Abortion and Infanticide

Article

The CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF PERSONHOOD is central to our discussion of Abortion as well as Suicide. (Lynn Morgan)

"Persohhood" is the process by which human lives become valued is derived from many factors:

• cultural divisions of the life-cycle
• attitudes about death
• social systems of descent and inheritance
• social systems of authority and achievement
• extenuating contextual factors mediating interpretation of a "life"

"when life begins" (this early threshold) is just one ISSUE in the larger question about WHO SOCIETY ALLOWS TO BECOME A PERSON, under what circumstances, and why.

Where do we find EVIDENCE of cultural notions of the origins of "personhood"?

• notions of the moral and social value of young children were uncovered through
• burial customs
• naming practices
• birth ceremonies and taboos
• "terms" (language) used to describe fetuses and young children
• In many cultures killing a fetus or a child is considered acceptable if it is not yet considered a "person" (infanticide will look at this debate more fully).

Human-ness versus Personhood: a fetus must first be determined to be HUMAN before it can be considered a PERSON.

• in some societies, the decision about humanness is not made until birth, when features are assessed.
• personhood is a socially recognized MORAL status.
• this may take days or months and it socially binds the child to the community
• IN THE US, there is no distinction in the life-cycle between these two events (humans and personhood) and so the abortion debate in the US, overlooks the fact that the life-cycle itself is socially patterned.

"Killing" Versus "Murder"

• the abortion debate in the US is argued largely through semantic association aimed at making the fetus a "person"
• baby, unborn child, product of conception vs fetus
• Human Life Amendment (1981

The Hogan Amendment

Section 1. Neither the United States nor any State shall deprive any human being, from the moment of conception, of life without due process of law; nor deny to any human being, from the moment of conception, within its jurisdiction, the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2. Neither the United States nor any State shall deprive any human being of life on account of illness, age, or incapacity.

Section 3. Congress and the several States shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The Burke Amendment

Section 1. With respect to the right to life, the word 'person,' as used in this article and in the fifth and fourteenth articles of amendment to the Constitution of the United States, applies to all human beings, including their unborn offspring at every stage of their biological development, irrespective of age, health, function, or condition of dependency.

Section 2. No abortion shall be performed by any person except under and in conformance with law permitting an abortion to be performed only in an emergency when a reasonable medical certainty exists that the continuation of pregnancy will cause the death of the mother and requiring that person to make every reasonable effort, in keeping with good medical practice, to preserve the life of her unborn offspring.

Section 3. The Congress and the several States shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation within their respective jurisdictions.

The Paramount Amendment

The paramount right to life is vested in each human being from the moment of fertilization without regard to age, health, or condition of dependency.

• You "kill" a human, but you "murder" a person

Is the product of a birth ALWAYS a HUMAN?

• Arunta of Australia: a premature child is not considered human, because it is nothing like them, instead they consider it the young of another animal (kangaroo) improperly inside a woman.
• Thailand: women are said to have given birth to: a gold, a monkey stomach, a fish, jewels, a mouse-like golden child.
• Truk Islands: abnormal or deformed births were labeled as ghosts and burned or thrown into the sea
• not infanticide: a ghost is not a person and can not be killed anyway
• Tallensi of East Africa: TWINS are suspected of being malicious bush spirits, and not trusted as human.
• Twins are treated as humans after a few months, BUT are not given a guardian ancestor and seen as people until after about 4 years, when their personhood can be assessed
• Southern Africa: Twins (if they were allowed to live after birth) were regarded with suspicion. No one would ever marry a twin, lest they try to kill them in their sleep.

PERSONHOOD IS CONTINGENT ON SOCIAL RECOGNITION

• historically this has been denied to a variety of groups of people:
• women
• children
• slaves
• prisoners of war
• lepers
• the deaf
• ethnic groups
• insane
• other "defectives"
• there can be no definition of personhood separate from its social and cultural context

Evidence from Burial Practices:

• Chippewa consider any birth to be a human, so they give early term miscarriages and still birth burials like any other "person" would get.
• USA: under 500 grams, fetus is not "buried"
• birth certificate over 500 grams, but is mitigated by social class, where poor mothers are less likely to see their dead births classified as "human"
• Ashanti: before adolescence, not given a ritual burial (adulthood designated person status)

Social Birth:

• Before the abortion debate, no one would have considered the fetus a "person" partly because an essential component of personhood, "SEX" was unknown.
• Birth itself marked both humanness and personhood.
• Based on the belief that BIOLOGICAL events have significance
• CHANGE (1973) Now instead of BIRTH being the darker of biological and social existence in the US, "VIABILITY" became a measure of biological and social significance.
• In Many cultures, SOCIAL "birth" is recognized much later on and is marked by various rituals
• ear piercing
• hair cutting
• naming
• depilation (body hair removal)
• removal of incisor teeth
• circumcision
• This may also be a long PROCESS, where various benchmarks must be met before one moves to the next stage of personhood. "rights" are always dependent on the continual completion of these stages.
• LIFE-CYCLE periods are also variant among cultures.It is common for stages like "infant" and "adolescent" to be absent in non-western cultures, where these categories are not recognized.

PERSONHOOD ACROSS CULTURES

• Javanese: To be a person is to be "Javanese" and flagrantly immoral, small children, insane, and insolent are said to be ndurung kjawa 'not yet Javanese'
• Nuer: people do not mourn for a small child. A small child is not yet ran, 'a person' at a bout 6 years of age when they can begin to contribute to the daily life of a kin group, they are considered a person.
• 1950's Korea: Death of an infant is not recognized. Personhood is a process.

biological birth acknowledges "potential", but is not a recognition of "personhood" in many cultures. Personhood is a socially and culturally recognized fact.

