4 articles discussing different aspects
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From: bfu@ifi.uio.no (Thomas Gramstad)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Abortion, rights, status of the fetus, religionism
Message-ID:
Date: 22 Nov 89 16:32:36 GMT
Article-I.D.: skakke.CMM.0.88.627755556.bfu
Posted: Wed Nov 22 11:32:36 1989
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Reply-To: Thomas Gramstad
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I forward these 4 messages originally posted to the bitnet biomedical
ethics mailing list to this newsgroup.
- Thomas Gramstad
------------
5-Oct-89 19:14:22-GMT,5697;000000000001
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From: Thomas Gramstad
To: m_gramstad_t%use.uio.uninett@nac.no
Subject: Embryos, fetuses, abortion, rights
Reply-To: Biologisk fagutvalg
Message-Id:
In this posting I will demonstrate the following points:
1. "Life" doesn't have rights. Persons do.
2. A person is not a chromosomal pattern or a collection of tissues
or organs.
A person has a chromosomal pattern and a collection of tissues and
organs.
A chromosomal pattern or a collection of tissues and organs is not
a person and does not have any rights.
3. Embryos are property.
4. To make abortion illegal is to make any woman a potential slave
and to violate her rights. To support such laws is to be an
accomplice to slavery, and thus to be an enemy of _human_ life.
---------------------------------------
Brain activity or any other neurological parameter is hopeless and
irrelevant in regards to abortion and rights.
"Even a lizard has brain activity, and a fetus in the early stages of
pregnancy is about as developed as a lizard. The *absence* of brain
activity proves the absence of life as a human being. But this
does not imply that the presence of brain activity proves an entity
to be a human being. That is, brain activity is a necessary but not
sufficient condition for human life."
( - Dana Honeycutt)
Any normal full-grown chimpanzee has a more complex and more operational
nervous system than a newborn human infant. And chimps don't have
rights. I don't know when a child reaches the neurological
complexity of a chimpanzee, but I submit we're talking about years.
So, if neurological parameters should be our guide, we certainly would
have a very, very "liberal" abortion law.
Or, if you want to start your concept of rights on the level of
fetus neurology, you would probably have to go vegetarian.
To say that any kind of life has the same status or value,
or that any kind of life has rights, is to devaluate and
eventually destroy _human_ life.
However, rights are not derived from neurological parameters.
Rights are derived from the existence and possession of a rational
volitional mind.
Only persons have rights, and only individuals are persons.
An individual is a living entity capable of self-generated action.
A person is an individual with a rational volitional mind, and
is consequently a moral being with rights.
A fetus is not a person, it is not even an individual. It is
completely, physically dependent on the actions and functions of
"another" individual for sustaining its life, and cannot even affect
the processes that maintains its life -- many of which are not even a
part of itself.
Strictly speaking, a fetus is not a parasite. A parasite is an
organism (a separate biological entity) that lives on or in an
organism of a different species and derives nutrition from it.
A fetus is not a parasite. It is an organ.
(The fetus is not even a vital organ; most women can live without it :-)
In short, a fetus is quite simply a part of a woman's body and
consequently it is the property of that woman.
Any woman has unlimited sovereignty over her own body and all its
parts and functions.
Thus fetus viability is and should be legally irrelevant because it is
the owner of the fetus who decides what to do with it.
(Fetus research is fine.)
>From this I conclude that, regarding abortion, the only factor of
moral importance at any stage of a pregnancy is the rational judgment
of the pregnant woman, and that the only factors of legal importance
is (should be) the decision of the pregnant woman (and her right to
decide for herself).
(A consequence of this is that any legally defined time limit on
abortion is unjustifyed and should be abolished. My purpose is not to
advocate late abortions - any rational woman will anticipate and
consider the medical and psychological problems that can arise from
that. However, as a matter of principle, abortion should be allowed
until the onset of birth has been objectively established.
The difference between a fetus one day before birth and a baby
one day after birth is that the latter is a human being, while the
former is not.)
The real issue, of course, is the first 3-4 months. A woman will
manage to make up her mind during that time.
The concept of "fetus rights" cannot coexist with the image of a woman
with a ruined career -- or an abjectly poor woman -- or a raped woman --
in the same brain. The idea of sacrificing a real human life in order
to maintain the chemical activity of a lump of human tissue is an
unspeakable obscenity. It is to reduce any woman to a reproduction
unit, a slave. Disguising this idea as "moral" is a giant fraud.
The use of the term "pro-life" is strongly misleading. Pro-life means
that which further human life -- the existence, happiness and
well-being of human beings. _Real_, and _human_ beings.
Those who want to forbid women individual autonomy and sovereignty
over their bodies are _anti-life_. The application of the term
"pro-life" to the goals of such people is a mega-fraud.
---
Birth is the moment of individualization and thus marks the origin
point of rights.
Rights are a human birthright - no more, and no less.
Copyright 1989 Thomas Gramstad.
May not be copied without permission from author.
Thomas Gramstad bfu@ifi.uio.no
10-Oct-89 19:47:01-GMT,3486;000000000001
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From: Thomas Gramstad
Reply-To: Biologisk fagutvalg
To: biomed-l@vm1.nodak.edu
Subject: Statement on foundation of rights -- Re: Abortion
Message-Id:
> Please list what `rights' you mean. And how do you mean the word
> `rights'??
Whoa. I can't list them, because they're endless. But I can say
what I think rights are, and how to judge whether something is a right.
In brief and in essence, my view is this:
A right is a sanction of action - more precisely, a sanction of
freedom of action in a social context. A right is an action that can
be exercised without permission from anybody; a voluntary, uncoerced
choice.
Rights are a kind of conditions of existence, required by man's nature
in order for her to survive. They are not arbitrary, they are not a
gift from a god or society. They are the same for all persons. They
are held individually by all persons at all times. They cannot be
taken away or suspended (but they may be violated).
Rights depend on 4 principles:
1. Life as a supreme value.
2 Man survives by reason, and reason can only function if left free.
Therefore she has a right to her actions; nobody has the right
to initiate force against her, nor does she have the right to
initiate force against others.
(That's the right to liberty.)
3. Man is an end in herself.
Therefore no man is a means to somebody else;
she has a right to pursue her _own_ life (ethical selfishness),
neither sacrificing others to herself, nor sacrificing herself
to others.
