‘This
Is a Touchy Problem of Definition’
Daily Observer
S.Q.
Lapius was never to be disturbed for anything during
the chorale of Beethoven’s ninth symphony, so I waited patiently. As the last chord was struck I turned off the
record player and showed him the front page of the newspaper. The headline that had caught my eye concerned
the indictment of
Lapius scanned the page quickly and chuckled, “What the
deuce are you so happy about?” I
asked. “That isn’t funny. It has fantastic implications. Those doctors could go to jail. They have already been suspended from the
hospital. They were performing a
research project on antibiotics on the fetuses of therapeutic abortions. Otherwise the fetuses would have been sent to
the morgue, the information on the rate of passage of certain antibiotics
through the placenta wasted.”
“Oh
that,” Lapius said, still chuckling, “I saw
that. But that wasn’t what I was
laughing at. It was the adjacent
headline. That aggression was finally defined
at the United Nations after 24 years of debate.”
“Don’t
you think it should be defined?” I asked, a bit miffed
that he had contrived to divert the conversation to an irrelevant subject.
“Probably
not, Harry. Anything that takes 24 years
to define is probably indefinable. A
definition of aggression figures in the text of the Congress of Vienna held in
1815, and nibbled at during the Hague peace conference in 1907. So it really has taken 150 years to come to a
definitive conclusion concerning aggression.”
“Well,
I was talking about the doctors, and indictments and abortions, not
aggression,” I said sulkily.
“So
was I, Harry, so was I.
Anti-abortionists believe that removing a fetus from its mother is
aggression; and particularly in this case when the fetus was 24 weeks old and
had a remote chance of making it on its own.”
“But
if doctors aren’t permitted to perform experiments on these fetuses, research
in this field, any field, may come to a stand-still. After all, the abortion was
legal, and why waste the fetus?”
Lapius waved impatiently.
“I’d rather listen to the Beethoven chorale again than have you
prattling about this nonsense. These
arguments aren’t new. Science
has always forged ahead in the face of impediments based on moral
considerations, theological law, legalisms and so forth. The early great anatomists were grave
robbers, and paid for the bodies. Who
knows how many murders were committed to sell an anatomical specimen to a
scientist?”
“What
has that got to do with the United Nations finally consummating a definition of
aggression?”
“The
point I was going to make, was that our generation has
assumed a fearful burden by trying to define things like aggression, or
questions such as what is life, and when does life begin. Not all qualities of life can be rigidly
defined.”
“Well
how do you develop guidelines, then?”
“I
don’t know,” Lapius said. That was the last thing I expected. For Lapius to admit
defeat so readily was confounding.
“Do
you think that science should stop?
After all, if they keep indicting researchers, or placing them in
jeopardy, science will slow to a crawl.”
“Maybe
it will simply be deinstitutionalized,” Lapius
answered thoughtfully. “The problem is
that we have learned from science that some things are subject to
definition. We can define a chemical
reaction or a mathematical problem. But
what we have not learned, is that we cannot define the
philosophical problems of the humanities quite as easily. Nor, perhaps, is it necessary. We know for certain that a 12 week old fetus
is not viable outside the body of the mother.
We do not know for certain that a 24 week old fetus is not viable. Perhaps therefore the doctors should take
cognizance of the fact that abortion is opprobrious to some people and cater to
their sensitivities by confining their projects to fetuses in the 12 week
range.”
“This
work was done on a government grant. In
a sense the government should be a defendant in the case. They approved it.”
“The
government might well have to share the blame.
The Supreme Court may also bear moral responsibility. Certainly this court action pinpoints the
matter. At what point is abortion
murder? You know, Harry, for several
millennia western society has decided it wiser to leave questions such as the
definition of life and death to the law of God.
The fact that it took the United Nations 24 years to define aggression
makes me think that our forbears weren’t so stupid after all. The problem with trying to define everything
is that the definition institutionalizes the subject. It perhaps prevents unreasonable people from
doing unreasonable things, but it also deprives the freedom to make reasonable
decisions in the light of their own moral code, public opinion, theology,
legality and whatnot.” This subject
always made Lapius very sad. He continued.
“By institutionalization, I mean that in this case, although of course I
do not know the facts, a therapeutic abortion was performed. That means that the mother’s life should have
been threatened by carrying the baby to term.
With the new abortion law, combined with the science of genetics,
pregnancies are terminated at 24 weeks if it has been determined that the baby
will be genetically deformed. But if
that were not the case and the doctor felt he had some freedom of choice, not
being locked in by the determinates of a research project, he might have been
able to look at the fetus and said, ‘Hey, this baby looks viable. I’ll bet there is a chance here. Let’s put him in an incubator and see.’ The thought might have entered his mind that
the mother had her dates wrong, and that the baby really was 28 weeks instead
of 24. But perhaps the doctor had become
automated by the directive of the project so that his free choice was
eliminated, and he mechanically did what he had to do. Kill a baby.
We can’t define everything, Harry.
To remain civilized we must continue to pay homage to the mystery of
life.”