ensure (and insure) his or her own life’s value. Pro-choicers would argue that neither value nor sacredness is self-evident, that both, in fact, are cultural baggage handed down through inculcated philosophies and theologies. Both might be psychological mechanisms that foster the continuation of the species (Kids, can’t live with them; can’t stop reproducing them). If (human) life has value, then the living live to reproduce, saving what has value. Second, to say the fetus has rights is to impose a legal tradition that has not permeated all cultures. The Romans, for example, sometimes abandoned malformed infants. And around the planet both today and historically, fully-formed humans have been denied “rights” and have been enslaved. Thomas Jefferson’s “unalienable rights” aside, not everyone accepts as a truth self-evident some universal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Probably billions of fully mature and rational humans have been treated as “sub-humans.” In this reduced argument for pro-choicers and against pro-lifers, I ascribe to them an ethical or moral system that is definitively situational. But isn’t that their position? Otherwise, there are moral absolutes, and the axiomatic thinking of the pro-lifers gains weight.
The two pro-choice arguments I enumerate are subject to both a bit of science and legal precedent by the pro-lifers. No, I’m not talking about Roe v. Wade (though the woman who was at the center of that ruling, Norma McCorvey, became in 1995 an advocate for pro-life). Rather I’m looking at the use, among other purposes, of DNA to convict criminals.
Let me start with the science and make it personal and then with justice. You are related to your biological mother. You carry some of her genetic heritage, but not all of it. Some of your DNA is yours exclusively. Since the OJ Simpson trial, the public has become more aware of the ramifications of this separate DNA, and TV crime show detectives and lawyers use DNA evidence to catch murderers (or identify either the pathological or the pathogenic). In “real life” detectives and prosecutors also use DNA to pin crime upon criminal and in some instances to free the falsely accused and imprisoned. Our legal system accepts that one’s DNA belongs to that person and to no one else, so it is admissible as evidence. Now if the pro-choice argument of “it’s my body” holds, then logically, the body that commits the crime is also the body of the mother—or an extension of it—because any singularity of body is demonstrable by its DNA. Short of convicting the offspring, the justice system could put the blame on the mother whose biologically identifiable body, or clone, committed the crime. Foolish argument? Maybe, but it is a logical extension of the “it’s my body” position.
We all know that we use DNA to convict or exonerate the offspring. So, legally we are in a contradictory bind. Do we accept the individuality of the offspring as defined by its DNA, or do we accept the joint ownership of the body (or should I say, joint ownership by the DNA?)? If one takes the “it’s my body” argument to its logical conclusion, then the current justice system imprisons only half of the real criminal. Of course, pro-choicers would say, “This is absurd.” (Not an argument) The mother neither participated in the crime nor had criminal intentions. (An argument) But is it absurd? How does it do anything other than reveal a basic contradiction in an Either/Or? Either the fetus is one with the mother fully or not one with the mother. How is it that pro-choicers are willing to accept DNA as indicative of individual human identity in one instance but not in the other? Is this where Emotion steps onto the stage of debate and loudly shouts an axiom with the face of Janus? Should pro-lifers shout in return, “Free the imprisoned! And put their mothers in jail”? Should the pro-choicers exclaim, “It’s not an Either/Or! Rather, it’s a Both/And”? DNA identifies both sentient individual and sentient clone. “It’s my body; it’s my body; IT’S MY BODY! That ‘whatever you want to call it’ has its own behavior’ as anyone who has ever put a hand on a pregnant woman’s stomach knows.”
But let’s say the pro-choicer decides that the DNA argument is specious at best. Now what does the pro-lifer argue? There’s always that other argument (#2), that the fetus is a parasite. It is true, obviously, that the fetus gets its life-sustaining chemicals from its host and simultaneously gets a safe house provided courteously by that same hostess. But here we go again with that stubborn DNA argument. Parasites have distinct DNA, and they don’t have the same physiology, form, or complex makeup of their hosts; but more importantly, they don’t turn into organisms that carry a considerable amount of their host’s DNA as a fetus does. And parasites don’t find sustenance and growth outside the host; parasites like malaria run their reproductive cycles within the host. “Human” (for want of a better word here) fetuses do not reproduce within the hostess, and they can become adult humans. With some care, the most premature of fetuses have been known to survive early ejection from the hostess and to grow into self-sustaining and reproducing humans. “Parasite”? I think not, at least not in the lexicon of biologists.