(That's the right to the pursuit of happiness.)
4. The fact that mind and body is a union.
Therefore man cannot survive simply by thought,
but by the union of thought and action,
including the production of physical products.
(That's the right to property.)
In short, I validate rights by an ethics which holds life as the
standard of value; thought as the means of achieving it; selfishness
as the ultimate purpose; and physical action and achievement as the
form thought has to be expressed in (productivity/work).
If there is any other way of validating rights, I don't know about it.
In general, a person has a right to do any action that does not
violate somebody else's rights, i.e. any action that is not an
initiation of physical force.
The essence of the validation of rights is that man's survival
requires the freedom to act on the judgment of her mind.
If using her mind was not man's means of survival, she wouldn't
have, and wouldn't need, rights.
While the actions of simpler forms of life are determined by genes
and environment, man has a conceptual consciousness which gives her
the possibility of choice (volition) in some aspects of existence -
a choice of directing and selecting her attention or awareness. The
initiation of cognitive processes in a conceptual consciousness is not
automatic. Life is mechanistic, consciousness is not.
That's it. Comments should probably be sent by personal mail;
flames to /dev/null.
Some references:
Aristotle: The Nicomachean Ethics
Ayn Rand: The Virtue of Selfishness - a new concept of egoism
Thomas Gramstad bfu@ifi.uio.no
12-Oct-89 4:51:41-GMT,16456;000000000001
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Date: Wed, 11 Oct 89 23:05:44 CST
Reply-To: BIOMED-L Biomedical Ethics
Sender: BIOMED-L Biomedical Ethics
From: Steve Grimes
Subject: I disagree.
To: Multiple recipients of list BIOMED-L
A response to Thomas Gramstad
tg>In this posting I will demonstrate the following points:
tg>
Hmmmmm, starting somewhere in the body of the post.....
tg>
tg>However, rights are not derived from neurological parameters.
Whew! This is a good start. I agree with this statement.
tg>Rights are derived from the existence and possession of a rational
tg>volitional mind.
This definition requires a subjective opinion of what is a "rational
volitional mind". As stated, both rational AND volitional become
requirements for "rights". This would deny rights to both the
irrational or non-volitional. People in these categories, depending
on the standard of rationality to be imposed, might include:
Insane people
mentally Ill people
Retarded people
comatose people
people who do weird, unnatural or seemingly irrational things.
born babies
unborn babies
I detect that the real effort of "pro-choice" arguments such as yours
are not to explicitly deny rights to any of the above categories except
the last. It seems your/their arguments are retro-fitted to apply to
this category only, without concern for the larger ramifications of
such reasoning. I believe this to be very dangerous as it establishes
a precedent that a distinction can be made between biological human
life and legal personhood. This opens the door to the next group with
a cause, to deny legal personhood to some unique "class" of biologic
humans because they don't fit some criteria for being "person's".
Our fundamental disagreement does lie in the nature and source of
"rights" however, as been pointed out several times on this list.
My stand is with the founding fathers of the United States of
America, and stated in the Declaration of Independence, that:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men
are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain inalienable rights, among these being life,
liberty, and pursuit of happiness." (from memory)
(I believe these to be listed in order of prevalence).
The term used by the founders was "natural" rights. These are not
earned by race, status, mental prowess, dexterity, or birth. They are
not "granted" by the State. They are endowed by God upon all men
and women. This stems from the Biblical concept that man is created in
the image of God. The State can protect these rights. Or,
the State can deny their existence and commit genocide against it's
people. As I've said before, the closest thing to "creation"
in the ontogeny of any man, is his conception.
tg>Only persons have rights, and only individuals are persons.
tg>An individual is a living entity capable of self-generated action.
tg>A person is an individual with a rational volitional mind, and
tg>is consequently a moral being with rights.
More subjective definitions, attempting to create a new standard.
The United States must not become a country where the worth of the
individual is based on "definitions" of others. The inalienable
Right to Life cannot be tied to some temporal standard of just
what that life is. The only concrete facts here are the biologic
ones, your declamations not withstanding.
tg>A fetus is not a person, it is not even an individual.
In previous posts I've offered documented evidence of the legal
rights of the pre-born child going back farther than Blackstone.
I suppose centuries of medical, legal, and ecclesiastical opinion
are irrelevant when you want to rationalize something bad enough.
tg>It is completely, physically dependent on the actions and functions of
tg>"another" individual for sustaining its life, and cannot even affect
tg>the processes that maintains its life -- many of which are not even a
tg>part of itself.
This paragraph marked the beginning of the gross scientific errors
in your post. The embryo/fetus exercises enormous influence over the
biologic processes of the mother. This begins when the fetus, upon
implantation, sends a chemical signal to the mother which stops her
her menstrual cycle. It ends when the fetus triggers the onset of
labor.
tg>Strictly speaking, a fetus is not a parasite. A parasite is an
tg>organism (a separate biological entity) that lives on or in an
tg>organism of a different species and derives nutrition from it.
With the exception of being the same species (although a different
sex roughly 50 percent of the time), the parasite label is closer
than this next humdinger....
tg>A fetus is not a parasite. It is an organ.
tg>
tg>(The fetus is not even a vital organ; most women can live without it :-)
Two women enter the hospital for biopsies of tumors. After surgery the
tissue samples are sent to the lab, where their respective labels are
lost. Uh Oh, which sample belongs to which lady? No sweat here, we
just take a little tissue from one sample and inject it under the skin
of one of the ladies. If an antigen/antibody reaction occurs, we know
that sample was not taken from her body. This simple test will be
true for tissue samples from any organ of your body. This is because
each one of us is immunologically distinct.
Now, take a sample of fetal tissue, and inject it under the skin of the
mother. Guess what! An antigen/antibody reaction occurs, since the
fetus is also AN IMMUNOLOGICALLY DISTINCT INDIVIDUAL. That's the
medical FACT Thomas. Your contrived definitions of what a fetus is and
isn't are just further attempts to justify killing the unborn. At NO
TIME after conception is the fetus a part of the women's body. No more
than if she swallows a turtle, it becomes "part" of her body. Sure
the fetus is within the body, and connected to it, but if a dog
jumped through my car window and chomped down on my gear shift (which
is shaped like a bone), does the dog become "part" of my car?
