Exhale serves women who have abortions, and their partners, friends and family. We respect the cultural, social and religious beliefs of all our callers.

Apparently they’ve been in operation for about 8 years, and claim to have taken close to 20,000 calls; I’m embarrassed to say I’d never heard of them before. Their Web site makes them sound like a neutral listening post for those who want to talk about their experiences and feelings about them, regardless of what those feelings might be or what the caller’s perspective on the whole issue is. I have no direct experience with this group, so I can’t say how accurate this is or how well it works, but the Web site seems to me like it takes just the right tone:

• Exhale views each individual as a “whole person,” respects their belief system and strives for cultural competency.
• Exhale believes that self-awareness, self-care, and knowledge can empower individuals.
• Exhale seeks to transform oppression by challenging its roots and empowering each other and our communities.
• Exhale values the spirit of collaboration.
• Exhale believes abortion can be a normal part of the reproductive lives of women and girls.

The problem, of course, is that the entire notion of abortion “counseling” is generally a deception perpetrated by anti-choice groups to trick women into being manipulated with slut-shaming and false information. That makes me leery of any group – however honest and above-board – that sets itself up to provide such counseling. And, given the documented fact that abortion is not uniquely associated with psychological trauma, and since we don’t normally set up support groups for every individual outpatient surgical procedure (“Expel seeks to transform colonoscopy . . .”), the implication that there needs to be one for abortion specifically also smacks – just a bit, perhaps – of a negative, or at least defensive, stance toward abortion in general. But their Web site specifically disclaims this, and, without direct knowledge, I’m willing to take them at their word.

It is valid to recognize that abortion can be an emotionally fraught experience. While it is an important, useful, and sometimes life-saving procedure, abortion is unusual (though hardly unique) in that it is a treatment for a condition that is often regarded as actually desirable, and that most women, including most women who have abortions, will seek voluntarily at some point in their lives. There is no contradiction in the fact that pregnancy can be wanted under some circumstances and unwanted under others, and it makes only the most obvious kind of sense that there should be treatments available for those cases in which it is unwanted, and that many women will want “an abortive remedy” when that serves their needs and interests under their particular circumstances. But it is understandable, too, that an unwanted pregnancy may call up thoughts about pregnancies they patient may want or embrace under other circumstances, and that a particular pregnancy may be unwanted due to immediate circumstances that the patient wishes she could change, and would be wanted under those changed circumstances. So it’s easily understandable that some women’s feelings about their abortions would be complex, even while they are firm in their conviction that having one is/was right under the circumstances at the time.

Given the virulent campaign to make women feel guilty for making their own decisions about pregnancy, and to use that manufactured shame and guilt as a tool to keep them from doing so, even admitting that women may have conflicted feelings about abortion, or indeed that it is possible to be conflicted about one’s decisions without that fact undermining the right to make one’s own decisions at all, is the kind of frank discussion of fact that becomes so dangerous in the face of organized campaigns of falsehood that consistently distort facts to attack women’s independence. But an honest discussion of abortion, and honest, respectful, and welcoming acknowledgment of the women who have abortions, requires treating simple facts in a true and honest way. It in no way undermines the pro-choice principle – even if it will be used as a dishonest political attack – t0 say that women may have complicated feelings about pregnancy and abortion and may want to talk about them, and it serves those women more fully and respectfully to address that need openly and provide a tool for meeting it.

One bit of the Exhale Web site took me aback, and then left me even more impressed with their apparent devotion to honest and value-neutral service to women. They say:

If you have been diagnosed, or have self-diagnosed, as having Post-Abortion Stress Syndrome, Exhale understands that having a name for what you’re feeling and experiencing can feel important.  Many women find the experience of identifying with this syndrome as positive and affirming.  It is also important to know that having feelings about a significant life event doesn’t mean that you have a major psychological condition that requires medical care.  For many women, naming and expressing their emotions, and having the space and support to do so, can be more empowering than being identified as having a disorder.  Whether or not you think you have PASS, the most important thing is that you get support for what you’re feeling, not what someone else thinks you should be feeling.  Exhale trusts you to know what feels right for yourself.

Exhale follows the findings of the American Psychological Association, which has not found a link between feelings that follow an abortion and a psychological condition in need of medical care.

This is startling, but strikes me as exactly right. “Post-Abortion Syndrome” is a wholly imaginary and deeply dishonest “diagnosis” invented out of whole cloth by anti-choicers. It exists (actually, is claimed to “exist”) only to discredit abortion – a procedure that serves women’s health and autonomy interests in a centrally vital way, and is actually safer than childbirth in almost all cases – as somehow pathological, in open defiance of established data (yet another example of a tactic that is pervasive on the right wing). The campaign to tout this fraudulent “syndrome” as a real condition has misled many women, often the youngest and most vulnerable among them; this is not just a travesty of medical science but an assault on women and their freedom. But the fact that some women have been conned into worrying about this fake disease, or mistaking their own natural complexity of feelings, or even regret, for some sort of illness on their part, must be met sensitively and with respect for the women who have those feelings, and the feelings they have.

It is unconscionable to participate in or endorse the deceptions the misogynist right practices against women and women’s independence, but it is vital to meet those women themselves, where they are and as they are feeling, and to validate their own perceptions of their situations and help them deal with them on their own terms. Exhale seems to walk this line bravely (given how easily such a stance can be misconstrued and used against them) and sensitively (given the difficulty of managing such a delicate distinction).

