Charles Bastille
1 min readJun 27, 2022

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You may be interested in the book by neuroscientist

Michael S. Gazzaniga called The Ethical Brain. I'll just quote the most important part (in my opinion):

"The fact that it is clear that a human brain isn't viable until week 23, and only then with the aid of modern medical support, seems to have no impact on the debate.

This is where neuro "logic" loses out. Moral arguments get mixed in with biology, and the result is a stew of passions, beliefs, and stubborn, illogical opinion. Based on the specific question being asked, I myself have different answers about when moral status should be conferred on a fetus. For instance, regarding the use of embryos for biomedical research, I find the fourteen-day cutoff employed by researchers to be a completely acceptable practice.

"However, in judging a fetus "one of us," and granting it the moral and legal rights of a human being, I put the age much later, at twenty-three weeks, when life is sustainable and that fetus could, with a little help from a neonatal unit, survive and develop into a thinking human being with a normal brain. This is the same age at which the Supreme Court has ruled that the fetus becomes protected from abortion."

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Roe got it right. Alito and the American Taliban have smashed 50 years of established women's rights to pieces. The've also been spending 50 years to achieve this victory of theirs.

THAT's what we are up against as we look to our response.

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Charles Bastille
Charles Bastille

Written by Charles Bastille

Author of MagicLand & Psalm of Vampires. Join me on my Substack at https://www.ruminato.com/. All stories © 2020-24 by Charles Bastille

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