By the way Thomas, it is the fetus who is responsible for one of the
miracles of pregnancy, solving single-handedly the homograft problem,
by which fetus and mother, though immunologically distinct foreigners
who could not exchange skin grafts or safely receive blood from each
other, nevertheless tolerate each other in parabiosis for nine months.
As with biology experiments, two creatures living in parabiosis does
not *one* creature make.
tg>In short, a fetus is quite simply a part of a woman's body and
tg>consequently it is the property of that woman.
tg>Any woman has unlimited sovereignty over her own body and all its
tg>parts and functions.
Where? Not in America. Can she commit suicide? Can she inject
illegal narcotics into her veins? Can she become a prostitute?
(Nevada excepted). No "right", including the fetus's right to life,
are "unlimited", or "absolute". Since your still hung up here on
the falsehood that the fetus is "part of the woman's body", I'll hold
further comments on this aspect of rights. (The weighing of "rights".)
Perhaps a slight digression into the nature of rights is in order.
It is sometimes helpful to discriminate between rights, possessed
intrinsically, and the exercise of those rights which may or may not
be allowed by society at large. The issue then becomes not one of
personal rights, but of societal restraints on individual freedom.
Society has the right to restrain our freedoms. Indeed, to become
a member in society, man must surrender the "exercise" of certain
rights in subordination to the will of society. This is the case with
traffic laws, etc. In America you have the freedom to travel at
will, almost anywhere you wish. However, you are not free to travel
down the interstate at 15 mph or 150 mph.
Now it could be argued that a man or woman has unlimited rights to
his or her body. And that it is society that is limiting their free
exercise in the cases of suicide, illegal drug use, prostitution,
and abortion. (I would separate abortion from these since it involves
two separate individual persons, thus making it an argument of "whose
rights should prevail".) But here I want to require the reader to
think through this: On what basis does a man or woman have unlimited
rights to their body, (again a moot point as far as abortion is
concerned but interesting nonetheless).
To my knowledge, Western Civilization does not recognize absolute
rights to our bodies in either its legal or ecclesiastical foundations.
Please correct my if I'm wrong here. (And I'm talking about significant
recognition by society and not mere philosophical speculations by this
or that figure in time). This being the case, doesn't this "unlimited
sovereignty" over our persons become one more item on the wish list of
those seeking to restructure American culture? It may be a principle
on which your morality rests, but that doesn't make it an uninfringable
inherent right for society to bow down to. Not yet anyway.
Again, my digression has little to do with abortion since to be
relevant, it would have to rest on the foundation that the fetus is
not a legal person. If the fetus is a legal person, he or she is
entitled to the same Constitutional protection of the right to life
as the mother. No more, and no less. That's why I argue mainly for
full personhood of unborn as well as born children.
tg>Thus fetus viability is and should be legally irrelevant because it is
tg>the owner of the fetus who decides what to do with it.
tg>(Fetus research is fine.)
tg>From this I conclude that, regarding abortion, the only factor of
tg>moral importance at any stage of a pregnancy is the rational judgment
tg>of the pregnant woman, and that the only factors of legal importance
tg>is (should be) the decision of the pregnant woman (and her right to
tg>decide for herself).
Your conclusion is just as false as your premises. Why? Because it
rests on those faulty premises. Now, typically one works from premises
to conclusions. But with abortion, many work from conclusions
to premises. The trouble for you is that, increasingly, the scientific
premises are on the Pro-life side. (Did you know that EEG's on the
baby in the womb reveal "dream sequences"? The baby in the womb has
sleep cycles, breaths the amniotic fluid, often sucks it's thumb,
has unique fingerprints at 12 weeks, can make audible vocal sounds at
18 weeks, is responsive to pain and touch and cold and sound and
light, recognizes her mother's voice, etc. No wonder modern medical
texts on fetology and embryology refer to the "second patient in
the womb". (They get the hiccups too!)
The baby in the womb also drinks the amniotic fluid, MORE if sweetened,
LESS if given an unpleasant taste! The baby in the womb can be TAUGHT.
Dr. Liley, considered the "Father of Fetology" states:
"He gets bored with repetitive signals but can be taught to be
alerted by a first signal for a second different one."
Gee Thomas, were getting close to volition and rational thought here.
These facts are on the Pro-Life side. Pro-choice people deal with
this in many ways:
1) Deny the scientific facts, and continue resting on
falsehoods like, "the fetus is part of the woman's body".
2) Ignore the scientific facts, and move the argument to
more vague areas like "rights", "responsibilities", etc.
3) Kick up dust and muttle the whole issue with ad hominem
attacks like: "why don't the pro-life people house all the
homeless people in the world." or arguments like "Every
child, a wanted child." (How would you like it if I said,
"Every black, a wanted black.".)
4) Convert to the pro-life side like the atheist abortionist
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who ran the largest abortion clinic
in the world for about two years, and was also a co-founder
of NARAL.
tg>(A consequence of this is that any legally defined time limit on
tg>abortion is unjustifyed and should be abolished. My purpose is not to
tg>advocate late abortions - any rational woman will anticipate and
tg>consider the medical and psychological problems that can arise from
tg>that. However, as a matter of principle, abortion should be allowed
tg>until the onset of birth has been objectively established.
tg>The difference between a fetus one day before birth and a baby
tg>one day after birth is that the latter is a human being, while the
tg>former is not.)
I could be just as dogmatic using the child's third birthday. Or how
about: "The black who is a slave, is not a human being. The black who
is free, is." Makes great sense doesn't it Thomas? Argggggg:
IT'S THE SAME BABY, ONE DAY BEFORE, ONE DAY AFTER !
Certainly in terms of Volition and Rationality. I thought that was
your standard.
tg>The real issue, of course, is the first 3-4 months. A woman will
tg>manage to make up her mind during that time.
Your about to mention "rape", so I'll mention the *reality* of
late term abortions, occasionally resulting in the "dreaded
complication" of live birth. No need to fear, these killers have the
whole scene well in hand. Just dump the gasping baby into a bucket and
neglect it. It will die soon enough. One case in Florida survived
over 24 hours, with NO life saving measures employed, before dyeing.