From what I see here – and again, I have no direct knowledge – the group hits the nail right on the head, in terms of acknowledging the range of women’s experiences and prioritizing their own perspectives on their situations, without downplaying every woman’s right to make her own decisions about reproductive health. (Including family and friends, including men, in their services is also a sign of a sensitive and realistically broad approach.) Healthcare has more and more come to recognize the importance of a wholistic approach to patients’ needs and experiences, including post-treatment support. In a field in which any admission of need is turned into yet another attack on women’s strength and claim to independence, simple decency and understanding can become a liability. By refusing to play those games, the approach that Exhale seems to embody returns the truly important issue – women’s need for service, support, acceptance, and respect – to the center of the abortion issue where it belongs.

I’d be interested in hearing what others think or have seen, regarding Exhale or similar services. Has anyone who is willing to discuss it here participated in such counseling, or served as a facilitator? How significant is this sort of support, and does it help?

UPDATE: Wow, am I a dumbass! Somehow I completely forgot about this organization, after I had previously blogged about it back when they were first starting up! Guess I should read my own blog more often.

Additionally, I have heard from well-respected sources that Exhale is legit – they will talk to anyone in a non-judgmental way, but are in no way anti-choice.

The winger blogs are all a-twitter over a story noting that the Omnibus Budget bill that was (finally) just passed contains a provision – known as the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which the religious wingers have stuck in every budget since 1996 – prohibiting federal funding for research “in which human embryos are created, destroyed, discarded, or knowingly be subjected to risk of injury or death”. Setting some kind of a record for intellectual incompetence, the right-wing CNSNews mis-reported this as “Obama Signs Law Banning Federal Embryo Research Two Days After Signing Executive Order to OK It” – which, in one single sentence, misrepresents the event (he did not sign a law on embryo research, he signed the budget bill, which contained one small amemendment addressing embryonic research among its reported 3,500 pages of text and appendices), false as to fact (his executive order did not address embryo research), and completely wrong in its implication (the budget amendment does not undo the research policy Obama announced, as this headline implies). Despite this falsity and confusion, the event is viewed as some sort of humiliation for, or hypocrisy by, President Obama, since he had made a point of repealing the Bush ban on stem-cell research funding just two days before signing the budget with its unrelated embryo-research amendment. Much chortling and back-slapping is now underway, among people who know nothing about the issue and are apparently too dumb to read.

Yes, certainly the Dickey-Wicker ban is stupid, anti-science and anti-intellectual, and annoying. But it does not undo the policy that Obama overturned, and which Bush had previously implemented. (This much should have been obvious, even to the wingers, and even without reading: since the Dickey-Wicker Amendment predated Bush’s policy by almost 6 years, there would obviously have been no need for that policy, or the immensely divisive fight over it, if they merely did the same thing, right?) In fact, it’s effect is quite small, and easily evaded, and is aimed at an entirely different scientific procedure than the one addressed by Obama’s recent policy statement – not that anyone in the right-wing monkey cage seems to know that.

The Bush policy went far beyond the Dickey-Wicker amendment. It prohibited funding for any lab working on human embryonic stem cells in any way, other than research using a small number of specifically authorized cell lines. It meant that labs recieving any federal funding could not do any research on the prohibited cell lines (i.e., virtually all of them), even if the funding for that research was provided by another source. They could not even use the same labs and equipment – they had to build a completely separate facility to do the work, which obviously was prohibitively expensive. Since almost all research labs receive federal funding of some sort, the policy was intended to – and in large part did – completely shut down almost all stem-cell research regardless of funding source.

The Dickey-Wicker Amendment banned funding for reseach conducted on embryos themselves. This includes the process of creating stem cell lines for further research, since the stem cells are taken out of an unused, non-implanted IVF embryo, but it does not prohibit “stem-cell research”, that is, the use of stem cells themselves, not the embryos they were taken from. (A stem-cell “line” is a continuously-maintained collection of cells in laboratory flasks, transfered periodically to new flasks as they divide and grow. It’s one of the unique properties of stem cells that they can be grown permanently in this way, unlike most other body tissues. The line is created by taking stem cells out of an embryo, but that only has to be done once for each new line; after that, it’s just the individual cells themselves that are grown – they do not form embryos, and could not be implanted to create a pregnancy, while they are growing in the culture medium. “Stem-cell research” uses these separated cells, not developing embryos.) Dickey-Wicker has always been interpreted as permitting funding for stem-cell research, but not for the creation of new lines of cells. Scientists accommodated this by using private funding to generate cell lines, and federal funding for research on the cells. Bush not only banned that, but imposed restrictions on the usage of existing cell lines that choked off vast amounts of ongoing research.

Dickey-Wicker is a bad policy, because the federal government is the source of the majority of basic-science funding, but it doesn’t actually prohibit stem-cell research. The combined effect of the repeal of the Bush ban and the re-authorization of Dickey-Wicker is to restore the situation before Bush meddled with it, and to free up every qualified lab in the country to do embryonic stem-cell research using any cell lines available – instead of just those that can afford to build wasteful, redundant facilities. And, since the cell lines on which Bush did permit research were maintained in a growth medium that cannot safely be injected into a human body, they could not be used to develop clinical treatments as the research progressed. Obama’s policy change removes that barrier.

Note, finally, that it was Bush‘s policy that was criticized as hypocritical – both by left- and right-wingers – because it inisted on prohibiting large amounts of research for the supposed reason that doing so with the products of destroyed embryos was somehow immoral, but at the same time explicitly authorized doing exactly that thing on a small number of specifically-designated lines that were in no way different in origin from the many others that were excluded. It was clearly just an awkward and stupid political compromise that carried no moral conviction – but it bottlenecked a major scientific field for most of a decade.