BIRTH AS A RITE OF PASSAGE

• Birth itself is a SEPARATION
• Everything that follows ritually, is part of the transition to personhood (circumcision, bathing, rubbing, hurrying the placenta, cutting the umbilical cord, food and behavioral taboos by mother , father and infant,physical separation from the mother)
• the rites are indicative of the LIMINALITY of the stage between BIRTH and PERSONHHOOD.
• taboos must be followed
• rituals must be observed
• all intended to help with the transition from human to person.
• often treated as a period of seclusion like being in the womb (children are not yet FULLY born)
• Philipines: strict seclusion in a room with a raised well-sealed floor and closed windows for two weeks
• Yavapai (Amazon):mother and infant remained in seclusion for 6 days on a bed of warm coals covered with grass.
• EXPLANATIONS:
• Ghana: child may be reclaimed by spirits, if it is a "spirit child". If it is, it will "die" before the 7 day seclusion is up and the body will be mutilated and buried in spot, so that this does not happen again. Parents are not permitted to mourn. It takes 7 days to know if the child is human.
• Ashanti: in this traditional matrilineal culture, the child is given its "spirit" nioro by the father.If the child survives 8 days with no special care while in seclusion, it is given a Nteatea ceremony by the father's lineage, and it is given its spirit. Until then it is potentially a "spirit child" and not yet born.
• Todo (India): keep child indoors for three months, until it is brought out to "meet the sun" (and all the other players in the social world). Until then the child's face can not see the sun, and they are not a person.
• Hopi: have a "meet the sun" ceremony where the mother was purified and the baby was named as it "met the sun".
• Bariba (Benin): babies could be born witches, and therefore must be identified shortly after birth so that they do not endanger the health of the mother or the community.
• Mohave: once a child has "suckled' on its mother's breast, it is a person and can not be killed with out sanction.
• Ancient Athens: A child could be killed before the naming ceremony Amphidromia
• 17th and 18th century England: infanticide was practiced and it was frowned upon, but since personhood was incremental, it was seen as less heinous than killing an adult, 
• Brazil: Death Without Weeping article. We see that Poor Catholic women allow see their babies as "unwilling to thrive" "not wanting to live"
• practice indifference to them/dont care for them if they seem weak
• dont bury them or have a funeral
• DISCUSS THIS ARTICLE IN DETAIL AFTER THE BREAK!!!!!
• WATCH CITIZEN RUTH (for discussion)

During these "trial periods", the infant must prove that they are worthy of personhood. first by managing to survive, and then by displaying the vigor and affect of someone who is destined to be a member of the community. If it does not pass these tests, it may be neglected, or killed without repercussion..

• INFANTICIDE is condemned, but only after the child is noted to be a person. In societies where they lack the means to kill a child BEFORE birth, these liminal periods are times in which killing is permissible.
• WEANING: Children are often considered appendages of their mothers until WEANED. 
• Yanomami: if a woman died in childbirth her (live) infant would be buried with her. If both survived, the child would be named after it was weaned.
• NAMING: as the quintessentia...in many cultures, there is no penalty for the killing of a child that is not yet named.
• Naming may have prevented infanticide
• Among the Inuit of the Arctic, a child was named after a deceased relative and so "reincarnating" their spirit. The child then became a known part of the social intercourse of the community
• In cultures that suffer from extreme poverty, the naming of children is often delayed as a way to stave off the disappointment of death (high rates of infant mortality)-emotional deprivation is part of economic scarcity (Brazil)
• Himalayas: Children's names are not spoken becasue they do not want to identify them to spirits that may endanger them (emotional attachment to name avoidance)
• Hindu: named by a Brahmin priest after the 10th day, but not called by their names for fear of the evil eye. (emotional attachment---but see vulnerability). Babies are often depicted in pictures with large birth marks so as not to make them too beautiful.

Why is it "Murder"?

• Factors
• the "status" of the mother (wet nurse, indigent mother, upper class woman)
• Female status and FETAL status are linked (sometimes this affords a woman higher status, sometimes lowers status)

QUESTIONS:
In the United States, the abortion debate has been constrained, by a culture-bound discourse on  "personhood". Because biological birth is seen as the event which designates both humaness and personhood, the only space to "negotiate" is the period before birth. the conversation is about "where on the spectrum" do we determine a child is "viable"/alive/human/a person? We disregard any definitions of the personhood of the mother, or any other aspects of this debate. 

• How have our TECHNOLOGIES (ultrasound, amniocentesis, etc) contributed to our changing ideas of "personhood"
• "gender reveal parties"???? What does this say? How does this impact the debate?
• Ultrasound "birth" announcements/baby pictures on facebook, etc. What up?

mizuko kuyd ---literally refers to a kayo 供養or memorial service conducted in most cases by Buddhist priests for the spirits of mizuko 水子，meaning “water child or children” and referring normally to an aborted fetus (induced or spontaneous) but also to stillborn infants and those who die soon after birth.

• This service is in part intended as consolation to the mother, as the one most directly affected, but often with other members of the family in mind as well. 
• Westernization and Urbanization: with the gradual devolution of the traditional family system in modern urban areas the responsibility for abortion, which used to be shared by the local community in Edo Japan, must now often “be borne in secret completely by the individual”

The Paradox of Abortion: 

• "The quality of life pitted against life.Whichever we choose, we lose. And that, too, is part of being human. That too is the dilemma of abortions” 
• Legality of Abortion
• abortion has been legal in the United States only since 1973
• Japan passed the Eugenic Protection Law in 1948 (with revisions in 1949 and 1952), making abortion legally possible for the first time.