(Or should I say "expiring". I suppose that would sound "cleaner").
tg>The concept of "fetus rights" cannot coexist with the image of a woman
tg>with a ruined career -- or an abjectly poor woman -- or a raped woman --
tg>in the same brain. The idea of sacrificing a real human life in order
tg>to maintain the chemical activity of a lump of human tissue is an
tg>unspeakable obscenity. It is to reduce any woman to a reproduction
tg>unit, a slave. Disguising this idea as "moral" is a giant fraud.
Disguising your arguments as scientifically based is a greater fraud.
I could just as "scientifically" submit that blacks or Jews are "blobs
of tissue" and, whatever we do, let's not restrict the rights of Nazi's
and the KKK from disposing of these lumps because of whatever chemical
activity is taking place in them. Sorry, I'm not buying it.
What about a woman who's husband/boyfriend deserts her and her already
born child? This could ruin her career. This could send her spiraling
into poverty. What if any of a million other circumstances should arise
placing tremendous hardship on this woman. Should we then allow her
to kill her child of up to, say, 3 years? I mean, hers is the *real*
human life isn't it? The "offspring" will never know the difference
right? (Personally, I think this is where we are heading if current
trends continue.)
tg>The use of the term "pro-life" is strongly misleading. Pro-life means
tg>that which further human life -- the existence, happiness and
tg>well-being of human beings. _Real_, and _human_ beings.
tg>
tg>Those who want to forbid women individual autonomy and sovereignty
tg>over their bodies are _anti-life_. The application of the term
tg>"pro-life" to the goals of such people is a mega-fraud.
Here's a slogan for you:
"Pro-choice, that's a lie. Babies don't choose to die."
tg>Birth is the moment of individualization and thus marks the origin
tg>point of rights.
Nonsense. Conception is the moment of individualization.
tg>Rights are a human birthright - no more, and no less.
"Only whites have rights! - no more, and no less."
tg>Copyright 1989 Thomas Gramstad.
tg>May not be copied without permission from author.
Thomas, I didn't find anything in your post which I haven't seen in
one form or another on some "pro-choice" placard somewhere. You'de
do well to take some tips from George or Ken, and add some *reason*
to your dogmatism.
Steve Grimes
17-Nov-89 1:19:55-GMT,35726;000000000001
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Date: Fri, 17 Nov 1989 2:19:29 MET
From: Thomas Gramstad
To: biomed-l@vm1.nodak.edu
Subject: You are wrong in fact and in principle (Re: Abortion and rights)
Reply-To: Thomas Gramstad
Message-Id:
Summary: A reply to Steve Grimes.
Keywords: Abortion, rights, the rest of the universe, and a few other items.
Conclusion(1)Defending women against anti-abortionists is an act of chivalry.
Conclusion(2)"Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have"
( - Harry Emerson Fordisk )
> From: Steve Grimes
> Date: Wed, 11 Oct 89 23:05:44 CST
tg> me, earlyer
> Steve Grimes
Part I: Mr. Grimes is wrong in fact.
-------------------------------------
> increasingly, the scientific premises are on the Pro-life side.
Well, we'll see about that.
> (Did you know that EEG's on the baby in the womb reveal "dream
> sequences"? The baby in the womb has sleep cycles, breaths the
> amniotic fluid, often sucks it's thumb, has unique fingerprints at 12
> weeks, can make audible vocal sounds at 18 weeks, is responsive to
> pain and touch and cold and sound and light, recognizes her mother's
> voice, etc. No wonder modern medical texts on fetology and embryology
> refer to the "second patient in the womb". (They get the hiccups
> too!)
> The baby in the womb also drinks the amniotic fluid, MORE if
> sweetened, LESS if given an unpleasant taste! The baby in the womb
> can be TAUGHT. Dr. Liley, considered the "Father of Fetology" states:
>
> "He gets bored with repetitive signals but can be taught to be
> alerted by a first signal for a second different one."
>
> Gee Thomas, were getting close to volition and rational thought here.
No, we don't, and I shall explain why.
The issues are (1) "dream-sleep" and (2) modified behavior (_not_ learning,
unless you are a behaviorist). I will take them in that order.
Re: (1) "Dream-sleep"
Most dreams occur in the so-called REM-phase (Rapid Eye Movement).
During a sleep period one goes into and out of this phase several times.
Essential characteristics of this phase is rapid movements of the eyes,
a particular brainwave pattern (EEG) and that the person, if awakened
in such a phase, will remember his/her dream.
In our discussion, it is interesting to note that REM-sleep is found
in all mammals.
It is even found in birds. (See Snyder (1966): "Toward an
evolutionary theory of dreaming". American Journal of Psychiatry,
123, pp. 121-36.)
Now, which chickenbrain wants to advocate the existence of rational
thoughts in birds?
Re: (2) Modified behavior.
Take a planarian. Put it in a box. Give it food, and it eats.
Now give it food, but give it a slight electric shock at the same
time. The chock will make the planarian contract or shrink a little,
as it begins to eat. Repeat this a few times. Then stop giving it
an electric shock when you feed it. The planarian will continue
to contract or shrink when it starts to eat.
"Gee, the planarian can be TAUGHT!"
But it can't. This is modified behavior. Learning requires
understanding - conceptual understanding. Modified behavior and
learning should not be confused. They are two separate and very
different issues, and the one may occur without the other.
And pavlovian reflexes, of course, is far removed from volition and
rationality - a point that any behaviorist would like to lecture you
for hours about. Indeed, they are so far removed from volition and
rationality that many scientists working with them deny that volition
and conscious rationality exists.
There were a few other items. "Recognizing the mother's voice"? How
is that measured? Modified behavior again? "Recognize" as it is used
here implies conscious identification, which is an unwarranted
assumption. "Recognition" at the molecular level, e.g. when an enzyme
"recognizes" its substrate, or when antibodies "recognize" their
antigenes, do not imply conscious identification or causation, it is a
mechanistic process. Mr. Grimes switches or equivocates different
contexts or meanings of the term "recognition" here.
Unique fingerprints - is that a criterion for personhood?
What about one-egged twin fetuses - are they not persons?
Or are they one person?
Thumb-sucking - does that make you a man? (Um, generic term)
> The baby in the womb also drinks the amniotic fluid, MORE if
> sweetened, LESS if given an unpleasant taste! The baby in the womb
> can be TAUGHT.