It would be much better to repeal both the Bush and Dickey-Wicker anti-science policies, but even so, Obama’s reversal is a huge step forward. He is hardly at fault for being unable to also remove a stupid amendment has been stuck into the budget bill by winger cranks for over a decade now. As was Clinton before him, he is in no position to hold up the entire government budget over one minor issue. Like the anti-choice Hyde Amendment, and other idiosyncratic policies, Dickey-Wicker was forced into the budget bill – one of the few bills the president simply can’t veto – because a small number of extremists are willing to crash the government, and the larger number of practical public servants can’t let them do it. But it’s hardly a humiliation, except for the wingnuts who put it there. And its reauthorization, backward as it is, in no way undoes the great good Obama has done with his previous pro-science decision.

Crossposted to Lean Left, the political blog I contribute to, because I’m shameless taking advantage of the fact that Lean Left is aggregated at Memorandum and SufScrup is not.

What you think of his policy depends on what you think of the moral status of embryos. If (as modern biology informs us) conception initiates a human life, and if (as the Declaration of Independence asserts) every human life is equally deserving of some minimal protections, government support for the destruction of human embryos for research raises profound moral problems. But if you think an embryo is not quite a person, or that its immaturity or inability to suffer pain or its other qualities mean that destroying an embryo does not amount to taking a life, the promise of stem cell science might well outweigh any doubts.

I hope at least some of the lameness of this nonsense is apparent to all, but I recognize that it involves issues and terms that are somewhat restricted in usage. Here is my response, as buried deep in the comments section of the WaPo‘s online edition:

Yuval Levin’s remarks on the morality of stem-cell research policy are simply incompetent.

He is correct that much hangs on the moral status of the embryo. He then makes basic factual and logical errors – ones characteristic of the right wing – in saying:

“If . . . conception initiates a human life, and if (as the Declaration of Independence asserts) every human life is equally deserving of some minimal protections, . . . [this] research raises profound moral problems. But if you think an embryo is not quite a person, or that its immaturity or inability to suffer pain or its other qualities mean that destroying an embryo does not amount to taking a life, the promise of stem cell science might well outweigh any doubts.”

It is difficult to count all the errors in that short statement.

Most importantly, he contrasts “a human life” with “a person” – but the first describes biological status (human embryos, as right wing “ethicists” tediously remind us, are indeed human), and the second describes moral status (not everything human has moral standing; “persons” are members of the moral community, but human embryos, fetuses, and brain-dead vegetative bodies, to name just a few types of human beings, are not generally regarded as persons).

Levin implies these are identical categories – if an embryo is a “human life” then it must be a “person”, or those who believe it is not a “person” are contradicted if they believe it is also a “human life”. But this is a simple logical error – the two terms pick out utterly distinct qualities, and virtually no one but religious dogmatists believes the categories are even coextensive, let alone identical.

Note also that the category Levin defends – biological “life” – is the one that does not imply moral status.

To anyone who did not follow the travails of Bush’s President’s Council on Bioethics, the idea that its former staff director could indulge in thinking this bad must be shocking. Sadly, it is all too characteristic of the work of that body.

He also posits a straw-opponent argument so bizarre he must have made it up, since no serious proponent of stem-cell research has made it: the claim that an embryo’s “immaturity or inability to suffer pain or [similar] qualities mean that destroying [it] does not amount to taking a life” is, of course, false, but utterly irrelevant to any moral question, and is one that no one defending stem cell research would think of making. Of course destructive research on embryos involves “taking the life” of that embryo (another biological fact), but, because the embryo is not a moral person, it does not involving killing a person (a moral issue). And of course qualities such as suffering, self-awareness, and the development of other moral capacities are part of the definition of personhood, but not of the definition of “a life”. No ethicist is confused by these distinctions. That Levin jumbles them into a mythical argument he imagines his opponents making proves only that he does not understand the most basic terms defining this issue, or that he uses them dishonestly.

Minor errors: the Declaration of Independence does not say that “every human life is equally deserving of some minimal protections”. It says, quite explicitly, that “all men” are endowed with certain “unalienable rights”, specifically including “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. It is quite a puzzle what is meant by “all men”, since many sub-categories of human persons were not, at the time of the signing of the Declaration, accorded full human rights. Historically, the inclusion of some of those excluded categories, blacks and women particularly, as “men” hinged on recognition of their personhood – that they had feelings and capacities equal to those of white men; there was never any confusion as to whether they had “a life”. Note also that abortion was generally legal in England and the US at the time the Declaration was written, though the killing of “men” was not. Levin is not merely wrong on the simple fact of the actual words used in the Declaration (the phrase “human life” appears nowhere at all in the document), but their meaning as well.

The Declaration also does not posit “minimal” (or other) degrees of rights. It is categorical: certain beings have certain specific rights. It is a very great stretch to assert that blastulas or embryos are such beings.

The decision whether stem cell research is allowable is also categorical: it is not a question of “promised” benefits “outweighing” “doubts” about beings who are “not quite” persons. Embryos either are or are not persons, which is a factual question. It hinges, as Levin notes, on a value question – but about the qualities defining personhood, not, as he claims, about biological category membership.

In short, Levin’s entire discussion of this issue proceeds from such gross, possibly deliberate, confusion and falsehoods it cannot be regarded as a serious contribution, still less in any way convincing.

He goes on to castigate Obama for stating that science policy would be based on”science, not ideology”. He is technically correct in saying there is a preliminary question whether the subjects of this research are moral persons on whom such research should not be conducted, in the same way that that question could, conceivably, be asked of any research subject, including rocks or atoms. But it is only to religious wingers like himself (and, more notably, Leon Kass and most of the rest of the former membership of Bush’s Council) that the moral status of an in vitro embryo even arises as a question. To virtually everyone who understands the issue – and make no mistake, the kind of slovenly mental ill-discipline that Levin brings to it is absolutely characteristic of the right wing, all the way up to and including the level of hand-picked Presidential advisors – there is no meaningful question of that kind.

