Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1313317
12 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 29 NOVEMBER 2020 OPINION Louisa Mifsud Houlton The pro-life position and the scientific story PROF. Isabel Stabile's article of the 28 October with the title of "Potentiality and Personhood: personal views" from its title promises to present the author's personal views about being pro-choice. In spite of this, it goes on to give arguments which are presented as if they should be at- tributed the scientific status of objective facts, proposed by someone claiming to be standing "on the shoulder of giants"; as if this statement alone, necessarily earns someone the freedom to dismiss any idea of finding logical sense in any pro-life po- sition, as, according to her, they all nec- essarily emerge from incorrect scientific evidence or philosophical assumptions 'hijacked by religious views'. Let us look through the arguments pre- sented and check if her views are indeed as objective, scientifically and philosophi- cally superior to the pro-life ones as Prof. Stabile indeed claims them to be. One of the arguments proposed by the pro-life movement is that life cannot be terminated after conception for the rea- son that the cells contain the complete human genetic material of a unique hu- man being. Prof. Stabile starts by speak- ing about its irrelevance since both hair and a cancerous tumour have these prop- erties. I agree with Prof. Stabile on one point: we do need to go further into our debate to clarify and consolidate this ar- gument and not by resorting to religion of course, but by taking a good look at the scientific research. Here, Prof. Stabile seems to think she is justified in claiming that, while us pro-lifers are obsessed with imposing our values on others, the more objective reasonable scientific research agrees with her. However, in contrast with what Prof. Stabile wants us to think, if one takes a look through some research that exists, one does not need to go too far to discover evidence that points towards the fact that a foetus is far more than just its genetic material: it is very much its own being, with its own rhythms, urges and biologi- cal expectations. It determines which way it will lie in pregnancy, the timing of the birth, and which way it will present for the birth (Music, 2013). A foetus responds to musical signals, moves in synchrony to a rhythm and even continues to move after the music has stopped (Sallenbach, 1993). As early as the first trimester the foetus will jump if touched by an amniocente- sis needle, turn away from the light of a doctor's foetal stethoscope (Goodlin and Schmidt, 1972) and has demonstrated a surprisingly clear capacity for choice. Indeed, observations using ultrasounds of foetuses have shown clear personality traits developing (Piontelli, 1992). Can a cancerous growth do all this? Or a hair? Of course not. So in the light of this research, equating a foetus with a hair or a cancerous growth is at best reduction- istic, at worse it is erroneous and untrue; and all the pro-choice activists who ar- gue their way into making us believe that scientific research proves this, are down- right wrong. Next Prof. Stabile goes on to argue that the foetus is only potentially a human be- ing and not actually one, so one does not need to enter into any ethical dilemmas about terminating it; pro-choicers even go so far as to protest when the term 'murder' is used, claiming their sensitiv- ities are being hurt as if this is far more of an issue than anything else. Of course, I understand their preference for the cleaner word of 'termination' from the messier one of 'murder'; with the former, they want to give it the semblance of a simple laboratory procedure of another cancerous tumour. But, with all due respect, this language is ludicrous. Forgive me if I fail to under- stand the difference. Am I the reason that I am not getting it? So, for the pro-choice movement, life in the womb seems to resemble life on another planet, outside our galaxy (which by the way we can feel all justified to terminate if inconvenient), but which if it is supposedly marked by an event called 'birth', it somehow lands magically here on earth and takes hu- man form, from which point we should all agree to do everything we can to safe- guard it. And what is even more infuriat- ing, they quote science or philosophy to argue their way through it. But let us take a good look at what the scientific research tells us: surprisingly, the first thing we will find is that indeed there is no evidence to point towards a clear demarcation line in our biological development of becoming who we are. Newborns distinguish their mother's voice from the voice of other new moth- er's because they heard it 'in utero' and research finds that they prefer the sound of it when the high frequencies has been filtered out so that it more closely resem- bles the muffled sound of the mother's voice in utero (DeCasper & Fifer, 1980; Querleu et al., 1984; Fifer & Moon, 1988). They even prefer (DeCasper & Spence, 1986) a story they heard repeatedly be- fore birth, or people speaking their moth- er's language to another language (Moon et al., 1993). So while Profs. Stabile wants to have us believe that a newborn is so different from a foetus, science tells us another story. Okay, so let us entertain just for one minute the notion that there does exist an imaginary line that once crossed gives us the status of human beings. Since, as the above-mentioned article acknowledges, science still leaves us in doubt as to where exactly this imaginary line can be drawn, does this give us any more reason to draw it? Let me give one example to elaborate my point: if you were holding on to a rope hanging over a cliff and you could feel that something alive was tugging on the other end but still had some doubt about whether it was another human being holding on tightly for dear life, would this doubt give you any reason to feel justified to go ahead and let go of it until you were most absolutely sure that it was not what you were thinking? Probably not as that might involve the risk of bringing about a terrible end to another fellow human be- ing. If you had a shred of humanity inside you, you would do your utmost to hold onto it until you had enough evidence and where absolutely sure to the contra- ry, even, if without checking the facts an- other human being from behind you vo- ciferously was telling you, using any other argument on the planet, to do otherwise, no matter how vociferous they would become and how inaudible the voice of the one hanging on would be. You would listen to your own good common sense