Note that this is not even modified behavior. It is different behavior
under different circumstances - a feature of any kind of life.
> weeks, can make audible vocal sounds at 18 weeks,
Any animal can.
> is responsive to pain and touch and cold and sound and light,
Most living beings are. Certainly all animals (Well, almost all.
Some cave dwelling animals e.g. are blind.).
----------------
Let's take a little break before we continue part I, and make an
observation about Mr. Grimes' argumentation: On the one hand, he
asserts that we should only consider (what he considers to be)
biological facts, such as the above. On the other hand, he asserts
that only human beings have rights. However, all his "biological"
arguments refer to characteristics that human beings share with other
species. Why then, do not the other species have rights too,
according to Mr. Grimes?
The answer is that all the facts (or "facts") that Mr. Grimes
presents, are simply meant as rhetorics. He doesn't really think that
thumb-sucking or "learning" - and not even volition and rationality -
matters or influence the outcome of the discussion about rights:
> The inalienable Right to Life cannot be tied to some temporal standard
> of just what that life is.
and
> They [rights] are endowed by God upon all men and women. This stems
> from the Biblical concept that man is created in the image of God.
I will comment on this in the second part of this message; for now
I will only point out the inconsistency between these statements and the
biologically based arguments (or "arguments").
----------------
> Two women enter the hospital for biopsies of tumors. After surgery
> the tissue samples are sent to the lab, where their respective labels
> are lost. Uh Oh, which sample belongs to which lady? No sweat here,
> we just take a little tissue from one sample and inject it under the
> skin of one of the ladies. If an antigen/antibody reaction occurs, we
> know that sample was not taken from her body. This simple test will
> be true for tissue samples from any organ of your body. This is
> because each one of us is immunologically distinct.
> Now, take a sample of fetal tissue, and inject it under the skin of
> the mother. Guess what! An antigen/antibody reaction occurs, since
> the fetus is also AN IMMUNOLOGICALLY DISTINCT INDIVIDUAL. That's the
> medical FACT Thomas.
Oh, I see. Immunological reactions or distinctness = personhood.
That is to say, (1) when you have immunological distinctness, then you
have two different persons each with rights, and (2) if you don't have
immunological distinctness then you don't have two different persons.
About (1):
An autoimmune disease is an interesting phenomenon. In such cases,
some part of the patient's body - say, the liver - is not
immunologically recognized as part of the body -- that is to say, an
antigen/antibody reaction occurs. This means that the liver is an
immunologically distinct individual. Therefore the liver has rights.
An organ transplant is an interesting phenomenon. Sometimes there is
an antigen/antibody between the transplanted organ - say, a kidney -
and the acceptor body. This means that the kidney is an immunologically
distinct individual. Therefore the kidney has rights.
In short, immunological distinctness is insufficient as a criterion
for personhood/rights. Immunological tests can (usually) tell you if
two samples of tissue are from the same biological unit or not; it does
not tell you what the moral status of that biological unit is; whether
it is an organ, individual or person -- to determine that, one has to
consider other knowledge, i.e. knowledge about the unit as a whole,
its functioning and relations to its surroundings. (Is it a part of
something else, or an autonomous entity?)
About (2):
One-egged twins and chimeras do not have antigen/antibody reactions
against each other. Yet they are individuals.
In short, immunological distinctness is not necessary (in fact,
it is misleading) as a criterion for personhood/rights.
Immunological distinctness is neither sufficient nor necessary as a
criterion for personhood/rights.
> At NO TIME after conception is the fetus a part of the women's body.
> No more than if she swallows a turtle, it becomes "part" of her body.
The turtle certainly becomes a part of her body; that's why she ate
it in the first place. Have you heard about digestion? What do you
think the biological purpose of eating is? It is to get energy to
maintain the life processes and to get building material for one's
body.
> Sure the fetus is within the body, and connected to it, but if a dog
> jumped through my car window and chomped down on my gear shift (which
> is shaped like a bone), does the dog become "part" of my car?
I believe that Mr. Grimes actually claims that this is an "analogy" to
a pregnant woman. That is to say, I believe he means that the car
corresponds to the woman and the dog to the fetus (and Mr. Grimes
himself -- i.e. the car-owner -- presumably corresponds to God).
Now let us consider the "analogy". First we will cut off the dog's
legs. Then we will put a cable from the gasoline tank into the
stomach and circulatory system of the dog (the dog cannot live without
gasoline, you see). Then we will put a mask on the dog's face and
connect it to a cable from the air condition system of the car. Then
we will put a cable into the dog's anus and urinary bladder and
connect it to the exhaust system of the car. Then we will make sure
and state explicitly that the dog cannot free itself from any of the
cables, nor from the mask, and that it cannot live without them. Now
we almost have an analogy. But not quite, because the dog still has a
fully developed nervous system, sensory organs etc. So we would have
to do something about that too. Get the picture?
To repeat myself:
tg>It is completely, physically dependent on the actions and functions of
tg>"another" individual for sustaining its life, and cannot even affect
tg>the processes that maintains its life -- many of which are not even a
tg>part of itself.
> Here's a slogan for you:
> "Pro-choice, that's a lie. Babies don't choose to die."
This is a straw man; Who has talked about killing babies?
Certainly nobody in this discussion. A baby has been _born_
(check any dictionary). We are talking about the _unborn_.
A fetus is not a baby.
> IT'S THE SAME BABY, ONE DAY BEFORE, ONE DAY AFTER !
I will quote from a message by Greg Gadbois, from a discussion about
abortion on another mailing list:
---------------------begin-quotation-from-Greg--------------------------
From: Gregory J GADBOIS
To:
Subject: Birth
>Posted-Date: Tue, 04 Apr 89 06:06 EDT
I think that birth is the appropriate dividing line between a fetus you
can kill and an infant that you can't.
The main points are:
First, political rights, the rights of man, are crucially dependent on
the fact that man has the faculty of reason. An animal that is
currently incapable of reason and has never had a history of reason
(I am excluding the person temporarily in a coma) or is permanently
incapable of reason in the future (the brain dead) do not have rights.
Reason is a necessary condition for political rights.
Reason can be characterized by the building and the manipulation of a
heiarchical structure of knowledge. An animal with the faculty of
reason creates and uses abstract concepts, concepts not directly
connected to the perceptual level.