Obama’s policy eschews ideology in authorizing research on embryos, since only an extremist and intrusive ideology upholds the moral status of the embryo – let alone embryos residing in laboratory apparatus with no possibility of development into a human person in the first place – as being a relevant consideration. Levin, the PCB, and their ilk are welcome to get all het up about whatever weird obsessions define their moral universe, but they’re not entitled to demand than anyone else take it seriously, let alone that an entire nation stop doing anything they personally don’t happen to approve of. As to moral questions about in vitro embryos, there is no fact-based argument, grounded on any value positions other than mere whim or dogma, that cannot be, and has not already been, dealt with decisively and easily. The ideology that has characterized this made-up debate has long been laid to rest; it’s past time for the science to proceed.

UPDATE: Somehow I didn’t even notice the title of Levin’s stupid piece: “Science Over All” – a not-subtle invocation of the phrase “Über Alles” that characterized Nazi-era Germany’s racial and geographic hegemony which included famous medical atrocities. Because embryonic stem cells in a laboratory flask are just like Jews at Buchenwald. Christ, these assholes make me tired.

Crossposted from Lean Left, the general-issues blog I contribute to.

Researchers identified 72 female students who said they favored voluntary euthanasia. Researchers then gave orange juice to these subjects, but half of them got juice spiked with caffeine. The students then read a series of arguments against voluntary euthanasia. An after study showed that the subjects receiving the caffeinated juice remembered more of the arguments AND were more likely to shift towards anti-voluntary euthanasia views. Similar results obtained in a study of 76 males.

["Coffee for Persuasion, "The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 7, 2006, A17; thanks Timothy Murphy UIC]

More seriously, I guess it’s not surprising that short-term memory retention would be affected by neuroactive drugs – though it’s a bit worrisome that such an ubiquitous one would have such a notable effect. Taking a total wild-ass guess, I would assume that the change in position is a function of the greater retention of the material – that is, that ingesting caffeine doesn’t inherently make you anti-euthanasia, but rather that a differential retention of arguments specifically against that position, caused by the drug, would then tend to skew respondents’ answers in that direction simply because they then had more such arguments in their heads.

Looking further, the original report is here. The situation is more complicated than explained in the blurb above: The students were selected for having opinions favorable to voluntary euthanasia (so the researchers could test the affect of the reading on changing their opinions). They were not just told to read the articles about euthanasia, but were divided into groups and given one of two tasks: either a mechanical editing chore or a specific instruction to read the articles carefully and consciously try to remember the arguments they used; they were then tested on retention and the affect of the articles on influencing their opinions. They were then given counter-messages (articles in favor of voluntary euthanasia) and re-tested on the degree to which receiving the counter-messages undid the change in opinion they had undergone from reading the original arguments.

The results indicated that reading the first (anti-euthanasia) arguments had no effect on opinion or retention, with or without caffeine, for the students who were given the simple editing task without being told to concentrate carefully. However, reading the first argument with careful concentration did improve both retention of the arguments and a change in the students’ opinions; the effect was present in both the caffeinated and the no-caff groups, but it was greater with caffeine. Then, after reading the counter-arguments, students who did not take caffeine reverted their opinions back to their original opinions, but students who did take caffeine were not affected by the counter-messages and retained the new opinions they had adopted after reading the first arguments. (A summary of the report appears below.)

The researchers attribute this to the differential affect of initial arguments and counter-messages: apparently, there is a theory in psychology that when people are exposed to new information, they tend to favor the first message they hear, which sets up a defense in their minds against a counter-message that they hear afterwards. Interestingly, in the above experiment this effect was not observed for the non-caffeine group, but the caffeinated group did show a defensive effect against the counter-message. This seems to me just as important a result from this experiment as the basic effect of the caffeine itself.

The results seem to suggest that caffeine not only aids retention of information (that one is consciously processing already), but somehow fixes it more firmly in the mind or increases one’s susceptibility to being swayed by it. The first part doesn’t seem so startling, but the latter is, to my inexpert perspective at least. It would be interesting to repeat the experiment with, say, bioethicists or others well-versed in the issue, to say whether their opinions would be more vulnerable under caffeine than those of students presumably reading about the issue seriously for the first time. I would predict the professors would not change their existing opinions even with the caffeine boost; if they did, that would suggest that the caffeine not only increases receptivity to new messages but somehow overrides existing strongly held opinions (a result that, frankly, I hope is not the case).

Report Summary

Each participant consumed 330 mls of a commercially available sweetened orange juice.

In a randomised, double-blind procedure, half of the drinks contained anhydrous caffeine at a concentration of 3.5 mgs/kg of body weight and half had nothing added (placebo condition). Participants were asked to drink the juice as quickly as possible. To allow for the maximum absorption of caffeine, participants waited for 40 minutes before continuing with the study. This absorption time interval is optimal for caffeine to peak in the blood (Maisto, Galizio, & Connors, 1991; Reynolds, 1996). Third, participants were informed that there was a debate regarding voluntary euthanasia in various communication mediums (such as newspaper, radio, television). As a cover story, they were told prior research had shown that students at their university were divided in their attitudes towards voluntary euthanasia—some were in favour of voluntary euthanasia, whilst others were against. Before participants read the arguments the extent of messagedirected processing was manipulated. In the low message processing condition, participants were asked to go through each word in the message and cross out every letter ‘o’. The aim of this task was to encourage only a superficial consideration of the content of the arguments contained in the message. In the high message processing condition, participants were asked to read the arguments and try to remember them because they would be required to recall them at the end of the study. This latter instruction was designed to encourage systematic processing of the arguments. As a persuasive message, six convincing narrative arguments against voluntary euthanasia were then presented. Such a message has been successfully employed in other studies of attitude change (see Martin & Marrington, 2005; Martin & Martin, in press; R. Martin, Gardikiotis, & Hewstone, 2002; R. Martin et al., 2003). Fourth, after reading the message, participants completed a thought-listing task and the same 9-point scale measuring their attitude towards voluntary euthanasia as in the first session (post-test I: initial message). Participants were then asked to recall as many of the arguments in the message as they could. Finally, participants were given six strong arguments that argued the opposite position to the initial message, i.e. pro-voluntary euthanasia. The initial and counter-messages both contained the same number of arguments and were of similar word lengths. The participants then completed the same attitude scale as that following the initial message (post-test II: counter-message). At the end of the study participants were asked to read the thoughts they had listed following the initial message and to indicate whether each thought was in favour, against or neutral towards voluntary euthanasia. . . .

