Abortion and fallacies

By Martín Bonfil Olivera

Published in Milenio Diario, december 2nd, 2009

The decriminalization of abortion (or its penalization, in this poor country that, as it takes a step forward, always takes another backwards) is not a scientific issue, but a social and political one.

And also an ethical problem, of course… just like all social and political issues. But unlike what happened in the middle ages, when it was believed that the only valid ethical criteria were those dictated by religion, today, in the 21^st century, we have scientific knowledge as a very important guide to norm the decisions we take as a society.

That's why fallacies such as "life begins at conception" cannot be allowed to pass for arguments when used by political parties, such as PRI, PAN, even PRD, and of course, the catholic hierarchy, have been doing in Mexico, in order to approve laws that will limit women's right to decide over their body, thus violating their human rights.

To refute this is so easy that its embarrassing: life does not begin at conception, because the sperm and ovum, the cells whose union gives origin to the zygote or fertilized egg (which is presented by these people as "potentially" human), are already alive before conception. If we take life as an absolute value, we should consider night ejaculations and menstruation as instances of assassination… "potentially".

A nice try to avoid this objection is to define that which starts with fertilization as human life. Again, false: sperm and ovule are as human as a zygote. The one thing that characterizes a zygote or an embryo as "human" during its first developmental stages is its genetic information… which is also present in the cells that give origin to it. (And even so, if the church wanted to argue that the essence of the human being reduces to its genes, they'd be getting into a conceptual mess worse than the one they started with!.)

A human being does not suddenly appear: it develops. Before the 12th week, it does not have a nerve system that can support functions such as perception and consciousness, without which we cannot speak of a "person". (For the same reason, someone with irreversible brain damage is not considered "alive" anymore, although its heart and lungs may be still functioning.)

As stated yesterday by Roberto Blancarte in Milenio Diario, what the religious hierarchy is achieving, with the complicity of political parties, is to "confessionalize politics, weaken secular State, and introduce catholic norms in legislation and public policies". It is evident: the criminalization of abortion is unjust and dishonest. Science and human rights give us enough arguments to oppose it. Otherwise, the price will still be paid by our women, and our society as a whole.

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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Women and washing machines

by Martín Bonfil Olivera
Published in Milenio Diario, March 11, 2009

In 2006, in a tour in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, former president Vicente Fox proudly mentioned that seventy-five per cent of the homes in Mexico have a washing machine, "and made of metal, not the kind with two hands and two legs". This injurious phrase showed that the former president's concept of woman reduced to "a person that washes clothes".

Last Sunday, International Women's Day, pope Benedict XVI asked for women "to be more respected and valued every day". The same day, The Vatican's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, published that women should give thanks for the washing machine because "this humble domestic appliance had done more for the women’s liberation movement than the contraceptive pill". Apparently, the Vatican values women more or less as much as Fox.

It's true that scientific-technological products –including washing machines, among other domestic without which housework would be worse than it already is– have contributed to diminish social inequality between man and woman (which still persists). What's indignant is to find people that still think that such labors are a natural obligation on women.

But it's undeniable that the fact that women, for the first time in history, are able to reliably control their pregnancies was one of the triggers of the revolution that radically changed their role in society –although, there's still way to go. Chemist Carl Djerassi, one of the fathers of the pill, reflects on these and other social consequences of his invention in his excellent book This man's pill.

On the other hand, science writer Ana María Sánchez Mora , in a penetrating book that should've been named Feminism and science popularization, but because of a bad editorial decision carries the ambiguous name Science and sex (La ciencia y el sexo), explains how science, apart from refuting some beliefs like witchcraft or the biological inferiority of women, of ending women's deaths from puerperal fever and producing the pill, gave women the knowledge and arguments to denounce and fight discrimination and abuses against them.

Science not only makes useful products. It also changes the way we see the world.

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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