The problem lies with determining when an infant becomes capable of
these feats. When the child can talk he has clearly passed the
strictly perceptual level. Unfortunately the problem is that the
child obtains the faculty of reason in a boot strap method. There is
no clear event before which the child does not have reason and after
which he does. Quite the opposite, in small increments the child
slowly gains greater and greater skills. And the problem is, you do
need a clear event. You must be able to delineate your political
rights to create objective law. For the purpose of objective law there
must be a clear methods for the society to distinguish when you
recognize an infant to have basic political rights. This line must not
be arbitrary. There must be some basis for it other than the need to
draw it somewhere.
An important thought is to remember that a man is not just the one
attribute of rational. A man has many more attributes, and in many
important ways, the child immediately after birth is much more like a
man, than the fetus it was. The infant is not physically connected and
dependent on the body of another. It breathes its own air. It directly
perceives the external world with its eyes and ears... The mere fact
that is not inside the mother is a fundamental (clearly delineated)
change.
There is not any other sharp transition after birth and before the
gradual acquiring of the faculty of reason. And birth is such a clear
transition that brings with it a huge number of other attributes of
man. This is the reason I believe birth is the appropriate place to
draw the line.
To synopsize, although birth slightly pre-dates the forming of a
rational faculty, it is the necessity of objective law and the other
attributes of man that require birth to be the dividing line.
---------------------end-of-quotation-from-Greg-----------------------
So the point is that the source of rights (rationality and volition)
does not tell you exactly the origin of rights, because the process of
acquiring and developing reason/rationality and volition is a gradual
process.
Therefore we have to define a method for dealing with what I call
"problems involving gradual transformations of essential
characteristics" (PIGTECs). The essential characteristic of a PIGTEC
is that there is a gradual change in the importance and
interrelationships of the factors that constitute its essential
characteristics, making it difficult to draw exact clear-cut dividing
lines. There is a grey zone.
The method for dealing with such problems is to gather knowledge from
both sides of the gray zone, thus making it smaller by moving the line
between white and grey and the line between grey and black until they
meet. Then there is no longer any grey zone, and the PIGTEC has been
resolved and dissolved. This may take long time, and there is need
for a strategy or method for dealing with the PIGTEC meanwhile.
If the "black zone" of the PIGTEC involves violation of rights, the
correct strategy is to treat the grey zone as a part of the black
zone. That is, you draw the line between white and grey. Human
development (embryo - fetus - baby - child - adult) is a PIGTEC of
this kind; killing people definitely is a violation of their rights.
The white zone in this case is womb-emptying; and the grey zone starts
from the time of birth.
The reason that you draw the line between white and grey, is that
that is the only way to be sure that you don't allow any violation of
rights by law. In other words, the point is to err on the cautious
side, instead of erring on the other side; that way one knows that
nobody's rights are being violated. This is what I call the
methodological defense of rights.
There is a slight difference between Greg's argument for infant rights
from other characteristics than rationality and my methodological
defense of them.
The problem is that these characteristics -- separate body functions,
breathing, separate social existence, separate perception etc. -- make
the infant an individual, but they do not make him/her a person. That
is, they are necessary conditions, but not sufficient conditions for
having rights.
Rights are derived from actual rationality, not potential rationality.
Which leaves us with the methodological defense, and the legislators'
needs for a specific event to base the law on. The only event that
is sufficiently specific is birth.
I suspect that it will remain so, also when the mind-body
interrelationship is better understood and the connections between
neurological and rational development is identified and the PIGTEC of
human development is resolved.
tg>The real issue, of course, is the first 3-4 months. A woman will
tg>manage to make up her mind during that time.
> Your about to mention "rape", so I'll mention the *reality* of
> late term abortions, occasionally resulting in the "dreaded
> complication" of live birth. No need to fear, these killers have the
> whole scene well in hand. Just dump the gasping baby into a bucket and
What baby?
> neglect it. It will die soon enough. One case in Florida survived
> over 24 hours, with NO life saving measures employed, before dyeing.
> (Or should I say "expiring". I suppose that would sound "cleaner").
Reference, please?
Note that any medical operation is a blood-dripping (or at least
blood-releasing), sometimes painful event. I can describe tapping
blood by puncturing a vene in your arm in a way that will easily make
most people shake and shudder. (The seven unsuccessful attempts.
All the blood on the floor. The stinging pain. The fear that the
clumsy medical student will puncture an artery the next time.)
In short, I'm saying that you are trying to manipulate emotions by
misrepresenting facts (the fetus is not a baby) and without having any
factual base (for the belief that the fetus is a human being) to
support the emotions you are trying to evoke.
tg>The concept of "fetus rights" cannot coexist with the image of a woman
tg>with a ruined career -- or an abjectly poor woman -- or a raped woman --
tg>in the same brain. The idea of sacrificing a real human life in order
tg>to maintain the chemical activity of a lump of human tissue is an
tg>unspeakable obscenity. It is to reduce any woman to a reproduction
tg>unit, a slave. Disguising this idea as "moral" is a giant fraud.
> What about a woman who's husband/boyfriend deserts her and her
> already born child? This could ruin her career. This could send her
> spiraling into poverty.
Certainly. Let us consider the situation: The woman gets pregnant.
She decides whether to carry to term or not. If she does, the man
must decide whether he will stay or leave, before birth. If he agrees
to stay, but deserts her after birth, she is (should be) entitled to
an economic compensation from him, decided by court, according to the
social/economical context of the couple. Or else, he faces legal
prosecution.
If the relationship is a marriage, there are already (similar) rules
for handling the situation, I believe.
And of course, if it is the woman who leaves after birth, and the man
is left with the child, then he is (should be) entitled to an economic
compensation from her, by the same principle.
tg>Rights are derived from the existence and possession of a rational
tg>volitional mind.
> This definition requires a subjective opinion of what is a "rational
> volitional mind". As stated, both rational AND volitional become
> requirements for "rights". This would deny rights to both the
> irrational or non-volitional. People in these categories, depending
> on the standard of rationality to be imposed, might include:
>
> Insane people
> mentally Ill people
> Retarded people
> comatose people
> people who do weird, unnatural or seemingly irrational things.