Analysis of simple main effects showed that participants did not change their attitude towards the messages when message processing was low in either the placebo (Ms=2.47 vs. 3.00 vs. 3.00), (2, 112)=1.17, n.s., or caffeine (Ms=2.67 vs. 3.33 vs. 3.53), F (1,56)=2.53, n.s., conditions.

However, participants did change their attitude towards the messages when message processing was high in both the placebo, F (2,112)=5.93, p< 0.004, and caffeine F(2,112)=31.75, p< 0.001, conditions.

Focusing first on attitude change to the initial message (pre- vs. post-test I), there was a reliable change in attitude towards the initial message when message processing was high in both the placebo (Ms=2.40 vs. 3.73), F(1,56)=13.18, p< 0.001 and caffeine (Ms=2.40 vs. 5.33), F (1,56)=63.77, p<0.001, conditions. However, the amount of attitude change in the caffeine condition (Mdifference=2.93) was reliably larger than that in the placebo condition (Mdifference=1.33), F(1,56)=19.04, p< 0.001.Focusing on attitude change to the counter-message (post-test I vs. post-test II), in the placebo condition the reliable change in attitude to the initial message (Ms=2.40 vs. 3.73), yielded to the second counter-message (Ms=3.73 vs. 2.73), t(56)=5.19, p< 0.03. Indeed, there was no reliable difference between pre-test and post-test II showing attitudes had returned to their original level (Ms=2.40 vs. 2.73) t(56)=0.69, n.s. However, in the caffeine condition the reliable change in attitude to the initial message (Ms=2.40 vs. 5.33), resisted the second counter-message (Ms=5.33 vs. 5.00), t(56)=0.58, n.s. The difference between the pre- and post-test II attitude scores (Ms=2.40 vs. 5.00) was reliable, t(56)=42.25, p< 0.001.>

HOPE SPRINGS, AR—The holy and sacrosanct miracle of birth, long revered by human civilization as the most mysterious and magical of all phenomena, took place for what experts are estimating “must be at least the 83 billionth time” Tuesday with the successful delivery of eight-pound, four-ounce baby boy Darryl Brandon Severson at Holy Mary Mother Of God Hospital.

The milestone was achieved by Carla Severson, 32, an unemployed cosmetology-school graduate and homemaker, and her husband of 14 years, Dwayne Severson, also 32, a former screen-door factory worker and freelance lawncare contractor. Experts say the miracle most likely was the result of the pair engaging in an otherwise routine act of sexual intercourse at some point during late May 1998. . . .

“This truly is a miracle,” said OB-GYN floor nurse Sandra Meese, placing Darryl Brandon in the New Births Room of the hospital’s maternity ward, where he joined 32 other equally miraculous babies. “Looking down into this precious child’s red, screaming face, so barely distinguishable from all the other wailing children surrounding him on all sides, one is reminded of just how special and unique the gift of life really is.” . . .

Noted essayist and biologist Stephen Jay Gould . . . call[ed] the latest addition to the Severson household “a miracle beyond compare.”

“It’s an amazing turn of events, no doubt about it,” Gould said. “Just think: A spermatozoa from a male mammal fertilized the ovum of a female mammal, causing a fetus to develop and, in time, come to term and pass through the female’s birth canal as a new being. It just goes to show that there are some mysteries even science cannot explain.”

[Note to Pete at March Together for Life, and all his little friends: not everything above is strictly true.]

Deliberately destroying embryos for research purposes, the prelate observed, “is equivalent to abortion.” The same penalty would apply, he said, since “it is the same action.”

Here he exhibits the same reasoning as that of American religious conservatives who obsess over IVF embryos, and who attempt to define pregnancy as beginning at conception rather than uterine implantation of the embryo. Like them, the Cardinal hoists himself upon his own petard by declaring the death of an embryo entirely outside any woman’s body to be “the same action” as the termination of a pregnancy taking place inside a woman.

Aside from the utter contempt for women that these attitudes display, there is the bizarre perspective on reproductive biology that they reveal. Pregnancy, by the religious right’s definition, has absolutely nothing to do with a woman or her body. A pregnancy is underway whether or not a woman is even involved. Pregnancy begins when the ovum is fertilized – which in IVF takes place entirely outside, probably many miles away from, the body of either the egg donor or the woman who may potentially carry the fetus to term. An abortion takes place when a pregnancy is terminated – which for an IVF embryo again encompasses no involvement of a woman’s body. Indeed, in the case of embryos created for research, a pregnancy and an abortion both take place – the religious right claims – even though there is not only no woman involved, but no woman even intended to be or potentially involved.

This would be simply asinine if the Catholic church, or the religious right generally, were held to even minimal standards of scientific fact and rational argumentation. For some reason, they never are, but that doesn’t mean that any of this makes sense.