Obviously, there’s a divide between the two sides of the debate. Pro-lifers accept an axiomatic right to life and the undeniable separate DNA of the fetus. Pro-choicers reject axiomatically derived values and favor the desire or perceived needs of the hostess who decides to abort a “clone” or “parasite.” (But they, also, rely on axioms) The argument has in the past few years gone Roman, with some defending the post-birth life of an abortion survivor and others defending the post-birth demise of the aborted left in the wilderness to die or be raised by wolves. Senate Bill 311, designed to amend title 18, US Code, “to prohibit a health care practitioner from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion,” has been defeated in 2020. Essentially, being born alive isn’t in the eyes of the government at this time a guarantee of any of those rights enumerated by Jefferson, at least not a guarantee of those rights for infants, or should I say, post-birth organisms capable of becoming, through some transitional developmental biochemistry, mature human adults.
And all this brings us to more questions, such as 1) At what age do Jeffersonian rights apply? 2) Who determines the rights and the extent of rights of others? 3) If there is no axiomatic right to life, then what justifies keeping you alive if society, or another member of society, deems you a burden subject to euthanasia or murder? Pro-choicers might argue that the Jeffersonian rights apply at the age of reason, that those rights are not absolutes, but rather situational and subject to change as culture changes, and that a mature sentient being can decide to terminate the life of another on the basis of economy, resources, or convenience (of whatever nature). Pro-lifers would reject those opinions, arguing, for example, that those who suffer some temporary psychological ailment that disrupts their ability to reason would make them subject to termination as the Nazis argued during WWII. Similarly, if humans enter the “age of reason” gradually, say between four and seven years old (I don’t know when), then what happens when they exit the “age of reason” in dementia. Is there a sliding frame during which the demented are partially rational and partially irrational, partly endowed with certain unalienable rights that gradually slip away with increased brain erosion or loss of self-identification? But then if “reason” is the guide, then one has to ask whether or not any “unreasonable” act at any time of life warrants others to consider terminating the “unreasonable actor.” (If so, goodbye many impulsive high school and college students)
There is, of course, the argument both sides could make from the “lesser of two evils.” That isn’t a new dilemma. In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna, the bowman, questions whether it is justifiable to kill his kinsmen among the rival Kauravas. Krishna, Vishnu’s avatar and Arjuna’s cousin, tells him that in a justifiable war he would be justified in his killing because one doesn’t kill the soul, just the body. Krishna favors the Arjuna and the Pandavas in the battle at Kurukshetra because in his eyes, the Kauravas would usher in a culture of hedonism and self-centeredness, whereas the Pandavas would usher in a culture of Dharma. In the abortion debate we appear to have a strange and topsy-turvy version of Kurukshetra. Those who would favor emphasis on personal needs, a modern version of Kauravas, believe nothing of significance is killed, just a soulless body. The modern Pandavas believe there is a “sin” in killing kinsmen, as Arjuna believed before Krishna convinced him he fought a just war.
We know from DNA studies that the fetus is, in fact, closely related to the mother, a kinsmen. Every abortion is the battle at Kurukshetra reenacted, the two sides of the debate falling in the camp of either the Pandavas or the Kauravas. The Pandavas argue that their opponents in the debate, the pro-choicers, are defenders of Anrita and the dissolution of universal moral law (Rita), a dissolution that necessarily follows from their acceptance of the identifiable Self as the sole authority on (human) rights. The Kauravas argue that the Pandavas fool themselves by thinking that there is Rita (Rta), that the Self, however it identifies according to situational necessities, is the decider and that “sin” or wrongdoing in almost any religious sense, is simply a cultural construct. Further, they argue that the only right is the right of the one who gets to decide what is right, what is “human,” and what identity is significant.
No doubt the pro-choicers will continue to say, “It’s my body” and “It’s a parasite.” And pro-lifers will continue to argue for the identification of the fetus as “human” with rights independent of its hostess because its inevitable future is a “human” presence. That arguing is not going to change until both can agree on what human means, what constitutes identity, and what a human is. Kurukshetra is an ongoing battle centered on defining the terms human, human identity, and a human. The abortion debate is a re-enactment of Kurukshetra.
After about 60 million artificial abortions in the United States since Roe v. Wade, where do you stand? And because volume isn’t an argument, don’t shout your answer.
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