Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote

Great thanks for this insightful debate.

On Tue, Jun 28, 2022, 11:01 Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:

i would describe things slightly differently, chidi.

i don't know what a "living thing" actually means. if you work through the logic, is the sperm any different from our blood, say, in terms of being "living"?

more important to me, this crisis over abortion is grounded in people whose religious beliefs place a priority on the viability of the foetus over the woman whose body actually contains and gives life to the foetus.

the reasons for this can be "religious"--although why any religion would priorize a foetus over a mother is beyond me. i find the disparagement of the mother, the woman, and her ability to decide what to do with her body and what it contains really awful, really incredibly backward, as though the man who fertilized her ovum had power over her as if she were his thing.

your description of the etiology of the life of a sperm and ovum to the baby leaves out the woman, her life and her body, as containing all that "life." but i would prefer not to say "baby" until it is born, and before that i'd refer to the foetus as "potential" rather than "actual" life. the language of aristotle: potential, but not actualized until birth.

my own preference for the question of abortion would be to have the woman decide until the foetus is completely viable without the mother's body, i.e., until late in the 3d trimester. we mostly had a tacit agreement in the united states that abortions were licit until the 3d trimester. now the rightwingers have prevailed, turned our world topsy-turvy, created havoc, and a new nightmare for women.

at this point, one can't help but feel all men should step aside and leave the entire question to be sorted out by women. instead, the supreme court has silenced women and returned a vast number to the endangered state that existed 60 years ago, when women were forced to bear children even when they had been victims of rape or incest.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM <chidi.opara@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, June 27, 2022 6:02 PM
To: USA African Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote

 

The spermatozoa is a living thing that fertilizes the egg, that becomes the foetus, that becomes the baby. Pregnancy preventive measures kill the spermatozoa and pro lifers don't seem to care.

-Chidi Anthony Opara (CAO)

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Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, IIM Professional Fellow, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador and Founder/Publisher of, www.publicinformationprojects.org)

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