[Trujillo] argued that reliance on scientific and technological progress had produced a “delirium,” with gravely harmful results for the life of society.

And it is on this bizarre appreciation of the facts of pregnancy and abortion – and of science across the board – that the church formulates policies regarding those who perform research on embryos.

UPDATE: On consideration, I realize that the above discussion may be somewhat unfair. The criticism on grounds of mischaracterizing pregnancy is valid only if the Cardinal is, in fact, declaring IVF embryos to be products of pregnancy. That is what I took his comment about destroying them to be “equivalent to abortion” to mean. However, afer reading other articles on this subject, I think it may be that he meant only that they are morally equivalent, not that they are identical in fact. If so, then my criticism of the Cardinal on that point is wrong; though many Protestants do make that identification, he may not have been doing so in this case.

In traditional evolutionary theory, reproductive success is all; those who die with the most kids win. Evolutionary psychology and sociobiology put this in more complicated perspective – altruism, kin selection, and all that – but it was still understood that getting your gametes over the hump, as it were, was the goal of life. This makes voluntarily non-reproductive lifestyles – whether homosexuality, delayed reproduction (with its risk of failure), or plain “childlessness by choice” – seem positively unnatural, and thus, in the naive fallacious naturalism that so often characterizes the right wing, that much more immoral. “Contracepting”, or not having kids by whatever means, becomes not merely religiously irritating to those of the familiarly thin skin, but somehow perverse, an attack on the species imperative to survive and prevail. Or so it may seem.

Barash defends sex for its own sake (a stance the more pathetic for its boldness in this benighted day):

For more than 99.99% of their evolutionary history, humans haven’t had the luxury of deciding whether to reproduce: simply engaging in sex took care of that, just as eating solved the problem of nutrition. But then something quite wonderful arrived on the scene: birth control. Because of it, women (and men) can exercise choice and, if they wish, save themselves the pain, risk and inconvenience of childbearing and child-rearing, indulging themselves rather than their genetic posterity.

Yes, indeed.

Barash’s point is that human psychology (he uses the term “free will”, but let’s leave the philosophical controversy over that issue out of this) transcends evolutionary drives, and indeed most biological programming. Humans can determine how much they personally value different ends, and this may result in devaluing ends that would otherwise contribute to evolutionary fitness. (There is no personal payoff in being evolutionarily successful; your children, and arguably your species, benefit from your contributing your successful genes, but the end is the same for you personally in any case. It’s up to you whether the fitness of future generations is worth devoting your life to.) Some choose not to have children, but that in no way violates any kind of biological – still less moral – obligation. Our psychology – with its contesting drives and values – is as much a part of our nature as (arguably more so than) our evolutionary history. Choosing non-reproductive strategies is natural; it springs from the part of humans’ nature that allows them to reflect on and choose among potential ends.

If reproduction is perhaps the fundamental imperative of natural selection, of our genetic heritage, isn’t it curious — indeed, counterintuitive — that people choose, and in such large numbers, to refrain from participating in life’s most pressing event?

The answer is that intentional childlessness is indeed curious — but in no way surprising. It is also illuminating, because it sheds light on what is perhaps the most notable hallmark of the human species: the ability to say no — not just to a bad idea, an illegal order or a wayward pet but to our own genes.

When it comes to human behavior, there are actually very few genetic dictates. Our hearts insist on beating, our lungs breathing, our kidneys filtering and so forth, but these internal-organ functions are hardly “behavior” in a meaningful sense. As for more complex activities, evolution whispers within us. It does not shout orders.

People are inclined to eat when hungry, sleep when tired and have sex when aroused. But in most cases, we remain capable of declining, endowed as we are with that old bugaboo, free will. . . .

When it comes to our behavior, evolution is clearly influential. Of this there can be no doubt. But only rarely is it determinative, even when something as deeply biological as reproduction is concerned. Indeed, the trend toward childlessness is neither particularly German nor strangely “un-biological” but profoundly human.

That’s a helpful message at a time when so much conservative social policy-making is being promulgated with potted pseudo-scientific justifications (gay parents will warp their adopted children; gay marriages will undermine the entire structure of society; contraception destroys the natural urge to protect life; abortion causes invisible psychological traumas . . .). Aside from the issue of sex, the entire notion of value-based choicemaking as both an expression of natural, and fundamental, human capacities, and as a counter to speculative assertions of biological constraints on acceptable human lifestyles, is a much-needed corrective.

The existential ground of human nature – that our existence does not dictate our essence – the escape to freedom that we achieved in evolving that big brain – is both a triumph of human evolution and the most fundamental feature of our nature. We need to hold on to it against those who deny its existence and seek to return us to biological straitjackets of their devising. And it wouldn’t hurt to have a little carefree sex along the way.

Adam Colber of Neuroethics & Law Blog has a good post, referencing an interesting recent journal article on the topic. Kyle Swan of Pea Soup had a more detailed discussion of the subject about 18 months ago (I just found the link after being “stimulated” by Colber’s post), which provides some excellent speculation and a very insightful comments thread. He also provides a useful bibliography, and links to a preceding series of posts on moral realism. There’s some excellent work going on over there at Pea Soup.

But what does this all cash out to?

First, there is evidence that young children make creative moral judgments. But this evidence can be interpreted in a variety of ways. (See Swan’s post, and the comments, linked above, for an overview.) The questions whether there is an innate moral judgment, and whether this is distinct from (a) sociobiological behavioral patterns that reinforce cooperation and “punish” defection, and so forth, and (b) nativist judgment regarding merely prudential matters, are still open as empirical issues. But let us assume that there is nativist moral judgment, and it is “really moral” in whatever sense (i.e., focuses on behavioral questions that we would recognize as moral rather than merely prudential or cultural) – what are we to make of that fact?

