The Viability Fallacy

Gaze and wonder at the the chart pushed by the New York Times to explain the abortion laws of each state. An abbreviated version heads the post.

The graphic is divided into the three trimesters, and lists the weeks 24-28 as “Fetus at viability (Roe standard)”. Roe was the woman who lied about a rape, and whose name is attached to the Supreme Court decision that allows women to kill lives inside them.

Anyway, the newspaper is for killing, while states like Alabama are against it.

Missouri passed a bill on Friday to ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, making the state the eighth this year to pass abortion restrictions that could challenge the constitutional right established in Roe v. Wade. Earlier this week, Alabama legislators voted to ban abortions in nearly all cases…

Most other states follow the standard set by the Supreme Court’s Roe decision in 1973, which says abortion is legal until the fetus reaches viability, usually at 24 to 28 weeks.

Viability is euphemism which means the point at which the life inside the would-be mother becomes human. The day, the hour, the minute, the second before viability and the life is a “fetus”. At the very moment viability is reached, the life becomes human. Alakazam!

The word also refers to the time at which if the life is removed from the mother, it could survive on its own—as a human being—where “on its own” is taken to mean “possibly with the assistance of various machinery.” The NICU, i.e. the neonatal intensive care unit, is full of such marvels.

Heartbeat bills are also viability bills, in a way. They too seek to define the bit of magic that turns the life from a fetus into a human being. But these bills are also political compromises, where those against killing are doing their best to stop it in a political environment that is still hostile to the idea of not killing.

Now viability is a curious definition for what turns the life into a human being. Obviously, an unstated premise is that killing an innocent human being is homicide. Killing the life before viability is like killing a chicken, killing it after viability is like murder.

Enter the Viability Fallacy. Medical science at Julius Caesar’s time was in its infancy (link). When he was cut out of his mother, he lived, though the Romans could have cut his throat, saving themselves future grief and glory, and likely not thought too much of it. Well, now, as the NYT has indicated, we can cut babies out at, say, 24 weeks, and they’ll live if properly cared for.

Yet as the machinery improves, the week at which viability is reached will grow smaller. It will be 23 weeks next year, 22 the year after, and so on. Why, we even read reports of the capability of babies grown à la Logan’s Run; i.e. completely from scratch in “test tubes”.

Which means viability will soon converge to the proper metaphysical view, which is to say, at conception. That the lives can be made and grown entirely outside mothers, or so they say, guarantees that killing them at any stage is homicide. This follows from assuming it is viability which is the magic that transform the life into a human being.

Two things follow from this. In less mechanically minded societies, say Chad, viability remains as it was in Caesar’s time, so the lives inside women may be killed there until birth. Perhaps a tourist market in killing will develop, as anchor babies do for immigration.

The second is that since it is clear viability will advance to 0 weeks, i.e. conception, thus it is absurd to view viability as the magic that transform the life into a human being. The definition of what is human cannot be contingent on technology, for this is absurd.

Thus, human life begins at conception, and the killing of these lives inside woman is indeed homicide.

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