> born babies
> unborn babies
(Again, there is no such thing as "an unborn baby".)
> I believe this to be very dangerous as it establishes a precedent
> that a distinction can be made between biological human life and legal
> personhood. This opens the door to the next group with a cause, to
> deny legal personhood to some unique "class" of biologic humans
> because they don't fit some criteria for being "person's".
This part is obscured -- not to say screwed up -- by failing to make
the following distinctions:
(1) IRRATIONAL: Capable of using reason, but choosing not to.
Note that rationality, as a characteristic of man, means to be
_capable_ of using reason. It does not mean that any and every man is
or must be rational (use reason) all the time, or even most of the
time. Therefore it includes both "rational" and "irrational" people;
rationality means to have the capability for reason right now, even if
the person in question does not use it.
An "irrational" person has exactly the same rights as a "rational"
person. (By the way, it usually makes more sense to talk about
rational and irrational _actions_ rather than persons because one has
to observe a person over some period of time before one can make any
valid generalizations about their character or personality.)
A person who is temporarily unconscious (e.g. a curable comatose
patient) still of course has the capability of reason and consciousness;
s/he has rationality, and rights.
(2) PRE-RATIONAL: An individual with the potential to develop reason
and volition (e.g. an infant).
(3) NON-RATIONAL: A member of the species Homo sapiens without any
potential for reason/rationality (e.g. brain-death, senility, severe
incurable mental retardation).
Note that embryos and fetuses do not belong to any of these categories
because they are not individuals. Therefore a discussion of these
categories and their concrete instances do not bear any relation to
embryos and fetuses; nor do the discussion of embryos or fetuses per
se have any consequences for the concrete instances of these
categories, contrary to Mr. Grimes' claims. One may ask whether
fetus-viability (outside the womb) is a relevant factor here, i.e.
whether fetus viability (which arises some time before birth) makes
the fetus an individual. This is a valid question. However, I
maintain that it is birth that makes the fetus an individual, for the
reasons given above (in the quotes from Greg's message).
I submit that the non-rational does not have rights,
and that it is the pre-rational that is interesting to discuss.
Is it always possible to identify and distinguish between these?
What about insanity? Insanity makes the distinction between
pre-rational and non-rational difficult: How do you know if the
patient is curable (pre-rational) or incurably insane (non-rational)?
Or are they just irrational? What is the relationship between
insanity and volition?
I think one has to start from the premise that any insane person can
be cured, unless _proven_ to be incurable (which will probably have to
be a proof of incurable, organic disease; this is an objective criterion
to distinguish the pre-rational (or irrational) from the non-rational).
This premise is justifyed from (1) the possibility of volition and
rationality in something that at some level is a human consciousness,
and (2) by the PIGTEC methodology I discussed and advocated earlier
(i.e. "err on the cautious side".)
tg>Rights are a human birthright - no more, and no less.
> "Only whites have rights! - no more, and no less."
This I find to be a very strange comment. The only way to imagine
some connection between the comment and my statement is, as far as I
can see, to assume that only whites are humans. It seems that Mr. Grimes
reveals some rather unpleasant sides of himself here.
> Disguising your arguments as scientifically based is a greater fraud.
> I could just as "scientifically" submit that blacks or Jews are "blobs
> of tissue" and, whatever we do, let's not restrict the rights of Nazi's
> and the KKK from disposing of these lumps because of whatever chemical
> activity is taking place in them. Sorry, I'm not buying it.
Sorry, I'm not selling it. Your distortions are limitless.
Part II: Mr. Grimes is wrong in principle.
-------------------------------------------
> My stand is with the founding fathers of the United States of
> America,
It is a gross misrepresentation to make it look like the religionists
are intellectual heirs of the founding fathers, or that the founding
fathers had the religionist view. The exact opposite is true. The
founding fathers advocated reason and the use of logic, not faith;
thus they separated the church and the state; in their personal life
they focused on life on earth, not beyond the grave; some of them were
declared atheists, and the others did not ascribe much significance to
god either (they were so-called deists, not babbling believers --
the "endowed by their Creator"-phrase to the contrary notwithstanding).
> and stated in the Declaration of Independence, that:
> "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men
> are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator
> with certain inalienable rights, among these being life,
> liberty, and pursuit of happiness." (from memory)
These are exactly the rights that I discussed and validated in my
previous message of Oct. 10th. If you haven't seen it, I'll forward
it to you.
> The term used by the founders was "natural" rights.
Right. What do you think "natural" means? It means _by_ _nature_,
not by decree -- God's, The State's or otherwise.
> They are endowed by God upon all men and women. This stems from the
> Biblical concept that man is created in the image of God.
Heh heh... I thought you said something about subjective definitions.
> As I've said before, the closest thing to "creation" in the ontogeny
> of any man, is his conception.
Again, you got your facts wrong. It is estimated that 75 % of all
conceptions end up as spontaneous abortions.
(Ref.: Kline, J and Stein, Z: Very Early Pregnancy. In Reproductive
Toxicology. Ed. R L Dixon. Raven Press, N.Y. 1985, pp 251-65.)
Apparently God is the greatest pro-abortionist in history.
So, either embryos are not persons, in which case the religionists are
simply wrong.
Or else, embryos are persons, in which case God is an evil mass-murderer.
What then about the people who praise and worship It?
Or do you claim that abortion when willed by (wo)man is wrong, but
abortion willed by God is right?
tg>Only persons have rights, and only individuals are persons.
tg>An individual is a living entity capable of self-generated action.
tg>A person is an individual with a rational volitional mind, and
tg>is consequently a moral being with rights.
> More subjective definitions, attempting to create a new standard.
This is an arbitrary, unsupported statement. Saying that my
definitions are subjective won't make them so. I have defined my
terms. If you think some of the terms are subjective, say which ones
and why you believe they are subjective. Be specific.
(By "volition" I mean a person's ability to direct or focus one's own
awareness. This is not an automatic process, it requires an active
choice. So I don't hold any religionist subjective causality-violating
view on volition.)
> The United States must not become a country where the worth of the
> individual is based on "definitions" of others.