Swan’s first commenter hit it on the head by asking: “what are your thoughts about how an innate moral ability interfaces with normative ethics?”

An obvious reaction, and my first one, is to argue that it is irrelevant to working out what the right moral norms should be. Whatever nativist judgmental capacity there is is clearly evolutionarily driven, and as such is no more morally right than putative sociobiological drives toward promiscuity or rape in males, stereotypical sex preferences, or out-group xenophobia. It is at best evidence that certain moral evaluations, which is to say certain responses to certain perceived behaviors, were adaptive in early human social settings. It is likely that many such selected-for evaluative traits would continue to be adaptive in other forms of human society, but it is also likely that many would not be as social patterns changed and cultural evolution redefined the social/familial landscape. Inferring any normative implications is merely to indulge the same naturalistic fallacy as so much naive sociobiology does.

Identifying these innate moral “principles” or patterns (if in fact they exist), however, may offer an at least suggestive, possibly even presumptive, set of candidate norms ripe for further evaluation, in the way that Axelrod’s famous identification of the “tit for tat” strategy for the iterative Prisoner’s Dilemma spawned reams of theoretical bloviating. Surely it is not accidental that human infants, and some other primates, seem to intuitively react to “punish” those who take a disproportionate amount of communal resources, nor that people will commonly refuse highly unequal divisions of resources even to their own immediate cost. These behaviors reinforce social comity by discouraging “defection”. But not only are these norms adaptive in some way, they may arguably be part of the logically necessary framework of a stable civilized society (hence moral norms, on some kind of Social Contract theory), or at least conform to actual moral norms as worked out by some other means. They’re worth taking seriously even if not endorsing prima facie.

However, the “moral APoS” case, I think, goes beyond the observation that there are such hardwired patterns of behavior. It is the claim that there is an inborn ”generative grammar of morality” – not just particular learned evaluative responses but a suite of coherent “principles” that could be modeled as a nascent moral theory. If we regard adaptive moral patterns as as being, as it were, “contingently normative” – as candidate norms worthy of investigation – is this “theory” a candidate moral system? Or just another reason why “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put on this earth to rise above?”

The Spanish Socialist Party will introduce a bill in the Congress of Deputies calling for “the immediate inclusion of (simians) in the category of persons, and that they be given the moral and legal protection that currently are only enjoyed by human beings.” The PSOE’s justification is that humans share 98.4% of our genes with chimpanzees, 97.7% with gorillas, and 96.4% with orangutans.

Note that the citation of genetic closeness is both a somewhat contentious issue and not directly morally relevant. The Great Ape Project itself refers to mental capacity, not genetic consanguinity. This is still an interesting development, however.

The measurement of genetic differences between species is more complicated than it looks, and the interpretation of those measurements is extremely contentious. For one thing, it matters a great deal whether you compare the entire genomes of the species, including the heterochromatin (non-transcribed “junk” DNA), or only the euchromatin (functional DNA) that produces selectable traits. Junk DNA is open to random mutation, since changes in its structure do not result in changes in biolgical functions; differences between species in these segments of chromosomes thus tend to accumulate steadily (this fact provides a convenient “clock” by which the dates of evolutionary events can be estimated). Functional DNA mutates at lesser rates, because significant changes in functional genes are often fatal or maladaptive, and thus eliminated from the gene pool; the exact rate at which a given gene changes depends upon the chemical and functional specifics of that gene and its resultant protein, and is distinctive for each gene. Thus, comparisons of the entire genome include comparisons of the highly divergent, randomly-mutating heterochromatin as well as the less-divergent, highly conserved euchromatin, and thus show larger degrees of difference; comparisons of functional genes only show closer connection. (The now-standard “98%” figure was based on comparisons of particular genes, not even large sections of the genome; since those genes included ones for vital biochemical functions, and hence tend to be highly “conserved” – unchanged by evolution – they give systematically higher figures for similarity.) Today, also, it is known that there are significant differences between human and ape genomes in terms of sequence repetitions, bacterial and viral gene inclusions, and some structural sequences, in addition to just correlations between base pair sequences. So the percentage figure you get depends largely on what you are comparing, and to some extent a percentage similarity is not even an applicable concept.

Understanding what those differences or similarities mean, however, is an even harder task. For one thing, the differences are far from random: the human genome shows a distinctly higher degree of sequence repetition (i.e., the creation of new genes, available for further evolution, by duplication of old ones) and faster evolutionary rates in genes related to brain structure, when compared to other primates – the evolutionary significance of this is obvious. So it may be that whatever degree of difference there is between the genomes in percentage terms, what matters more is which genes are different. From another perspective, it may not matter much at all what the percentage difference is between various genomes. Multiple comparative studies clearly show largely unambiguous evolutionary lineages; whether the difference in gene sequences between humans and chimps is 1%, or 2%, or 5%, or 20% is irrelevant – there is no question that the two species of chimps are our closest living relatives, followed by gorillas, then orangs, and so forth. If 2% is the difference between humans and chimps, then a 2% change in DNA is what it takes to distinguish between a human and a chimp – if 20%, then 20%. The relationship does not change, whatever the figure might be. Finally, none of this – whether the number turns out to be large or small – makes a difference to the question whether apes deserve moral status comparable to that of humans. To cite these figures as evidence for such a claim is no more than a familiar example of the “naturalistic fallacy” (the claim that some certain natural fact implies a moral conclusion all by itself). To their credit, the Great Ape Project people for the most part have not fallen into that trap, though this news report appears to suggest that the Spanish Socialists have done so.

