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    • Pigs, Fetuses, and Getting it Right (Guest Post by Claus Larsen)

    By Notung • • 6 comments

     

    The following is a guest post by Claus Larsen, editor of skepticreport.com. Guest posts do not necessarily reflect the views of me or anyone else on the Skeptic Ink network. If you would like to guest on this blog, then please ensure that the post adheres to the SIN discussion policy, and use the contact form on this blog or contact me on Twitter. Guest posts presenting reasoned disagreement with my own views (on any subject) are especially welcome.

     

    Pigs, Fetuses, and Getting it Right

    by Claus Larsen

     

    On March 13, 2013, blogger Rebecca Watson writes about a Twitter exchange by Richard Dawkins, world-renowned ethologist, evolutionary biologist, outspoken critic of religion, founder of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (RDFRS), and author of books such as The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, River Out of Eden, Unweaving the Rainbow, and The God Delusion.

    In her blog post, Watson strongly suggests that Dawkins is, at least to a point, supporting, rather than fighting, the anti-abortion stance of the Religious Right.

    I am very familiar with the works of Dawkins, and, to my knowledge, he has fervently defended a woman’s right to abortion. Thus, I was rather surprised to hear that he might have changed his position.

    It turns out that this is not the case. Instead, Watson, in her blog post, makes a series of false conclusions, based on some rather grave misunderstandings.

    Watson kicks off by claiming that Dawkins argues that a fetus’s potential ability to feel pain should be elevated over an adult woman’s right to control her own body. She does this by referring to Dawkins’ tweet:

     

     

     

    She then points to a video, where Dawkins discusses the issue of pain with philosopher Peter Singer, exemplified in a human fetus and a pig: Since both have the ability to feel pain and suffering, anti-abortionists should not eat meat, if they want to make a coherent argument.

    Watson writes:

    Generally, I agree with this idea, though there are a number of problems with it. The biggest one is that pretty much all anti-abortionists argue that one of the most important characteristics that makes a fetus a person is its ability to develop into a person. Obviously, pigs are not very good at this, and so you will probably not have much luck convincing any anti-abortionist using the pig argument.

     

    First, it is not true that “pretty much all anti-abortionists argue that one of the most important characteristics that makes a fetus a person is its ability to develop into a person”. They argue that a fetus is a person, regardless of how developed it is. Watson has fundamentally misunderstood what anti-abortionists are arguing.

    Second, this has nothing to do with the point both Singer and Dawkins are making, which is about pain itself. Watson’s counterargument is therefore a straw man: She is attacking an argument which neither Singer nor Dawkins are making.

    Watson continues in the same vein:

    Also, the argument loses all its steam once it runs into a vegan anti-abortionist.

     

    This strikes me as an odd, and even constructed, counterargument. I am sure it is possible to find a few anti-abortionists who reject the consumption of meat due to ethical concerns, but I would venture a guess that you would find a lot more vegans in Watson’s camp than with the Religious Right, where you usually find the core of anti-abortionists.

    Even if just one vegan anti-abortionist was found, it would not make the argument “lose all its steam”, since the argument does not hinge on all anti-abortionists being meat-eaters.

    When Dawkins tweeted these two:

     

     

     

    Watson concluded that Dawkins argued that a fetus’s potential ability to feel pain should be elevated over an adult woman’s right to control her own body.

    He does no such thing. In the second tweet, he thinks that fetal pain could outweigh a woman’s right to control her own body. I am venturing a guess here, but I don’t think that Dawkins means a fetus in its very early stages, but when it is approaching the time of birth, where its nervous system is fully developed.

    By putting Dawkins’ two tweets together, Watson tries to make it look as if Dawkins is actually anti-abortion, at least to some degree. This is highly misleading of Watson.

    Watson then claims:

    He then characterizes his opponents as moral absolutists and people who are using emotion instead of logic:

     

    and points to two more tweets:

     

     

     

    First, Dawkins says very clearly that if someone is an absolutist, they won’t agree with him. He does not characterize his opponents as moral absolutists.

    Second, he is addressing tweets we don’t know about, but are presumably emotional in nature. Hardly surprising, but not representative of the tweets that Watson presents to support her case.

    She argues:

    Ultimately, that characterization is silly. We’re all human, and we’re all emotional (except for the sociopaths, I suppose), Dawkins included.

     

    Again, Watson gets it wrong: Sociopaths do not lack emotion, but empathy: They have little or no sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.

    Watson then points to another tweet:

     

     

    and says:

    Dawkins asks when a fetus begins to feel pain, which is a strange question for a biologist to ask Twitter for help on:

     

    Watson completely misreads Dawkins here: He is not asking for help on something he is very aware of, he is asking his readers to think further on the pain argument, by juxtaposing a human fetus with a pig, precisely as he and Singer did, in the video Watson referred to earlier.

    In her fervor, Watson writes that:

    The question may have been rhetorical, but I’d hope in that case that he would help people by providing the answer, which is that there is no clear cut scientific opinion on the matter but there’s mounting evidence to suggest that they never feel pain at all, despite the fact that religious fundamentalists falsely claim fetuses feel pain at 20 weeks and use that as a way to limit women’s access to reproductive health services.

     

    Unfortunately for Watson, Dawkins isn’t arguing on the side of anti-abortionists. He is talking about a fetus, which is simply the stage between the embryonic stage and actual birth. By claiming that a fetus can never feel pain at all, Watson is either misunderstanding what a fetus is, or overstating her case considerably.

    Watson is even hesitant to give Dawkins the benefit of the doubt:

    These facts were pointed out to Dawkins by many Tweeters who flooded Dawkins with links to peer-reviewed studies
    …
    It appears that as of now, none of those facts have been addressed by Dawkins.

     

    The tweets in question are not merely addressing Dawkins, but also other people, presumably also engaging in the Twitter debate. It is also disingenuous of Watson, because she writes her blog post on the same day of the tweets, without giving Dawkins much time to respond. Does Watson really think Dawkins is sitting about, waiting for the tweets to pour in, with nothing else to do?

    Watson finishes off with:

    So to sum up: no, Dawkins doesn’t think that pigs and humans share a genome, but he does seem to buy into the Religious Rights’ dual arguments that fetuses can feel pain during some abortions and that that pain may be great enough to trump a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body. Unfortunate.

     

    Here is the crux of the matter: Watson conflates the issue of fetuses feeling pain with those who use the issue to argue against abortion. It does not follow that pointing to a fetus feeling pain makes you someone from the Religious Right, or a supporter hereof.

    Should Watson still have any doubts where Dawkins stands on abortion, she needs only to re-read his book, “The God Delusion”, where he makes his position crystal clear, in the part, “Faith and the Sanctity of Human Life”: He is as far removed from the Religious Right anti-abortionist stance as he possibly can be.

     

    Claus Larsen is the editor of SkepticReport.com, an online magazine for skepticism and critical thinking.

     

    Category: Ethics

    Article by: Notung

    I started as a music student, studying at university and music college, and playing trombone for various orchestras. While at music college, I became interested in philosophy, and eventually went on to complete an MA in Philosophy in 2012. An atheist for as long as I could think for myself, a skeptic, and a political lefty, my main philosophical interests include epistemology, ethics, logic and the philosophy of religion. The purpose of Notung (named after the name of the sword in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen) is to concentrate on these issues, examining them as critically as possible.