Worth and rights are completely different issues, they are not even
related. All human beings have the same rights. All human beings
should have self-worth, but as adults it is their own responsibility
to achieve it; and it should not be (need not be) determined by
others' evaluations or random utterings about them. All human beings
do not have the same worth (or value) to me. My friends have a bigger
worth to me than strangers. Strangers have a bigger worth to me than
enemies, who may not have any value to me at all. The man I buy bread
and milk from has a bigger value to me than a stranger on the other side
of earth. No man has the same value to all human beings.
Rights are attributes of the individual. Worth is (1) an individuals
appraisal of her/himself or (2) an individuals appraisal of another's
relation to her/himself or others.
Maybe you meant to say that:
The United States must not become a country where the _rights_ of the
individual is based upon "definitions" by others.
With which I would agree wholeheartedly, of course. Rights must be
based upon human nature; not on random definitions by others, whether
they call it "God", "Allah", "The State" or whatever.
> The inalienable Right to Life cannot be tied to some temporal standard
> of just what that life is.
Another totally arbitrary statement. (The spewing of arbitrary
statements is a hallmark of the religionist.)
This statement means: "The right to life has nothing to do with what
life is. Thus, the right to life has nothing to do with reality. It
only has to do with what God says, and I and my fellow group of
religionists know what God says, therefore we are the ones to decide
what the right to life means."
> The only concrete facts here are the biologic ones, your
> declamations not withstanding.
Yeah, just about what I was going to say.
tg>A fetus is not a person, it is not even an individual.
> In previous posts I've offered documented evidence of the legal
> rights of the pre-born child going back farther than Blackstone.
So? If going back in time is the criterion, why don't we go back
to the Stone age, and learn from their practices and apply them?
> I suppose centuries of medical, legal, and ecclesiastical opinion
> are irrelevant when you want to rationalize something bad enough.
Oh, I see. If many people believe something long enough, then it
becomes true, somehow? For example, when "centuries of ecclesiastical
opinion" hold that women don't have souls, while men have, then this
is true. Has "ecclesiastical opinion" ever been proven right in
anything? Any single thing?
> It is sometimes helpful to discriminate between rights, possessed
> intrinsically, and the exercise of those rights which may or may not
> be allowed by society at large.
Right -- and to the extent "society" (government) fails to uphold
rights, or violates them, to that extent people are unfree, and to that
extent the society is a dictatorship.
> The issue then becomes not one of personal rights, but of societal
> restraints on individual freedom.
So, "societal restraints on individual freedom" has nothing to do with
personal rights?
> Society has the right to restrain our freedoms.
(Assuming that you mean something with the word "freedoms", and not
just anything a human being might fantasize about doing:)
No, it doesn't. The only way to come to that belief, is to posit
something above man -- something to which man (each and every human being)
is a means. Instead of recognizing each human being as an end in
her/himself, s/he is reduced to a means for something else - reduced
to a thing. See my closing paragraph.
> Indeed, to become a member in society, man must surrender the
> "exercise" of certain rights in subordination to the will of society.
Consider this:
Everything that a human being can do when s/he is alone on an island,
s/he has the right to do on her/his own ground in a society.
> This is the case with traffic laws, etc. In America you have the
> freedom to travel at will, almost anywhere you wish. However, you are
> not free to travel down the interstate at 15 mph or 150 mph.
Traveling with those speeds are not rights in the first place.
Therefore such speed limits do not violate rights, and individuals
observing the limits do not surrender the exercise of any rights.
> On what basis does a man or woman have unlimited rights to their body[?]
I discussed that at some length in my message on "foundation of
rights", Oct. 10th;
the essence of it is that the specifically human way of survival
is to use one's mind, i.e. to live consciously, i.e. to use reason.
This is not an automatic process, and it cannot be forced to take place.
Thus the mind must be left free to function.
Since mind and body is a union, and the mind cannot live without a body,
and life is the goal, and man is an end in herself, a person must by her
nature have right to her actions -- i.e. to her body.
A bird's means of survival is its wings. To advocate that a human does
not have the right to her mind or body, is like advocating to rip the
wings of a bird and throw it on the ground. Is that moral? Is it a
correct view on morality? Is it acceptable even to call it _a_ morality?
What we are talking about here is force. Raw, naked, brute force.
Shall a woman, who had to take an illegal abortion, perhaps under
hazardous, health- or even life-threatening circumstances, be tracked
down, beaten up and arrested by the police? Is she to rotten in jail,
because she chose to remove a piece of tissue from her body? Is she to
be fried in the electric chair as a murderess? You heard Mr. Grimes:
> If the fetus is a legal person, he or she is entitled to the same
> Constitutional protection of the right to life as the mother. No
> more, and no less. That's why I argue mainly for full personhood of
> unborn as well as born children.
Do you call this moral? I say that even to call this _a_ view on
morality is to give it a sanction that it does not deserve; this is
raw force, and what it will do to women is akin to rape. This is evil.
> Thomas, I didn't find anything in your post which I haven't seen in
> one form or another on some "pro-choice" placard somewhere.
Well, I've certainly seen some anti-abortion "arguments" that was new
to me in your postings, Mr. Grimes. This is hardly surprising.
Considering the quality of anti-abortionist "arguments", it is to be
expected that they have a high turn-over rate.
> ... your dogmatism.
No, it's not dogmatism; it's something that's much more dangerous to
your kind of ideas: reason and moral certainty. All to often one sees
people bring pragmatic arguments against the religionist morality,
without challenging the religionist morality itself, thus conceeding
the opponent's premises - a sure-fire way to get on the defensive. If
you (the general you) remember but one thing from my postings, let it
be this:
YOU CANNOT FIGHT A WRONG VIEW ON MORALITY WITH ONLY PRAGMATIC ARGUMENTS.
YOU CAN ONLY FIGHT A WRONG VIEW ON MORALITY WITH A _RIGHT_(*) VIEW ON MORALITY.
(*) no pun intended..
The religionist view on morality is not pro-life. It is not good.
It is not benevolent. It is not even moral. It is quite simply obscene.
The mere act of asserting a superior being who is forever and in
principle beyond anything man can be or do, is a degradation of man --
an act of spitting her in her face. Let her wash her face, and
proceed to live her life -- her own, unique life -- as she sees fit.
Rest in peace,
Thomas Gramstad
Copyright 1989 Thomas Gramstad
May be quoted and/or copied electronically to individual users.
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Thomas Gramstad bfu@ifi.uio.no
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