All that aside, however, as a development on the political and moral landscape, this is interesting. The PSOE currently holds 43% of the Spanish National Assembly, 39% of the Senate seats, and the Presidency; if they’re serious about this policy, they stand a good chance of pushing it through. (Frankly, it boggles the mind to imagine that a major European political party is going to go to the mats on this issue, but who knows? It would be fascinating to know the inside history of how this policy was adopted.) Simply by highlighting the issue, they have put primate personhood on a serious footing, in a way it never has been before.

It is a commonplace of arguments over “personhood” that on any reasonable, non-arbitrary definition of moral personhood, non-human species might potentially qualify. Defenders of a functional definition of personhood point to this as a feature, not a bug – it is a necessary consequence of the theory’s being non-arbitrary, and it allows for evaluation of claims of personhood on the merits in each case, rather than simply by reference to category (species) membership. Once the possibility of non-human persons is bruited, three suggestions then almost immediately follow: intelligent and sentient space aliens, intelligent computers, and intelligent non-human Earth species, of which the most popular candidates are typically apes, whales and dolphins, and some domesticated animals such as dogs or horses. The first two categories are not represented by any known members, and so are of only theoretical interest, but the question of personhood of animals is of practical significance. “Ethical vegetarians” typicall hold that animals deserve moral consideration, at least to the extent of minimizing suffering or of protection against exploitation; others hold that they qualify for full moral personhood.

Peter Singer became one of the most influential members of the animal-rights movement when he personally adopted an anti-suffering stance, along the lines of Bentham’s famous distinction (“The question is not, ‘Can they reason?’ nor, ‘Can they talk?’ but rather, ‘Can they suffer?’”), and put the animal-rights position on a firm philosophical grounding. More recently he has endorsed the Great Ape Project and taken the position that adult apes of several species should be regarded as moral persons (or, “members of the community of equals”, as the Project puts it, which is a similar but not identical concept). Most philosophers are comfortable with the idea that such a conclusion could make sense, but I think few others believe that it has yet been proven to be true. The fact that a major political party has officially endorsed such a program is unquestionably a milestone.

I think this development is significant in two ways: most obviously because of its potential impact on the animal-rights movement, and also because, in introducing the question of moral personhood for non-humans, the Socialists are implicitly raising the question of the definition of personhood to political prominence. An interesting speculation: the Socialists may have cited genetic evidence of closeness to the human species as the grounding of their position not in spite of the naturalistic fallacy, but because of it. Their position seems to imply that human specieshood is still the definition of personhood, and simply holds that ape species are “close enough” to human to be tucked into the fold as well – thus specifically avoiding a discussion of relative intelligence or mental capacity. If this speculation is correct, then the Socialists have mucked things up but good: bringing in non-humans as a point of contention while the question of personhood for human organisms itself remains controversial. However, if this controversy can be re-centered where it belongs, on a functional definition of intelligence, then it will contribute greatly to elucidating the importance of personhood as a basic moral concept and category – for human individuals as well as members of other species. (I also think this is the only way the animal-rights position can win out – “close enough” on genetic grounds is not good enough morally, especially since the genetic linkage is, as I noted, not so obvious or so close as many people think.)

I would like to see “personhood” given the respect and attention it deserves, especially in the face of the organized, ongoing campaign by religious conservatives to establish human embryos and fetuses as persons, irrespective of circumstances, under US law – as a means of rolling back reproductive autonomy rights. That conversation has been systematically shut out by those who don’t want to hear any suggestion that distinctions can be made between human organisms of any kinds. If the Spanish Socialists succeed in forcing the question of personhood onto the political landscape, they may wind up doing some human persons a great deal of good, whether or not they prove there are any animal persons.

However, I’m always amused by and contemptuous of the labels on “green” foods and products self-righteously proclaiming that “this product was not tested on animals”. (Today I tried some shaving cream, from a cosmetics company run by two gay men, which was reassuringly labeled “tested only on boyfriends, not animals”. Great product, by the way.) There are only two things that can mean, and they both are predicated on the assumption that you’re an idiot.

As is widely known, the FDA has only limited regulatory authority over “dietary supplements”, and virtually never exercises what authority it does have. In addition, by federal law any ingredients in use prior to October 15, 1994 are presumed safe by virtue of experience; “new dietary ingredients” introduced after that date must merely be reported to the FDA, but no testing is required. The FDA has no authority whatsoever over cosmetics, other than their labeling. It does not even have that much authority over soap. It is illegal to market any actually dangerous product, but the FDA has no mechanism for ensuring non-drug product safety before people start dying, going blind, or looking like Boy George. Manufacturers have perfect freedom to conduct whatever testing they choose to ensure their products are safe – including none at all. Some conduct animal testing, some do not.

So, if you’re using any “health supplement”, cosmetic, or soap product that advertises “no animal testing”, you can be assured of one of two things: that product was “tested” by use on other human beings with no prior assurance of its safety, or, that product is now being tested on you. You’re either volunteering to be the guinea pig, or taking advantage of the fact that a lot of other people (probably unwittingly) already did so, though you have no actual knowledge of the outcome in their cases.

Since, in fact, most of the additives in hygiene products are well-known and fairly safe, I usually ignore the issue of testing (it’s hard even to find a product that was responsibly tested before marketing these days). But I regard the “no animal testing” label as indicative of two things, both of which I resent: (a) the company didn’t care enough to do proper safety testing, but was willing to just wing it with their customers’ health, and (b) they assume their customers are dumb enough not only to buy untested products, but to make buying decisions on the basis of the fact that they’re untested! I’m willing to take some of this risk if there’s no easy alternative, but I don’t like the company assuming I’m so dumb I actually think that’s a good thing! As for you . . .